Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Ecclesiology

  • Church and Healthcare: Fear

    Let me remind everyone that I’m really thinking on my blog, rather than providing answers that I have really thought out in discussing health care issues and the church. I have lots of pieces, but I don’t feel that I have anything like an assembled puzzle. My comments will also necessarily derive from personal experience. And as always, I tend to ramble a bit!

    One direction from which we can come at this issue is from the question of need. What is it that a person needs from their church community when facing either illness or death? Since Mark brought up especially end of life issues, I’m focusing on this, including life-threatening illnesses.

    Several times when we’ve gone into the children’s wing of the hospital where our son received chemotherapy, my wife has commented that the real enemy is not cancer, but fear. I confess that the first time she said that, my reaction was a bit bewildered. Yes, I know that we have to fight fear, but we’re putting all of these chemicals into a child’s body for the purpose of killing the cancer, hopefully before they kill him. That’s surely fighting the cancer!

    But she has a point. The real difficult thing about illness and eventually facing death is the number of decisions that have to be made. Now my wife and I obviously were not facing our own deaths, but rather the death of a child. At first I was less involved. I was the step-father, but then James had to face the death of a loved one during his own struggle–his father died of a heart attack. After this I got a new perspective, because I was the one to go with him to doctor’s consultations. I remember his response vividly. He had only known about his father’s death for perhaps 15 minutes when he walked up to me and said, “Well, I guess it’s all up to you now.” Thought it wasn’t “all up to me,” he had a point.

    The thought of death does something to us, even as Christians, that I think makes us irrational. I say (and confess) “us” even though I believe our family managed to step back. The first thing is to realize that death isn’t your worst enemy. I say that not merely as a Christian who believes that there is more for us after this life. Leaving that aside, the process of medical care can be much more terrifying than the thought of dying.

    To be honest, I don’t know how most people do it. I grew up in a medically oriented family. We discussed health issues around the dinner table. We talked about dying as a pretty ordinary topic. We talked about the choices in medicine constantly. My wife is an R. N. and has 12 years experience as a hospice educator. With all that background available, we would get into a doctor’s office for a consultation and become hopelessly confused.

    I remember one consultation after the first recurrence of the cancer. The oncologist was outlining treatment options. I could look at James and see him tuning out. I told the doctor that I had the role of being the idiot and started asking him detailed questions, making him explain the treatment options, their impact both in terms of effectiveness and side effects. By being the complete idiot and making him go into ABC mode, I got the information. I’m wondering how many people would push that hard, or know when to push. He was a good doctor, with an excellent reputation, and we liked him. We ended up taking “none of the above” and going with a plan cooked up by a surgeon at another hospital.

    Now our church family was a bit of a mixed bag throughout all of this. Because I’m going to point out some real failures of support, I want to note that I believe everyone sincerely wanted to be “the body of Christ” for us. Most of them also did reasonably well. But there were people who were not at all helpful. In most cases, I think this was because of fear, either their own, or their assumption that we would be running scared. (Please don’t imagine us as some kind of fearless heroes. We just tried to remain rational under pressure!)

    Let me just list some things:

    1. You don’t have to be down all the time just because you or a family member is ill. A number of people took me aside because they felt they needed to let me know that Jody (my wife) was in denial, and didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation. She was much too cheerful. All things considered, I suspect the hospice educator was adequately informed. I was happy that there were times when she could be cheerful.
    2. Repeat that point for James. I don’t know how many times I was told he didn’t understand his condition and the fact that he could die. When he first went into treatment he wasn’t all that clear, but by the time it was all over he could educate most adults on cancer, death, and dying. Again, any time he could be cheerful was good. Before his father died, he and I had an agreement that we would just have fun, so I never brought up the illness when we were together unless absolutely necessary. Of course later that had to change. Church members (or any friends and relatives) need to be aware that you don’t need someone to be miserable with you. Often it’s nice just to have someone be normal and do normal things.
    3. It is impossible to follow every diet, special remedy, or treatment plan found on the internet. We were frequently presented with complete solutions discovered via the internet, ranging from eating lots of brussels sprouts to buying a several thousand dollar water filtration system. It was OK for people to suggest, but when they followed up to see if we were following their suggestions it was a bit much.
    4. Similarly, you can’t go to every faith healer, preacher, prayer team, special revival, or healing service that is offered. We had people who were desperate because they thought if we didn’t go to a particular place, James would not be healed, but if we did, healing was certain.
    5. People don’t necessarily hear what you teach and preach. Since both Jody and I teach and offer seminars, including on the topic of prayer, it was often expected that we should be able to pray for our son’s healing and that would be it. Apparently very few people had ever listened and realized that we had very explicitly said that there was no such guarantee or expectation. (Cue the folks who say that it was because we didn’t believe enough or in the correct faction that there was no healing.)

