Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

P ART III: P LANTING U RBAN C HURCHES • 307

Acts 15.19-21 (ESV) – Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood. For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues. Acts 15.28-29 (ESV) – For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.

A. Plant, grow, and sustain churches within a particular linguistic, ethnic, and cultural identity: the homogenous unit principle.

1. Culture is intrinsic to the creation of God.

2. God as the author of human life (Gen. 1-2)

3. God’s creation mandate as an intrinsic blessing of human creative cultural production

a. Be stewards of the earth: tools, technology, shaping environment.

b. Go and multiply: kinship, social organization, structure.

4. The differences between peoples have now been acknowledged and reconciled in the ministry of Christ.

a. Our differences are now reconciled through the work of Christ on the cross.

b. Between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female, barbarian and Sycthian, Eph. 2; Col. 3.11; Gal. 3.28

c. God is reconciled with all people now in his Son, 2 Cor. 5.18-21.

d. We share in both the guilt and the glory, Rom. 3; 1.16-17.

5. The goal of redemption is Christlikeness, not cultural sameness. (The goal is always to help people become more like Jesus, not more like us.)