Is social justice an essential part of the gospel? The question has been raging for decades, and in some circles the matter was settled long ago. But a new generation of evangelicals with a strong inclination toward social engagement is reviving the debate. But I'm increasingly convinced that we are framing the debate incorrectly, and missing the point as a result.

The latest example came last week when Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (my alma mater) hosted Jim Wallis and Al Mohler to debate the role of justice in the mission of the gospel. Wallis, the president and CEO of Sojourners, affirmed the centrality of social justice in the gospel, while Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said it was an implication of the gospel but not part of it.

Disagreeing with Mohler’s point of view, Wallis said, “If justice is only an implication, it can easily become optional and, especially in privileged churches, non-existent.” He cited the examples of “atonement-only” churches in America that were on the wrong side of the Civil Rights movement, and churches in South Africa that defended the apartheid regime.

In a post-debate blog post, Wallis wrote, “Conversely, churches that have been on the side of justice, such as black churches both in the United States and South Africa, were always the ones to say that justice was integral to the meaning of the gospel and not just an implication of it. That should tell us something,”

A reporter recently asked me, “As a Christian leader, does your faith have anything to say about Wall Street?” I said, “How much time do you have?”

Theologian Karl Barth said, “We have to read the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other.” For too long we Christians have used our faith as a ticket out of this world rather than fuel to engage it.

In his parables, Jesus wasn’t offering pie-in-the-sky theology… he was talking about the real stuff of earth. He talks about wages, debt, widows and orphans, unjust business owners and bad politicians. In fact Woody Guthrie breaks it all down in his song “Jesus Christ.” The song ends with Woody singing, “This song was written in New York City. If Jesus were to preach what he preached in Galilee, they would lay him in his grave again.”

The more I read the Gospels, the more they seem to confront the very patterns of the world we live in. At one point Mary, pregnant with Jesus cries out: “God casts the mighty from their thrones and raises the lowly… God fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty…”. You can’t help but think if she were alive in contemporary America some folks would try to accuse the Virgin Mother of being Marxist or promoting class warfare. But all through Scripture we see this–over 2000 verses about how God cares for the poor and most vulnerable.

What would Jesus say about Wall Street?

The latest edition of our free digital magazine, Catalyst Leadership, is now online. In this issue we have almost doubled the number of pages and articles, and with all of that new space we're tackling a critically important question: What is the gospel?

Articles, videos, and commentary from Tim Keller, Gabe Lyons, Scot McKnight, and Francis Chan are included. Head over to CatalystLeadershipDigital.com to check it out.

Last week I wrote a brief report about Al Mohler's dissatisfaction with Joel Osteen's answers during his CNN interview with Piers Morgan. Osteen said that while he would not officiate a same-sex marriage ceremony, he was open to attending one if it involved close friends. Dr. Mohler said Osteen's position was "beyond mere incoherence. It is moral and theological nonsense. More than that, it is a massive statement of ministerial malpractice."

On this blog I asked whether Mohler's objection to attending a same-sex marriage ceremony was held by other Urbanites. And what about other marriage ceremonies that didn't mesh with sound Christian doctrine, like Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist weddings? Could a Christian attend those events?

It seems that Dr. Mohler caught wind of our conversation here on Out of Ur and has written another column to clarify his thinking. But it raises even more questions about what a Christian leader who does not theologically agree with same-sex marriage is allowed or obligated to do about it.

Read parts one, two, and three of "Recipe for Church³⁶⁵".

Ingredient Four: Decentralized Service

Over the last few years my travels have been taking me more regularly to Portland, Oregon. Portland is weird, and that’s how they like it. But it’s also inspiring. I’m thinking of Rick McKinley and his church Imago Dei. Rick and the leaders at Imago have done a great job inspiring their people to serve the community in Portland. But when members of the church approach a pastor about starting a new ministry, Rick has trained them to always say the same thing: “No.”

I know, it sounds counter-intuitive, but there is brilliance behind the madness. Leaders at Imago Dei know that in most cases there is another church, agency, or non-profit already engaged in the work. So rather than reinventing the wheel and launching a redundant ministry within Imago, they work to connect their members with other organizations all over Portland. As Rick said, “No logo, no ego.” If our church’s name doesn’t have to be attached, a lot more work gets done. As a result, Imago members have been seeded all over the city and multiplied their influence and impact.

