My Interview With Frank Viola for From Eternity To Here

(This is a re-posting of an interview I did last year for audiobook publisher christianaudio. I’ve been working for christianaudio for the past year in a variety of roles, one of which is to conduct author interviews. The interviews are absolutely free to download – although free registration is required.)

Last week I was fortunate enough the chat with author and organic church leader Frank Viola. As you know he’s written some provocative titles recently, including Pagan Christianity and Reimagining Church. His most recent book is From Eternity to Here. Frank talked with me about his motive for writing the book and how he came to see God’s eternal purpose for the church differently. I think you’ll enjoy hearing from him.

Go to the interview download page by clicking here.

Technorati Tags: audiobooks, christianaudio, Christianity, Frank Viola, From Eternity To Here

Monday Morning Poetry: Jerusalem by William Blake

Today we return again to William Blake, that most unorthodox and provocative of Christian spokesmen to what, at first blush, might appear to be one of his most orthodox (and imperialist) sounding poems.

Jerusalem by William Blake

AND did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.

Technorati Tags: Christianity, Jerusalem, Poetry, William Blake

Sunday Morning Meditation: God’s Greatest Works

Psalm 145: 3-9

“Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
His greatness no one can fathom.” (v3)

David is at it again. Here he is, harp in hand, singing of the greatness of God. Only this time David says God is so great that mere mortals cannot even comprehend it, no individual expression of praise can possibly contain it. Its not enough for one man to sing of the Lord’s power and might, no, David says,

“One generation will commend your works to another;
They will tell of your mighty acts.” (v4)

David has glimpsed the greatness of God, and has seen that it is beyond the ability of mere individuals to proclaim it. Indeed, David sees generation after generation spilling forth praise, still unable to contain the vastness of God’s glory. Individuals aren’t enough to proclaim his greatness, generations aren’t enough! Will even eternity be long enough for the people of God to exhaustively proclaim the wonder of his great works! I think not. (Rev 19:1-9)

So David joins with the generations of the people of God, responding to their call and answering their summons to give God Glory,

“They will speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty,
And I will meditate on your wonderful works.
They will tell of the power of your awesome works,
And I will proclaim your great deeds.
They will celebrate your abundant goodness
And joyfully sing of your righteousness.” (v5-7)

But what exactly are God’s “wonderful works,” David, what are his “great deeds?” Is it his creation of the universe, the awesome power of thunder and lightning and earthquakes, or the splendor of the sun and moon? Or, perhaps it is His mighty deeds on behalf of his people, the liberation from bondage in Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea, or the miraculous provision of water and manna in the desert? Certainly these come to mind when dwelling on the greatest works of God.

Yet, in addition to these, David has something even greater in mind and it is to this greatest of all acts of God that David know turn his attention in the middle climax of this song,

“The Lord is gracious and compassionate,
Slow to anger and rich in love.
The Lord is good to all;
He has compassion on all He has made.” (v8-9)

David knows, there is no act of God quite so great as his unfailing compassion and mercy. For this reason, generation after generation, we seek to praise him into eternity.

Technorati Tags: Christianity, Compassion, David, Mercy, Psalms

After SVS 2010: Steven Hamilton, Signs & Wonders: Wisdom & the Reign of God

After SVS 2010 is an extended dialogue with presenters from the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference, held Feb 11-13, 2010. Monday through Friday until March 26th we’ll profile an SVS presenter and dialogue with them around their paper. Click here for a brief intro and link directory of the series. Full text of papers are available to SVS members.
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Steven Hamilton, “Signs and Wonders: Wisdom and the Reign of God”

(Incidentally, Steven was snowed-in at the Baltimore airport during SVS, so he was unable to present as scheduled. I’m pleased to be able to remedy that somewhat by profiling his paper here.)

Abstract
In New Testament studies, the topic of Wisdom has gained real momentum recently, after many years of neglect. Yet as most scholarship has seemingly focused in the areas of Wisdom Christology, conventional Wisdom in James, the interaction of sapiential and apocalyptic thought in other New Testament literature, and the issues surrounding sophia in 1 Corinthians, there are many areas to which a wisdom-orientation can be brought to bear. What of Wisdom and the heart of Jesus’ message: the Reign of God?

