Redeemer City to City

Feb 16, 2018

Listen

Immanuel Presbyterian Church was an aging, monocultural church in an increasingly younger and ethnically diverse neighborhood in South Miami. City to City spoke with pastor Felipe Assis to see how contextualizing ministry resulted in a church revitalization.

Read Part 1 and Part 2.

CTC: What does preaching look like now, contextualized to your Miami location? Can you give me some examples?

Felipe Assis: My preaching is very gospel centered in the mold of how Tim Keller teaches. Some of the examples that he talks about work in my context. Some don’t.

CTC: Can you give me an example of some that don’t?

Felipe Assis: For instance, I would imagine in a place like New York or even the Pacific Northwest, there is a barrier toward belief in God to begin with. You almost have to work from that standpoint of skepticism, deep skepticism towards deism, theism, or a belief of God in general.

If you’re in Miami, because of the Latin cultural background, people assume that God exists. They’re not living as if God exists, but they respect church and the clergy for the most part, even if they don’t attend church or are skeptical of the institution. You don’t have to go to great lengths to prove the existence of God before you actually talk about the implications of the gospel and why it’s good news.

I start from two steps in, you know what I’m saying?

As for contextualizing my preaching, I’m really tackling the issues of religion and practical life here. Miamians and Latinos, they’re very practical. In the beginning, I was so Kellerish that I was using all of these quotations from books. They don’t give a rip about that. They don’t know who any of those guys are. Instead I will quote their cultural authorities, mostly artists and poets, entertainers, that sort of thing.

The other thing about preaching is, it helps here to be a little bit more animated. Tim Keller says that you shouldn’t focus on that too much, but I think that because of our culture, they’ve got to feel it. Now if it’s just animated without good content, then it doesn’t work anywhere, but if you have gospel content and you can connect with them at that heart level, I think that’s appropriate.

CTC: What about your worship?

Felipe Assis: The thing about Miami is, it’s a culture in formation. It’s a very young city. All of these cultural changes were happening in a span of 50–60 years. It’s not like New York where you know what it means to be a New Yorker. We don’t know what Miami is going to be 10 years from now. There are still people moving here who are shaping the culture. You’re dealing with this constant metamorphosis in the culture.

We’ve made some changes in worship through the years. I mentioned we’ve become a little less liturgical. In the beginning, our worship was very much like some of the hipster churches in the PCA. You had folk or bluegrass music. Here in Miami, people reacted with, “What is this, the Deep South?”

I had to go back to my worship pastor and say, “Even though we’re contextualizing these hymns to modern rhythms and styles of music, it really doesn’t fit our culture because this is stuff that people sing in the South.” Miamians respond much more to contemporary worship like Bethel and Hillsong because it requires energy and participation and feelings and emotion. We’ve shifted a little bit more towards that, not because we’re trying to follow a trend, but because we think that it’s more helpful to our people.

Also, our campuses have slightly different cultures, so we have made adjustments on a campus basis. It doesn’t look uniform in the sense that you go to Brickell and it’s the same worship experience that you would have at Pinecrest or Miami Springs. We’ve made changes to contextualize worship to our neighborhoods.

CTC: Can you give one example of the differences in each neighborhood?

Felipe Assis: Brickell is the financial district of Miami, so it has a lot of young professionals. The church is probably 70% single. It’s actually the whitest campus because these are folks that come in for med school, or that come to work in the banking industry. They come from all over the world and all over the country too. At Pinecrest, which is the old location of Immanuel, the original campus, of course there are a lot of young families. And today the congregation does look like the neighborhood.

So when I preach at different campuses, in the morning sermons I’m addressing a lot of families, so I’m going to talk about the idolatry of children and of the home and of the family. Then when I preach at night at the Brickell campus, I’m going to talk about the idolatry of career and romance and that sort of thing. Even the sermon illustrations change, the way that we preach. It’s the same message, the same application, but we try to contextualize the illustrations for different realities. Worship in Brickell on Sunday night is a little bit more liturgical because of that crowd. We have communion every week there. There’s always a hangout afterwards, and a lot of community building throughout the week. It’s reflected in Sunday worship as well.

CTC: How has contextualizing the gospel and your ministry in Miami shaped the way you view the city?

