Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • A Note on Revelation, Christology, and the Prologue to Hebrews

    Yeah, this will be a short one. Really!

    [ncs_ad pid=’0664239013′ float=’right’ adtype=’aer.io’]As I’m reading through another commentary on Hebrews (Luke Timothy Johnson, Hebrews, New Testament Library), I can’t help but write a few notes. One might get the idea from a couple of my recent posts that I find a great deal to argue with in this commentary. Actually, it’s one of the best I’ve found. Johnson is both clear in his exegetical notes and challenging in his theological reflections. Of recent commentaries I find David Allen (Hebrews: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition, New American Commentary) more helpful on exegetical details, with his great summaries of the various positions and evidence for them, but I am finding Johnson more helpful thematically.

    The prologue to Hebrews is critical. Unlike many of the Pauline epistles (though I don’t exclude Pauline authorship), this isn’t the introduction to a letter. Rather, it’s a launching pad for the theological discussion. In the train analogy I used yesterday, it’s a large signpost telling you what train you’re supposed to get on and why. I would add a quick note that the structure clearly makes Hebrews 1:1-4 a unit, not Hebrews 1:1-3. The argument is picked up with the first supporting scripture in verse 5.

    [ncs_ad pid=’0805401350′ float=’right’ adtype=’aer.io’]It’s important in any book of the Bible, but especially in Hebrews, to look at how a thought is carried forward and concluded before determining for certain the meaning of a specific proposition. One claim regarding Hebrews is that it teaches supersessionism, a claim I find more often in superficial studies of the book than in serious commentaries.

    There’s a good reason for this. In reading the prologue quickly, you might get the idea that the argument is that Jesus is good, and the partial, earlier revelation is bad. As you read through the book you can find passages such as Hebrews 8:13 you have explicit statements that have led some to such a conclusion. But in 8:13, the author is referencing a specific passage of Hebrew scripture and founding his argument in the thing that is made “old.”

    The image that comes to my mind is of a house being built. In working on some software for a home designer, I toured a building site. There we saw the frame of a house. It was not finished. I could see where the nails, braces, tie-down straps, and so forth were. Later, siding would be added and many other elements that would finish the house. The old, the framework, would be put out of site, but not eliminated. It wasn’t that the framework was bad. In fact, our whole purpose was to make sure the framework was good, and ready for hurricane force winds. But to live in the house, to consider the house complete, more was needed.

    Look at 8:13:

    ἐν τῷ λέγειν καινὴν πεπαλαίωκεν τὴν πρώτην· τὸ δὲ παλαιούμενον καὶ γηράσκον ἐγγὺς ἀφανισμοῦ

    (Nestle, E., Nestle, E., Aland, B., Aland, K., Karavidopoulos, J., Martini, C. M., & Metzger, B. M. (1993). The Greek New Testament (27th ed., Heb 8:13). Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft. Accessed from Logos Bible Software.)

    In saying “new” he makes the first old. That which is being declared old and is aging is close to disappearing.

    Yes, the old is being declared (or made, but I prefer “declared”) to be what it is. It’s going to disappear. But the author’s argument here is built on precisely that “old” revelation. We’re about to finish out that house, put on the frame and the trimmings and call it complete. The revelation of God in Jesus Christ truly brings God and man together, a theme that we’ll revisit in discussion the priesthood and why Jesus is considered the great high priest.

    So while in the prologue the author argues that Jesus is much superior to that which occurred at many times and in various ways, as he proceeds he builds his argument on the scattered revelation which is being “superseded.” Those older revelations still have their value, but for the Christian, all is seen through the ultimate revelation in the person of Jesus Christ. God has spoken to us through “a son,” which, absent the definite article in Greek emphasizes the nature. Through the prophets, but through a son. I tell my Sunday School classes that this involves putting on our “Jesus-colored glasses.”

    While individual statements may seem to support an idea of supersession, the fact that the author builds his argument, an argument made after the resurrection, on those same supposedly superseded passages means that we need to look closer. He is telling us to change our focus, to look at the greatest revelation and to see other revelation through it.

  • Biblical Culture Shock?

    Biblical Culture Shock?

