Church Ministry Purpose Statement (Purpose Series 5 of 5)

In this last article we move from your own self awareness of these priorities and how they can affect you personally, and how they can create a church that is either healthy or unhealthy, balanced or imbalanced. Now we're going to take that down to the application of this concept with the emerging core group. Every core group member, although having never had this training, you can be quite confident they have one or two areas they're very passionate about. We'll also see this under styles. There's a certain way that worship should be done. There's a certain way that prayer should be done, that kind of thing.

The effort to establish a healthy emphasis on ministry priorities in your church plant is not yours alone. Your core group will also have their own ministry priorities. Learning how to integrate their priorities and purpose and your personal priorities as the leader is a vitally important part of planting a healthy church. The convergence and the potential of great positive synergy or negative is usually related to how well you are aware of the dynamics that are at play while it's happening.

I will go through this exercise using myself as an example. That will hopefully prepare you to actually go through the exercise in following. Let’s just imagine that there is a core group that you have, a small group of people that have gathered to join you in planting this church. You're going to ask them what I just asked you, but when you do that you're going to do what I haven't done so far. You're going to figure out what kind of core group this is, similar to is it a learning church that's healthy but has all the others? Is it a worship mercy church? Church planters are normally greatly helped by understanding their core group well. Guess what, your core group falls into one clearly defined category. The way you find it, you just ask them.

I have just asked you to say which one or two are yours. If you were to pretend, you are now the core group, I am the church planter. Now I'm going to ask you to raise your hands. How many of you in my core group listed worship as your number one category? Let’s say four people raise their hand, write down four. How many of you put learning as your top priority? All of a sudden nine people raised their hand. How many of you put fellowship? Seven people raised their hand. How many of you put outreach? Three people raised their hand. How many of you put mercy? No one listed it first.

What do you have on your hands? You have a learning fellowship church. You have a learning fellowship core group. That's very interesting that we just all listed of the five primary purposes that God has given us, we all listed those that we would say and corporately, isn't it interesting that we're learning fellowship?

Number two: assume that these are the ministry priorities of your church's core group. Using Keller's priorities, record below what you believe would be the unique strengths and weaknesses that this core group's ministry priorities represent. This is identical to what you did for yourself. Now if you have a learning fellowship core group, what kind of dysfunctional church are they going to become unless they are led well? Basically, they're going to become a church that doesn't focus on the poor. Outreach in word or deed is a significant void in this church. Unless you have evaluated like a physician would evaluate a human body, you're evaluating this visible body of Christ and you're seeking to understand her corporately in terms of emphasis and passion and focus. We got a people who are just wired basically to be devoted to the Apostle’s teaching and to fellowship, not so wired to prayer, not so wired to caring for the poor, not so wired to seeing people added to the church every day who are being saved. A wise church planter exegetes himself, his culture and his core group.

That's why in terms of what does a church planter do and emphasize, especially during the early phase of church planting, be very wary of anybody who tells you this is what you focus on. What you focus on then is related to what the greatest needs are for taking this embryonic community that has a strong focus in one or two areas and keep fanning those flames because that might be what emerges here as Christ builds his church, but you need to make sure that what you're planting is a healthy church. That's a very unhealthy core group right now. The area of ministry of word and deed is almost nonexistent. What I'm telling you is you can do that with any core group.

Notice the next thing, this is where all this is going. On the basis of your ministry priorities, how well would you fit with this core group? How many areas of overlapping ministry priorities do you have? How important do you think agreement or overlap is? What are the advantages and disadvantages of having complete overlap? What that would mean is you are the church planter, you just polled them, and you are a learning fellowship church planter, and your core group is learning fellowship. Sometimes that happens because of who you are and how they are drawn; like draws like. Sometimes, especially if you go with a core group that existed before you, it's completely dissimilar. In other words, the analysis comes back, they are learning fellowship and guess what you are, you are evangelism and mercy. They've just called you because they love you and they love your wife, and they love that proposal you wrote, and they just think God has called you. You take them through this exercise. What insights do you gain?