Felipe Assis: I think the city serves in two ways. Sometimes the city is a mirror. Sometimes the city is a window.

The city’s a mirror because when you begin to engage and minister in the city and look at its brokenness, you realize that brokenness is a reflection of who you are. You realized you contributed to that brokenness, or you are contributing to it as well. So you see your sinfulness reflected in the city and some of the things that you’re frustrated about are things that you can spot in yourself. Like my mom used to say, “If you can spot it, you got it.”

CTC: That sounds like a mom.

Felipe Assis: It’s something like that. I’m translating it from Portuguese.

CTC: Yeah, that one comes across pretty well.

Felipe Assis: The other way the city serves is as a window. Cities are places of proximity, and with proximity you’re able to see things in a way that you’re not able from a distance. For example, when you’re walking down the street and you see something on display at a store, from a distance it looks like one thing. But when you get close you see all the details — like the price tag! With proximity, you’re able to see deficiencies or things about the city that are beautiful that you can’t see from a distance.

In Miami, one thing that changed for me was to see Miami — from a distance — as a place where people go to have fun and a vacation spot. It’s another thing to live there and be able to look into the window there and see people’s dreams and aspirations and their brokenness and be really moved by all those things and present the Gospel in a way that encourages what’s already there that’s positive, that you had no idea was there until you looked.

When I first got here, had a preconceived judgment, which was not accurate at all, and now I see it. It takes proximity to see the aspects of the city that are beautiful and be able to bring the Gospel to bear on the things that are broken about it. Unfortunately, a lot of planters who come into Miami from the outside only see it from a distance, not through the window.

CTC: If somebody’s at the beginning of this journey and they want to recontextualize or rethink their context and how they do ministry, what advice would you give them? Where do they start?

Felipe Assis: It may sound a little harsh, but the first question that they should ask is: “I know that the church needs to change. Am I the right person to bring about these changes?” And you should ask other pastors, your wife, or aresources like City to City to pray with you and help you. My guess is that when the church gets to that point [of being out of sync with the neighborhood] with a leader that’s been there for more than five years, he’s probably not the right leader. You almost have to bring someone in from the outside. You might be part of the problem even though you’re well intentioned, and you might need to move on and lead the church into a process of welcoming a new leader that can bring about those changes. That’s the first thing.

The second thing is, let’s say you’re the new leader coming into a situation of a church needing revitalization, like I was. Even though I was bicultural, even though I was coming from South America to Miami (which is a much easier adaptation than moving from the Midwest to Miami), you still have to learn the culture. That’s the main thing that I tell pastors and church re-planters that are coming in: “Look, take your time. Don’t rush through things. Be a learner of the people and of the culture. Live in the neighborhood.” If you’re making changes right now and then later on you realize, “Gosh, I should have done it a different way,” it’s too late. It’s better for you to take the time, ask a lot of questions, interact with the people, live in the neighborhood. The greatest mistake that almost all of them make is to come in and assume things and not learn.

CTC: Is there a difference between being contextual in your ministry and being relevant in your ministry?

Felipe Assis: Yeah. I think that if you are contextual, you are going to be relevant. If you err on relevance, you may be contextual for a period of time, but then because culture’s always shifting, you may not be contextual five years from now. That’s why you have to always keep learning.

Felipe was born in Brazil but had part of his upbringing in the United States. Felipe founded and pastored two churches in Recife, Brazil. In 2008 he moved to Miami at the invitation of City to City with his wife Beth and two young children to plant Crossbridge Church and serve as a catalyst to a gospel movement in Miami. Felipe Assis re-planted Crossbridge Church in Miami, Florida in 2008.

This interview is part of the course, “Understanding Your Ministry Context.” This course is about becoming a student of the particular people you are trying to reach. See all of our online courses at learn.redeemercitytocity.com.

You can follow CTC on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the web.

The post A Church for a Changing Miami: An Interview with Felipe Assis (Part 3) appeared first on Dave and Pauline - Worldviews International.

Redeemer City to City

Feb 16, 2018

Listen

Immanuel Presbyterian Church was an aging, monocultural church in an increasingly younger and ethnically diverse neighborhood in South Miami. City to City spoke with pastor Felipe Assis to see how contextualizing ministry resulted in a church revitalization.