The wisdom-orientation has a surprisingly significant impact in terms of the theology and praxis of the Kingdom of God.  This consideration will explore the frontiers of wisdom, seeking to understand how insights from the Hebrew corpus can be brought to bear in our present New Testament context of the Kingdom being both ‘now’ and ‘not yet’. While biblically-speaking, we access wisdom through an encounter with God rooted in awe and reverence, humility and worship, wisdom is not only found in the realms of religious gatherings, but all of life. The Reign of God is holistic, and as we experience the powers of the age-to-come inaugurated in Christ Jesus, the wisdom-orientation can aid the consideration of the Reign of God in our lives at our most charismatic as well as our most mundane.  In fact, the way of wisdom, much like that beheld in Job, is sought fervently, encountered with His Presence in surprising, satisfying ways, and then further shaped through interaction, devotion and contemplation.

Utilizing James Crenshaw’s point of departure –hokma as a shared paradigmatic approach to reality – we contemplate three major issues that a wisdom-orientation brings to the foreground: (1) a Trinitarian perspective vis-à-vis wisdom and how theologian-practitioners and scholars in the Vineyard movement may be uniquely positioned to explore our somewhat atrophied but burgeoning understanding of a Wisdom Pneumatology; (2) the shaping-nature of Wisdom and the Spirit connected to an underlying and holistic spiritual formation; and (3) how this wisdom-orientation dwells in the tension of ‘both/and’, bringing to the foreground our perspective and experience of the ‘now-and-not-yet’ of God’s Reign.  The Transcendent and Immanent modalities of wisdom are considered along with convergences of the sapiential, prophetic and apocalyptic in scripture, in Christ and in the Church.  Brief explorations of the further implications of a Wisdom Pneumatology on other areas like missiology, charismatology and ecclesiology are briefly considered.

Interview With Steven

Q: How did you become interested in your topic

A: I was studying Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Civilization at the Baltimore Hebrew University.  I had a really great graduate group there with lots of great explorations and exchanges.  My advisor was Barry Gitlen, one of the lead archaeologists at the Philistine Ekron dig site and an expert in Philistine material culture and the 10th century, which is the time period of the rise of the monarchy under David.  This was a time when the ‘Wisdom’ perspective and tradition emerged as fairly distinctive in the history of Israel.  This emergence of the role of the Sage and Scribe can be seen to have had a rather significant impact on history, especially on the writing and transmittal of our ancient scriptures. I think that is where my deep interest in wisdom first took hold.

Q: How do you think your paper is relevant to the Vineyard movement at large?

A: I think a fuller Trinitarian aspect has been lacking in scholarship, the neglected third being Wisdom Pneumatology and I think the Vineyard – loaded with Kingdom theologian-practitioners and scholars – is primed for a major contribution to this field. I also think the wisdom-orientation recommends itself to the Vineyard as a ‘radical middle’ perspective that brings to the fore our Kingdom theology and praxis, especially the ‘both/and’ and ‘now-and-not-yet’ perspectives. I would even say that it dwells in this tension to the point of clarifying that this Kingdom tension is inherent to our place in this present aeon. Genuine Wisdom moves toward the essence of the musterion of the gospel of the Kingdom of God in Christ Jesus. I think the Vineyard has gathered a lot of wisdom from the praxis of the Kingdom of God, and applying that to the formational aspect in the theology of the Reign of God might be fairly helpful to the larger movement.  I have the feeling that this is a ‘Wisdom’ season for the Vineyard, not just in terms of leadership and culture, but in a distinctive way that Caleb Maskell outlined in his perspective at the UK and Ireland Vineyard National Leaders conference. Caleb even recommends Peter Leihart’s book Solomon Among the Postmoderns to the pastors and leaders in order to reach out to understand this emerging generation…and this book is essentially a commentary on Wisdom. Thus, I think that further explorations into the depths and riches of the biblical wisdom-orientation has much to recommend itself to the Vineyard movement.

Q: What do you think might be the practical implications of what you’re exploring?

A: Holistic Spiritual Formation. A balance that includes our most charismatic experiences and our most mundane.  Too often, I think many people think of their spirituality in a limited way, that the Kingdom really only breaks through in ‘prayer ministry times’ or when they can feel the Presence of God or even just on Sunday’s.  The wisdom-orientation can help us discover the transcendent and immanent aspects of the Kingdom, and also that we are ‘formed’ via these experiences, really all experiences, since spiritual formation happens as the Holy Spirit uses everything we experience to form us toward Christ; which includes our best and our worst, the felt Presence and Absence of God, our easiest and our most difficult seasons

Cross-training. I think a wisdom-orientation can help us bring issues together that have mostly been considered ‘either/or’ and bring them into a ‘both/and’ perspective. This experience just might propel us into new horizons vis-à-vis the theology and praxis of the Kingdom. For instance, a few years ago I was in Cincinnati at a small gathering and ended up in a group with Rose Madrid-Swetman talking about bringing together the charismatic and contemplative.  I have been trying to do this with a series of spiritual formation cohorts at our church, and the results have really been surprising and challenging, with real depth and new possibilities emerging for ministry, devotion, and experiencing God.

