Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Christianity

  • Choosing a New Church

    No, I’m not choosing a new church. In fact, I really like my home church, First United Methodist Church in Pensacola. But today I received an e-mail from someone who asked me to share a blog post with my readers. I get few enough such e-mails that I normally at least read them, though I’m not going to link unless I feel there’s something worthwhile.

    In this case, while I think the post makes some interesting points, I have a major problem with the entire approach. The post is 10 Tips for Finding a New Church Home.

    The points are generally valid. I have some objection to the fact that “mission” is #9. But that is only the minor point.

    My major point is that the primary thing we should consider when choosing a church congregation is how we will be able to serve through our membership in that congregation. Now all of the other points in the article may well contribute to our ability to minister. For example, if your church does not have adequate ministries for children, or if you are not challenged and convicted by the sermons, you may find it more difficult to use that congregation as a base for your own ministry.

    Christianity is about serving others. When my wife and I have changed congregations, we generally ask first about the mission of the church. In fact, I have quite a “thing” about church mission statements. Most churches have one. What I’ve found in visiting churches is that if the members in general can tell you what the focus of their church is in ministry, you’ll find you have a vibrant church. If the members in general aren’t sure what they are there for, you’ll find the church is dead.

    So while this list of tips for finding a new congregation includes many things that should characterize a good church, it looks much too much like the way I’d choose a grocery store.

    This leads to point #10: Keep trying until it feels right. I’d suggest instead a prayerful process of selection that ends when you know you will be able to carry out your personal part of the overall mission of the body of Christ as part of that congregation.

  • Spong vs Mohler

    I found this video interesting, even though I don’t consider Spong one of the better advocates of a liberal approach to the Bible.  From my perspective he’s slipped off the far edge of the map.  I would suggest there is a position that does not affirm biblical inerrancy, yet maintains biblical authority.

    (HT: Exploring Our Matrix)

    Michael Dowd, also debating with Dr. Mohler (who seems to be keeping busy!) claims that biblical Christianity is bankrupt. I intend to respond from my “passionate moderate” viewpoint a bit later. For now I would just note that I see problems with the definition of “biblical Christianity.”

    (Another HT to: Exploring Our Matrix)

  • Christian Carnival CCCXL Posted

    … at The Jevlir Caravansary.  Check it out!

  • Christian Carnival Coming

    I’m hosting it at my Jevlir Caravansary blog.  Deadline is midnight tonight.

  • On C. S. Lewis

    There’s an article in the Touchstone archives by Bishop Wright which I find very interesting, largely because it expresses some of my own feelings regarding Lewis.

    C. S. Lewis is, of course, a brilliant writer. I enjoy reading even those things with which I disagree, and not just because I like to be challenged. He simply uses the language brilliantly. I would also say that the book Mere Christianity played a role in my Christian life both when I was a student, and then when I was returning to church. At the same time, I don’t use a great deal of the apologetics that Lewis used in supporting my own faith in discussions with others. The trilemna, for example, doesn’t work for me as an argument for the divinity of Jesus. It does help clarify things, I believe, at a certain point, but it is not, in itself, convincing.

    I have also observed what Wright notes as well, that C. S. Lewis, though often embraced by conservative evangelicals, was not one himself. I would note that even from my more liberal perspective, I find Lewis’s view of inspiration to be a bit beyond where I want to go. Nonetheless, I think I can understand the value of Lewis to evangelicals in that he makes some fairly viable statements on some of the essentials, and he provides us with expressions of many other ideas that are valuable in themselves.

    All in all, thanks to Bishop Wright for helping clarify some of my own thinking about one of my favorite authors. (Wright himself is another, though he tends to be a little less delightful in style!)

  • Burned Out Pastors

    One of my observations in both churches of which I’ve been a member and churches I’ve visited, representing several denominations, is that the actual job of the pastor is so enormous and multi-faceted that no human being could actually perform it.

