Coram Deo Blog
28 July 2010 at 10:34 am by Bob Thune · city renewal, culture, kingdom, theology
By far the most thought-provoking book I’ve read so far this year is James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World. I finished this book about a month ago and have been ruminating on it ever since, trying to discern how exactly to pen an adequate review/summary. So if you’re not going to read on, I’ll just tell you now: you should buy this book and read it. Everyday readers will benefit from Hunter’s penetrating insights into evangelical Christianity’s interaction with modern culture. And spiritual leaders will gain a litany of reasons to question their assumptions about Christian mission and spiritual formation.
If you didn’t discern from the publishing house (Oxford University Press) that Hunter’s book is an intellectually weighty work, his aggressive thesis ought to get your attention – and leave you hoping for some substantive argumentation. Hunter’s contention is that though Christians far and wide are united in their desire to change the world, “the dominant ways of thinking about culture and cultural change are flawed.” The Christian/populist idea that cultural change results from “change to the heart and mind of the person, through the values and ideas that people live by… is almost wholly mistaken… [E]very tactic for changing the world that is based on this working theory of culture and cultural change will fail.” Thus, says Hunter, “If one is serious about changing the world, the first step is to discard the prevailing view of culture and cultural change and start from scratch.”
Starting from scratch is exactly what Hunter is attempting to do. His book is a massive work of deconstruction and reconstruction. He labors to tear down, bit by bit, the dominant Christian paradigm of cultural change and to replace it with a new and better way of thinking. Does he succeed? You’ll have to answer that question for yourself.
Hunter is a very cautious and charitable interlocutor. He is writing as a thoughtful Christian, and he is surprisingly warm and gracious even in his deconstruction. He does not denigrate the efforts of Christians to change the culture through evangelism, political activism, or social renewal. He is simply arguing that these methods do not work. It’s not that Christians lack good intentions or adequate will; it’s that they’re starting from wrong assumptions.
Hunter’s thesis is relatively straightforward. But it’s the robust argumentation he pursues to defend that thesis that makes this book compelling. As a professor of religion and culture at the University of Virginia, he clearly has the research horsepower to deliver the goods. To whet your appetite, I’ll quote Hunter’s own summary of his argument near the end of the book:
I note in Essay I that Christians have long had a healthy desire to change the world for the better, a desire with roots in sound biblical and theological reasoning. In the past, however, they have done so with mixed effect…
The first problem is that the implicit social theory that guides so much of their efforts is deeply flawed. Christians… tend to believe that cultures are shaped from the cumulative values and beliefs that reside in the hearts and minds of ordinary people… This is why Christians often pursue social change through evangelism (and conversion), civic renewal through populist social movements, and democratic political action (where every vote reflects values). The evidence of history and sociology demonstrates that this theory of culture and cultural change is simply wrong and for this reason, every initiative based on this perspective will fail to achieve the goals it hopes to meet. This is not to say that the hearts and minds of ordinary people are unimportant. To the contrary. Rather, the hearts and minds of ordinary people are only relatively insignificant if the goal is to change cultures at their deepest levels.
Against this view I have argued that cultural change at its most profound level occurs through dense networks of elites operating in common purpose within institutions at high-prestige centers of cultural production… Thus, for all the talk of world-changing and all of the good intentions that motivate it, the Christian community is not, on the whole, remotely close to a position where it could actually change the world in any significant way.
Were Christians to be in a position to exert enduring cultural influence, the results would likely be disastrous or perhaps mostly so. The reason, I argue in Essay II, is that world-changing implies power and the implicit theories of power that have long guided their exercise of power are also deeply problematic… In conformity to the spirit of the modern age, Christians conceive of power as political power… they mistakenly imagine that to pass a referendum, elect a candidate, pass a law, or change a policy is to change culture… In so doing, Christians undermine the message of the very gospel they cherish and desire to advance.
