Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Christian Ministry

  • Taking [Part of] the Bible Literally

    It appears that some young earth creationists take Genesis very literally, but are perhaps a bit less literal in their understanding of 1 Corinthians 6:1-7. The Australian Creation Ministries International is suing the American Answers in Genesis over a number of issues.

    For those who might not know, here is the passage from 1 Corinthians:

    1Do some of you dare, when you have a dispute with another, to have it judged by the unrighteous and not by the saints? 2Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world will be judged by you, are you then unworthy of judging even the smallest issue? 3Don’t you know that we will judge angels, not to mention the issues of ordinary life. 4So if you have a lawsuit regarding ordinary matters, will you then seat as judges those who are disdained in the church? 5This is shameful! Is there not one among you who is wise, who can judge between brothers? 6Must one of you Christians go to the law against another and before unbelievers at that? 7You’re already defeated when you have to go to the law at all. Why would you not rather be injured? Why would you not rather be defrauded? — 1 Corinthians 6:1-7

    Now I understand how to apply time and circumstances to that passage, but then I’m one of those near-heathen liberals who doesn’t accept the literal creation story. I wonder how literalists justify such behavior? Well, here is where they do it, though I think if I got that much liberty to play around, I could find a way to get past the literal interpretation of Genesis as well.

    HT: The Panda’s Thumb

  • The Dream Factor on Money

    Pastor Tom Sims has a good short note on Christians and money, titles Spelling M-O-N-E-Y Biblically. Money is a tough topic for Christians. We tend either to go overboard on prosperity theology or be afraid of prosperity lest it destroy us spiritually. Tom’s thoughts may provide some guidance.

  • The Right Type of Accountability

    I’m an advocate of accountability, especially in church matters and our spiritual lives. I think it makes for wiser decision making and greater likelihood that we will carry out our goals. Accountability can come in many forms, from very formalized, such as an accountability group that meets regularly in which you question one another’s spiritual life, or simply telling friends and family what it is that you’ve determined to accomplish. The value of these types of accountability varies, of course.

    The Washington Post has an article on accountability, which quotes experts to tell us a number of things about accountability that may seem like common sense, but in government at least we don’t seem to follow them. Perhaps having a few PhDs say these things will help!

    This article quotes Jennifer Lerner, now moving to the Kennedy School of Government, as saying that the wrong type of accountability can produce the opposite effect to what was intended, and notes,

    What she and numerous other experts have found is that particular types of accountability are needed for particular situations. Get the nuances wrong, and accountability backfires on you.

    In particular candidates in either party may be drawn to the left (Democrats) or the right (Republicans) by the voters who will get them nominated, and then feel accountable to those voters once elected. Thus they may do things that please that constituency, to whom they are accountable, rather than what they actually believe is right.

    Accountability may also make the decision maker favor things that are easier to explain, even when those things are not necessarily better. The article cites medical decisions, in which a physician may choose the course of action that would be easiest to explain in a lawsuit, for example, over what he or she truly believes is the best choice. From my own experience with the medical profession I suspect this would result in favoring a traditional, well-established course of action over something newer but potentially more effective.

    Of course it should be no surprise that accountability that kicks in before and during the decision is more effective than accountability that kicks in afterwards. We needed a good deal of research to figure that one out! But it is something we don’t always notice. Once a decision has been made, we’re more likely to spend our time justifying what we have done than in reflecting on what we may have done wrong. Questioning often simply hardens our stance on that matter as we get defensive.

    To relate this directly to church, consider the conflict between a forward looking ministry team and a hard-headed finance committee. We have the faith versus sight debate in full swing, with the ministry folks assuring the finance folks that they are following God’s leading and that God will provide for their need, and the finance folks pointing to the budget. Where is wisdom? I think each being accountable to the other is a good thing. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer.

    But that kind of decision is not limited to the church. In a business you would have a similar conflict between the creative folks and financial officer. Is this product worth investing in? Do we have the money to produce it? All the while the creative people are pointing out how sales will quickly bring in the necessary support. Or something like that . . .

    Accountability is good, but needs to be combined with the courage of our convictions and the humility to reconsider of favored ideas.

