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2005-10-13T12:14:00.000+02:00

September 15, 2005

Tradition, Tradition, TRADITION

The movie Fiddler on the Roof opens with the sun rising over the village of Anatevka, pans to a man fiddling on a roof (no surprise) and then cuts to Reb Tevye as he explains life in the village. Life, as Tevye sees it, is based on tradition. He explains, “Here in Anatevka we have traditions for everything, how to eat, how to sleep, how to work, how to wear clothes”.

Christianity has become a very traditional religion. Much of what we do is not particularly based on the Bible, but on tradition. Even if it is based on the Bible, the way the biblical truth is expressed is still based on tradition. Just how many ways are there to baptize someone? Yet we argue about it, and defame each other over our traditions like modes of baptism. Sometimes our biblical connection is really merely proof texting for our traditions. Many, if not most, Protestants of various shapes and colors are critical of Roman Catholicism for putting tradition on an equal footing with the Scriptures. But if the truth be known, the same person that criticizes Catholics for their traditionalism would be the first to scream for moving the piano to the left side of the sanctuary, or for playing a guitar in the service.

The Three Propositions of Traditionalism

There are three propositions of the traditional mindset. These three propositions work together to form a clear, hermetically sealed worldview that explains everything to the traditionalist. With these three propositions in place, every question is answered, every criticism rebuffed, every doubt resolved. They are the following:

That’s the way it is.
Because that’s the way it’s always been.
Because that’s the way it should be.

Think of a cube shaped box. The foundation is that’s the way it is. How could it be any other way? Why would it be any other way? It’s that way because there is a good reason. If there wasn’t a good reason, it wouldn’t be that way. The walls of our cube shaped box are because that’s the way it’s always been. What, you think our founder didn’t know what he was doing? Are you questioning the wisdom of the ages? Good enough for Paul and Silas, good enough for me. Finally, this lovely box is capped and sealed with because that’s the way it should be. It is so reasonable, we have always done it this way because that’s the best way to do it, otherwise we would do it differently. Can’t you see the logic? What’s wrong with you? As stated above, our lovely, traditional box is hermetically sealed. Everything inside is safe, nor can fresh air creep in through some hidden crack.

That’s the way it is. Why do we preach from behind a pulpit? Because that’s the way it is. Why do we have Sunday school? Because that’s the way it is; don’t make waves. Why do we have wooden pews? Because that’s the way it is. What’s the matter with you? Are you some kind of radical troublemaker? But honestly, why; why do we have pulpits, Sunday schools and pews?

Because that’s the way it’s always been. When was the last time you saw a good, God fearing, Bible believing Protestant church without a pastor, or at least looking for one (O.K. Plymouth Brethren aside)? When was the last time you saw a Roman Catholic Church or an Eastern Orthodox church without a priest, or at least looking for one? That’s the way it’s always been. When was the last time you saw a church service without singing? It’s always been that way. When have you ever seen a church service in a building where the people didn’t stand up and sit down at the direction of the clergy? Good grief, why do we have clergy? I ask again, why do we have pastors, singing and synchronized bobbing and hopping?

Because that’s the way it should be. Case closed. To the traditionalist this is perfectly logical, even if there is no actual logic involved. To the traditionalist this is safe, although in actuality this is no safer that the different traditions of someone else, or for that matter, someone who has few or no traditions. For the traditionalist this is comfortable. Now we are getting to the crux of the matter. This is not a system based on logic, or even really safety, it is all about emotional comfort.

One of my favorite pastimes in Spain is to watch Spanish body language. Once I saw what appeared to be two women pushing their babies with strollers in El Retiro Park while they had a violent verbal argument. They were even hitting each other on the arms. When I got closer I found out they were swapping recipes for cooking cod. The Spanish look like they are fighting and angry when they actually are having a good time. What, are you out of your mind!? Do you really put parsley on your cod???? You’re mad!!!! Whack! Oh the joy!!

But try to debase a Christian traditionalist of his or her tradition and it will not just seem like fighting and anger, you will probably get a heavy dose of the real things. I have recently had a pastor I’ve known for years try to get our support cut because we don’t train simple church leaders in seminary. Evidently he has been rather emotional about this. Where is the biblical precedent? What seminary did Timothy and Silas go to? What about Barnabas, Philip or Jesus for that matter? This is not a biblical idea, it may be all right in some circumstances, but it is not biblical. It isn’t even the most effective way to transmit the Christian life or even leadership skills; it is just a tradition, and not even a particularly old tradition. Now mind you, this is a very good man. In his mind he was trying to make sure heresy doesn’t break out. But simple churches have effective ways of dealing with heresy. And besides, more than a few heretics went to good Christian seminaries. Why the anger? Why the emotion? I think it is because traditions make us feel safe and comfortable. And if our comfort and perceived safety are put in jeopardy we get pretty emotional. After all, seminary training is a lot more central and crucial, at least to some, than a cod recipe.

Keep in mind just a few hundred years ago Christians were killing Christians over traditions. Even John Calvin had a Spanish “heretic” (he apposed Calvin’s Institutes) Miguel Servetus burned at the stake on October 27, 1553 in Geneva. Even if he was a heretic, why didn’t he try to help him instead of kill him? Why didn’t he love his enemy as Jesus taught? Tradition; it was the tradition of the Medieval Catholic Church to kill heretics. It was the tradition of the times for religious leaders to view mercy as weakness. These were among many unsavory Catholic traditions that got passed on to the Protestant churches of the Reformation.
Let’s not be too hard on John Calvin. Martin Luther and his followers fought a long, nasty war. And how many people were killed in Jesus’ name in the Thirty Years War? And why were these people killed in Jesus name? Tradition; in this case the tradition is that of the people following the religion of the ruler. If the people follow the religion of the ruler, then what happens if the ruler next door starts being a heretic? Well, obviously the best thing to do is kill him and all his army. All this was in Jesus name. By the way, this idea of the people following the religion of the ruler is also why the Reformation leaders didn’t have a very clear understanding of the Great Commission. Why would you preach the gospel to every creature when you can just have a quick war and convert the king?

The sad thing is that John Calvin, Martin Luther or John Hus (his followers threw a Catholic emissary out of the window of the Prague bell tower) never even questioned these things. They were so self evident, after all that’s the way it is; because that’s the way it’s always been; because that’s the way it should be. It is true that the Catholics were even more vicious than the Protestants (for instance the Catholics came back and threw a whole bunch of Protestants out that same tower window), but neither side should be given a pass as if to say what they did was all right. Now do you see why traditions can be so dangerous? We end up murdering and waging war in Jesus name and don’t even feel guilty.

Not every tradition is evil. Not every tradition is bad. Many are just good ideas from another time; some are just silly. A few are still good ideas. However it is a problem if we don’t question them. Then we allow them to live in their little cubical boxes, never questioned, never tried, no fresh air, no fresh thoughts.

How did this tradition get started?

Reb Tevye, the milkman of Anatevka, is explaining why everything in his village is based on tradition. Then he says, “How did this tradition get started? I’ll tell you. I don’t know.”

Let me ask you, why do most church services start around 11:00 AM? This is a tradition that is just now beginning to change in some circles, but still most church services, at least in the United States, and even in churches outside of the United States, started by US American missionaries, start at 11:00 AM. I’ll bet there is more than one church in the world that starts at 11:00 AM, but was founded by third world missionaries that were brought up in churches or denominations founded by US missionaries.

Now, do you really want to know why church starts at 11:00 AM? Well, here’s the answer. When the US American culture was breaking west across the plains and heading for the Pacific coast, the culture was decidedly rural. Most frontier churches were manned by Baptist, Presbyterian and Methodist circuit riders. When you were on the farm, many miles from town, going to church was the major social occasion of the week. But, like it or not, Bessie the milk cow, waits for no man and no God. She needed to be milked seven days a week, twice a day. So the frontier Christian got up before the crack of dawn, milked Bessie, did the rest of the chores, ate breakfast, gussied up, got in the buckboard, took the family to church and could reasonably be expected to get there by 11:00 AM. Then he stayed and socialized, had an evening service, put the family in the buckboard, lumbered home and paid Bessie another visit out in the barn. Yet to this day, there are people all over the world who would get emotional about changing the time of the service from 11:00 AM. Most of these people don’t milk cows; some have never touched or even seen a milk cow.

Here is another question. Where did the idea of expository Bible preaching come from? Actually this is a pretty recent idea. But for some people this is the sin qua non of churchness. Why in the world would we choose one of the least effective forms of teaching, lecture, as the main form of the transmission of Christian life? Why do we feel that if we don’t go verse by verse through some lengthy passage we are really not teaching Christianity in the proper way? You know I can’t wait to answer this. You know I will answer this.

This has to do with mixing the Enlightenment with Christianity. The Enlightenment (a godless worldview) believes that only the facts are important. Only what can be proven exists. The facts of Christianity are in the Bible, they are called doctrines. The best way to teach facts, one after the other, is in a lecture. It isn’t a good way of producing life change, but it is a great way of teaching facts. Personal discipleship, either one on one or in small groups is a much better way of seeing powerful individual change in the Christian life. Here is an interesting equation: Enlightenment + Christianity = Evangelicalism. That’s what Evangelicalism is, the historical expression of Christianity that came out of the Enlightenment. Where is expository Bible teaching preached as a mantra? Evangelical Christianity is the answer. Is there anything evil about expository Bible teaching? No. Is there anything sacred? No. Is it a great way to show people how to follow the lifestyle of Jesus? Not particularly; but it is the enlightened way.

