Kathy Keller and the Prime Directive (Part 2)

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.

Why the Program Rejects Lent and Pragmatic Church Growth

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. Mike Abendroth here. Tried to do Facebook Live again, wouldn�t work. I don�t know. I updated my iOS yesterday, it didn�t seem to help me much. All right, well, today we�re just going to have a little wrap-up on 10 Reasons You Should Celebrate Lent, so you can get ready early.

Hey, here�s a little Christian life hack for you. If you�re a charismatic pastor, promotes Lent, and you�re shocked, you ought not to be. I mean, it�s just the latest thing. It�s just, you know, if you�re charismatic, then you have to have some kind of sensual, that is, tactile, touch, taste, feel type of thing.

Instead of Habakkuk 2 .4, the just shall live by what? Faith! That�s exactly right, and the object of the triune God. Well, so much for Facebook Live, we�ll have to do that another time, but there is that exclusive group you can join.

I don�t know what kind of benefits there are, but you can always join it. People are going crazy online, and Phil Johnson said the other day, I think he�s right, the new emergent type of talk is all the woke stuff, and I called it woke-mergent, because it�s got the E for emergent and the woke.

But today, we�re not talking about any of that. Not Lent, not woke. We are talking about what you should do and what you�ve learned in 30 years of ministry ministry, if your name is Kathy Keller. March 12th, Lessons Learned from 30 Years in Ministry, www .medium .com forward slash redeemer city to city.

Church as Usual Will Not Work

Number one, the first one, remember, was last show, because of the chief value, prime directive, church as usual will not work. Church as usual will not work. Remember, don�t name your name, the church Christ the King, unbelievers want something with the word help or a rescue or something that has a positive appeal for people.

That�s what you want to do. You have to determine everything for the grid. Church as usual will not work. And so today, we come to the second part of this, and again, I guess this is the disclaimer, if I say something, you are free to critique it.

If somebody writes a blog or says something like this, it is out, sent to the world, and it finds its way to my people in my home church that I worship in, and I think you should be a big boy or girl and then be prepared for the critique.

And if you are one of the most influential Presbyterians in the country, maybe in the world, and your first bit of pragmatism for the church or the first bit of, you know, here�s how you do ministry is pragmatism, church as usual will not work, would it get in the way of non-Christians hearing the gospel, questions like that, you�re on a different planet as far as I�m concerned.

We talked about faithfulness, and we talked about what God requires. Okay, before I get into number two, here�s the way you should work it. Even if you�re attending a church and you�re not the minister, you�re not the leader, are those words, unbelievers like those words, church as usual will not work, okay, so you can�t call them reverend, pastor, lead pastor, vision pastor, demon casting out pastor, pasta pasta, what do you call them, I don�t know, what do you call them, the Louvre, I have no idea, church as usual will not work.

Precedent Means Nothing in Ministry

Number two, oh, what was I going to say about this, it�s Jesus�s church, it is the Lord Jesus�s church, He purchased the church with His own blood, therefore He gets to say what we do, what we do, how we do it, what the motives should be, and I just leave it at that.

How do you do all this other stuff, where�s my seminary classes? I agree, some of my seminary classes, maybe I wasn�t paying attention, but I think I would have been paying attention to this class, church as usual will not work, thirty years of ministry, that�s the first thing, the prime directive, the chief value.

I didn�t say it, she said it, I don�t know if they learned it at Gordon-Conwell in the early seventies, I don�t know where it�s learned, but it is just the influence of what�s going on there, you know, Machen, they said, had his warrior stepchildren, you�re going to watch, Keller�s going to have his social warrior stepchildren, you watch, you watch and we have it even now.

Number two, thirty years of ministry, Kathy Keller tells us, number one, church as usual will not work. Number two, she said, quote, this brings up a corollary insight, a big, big mantra around here for a decade at least, precedent means nothing.

All right, I can tell you what I think that means, but let�s let Kathy tell us what she thinks that means, since we�ll go for authorial intent instead of reader response theory. If you try something and it doesn�t work, scrap it.

Did I not tell you, this is not Kathy, now this is me, did I not tell you, this is pragmatism on anabolic steroids, this is, you know, I follow cycling, this is doping, it�s dopey in my opinion, but it�s also doping, dopamine, that�s another question.

