Come and See: Why Believe in Jesus - Tim Brown

Our vision and our desire is to see-
“The fame and deeds of God renewed and known in our time” (Habakkuk 3:2).
To that end, we live as those who pursue God’s presence in our midst, and practice the Way of Jesus in our time and place, to bring spiritual, social, and cultural renewal to the city.
To find out more about Church of the City New York, visit church.nyc

[@benskinner1372]

Thank you, Tim! This is a wonderful sermon. 🙏

[@philipbenjamin4720]

Hello Tim Brown, Thank you for your message. I presume that when someone like you preaches and you haven’t preached often that Jon Tyson or some other senior leader in your church who does preach a lot will take you aside and let you know what they thought of your sermon. If it’s Jon Tyson who does this with you I cannot see how he could be anything other than approving - since your preaching closely matched his approach and even his style. It was information heavy - you quoted prominent bible teachers - you were easy to follow - you were extremely well organised and prepared - and you were eloquent. My sense about you from listening to you is that you are an honest, diligent and likeable person - I would very much like to meet you one day - I feel confident that my conclusions about you would be confirmed. But here’s the thing Tim - I believe that the model of ministry that you are being led to adopt - and which you are absorbing - is not biblical - for a number of reasons laid out below (not all of the things I list below are true of your sermon - they are however all true of Jon Tyson’s approach to ministry): -Jon Tyson and Tim Keller and others operate as if the Christian is most faithful when he has the bible in one hand and the New York Times in the other. The thinking is that if you can better understand the culture around you you can better apply the truth to it. While this is true the thing that Jon and Tim Keller and others fail to understand is that it isn’t our knowledge of the GENERAL culture around us that helps us apply the truth (I don’t need to know how to play basketball to evangelise and pastor Americans). The thing that it helps to understand is the SPIRITUAL culture in which the people we are trying to reach exist. What people like Jon and Tim Keller don’t/didn't recognise is that to discern the spiritual culture around them involves making ONLY SPIRITUAL judgements. Therefore ‘reading the New York Times’ (by which I mean consulting sociological sources) isn’t going to help make those judgements. The only way to become spiritually wise about the world is to fear God (Prov 9:10) - to turn to God in faith - with our spiritual understanding of the world being a result of our intimate knowledge/experience of the character of Jesus and that fact that we are living IN the world - instead of hiding from the world. There is a reason why pastor/teachers are tempted to behave inappropriately in this area. It enables them to use their additional knowledge and their intellect to make them appear to be a better preacher than the guy down the road. Tim Keller suppressed the Spirit in believing that it was possible to use intellect to gain spiritual understanding (I realise that sentence didn’t make sense - spiritual understanding is spiritual - intellectual understanding is intellectual). Tim once posted the following tweet: “When you listen and read one thinker, you become a clone… two thinkers, you become confused… ten thinkers, you’ll begin developing your own voice… two or three hundred thinkers, you become wise and develop your voice.” He was a committed Pharisee - this led to his being unable to 'see' people around him who were not like him - shown here in his not realising that many people cannot buy book after book in order to understand and faithfully model God’s word. (And nor should they pay money to engage with God's word - see the link below): gospelinlife.com/timothy-keller-mp3-sermon-archive/ Are you sure that Tim Keller is a suitable person to quote (without making qualifications) in your sermons Tim? -I don’t believe it is appropriate to give attention to leaders within worldly culture to strengthen our message - because it undermines our message - it suggests that the idea we presented is more likely true because someone famous or influential said it. So we should not quote Jim Carrey saying: “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer” because God himself is constantly testifying this truth and the idea is no more true because Jim Carrey said it. It’s the same with highlighting negative aspects of worldly culture - there is a risk if we make much of what big names in worldly culture think even in the context of disagreeing with them that we are tipping the hat to the way in which those people became someone who got to be quoted instead of ignored. We are sending the message that becoming a Christian involves ADDING a new dimension to someone's generally sound and sensible life - when Christianity redefines what life itself is - WHO life is. The world is God’s world - he is sovereign - we are building his kingdom -we therefore shouldn’t be implying that Christianity must PROVE itself worthy to this world before people should be required to receive it. To do so is to shoot ourselves in the head -since there will never be a way to faithfully present the gospel that avoids people being confronted. -When should preachers quote other bible teachers and scholars? When should preachers quote people who believe? I believe it should only be when that person is saying something that is intended to give clear meaning to some part of scripture (or if it's on a subject spread across scripture we should ensure that if we quote the person we bind their comment to as many passages as necessary to prove its truth). An issue with who we quote - preacher teachers have to face the fact that hearers will think they are endorsing those quoted unless it is expressly made clear that this is not the case. -You might think that in saying all this I have managed to make clear what true preaching is - when I haven’t as yet. I believe that the generally accepted understanding of preaching is that in order to be qualified as a preacher one must not just talk about spiritual things - but also model them in one's life. While this statement isn't false it isn't a right way to DEFINE preaching - for two reasons. First preaching isn’t just talking about things - it is TESTIFYING in word and embodiment (a surrendered life) to the truth. And second the only way for a preacher to do that faithfully is to limit the subject matter of what they preach to WISDOM - understanding of the bible they have gained from ACTING ON the bible (and any spiritual truth which aligns with the bible). Being surrendered to God isn't enough to qualify a preacher to share IDEAS that sit outside of their own experience. With that in mind I want to give you some feedback Tim. While I was listening to everything you said the part that I found the most striking was when you began to share your testimony at the end (which you did in an appropriate way - generally it isn’t a good idea for a preacher to use their life as an example - or even the lives of people they know - which Jon Tyson does and shouldn’t do). While we are all generally attracted to what is personal the reason why this part of your message moved me was because at that moment IT FELT AS IF YOU WERE SHARING WHAT WAS TRUE IN YOU. A final suggestion - make sure that you keep Peter and John in mind when you consider the way in which your pastoring/teaching is going to operate. They were two fisherman who wrote seven books of the bible. I doubt that they were of higher intellect - yet their understanding was incredible. How was this possible? Because everything they spoke was them answering a question - “how would Jesus respond to this - or how would these two ideas that seem to be in tension be one in him?” My mother was a deeply frustrating person to talk with - her thoughts were constantly all over the place - talking with her was hard work or even pointless at times. But when she gave a speech for a milestone moment in the life of a friend everything was different - at that moment she was sharing RELATIONAL understanding - her thoughts were clear and pertinent. This is the nature of godly teaching and preaching. Church of the City appears to exist for high intellect people. Yet New York has all kinds of people. While churches make CULTURAL choices I don't believe that any church should present Christianity as anything other than RELATIONAL at ANY time. God bless you Tim. PS There is no such thing as Christian scholarship - just as there is no such thing as Christian plumbing. There is biblical scholarship. Biblical scholarship is all analysis of the bible that doesn't require making spiritual judgments. It can be done by believers or non-believers. If a scholar gets something wrong that doesn't make them wicked - it only makes them a less than outstanding scholar. The output of scholarship is information which pastors and bible teachers might find helpful in explaining THE HEART - THE TRUTH - of a bible passage (although less often than many think - if we are relying on scholarship to reach conclusions from scripture we are doing it wrong). Pastor/bible teachers should only share enough scholarship to make their teaching clear - not any more than that.