Americans love Gatsby. We love the idea of a mystery man from nowhere. We want to believe, like Gatsby, that we can invent a persona to fit into our culture.
Gatsby is a story about the lengths we will go to because of shame. Gatsby’s great secret is that there is no Gatsby. An impoverished teenage boy, ashamed of his upbringing and family, invented the character of Jay Gatsby. He then spent his life lying, cheating and stealing to create Gatsby.
Churches often force people to do the same.
Martin Luther wrote, “If we had to do without one or the other, it would be better to lack the works and the history than the words and the doctrine.”
The reformers agreed with Anabaptists that Jesus was “the source of our life,” but it seems clear that it was the death of Jesus, rather than Jesus himself, who was at the center of their faith.It is clear from their writings that he was not “the central reference point for our faith and lifestyle, for our understanding of church, and our engagement with society.”
…[This is why] in many Christian traditions, ethical guidelines derived from the Old Testament or pagan philosophy trump Jesus’ call to discipleship.
Christian music has shaped Western Civilization. Our modern music theory can be traced back to the chants systematized by Pope Gregory, and the Jewish and early Christian antiphonal songs that proceeded them. For centuries, the church commissioned some of the greatest works ever composed. Rock and Roll, one of the few art forms that the U.S. can take credit for, can easily be traced back through R & B, to gospel to and African American spirituals.
Something changed in the last few decades. When it comes to pop music, the church stopped creating art, and started trying to market knock-offs of mainstream radio.
According to Michael Frost, the church is in exile. It needs “songs of revolution,” music that tells the story of our true home, the world to come. We have to start writing the kind of songs that inspire movements.
The music the church needs will grow out of artists embedded in the church, who are compelled to tell their own story, and dream of God’s kingdom. It will be honest about our fallen nature and the messiness of the world. It will transcend the love songs of the radio and the praise chants of the last generation. It won’t always be clean, and it won’t always sound like something a good Christian should say.
I’ll be honest. There’s very little Christian music I find listenable. Even less of it can be called “songs of revolution,” the type of music, that a truly counter-cultural, missional church will need. Here are 10 songs that I believe are a step in the right direction.
What songs would you add to this list?
(This post is spread over 11 pages. Click the numbers below to move forward.)
There were many important moments at the inaugural Missio Alliance gathering, but one of the most powerful and unexpected was hearing from Cherith Fee Nordling. Many in the audience were asking themselves “why have I never heard of her?!”
For me I was struck by how she spoke of theology as a woman. Cherith is a powerful speaker, and much of that power seems to come from a sense of comfort in who she is, as a woman in Christ.
Much of what Cherith spoke about was “embodied theology”, the unique Christian proposition that God became flesh, and has a plan to redeem and restore our flesh. Or, as Cherith puts it, the gospel is about how “you get your life back!”
Via Northern Seminary:
Before joining Northern, has taught at Regent College Fuller Theological Seminary, Cornerstone University, Westminster Theological Centre in London, the Vineyard Leadership Institute in Ohio, the Trinity Learning Community in California, and Wheaton College in Theology. Most recently, she taught at Calvin College and Seminary while serving as Co-Director of Christian Formation with her husband.
Nordling received her Ph.D in Systematic Theology from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She is author of, Knowing God by Name: A Conversation between Elizabeth A. Johnson and Karl Barth, is currently working on a commentary on Acts, a book on theological anthropology and the resurrection, and a condensed version of Paul’s Christology with her father and noted author, Gordon Fee.
Inspired by the unofficial N.T. Wright page, here are some resources to introduce you to this important voice:
JR Woodward is a fellow graduate of the Fuller MAGL, the head of V3 Church Planting. His book Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World, synthesizes much of what we studied in the MAGL with his own philosophy of church planting and leadership.
According to Woodward’s, there is a direct correlation between the forms of church leadership and the spiritual lives of individual believers. He draws on Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 4 that there is a “link between the spiritual maturity of the church and the five kinds of equippers operating in the church: apostles (what I nickname dream awakeners), prophets (heart revealers), evangelists (story tellers), pastors (soul healers) and teachers (light givers)”.
This view of church leadership is ocasionally referred to as APEPT. The modern churches obsession with Pastor/Teachers often leads to the joke “where are all the APEs in the church?
Here’s a quick overview, and my response:
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