Here is another question. Why do 99 churches out of 100 have an entrance, sometimes called a narthex, two sets of pews with a central isle, an open area in the front of the ‘sanctuary’ (a non New Testament word and concept) and a pulpit in the center of this area facing the pews. The answer is… basilica. No, this is not a non sequitur joke.

The year was 312 AD. The Christian Church was a persecuted minority. At the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, emperor wannabe Constantine beat Maxentius, another emperor wannabe. Yes, this all relates to why we have a pulpit. Before the battle, Constantine had a vision where he looked up into the sky, saw a cross and heard a voice say “fight under this sign”. Constantine had his Roman soldiers paint crosses on their shields. He won. He felt this had been a sign from the Christian God his mother worshiped. The next year, undisputed Emperor Constantine declared in the Edict of Milan that all religions were legal in the Roman Empire. But, they were legal because Christianity was legal. The Romans weren’t stupid; they knew this meant that that Emperor was favoring Christianity.

Before this time Christians met in houses and secluded places, after all they were an illegal, persecuted sect. Now they were the biggest thing in town. Soon, many if not most Romans wanted to go to church. Where were they to meet? Houses just couldn’t hold the influx. They contacted the Roman government and the government gave them permission to meet in the basilica. The basilica was a catch all government building. Every significant town had at least one. It was big. It held public meetings. It sometimes functioned as a market. But its main function was as a courthouse. The judge sat where the pulpit is. The spectators sat or stood in two banks of rows with a central isle in the middle, and with an isle on each side.

When the Christians started building their own basilicas the question arose, what do we do with the unbaptized believers? After all, they haven’t earned the right to get all the way into the main part of the basilica. So, they added an extra part at the back, the narthex. How’s that for unbiblical and unfriendly thinking? We don’t let the outsiders into our sacred building (non New Testament idea) so we build them a special place (non New Testament idea) to make sure they know they are second class citizens (non New Testament idea); hence our architecture.

I have just described the physical layout of most church buildings and most courtrooms. It doesn’t matter if they are Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Presbyterian or Baptist. This is a tradition that has stuck around for 1700 years; and has absolutely nothing to do with life as we live it today. But just try to take the pulpit (power and authority furniture) away. Try to get rid of the space at the front. Try to do any significant change at all and I bet you somebody will get extremely angry. I’ll also bet you that angry person has never worn a Roman toga, a piece of apparel that was only for the Roman aristocracy. Christianity spread best in the lower classes so the toga never caught on with us. But, the basilica makes as much sense today as a toga does. Think friends; most people know what a courtroom looks like. Non Christians come into a church building, but it looks a lot like a courtroom. What are we saying about our faith? What are we saying about the preacher? What are we saying about God? The same questions should be asked about the formality and institutionalism of our expressions of Christianity; particularly in this emerging postmodern society that has a distrust of institutionalism and is looking for a warm, personal and friendly god.

Why do some preachers wear robes? Answer, it is the robe of the doctoral graduate, and we wanted clergy that was educated and upper class. Why do many Christians think it is more holy to abstain from alcohol? This has a lot to do with the American Temperance Movement but nothing to do with the Bible; despite some heavy isogesis from some of our fundamentalist friends. Why do we have Sunday schools? In the 1800’s it was originally a means of giving poor child laborers a chance to become literate. Why do some preachers always wear ties? The only function of a tie is to declare high status; it doesn’t exactly keep your buttons warm, and it is not the least bit spiritual. I could go on and on.

Knowing where we fit

Tevya, our dear milk man from Anatevka goes on, “And because of our traditions everyone of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do.

Let’s be honest, the traditional life can feel good. It is safe, it is secure, it is comfortable, and often times it is silly. Both Christians and non-Christians feel comfortable in a traditional box. If we are talking about a non-Christian what does it matter? If they want to be either silly or comfortable, it isn’t our job to make them fit into our box, especially our traditional one.

Traditionalism really is all about safety and comfort. When we are in our hermetically sealed box we feel safe, we know how to act, we know what is expected of us, we know how others can and will respond to us. This gives us a deep, warm feeling of security, of rightness. It makes us feel right but is it not necessarily righteous and often times ends up being self righteous. Traditionalism leads to a false spirituality that says fit the box and be right. If someone comes along and calls themselves a Christian but does not fit the box we attack. Why? Because they are dangerous; they take away our sense of comfort and security. The false logic of traditionalism has already made it clear to the traditionalist that this strange person is wrong. Isn’t this exactly what happened to the Pharisees? Of all the people in the world, they should have been ready for the Messiah, yet they plotted to murder him.

As Tevya said, “…everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do”. This is where religion comes from. Religion is going through the forms to make God or the gods happy. If we do it just right, the way it has always been done, we are safe. Don’t rock the boat, don’t take chances; after all if it worked before it will work again and God will be happy and do what we want. In reality this is worse than religion, it is magic. Magic is going through certain rites, forms or incantations to manipulate the gods. Magic is offensive to God. The God of the Bible can not be manipulated. But for Christians there is another significant hidden danger in traditionalism.
The Ultimate Danger of Traditions

Reb Tevya winds up his musical discourse on the traditions of Anatevka with this statement, “Without our traditions our lives would be as shaky as a fiddler on a roof”.

That’s fine for Tevya, but we are followers of Jesus. The Christian life was not meant to be led by tradition; it was meant to be lead by the Triune God. The New Testament is full of statements like: being led by the Spirit, the Spirit leading us unto all the truth, being filled with the Spirit, conformed to the image of Christ. One of God’s titles is Lord of the Harvest who sends workers into the harvest. Jesus is the head of the Church. It is the head that thinks and plans, not the eyes, hands, feet and ears.

The New Testament is replete with examples of Christians doing the strangest things, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which leads to incredible spiritual fruit. Why would Philip go out on a desert road when thing were going so swimmingly in Samaria? Paul was pretty sure he knew the next logical place to go in Asia Minor before he had a divine dream in which a European played the starring role. Aren’t you glad the gospel got to Europe? The Holy Spirit instructed Peter to eat some pretty nasty, crawly things. The upshot was that Cornelius and his household came to Christ and the gospel broke the Jew/gentile barrier.

Things are no different today. God still wants to lead us. He wants us to be filled with the Spirit. He wants to lead us unto all the truth. He wants us to be conformed to the image of Christ. He still wants us to pray that the Lord of the Harvest sends workers into the harvest. Jesus is still the Head of the Church. Here is a Bible verse for you:

In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. (Acts 2: 16-18)

Notice the timing on this one; in the last days. Luke changed the timing in this from Joel 2:28 which says “and afterwards” not “in the last days”. The Holy Spirit, through Luke, was making it clear that this stuff would be going on till the end. Notice it doesn’t say, before the completion of the canon. God wants to lead us. He does it through giving us insight into Scripture, wisdom, leading, prophecy, dreams, visions, etc. He never leads us to do something that is anti-biblical. If it actually goes against the Bible, not just our pet doctrine, it’s not from God. This leading is supernatural. And tradition gets in the way of that.

When we live our Christian life by tradition we are shortcutting God’s leading. Our decisions have already been made, our strategy is laid out, and no questions should be asked. But God knows what should be done. God is not stuck somewhere in frontier times, or the l800’s or 313 AD. He knew what he wanted his people to do in ancient times. He knew what the plan was for the Renaissance, which was the Reformation. Unfortunately the Reformation leaders got stuck in some unbiblical traditions so the Reformation was never completed, which is why we are in a second reformation today. God knew who he wanted to use in the Enlightenment, men like John and Charles Wesley, John Whitfield, and Jonathon Edwards. God knows what he wants to do today as we move into the postmodern world; but if we get stuck in traditions that go back to what may have been sound practice in 313 AD or the Renaissance or in the Wild West we are going to miss the boat.

This is the painful thing about tradition. It robs us of a vital and living relationship with God. He no longer leads us, or at the very best we can only meet him in our hermetically sealed box.

The God of the Bible leads us in his triumphal parade; He leads, we follow. We don’t do things for him, he does things through us. It is not by our might but by his. Tradition gets this backwards. Tradition focuses on the wrong thing. It is focused on the form, not the King of All Creation. If we are focused on tradition we end up doing all sorts of silly or even deadly things, because we are focused on the wrong things; consequently we are not following our Lord into the Harvest.

God bless and keep the traditionalist

I want to share one final scene from the introduction to Fiddler on the Roof. The young man Labish approaches the wise Rabbi and asks him “Is there a proper blessing for the czar? The dear, wise Rabbi responds that indeed there is a proper blessing for the czar. “May God bless and keep the czar…far away from us!” I would like to amend the Rabbi’s blessing. God bless and keep the traditionalist, but keep traditions far from me.

God bless and keep the traditionalists. I do not deny the traditionalist’s desire to know God. I do not deny that many traditionalist Christians have a relationship with Jesus. It is not my place to determine who should be classified as wheat and who as tares. Jesus says that is a job for the angels. May God richly bless them. They are not my enemies. But Jesus had some pretty pointed words for religious traditionalists, at least ones who had traditions that were keeping them from a true and vital relationship with God. The problem with traditions is that they go unquestioned. Traditionalists are loved by God, but sometimes they need to be poked; that’s why Jesus did it.