    That isn’t what was envisioned in the New Testament, but it has become pervasive. Responding to an article in the New York Times, Arthur Sido has some excellent comments on this point. I’d add my small quibble–I’d say “men and women” where he says “men,” but in general I just say a hearty “Amen” to his post.

    What truly bothers me on this issue is the way in which we cling to stupidity in the church. There are many cases where the Bible asks us to stand against the viewpoint of our secular culture. But any business consultant could tell us that the model of church management we use isn’t going to work, and that the actual job description of a pastor is impossible to fill. Those who try are destined for much heartache.

    I do see a place for the professional ministry, in the sense of people paid for full time service. But both to save their sanity, and to allow the church to accomplish its full mission, we need every member active in ministry, which those paid full time equipping the whole body.

    In this case we’re running hard against both Biblical commands and common sense. I wonder why we do that!

  • New Biblical Studies Carnival

    Jim West has brought back the Biblical Studies Carnival.  (HT:  TCOJC)

  • I Believe Some Bizarre Things

    The Sunday School class I currently attend uses a random selection process for the questions we’ll discuss.  Class members put questions in a container, and we draw a question for each week.  Last week the question was:  Why am I such a doubting Thomas?

    As we were discussing how much we doubted, what we doubted, and why, someone commented that what we believe as Christians really is quite bizarre if you haven’t gotten used to it.  Most commonly we would cite things such as the resurrection.  I believe that one person who died about 2,000 years ago didn’t stay dead, but came back to life.  That’s a fairly bizarre thing to believe, or better to base an entire system of belief on.

    The person who made the comment cited the belief that Jesus died for our sins and thus we can have salvation.  I believe that’s equally bizarre.  Who these days would think of such a thing?  The idea of atonement was much more common in the ancient world, but not so much in western civilization today.

    And that brought another question, which seemed to be addressed to me.  Did Christianity seem less bizarre back in the first century.  My answer is “yes,” though different things would seem bizarre and likely in different ways.  As I’ve already mentioned, the atonement would seem more natural, provided one was drawing on a range of ideas prevalent in the ancient world, but there are aspects of it that are odd.  For example, the idea of a single, universal atonement, reconciling the whole world to God, was unique to Christianity, I believe.

    I don’t think it came out of thin air.  There are many, many parallels that come close, but I think the full idea of atonement as expressed especially by Paul, is unique.

    But what first comes to our modern, or even slightly post-modern minds, is generally the question of miracles.  But there is where I think we differ less from the ancients than we generally think.  We imagine that they were much more naive about miracles in general than we are, that they would tend to believe whatever miracle might be claimed.  I see little evidence for this.  In fact, the resurrection was very hard for either Greeks or Jews to believe, and was often a stumbling block, as noted, for example, in Acts 17:32.

    I observe two things.  First, there are quite a number of miracle stories even today, and plenty of people to believe in them.  Second, there is plenty of evidence of ancient people who were quite unwilling to believe miracle stories.  In both cases, such belief tends to be easier regarding miracle stories in one’s own religious tradition than in those of others.  As a Christian, I find it much easier to accept the idea that Jesus ascended to heaven than that Muhammad did.

    I’d suggest that this has a substantial impact on the way I read the Bible, as opposed to how I might read other literature, especially religious literature.   While I look at evidence regarding historical events related to my faith, at some of the most critical points, it is faith, without that much sight involved.

    One important reason to recognize this, I think, is that it will impact the way we relate to other people.  When we understand that, in a sense, one must put on a whole new religious culture before our religious faith makes sense, we may be somewhat more charitable.  I’m afraid I may lean the other way.  I find doubt and even rejection of things I hold dear quite reasonable, despite the depth of my own commitment to those beliefs.

    So I may not believe at least six impossible things before breakfast every morning, I do believe some things that, to someone outside my faith tradition, are bizarre.

