The Church in New England

I direct your attention to two posts: first, Dane Ortlund, writing at the Gospel Coalition Blog, notes the renaissance that happened in C. S. Lewis' life when he "awakened" to the truth of the gospel of grace. This "grace awakening" is something we are all, in my opinion, at any given time moving toward or away from. We are either waking up, or falling back to sleep. Another way of saying that is, we are inclined, in our nature, to nap on the Gospel. The Lewis quotes in Dane's post are of course eloquent, but I wanted to take note of something Dane says at the very end:

Something of a gospel resurgence is taking place today across various swaths of evangelicalism. All this we happily receive from the hand of the Lord. The need of the hour, however, is neither self-congratulation nor smug diagnosis of who “gets” the gospel of grace. The need of the hour is deeper reverence, new levels of wonder at the grace shown oneself, and a whispered prayer that the good news of God’s free grace in Christ would spread with a continued contagion the effects of which will be felt for generations to come.

Yes, this is very well said. But most of my awareness of this "resurgence" is via the Internet, not local.

You see, I live in New England. The situation here is summarized by the erstwhile Jared Wilson in an article at Resurgence.com entitled Why New England is the New American Missional Frontier. Jared speaks of the dearth of "Gospel awakened" churches here:

And where churches are evangelical, the evangel has not yet captured the hearts of many congregations. As the cultural environment became more worldly, conservative churches became more insular, opting to self-protect in their religious “bunkers” instead of engaging their communities in gospel mission. The need for gospel-centered missional churches throughout New England is dire. The good news is that a movement is afoot already, but it needs more workers.

Jared's estimate is accurate. There are plenty of conservative churches who include the Gospel in the "what we believe" page on their website, but the preaching is all us (Christians) vs. them (the world), or else therapeutic deism, or occasionally Todd Bentley-like nonsense. There are also the liberal churches that are all about social justice and gay rights, and put political action first on their agenda.

As I look around my city, I see one church that seems to get it. It's an Acts 29 church pastored by Angel Silva, called Missio Dei. If I was making the decision for myself alone, it would be my choice for a church, but Laurie is not so sure. That's another aspect of the ongoing "thoughts and second thoughts" I wrote about in this recent post.

Another promising item is that there exists a Gospel-driven church-planting organization (called the NETS Institute for Church Planting) which focuses mainly on New England. I note with interest that they're working on starting something in my town. Note also that their vision statement is excellent, and includes this:

According to Dr. David Wells, evangelical Christianity is currently in a free-fall. We agree. Evangelical Christians have largely confused, given up on, or flat out denied the historic gospel. The result is a massive confusion over sin, the person of Jesus Christ, the cross, and the nature of saving faith. At NETS, we desire to recover the biblical gospel through training godly men and sending them out to plant churches to proclaim the gospel to the lost and confused.

Hmmm. Finally, I notice that their board of advisors includes D. A. Carson, Sinclair Furgeson, and Bryan Chapell, all people for whom I have great respect. I'm definitely intrigued!