Steven will be available for further questions and dialogue in the comments.

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Steve Hamilton (www.verveandverse.blogspot.com) lives in Annapolis, Maryland and is married to Chaundra; they have three lovely girls together. A bi-vocational leader at the Central Maryland Vineyard, member of the Justice Response/VAST national leadership team with VineyardUSA and also a founding member of the Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force, he has spent almost 20 years in diverse endeavors as a civil servant with the U.S. government. He has studied bible and ancient near eastern civilization at the Baltimore Hebrew University and spiritual direction at the Sustainable Faith School of Spiritual Direction.

Technorati Tags: Christianity, Society of Vineyard Scholars, Steven Hamilton, SVS, Vineyard, Wisdom

After SVS 2010: David Kushner, Echoes in Scripture

After SVS 2010 is an extended dialogue with presenters from the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference, held Feb 11-13, 2010. Monday through Friday until March 26th we’ll profile an SVS presenter and dialogue with them around their paper. Click here for a brief intro and link directory of the series. Full text of papers are available to SVS members.
___________________________________________________________________

David C. Kushner, “Echoes in Scripture: Joel in Acts 2″

Abstract
In Acts 2 Peter cites Joel 3 (2:28-32) as his preliminary text. Joel 3 is mis-quoted, and appears to be related only as a proof-text. The contention of this paper is that Joel echoes throughout the context, theological concerns and imagery of Acts 2, which itself outlines the over-arching themes of Acts. The sum result of the Joel 3 citation is an overlay of complementary contexts that enables readers to appreciate the development of early church theology, hermeneutic, nascent pneumatology of the Spirit’s role and power in the kingdom of God, and the groundwork for how God’s justice will be meted out through the community of faith.

A literary-theological investigation of the context of Joel, reveals an expectation of the Day of Yahweh signaled by the outpouring of his Spirit, which establishes justice, calling the faithful out from among the nations.  Joel portrays Israel in the midst of exile, experiencing alienation internally, spiritually and from foreign forces. Joel 3 functions as a crux for the parallel structures of the book, and centralizes the outpouring of the Spirit as the inauguration of the re-establishment of Israel as Zion, which is concomitant with Yahweh’s justice among the nations. As in the case of the Exodus, the calling of the faithful from among the nations brings both salvation to those who call upon the LORD, and judgment upon those who defy him. Furthermore, evidence suggests that some prophetic thinking (Joel and Ezekiel) envisions the Spirit being directly related to the dispensation of justice within Zion and outward to the nations (as in Numbers 11).

Acts 1-2 embeds the events of Pentecost in the context of the exodus.  Israel still awaits for the completion of her exile to be signaled by the installment of God’s Messiah on Jerusalem’s throne and the eradication of Roman domination. The theophanic imagery of God’s Spirit upon the disciples signals the return of God’s presence from Exile and “the last days” (ie, the day of Yahweh).  The citation of Joel, whose own context expects the day of Yahweh to be signaled by the outpouring of the Spirit and the subjugation of hostile empires to God’s righteous kingdom, allows all of these themes to be brought to the reader’s attention, without requiring explicit comment. Furthermore the subsequent sermon serves as an exposition on the final two verses of Joel3, bringing the rhetorical force of imminent judgment and the epiphany of Joel’s prophesy of God’s messianic kingdom into sharp relief for the hearers.

Technorati Tags: Acts, Christianity, David Kushner, Joel, New Testament, Old Testament, Society of Vineyard Scholars, SVS

Help Me Welcome Matt Self Back to the Blogophere

I first started dipping my toes in the blog waters back in 2005. I don’t remember how, but I soon stumbled across Matt Self’s blog. At the time he was writing some of the most original and inspired commentary on life and faith I’d found anywhere.