I also want to make clear that there is nothing wrong with non-spiritual traditions. We have many traditions within our nuclear family. For example when we are together someone might call out ‘family huggie’. When this is done, we all huddle together and have a big family hug. I love to eat breakfast with Margi on the patio in the summer. We have many family Christmas traditions like ‘hide the star’ where we hide a wooden star, and whoever finds it hides it in the next place. There is something emotionally comforting about these traditions. The problem is when we have spiritual traditions, which tend to become an end in themselves and move us away from Jesus and the truth.

…but keep traditions far from me. I know that I have more than a few spiritual traditions. The problem is that I can’t see them. It has never occurred to me to question them. I am blind. Jesus is not afraid of questions. The only good tradition is an analyzed tradition. If we have thoroughly analyzed it, and we still have good reason for it, it is probably O.K. But let’s be honest and admit that it is not the only God honoring way to love and be loved Jesus, and love our neighbor as ourselves. If someone else wants to do it another way, and it is not sinful, relax. In general though, I would just as soon keep my traditions to a minimum. I don’t want to get my comfort and security from a practice, no matter how beautiful; that should come from Jesus.

September 21, 2005

Dear Rick,

Thank you so much for your comments. As always I am grateful to the thoughtfulness you put into this process. I am encouraged that my writing makes you think and conversely your comments take me to new areas to explore or force me to think more deeply about issues on which I am already thinking. This is the whole idea of having an advisory team; I get to share what I am learning with people who may benefit from it, at the same time they force me to think or question. This, I believe, is a very healthy process. Below are my responses to each of your comments. Your comments are in italics, mine in regular type. My original comments in the Tradition, Tradition, TRADITION paper are in bold.

These three propositions work together to form a clear, hermetically (Deleted by Rick: hermeneutically) sealed worldview that explains everything to the traditionalist.

As stated above, our lovely, traditional box is [hermeneutically] Rick Satterthwaite comment:Perhaps you mean to use this word! sealed.

There is nothing more annoying than someone who tries to use big words but ends up using them incorrectly. No, I take it back; there is one thing even more annoying, when it is me. Yes, I was looking for the word ‘hermetically’ sealed not ‘hermeneutically’ sealed. I have corrected the paper and I have learned a vocabulary lesson. Thank you.

When was the last time you saw a good, God fearing, Bible believing Protestant church without a pastor, or at least looking for one (OK Plymouth Brethren aside). Rick Satterthwaite Comment: As an aside: you had better take a good look at the Plymouth Brethren, the Society of Friends and similar Christian groups and see how they “turn out” historically or how healthy they are currently.)?

Good point. How they “turned out” would be a matter of opinion based on who was evaluating. Here is my take on these two groups. The Plymouth Brethren are the epitome of enlightened conservative/fundamentalist Christianity. They have a dangerously rigid and literal hermeneutic (I used the word right this time) based on using an enlightened mindset to evaluate texts written in ancient times. In other words, their hermeneutical concepts do not fit the way the texts were written which ends up warping how they understand the texts. This, as I understand it, all goes back to John Nelson Darby. If one is going to evaluate an ancient text then one should try to understand it as one who was reading it from that culture, time, language and worldview. At best the Brethren, and most conservative Evangelicals, only get the language issue right. Sometimes they don’t even get that right, hence the King James only crowd. Evaluating through the grid of another culture, time, language and worldview is actually impossible to do. But, doing our best, with the help of the Holy Spirit, is much better than not doing so, which is what many conservatives have done.

Because of this, in my opinion, the Plymouth Brethren did not turn out so well. They are highly legalistic, rigid and usually unfriendly. They tend to be closed to outside influence and proud of it. I believe this is because they arrogantly assume they have it all figured out and everyone else is wrong. It always amazes me how the more conservative we are, the more ungracious and unkind we become (I say this as I make some very strong and perhaps unkind statements).

I have a High School friend Dave, who became a Plymouth Brethren. He did go to our High School Reunion last summer, which is a bit surprising. To my knowledge, all of the committed Christians in my class came up to talk with me and share fellowship except Dave. People were doing this because it became common knowledge that I was a missionary. I felt he was avoiding me. It could have been my imagination, but I felt he did not want to share life in Jesus with me because I was “one of those liberals”. Now, I didn’t approach him either because I thought it could make him uncomfortable. I was wrong to do this, and if I am correct about his motives, he was too. I have other friends in the house churches in Walla Walla who were involved with the Plymouth Brethren. They were so deeply wounded by the experience that now, years later; they are still trying to recover emotionally and relationally. I don’t think this is because they don’t have pastors and trained clergy, which is the one thing I admire about the Brethren. I think it has more to do with their shallow hermeneutics and their legalism.

The Quakers, more correctly called the Society of Friends, are a much more complex case. They have rejected the two clearly biblical symbolic sacraments (or ordinances or rites, take your pick) that Christianity has; baptism and communion. They did this because they saw these things abused by the Catholics and Anglicans, who had given them salvific power; and I suspect, were used to control people (if you don’t do as I say, you don’t get communion and you go to hell). They were correct to reject viewing both baptism and communion as salvific, but they were wrong to reject them all together. As highly dramatic and symbolic acts, these have tremendous power to convey spiritual truth. Done well, these acts go through the head right to the heart.

The Quakers are also an example of the healthy use of prophecy during the Enlightenment. There idea of sitting in silence until God gave one of them a word is just another way of doing prophecy. It is one that is commonly practiced today among those who believe that the supernatural is for today. Like prophecy in New Testament times, sometimes one got a genuine message from God, sometimes not. That is why we have to test prophetic utterance.

The Quakers are to also be highly commended for their gutsy stand for the poor and disadvantaged. At a time when most Christians were making every kind of evil excuse to honor the rich and ignore the poor and powerless (enough to make James roll in his grave), the Quakers did just exactly the opposite. In other words, they did exactly as Jesus taught. Their works reflected their faith, again a doctrine God taught through James. The underground railroad, before and during the American Civil War, probably would have failed if it weren’t for all the Quaker links in it. Early American Quakers were a courageous bunch. I suspect this was true of the English Quakers as well, but I am not as clear on their history. Some of the early American Quakers were horse whipped and even martyred. It should come as no surprise that they were martyred by other “Bible believing” Christians; in at least one case by the Puritans.

So, in general, I respect the Quakers. They did have at least one other failing; they tended to become theological liberals. Did they do this because they didn’t have pastors or clergy? No, and again I say no! If that were so, how can we explain the Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists and some forms of Baptists, etc. etc. that had many move towards theological liberalism at the same time. These groups all had clergy and one of my other pet peeves, seminaries. The clergy and seminaries not only didn’t keep these groups from heresy, they were the source. As Jesus says, their mouths became open graves. Or to extend Jesus’ metaphor, the mouths of some clergy became open graves and some seminaries became mass graves, full of filth and corruption; strong words but warranted words.

I want to again make clear that trained clergy and seminaries do not protect us from heresy. Every single denomination that I can think of has had heretics come out of their seminaries. Clergy just as often; or better said, more often than not, create more problems than they solve. High among these is the spiritual torpor that is common among Christians that consider themselves ‘laity’.

How then did all these denominations ‘go liberal’? They succumbed to the spirit of the age. What was the spirit of the age? The answer is my biggest pet peeve of all, the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment has been a disaster for Christianity. The liberals bought the satanic lie of the Enlightenment that man can use his own reason to determine the truth. This is done by empirical deduction and scientific experimentation. Once they caved into this lie, they were sunk. They read the Bible through this lens and threw out all talk of the miraculous and supernaturalism. In the process they ended up denying the New Covenant, the foundational doctrine of the New Testament. They also lost all personal contact with God. Then they attacked the text of the Bible using “scientific” anthropological theories that have since been discredited (JEPD theory, etc.). They ended up with nothing but a vague, godless, political liberalism with an emphasis on being nice. I’m not against being nice, it just is not adequate; nor is it nearly as powerful as gracious loving kindness in the power of the Spirit.

Who determined what was true and what was not in the Bible? These arrogant people did. What were their criteria for judgment? Whatever the views of scientific Enlightenment told them was correct. The conservatives did not fare much better. They did much the same thing; the only difference was they felt the Bible was a priori true. Their hermeneutic was not quite as awful (as described in my paragraphs on the Plymouth Brethren), but still led to a non-supernatural understanding of God, the Bible and the Christian life (the doctrine of cessation). This should come as no surprise when one considers the basic values of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was very unhealthy for the conservatives and was an unmitigated disaster for the liberals.

I am not however, as some conservative Christians are, anti-science. Science and human reason are tremendous tools for examining God’s created world. Human reason is part of the image of God in man. It is just not adequate to explore the full spectrum of God’s reality.

Did every Quaker church become liberal? No, that is absolutely not true; nor did every Anglican, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Methodist and Baptist church become liberal. The tendency to dichotomize, which is common among more conservative Christians, and label whole denominations as ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ is not wise and does not adequately reflect the truth. The Quakers in the United States, for example, have a stronger tendency to be liberal in the Eastern seaboard, and less in the Western states. The conservative hotspot is Southern California centered in Whittier and Yorba Linda. Not every Quaker meeting is liberal in the East, nor every Western one conservative. Further, I suspect that there is a whole liberal/conservative continuum going on here. Most Protestant denominations have some sort of liberal/conservative continuum going on. However, a few fundamentalist groups have probably survived unscathed from liberalism but have more than likely fallen headlong into cessationism and legalism or for some, an unbalanced Pentecostalism. Now you know why the Enlightenment is one of my chief bugaboos; the pox on the Enlightenment.

