This month pastor Mike and I were introduced to the NETS center for church planting and revitalization in the outskirts of Burlington, Vermont. We visited their training center and had a chance to speak with pastors of 4 church plants in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. It was a whirlwind tour. Here are some of my takeaways:

1. Less Is More. Church planting is always hard, but especially in the northeast. That being said, over the past 10-15 years these brothers and sisters have planted a total 5 churches in New England and each is healthy and growing. Their slower pace in planting is due to their focus on vetting the planting pastor (and family), and making purposeful decisions on where exactly to plant. The process has paid off and is yielding much fruit.

2. Doctrine Matters. The spiritual graveyard that is New England is a direct result of the embracing of liberal doctrinal views as far back as the 18th century. We saw more church buildings repurposed as apartments or libraries or community centers than actual churches. That being said, the gospel preaching churches we visited were teeming with life. As one example, we visited Redeemer Fellowship Church in Watertown, Massachusetts. They make use of a beautiful old congregational church building. Across the street sits an old American Baptist church that has been turned into high end luxury condos. The contrast was clear; may we be warned.

3. Small Churches Should Dream Big. The vision of the NETS center is an outgrowth of Christ Memorial Church. These folks are God-glorifying, humble servants seeking to make the best use of their resources. But they aren’t a huge church. They are large by modern day New England standards, but they certainly aren’t a mega-church. Yet they have impacted the entire region because they put Jesus and his kingdom first. My mind wandered often to how God will use us to further the gospel. Let’s dream big!

Perhaps one day we will hire a pastor trained at the NETS center. Perhaps one day we will send a family to NETS to prepare for planting a church in northeast. One thing is clear, God is using his church to make and mature disciples even in a culture that is thoroughly post Christian and often resistant to the gospel. To God be the glory for these churches!

Calling It Like It Is

This is a great read. Rod Dreher, an Eastern Orthodox Christian and former Roman Catholic, says much that will resonate with the believer. He rightly analyzes the nature of “Christian” approaches to our culture and the dramatic shift in the last 10 years. In short, he says what we’ve all painfully realized: America is officially a post-Christian nation.

Most of his criticisms hit the mark. Speaking of how the church has failed to stand apart from culture, he says,

We seemed content to be the chaplaincy to a consumerist culture that was fast losing a sense of what it meant to be Christian.

He rightly asserts that

American Christians are going to have to come to terms with the brute fact that we live in a culture, one in which our beliefs make increasingly little sense. We speak a language that the world more and more either cannot hear or finds offensive to its ears.

He calls for the question without mincing words: “In the end, either Christ is at the center of our lives, or the Self and all of its idolatries are.” Amen!

Strategic Withdrawal?

Given that we live in a post Christian culture, Dreher’s thesis is that we need a strategic withdrawal from culture, modeled on the Benedictine monastic worldview and lifestyle. This isn’t necessarily a literal withdrawal, but rather a worldview shift.

He applies the Benedictine model of total abandonment to the will of God in vows of obedience, fidelity to the community, and changed living to politics, church life, Christian subculture, education, vocation, sex, and technology.

His thoughts on politics, education, and technology are worth serious consideration for all followers of Jesus. For example, on the church he says, “American Christians have a bad habit of treating church like a consumer experience.” He rightly criticizes the spiritual bankruptcy of this approach.

On politics he concludes, “Christians have to keep clearly before us the fact that conventional American politics cannot fix what is wrong with our society and culture.” For far too long we have looked to Washington for solutions that can only be solved by Jerusalem.

His assessment of education will likely be the most challenging for many:

Those who try holding on to pedagogical forms—public, private, and parochial—that can no longer shape the hearts and minds of the next generations in an authentically Christian way risk damaging their kids by leaving them morally and spiritually vulnerable.

Whether you agree with him or not, we must give serious thought to the forming influence of education on our children’s character, not just math and reading.

We’re Not Saying the Same Thing

As much as I found myself agreeing with so many of Dreher’s observations and conclusions, I also realized his work is missing something. Something big. He makes no reference to the transformative power of the gospel.

