Living Under the Reign of God: Gospel, Church

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Living Under the Reign of God Gospel,
Church Culture in a Postmodern Context

• Baptist Bible Seminary December 2004

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The Churchs Cultural Captivity

• 1. Loss of eschatological urgency
• 2. Framed in the normalcy of the present and
  not the coming kingdom
• 3. Derives its status and forms of power
  from the world
• 4. Seduced to turn the world into the
  kingdom that avoids the cross,
  conversion, goodnews!...

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Lessons to be Learned in the Crisis of a
Crumbling Worldview

• Need to abandon just a privatized faith for
  participation in a radical kingdom community...
• Church - culture relationship is not sponsoral,
  religious servants of, citizens rooted in a
  foreign land
• Need to recover the gospel, church the world.

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Post-Captivity Evangelism

• Evangelism must be seen as invitation to enter
  the Kingdom and thus the church.
• Converts need to be presented the implications of
  entering a new race of men.
• Can no longer assume that enculturated people
  have a common understanding of language with us.
• Without imposing the gospel, we need to trade on
  the moral point of contact for the gospel.

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Point of Contact for the Gospel

• Inescapable - Sensus Deitatis
• All men know their guilt (worthy of death) that
  they are creatures
• Agency of Word and Spirit in regeneration
• Epistemologically - nothing in common
• Metaphysically - everything in common
• Moral Point of Contact - Judgment, Repent

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Implications for Evangelism Apologetics

• 1. God redemptively engages people in their
  history by the grace of the Holy Spirit.
• 2. There must be a faith community that
  demonstrates that the gospel is true in practice
  and thus in reality.
• 3. By the use of redemptive history we must show
  the narrative is compelling coherent on its own
  terms.
• 4. Our faith narrative must be presented as
  encompassing all of life experience.
• 5. We must honestly fully hear other faiths.
• 6. The gospel should be presented without resort
  to verbal violence against others.

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The Church an Alternative Culture

• Matthew 513-16
• Salt of the Earth to become foolish
• Light of the World represent kingdom salvation
  to the world
• City Set on a Hill issue is seen or not seen
• Live in Such a Way that the Kingdom Will Be
  Manifested

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Kingdom and the Church
Kingdom
Church
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Kingdom Church
Church Mission Under the Reign of
God

• Represents the kingdom as its community(koinonia)
  
• Serves the Kingdom as its servants (diakonia)
• Announces the Kingdom as its messenger(kerygma)

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Post-Foundational Theology

• Evangelicalisms commitment to Enlightenment
  Captivity
• New approach to post-foundational theology
  (Grenz, et al)
• Emerging Church
• Rethinking Biblical Theology from the perspective
  of the Biblical Metanarrative

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Theology as a Bounded Set
Ten Loci as the Boundary
Doctrine
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Theology as a Centered Set
Centered Community
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Theology as a Bounded/Centered Set
Interpreted Biblical Metanarrative
Christ Centered Coherence
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The Enigma of the Emerging Church
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Key Tenets of the Emerging Church

• Recover aspects of liturgy that was jettisoned by
  modernity
• Remove Christianity from its cerebral captivity
  as propositions to believe
• Replace the cognitive with the aesthetic
  embrace abduction while rejecting both deduction
  and induction
• Truth springs forth from relationships and is
  always akin to feelings

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Living Under the Reign of God Gospel,
Church Culture in a Postmodern Context
The End

• Baptist Bible Seminary December 2004