Quite a lot has happened since then in Matt’s life that caused him to stop blogging in 2007 2006. I won’t get into that here because it’s not my story to tell, but his absence has been more than understandable. Still, perhaps selfishly, I’ve missed his voice and I’m sure others have too.

Today Matt decided to tentatively start writing online again and he’s looking for dialogue partners. Do me a favor: put him in your RSS reader or bookmark his address (click here). And comment from time to time. You won’t be sorry.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Christianity, Friends, Matt Self

One MIllion Arrows Encourages Christian Parents to Take Discipleship Seriously

Recently I was fortunate to receive a copy of the book One Million Arrows, by Julie Ferwerda, for review. It is well-written and surprisingly packed for 156 pages. She does an excellent job of combining illustrative narrative with relevant information, and manages to tell her stories with uncanny authenticity and passion. Her illustrations aren’t just overworked sentimental nods to the narrative-oriented reader; they’re personal experiences that comes across as compelling without being sappy. No small feat in the “Christian Living” category of publishing.

What I liked best was how Ferwerda cuts to the heart of the issue: are we as parents just walking our kids through life as usual, or are we raising them up to impact the world for the Kingdom? There’s an important quote on page 43 that punctuates the urgency of that question:

One concerned educator and youth ministry expert, Alvin Reid [...] shares his observation: “For the past three decades youth ministry…has exploded across America accompanied by a rise in the number of degrees in youth ministry granted by colleges and seminaries, and abundance of books and other resources, and a network of cottage industries devoted solely to youth ministry. Yet those same three decades have failed to produce a generation of young people who graduate from high school or leave youth groups ready to change the world for Christ.” Add to that Reid notes, that our churches are starting to show a startling decline of youth ministry effectiveness.”

Julie points out that when she was growing up it was the youth pastors job to educate Christian kids and lead them to have an impact on the world for the gospel. But now she realizes that this job is far bigger than local churches and fundamentally belongs to Christian parents.

I couldn’t agree more.

Christian parents must see themselves as their child’s spiritual teacher first and foremost, with the rest of the community of faith playing a supporting role (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). Perhaps the best part of the book is that Ferwerda doesn’t allow it to descend into a simplistic formula for raising Christian kids. It’s full of excellent tips and contextual examples, but mostly drives home the message that parenting is a task of discipleship, and leaves the reader to freely work out how that might look in their own home.

I only have one minor concern: the tone is highly triumphalistic. Throughout, Ferwerda’s emphasis is on immersing your children in scripture, prayer, and what I would call a vision for missions, all as a means of ensuring your child’s commitment to the Kingdom. It might seem strange that as a pastor I would find this concerning, so let me explain.

As a minister for more than 15 years (10 as a youth pastor) I’ve observed that those households who were the most spiritually fervent tended to produce two kinds of kids: equally spiritually fervent or religiously rebellious – and more often the latter. In my opinion the reason for this was that many Christian parents take the scriptural admonition to “raise up a child in the way they should go” as a mandate to indoctrinate their children rather than disciple them, and in my experience most youth will, sooner or later, resist the process of indoctrination.

Nowhere in this book does Ferwerda recommend the simple-minded indoctrination of kids. However, neither is there any dialogue with how the typically-simplistic approach to bible-teaching common in Sunday school often leads those kids to an adolescent rejection of those very answers on the grounds that they simply don’t match up neatly with the actual experiences of life. Most youth go through a fatalistic “Ecclesiastes” phase, and it’s tempting to combat that with biblical certainty. Yet, what is needed most is to heed Solomon’s own advice – to not be too religious (Ecc 7:16) – and instead offer youth the freedom to question, explore, and even to be skeptical and fatalistic at times. Teenagers especially must be brought into an open and safe dialogue with the mystery and skeptical self-critique found in scripture, particularly through the alternative wisdom writings, the prophets, and, of course, Christ himself. When we gloss over the biting critique of these writings in an effort to counter the moody skepticism of adolescence, we rob youth of the raw honesty adolescence craves and invalidate their natural and necessary doubts.

In my opinion, this is one of the biggest problems with the Evangelical Youth Ministry approach, and I worry that if parents read One Million Arrows that way, they’ll simply duplicate a kind of dishonest certainty in their home, and thereby suffer the same rate of failure as Modern Youth Ministry.

