B. Ministry Marks of Effective City-Center Churches

1. Contextualize the gospel so traditional, modern and postmoderns "get it" and are challenged. The basic worldview of a person or a culture is an answer to the question: What is really wrong with the world (or people or life) and how can it be fixed? Every culture has a worldview story. The job of the missionary is to enter sympathetically into the worldview story of the culture yet challenge and retell the culture's story so they see their story will only have a happy ending through Jesus.
   
   1. Show that the religious are running from God as much as the nonreligious.
      Message: The irreligious and immoral are running from God. But the religious and moral are running from God just as much. How? To think you can be blessed by God by being good is to be your own Savior and leads you to think God owes you (so you are in control of him). Thus, religion and irreligion are just two different ways of accomplishing the same thing—being your own Savior and Lord.
      Exposition:
      • Religion operates on the principle of "If I live like this, I'll be saved/blessed." But the gospel operates on the principle of "I am saved/blessed in Christ, therefore I will live like this."
      • Religion motivates through fear and pride; the gospel motivates through grace and joy. These are two radically different paths, though the adherents of each sit in church pews together each week, both striving to read the Bible, be good, and pray but for completely different reasons. Religion produces either superiority (if you've lived up to your standards) or inferiority (if you haven't), but either way you are driven by radical insecurity. And religion leads you to exclude others who are not as righteous as you.
      • The difference between a Pharisee and a Christian is not repentance for sins. Pharisees repent of sins! What makes you a Christian is repenting of self-righteousness, your self-salvation. You repent not only for the bad things you've done but also for the reason you've done all your good things—to control God and save yourself. To see that and change that brings about radical conversion, puts your identity and all your relationships on a whole new footing. (See below under 2a for how.)

      Contextualization issues: a) Traditionalists need this message, or they will settle into moralism and self-righteousness and think they have a grasp on Christianity. b) The postmodern and modern need to hear this message: Most people who think they've rejected Christianity have actually rejected some form of religion. If they don't see the difference they'll never give real Christianity a chance.
      Religion is the default mode of the human heart. Christians who know the gospel in principle continually revert to religion. They believe the gospel at one level but at deeper levels continue to operate as if they are saved by works; they continue to base their standing with God and their view of themselves on their spiritual and moral performance. This leads to all sorts of anxiety, pride, inferiority, anger and spiritual deadness.
      Every culture tends toward its own kind of religion/moralism/self-salvation. Traditional culture makes a "savior" out of family and being good; modern culture makes a "savior" out of individual fulfillment; postmodern culture makes a "savior" out of group identity and inclusion. All will lead to exclusion and radical insecurity.

   2. Show that the secular or nonreligious are just as spiritually enslaved as the religious.
      Message: Sin is building your identity—finding your greatest meaning, significance and security—on something besides God. Everyone centers his or her life on something, and whatever that is becomes by definition and function a)your god—something you adore and serve with your whole heart, and b) your "savior"—something you have to have in order to feel spiritually and emotionally significant and meaningful. So even the seemingly most nonreligious people are living lives of worship, working for their "salvation" though not expressing it so to themselves.
      Exposition:
      • This way of forming identity leads (inwardly) to slavery, because we are driven to achieve those things we must have to be happy. If we build our lives on human approval, we are slaves to opinion. If we build our lives on academic or economic or artistic achievement, we are slaves to our careers. In any case, we do not control ourselves; rather, we are controlled by what we live for. When we make even the best things (family, work, romance, etc.) into ultimate things and ways to get significance and joy, then they drive us into the ground because we have to have them. If we lose a good thing, it makes us sad. If we lose an ultimate thing (an idol), it devastates us.
      • This way of forming identity leads (outwardly) to oppress and exclude "the Other," because we must disdain those who do not have the same identity-factors that we have. If you build your identity on being very hard-working or moral, you must disdain those who are lazy or immoral. If you build your identity on your social class or national identity, you must disdain those of different classes or races.
      • Jesus is the only Savior and Lord who a) if you find him, will fulfill you, and b) when you fail him, can forgive you. If you live for career success and you fail, your career can't "die for your sins." Rather, your failure will punish you with self-disdain all of your life. But Jesus gave his life a ransom for us; "ransom" is the payment that releases from captivity and slavery.