Finally, I argued in the present essay, the political agendas of the Christian Right, Christian Left, and the neo-Anabaptists are just the leading edge of larger paradigms of cultural engagement that I call, respectively, ‘defensive against,’ ‘relevance to,’ and ‘purity from.’ Each of these paradigms operates with different understandings of what it is that most needs changing within the contemporary world… In opposition to [these paradigms], I have suggested a model of engagement called ‘faithful presence within.’
As you can see from this excerpt, Hunter’s book offers much to digest. He takes to task all forms of Christian political engagement (not just the Christian Right). He examines wrong ideas about power and counters with what a biblical approach to power might look like. He offers thoughtful support for his contention that culture is shaped by institutions, not individuals. Along the way, he makes complex sociological principles accessible to the average person. For instance: does symbolic power seem like an abstract concept? Well, just think of it this way: an editorial in the New York Times carries more ‘clout’ than one in the Lincoln Journal-Star. That’s because the Times has greater symbolic power – which makes it more culturally influential. It’s those kinds of insights that make Hunter’s arguments plausible not just to sociologists, but to thoughtful Christians everywhere.
Hunter’s book isn’t without weaknesses, and others have offered valid critiques. But for all Christians seeking to thoughtfully engage culture – and especially for Coram Deo members seeking to live on mission and bring renewal within the city – this book is a must-read.
For those who will be called to lead the church either now or in the future: it would be wise not to say or write anything about cultural engagement until you’ve read this book. Why? Because according to Hunter, Christians need to “abandon altogether talk of ‘redeeming the culture,’ ‘advancing the kingdom,’ ‘building the kingdom,’ ‘transforming the world,’ ‘reclaiming the culture,’ ‘reforming the culture,’ and ‘changing the world.’” You may end up disagreeing with Hunter on this point. But you shouldn’t do so until you’ve weighed his argument.
[One of Coram Deo's missional community leaders, Tyler Zach, read Hunter's book with laptop at hand, summarizing the key arguments and assertions. In weeks to come we'll post some of Tyler's summaries to help readers more thoughtfully engage this important tome.]
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20 July 2010 at 8:03 am by Bob Thune · A29, church planting, politics, prayer
A brother in Christ and a partner in ministry, Pastor Rashid Emmanuel, was shot dead in Faisalabad, Pakistan, yesterday, after being exonerated from accusations of blasphemy against the prophet Muhammad.
AP report
BBC report
We are grieving Rashid’s death and praying/hoping for the safety of other Christians in Pakistan. The country is 97% Muslim, and though the government has a good record of protecting religious freedom, some radicals among the population are very hostile to Christians. Sources on the ground are complaining that the blasphemy charges were spurious in the first place. Religious freedom advocates have criticized Pakistan’s blasphemy law for being vague and subject to exploitation by those hostile to Christianity:
Section 295-C: Use of derogatory remarks, etc; in respect of the Holy Prophet. Whoever by words, either spoken or written or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.
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16 July 2010 at 9:14 am by Bob Thune · church planting, city renewal, gospel, leadership
As previously mentioned, I have been invited to travel to northern New England this fall to speak at a conference on the centrality of the gospel. This is a cool opportunity for me and a significant chance to plant gospel seed in some of the hardest soil in north America.
Lead 2010 Conference Website
Any cultural observer or missiologist will agree that the northeastern U.S. is the hardest place on American soil for church planting and renewal. The home of the Great Awakening has now become a bastion of stale, liberal religiosity littered with dead and dying churches. But God is doing something. A resurgence of gospel interest is taking place among many young church leaders. God is calling church planters to forsake ’safer’ soil in the South and move to New England to labor there. And within established churches – many of them hundreds of years old – a desire is growing to rediscover the centrality of the gospel, the mission of Jesus, and the work of church planting.
Please pray for my role in the Lead Conference to further the work God is already doing, for His kingdom and glory.
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14 July 2010 at 9:11 am by Bob Thune · announcement, just another day...
Today Coram Deo says farewell to the converted house on south 87th Street that has been our ministry headquarters for the past three years.
