Gospel Eco Systems

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.

My name is Mike Abendroth, and you can always email me at info at nocompromiseradio .com, or you can watch the NoCo90s, noco90 .com, go to the YouTube channel, No Compromise Radio, and you can interact with moi, or I'll send it to Ray or Steve or somebody else.

The Atheist Megachurch Movement and the Need for Fellowship

Atheist megachurches take root across U .S., world. By Gillian Flackus, Associated Press. You probably saw this in the news recently. Los Angeles, it looked like a typical Sunday morning at any megachurch.

Several hundred people, including families with small children, packed in for more than an hour of rousing music, an inspirational talk, and some quiet reflection. Kind of sounds like an emergent church to me, doesn't it?

I remember one time I went to Vintage Faith, which is in Santa Cruz. They're kind of the pioneer of emergent churches. Dan Kimble was, is the, I don't know what he calls himself there, the leader. And I remember during the middle of the service, we took the kids there, in the middle of the service, people would get up and paint on the wall or the painting area.

You had a crushed beer glass display. I think it was made of a cross out of beer glasses. You can get up anytime you want and go have communion. All kinds of weird things up on the walls. And my kids said, Dad, is this a church?

They even knew. They knew what was going on. And of course, nobody was preaching the word. But anyway, this is not an emergent church. It says the only thing missing was God. Well, maybe it is an emergent church after all.

Yeah, that seems to make sense. Nearly three dozen gatherings dubbed atheist megachurches by supporters and detractors have sprung up around the U .S. and Australia, with more to come after finding success in Great Britain earlier this year.

The movement, fueled by social media and spearheaded by two prominent British comedians, is no joke. Just briefly regarding this, this proves a particular theological point. The need for fellowship. The need for—I hate to say this word because it sounds so emergent—gathering.

The gathering. I actually thought maybe we could start a new church called The Merge. The Merge. People want to have fellowship. We are made in the likeness and image of God. We are image bearers, and we desire communion.

Not just with God, but with other people. You can think of the two great commandments. You can think about not forsaking the assembly. And we have a desire to be around other people. Now you say, well, there's some exception.

But the exception proves the rule. The guy who wants to go to Montana to get away from everyone, he still wants communion. He still wants fellowship. He's just going to have it with nature instead of other people.

And so what will happen with these things? British duo Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans are currently on a tongue-in-cheek 40-dates, 40-nights tour around the U .S. to drum up donations and help launch their new Sunday assemblies.

Part of me wants to say these will never last because there's no abiding realities, and they'll just peter out. But the other thing is, you know, liberal churches, they keep going. Universalist churches, they keep going.

And so there we have it. Number two here on my desk as we're cleaning off my desk. It's raining out. It's Thanksgiving Eve day in real time, and it's about 60 degrees outside here in Massachusetts, and it's pouring rain.

And so I wish it was either 40 degrees colder so we could go skiing, or if it wasn't raining, we could go bicycling. There you have it. This was sent to me by someone. They didn't put their name that I know of.

It was sent from a no-compromise listener, I assume, to the mail address here, 307 Lancaster Street, West Boylston, Mass., 01583. A race like none other. N-U-N. A race like none other. St. Teresa School, the Nun Run.

Getting kids in the habit. I mean, how could I make this up? Getting kids in the habit. January 25, 2014. The fun run begins at 8 .30. 5K begins at 8 .30 a .m. Pancakes included. Technical hat and reusable cloth bag for the first 250 registered runners.

Is that a habit? What's a technical hat? I guess that is. I don't know. Medals for top three 5K runners in 16 age groups. Door prizes. And then here's the fun part. You want the fun nun run? So here's the fun nun run.

All runners who beating the running nun are eligible for a prize. I guess we're supposed to win the race. That's what we're supposed to do. Crazy. All right. What's next? Narcissistic personality disorder, NPD.

Malignant self-love slash narcissism. What is NPD? I thought it was the Newark Police Department. Narcissistic personality disorder. And what I do want to say here is you ought to get a book by Peter Bragan.

Your drug is the problem. He's an un... As far as I know, he's not a Christian man. Peter Bragan. And he's a doctor. And he talks about psychotropic drugs. And especially if you're trying to get off of psychotropic drugs, he gives you a good format for doing that thing.