    From OpenClipart.org
    From OpenClipart.org

    Before I went overseas with my parents at 14 years of age we were all required to be briefed about culture shock. Sometimes people have very negative reactions to encountering cultures different than their own. We saw this happen with people who went to Guyana (where I was for three years and my parents for seven), who would come to really despise everything Guyanese. It was hard for me to comprehend, because the Guyanese people, while they did things differently than Americans, were not really all that shocking. You adjusted slightly to the local norms, and life went on.

    We saw this happen with people who went to Guyana (where I was for three years and my parents for seven), who would come to really despise everything Guyanese. It was hard for me to comprehend, because the Guyanese people, while they did things differently than Americans, were not really all that shocking. You adjusted slightly to the local norms, and life went on. My parents were accused of letting me go too “native,” whatever that meant.

    Since then I’ve seen this happen to people experiencing different regions of the United States. It doesn’t take huge differences to cause some shock. It really doesn’t have as much to do with the amount of difference, but rather with how one reacts to the differences. To live with those differences you don’t actually have to change your values or your personality. You just have to recognize who the other person is. You can even disapprove, if you keep it in bounds, and especially if you recognize that the person from another culture has every bit the right to their cultural norms as you have to yours. If you’re visiting, they have more!

    Sometimes visiting the worlds of Bible writers can result in culture shock. The cultures of biblical writers were quite different from ours, more different than anything we’d likely experience in traveling in the modern world. I would suggest that the goal must be not to get so shocked by the differences in culture that we fail to hear the people behind these events.

    In fact, I find that frequently our tendency to stand in judgment on the characters in stories and even the authors often diminishes our ability to truly experience the value of the story itself. And even many didactic passages are, in essence, story.

    Since I’m talking so much about Hebrews, let me apply this to that book. I’ve been searching for metaphors to express two things: 1) The overall message and 2) The role of sacrifice in the book. Here are some ideas. I’ll refine them as I go.

    For the overall message, I’ve been using the train. I recall in my first visit to Germany I was met at the Frankfort airport by my translator, who was about 20 years old and one of the few people I’ve encountered who walk faster than I do on a regular basis. We had to catch a train, and to do so we crossed numerous tracks, passed numerous trains, and finally jumped on one at the last minute, just before it started to roll.

    My German is good enough to read signs and follow directions, but I couldn’t keep up. By the time we got on the train I was thoroughly lost and couldn’t have told you the destination. I was completely dependent on my translator. After we left the station, for a disturbing moment, she thought she had gotten on the wrong train, but then she determined we were head to the right place and we settled down.

    I think I could translate much of the message of Hebrews into a train metaphor. It’s all about getting on the right train and staying on there until it reaches the destination. You have doubts, perhaps, along the way, but you double check (as the author of Hebrews is doing) and you realize you’re still headed in the right direction. There’s nothing more to be done. Just stay on the train. It will take you where you’re going.

    I’ll apply this metaphor in a number of texts, though I will note that there are rough edges. Still, I’m finding it more helpful than not.

    Second is the metaphor of sacrifice, particularly animal sacrifice. I have discussed atonement and the death of Jesus elsewhere and will doubtless do so many times more. Here I’m referring only to animal sacrifice as part of a general cultic experience. This is something that modern minds find difficult to embrace, or even to observe from a distance. What can all those slaughtered lambs, goats, rams, and bulls have to do with a positive experience?

    There are two directions in which I think we fail in relating to sacrifice in scripture. The first is to reduce sacrifice to blood atonement for sin. There are sin offerings, and sacrifices did relate to sin, but blood atonement for sin was not the exclusive view. To see sacrifice as just about blood atonement is just as much a misunderstanding as to dismiss it entirely, which is the second direction in which we often fail.

    My metaphor here is community, specifically mutual support and communication in community. The cultic system involves the divine in the activities of the community and the sacrifices relate to the various aspect of this set of relationships. Atonement (and I’ll discuss various words at some later time) doesn’t just involve dealing with specific sinful acts, but rather with a restoration of those relationships and those communications.

    We tend to separate prayer and hearing God speak from the activities of the cult. Prophet and priest have different roles, never to meet. But the priest also had a role in communication and the cult supported community.

