Loading...

Urban Church Planting - Lesson 5

The Importance of Tradition

In this lesson, you explore the importance of tradition in urban church planting, starting with a definition and significance of tradition, as well as biblical examples. You learn about the role tradition plays in connecting with the cultural context of urban settings and establishing a sense of belonging. The lesson further discusses the balance between tradition and innovation, guiding you in identifying healthy traditions and adapting them to better serve the urban church context. Finally, you gain practical insights into applying tradition in urban church planting to build relationships, create community, and foster spiritual growth.

Don Davis
Urban Church Planting
Lesson 5
Watching Now
The Importance of Tradition

EV327-05: The Importance of Tradition

I. Understanding Tradition

A. Definition and Significance

B. Biblical Examples

II. The Role of Tradition in Urban Church Planting

A. Connection to Cultural Context

B. Establishing a Sense of Belonging

III. Balancing Tradition and Innovation

A. Identifying Healthy Traditions

B. Adapting and Evolving Traditions

IV. Practical Application of Tradition in Urban Church Planting

A. Building Relationships and Community

B. Fostering Spiritual Growth


Lessons
About
Resources
Transcript
  • In this lesson on Ecclesiology, you will gain knowledge and insight into the study of the church, including its nature, purpose, and organization. You will learn about the biblical images of the church, the Great Commission, the church's ministry, and its role in society. You will also explore the church's offices, governance, and accountability and discipline.
  • You will gain knowledge about what a Church Planting Movement (CPM) is, its importance, and its characteristics. You will also learn about the challenges of starting a CPM and the steps involved in beginning one.
  • You will gain a comprehensive understanding of alternative forms of spirituality, including an overview of different types and their characteristics, criteria for evaluating them, and the role of the church in responding to them. You will learn how to engage with alternative forms of spirituality in a Christian way that is both compassionate and truthful.
  • You will gain a comprehensive understanding of the role of tradition in urban church planting. By exploring biblical and historical examples of tradition and evaluating its positive and negative aspects, you will learn how tradition can be applied in the context of urban church planting.
  • This lesson provides insights on the significance of tradition in urban church planting, focusing on connecting with cultural context, balancing tradition and innovation, and applying tradition to foster relationships, community, and spiritual growth.
  • You will learn how church planting movements use different structures and religious authorities to balance authority and flexibility, develop local leadership, and adapt to challenges while maintaining growth.
  • Through this lesson, you gain insights on building a strong identity and crafting an effective strategy for successful urban church planting, focusing on core values, authentic culture, community outreach, leadership development, and adaptability.
  • Discover the key elements for creating a dynamic church planting movement, including prayer, cultural relevance, leadership development, and discipleship strategies, while addressing challenges faced along the way.
  • By exploring strategies for urban church planting, you gain practical knowledge on tailoring approaches for city contexts, building core teams, and implementing phased processes for long-term church success.
  • By studying this lesson, you learn to develop essential leadership qualities and skills, build a strong team, and address challenges in urban church planting effectively.

We will consider the factors and forces connected to a remarkable phenomenon of church planting movements taking place throughout the world today. At a time when definitions of the Church have become more and more loose and individualized, we will analyze all church plant and growth theories as they relate to the Nicene marks of the Church in the world. Using these marks as a representative of a legitimate biblical view of the Church, we will then discuss and investigate the connection between church planting and world evangelization, growth, and leadership development. You may also access this class at Tumi.org under the title, "Winning the World: Facilitating Urban Church Planting Movements."

