Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Religion

All posts relating to religion, including those on the relationship of religion to other fields, such as science and politics

  • Dave Black Has a Question on Ministry

    The Jesus ParadigmYou can find the full context at The Jesus Paradigm (extracted from Dave Black Online). But here’s just the question itself:

    When will appeals for vocations to the ministry end? And when, in their place, will the church encourage all of its members to seek God’s will for the area of ministry in which they can most effectively be used by Him?

    Good question. But before I look at it, it brings up an interesting phenomenon I’ve noted in the church. My wife was mentioning to me how every pastor she has ever talked to about testimonies in the church service (having someone other than the pastor talk a bit on Sunday morning) says it sounds like a good idea. (Hint: Read 1 Corinthians 14.) Yet nobody ever actually does it.

    Similarly in youth ministry, I’ve encountered many, many people who think young people should be more involved in the church in general, including leading and speaking, but it rarely happens. I recall one church that agreed generally in a meeting that the young people should be made welcome in the service with the adults and allowed, even encouraged to speak. But it didn’t actually happen.

    Thus back to the call to ministry. I can’t remember anyone I’ve talked to who doesn’t agree that every Christian is called to ministry, to service. There’s some disagreement as to the distinction of different calls, for example, is a call to full-time ministry substantially different from a call to teach Sunday School? But when it comes right down to it, much of the ministry is done by the professional staff.

    I recall a conference at which my wife Jody and I were both speakers. The other speakers, three of them, were all ordained. We were teaching about prayer. During the last session, the local church pastor made a call for people to come forward for prayer, and invited the pastors to come forward and pray. Odd, isn’t it? Is prayer a function of the ordained clergy? It reminds me of a former bishop here who was speaking at our church. He remarked that he really loved to have people praying for him who weren’t paid to do it!

    In the Methodist church we have a long, daunting process through which we put young people who are “called to ministry,” but we’re pretty random about anything else. When I first discussed how I could serve in the United Methodist Church, already equipped with an MA in Religion, the only thing the pastor could think of was to become a candidate to be a pastor. When I pointed out just how little my training or gifts had to do with pastoring a church, he had no idea what to do. I worked at it and found a place, but the church as a whole didn’t know what to do with me.

    Then there’s the multi-page survey, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but cannot possibly be the only thing we use to get people involved. Some people won’t identify their own gifts. I wouldn’t have checked a box for children’s ministry, for example, yet I’ve been invited to teach the third grade class at my church twice so far this year, with good success. (If you know me, you’ll realize that all glory for that must go to God. It’s a miracle!)

    I think there would be an incredible transformation of the church if we just began to do the things we all know we ought to.

    So I have a different question: Why is it that we don’t do these things that we’ll all generally agree we should do?

     

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  • Book Notes – Revelation: The Way It Happened

    When I encountered Lee Harmon in cyberspace, or more precisely he encountered me, and I learned that he’d written a book about Revelation, I was immediately hooked. Besides, Revelation – The Way it Happened is such an interesting and suggestive title. Let me warn you that, as usual, this will be less a review and more thoughts and notes on the book and on the topic.

    I grew up on Revelation. Well, Daniel and Revelation. As a young Seventh-day Adventist I would hear a new series of evangelistic sermons on the topic at least once a year. We’d all go, because we obviously didn’t want to have the venue (often a tent) be empty.

    And each year I heard an updated message. Revelation meant something just a bit different as all the charts and events were rearranged to suit the current news, and the evangelist would explain how precisely current events fit the right moment in the prophecy.

    It took me a few years, but I began to notice the problem. When I decided to leave the Seventh-day Adventist Church, eschatology was one of the key issues, along with the doctrine of the remnant which in turn derives from SDA eschatology.

    There are four major streams of interpretation of Revelation: preterism, historicism, futurism, and allegorical. Preterism holds that all or most of Revelation was fulfilled at the time (or failed of fulfillment). Historicism sees long periods of history represented by the main portions of the book (churches, seals, and trumpets especially). Futurism hold that most or all of the book remains to be fulfilled. The allegorical view comes in a variety of forms, but generally holds that the symbols in Revelation may be used to represent events at many times and places, but are not predictive of specific times and events for the most part.

    SDAs keep historicism alive. The problem is that when the scheme used was first produced, it led nicely through history up to that time (the “great disappointment of 1844), with a relatively short “time of the end” coming immediately afterward. Even after the great disappointment, when SDAs took the position that they had been wrong to set a date and time, but still assumed that the end would come very soon. (To get a more detailed rundown on this issue, in fact a very detailed one, see Edward W. H. Vick, The Adventists’ Dilemma.)

