Tim Keller’s new blog and a triperspectival analysis of today’s church movements.

First off, I am very happy for this: http://rcpc.com/blog/view.jsp?Blog_param=44. Tim Keller is a gifted preacher and his perspective on many issues facing churches and the Church is great. Very insightful, yet humble and consistent in valuing progress toward redemption and fulfillment of our Kingdom calling.

Second, over the past year I’ve been able to spend a significant amount of time discussing strategic issues facing Christians and the church with Drew Goodmanson. Drew is a strong believer in a “triperspectival epistemology” (aka the belief that true human knowledge has three perspectives: normative, situational, and existential (based on John Frame’s work The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God).

Though I still wrestle with the nuances of triperspectivalism (it’s pretty darn nuanced), I’ve come to appreciate the its value and believe that thinking provides a complete picture of the nature of things.

So I was delighted to come across this when reading Keller’s blog post:

John Frame’s ‘tri-perspectivalism’ helps me understand Willow. The Willow Creek style churches have a ‘kingly’ emphasis on leadership, strategic thinking, and wise administration. The danger there is that the mechanical obscures how organic and spontaneous church life can be. The Reformed churches have a ‘prophetic’ emphasis on preaching, teaching, and doctrine. The danger there is that we can have a naïve and unBiblical view that, if we just expound the Word faithfully, everything else in the church — leader development, community building, stewardship of resources, unified vision — will just happen by themselves. The emerging churches have a ‘priestly’ emphasis on community, liturgy and sacraments, service and justice. The danger there is to view ‘community’ as the magic bullet in the same way Reformed people view preaching.

Our strong tendency toward one of the three perspectives can often be detrimental where the other aspects are neglected.

To help address this it’s important to know which perspectives you naturally tend toward. For example, I am strongly Normative or Prophet. I naturally emphasize the unchanging truths of God’s character, the gospel message and the mission of the Church whenever I think strategically about my call as a Christian. This can create negative tendencies which I need to guard against (both from neglect of the King and Priest perspectives and overemphasis of the Prophet). Drew has a posted a breakdown of these perspectives on his site here (PDF).

The second thing we must do is seek out and humbly open ourselves to input from those with different perspectives. Only Christ fulfill all three roles perfectly. As the church, we are called into community to continue His redemptive work. Therefore it is important that we seek to be in diverse community in order to guard against the limitations that come with homogeneity.

For me, Keller’s post is a wonderful reminder of the beauty and genius in the completeness of Christ’s plan for us. The goals of any Kingdom strategy must be Christ’s goals first and not our own. We must be so committed to those goals that we’re aware of how we (as imperfect individuals) are limiting the ability to achieve those goals and be willing to get out of the way.

Image source : David Fairchild http://www.pastorfairchild.com/