Let's say it's me. I said we'll use me as an example. I am a learning, outreach person. If I were the church planter and you were the core group and you were learning fellowship the question is how much overlap. Is it a complete overlap? Is it no overlap, or is at least an overlap in an area? Well, it's pretty clear that we have commonality in learning. They as a group have a propensity to focus more on fellowship than I do collectively as a group, but I focus more on evangelism. That's very valuable information if you're a church planter. What is this group prone to say about me on the way home? I already know. "He doesn't love people. He loves the word. He loves the lost. When's the last time you had any time with him? He's out winning people to Christ. He can teach, but when is the last time you hung out with him?" I am a learning, outreach person and my compass almost every time it's just going to go right there.

Healthy Christians maintain balanced development in their personal ministry priorities, your personal worship, learning, fellowship, outreach, mercy, but they also learn to focus their ministry in light of their unique gifts and passions. In a similar way, the healthiest church plants are normally those that maintain both a balanced focus on all five of these and they actually know what they are uniquely gifted and passionate about doing best. That's what it means to serve out of strength, but in the context you learn as a church planter what it means to serve out of weakness.

When you are planting your church, learn to minister not just out of your strength and develop your church plant in light of its unique strength, but learn to minister out of your weakness. In the example, if I am a learning outreach person, that means that if I'm going to develop a healthy church, that means that I must focus on fellowship in a way that you could say doesn't come very natural to me. I need to prioritize relationships. I need to prioritize group time. I need to prioritize worship and prayer at a new level. When you are doing that, two things are happening, you are consciously planting and developing a healthy church because you have an acute awareness of what are the vital signs of health. You know what their propensities are and what their propensities for vital signs are to neglect. You also know those about yourself. You actually model before them serving not just out of strength. You affirm that, but you serve out of weakness as well.

For me, it means moving into the areas like of fellowship and relationships where I have tons of self-protective layers for me to move more deeply in relationships would cause me to not feel as in control or to feel more fear of rejection or not being approved. Whatever those heart issues are. I have to move out of my areas of strength, learning, teaching, outreach, and actually move into these realms where I don't have a naturally propensity. When I do, I need Christ more. It's in my weakness as I seek to serve in areas where I don't feel competent that he loves to show his strength.

Transformed Worldviews: Part 2 (Philosophy Series 5 of 5)

I put the Gospel in the context of four categories. I've linked the four major aspects of the Gospel with each of the ultimate questions. If you wrote under category one, in terms of the ultimate question of origins, "I believe I came from a big bang billions of years ago," you would write for the Gospel answer under that one, "I believe I was created by an infinite personal God in his image." That would be their answer as compared and contrasted with the Gospel answer.

The assumption now is that you have taken each of the four ultimate questions, and you have given your first shot, best shot at how they would answer the question of origin, the problem of evil, the question regarding hope or forgiveness, and the question regarding the afterlife or the future. I've broken down the Gospel into four very classic, traditional categories: creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. Let's look now at creation in terms of the Gospel. The good news is that God exists as a person who's infinite and eternal. He is the creator, not just the creator, but he is the sustainer. That's creation and providence of everything as good. God has revealed himself in nature, in history, in Jesus Christ. God has revealed his will to us. He's given us truth and morality in the Scriptures. God created us in his image with dignity to rule over his creation with joy.

Now I want you to look back at their answer in light of the answer of creation, the answer to the ultimate question that I just gave you. Look at their answer, and begin to think, "What is the Gospel answer?" The second one, the ultimate question of the problem of evil, suffering, and death, from a Gospel perspective, it would come under the concept of the Fall. All mankind is morally guilty because of sin, has a bad record before God. We have a bad standing before the heavenly courts. All mankind is morally corrupt because of sin. We not only have a bad standing before God, we have corrupt hearts now because of sin. All creation is fallen and depraved because of sin.