  • Finding My Way in Christianity

    Finding My Way in Christianity: Recollections of a Journey

    I’ve tried to make a habit of writing some personal reflections on the books my company, Energion Publications, publishes. That doesn’t usually involve that many posts, but I got behind earlier in the year, and I’m catching up. This one is going to be longer than usual because these are personal reflections, and this book gets rather personal for me.

    Finding My Way in Christianity leads me to some very personal reflections, so you can expect me to talk about myself a great deal here. While all the books I publish will connect in some way with my own spiritual life and experience, this one connected very directly with my personal experiences. The author, Herold Weiss, taught at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, and while he left about 10 years before I arrived as a student, a number of names he mentions are very familiar. I knew some of his colleagues, and he also had some of those who would later be my professors in his classes.

    In particular I noticed the name Sakae Kubo, who became the dean of the School of Theology at Walla Walla College while I was a student there. I studied epistles in Greek with Dr. Kubo for two years, and he was the one who encouraged me to apply for a fellowship to study at Andrews University, where I subsequently received my MA. Amongst other people mentioned are Earle Hilgert, whose name I heard repeatedly, Siegfried Horn (though I studied under his successor, Dr. Larry Geraty), and many others.

    By the time I was at Andrews, the controversy had moved on to different names, but the same issues were involved. There was a great deal of controversy around Dr. Desmond Ford’s teachings at the time I was there, and there were still many people demanding that one accept the interpretation provided by Ellen White as definitive regarding any particular scripture.

    Let me start with a couple of stories from my time at Andrews University that seemed small at the time but have turned out to be pivotal for me in my own journey of “finding my way in Christianity.” The first was when I was invited to watch an Assyriologist at work in the Horn Museum at Andrews. I had no idea where anyone got the idea that I wanted to be an Assyriologist. I was taking Akkadian, but only as one of the languages, not my major language. (I took a concentrated quarter of study in that language.) Nonetheless I went to observe this man at work. Now it was fascinating to watch him. He was transcribing tablets and his skill and speed at drawing the signs was impressive. He asked me why I wanted to be an Assyriologist, at which point I told him I didn’t. He had apparently been told I was interested in doing my doctoral work in that area.

    What that session actually accomplished was to crystallize for me the work I really wanted to do, which was to be able to talk about the issues of history, language, and background to non-specialists–to be a popularizer. Now I suspect that I was sent to watch this man and encouraged to think about a specialized career partially because of the dangers inherent in being an SDA scholar interpreting biblical scholarship to the people in the pews.

    I had come from Walla Walla College where I found the attitudes of the professors universally helpful. At least in private, people were willing to discuss just about anything with me. In classes, they were more careful, though I thought they were generally quite honest. There was a view I learned first from my uncle, Don F. Neufeld, who was an associate editor of the Review and Herald at that time, which suggested you didn’t need to tell people everything you knew. The phrase my uncle used was “pastoral concern.”

    So out of pastoral concern you wouldn’t discuss the problems with a literal interpretation of Genesis with people whose faith might be shaken by such ideas. I had many personal conversations in which he acknowledged that the earth really couldn’t be 6,000 years old, and that the Geoscience Research Institute’s tours were really exercises in futility. He wasn’t sure that even the folks who led them really believed what they were teaching.

    I was reminded of those conversations when I read Dr. Weiss’s comment that these presentations sounded to him like “special pleading,” and that he “got the distinct impression that the presentations were efforts at treading water in order not to sink.” That is indeed the feeling one gets in such presentations. I remember seeing GRI ads offering grants to do scientific study to prove the young age of the earth, surely a case of putting one’s conclusion ahead of the evidence.

    I noticed a change when I went from Walla Walla College to Andrews University. None of my professors in either place challenged major SDA doctrines in their teaching. But questions were heard and discussed at Walla Walla, even if not all of them were answered. (One can hardly expect answers to all questions.) At Andrews, I found it easy to discuss languages and history, but questions on broader issues were much less welcome. The atmosphere was different.

