Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Christian Ministry

  • Evangelicals and Evolution

    One response I get to my teaching and writing on creation and evolution goes something like this: “You’re just a liberal who’s trying to do away with the Bible, so it’s natural that you go along with the secularist society around you on evolution as well.” But that isn’t the case. For example my company (Energion Publications) publishes Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. who would best be described as an Old Earth Creationist. You can imagine that as I edited his books for publication, not to mention in our personal friendship and dialog that has gone on for a number of years longer, we have engaged in a few debates on this. But the fact that by almost any measure you choose, Elgin is more conservative than I am, in the area of creation and evolution, there is no difference in the way we would handle the Biblical materials.

    That’s my long way around to get at the point that creation vs evolution need not be a conservative/liberal issue in Christianity. I may be a liberal (though I prefer “passionate moderate”) but you can’t determine that by my stance on evolution.

    Steve Martin, an evangelical Christian, has a blog titled An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution. He left a comment on my previous post linking to a post on his blog Evangelicalism and Evolution: Why the Discussion Matters. I agree with the additional points that he makes there, and would like to call this to everyone’s attention.

    I had an experience with my pamphlet God the Creator that supports his point. A college student told me that he was talking to a fellow-student who was interested in Christianity, but whose scientific training convinced him that evolutionary theory was the best explanation for the diversification of life on earth. The Christians he talked to were telling him that he had to give up that belief in order to be a Christian. This young man had attended my seminar “God, Dinosaurs, and You” (I’m not responsible for that title), and told him otherwise. At the time he shared this with me, several more people were attending church simply because that barrier to faith had been removed.

    I would add also that as I believe the primary Christian witness is the individual Christian (and Christian congregation or community) through whom Christ is shown to others, a lack of individual integrity is critical to the gospel.

    OK, enough rambling. I’ve gotten in my commercial plugs. I don’t do that much all that often on this blog. Really! I’ll be adding Steve’s blog to the blogroll.

  • Could You Take Your Pastor?

    I recall an argument in my freshman year in college, in which a fellow-student who was much larger than I was decided to end the debate by saying, “I think I’ll just beat you up!” He could have too. I wouldn’t have stood a chance. So obviously he was right.

    Well, I’ve found a second thing today that I would like to say isn’t true, but there it is. Via Locusts and Honey and Ignite I found this article by [tag]Mark Driscoll[/tag]. Now I must confess Driscoll has been dropping lower on my favorite list after his comments on the ESV which I discussed here.

    But in the referenced post Driscoll discusses his love of mixed martial arts. Now I’m not going to attack people for the sports they watch. I’m a baseball fan myself, even more so than usual because my stepson John Webb is a pitcher (AAA this year though he has some big league time). I get illustrations for spiritual things from baseball. Sometimes I even get some from football. I don’t generally watch boxing. I’m probably not “manly” enough in Driscoll’s world.

    Then he concludes thus:

    Because I am a Christian pastor I now need to find something that connects all of this to being a Christian. So, I’ll just say that while young men are watching tough men compete, the reason they don’t go to most churches is because they could take the pastor and can’t respect a guy in a lemon-yellow sweater, sipping decaf and talking about his feelings.

    Well, let me suggest something just as blunt: If you determine whether someone is worth listening to based on whether you could take him in a fight, if you despise someone because they wear a lemon-yellow sweater, sip decaf, or talk about their feelings, then you need to seriously reexamine both your intellectual and your spiritual life.

    Soon!

  • GMC not Ford

    When I see a headline like The Search for the Heterosexual SUV, I go to the actual source hoping against hope that it will turn out to be in the Onion. Of course, since I know that the American Family Association has called for a boycott of Ford, I know I don’t have much hope.

    But I go read the source story anyhow, and there I see this:

    The ministry leader says Ford’s diversity policies meant his ministry could not purchase a Ford vehicle. “Ford lost out on a huge amount of money,” he points out. “And this was money that was raised by SBM’s ministry partners — and it is just very sad that Ford continues to promote this agenda.”

    Instead, Bennett’s ministry purchased a GMC SUV that will be used to crisscross the nation, transporting a ministry team of former homosexuals who will visit churches and give their testimony of freedom from homosexuality through Christ.

