Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Connectionalism and Dysfunctional Churches

    I have made a few negative comments about conference dashboards keeping statistics on membership, apportionments, and other activities available to anyone who wants to read. I continue to question whether these numbers really tell the story of the health of the churches. There are, I believe, some very large and growing churches that have little or nothing to do with the kingdom of God.

    Nonetheless, I think we have a problem with accountability in the United Methodist Church. When I took my new member class in my first United Methodist congregation, I recall the teacher, who made a number of historical errors, emphasized connectionalism. But if I were to go by his discussion of it, connectionalism means simply that we all go help one another as needed; nothing was said about accountability.

    Those who are pushing the statistical approach are, I believe, responding to a very real problem. Pastors and church congregations in the United Methodist Church can go on indefinitely violating the discipline of the church or refusing to take necessary actions to make their church successful, while expecting that others will take up the slack.

    That is what happens when a church continually fails to pay its apportionments. Now I’m not 100% a fan of apportionments as they are currently implemented, but they do represent a critical element of connectionalism. We put our money together to accomplish things we can’t do separately. Whatever reforms the system might need, the basic concept is sound, and more importantly if you have such a system, and some churches don’t do their share, all suffer.

    This means that we need accountability as part of our connectional system. Churches need to be accountable to those who support them. In a more congregational system, an older church barely hanging on while slowly dying would have a hard time getting people to send money to help. A United Methodist congregation that refuses to take necessary actions, and continues to fail to support the team will nonetheless benefit from the resources of the denomination.

    We should be willing to give money to support the mission of the church. But supporting a church that is willfully imitating a sinking ship sliding under the waves is not mission—it’s bad stewardship.

    In addition, dysfunctional congregations continue to be part of the witness our denomination gives regarding Christ. Our “brand” can be tarnished by the actions of any of our churches. In the case of a denomination, tarnishing the brand also provides a negative witness—tarnishes the brand, so to speak—of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

    My problem is that statistics can and generally do fail to get the entire picture. You can have good statistics and still not be building the kingdom of God. I welcome moves to make pastors more accountable. I think more could be done to make churches accountable as well.

    But accountability is going to take more than reading the numbers. It will require people with good discernment who can see the context, make the necessary decisions, and take responsibility for those decisions. It may be difficult. We may prefer to find some objective measure, but it is still necessary. An objective measure of a subjective set of values will, by nature, be deceptive.

    In critical ways, the church is not a business. Thus my call is for accountability carried out by human beings who exercise all their discernment and wisdom and seek to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.

     

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  • Revelation and a System of Doctrine

    I really enjoy the last few days of work on a pending book release, because I include an opportunity to read the final form of the book at a more reasonable pace and without the constant distraction of working on editorial changes. Well, I should confess that I’m also always going crazy with production issues, but we’ll leave that to one side.

    Right now I’m doing my final run through From Inspiration to Understanding: Reading the Bible Seriously and Faithfully by Edward Vick. It’s an enjoyable process. I’m going to comment on it a bit more later. Today I’m just going to use one quote, regarding revelation.

    But the meaning of the Bible is not exhausted by being made the basis of a system of doctrine. There is much that escapes when ‘Bible’ and ‘system of doctrine’ are conflated. In fact, while by no means denying the importance of doctrine (why should a theologian do that?), one must say that if the importance of the Bible is made to consist in its being construed as a source of doctrine, it is being severely reduced, misunderstood, and indeed distorted. Revelation is not reducible to the communication of propositions, and faith is not identical with assent to propositions, in this case propositions repeating biblical statements, or being inferred or worked out from them (emphasis mine).

    Note that Dr. Vick is not suggesting, as the context makes even more plain, that there are no propositions involved or that propositions have no value. Rather, revelation is much more than and other than that.

  • This Headline Says It All

    Tithing Hits Record Low; Churches Spend More to Make Congregants Happy.

    While I don’t believe tithing is a command binding on Christians, my problem is not that it would demand too much, but rather that it demands too little, does so in the wrong way, and for the wrong reasons. But that’s another topic.