Dr. Don Davis
Urban Church Planting
ev327-05
The Importance of Tradition
Lesson Transcript

[00:00:00] I think Barna is absolutely right in this regard that God has given us freedom, and I think we need to understand this freedom in a certain way. This was given to you, I think, on either the second or third week. It's a green sheet. It should be in some. We're in the mass of sheets that you have. I want to talk about for a second. I want to go a little deeper into this whole thing of tradition and to think about it in some way and to look at it in sort of concentric circles. The core evangelical faith, which is the apostolic tradition or contextualized, distinctive, sort of based on, you know, perhaps how God is led in a certain group. I don't necessarily believe that denominational ism is wrong, as a matter of fact. I'm going to argue that if you really want to grow churches, the easiest way is to have them associate in some very particular specific way. And then then those those groups that do have distinctions, they organize themselves in certain ways. On page eight of your or at the top of page eight, it has traditions on your outline. I'd like to give you guys a sense of three ways in which we need to sort of think about tradition as we think about planting churches. Traditions are not things that we in our country know much about. We don't really think about tradition a lot. I think that theme is right, that we see that any community that forms traditions sort of interfering with our freedom, we don't want to be told by people what to do. We don't like that that interferes with us. We tend to view individual choice as one of the top most important values in our society.

 

[00:02:02] Anything that interferes with your choice is, by definition, wrong in our society as a rule. Tradition sort of goes against that. I don't know if any of you guys have seen the movie Fiddler on the Roof, one of my favorite movies. I just think it's great. But it talks about the relationship between tradition and and the new winds that are blowing in Russia at the time of the revolution, freedom and tradition. To me, this goes to the very core of how we run a church. If you are in a church, you are wrestling with, okay, what are the things that we keep? What are the things that we discard? What are the things that we defend? What does it mean for us to be church? How much how much of this is necessary? How much of this is voluntary? How much of this is quite literally counterproductive? There is a sort of continuum in the books that we read. Barna essentially says that most of if not not all of it, that that compromises any part of your individual conscience is not necessary. Even if a local church was doing okay. I think Barton would say you not you don't need to be associated with it in order to both to grow in Christ and to be passionate about the kingdom. I am. I want to give you guys a very brief overview. I apologize for all the text. I'm not going to read it. I promise we won't read all of it. I want to highlight certain principles about tradition that I think are absolutely essential for this course. And I can give you the punch line right at the beginning without tradition, without finding a way to distinguish between these levels. But the core evangelical convictions, those contexts where our own distinctiveness can be made, and then those common organizational structures that we just share because we want to, we're going to have to discern there are certain traditions that that we cannot get rid of or should put differently.

 

[00:04:15] There are certain traditions that to let go of is not even to be a Christian. I want to say that. Make that plain you. Let's let's discover what those traditions are. There are some traditions that there's a wide room of distinction and in variance. There are others that we are completely open to are depending on what we believe and what our culture is and so on. Let me give you let's let me begin with a handful of principles from the Bible on tradition. The word for tradition is prayer doses. I think in some ways the Deuteronomy 32 text is, is, is a wonderful summary of the Bible's teaching of tradition. Remember the days of old, don't ignore them, remember them. Consider the years of many generations. Ask your father and he will show you your elders. And they will tell you. I mean there is that was taken out of place in in the in Deuteronomy where the whole section quite literally was on the importance of tradition. I gave you two definitions from some Greek sources on of doses. It it's transmission. It can be that which is transmitted. The actual concrete thing that was given over. I have something you guys have ever played to the top of your game. You know, we whisper you. You sit in a circle and you whisper the one that, you know, the squirrel had egg on its face as it ran through the circle. And then the next person and by the time you're in the monkey shot the man with, you know, I mean, it just completely was what was messed up as it went through. Well well, tradition is both the act of transmitting it and what is transmitted. In other words, it's both what is said and the act of of receiving something and then giving it over to someone else.

 