Al Mohler is mopping the floor with Joel Osteen's perfectly quaffed hair. Last week Osteen and his wife were interviewed by CNN's Piers Morgan to promote his new book Every Day A Friday, How To Be Happier 7 Days a Week. (I'm sure the board game will be released in time for Christmas.) During the interview Morgan asked the megachurch pastor about cultural issues like capital punishment, abortion, and same-sex marriage. Osteen's ability to dodge the questions rivaled the slickest politicians.

But that's exactly what annoyed Mohler. Unlike Osteen, Mohler is never reluctant to give a definitive answer (even when none is requested). The Southern Baptist leader took particular offense over Osteen's remarks about same-sex marriage. When asked about his opinion, Osteen said:

“You know, Piers, it really never changes because mine was - mine’s based out of the scripture. That’s what I believe that the scripture says that - that homosexuality is a sin. So, it - you know, I believed it before and I still believe it now. Again, I would just reiterate what I said, I’m not after - I’m not mad at anybody. I don’t dislike anybody. But, you know, you know, respecting my faith and believing, you know, in - in what the scripture says, that’s the best way I can interpret it.”

But later in the interview Morgan asked if Osteen would ever attend a same-sex marriage ceremony. He answered:

"I’m not going to disrespect somebody that’s dear to us and say, you know what, you’re not good enough for us or something like that. That’s the way that I would see it. Now, I’m not going to just run off and go attend, you know, certain marriages just to make a statement because that’s not who I am and that’s not what I stand for and, again, I don’t look down on those people.”

It's Columbus Day. (Well, actually Monday is the day off for most people, but October 12 is actually the day Chris first laid eyes on land in the western hemisphere, an island he dubbed San Salvador.) For some it's a day to celebrate their European (particularly Italian) heritage. For others it's a day to mourn the loss and persecution of native cultures in North America. How should the people of Christ think about this holiday?

Mark Buchanan, pastor of New Life Community Church in Duncan, British Columbia, and a contributing editor of Leadership, wrote a stirring article about his church's ministry with native peoples and the complexity of history. I highly encourage you to read this award-winning article.

The Tswassen people live in the south end of Greater Vancouver, close to the upscale community named after them. They've been on this land, though much more of it, for thousands of years. Back in the day, they had free run of forest and ocean. They hunted and fished, carved their wooden art in fragrant cedar, wove their baskets, held their potlatches. They sang and danced their grief and joy, their welcome and warning, their coming and going.

Now, they're confined to a narrow wedge of land between the mudflats and an industrial park, and they rely on a casino for most of their income. Among them, there is a high incidence of suicide, alcoholism and drug abuse, teenage pregnancy and incest, domestic violence, and health issues of every kind.

The Tswassens have a prophecy 500 years old. One of their ancient holy men foretold that a people pale as birch would one day come from across the great water in large canoes. They would bring with them a Black Book. The Black Book was Truth, end to end, a gift of inestimable good. The people lived for many years awaiting the prophecy's fulfillment.

And then one day it happened. The big canoes— bigger than the Tswassens ever imagined—arrived. They teemed with people pale as birch. And, yes, they brought with them a Black Book.

Then the killings started. The Tswassens became an obstacle to the pale men, and the pale men slaughtered them, and those they didn't slaughter they enslaved.

Andy Stanley’s final message at Catalyst stressed one big idea: the vitality of Christian leadership depends on apprenticeship. Stanley defines apprenticeship as the process of “selecting, modeling, and coaching for the purpose of replacing yourself.” As Stanley said in an earlier talk, most of us have a problem with that word selecting. It seems so unfair. But Jesus wasn’t "fair"—in the sense that he didn’t spend the same amount of time with each disciple. According to Stanley, "Our job is to look behind us and pour our lives into a few selected people.”

This leads to another implication for every leader: “Your responsibility is to empty your cup. It is not your responsibility to fill someone else’s cup.” That should take a huge burden off of us as leaders. We don’t have to know everything. We don’t have to be experts. We don’t have to fix people and fill their cups. For Stanley, “If you are one step ahead of anyone, you have something to offer to someone who is one step behind you.” What a great—and liberating—goal for every leader.

Stanley shared the following personal story.

