Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Discipleship

  • Forgiving or Excusing

    I’ve noticed in recent discussions both online and offline that there seems to be some fuzziness about the difference between these two concepts. I think that perhaps our human tendency is to either excuse or condemn.

    By “excusing” I mean either minimizing a transgression or perhaps even claiming it’s not a transgression at all. When we fail to find an excuse, then we condemn. It’s hard to both regard an action as truly wrong and damaging, and yet to forgive. It’s hard to forgive when someone does not regard their actions as truly wrong.

    I would argue, however, that there is a part of forgiveness that we should embrace even when the perpetrator of the action is not repentant. We need to give up our own resentment and rage that make us do irrational things in response to wrongs. That doesn’t mean we need to excuse the person or let them by with the action; merely that we need to bring ourselves to the point where we can respond rationally.

    Politicians tend to give non-apologies, or, in the terms I’m using in this post, they try to excuse their actions. Their hope is not that we will think they did something terribly wrong, are sorry for it, and that we should forgive. Their hope is that we will decide they weren’t so very wrong after all.

    Many of us actually like it to work that way, because it is easier to condemn or minimize than it is to forgive. A pastor who fails us, yet acknowledges guilt and asks for forgiveness, has still hurt us. But there can and should be an opportunity for forgiveness and redemption. Forgiveness doesn’t eliminate consequences. Often there is a rush to restoration, especially with very famous people. But for many others, who may have as much potential even though they lack the fame, there is no rush. There may, in fact, be no plan for redemption at all.

    I would suggest that we need to be very careful to hold people accountable, to acknowledge the true nature of transgressions, yet where there is repentance, we need to be ready to forgive and restore under appropriate circumstances. It’s much harder than either condemning or excusing, but it’s the way of grace.

  • Looking for a Good Sermon?

    OK, I’m blogging on a Sunday morning before I go to church, but I will use as my excuse the fact that I get up substantially earlier than the world, or so it seems, and thus I do reading and such well before it’s time to go to church.

    I expect to hear an excellent sermon at First UMC Pensacola later this morning. Besides the knowledge that both our senior and associate ministers generally produce great sermons (the associate, Rev. Geoffrey Lentz, is preaching today), I actually got a foretaste of the sermon in conversation with Geoffrey. He’s tackling the book of Joshua in a series of sermons he and the senior pastor are doing on broad themes in Bible books. It’s a tough one to preach from and he had some great thoughts.

    But I also read another sermon for the second time this morning, Just What Is The Right Thing To Do?, by Tony Mitchell. It’s probably too late to urge you to find Dover UMC where he will be preaching and go there if you’re in the area.

    There is always some new survey to distress us about the state of American Christianity. We can wring our hands and bemoan the deterioration of our culture, or we can ask ourselves how we’re going to respond to the realities that we face. This sermon falls into the latter category. It’s a keeper.

    Now you’ll probably think I say this just because I’m quoted in it. I can tell you that’s not the case. (OK, don’t believe me!) It’s after that section that I really started to get on board with the sermon. In any case, whether you think I’m biased or not, check it out.

  • Experiencing the (Baptism of the) Holy Spirit

    Experiencing the (Baptism of the) Holy Spirit

    This is a topic where I tend to make just about everyone uncomfortable. Long time readers may recall a previous discussion of speaking in tongues, and my own experience of it. Those who expect me to be intellectually oriented and rational are uncomfortable with mystical experiences, and many who are comfortable with the mystical experiences are deeply troubled by my tendency to analyze.

    But the fact is that I am one person, i.e. the same person who examines data about the historical Jesus and expresses skepticism of some of the details recorded in the gospels also claims to experience the risen Jesus in a personal way. So when Adrian Warnock started talking about the experience of Holy Spirit baptism, I decided to say a word or two.

    I’m not going to defend my particular theology in this post, but let me simply state that I believe that Holy Spirit baptism can, and ideally should occur at the time of one’s baptism in to the Christian faith. Nonetheless in the book of Acts we have numerous instances where the two experiences are separated. I believe nobody comes to Christ in the first place without the work of the Holy Spirit, but the idea of the baptism of the Spirit involves one personally experiencing and being transformed by it.

    At the same time I want to guard against the notion that this experience is singular, that one checks off the boxes of conversion, then baptism in the Holy Spirit, and then one has attained. I don’t like the idea of Christians who have “attained.” I think they tend to fall quickly into pride. I know I would, so if I ever get to the point where I believe I have attained, it will be the surest sign that I haven’t. I know I’d fall straight into spiritual pride without passing Go or collecting my $200.