And since I'm not a doctor, his words are more valid than mine. If you look at the DSM-IV and how people vote these diseases in, and the new SAD, the new Internet Addiction Syndrome, all these other things, it's...

I think if you do some digging, you're going to find out. Your eyes are going to be wide open. I did find it interesting that it says here, narcissists build a false sense of self-worth from narcissistic supply.

That is attention, adoration, and adulation. Just like Johnny Rotten said, there's an unlimited supply. Aging maverick Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong has no regrets. Morris Plains, New Jersey, at 82, retired and enjoying life.

He better enjoy it now unless he repents. Bishop John Shelby Spong doesn't have to be the liberal enfant terrible, terrible, whose pronouncements for gay rights and against traditional dogmas once scandalized Christendom.

And so I'm sure others have said it better than I can say it. But the scandal of the Christian religion now is basically there's no more scandal. What is scandalous? Is gay marriage scandalous? It's come see, come saw.

Is a denial of the Trinity scandalous? No, we invite those people because they have tribes bigger than we do. We invite them to the elephant room too when Driscoll and MacDonald can affirm them for the sake of growth.

They can't learn anything about church growth from their own tribes, so they have to go outside of their tribe to oneness Pentecostalists. There's no more scandal. John Shelby Spong has done everything in his power to destroy the church.

He's done everything he possibly can with his voice, with his pen. And here's the wonderful thing. In 100 years, they'll say, John Shelby Spong who? And Jesus Christ will continue to build his church.

He's purchased the bride. He has accomplished salvation. And now by the Spirit's power, that salvation is being applied to every single elect person, not losing one. Aren't you glad that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, including the liberal, venomous, blasphemous fountain pen of John Shelby Spong?

And whether he is ordaining gay clergy or blessing same-sex marriages or having females preside as bishops. By the way, I did want to make a disclaimer. I think I once said on No Compromise Radio that Catherine Jeffords Shorey was homosexual.

And so I apologize. That was not correct. But she affirms those very things. So anyway, I was wrong on that one. I had my info and just I had a misspeaking disorder. And that's what happened. But seriously, I misspoke and I'm correcting it right now on national radio.

I can remember when a woman, getting a woman as a rector was the hardest thing you ever did, Spong said with a gratified smile as he relaxed on a sofa in the suburban New Jersey home he shares with his wife, Christine.

I was told to put a collar on. I haven't worn one in a long time. Oh, he's just such a rebel now, isn't he? And he talks about the battle has been won for gay rights. He said, I was simply interpreting a rising consciousness.

Whether it was race or women or homosexual people, the issue is always the same. Fighting against anything that dehumanizes a child of God on the basis of an external characteristic. How about fighting against anything that defames the glory of God in His Word?

Isn't that what we're supposed to do? He doesn't even know he's a product of his age and he's caught up into the vortex of the world as it is and the system. But of course, unbelievers act like unbelievers.

And so he says, now I feel mellow and I don't think I've changed particularly. I'm just not controversial in my church anymore. Because the scandal of the church is there's no more scandals. There's no more controversy because anything goes.

This is Shelahism at its best. Shelah says, I'll take this with Christianity and I won't take that. I need the Savior bit and I need the love stuff and the joy stuff and nice moral stories for my kids because we like morality.

Of course, everyone likes morality, especially Satan, right? And so this is a perfect thing for him because he needs to retire. Why? A, he's old and B, he's run out of controversial things. Because there's no more controversy at all.

Spong here, according to the article, doesn't think any of the Gospels are literal retellings of the life of Jesus. All of them, quote by Spong, were written 40 to 70 years after the crucifixion in a language that Jesus did not speak and not by eyewitnesses.

I see them more as Jewish interpretive portraits painted by Jewish artists. Try to capture the essence of this man's life. A lot of people hear me attacking their certainty. I don't have any interest in doing that.

I'm interested in penetrating the meaning of certainty. We have to get beyond the symbols and John's Gospel does that for me. Is that what we're trying to do? We're trying to get back behind the writings and get into the minds of what?

Of who? The Jewish interpretive portraits? Well, so much for John Shelby Spong. All right, what else is going on No Compromise Radio? I have something here from Tim Keller, and he is talking about ecosystems.

