Our religion ought to inform our politics as it ought to inform our whole life. There are some political issues we should not be silent on (abortion comes to mind). However, the “culture wars” in America have duped Christians into enlisting in causes that have nothing to do with their religion. Worse still, it makes our religion into simply one aspect of a larger subsuming culture complete with its own schools, dress, music, television shows and diets. It doesn’t take a large jump before those things all become of similar importance, and Christ takes his place in the pantheon between Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck (or Obama and Al Franken, as the case may be). It’s the devil’s old bait-and-switch. Christ didn’t have a problem with the Pharisee’s actual righteousness, he had a problem with assuming that adherence to arbitrary cultural conventions was righteousness. Christianity is not a culture, it is trans-cultural. When we engage in evangelism, it should not be to make people more like us, but rather more like Christ.
Here is a summary of the messages from the SBFC-SW 2009, as well as a collection of photos from the conference and a video I took of the attendees singing “Be Thou My Vision”.
“Finally, I worry that a movement built on megachurches, megaconferences, and megaleaders, does the church a disservice in one very important way that is often missed amid all the pizzazz and excitement: it creates the idea that church life is always going to be big, loud, and exhilarating and thus gives church members and ministerial candidates unrealistic expectations of the normal Christian life. In the real world, many, perhaps most, of us worship and work in churches of 100 people or less; life is not loud and exciting; big things do not happen every Sunday; budgets are incredibly tight and barely provide enough for a pastor’s modest salary; each Lord’s Day we go through the same routines of worship services, of hearing the gospel proclaimed, of taking the Lord’s Supper, of teaching Sunday School; perhaps several times a year we do leaflet drops in the neighbourhood with very few results; at Christmas time we carol sing in the high street and hand out invitations to church and maybe two or three people actually come along as a result; but no matter — we keep going, giving, and praying as we can; we try to be faithful in the little entrusted to us. It’s boring, it’s routine, and it’s the same, year in, year out. Therefore, in a world where excitement, celebrity, and cultural power are the ideal, it is tempting amidst the circumstances of ordinary church life to forget that this, the routine of the ordinary, the boring, the plodding, is actually the norm for church life and has been so throughout most places for most of the history of the church; that mega-whatevers are the exception, not the rule; and that the church has survived throughout the ages not just – or even primarily – because of the high profile firework displays of the great and the good, but because of the day to day faithfulness of the mundane, anonymous, non-descript people who constitute most of the church, and who do the grunt work and the tedious jobs that need to be done[emphasis added]. History does not generally record their names; but the likelihood is that you worship in a church which owes everything, humanly speaking, to such people.”
“I think sometimes we get so focused on getting the message out that we forget that the person we’re interacting with is a fellow human being made in the image of God with all the wondrous design and complexity that entails. We need to treat them with respect as per 1 Peter 3:15 by listening to what they say. We need to pray that God would aid our ears to help us discern how to apply Gospel first aid. Jesus did that and with remarkable effectiveness cut to the heart of the problem - Jesus was talking to a man who had no idea that he was anything else but a human rabbi. In listening to him, Jesus discerned that the man’s (somewhat fawning) pious talk needed to be dealt with immediately. Jesus was after the self-righteousness that thinks you can make yourself “good” and acceptable to God. He is seeking to challenge this man’s whole concept of moral goodness.[Tim Keller's Study Guide on Mark]“
– Christopher Powell
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