    One Sunday near the time that James went home we all skipped church and met in the living room. Some of our family members had been hurt by things they had heard. I pointed out that the people who did the hurting were not intending to, but that they were very likely operating from fear. If you can find a reason why someone else is suffering, then you can feel that you won’t be targeted. On the other hand if they could be convinced that the right prayer would result in certain healing, they could feel confident that if that nasty diagnosis came in, they could handle it.

    The idea of losing a child to cancer is so horrifying that we’d like to find a reason, and specifically a reason that doesn’t apply to you. Good luck! I wish anyone who does this the best in making yourself feel confident. But bad things do happen to generally good people, and whatever comes up as your lot, whether you look at is as God’s plan, or just the way things work in this world, you’re going to have to deal with it.

    So what does a church do as a community about this fear? I found that there is one key, and that is staying together and sharing. James had friends who drew closer, and he had friends who couldn’t handle being with him in the fire of affliction. We have been so amazed and thankful for those friends who stuck with him. The majority of those were a few years older than he was, and that difference got more marked as time went on. He simply no longer talked about the things that the boys his own age were interested in. But there were a number of close friends his own age who walked the walk with him. There are others I know who have regretted it.

    Simply staying friends, remaining part of the community, and allowing the portions of life that can go on normally to do so is extremely important. There’s such a thing as dying while you’re still alive. James made an early decision not to do that. His final summer he started out in marching band for his high school. He made a difficult decision to step out because he realized he wasn’t going to be strong enough to march that season and indeed would probably not live through it, but he continued to join them on the field, and help with those things he was physically capable of doing.

    He made a conscious decision that death wasn’t going to stop him. The rest of us had to go along with that! And it was the right decision. The fear can destroy you long before the disease does, and make your remaining days a living death.

    There is a value here in education, but that needs to be supplemented by active support. “Support” as I’ve said, isn’t a matter of having the right thing to say all the time. It’s a matter of simply continuing to be connected even when you don’t know what to say. I already knew all the words. The problem wasn’t to know what I ought to think. The problem was to get the encouragement and strength that comes from community. The ones who showed up and felt foolish, or so they tell me, didn’t hurt us in any way. Generally we had no idea they were as clueless as they claimed. We were just glad they were there. The folks who melted away–those hurt.

    Most churches need to really reorient their thinking to truly be a community. The response to every problem is to have a program, and designate people. And of course we do need designated leaders and programs can help. But it’s not the designated people who showed up that helped. It was the close friends who remained and got closer.

  • Respecting Elders and Adjudicating Church Property

    [Note: I’m fighting the flu, which is why I didn’t post at all yesterday. I’m up to reading again today, and found a few things to comment on.]

    Peter Kirk posts on the church congregation of which J. I. Packer is a member, which has voted to leave its diocese and join the southern cone. This is not in my denomination, but it is becoming a more and more common issue as various denominations turn leftward, and conservative congregations try to leave their denomination.

    There are two issues that concern me a great deal. The first is about the treatment of J. I. Packer. Now you don’t have to read more than a few posts to realize that I’m not very near J. I. Packer on the theological map. But I think those of us who are moderate to liberal in persuasion need to make sure that we treat people who disagree with us with a certain degree of respect. I am open to correction on this, but I fail to see where Dr. Packer has done anything to warrant this type of treatment. It appears to just be an attempt to silence him, and probably not a very effective one at that.

    But second, this reminds me of a number of cases in this country in which property issues have landed churches in court. Now I don’t see that happening here in this particular case, but in many cases here in the United States, congregations are winding up in court over church property. There is very little value, I think, if a denomination keeps a piece of property, but loses the members.

    When the dust has settled, and when we all stand before the great judgment seat of Christ, I don’t want to be the one who took a congregation to court over property issues. I can see some technical justification, but I think with Paul that we should say “It would be better to let yourselves be cheated and robbed” (1 Corinthians 6:7 CEV).

