Resources For "Devoted" Series From Each Harderwyk Preacher
I. New For This Week
How To Reach The West Again - Tim Keller - Resources that Harderwyk pastors are studying and using as we plan for ministry post-COVID.
“To
clarify, a missionary encounter is not a withdrawal from culture into
communities with little connection to the rest of society. Nor is it an
effort to secure political power in order to impose Christian standards and
beliefs on an unwilling populace. Nor is it an effort to become so
“relevant” that the church becomes completely adapted and assimilated into the
culture.”
“Instead, a missionary encounter connects (unlike strategies of withdrawal), yet confronts (unlike the strategies of assimilation), and therefore actually converts people (unlike all the strategies, including those of political domination). And while critiquing all the other strategies at a fundamental level, a church embarked on a missionary encounter does maintain its distinctive (a goal shared with the withdrawal approach). It does often affirmed and always serve its neighbors (a goal shared with the assimilation approach). It does call people to repent and change (a goal occasionally shared with the politically assertive approach).
In many ways, we must look to the early church that had an effective missionary encounter with a very hostile culture. - How To Reach the West Again, p. 13
CLICK HERE for access to the full paper and other related resources.
Native Expression - The Story of Casey Church - CLICK HERE - An article from the Fuller Seminary Alumni Magazine about his "contextualized ministry" as a Native American. It is a great example of the same challenge faced by the church in Acts 11. CLICK HERE for a 90-second YouTube of Casey himself introducing his vision for ministry.
II. From The Commentaries On This Passage
In regards to Peter’s journey in welcoming Cornelius, a gentile, into the family of God here’s John Stott’s overview adapted from The Message of Acts
“Peter’s order of events is important because it helps us to live through his experience with him, and so to learn just how God had shown him that he should not call anybody impure or unclean (10:28). It took four successive hammer-blows of divine revelation before his racial and religious prejudice was overcome, as he explains to the Jerusalem church…
- First came the divine vision (4–10)…
- The second hammer-blow was the divine command (11–12)…
- The third hammer-blow was the divine preparation (13–14)…
- The fourth and final revelation to Peter was the divine action (15–17)…
….If Peter had been convinced by the evidence, so now was the Jerusalem church: they had no further objections (literally, ‘they remained silent’) and praised God. As F. F. Bruce neatly puts it, ‘their criticism ceased; their worship began’. And they had good reason to glorify God for, they concluded, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life (11:18).”
In regards to understanding the depth of the racial and religious divide as well as prejudice that God was breaking down in Acts 10-11 here are some insights from NT Wright in Acts for Everyone, Part 1
t this point we must remind ourselves of one of the basic points about the Jewish food laws. It wasn’t just that the Jews weren’t allowed to eat pork. There was a whole range of meat which they were forbidden; they are listed (for example) in Leviticus 11, and were much discussed by later generations. And these food laws, whatever their origin, served to mark out the Jewish people from their non-Jewish neighbours, a rule reinforced by the prohibition on Jews eating with non-Jews, sharing table fellowship. The reasoning was clear: the people you sit down and eat with are ‘family’, but the Jewish ‘family’ has been called by God to be separate, to bear witness to his special love and grace to the world, and must not therefore compromise with the world. Of course, there were less complimentary ways of putting that as well, and the food taboos were regularly used as a weapon in a larger war of words, with Jews accusing Gentiles of all kinds of wickedness and uncleanness, and Gentiles responding with sneers. All of this we must keep in mind as we join Peter on the roof and watch this great sail descending from heaven—with unclean food in it.”
“There is a story told of C. S. Lewis, as a small boy—about six or seven, I think. One day he announced to his father,
‘Daddy, I have a prejudice against the French.’
‘Why?’ asked his father, not unreasonably.
‘If I knew that,’ replied the precocious youngster triumphantly, ‘it wouldn’t be a prejudice.’
He was quite right, of course. The point about a prejudice is that it’s what you have when you are ‘pre-judging’ a case: making your mind up before you know the facts.
Now of course there are many halfway stages between naked prejudice and completely well-informed opinion. Frequently we back up our prejudices by finding out just enough facts that support our case, and conveniently ignoring the rest. Bad historians, clever politicians and lazy theologians do that all the time. And in the case of the ancient world people did it a lot, too. Many Jews could tell stories about the wicked things that Gentiles got up to. One of the reasons some Jews gave for not going into Gentile houses and eating with them was that the houses were polluted because Gentiles forced their womenfolk to have abortions and then put the dead foetuses down the drains or under the floorboards. In the same sort of way, some Gentiles were taught that Jews were stuck-up, unsociable people, because they wouldn’t eat pork (which was the cheapest meat available in most places), because they insisted on having a day off work each week, and because they wouldn’t join in with normal social activities, like the parties which went on around pagan temples and the great games which celebrated the gods, or sometimes the emperors. A particularly interesting slur was that Jewish people robbed pagan temples, presumably because, since they didn’t regard the pagan divinities as real, nobody actually owned what was in their shrines so they might as well help themselves. But so far as we can tell there were large numbers of Gentiles and Jews who lived quite happily alongside one another and gave the lie to the prejudices.“
An important caution for us from NT Wright in Acts for Everyone, Part 1
“All these are important as we ponder the ways God works and the ways in which God’s people sometimes need to explain themselves to one another—an important task in all generations, since God is always doing new things, but there is equally a danger in mere human innovation. (Not all bright ideas are good ideas; not all good ideas are from God.) Part of the difficulty, of course, is identifying the work of the holy spirit. There have been, in the last century or so, many movements which have claimed to be spirit-driven, but which have resulted in all kinds of shameful behaviour. There is a constant need, particularly among Christian leaders, to be anchored in prayer, humility and deep attention to the word of God and particularly (as here) the words of Jesus.
Even when agreement seems to be reached, we cannot rest on our laurels. The victory which was won in verse 18, when Peter’s inquisitors were reduced first to silence and then to recognizing that God had indeed been at work, seems to have been reversed again in 15:5. And the further victory of chapter 15 as a whole does not seem to have extended towards the glad recognition of non-Jewish believers as equal partners when Paul finally returns to Jerusalem in 21:20–21. What is the explanation for this?
Surely the obvious one: that things were not static in the social and political world of Jerusalem through the 40s and 50s of the first century. Far from it. The pace was hotting up. Pressure was mounting that would eventually lead to a massive revolt and the bloodiest and most disastrous war in Jewish history, ending with Jerusalem being destroyed by the Romans in ad 70. People were not, in other words, sitting around in Jerusalem discussing, as an abstract issue, the question of the value of circumcision and the food laws. These were the equivalents of the national flag at a time when the whole nation felt under intense and increasing pressure. To welcome Gentiles as equal brothers and sisters must have looked like fraternizing with the enemy. To be ‘zealous for the law’, including circumcision and the food laws, must have looked like the only way that would fit in with the will of God for his people. If we want to understand, and learn from, the complex debates faced by the early church, we would do well to ponder their entire situation, and contemplate the ways in which our own theological debates are more conditioned than we sometimes realize by the swirling currents of political, social and cultural pressure.”
III. Ongoing Resources
1) Spiritual Formation Resources Page - CLICK HERE - This is still a work in progress, but be a part as we look to build
2) Scotty Smith’s Heavenward Daily Prayers - CLICK HERE to see the daily prayer blog of Scotty Smith. You will see an option to have them delivered to your email inbox each day as well.
3) Simple Lectio Divina Overview - CLICK HERE for a simple introduction of the spiritual practice of a more personal way of experience the Word through contemplation and reflection.
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