      Contextualization issues: Modern and postmodern people must be given this (perfectly Biblical) definition of sin. If you define sin only as "breaking God's law," contemporary people will not be able to identify themselves as sinners. They will say, "Well, but who is to say this or that is a sin? I don't think it is wrong to have sex if you really love one another," etc. But if you define sin more broadly as false identity and idolatry, as making anything (even a good thing) into an ultimate thing, then you give modern and postmodern listeners a concept of sin they are familiar with (addiction) and cannot so easily dismiss as irrelevant to them, because they know they are building their identity on something besides God, even if they believe in God in some general way.

   3. Show how Christ's redemption restores identity and community.
      Message: Both religious moralism and nonreligious idolatry lead to a) an unstable identity and b) superiority and exclusion of "the Other" (those who are of sharply different viewpoint and culture). But the gospel gives us an unassailably confident and gentle identity which frees us to embrace "the Other" in love.
      Exposition:
      • Religion and non-religion leads to an unstable identity (insecurity resulting in either arrogant superiority or fearful inferiority) because significance is bound up in performance or achievement. So you are humble but not confident when failing your standards, or confident but proud when living up to standards. But you'll never be sure you've arrived, and so you are always driven and nervous. But the gospel says that you are saved by sheer grace which a) makes you humble—you are such a sinner that Christ had to die for you, and b) makes you bold—you are so loved that Jesus was glad to die for you. You are both a sinner yet accepted.
      • Religion and non-religion leads to superiority and disdain toward "the Other". If your identity is based on being a hard worker, you must feel superior to those you consider lazy. If your identity is based on being open-minded and liberal, you must despise conservatives (and vice versa!) It all leads to exclusion. But the gospel is that a) on the cross Christ fulfilled God's righteous law (so contra the relativist mindset that there are absolute moral standards by which you evaluate others), but b) on the cross he did it all for you (so contra the moralist mindset that there can be no superiority or haughtiness toward anyone; you are saved by sheer grace). At the heart of the gospel is not a teacher whose standards we live up to but a savior who died for his enemies and opponents, for "the Other," including us.

      Contextualization issues: a) Modern people, in particular, are concerned with finding the freedom to discover one's individual identity. Kierkegaard's depicts sin in The Sickness Unto Death as "building your identity on anything but God," which leads to psychological fragmentation and fragility. b) Postmodern people, in particular, are concerned with how we can live at peace in a pluralistic world. There is no religion with a more powerful ground-motif for accepting enemies and "the Other" than Christianity. We are the only faith that has at its heart a man dying for his enemies, forgiving them rather than destroying them. This must be presented to our culture as an unparalleled resource for living in peace in a pluralistic society.

   4. Show that the joy of grace is the key to change.
      Message: Why do we do the wrong things we do? Look at the Ten Commandments. The first and most primary is to "Have no other god-saviors before me." Implication: You never break one of the other commandments unless you are first are breaking the first. You don't lie, commit adultery, or steal unless first you are making something more fundamental to your hope and joy and feelings of worth than Jesus. So a lack of joy in what Jesus has done for you is always the root cause of any failure to live as you should.
      Exposition:
      • When you lie, for example, it is because your reputation (or money or whatever) is more foundational to your self and happiness than the love of Christ. We always sin because at that moment we don't really believe the gospel—that we are completely accepted in Christ. We are looking to something else to be what only Jesus can be to us, we are trusting something else as Savior. Or put another way, it is always a lack of joy—a lack of deep joy and rest in Christ's love and work for us—that is the reason we ever do wrong. If we were happy enough, we'd not need to do wrong.
      • Christians may believe the gospel at one level but at deeper levels continue to look to other things besides Jesus in order to feel justified. Even after you are converted by the gospel, your heart will go back to operating on the religious principle unless you deliberately, repeatedly set it to gospel-mode. This then is the basic cause of our spiritual failures, sins, uncontrolled emotions, conflicts, lack of joy, and ministry ineffectiveness. The gospel is not just the ABC of the Christian life—but the A to Z of the Christian life. This is radical! You don't believe the gospel to be saved and then move on to more advanced principles in order to grow. All of our personal problems and church problems arise when we don't continually go back to the gospel to work it in and live it out.
      • So we cannot change our hearts just through willpower, through moral reformation, through learning Biblical principles and trying to carry them out. Ultimately, our hearts can only truly change as we use the gospel to change their basic ways of operating—to change the main things we put our hearts' greatest hopes in, the main things we find our hearts' deepest joys and glories in.

