A whiteboard video by Jeff Maguire and Brian Hurst. This is our take on what is meant by words like “church” and “gospel”. The concept comes out of the evangelism section of the Lausanne Covenant. Thanks to Brian Hurst for the drawings (check his stuff out at www.thequietsociety.com) and his wry sense of humor. The video will be shown at Mariners Church (www.marinerschurch.org) on October 22 and 23, 2011.
Thanks for this to my former LBC colleague David Tolhurst.
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Danut, this is coming from a very Evangelical (read that American Evangelical/ Protestant) position.
1) In the first part, he describes the church “activities” … as normal American Protestants look at it. When the historical meanig of Church has always been the Preaching of the Word and faithful distribution of the Sacraments (Word & Sacrament). Well … it looks like the majority of American Protestants/Evangelicals forgot/discarded the latter, and mangled the first (instead of preaching Law & Gospel, many Evangelicals will go for the Law-gospel-Law sandwich).
2) the latter part of the video sounds very “synergistic” … “God¨’s Kingdom BEING made real right here, right now” … “with the FULL Gospel” … my question is
Since when are we making God’s Kingdom … and since when is the Gospel not Full ?!?
The way I see it, we – followers of Christ are given in Baptism a heavenly adoption in God’s Kingdom and we live as members of 2 kingdoms (temporal and spiritual), always in need of His Grace and forgiveness. The Gospel is God’s Truth that changes lives and believers are “living stones” in God’s Church (pilgrim or militant Church, as opposed to triumphant one) as St. Peter teaches us in his epistle.
By: gabriel borlean on 25 January 2012
at 9:04 pm
Very good observations, Gabriel. These are some of the most serious problems with evangelicalism.
By: DanutM on 25 January 2012
at 9:14 pm
hope I did not sound too stern/opinionated, but I get upset when seeing/hearing how American “cafeteria Christian” flavor of Christianity gets passed on as standard old-fashioned cuisine. Was it Jaroslav who said that American Christians suffer from historical amnesia ?
Believe it or not, many American Lutherans (also the WELS, LCMS conservatives) need to re-read their Small/Large Catechism and Book of Concord … because they are so easily being influenced by the trendy hip&new American evangelicalism. Does nobody remember the call of the Reformation “ad fontes” (back to the sources) ?
By: gabriel borlean on 25 January 2012
at 9:22 pm