    And I can’t resist noting that the word “tithing” used to refer to giving 10%, not 2.38%, though I know the word has changed meaning. Still, if you’re going to call it a biblical command, it might be better to stick with the biblical meaning, or a close approximation.

     

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  • To the IRD: Democracy is Biblical?

    Mark Tooley of the Institute for Religion and Democracy thinks that religious leaders should not be supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement:

    “Religious activists who have aligned with the Wall Street Occupation should model mature Christian discernment, not echo angry resentments that dream of a secular utopia.”

    That quote is highlighted at the top of the IRD statement titled IRD Challenges Religious Left over Support for Wall Street Occupation (HT: Christian Post).

    Now I have reservations about religious leaders becoming tightly connected to a particular political movement. I think it is way too easy to let our commitment to the kingdom of God be hijacked by various political agendas.

    But that’s not IRD’s point. They believe that the agenda of these leaders in the religious left is, in itself, not biblical. Their own statement says, “The Institute on Religion & Democracy works to reaffirm the church’s biblical and historical teachings, strengthen and reform its role in public life, protect religious freedom, and renew democracy at home and abroad.” In fact, if you look over your web site, it becomes apparent they have their own political agenda, for example on the death penalty, in which Mark Tooley again suggests that only those supporting the death penalty are presenting “careful reasoning rooted in Christian tradition . . . ”

    If one believes Mark Tooley, those who show “mature Christian discernment” apparently must support democracy, but oppose big government, and particularly redistribution of income. Now while I am leary myself of schemes to redistribute income, I do not make the assumption that my own political position is the only Christian one. I believe that God calls us to care for the poor and unfortunate; he has not told us in scripture the precise method to use.

    And please tell me just where it is that the Bible supports democracy. I have heard this over and over, yet I don’t see any case where democracy in any form recognizably similar to modern democracy, was practiced or advocated. Might it be the best way to run a country in which one may live as a Christian? I would imagine so. I like it myself. But the Bible doesn’t make that the one and only Christian option.

     

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  • Minutemen – Follow the Oil Tour

    Get your own signed copy of Nick May’s new book Minutemen during his “Follow the Oil” tour.

     

  • O’Reilly vs Dawkins and Mocking God

    The video below is a short exchange between Richard Dawkins and Bill O’Reilly. I’ve come to expect nonsense from O’Reilly, and I have a fairly low opinion of what Dawkins writes regarding theology, while considering his science writing second to none.

    Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

    What caught my attention here was the accusation that Dawkins is mocking God. More and more, I see this accusation used against anyone who doesn’t accept someone’s religious beliefs and has the audacity to challenge them. I’ve expressed a certain disdain for what Dawkins writes about theology, but I believe he has the right to say that.

    Is what he says “mocking God”? Well, he’s an atheist. He doesn’t believe in God. What exactly do you expect him to say?

    Thus I can be regarded as blaspheming Islam because I don’t believe that Mohammed was a prophet. In turn, a Christian might think a Muslim was blaspheming Jesus because he doesn’t believe Jesus is divine. If you believe something isn’t true, well, you believe it isn’t true!

    Dawkins is bound to think the core story of Christianity is myth (understood in the derogatory sense), because he doesn’t believe it’s true, either as history, or as a good, effective myth (seen in the more positive sense). I may disagree. I may dislike what he has to say. I may even think his language is intemperate from time to time, but that fact still remains.

    But expressing it in a children’s book? Again, I have the right to produce a children’s book based on my theological beliefs, entwining them in the story. Is this not also acceptable when done by someone else with different beliefs?

    Just because faith is involved shouldn’t mean that it’s unacceptable for each person to express their point of view, and defend it, even vigorously.

  • Battle over Inspiration or Interpretation

    There’s an interesting article by Mark Galli on the Christianity Today web site, titled A New Bible Battle. Galli refers to the “old” battle, and Lindsell’s book. That battle was over inerrancy. But this new battle has to do with reading the Bible in what Galli calls “sub-biblical” ways, for example, as a self-help manual.