Catalyst 2011 has sent a powerful message of Christ-centered justice and mercy for what Jesus called “the least of these my brothers and sisters.” So the message this week has been, “Come all you poor and brokenhearted. Come all you children and orphans. Come all you wretched of the earth—shoeless ones, hopeless ones, dispossessed ones, and forgotten ones.” Today at Catalyst we heard amazing, heartening statistics about huge strides in combatting world poverty. But, surprisingly, I only heard one (indirect) reference to abortion. So “Come all you unborn?” Hum, I think so.

I’m not criticizing Catalyst because they can only promote so many wonderful causes in two days (and I’m amazed by all that good that’s been done in 48 hours). I’m concerned about a larger trend: in our celebration of justice and mercy, somebody forgot to invite the unborn. I’m not sure why, but here are a few possibilities:

One of the things I appreciate about this conference is the beautiful blend of worship and compassion, evangelism and justice, love for the church and love for a broken world. The Catalyst culture promotes so much talk and action around huge issues like solving global poverty, protecting and adopting orphans, walking with the poor, feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked. This isn’t supposed to minimize the call to preach salvation in Christ alone (although I’ll let readers decide if that has happened or not). And most of this passion and energy is coming from a new wave of younger leaders.

But there’s also an interesting (and I think deeply biblical) twist to one aspect to this emphasis. It’s a better way to do justice and avoid “toxic mercy.” Here’s an example of toxic mercy: Bob Lupton told a story about a fairly typical suburban church program that brought gifts to a poor inner-city family at Christmas time. Of course the children in these inner-city families were always happy to get presents. The kids’ mothers were also at least semi-excited, especially for their kids’ sakes. But the fathers would usually disappear. It dawned on Lupton that these fathers couldn’t handle the shame. When the nice, well-meaning suburban church members swooped in to “help” the “needy” poor families, they emasculated the men and fathers. It provided one more concrete and public reminder of the fathers’ inability to care for their families.

Now I know why people enjoy listening to Mark Driscoll. He’s engaging, funny, provocative, pastoral, and so darn interesting. Here are a few of his best one-liners:

•"Some people deal with fear by reading books on the rapture and continually asking, ‘Are we freakin’ done yet?’ No, we’re going to be here for a while, so put a cup on, kid.”

•“The New York Yankees lost last night [in a playoff game against the Detroit Tigers] which proves two things: God is sovereign and he loves us.”

•“You don’t have to fear death because when we die we’re going to be with Jesus. So is death really that bad? It’s not like we’ll die and go to Detroit.” After a smattering of boos, Driscoll said, “Hey, I don’t write the mail; I just deliver it. There’s a reason why we’re not having this conference in Detroit.”

You can either love or hate the guy, but he'll never bore you.

As a preacher, Driscoll is simple, clear, and utterly gospel-centered. He started with a human problem: we’re afraid. Then he relentlessly exposed the idolatry underneath our fear. The real question for leaders to ask is not “What are you afraid of?” but “Who are you afraid of?” Then he offered the following diagnostic questions for every leader:

1. Whose opinion matters way too much to you?
2. Is my appetite for praise unhealthy?
3. Am I overly devastated by criticism?

Whenever we lead with fear we allow other people to become our functional god. We live under their sovereign rule. We are holding that person in awe, and by fearing them we cannot love them. When we live with fear we have vision without hope. We see the future, but God isn’t in it.

But here’s what I loved about Driscoll’s message: he didn’t just preach Law—as in, just stop being afraid. Instead, he preached the gospel.

Here's a quick take from Francis Chan's talk. Chan started with 1 Samuel 30, a story from David's life. David and his soldiers had just returned from battle only to find their entire village razed and that the captors had taken off with the women and children. They had lost everything. The situation wasn't just dire; it was devastating. Then, to top it off, after David and his soldiers had wept until they could weep no more, the other soldiers swelled with resentment towards David. They even wanted to stone him. This was bad! But Chan pointed us towards a strange, seemingly out-of-place verse: "...but David strengthened himself in the Lord."

Chan comments, "That's it? He 'strengthened himself in the Lord?'" With all of things David could have done and should have done, that was the first (and apparently) the only thing he did in that desperate situation. Chan asks, "When was the last time you heard anyone talk that way?"

