Both Word- + Spirit-centered (Total Church)
Only a few dozen pages into the new Total Church book. It arrived this week in the mail — 4 weeks before it’s official publishing date — and I was hoping to dig into it this weekend if possible. Last night I couldn’t put it down. Looking forward to interacting with the UK authors’ concepts, as they try to unfold what they mean by the subtitle: "A radical reshaping around Gospel and community."
The publisher gives a summary:
"As two pastors outline the biblical calling to make both the gospel and community central in the Christian life, they apply this dual focus to evangelism, social involvement, church planting, discipleship, youth ministry, and more, urging the body of Christ to rethink its perspective and way of life."
Here’s a sampling from chapter one, a quote I sent this morning to a friend about the both/and of being Word-centered and Spirit-centered (not either/or). I think they nail it on the head.
"Spiritual experience that does not arise from God’s word is not Christian experience. Other religions offer spiritual experiences. Concerts and therapy sessions can affect our emotions. Not all that passes for Christian experience is genuine. An authentic experience of the Spirit is an experience in response to the gospel. Through the Spirit the truth touches our hearts, and that truth moves our emotions and affects our wills.
This also means that Bible study and theology that do not lead to love for God and a desire to do his will — to worship, tears, laughter, excitement or sorrow — have gone terribly wrong. True theology leads to love, mission and doxology (1 Timothy 1:5, 7, 17 ). We should not expect an adrenaline rush every time we study God’s word. We all express our emotions in different ways. But when we study God’s word we should pray that the Spirit of God will not only inform our heads but also inspire our hearts.
Part of our problem is that we often assume an experience of God will be some kind of revelation — a dream, an inner voice, a guiding sense of peace, an encounter, a word. This assumption is reinforced by mysticism and existentialism. But we have no reason to need or expect a revelation from God. God as revealed himself in his Son and in his word. And God’s word is whole adequate and sufficient. But the Bible does lead us to expect other experiences of God through the Holy Spirit — love for God, love for others, assurance, joy, confidence, peace, and so on. Word and Spirit give us a new desire for God (Romans 8:5-9; 4; 17 ; Galatians 5:17 ).
True Christian experience is experience that arises through the Spirit from by the revelation of God in Jesus contained in the Bible. God rules through his word, and the Spirit applies that word to our lives. The Spirit opens blind eyes to see the truth and melts cold hearts to respond to God’s word. The word of God comes in the power of the Spirit (Acts 10:44; 1 Corinthians 2:4; 1 Thessalonians 1:5-6 ). If we want to see the Spirit of God at work, we must proclaim the word of God.
We might say that being word-centered is synonymous with being Spirit-centered. The difference is that we cannot control the Spirit. We cannot determine or even predict when and how he will work (John 3:8 ). Our role is to read, hear, proclaim, teach, and obey the word. The Spirit’s role is to do the work of God through that word. Through the Spirit our words become the living word of God (2 Samuel 23:2 ). And so we center our lives and ministries on the word of God while praying that God’s Spirit will do the work of God through that word."
- Tim Chester & Steve Timmis, Part 1: Gospel and Community in Principle, (ch. 1) "Why Gospel?", Total Church: A Radical Reshaping Around Gospel and Community (Crossway, 2008), pp. 31-32.
- Find out more from the publisher
- Also, both authors were in the U.S. in August for the Total Church North America conference
- Church planter Jonathan Dodson has some good reflections on the gathering
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