The Jesus Paradigm

Category: discipleship

  • Gifts and Ministry

    From Dave Black Online:

    Brother Jason’s message today from Acts 4-5 was a wonderful reminder to me that the church needs to be generous at all times, not just when disaster strikes. What an encouragement — and warning! — this passage must have been to the early church, and what a strong exhortation it could bring to many in our own day. Our American churchianity often puts our needs and comforts above those of others. Our culture is smug and self-centered. Jesus insisted that His followers care for the vulnerable. That, after all, is how He lived.As Jason was speaking, my mind wandered (sorry, Jason!) to another passage that speaks about generosity, namely James 1:17. In church I happened to have the NET Bible with me (along with my Latin and Greek, of course), and I was delighted to see how Dan Wallace & Co. had rendered this verse: “All generous giving and every perfect gift is from above….” Fantastic! This verse contains a great but often overlooked truth: Not only do our gifts ultimately come from God Himself, but even our desire to give — our propensity to be generous, if you will — is the product of God’s grace at work in our lives. This truth is masked, of course, in the NIV’s rendering, “Every good and perfect gift is from above….” What a horrible conflation of the two different Greek words here for “gift.” (The NIV, to be acceptable here, simply needed to add a note giving the literal. Sadly, it often fails to do that.)

    All of which means that I can take no credit either for what I give or for the desire to give it!

    Dave Black is the author of The Jesus Paradigm and Christian Archy from Energion Publications as well as numerous other books.  This extract is used with his kind permission.

  • People are Vulnerable to Love

    From Dave Black Online:

    People are vulnerable to love. That’s one of the points Becky emphasized with the middle schoolers today. She told the story of a Muslim man in a small village in southern Ethiopia whom she had outfitted with a pair of non-prescription reading glasses. When he left the church compound he told the leaders, “Never have I seen such love as in this place.”

    (more…)

  • Blogging/Essay Contest – 21st Century Church

    Energion Publications will host a blogging/essay contest.  Entries are open immediately and will close November 2, 2009 when Dr. David Alan Black’s new book Christian Archy is released.  Judging will take place during the first week of November, and winners will be announced by November 16.

    To enter, simply write an essay in answer to the question: What should a congregation following Jesus Christ in ministry look like?

    If you are a blogger, post the essay on your blog and link back to this post, then also e-mail pubs@energion.com just to make sure.  We will add your post to the list of those participating.  If you are not a blogger, e-mail your essay in either Word document or Open Document Text (OpenOffice) format to pubs@energion.com and indicate in the e-mail that you are entering the 21st century church contest.

    Entries will be judged in the following areas, with each area receiving a score of from one to ten:

    1. Biblically rooted
    2. Historically aware
    3. Complete
    4. Clear and Concise
    5. Overall impression, including appearance, discussion generated, and anything one of the judges wants to include

    Note that 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 may conflict in the approach of some people.  That is why there will be three judges, who come from different theological traditions:

    Alan Knox (The Assembling of the Church), a doctoral candidate at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

    Geoffrey Lentz (GeoffreyLentz.com), associate pastor of First United Methodist Church in Pensacola, FL, doctoral student at Drew University, and author of The Gospel According to Saint Luke: A Participatory Study Guide.

    Elgin Hushbeck, Jr., author of Evidence for the Bible, Christianity and Secularism, and Preserving Democracy, (all from Energion Publications), and owner of Aletheia Consulting, Inc.  Elgin is a member of a Christian Reformed congregation.

    Each judge will rate the entries independently.  One of our copy editors will also rate the essays, but that rating will only be used to break a tie.  Judges will not consider whether or not you use or quote from Energion Publications products or web sites in your post.