Rick, as you well know from our personal interaction, I am less skeptical about postmodernism but still feel that it has significant problems. Postmodernism is not our answer. A thoroughly biblical worldview is. This, by its very nature, will be supernatural. However, we must honestly acknowledge our human weakness. We are constitutionally incapable of getting our worldview exactly right. That is why the Spirit needs to lead us unto all the truth. Further, we cannot arrogantly say, the Spirit led me to the truth, so I know I am correct. The spiritual reality we find ourselves in requires a vague lack of clarity and humility when we speak of the truth (postmodernism has this down pat). Jesus is the Truth. There are certain things we clearly know from the Scriptures, but there are many things that are vague and on which good, honest, faithful Christians will differ. They probably all believe that the Spirit led them unto all the truth.

How do I explain this? I suspect that the Spirit is not as eager for us to get every jot and tittle straight as we are. I think if we approach him with a loving, humble seekers heart we will find the truth that is important and he will leave us with some mystery and uncertainty. This, in and of itself, forces us to seek him more, which is his objective. We Christians, who have been brought up in the Enlightenment, often have a different objective: to get all of our doctrine absolutely correct. My doctrine will never be as correct as the demons, yet I will spend eternity with Jesus and they won’t. They believe that God is one, and tremble in fear. Their doctrine is correct, their willful choices are disastrous.

To the tradionalist this is perfectly logical, even if there is no actual logic involved. Rick Satterthwaite Comment: I like your term “traditionalist” but in fact the normal term for most people who are in this situation is probably “conservative”. This is important because many in this camp have it clear that above all it is important to be conservative. This can mean simply “theologically conservative” or you could add “politically conservative” or expanding further, “socially conservative”. The non-conservative world, for many, is clearly labeled “liberal”. While there are many who are a bit more careful with their labels than to have only these two camps, allowing a bit of middle ground, once something has the “liberal” label it is considered un Biblical. Rarely do we discuss the danger of conservatism. The dangers of liberalism seem clear to most conservatives, but the dangers of conservatism… for example, conserving something that is in fact not Biblical or conserving something that is not worth keeping for other reasons – those dangers are less obvious.

Wow, you are doing some great thinking here; in my opinion. I would like to challenge you further along these lines. I think that most of our friends in the ‘conservative’ camp use the terms conservative and liberal incorrectly, at least usually. Here we go with history again, and yet once again I get to rail against the Enlightenment. The conservative/liberal split was mostly in the Western Church, particularly in mainline Protestantism in the United States and in the European Church, centered in Germany. However, the Catholics had their own manifestations as well. I suspect strongly that the Serbian Orthodox or our Coptic friends don’t talk much about this dichotomy. In the U.S. this dichotomy dates back to the fundamentalist/ liberal split that happened in the late 1800’s but came to a head in the 1920’s and 30’s. What was the cause of this split? You guessed it, the Enlightenment! This was all alluded to above. The liberals bought the full Enlightenment lie and the fundamentalist bought a watered down version of the same lie and then they both attacked each other as heretics. By the way, the shattering of the Church over doctrine is one of the chief heritages of the Enlightenment. It is as if Jesus’ prayer in John 17 somehow doesn’t count as long as we are seeking doctrinal purity.

However, the conservatives, who were a less angry version of the fundamentalists, but still bought the same Enlightenment lie, often now use these terms, conservative and liberal wrongly. The term liberal, should rightly be used for those churches and individuals who were part of the Modernist (read Enlightenment) liberal movement. Fundamentalists or conservatives are those who rejected this excess. We now use the terms quite differently.

We use the term liberal for anyone who is less legalistic than I am. We use the term conservative for anyone who is just about as legalistic as I am, and we use fundamentalist, or more commonly legalist, for anyone who is more legalistic than I am. This is really all about rules. He is a liberal because he will drink a glass of beer. He is a liberal because he doesn’t go to church every Sunday. He is a liberal because he doesn’t believe in the verbal plenary theory of biblical interpretation. She is a legalist because she won’t go to movies. She is a legalist because she feels it is more holy to wear long skirts and dirty tennis shoes. She is a legalist because she only uses the King James Version of the Bible. Baloney. This whole paradigm is 180° off center. This is all about who has more rules and who has less. This is living in the Old Covenant of the Law instead of the New Covenant of the Spirit. We don’t live by rules, no matter how good they are (Romans chapter 6). We live in the power, under the authority and by the prompting of the Holy Spirit. When we do this we fulfill the Law. We do not live godly lives by trying harder or having a stricter set of rules. When we live in the power, under the authority and by the prompting of the Holy Spirit, we are characterized by the fruit of the Spirit; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We don’t try to be that way, that’s the Old Covenant; we are that way because of who is in control of our souls, the Holy Spirit. When the Spirit is in control, we reflect the Spirit; also commonly call putting on the image of Christ.

I find that a pretty good indicator of a legalist is someone who tends to habitually use the conservative/liberal paradigm. For much of my Christian life I did this myself. And, for much of my Christian life, I was a legalist. I probably I still am, but God is at work in my life. There is a legitimate use of the term conservative, one who tries to conserve the status quo. In my opinion, you used the term correctly in your statement above. Fundamentalist is a term that is so hopelessly abused that I have given up, although I did use it above. It should mean someone who believes in the fundamentals of the faith. It is almost never used that way anymore; and is much more commonly used to refer to hard core legalists. This is a term used proudly by those legalists who call themselves fundamentalist, and derisively by everyone else. The term liberal, in my opinion, should be used to describe someone who would consider themselves as in the Mainline Protestant Liberal camp. They, by the way, do not view this term as derogatory and would own it wholeheartedly, just as a conservative or a fundamentalist does not consider those labels as derogatory, yet others do. Look at the way we are treating each other. Look at the name calling; oh the love! We are all a bunch of arrogant fops. Oh, sorry, I got carried away with myself.

I have recently had a pastor I’ve known for years try to get our support cut because we don’t train simple church leaders in seminary. Evidently he has been rather emotional about this. Where is the biblical precedent? What seminary did Timothy and Silas go to? What about Barnabas, Philip or Jesus for that matter? This is not a biblical idea, it may be all right in some circumstances, but it is not biblical. It isn’t even the most effective way to transmit the Christian life or even leadership skills; it is just a tradition, and not even a particularly old tradition. Now mind you, this is a very good man. In his mind he was trying to make sure heresy doesn’t break out. But simple churches have effective ways of dealing with heresy. And besides, more than a few heretics went to good Christian seminaries. Why the anger? Why the emotion? I think it is because traditions make us feel safe and comfortable. Rick Satterthwaite Comment: Your pastor friend thinks his money will be at risk if you don’t use his traditional methods. He wants more of a “sure thing” and thinks he will get it using the same training he got.

It is possible that this is what my pastor friend is thinking; it certainly is a common paradigm in the U.S. Church today and arrogantly reflects a monetary view of effectiveness. It is akin to the old ‘bang for the buck’ statement that I am so tired of hearing. Funny, when I was in Guatemala, an easy field to do ministry in, and hitting home runs all the time (arrogant self perception), this statement didn’t bother me. Now that I am playing in a much tougher ball park, the bang for the buck statement really gets on my nerves. This is nothing more than the syncretistic blending of the god of America (money) with the God of the Bible.

However, knowing him, I don’t think that in this particular case, this is the issue. I want to reiterate that this is a good man. I have tremendous respect for him. He has been very gutsy in standing up to liberals (I am using the word correctly) in his denomination. Some of these liberals want to stop following Christ and start following Christa, or worse, a female nature deity. I respect him for his courageous, year after year consistency. He has a love for the Word of God and preaches it. I respect him for that. He loves Jesus, just like all Christians should. He exemplifies this. I think, and this is my opinion, which by nature is flawed, that he is just so stuck in the clergy/laity/seminary paradigm that he can’t see out of his box. I really believe he is trying to help me avoid problems. I don’t agree with his solution and frankly think the medicine is more dangerous than the disease, but I think his heart is good.

Here is an interesting equation: Enlightenment + Christianity = Evangelicalism. That’s what Evangelicalism is, the historical expression of Christianity that came out of the Enlightenment. Where is expository Bible teaching preached as a mantra? Evangelical Christianity is the answer. Rick Satterthwaite Comment: As an evangelical myself – I am in the process of making it mean what I feel it should mean, this is part of my responsibility as part of this group. I do not identify evangelicalism with any particular style of preaching or teaching. I DO identify it with “being Biblical”, “preaching the Gospel to non-believers” with our lives and words, a respect and teaching of the whole Bible, and a sense of belonging to the whole Body of Christ, historically and currently – though not as the exclusive representative; and I use the name “evangelical” in Spain especially, as a way to be honest and communicate as openly and clearly as language enables me as to what I mean when I say I am a Christian –without over-identifying myself with a movement within the Christian faith and surely without attempting to convert people here to evangelicalism.

Again, you are doing some good thinking. Not all Evangelicals practice expository Bible teaching. I would guess that the majority don’t. What I meant, by what I said, is that this particular branch of Jesus’ Church is where expository Bible teaching is de rigor. You are using the word ‘evangelical’ correctly, as one who preaches the gospel. Most, however, actually use the term ‘Evangelical’ with a capital E to refer to that branch of the Protestant Church which was birthed during the Enlightenment and is somewhere to the less legalistic side of the fundamentalists. The main distinction between a fundamentalist and an Evangelical is the ‘doctrine of separation’ by which fundamentalist mean that they won’t associate with acclaimed Christians with whom they have doctrinal differences. The word evangelical should mean those Christians who preach the gospel. All Christians of every stripe should be evangelicals; most Christians aren’t, including most Evangelicals.