In other words, it's not just humanity that has fallen, but all of creation is now marred by sin. This is why we have natural disasters. This is why we have the hurricane. Evil, suffering, pain, injustice, and death are the result of sin. A phrase that Plantinga uses in a small little powerful book her wrote. He likes to use the phrase: "This is not the way it is supposed to be." When people understand the Gospel, and in their particular area of woundedness or brokenness, for them to hear from you, "This is not the way the infinite, eternal God meant it to be," it stirs them. Whether they have expressed it or not, they wondered, "Why is this?"

The next area: redemption, the hope of forgiveness, acceptance, freedom. Here is the good news of the Gospel events. God in Christ was born. He lived a sinless life. He died a sinner's death. He was raised from the dead, showing a victory over sin, over death, over evil, inaugurating a new era to come on the earth. He was ascended to the right hand of God. He now is ruling over all things until he returns again. God has now made Christ prophet, priest, and king over all. Jesus is now lord and savior. He is now lord, one who can demand submission to him. He is now savior, one who has the authority to bestow salvation on his people.

God now promises in Christ that people can be forgiven. They can be accepted. They can be more than just right with God. They can become sons and daughters of God. They can have a new record. They can have a new heart, regeneration, freedom. We should put the Holy Spirit there in terms of regeneration. They can have a new set of propensities, a new power. God promises a new Heaven and a new Earth to come. That is, things are not the way they're supposed to be, God has already broken through, we're in a strange interim time that the kingdom has broken through in Christ. Yet, he will return and make all things new. Between now and then, we have a foretaste. We have an appetizer of what is to come. Our hope is in a celestial city to come. Life is fleeting, but there is real hope.

Then this last one, consummation, the promise of future hope for tomorrow, again just kind of reiterating here, the kingdom has come. You have been delivered from sin's penalty. The kingdom is coming. You are being delivered from sin's domineering power. The kingdom will come. You and all creation will be delivered from sin's influence and presence. There will be no evil, no suffering, no pain, no injustice, no death. Humanity will rule over God's creation with joy. This is the way it's supposed to be. This is the way it will one day be through Christ. You can taste it now. It's the already and the not yet. Those little tastes are meant to be appetizers to cause you to long for his return. Our hope is in him coming and making all things new.

What I want you to do now, go back. Look at these four ultimate questions about reality. All of them fundamentally answering that one question, "What is real?" Look at each of the answers that you've recorded for each of these categories of origins, of the problem sin and suffering, the hope of redemption, and the hope of life eternal. I want you to write here, "What is good news to them?" There is a sense in which there is this good news that is general and monolithic for all humanity. In light of their culture and their unique brokenness and woundedness, which is displayed in how they answer these ultimate questions, what is good news to them? What is a superior answer that will be compelling and that will be attractive, or offensive in terms of the cross? Take this time now. List your Gospel answers.

Transformed Worldviews: Part 1 (Philosophy Series 4 of 5)

In this module, what we're going to be doing is looking at the concept of transformed worldviews. If you remember from our last session, what we looked at were the first three categories of our ministry focus group: behaviors, underneath that, the values that were driving the behaviors and the beliefs that were underneath the values.

We are now looking at the core concept of worldview, where every human, because they are image-bearers, is asking some form of the question, "What is real?" That may not make a lot of sense right here but I'm going to break down this question. Whereas the behavior question is, "What is done?" The value question is, "What is good?" The belief question is, "What is true?" Now we turn to what is underneath that in terms of the core worldview. Here the question, "What is real?"

Every culture has, at its core, a worldview. By "worldview," what I mean is a conceptual grid that people use to understand life and define reality. Some people believe that reality exists only in what can be seen and what can be touched and felt, and many believe there is an unseen reality beyond the mere physical senses. That's just an example of worldview, your perception of reality. What is reality? What is ultimate reality? Is there an invisible sphere of this world that is real? Those are worldview questions.