[00:06:24] So in some ways, it can be teachings, it can be instructions, it can be doctrines. It can it can be ethics. It can be the actual practice of transmitting it. I want to just sort of give as an overview since these guys. I'm stunned that they would write books on church planning and not say a word about tradition explicitly. That's very bad theology to me, given the fact that Christianity itself is a historical religion. You seem to me you would want to begin with history. You would want to begin. Okay, what? What? What are we. Where do we come from and where are we headed? So the first point is the concept of tradition in Scripture is rooted in the remembrance, celebration, enactment and proclamation of what God did in history to redeem and save a people for his own guys. Tradition is not it doesn't have to be a dry, meaningless, dead orthodoxy. It can be. It can be. All it is is remembering what God has done in history and how it relates to us. That's the simplest, easiest way to understand tradition. I'll just read some from the paragraph that I wrote. Every age of Christian testimony has given witness to their deep faith and hope and the salvation promise of the trial and God to redeem a people out of the world for its own possession and service. The history of the Judeo-Christian faith is anchored in a hope which is renewed daily, weekly, monthly and annually in the worship and service of the people of God. It's rooted in the work of Jesus of Nazareth, demonstrated in his perfect life, expressed in his death on the cross, vindicated by his resurrection from the death in ascension to the father's right hand is rooted in the historical journey of God's people, Israel and made real in the life and service of the Church, a tradition which involves those acts, behaviors, customs practices which are articulate, celebrate in that retail.

 

[00:08:30] The feeling embody the story of God's salvation in Jesus. We had the Lord's Supper. We take the Lord's Supper every week, and to me, together as a staff, what is the Lord's Supper? Except those things we articulate what Jesus did, we remember it, we retell it when we eat the bread. And when we drink the wine, we literally use wine because it doesn't spoil. By the way, you know, the beautiful thing about wine, it never spoil. Although I must tell one little joke that's an inside joke to tell me we as learned it, go get the wine for long and not being a wine aficionado or you know she went and got raspberry something wine dessert wine this wine with this wine was so tight that my face just hope that oh it was the sour is good. I think we still have that wine. It's available for purchase, you know. It sure did. She tried to form a tradition that we stop real quick. Dan Wind got us some very, very mild Morgan David ish kind of wine for our you know some traditions use real wine some don't we do. The point is, is that when we when you come to the Lord's Supper, it is the remembrance, the celebration. We are, we are, we are. We are focused on and proclaiming, as we take it, the story of God's promise in Christ to redeem the world of participation in that and looking forward to his soon return. I just put some some key text, y'all, in Old Testament on pages one of pages eight nine. About the way tradition functions. And I think this is very important for us. No matter how many churches we plant. It just seems to me that as a Christian, we have to recognize.

 

[00:10:46] I'm just very disappointed that that a book of church planning movements would be rewritten and there's virtually little or nothing in any of them or Israel. If you if you've seen a word in Barna on Israel. Ole, ole, ole, ole. The Holy Land on the story. I'm just saying that if you make mission and ministry and outreach and focus the heart and soul of Christianity, you will go where. Unfortunately, some of these offers are going. If you, however, go back and just go to where the Bible go, God Almighty called an Arab man of Abraham out of her to to give him a covenant promise and wove that promise through history. I love Exodus 12. At the bottom of page, you shall observe this right? Speaking of Passover here as a statue for you and your sons forever. And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as He has promised us, you'll keep this service. And when your children say to you, What do you mean by this service? You shall say, it is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover for you passed over the houses of of of the people of Israel in Egypt when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses. And the people gather here and worship in A.M.E. Church. As I was growing up as a young boy, we used to see a number of different texts every service, the Lord's Prayer, the Decalogue, all ten. We would say that there was a solemn reading, Old Testament reading and all of that. But I just loved as a kid, hearing our preacher boom out and the Lord spake all these words saying, I'm the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

 

[00:12:34] Look at where God begins. You don't begin with there. You know what? We are the other self-governed. Whatever He begins with what he did for them historically, I am the God that rescued y'all. I'm the God that brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You will not have another God to hear me. I am the source of your deliverance. It's powerful. That's Christianity to me. It doesn't begin in movement language in that it begins, it seems to me, with with God's history, what He did and these other text, by the way, you should read if you haven't recently. Deuteronomy 26. It's amazing because God actually gives tells them to give. This response is a right that they were supposed to go God tells them and you will make this thing to the priest. You will go and make the sacrifice. The priest will deal with it. And this is the response of God, so that they should make look at the way it is before the Lord your God. This is what the people would say at this offering. A wandering or a man was my father. He went down into Egypt and so during their few in number there, he became a nation great, mighty and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor. Then we cried to the Lord, so on and so on and so on. I mean, in other words, God ordered them to remember the history, tell the story recited in front of everybody. It was just a it was woven into the identity of the people. So it seems to me that we should begin all our thinking of church planning with church planning did begin in Seoul and Singapore.

