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

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

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Post-Captivity Evangelism

1. Evangelism must be seen as invitation to enter
   the Kingdom and thus the church.
2. Converts need to be presented the implications of
   entering a new race of men.
3. Can no longer assume that enculturated people
   have a common understanding of language with us.
4. 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

1. Inescapable - Sensus Deitatis
2. All men know their guilt (worthy of death) that
   they are creatures
3. Agency of Word and Spirit in regeneration
4. Epistemologically - nothing in common
5. Metaphysically - everything in common
6. 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

1. Represents the kingdom as its community(koinonia)
   
2. Serves the Kingdom as its servants (diakonia)
3. Announces the Kingdom as its messenger(kerygma)

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Post-Foundational Theology

1. Evangelicalisms commitment to Enlightenment
   Captivity
2. New approach to post-foundational theology
   (Grenz, et al)
3. Emerging Church
4. 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

1. Recover aspects of liturgy that was jettisoned by
   modernity
2. Remove Christianity from its cerebral captivity
   as propositions to believe
3. Replace the cognitive with the aesthetic
   embrace abduction while rejecting both deduction
   and induction
4. 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