    I do remember a specific experience at the time of my own baptism at age nine. I was in Mexico with my missionary parents and had to convince them and a Spanish speaking pastor that I knew what I was doing. It was the strong conviction that had come on me that made me able to do so. They were very skeptical.

    But I want to discuss a later experience, that came when I was working in the church. This happened several years ago. I was trying to get material written for the early stages of Pacesetters Bible School, and I would be interrupted frequently. But one week almost the whole church staff including the pastor was going to be out of town on a mission trip, and I was looking forward to a week of writing with few interruptions. It was not to be.

    One of the things about “mystical” or “spiritual” experiences that I have noticed is that they do not occur for my convenience. My Monday of that week happened as I had hoped. I got a great deal done. On Tuesday I was praying through my prayer list. I had an extensive prayer list, and was quite systematic about praying for the people on it. Having checked off my list, I felt that I had done my part in praying for the congregation.

    Included on my list were all the college students and all the church leaders. As I began praying through the list that day I was interrupted by a voice. Now all the more intellectual folks and those who are not Christians are permitted here to doubt my sanity. I generally just assume it’s loosely attached. But I did hear a voice. It said, “Stop.”

    So I stopped a moment and then started to pray for that person again. Again, I heard “Stop!” Then the voice began to question me about these persons. What were their gifts? Regarding the students it asked me what they were studying, when they would be finished, and what their ambitions were. For the church leaders it asked me what their specific roles were.

    Now the fact is that I didn’t know most of this stuff. They were on the staff or on committees, or they were students, so their names were on my list. I didn’t have a clue as to who they were personally. Then the voice asked me, “How do you expect to function as a teacher in the church if you don’t even know what these people are supposed to be doing?”

    Good question! But I’m a stubborn person. I argued with that voice for the remainder of the week, from during the morning Tuesday through around noon Friday. By noon Friday I was pretty much done. I think I had a mild idea of how Elijah must have felt when God said, “What are you doing here?” (1 Kings 19:9)

    What happened at noon on Friday? Finally I admitted that I needed to change the way I did business. I was all in the books. I planned curriculum according to what I thought people (in general) needed to know. I didn’t really want to know the people themselves. That was messy and took up too much time.

    It was a transforming moment in ministry for me. I may be insane to argue with a voice for several days. Each day I returned to the office intending to work, and it didn’t happen. When I shut down and went home, things went back to normal. But that insanity was transforming. People noticed the difference. They would ask me, “Who are you and what have you done with Henry Neufeld?” The main obvious difference was that I started taking a personal interest in people’s lives, their call, and their work in the church. I started to try to meet those needs.

    Now this seems fairly obvious in hindsight. Isn’t that simply good people skills? But at the time I didn’t exercise that variety of people skills, and due to my knowledge in other areas, and basic teaching skill, people put up with me anyhow. It took this spiritual encounter–in my view an experience of baptism–completely being overpowered–by the Holy Spirit to get me on track.

  • Legislating Morality

    Have you ever heard a conversation like this?

    “You can’t legislate morality,” says one person.

    “Oh yes you can! We do it all the time. Murder is immoral and we legislate against it.”

    Interesting, no? For me, this gets combined with separation of church and state. I’m an advocate of separation. People will frequently ask me why I don’t want politicians to take their faith into their actions in government, and how I would be able to separate those actions if I was a politician.

    Well, I can’t separate them, and I have no plans of doing so. Who I am is driven by the fact that I’m a Christian, trying to live out a life here as a follower of Jesus. If I stood for election to some office, I would remain a Christian, and Christianity would be a part of my political choices. I would hope that I would also be able to express those choices in a way that would be comprehensible to people of other faiths and of no faith at all. I would certainly regard it as my duty to try, and if I found that I was advocating legislation that was good only for Christians, to stop doing so.

    Separation of church and state is sometimes read as separation of church and statesman. But the constitution says nothing about the faith of an officeholder, except to specify that there can’t be a religious test, which suggests that “separation of church and statesman” was not the intent. (I realize that “separation of church and state” as a phrase, does not occur in the constitution, but I regard this as irrelevant. As with many other legal principles, it is a name for a principle contained there, which is convenient shorthand for the words that actually are there.)