    This is followed by comments from dozens of people talking about how horribly they will hurt Ford’s business by going and buying GMs or Dodges. The interesting thing is that the Human Rights Campaign (HT to Ed as well for this link) rates GM, Daimler-Chrysler, and Ford all at 100% in their support of equality for gays and lesbians. I’m really hoping to see all these people refuse to buy any of these models of cars because the employers treat their employees fairly. This isn’t family values; this is a campaign against fairness and decency!

    Folks this is why “hate the sin but love the sinner” has such a bad reputation. The problem is that in most cases when someone says they hate the sin but love the sinner they actually hate (or at least despise) the sinner as well, and that is especially true in cases of sexual orientation. When one can’t even tolerate someone else treating a person fairly, then one needs to look more carefully at just how one truly feels.

  • Which Paradigm to Check

    David Lang has written an interesting post at Better Bibles dealing with the complementarian/egalitarian debate. Readers of this blog will realize that I’m not terribly moderate on this particular issue–I’m passionately egalitarian.

    David does make a good point about polarizing arguments, however:

    . . . In the process of trying to persuade those who disagree with us, we often become even more polarized in our views. We get so frustrated with the other person for not agreeing with us and so flustered by their arguments, that we begin to shore up our own arguments and press the text to say something more clearly or explicitly than it really does. This is especially true when we see the stakes as being high. . . .

    It’s quite true that overstating one’s case can both drive neutral parties away and alienate opponents so that dialog becomes much more difficult if not impossible. I would say on the other hand, speaking from personal experience, that one can be so careful not to overstate one’s position that it becomes unclear just what the position is.

    People will then congratulate you for being a peacemaker, but the problem continues. You can spend so much time framing a debate, that the debate itself gets lost.

    David’s comments are not without merit, however. And I will keep them in mind as I state things fairly forcefully. But perhaps I will restrain myself from time to time!

    But the key point to which I wanted to respond is this:

    As I’ve observed the gender role debate, I’ve seen this dynamic played out over and over again. There is a finite set of Biblical passages which the two camps must deal with. . . .

    It’s a simple statement and is perhaps not David’s main point, but it becomes my main point. Why? Because I do not believe that this debate is a matter of dealing with a finite set of Biblical passages. We are warned to check presuppositions, so the presupposition I want to check is this very one.

    To me, the issue is not a finite set of Biblical passages. I happen to believe, for example, that at least in some of his churches, Paul did not permit women to teach. I don’t think Paul would, in his context, have advocated ordination of women. The “finite set of passages” position seems to rest on the idea that the Bible is primarily a set of theological propositions, and if we can just straighten it out so that all of them say one thing, that is the theological answer.

    I would suggest instead looking for the principles on which the various individual judgments were based. To me particular counter-examples to male leadership, such as Deborah in the Old Testament and Junia in the New are that much more significant because of the fact that they occurred in overwhelmingly male dominated societies. That is an interesting factor, whether or not there are particular texts that speak against women in leadership or not.

    This leads me to believe that I don’t have to “deal with” all of these passages, at least in the sense of explaining that they really express an egalitarian ideal. What I’m looking for is what are truly the basic principles of the kingdom.

    When I have found those I try to apply them to living in a modern society. What worked in Paul’s churches may not work in today’s churches and vice-versa. What I must be careful to do is to make sure that my behavior today is based on the same principles.

    I take this a bit further, however. It is not merely Biblical passages that are involved, but also church traditions, and most importantly the present day guidance of the Holy Spirit. Now I don’t believe that the Holy Spirit will guide us into violating the principles that are expressed in scripture, but he certainly can guide us into seeing how those principles are to be applied in a modern context. All of this is accomplished using our reasoning powers–always under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or so we’d all like to assume.

    The paradigm that I would like to see shift is one that expects us to explain all of the texts one way or the other, and takes a look at the general trend of scripture–the trajectory, if you please–to see where God is leading us.

    I do believe passionately that God is leading us to more equality in ministry. I believe this because I see it happening in scripture–some of the time. I believe it because women have stepped up throughout church history. I believe it because I see genuine calls and gifting amongst women in areas the complementarians would reject. But most importantly, I see anything less than equality in the church as unworthy of the incarnation. The Word becoming flesh dwarfs these kinds of human barriers.

  • Complementarianism and Suppressing Women

    There have been numerous really wonderful articles on women in ministry lately, and I have been so busy both with my own writing and editing, proofing, and formatting my very unsuppressed wife’s new book on grief, that I have not been able to get involved.

    I’m going to point to a couple of posts on Dave Warnock’s blog, and add just a few short words of my own so that if any of my readers have been missing all this, they’ll have a place to start.