I personally don’t want to refer to myself as an Evangelical here or the U.S. although sometimes I use the term carefully with Evangelicals so I don’t scare them to death. I am an evangelical because I preach the gospel. Most of my doctrines are fundamental (used in the right way, not referring to legalism or the doctrine of separation which I refuse to practice on John 17 biblical grounds) and ones that most Evangelicals would be comfortable with. Some would think I was a liberal, some too conservative. That, as I explained above, just shows fuzzy thinking. I don’t refer to myself as an Evangelical because I belong to Jesus, not a theological camp. I hope that doesn’t sound to self righteous. Further, this separating into Christian tribes offends non-Christians, particularly postmodern ones, and I don’t like it too much either. I have been called to love postmoderns. Witness how often non-Christians ask about, and question how divided Christians are among themselves. This is a terrible witness. I am in love with Jesus. I am a follower of Jesus. If they ask, I am a Christian. If they ask for further clarification, which they seldom do, I can explain it to them. But postmoderns don’t like labels, particularly religious ones and neither do I. (Read the above paragraph in a gentle voice, I just re-read it and it sounded angry. I’m not angry, just careful how I label myself or allow myself to be labeled.)

We don’t let the outsiders into our sacred building (non New Testament idea) so we build them a special place (non New Testament idea) to make sure they know they are second class citizens (non New Testament idea); hence our architecture. Rick Satterthwaite Comment: Careful! The idea is not necessarily “un-biblical” – it could well come from the old-testament design for the temple, which had its outer and inner courts and finally it’s holy-of-holies. I believe the outer court was for the gentiles or nations.

The history of the architecture of the Church as coming from the Roman basilica with the later addition of the narthex is historically correct. There is a similarity to the basic layout of the Tabernacle and the Temple, but that is not where our architecture came from, although many might think it is and how some might inappropriately justify it. Both the Tabernacle and the Temple appropriately reflect a theology based on the Old Covenant and a God who had a special covenant relationship with one ethnic group and later nation. I will not go into the issues here, but I think they are fascinating. So, our architecture is unbiblical, but does have a similarity to both the Tabernacle and the Temple.

In the same way, we often think that the priesthood of the Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Anglican churches going back to the Old Covenant Hebrew model. Again, this is not justifiable since we live in the New Covenant, but in fact, that is not the history either. The model, while similar to the Hebrew one, is actually the pagan Roman religion. Note the vocabulary. The pontifex is a pre-New Testament Roman religious term for a specific type of pagan Roman priest. The Pontifex Maximus (now in reference to the Roman Catholic Pope) was a highest pagan pontifex. The word curia was a reference to the Roman magistrates; the Curia Hostilia was the Senate building. Curia now refers to the upper echelons of the Roman Catholic Church’s hierarchical power structure. Note how they function, like the Roman governmental power structure. That tall pointy hat that bishops and popes wear was modeled on certain head gear of the pagan Roman priesthood. This all goes back to 313 A.D. and the Edict of Milan. Tradition, Tradition, TRADITION.

Why do many Christians think it is more holy to abstain from alcohol? Rick Satterthwaite Comment: American Christians and their mission-colonized disciples.

Absolutely correct, yet many still think this is the ultimate in holiness.

Reb Tevya winds up his musical discourse on the traditions of Anatevka with this statement, “Without our traditions our lives would be as shaky as a fiddler on a roof”.

That’s fine for Tevya, but we are followers of Jesus. The Christian life was not meant to be led by tradition; it was meant to be lead by the Triune God. The New Testament is full of statements like: being led by the Spirit, the Spirit leading us unto all the truth, being filled with the Spirit, conformed to the image of Christ. One of God’s titles is Lord of the Harvest who sends workers into the harvest. Jesus is the head of the Church. It is the head that thinks and plans, not the eyes, hands, feet and ears. Rick Satterthwaite Comment: It also has examples of “making disciples” and teaching men to follow God as we follow God…

I wonder, Rick, if you perhaps are thinking that we make disciples and teach men to follow God as we follow God, in our own effort, rather than if the power of the Spirit? If so, I would disagree. My view could use these exact same words and mean that in the power, control and under the direction and prompting of the Holy Spirit we make disciples and teach men to follow God as we follow God. I personally don’t think human effort, in and of itself, plays any part in the godly lifestyle. I believe that as Christians, we have only one thing we have control over, our will. And I believe that the only appropriate response of our will is surrendering it to Christ and the control of the Holy Spirit.

I want to share one final scene from the introduction to Fiddler on the Roof. The young man Labish approaches the wise Rabbi and asks him “Is there a proper blessing for the czar? The dear, wise Rabbi responds that indeed there is a proper blessing for the czar. “May God bless and keep the czar...far away from us!" I would like to amend the Rabbi's blessing. God bless and keep the traditionalists, but keep traditions far from me. Rick Satterthwaite Comment: This is very cute, and one of my favorite lines from the musical. But you might balance your argument with at least a few thoughts about what is GOOD about traditions. Really. Perhaps define a few good traditions or give an idea about how you REALLY intend to live. Traditions save us time and conserve our emotional/organizational/etc energy which we can then spend on other things. Humans are creatures of habit – and in some respects this is a good thing.

What good religious traditions? They may save energy, but again I think the medicine is worse than the disease.

I also want to make clear that there is nothing wrong with non-spiritual traditions. Rick Satterthwaite Comment: Curious that you have eyes to see the value of “non-spiritual” traditions but not spiritual ones. Personally, I try not to separate “spiritual” and “non-spiritual” in general, but since you are making this distinction here, I am simply pointing out what I think is a blind spot.

Spiritual traditions get in the way of my relationship with Jesus and cause me to short cut my relationship with him. They tend to make me take things for granted that I shouldn’t take for granted and things for truth that I shouldn’t take for truth. I don’t think that is healthy.

I would tend to agree with you in general that we should not try to dichotomize our lives into spiritual and non-spiritual. All of life is to be lived in and for Jesus. But, in this case, I am referring to traditions that have grown up in our practice of our relationship with the Triune God. This is a 24/7/365 relationship, but it can be short circuited by traditions.

Traditions that are not specifically focused on this divine/human relationship will fall somewhere on a healthy/unhealthy continuum. Some are quite healthy, some less so. Am I still thinking fuzzily here? If so, show me where. Also, show me a good ‘religious’ tradition that shouldn’t be analyzed and the spiritual practice of which can not be done another non-traditional way. I would be curious as to what that would be. I don’t deny that such a thing exists; I may be stuck in a conceptual trap.

…but keep traditions far from me. I know that I have more than a few spiritual traditions. The problem is that I can’t see them. It has never occurred to me to question them. I am blind. Jesus is not afraid of questions. The only good tradition is an analyzed traditon. Rick Satterthwaite Comment: Perhaps simply God can help us by convicting us of traditions that we should drop and also helping us see the foolishness of certain habits when, as you say, they themselves become the focus, rather than hearing from the Lord, for example.

See my comments above. When we become too dogmatic, which I may be at this point, we stop seeing clearly. Help me here.

September 27, 2005

Fiddler on the Roof As a Metaphor for Life Under the Direction of Jesus

Well, it should come as no surprise the Fiddler on the Roof is one of my favorite movies. I enjoyed using the opening scene as a framework for Tradition, Tradition, TRADITION. It gives me joy to be able to write creatively on something about which I am passionate. I am passionate about my spiritual life and the journey that Jesus has me on. I am also finding that I am passionate about this D.Min. Perhaps it is because I can study in depth things that I am passionate about and then write about them which is a further joy.

As I looked over the opening scene of Fiddler on the Roof it made me want to see the whole movie again; so Margi and I sat down with Oliver and watched the movie. It has been a long time since I have watched it in its entirety. What a great movie, but here is the thing that struck me this time. This movie is very well crafted and very well acted; yet with the minor exception of Michael Glaser of Starsky and Hutch fame, nobody in this work was all that famous. Who ever heard of Topal, who played Tevye, or Paul Mann who played Lazer Wolf, or Leonard Frey who played Motel. Isn’t that what the Kingdom is like?

26Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29so that no one may boast before him. 30It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."(1 Cor. 1:26-32 )

I’m sure in the world of theater these people are known, but to most of us Paul Mann is just the big guy with the bloody apron in Fiddler on the Roof. Yet what an incredible job of acting these people did, what incredible talent. Take for example the scene where Tzeitel sings and dances to Matchmaker, Matchmaker Make me a Match with her sisters as they take in the wash preparing for Sabbath. Her imitation of Yente the matchmaker is a great piece of art. Who was the exceptional artist who did this? Well of course, Rosalind Harris. Rosalind Harris?

Isn’t that the way the Kingdom is? We, the not noble, wise and influential by human standards, are used of God to do things that count for eternity. We may not be all that important by human standards, but in the power of the Spirit, we can do things that are absolutely incredible. I am thinking of a story I just read in Power Healing by John Wimber. Some unnamed guy from his church was in a coffee shop and noticed an older man whose hand shook so much it was difficult for him to eat. By the prompting of the Spirit he walked up and said “Jesus is going to heal that hand.” This is exactly what happened, an instantaneous healing. Then he announced something to the effect, “now Jesus is going to heal your soul” and led the man to Christ. The young man was never even named, which is fine, the prime mover here was Jesus, not the young man. He was just this guy from John Wimber’s church, used of Jesus to do Kingdom work.