    But a second experience reinforced this view. One of my professors recommended that I submit a paper I had presented in his class to Andrews University Seminary Studies for publication. I naively did so, not really thinking about the result. One of the reviewers for the paper was another professor, one with whom I was not nearly so much in tune theologically. According to the editor, who discussed the result with me, this reviewer said I was “trying to be a second Wellhausen.”

    That was, of course, both very flattering for a mere MA student, and also very dangerous in Adventist circles. The professor himself, who started avoiding me on campus, never commented on this to me until after I had graduated, at which point he stopped me to warn me of the dangers of the course I was following. I had benefited greatly from his linguistic knowledge, but had found that he would always choose the interpretation that supported traditional Adventist theology, whether or not the text supported that.

    The article was not published, and I didn’t bother submitting it elsewhere. By that time I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to manage to make a career as a Bible teacher in the Seventh-day Adventist Church even though I did try for another couple of years.

    Now let me turn to the book. No, I haven’t forgotten the book on which I’m supposed to be reflecting. Receiving manuscripts is an interesting experience. I started Energion Publications, and for some time it was a part time job for me. We’ve moved beyond that point in the last couple of years. The first several things I published were solicited. It’s not that I didn’t receive manuscripts; it’s just that I didn’t receive publishable manuscripts in the early days without going out and asking for them.

    Over the last couple of years I’ve had to put together a good process for selecting manuscripts because I’ve been receiving many that require more than five minutes to reject, and a few that I can accept. One part of that process is that I have specific people to read manuscripts so that I don’t just publish what interests me.

    Now getting a manuscript from a Seventh-day Adventist writer brings out mixed emotions. The first question is whether it is a manuscript that addresses specifically SDA issues. The second is whether it maintains an attitude of Christian charity towards the SDA church. Those are two hurdles that must be overcome in my mind. The third question is whether it is of interest to a more general audience.

    This manuscript met the first two tests. Dr. Weiss speaks directly and forcefully on occasion, but no more so than his subject demands. I think some people will be unhappy with the stories that are told, but even though I was not at Andrews at the time in question, the stories ring true and mesh with what I learned of these things when I was in school. Dr. Weiss is calling for dialog; for an attitude that allows questions to be asked and the evidence to be examined.

    I would contrast this to the idea of “pastoral concern.” As much as I learned from my uncle, this is an area where I disagree with him profoundly. I think that the unexamined question is an accident waiting to happen. I know people who have studied these questions and come to conservative conclusions. I know others who have come to more liberal conclusions. I respect both those groups and the many between. But I have a problem with those who won’t face the questions in the first place, or who don’t allow others to do so.

    I have encountered many, many young people who say that their pastors and Sunday School (or Sabbath School) teachers have deceived them. It’s not that these people gave them the wrong answers. It’s that these people didn’t admit the questions even existed.

    Such theological journeys do not occur in a vacuum, however, and I think that is the great strength of this book. Dr. Weiss recounts a cross-cultural journey that merges with the theological journey. This part of the book was another very attractive point for me. I grew up partly in Mexico and in South America myself, though I was the son of missionary parents, and I lived in the one English speaking country on the mainland of South America – Guyana. But friends and associates came from or served in many of the places mentioned in the book. The story, with each chapter titled after a geographical location, put theology in the context of a person and a community, as it should be.

    There remains my third question regarding a book about the Seventh-day Adventist church, whether it is of interest to a broader audience. For this I had to get the opinions of others. Those opinions were favorable. On the one hand, this is because the experience of a spiritual journey in the Seventh-day Adventist church is not so different from such an experience in any other denomination as one might imagine.

    On the other hand, this is because, contrary to my initial expectations, this is not a story about the SDA church. It is the story about a believer encountering his faith, and the challenges to it that we must face. Those challenges come both from the information and views that we encounter that might not fit, and also from those in our faith community who find the very idea of a spiritual journey threatening. I find this latter group most dangerous. Those who believe they have arrived will quit trying to travel.

