Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Christian Ministry

  • I Get Mail from UM Communications

    I’m yielding to temptation and including an “I get quoted” story, because I’d like to call attention to the article in question.

    Today when I went to Bible study at my church, First UMC of Pensacola, my pastor handed me a large envelope. Since I wasn’t expecting anything I was a bit surprised. Inside there were three copies of Interpreter magazine, again a surprise because I couldn’t think of any reason I’d get one.

    But then I found the article by Kathy Noble, “Lord, Save Us” (pp. 33-34), in which she quotes me about the movie. It’s very generous to send me three copies since I’m quoted, but I appreciate it very much. A few people in the study group said they hadn’t looked at their Interpreter yet, but would now.

    This movie will challenge the way we think and do ministry. You can find out more at Lord, Save Us (the movie), and/or join the discussion at Interpreter Magazine.

  • How Not to Make Your Point

    In his post next time, don’t invite the baptists, Bruce Alderman provides a link to a very unfortunate case in which a Lutheran pastor is put down by a local Baptist church because she is a woman.

    Let me note here that I am personally acquainted with Baptists who oppose women in pastoral ministry and are quite courteous. They have no problem recognizing what’s essential for interdenominational fellowship and what is not, nor do they have a problem conveying their views in a Christlike manner. So this isn’t about Baptists in general.

    Nonetheless, this particular church takes a different view. Go read it for yourself. I’m thinking this may not live up to Paul’s little suggestion:

    18 If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. – Romans 12:18 (NRSV)

    If they believe they cannot in good conscience be present at the installation, perhaps they should stay home quietly. I have to doubt the positive effect of rudeness.

  • Of Apportionments and Stewardship

    Bishop Willimon has a post about pastoral leadership and stewardship, with the particular aspect of stewardship being apportionments. I like the framing that goes on in our church, as apportionments are called “fair-share giving.” I know that sounds better, but I still call them apportionments.

    I think the general finding is unexceptional. Pastoral leadership has a large impact on how a church responds to apportionments. My question is just what it says about an organization that the pastors have that much of an impact. Apparently the members in the pews are often not all that dedicated to apportionments. One major reason could be that very few United Methodist members really understand how apportionments are assigned (though that knowledge might make the less happy), or how they are spent.

    I have yet to attend a United Methodist church that pays all of its apportionments. At the same time, the way in which the denomination spends the money that is sent up the line tends to make me want to go find an independent church. Unfortunately, I am also well aware of the potential problems of independent churches. For some reason, all churches and denominations consist of people, and thus all forms of organization have problems.

    My own answer is that as long as I’m a member of a United Methodist congregation I must support the payment of apportionments and continue my stewardship, including giving to the local church as the Lord leads. But if there comes a time when I choose to become a member of a church of another denomination, the use of money at the conference and denominational level will doubtless have something to do with it.

    What disturbs me here is to hear stewardship discussed specifically in the form of apportionments, and secondly to see how much Methodist churches change with pastoral assignments. The leadership pattern displayed in Bishop Willimon’s post is something I have observed (much less scientifically, of course) in other areas. I have also seen leadership changes do great damage to a church. I know of a church where the pastor went from pro-charismatic to not-so-much pro-charismatic, and then back to charismatic. With each change the church shed members and while it continues to struggle along, it is not thriving, and many pastors are not very anxious to be sent there.

    I wish I knew how to solve this, other than better pastor placement, and I must be honest when I say that I would do much, much, much worse than the bishop and cabinet in our conference. (Amongst a multitude of other things, this explains why I am neither bishop nor even pastor.) But I do believe this is something that should be of concern. It fits the “shepherd and sheep” model, but doesn’t sound much like the “body of Christ.”

  • Ben Witherington on Women in Ministry

    Ben Witherington is taking on Biblical arguments against women in ministry in an article titles Why Arguments against Women in Ministry Aren’t Biblical. (HT: Dr. Platypus.)

    I personally find his first and second arguments quite good, while I tend to be less convinced by his arguments regarding the specific texts. It seems to me that if, as he notes at the beginning of the argument, the New Testament is moving away from patriarchy, that is the overarching argument. Witherington says:

    … As I have argued at length, the patriarchal family was the existing reality in the NT world, and what you discover when you compare what is in the NT and what is outside the NT, is that Paul and others are working hard to change the existing structures in a more Christian direction….

    Thus I would regard his point #2 as the controlling factor in reading the texts cited in #3. The exegesis seems a bit too tortured for me, even when I want to agree with the conclusion. I’d prefer to say that these instructions were correct for the churches and the times to which they were addressed, and did mean that Paul did not permit women to teach at those places and times. I think Witherington’s argument in point #2 suggests that those commands do not apply universally, as the trajectory is toward more rather than less equality.

    I’m glad to see someone of Dr. Witherington’s stature address this issue. Too often those of us who are in churches that accept women in ministry as a matter of course don’t bother to even examine the Biblical arguments. As long as this is not discussed, we have no way to build unity with those of our brothers and sisters who disagree.

  • Lord Save Us From Your Followers – The Movie

    I think there are two major errors we can make as Christians: We can fail to have a message, and we can fail to be the message. If I follow the stereotypes I would say that liberals tend to fail in the first, and conservatives in the second. But I’m afraid we all tend to fail at both.

    Tom Sims posted this trailer on his blog The Dream Factory. I think the trailer, and hopefully the movie, should make us think, then make us do.

    The gospel will offend, but make sure it’s the gospel that is doing the offending and not your attitudes or prejudices.