    Where we have to separate in terms of congregations and denominations, we should all be able to agree to make a maximum effort to do so in a Christ-like manner, at least as much as is possible when disuniting. (Christ-like schism? Is that possible? Maybe it’s the flu!)

    From a Christian point of view this treatment of Dr. Packer seems to come from the same angle. It looks like a rather unChrist-like attempt to score points because someone annoys you. Liberals should be in favor of openness. More importantly, Christians should treat one another with respect, and treat an elder with due respect. This looks like scoring cheap points.

    Update: Can I use the illness excuse again? I somehow missed the fact that there is a property issue in this case. So it is more precisely an example of the issue I’m talking about here.

  • Church Politics Good and Bad

    Not too long ago I posted about the necessity for church politics. Today I was reading Frederick W. Danker’s commentary on 2 Corinthians, and I ran across a similar argument, based on 2 Corinthians.

    Let me quote it:

    Much of Paul’s success lay in his political acumen, with a flair for recognition of the potential of others for service. If politics is the art of mobilizing power and resources, material and human–with whatever bureaucratic structures are necessary–to satisfy the optimum requirements for justice and to ensure the safety of the powerless, St. Paul qualifies as one of its masters. There are those who shy away from the use of the terms politics and bureaucracy in connection with ecclesiastical matters. But if politics is presumed to be so intrinsically tainted that the institutional church is embarrassed by the term, there is no reason to expect “politicians” to think better of themselves. There is no escape from reality–politics and bureaucracy are facts of life, and it is primarily a question of whether there will be good or bad politics and good or bad bureaucrats. It is also true that groups of people ultimately determine which kind will prevail. In this letter to Corinth, Paul exposes practitioners of bad politics and invites his addressees to insist on good politics. He himself claims to be a politician dedicated to the interests of God and Jesus Christ, and therefore of the Corinthians’ interests. It is not surprising therefore that many of Paul’s statements in this letter relate to matters of morale, authority, teamwork, and obedience.

    I think this paragraph presents a very important truth, and it is well supported by the epistles of Paul, and particularly 1 & 2 Corinthians. Whether in politics or in the church, when we dismiss all politics as dirty or unnecessary we simply guarantee that we will have bad politics.

    Cynics around the country will fail to vote or fail to express their opinions and then will complain. But they themselves are complicit in the fact that politics is dirty, because they do not participate and place their votes against the bad politicians.

    In many churches there are people who complain about the way the church functions. In my own United Methodist denomination many like to complain about the larger church organization, but very few people want to get involved and do the hard work of making church politics function well.

    We have to get involved and expect–no, insist on–more. Otherwise we’ll continue to get less.

    (I wrote a short review of Danker’s commentary on 2 Corinthians here.)

  • Life of a Rumor

    One of the nastiest sins you can have break out in your church is gossip. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most common–more common than the common cold. I have seen church congregations broken apart by gossip, and nobody involved thought they were doing anyone any harm.

    Excuses for spreading rumor and innuendo vary. Sometimes people just don’t see the harm. Sometimes they believe the rumor is true. Other folks just can’t help it; the rumor is too juicy and they just have to tell someone.

    If another person draws their attention to it, there are plenty of excuses. Here are some samples:

    “I’m just doing my duty as a church leader to find out the truth.” This one works even if you’re on the hospitality team, or you help park cars. You’re still a leader, right?

    “I’m not spreading the rumor. I’m trying to control it and let people know how unreliable it is.” OK!

    “I’m not talking about _____ (the subject of the rumor). I’m dealing with the people who spread it.” Well, no problem then!

    But my favorite is: “I’m just telling you so you can pray for _____ more specifically.” I’ll make sure to pass on your inside information to God in my next prayer in case he missed it.

    There are a few malicious tale bearers, but most people simply talk, and they never realize what they are doing. But the spread of a rumor can do a great deal of damage. Generally also the rumor becomes more believable the more people who repeat it. It’s not evidence. It’s how many times you heard it. By the time you get to the people talking about the people talking about the rumor, nobody knows where it started, and it has a life of its own.

    Similar things happen in the media, I think, and with similar effect. A newspaper publishes a story that may (or may not) have inadequate support. Then we get the media outlets who spend their time talking about how nasty it was for the first outlet to release the story, but the general public simply hears the rumor again and again. Multiple experts get on the various talk shows to comment on whether the original story should have been published. Then more experts talk about whether we should be talking about the story. Before long viewers, readers, and listeners are no longer sure just what the story was.