If you try something and it doesn�t work, scrap it, how about preaching, how about giving, I think that�s church as usual, isn�t it? What else does she say? Do not feel that you have to stick with something just because you�ve put a lot of time and energy and money, that�s one thing they�ve got up there, they always need more of it, into a plan, in my opinion.

If it stinks, don�t do it, I mean, it�s taken me 30 years to figure that out. Don�t listen to people who say, this is crazy, like Avondrott, the thing is I can say whatever I want because I�m such a small fry, I�m under the radar of everybody.

Talking about 50 ,000 Twitter followers, I think in 25 years we might have 50 ,000. We might, we might not, we might not. What kind of people? Don�t listen to these kind of people. If we do that, then we�re committed to continue doing it.

No you aren�t. If you do it and it doesn�t work, just don�t do it again, precedent means nothing. That was true right at the beginning with the name of our church. See how we do the little eisegesis, we do the hermeneutics, we do the base everything on our experience and what we did?

The article continues, �When I say we committed ourselves to not doing anything because that was the way we�d seen it or enjoyed it in another setting, I really do mean nothing. Okay, I didn�t say that.

This is not me torquing it to make good radio, I�d like to know the definition of good radio. I guess radio is in the ear of the beholder. I tried to make it live, Todd Freelive, but I couldn�t do it.

Todd said, �I can come back on now. I�ve done my penance. I can guest host the show again. And actually James White, he said, �I can come on Dividing Line. How about that? That�s got to make some people mad.

Who else? Whose show could I be on to make people mad? Todd, I don�t think Todd makes people mad usually. I do really mean nothing. City to city is the first institutional expression of this value. Originally we had a lot of seekers, both new Christians and non-Christians.

They call me the seeker. Okay, what�s a seeker? Did you not go to seminary to figure out no one seeks after God? Is that Romans 3 or is that somewhere else? I obviously don�t know the answer to that question.

We didn�t have a lot of long-term Christians. What is that? What is a long-term Christian? Oh, mature Christian, okay, all right, that could be. Because in God�s merciful providence, other churches had attracted all the self-identifying Christians over to their congregation.

I identify as a Christian, what do you self-identify as? What kind of language is this? Did I not tell you last time I cannot believe this thing was published? This turned out to be a wonderful advantage because we didn�t have a constant refrain of we�ve always done it this way and this is how church works and this is how we should do it.

However, those few long-term Christians who did attend were aware that every church had to have a foreign missions committee and they knew how foreign missions worked. You formed a committee, invited a bunch of missionaries to visit and present their call or vision.

You gave them some modest monthly financial support and you got reports back. I have to admit, Tim and I were busy, so we let them run it. And to be fair, that�s all we had ever known by the way of foreign missions as well.

Then a funny thing started to happen. We started getting delegates from the Netherlands and then from China saying, �We don�t know how to reach our cities. Our churches have become very suburbanized or even rural.

You�re doing okay in the city, so tell us what you�re doing so we can do it. We began to realize that this is what Redeemer had to offer people. They had to offer people. That was my mistake. I will take full credit for that.

No mafia intended. Experience and an expertise about reaching skeptics in cities. We are experts at reaching skeptics in cities. Who was the guy that said, by the way, �God made the country, man made the cities, and the devil made the suburbs.

I think that was Thomas Chalmers. I think that�s it. By the way, on a different note, our basement flooded a few months ago because it got so cold outside. I turned off the outside spigot and the water to it, not just the outside spigot but the pipe that goes to it, and that valve failed.

The water went out there, froze, burst, three inches of water in the finished basement, in the finished bathroom basement, in the finished closet basement, and in the unfinished garage. Yuck. Yuck. Cold.

Wet. My wife said, �Honey, I know it�s your day off at 6 a .m., but the basement�s flooding. My wife didn�t make that sound, but that was the sound that was made. You know what I said to her? I said, �Well, honey, I have a chief value and a prime directive, and that is the church as usual will not work, and I�m not working today either.

You clean it up. Of course, I didn�t say that. Anyway, the basement is almost redone, by the way. We are experts in reaching skeptics in cities. Number three, Kathy Keller, 30 years of ministry. Quote, �Another core value that originated from the prime directive, church as usual will not work, is that excellence is inclusive.