    I dove back into the issue with Dave’s most recent post on the issue, Responding to comment storm, in which he deals with the storm of comments that resulted from this post in which he mentions that his wife refused to make a certain person her friend on Facebook.

    My attention was caught especially by just a couple of lines:

    . . . It is not and cannot be up to you to judge whether your actions make women feel inferior. You cannot do that, I cannot do that, no man can do that. Only women can judge whether complementarianism and male headship does that to them, in that way the evidence is clear.

    I have also frequently heard the refrain that certain men’s wives and daughters and totally happy and nobody feels suppressed in their churches. I also do know women who are complementarians, and would say the same thing. But I find it interesting that this apparent happiness is to be denied to others. There are many reasons why a woman might not feel suppressed in a church where leadership is confined to males. She might not be called to leadership herself. She might truly believe complementarian doctrine and thus stay away from such positions out of obedience to God as she sees it. I do think there is a certain peace in obedience to what you truly believe is God’s will, even if you are wrong.

    But then there is the other side, reflected in Dave’s comment that I quoted. We truly can’t speak for others. We can’t know how our attitudes and our speech impacts other people. I recently was able to rejoice as a woman with whom I am acquainted was sent out to pastor a church. She had felt God’s call when she was 10 years old, I believe, but her grandfather told her that women could not be pastors and she should forget about it. She did, but then with her children grown the call came again, and now she has the peace and joy of obeying that call. What impact did that grandfather’s denial have on God’s kingdom?

    But I really want to share my own personal perspective. My wife and I attended a service at a much more conservative church than we normally attend. At that service, the minister expressed the complementarian view rather forcefully, and then offered communion. It was open communion. I was simply amused at the sermon. I thought it was theologically and Biblically naive, though presented by someone who has a PhD in Biblical studies. It wasn’t just the complementarianism but the related church structures that he improperly inferred from scripture. Basically, I saw it as a theological debate.

    My wife, however, felt differently. I could tell that she was hesitant and a bit withdrawn during communion. She told me afterward that she had questioned even taking communion, but had finally forced herself to do so. The man was still a Christian brother. But what was a theological debate to me was a personal affront to her. What’s more, she was right, and if I had been fully sensitive to her perspective, I would have heard it as an affront. It said, “You are not what you claim to be.” She is called to be a teacher. She is a teacher of exceptional skill. Denying that role is an affront. Complementarians don’t see it. They think it’s some kind of pride issue. But of course the only people who are to humble themselves are women.

    For my wife to “humble herself” under those circumstances, however, would be an affront to God, because she truly believes she is called by God. It’s not something she can just put aside and ignore because some bigoted church leaders say it isn’t so. There’s a prophetic action against injustice that is called for, a proclamation: “I am called of God.”

    Does she need to disrupt someone else’s service? No. It’s their church. She doesn’t need or want to do that. But she isn’t going back there, and she will be very clear in other circumstances as to what her call is and to the fact that she rejects any claim that denies it.

    But let me get more personal about myself. I also cannot claim to define how others will feel about what I say and how I act. I have been egalitarian since at least my college years. I support ordination of women in ministry. I believe my wife’s call is at least as important as my own, and quite possibly more so. (I have no standard of measure, so who knows?)

    But when my wife felt she was supposed to submit a resume for a job in another city, she took some time to bring the issue to me. Why? She felt that I would not consider the move because of my own work circumstances. What had I done to give her this impression? I’d made some negative comments about the job option involved, amongst other comments that seemed minor to me. And I would note that my wife is not particularly shy. That particular job didn’t happen, but I thank God for the opportunity it gave for me to speak positively and precisely about how I viewed her calling. I made assumptions about that, and I should not have done so. (Note that we married when we were both in our 40s. There hadn’t been a large amount of time for her to evaluate my response.)

    There’s a certain amount of man vs. woman stuff here. I tend to breeze by things about feelings; she doesn’t. But at the same time, none of us should assume that we can speak for someone else on what will seem oppressive and what will hurt. We need to give consideration to what they express themselves and make as certain as we can that they are free to make such expressions.

    Final note: Dave has a number of good links related to this issue here

  • Mainliners Stand Up!

    I use “mainliners” for lack of a better term. I’m a member of a United Methodist congregation, and it will probably shock many of my readers that it is, in United Methodist terms, a fairly conservative one. I’ll even be preaching one service there tomorrow.

