For a large portion of my recent evangelical journey, I have found myself wandering between three varieties of evangelicalism:
Southern Baptist fundamentalism
Evangelical Calvinism
Generic contemporary evangelical revivalism
…It’s occurred to me that at least two of these streams have done much to shape me in the belief that pursuing polemic argument is a primary expression of discipleship. I have been affected by this kind of spiritual “rule,” and when I step away from it, the effects are very obvious.
Lots of time is taken up in finding error, pointing out error, justifying the seriousness of the error (even if it is in a non-essential area), and responding to the error with the proper arrangement of Biblical material.
It’s amazing how many Christians conceive of almost the entirety of discipleship in terms of argumentation. This is seen in the pastoral models they choose, the books/blogs they write and the spiritual activities they value most (debate and classroom lecture.)
These largely unarticulated forms of spiritual formation can be seen in what is not important. I note with interest that one simply cannot say enough bad about most kinds of contemplative prayer, and any sort of silence among many of the reformed particularly. Any kind of intentional approach to spiritual formation, and any kind of intentional approach to discipleship (Dallas Willard, for example) is undertaken amidst a barrage of criticism. If the imagination is mentioned, all fire alarms are pulled and a search for Oprah Winfrey ensues.
Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.
The “fully formed” Christian in these traditions is not a person of silence, but of much talking, talking and more talking. Worship is lecture, a rally, or an emotion-centered event. The primary encounter with the Bible is exposition and lecture. Correcting theological error, moral error and ecclesiastical error is the main business of the church.
…Much evangelical spirituality has become like fantasy baseball. We have our own league, our own team, our own statistics, our own insulated world in which all of this matters. We can give great speeches and write long posts (and I am the chief of sinners here) on what doesn’t matter much at all. These days, we don’t all get our 15 minutes of fame, but we can all worship a pastor, go to a winning church, opine on a blog, imagine our arguments are significant in the world.
Meanwhile, we start to look and act more like a fantasy league junky, and fewer and fewer people have any idea what we are talking about.
Please forgive the tardiness of this week’s Ramblings, iMonks. I am on the road, and where I’m staying does not have internet service. Can you imagine that? No internet! The only thing worse than that would be no Saturday Ramblings. This will have to be short, and hopefully sweet. Much thanks to Adam Palmer and Rev. Randy for their contributions. And, as always, the Synonymous Rambler. Now, shall we ramble?
Have you ever really needed to talk with your pastor, but he was unavailable at the moment? Here’s one man’s way of getting his pastor’s attention. Perhaps the pastor was too busy drinking tea?
Charisma wonders why so many televangelists go to jail. Wow. What a loaded question. Why do you think so many televangelists end up in the hoosegow?
Prayer for Boston is a fleeting thing, apparently. And what do you think of this: “Do you want me to DEFINE prayer? A solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship. Prayer is solemn. Not a ‘like’ on facebook.”
Guess who is trying their hand at evangelism? No, really. Guess. Were you right? And what do you think of their new “Jesus was hip” advertisements?
Note from CM: One of our regular commenters goes by the handle, “Mule Chewing Briars.” I’ve been enjoying his blog lately; he writes at A Mule in the Chapter House. In some recent comments he’s made here and in the following post, I recognized a story with a trajectory similar to my own. I think you will enjoy it and benefit from reading it. Thanks, Robert, for letting us re-post it.
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The pastor at the the Assemblies of God church my wife attends spent 45 minutes last Sunday pleading with God for a “community wide revival.” Now, although I was baptized in a church that isn’t known as a hotbed of revival, I spent around thirty years of my life between 1973 and about 1996 in and out of different revival-oriented churches. Somehow, I had gotten the idea that the church into which I was baptized was not a church to be taken seriously by serious Christians, and in 1973, I considered myself a serious Christian. You see, I had a serious “come to Jesus” moment. After several years in the late sixties, early seventies drug-and-rock-and-roll culture, something of a revival broke out among people my age. It was called The Jesus Movement, and I don’t want to think about the influence it had on American Protestantism because dwelling on that depresses me profoundly. Suffice it to say that in 1968, Protestantism was a pursuit for grown-ups and for those young people who aspired to that label. Fast forward forty years and the most important thing in Protestant Christianity is that it be relevant, i.e. amenable to a group of people who, as CS Lewis said of Susan Pevensie, want “ to race on to the silliest time of one’s life as [possible] and then stop there as long as [one] can.” Boomer fingerprints are all over early 21st century Protestant Christianity, and you can barely see inside for all the smudges.