How much language from the world can we use? I�m a self-identifying Christian. Excellence is inclusive. Don�t say the word �Christ is King. It�s triumphal. This part you probably know. It�s been in the news quite a bit lately.

We paid our musicians, even though we couldn�t pay them a lot. Do they pay unbelieving musicians too? We respected that that�s how they made their livelihood, and they respected the church in return. They brought their friends.

At one time, we did a survey and discovered that we had somewhere between three and four hundred professional musicians attending Redeemer. If you wanted to sing or play at Redeemer, you had to audition, which was unheard of in a church at the time.

Wow. Wow, impressive. But we believe that excellence in music and all other public faces of Redeemer was inclusive. That meant childcare. That meant the bulletin. That meant coffee hour. I thought, �Church as usual will not work.

How many churches have had childcare over the last hundred years? How many churches have tried to have some kind of bulletin? How about coffee hour? �Church as usual will not work. Everything she said was more inclusive if it was done excellently because even if you weren�t a believer, you could appreciate the music, or you could be impressed by the nursery, or you could say, �They�re offering bagels and cream cheese at the coffee hour.

Wow. End quote. Really? Really? Really? And the Presbyterian PCA General Assembly buys into some of the things that are said striving this issue? Not this issue of bagels. I think they don�t have any problem with bagels.

Wow, the unbelievers come here and they�re impressed with the nursery. Now here�s what I will say, since it�s my show. Our nursery here, when I got here, it pretty much smelled like urine. And I guess at times, any nursery can smell that way.

If there�s a diaper you�ve got to change or something, you know, bathrooms can smell bad. You need to have a nice ventilated system and other things like that, some type of deodorizer, right? But just overall, it reeked.

It wasn�t good. So I said to Scott, one of our deacons, �Can you make it, here�s your budget. Make it. I don�t want to be embarrassed by that, but I didn�t say so. So when unbelievers come in, they can say, �I�m impressed by the nursery and they�re offering bagels and cream cheese.

Wow. Why did Willow Creek do so well? Here�s my take. Because Bill Hybels knew how to run a church, our business, the business church. He was a good leader. Now I know he�s in all kinds of trouble now.

I don�t know all the details of that trouble and I don�t like his theology in any way, shape or form, or therefore his methodological, philosophical outflow of that. But he knew how to run things. And I don�t care if he would have been an Episcopal, the Episcopalian church that he ran would have been huge.

Rick Warren, it�s the same thing. And here it�s the same thing. Tim Keller is a leader and he knows how to do things. But then when other people try to do these things that Hybels, Warren, and Keller have tried to do or have done, since they, these other pastors and leaders, don�t have the skill sets that these mega-church type of people have, but insist on trying to do what these other people have done, it falls flat.

Now, I try to import purpose-driven church and purpose-driven life type of stuff from Warren across the country. Why does it not work? Well, maybe some of it works in parking lots and other things, but overall it doesn�t have the same effect.

Why? Because you don�t have the same person, Rick Warren, who, with all his bad theology, is a really good leader. Okay. So, if you�re not Tim Keller, what do you do? Wow, have good nurseries and good music.

Make sure it�s coffee and bagels and cream cheese. If I was an unbeliever, I would be much more impressed if I walked into a church and it was, you know, impressive music, clean nurseries and such, but I would like bagels and lox with a little bit of onion and a lot of capers.

If you don�t have enough capers for me to put on my bagels and lox, and I lived in L .A. for long enough to know a good bagel when I taste it, I would like oh, and there was a place in New York City, by the way, and I don�t even know if Tim Keller knew about this.

I think it�s since closed, but it�s called �Lox Around the Clock. Something like that. I wonder if it�s still out there. I remember taking Kim there, I don�t know, three in the morning or something, because you could get lox, bagels and lox around the clock, open 24 -7.

I want to wake up in a city that doesn�t sleep. I think that�s a song, isn�t it, done by professional musicians. I wonder if the three men who dressed up in white, tight, whitey-tighty outfits, ballerina outfits, and danced, what I assume was some kind of Trinitarian deal, I could have been wrong on that, during the offertory at Redeemer.