And he gave a talk to Renew South Florida, and he's talking about gospel ecosystems. So, you know, it's a long thing that he gave, so I don't want to read the entire deal. So I'm going to just read part of the beginning, and then that will confuse me enough to have no idea what the guy's saying.

Okay, the subject is, Tim Keller said, creating gospel ecosystems. What is that? A physical ecosystem is, we know, a biological ecosystem. It's where you have a set of forces that sustain each other, interact with each other, stimulate each other.

So Organism A eats Organism B, and it is a good thing for Organism C, because if Organism B's numbers were tabbed down, Organism C wouldn't exist because Organism B eats C. And Organism A eats C, which means if there wasn't enough Organism C, there wouldn't be any Organisms A.

But because they're all eating each other, because they are, you might say, in a sense, sustaining each other, you've got an ecosystem. An ecosystem is a balanced set of forces and energies that grow each other.

Now the question I want to talk to you about today is, how do you start a gospel movement in your city? I'll just stop right there. What if you don't live in a city? I have seven minutes to get to church here from my house.

No stop signs. Actually, no stop lights. I just drive in the country along the reservoir. How can you see a gospel movement develop in your city? Now, cities need help. I get that. But it's always the city, and you say, well, he's in the city.

A gospel movement is this. A gospel movement happens in a city when across churches, across multiple denominations and networks, and beyond any one key leader or any one command center or any one denomination, you actually have the body of Christ in the city, geometrically growing, not just reconfiguring.

Now, I don't know. I'm just a Nebraska public school educated kid, and I've been to seminary. I teach at seminary. I don't have any idea what any of this means. When the body of Christ is growing from 1 to 5 to 10 of the population because it is growing fast in the population, it's actually growing.

So in other words, the church isn't growing unless it's growing faster than the population. Usually what happens in most cities when something that happens is reconfiguration. A new church grows or a new network of churches grow, and what they do is largely pull Christians out of less effective ministries into their ministries.

He goes on to say what has really happened mainly is 90 of the growth of that network is reconfiguration, just pulling Christians from other places, now deploying them better, and certainly people becoming Christians, but overall the body is not growing.

It's reconfiguring. That's not a movement. So what do we do if we'd like to have real growth and not reconfigure things? And he gives us a list, okay, seven things that help with reconfiguration in Christian ecosystems.

Again, I didn't make this up. One is kingdom-centered united prayer. There's a bunch said about every one of these. I just have to give you the bullets. Secondly, you have to have lots and lots and lots of specialty evangelistic ministries.

Okay, number three, justice and mercy initiatives. Okay, there's a lot I could say about the justice initiative. Fourth, faith and work initiatives. I do find it interesting what he says about this, which is to say, again, the very big churches might have 200 artists in them, but by and large if the Christians who are artists in the city are going to resource each other, help each other, get together, they're going to have to usually get together in various sorts of initiatives.

The artists may have to come across churches, and they have to be supportive in networks and organizations. Then all kinds of stuff come out, ideas come out. That's how art happens, by the way. It happens at parties.

Artists go to parties, and then they get their ideas, and then they, you know, I read an article not too long ago, remember, about the, you know, the artists who say that everything pretty much happens at parties.

Sounds like Bauhaus. She's in parties. Number five, okay, fifth, educational and family support institutions. Sixth, you need your own leadership development systems. Seven, the last element in, the last part of the labor, excuse me, the layer that has to be there interacting with the churches is overlapping leaders, overlapping leaders who come together, and they're not kingdom, they're just not so oriented around their own turf and developing their own kingdoms, but they really have a heart for the whole city, and they get together and talk.

And that is what I mean by overlapping. You have to have your business leaders, they're the wealthiest. You have to have your arts leaders, they're the wildest. You have to have your tech people, they're the wiredest.

You have to have your pastors, they're the weirdest. So then the wildest and the wealthiest and the wiredest and the weirdest are getting together saying, what are we going to do about our city instead of just always being in their own little turf networks and concerning only about their tribe increasing?

That's kind of a capstone to cherry on the Sunday. He ends with, so that's a vision for gospel movement. And I'm just trying to have you raise your eyes beyond the current horizon where your eyes are fixed because right now in some of your cases, you just want to survive.