  • The Gospel of Masculinity

    Over the last few years we have seen a number of movements in Christianity to involve more men in the church and in spiritual activities. I welcome this trend, because spirituality has too long been the province of only a small percentage of men. This is not because I think that women need men to keep them straight in church. Rather, it’s because men need spiritual food as well. The church is enriched by the involvement of a great variety of people.

    The problem that I see, which was emphasized by Mark Driscoll’s recent video (link to my post about it), is that we reshape the gospel to fit the people instead of the people to fit the gospel. I don’t mean that the gospel is for only one type of people, but the gospel does (or should) change people in substantial ways.

    To some, however, there seems to be a new Jesus. Replacing “gentle Jesus meek and mild” is the Jesus who would own several guns, go hunting and fishing, be a sports fan if not an active participant, drive a pickup truck, and always have control of the TV remote. This is the Jesus who wouldn’t let anyone push him around, whose solution to crime is to go catch them and put them in jail or hang them. Some folks sound like Jesus likes people who don’t share these characteristics less. Men, such as myself, who don’t need to have the remote in their hands and don’t own a gun aren’t taking leadership and aren’t masculine enough. Their wives won’t really love them, and God despises their lukewarm attitudes because they are not clearly and obviously in command of their home.

    Now some good, very masculine men may be offended by that last paragraph, but you see I think the “gentle Jesus meek and mild” is also a dangerous caricature. For some years we’ve had in many churches the sort of Jesus who can’t stand the hunters and fisherman, who has a special section of heaven roped off for the folks who drive pickup trucks so they won’t get in the way of the truly spiritual folks who drive subcompacts, and probably doesn’t like cops because they arrest people instead of converting them.

    OK, now I’ve offended another group. My point is simply that Jesus is there to take you from where you are, and to lead you to be a better person, no matter what your personality. Christianity is not about making you into some sort of caricature of the personality someone thinks is most “Christian.” It’s about taking a variety of people and making them better able to serve their fellow human beings.

    There are folks who serve one another who are quite fond of guns. One pastor I know is a retired sheriff’s deputy. He’s a good shot and a wonderful Christian man at the same time. Another man I know personally is gay, and spends his life well beyond what we’d normally call “duty” in service for others. I know a dentist who has led numerous mission trips and has a special ministry to children when he leads teams in service. He also has a substantial supply of guns (I’ve handled and discussed most of them with him myself), likes to shoot, drives a pickup truck, and could be mistaken for a ruffian if you didn’t know him. My father, on the other hand, is an MD who was a missionary all his life, and served World War II in a conscientious objector’s camp in Canada because he refused to bear arms.

    All of these people were and/or are servants of God and followers of Jesus. There isn’t one stamp for it. A gospel of masculinity is not a good replacement for a gospel of femininity or any other specialized gospel we invent. What we need is a gospel that includes all those God is calling. God will make use of our diverse gifts and personalities and smooth the rough edges where necessary.

  • Even Better Update on Driscoll Video

    Check this post on In Defense of the Faith for further information. One can’t be absolutely certain with blog comments, but this is beginning to make sense to me, I think. 🙂

    In textual criticism, we consider a reading that could give rise to all the others as more probable. This report–that the videos were available, but in a different way than expected–could give rise to all of them. This whole thing reminds me about making assumptions that one person’s take on an event is necessarily accurate, even if they are sincere.

  • Update on Driscoll Video

    A couple of updates on this controversy. I may have spoken too soon on the matter of the duties of the conference hosts. It appears that people may have gotten the videos there. I’m still not sure precisely what happened, so I will still maintain that handing out the video would be the right thing to do, though it seems it’s possible that’s precisely what did happen.

    Commenters on my previous post Peter Kirk and Charity had questioned me on this point, and Charity says that many people left with the video. Thanks for these updates.

    There are also two further posts to which I would like to call attention because they provide some additional perspective:

  • Church Planting Body Count

    I regularly find myself surprised at how surprised some folks are at the unsurprising. We should, after all, expect people to be the people they are, and Mark Driscoll is Mark Driscoll. Shocking, isn’t it?

    Well, Mark Driscoll prepared a video for a conference on church planting in which he was very much himself, and some folks were shocked. They criticized the video, and they didn’t hand out copies as promised.