    A similar issue is present for futurists, in that the various players and the details of end time events change as time moves forward, even though they don’t have the problem of a timeline that stretches from the 1st century to the present, and must in turn be stretched further to accommodate continuing history. Futurists nonetheless have to contend that John the Revelator (whoever that was) had a vision of far future events which was attached to a short letter about current events written to contemporary churches, and that there was a gap of at least a couple of millenia between the two. Though Revelation 10:6 proclaims “no more delay” this interpretation proposes a great deal of delay indeed. Of course, once one places the declaration that there will be no further delay into the context of a much delayed prophecy chart, one can avoid the contradiction, provided one is flexible enough.

    So that leaves us with preterism, which has most of the book refer to events contemporary to its author, and the allegorical view, which often doesn’t attach the material to much of anything.

    My own bias is in favor of an allegorical view, but one that is rooted in 1st century events. Thus I see Revelation 12 as an excellent depiction of spiritual (and political) conflict no matter when it happened, but I also accept a historical grounding in the birth of Jesus and the church.

    Having rambled thus far, let’s get to the book. I usually list strengths first and then weaknesses, but so I can get on with the fun, I’m going to list weaknesses first.

    If you pick up this book thinking you’re going to get a scholarly dissertation, complete with full examination of all the views and plenty of footnotes, you’ll be disappointed. It’s a presentation of its author’s interpretation with a few references to other views, and very little in the way of footnotes. There’s a good extra reading section, though I’ll confess it doesn’t match what I’d recommend in many cases. It’s still a good listing. There are many books on Revelation, and it would be shocking if two lists coincided completely.

    On the other hand, if you pick up the book thinking you’re going to be carried gently into understanding the book via light fiction, you’ll also be disappointed. There are multiple threads, one of them a contemporary story within a story (a father telling his son a story), interspersed with commentary and some historical narration. Font and style indicators guide you through all of this, but you’ll probably feel a little bit scattered in the early stages.

    Having said all of that, let’s get to the strengths. The writing is clear and direct. It’s really easy to follow the story lines once you get them straight in your head, and despite my note about a lack of footnotes, there is no lack of references to biblical and other literature from the time.

    One of the great errors Bible students make is that they expect to be able to go read Revelation on its own and come to some sort of understanding. The book is filled with quotations and allusions, some very close, some more distant. But there are very few words in the book that don’t connect somewhere. Harmon does a good job of referencing much of this material.

    I was especially gratified to see the extensive use of the connections with Ezekiel, which often don’t get enough attention from modern futurist commentators. Of course Daniel is also important as is Zechariah but so are many other books. Getting a feel for the symbolism also requires use of other apocalyptic literature, and Harmon provides quite a number of references.

    I have been attracted to the 70s or 80s dating that Harmon uses myself, but I remain unconvinced. I think it’s a possible dating, but my main criticism of the interpretation provided may be an excessively close tie between the imagery and real world events. It’s possible, but I think it is a bit of a stretch.

    Overall, I’d say that while I find several specific theses in the book questionable, it’s a good read and it provides enough references to primary literature to help set you on your way to some rewarding study. My hope would be that readers of this book will turn to those primary sources and help change the way Christians speak about Revelation.

    The fact is that we’ve been proclaiming “soon,” in the send sense of “just around the corner” for so long, that it no longer sounds very convincing. If people did this in any field other than religion, we’d call them liars. There’s a way to understand “soon,” but this isn’t it. If the futurist interpretation of Revelation is correct, one would have to suppose that God lied to those who first heard the words. We need to rethink the way we teach prophecy, and do it less as prediction and more as admonition.

    The purpose of apocalyptic is encouragement at a time of trouble. There is encouragement there that can apply at any time and place. There is also an ultimate hope. But the reason to carry out our mission as Christians, Christ’s body in the world, is not that Jesus may come and end it all at any moment, but rather that Jesus is already near and our own end is always near. And because Jesus is near we can face our own hardships and ultimate passing from this world with hope.

    I believe in the “resurrection of the body and the life everlasting” as the creed says. But I don’t believe that the passage of time is the main issue. Whatever the length of time until the end, God is present.

    In the meantime, you could do much worse with your time than read this book and let it challenge you to further study.

     

  • Fear, Beliefs, and Questioning

    Image of "Dawn: Luther at Erfurt" wh...
    Image via Wikipedia

    I’ve often said that I think people who become angry when their beliefs questioned are actually less confident of those beliefs, rather than more so. But that’s a pretty broad and inadequate statement, I think.