Was that it? Is that what they were doing? Did they get paid, by the way, to do that? I think they did. I think that is excellence is inclusive. Well, they offer bagels and cream cheese at the coffee hour, and they have three men dressed up in ballerina tights.

Now, I ride a bicycle, and I have three daughters. Now, what do those two things have to do with one another? Well, here�s one thing. My daughters, if they have a low-cut top on, I say, �Daddy loves you, and you can wear that in front of your husband, or on your honeymoon, or whatever, but it�s not appropriate.

And, �Sweetheart, this is what you want to think about, and I think you�re a very beautiful young lady. We just need to, you know, time and place for everything. Just need to cover yourself up. And, �Here�s how guys see things, and here�s what guys think about.

And, you know, just nice father-daughter type of talks. Well, on bicycles, when you ride 50 miles, you 80 miles, 100 miles I�m supposed to ride 116 miles on my 58th birthday. I turn 58 on May 12th, and I think that�s a Saturday, so that helps out.

I can yawn even thinking about it. So, I try to do double my age on my birthday, or thereabouts. Maybe I, you know, it�s a Tuesday, so I need to do it on a Saturday for the day off. Well, last year with all the cancer stuff, I never did it.

I was out of town anyway. But I�m starting to ride again, and I�m feeling pretty good. So thanks for praying. And I�m not out of the doghouse proverbial yet, proverbially yet, but churches, I mean, as usual, will not do.

All right. But I don�t really my wife is like, you know, you want the ladies, your daughters to wear things appropriately, and here you are. You have spandex shorts on. I don�t think you should be walking around with those on.

I said, �Well, I�m just on my bike. Yeah, she said, �Do you ever go to like 7-Eleven or something to get a monster drink Yeah, but I do it discreetly. Back to the article. �Very early on, when the full sum of all we had by way of physical representation of the church was a brochure, one of the first early attenders of Redeemer, a graphic designer, picked up the brochure.

She looked at it and said, �Full color, coat of varnish. This is nice. These people must be serious. This isn�t the Babylon Bee. They�re serious about things. �I�d fought for that brochure. I�d been working for a Christian publishing house in Philly, and the art department there was going to help me out by producing a brochure for me.

They tried so hard to convince me to do it with cheaper paper in tones of brown and celery. I said, �No, no, no. I want it to look like this brochure that came from a bank offering me a credit card. Colorful, shiny, nice, ballerina-like.

Sorry, that was my ad. However, that came at a cost. The brochure that we ended up with cost five times the amount of the brown and celery on the cheaper paper. A corollary to this value is that excellence comes with a price.

If a problem can be solved with money, elbow grease, time, or plain hard work, spend the time or the money. The effort will be noticed. Wah, wah, wah, wah. I have a question for you. What if you're in the city and you don't have the budget?

What do you do? Maybe we just take it out of the pastor's salary. That'll solve it. Church, as usual, will not do. Do you call them bulletins or programs at church? Get you a program. The best advertisement I ever heard, I think I was at a Dodgers baseball game or Angels when I lived in Anaheim Stadium, when I lived in Anaheim.

You've got to have a program. If you ever sell programs, this is how you do it. You've got to have one. That's a good, that's law, it's imperative. You've got to. I mean, you can't say get your programs.

That just doesn't have the same emphasis. You've got to have a program. I mean, you're going to spend all this money to come to a game once a year with your kid and all the parking and everything else and the price of the tickets and everything else, and you can't have Boston Bruins hockey as usual.

Excellence is non-negotiable. You can't have the Brown and Celery paper. You have to have a program. You have to have a bulletin. Pragmatism versus what? Stewards must be found faithful. Versus what?

Second Timothy chapter four. Preach the word in season and out of season. First Timothy chapter four. Read scripture. Ephesians chapter five. Singing to one another with songs and hymns and spiritual songs.

There's so much more about scripture that we can talk about. You want to do things with excellence? Amen. You want to question everything in the past when business as usual and then say, well, look at all the things we did and this is what we're after.

This is the wrong way. 30 years of ministry has taught you what? Okay, you want me to say in my opinion again? To do things the wrong way. But what has happened is people want to be the next killer and so they do this exact same kind of thing and that's the tragedy of this whole deal.