Read Part 1 of the interview.

CTC: When you started replanting, then, what kinds of changes did you think needed to take place to contextualize the ministry in South Miami?

Felipe Assis: There were things that were obvious and there were things that were not so obvious. However, just because they were not so obvious didn’t mean that they were not the most important things.

Obviously, Miami is a young city. You have new immigrants moving in all the time. The church building sits at the crossroads of three neighborhoods. There’s a lot of great schools around the church which indicate that there are a lot of young families there. Very diverse — about 75% Latino, and then you also have Chinese, you have Caribbeans. The church did not reflect that diversity at all. 

The worship service was typical of the mid 80s. I think they got stuck with their glory days there. This is what worked in the past and they kept on doing it. Also the church had a fairly modern architecture, but the furniture and the environment was old and dirty. Miami is a vibrant modern sort of city, so those were the apparent things that needed to change.

Now, one of the things that was not so apparent is that the church was not a gospel centered church. They were an evangelical biblical type of church. You had people that really loved Jesus and were faithful stewards of the resources that they’ve been granted in terms of the people and the property and that sort of thing, but not a gospel centered approach.

The other thing was that the church was really inward focused. The programs they had — Sunday school, and Bible studies in the homes, Wednesday night dinners, and all those things — weren’t bad, but they were only geared towards caring for the needs of the existing congregation. There was no preoccupation for reaching out to the neighborhood around them.

Contextually, you had a very conservative political leaning in the church, in a city where that’s very off-putting. If the average person from Miami walks into a church where everybody’s white, older, affluent, and are always speaking of issues on the political right, that’s a huge deterrent for them to assimilate to the life of the church.

CTC: So where did you start?

Felipe Assis: The most important thing in terms of revitalization and replanting is reestablishing the church culture. At the end of the day it’s not about the strategy. I like what Peter Drucker used to say, that culture eats strategy for breakfast. If the culture remains the same, there’s no strategy that’s going to work.

So the first thing was to establish a real gospel-centered, grace-based culture. I knew that if they really understood the gospel, if they really embraced it, then whether people were coming in fresh off the street or were existing members, then they would have a disposition toward outsiders, toward those who were on the fringes, those who in the past they had not welcomed. It would be easier to have the conversation about what does worship look like, because worship would be guided by the need to contextualize the gospel for the outsider. Then every program that we suggested would be influenced by this understanding.

The main thing is to change the soil that the plant is replanted in. Collect it from one soil and plant it into a soil with gospel nutrients, so that plant could grow.

The first soil might be a soil of legalism or moralism — what Tim Keller refers to as “religion.” Or, it might be a soil of secularism. Either way, you have to remove it from one soil and put it in a gospel soil. I started to rework the soil. Obviously you do that primarily through preaching and teaching. I led gospel conversations during the week with leaders and other people, just trying to instill that — to beat them upside the head with the gospel!

What we began to see is that there were people committed to moralism, not only at Immanuel, but people coming from other churches, hearing the gospel and saying “I thought I was a Christian” but then converting. Then we began to see people coming in off the street with a nominal Christianity or no religious background at all and converting. All it takes is about three or four conversions in a plant or a replant for people to see, “Man, this thing is powerful. This thing is actually working.”

When the culture began to change, we began to have conversations about contextualization. I kept things really simple in the beginning. I actually stripped down the worship. I brought in my brother, who was a worship leader at another church on Sunday nights. So he’d come in on Sunday mornings, a young guy with just an acoustic guitar and vocals that fit singing hymns, just kept it simple. It was the middle ground.

The response was, “Okay, hymns are fine. But what did you do with all of our Maranatha songs?”

I was like, “Guys, no one sings those songs anymore. Those are not modern songs.”

CTC: We need to talk about the definition of “modern.”

Felipe Assis: Yeah.

So we decided to just do the old for now. With Sunday school, I told them, “If you guys want to keep doing Sunday school, be my guest, but I’m not going to invest any of my energy in Sunday school.” We were slowly starting to dwindle down in all of those things. We started to implement new things, but kept things very basic so that we’d continue to foster that gospel culture among them.