The church into which I was baptized was a Constantinian church, that is to say, a state church or an ethnic church. It was old-school. A Christian was someone who was born into the ethnic group and who had been baptized into its fellowship as an infant. The Assemblies of God church I found refuge in in 1973 was what I guess you would call a Revival church. Father Stephen Freeman, on his excellent blog Glory To God For All Things, does a very good job of explaining the difference. You become a member of a Revival church by “getting saved” and undergoing baptism as an adult. It was implied that something was defective if you had only the first level of Christianity. It was implied that the only thing baptism accomplished for you as an infant was to make you wet. I remember the Assemblies of God pastor and many of the more eminent layfolk considering people in my native church valid objects of evangelism. I did too, and it led to some embarrassing incidents where I displayed too much zeal and too little discernment. There are a lot of very pious people in the Assemblies of God. I could tell the difference even when I was very young. A Congregational minister in whose choir I sang because my mother earned a stipend as their choir leader often allowed his Assemblies of God-ordained sister to preach when he was absent. The difference was between night and day. It took a while, and a lot of growing up, before I could appreciate the serious Christians in my ancestral church.
[This originally appeared in May of 2010. I feel like I am still in the ring fighting this battle, so I thought we would have another look at this topic. JD]
It stood to reason that a struggle with the Devil meant a spiritual struggle … the notion of a physical combat was fit only for a savage. If only it were as simple as that. (Perelandra by C.S. Lewis)
I have been watching a lot of boxing on TV lately. I’ve always liked boxing–”the sweet science”–but had not really watched much in the past few years. Not much has changed though. You still have two men (I have yet to watch two women square off in the ring) who are nearly equal in weight spend three minutes at a time trying their best to hit the other in just the right way to knock him to the ground, hopefully to stay. While it can look brutish and needlessly violent, there really is a lot more science and math involved in boxing than there is raw strength. A skilled fighter can take down a stronger but unskilled fighter every time.
I have been watching a lot of boxing, but I feel like I have been in the ring myself much of this week. The past several weeks, in fact. Maybe the last couple of months. And I feel neither skilled nor strong. I have been battered and beaten, and right now am struggling to make it to my feet before the referee counts to ten. Who knew that when Paul wrote to Timothy about fighting the good fight of faith he meant it would be a real fight?
I am not talking about “spiritual warfare” here, or at least not in the way those words have been misused over the last couple of decades. This is not about hunting demons in your laundry basket or anything like that. As Lewis says, if only it were as simple as that. Smith Wigglesworth supposedly was awakened one night to sense a demon at the foot of his bed. His response? “Oh, it’s just you.” Then he rolled over and went back to sleep.
This is a spiritual battle I am in, no doubt about it. But it affects all areas of the “me” that is, well, me. When I am fighting with my emotions, it affects my body. My back aches so badly I cannot sleep. And without sleep, my emotions are a wreck the next day. And both the physical and emotional pain keeps me from being sensitive of spirit in listening for the still, small voice of the Lord. So this is a “whole man” fight, if you will. I cannot just say it is affecting me mentally or emotionally and the rest of me is fine. No, it is a battle that affects all of me.