    I was discussing this with my wife recently, and we were wondering why neither of us get annoyed with people who question our faith, when some folks we know do. In an extreme case, I recall talking to a young man at a book show who responded angrily to my book What’s in a Version?. For him, the KJV was the one and only word of God, and you could see the tension creep in at the very thought that anyone might question that fact. As the discussion progressed, it became clear that for him, faith would collapse should this one doctrinal position prove false.

    In our discussion, I recalled my own departure from faith after I received my MA. I claimed unbelief, but as I processed things, I eventually (nearly 12 years later) came to the realization that I did, in fact, believe. The belief wasn’t something one would call Christian faith, and it was limited, but having shed most doctrinal positions, I found myself believing still. In exploring that, I returned to some doctrinal positions I had held previously, but not to others.

    I think the question here is just what is the object of my faith. If I, like that young man, would find my world unraveling if one could prove that the KJV wasn’t the one and only true word of God, is my faith in God or in the doctrine? Now the KJV-Only position is an extreme example, and I do believe many KJV-Only advocates are guilty of bibliolatry, but it’s very easy, I think, for us to place our personal preferences, and even our correct doctrines, ahead of God.

    For example, T. C. Moore suggests that the Gospel is the Messiah and not the doctrine of justification by faith (HT: Political Jesus). While I accept the doctrine of justification by faith (though not with all the definitions some Calvinists place on it), I would agree. The doctrine tells us something about the object of faith. Thus I could be convinced that I had misunderstood something about the doctrine without it making me question my faith in Jesus.

    On the other hand, I want to avoid the idea that doctrine, or the content of our beliefs, doesn’t matter. What I believe about Jesus is important, at the same time as I place my faith in Jesus and not in what I believe about Him.

    Let me compare this to marriage. I love my wife. I could describe this as adequate. She, and not some one of her attributes, is the object of my love. I know that she is a great organizer, a great caregiver, that she loves and prays for our children and grandchildren, and that if the budget is short she’ll give up something she wants before something that the children, grandchildren, or I would like. It’s important that I know these things about here. They’re true.

    But I don’t focus on those things to the neglect of the person. I could be out every night telling people about those things, while neglecting my wife, herself. But more importantly, what happens when she displays weakness? My love doesn’t change. But if what I loved was merely a list of characteristics, it might.

    The two elements are a package, but I do believe that if the focus, the object, of our faith and trust is right, we will have much less fear of examining the various things we believe about that person. There is no single string you can pull to make my faith in God disappear.

    So pull away at those strands. I’ll enjoy the discussion! Maybe we’ll both learn.

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  • If Your Spouse is Abusing You, Get Out of There

    A video from John Piper is making the rounds (HT: Tim Ricchuiti).

    I’m not going to comment directly on the video. Rather, I think it is worthwhile to give my answer to the question asked. What does a woman who is abused do? (Note also that I’m aware there are men who are abused, but the question was not framed in that way.)

    My answer is simple: Get out of there and report it. But especially get out of there. Don’t give a physical abuser the opportunity to do more damage.

    I am an egalitarian as I have stated on this blog any number of times, yet I won’t criticize complementarian philosophy as natural leading to abuse, as some have done. I treat this issue as a non-essential. Complementarianism is not abuse.

    Violent abuse, on the other hand, is a crime and not just something to be dealt with in connection with the church. It remains a crime irrespective of the theological positions of the abuser. I think we’ve had enough cases of church cover-ups. I also cannot see any way in which abusing one’s spouse or one’s children can be justified, or that one ought to endure it. It should be reported.

    Many women in such a situation would not feel comfortable taking their case before the church, especially with a husband who might be in a position of authority, or where the church leadership is all male. In such cases again, I would always emphasize getting out of reach of the abuser first, then reporting it either to the authorities or to someone trustworthy who will, in turn, report it to the authorities.

    For me the key theological issue here is that abuse violates the divine mandate for marriage. For some it seems to be easy to hear “wives submit to your husbands” (Eph. 5:22) without also hearing “be subject one to another” (Eph. 5:21) and “love your wives as Christ loved the church” (Eph. 5:25). How was that again? “As Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”

    That’s the New Testament idea of having authority.