The other thing that I mentioned above about the movie was how well crafted it was. There is not one throw away scene. Even though this movie is around three hours long, every scene, song and dance advances the plot. There is not even a throw away sentence or phrase. That is the kind of life I want to live in Jesus. I do not want the secular part of my life and the Christian part, as Rick Satterthwaite correctly pointed out. But it is even more than that; I don’t want to go long stretches, day after day, without Jesus doing Kingdom work through me. Didn’t Jesus teach us to pray “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” Aren’t we supposed to seek first the Kingdom of God and leave the other stuff to God, to paraphrase Matt. 6:33.

Jesus said he was here to do his Father’s will. He said he didn’t do anything he didn’t see the Father doing. I want to live like that. I want to be so obedient, so sensitive to the movement of the Spirit in my life and what he is doing in me and around me that my life constantly advances the Kingdom. I have a long way to go, but like stated above, I don’t have to be anyone special for that to happen. The dumpy kid from Walla Walla is good enough for Jesus.

September 28, 2005

The Enlightenment as a Polio Epidemic

As I have been working on the last class focused leadership, and this class as I focus on supernaturalism, I have been struck by how much we, the Evangelical Church, has been wounded by the Enlightenment. It has struck me that the Enlightenment, for Western Christianity, was much like a polio epidemic. Just as a virulent polio epidemic kills some and cripples others; the Enlightenment has done this to the Western Church. The ones who were killed were the Mainline Protestant Liberals. They bought the entire satanic lie. They believed that with their own human reason they could figure God out. They believed that as they used enlightened philosophy, as they investigated the biblical texts using modern understanding of how texts function and historical and scientific investigation, they could figure out what was true and what was not. They ended up leaving out all of supernaturalism, all miracles and Jesus himself. They ended up with a Deistic god who wound things up, and let things go. Many ended up with no god at all except the god of the Enlightenment, themselves. They denied the gospel, they deigned Jesus. They became spiritually dead. They were left with vague left wing politics and doing nice acts. Which is fine, it just doesn’t connect one with God.

However, there were others, the fundamentalist and the evangelicals, who were crippled. They believed that the Bible was true, but that somehow supernaturalism ended at the completion of the canon. Why did they believe that? They did this because their enlightened worldview wouldn’t allow for current supernaturalism. It is much easier to push that stuff off in the past. By doing this it acts a bit like a myth, something that guides but we don’t actually live out. It is something strange, mysterious and back then.

When we did this we cut ourselves off from God’s power. We make Christianity something that we do, that we learn about. It becomes more like a philosophy to live out rather than an experiential relationship with Jesus. Even the fact that Christianity is a relationship with Jesus is made into one more doctrine. We have been cut off from our source of power. We can read and study about walking and running, but our legs have been crippled so we can’t actually do it. We no longer know how to follow God into ministry, because by its nature, this is a supernatural process which we have rejected because of the Enlightenment.

Even the goal of our faith becomes truncated. It is to have salvation, eternal life after we die. Heaven will be great, but I want to know, love, experience, be obedient to and serve Jesus now. He is not just then; he is now and then. I want as much of Jesus as I can get, and that goes far beyond good doctrine, study, a moral life and salvation when I die.

A Conversation with Linus Morris

Linus Morris has graciously agreed to be my mentor for the supernaturalism class. In addition he was one of the readers and a part of the advisory group for the Overture I class. Linus seems to see where I am going and still ask insightful questions and help expand my thinking. He called me a few weeks ago and talked about my Overture I paper, where I was going with my doctorate and where I was going with this supernaturalism class. He made one comment on my leadership paper that I have been chewing on since he said it.

While he seemed to grasp where I was going with theocentric leadership, with each gift being under the authority and power of the Spirit with no one gift having higher status, power, authority or position, he did challenge me to think about the key functions of the Eph. 4:11-12 gifts. These gifts, apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher, play a special role if the church is to be missional. These are the key gifts God gives to his Church so that the Kingdom can spread, particularly that aspect of the Kingdom involved with numerical growth. These gifts act together as a missional skeleton on which the other gifts can hang. Are they more important than mercy, for example? No. Are they a higher status gift? No. Is there a hierarchical structure formed by these gifts? No. But they do play a key role in the advancement of the Kingdom. We could say then that those who have and are functioning in these gifts are missional leaders. They don’t have more power, status, or authority in the Church in general; but when the Church is functioning as it should, being missional, they lead out in an important role.

Because of our unique history in the West, and the devastation caused by Christendom, the Church has failed to function effectively as a missional body. We have lost our vision. We have lost our God given and ordained drive. So we think that we don’t really need these gifts, or at least some of them. We have little room for apostles, many have no place for prophets, and we have a minor place for evangelists, even when they make us nervous. We do however; have a place for pastors and teachers. We have institutionalized these gifts to roles, titles or functions or boxes on our organizational diagram. Consequently, a pastor may have organizational and positional authority with a title, but not the gift. We have honored teaching because we have reduced Christianity to a philosophy and philosophies must be taught not caught.

When we realize that these gifts are the missional skeleton of the Church, we can allow such people to function together as they should. They should work together, because none of these gifts is sufficient to lead the Church in its missional task by itself. They should work in the power and under the direction of the Holy Spirit. That is part of the special role of the prophet. They have a certain kind of authority, based on spirituality, experience, and gifting. It is not positional or institutional, but when an experienced apostle talks about church planting strategies, we should probably listen. When an evangelist feels that God has given him a key to reaching people in a new context, we should probably listen. Just don’t turn this into an institution with status, power, control, positions and all the problems that come with them. Let it be organic under the direction of the triune God.

October 4, 2005

Chuck Kraft Gives the Enlightenment a Black Eye

OK so I am enjoying this Supernaturalism class so much that I am beginning to feel guilty. Not real guilty, kind of like a little guilty pleasure. I have four Journal entries in my To Do list that I haven’t written yet and three book reports to write. I have been ill, so I just didn’t have the energy to write and at times not the energy to read, but I did get a couple of books under my belt so I have to catch up on the writing. All that will happen after the European House Church Consultation this weekend in Nerja.

But, Chuck Kraft just stated so well what I believe about the damage that the Enlightenment did to my faith that I just had to write about it. I will quote here Chuck at length and hope I am not breaking some copy write law:

The study of human cultures helps us to understand that as we grow up, we learn the assumptions believed by the adults of our society. We call these assumptions our worldview. On the basis of these assumptions, we interpret all we see of REALITY (in context, Chuck’s way of referring to God’s view of reality as opposed to “reality” our limited understanding of it). All that we think we know, then, we know in relation to these assumptions.

There are at least three kinds of basic assumptions: 1) those concerning what to believe or not believe: 2) those concerning what to value or not to value; 3) those concerning what to commit oneself to or against. Ever since the eighteenth-century “Enlightenment” movement, Western Christianity has participated in the rationalism, materialism, and humanism of the surrounding secular society. We, like secularists, have learned to focus on the material world and to largely ignore spiritual reality, even though we are theoretically committed to a biblical view of invisible being and power. Our concern for power is largely the same as that of non-Christians—focused on human power over the material universe. It is usually only slightly altered in the direction of the primary concern of biblical peoples (and of most contemporary non-Western societies) for spiritual power. We practice, therefore, a largely powerless Christianity in which such beings as Satan, demons, and angels seem more mythical than real.

Most Western Christians would even view God as fairly distant and not very active in human affairs. For this reason we find it difficult to believe that God works today as he did in scriptural times to bring people to the freedom he has promised. We have been infected by assumptions that lead us to believe that what we can see and touch, especially if it is endorsed by science, is real, while things that cannot be touched are either not real or not important. We have also learned to assume that God is not really involved in anything that can be explained scientifically.

For example, we may give God credit for an amazing healing from cancer that the doctors cannot explain, but doubt that he is involved when the same or a lesser healing takes place after medicine or surgery has been used. Likewise, we may agree that Satan influenced Hitler, but not believe Satan was involved I the latest difficulty we have had with health or our automobile.

We have become innocent victims of a worldview that makes it difficult to believe much of the Bible and to see God’s hand in events. If we are to participate in deep-level healing, therefore (either as bringers or receivers of healing), we need to open up to a more scriptural view of God’s presence, power, and willingness to heal. To do this, we must reject any view of God that holds that he doesn’t want to heal. We must stand against feelings of inadequacy, fear of opening up to spiritual things, and the unwillingness to risk, and the rear of being labeled a weird “faith healer.”

Though I believe we need to maintain a healthy skepticism such as that of Thomas, we need to fight any tendency to follow the example of the Pharisees who refused to believe no matter how much proof the saw.

Kraft, Charles H. with Ellen Kearney and Mark H. White, Deep Wounds, Deep Healing. Regal, Ventura, CA, 1993 p.23-24,

Where do I begin on this? This is exactly what I have been trying to say now ever since I became aware of my enlightened worldview as I began to study postmodernism. That is the problem with worldviews, they just are; we can’t question them because they are our unquestioned and assumed framework for understanding REALITY. But, as Chuck points out just before these paragraphs, what we have is “reality” not anything close to REALITY as God sees it. Frankly, I think some of us are afraid to actually pose questions to the Enlightenment, because the conceptual earthquake is too painful. But here are some of mine?