 

[00:14:19] In Cambodia. Mongolia. It did more of all of these guys. Was one guy who just he goes back to actually gives in that he seems so the mall seems sort of small compared to a guy. He's like a person in a debate that is, you know, he keeps raising the scene, can I say. I would like to could. I think it's like all of this stuff is sort of I knew that already. Right. That's why it's important for you to read more. He actually says the church began at Pentecost, not in church planning movements. I mean, it just seems to me that if you ignore tradition in history, if you just if you jump from Pentecost to your Bible, the self-governed follow. And all of that time, just enough. Don't need it. Don't have to look at it, read about it. That is just to me, simply either purely Christian or not Christian. I'm just trying to you know, I'm going to I determine in this course, you know, at some point, I'm going to have to just start professing. Tell you guys what I really think. I think that to ignore tradition is just really, frankly, unbiblical. That's the point I'm making here. Number two, at the bottom of page nine, godly tradition. It defies grounds and reinforces the true tradition that is anchored in the truth of what God has done in our lives can become ungodly because of simple habits and dead orthodoxy. Not all tradition is godly. Let's make that plain. So don't you seek to be a churchman immediately puts you in a position where you have to decide which traditions are really living. Godly. Telling the story helpful. Making me fat. Making other people happy in what others are.

 

[00:16:17] Just sucking the life out of us. You know what? Traditions have nothing to do with the Bible. Nothing to do with God. And how do you discern the difference? How do you make the difference there? And there are there are there are quite literally extremes on either side. To me, Bon Bon is a very easy target. It's a big one for me. I'm sorry, because he just says that he he just doesn't seem to give any sense of history at all. None except what he's observing and what he thinks we should do in light of what he observed. There are some, however, who ratchet down every little stupid tradition. Even if it's not important, it doesn't relate to anything. It can help anybody. But that's what we do here. You go and stay here. That's what you go do. Okay. You know, I've been in those. That's what I mean. It was. I said, you what? What's it like? Like Death to the Spirit. How would you guys answer? Rob, what? What do you do as a real person when you recognized point number two that there is godly tradition, but there's also ungodly tradition? And what are we to do with ungodly tradition? What? I'm going to make a list of a tradition and you say, get rid of change. Give me a give me a range of response. Can will can you. Well, we can can it? We can keep it. Why don't we succeed? This is a good thing. Okay. Let's begin right up front. Women not being or doing. I shouldn't have put it in a negative way. Ordain. Ordain women. How about the tradition of Sunday morning worship? Cannot keep changing. Oh, okay. All right. Well, let's see. Organs and worse.

 

[00:18:26] I know some people would like to completely, you know, become organ carriers. They hate organs. It sounds so funeral esque to them and just so sad. But, you know, it depends. You get a brother and sister, all of these three. Or frankly, why should I have all the fun? Is there another tradition? What's a tradition that that we could really you know, that is okay. Rob gave us a few bylaws, bylaws and church governance. We need bylaws for it's quite. Literally. That's very good. Should we keep it? Change it? This insider movements is on. I mean, if you read those articles, it'll pretty shocking. You'll be stunned at what they're doing. But people who retain all their full participation in all of the Islamic, Buddhist and Hindu things, and yet they are on in their mind, they are un they are absolutely followers of Jesus. And yet they're doing this in order to win the people within those movement. This is the only way to win them is to go and be a part of the movement. I know that Islam means nothing. This doesn't mean anything. It's no different from Paul in Judaism. Judaism is Jesus is the end of the law to everyone who believes I'm going in the air and I'm going to win as many as I can, and if I can win them as an imam, I'm going to do it. So what would you you know, that's pretty powerful. I mean, the insider movements, it's the thing is like burning your thousands and thousands of people who are really coming to the Lord in these movements, they're retaining their identity. I've talked to my son seriously about planning a church in the underground punk rock culture that he's a part of.