The gospel-less culture of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox church cultures has left Dreher longing for a gospel transformed community without the power of the gospel. Indeed, this is also the flaw with the Benedictine worldview: we cannot create a Christian culture, only the Spirit of God bringing sinners to repentance and faith creates Christian culture. Will power is no substitute for the gospel that is the power of God for salvation.

The only reference to conversion in his book is negative. He criticizes “Evangelicalism” because it “has historically been focused not on institution building but on revivalism, making it inherently unstable.” This statement, perhaps more than any other, reveals my problem with The Benedict Option.

No amount of cultural isolation, home schooling, and tech-free space can change the heart of a sinful human being. We’re not building an institution— Jesus is, and it’s his church, full of personal revival stories of sinners who came to saving faith.

Dreher assumes that Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants are small “o” orthodox Christians. I presume by this he means that we all believe God exists, that the Bible is his Word, and that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead. But demons believe that much.

Our hopes are rooted in very difference sources. The hope for sinners in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches is rooted in the church itself and an individual’s ability to do good works, not faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection alone that produces good works.

Is the Answer Community, or a Gospel Transformed Community?

In the end, I share Dreher’s analysis of our cultural situation, but I would propose a different solution. Rather than take the burden on ourselves to create a culture that will endure the culture’s attacks, let us entrust ourselves to the life giving God of the Scriptures who gives spiritual life to those dead in their sins.

The community Dreher is suggesting we build is already in existence in gospel preaching churches. We may need to take some of his advice, but we must be careful to do so with an emphasis on the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ good news is our hope, no matter what culture does to us.

If you don’t know what The Shack by William P. Young is stop reading and go do something else worthwhile. If you do and you want a Christ-centered review of the content and response check Tim Challies here and Al Mohler here and a little Tim Keller here. Theologically, this book is an absolute mess, and Challies linked above deals with that in detail.

Spoiler Alert:

While I won’t review the whole plot, I will reveal some key moments in the book.

The Main Point

Here’s my main problem with The Shack as art and implied theology: the book fails to live out it’s main thesis.

The Shack is the story of Mack, a man who’s traditional Christian faith failed to survive the tragic loss of his daughter. Mack goes back to the shack where the crime was committed and has visions of the Trinity, in which God speaks to him.

The pinnacle moment comes when Mack enters a nearby cave which serves as a courtroom. To his surprise he is the judge and God is on trial. The moral of the story is simple: to deal with his pain Mack must trust God and submit to him as the judge of the universe. I agree with this premise.

The Main Problem

The only trouble is the rest of the book pretty much in its entirety. Rather than reflect a faith that submits to God as the ultimate authority in the universe, in The Shack, Young deconstructs and undermines the major tenets of Biblical Christianity: the Trinity, the Bible as God’s revelation of himself, the Church, salvation and forgiveness, and more.

As you read The Shack, it becomes clear that Young explicitly or implicitly believes that everything you know about Christianity is wrong. For example: should you read the Bible? Nah. “God’s voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects.” Pastors and theologians are the real problem.

Should you go to church? Why bother? In the book, God’s not even at church: “You’re talking about the church as this woman you’re in love with; I’m pretty sure I haven’t met her… She’s not the place I go on Sundays.”

Does God save? Only if you choose him first. In the book God says, “In Jesus, I have forgiven all humans for their sins against me, but only some choose relationship.” Perhaps the perspective here is everyone is ultimately saved. It’s hard to tell, other than that for Young, God seems to have left the matter up to us. Not a lot of hope in that gospel.

Inconsistent at Best

In the end, Young leaves the impression that we should trust God with our greatest pains and injustices, but we should not trust him in his Word or in his Church. We can’t have it both ways. Either God is the Creator as revealed in the Bible or he isn’t. Whatever the religion is expressed in The Shack, it clearly isn’t Christianity.

Side note- this book is an example of a common reaction to Christianity in the last 10-15 years: it assumes due to abuses and failures within the church that the entire system is irredeemably flawed.

The church is indeed full of broken people who fail, but our hope is not a stripped down Bible-less pro-God mysticism, but rather the gospel of Jesus Christ as proclaimed in God’s Word. Only that God can lead us through our pain.