After World War II, through the 1950’s and especially in the 60’s-70’s and since, America’s culture has been more and more dominated by youth and youth-oriented themes, fashions, preferences, and images. An entire “youth culture” was created and its energy has filled the land. Churches, especially those who have bought in to church growth philosophies, have capitalized on this, changing or throwing out longstanding traditional teachings and practices in order to provide religious settings that fit more comfortably with the lifestyles and preferences of the youth-dominated culture. The more traditional and historic church traditions declined dramatically as the culture of evangelicalism became more and more publicly dominant, energized by the youth ethos.
That is a very broad description of the religious landscape in which I have lived, grown up, received my spiritual calling, and served as a pastor and chaplain. Having weathered this storm, many of us have now come to lament the destruction this tidal wave of change has wrought to the faith and the church. We’ve chosen to choose what Robert Webber called, “the Ancient-Future” path, hoping that we might find a way forward while recovering a more healthy appreciation and integration of tradition and historical perspective.
That’s the pedantic version of what I wrote yesterday when I expressed my longing for “Grandpa’s Church.”
However, there is a big problem that I see about seeking an adult faith and Church in the midst of youth culture, one that frightens and worries me deeply.
A recent discussion in the blogosphere caught my attention, especially for the issues it raises for churches, pastors, and ministry leaders these days.
It started with Derek Rishmawy’s post, “Who Are You Sleeping With?” My Conversation with Timothy Keller. Rishmawy describes going to the 2013 TGC conference and attending a breakout session with Dr. Keller on the subject of revival. After Keller taught, there was time for questions. Rishmawy asked the presenter what some of the obstacles are in our contemporary culture with regard to repentance, revival, and renewal in the churches.
Drawing on his experience in urban, culture-shaping Manhattan, Keller responded that one of the biggest obstacles to repentance for revival in the Church is the basic fact that almost all singles outside the Church and a majority inside the Church are sleeping with each other. In other words, good old-fashioned fornication.
The author ends up seeing Keller’s point.
Just as C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity all those years ago, there are few of Christianity’s teachings more offensive, unpalatable, and likely to drive people away from hearing the Gospel than its sex ethic. Many college students and young adults don’t want to turn to God, or at least not the kind of solid God you find in the Gospel, because He has opinions on sex we find restrictive.
Culturally that’s just where we’re at.
The post goes on to say that we live in a culture of people like Augustine, the great Bishop who struggled mightily with concupiscence. The church must therefore speak boldly and confidently to the issue of sex, not in a shaming or holier-than-thou fashion but in a way that helps people see sexuality as the good gift God gave us so that we may desire to live sexually healthy and holy lives. We must not fear to address such matters, but neither should we run down the lascivious and creepy path that far too many have taken (see the article in her.meneutics this week: “I’m Sick of Hearing about Your Smoking Hot Wife”).
We do not know who God might be calling us to present with the Gospel’s call to sexual holiness. Keller’s challenge is for the Church to humbly but boldly call the Augustines sitting in our pews and local city coffee shops, bound fast in sexual sin, to turn and repent by the Spirit’s power to the true liberty of the Gospel. Only when Christians are courageous (and wise) enough to deal with our sex issues will we see ”sleepy Christians waking up, nominal Christians being converted, and hard to reach cases being extraordinarily converted”—in other words, revival.
Rachel Held Evans responded with a cautionary post. She was especially concerned that the article seemed to imply that sexual guilt was the primary reason young people have doubts about the faith. After noting that Derek Rishmawy had issued a helpful clarification to what Keller said and his subsequent post, she nevertheless thought that this perspective has been common enough that it should be addressed.
So she made the following points:
The suggestion that the primary reason young people have doubts about a variety of Christian issues is because they have guilty consciences is dismissive and hurtful.
Correlation does not mean causation. In young adulthood people often deal with spiritual questions and doubts. At the same time they are thinking about sex and getting involved in more serious relationships. The link between the two realities may not be as cut and dried as conservative Christians have interpreted it to be.
Evans summarizes her argument with these words:
As I’ve said on multiple occasions, most young adults I know aren’t looking for a religion that answers all of their questions, but rather a community of faith in which they feel safe to ask them. A good place to start in creating such a community is to treat young adults like the complex human beings they are, and to take their questions about faith seriously.