    Finally, of course, bloggers like me start talking about the media that talked about the media that talked about the media that originated the story . . .

    It’s driven by the fact that we, the public, will watch this kind of thing. It’s a human thing, just like gossip in a church community. If we don’t want it, we’re going to have to learn to change the channel, read a different web page, listen to a different radio station, or perhaps simply go and research the facts as best we can.

    Let me recommend two sites I’ve been using more and more: PolitiFact and FactCheck.org. We need to be aware that even they can be wrong, but looking for the facts is a number of steps above simply chewing on the rumors.

  • Churches other than Roman Catholic are not True Churches

    I always knew I was a heretic:

    Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says Orthodox churches were defective and that other Christian denominations were not true churches. (From MSNBC.com)

    Well, actually, I never regarded the Catholic church and the pope as having any authority over me in any case, but I expected this kind of nonsense when this pope was elected, and here it is.

  • What Holds us Together?

    I was reading this story about American Episcopal bishops and their response to the Anglican communion, and it struck a cord in me because of my own experiences. Here we have a conservative Episcopal bishop providing a response to a challenge that primarily resulted from the actions of liberal bishops.

    What is making the Episcopal Church USA hang together? I could, however, just as well ask the same thing about the United Methodist Church, of which I’m a member. Why do we all hang around and duke it out year after year and General Conference after General Conference?

    I recall a study that suggested that there were really four camps in the UMC on the issue of homosexuality. There are those who believe homosexuality is a sin, and who do not believe we can remain as a unified church with disagreement on this issue, there are those who believe homosexuality is sin and yet think we can get along. On the other hand those who believe homosexuality is not a sin are similarly divided between those who think we can co-exist in a denomination that with those who believe the opposite, and those who think we can’t. Yet year after year the debate goes on.

    But I’m wondering again just what keeps us working together. How many of the goals of my local church here in Pensacola match those of more liberal churches in the Northwest, for example? Are we really in community or is it just on paper? Those who know me may be surprised to realize that the congregation of which I’m a member is really quite conservative, for a United Methodist Church. It’s not at the hard right, but it’s right of center. I think I’m somewhere in the center range of United Methodist belief right now myself, and I feel that I could work together with some reservations in most of the churches I know. I’m afraid I would have to make an exception for the one church that I know of that removed the cross as a symbol of death.

    I’m thinking that a great deal of the glue is simply tradition, whether for the Episcopal Church, with a somewhat longer tradition, or the United Methodist Church, which has certainly had enough history to become respectable. Denominational loyalty goes a long way for people who have lived in a community and gone to a particular church for years and years, or been multigenerational members of the same denomination.

    But the current generation isn’t buying that, whether they are liberal or conservative. They want a church community that is going where they are going and in which they can be wholehearted, active, members if they want any church at all. “We’ve always been Methodists” or “We’ve done it that way for years” doesn’t really work for them.

    I know I keep revisiting this topic, but it seems still to be a very live one. The membership of the United Methodist Church seems to indicate that we’re not finding the popular answer to these questions whether or not we are finding the right answer. The Episcopal Church has a similar problem.

    I think we need to find the glue, on a personal, congregational, and denominational level. If we can deal with the glue, we should be able to deal with the rest. For me, the central message of the love of Jesus who came and died for me is a driving force. I’m interested in social activism because I think Jesus called us through the incarnation to the ministry of reconciliation. Simply being redeemed drives me to want to be with others who feel the same way. That drives other issues into the background.

    But I think the question of whether even Jesus and his mission are the central position of our faith is subject to serious debate in many places. I find people both to my right and to my left who, redeemed by the blood of the lamb want to go out and share the gospel through word, deed, and sign as led by the Holy Spirit. Others, well, not so much. I’m not referring to different theories of the atonement. I’m referring to various views that make the atonement less than a central topic.

    If it weren’t for the atonement, I’d be carrying out whatever social action I have through a civic organization. I wouldn’t need a church. A church doesn’t just need to serve the community; they need to serve the community driven by Jesus Christ and filled with his Spirit.

    When I first thought of writing this I was thinking of a kind of moderate split–let’s take everyone who can exist together out of the center instead of continuing to head toward a left-right split. But I don’t think even that would put together the right combination. I’m looking for a community that wants to carry out the “royal law” and do so driven by and in the name of the royal person–Jesus Christ. So far, in spite of disagreements I have found that I can do that in three different United Methodist congregations. The denomination as a whole? Well, not so much.

