Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Christian Ministry

  • Ministry and Porn

    After yesterday’s post on Moral Choices when Viewing and this follow-up that I wrote for my wife’s devotional list, I found this post via Imago Dei. I get Donny’s regular ramblings via the Moderate Christian Blogroll, but I don’t regularly read XXXChurch.

    There are a number of points in here that are worth noting, and I want to give you a couple of quick quotes:

    And despite what many Christians might think, pornographers won’t be legislated out of business. They’re too smart to just sit back and allow such things to happen. Besides, legislation will NEVER change the hearts of anyone. I can’t tell you how much it bothers me to hear the ramblings of groups such as the Family Research Council, which seem to think we can pass laws to improve “morality” in our country. That’s just not the case. God himself gave us the choice to make our own decisions. Which of us is above God?

    Donny speaks largely about the pornography industry, but I think we need to get our focus as a church on reaching and healing people, and not so much on making laws. I do fully believe Christians should be involved politically and should live out their Christian principles in their involvement. But as a church we have been given the gospel message and the task of using it to be witnesses and to make disciples.

    We don’t like that process because it takes time and effort, especially the effort of keeping on running the race and living a life of Christian witness. But going for legislation instead is a fast food approach. Sure, if I can legislate a piece of moral action, that legislation will influence more people at once than my personal witness, and it will do so more quickly. But it will not change people’s hearts. That’s the function of the gospel message.

    I must note that I don’t think it is impossible to legislate moral behavior. Obviously we do so all the time, and in many areas we must do so. In many other areas, we should recognize that such legislation will not be effective. It’s just practical stewardship of resources to apply legislation where it’s going to accomplish its goals.

    Let me close with something I read in my devotional time this morning:

    (38) And he said to them, “Let us go elsewhere into the nearby country towns, so that I might preach there as well. Because it was for this that I went forth. (39) And he went into all of Galilee preaching in their synagogues and casting out the demons. — Mark 1:38-39

    It is a characteristic of Mark’s gospel that the proclamation is followed by the defeat of evil spirits. It’s interesting also to note that Jesus was often running away from the crowds who wanted to hear him. Do you have to turn people away from your church because there are more seeking the message and healing than you can accommodate?

    It doesn’t happen at my church. Perhaps we all have some work to do–on ourselves! 🙂

  • Moral Choices when Viewing

    When I saw the post Virtual Gomorrah: Temptation, Technique, and Technological Progress on the evangelical outpost, I expected to be annoyed by calls for censorship. And indeed there are a few words that tend to annoy my libertarian approach, such as these:

    . . . My basic position is that while they are desperately needed they are also hopelessly ineffective. I’ve come to believe, as Princeton Professor Robert George says, that “laws are likely to be least effective when they are needed most.” I’m still trying to decided how to say that is a way that doesn’t sound defeatist or pessimistic. . . .

    After that note from the introduction, however, the post is right on target, and worth reading. The question I think we need to ask ourselves is simply this: Do I have the will to live my convictions? For a Christian I would put it more precisely: Will I allow the Holy Spirit to keep guiding me into greater maturity?

    The success of pornography and violence in the public media, whether on television, video, games, or via the internet suggests that many people who claim to be disgusted by x-rated material really aren’t. When nobody is watching, they are quite ready to watch the things that they condemn. If that were not the case, e-mail inboxes would not be flooded with offerings of pornography. Those who sell this material know that if they scatter their ads far enough there are people who will pause before hitting that delete key and then they will get sucked in, one step at a time.

    I wrote about this a couple of years ago (pre-blog) in an essay titled Off-Switch Censorship. I think it’s still applicable now.

    We are far too anxious to get someone else to solve our problems of will. There is a simple but difficult solution. Learn to say no. Decide not only what you will watch but how much. This can apply to politics, war coverage, or entertainment. There are some things that are no good in any proportions, but there are also things that are good when used in balance, but are dangerous when used to excess.

    Consciously establish your own boundaries and then work hard to stick with them. If you have problems doing so, then get some help. Christian churches should provide opportunities for people to be accountable to one another. I’m not talking about big brother, in which the church tries to monitor your private life, nor am I talking about an intervention group for acknowledged addicts. I’m talking about a group of people who talk to one another about how their Christian walk is going.