Rachel Held Evans received some pushback on her article. Some of the responders thought she was being unfair to Keller and so on. I don’t really want to get into all that, but I thought one of the best comments was by Ben, who wrote:
I lead a college ministry and I want to affirm a few things: Doubts and sexuality are on the table for discussion. They are both too important to ignore. Sometimes they are related. Sometimes they aren’t. But you don’t know until you start talking and asking. I ask my students about their relationships (my assumption is that people are sleeping together) because no one else will and our sexuality has a huge impact on how we live and interact with each other and God. Anecdotally: the times in my life where I experienced the greatest doubt/most considered throwing in the towel were the times I was experiencing the most sexual un-health and loneliness. I know that isn’t true for everyone, but if that pastor had asked me that question, I would have said, “No one, but I want to.”
Everyone in this discussion had something valuable to contribute, but in the end, I think Ben said it most succinctly: “…you don’t know until you start talking and asking.”
In the end, it is about relating to people, talking to them, listening to them. It’s about real conversations and real life, life in all its complexity and mystery. We simply don’t know how all these things are related, or what God will put his finger on in a person’s life to get that person’s attention. We can, however, be good listeners and love our neighbors. We can earn their trust and become friends in ways that will allow us to have honest interactions.
We might consider consulting Jesus, who has a bit of experience in dealing with doubters and sexual sinners. Seems to me he was both gentle and direct, patient and challenging, awakening faith, hope and possibility where once there was only the fog of doubt and bondage.
If we could somehow communicate him to others, not just rules and “truths” and principles we think we’ve learned about him, then maybe something similar might be awakened in our friends: a willingness to walk even though the way is dark, a hunger for wholeness and peace.
It struck me the other day that one of the reasons I have returned to mainline religion is because it’s so, well, adult.
Contrary to what I hear around me so often, I want my grandfather’s church.
I know, I know… there are characteristics of that old, traditional church that are not desirable: many had a narrow, parochial spirit, many were characterized by pervasive judgmental attitudes. They could be exclusive, racist, uncreative, and stuck in their ways. This I readily admit and abhor. A congregation that replaces a living, thriving, growing tradition with anemic or dead traditionalism is of no interest to me.
But I want a church where I know and feel that the adults are in charge, where wisdom trumps enthusiasm, where historical perspective is considered, where depth is valued as much as breadth, where stories have shaped us for generations.
I want a church building made of stone and wood, quality materials, with natural light and symbolic significance and a certain level of aesthetic excellence upheld in architecture, art, furnishings, music, liturgy, and preaching and teaching. I don’t want to be snobbish about it, as though these things are there to represent and satisfy my good taste. That is not the point. Rather, they should communicate weightiness, solidity, permanence. Those who come among us should think: “This is a place where life and love and God and people are taken seriously.”
I’m done with an approach to the faith that flies by the seat of its pants and calls it “spiritual.” Gatherings that feel like pep rallies, youth conventions, or pop concerts hold no appeal. I need to be humbled, not enthused; to know my place in a diverse, multi-generational community of ordinary people who are learning to “walk and not faint,” nourished by spiritual leaders and institutions that have gravitas and maturity.
Give me the neighborhood church on the corner, not the big box church on the suburban highway; the robed pastor in the pulpit, not the hipster who preaches from his iPad or the superstar on the video screen. Give me candles and altarware, you can keep the stage lights. Walk me through the Church Year, and help me teach my kids the Catechism. Keep things simple and meaningful. Don’t program us to death with something for everyone. Let us learn to love our neighbors by participating in the community through being involved in the schools, the sports and recreation leagues, the Scouts, the arts and in charitable causes. Give us time to have evening meals with our families and Sunday afternoons at the park or visiting with friends.
I understand the attraction of youth and enthusiasm and energy. We need young leaders too, but let them be those who have older mentors to guide them and recommend them, not brash entrepreneurs who come with all the answers and stake out territory on their own. As I said before, I want the adults to be in charge.
