I've been thinking a lot about this sermon lately. It raises a lot of good questions.

T4G 2010 -- Session 4 -- Thabiti Anyabwile from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

I know I've got one person who reads this blog and I don't know if they can watch the video so I'll include my notes too.

Culture: What is it? On what level do we engage culture? How do we do it, what is the result of our engaging culture? What are our objectives in engaging culture? Are these even the right questions for pastors/the church to be asking?

Outline of session: Based on Colossians 1:24-3:4 1) Paul's pastoral purpose 2)Paul's cultural philosophy 3)Paul's practices derived from his philosophy 4)Paul's pastoral Perspective

1) Paul's Pastoral Purpose: - Col 1:24,28 - Paul is a minister to make the word of God fully known so that he can present his hearers mature in Christ totally conformed to the image of Christ.

- Is this our singular passion in pastoral ministry? *Before engaging the culture we must be gripped by this purpose*

- Col. 2:4 - Reveals the danger of false teaching/doctrine and its ability to lead the people away from the goal and purpose defined above. The irreducible minimum of ministry: people repenting and believing in the message of the gospel.

- Moving to language of culture engagement or changing the culture signals a mission shift, a move away from the gospel to a focus on culture.

2) Paul's Cultural Philosophy

- Col. 2:6-8 - The people should be taken captive by Christ.

- v. 9-10 - being rooted in Christ begins in the Gospel. We are filled by Christ. We need nothing more, no new philosophy.

- The gospel fills, circumcises/changes, forgives through the nails of the cross (v. 14). Have the Gospel as your main philosophy.

- Are we captured by Christ? Or are we captured by the world's philosophy and ideas. Verse 8 wipes away worldly philosophy from having any base in the church. Paul puts worldly philosophy against the gospel. Worldly ideas are the biblical antithesis. Engaging culture is not neutral ground.

- *Noteworthy* Van Til's quotes on Christians not realizing that they are living in a world of sin being continuously deChristianized. As the world is consumed more accommodations with the world are made. If we adopt the philosophy of the world we choose new ground and we are not firmly rooted in Christ.

3) Paul's Practices:

- Col. 2:16,18 - Provide warning. We must think of ourselves in light of the judgment of the gospel. Not the judgments of other people or practices. Anyabwile asserts that every human culture is fundamentally apostate.

- When we push our members up into Christ we are leading them to shed the skin of their culture and put on the new clothing/culture of Christ. We come out of various cultures into the culture of God to be the people of God shaped by and rooted in Christ.

- When we hear the word church we need to think of people as multi-ethnic, multi-national but never as multi-cultural because as Christians we have entered into the culture of God.

4) Paul's Pastoral Perspective

- Col. 3:1-4 - Be absorbed with Christ in our perspective. We set our minds a living for that world to come, longing for the world where Christ lives.

- If we don't engage the culture with this perspective we will live for the lives discussed in 3:5-11.

- Our goal as pastors, ministers is to push people to Christ. He is our purpose, philosophy and perspective. The gospel is Christ.