If the Enlightenment view of the world is correct and complete, why does it not square with the Bible?
Why are the experiences of Jesus and the early Christians so distinct from what Enlightened Christians experience?
Why to people of integrity like Chuck Kraft and John Wimber report that when they set aside their enlightened worldview they suddenly experience a God who is supernaturally powerful?
Why are Enlightened Christians content with a God they can’t experience or can only lightly touch, when God makes pretty bold claims about how much he wants us to experience his supernatural power?
Why do Enlightened Christians feel safer calling people like Chuck and Wimber liars, even when they just seem to report a worldview exactly like the Bible’s or at least well within the biblical parameters?Which is more important to us, a biblical worldview or a secular humanist worldview?
Why do Enlightened Christians feel their lack of supernatural experience reflects the truth more than the testimony of millions of contemporary Christians who report current powerful supernaturalism all over the world?
Why are we more willing to say that somehow, perhaps, maybe it can happen in the jungles of Africa or in some dusty village of Latin America, but not in my own back yard?
Did it ever occur to us that the problem of geographic Christian supernaturalism, (i.e. that it happens over there but not in the West) has more to do with the unbelief of Western Christians than it does with the superstition of non-Western Christians?
Where did this unbelief come from? The answer of course is the Enlightenment, certainly not the Bible.
How many arrogant Western Christians are there who don’t realize that our non-Western brothers have much to teach us about God, even if they didn’t go to seminary and perhaps can’t even read or write? But what they can do is heal, cast out demons, perhaps even raise the dead; which is more important to the Kingdom, a seminary title or raising the dead for all the village to see?
Don’t we realize that when we do this it is the greatest of sins, called unbelief and lack of faith? This is, by the way the very sin that Jesus says stops us from experiencing God and supernaturalism. Hmmm! I wonder who is behind that?
Why would we want to harbor and protect unbelief and lack of faith when Jesus said it was so damaging to our souls?
Most contemporary Enlightened Christians know, first hand, people who have been powerfully, supernaturally healed. Why do they feel the need to stick that in some special box and not investigate it closely? Why do they feel a need to try to rationalize these things when the Bible gives us more than an adequate answer for such things? I know many, many people who have been healed. Johanna was healed of a crushed vertebrae. Dr. Kurtanik at Biola was on his death bed with metastasized cancer, but when I knew him he had been clean for decades. Boy did he believe in prayer. The list goes on and on.
Why do we Enlightened Christians allow a secular worldview to diminish our God into a distant, deistic god, far off, remote and virtually powerless?
Don’t we realize that to believe that of God is an insult to him?
Don’t we realize that this far off, remote and virtually powerless god could have never created the universe? We now have a faith that at its core is logically inconsistent.
Or, conversely, we have to do some ugly hermeneutical juggling to believe in the doctrine of cessation, which has its own logical flaws?
With the doctrine of cessation, we just postpone God’s powerlessness until the completion of the canon and say he stopped being who he was, for some strange reason, when the Bible was fully written.
Why would God become less that what he is by his very nature? Oh, I know, he is just setting aside his attributes, not forsaking them. Why only his power? Why not his omniscience or omnipresence?
Why would God intentionally become powerless and less than omnipotent? Did he do this so that we can be reasoned into faith, and only reasoned into faith? That sounds a lot like an enlightened rationalists thinking? Or, perhaps, better said, not thinking.
How can we be so content with a faith that has become even less than a faith? In reality it has even become less than a religion, it has become a philosophy. It has become something we rationalize in our minds, not believe in our hearts. At least religions have rich metaphorical myths that attempt to explain the mysterious and supernatural. We are left with rationalistic dust. What is the appeal? To me that is not much different that going to god’s deistic lodge meeting.

I feel cheated! René Descartes stole my faith from me and turned it into rationalistic claptrap while he sat in his French window wondering how he could prove that he was. “I think therefore I am.” Well congrats René. YHWH said I AM. Jesus repeated it five times in the book of John. I exist because He does. The audacity of René thinking he could figure it all out by himself, of course without God, who had become, at best, superfluous. He took the capital letter out of God. We have believed a lie and it did serious damage to our relationship with God. This isn’t the first time men have believed a satanic lie and it has harmed our divine relationship. I want my faith back! I want my God back and I find that I am taking my God back by studying supernaturalism. I also find that my study of postmodernism prepared me to do this. If I had not been prepared philosophically to ask these questions they would have been too painful for me.

Now back to my questions:

How many people’s faith has been shipwrecked on René Descartes´ philosophical and arrogant ponderings?
How many Western Christians have been crippled in their faith because they believed lies about who God really is and how he works?
How many supposed Christians have actually been robbed of salvation because they believe philosophically in their head (give intellectual ascent to the correctness of the gospel) but not actually believing with their hearts?
How many people go unhealed because we don’t believe?
How many go unsaved because we can’t do ministry like Jesus did?
How in the world do we think we are going to rationalize postmodern Europeans into the Kingdom?

October 7, 2005

Rick Satterthwaite’s Answer Key to My Questions

Dear Ross,

I am very glad to hear how you are enjoying this adventure of discovering the Lord and his greatness, his power and again looking critically at how he seems to be working in this world.

A bit "tongue in cheek" I have decided to save you some time and simply answer your questions.

How many people’s faith has been shipwrecked on René Descartes´ philosophical and arrogant ponderings?

235,849,012. These, of course, did not have "saving faith" but had a kind of faith that certainly buckled under rationalistic, anti-supernatural presumptions. There is also a very large number of people who, perhaps giving too much weight to the value of rationalism, nevertheless came to the correct conclusion that, if there IS a God, the only rational thing to do was to seek Him and, if found, honor, serve and worship him. And they did.

How many Western Christians have been crippled in their faith because they believed lies about who God really is and how he works?

I do not have an exact number, but I do have an exact percentage. 100%. The same would be true for Eastern, Northern, Southern Christians. We are all somewhat crippled in our faith because what we believe about God and how he works isn't the full truth. May God bring us into the full truth as soon as possible!

How many supposed Christians have actually been robbed of salvation because they believe philosophically in their head (give intellectual ascent to the correctness of the gospel) but not actually believing with their hearts?

None. No one can pluck us out of God's hand or thwart his will to save - though it is true that many are the means and wide is the way that leads to perdition.

How many people go unhealed because we don’t believe?

Quite a few no doubt. What a waste!

How many go unsaved because we can’t do ministry like Jesus did?

None. Thankfully, though, Jesus is continuing his ministry just like he used to, and much more. But, no, we are not ultimately responsible for the salvation of anyone. If any man's salvation depended on me, woe to that man. He is dead meat. No hope for him. Thankfully, Salvation is in the hands of the Lord. It depends on no man.

How in the world do we think we are going to rationalize postmodern Europeans into the Kingdom?

Of course we will not. Nor can healing, prophetic and other types of external miracles convince anyone in and of themselves. But God saves some, the work is His, the Holy Spirit convicts and by miracle, yes miracle, some men respond to His grand offer. I am so glad that somehow he has hauled me in. I am humbled. Thankful. Puzzled at times. Amazed. God is GOOD!

Growing in the Prophetic

2005-10-13T12:08:00.000+02:00

I. What is the main idea or thesis of the author?

Mike Bickle is the pastor of Metro Christian Fellowship in Kansas City. The church is noted for two things; it is the home of a non-stop prayer meeting, and it is famous (or infamous, depending on one’s perspective) as the home of the Kansas City prophets. Bickle finds himself in an interesting situation; he is the head pastor of a church famous for prophetic manifestation. He himself, is not particularly prophetic, but sees himself as one gifted in leadership. This creates a tension, to administrate a church well, and deal with powerful prophetic ministry. Prophecy, by its very nature, creates tension, particularly in an institutional setting.

Prophets, by tendency, function outside of the normal. They are concerned with obedience to what they hear from God. They are often insecure that they won’t be listened to, that their message will be ignored and that they will be marginalized or rejected because of their message, and their often odd, prophetic behavior. Prophets, when immature, have a tendency to act out, to over speak, to draw attention to themselves, or try to interpret their own words, when they may not have been actually given the interpretation or application of their prophecy. Prophets may be highly gifted by God, without yet having the spiritual maturity to handle their giftedness. Their gift itself may not be well developed, refined or matured. All of this can create chaos in a church setting. How does one lead a church, administrate prophetic people, help them mature, hear from God, yet not despise prophetic utterance and not allow chaos to reign? The point of this book is really to answer this complex question.

II. What is my interpretation of the author’s thesis?

First, it would be helpful if the book had been given a different title. I would suggest that Administrating the Prophetic, rather than Growing in the Prophetic would have been a better title, since that is really the focus of the book. The fact that the book could have a better title, does not take away from the validity of the contents.

Bickle does a good job of showing how the prophetic ministry can create tension and chaos in a church. He does this through telling stories from his own experience, for example, the story of two immature prophets trying to outdo each other in a worship service. But, he also tells stories of clear, powerful, public prophecies which were used by God to advance his Kingdom, move people into ministry, and release God’s power. These are not stories of vague, King James English allusions that can be understood in a number of ways. These are tape recorded public prophecies that name names, times, dates and results. The results are incredible, and they were later fulfilled to the letter. This doesn’t happen once or twice, it is a regular occurrence at Metro. With the power, comes the tension and occasional chaos. When one reads of the difficulty of having prophetically gifted people it tends to make one avoid this ministry and seek the relative quite of non-prophetic ministry. Then, when one reads what God does through the prophetic, it makes one what to see this happen in one’s church.