      Contextualization issues: Both modern and postmodern people have rejected Christianity because of what they perceive to be its inner joylessness. The gospel motivation for moral behavior fits neither the traditionalist's duty-driven view of life nor the postmodern's self-driven view of life. It breaks the categories, because it calls people to die to themselves and yet promises inner joy.

2. Incarnate worship into non-abstract culture.
   Contemporary culture has little patience for long strings of logic and for abstract thinking in general. It prefers the visual, the narrative, and the intuitive over the propositional and the rational. Now, there must be a balance here. Since God gave us a book of words (rather than music or painting) and forbad making images of himself, there is much about Christianity that encourages discursive thought. Truth is not less than "propositional" (specific statements that are either true or false) but quite a bit more. Nevertheless, the doctrine of the incarnation and the forms of the Bible give us a lot of resources for appealing to a non-abstract culture, especially in worship.
   
   1. With Christ-centric preaching.
      People in our society will respond to narrative and story. They tend not to like the older kind of preaching that simply enunciates doctrinal principles. Neither will they be as excited about the newer user-friendly sermons of seeker-churches on "How to Handle Fear," "How to Balance Your Life," etc. But there is a danger that postmodern preaching will devolve into mainly poetic storytelling rather than expounding the truth.
      In Luke 24 we learn that every single part of the Bible is really about Jesus. The Christ-centric preaching approach sees the whole Bible as essentially one big story with a central plot: God restores the world lost in Eden by intervening in history to call out and form a new humanity. This intervention climaxes in Jesus Christ, who accomplishes salvation for us what we could not accomplish for ourselves. While only a minority of Biblical passages actually give the whole storyline, every Biblical text must be placed in the whole storyline to be understood. In other words, every text must be asked "What does this tell me about the salvation we have in Christ?" in order to be understood.
      This understanding of preaching, then, turns all preaching into narrative preaching, even if it is an exposition of Deuteronomy, Proverbs or James. Every sermon is a story in which the plot of the human dilemma thickens, and the hero that comes to the rescue is Jesus. Christ-centric preaching converts doctrinal lectures or little how-to talks into narrative preaching, but it is still careful, close Biblical exposition of texts.
   2. With experiential preaching.
      People in our society do not just want intellectual propositions. For them life's meaning is grounded in what they experience. If we understand the purpose of preaching is not only to make the truth clear but also to make the truth real to the hearts of the listeners, we will have a kind of preaching that is committed to objective truth and, at the same time, deeply experiential.
      The "informational" view of preaching conceives of preaching as changing people's lives after the sermon. They listen to the sermon, take notes, and then apply the Biblical principles during the week. But this assumes that our main problem is a lack of compliance to Biblical principles, when (as we saw above) all our problems are actually due to a lack of joy and belief in the gospel. Our real problem is that Jesus' salvation is not as real to our hearts as the significance and security our idols promise us. If that's our real problem, then the purpose of preaching is to make Christ so real to the heart that in the sermon people have an experience of his grace, and the false saviors that drive us lose their power and grip on us on the spot. That's the "experiential" view of preaching (Jonathan Edwards.)
      Example:
      • Think of how we ordinarily try to instill honesty in children and youth: "If you lie, you'll get in trouble with God and others" or else "If you lie then you will be like those terrible people, those liars, and you are better than that!" But look at these last two statements! What motivations are you bringing to bear on them to change their behavior? Fear (you'll get in trouble) and pride (you'll be like a dirty liar).
      • But if you stir up and use sin (fear and pride) to get people to do the right thing, then you aren't actually changing the heart. You aren't getting at the fundamental self-regard and self-absorption of the human heart. You aren't uprooting the idolatry (of human approval, etc.) You are actually strengthening the fear and pride and manipulating or jury-rigging it to render a new behavior. You are, as it were, bending the person into a different pattern of fear and pride rather than melting them into a new shape through enough joy and love and gratitude. But if you bend your heart like a piece of metal, then either you will break it or it will finally just snap back.
      • How do we cultivate true honesty (i.e. an integrity born of a heart-restructuring encounter with God's grace rather than an honesty born of a jury-rigged proud/fearful heart)? It grows when I see him dying for me, keeping a promise he made despite the infinite suffering it brought him. Now that a) destroys pride on the one hand, because he had to do this for me—I am so lost! But that also b) destroys fear on the other hand, because if he'd do this for me while I'm an enemy, then he values me infinitely, and nothing I can do will wear out his love for me. My heart is not just restrained; it's changed. Its fundamental orientation is transformed.

