Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Christianity

  • On Roman Catholics and Scholarship

    One of the great benefits of owning a publishing company is that there are always a number of smart people who will answer my e-mails. Thus, when I saw the brouhaha about Michael Patton’s post calling ‘Roman Catholic scholarship’ an oxymoron, I remembered immediately that I have just contracted Dr. Robert LaRochelle to write a book on—guess what?—dialog between Catholics and Protestants. (The book is Crossing the Street, to be released in May, 2012).

    So I asked Bob if he’d write a response, and he graciously agreed. This morning, I published that response over at Energion.net. I’m linking it from here for two reasons. First, Energion.net is a site I’m developing, and I have more traffic here on my personal blog. Second, I want to call attention to one paragraph in particular, which relates to dialog in general.

    One of the things I tell my authors is that Energion Publications is not interested in homogenized material. We want material that is in conversation with other viewpoints, but still expresses a strong and robust viewpoint of its own. Bob said it well:

    So, in summary, as one whose movement into Protestantism and practice of my faith has been deeply enriched and enhanced by bold and exciting Catholic scholarship, I find Mr. Patton’s argument unconvincing. I do admire, however, his strong advocacy of the importance of theology within the Christian community of faith. It is my firm belief that true ecumenical dialogue between Protestants and Catholics really suffers when theological ‘indifferentism’ is seen as the norm. The idea that ‘it makes no difference’ and that all belief systems are ‘really the same’ is both inaccurate and does no justice to the cause of deeper understanding and shared contribution to both Christ’s church and to God’s world.

    ‘Indifferentism’! What an excellent name for a not-so-good thing!

  • One Reason Christian Leaders Fall – Overload

    There have been any number of Christian leaders who have fallen recently, and while the publicity makes it appear that there are more and more, I suspect this isn’t anything new.

    One major reason for a failure in leadership is that we put too much trust in people. We give a pastor a great deal of authority, we give him a job that is impossible for any one person to do, and then we’re surprised when failure occurs. I think the pattern of Christian leadership is not supposed to put that much pressure or authority on any single person.

    I believe that reasonable responsibility, reasonable trust, and a reasonable job load would be a good starting point to helping Christian leaders keep their balance.

     

  • Part-Time Ministry Call: Disappointment or Opportunity

    No, this isn’t a topic I know much about, but I know that many past readers of this blog are either in part-time ministry or are (or have) considered it.

    There’s still space in tonight’s Webinar, Part-Time Ministry Call: Disappointment or Opportunity, by Energion author Bob LaRochelle. He’s author of Part-Time Pastor, Full-Time Church (Pilgrim Press, 2010) and of the forthcoming volume, Crossing the Street, to be released by my company Energion Publications in May 2012.

  • What if Church Was Like

    … This!

    This is Discipling from The Foursquare Church on Vimeo.

    (HT: Dave Black Online)

  • Why I Believe in a Designer but Don’t Accept Intelligence Design

    Pocket watch, savonette-type.
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    This was triggered by Ed Brayton’s answers to the short ID quiz, and particularly by the first question.

    1. On a scale of 0 (diehard disbeliever) to 10 (firm believer), how would you rate your level of belief in Intelligent Design? (Minimal Definition of Intelligent Design: The idea that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, and not by an undirected process.)

    I agree with Ed that this definition isn’t terribly accurate for what is actually presented as intelligent design. I’m regularly told that I must not substitute “God” for “intelligent designer” and that it might, for example, be intelligent aliens who interfered with the process of evolution in order to produce the results we actually have. Design by an intelligent alien would only push the process off into the distance, not solve it.

    But it is hard to regard something as a serious theory where a single part can be filled by either God or by a super intelligent alien. Yet for various reasons (PR and politics, in my opinion), ID advocates don’t want to just say God.

    On the other hand, if you say God is the designer, then you can quite justifiably call ID a God-in-the-gaps argument. Where we have no known path of evolutionary development, or better, where we believe there can be no such path—always based, as it must be, on current knowledge—then we suppose the involvement of a designer.

    Such an argument is subject to tomorrow’s knowledge, and indeed new gaps have been filled. Behe‘s “black boxes” don’t always remain black boxes.

    But for me, the main issue is simply that I do see  the universe as designed, and I do so for religious reasons. I do not think the natural laws as we see them exist independently, even for a moment. May problem with Paley’s watch is not that I don’t think it’s designed, but that I think the grains of sand around it are also designed.