I realize I’m surrounded by young Christian leaders, but I have a confession to make: as a general rule, I haven't always fully trusted leaders under 29. I know many who are brilliant, creative, fun, and spiritually deep, but I guess my predjudice is two-fold. First, they haven’t suffered or failed enough. Second, I can’t get over how immature I was at 29—or even at 39! (I finally started to grow up largely under the tutelage of two great mentors: suffering and failure.) But, alas, Catalyst is messing with my long-standing assumption about young leaders.

Here’s a good case in point: Katie Davis. In 2006, at the age of 18, she took a short-term missions trip to Uganda. Then she returned to Uganda for a year. Now, at the age of 22, she’s already established Amazima Ministries, a non-profit ministry in Uganda that seeks to meet the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of over 450 children. Most of the children are orphans. On top of that, she adopted 14 Ugandan children.

But I was most impressed not with her accomplishments but with the simplicity and depth of her faith in Christ. When she was told that 14 adopted kids seems like a huge commitment, she laughed it off and said, “Well, not when you compare 14 children to tens of thousands of orphans.”

BE PRESENT. That’s the theme for Catalyst 2011. I love the theme. I’ve spent most of my life learning how to show up—I mean really show up—and be present to God, my own heart, and of course people—church people, lost people, happy people, anguished people. But how do you pull that off, especially given the frenzied demands of ministry? Andy Stanley opened the day by offering one small step on the journey of being present.

He started with a simple premise: “The more successful you are, the less accessible you will be.” For instance, now that my senior pastor oversees 1,000 people, he can’t be accessible to everyone. Given this reality, Stanley says we have two options: (1) Ignore it and burn out being accessible to everyone; or (2) Face it and hide yourself from everyone. But here’s a hard-edge truth of ministry: we can’t shut out all the needs around us but we can’t take them all on either. According to Stanley, that’s the fundamental tension of ministry—a tension you’ll never resolve.

So what do we do? Here’s his advice: “Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone.” That is how you can manage your limits in ministry. For example, you might not be able to do ALL the marital counseling in the church, but you should be knee-deep in at least one troubled marriage. Or you might not be able to do ALL the funerals, but you better be walking beside at least one grieving family.

Stanley offered a few maxims that go with this principle:

Okay, so I've never read any of David Platt's books. And, quite, frankly, I didn't know what the fuss was all about ... until tonight. I'm not sure what happened, because I came here to "cover" Catalyst--as a detached, objective, non-participating blogger--but by the time Platt got done preaching, God had brought me to my knees, weeping. The talk was pretty simple--a four-point sermon based on Exodus 32 about the pitfalls of pastoral ministry--but it bowled me over (and I'm not a pastor at this point in my life). So what happened?

First, there's Platt the guy, the ordinary, humble, broken fellow-sinner and struggler who just stands up with a Bible and starts preaching. David started the message by reminding us a few times, "I'm way over my head in every area of my life. My life in ministry is filled with so many weaknesses." Then he proceeded to preach a message that was laced with prophetic zeal, but here's the amazing thing: I never once caught a whiff of anger or self-righteousness from him. As a matter of fact, at every stage of his message he was on the verge of tears. I'm not given to Christian celebrity name-dropping (as a matter of fact, it repulses me), but this guy reminded me of a modern-day Jeremiah, exuding tenderness and tough truth at the same time.

Now for the four points of his message. Based on Exodus 32, Platt identified four "golden calves" of our leadership (and, again, he stated them with such biblical integrity, simplicity of speech, and with so much tenderness of heart that I couldn't argue with anything he said):

1. We have become leaders without convictions. We have created an entire leadership culture where the name of the game is giving people what they want. But Platt urged us that "God is more interested in the sanctity of his people than the success of your ministry."

I'm just heading out to Atlanta for the 2011 Catalyst Conference. Stay tuned for updates from the conference over the next few days. Based on the theme for this year's conference--Be Present--the upcoming participants have posted the following "reasons to be present" (with my thoughts in italics):

1. "Road trip, enough said."[Yep, me too!]
2. "The energy is absolutely contagious."[Hope I get infected.]
3. "Free donuts."[I'll be looking for free pumpkin donuts.]
4. "Have a reviving experience and take it to my community."[That's from Guatemala. Nice!]
5. "It's a great way to passively aggressively help your pastor be a better leader." [Sure hope that works out for you!]
6."BECAUSE GOD IS ALWAYS PRESENT. Dios siempre esta present." [Si, es verdad!]