 

[00:20:29] I mean, I've said, I think you could do it. What would it look like? Where would you meet? We're Christian. Christ is law tradition. It means that we're free and Christ really free. And what does that free mean? What are the limits of that? Regardless of your list, guys, you're going to have to come to a point where you deserve where you deserve what's allowable. What isn't allowable and where you put your hat. What's the P? Where you lay your own? And on what basis do you make your decisions there? I mean, are you just like anything having to do with that idol or are you sort of open to things? Can you experiment? How much can you experiment? How much are we willing to do that? How much how much room does God allow us to actually do that? Yeah, there are all sorts of questions here that in every one of them is important at the top of page ten of your outline. Jesus rebuked the the he frequently rebuked the Pharisees for establishing traditions that nullified rather than uphill, God's commands. By the way, if you heard what Paul said in his first answer, he said that that traditions that don't really sort of help you attain what God wants you to is by definition of that tradition, something could be completely allowable and ineffective. In other words. Right. It's completely allowable. I mean, it's nothing wrong with it. We've done doing it. But but we don't have enough people who have the courage to say, could we revisit this? Is this really necessary? What is this gaining us? Is this exalting God? Is it drawing people to Christ? Are we edified? Are we growing as a result of this tradition? And you can see Jesus's own statement in Mark seven.

 

[00:22:31] You leave the commandment of God and hold the traditions of man. And then Paul to the Colossians of see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy, an empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, not after Christ. So if we can admit that tradition has this role, it can either be godly or ungodly. Then thirdly, without the fullness of the Holy Spirit among the people of God, without constant the constant edifying of the Scripture saying what we're doing according to the Scripture and the passionate remembrance and celebration of what God actually did in history, tradition will inevitably lead to that formalism. I believe this. There is no way on earth that if you're not spirit feel biblical and truly open to what God is doing, that your tradition will not become an end in itself. It's just like weeds. You don't have to. So weeds. Weeds will come up naturally. If you want good fruit, you have to sow it deliberately. And so I think that there's there's there's the Bible teaches us there's something about those who belong to Christ, who live by the Spirit. If you don't walk by the spirit, then the flesh will control. That's just that's just the plain sense in the Bible. And that no one can sort of claim anything in their own power. But as second Corinthians three says, God has made us competent ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit. With the letter kills, with the spirit gives life. Now, two final points on tradition, sort of general things before I give very briefly the distinctions of tradition, fidelity and reproduction of what the apostles tradition is of their testimony, their teaching, their ethical vision, essentially all in parentheses.

 

[00:24:24] That's nothing but the New Testament. The apostolic tradition is what they told us about Christ and His kingdom. That is the essence of Christian maturity. Tradition for the church is never misguided or arbitrary. We draw our sense of identity from what we know about Jesus of Jesus of Nazareth based on what the apostles have told us. We are messianic, hermeneutical community. Get that, because I will test that. The church is a community that focuses on Messiah and has. You can't just sort of stand still. Every church has to ask these questions. Are the things that we're doing right or do they do they glorify Messiah? Are they bringing us closer to God? Are they consistent with what the Scriptures teach? And therefore, we are under no obligation to to give out anything that doesn't, in fact, do that. At the top of page 11, as so often is so often said in African-American Christian worship communities, tradition should make the story plain. Make it plain. Is, is, is. I've heard that 10,000 times. And make it plain. Make it very plain. That's tradition. Should not make it harder to understand what Jesus did and who he is. You should make it plain. So that's how you can asses. Keith said there is reason why Campus Crusade for Spiritual Love has been used with tens of millions and millions of people. You can say is that, you know, for spiritual loss, should we keep it or not? You know, really, there's nothing special about that. There's no no biblical, you know, the rock, you know, the Roman road and those things. Those are not necessarily wrong or whatever. But but what you see object, there's a simplicity in that that tells the story in a concise, powerful way that just lends that to be effective for us.