    I think that without this fuller aspect of sacrifice we are likely to misunderstand Jesus as the perfect sacrifice. He is not just a bigger, stronger, better blood sacrifice for sin. He is the only one who can by nature perfect the lines of communication between God and humanity.

    Much more on that later as well!

  • The Bible Was Not Written to You

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    I’ve discussed this before, and discussed it both in my books When People Speak for God and Not Ashamed of the Gospel: Confessions of a Liberal Charismatic. I was asked after my Sunday School lesson last Sunday whether Zephaniah’s prophecy in 3:1-8 applied to America.

    Let me annoy everyone: No and Yes.

    There is pretty much nothing in the Bible that’s addressed to you. One could argue such passages as John 3:16, which are talk about the world in a way that probably encompasses all time. But in general, the words of the Bible are addressed to specific people at specific times. They are also spoken by specific people, but that’s a bit beyond this post.

    I start this with the Ten Commandments. They were not written to you. We often treat them as the most universally applicable part of scripture there is, though we don’t actually keep them as Christians. As someone who grew up Seventh-day Adventist, I’m unusually aware of the Sabbath command. We Christians don’t even start to keep it, yet we pretend the Ten Commandments are central.

    And we’re right not to keep them literally and specifically because we can read right at the start that they were addressed to a particular group of people at a particular time, and that group was not us, nor was that time now.

    Nonetheless, if we consider the Bible in some sense inspired, we will see divine principles going into action in the life of the people of Israel. Those divine principles will be relevant, and will likely make those Ten Commandments applicable again—in principle. It’s interesting that while we claim to keep the Ten Commandments, and fail to do so literally, we also seem to miss out on the principles, such as not portraying God with any images. There’s an important principle behind that command, yet we create both mental and physical images of God that are both limiting and indestructible. God, for us, is in a box.

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    And that fourth commandment isn’t irrelevant. Time belongs to God because he’s the creator. In my view, God doesn’t claim less time, but rather more. How do we honor God with our time and recognize him as creator with each minute?

    But further, the Bible was not written to people with our philosophical and scientific views. Our options for how to think about things have changed. So if we’re going to find the principles, we’re going to have to see through the cosmology and the metaphors and translate them to our time and place.

    Why couldn’t God speak directly to us and make it clearer in our terms? I would suggest several things: 1) God does speak to us today if we’ll listen, 2) It’s important to realize that God has spoken at many times and in many ways (Heb. 1:1), 3) It’s important to become part of the faith community over time as well as across space and culture, 4) The search for God may well be more valuable than finding God.

    I think that if we truly treated the Bible as the treasure it is, as the combined experience of a community of faith over time, it would help us understand how to be God’s community today. Understanding metaphors that are foreign to each of us personally can help us bridge the gaps that must be bridged every day in order to live as God’s people doing God’s work in God’s world.

    God has spoken. God is speaking. God will speak some more.

    Are we truly listening?

    Note also: I’m Right and You’re Wrong: Why we disagree about the Bible and what to do about it by Steve Kindle.

  • Blaming and Sympathizing with Groups

    Blaming and Sympathizing with Groups

    Peace dove
    From OpenClipart.org

    I didn’t want to comment on the murder of 49 people in Orlando, not because I don’t sympathize with the victims or condemn the killing, but because I dislike getting tangled up in politics on this blog.

    If a Christian commits an illegal act, we often separate him (or her) from “our” Christianity, or even claim that the perpetrator was not a Christian at all. From local history here in the Pensacola area, I recall Paul Hill who committed murder here at the entrance to an abortion clinic. Paul Hill was an ordained (and later defrocked) pastor. He built his view on principles that were held by a large number of Christians. Yet when he went so far as to take two lives because of those views there were those who said he wasn’t really a Christian.

    That’s a claim of convenience. It keeps us clean. It prevents us from having to examine ourselves, and that is very unfortunate, even dangerous.

    On the other hand, we have the problem of someone looking at Paul Hill and saying, “See! That is what Christians do! Paul Hill was a Christian and he was also a murderer. So also all Christians!” That is an equally dangerous view. A faith tradition as broad and varied as our own is bound to have some people who go off the rails. If some Christians are opposed to abortion as murder, someone is bound to decide to become a vigilante and “fix” the problem. This isn’t an argument against the view that abortion is murder. Rather, it tells us that human beings will carry things too far, or perhaps jump the rails to something completely different.