Let me orient you to the concept of worldview and then we will see the application of the gospel to the fundamental question, "What is reality?" as we break if down into four categories. I've given you here four questions that are the core of every worldview and every culture. This is Anthropology 101, in terms of, what are sometimes called, ultimate questions. People hardly ever say, if asked, "Oh yes, I have four ultimate questions I'm trying to answer all the time." They're not conscious of this, but when human beings are actually carefully studied, and we're talking about exegeting culture, and cultures are studied across the spectrum, human beings are found to be asking ultimate questions. I've categorized them into four.

Where we're headed with this is, show you how the ultimate questions, that all people are asking, find their ultimate answers in the Gospel. When you're bringing the Gospel to a nation, or you're bringing the Gospel to a culture, to your ministry focus group, there's a whole new understanding of what it means to bring the Gospel to these people. Rather than a preconceived set of propositions that we simply drop on them that just doesn't connect with them at all, what we're actually doing is bringing the very essence of the Gospel to them in a way that answers the very deepest questions that they're asking about reality.

With that background, let me show you the four questions. The first question is often called "the ultimate question of origin." Sometimes this is called "the question of meaning" or "morality." It's often expressed like this: "Where did we come from? Why are we here? What is right and wrong?" Again, like you did with behaviors, values, and beliefs, I'm going to ask you now to be thinking in terms of worldview, and what their answer would be to each of these four fundamental questions, and what the answer is according to the Gospel.

So notice, question of origin, their answer; the Gospel answer. An example, "I believe that I came from a big bang that happened billions of years ago as a mysterious result of energy, plus time, plus chance. All of humanity and all of the world finds its origin in this convergence of energy, and chance, and mass, and space that just mysterious came together and there was this big bang." How someone answers the question of origin has a much more profound influence on their lives than they, or you, realize. Often when people think about questions of origin or creation, it's just kind of a speculative, kind of a philosophical concept. When you begin to see the relationship of the answer to the ultimate question of origins to how people live every day, and how they view life, the ramifications are very significant. I'm going to be asking you to list what is their answer. Where did we come from? Why are we here? Sometimes it would be, what is the purpose of life?

Second question: questions regarding the problem of evil, the problem of suffering, the quandary of death. You can't go to any culture, on any continent, and not find these kinds of questions. Why this pain? Why death? Why suffering?

Question number three: is there any hope for the problem I'm facing? Sometimes it's phrased, "Can I be forgiven? Can I be accepted? Can I be free?" hope for forgiveness, acceptance, freedom. Their answer; Gospel answer.

Then the fourth one, questions regarding the future, an afterlife, an eternity. This is often linked to whether or not reality is just what is seen or unseen. How will what's wrong be made right? How are things supposed to be? What lies ahead after death? What is their answer? What is the Gospel answer?

I put the Gospel in the context of four categories, and I've linked the four major aspects of the Gospel with each of the ultimate questions. The first thing I want you to do is only give their answer under each one of these four, not the Gospel answer. I've given you an example of the first one, question of origin, "I believe I came from a big bang billions of years ago." Question regarding problem of evil, what would their answer be to "Where is there hope in light of evil and suffering and pain?" Questions regarding the afterlife or the future, what would their answer be? After that, I'll give you an overview and an orientation of the Gospel as a whole, and then I want you to go back to each one of those answers that they gave and see the Gospel in light of similarity and dissimilarity. Let's stop now and do their answer to each of these four ultimate questions.

Transformed Behaviors, Values, and Beliefs (Philosophy Series 3 of 5)

There are three primary goals of a contextualized philosophy of ministry, as it relates to your ministry focus group. Radical identification with the ministry focus group, effective communication to the ministry focus group, and holistic transformation of the ministry focus group as a result of that.

Our focus in this session, is on the ultimate goal. Holistic transformation of our ministry focus group. Gospel-centered churches, transformational churches, are intentionally seeking much more than merely the modified behavior of their ministry focus group. Instead, they are intentionally seeking ways to bring the gospel to bare, not just on behavioral modification. Not just on what you do or don't do, but you are intentionally seeking to get underneath the behaviors, to understand why.

