Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Christianity

  • Evolution and Continuous Upward Progress

    This is a recreated vector image in SVG. The o...
    Image via Wikipedia-Perhaps not so much with this upward progress

    Peter Kirk has written a post titled The Gospel is not incompatible with theistic evolution, in which he responds to an article by Dr. David Shackelford. Peter’s response covers most of the ground.

    I wanted to add something here, however, regarding “continuous upward progress,” which Dr. Shackelford, as quoted by Peter, says is “demanded” by most “versions of evolution.” I’m in the dark about what he means by “versions,” unless he’s referring to popular conceptions, and especially social evolution.

    For example, an evolutionary view of the early Christian church would have the church “progressing” toward greater order and organization, thus the pastoral epistles must be later than other writings because they refer to such greater organization. On the other hand, if the progress is not so steady, nor unidirectional. I’m no church historian, but I’ve often wondered if the progress toward greater structure was not faster amongst those coming from Judaism with synagogue traditions than for Gentile Christians. All this begs the question of what is “progress” and more particular what is “upward progress.”

    But the biological theory of evolution teaches no such thing. Though there is, I believe, a general trend toward greater variety, simply because there are more creatures to be varied, even that trend is not inevitable, and one can question whether a trend toward greater variety would be “upward progress” in general.

    The tendency of biological evolution is toward suitability for some ecological niche (stated loosely–I’m no biologist), and depending on how you look at it, the tendency could be distinctly downward, for example, when a population of fish living in a cave lose their eyesight. The tendency can be terminal when a population fails to adapt to environmental changes.

    For certain periods of time and using certain defintions of “upward” (people who use this term usually mean upward as leading toward us humans), you will find “upward progress” in evolution, but there is nothing about the theory, nor is there general evidence in the record, to suggest that evolution demands upward progress.

     

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  • Persecution

    I hear complaints from time to time that American Christians are persecuted. Usually this means some minor annoyance, such as being ridiculed for some belief or another. I’ve even heard the complaint when someone is challenged to provide a defense for their faith.

    One of the best ways to get our balance, and to realize how privileged we are in America, despite any minor annoyances, we have but to look at places where Christians are currently actively persecuted, where a threat to their livelihood is the most minor of persecutions, where, in fact, Christians may be killed for their faith.

    World Prayr, an organization with which I’m associated, has been highlighting persecuted Christians on their blog in their daily devotional posts.  (You can find today’s post here.)

    I’d like to add one thing here. In America, we are in the majority as Christians. We may complain about nominal Christians or Christians in name, but churches are ubiquitous, and well accepted. As a majority, we need to resist the temptation to behave as persecutors. As an example, I’m referring to opposition to allowing Muslims to build mosques, and to opposing minority religion representation amongst military chaplains. If these things happened to Christian minorities in other countries, we’d regard it as persecution. We need to do unto others as we would have them do to us.

     

  • A Couple of Links on the Purpose of the Church

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    A few days ago I posted a quote on the purpose of the church, particularly church growth, and between the comments to that post, Twitter, and my RSS reader, I’ve found a few to add to it.

    First, Jimmy Davis, a former student (for one year of Hebrew) and now an associate pastor in Texas, provided a link to his article, When Your Church is Really Parachurch. The critical conclusion:

    Organizations, much like individuals, are prone to have “me-first-hearts” rather than “you-first-hearts.” I am not saying that organization is bad or unnecessary; indeed, it is necessary and good (the first six chapters of Acts describe how the church organized itself as it grew). But the attitude of the church’s pastors, programs, polity, and place toward the church’s people should always be one of “at your service.” As I examine my own experience in the pew and the pastorate I am convinced that though Jesus has called the organization to serve the organism, I and many others have led our churches to have an “organization-first-heart.” Our churches must learn to live the cruciform life of dying to the glory and good of the organization in order to live for the glory of God and the good of people.

    Jimmy has a book coming out soon, Cruciform: Living the Cross-Shaped Life which he says will be released April 1st (no foolin’!). (No, I’m not the publisher on this one!)

