City Notes 21: Books in 30 minutes or less
City Notes are more than a book review. They are meant to provide you with
direct quotes from some books I've read in the last year, so you can get
a taste of the overall theme of the book and then begin to chew on what
your life might look like if you applied what you read.
Here are links to the previous City Notes books:
2014 | AND; Life Together; A Meal with Jesus; Deep Church; Gospel-Centered Discipleship; The Art of Neighboring; Speaking of Jesus; A Praying Life; Building a Healthy Multi-Ethnic Church; Family on Mission; Leading Missional Communities; Launching Missional Communities; Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times; You Can Change; The Hole in Our Holiness; Encounters with Jesus; One Thousand Gifts
Everyday Church by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis Review of Quotes | City Notes 21: Part 3 of 3
Chapter 6 | Hope at the Margins: 1 Peter 3:8-5:14
“As Christians we follow a Savior who suffered, so we must expect to suffer. Indeed our sufferings are a participation in the sufferings of Christ. Our ability to rejoice in sufferings derives from the fact that our sufferings confirm that we are united with Christ and so confirm that we will be united with him in glory…God is at work in our sufferings and through our sufferings. It is God who takes us through trials and suffering. If we remove God from our suffering, we are left with cruel, cold, impersonal suffering. But if we can recognize that our suffering is somehow in someway coming from God himself, then our grief, though real and painful, is not relentless or futile. God’s ways may be unfathomable, but his character is not. We know him to be a good, wise, loving, and merciful God because he has shown himself to be that in the giving of his Son on the cross. That one act interprets all of God’s other actions. That is the lens through which we should view life in all its complexity.” – pg. 133
“Tertullian said, ‘The leg does not feel the chain if the mind is in heaven.’” – pg. 135
“Peter has
already described Christ’s suffering followed by glory as ‘grace’ in 1:10-11,
13, and said that suffering unjustly for Christ is commendable, literally ‘a
grace’ (2:19). Peter needs to write to confirm that this is ‘the true grace of
God,’ because there are false versions of grace that promise glory for now or
without suffering. To claim our nation as Christian and expect special
privileges from the state is false grace. To claim we can leave behind sickness
and trials and claim health and prosperity is false grace. To leave behind the struggles and
humiliations of mission, and settle for acclaim of the converted is false
grace.” – pg. 137
“How can we do missional church when life is busy? How can we combine everyday mission with a full-time job? How can we find leaders when we are seeking to multiply groups across a city? How are you to be funded? Peter’s call to follow the way of the cross and embrace the pattern of suffering followed by glory provides the essential framework in which we must approach these issues. Once again it is hope that changes everything. Whether it is money, career, or the pressures of leadership, it is our ‘living hope’ that is to determine our priorities. We thrive on the margins because we are men and women of the gospel with eternity burning in our hearts.” – pg. 138
“People ask
how Christian community looks different from the kind of friendship enjoyed by
others. The answer comes at the point of tension. Every community experiences
relational tension; that is a fact of life. In a Spirit-filled, gospel
community, that tension leads to the glory of God. ‘Love each other deeply,
because love covers over a multitude of sins … (1 Pet. 4:8) … Servant-heartedness
is to characterize not only leaders but the whole church. The apostle is
passionate about gospel living for everyone in the everyday. His focus is not
so-called professionals or super-talented, but ordinary people living together
by grace. Living in missional community not only requires forgiveness, but also
time. Relationships are time intensive. Everyday church fills every day, but it
does not necessarily fill it with extra activities. It is about living ordinary
life with gospel intentionality. It is about doing what we already do with
other people and with a commitment to speak of Jesus, whether to encourage
believers or evangelize unbelievers. Suppose you go for a walk with a
family from church and one of their unbelieving friends. Or suppose you help
someone with his garden and get chatting with the neighbors. Is this family
time or leisure time or church time or mission time? The answer, of course, is
all of them.” – pg. 143
“Peter calls elders to lead from the front, to lead by example rather than driving from behind by command. Leaders should lead the way in mission. Yet in many churches leaders have fewer unbelieving friends than most people in the congregation. Leadership is not so much about developing a program that others follow as creating a culture in which others flourish. Whether it is money, time, or leadership the key is hope, just as it was with our attitude to suffering. Those who lay up treasure in heaven are typically generous with the treasures of earth. Those who live for eternity are free to give time to mission. Leaders who live for ‘the crown of glory that will never fade away’ (1 Peter 5:4) serve willingly and eagerly (v. 2).” – pg. 147
“ … prayer needs to be central to our mission strategy. Peter says, ‘The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray’ (4:7). This is a truth we all know in our heads, but our practice so often reflects an assumption that only our actions matter. So why do we not make prayer central? Perhaps we think we are central to gospel growth, then our activity will always seem more urgent than prayer. … If we want to be in control, then we will restrict ourselves to situations in which we are comfortable. If my strategy is to persuade people with carefully constructed arguments, then I am in control (and if I am not, then I can read a book to acquire better arguments). But if I pray with an unbeliever for a specific need, then I am not in control of the outcome. This scary reliance on God is precisely what we want to cultivate. This is a strategy that lets God be the primary agent of mission, that lets God be God. … We speak with the words God provides and serve in the strength God provides so that God is praised rather than us. We put ourselves in situations in which we must rely on God (1 Peter 4:11; 1 Corinthians 2:4-5; 2 Corinthians 4:7). We need to view prayer as a missional activity. For us this involves three things:
(1) routine, regular, organized prayer,
(2) a reflex toward impromptu prayer, and
(3) prayer for unbelievers
So we want to make prayer our central
missional activity and our first recourse when needs or opportunities arise.