    The problem I’ve found with mainliners is less that they don’t know what they believe, though they are often accused of that (sometimes justly), but that they sometimes have a hard time believing anyone else could believe something different. For example, in all of the United Methodist congregations of which I’ve been a member (three so far), and in fact generally all those I’ve visited as a teacher, there was a general acceptance of women as pastors. People would discuss the possibility of congregations having difficulty accepting a woman as pastor, but the overwhelming belief among the leadership was that those congregations would come along at some point, and no doubt at all that they should.

    Though there have been a wide variety of personal opinions about abortion and abortion rights, there is an overwhelming consensus against violence against abortion clinics and abortion providers and a certain discomfort with protesters holding up signs with mangled fetuses.

    While the views in the pew differ very often from more extreme views in Nashville (for non-Methodists, that is the center of Methodist boards and agencies), they also differ from fundamentalist churches and from far right politicians (and obviously far left).

    But there often seems to be very little action. We’re often willing to allow extremist viewpoints to dominate the representation of Christianity, and we don’t really want to stand up for who we are and why we believe that Christianity is not about the things that drives the American religious right. Now my point here is not that someone can’t be a Christian and hold right wing views on many topics. Rather I’m saying that those views don’t define Christianity, and it would me a good idea to let people know that there are Christians who differ. Nor should this be limited to political issues, but should reflect theological issues as well.

    I was reminded of this when I encountered PamBG’s blog. She is a Methodist pastor in the UK, and she wrote a post on sexism and the Methodist church, in which she said:

    We don’t take this theology seriously because we don’t hold it. However, ‘complimentarianism’ is held by many Christians in the United Kingdom including the growing ‘New Frontiers’ denomination. Complimentarianism is ‘preached’ by the Calvinist theologian John Piper who seems to be increasingly popular with many younger Christians in the UK as well as in the US.

    I think she’s right, and she’s right not just for British Methodism, but also for American Methodism. There’s a certain arrogance in failing to take seriously movements in other churches, but I suspect there’s more complacency. We’re used to being the second largest protestant denomination here in the U.S. (I don’t know what excuse our British brethren have, but hopefully it’s better than ours!). At the same time we’re in continuous decline. Some people think liberal religion will inevitably decline. Now I prefer to be called a passionate moderate, but I draw the “L” word often enough to at least embrace it with one arm. I’m really talking to everybody who’s to the left of the Southern Baptist Convention, however, moderates, liberals, mainliners, progressives, and any other set I may have missed.

    I don’t think liberal religious will inevitably decline, unless its own adherents fail to take it seriously. There are several ways to carry out this failure. One is to assume that one is the voice of the future and thus that everyone else will doubtless follow along as they evolve to new social heights. There is, however, no certainty of that.

    Another way is to assume that Christianity, as such, is of no great value. If the adherents don’t consider it valuable, it will inevitably decline.

    A third way is to ignore what everyone else is doing because we know where we’re going. But we don’t live in isolation. It’s quite possible that many of the nasty things we pride ourselves on not doing will become the norm while we’re not paying attention. That would be a tragedy, but with our current behavior, I think it would be one we richly deserve.

    Even if, especially if your positions differ from the noisy types, this is a good time to stand up and be counted.

  • Is Rudeness a Christian Value?

    The Minutemen United web site provides the following purpose:

    Minutemen United is a group of men and women dedicated to creating an environment where Christian thoughts, ideals and leaders can get traction in the marketplace of ideas. We hail from New York to California and are headquartered in Ohio ” the heart of it all”.

    But according to the Columbus Dispatch, their way of getting “traction in the marketplace” for their particular brand of “Christian” ideas is to be rude and to disrupt other folks’ church services.

    On one of the first Sundays, six people came to the church’s 11 a.m. service and addressed the congregation during a time designated for prayer requests and comments.

    Hurt said a man, who introduced himself as a minister from the New Beginnings Church in Warsaw, Ohio, started to give a sermon about how the church was acting against God’s word by accepting homosexuals.

    Members of Minutemen United also visited King Avenue United Methodist Church in Columbus that same morning, said the Rev. John Keeny.

    “They rebuked me as a pastor for preaching that God’s love is for everyone,” Keeny said.

    Interesting approach. I note that their is named “New Beginnings” and is thus neither First Baptist nor King Avenue United Methodist Church, a point they seem to have missed when deciding where to park their sermons.