  • Time for Church Accountability

    Quite frequently I receive appeals for funds from various ministries. This is probably because I head an all-volunteer ministry, Pacesetters Bible School, Inc. and thus am readily connection with Christianity, non-profits, and thus charitable contributions. Now I have no problem with charitable organizations making appeals for funds, though my group limits appeals to people who have attended an event we sponsor or in some way asked to be on the mailing list.

    I got one of these appeals today, and the thing that bother me about it, and triggered this post, was that the pledge card inside invited me to pledge some tithe to go to support pastors in this group’s various mission locations. The question comes to mind immediately as to just why I should send tithe to them, and since I have no personal or business connection with them, other than their mailout, why I should regard them as trustworthy. In fact, reading their magazine I’m pretty sure I would not support them were I to make a full investigation. Since my default is to support things I know about, I won’t bother with that lengthier investigation.

    Now I’m not a really strict person about tithe. I do believe it’s a good general standard of stewardship, but I believe each person must deal with their own conscience on charitable giving and service. But I also think that the local church is potentially a wonderful institution for giving and carrying out charity. Here’s a group of people you meet with every week (hopefully), and get to know (ideally), and trust (possibly). You can get the idea over a period of time of how they will spend your money.

    In principle, it seems to be that a great way to do your basic charitable giving is through a congregation or local group. Taking that principle and asking you to apply it to essentially random people far away, without accountability is questionable at best. I’m assuming that most people who receive such solicitations treat them as I do. But inevitably, just as a few people get caught by “African dictator” scams in e-mail, so some people get caught by various ministries asking for money.

    But as a follow-up thought, I have to ask just how accountable your local church is. Do they, in fact, spend your money in a way that you would regard as good stewardship? I’ve written recently about authority and accountability (Why Authority Issues are Important), and like many, I spoke more of accountability from above. But I think the focus needs to be a general accountability to the members–the people who produce the cash and suffer through failures of leadership.

    In Christian churches we have too long lived with the idea that the pastor and the elders are above the rest, and should not be questioned. Even in churches with very democratic structures you will generally find a group of people in leadership who are informally considered above reproach and questioning. I believe that there should be no such time. Everyone should be accountable in what they do, whether they have served the church for 5 minutes or 5 decades.

    This is true of financial accountability, of one’s moral life as a church leader, and of teaching and doctrine. In one church I attended I found that people were running around passing on things that I had said about the Bible. Now the fact was that I did have the strongest credentials in Biblical studies in the church, and I had often been able to provide answers and references. I was criticized for giving too carefully qualified of answers (people don’t want all that detail, just give them the answer). Some people even misquoted me back at myself, so that I was the authority behind something I never said.

    I would regularly say, “Don’t take my word for it. Study it out and come to your own conclusions.” Some people in the church leadership told me I was unreasonable. Why shouldn’t folks depend on the Bible “expert” among them? Well, there is a simple problem there–accountability. There was nobody else in the church who knew Biblical languages, or who had studied the history of the ancient near east, or Biblical exegesis, or a number of other fields as I did. If I was in a seminary setting, there would be someone questioning what I said all the time, and justly so. I should be prepared to defend what I say. But in that local congregation, it was just one man–me–and my errors were getting perpetuated. I might correct them later, but they were already a tradition for some people.

    The same thing happens with the finance committee. It’s too complicated and time consuming to check up on what they’re doing and to see how my money is being spent, so I just assume it’s being done well. But I think that’s irresponsible, and it denies accountability to those leaders.

    Check your chuch budget. Find out, for example, how much is being spent on service to the community, and how much on maintaining the church structure. Consider whether those are appropriate numbers and what might be done about it. Consider how much is spent on children and youth, the future of the church, and how much is spent entertaining the older members. (As a grandfather approaching age 50, I think I can say that!) Don’t forget that taking care of the church facility and existing members does cost money, but consider how the church can maximize outreach and service.