    God, who created the universe, is quite capable of creating either finished creatures or the processes by which they would come into being, and I don’t see any portion as less (or more) the product of design than any other. At most, ID could produce evidence that God’s process was insufficient to its purpose and required interference.

     

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  • Worship and a Broadcast Sermon

    John Meunier asks if he can be replaced by a video screen. It’s a good question, considering the number of megachurches that are broadcasting a sermon to multiple locations.

    I have several objections to the idea of a broadcast sermon:

    1. I think our worship services are already too far from the idea of active participation. I’d like us to move toward 1 Corinthians 14 worship. (See my post The Problem with 1 Corinthians 14 Worship.
    2. Broadcasting one man’s (or one woman’s) message to multiple locations tends to build the false notion that only the professionals are qualified to share the Word. What an opportunity having multiple campuses would provide to train up more Christians to share?
    3. Using the one sermon in multiple locations elevates the authority of one person over the body.
    4. The very idea of one church with multiple campuses takes us away from a style of authority that treats the body of Christ as a single body, not as a large passive audience to be entertained or informed.

    I think every worship service should involve active participation and personal contact. I can watch or hear great sermons from great preachers on my television if I want.

    And while we’re at it, we need a service long enough to cover the ground, which includes hearing the scripture itself (not just someone’s discussion of it), prayer, interaction, discussion, learning discipleship, and preparing to take the message outside during the week.

     

     

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  • Equipping is not Delegating

    I just put an extract from Dave Black Online on The Jesus Paradigm. (I have permission to do this.) Unfortunately, Dave’s blog doesn’t allow linking to a specific entry, so I’m linking to the extract. All I want to say here is “Amen!”

  • First Century Church – Wanting and Doing

    My wife said some important things in her devotional yesterday, First Century Church Wanted.  If I might summarize, many of us want what the early church had, but we don’t want to do what the early church did.

  • If All Else Fails, Blame the Latest Technology

    The Christian Post has a headline that reads Apologist Josh McDowell: Internet the Greatest Threat to Christians. Now if you read the article, you’ll realize the biggest problem here is headline writing rather than what Josh McDowell had to say. In the end he concludes that Christian parents need to be knowledgeable. I’d have a hard time arguing against that.

    At the same time, I have to ask just why the availability of knowledge about atheism is such a serious threat to Christianity. In my view, we should be reading and discussing those arguments fairly early in our children’s lives.

    Holding a position or belonging to a group because you don’t know any better is not a particularly valid choice. If the only way we can keep members is by limiting knowledge, then we deserve our fate.

    McDowell is arguing for more knowledge. (For what it’s worth, I don’t really find his books very helpful in that regard, but that’s beside the point.) The problem is that I frequently hear Christians speak as though the best thing would be if we could restrict the availability of the knowledge.

    That ship has already sailed, and it was a leaky one at that.

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  • A Sinful Job Description

    Christ's Charge to Peter by Raphael, 1515. In ...
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    The Christian Post has an article on depression amongst pastors and ministry leaders, which, in turn, links to an article at The Gospel Coalition. Now the Gospel Coalition article is part one of a five part series, so I’m not going to comment on how far they will go before they are done, but I think they could expand on their first item: Unrealistic expectations.

    Not only are our expectations of pastors unrealistic, but they are sinful, and our descriptions of them are deceitful. The surprising thing is not that there are depressed pastors and ministry leaders. The surprising thing is that we have any functional leaders at all! I have long believed that if we described what we want in a pastor in a job description, nobody would be able to fulfill the role.

    What we want, I believe, are Christ figures, who, rather than leading the church, will be the church, and will eventually sacrifice themselves, and probably also their families on behalf of a local church. That local “church” is only a church in name, because they are not behaving as the body of Christ, but rather delegating that task to a paid professional. Visiting the sick and shut-ins, serving in the community, spreading the gospel message, giving, and study of the Word are all functions of everyone, not just one ordained person.

    Just leading the teaching ministry  of a mid-sized congregation would be a solid, full-time job for one person, and that only if he or she spends most of the available time equipping other teachers in the church.

    As long as we have unrealistic–yes, sinful!–expectations enshrined in our church organization, we’re going to have leadership problems, not to mention plain old “living the good news” problems.

     

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