But to be fair, Ferwerda never denies any of this scriptural complexity, and addressing it isn’t her project. Her goal is to affirm the centrality of the home as the place of discipleship, and she does an excellent job with that task. She tends to express the faithful optimism characteristic of Evangelical faith, and those who aren’t Evangelical might find this a bit off-putting – which would be a shame because One Million Arrows brings an important perspective to a critical issue facing the American church at this very moment. I recommend it for any Christian parent looking to engage their kids intentionally with the gospel.

Technorati Tags: Books, Christianity, One Million Arrows, Parenting

The Worker’s Wages Part 3: The Essence of Ministry

(This is the third part in a six-part series exploring the dynamics of clergy pay in missional churches. See previous installments: Prelude | Part 1 | Part 2)

In my last installment I tentatively proposed that the minister’s wage isn’t money, it’s community care. Now, practically speaking that care must manifest as money, or food, or housing (or perhaps other goods and services), but strictly speaking the wage itself isn’t any of these things.

What Kind of Work?
However, understanding the essence of the wage doesn’t get us all the way to understanding how to appropriately convert our care into food and shelter for ministry leaders, or how to appropriately frame our expectations of the kind of work they do (an equally important issue). For that, we’ll need an understanding of what kind of work a ministry leader does. To gain it, we’ll go back to our original passages.

1 Timothy Chapter 5:17-18
Again, we’ll use Paul’s words to Timothy as our starting point:

The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, “Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,” and “The worker deserves his wages.”

Paul is describing the gifts, and we have several passages concerning that topic (Rom 12, 1 Cor 12, 1 Pet 4:10). Indeed, the church is very comfortable talking about the roles of the people according to gifting, and there have been popular movements to identify the role of everyone in the church by gifting because, in a critically important sense, everyone is a minister according to their gifts.

However there is little exploration, that I’m aware of, regarding how the nature of “gift work” may or may not be different than other kinds of work. If it is different, wouldn’t that have some bearing on the “how, why, and what” of wages for those who require compensation? (We’ll have to hold off, for now, on why some ministers are worthy of a wage while others are not.)

Gifts Are Different Than Skills.
It’s my proposition that gifts are significantly different than skills (based largely on the ethnographic work of Marcel Mauss and the thoughts of Lewis Hyde). A skill is a kind of property. You earn it and you own it. Under normal conditions, the skill-worker has mastery over their skills, that is, they control them completely. Therefore, you can reckon compensation for your skills fairly easily. Skills serve best when they are accumulated like capital, and like capital, they affect a kind of return on investment for their owner. Hence, the skilled trades-person accumulates skills as a kind of wealth.

But a gift is not a property. It cannot be earned or purchased, only freely received. Nor can it be mastered because it doesn’t belong to the gift-worker. In fact, gifts, because they are given for the purpose of creating relational ties, must be given away again, and often fade (or rot i.e. Ex 16) when they’re not used-up or shared. They come and go, and are notoriously difficult to control. Because the gift-worker cannot master the gift, they can only be good stewards of what they have been given, while they happen to have it – and to be a good steward specifically means to give it away, leaving the gift-worker in a perpetual state of spiritual poverty.

Therefore, it is also notoriously difficult to reckon the compensation of gift-work, because it’s production cannot be controlled. Often long hours (or days, months, even years) go into waiting and supplicating for true gifts to arrive. Yet once they’re received by the gift-worker, they typically “work” in a frenzy of productivity, giving generously to all who benefit from it, and (in a way curiously distinct from skills) are multiplied in the giving.

(Of course, there is a very important sense in which skill-work and gift-work cooperate, but that is not the important point here. I think we must begin by understanding the prior distinctive essence of ministry as a gift-work, before we can understand how to appropriately re-integrate it with trade skills.)

Let’s return to our other central passage to illustrate gift-work among ministers:

Luke 10:5-7
Let’s start by revisiting Jesus’ instructions, to the 72 disciples:

¹After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. ²He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. ³Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. ⁴Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.⁵“When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ ⁶If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you. ⁷Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.

⁸“When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you. ⁹Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God is near you.’

This is classic gift-work, with several prominent features of gift-exchange occurring:

1. The Gift Is Transient: The disciples can only give away what Christ has first given them, namely peace, power, and kingdom. Again, these gifts are not a property to be held as capital. They must be given in order to multiply, so the ministers, although they are givers, remain as dependent as those to whom they give.

2. The Gift Requires Personal “Poverty”: The disciples go with nothing, demonstrating the “poverty” of gift-work, because receiving the gift first requires the emptiness of poverty, prayer, and sacrifice. This is congruent with 1 Tim 5 and echoed in the Beatitudes.