    The prizes are:

    First prize – Free copy of The Jesus Paradigm + two other Energion Publications books, with a $25 gift card for Barnes & Noble

    Second prize – Free copy of The Jesus Paradigm + one other Energion Publications book, with a $15 gift card for Barnes & Noble

    Third prize – Free copy of The Jesus Paradigm with a $10 gift card for Barnes & Noble

    (If you have previously received and reviewed a copy of The Jesus Paradigm you may choose any other book in our catalog as an alternative.)

    All other participants get the joy of participating in the discussion, and hopefully a fair amount of link love.  All posts regarding this contest will be cross-posted to JesusParadigm.com, and you can comment/link there to enter as well.  Feel free to participate in the discussion even if you don’t want to enter the contest.

    Note: All prizes will be awarded.  Prize winners have no obligation to Energion Publications other than the necessary steps to enter the contest.  Judges will be instructed to disregard use or non-use of Energion Publications books and web sites in judging the entries.

  • Knowing God in the Furnace

    From Dave Black Online:

    Today I’m taking Becky back to UNC Hospital for her second round of chemo. I’m asking God to spare her this time from the excruciating pain she had after the first go-round. Like the three men who walked in fire in the book of Daniel, I’m convinced that God is able to deliver from the furnace. “But if not,” Becky and I will not bow to the gods of doubt and despair. Sometimes God delivers from the fiery furnace. Sometimes He delivers in the fiery furnace. Either way, we are never alone. The Judge of the earth always does what is right, and oftentimes we get to know Him better in the furnaces of life than anywhere else. The Christian is not a cog in a machine. God cares for each of His children, and He is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond what we ask or think. At the king’s order Daniel spent the night with lions, but it was Darius who had the insomnia. Our God is able to deliver us. [emphasis mine]

    Please be in prayer for Dave and Becky as they minister to the rest of us even in their own times in the furnace.

    (Quotes from Dave Black Online are used by permission.  Dave Black is the author of The Jesus Paradigm and this site is maintained by its publisher, Energion Publications.)

  • Unity and Diversity

    From Dave Black Online:

    In theology class recently we discussed the seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel. Let me outline what I said. (Much of what we discussed was based on an essay I wrote several years ago for a somewhat obscure journal called the Criswell Theological Review. The essay is titled “Structure and Style in John 17.” If you would like a copy, let me know.)

    The church consists of people who know God personally through Jesus Christ. These people come from many different cultures and backgrounds. There are as diverse as diverse can be. Yet they are all one, united in the very same way that Jesus is united with His Father. What does this unity look like? This is a question to which scholars have given many different answers. What is absolutely certain is that unity does not mean uniformity. It has nothing whatsoever to do with bland sameness. It involves a unity of spirit, an identity of purpose, and a commitment to brotherly love. One evangelical scholar argues that the church is like a huge army marching under different regimental banners. It is not supremely important what regiment we belong to. What matters is that we all follow the commanding officer.

    I resonate with this analogy. For many years now I have reenacted the American Civil War. Each regiment has its own customs, flags, esprit, and idiosyncrasies. Yet despite the fact that the army marches under many different flags, each regiment is expected to obey the commanding officer and work together as a unit.

    As followers of Christ, we must never forget that Jesus came into the world to inaugurate the kingdom of God. In this kingdom, national and tribal allegiances are unimportant. They are superseded by our loyalty to our Commander-in-Chief. If, by a miracle, unity ever became a “first order” category in our Bible-believing, evangelical churches, evangelism might become our one overmastering passion. I am told that as a Baptist I must fight for Baptist distinctives. Some would go further. They would say that I am not to eat the Lord’s Supper with those who hold to “wrong doctrine” — pedobaptism, for example. How avidly we cling to our distinctives! But our supreme aim can NEVER be to exalt our own regiment. The Commander asks us to follow Him. And if we make that our aim, surely we will realize that the things that unite us in the kingdom are much more important than the things that divide us.