What are the values that are driving those behaviors? What are the beliefs, then, that are driving those values? What are the worldviews that are actually underneath those beliefs. I really want to encourage you to have in your mind, the task of penetrating deeply, to the very core with the gospel. 

Notice the questions that are now with each of these concentric circles. The behavior circle: what is done? The value circle: how they answer the question, what is good? The beliefs circle: how they answer the question, what is true? The worldview question: how do they answer question, what is real?

This is hard mental work. This does not come easy, so if you find yourself, as I now push you, this is what's done for basic missionary training, where you have to be pushed to begin to think now, about applying these principles to your ministry focus group. Gospel- centered churches, transformational churches, are intentionally seeking much more than merely the modified behavior. They're seeking to go deeper.

I want you to think of your ministry focus group. Now, we're actually going to start studying them. We're going to start exegeting and seeking to understand them, so that in light of our understanding, we might learn with greater clarity and power, what is good news to them. In light of what I was talking about last time.

We'll look first, at the three levels: behaviors, values, and beliefs. What is done? What do they do or not do? What is good? What underlies their behaviors? What's true to them? What do they believe that actually lies at the root of their values?

In the material, you'll see these three categories. Transformed behaviors. Then if you notice, there are two sub-categories under each of these three areas. For instance, transformed behaviors. What are their behaviors now? What would their behaviors look like if they were transformed through the ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ?

The next one: values. What are their values now? Normally, you’re developing three to five with your team or with your coach. I want you to just be able to put one down, so you begin to taste it. What are those values now, that underlie those behaviors? What would they look like if they were transformed?

Then, beliefs. What are their beliefs now? What would their beliefs look like, that would be transformed, that would be the motivation for these particular values? See what I mean by hard work? For those of you who have had training in exegeting special revelation, this is usually the time that's paralleled by learning Greek and Hebrew, and learning hermeneutics and looking at the text and going, well, wait a second, this is not real easy. Exegeting the world is difficult. Exegeting the word is difficult.

I'm basically giving you cultural hermeneutics. I'm going to ask you three baby questions. Let's just start with this outer circle. Tell me one thing that they do now, but that if the gospel penetrated this culture, what would it look like that would be dissimilar? What do they value now? What do they believe that's underneath that value, that motivates it and what would that belief be, that was evidence of the transforming work of the gospel?

Now, I'll give you just one example. Under behaviors now, I thought of passive men. I think the church today, is plagued by passivity. By men who have gone passive. Passive as fathers. Passive as husbands. Passive in terms of the spiritual development of their family. Passivity. I believe is like a disease, a plague of this generation. What would that behavior look like transformed?

Well, the antithesis of that. This would be somebody who is not passive but who is engaged and active and initiating with the spouse. Initiating, across the spectrum with children. Initiating, in terms of spiritual development. This would be a different behavior. Even in thinking about this, all I could think of is all the years I went back and forth over the Pacific, in Japan and saw an Asian culture where men had just, especially as it relates to anything spiritual or anything related to home, just totally passive. Anything religious is not manly. Religion equals things that women do. That would be an example of behavior. He doesn't have to illegitimately be seeking vindication from his career, drinking from sewer water, when he could be having vindication that would never run dry.

The third category: beliefs. Most of these guys actually believe that there are no real moral absolutes and that everything is really relative. There's no real right and wrong. Except, the only absolute is that there are no absolutes. That's what's going to be undergirding, a lot of this.

What would it look like if beliefs were transformed? There would be this belief that the scriptures actually give us what Frances Shaeffer used to call, “true truth.” There are rights and wrongs in life and those are not determined by consensus or by cultural vote. We're not in a closed system, we're in an open system. The good news is there's an infinite personal God and he exists. He has spoken. He has spoken through his Son. He speaks through his word. We can know what's right and what's wrong. Our desire would be that that belief that God has actually spoken and that's how we know what's right or wrong, would be what this person would believe. See how practical that is?