   Summary
   Most preaching in both conservative and liberal churches is moralistic and informational. It tells people (usually rightly) how they should behave and live, but it implies (often through silence) that the reason they should live like this is so God will bless them, so they will go to heaven, so they will be able to say they are part of God's people, so their life will work better. But the fundamental questions every sermon should address are a) Why do I have trouble living right? (Answer: Because in some way I don't really believe the gospel or rest and rejoice in who Jesus is and what he did for me.) b) Why should I live this particular way? (Answer: Because Jesus lived this way for me at infinite cost, and this removes my need to live in any other way.)
   Ultimately, moral people who are being moral out of fear and pride are being moral for themselves. They may be kind to others and helpful to the poor at one level, but at the deeper level they are doing it so God will bless them (religious version) or so they can think of themselves as virtuous, charitable persons (secular version). They don't do good for God's sake or for goodness' sake or for others' sake but for their own sake. If preaching motivates people to follow Biblical principles out of fear of rejection (by God and others) or out of pride (so they can feel superior to others) rather than out of deep joy in what Jesus is to us and has done to us, such preaching will actually nurture the fundamental self-centeredness and works-righteousness of the human heart. That is why so many churches are plagued with gossip and fighting. Or why so many apparently moral people can fall so suddenly into great sins. Underneath the seeming morality is great self-centeredness and self-righteousness left untouched by preaching.

3. With artistic excellence and liturgical richness in worship.
   Here we get into choppy waters! I do not believe there is just one style of worship that will reach everyone in city centers. City centers, as we have seen, are the most culturally diverse places on earth, even more so than inner cities. And in general:
   • Classical music and liturgy appeals to highly educated and older people. High cultural forms are those that, by definition, require training to appreciate.
   • Praise and worship approaches are far more likely to bring together a diversity of racial groups—Black, Hispanic, Asian.
   • Younger professional Anglos, especially of the artistic bent, are attracted to the "fusion" of liturgical/historical with the most contemporary musical forms.
   • Baby Boomer families are very attracted to "seeker-sensitive" worship and the more ahistorical, sentimental, earlier Christian contemporary songs.

   Nevertheless, there is some real potential in the movement of what could be called "fusion" worship (or Ancient-Future worship), in which rich liturgical and sacramental worship is combined with both classical and contemporary music.

   • It probably will be less off-putting to non-Christians than contemporary praise and worship. The postmodern need for roots, narrative, and experience is not met well by ahistorical, seeker-sensitive, contemporary worship (which is often deemed "cheesy.") The postmodern skepticism and fear of emotional manipulation takes offense to emotionally-intense, sentimental, charismatic contemporary worship. Yet its emphasis on experience makes it far less cognitive/rational than the straight Protestant free church worship. And its willingness to mix in contemporary elements will make it more accessible than the straight liturgical.
   • There is a lot of silliness going on, however. A warehouse is bought, icons are projected on the wall, candles are lit everywhere—all this to evoke a sense of tradition, history, timelessness and mystery. But often these churches are not embedded in any actual tradition. Unless the churches get embedded in a real ecclesial and theological tradition (Reformed, Anglican, Orthodox, Catholic, Free church, Lutheran, Methodist, Holiness, etc.), they won't last. The pastiche of traditional elements won't cohere and ultimately serve as a kind of marketing strategy or gimmick.
   • One more point: The strength and power of African Anglicanism shows that the liturgical can be combined with emotionally-expressive, contemporary music and sensibilities. So this "ecumenical fusion" may have a bright future, as world Christianity increasingly becomes non-white.

   As noted above, the music and art must be excellent. Since a variety of music is needed in city-center churches (not just white soft-pop), it takes a much greater skill-set to produce the music than an amateur worship band.