3. The Gift Provides Community “Wealth”: The hosts are sustained by the gift and the ministers live off the reciprocity typical of gift-exchange. They give what they have and are, in return, given gifts of food, hospitality, shelter, etc. This kind of return, as distinct from payment, is a way of demonstrating the communal abundance of the gift-economy through the multiplication of the gift as it is passed from one empty hand to another.

4. The Gift is Fertile: Characteristic of other gift-cultures, we have an illustration of an agricultural motif (v2). The enthnographic data from such societies shows that the cycle of planting and harvesting becomes significant as an embodiment of the economic gift-cycle, with it’s dependence on the ultimate giver (God or the gods), its sowing and reaping reciprocity, its abundant multiplication via fertility, and its sustenance. All are images of “the gift” at work.

5. The Git is Consumed: The 72 ministers literally feed off of the abundance of the gift. In this way they are not only consuming the multiplied abundance of the gift, they are also literally consuming the return gift of sacrifice made by their hosts.

This last two observations, I think, connect this passage with the function of the priests of the Old Testament, who eat of the meat sacrifices brought to the temple and burn the grain sacrifices (Lev 6). By eating the gift/sacrifice the minister/priest is simultaneously included in the sacramental community and demonstrating the role of God in the gift-cycle by returning a portion of the sacrifice to God (burning accomplishes this same latter function, though with an emphasis on faith-dependence rather than sustenance). Ethnographic data depicts this same eating/burning practices in the religious rituals of other gift-cultures, for example in the Maori tribe (eating of sacrifice by the priest) and the North American Native practice of Potlatch (burning of excess wealth).

There are many other passages I could connect to this theme, but this is a blog not a book : )

I think there are also, obviously, very strong Paschal tones here as well, reaching backward toward passover and forward toward Eucharist. But that is not directly tied to the subject of leadership vocation and wage, so we’d better leave those explorations for another time, and perhaps for a better commenter (I’m looking at you Geoff).

So, what are your thoughts? Do you agree with the characterization of a minister’s work as essentially gift-work, rather than skill-work (or property-work)? If so, does it matter? Are there implications to be explored, particularly for post-Christendom missional leadership with regards to how we treat vocational leadership?

Technorati Tags: 1 Timothy, Christianity, clergy, Jesus, Leadership, Luke, Paid Clergy, Paul, The Gift

On Getting It Right: Doctrinal Confession Gone Wrong

Three quick postlude items from my recent series blogging through Dallas Willard’s book Knowing Christ Today.

First, I recently conducted an interview with Dallas Willard on this book for Christianaudio.com. If you’re interested, you can download the interview for free by clicking here (registration is required).

Second, Dallas will be speaking at a conference in Anaheim CA called “Knowledge For Life,” on these same themes. The date is April 17, and you can register by clicking here. I’m planning to attend, so if you are too I’d love to connect, so shoot me an email!

Finally, in my recent series in Dallas Willard’s book, Knowing Christ Today we discussed what he calls “soft pluralism” or “inclusivism.” There was an excellent footnote in Chapter 7 that didn’t fit my post on that day, but is important enough that I want to quote it here and open it up for discussion.

Willard is talking about recognizing that other religions may indeed contain true knowledge about God that we can respect, saying:

“This “pluralism” might well concede that all of these features of religions involve important aspects of truth and goodness and should be respected as such. Those dead set against pluralism in any form would of course deny that. But disciples of Christ certainly would not have to do so. [...] outstanding spokespeople for Christ in the Bible have been more generous toward other religions than that and have held that the God of the Bible and of Christians deals lovingly and justly with those who fall far short of “getting it all right” in their understanding and in practice.”

This is where the footnote begins, and where it really gets good:

“In any group the vast majority of those in “good standing” do not believe many of the things the leaders of the group teach as “necessary.” More often than not they don’t even know about them, and if they did, they would not be able to understand them. An example of this would be what is stated about salvation it he Athanasian Creed. After laying out extremely subtle points about the Trinity, it is declared there that “he therefore that will be saved must think thus of the Trinity,…neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance” of the Trinity. The issues in this creed are extremely important. But if one must “think thus” to be saved, 99 percent of professing Christians are not going to make it. Try this creed on and see what you think. Groups and their institutions tend to confuse what they need to teach with what one must believe in order to be saved. This leads to their members professing lots of things they neither believe nor are committed to – indeed, do not even understand. That, in turn, makes it inevitable that they will not “live up to what they profess,” for they actually do not believe what they profess. The effects of this on genuinely trusting and following Christ is devastating. They can be abundantly observed in most Christian groups.”