    In a word, evangelicals are to be a people who are united for the Gospel. The kingdom of God transcends every manmade barrier we can erect — race, education, gender, color, background, nationality. Think of the leadership of the church in Antioch (Acts 13:1). They had a Cypriot (Barnabas), a dark-skinned man (Simeon “the black”), a North African (Lucius from Cyrene), an aristocrat (Manaen, a member of the Herodian family), and a Jew (Saul of Tarsus). What made their joint leadership possible? I dare say that the “fellowship of the Spirit” (Phil. 2:1) was more important to them than their obvious differences. That humble attitude paid handsomely. The congregation at Antioch became a missionary sending church, as every local church should be.

    I believe that most churches today could do a great deal more to encourage this outlook. We can hold city-wide meetings with other congregations, or we can combine services with the church next door, or we can come together for prayer meetings. Perhaps this would help us catch a glimpse of the true catholicity of the church. It is necessary to emphasize that we must depend completely on the Holy Spirit if we are to achieve such unity. The Spirit was given to us, not to make us comfortable, but to make us missionaries. It was the Spirit who drove Paul and the other early missionaries to “struggle together in one soul for the faith of the Gospel” (Phil. 1:28). It is He who dismantles our pride and enables the lovely fruit of the Spirit to take root in our lives. This, I believe, is what Jesus prayed for in John 17 — a church whose fellowship was real and vibrant, and a church devoted to evangelism.

    When the Spirit is freely welcomed among us again, who knows what the results might be?

    P.S. I should note that I do not reenact the Civil War because I seek to glorify that war or any war for that matter. Quite the opposite. I seek to educate the public about what life was like in the encampments of the period.

    David Alan Black is author of The Jesus Paradigm and the forthcoming book Christian Archy from Energion Publications along with 20 titles from other publishers.  This extract from his blog is used by permission.

  • The Athens Perspective

    From Dave Black Online:

    Do you have the “Athens Perspective”? Here’s what I mean. When I first visited Greece in 1981, I couldn’t wait to see the archeological treasures of its great capital. The Areopagus, the Acropolis, the Parthenon — I felt like I had gone to heaven so enraptured was I with all these wonderful sites. But when Paul and his adventurous missionary company visited the city on his second missionary journey, all he saw were spiritual needs. Paul would never have considered himself a “radical,” yet he was one of the most radical men who ever lived. “Radical,” of course, means going to the root, and Paul plunged through all the layers of history, philosophy, and architecture to the root of mankind’s need.

    Yesterday Alvin Reid told the story of how he and his son once toured the great cities of Europe. He set as his personal goal to share the love of Jesus with at least one person every day on the trip. I can just see Alvin talking about Jesus in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, striking up a conversation and then moving beyond the distracting loyalties to the core of man’s emptiness.

    There is a radical reformation taking place in our day. Many of us are a part of it. We are tired of debating the virtues of the NIV over the ESV (or vice versa). We are tired of You Tubes criticizing a certain pastor because of the way he pronounces “logos.” It’s time to get back to the essentials, to dare to put the Gospel first and to allow the Lordship of Christ to unsettle our morose self-centeredness.

    What happened to Paul in Athens is happening in my own heart. God is beginning to remove any interest in my heart to see the “great sites” of this world. I want to look at the world as God sees it and evaluate everything in life from an eternal perspective. I’m thankful to be part of a missional revolution — a reordering of priorities in the Body of Christ, a rethinking of presuppositions, a recommitment to conserve the essence of life as Jesus taught us to live it.

    The Athens Perspective: You either have it or you don’t. We are to be the essentialists of our day. In fact, if all we see when we visit Athens are great buildings, there’s something dreadfully wrong.

    David Alan Black is author of The Jesus Paradigm from Energion Publications.  Quotes from his blog are used here with his permission.

  • How Can Churches Promote the Christ-Centered Life?

    How can churches promote the Christ-centered life? Christ is our first priority! He must be central. In everything He must have the preeminence (Col. 1:18). His presence, purpose, and power must pervade everything.

    What will enhance His preeminence?