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  • If We Were Doing Our Job in the Church

    … then perhaps nobody could say this:

    But if four years of college undo 18 years of parenting and religious affiliation, perhaps the faith community’s tenuous hold is the problem, not the particular place outside its bubble where that hold evaporates. Consider the believers we’ve seen in history. With all the persecution that Judaism and Christianity have survived over the centuries, an argument that sites America’s Top 310 Colleges as a first order adversary is hard to credit…. (Source: The Atlantic: Why College Students and Losing Their Religion)

    I agree. We tend to blame society for the fact that our young people tend to leave the church around college age. I suspect we’d like to believe that because it means we’re not to blame. We’ve done our best, but it’s just the society. What can we do?

    Well, we could try living our faith and inviting our kids to live it with us, rather than trying to work in just the right amount of indoctrination. We could try examining the kinds of ideas they’ll hear about in college, rather than repeating cliches and working our way through bland, unchallenging curriculum. (Can anyone say, “Bring your Bibles?”)

     

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  • On Missions and Priorities

    Three days ago I wrote a post on our priorities and the purpose of the church. Today over at Energion.net (belonging to my company, Energion Publications) we publish a post by D. Kevin Brown titled Missions – What about It?. He’s asking some of the same questions along with a few more.

  • No, Burning Books Is NOT Worthy of Respect

    Book burning
    Image by pcorreia via Flickr

    The Fifth Column has a post titled On Burning Books (HT: Divine Ripples), referring specifically to the recent burning of a Qur’an. He concludes that:

    It may not be prudent, it may not be useful, but it is a stand worthy of respect.

    I disagree. Book burning is either the petulant reaction of fearful people looking for control, but lacking convincing arguments, or a way to gain undeserved attention.

    The article cites a really bad reason why one might respect book burning: Church councils did it through the years. Wow! Lots of church people gathering together and doing something stupid! Who would have ever imagined it? It just proves that Christians are no more immune from stupidity and control issues than any other group of people.

    Here’s a quote:

    And it wasn’t just the Koran that burned. During the Middle Ages, the Talmud was frequently targeted for the fire by Church authorities precisely because of the numerous blasphemies concerning Christ and the Blessed Virgin that it contains. Throughout Europe, the book was formally put on trial and censored or burnt, in much the same way Terry Jones tried and burnt the Koran.

    And this is somehow an example of a good idea?

    I want to make clear her that I’m talking about we should do, what’s a good idea, and not what should be legal. I would never burn the American flag, even in protest, but I firmly believe it should be legal to do so. I would never burn a copy of the Qur’an, but I believe the action should be legal. Lots of stupid things are and should be legal. I do not believe the burning of the Qur’an justifies violent actions in response, just as I do not believe that any insult to Christianity, such as burning a Bible, would justify a violent response from Christians.

    Now to be fair, the article does question both the prudence and effectiveness of the tactic. But nonetheless the author concludes that there is something here to be respected.

    Our problem with Islam is not that we don’t get to say enough nasty things about Muslims, or that we can’t respond to Islam. We can and do respond respectfully on many occasions. But when someone burns a copy of the Qur’an it sends another message, not one of respectful disagreement, but one of hatred. It does nothing to stop even one act of terrorism. It does nothing to convince any radical Muslim that he is wrong, nor any Muslim, of course. It is the adult equivalent of a child’s temper tantrum.

    I’m reminded of a time many years ago when I was in a group of young men. One person got angry at another and started swinging his arms in a sort of suggestion he was going to punch the other one out. He kept saying, “Hold me back! Hold me back!” But he never actually approached the other guy, who would doubtless have won any fight between them. Nobody tried to hold him back either, because we knew he was going to be ineffective. The one difference between this event and that one is that the purported target exercised restraint.

    We don’t need to take our cues from the radicals. We don’t need to become like them. They are not concerned about who they kill. We should be. They are not making distinctions between one American and another. We should recognize distinctions in their camp. We should not let terrorism make us less than we are.

    I fear, however, that it has already happened to some extent.

     

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  • No Preaching and Leave Your Bible at Home?

    Via Dispatches I found this story about a lawsuit against the Grossmont Union High School District. The suit alleges that the school forbade the student to bring his Bible to school or to preach. The district tells a different story, claiming the student was very disruptive.

    I mention this story for a couple of reasons. The first is our tendency to jump to conclusions. My first response, I must confess, is to think the school is in the wrong, not because of freedom of religion (though I think that’s applicable) but because of freedom of speech. I understand that there are limits–substantial limits–to speech as a student in school, but I tend to think administrators overdo that point. Nonetheless, the more I think about this case, the less certain that becomes. It will be interesting to see what comes out in court, and just who is jumping to conclusions. If the facts were completely as alleged by the plaintiff it would be a slam dunk for them–which makes me wonder.