What do you think might be the “devastating” effects of pressuring people to profess what they don’t actually believe and do you think they’re readily observable?

Technorati Tags: Christianity, Dallas Willard, Knowing Christ Today

Reading Blog: Knowing Christ Today, Chapter 8

(This is the 9th and final installment in my series on Dallas Willard’s latest book, Knowing Christ Today. Previous Entries: Intro | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7)

Pastors as Teachers of the Nations

Of all the chapters in Willard’s latest book, this final one surprised me the most, starting with the seemingly outrageous title, “Pastors as Teachers of the Nations.” Isn’t that arrogant? Imperialistic, even, in a post-Colonial sort of way? Still, it is the logical conclusion of Willard’s line of thought regarding the central importance of spiritual knowledge in general and knowledge of Christ in particular:

“Who is to bring the knowledge that will answer the great life questions that perplex humanity? [...] The primary responsibility to teach falls upon those who self-identify as spokespeople for Christ and who perhaps have some leadership position or role in Christian organizations.”

He makes it clear that he is not speaking exclusively to those who hold official leadership positions, but he is speaking especially to them and in so doing he addresses Jesus great comission to”make disciples of all nations,” and says something perhaps challenging to us pastors:

Above all, perhaps, we must not think of the task as making adherents to a particular brand of Christianity now current. If we do, we will then lose the cosmic viewpoint and see the task only in terms of religious organizations and political realities. Jesus, however, did not send people out to make Christians or start churches as we understand them today. He set them to make disciples (students, apprentices) to him and, supported by his presence, to teach them all that he had taught by word and deed. That is a very different enterprise!

Here Willard stresses, again, the central importance of genuine knowledge for teachers of any kind, but particularly Christian teachers. It is not enough to know about Christ, or scripture, or theology proper. Our task is to know Christ and make him available by that knowledge to others. This, of course, means that we must actually be people who possess such knowledge of Christ and be able to demonstrate it; and this leads to another challenging point – Willard says we should ask for and expect no priviledge accoriding to title, but rather be ready to demonstrate the truth of the knowledge we profess:

True spokespeople for Christ need no special advantage and seek none. It is one again – but now on the worldwide stage that comes with “globalization” – a question of the God who answers “by fire” (1 Kings 18:24).

Are pastors really ready and willing to be tested in that way? Being willing to have one’s knowledge tested and demonstrated as true in real life speaks to a level of confidence we don’t often see in Christian leadership. Instead, what we tend to see is endless defensive bickering and accusations aimed at belittling the competing dogmatic thoughts of others (usually other Christians). Entire ministries and churches are now built on that foundation. Willard has something to say about that as well:

It is not knowledge, but nervous uncertainty, that makes people dogmatic, close-minded, and hostile – which spokespeople for Christ must never be. Paul wisely said to his young pastor friend, Timothy” “The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone, an apt teacher, patient, correcting opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth” (2 Tim 2:24-25).

Of course, because we live in a time when all religious thought – and the status of Christian leaders along with it – has been relegated to the scrap heap of mere opinion, pastors will have to repeatedly, and under tremendous external opposition, present the basic tenets of Christianity as knowledge and be ready to defend and demonstrate it. This is largely not the case today, where pastors as seen as teachers of what Christians are supposed to believe, not of what is known and can be known as true by anyone through fair inquiry.

Finally, all this discipleship is an activity that happens not in the church, but in the world – for that is where people live their lives and that is where God is at work. Raising people up to serve in the church is ultimately a dead-end. “Discipleship is for the sake of the world, not for the sake of the church.” Willard ends the Chapter and the book with this exhortation and encouragement:

The most important thing that is happening in your community is what is happening there under the administration of true pastors for Christ. If you, as a pastor, do not believe that, then you do not understand the dignity of what you are supposed to be doing. Whatever your situation, there is nothing more important on earth than to dwell in the knowledge of Christ and to bring that knowledge to others.

Questions:

1. What’s your reaction to Willard’s claim that pastors are to be the “teachers of the nations?”
2. How do you feel about the idea that our claims of knowledge about Christ must be testable and provable as true?
3. What other thought or questions are you left with as we finish this book series?

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