    The churches would have every right to have the police throw these trespassers out. I congratulate both congregations for displaying a more Christ-like attitude than I likely would have.

    HT: Pandagon.

  • Selling Christianity

    Laura has an excellent post on this. She links back to an earlier post I wrote, but that’s not why I’m calling it excellent. She also makes a number of good points, and links to a number of good posts.

    Some Christians make the assumption that if you’re not “in your face” about your faith, you’re not serious about your faith. After all, how can you be quiet when people are going to hell? That’s one reason a number of people complain when I call myself a moderate Christian. How can one be moderate about Christianity? You’ve got to be on fire!

    But regarding your faith as important does not mean you need to embrace ineffective or unethical methods of witnessing. Under unethical I would include any means of witnessing that doesn’t recognize the person to whom you witness as a child of God, endowed with the ability to make his or her own choices. Thus a Christian witness should try to look at God’s children the way God does, and God not only cares about us, but respects our choices.

    Any approach to witnessing that drives people away is ineffective. I recall one teacher saying once that we should make sure that when we are done conversing with someone that it will be easier, not harder, for the next Christian to talk to that person. Sometimes that will mean that I have to shut up completely, because anything I say will make things worse.

    The most important thing to remember, I think, is that God is responsible for conversions. You are not. I am not. God is responsible for heaven and hell. You and I don’t get to make those calls. God is also sovereign, and he doesn’t need our help running the universe. What does that leave us? Well, we simply are called to give witness.

    There’s always the “gospel offends” excuse. Now I do believe that the gospel offends. Grace is unfair. God’s grace is going to let people into heaven that I don’t really like all that much. But much of the actual offense people have against Christians is not due to the gospel. Often it is something precisely the opposite of God’s grace that offends them. When Christians are unforgiving and judgmental, when they arrogate to themselves God’s prerogatives of judgment, when they treat non-Christians with disrespect, those people are offended. Even though Christians have done the offending, the gospel was not at issue.

    There are two elements to a Christian witness. First is a Christian life. Not a perfect life, mind you, but a life aimed at discipleship. Second is the confession. The reason I put the confession second is that a transformed life will draw questions. The confession comes in answer.

  • Enthusiastic for Everything

    Adrian Warnock has written an interesting and challenging post titled I DON’T WANT BALANCE, I WANT IT ALL!. There is a great deal in that post with which I not only sympathize, I empathize–I’ve been there.

    For me one place I want both is in the intensity of much charismatic worship. I have experienced that in many places, including the Brownsville Revival here in Pensacola. It’s an interesting feeling, however, to realize that many of the people with whom you are worshiping would regard you as questionable at best for your theological views.

    I also have enjoyed the theological footwork of the reformed. Since I mentioned a charismatic place by name, let me just mention McIlwain Memorial Presbyterian Church (PCA) here in Pensacola. At a conference they hosted I enjoyed listening to folks like James Boice and John Blanchard, and even sang Charles Wesley’s “Oh for a Thousand Tongues” with that reformed congregation. It was both intellectually and spiritually stimulating. Their pastoral staff has been friendly over the years, and I’ve enjoyed working with them. Yet at the same time I knew I would be questionable as a church member and would certainly never teach there because of their doctrinal standards.

    That’s why when an opponent dubbed me a “liberal charismatic” I adopted the term, at least partially. I prefer “passionate moderate,” but “liberal charismatic” has always seemed to catch something of that which drives me.

    I was thinking of one of my normal long posts in response, when I encountered this post by Dave Warnock, which says what I wanted to say, and does it better. Check it out.

    I’ll add just a note to commenter GlennSP, who accuses Dave of bring in a subject that has no reference in the post. To me, however, it does. I want all those things Adrian wants, and I also want them for my wife, my daughter, and for all the women I’ve encountered in the church, many of whom are struggling to find a place they can use the gifts God has given them. I want it for a newly ordained United Methodist pastor whom I’ll leave nameless, who only entered ministerial candidacy when she was into middle age because when, as a young child, she heard God’s call to be a pastor, and was told by a respected elder, “Girls can’t be pastors.” It does have reference, because when I say I want it all, I mean that I want it all for everybody.

  • New Philophronos Blogroll Member

    I join with Laura in welcoming Discovering the Heart of God as a new Philophronos Blogroll member. Go check out his blog.

    I’m going to link to a specific post from the Pacesetters Bible School Newsletter to which I’m the primary contributor.