    I first saw this video on Adrian Warnock’s blog. Adrian comments:

    I am praying for him right now as I write this as I am sure this was the last thing he was expecting or wanting. Personally I love the video and I think he is right on with what he says. Well done Mark for standing for God and more power to your elbow!

    Well, it should surprise nobody that I don’t particularly like the video, and I think there are substantial issues there beyond the exclusively man-oriented view of the world. Driscoll comments repeatedly on the things Jesus is not, and often in fairly derogatory terms. I particularly noted “tell the lady with the tambourine who shows up to church to park it” though I’m sure we’ve all been there with people who are doing things that we’d prefer they didn’t. So I disagree with the clearly male authority dominated approach.

    But I’m more disturbed by the picture of Jesus that is presented. The picture of “gentle Jesus meek and mild” is not a terribly accurate one, and it does need to be balanced. But the rough, overbearing Jesus, the hunting buddy Jesus who despises people who drink herbal tea and aren’t masculine enough, is also a false and dangerous caricature. (Bias alert: I drink herbal tea. 🙂 )

    There is also a good message hidden in there, though it has been buried under mounds of extraneous junk. Church planting isn’t easy. And despite almost disparaging remarks in the video about pastors of existing churches, pastoring isn’t all that easy either. (I sincerely hope that Driscoll didn’t intend to be a dismissive of the ordinary role of pastoring as he seemed to be. I think he was just very strongly focused on the church planters role, but I would suggest more care.) There will be people one cannot help, and there are people who need to be told to find another place to worship. Often that is to their benefit as well as to the benefit of the local church. But that is hidden by the shock value of the tone and of the setting for the video.

    Nonetheless I would have told the leadership of the conference to have the video handed out. First, they should do so because they asked Mark Driscoll for a video, and they have some obligation not to make him spend money and then send his people home. Being people of their word should be important. Second, I don’t think moderate and liberal Christians should fear conservative ideas. That video provides me with more material to use in illustrating precisely what I don’t like about the complementarian approach and certain uses of the spiritual warfare metaphor.

    I do have to ask my complementarian brethren, however, whether they would give equal time to a video presenting the egalitarian position. Is this about an open exchange of ideas, or are you just offended that a video espousing your view was not welcomed?

  • Ministry and Porn

    After yesterday’s post on Moral Choices when Viewing and this follow-up that I wrote for my wife’s devotional list, I found this post via Imago Dei. I get Donny’s regular ramblings via the Moderate Christian Blogroll, but I don’t regularly read XXXChurch.

    There are a number of points in here that are worth noting, and I want to give you a couple of quick quotes:

    And despite what many Christians might think, pornographers won’t be legislated out of business. They’re too smart to just sit back and allow such things to happen. Besides, legislation will NEVER change the hearts of anyone. I can’t tell you how much it bothers me to hear the ramblings of groups such as the Family Research Council, which seem to think we can pass laws to improve “morality” in our country. That’s just not the case. God himself gave us the choice to make our own decisions. Which of us is above God?

    Donny speaks largely about the pornography industry, but I think we need to get our focus as a church on reaching and healing people, and not so much on making laws. I do fully believe Christians should be involved politically and should live out their Christian principles in their involvement. But as a church we have been given the gospel message and the task of using it to be witnesses and to make disciples.

    We don’t like that process because it takes time and effort, especially the effort of keeping on running the race and living a life of Christian witness. But going for legislation instead is a fast food approach. Sure, if I can legislate a piece of moral action, that legislation will influence more people at once than my personal witness, and it will do so more quickly. But it will not change people’s hearts. That’s the function of the gospel message.

    I must note that I don’t think it is impossible to legislate moral behavior. Obviously we do so all the time, and in many areas we must do so. In many other areas, we should recognize that such legislation will not be effective. It’s just practical stewardship of resources to apply legislation where it’s going to accomplish its goals.

    Let me close with something I read in my devotional time this morning:

    (38) And he said to them, “Let us go elsewhere into the nearby country towns, so that I might preach there as well. Because it was for this that I went forth. (39) And he went into all of Galilee preaching in their synagogues and casting out the demons. — Mark 1:38-39

    It is a characteristic of Mark’s gospel that the proclamation is followed by the defeat of evil spirits. It’s interesting also to note that Jesus was often running away from the crowds who wanted to hear him. Do you have to turn people away from your church because there are more seeking the message and healing than you can accommodate?