    In fact, we can have similar results in society as a whole. I am always concerned when legislation is proposed and passed in the heat of emotions following an event. Rarely, I believe, is such legislation the best choice. We are capable of passing immoral laws because we are outraged by evil. Evil can generate more evil.

    Neither blaming the entire group of which a person is a part, nor excluding that person from your own group will help. A person who, up to yesterday, you would have called part of your own religious (or other social) group has now committed a crime does not become something else when he commits a crime. He was something else while living among you. The terrorist, murderer, or child molester of tomorrow may be sitting down the pew from you in church. There are evil people out there and there are triggers waiting to start them on doing evil deeds.

    The same is true of other faiths and social groups. There are Muslims who are appalled by acts of terror. There are Muslims who are evil. Just as we would wish to have the evildoer separated from our faith, and don’t like the idea of “Christian terrorist,” so Muslims would like to have terrorists separated from their faith. We don’t want to have all Christians blamed for the Paul Hills of the world. Muslims don’t want to all be blamed for the actions of one man in Orlando.

    This is not a matter of numbers. Some will point out to me that there are more Muslims espousing terror and violence by far than Christians. I’m not going to argue the statistics. I recently spoke at an interfaith event along with a number of other people, including a Muslim Imam. He’s a fine person and an advocate of peace. He doesn’t cease to be those things because others commit acts of terror. He is who he is, and so are millions of others.

    We need to grant them the courtesy we want people to grant us. We are each who we are apart from what other people who may claim the same label(s) does. Where attitudes of our group contribute, we need to fight that. In my experience, peace advocates tend to fight just such attitudes.

    And then there are the victims. It was interesting watching who mentioned what. The victims were from the LGBT community, gathered at a place where one would expect to find them. It appears that the perpetrator of this act of terror hated and despised gay people. This is also a fact and needs to be mentioned. LGBT people are targetted these days for who they are. It’s monstrously wrong to do so and we need to be aware that it is happening and conscious of what makes that happen. Think: What is it in my language or behavior that might make someone else think a gay person is less of a person than I am? Then don’t do or say that.

    We need to sympathize with those who are injured, and in doing so, we need to be willing to name them and to name the reasons they were targetted. We need to condemn evil, and at the same time give the same courtesy we would expect to the innocent.

    About a year after 9/11 I was traveling and rode in a taxi with a driver who was a Sikh. I made bold and asked him whether he had been threatened following the attacks because of his appearance. I recognized him as Sikh, but he might easily have been misidentified as a Muslim (some Sikhs were). He told me that for several months he could not wear his turban because of the threats. It was unfortunate that a man with no connection to Islam, much less the terrorists, was treated in this way.

    But it is equally unfortunate that Muslims with no connection to the terrorists are treated in that way because of hate for their group. We make every effort to be separated from evil acts by those who call themselves Christians. We should be equally sympathetic to those in other religious groups who are trying to do the same thing. It’s easier to blame the group. It’s more productive to be precise and accurate.

    Not to mention more Christ-like.

     

  • Modern Barriers to Understanding Hebrews

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    Despite my somewhat snippy comments in my last post, I found reading Luke Timothy Johnson’s introduction to Hebrews in his volume in the New Testament Library (pictured at left) quite helpful. In particular, he looks at reasons why modern people may have a hard time reading and understanding this book. Along the way, it becomes clear that some of the same points may have made it difficult for people in past centuries as well! One of his points is one I frequently emphasize: our lack of understanding of sacrifice in the ancient world and particularly in Israel.