I want you to think of your ministry focus group. I've just given you an example of each of these three. I want you to write behavior now, behavior transformed. Value now, value transformed. Belief now, belief transformed. This is hard work. Normally this cannot be completed alone and you're just showing your image-bearer nature, meaning your interpersonal by very being. You need to join with others. You need to look at this particular culture and you need to ask these questions. Give it a shot, so you can begin to experience what it's like to think of your culture and go from the behaviors, to the values, to the beliefs and then we'll come back later and do worldview.

Gospel + Church + Culture (Philosophy Series 2 of 5)

Philosophy of Ministry is a unique set of integrated ministry purposes, values, styles, and strategies embraced and used in gospel ministry by a particular church in its culture. You must become a lifelong in-depth student of all three, meaning culture, church, and gospel if you're to be effective in church planting. You must be not only a wise interpreter of God's word but also a wise interpreter of God's world, particularly as it is uniquely manifested in the culture that your church is serving. Most church leaders are trained to study the word well, but they are rarely trained to study culture well.

In 1 Chronicles, chapter 12, some of you do remember, the men of Issachar, they understood the times and they knew what Israel should do. As a church planter, do you understand the times? Therefore, as the New Israel and a manifestation of that in a church, in light of your understanding of the times, do you know what to do? Think of why the letters, most of the letters, the Pauline Letters of the New Testament were even written. One of the primary reasons that almost all these letters were written was because as the gospel advanced, it faced different cultural context. It faced different traditions, different beliefs, different ways of doing things.

The Apostle Paul would write a letter to say that we should not be thinking through culture and then responding to it. Can you imagine the Apostle Paul taking that posture when the church's report back, like the church at Colossae reported back, what most believed was a form of, kind of a weird synchrotism between Judaism and Neo-Gnosticism Where they were talking about supernatural beings and different dimensions of spirituality and that was in the culture. What do we believe about angels and things? Can you believe if Paul the Apostle, we don't seek to understand or respond to those things? It's why he wrote Colossians.

You're in a position that just is continuing. As the gospel advances, questions are being raised. Different cultures are being confronted and certain things in them need to be affirmed and those things that are not godly need to be denied and need to challenged. You cannot not contextualize. It's not possible. If you are not contextualizing, that means that's how you're contextualizing. You're contextualizing poorly.

Usually underneath that is this concept that Christianity can somehow exist without culture. It's not possible. Then you actually just think of the doctrine of the incarnation. Why didn't Jesus come as an acultural human? He came as a very unique cultural person. Most of us don't realize God is on the side of culture. Culture will transcend eternity. The actual formula, as kind of strange as that may sound, the actual formula is an understanding of the gospel, plus the centrality of the church, plus an understanding and an exegesis of the culture and the ability to integrate these three. Normally, it’s not so formulaic that you can guarantee it, but normally, God shows up. Normally when you see these three components at work, lives start being changed. Cultures start being changed.

In retrospect, as people have studied this, it's fascinating when people really know the gospel and they have the centrality of the church and they understand the culture and they understand the cultural stances and things we'll be getting to, there's a convergence there. It almost always relates and changed lives and changed cities or changed towns or changed villages.

One of the most common sources of conflict in church planting is regarding philosophy of ministry issues, a unique style of worship, a particular leadership style. You could put anything. An evangelistic style, a preaching style can be the source of significant church conflict that can greatly damage and even kill a young church.

Because philosophy of ministry is one of, if not the top, issues in conflict, we dare not at least touch on this is a common mistake. Here's the concept. There are four essential criteria that we teach that should be the criteria of your emerging church leaders. Number 1, true spirituality. That's 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, characteristics of an elder. Number 2, sound theology. Number 3, proven track record of effective ministry. Number 4, essential agreement, not exact, on philosophy of ministry.

This should scare you. You go into a situation and, as a result of this course, you have an amazing philosophy of ministry statement, and there's this core group that hears you've had this training. They bring you in and they say, "Tell us about our philosophy of ministry." They look at it and they go, "Wow. This is great. We love it, and you're hired." Everybody's excited until several months in when real ministry starts happening that their real philosophy of ministry began to surface as decisions would arise on what these different areas of ministry were actually going to look like.