    Pastor Steven Furtick (I’m not sure where I gleaned this from), admonishes us to be fishers of men, not keepers of the aquarium. It’s an excellent way to make the point! I have often noted how churches that concentrate on taking care of the people inside tend to diminish. Often in order to properly care for those inside you need to be looking outside.

     

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  • How Liberal Christians Lose Credibility

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    This article interested me, if for no other reason than my tag line: Thoughts on Religion in the World from a passionate, moderate, liberal charismatic Christian. Now I should point out again that “liberal charismatic” was a tag bestowed on me by someone who didn’t like me, and my preference is “passionate moderate” as a self-description. But many of my friends think “liberal charismatic” is fairly accurate.

    One of the problems with liberal Christianity, in my opinion, is that many American liberals have problems explaining why they are Christians, specifically Christian liberals. The appearance some present is of being culturally rooted in Christianity and using Christian language to some extent, but not really taking it all that seriously. In my experience, most liberal Christians really do take their theology and discipleship seriously. It’s the appearance. I think it may be that the constant explanations of why one isn’t conservative on doctrinal issues detracts from making a positive case for what one does believe.

    I found the post 10 ways “liberal” Christians lose credibility via John Meunier, and I think a number of these points are quite good. Reyes-Chow is clearly more comfortable with the liberal label than I am, but that gives him more credibility in talking about it as well. As John was, I was particularly interested in the point on Christology:

    We must be able to articulate a Christology that informs our liberalness.  Too often I have been in conversations where it seems that our positions inform our understanding of Jesus….

    In my view, however, that issue comes up for all Christians. I think modern American Christianity has a great deal of trouble with Christology, and with rooting discipleship in a robust Christology. As a self-proclaimed Christian moderate, I confess that it’s easy to let my “positions inform [my] understanding of Jesus” rather than having it the other way around.

    Wander on over to Bruce Reyes-Chow and read the whole post.

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  • A Test to Determine if One is a Christian

    Early Christian ichthys sign carved into marbl...
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    I’m pretty annoyed to have judges trying to make a determination of whether one is a Christian based on their knowledge. That reflects a very poor understanding of Christianity that probably comes from someone who has grown up Christian and doesn’t really understand someone who is a recent convert.

    The story is here. At least the appeals court has sent the case back for review.

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  • Critical Views of OT vs. NT

    I’ve noticed in conversation with a number of pastors over the last few years that many tend to take a more conservative view with regard to authorship of the New Testament than they do of the old. This is, of course, strictly anecdotal, limited to my own experience.

    For example, someone may argue vehemently for early dating and historical reliability of the gospels, or Pauline authorship of the pastoral epistles while accepting a late date for Daniel or for the final composition of the Pentateuch or a 2nd century date for Daniel.

    My point is not that they are necessarily wrong. I take some relatively liberal positions on a number of these issues myself. What I’m wondering is whether there is indeed a difference. Most of my study, both formal and on my own since, has involved the Old Testament, and I tend to accept more of the Old Testament critical theories than I do for the New Testament, where I tend to avoid a specific decision on issues I haven’t studied in as much detail. But the folks to whom I’m referring have studied the New Testament more thoroughly than the Old, and take a reverse position.

    I’ve written a brief survey, just 11 questions, to kind of get an idea. Doing this online is not scientific, and I haven’t spent enough time on these questions in any case, but I’d still be interested in getting a general idea.

    I’ll post the results here later.

    Online Survey Software

    Take the Online Survey

  • Organizing Small Groups

    Will Rice, Discipleship Pastor at University United Methodist Church in San Antonio, is suggesting retiring the term “small group” because he thinks it is not well enough defined (HT: Dave Black Online). It is hard to know precisely what one is talking about when one says “small group.” He’s right–it is hard.

    He also has some suggestions, such as defining the mission of the small group, making sure you have leaders gifted and trained to accomplish that mission, and evaluating the results according to the mission. I intentionally repeated the term “mission” multiple times there for emphasis. His suggestion is good. I’ve said many times, and I’m pretty sure I’ve said it within the last several posts, that I can tell how a church is doing on its mission by asking a member if they can state that mission.