For the first 18 months of Coram Deo’s existence, we officed in the back corner of an office building owned by our mother church. And when I say “officed,” I mean that term loosely, since said church was in the process of renovating the rest of the building. We did our best to write sermons, counsel people, and meet for missional community despite the din of hammer drills and backhoes, the smell of paint, and the regular interruption of construction workers who needed to use our bathroom. Despite the distractions, it was a great blessing to have a sending church who gave us free office space while we got the church up and running. To this day we are grateful.
In the summer of 2007 it was time to cut the umbilical cord, and so we leased the cheapest 1400 square feet of office space we could find, which happened to be on 87th and Center near Canfield Plaza. It was pretty neglected, but thanks to the labor of some Coram Deo folks, we whipped it into shape. For the past three years this space has been the nerve center for the daily operations of the Coram Deo church community. It’s hosted missional communities, Bible studies, counseling appointments, baptism classes, membership interviews, staff meetings, premarital classes, Spring Break teams, preaching cadres, and church planters’ training, as well as facilitating the daily office work that keeps the mission moving forward.
Since 2007 our church has tripled in size, with corresponding growth in leaders and complexity, making this little office-house no longer feasible for many of these uses. God in his uncanny providence gave us a new office (more on that story later). So today, we pack up and say goodbye to 87th Street. We’ll move all of our operations to the new CD headquarters in the Access Bank building on 78th and Dodge.
Thanks for the memories, 2805. I know Kendal thinks fondly of his days fighting the spiders and rats in your dirt crawlspace to change the furnace filter. But alas, those days are behind us now. May the many coffee spills Walker left on your carpet be a nostalgic reminder of our presence.
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11 July 2010 at 4:00 pm by Bob Thune · church planting, gospel
This fall I am speaking at a conference in New England on the subject of gospel-centered church planting. My task in the opening keynote talk for the conference is to address the question: what is the gospel?
I thought it would be interesting – and helpful in my preparation – to invite blog readers to give their 2 cents on this question. What should I make sure to talk about in order to give a full and robust answer to the question?
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5 July 2010 at 10:05 pm by Bob Thune · A29, church planting, leadership
In the past few weeks I’ve listened to two sermons by aspiring church planters here in Omaha. In both cases these men tell personal stories of how God has used the Acts 29 Network – and our process for training, assessing, and developing future leaders – as a key resource in their own development.
People ask all the time what exactly our process is for raising up and training church planters. Listening to these stories might help you have a better understanding of why we believe the gospel, mission, and community come together to have a formative influence on young leaders – and how we try to steward what God is doing in their lives for greater influence.
Justin Dean is a church planting resident at our sister church, Core Community… he tells the story of how his first meeting with Ethan and me at an Acts 29 bootcamp in Louisville last year became God’s means of calling him to Omaha for a season. Erick Whigham is one of our emerging leaders at Coram Deo… he tells the story of how God used a conversation with me to temper his expectations and give him patience.
Justin Dean’s Sermon (Core, 6/20/10 – Exodus 4: What Is In Your Hand?)
Erick Whigham’s Sermon (Coram Deo, 7/4/10 – Psalm 131)
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2 July 2010 at 9:15 pm by Bob Thune · A29, church planting, city renewal
I just returned from 3 days in Phoenix, where I did some teaching and training for church leaders through the Surge Network. Surge is a local coalition of gospel-centered church planters and pastors who want to see the gospel transform the city of Phoenix. They hail from many networks and traditions: Acts 29, Sovereign Grace, Presbyterian (PCA), Baptists, and nondenominational churches. But they are united in their commitment to robust theology, missional church dynamics, and a gospel-centered philosophy of ministry.
One Surge leader explained the vision to me this way: “Right now, a-theological megachurches dominate the landscape of Phoenix and drive much of the religious conversation in our city. But what if, in 10 years, the more Reformed, gospel-centered churches (whether small or large) were driving the conversation? We think that would be a good thing for the gospel, a good thing for church planting, and a good thing for the city of Phoenix.”
Surge revolves around three primary initiatives: a monthly lunch open to all and focused on networking and training; a year-long “Surge School” open to committed leaders who want to develop theologically and missionally; and a small number of church-planting internships and residencies designed to develop and train aspiring church planters. I was invited to speak at the monthly lunch and to teach on gospel-centered ministry for the Surge School.