    Let me give you an example from my own life. My morning starts with a short time of prayer, then there are certain morning activities, things that need to be done immediately. Then I have my time of Bible study and prayer that is somewhat longer. Now my wife knows by experience that my day goes much better if I have that second period of study and prayer. That’s my time with God that lets me hear from the Lord about my priorities for the day and generally feeds my soul.

    Unfortunately, I have a strong tendency to look at the list of things I really need to get done that day, and to decide I need to get started. After all, I’ve already had prayer time. I can rationalize this by noting that I will spend several hours working on a manuscript having to do with a Biblical or spiritual topic, so I am, after all, studying the Bible. Well, your mileage may vary, but for me there is a huge difference between relaxed, devotional study, and editing or writing a manuscript, however good that manuscript may be.

    As I said, my wife knows how this works, and she can identify when I’ve done my devotions and when I haven’t by my attitude through the rest of the day. Devotional dependency? Perhaps. 🙂 But the fact is that she gently holds me accountable on that point. When she notices the results, she’ll ask me, “Did you have your devotional time?’ Now your spouse is not likely to be an adequate source of accountability, though I think a spouse can help a great deal. But having someone just ask you can be a big help.

    I would suggest that laws against pornography and obscenity are not going to be generally successful. Like drug laws, we have the unfortunate tendency to measure their success by the number of people caught, not by the number who have access to the material. (I am opposed to censorship in any case. I just happen to believe in this case that censorship is also going to be ineffective.) That means that those of us who do not approve of such materials need to take responsibility for our own actions.

    One last thing–turn the switch off before the program you don’t want to watch even starts. Delete the e-mail before you gaze at the thumbnails and wonder. Once you’ve decided on the boundaries, enforce them on yourself with rigor.

  • Sudan Missionary from Pensacola

    There was an encouraging story in the Pensacola News Journal titled Big difference in Sudan about Jim Esson who is returning to the Sudan and working on building a medical clinic. This is a very positive form of mission activity.

    In the comments someone complains that the mission is out of town while there are still people in need locally. But there are many different forms of service, and we don’t need to choose just one. There are plenty of resources available; what we need is the willingness to use them wherever there are needs.

  • 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.)

  • Gifts Ministry and Blaspheming the Holy Spirit

    OK, that should be a sufficiently provocative title! 🙂

    Peter Kirk commented on an earlier post and gave me some advice–advice which I would normally consider quite good sense. Here it is:

    But maybe you are going a bit too far, at least to keep yourself out of trouble, in suggesting that those who do not accept women’s ministry may be guilty of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

    Now I would normally take that advice, because heating up a debate such as this is commonly quite unhelpful, but in this case, I’m not going to, and instead I’m going to make my reasoning explicit, paint a target on myself, and see who wishes to take target practice. I do not mean to destroy dialogue, but I have claimed repeatedly that there must be a balance between expressing one’s views forcefully and allowing room for conversation in any dialogue. Often what passes for dialogue consists entirely of watered down arguments and sentiments, and results in a mental fog rather than an exchange of opinions. I would reference my responses to the Adrian Warnock interviews with Wayne Grudem as an example. I responded with some vigor to a number of points, yet at no time was I actually angry with Adrian or with Wayne Grudem. I know that some things that I said did offend a couple of people, but I think I said what was necessary in order to be honest.

    Looking Back

    Now I’m going to refer back to my response to that interview on a couple of points. First, however, a correction. I quote from my own post:

    I would note however, that while I disagree with the idea of male-only church leadership, I am not particularly offended by churches that follow such a practice. Anyone who dislikes their view can go find another church, and there are plenty of those. What I object to is that this doctrine is made an essential of the faith. . . .

    I am going to refine that position in this post, because I don’t think I drew the line correctly, and I think that my response has become more vigorous due to some experiences since that time.

    In the same post, I also partially defend Grudem’s use of the term blasphemy for the views of another, from his viewpoint:

    Now I know that Dr. Grudem retracted his acceptance of the term “blasphemy” when used of Steve Chalke (with whom I am not acquainted). I’m a little less happy with that retraction than others are. Don’t get me wrong here please. I appreciate the humility and the willingness to dialogue that it represents. But I wonder if at root there isn’t some justification for the word form Dr. Grudem’s point of view on the atonement. Now I can’t speak for him, but what suggests this to me is my own reaction from the other side. The claim that penal substitutionary atonement is the essence of the atonement tempts me to use the word blasphemy because I believe it paints such a wrong picture of God, one different from the revealed and experienced God. Now I’m also going to resist use of the term, though my own use of anti-God could easily be as provocative. Thus I understand both John Piper’s desire to use the term, and Wayne Grudem’s initial agreement.