    I’m also completely in agreement with the idea of finding the right people with the right gifts to put into the right position as facilitator. I’ve even written a book about it, and the title includes the phrase “small group!”

    But there’s another side to this that I’d like to underline briefly, and that’s the church (in my experience Methodist, though I have no reason to believe this is exclusively our problem) that tries to over-organize and over-control small group developments (see my earlier post Putting Up Barriers to Ministry). If a group of people meet and they don’t fit the favored definition of “small group” they are actively discouraged. I even encountered a pastor who objected to prayer groups meeting off-campus without church sanction. It’s quite possible to define, organize, and train our way out of existence. I say this as someone who loves defining, organizing, and especially training.

    I think there are small groups that develop naturally in a church that are detrimental to mission. I would suggest, however, that the solution is not to force all groups under a regimen of control, but rather the preaching of the gospel and teaching discipleship, along with appropriate, Christ-like, church discipline. I don’t mean that Rice’s good suggestions amount to forcing groups under a regimen. I’m referring to what I’ve observed in certain churches. I think one can tell the difference by observing the fruit–if groups of Christians are gathering and doing mission, it’s working.

    Somewhere between (or away from) control and chaos (with apologies to Get Smart) there’s a place where we function as the body of Christ under One Spirit.

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  • Converts to Orthodox Churches

    … are increasing.

    I don’t find this all that hard to understand. I personally have been enjoying more reading of the eastern church fathers, and have found much good material in the theology and liturgy of the Orthodox churches.

    Chron – Houston and Texas News reports on some churches in that area which are largely made up of converts and are often pastored by converts to that tradition. People come, amongst other reasons, because they are looking for stability. When the church changes as fast as the culture, one can easily wonder just what the church is for.

    While I am attracted to some of the theology, I can’t say that I am much attracted to the ecclesiology or the church structure. In fact, I find even the structure of the United Methodist Church a bit annoying. At the same time, I think I see similar ideas and attitudes in action in the ICON service at my home church, First United Methodist Church in Pensacola. Many people wondered about the traditional elements of the liturgy. There’s a tendency in many of our churches in this area toward worship services that are just contemporary. Would people want a service with the more traditional elements?

    The answer appears to be “yes.” Most of the new members of the church are coming in through that service. People are attending who haven’t attended church in years. People love the service. It combines technology, contemporary music and a traditional structure for the liturgy.

    I do like this liturgy that tends to provide stability, but perhaps we could do even more if we recovered the counter-cultural nature of the Christian message and really became God’s upside-down kingdom.

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  • Creationism vs Anti-evolutionism

    The Creation of Adam
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    According to Todd Wood there’s a real difference, and I agree, although I think real creationists are a bit thin on the ground.  He writes about this on the Center for Faith and Science International web site. One of the requirements, in my view, is the admission that the foundation of young age creationist thinking is accepting Genesis 1-11 as history and building from there.  To claim that one accepts young age creationism based solely on current scientific evidence is simply no believable.

    That is precisely where Todd Wood and Kurt Wise (author of Faith, Form, and Time–the one creationist book you should read if you want to understand it) are refreshingly honest.  They admit they start with their conviction about what the Bible says and that there is much science to be done to back up such a view.

    What caught my attention in this article is the reference to George McCready Price, a Seventh-day Adventist who pioneered modern day creationism and flood geology.  I got to Price’s writings by starting with Frank Lewis Marsh and his small book Evolution or Special Creation.  Marsh was somewhat more accessible than Price.

    Despite the fact that I believe that to read Genesis 1-11 as history is generally to misread it, I appreciate the faith stance of Todd Wood and Kurt Wise and their honesty in admitting their starting point in faith.

    (I’m experimenting with Zemanta.  I may have overdone the linking!)

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  • Dan Dick on Make-No-Wave Church

    … at Make-No-Wave United Methodist Church. For what it’s worth, I think the young pastor was absolutely right to push. May his tribe increase! (HT: John Meunier)