    Some time ago I began a list of ways I feel we can help our local churches become more consistent with the Scripture’s emphasis upon the supremacy of Christ. If we take Col. 1:18 seriously, its ramifications in any local church will become creative and exciting. But we must be willing to follow the Scriptures into the nitty-gritty, day-by-day workings of our churches. Rigid, harsh, legalistic measures have no place in this process. But perhaps there are some practical steps we can take as the Holy Spirit leads us.

    1) Work to implement a biblical pattern of plural eldership.

    2) Acknowledge Jesus as your church’s only “Senior Pastor” (1 Pet. 5:4).

    3) Substitute the name “Jesus Christ” for your pastor’s name on your church’s marquee.

    4) Begin calling each other “brother” and “sister” in accordance with Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 23. This includes leadership.

    5) Follow Paul’s injunction in 1 Cor. 14 and allow several people to teach during the assembly while others weigh their teaching. This can be accomplished even if you retain the traditional homily/monologue by allowing others to have a “word” either before or after the sermon.

    6) Encourage the priesthood of all believers by allowing greater participation in your gatherings.

    7) Observe the Lord’s Supper regularly (weekly if possible) as a full meal in which you celebrate the presence and soon return of Jesus. Remember, many evangelicals are converting to Catholicism and the Orthodox Church today partly because they have grown weary of the anthropocentricity of the typical evangelical church, where the pastor is central.

    8) Leaders can avoid giving the impression that they are “above” or “apart from” the congregation by speaking from the floor (instead of from the platform) and by foregoing the use of a pulpit.

    9) Put missions first in all you do. Your church can’t come first. If you’re occupied with its life and function, you’ll think inwardly. What sets a true evangelical church apart is its commitment to the Gospel.

    10) Accordingly, adjust your church budget to reflect a commitment to outreach rather than inreach. No more of the mindset of “God bless us four and no more”! In prayer, in strategy, in cooperation — become intentional about reaching out. We do this by working in social concern within our communities, by planting new churches, by encouraging sister churches, by eating and drinking with the lost and even attending their parties (as Jesus did). We do this by folding the new lambs into the flock. We do this by growing through world missions and by developing a plan to infiltrate and influence it for Jesus Christ. We do this by keeping the Great Commission before the people both in knowledge and in practice. We do this by supporting missionaries — not just those sent out by a denominational board but real flesh-and-blood church members. Elders themselves must lead by giving and going. Let your church reach and reach and reach — in all directions!

    11) Teach your people that every Christian is a minister and a missionary and that all of us together are necessary if the Body of Christ is to grow. Then, as the bond of love with Christ and others is secured, we can go out into the world and do great exploits for God.

    Church of Jesus Christ, it is absolutely essential that we raise up a generation of leadership that has a biblical philosophy of ministry. This is my goal in all my teaching. Please pray for me and my students, that together we might major on the time-honored, Spirit-ordained, scriptural basics of Christianity!

    From Dave Black Online.

  • Faith Communities and the Government

    President Obama realizes he needs the support of the faith communities if he is to pass major health care reform. This is the gist of an essay published recently in the Washington Examiner,

    One thing seems clear to me: the president will continue the Bush policy of using religion to bolster his policies. This includes holding prayer meetings, supporting faith-based initiatives, and seeking the support of leading evangelicals. If you look at American history, you will see that the church bore most of the responsibility for social welfare prior to the 1930s. After the Great Depression, the U.S. government stepped in to relieve the burden. Some argue that this was necessary, that the church was simply too overwhelmed to carry the load any longer. There is some truth in that assertion. But the real problem, it seems to me, is that the church has failed to live up to its calling. Is it really too late for the church to reclaim its earlier social responsibilities? Sadly, the answer is probably yes, unless Christians of all denominations repent of our materialism and misplaced priorities (our giant salaries, lavish sanctuaries, etc.). One often hears that the Bible contains over 2,000 references to the poor. But these references are to the believer’s responsibility, not the government’s. Fidelity to the Scriptures would seem to require evangelicals to expend more effort working to alleviate the grave social needs of our nation by spending less on ourselves. Here’s an essay about one church’s efforts at doing just that.