    Again, I want to refine that comment just a bit in this post by being more specific about why I use (and used) the term “blasphemy” in that particular context, and why I can understand its use by another against my own position. A bottom line point here, however, is that if anyone who is a part of the family of Jesus believes that I am in danger of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, my preference is that they say so. I may disagree with them, but I get the opportunity to examine my own beliefs and question myself, which is a good thing. I regard that as part of the attitude of repentance.

    The Unpardonable Sin and Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit

    I need to say just a few words about the unpardonable sin. It is commonly equated, and quite scripturally so, with the phrase “blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.” I am not going to fully defend my position on this in a post that will already be quite long, but I do not believe that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is a single act, nor is the unpardonable sin singular. I have commented on this briefly in the Participatory Study Series pamphlet Repentance and Rejoicing:

    One of the tasks of the Holy Spirit is to convict of sin. If we turn away the Holy Spirit so much that we no longer hear His voice, we will no longer ask for pardon and it will, in fact, be too late.

    I discuss this a bit further in my personal testimony, and also in a sermon which was broadcast on the radio here in Pensacola, and will be podcast via the Pacesetters Bible School New Blog within the next few weeks.

    In summary, I believe that we are all more or less on the path between pardon and the unpardonable sin, which elicits the stern warning of Hebrews 6:4-6. There is a point of standing up against the urging of the Holy Spirit at which you will no longer hear the Holy Spirit speaking. When you get to that point, you will no longer as forgiveness, and thus will no longer be forgiven. Thus the unpardonable sin is that sin for which you do not ask pardon, and every time you resist the Holy Spirit, you head that direction. Fortunately, God’s grace is greater than our sin, and constantly pushes us to listen.

    To go even further, however, I believe that every time we resist truth in any area of our life, we build habits of resistance that start to shut our ears to new light and to correction. If I become so angry with Wayne Grudem (see above), for example, or John Piper for their comments on penal substitutionary atonement, that I refuse in the future to hear anything they say, I have taken a step away from being corrected. Now obviously I can’t physically read or hear everything that anyone might desire. I’m talking about the attitude.

    Gifts, Women’s Ministry, and Blasphemy

    So this brings me to the actual point of this post. (I imagine you thought I was never going to manage that!) I start from the simple position that the Holy Spirit gives gifts in the church as he wills in order to do the work of ministry. Unlike our federal government, God doesn’t give unfunded mandates. The Holy Spirit can accomplish your call and your congregation’s call through you provided that you let him. The presence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the church indicate God’s intention that those gifts be used in ministry.

    Every time I close myself off to that call, every time I place a barrier in the way of the Holy Spirit carrying out his ministry in and through me, my family, or my congregation, I am speaking against the Holy Spirit, putting up my views and my agenda as greater than God’s. That is not only a form of idolatry, but when done in the face of the conviction of the Holy Spirit it is, I belive, a step on the road to blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. That blasphemy will become unpardonable if I get to the point of being unable to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches (Revelation 2-3).

    Now one caveat here. While I am now more offended than I was previously by churches who deny women a place in ministry according to their gifts, I do believe there is a substantial difference between believing that something is right and failing to do it and not being aware that something is right. Both are dangerous, because our awareness of the Holy Spirit–God’s breath in Christ’s body–is key to our Christian life. But the first can be disastrous in a short period of time, while the second erodes. If completely honest, those with the second error correct their course.

    This does not merely apply to women’s ministry. It applies to all forms of restrictions on ministry. I have seen churches where ministry was artificially restricted based on age, on economic status, on whether one was part of the founding families of the church, on intellectual ability or lack thereof, or on a buddy system with the elders and pastor. All of these things are, I believe, a way of flying in the face of the work of the Holy Spirit.

    My bottom line is this: Be open to what the Holy Spirit is actually doing. While you need some structure from sound doctrinal beliefs, it’s easy to be wrong and to place your own agenda above God’s agenda. The one way to be safe is to maintain that attitude of repentace, to remain correctable.

  • Put Your Bible Down for a Day

    That would be a weird thing for a Bible teacher, such as myself, to say. And indeed, I didn’t say it. Dennis Stout did, over a Christianity Today/Christian Bible Studies.com. There’s some good advice in this article, so I wanted to commend it to my readers.