    But to take his points in order:

    1. It challenges the value of the historical-critical method. I would note both that this is true also of many other books, especially in the Hebrews scriptures. Historical methodologies need to be practiced with a certain humility and willingness to admit ignorance. On the other hand, if we are going to view a piece of literature as having an historical setting, we must look for the setting to whatever extent we can determine it. Which, in fact, Johnson proceeds to do. I prefer “historical-critical methodologies” (emphasizing the plural), because while I think that the critical approaches have opened up some avenues, they do not stand alone, the do not stand or fall as a body, and one can derive value from them even while doubting the basis on which some were created.
    2. We have no understanding of sacrifice (as noted above). I have two notes, even though I agree. First, this is not just a problem for understanding Hebrews, but also for understanding the entire New Testament. A failure to understand the sacrificial system will result in a superficial understanding of New Testament allusions to it, at best. Hebrews is just a concentrated example of the problem. Second, however, I think many who would claim to understand sacrifice narrow it by looking back from the New Testament to the Old. They see sacrifice as being purely about atonement and thus fail to see the broad spectrum of theology that underlies the various sacrifices. Just last night I was reading Numbers 28 & 29 and was struck again by the variety of sacrifices. The original readers of Hebrews, I suspect, had a view of sacrifice that couldn’t be covered in a paragraph or so.
    3. It “… challenges our construction of the world, our image of Jesus, and our understanding of discipleship …” I’m afraid I had to do some chopping to get a short quote, but I also believe I’m faithful to Dr. Johnson’s intent in that paragraph. This is also a good point. Hebrews is very theological, but at the same time as it challenges our view of Jesus and salvation, it also calls to action and does so in a very severe way. My own impression is that we have misread this a bit, but nothing I see diminishes the level of the call. Along with the call is also a message of grace, that the means of answering the call is now available.

    My own theological has been formed as I started with Ezekiel, moved back from there into Leviticus and the Torah in general, and forward to Ezekiel. I frequently see the author of Hebrews bringing in big ideas by alluding to passages with which his audience would be familiar. Unfortunately, we are not.

    So I would add a fourth point: Our serious lack of knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures, and particularly Torah, means that we have a hard time understanding Hebrews. We don’t have the right questions, so we don’t recognize when the answers appear before us!

  • Hebrews and the Problem of Writing Introductions

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    I’m reading through Luke Timothy Johnson’s commentary in the New Testament Library and have just completed the introduction. I have a couple of thoughts today, not least of which is to note the problem with writing introductions.

    For a reader to truly follow an introduction, it would best come after the commentary and some serious time reading the book, but (catch-22), the commentary is best understood in light of the introduction. For me this has often involved reading the introduction, then the commentary, and then reading the introduction again as a sort of conclusion.

    But often the introductory material is still quite illusive, if not illusory, and the author is left to construct the sort of fantasy realm in which the study will take place. This isn’t a particular criticism of Johnson, who is an excellent writer and makes some quite profound points about Hebrews and Bible study in general in the course of his introduction. His arguments on the dating of the book (45-68 CE) are interesting but not conclusive and he admits as much.

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    On authorship he expresses the strong conviction that it is right that modern scholarship has abandoned the idea of Pauline authorship of the book. He gives us notice that this is coming a couple of times earlier in the introduction. And he provides a quite good set of reasons for why he believes this to be the case, though I cannot read references to Origen and “God only knows” with the same confidence after seeing Dave Black’s discussion of it in The Authorship of Hebrews (full disclosure: I’m the publisher).

    Then he begins to make his case for his own candidate as author, Apollos. Here he provides affirmation of my rule of biblical introduction: Authors are much better at critiquing the proposals of others than they are at establishing their own. I can’t quite say that there is no evidence whatsoever to support Apollos as author, but someone proposing Apollos should restrain himself from critiquing too vigorously the proposal of Priscilla as author (Johnson lays into it, admittedly with quite good arguments).

    The line I like regarding Priscilla is: “… the fact that everything supporting her candidacy would apply equally to her male partner, Aquila.” Just so. And further, pretty much every argument advanced in favor of Apollos would apply to any Greek speaking Jew who met Paul at some point. Some may object that Apollos was considered a good orator, and there is the elevated language of Hebrews, but if such an argument were advanced about a modern book (the book is well written, and so-and-so is a good writer), it would be laughable.

    I can, of course, leave the laughing to others more qualified than I, and there are plenty who will take up the cause. The fact is, that if you abandon Paul, you pretty much need to abandon naming the author. There is so little known about the candidates. Other than Luke, we lack any written material from them which can be used to compare to the text of Hebrews, and their biographies are so short that one can make up whatever story one wants.

    But such is the hardship of writing an introduction. How many paragraphs does it take to say “I don’t know”?