    I advocate separation because of two things. First, I believe that getting the power of government is inevitably corrupting to the church. When we try to accomplish the goals of the gospel through legislation, we often forget the power of God and the value of grace. Secondly, I believe that the government is too easily led to serve only the majority, and that aligning with a particular faith or religious tradition exacerbates that problem.

    None of this, however, prevents or should prevent people from taking their moral principles, however derived, into the public forum, arguing for them, and producing laws that they believe are suitable to good moral principles. And thus I get back to legislating morality.

    “You can’t legislate morality” is used in two ways in my experience. First, it is used to suggest that you can’t make laws requiring people to be moral. This is most commonly used against laws regarding sexual morality. In this first sense, the statement is clearly false, as we can legislate moral actions in many spheres. Laws about sexual morality may be hard to enforce, but they certain can be legislated.

    It is possible that some rejection of “legislating morality” results from the fact that it is difficult to legislate moral behavior. Apart from social context, it is no more difficult to enforce a law against adultery than against murder. There will be evidence left in both cases, witnesses in both cases, and a good investigator can probably discover these. There is obviously no great difficulty in implementing a penalty. The real problem with enforcing a law against adultery in modern society would simply be that the behavior is prevalent and widely accepted. It would be hard to enforce because of that. For example, if a police officer comes to my door looking for evidence of murder, I’m likely to be as cooperative as I can because I share a society-wide revulsion of murder and wish the murderer caught. Adultery? Well, not so much.

    I don’t mean to minimize adultery as a sin. Frankly, I think churches do that way too much, to the point that there is very little moral stigma to the occasional adultery in many churches. Pastors can commit adultery and simply get some counseling and get moved in many mainline churches. But the societal view of adultery in general would not allow for an effective civil penalty. So as a practical matter, we could not legislate that particular point of morality, or better moral behvavior. But that’s not because of any inherent difficulty in legislating something moral. Rather, it’s because so many people either don’t see adultery as immoral at all, or regard it as only a minor offense.

    There is a second sense, however, in which “you can’t legislate morality” is quite true–if we mean that it is not possible to pass legislation that will actually make people moral. We can legislate against adultery, or abortion, or any one of a number of other things all we want, and we can enforce that law against a varying percentage of the population, but that law will not make people at heart less adulterous, less inclined to seek an abortion, or less inclined generally to moral behavior.

    That’s the thing about law–it mandates behavior; it can’t mandate character. God’s law runs into the same difficulty. Paul runs through that conflict through Galatians and Romans. I get up in the morning, look at the law, and it tells me, “Henry, you are a person with a considerable number of moral failings.” OK, that’s true, but what do I do about it? The law is pretty unhelpful. I’m already determined to overcome moral failings as much as I can. As I do so, the law is always there to remind me of where the problems lie.

    That’s where the gospel comes in. The gospel is the means of changing hearts and creating moral people. Which brings me full circle to the church/state issue. I think often we, as Christians, act as though we don’t believe the gospel. We don’t believe there is grace (both prevenient and sanctifying for my fellow Wesleyans) that can change people at the core, and keep them moving toward being moral people.

    It seems to me that if we Christians truly believed in the gospel, we would be so caught up in it that we would spend much less time creating laws, and much more time trying to spread Christ’s grace. Of course, when I ask that implacable law in the morning how I’m doing on this one, I can’t say that I’m always the best example. But it’s another good thing to work toward.

    We can’t legislate moral people, just moral behavior. But as Christians, that should not be discouraging, but rather energizing. After all, we have the gospel!

    (Note: Maverick Philosopher has a post on some definitions related to this topic, from a more philosophical point of view; it’s worth reading, HT: evangelical outpost.)

  • Mother Theresa and Crises of Faith

    A friend e-mailed me the link to Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith. Although they use the singular “crisis,” that one crisis was one she lived with for a long time.

    I have to say that I have ample sympathy, not to mention empathy with people with doubts from time to time. I think God leaves us with an abundance of questions. Standing back and thinking in “theologian mode” that seems like an excellent scheme to make us grow spiritually. Living through it seems just simply annoying.

    It does remind me how much I dislike prosperity theology. Besides promising people something that is false–not all, or even most, followers of Jesus will be wealthy–it also encourages people to deny doubts and troubles in order to appear to be “real, faith filled” Christians.

    When our son was in his fight with cancer, from which he ultimately died at age 17, there were those who felt that if we had the right amount of faith, God would heal our son. It’s an interesting feeling to not only struggle with the reality of losing a child, but to also face the implicit accusation that it’s your fault because you don’t pray correctly or with enough faith.