 

[00:26:31] And what we need to do in all our churches is ask the question, can you imagine going through your ministry or your life and saying, Is this tradition that I keep? Is it really enhancing my ability to make Jesus know, or is it taking the way I mean, with a clipboard and just looking through? That's really essentially what it is. If you look at all you see is the things that you heard from me in the presence of many witnesses interest those things, the faithful men and women, faithful people who will be able to teach others also. So Paul is very plain. He gave to others what he also received. And he actually he constantly appealed to the churches that he planted or to his tradition, both in support of doctrinal an ethical practices. He the apostles, used tradition as the yardstick and the plume line of what it means to be an authentic Christian. This is what you should do. This is, as you see the act, this is what you should believe at the top of page 12, very quickly, when a congregation uses received tradition, uses receive tradition to remain faithful to the word of God. They're a command. They are commanded by the apostles. When when churches in the New Testament actually took the tradition that the apostles taught and were faithful to the word the apostles said that was a great thing for them to do. And so what is important and I will test on this, this is very, very important for what we do in the future. There are three levels of Christian authority. There is the authoritative apostolic tradition. It's the Bible. That's the easiest way to think about this. The apostles and the prophets are those who gave eyewitness testimony to who God was doing first in Israel and then ultimately in Christ.

 

[00:28:24] We've got this very unusual text in Ephesians two that the church, the very church itself, the household of God, is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. Christ, Jesus Himself being the cornerstone. This, to me is one of the great reasons why we should we anyone who is sort of open to just slicing and canning wholesale tradition, we need that. We need to be very, very careful with that. I would I would respect Obama's argument far better if I could sense that he had some sense at all of the importance of history in his argument. He doesn't seem to have any any sense of history. You can let it go. I'll let it go quickly. I think that's very, very dangerous. Yes. The first the great tradition is what Christians everywhere have believed always by all. Now, now we can we can discern what those things are. We know what Christians who believe from the very beginning about Christ, about the resurrection, about the Trinity. That is in fact. That's not the Trinity is not of the Trinity is not sort of spelled out in a sort of a clear, simple New Testament way. But the church from the very beginning is here that Jesus was God from the very beginning. And so that would be a part of the great tradition. There's the scriptures. There is what Vincent said. Christians are believed everywhere, always by all. And then there are specific church traditions, the founders of denominations in order. Guys, I would call what Garrison said about the seven member Central Committee in Cambodian churches. Remember, he was talking about that. He said in all of these villages, they've sort of embraced that. The seven member Central Committee as a particular as a particular way of of giving life and expression to the great in the apostolic tradition.

 

[00:30:31] I thought, Paul, I would just put in the Presbyterian Church USA. It has approximately two and a half members, 11,200 churches, 21,000 ordained members. They trace their history to the 16th century Protestant Reformation. This is taken directly from their website. Our heritage and much of what we believe began with the French lawyer, John Calvin, whose writings crystallized much of the Reformation thinking that came before him. Is it wrong to be a Presbyterian? No, no, not in fact. If they if they are defend a great tradition or are informed by the apostolic tradition of the paragraph on page 13 is very important that again, I apologize for reading this, but it's it's just important that you get this point. Christians have expressed their faith in Jesus Christ in various ways through specific movements and traditions that embrace of the authoritative tradition and the great tradition in unique ways. For instance, Catholic movements have have arisen around people like Benedict Francis or Dominique, and among Protestants, people like Martin Luther, John Calvin, lovingly and John Wesley. Women have founded vital movements of Christian faith. Amy Simple MacPherson of founded the Foursquare Church, which is one of the biggest, most aggressive churches in the world, as well as minorities. Richard Allen, a black Methodist, founded the African Methodist Church, or Charles Mason founded the Church of God in Christ, quite literally, the first Bishop of the Assemblies of God. Did you guys know that the Assemblies of God were originally were a part of the Church of God in Christ? Matter of fact, there was a split over race and the assemblies, which just had its 51st its 51st assembly in Denver just last week. 12,000 congregations. There were over 20,000 people in the convention center. And that movement was spawned quite literally by pope black folk in the south.