  • In Defense of the Ordinary

    In Defense of the Ordinary

    In preparing for my Sunday School lesson tomorrow I read some very high sounding words about settling for less: pleasure rather than joy, vengeance rather than justice, sentiment rather than beauty, and so forth. The source was N. T. Wright, quoted in the introduction to the  Cokesbury Adult Bible Studies Uniform Series for the Summer of 2016.

    The idea is not bad. But it is an idea that is easily corruptible. A pursuit of right-doing is a good thing until it becomes perfectionism, judgmentalism, self-righteousness, disdain, or any of a number of other ways in which doing good can become obnoxious and destructive. A love of learning is wonderful as long as it drives one to learn more and make use of that learning. When it leads to a superior attitude or an inability to hear the wisdom that may come from one less learned, it’s not so great. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but so is ugliness, at least when “ugly” is defined as “not living up to my personal standards of beauty.”

    We often express shock at the disciples, who constantly asked who was greatest in the kingdom. Why didn’t they get it? But we do very much the same thing. Constantly. A pursuit of excellence can become a pursuit of “more-excellent-than-ness” and can also result in a narrowing of vision.

    Any work is a vocation
    From OpenClipart.org.

    I was talking to my mother at the end of May, just after she turned 98. She mentioned to me the “sacred four” professions. We had a song in Sabbath School (this was the Seventh-day Adventist Church), and it went, using my name, “Henry can be a missionary doctor, a missionary doctor, a missionary doctor….” Or it could be teacher, nurse (for the girls, of course), and minister (meaning pastor/evangelist, for the boys). Those were the “great” vocations to pursue.

    My mother said she added farmer, janitor, housewife, and so forth. I remember her doing that. She’ bring in tools for each trade, and we’d have a hoe or rake for the missionary farmer, broom for janitor, etc. These were considered ordinary professions, but could be vocations as well. Why talk to your child about being a farmer or a building custodian, or perhaps a garbage collector? Because each of those things is an important vocation, as are many, many more. The real question is whether the person doing them will do them to the best of their ability and be a witness while doing so.

    And that is the question for the “important” professions as well. A seminary professor can be a missionary, but so can every other person out there.

    But we want a comparison scale.

    Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not against pursuing excellence. That’s a good thing. What I’m against is creating these hierarchies as to who and what is the more important thing. Does your pursuit of your concept of beauty mean that you can’t appreciate something simple? Does your pursuit of better theology mean you can’t listen with appreciation to a Sunday School class taught by someone who worked in the fields all week? Does your desire to hear the perfectly-formed, homiletically brilliant sermon mean that you can’t listen to a speaker who wasn’t trained in those things but has a real-life walk with God to testify to?

    I would suggest that a healthy pursuit of excellence leaves one appreciating excellence wherever it is found, not just in one’s little corner. A pursuit of beauty leaves one appreciating beauty in a wide range of places, seeing more beauty than others because one has beauty in one’s eye.

    I like the sentiments from N. T. Wright I noted at the beginning. We do lose when we accept vengeance in place of justice. We need to pursue justice. We need to pursue those great things. But we also need to recognize greatness everywhere. The clerk who rings up your groceries and does it well is absolutely a great person.

     

     

  • Let the Children Interrupt

    Let the Children Interrupt

    Children under a tree
    From OpenClipart.org

    This past Sunday the lesson was from Luke 18:15-17, Jesus blessing the children. Saturday evening, as I was thinking about this, a local church was promoting their variety of children’s programs and how that showed their care for the children. I know it’s probably unkind of me, but I was not impressed.

    Yes, having children’s programs is better than ignoring the children. Having something for the children to do while their parents carry out the activities of the older folks is better than doing nothing. When we were overseas, my mother was often asked to donate to church building projects. She would always ask to see the plans. Frequently those plans would involve a church sanctuary and no educational rooms at all. She’d ask where was the space for the children’s programs, and was told they could meet under the trees until the church had the money to build their facilities. She’d suggest instead that the adults meet under the trees and that the space be given to the children.

    Yes, it’s good to provide for the children. But the interesting thing that Jesus did is this: He let the children interrupt the activities of the adults. He didn’t appoint a “children’s apostle” or create a children’s “blessing room” where appropriately gifted leaders could work with the children. No! He invited them to where he was, right to the center.