    I was thinking about the desire of some in the SDA church to avoid literature written by people from other denominations and to halt the inquiries of young minds who might look outside of traditional channels for information, answers, and new questions. This couldn’t happen in, say, the United Methodist Church, could it? (For anyone who missed it, I’m now a member of a United Methodist congregation.)

    A church with which I’m acquainted was having trouble, as many churches do, keeping its college age young people. They started a young adult class. The teacher, not herself college age, went out of her way to discover what the two or three young people wanted to study. They ended up reading books of theology and philosophy from a variety of perspectives and discussing them in class. The class grew, even attracting a number of adults in the church to join. Young people were coming back to the church.

    Then the complaints began. Some were not happy that some of these young people didn’t attend the church services. But the big complaint was that they were not using “approved curriculum.” They started an “official” college age class to replace it, using approved young adult curriculum. That new class lasted about a month and then it was over. Those young people who had attended just Sunday School but not church continued not to attend church. They just didn’t attend Sunday School either.

    The problems described in this book can happen anywhere. It’s not just about SDAs. It’s about Christians–people–gathered into the groups we call denominations.

    When I was struggling with my own faith following completion of my degree at Andrews, I was frequently told to “just have faith.” Others would ask me how I could question the faith of the pioneers, meaning, of course, the Adventist pioneers. But I find an appeal to numbers or an appeal to history pretty weak, especially if the numbers are small and the history short. To remain a part of Adventism, one has to have a personal conviction, and such conviction is not fostered by telling the questioner to believe and shut up.

    I would address four groups of potential readers.

    First, there are those who are in the Seventh-day Adventist church, whether you are a conservative Adventist or liberal. This book will give you some insights into the joys and difficulties of those who work within Adventism, yet want to be open, examining all things, keeping what is good, and rejecting what they find to be wrong. I wish I had been able to read something like it when I was going through Andrews. I doubt it would have kept me in Adventism–I lack the patience. But it might have spared me some of my detour away from Christianity.

    Second, there are ex-SDAs. If you are angry at your former church, you will find that others have walked this road, and that there are many there who are, in fact, sincere seekers for truth. This book is encouraging to me, because I know that in my former denomination there are folks like Herold Weiss.

    Third, there are those in the broader Christian world who face similar situations. Some of the particular doctrinal issues (the investigative judgment, the role of Ellen White) will be different, but others (verbal inspiration, creationism) will be very familiar. Some of you may be walking that kind of a road right now. How do you respond to the challenges to your faith? How do you respond to new knowledge that might make you reassess some of what you have believed?

    Fourth, there are the heresy hunters. There are many divides amongst those who grew up in the SDA church but later left. One of those is between those who turn to a very conservative evangelical Christianity and those who take a more moderate or liberal route. Many who leave to join conservative evangelical communities become harshly critical. Many of these treat the entire SDA church as a cult. I think this book is a good read for these folks as well.

    I’m glad I chose to publish this book, both from the personal perspective and as a publisher. I think it will be of value to the body of Christ.

    Note: There are still advance copies available to reviewers, including those in our blogger review program. E-mail pubs@energion.com for information, or request your copy via our convenient request form.

  • Quote on Worship

    From C. Michael Patton:

    What I have been coming to realize over the years is that there is simply no one way to do church. …

    You need to read the whole post at Parchment and Pen to get the real drift of what he’s saying, complete with evangelical discomfort with a seeker sensitive service, a discomfort I share to some extent. I do think he makes some excellent points for people on both sides to consider.

    On the one hand, advocates of seeker sensitive worship should take to heart the points about discipleship. Christian discipleship is not really all that seeker sensitive!

    On the other, many do well to consider why people come to hear the gospel under some circumstances, but not others.