CTC: Was your preaching affected by trying to instill a gospel culture?

Felipe Assis: I believe that the gospel ought to be preached to both Christians and non Christians. The premise is that the human heart has idolatry either way. We’re always trying to contrast the gospel to religion, to go after those who think everything is fine and they’re pleasing God and they’re living as God expects them to. At the same time, we’re trying to go after those who are the younger brother [in the parable of the Prodigal Son], those that do not have a religious lifestyle or aren’t even thinking about it.

I think in the beginning, I made a lot more gospel applications to Christians and religion. Trying to relate why the gospel is good news to the way which they’re living their lives and the things that they’re dealing with emotionally or professionally.

CTC: I assume most of the Latino and Caribbean populations in Miami have at least a nominal Catholic background. Do you think their background in Catholicism affects the way they hear the gospel or engage it?

Felipe Assis: Yeah. The new converts we had were a lot of people coming out of Catholic backgrounds. There are two types of Catholics. I learned this when I planted in Brazil. There are people that have a negative experience with the Catholic Church, and there are people that have a positive experience with the Catholic Church.

The ones that have had a negative experience with the Catholic Church want something that’s completely different in terms of worship. They want nothing that resembles their experience in the Catholic Church. Those who have had a positive experience, although they didn’t really grow in terms of their understanding of the Bible and God, they felt good when they attended the mass. They feel that the Catholic Church stands for good moral values and that sort of thing. They’re happy to raise their families in that context. It still has something good to offer.

At Crossbridge, the first type that we welcomed were people that had a positive experience with the Catholic Church. We were a little bit more liturgical back then. We had communion more often. Then for some reason, we started reaching a lot of Catholics that have had a bad experience with Catholic churches. The Catholics that are coming into the country now are not your first generation Catholics who grew up in mass. They’ve been secularized and they’re nominal Catholics. They’re disappointed with all the scandals of the Catholic Church in recent years. We’ve made a point to sort of break away a little bit from that association. Our church has progressively become less liturgical.

Continue to Part 3.

Felipe Assis re-planted Crossbridge Church in Miami, Florida in 2008.

Felipe was born in Brazil but had part of his upbringing in the United States. Felipe founded and pastored two churches in Recife, Brazil. In 2008 he moved to Miami at the invitation of City to City with his wife Beth and two young children to plant Crossbridge Church and serve as a catalyst to a gospel movement in Miami.

This interview is part of the course, “Understanding Your Ministry Context.” This course is about becoming a student of the particular people you are trying to reach. See all of our online courses at learn.redeemercitytocity.com.

You can follow CTC on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the web.

The post A Church for a Changing Miami: An Interview with Felipe Assis (Part 2) appeared first on Dave and Pauline - Worldviews International.

My views on this subject would be called “complementarian”  – that men and women have equal value and dignity as persons made in the image of God, but that in both the home and the church they have different God-given roles.  Egalitarianism, on the other hand, is the viewpoint that there are no biblical gender-based restrictions on ministry in the church. Scripture states:

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” Galatians 3:28

The equal value of males and females stated in this passage is not in dispute. The problem lies in the Bible passages dealing with the different  roles of men and women in the home and in the church.

“… what many egalitarians fail to understand, is that a difference in role does not equate to a difference in quality, importance, or value. Men and women are equally valued in God’s sight and plan. Women are not inferior to men. Rather, God assigns different roles to men and women in the church and the home because that is how He designed us to function. The truth of differentiation and equality can be seen in the functional hierarchy within the Trinity (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:3).
The Son submits to the Father, and the Holy Spirit submits to the Father and the Son. This functional submission does not imply an equivalent inferiority of essence; all three Persons are equally God, but they differ in their function. Likewise, men and women are equally human beings and equally share the image of God, but they have God-ordained roles and functions that mirror the functional hierarchy within the Trinity.” See: (https://www.gotquestions.org/complementarianism-vs-egalitarianism.html)

The most thorough Biblical treatment of this subject is in the book  “Man and Woman in Biblical Perspective” by James Hurley, Ph.D.  Dr. Hurley, who was on the staff of L’Abri, was also my professor at Westminster Theological Seminary and my mentor. He is now a professor at Reformed Theological Seminary .  

