Salt and Light

I heard Steve, a missionary from Peru, speak Sunday on Matthew 5:13-16.

13"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.
14"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 15Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

Steve pointed out that both these metaphors say the same thing, namely that we as believers exist in the world to reveal God. He connected it with the Beatitudes ("Blessed are the meek"; "Blessed are the poor in spirit"; etc.), saying that those qualities are how we reveal God in our everyday situations.

I thought this would be a good starting point for this weblog that deals with the church in the world and the culture. Sometimes we make it more complicated than maybe it needs to be. I'm not saying life and ministry aren't complex. But the guiding principles that Jesus left with us are pretty straightforward. God is present in our world. We need to be ready to show people that he is. It's his presence that they need to see through us. And that's true no matter how perplexing or changing our culture is. God is not wringing his hands wondering how he's ever going to get a hearing in our so-called postmodern world. He's already in the midst of it. The question is whether we will do things in dependence on Christ or on our own (John 15:5). I'll let Steve have the final word:

You can either be a small part of God's big plans, or you can be a big part of your own small plans.

The Church as God's Temple in the World

David Peterson, in Engaging with God: A Biblical Theology of Worship, talks about the church as the temple of the Holy Spirit and what that means in terms of its external relationships. After quoting and commenting on 2 Corinthians 6:16-18, Peterson writes (p. 203):

The passage concludes as it began, with a challenge to live a holy and separated life: 'Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God' (2 Cor.7:1). Paul uses transformed cultic language to indicate that a sanctified lifestyle is the 'worship' appropriate to the new temple. Reverence for God is to be expressed by living differently from those around us. Paul does not mean that Christians are to withdraw from effective contact with unbelievers (cf. 1 Cor. 5:9-10). The challenge is to avoid any compromise with paganism (cf. 2 Cor. 6:16, 'idols'). Wherever we go and whatever we do, we need to remember that we belong to the community called to reflect God's character and purposes in the world and to the world.
I would conclude, then, that one of the reasons for gathering together as God's 'holy temple' is to recall his promises and to encourage one another to live out in everyday life that holiness which is his gift to us in Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 1:30).

I think this is the challenge facing the current church. For all our talk about worship needing to be "24/7", we still overwhelmingly identify it with the music we sing (whether Sunday morning or any other time). For some, taking our worship out of the church building and sub-culture means nothing more than holding a "worship service" in the local park or having a "praise celebration" in the streets. We have a hard time getting away from this idea that worship is what we experience when we sing and praise. Peterson's point is that we worship when we live holy lives at work and in our homes and with our neighbors and in the stands at our son's soccer game and on the internet and ...

Getting Started

Sorry, this site will be a little slow getting items posted to it.

But I'm hoping this will eventually become a reference tool for myself and others (i.e., links to other sites), that will stimulate thinking on how local churches can engage the culture with the presence of Jesus Christ and for the glory of God.