And if you send me a postcard advertising your church as “not your grandfather’s church,” I’m here to tell you right now that is not a selling point. Grandpa’s church is the very one I’m trying to find.
Note from CM: Back in 2009, Michael Spencer some posts exploring what he called, “The Jesus Disconnect.”Here is an edited version of the first post in that series.
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Nothing has impressed me more in my last few years of writing, reading and discussion than the disconnect the average Christian believer feels from the ministry of Jesus, specifically his miracles, exorcisms, teachings, training of disciples and encounters with individuals as described in the first half of the Gospels.
For many Christians, their view of Jesus is much like the movie Passion of the Christ. The story of Jesus begins with the suffering of Jesus, with the ministry of Jesus fading anonymously into the background, appearing occasionally in a few moralistic or sentimentally devotional flashbacks.
This disconnect leaves me with the feeling that many Jesus-followers are almost cynical regarding the relevance of the ministry of Jesus for anything other than preaching “lessons” from the example of Jesus. The actual significance of this major portion of scripture seems to be confusing to many Christians.
The disconnection from the ministry of Jesus takes several different forms.
1. At times, it is a stated preference for Jesus as presented in the Pauline epistles. This preference can be modest, defensive or hostile. In its more extreme forms, the person wanting to serious consider the place of the ministry of Jesus in an overall approach to Christianity may be accused of denying the Gospel, or of replacing a Gospel of justification with a Gospel of “the Kingdom.”
2. The disconnect may be a belief that the ministry of Jesus actually is an inspiration to liberal, socialistic misunderstandings and abuses of the Gospel.
3. The disconnect may grow out of a belief that the church Jesus founded and its current ministry in the world is the goal toward which all of Jesus’ words and actions pointed. To take Jesus’ ministry seriously is to wrongly emphasize the “seed” stage over the more mature “plant” or “tree.”
4. Others who are disconnected from the ministry of Jesus simply do not know what to do with the example, teachings and significance of Jesus’ ministry today. They are frequently quick to state that we don’t follow Jesus’ teaching literally and have no real need to do so.
5. Most evangelicals are operating off an outline of the Gospel that gives no real significance to the ministry of Jesus. Jesus death and resurrection have significance in personal evangelism, but the ministry of Jesus does not, so this part of the Biblical presentation of Jesus is easy to disconnect.
There may be other reasons for this disconnect from the ministry of Jesus, but these seem to me to be the primary responses that I hear, read and observe.
These are the questions that catch my interest as I think about “The Jesus Disconnect”:
First, how do we view the ministry of Jesus in an overall consideration of Jesus?
Second, how does the ministry of Jesus participate in the Gospel and all that the Gospel does?
Third, how can we access the ministry of Jesus in a Jesus shaped Christian life?
Finally, what are the implications for evangelicals of recovering the entirety of Jesus as presented in the scripture?
On her blog, Faith and Water, Rachel G. Hackenberg has offered an interesting perspective on how to look at the way different churches function:
I am increasingly convinced that there are three kinds of churches — three prevailing characters of congregations, carrying implicit theological underpinnings — and that these three church types exist across denominations, across worship styles, from small churches to megachurches, in rural and urban settings alike. (And I’m interested in your own experiences and perspectives on these characterizations, if you’re willing to comment.)
As I see it, these are the three kinds of churches:
+ the church that asks you to be a sanitized self
+ the church that welcomes you as a wounded self
+ the church that invites you to live as a healed self
She calls the first an “Easter” church, the second a “Good Friday” church, and the third a “Pentecost” church.
The Easter church “holds the belief that new & resurrected life in Christ looks a certain way and lives by certain standards.” It may be a conservative congregation that has strict doctrinal or behavioral standards or a progressive church that implicitly forces conformity to particular social justice perspectives.
The Good Friday church functions as a hospital for the wounded. They “make room for our woundedness … they also allow us to remain there.” She notes that they often focus their ministry on a particular demographic or specialize in responding to particular needs and devote themselves to tending the injuries of those broken by life.