 

[00:32:44] I'm just saying the point I'm making is that God Almighty is always raised up at different times, different people, to refresh through the Holy Spirit and raise up movements. I don't think we should be against that. As we go next, we're going to we're going to study this. I truly do believe that God is raised up. See, I have no problem. I'm like Krishna, if God wants to raise of Luther or Calvin or Wesley or Mason, if he wants to use a woman or whoever he wants, we should be open to that. And quite literally, as long as a movement will defend the great and the authoritative tradition, I think that there is real freedom in Christ for them to define themselves. I just gave you something for your own study. The next pages. I want you to know what the historically, what the great tradition is. Just so you know, in broad outline of the different creeds. And then I actually I need to you need to put somewhere here and I wrote this together. I was inadvertent by not putting his name in on that. The chart on the four ecumenical councils are quite literally those charts that really in some ways define the earliest Christian thinking. You can see how old Christianity is. 17 centuries ago, Christian pastors were defending the truth of the church. Let let me let me sort of close then right there with this. And I don't know if there are any sort of reactions to this. The point that I wanted to make sure that you guys understood. Is that in a real sense, to understand Christianity is to understand it in a rich way. Christianity has core convictions that are historical. They have nothing to do with the self-government of a follower of Jesus or what they get out of, or what's going on in Cambodia or any other place.

 

[00:34:48] These things took place because the apostles gave us commentary on Jesus of Nazareth, and even then it is built on what the prophets told us before then. It's all. It goes all the way back to the garden, for heaven's sake. The core evangelical convictions. God Almighty. The praises of men and women. And they have real distinctness. We're going to talk about that in the weeks that remain. If we wanted to plant. This is a question that I ask myself constantly. If I really wanted to see 15,000 churches planted in the American inner city in the next 30 years, what would that what would it spirituality look like? How should we how should we how should we define it? How should the churches be organized? What what what would be the way in which we would ask these churches to really organize and send their friends? This is the whole purpose of this course for me is I'm looking at everything that is going on and all those things to say of God, the Holy Spirit. One of the following The City. What sort of churches would we have and how do we do that? I have no I have no doubt in my mind that God wants to do it. The question is, do we have people who understand tradition and freedom and these things well enough that we can sort of navigate our boat through some very dangerous waters? I am not about. I'll just be honest. I'm not about to just willy nilly just chuck away everything. Just because I don't like it is going to require real spiritual depth and real, genuine spiritual freedom in order to figure that out. I apologize, y'all, for this week especially. I just have to put what we covered on tradition tonight is key to everything that we're doing from now on.

 

[00:36:34] Any questions or comments? Yes. Well, what I love about what is it? Is there a core that no matter what the movement is, no matter what the movement is, I don't care if it's in Cambodia or Mongolia or in inner city Philly or whatever the movement is there a common sort of source and core that we all share and in these various movements. Number six, the Holy Spirit can be doing dramatic things in number six and number two is under persecution and most of the believers are being killed. That's what I heard and seen. You could say the same message in the same way in for the same reasons, in the same culture, and get to completely different reactions. If you're not aware of that, then you will turn these books into mechanistic, technical, little things. One of the six little things that I need to do to guarantee that I get as many people as much as possible. That won't work. That's why what you're saying is so important. I'm saying I truly do believe that if God wants, there is a tradition with a big team. There's a tradition that goes all the way back to the garden, quite literally, that goes through Israel, that goes that it culminates in Christ. You do not have the right to self-govern and choose your way out of that. You're not a Christian if you do. Well, see, this is this is the rest of this course is trying to trying to discern what this is. And if we if we could, in fact, discern how do we implement it in the city? Are there some elements in the city? Is city spirituality different from city spirituality? You know, you describe Barnard describes middle class American culture.

 

[00:38:23] He really is talking about underclass culture. He ain't talking about anybody from here. So we've got to do our own sort of research, which is what we will do. Again, guys, you should be thinking about what texts you're going to read, do your your, your projects. All we only have a few weeks more is pretty scary in this thing. Please read this. Prepare yourself. We are going to use these insights as we go, guys. We are done at least for today.