    In my book When People Speak for God, I emphasized the importance of including interpretation when we talk about the reliability of the Bible. My point there is that describing how reliable a measuring instrument is would be pointless if nobody could read the reliable results. Thus when people get such varied results from reading the Bible, what is the point of speaking, in isolation, of the Bible’s reliability?

    Of course those who speak in this way normally do include the additional caveat, “interpreted correctly.” But too often that caveat is simply dropped in, and the methods of interpretation don’t, in fact, handle what the text actually contains. Figuring out what is a “sub-biblical” method of reading the Bible will take a robust idea of inspiration from the earliest oral tradition to the latest printed text.

    But getting us away from “self-help” readings is a good step or two in the right direction.

  • Discipleship Not About Numbers

    … so says Dan Dick. All I can say is I agree. Go read!

  • An Amazingly Bad Article on THE MESSAGE

    Well, not really so amazing. I’ve seen many like it, and it comes from the Worldview Weekend folks who have been spending their time being extraordinarily critical of other conservative Christian organizations.

    The article is titled BRIEF (AND BY NO MEANS EXHAUSTIVE) SUMMARY OF PASSAGES CONTAINED WITHIN “THE MESSAGE” BY EUGENE PETERSON WHICH DIRECTLY COMPROMISE FUNDAMENTAL TENETS OF ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY. Well, at least we know the headline wasn’t brief.

    I’m not going to run the article point by point. Rather, I’m interested in the general approach.

    One common way of comparing Bible versions is to take a set of one’s favorite proof texts and determine whether one can still support one’s favorite doctrines using the translation in question. I want to distinguish this from the quite legitimate comparison of renderings for their quality. Orthodox doctrine is not created on the basis of a few lines of scripture and doesn’t fall based on one or two mistranslations. If it did, it would already have fallen.

    I can’t find any translations on my shelves, including my favorites, that don’t have one rendering or another that I’d prefer were different. In many cases, I can get quite passionate about how a particular rendering is bad, and my preferred rendering is good. I consider such discussions entirely appropriate.

    But in evaluating a translation, one needs to look at a number of things, including:

    1. The goals of the translation
    2. The method of translation employed
    3. A wide variety of texts, not just a few proof texts

    In this analysis all of these items are ignored. Yes, the author says he could find many more issues, and doubtless he could. I found quite a number in my own reading of The Message, and personally I don’t like it all that much. At the same time, I’ve also found some exceptional renderings that are well worth reading.

    More importantly, if a reader is using sound methods of biblical interpretation, one will still find orthodox doctrine in The Message. One may find certain texts don’t sound like what one expected in doctrinal terms, but in some cases, Peterson’s rendering is well justified.

    The approach taken by Justin Peters in the referenced article is simply a failure. While I would not recommend using The Message as your sole Bible for study (I really wouldn’t recommend making any English translation exclusive), it can be a valuable tool in improving understanding. It is especially useful for reading large portions of scripture for an overview and for its cultural translation of the text.

    Authors get their one idea of what a translation should be, and what information should be conveyed, and if they don’t find that, they think the translation is very bad. The fact is that all translations fail to convey part of the original, and do convey other parts. Which part is most important? Let the reader decide! This reader decides on variety.

     

  • Minutemen

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    (As of 10/2/11, B&N is offering
    Minutemen for $8.76, 32% off
    the cover price)

    Nick May is coming out with his second book, Minutemen. (His previous title is Megabelt from Energion Publications.)

    This book is not at all like Megabelt. It’s the story of four young men whose relationships haven’t worked out (or are deteriorating) and the decisions they make as things spiral out of control more and more. There’s no obvious solution to the ever increasing problems. But the one thing you can expect in this book is that unexpected–and positively weird–things will happen.

    Nick claims no moral to the story, but I can make several of them, and perhaps that’s the point of not having an intentional moral proposed (and made obvious) by the author–one can make up one’s own.

    This is coming from the brand new Eucatastrophe Press.