    My second point is that we should, at the same time we teach our children their faith, teach them good behavior and courteous, open, and friendly ways of sharing it. This both provides a witness in their lives as they treat other people with respect, including not forcing religion on them, and it is also just more effective witnessing. We gain nothing through rudeness. I don’t know the facts of this case, just the allegations. But there are genuine cases in which Christians young and old diminish or even pervert their witness through the means they use to carry it out.

    Please remember that I do not say this as a way of claiming that this young man did wrong. We don’t yet know precisely what happened. That is what a trial is for.

    For this I refer back to my 2006 post, Witness without Being a Pest.

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  • N. T. Wright on Hell and Universalism

    (HT: Through a Glass Darkly)

  • If THIS is the Purpose of Your Church then It IS Obsolete

    Mark Cuban guest starred in the episode.
    Image via Wikipedia

    John Meunier cites comments by Mark Cuban, owner or the Mavericks, who says he doesn’t need the new media because he can reach their readers just as well himself. I would note in passing, though it’s not the topic of this blog, that I think Cuban is optimistic about his ability to reach people directly. I get my sports information via the internet, and I almost never do so through the team’s web site or official channels. But that’s something time will test.

    Meunier’s application to the church is interesting, however, and matches with some things I’ve read recently and also heard in discussions at church, i.e. in the physical building we call church. The general idea is that because people can make connections now via social media, they need the church less. I have no doubt that for certain definitions of “church” and “need” this is true. People who attended church for the purpose of social or business networking no longer need the church as much in that particular way.

    So if your church exists for the purpose of providing social networking, then your church indeed is obsolete, or is rapidly becoming obsolete. Even someone like me, past middle age, can contact my business associates, friends, and family via social media and text. In fact, I do almost all my business networking online. That doesn’t mean I don’t ever want to physically meet people. In fact, I like to meet them whenever possible. But I have had design work done by people I never physically met. I regularly publish authors I have never met. I sell to people I have never met in physical space.

    The problem here is with the definition of church. We use “church” to refer to the building, to the congregation that meets there, to denominations, and to the church universal. Our physical building is diminishing in importance. Not becoming useless (or obsolete), mind you, but diminishing in its role. The local congregation, in the sense of those located in one physical place, is diminishing in importance, as we have it now. But there is no reason in all of this to suggest that the church, as the body of Christ in the world, is diminishing in importance. Unless, of course, we’ve made church equivalent to one of those other things.

    Social media is regularly decried as a means of keeping people apart. But people are using it to get together. People complain about how the easy access to one another via cell phones, on Twitter, on Facebook, and in so many other ways diminishes more personal contact. But for me, and I know for many others, all of those are means of keeping in better touch with people I care about. In addition, they make it possible for me to find out about, and care about, people I might never have met otherwise.

    The building was never the church in the first place, at least in the biblical sense. Yes, we use the word that way, and I’m not complaining about the way language changes. We just need to be aware of which definition of “church” we’re using. Social media means the building is less important, because it gives us other ways of connecting.

    Now if your church, in the sense of local congregation, existed largely as a social network, it’s going to be obsolete as well. It just isn’t as efficient at social networking any more. If that was all your church was, there’s no reason to mourn its passing. But if your congregation was a gather of people filled with the Holy Spirit and empowered to do ministry (see 1 Corinthians 12-14 and don’t skip chapter 13), then three things may happen.

    First, you can expand your congregation and connect it to other congregations  more efficiently. There might be a congregation in some other part of the world that needs to connect to your gifts in order to serve where they are. You can connect with them via social media, and both be more effective.

    Second, you can more efficiently get your congregation aware of, and working together on the things you are called to do. You can arrange rapid responses to disasters. You can discuss the Sunday School lesson on your Facebook wall. You can tweet about the church service if it excites you and thus reach people who couldn’t, or wouldn’t (and probably won’t) enter your building.

    Third, remember all those buildings? As they became less useful as places for the membership to gather, you can convert them for use in other ministries, or if you find no new use for them, sell them, and use the money to accomplish the church’s mission. I personally think church campuses are the most underutilized class of real estate around. What good is that sanctuary to anyone during the week?

    Speaking of which, and only slightly off topic, what is it with all these closed and locked gyms (or family life centers, or whatever you call them)? I’m guessing that if the church was willing to go to work you could have young people using those facilities for fun and learning. Many of them wouldn’t be church members? Their parents aren’t paying tithe to support the building? Good! Learn as a church to give in mission. There’s a risk in having kids off the street in your facility? They might tear it up? Good! It all belongs to Jesus anyhow, and he can handle it.

     

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