  • Hebrew Teacher Dismissed Because She’s a Woman

    This is incredible. The post on the Christians for Biblical Equality blog is dated January 25, but I just came across it today. My own advisor at the MA level was a woman, Leona Glidden Running, who was both a godly woman and a wonderful teacher. It’s incredible to me that this sort of travesty of the good news of the gospel takes place.

  • Great Post on Gifting

    In preparing the Christian Carnival CLVIII, which I hosted this week on my Participatory Bible Study Blog, I found a real gem of a post on gifting. Dana, of Dana’s Avenue, wrote about Gifting, and the experience of discovering excitement in the gift of accounting.

    This really strikes a cord with me, because in my own classes on spiritual gifts I tell people that the church is filled with people who want exciting gifts like prophecy, miracles, or leadership, but very few want things like wisdom, hospitality, or helping. The church, on the other hand, needs those gifts in reverse order. We need lots and lots of helpers!

  • Being United Methodist: Identity and Purpose

    One of the problems with having a sign in front of your church, and particularly a denominational identity, is that it produces certain expectations in people who may considering entering your property and visiting your church for an event or a worship service. Now some of you may not think this is a problem–you want an identity. That’s good! But consider these question: Is the expectation created by your label realistic? Is it what people will find when they enter? Are you willing to stand by that purpose even if they choose another church?

    This discussion could apply to any denomination, I think, and also to many non-denominational congregations. But my experience is with entering a United Methodist local church. I’ve discussed parts of this experience several times before, but rather than link to a scattered set of sources, let me just highlight the relevant points of my own experience.

    I was raised Seventh-day Adventist, and completed my MA degree in Biblical Languages at the Andrews University Graduate School in conjunction with the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary. Then I left the SDA church and all churches for 12 years. I started my path back into the church at a United Methodist congregation. One of the first things I asked for was a definitive statement of United Methodist doctrine. I wanted to know what I was getting into. So the pastor of that church gave me a copy of the United Methodist discipline. Don’t groan! Considering the way I presented my question to him, he had no choice.

    I read the early pages of the discipline, the doctrinal standards and the explanations. I questioned elements of the social principles, but based on that reading I thought I could get along in a United Methodist congregation. I was naive enough to believe that Methodists actually had some idea of what was contained in their own doctrinal statement, but more on that in a moment.

    I attended two different United Methodist congregations off and on, and also went to small group Bible studies in both. When I had decided to rejoin the church, and specifically one of those two congregations I went to the pastors and discussed it. The first pastor told me that I would be welcome in his church no matter what. I explained that while I had been baptized, I had been out of the church for some years and wanted to acknowledge that. “We don’t care about that,” he said. “We just want you to enjoy our fellowship.” There was no discussion of my beliefs in any way. I’m not sure he had ever heard me affirm that I believed in God, though he knew I read Greek. I can testify that the two are not equivalent.

    The second pastor sat down and asked me what I believed about Jesus. What a difference! We had a serious conversation. I even contested points with him. But at the end he knew that I did, in fact, believe in Jesus and was ready to accept me into membership. I joined the second congregation.

    I suspect that the first pastor did not want to offend me by suggesting anything in particular I had to do. But by doing so he made me ask myself why I would join his congregation. What was the purpose? If it was merely to “enjoy fellowship” that wasn’t sufficient to me. By being open to all, I think he made the church seem to be unimportant and of little use.

    Even in the church I did join, however, there was disappointment. I read about the doctrine of Christian perfection, one of those Wesleyan doctrines with which I have a certain amount of trouble. I read Wesley’s A Plain Account of Christian Perfection amongst other things in order to clarify what Wesley taught on the matter. When I discussed that with the pastor he asked me to teach a class for the entire church on the topic. Now I had grown up in the SDA church and heard about John Wesley all my life. Imagine my amazement when I found that not one single member in that class was even aware that there was a doctrine of Christian perfection and that it was listed in the doctrinal standards of their denomination.

