What Does It Really Mean to Be Worldly?

This Pre-forum talk addresses the following topics:

1.     What Does It Really Mean to Be Worldly? This talk begins by dismantling the trivial versions of what it means to be worldly.  The church becomes truly worldly when they forget who they are because they forget who Christ is.  This makes us lose our distinctive character so we blend in and become enculturated.

2.      What in the World is the World?  We become worldly through the mechanism of what the New Testament calls ‘the world’.  Made up of a blend of cultural values, these function as pretensions that make us drift from the knowledge of God.  When the church succumbs to the seduction of these cultural values, key aspects of our spiritual life become disordered.    

Andrew Fellows was appointed pastor of a church in Bradford, West Yorkshire in 1988 where he served for seven years. In 1995 his family moved to the English branch of L’Abri Fellowship, where they lived and worked for 21 years. From 2011 to 2016 Andrew was the chairman of L’Abri International. Now based in Cambridge, Andrew is the pastor of a newly formed church alongside his work of speaking and writing. He has a special interest in reaching sceptics and encouraging followers of Christ to develop the life of the mind so it includes the whole gospel to the whole world with all of its implications. IVP recently published his book, Smuggling Jesus Back Into the Church: How Not to be Worldly. Andrew is married to Helen. They have four children and three grandchildren.