In other words, you just don't want, in other words, when you first start a church, your first horizon is, I don't want five years from now for me and everybody I know to think I'm a failure. That's your first horizon.

And maybe that's as far as you can go at first. Then next horizon is, oh, we're doing okay. I would like to start another campus. I would like to start a network. I'd like to start other churches. And so maybe you get a vision for your own church becoming a movement.

I want you to never forget that there's a higher horizon and that is a gospel movement in the city. Hmm. Is there any discernment in the world anymore? What does the Holy Spirit do as he raises a church?

What do pastors do? What are they responsible for? What's God's global mission? What is an ecosystem with justice, mercy, media outreach? I think the world would be very happy with such a thing. I'm not so sure that the Holy Spirit works this way.

Matter of fact, I'm sure he doesn't. Something revealed apart from the Holy Scripture? No, I should think that what's missing is even more basic for a gospel ecosystem, says R. Scott Clark. Well, maybe I don't do the Tim Keller stuff because I have no idea what he's talking about and I'm just an infantry man.

My name's Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio. I just have all this stuff sitting here, and then what do you do with it? What do you do? You have covenant network of Presbyterians, seminary president.

Genesis 2, Human Isolation, and the Gummy Bear Hermeneutic

Genesis text is not about male and female, but instead human isolation. I would be a Christian for lots of reasons, but one could probably be there's so much attack on the truth. That would by default make me think this has to be true because everybody's attacking it and saying kooky things about it.

McCormick Theological Seminary president Frank Yamada said that the takeaway from Genesis 2, 18 to 25 is not about a man and a woman, but that God has figured out a way to take away isolation from human beings.

Yamada's sermon, Becoming One Flesh One Body, was given Thursday night at a worship service at Covenant Network's 2013 conference, Marriage Matters. See, because it's not good for man to be what? Alone.

Human isolation. That's the takeaway. He said that the Presbyterian Church USA's Big Tent event held August 1st to 3rd in Louisville, Kentucky, or he said at this place, putting God's first things first.

And then he uses a sermon illustration of a story about his dog got focused so much when he gets gummy bears. Following the service, a member of the audience came to him asking him about feeding his dog gummy bears.

That was this guy's takeaway, said Yamada, adding that as a preacher, he's often struck by what a person's takeaway is from one of his sermons. When I read Genesis 2 and hear what others take away from the text, I scratch my head.

When someone reads a beautiful, moving text and his takeaway is man and woman, Yamada said he wonders, what text are you reading? Is that all you got from this text, man and woman? That's all you get.

So you read this passage that we often read at marriages, and there's no suitable helper for Adam, so the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was sleeping he took one of the man's ribs and then closed up the place with flesh.

Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man and he brought her to the man. The man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.

That is why man leaves his father and his mother and is united to his wife and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame, because my takeaway was the dog gummy bear scenario.

That's my new hermeneutic. So this is about human isolation. And so this is the new hermeneutic. This is the gummy bear hermeneutic. Something's not quite right in creation, said theological seminary, McCormick Theological Seminary, President Frank Yamada.

Doesn't Genesis 2 seem to address this dilemma of isolation? It's not good for the human being to be alone. It seems to me that the much greater takeaway that speaks to the human condition, indeed in these life-giving partnerships with those who recognize as flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, from our side by our side, I recognize a companion, a partner, an easer, a helpmate.

He said, as he continued, the takeaway doesn't just apply to individuals, but to groups. Racism, sexism, or heterosexism. So now you can take Genesis 2, man and woman, and you can make it into issues with heterosexism, which is just as bad as racism, which is just as bad as sexism.

Well, how can he have doctrinal studies in the Hebrew Bible with an emphasis in hermeneutics? Well, because he's also got an emphasis with feminist theory and culturally contextual biblical interpretation.

From the I-don't-really-care-what-the-Bible-says department. Well, my name is Mike Capen Droth, this is No Compromise Radio. Just some things that were bugging me. Ecosystems bug me. Hermeneutical faux pas bug me.

What else did I have on here that bugged me today? What was your other thing? Narcissistic disorders. They bug me too. They bug I. You can write me info at nocompromiseradio .com. And you can go to our website and read the blog.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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