The Pentecost church “witnesses to our worst wounds and our best actualizations, and it echoes the Spirit’s unending call to fuller life in Christ.” They regularly challenge people to refuse to settle for the outward righteousness that may pervade the Easter church or the wallowing in woundedness that may characterize those in the Good Friday congregation.
Each type of church tends to attract people with similar perspectives, and there are strengths and weaknesses in all of them. Although she has clearly set this paradigm up to favor the “Pentecost” church, she notes that even this church culture can be provincial and make others feel unwelcome. Hackenberg concludes by saying:
Importantly, I believe that congregations’ characters do not need to be regarded as entrenched or eternal. The Easter church can be taught to bleed and make room for life’s disorder. The Good Friday church can be encouraged to risk discontentment with its unending woundedness. And the Pentecost church can be challenged to widen its witness to healing, to embrace holy restlessness more boldly in its life & work.
What do you think of the way she has framed this?
Though her categories are obviously broad, do you think she makes helpful observations about the way communities of faith generally approach, define, and live out their beliefs?
If so, what examples have you seen of these basic types of churches? What strengths and weaknesses do you see in each approach?
Note from CM: One blog I enjoy and learn from regularly is P.OST, Andrew Perriman’s site about “Evangelical theology for the age to come.” Andrew has combined theological studies and writing with pastoral and missional work in a wide range of contexts around the world. I find his writing extraordinarily stimulating.
One good place to start to start reading him is his post, “The narrative premise of a post-Christendom theology.” Perriman represents the voice of an even newer “new perspective,” one which builds upon the historical insights of people like N.T. Wright about what Jesus came to do in the context of the story of Israel. He then seeks to understand how the community of faith formed in Jesus’ name imagined their future as the people of God that leads to the final judgment and making all things new.
Thanks to Andrew for allowing us to post today’s piece. It is part of a series he is doing on the meaning and significance of “the righteousness of God” in the NT. Its focus is on 2Corinthians 5:21. Here is that text in its context (NASB translation):
Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
And working together with Him, we also urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain— for He says,
“At the acceptable time I listened to you, And on the day of salvation I helped you.”
Behold, now is “the acceptable time,” behold, now is “the day of salvation”
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Driving back from visiting my mother yesterday I listened to a Premier Radio podcast of Tom Wright and James White debating the meaning of “justification” in Paul. It’s a difficult and rather disjointed conversation—Justin Brierley was clearly struggling to keep his head above water—but it’s worth listening to.
Wright has been enormously helpful in bringing into focus the Jewish-biblical—rather than Latin-medieval—background to Paul’s argument about justification and righteousness. But it seems to me that, in his reconstruction, the end of Israel’s exile is effectively the end of narrative—the end of theology as an engagement with the narrative of God’s people.
My view, developed in The Future of the People of God: Reading Romans Before and After Western Christendom, is that we cannot understand Paul’s argument in Romans about the justification either of righteous Gentiles or of believers apart from the anticipated historical — that is, eschatological — framework. The story does not stop with Jesus or Pentecost. It moves relentlessly on.
Justification and righteousness are not theological abstractions in Paul. They are consistently narrative categories. They address historical circumstances. They presuppose the impending “wrath” of God, either against Israel or against the Greek-Roman world, which I think has to be understood in historical terms.
So the basic question can be put almost this bluntly: Whom will history prove to be in the right? When God eventually judges the Greek-Roman oikoumenē, who will be justified? Two groups of people will be found to be in the right: first, and somewhat incidentally, Gentiles who instinctively do what the Law requires, who will put the Jews of the diaspora to shame (Rom. 2:14, 27); secondly, and more importantly, those who put their trust in the proclamation that Jesus died for the sins of Israel and was raised by the living God to judge and rule over the nations (Rom. 3:21-26). The first has to do with the justification of human behaviour. The second has to do with the justification of a people loyal to YHWH.
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