  • Living Romans 12

    Alan Knox has reposted a series on how the church can live Romans 12:9-21 along with some current thoughts. He points out that Romans 1-11 are theological, but starting with Romans 12, Paul begins to speak about how the church can live out the theology of the first chapters.

    This all reminded me of one of my complaints about my biblical training, both undergraduate and graduate. While an undergraduate, I took Exegesis of Romans in Greek, a one quarter course designed to make sure that those of us with two years of Greek didn’t just stop there. It was wildly unsuccessful at that task, as the assignments that forced one to actually read Romans in Greek were minimal. But my greater complaint was that we didn’t follow a schedule and thus only got through Romans 8 in class.

    This did allow the very Arminian professor, also an advocate of the moral influence view of the atonement, to avoid some difficult passages in Romans 9-11, but it also meant that we stayed in the theological portions of the book.

    I was further disappointed when I took an exegesis class in Galatians in seminary. I was disappointed that it was done from the English text, but because of the graduate school/seminary agreement (I was in the grad school), I had to take on an extra assignment, and the professor agreed that I could simply do all of my work from the Greek text. (The value of two years of Greek after which one doesn’t actually study the New Testament from the Greek text largely escapes me.) But again I was disappointed, as we only completed through Galatians 4.

    Now I know that both professors would say that they were just trying to cover the text that they did cover in depth. I know this because I asked, and they did say that. But the risk here is that one gets an extremely skewed view of Paul–Paul the theologian, when he was really much more pastoral. His theology was the foundation for his practical teaching.

    I’m no expert on Paul. My primary study was in the Hebrew Scriptures and other ancient near eastern literature. But I am a firm advocate in all cases of studying whole pieces of literature and putting the appropriate weight on all portions. I can’t imagine Paul being happy when we read about salvation by faith and then miss Galatians 5:13 which tells us the results.

    How does your church and your life measure up to the practical, active portions of Paul’s epistles? What difference might it make in the way other people view Christians if we did so?

  • Church 7 Days a Week

    Kevin at Shooting the Breeze comments on a YouTube video.

  • Love Without Involvement

    I have, on occasion, been accused of being a “love preacher.” It’s not an accusation that frightens me, but it used to puzzle me. It doesn’t so much any more. There’s a difference between a casual “all you need is love” attitude and “love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34), especially considering that the latter is a command given by someone who went on to die immediately afterward.

    The problem is that we want “love” as a kind of general good feeling about people, a general desire to have nice things happen to them, but at the same time we don’t really want to get involved in the actual implementation. I think many of us want to help the homeless, but sincerely hope we can do so by giving some money to the soup kitchen, or voting for politicians who will implement policies to help them, but not getting our hands dirty in the process.

    There’s nothing wrong with giving money to the soup kitchen, or with trying to implement policies that help the homeless, nor with voting for politicians who will support such policies. The problem is that too often we call this “loving one another as Jesus loved us” and that’s not how Jesus did it.

    He starts in heaven, takes on a human body, lives with us, eats with us, sleeps with us, gets dirty with us, and finally dies on a cross, all the time being like us. If you take the incarnation seriously, that Jesus was God in the flesh, you have to also believe that Jesus could have done as many or more nice things for people around him whilst hanging out in heaven.

    But the Jesus kind of love doesn’t allow that. It gets dirty. It suffers. It cares in a personal way. Read Philippians 2:5-11.

    My friend Greg May is a contributor to our Energion.com Podcast, and I think he hit one out of the park with his podcast today–A Spiritual Tragedy. Please check it out!

  • Exceptional, Must-Read Article – Be Farmers, not Recruiters

    If you’ve been on a church nominating committee and experienced the task of persuading someone to take a job that just has to be filled, or if you’ve been on the other end of that phone call when you’re begged to take a job for which you know you are not gifted or called, or if you’ve wondered why these problems crop up, then you need to read an article I found today.

    Here’s a taste:

    Recruitment sucks! I used to think that recruitment was a strategy that only added ministry to the Kingdom and could never be a multiplying strategy. I have come to see that it is not even an addition strategy. Recruitment is actually a subtraction strategy. It doesn’t add anything to the kingdom. It simply takes from it. It is a strategy that uses the kingdom for its own good rather than contributing to the kingdom.

    When everyone is taking and no one is contributing, soon the pool sucks dry and we are all left with nothing. The vast majority of churches are sucking up what little resources are left in the kingdom and contributing nothing back. The results are that we are in a drought. Our pool is shrinking daily, and in the end all we have left to us is the muck at the bottom of the pond.

    This explains why so many churches are dying of thirst. Quality diminishes. Needs are left unfilled. Our thirst for more resources increases. Our churches are left weakened.

    There is a solution, however. There is an oasis available to all our churches with enough resources for everyone. We can learn this solution by a quick analysis of how leaders are found in the Book of Acts.

    It’s at SmallGroups.com. Read it! Practice it!

  • Yes! Spend Less on Buildings

    … or use them more effectively.

    From The Assembling of the Church:

    … Instead, the church decided that they wanted to spend more money serving people and less money of a meeting place.

    Go read Alan’s post for the full context. Messiah Baptist Church is to be congratulated, and hopefully their example will be followed elsewhere.

    There are two approaches to buildings that would be better than what happens most often. First is to get lower cost buildings, and the second is to make more efficient use of buildings in service. A dedicated church sanctuary, used for nothing else, doesn’t strike me as a good use of God’s money.

    Buildings filled with Sunday School classrooms that are used only on Sunday doesn’t strike me as a good use of God’s money. Surely something better can be done.

    (HT: Dave Black Online.)