    One last thing–this isn’t a call for whiners and complainers. Quite the opposite! Whiners and complainers don’t hold people accountable, they just have fun complaining and gossiping. The difference is in who you talk to and how you do it. If you go to your finance committee to talk about the budget with some specific point in mind and a suggestion for positive action, that’s accountability. It’s still accountability if you go to them with a specific problem, along with evidence to support your claim. If you go to them just to say, “I hate this budget,” but don’t have anything concrete to suggest, that’s just complaining. No matter what you have, if you gossip about it around the table at Wednesday night dinner, that’s whining and complaining. Don’t do it. If you hear it happening, hold people accountable. Say, “I don’t think we should talk about this here and in this way. Let’s take any issues we have to the right people.”

    That’s enough time on the soapbox for me today.

  • Should a Pedophile be Welcome at Church?

    I’m not sure how to react to this story, but I think it’s a good one for discussion. On MSNBC I found the following story: Sex offender can worship – with conditions. I find the story troubling. As a grandparent of 5, I have to ask whether I would regard it as safe to have my grandchildren at church with him. At the same time, I would also have to ask what alternative I would propose to minister to such a person.

    The church made a covenant of restrictions on his activity, monitoring, and accountability. But one church member expressed the question quite well:

    Mary Carlson, a single mother of an 8-year-old girl, has fears despite the covenant. “He is a pedophile, and this pedophile might be fantasizing about this little girl across the aisle,” she said.

    As a United Methodist, I uphold “Open hearts, Open minds, Open doors,” at least insofar as I can make any real meaning of the slogan. But this open?

    Any thoughts?

  • Why Authority Issues are Important

    Via Pandagon I found this story, also reported here. These are serious accusations, and more and more people are coming forward.

    Such a story should emphasize several things to those of us who are in ministry, including how transparent our ministry practices should be. Teach and behave in such a way that an accusation such as this would be implausible in your ministry. In my view that includes not claiming excessive authority over the spiritual lives of others, and in fact teaching them to use their own discernment with respect to claims of spiritual authority. It also means practicing accountability, both to let the congregation know that you really mean it and to make sure that the opportunity doesn’t arise.

    Christians should also be very conscious of efforts to force them to give up their judgment to another person. Even demands that one “prayerfully consider” something that you have already rejected (for good reason), can be efforts to break down your own good sense and rational judgment in favor of a church leader. If you haven’t prayerfully considered something, of course, it’s a good idea to do so. But when you have, remember that your decision is between you and God and don’t let yourself be pushed around.

    All of this reemphasizes the point I made a few days ago about the dangers of authority, especially the type of church teaching that makes women spiritually inferior in authoirty to men, such as the teaching that a woman can never have authority over a man in the church. I discussed these issues in Women in Ministry: A Shock and Gifts Ministry and Blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

    Note what I wrote in the first of these entries:

    God doesn’t like his children lording it over one another.

    I have taught this repeatedly. Authority, especially spiritual authority, is dangerous. You create the potential for abuse as soon as you place them in charge and insulate them in any way from accountability. This is true in the home when a man is made “head of household” answering only to God, with his wife answering to him. It is true when one of the church offices is placed above all others. There are a number of teachers who emphasize that the pastor is the final authority in the church and insulate him from challenges because one cannot touch God’s anointed. But all of these options fly directly in the face of the gifts teaching of 1 Corinthians 12-14. God gives the gifts as he wills. They are all important, they are all needed in the church. None of them are to make one of us Lord over another. To fail to recognize this will ultimately result in abuse. If you’re teaching it, though you may not be abusing anyone yourself, you’re opening the door. [Emphasis from original.]

    Now notice the teaching that was apparently involved in this particular pastoral abuse, from The Dallas Observer Blog:

    Allen’s practice of paddling adults has been widely known in local COGIC circles for years, but a common teaching in black Pentecostalism is that a church member should never make an accusation against a man of God. Instead, he or she should pray privately that God deals with the minister’s sin. The two women I interviewed, in fact, each cited this teaching, which is apparently based on a biblical statement, “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm,” that is mentioned twice in the Old Testament.

    I don’t by any means believe that everyone who teaches a questionable view of authority is engaging in this type of abuse, but I do believe that any teaching that tends to remove accountability from someone in spiritual leadership is terribly, terribly dangerous and must be vigorously challenged by all Christians.

    Unfortunately, in some charismatic and pentecostal circles, the belief that God’s Spirit can come upon everyone in the church and that God can speak to anyone sometimes gets perverted into the idea that God puts an unaccountable authority on certain church leaders. When you have that teaching, abuse of authority, whether spiritual, emotional, or finally physical will not be far away. (Note that I do not mean that the abuse is limited to or especially bad in charismatic and pentecostal groups; rather, that in those groups it is this particular doctrine, and related doctrines about “anointing” that are often abused in this way. Other groups have their own avenues into sin.)