    I can’t really speak of what goes on in the broader denomination. I’m a small picture man. But I do see this in congregations. If you try to be all things to all people, you can easily wind up being nothing at all. Those who know me and read any of what I write will know that I’m not calling for tense, lengthy, doctrinal standards. But I am calling for knowing our identity and purpose at the congregational level. United Methodists should go out to that cross and flame symbol and ask themselves whether it is false labeling. Are people going to experience the the incaranational love and revelation of Jesus Christ and the fire of the Holy Spirit in your church? Is it an expectation of all or most of the members? Don’t suspect me of forcing a particular definition of each of these elements. I’m not. What I’m wondering is whether you could answer that question, whether you’re church member or pastor, in an intelligible way. If I was joining your church, would you say that you just wanted me to enjoy your fellowship, or would there be expectations of service, an identity to assume, and a purpose to support?

    My pastor (Gonzalez UMC) when he arrived at the beginning of a building program for a “family life center,” made certain that the name was changed to “community life center.” The name makes a difference, he told me. We need to be a church that reaches out to our community and makes a difference. There’s one piece of the identity. If you don’t want to reach the community, you’re going to have many moments of discomfort at our church. It gets more detailed than that, but I’m not writing to tell you what your purpose should be in detail.

    What I’m trying to say here is that when we get so open that we lose identity, we also give up any reason for anyone to enthusiastically support us. People don’t support an organization with any enthusiasm because of what it’s not. They support it for what it is. If you don’t know the purpose of your church, whether you’re church leader, member, or pastor, you will find it difficult to grow.

    As a final note, I think this is an area in which Christian liberals and moderates have failed in particular. We too often either define ourselves, or fail to define ourselves by what we are not, and then try to keep from offending anyone on any side.

    On the one hand I can define myself as a person who does not believe in the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, who does not accept a literal seven day creation week, who rejects penal substitutionary atonement as the true meaning of the atonement, and who rejects male only church leadership. But what a dull litany that is!

    I’d prefer to be known as a person who believes that God has gifted us through his Spirit with the testimony of persons and communities of faith who have experienced him in real and special ways, who believes that God works mightily through the reliable fundamental laws of the universe he created to produce near-infinite variety, who sees the atonement as so broad and deep that it requires many metaphors just to scratch the surface, and who believes that God gifts all of his children in wonderful ways for a variety of roles in the church.

    And frankly, I’m happy with that latter identity. If you want to openly discuss those issues, welcome to fun and fellowship. But if you want to put down those who don’t believe the Bible is inerrant, or demand that all recognize just one metaphor of atonement, or make the women of the church feel as if they are not merely different than, but less than–well, go find another fellowship! I will, if I find myself in a congregation that wants to behave in that way.

    It’s not a matter of writing people out of the kingdom of heaven, or refusing to discuss with them or deal with them. It’s a matter of bringing together a congregation that can produce a coherent witness to the love of God in their lives.

    (I wrote some on a related topic on the Pacesetters Bible School news blog.)

  • Pat Robertson and the Meaning of Prophetic

    One of the dividing lines in Christian churches today is over the gifts of the Holy Spirit. While speaking in tongues gets most of the attention, the gift of prophecy is a close second. In terms of its potential to tear a church apart, it comes out ahead of tongues, I think. Currently there seem to be two major approaches. First, there are those who refuse to allow anything like prophecy, seeing safety in simple denial, while on the other hand we have many churches in which just about anyone who claims to speak words from God is at least tolerated.

    There is also a strong tendency not to want to say anything in opposition to anyone specific who claims to be a prophet, often under the idea that one should, like David, never speak against God’s anointed. The difficulty here is that one has to question the precise type of anointing and calling of someone who peddles nonsense as the word of God.

    Let me clarify quickly what I mean here by prophetic. There is a general popular sense of “prophetic” as a message that predicts the future. On the other hand, there is a religious or spiritual sense of prophetic that deals with correction and challenge to a group of people. A “prophetic voice” might call a community to greater social action, for example. The Biblical prophetic movement combined aspects of both. I would suggest, in fact, that you will find little or no prediction in Biblical prophecy that is intended simply to satisfy curiosity or to provide information about the future as its purpose. Rather, when a prophet speaks of the future he does so to challenge the community or individual to some form of action, or to rebuke or correct.

    Both of these aspects are tied together by the affirmation of the prophet that he speaks for God, and by the acceptance of the audience that he does so. Prophets did face rejection, but only rarely was this rejection based on the assumption that the prophet was false. The sense in which I’m using the word “prophetic” prophetic here includes those three elements: challenge or rebuke, prediction or promise, and an affirmation of divine guidance or content.

    (more…)