    I suspect the faith that is without any doubts of being shallow. Trust and endurance are separate things. Faith, however, is not so absolute as some would like to make it.

  • 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.

  • A Visit to the St. Gregory Palamas Monastery

    Kevin at Everyday Liturgy is beginning some reflections on his visit to St. Gregory Palama monastery. This caught my attention, since my recent discussions of the atonement led to some discussion of the Eastern Orthodox view of the atonement, and thence to some articles on St. Gregory Palamas, and I now have a plan to acquire a copy of a book about him.

    Here’s a taste:

    I went to the monastery partly expecting to see a different world of great and explicit spiritual feats – what I found was a community of simple men, living simply, working out their salvation by simple means. I think I might have been able to deal with the realization of my former misconcieved expectations, for if their world was so incredibly different from my own, I might have been better able to excuse my personal entanglements in wordly concerns. But, since their lives were made up of all the elements as mine, I found myself without excuse and felt somewhat exposed by the light the monastery shone on my life. Since returning, I have been wondering how I can better live the life of the Gospel in my own place, how my desk job can be an obedience, how I can pray more, how I can respect and serve others, keep silence when necessary and speak words of love when possible.

    Check it out!

  • 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.

  • On Churches, Drinking, and Weaker Brethren

    Joe Carter has an excellent post looking at the Christian standards on drinking. What does one do with the behavior of Jesus, who did drink? Would Jesus be acceptable as a pastor or elder in our churches or as a faculty member in our seminaries?

    I am a member of a United Methodist congregation, and our standards are a bit softer today, but historically Methodists have been quite strongly against use of alcoholic beverages. I grew up as a Seventh-day Adventist, and in that denomination drinking is strictly forbidden.

    My own choice, and I believe the right choice for me, is not to drink at all, but I do not believe that my personal choice is necessarily the correct choice for everyone. I would certainly not have a problem with church members or church leaders, including pastors and bishops, who used alcoholic beverages in moderation. What precisely “moderation” means may also be difficult to define, but I believe it’s an appropriate exercise.

    Carter concludes:

    These types of questions have important implications that go far beyond the concerns about drinking beer or wine. Where does Christian liberty end and institutional authority over matters of conscience begin? Obviously there are times when we need to delineate such boundaries. But we should be cautious about where we mark those lines — especially when they would put Jesus on the wrong side.

    Good point. I would add that I think we should be comfortable if the way we answer is in accord with the “royal law” (James 2:8). If I drink, I do need to be concerned for those who might stumble because of my action. If I don’t drink (my own choice), I need to make sure that people understand that this is my choice for my walk with the Lord, and not something I hold up as a universal standard.

  • My Latest Book (Partly)

    My new book wasn’t planned–by me, that is. Rev. Riley Richardson, pastor of Gonzalez United Methodist Church (and thus my pastor) were talking one day about books, and he said, “What I need is an extremely simple book that I can give to new members that will tell them what to do next and help guide them into discipleship.

    Discipleship: Jesus With Us

    Being a publisher, and more specifically a publisher whose publications are driven by what I perceive as educational needs in churches, I immediately suggested to Riley that he write such a book and I would publish it. But he didn’t jump right on the bandwagon until I offered to help. So on the new book you will see right below Riley’s name the phrase “with Henry Neufeld.” That means Riley got to make all the decisions, and I helped him produce it. I helped myself by incorporating material from some of our existing Participatory Study Series tracts with Riley’s approval.

    For those who don’t know him, Riley is an energetic, evangelical Methodist pastor. He’s practical and down to earth. So the book isn’t really mine, despite the title to this blog post, but I had quite a bit to do with it and I’m happy to be able to offer it as a tool for pastors, church leaders, and every member who has ever wondered what to do next when someone becomes a Christian or joins the church.

    The statistics are not so good for new Christians staying in the church. Discipleship and fellowship are key elements to sticking with it. Both Riley and I pray that this little book will be a help to many.

    This book will not (or at least should not) teach the pastor anything new about discipleship. It’s a tool to use in ministry and in sharing with others. Activities and study questions are included so it can be used in small groups.

    A couple of personal notes–first, nepotism is involved in the cover production. That beautiful cover is the work of my nephew, Jason Neufeld (contact info at jasonneufelddesign.com). Riley has designated his royalties to go to the Ukraine missions that are carried out by Pacesetters Bible School and partially supported by Gonzalez United Methodist Church.