It’s great to see movements of God like this, where like-minded, gospel-saturated, kingdom-focused leaders come together to advance the mission of God in their city. I wanted to share what the Surge guys are up to in order to urge you to 1) pray for what God is doing in Phoenix and 2) pray for God’s continued grace as we seek to forge similar kingdom partnerships here in Omaha.
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29 June 2010 at 8:58 am by Bob Thune · ecclesiology, evangelicalism, leadership
EIGHT CHARACTERISTICS OF FALSE TEACHERS
[from Coram Deo's eldership training class]
- They turn secondary issues into primary ones (1 Tim 1:1-7, 2 Tim 2:23)
- They cause division & dissension (1 Tim 6:3-5, Romans 16:17-18)
- They prey on the weak (Rom 16:17-18, 2 Tim 3:1-9)
- They talk a lot but say little (2 Tim 2:16, Titus 1:10)
- They have un-Christlike character (Titus 1:16, 1 Tim 4:1-2)
- They don’t call people to repentance (2 Tim 4:1-5, Jer 23:14)
- They despise authority (Jude 8, Col 2:18-19)
- They are ultimately tools of Satan himself (1 Tim 4:1, 2 Tim 3:24-26)
False teachers tend to distort the truth along one of two trajectories: legalism (1 Tim 4:1-5) or liberalism (Jude 4, 2 Pet 2:18-19)
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27 June 2010 at 9:59 pm by Bob Thune · A29, church planting, city renewal, sermon
It was a great privilege this morning at Coram Deo to have JD and Michele Senkbile back with us. The Senkbiles were an integral part of the original team that founded Coram Deo. They moved to Cape Town, South Africa, in December of 2008 to oversee Acts 29’s church planting work on the African continent. Throughout 2009, the Holy Spirit made it clear that they needed to plant a church in Cape Town as a home base for gospel movement in southern Africa. So in January of 2010, they launched Vox City Church in the heart of Cape Town. The word vox is Latin for voice… Vox City Church desires to be a voice for the gospel in the heart of Cape Town.
If you’re not familiar with JD and the work God has called him to, audio from today’s message will be up shortly on the Resources page or Coram Deo’s iTunes podcast. Keep JD and Michele and their team in your prayers as they seek to shape a biblically faithful, culturally relevant gospel-community-on-mission in this important global city.
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27 June 2010 at 9:37 pm by Bob Thune · formation, idols, theology
One of my favorite spiritual writers is A.W. Tozer. He begins his master work The Knowledge of the Holy with a chapter entitled “Why We Must Think Rightly About God.” I used the following quote in a Bible study on biblical eldership this weekend to emphasize the importance of sound theology, and thought I’d post it here for the benefit of other readers as well.
(If you’ve never read The Knowledge of the Holy, consider this your invitation to pick up a copy. It’s well worth your time and effort.)
What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.
For this reason the gravest question before the church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the church… Among the sins to which the human heart is prone, hardly any other is more hateful to God than idolatry, for idolatry is at bottom a libel on his character. The idolatrous heart assumes that God is other than He is – in itself a monstrous sin – and substitutes for the true God one made after its own likeness…
Let us beware lest we in our pride accept the erroneous notion that idolatry consists only in kneeling before visible objects of adoration, and that civilized peoples are therefore free from it. The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of him. It begins in the mind and may be present where no overt act of worship has taken place… Wrong ideas about God are not only the fountain from which the polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves idolatrous. The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.
Before the Christian church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to the question, “What is God like?” and goes on from there… The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind.
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By far the most thought-provoking book I’ve read so far this year is James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World. I finished this book about a month ago and have been ruminating on it ever since, trying to discern how exactly to pen an adequate review/summary. So if you’re not going to read on, I’ll just tell you now: you should buy this book and read it. Everyday readers will benefit from Hunter’s penetrating insights into evangelical Christianity’s interaction with modern culture. And spiritual leaders will gain a litany of reasons to question their assumptions about Christian mission and spiritual formation.