    I think we are too concerned with having our busy routine interrupted. Perhaps if we let the children get involved some of the super-sacred elements of the order of service might be skipped. Perhaps some of the adults would have to listen to something simple and repetitive.

    Those with special gifts for teaching and for connecting with children and young people are to be treasured and  their talents used in ministry. But children need to spend time with the adults as they learn, and not always be separated out into age segregated groups where six-year-olds learn from six-year-olds and teens learn from teens. Church should be a place where they can practice and learn. I’m in favor of having children and teens give testimonies, speak, and even present the message. Where better to learn than in their own community? Of course, all these activities should be done with the help of people of experience who can mentor and guide without controlling and suffocating.

    I was visiting a small house church overseas and was asked to present a children’s story and also the message for the adults. I hadn’t tried a children’s story in many years. But I gave it a try. For the adults message I had carefully taken a passage and prepared an expository message. It was really pretty good since I say so myself! [Yeah, right.] I was uncomfortable with the children’s story. After I had presented both, and was chatting with my translator immediately after our time together, I noticed the head elder copying my illustration from the blackboard (yes, the old-fashioned slate kind). Then he asked me a few questions through the translator, all about the children’s message.

    The children’s story had caught his attention and had met a need in the church. It was clear from our conversation that he was fine with my expository preaching. It just hadn’t connected. The children’s message had.

    Is it possible there isn’t such a difference between our needs as older members and those of the children and young people in our churches?

  • Quote of the Day

    Messages are only as useful as the audience they reach … — Joshua Darr, FiveThirtyEight.com

    Just so! And even though that comes from a post about politics, I’m not thinking politics here.

  • Pastor Searches and Job Interviews

    Pastor Searches and Job Interviews

    Church politics is necessary. Even those who most avoid it live with it. What we must work toward is a way of making decisions in the church that isn’t just a pale reflection of the way things are done in the world.

    One of the ways we create a pale reflection is by doing what the world does, only doing it less effectively. Growing up, I was informed regularly that the church functioned democratically. I could see, however, that it was much more of an oligarchy. Why? Because while the church wanted to carry out activities by vote, they didn’t want the discussion and potential acrimony that went with it. For a church such as the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which I grew up in, or the United Methodist Church, of which I am a part now, this “peaceful” approach, in which members vote for what the leaders have decided, generally breaks down as you move up the chain. In that breakdown, local church members see a great divide between what they would have wanted and what their church is doing.

    ThriveThe form of democracy, without a lively dialogue and exchange of ideas on issues, doesn’t really function much like democracy. There are doubtless many reasons why we might not want actual democracy in the church, though the priesthood of all believers does tend to imply that more people have influence.

    Thom Rainer, in a post titled FIVE QUESTIONS PROSPECTIVE PASTORS RARELY ASK SEARCH COMMITTEES (BUT SHOULD), perhaps unintentionally highlights this problem with a pastor search. A pastor search is like a job search, only with  spiritual veneer. So we sometimes avoid talking about the things that we really should be interested in and pretend the situation is other than it really is. (I should note that businesses are also very much subject to doing the job badly, though usually for different reasons than the church.)

    In her book Thrive: Spiritual Habits of Transforming Congregations, Ruth Fletcher discusses discernment frequently. She says,

    In transforming congregations, leadership teams meet frequently to talk about what the Spirit seems to be doing in the congregation and to notice where the Spirit seems to be guiding the church to go. They keep their own sand moist by engaging daily in the spiritual habit of prayer, and practice the spiritual habit of discernment in their personal lives. They discipline themselves to open their minds to new understandings, to open their hearts to the plight of their neighbors, and to open their wills by setting aside their own agenda in order to seek God’s new creation. (p. 119)

    Provided the church congregation believes it should have a paid pastor at all, this would seem like a good approach. Talk about what the Spirit is doing. Engage in the “spiritual habit of prayer” and the “spiritual habit of discernment.” Set aside “their own agenda.”

    What would it look like in a church if the process of filling roles or offices in the church was a process jointly of congregational leaders and candidates setting aside their own agenda and discerning what the Spirit is saying to their church?