Here are Hurley’s conclusions on Pg.233:

“In the light of our consideration of 1 Timothy 2 and 3, I conclude that Paul taught that the office of elder/bishop/presbyter was restricted to men. He felt that the creational pattern of male headship in both home and church required that women should not exercise spiritual oversight of the flock. They could not be in positions of authoritative teaching or exercising discipline over men. He grounded his view in the relationship of the man and his wife before the fall (although we have noted that it continued beyond it) rather than on relationships established as a result of the fall of Adam. He did not make any appeal to cultural factors such as the relative lack of education for women or the response which outsiders might have to women in positions of responsibility. The nature of his argument leaves virtually no room for modification of his conclusions as a result of alterations in cultural situations.” 

B. Can women Preach the Sermon at a Worship Service?

First Corinthians 14:33–35 states, “As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church” (ESV). In 1 Timothy 2:11–12, there is a similar instruction: “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. . . . She must be quiet.”

A thoughtful exegesis of these passages shows that a woman cannot preach or teach authoritatively in worship services where are men are present, but they can participate in other ways. See:  https://www.gotquestions.org/women-silent-church.html

The more difficult question is whether or not the elders can delegate their function to authoritatively PREACH the Word to anyone who is not an elder. I believe they cannot do so. Nowhere in Scripture are they given this authority. Only the authority that appointed the elders to be elders can appoint others to preach. In Presbyterian churches this authority is given to the Presbytery not to the board of elders of a local church. 

Hurley gives an example at Pg. 248:

“Situation: A well-known and well-educated Christian woman is asked to address a local congregation about the role of women in the church. Her teaching is well known to the elders, who approve of it. She is given a half-hour during the Sunday worship service for her talk. The pastor follows her talk with the usual (brief) sermon… It is my [Hurley’s] opinion that the sharing and teaching under discussion does not in fact place the woman in the role of an elder. Her teaching has no authority apart from the approval of the elders. She is not seeking to enforce her teaching with discipline and is not assuming the elders’ responsibility of ensuring that the flock is taught true doctrine (although we shall assume that what she teaches is true doctrine). Her participation in the worship service is still within the bounds of the priesthood of all believers… Paul did not forbid women to bring any teaching whatsoever. We have seen that all may bring a word of instruction. What he spoke of was the continuing, authoritative teaching which structures the faith of the church. A half-hour talk would not do this. Any acceptable person may address the congregation.”

 In this example it is clear that the woman is not speaking authoritatively. The woman’s talk is followed by a sermon by the pastor – so there’s a clear and apparent distinction between what she says, and the Pastor’s sermon. 

For a good short article on women preaching, See:  https://www.gotquestions.org/women-silent-church.html

To summarize: 

1. Only men can be elders or pastors.
2. Elders cannot delegate their function as elders to anyone, male or female.
3. Women are not to authoritatively teach men, especially in the gathered church for worship services.

In approaching this subject, we should do so with humility before Our Lord, not with the cocky bravado of our present secular Western culture. No one has a monopoly on the truth. Above all, we should love one another and respect and treasure, the opinions of dear Christian brothers and sisters who disagree with us on matters which are not essential to salvation. 

“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”  1 Cor. 13:1 (LSB)

DAVE SEIVRIGHT is a former lawyer from Jamaica, is a graduate of the University of Liverpool, UK, and Westminster Theological Seminary, USA. He also did graduate studies at L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland, and Trinity College in England.  He has been married to PAULINE for 58 years. They have 4 children and 11 grandchildren.

Dave had the privilege of being personally mentored by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer, and also by Dr. J. I. Packer. Dave was also mentored by the teachings and writings, and by personal interaction with the late Dr. John Stott.  Dave attempts to pass on to others the things he learned from these great men of God. Combining his studies of interpretation and evidence as a lawyer with his studies of philosophy, apologetics, and theology, Dave has taken a special interest in the subject of “Worldviews” and the influence of Christianity on the culture of Western civilization. Dave has devoted his time to teaching the Christian worldview worldwide, and mentoring and discipling very intelligent young professionals, particularly in Miami, and in Germany.

The post The Role of Women in the Church – by Dave Seivright appeared first on Dave and Pauline - Worldviews International.