    In my forthcoming book, Christian Archy, I state the issue this way:

    It all boils down to priorities. And there is absolutely no reason why our priorities should not change. We must ask ourselves, “How would God have us use the resources He has given us to have the greatest possible impact on the kingdom?” In practical terms, this might mean using the Bible instead of quarterlies in our Sunday School classes. It could mean renting a facility to meet in rather than building an expensive sanctuary. It will certainly mean using all of our resources with a sense of global responsibility. As Paul said, stewardship requires us to ask how we can use the resources God has entrusted to us more equitably (see 2 Cor. 8:13-15). Each of us must examine our lifestyles for wasted resources that could be invested in the kingdom. We must become better stewards of our time, budgets, homes, and physical recourses.

    This readjustment process does not mean falling into the trap of legalism. It does not mean establishing additional “programs.” It is the Holy Spirit, through the Word of God, who must be at work so that we may see what the church must become as it emerges from its cocoon and into ministry in the world.

  • The Quest to Find Jesus

    From Dave Black Online:

    At the heart of my journey has been my personal quest to find Jesus. Not the Jesus of my childhood, neatly compressed into a glossy magazine. Nor the Jesus of my academic research — an analyzable datum of objective linguistic investigation. Not even the Jesus of Southern churchianity — a fossilized relic deeply embedded in literary limestone and hidden from sight by the attendance boards and manger scenes so visibly on display in our sanctuaries. Recently, some scholars have sought Jesus in social convention — a Mr. Nice Guy who models societal decorum for our children. Others see nothing but the Jesus of politics — either the political revolutionary or the societal transformer who eagerly uses our tax dollars for spiritual causes. Oddly, I found Jesus in none of these places. The Jesus I know and love is found in the Scriptures about Him, the Gospels themselves. Here I find the most beautiful life that was ever lived, a life devoted to placing the needs of others over His own needs, a life willing to go all the way down to wash the feet of outsiders and sinners. This Jesus said of Himself that He did not come to be served but to serve. He came to seek and to save that which was lost. He is the Model Missionary. And it is like Him I am seeking to become.

  • Too Hot to Handle?

    From Dave Black Online:

    Alan Knox hits it out of the ball park with his latest essay: In Theory. His point? What good is Bible study if we fail to put into practice what we know to be true? This is one of the main issues I deal with in The Jesus Paradigm, and it is why I spent a whole chapter on the Anabaptists. Among other things, these sixteenth century radicals believed in “biblical authority instead of ecclesiastical tradition,” “the Bible as a book of the church instead of as a book of scholars,” and “a hermeneutic of obedience instead of a hermeneutic of knowledge.” For them, the Bible, not tradition, provided the patterns for church life and organization just as plainly as it revealed the basic theological content of the faith. That belief earned for them the implacable hatred of the church hierarchy.

    I conclude chapter 2 of The Jesus Paradigm with these words:

    There can no longer be any doubt that our churches have departed from biblical norms. Could it be that we lack the prime essential for discipleship — a personal commitment to the lordship of Christ? I ask myself: Where are the young and women of today’s generation who are determined to stand upon Scripture alone, who are resolved to live by it, and who are committed to obeying it in their lives, their families, and their churches? I venture to say that the twenty-first century church is at a vital crossroads. If we should dare to submit ourselves anew to the full biblical witness to Christ and his church, I believe that the most significant renewal movement in the history of the church may yet await us.

    Our problem is not one of knowledge but of obedience. The Paul of 1 Corinthians 14 has proven to be too hot to handle, too radical for the established church.

    Note: Posts here from Dave Black Online are used by permission.  Thanks!