Prayer is not a support activity to mission. It is itself a frontline
missionary activity. Mission is never under our control. God is the great missionary.”
– pgs. 148-149
Questions for gospel communities (see
list):
(1) God: Are you God-centered?
(2) Love: Are you others-centered?
(3) The Bible: Are you Word-centered?
(4) Grace: Are you grace-centered?
(5) Mission: Are you mission-centered? – pgs. 150-151
Conclusion | Next Steps
"Do we
have the imagination to be what we can and should be as the people of God? Do
we have the desire to be the people of God together on mission? Can we move
beyond church as a weekly service and become a community that shares life and
mission? Can we be a people for whom church and mission are our identity rather
than occasional events? ... the church is made up of people who, though
saved by grace, continue to struggle with sin. The church is not ideal because
we are not ideal, but some approximation is possible. God does not call us to
mediocrity, nor does he call us to be a community on mission and the mock our
failures. He gave his Son and sends his Spirit so we can be his people and live
as his people…everyday church is not primarily about a structure but about a
culture or ethos. You cannot organize people to everyday church through
structures and programs. People need to catch a vision and learn how to live
that our day by day. Structures can help or hinder, but they cannot generate a
communal identity or a missional lifestyle. Primarily everyday church needs to
be taught and modeled. It is about culture change.” – pgs. 154-155
“Doing
church as a large gathering is the easy option. You can be friends with anyone
when all that’s required is meeting for a couple of hours on a Sunday morning.
You spend most of that time singing and listening to someone else talking. In a
gospel community you are forced to rub shoulders with people day to day. People
let you down and disappoint you. People say things about you or do not do
things they said they will do. That is when it is hard to love and serve and
forgive, but it is precisely in the everyday that we are called to be the
people of God. If we are not the people of God in these moments, we cannot
claim to be the people of God on a Sunday morning.” – pg. 156
“The gospel community is much more than a
meeting. It is not an event but an identity, a community of God’s people doing
mission together. The gathering, too, is more than a meeting. It is the network
of gospel communities working together to reach the city. The gathering of gospel communities has a shared leadership, which better enables us to
cooperate. It also means we can put younger leaders in place within a supportive
structure and create gospel communities on the fly in response to evangelistic
opportunities. This collective identity with a collective meeting means the church is
more reproducible. We do not need a lot in place to start a new gospel
community, because leaders are supported by a wider network, and good Bible
teaching is assured through the gathering. So gospel communities can be light,
flexible, and adaptable. They can even be expendable in the sense that we can
innovate and take risks without fear of failure. The gospel communities can
also be encouraged to adapt their activities, location, style, and so on to the
people they are trying to reach. They are free to be very contextual
expressions of church, perhaps with a focus on a specific ethnic or social
group, because the gathering gives full expression to the unity we have in
Christ, which transcends cultural differences. We want to express both the
particularity of the gospel (through contextual gospel communities) and the
universality of the gospel (through the unity of the gathering).” – pg.
157
We see this in creation: we are made for community with God and others and to image God’s glory in his world.
We see this in Abraham and Israel: at the heart of God’s purposes are not isolated individuals but a people whose life is to draw the nations to God.
We see this in Jesus: he is the true Israel, the true people of God, and the light of the world who calls his disciples to be his new community and to be a city on a hill that cannot be hidden.
We see this in the new creation: God dwells among his people and makes them his own.
God’s purpose has always been to have a people who are his people through whom he reveals his glory in the world. This is how God defines the good life: the people of God together in community making knowing the glory of God. This is the gospel. This is why Jesus died. Jesus did not die to save isolated individuals. He died for his church. He died and rose and sent the Spirit to create a people who would be his people and though whom he would reveal his glory.” – pg. 160
“Everyday church will expose our idols. You never really know what drives you until you live in community. Other people threaten or thwart our sinful desires. Suddenly our idols keep popping up all over the place. They sit on the mantelpiece of our heart until somebody knocks them off. Then we cry out in protest or dive to catch them. But let them fall! The pain of having our idols smashed only serves to point us to the one true Lord. Either everyday church will witness to God’s grace in our lives or it will fracture. We cannot ‘achieve’ everyday church. It grows out of God’s grace to us and to others. It is the fruit of grace and therefore a testimony to grace. When people see us living life together – loving, serving, forbearing, supporting, encouraging, and proclaiming the gospel to one another – it will provoke questions. ‘Finally all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. … In your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect ‘ (1 Peter 3:8, 15).” – pg. 161
Next post: Rhythms of Grace: How the Church's Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel Part 1 of 3
– Sully
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