  • Women in Ministry: A Shock

    I have long been an advocate of the full involvement of women, indeed of all people in the ministry of the church. It is the essence, I believe, of gifts based ministry. If you believe that the Holy Spirit gives gifts for service, and then you deny the use of those gifts to certain members who have them based on race or gender (amongst other things), then I believe you are flying in the face of the very concept of spiritual gifts.

    In fact, to deny the work–any of the work–of the Holy Spirit in certain members of the body of Christ, is a step along the road toward blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Such denial is to say that the Holy Spirit has gifted and chosen someone, but you know better. If it is now “Christ living in us” rather than us living our own life, how is it that you justify making these distinctions. The clear trajectory of scripture is toward erasing such boundaries.

    (26) You’re all God’s children through faith in Christ Jesus. (29) For as many as have been baptized into Christ are wearing Christ as a garment. (28) There is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. — Galatians 3:26-28

    I know many deride the idea of trajectories as being too loose a form of interpretation, allowing people to go anywhere they please. But with such a clear destination point for the trajectory as that, how can we possibly miss the trajectory? There had to be a difference in Paul’s churches between Jews and Greeks because of the culture. That was the one element he personally fought in his lifetime. Slave and free took somewhat longer. Male and female is one that we’re looking for today. But I think that God’s desire, God’s goal for all his children has been plain to see all along.

    God doesn’t like his children lording it over one another.

    I have taught this repeatedly. Authority, especially spiritual authority, is dangerous. You create the potential for abuse as soon as you place them in charge and insulate them in any way from accountability. This is true in the home when a man is made “head of household” answering only to God, with his wife answering to him. It is true when one of the church offices is placed above all others. There are a number of teachers who emphasize that the pastor is the final authority in the church and insulate him from challenges because one cannot touch God’s anointed. But all of these options fly directly in the face of the gifts teaching of 1 Corinthians 12-14. God gives the gifts as he wills. They are all important, they are all needed in the church. None of them are to make one of us Lord over another. To fail to recognize this will ultimately result in abuse. If you’re teaching it, though you may not be abusing anyone yourself, you’re opening the door.

    I come to this position from an entirely positive point of view. My mother was a professional woman, a Registered Nurse who worked in missions with my father, who taught and led in churches. My father was an MD who did much less public speaking than my mother, and yet was behind her all the way. So I grew up with the idea that a woman could be strong and could take a leadership role. Similarly, I married a woman who is a spiritual leader, and is also a Registered Nurse. We sometimes teach as a team, and people are blessed by the different perspectives on the same subject we offer. The positive feedback on those sessions reinforces my belief in ministry.

    This morning when I looked over the blogs I normally read, I found Suzanne McCarthy’s entry at Better Bibles Blog. Suzanne has arrived at similar positions to my own, as far as I can see from reading her blog entries, but now I know that she got there the hard way. It is one thing to know that there are potential problems. It is another to have the testimony that such things are real. It is important, however, because people will avoid the danger signs as much as possible. Just as the church has avoided the issue of giving equal weight and authority to women for two millenia, so humanity in general will avoid the idea of giving up their improper authority over others. As my wife frequently says, Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

    The rest of us would like to pretend these things don’t really happen, that it’s all just theory. Theory is nice, when you can avoid watching it play out in practice. But there is no such thing as “good in theory, bad in practice.” A valid theory works out in practice, and this one does so on a regular basis. I’m tremendously thankful to people such as Suzanne McCarthy who find the courage to give their testimony on an issue such as this. There is so much shame involved, though there should not be. The only appropriate shame should be that of the abuser, not the abused. It is a comment on how far we are still from Paul’s ideal of being all God’s children, one in Christ, that we can still reflect shame on the victim.

    And that’s another trajectory in scripture–reconciliation. Jesus Christ wants to bring us all closer. He places his Spirit in everyone, not just the guys, not just the older folks, not just the ordained, and not just the church elders. Everybody shares in God’s Spirit. When we deny this to our fellow-believers, I repeat again, we are starting down the path to blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. At the end of that path is the complete lack of reconciliation, the inability to even hear the voice of conscience or the voice of God, and finally spiritual death.

    Thank you, Suzanne, for your courage in bringing this forcefully to our attention.