Making disciples of all nations includes the nation — the people group — where you live.

In other words, there’s a lot of conversation about NCT orthodoxy.

But what about NCT orthopraxy?

What should a church that teaches New Covenant Theology look like? What are its hallmarks?

I’d first point us to Galatians 6:2 (ESV): “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

That’s an application of what Jesus Himself told His disciples.

We can look to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in John’s Gospel for the source of that: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34–35 ESV)

As Charles Leiter writes in his exceptional work from 2012, The Law of Christ:

The Christian’s standard is thus not just any sort of “love,” but Christlike love — love of the same quality and magnitude as Christ Himself demonstrated in His incarnation and death on the cross! By rising to pray and commune with His Father, by walking through jostling crowds in perfect peace and tranquility of heart, by opening His mouth in wisdom and compassion, by washing His disciples’ feet, by forgiving His enemies — by everything He ever said and did, the Lord Jesus gave us the pattern for our conduct. As we indicated earlier, it is the highest, clearest, and brightest revelation of man’s duty that could ever be given to the human race. There can be nothing more exacting, or more demanding, or more wonderful than this — to love God and to love others in the same way and to the same degree that Christ did! No one has ever fathomed the full import of these words, nor has anyone ever begun to fully live up to them.

(Leiter, Charles. The Law of Christ. Hannibal, Mo.: Granted Ministries, 2012. Print. p. 160)

Christlike love should be the hallmark of a Christian; it should be the hallmark of an NCT church.

And I’d add this reminder: “Go (or as you are going) therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, [20] teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19–20a ESV)

What do these point to? Caring for one another sacrificially. Loving one another abundantly. Discipling one another constantly. All while on mission for Jesus.

A true New Covenant Theology-subscribing church must be one of love, discipleship and mission, growing in the image of Christ.

Not a good example of contextualization.

At his blog, It Is Written, Dr. Bob Gonzales has put together an excellent series on contextualization – a mandatory tenet of missional churches and the bête noire of John MacArthur — or what can better be described as “accommodation.”

In his latest installment, Gonzales helpfully reminds us:

[W]e need to accommodate our communication to the people we’re trying to reach, to the people we’re trying to edify because God accommodates himself to us in his revelation and because the servants of God, like Jesus and like Paul the apostle, accommodated their communication to their audience. Brothers, if we want to win souls, if we want to see our churches grow, if we want to increase the edification of our current membership, then we must become all things to all men. We must accommodate (not compromise) in the area of communication.

Indeed, contextualization properly defined and properly done doesn’t water down the gospel; it makes the offense of the gospel as clear as possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KIA-DGx_3Y

Here’s a video that tells the story of the first church they planted. I just love this.

On December 15, 2007, 25 families made the commitment to move from Denton, TX to Atlanta, GA to plant a church that was in the city, for the city, and looked like the city. It became the Rebuild Network’s first church plant—Blueprint Church.

I’m saddened to see how poorly we’ve adopted what the authors recommend.

Chapter one provides a beautiful parable comparing the work done in churches to a vine growing on a trellis. The authors ask us, are we putting our effort into building a trellis (creating programs) or cultivating the vine (growing people.) The argue — and I agree — that way too much goes into creating structure and force-fitting people into that structure, rather than building, training and growing people for ministry.

Chapter two of the book outlines the “Ministry Mind-Shifts” that the writers recommend and which they flesh out in detail in later chapters. They say we need to transform:

1. From running programs to building people
2. From running events to training people
3. From using people to growing people
4. From filling gaps to training new workers
5. From solving problems to helping people make progress
6. From clinging to ordained ministry to developing team leadership
7. From focusing on church polity to forging ministry partnerships
8. From relying on training institutions to establishing local training
9. From focusing on immediate pressures to aiming for long-term expansion
10. From engaging in management to engaging in ministry
11. From seeking church growth to desiring gospel growth

Getting buy-in on these as principles is not the difficult part. Getting buy-in on these as actions? That’s where the work is.

As Dr. Piper wrote, “For decades, Moe was a factory worker and bi-vocational pastor on the rugged spiritual soil of New England. He was one of the first to believe in the power and potential of computers ‘talking’ to each other, and he may have been the first that dared to dream about a radical new way to freely spread the gospel.”

Be sure to visit the site Moe edits: Christ My Covenant and also Piper’s Notes, the original online archive of John Piper.

We had some especially engaging discussions in Matthew 6, which begins in verse 1: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.” We talked about how we should be giving, praying and fasting in a way such that we guard against doing it in a way so as to be seen by others.

How striking is the warning of Matthew 6. Yet daily I see pastors (and those who aspire to be pastors copying those chatty pastors) posting 140-character personal prayers. Are they not doing the social media equivalent of standing and praying “in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others” (Matthew 6:5)? So that they can be re-Tweeted or like-buttoned?

Why do those need to be on Twitter or Facebook? Is it so that they are seen by others?

Encouraging others to pray using social media is probably just fine. Using social media so that your prayers can be seen by others? I think Scripture counsels against that.

Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.”

Don’t let that be you.

He is pretty much on the mark (more on that after the quote.) And it’s why in our sanctification, we look to Christ and not a checklist, because it’s not a checklist written on our hearts.

[W]e are just as emphatic that it does not mean that God inscribes a New Covenant list of rules on the heart of a Christian. We are skeptical of any attempt to create a new list to replace the old list. There is no New Covenant Decalogue. We disavow the way some NCT people use the term law of Christ. We do not think there is a concrete, unchanging, all-inclusive, revealed list of the specific laws of Christ any more than there was a concrete, unchanging, all-inclusive list of God’s moral law revealed at Sinai. Under the New Covenant, God puts “love God, love neighbor” into the heart of every person in Christ by the Spirit. There is a sense in which the commands to love God and love neighbor are as sufficient as a complete list would be.

– Reisinger, John G. In Defense of Jesus, the New Lawgiver. Frederick, MD: New Covenant Media, 2008. Print. p. 117–8.

I say “pretty much on the mark,” because it is the giving of the Holy Spirit to dwell in the heart of the believer that fulfills Jeremiah 31:31–34. The very nature of God — His love — in the Spirit of Christ is His law written on our hearts.

Thanks to Google books, it’s available as a free download.

And it is brilliant.