    It doesn’t happen at my church. Perhaps we all have some work to do–on ourselves! 🙂

  • Moral Choices when Viewing

    When I saw the post Virtual Gomorrah: Temptation, Technique, and Technological Progress on the evangelical outpost, I expected to be annoyed by calls for censorship. And indeed there are a few words that tend to annoy my libertarian approach, such as these:

    . . . My basic position is that while they are desperately needed they are also hopelessly ineffective. I’ve come to believe, as Princeton Professor Robert George says, that “laws are likely to be least effective when they are needed most.” I’m still trying to decided how to say that is a way that doesn’t sound defeatist or pessimistic. . . .

    After that note from the introduction, however, the post is right on target, and worth reading. The question I think we need to ask ourselves is simply this: Do I have the will to live my convictions? For a Christian I would put it more precisely: Will I allow the Holy Spirit to keep guiding me into greater maturity?

    The success of pornography and violence in the public media, whether on television, video, games, or via the internet suggests that many people who claim to be disgusted by x-rated material really aren’t. When nobody is watching, they are quite ready to watch the things that they condemn. If that were not the case, e-mail inboxes would not be flooded with offerings of pornography. Those who sell this material know that if they scatter their ads far enough there are people who will pause before hitting that delete key and then they will get sucked in, one step at a time.

    I wrote about this a couple of years ago (pre-blog) in an essay titled Off-Switch Censorship. I think it’s still applicable now.

    We are far too anxious to get someone else to solve our problems of will. There is a simple but difficult solution. Learn to say no. Decide not only what you will watch but how much. This can apply to politics, war coverage, or entertainment. There are some things that are no good in any proportions, but there are also things that are good when used in balance, but are dangerous when used to excess.

    Consciously establish your own boundaries and then work hard to stick with them. If you have problems doing so, then get some help. Christian churches should provide opportunities for people to be accountable to one another. I’m not talking about big brother, in which the church tries to monitor your private life, nor am I talking about an intervention group for acknowledged addicts. I’m talking about a group of people who talk to one another about how their Christian walk is going.

    Let me give you an example from my own life. My morning starts with a short time of prayer, then there are certain morning activities, things that need to be done immediately. Then I have my time of Bible study and prayer that is somewhat longer. Now my wife knows by experience that my day goes much better if I have that second period of study and prayer. That’s my time with God that lets me hear from the Lord about my priorities for the day and generally feeds my soul.

    Unfortunately, I have a strong tendency to look at the list of things I really need to get done that day, and to decide I need to get started. After all, I’ve already had prayer time. I can rationalize this by noting that I will spend several hours working on a manuscript having to do with a Biblical or spiritual topic, so I am, after all, studying the Bible. Well, your mileage may vary, but for me there is a huge difference between relaxed, devotional study, and editing or writing a manuscript, however good that manuscript may be.

    As I said, my wife knows how this works, and she can identify when I’ve done my devotions and when I haven’t by my attitude through the rest of the day. Devotional dependency? Perhaps. 🙂 But the fact is that she gently holds me accountable on that point. When she notices the results, she’ll ask me, “Did you have your devotional time?’ Now your spouse is not likely to be an adequate source of accountability, though I think a spouse can help a great deal. But having someone just ask you can be a big help.

    I would suggest that laws against pornography and obscenity are not going to be generally successful. Like drug laws, we have the unfortunate tendency to measure their success by the number of people caught, not by the number who have access to the material. (I am opposed to censorship in any case. I just happen to believe in this case that censorship is also going to be ineffective.) That means that those of us who do not approve of such materials need to take responsibility for our own actions.

    One last thing–turn the switch off before the program you don’t want to watch even starts. Delete the e-mail before you gaze at the thumbnails and wonder. Once you’ve decided on the boundaries, enforce them on yourself with rigor.

  • Sudan Missionary from Pensacola

    There was an encouraging story in the Pensacola News Journal titled Big difference in Sudan about Jim Esson who is returning to the Sudan and working on building a medical clinic. This is a very positive form of mission activity.

    In the comments someone complains that the mission is out of town while there are still people in need locally. But there are many different forms of service, and we don’t need to choose just one. There are plenty of resources available; what we need is the willingness to use them wherever there are needs.