Then what happens is all of a sudden the church planter realizes he has significant philosophy of ministry issues in critical areas, like worship, outreach, leadership, and these people in the core group with whom he has these differences are in positions of authority already in the core group for making decisions. His chances of survival are very low. What actually happens normally is that it becomes really clear. It's not a problem with spirituality, not a problem with beliefs, not a problem with ministry gifts, but all of a sudden, it becomes very clear. "I didn't have this in mind for what worship would look like. I just assumed you wanted a Sunday evening worship."

All of a sudden, you see something like that where the church planter is just going, "We don't have a real fit here, do we?" The church planter has just seen that this person doesn't fit the fourth of the four criteria.

Philosophy of Ministry Introduction (Philosophy Series 1 of 5)

This is our module on philosophy or philosophy of ministry. That is a term that we use to describe the more technical term of contextualizing the gospel to a particular culture or ministry focus group, and in this module, like in all modules, we have one primary question that we're seeking to answer. The question here is, how can I contextualize the gospel without compromise? The assumption here is in my particular ministry focus group. Contextualization is presenting the gospel in ways which consider the worldview of the respondent culture, adapting the biblical message into forms that are true to scriptures, but appropriate to the local culture and society.

Right at the center of the heart of the thesis of this session. To the weak, I became weak to win the weak. Now he's taken us through multiple situations of how he adapted to them in order to win them.

Then we have this famous statement. "I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. Why? I do this, I do all this for the sake of the gospel that I may share its blessings." Here we see the Apostle Paul, adapting his ministry very specifically and very uniquely and in dissimilar ways according to his cultural contexts. He's embracing, at least we know from even this, he's embracing certain cultural forms, certain traditions that are not necessarily his, but he takes them on in order to find common ground for the sake of the gospel and his caveats teach us that he does this. To those not under the law, he becomes as those not under the law and vice versa, but he does this with these little caveats without violating sound doctrine, without violating the gospel. That's the task.

I don't know if you thought a lot about the difference between Christianity and every other major religion beyond the obvious of the centrality of a person and work of Christ into this area of contextualization. One of the things that makes Christianity unique is not just every other world religion points us to a path that leads to the way, but in Christianity, Jesus Christ is the way, is a person. There's not principles to abide by, to gain God's favor. This concept that we just got a taste of with the Apostle Paul has been called the divine genius of Christianity. It is actually one of the primary reasons that Christianity is the number one largest world religion today.

It is because of this divine genius of Christianity being able to take on such dissimilar forms according to culture that it looks significantly different in one cultural context than it does another. What's even more fascinating, if you think about your own denomination, people will often ask me as a Presbyterian, usually these are people who are not followers of Christ, they'll say, "Well, what is a Presbyterian church like?" I go, "I can take you to churches in southern California and say let's worship here and I'll say this is a PCA church, and then I put you on a plane and I fly you up to New England and I say this is a PCA church." The person not familiar would say, "No, no, no. Now these cannot be the same denomination." I say, "Oh, yes, they are."

The reason they are is a little micro-example of the divine genius of Christianity in terms of a parallel with Islam. Islam is actually locked in to a particular time in history, a particular culture, a particular language, a particular dress, like a flash photo has been taken of that culture, and if you adopt as your religion Islam, it will look like on the West Coast exactly what it looks like on the East Coast, exactly what it looks like in Asia and exactly what it looks like in Europe. I just want you to be struck with this concept of the divine genius of God's plan of actually bringing the reality of who He is in Jesus Christ, into the world through the incarnation of Christ into a particular culture, a somewhat lower class Galilean culture that was Jewish.

Notice there's no such thing as acultural Christianity. It is not possible to have Christianity that is acultural. By its very nature, the gospel must take on form in an incarnational context. Here are the biblical perspectives given to us on how the Apostle Paul would accommodate without compromise. What this whole session is about is who are you seeking to reach and what does that mean to the, fill in the blank? I became a, fill in the blank, that I might win some.