The prophetic, particularly as expressed through growing but immature prophets, is a difficulty no matter what form the church takes. However, I think the form of the church heightens or lessens these problems. Because Bickle sees ministry through a hierarchical, institutional lens, with pastors having positional and institutional power, many of the problems Bickle relates are caused or at least compounded by church structure.

Imagine, for a moment, the story of the dueling prophets at Metro. In a large worship service, two immature prophets stand and prophecy alternately about greater and greater things. The members of the laity are confused. It this from God or is it carnal? Is this God speaking or men? Should someone step in and who is responsible? When should they do it and how? Imagine the same problem in a simple church. There is no laity. There are only 8-12 people involved. Anyone can speak or rebuke. In a mature church, loving rebuke part of what the church does. There is no confusion as to whose job it is to stop this kind of thing. Anyone can. And it can be done gently, not as a top down, perceived power play from clergy that end up wounding and compounding an immature prophet’s insecurity. Form does create or heighten problems.

III. What would a serious application of this book look like?

We would take prophecy seriously. We would take the life and health of the church even more seriously. We would not despise prophecy; we would encourage it and its developing maturity. We would lovingly foster it, and keep it with in its biblical parameters. With this in mind, I Corinthians 14:29-33 makes clear sense.

Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.

Prophecy should not be stifled in any church. It is a gift from God. But it must be administrated wisely or it can do more damage than good.

Book Report The Heavenly Man

2005-09-08T16:39:00.000+02:00

I. What is the main idea or thesis of the author?

This is the story of Brother Yun, whose real name is Liu Zhenying. Yun is a leader in one of the Chinese house church networks in Henan Province in Northern China. There are really two purposes for this book. The first is to tell Yun’s story, a story full of persecution and supernatural power. The second is to promote the cooperation of the Western Church with the Back to Jerusalem Movement which is a small but growing missions movement of the Chinese house churches to reach the unreached peoples between China and Jerusalem which happen to fall on the historic silk road.

This is not a typical book to be read for this type of study. However, it is a clear example of supernaturalism working in the church today in a house or simple church setting. Since this is the focus of my study, I felt it would be useful to take a look at the realities of what this actually looks like.

II. What is my interpretation of the author’s thesis?

Since this was not a typical book I felt I needed to focus my reading. To do this I developed six basic areas I would look for as I read this book. All six are related to supernaturalism in a simple church context. The are:

1. Find different forms of supernaturalism,
2. Look for how different worldviews affect our view of supernaturalism,
3. Note How the Chinese house churches interact with and respond to supernaturalism,
4. Notice how the Chinese brethren view scripture and how this affects their view of supernaturalism,
5. Note how supernaturalism affects ministry, strategy and the flow of the gospel and church planting,
6. Look for triggers to supernaturalism and barriers to supernaturalism.
.
Here is what I have learned.

Find different forms of supernaturalism. God’s creativity doesn’t seem to be limited. He does what is needed and doesn’t seem to care that some people will insist that is it impossible. After all, it wouldn’t be supernatural otherwise.

Look for how different worldviews affect our view of supernaturalism. The Chinese worldview is affected by the Enlightenment through communism; however the underlying worldview is Animist/Taoist/Buddhist. They don’t seem to be predisposed, by default against supernatural power, which amounts to unbelief, so they encounter much more that we tend to.

Note how the Chinese house churches interact with and respond to supernaturalism. I think the thing I am most impressed with is their utter obedience. There is no rationalization; if God speaks to them through supernatural means they obey. They also take supernaturalism as a given, it is just part of being a Christian.

Notice how the Chinese brethren view scripture and how this affects their view of supernaturalism. They seem to have never heard of the doctrine of cessation. It is probably a good thing. I can just see someone trying to explain it to them, and what a great laugh they would get out of it. More than likely they would feel a need to pray for the poor soul that believed such nonsense.

Note how supernaturalism affects ministry, strategy and the flow of the gospel and church planting. Miracles happen and when they do it is not uncommon for people to come to Christ and churches to get planted. However, this is not always true. Some miracles are just for the believer, such as getting out of prison, escaping persecution, direction, etc. They do set goals on occasion, whether this is under divine direction or not is sometimes not mentioned. But, in general they are not setting goals and objectives, marshaling resources, reasoning through what step to do next. They just follow the Lord, and incredible things happen.

Look for triggers to supernaturalism and barriers to supernaturalism. Some of the triggers seem to be the following, trust, a clean heart, obedience to God’s call despite the seeming ‘illogical nature’ of such, past obedience to supernaturalism, fasting and intense prayer, desire for God’s presence and power, a close personal walk with Jesus, etc. There is a theme here and it is faith.

III. What would a serious application of this book look like?

This is actually the serious challenge. We, as western enlightened rationalist, find interacting with God’s supernatural power very difficult. Our worldview keeps getting in the way. We tend to question, doubt and hesitate instead of obey. This, in reality, is lack of faith, which Jesus and the New Testament writers make clear is a hindrance to God’s power being displayed. We are the losers in this.

Further, I think we have substituted obedience to God’s supernatural voice with a business model of doing ministry. We write goals, make plans etc. instead of following the Lord of the Harvest into the harvest. I believe we are inadvertently telling God how he ought to do ministry. This book has been a serious challenge to me to reevaluate how I approach ministry and how I respond to God.

Reading the Heavenly Man

2005-09-08T12:24:00.000+02:00

September 7, 2005

Reading The Heavenly Man With a Purpose

This is the third time I have read the book The Heavenly Man by Brother Yun with Paul Hattaway. I always love to read this book because it shows the power of God, not as something that happened in the 1st Century and then somehow stopped, but as something current and relevant. This time however, I am not reading it for pleasure, but with a purpose. I have written out six issues I am looking for as I read this. Each issue relates to my self study course on supernaturalism. They are:

Find different forms of supernaturalism
Look for how different worldviews affect our view of supernaturalism
How the Chinese house churches interact with and respond to supernaturalism
Notice how the Chinese bretheren view scripture and how this affects their view of supernaturalism
Note how supernaturalism affects ministry, strategy and the flow of the gospel and church planting
Look for triggers to supernaturalism and barriers to supernaturalism

Currently I am on page 263. At this point there have been at least 41 different forms of supernaturalism. Of course, this depends on how one categorizes such things. However, here are just a few forms. First, there are the more common forms of supernaturalism such as prophecy, healing, God speaking to believers in an inaudible voice, dreams and visions. These are things we see in the Old and New Testament, and many claim to experience today. These are also the most common things mentioned in The Heavenly Man, with the all time favorite being God speaking to believers in an inaudible voice. So far, this has been mentioned at least eighteen times. This, when obeyed seems to lead to ministry, protection from persecution, or a deeper walk with Jesus. It most commonly seems to lead to ministry.

I have also noticed that I have experienced at least some of these types of supernaturalism. What is going on in house churches in Spain and Portugal, for example, started with me receiving an inaudible command from the Lord to pray for five couples to start a house church movement in Spain. I wonder what would have happened if I had brushed this off as my imagination, which in fact, is what I almost did. I have also experienced significant dreams. The most important of which seem to be focused on a wheat harvest theme. This, I suppose, should not be surprising given that it is both a biblical theme with specific significance and it is part of my personal history with strong emotive significance. I am learning that when I have a dream that has spiritual meaning that I know it and have a pretty good idea what it means. When I give these dreams to other people they tend to either be mystified by its meaning or focus on extraneous details. Here are the two most significant ones.

I walk into a store to buy something. I go over to the area where one fills plastic bags of produce. I get a bag of wheat. But what wheat! It is the size and shape of Spanish almonds. I am filled with incredible joy just seeing wheat like that.

I think the wheat represents people in the Spanish house church networks who are important. Like seeds, they have DNA which can spread. These are the people God has given to continue what he used me to start. They don’t belong to me. I am not in control. It isn’t my job to plant them. They belong to Jesus. But I should have great joy that they exist, and what He is doing will not fail. It is also interesting that when I shared this dream with Chris Daza, an experienced prophet, he also said that God will let me see the harvest. I think this is also true and something I have prayed for, for a long time.

The second dream is that I am with my father and he is driving a new combine. What a combine! It is something out of the space age, but also it is not brand new, but actually quite used. My dad is harvesting a very good crop in a field I have never been in before. If it were a field that our family had harvested in reality I would have recognized it. At one point in the dream I was on the ground in the stubble and my dad was harvesting but making skips with his header. What was more, there was downed wheat, which is common in a good crop but he was missing that too. I was very distressed. I walked over to the downed wheat and held it up with a stick. It was slightly green (not quite ripe) but had tremendous heads on it.

I think the new field represents a new place of ministry. That incredible combine represents simple churches. It is an effective harvester, but it really isn’t that new. My job seemed to be to point out what we were missing, the skipped wheat and the downed wheat. I suspect this means that my strategic gifts are to be used in helping us locate and understand how to use simple churches in sub groups of postmodern societies, to notice what we are missing.

However there are other types of supernaturalism mentioned. Some of them would be too incredible to believe if we didn’t read about such things in the Bible. I think it is interesting that some have tried to discredit Yun for this very reason. If one comes from an Enlightened worldview the whole books sounds like a pack of lies by a religious fanatic. However, when I was in Seattle last January at the Overture I course I met Ronald Yu, who is a Chinese house church planting trainer. I asked him if he knew Brother Yun. He said that they had never met face to face, but he knew of him and they had talked on the phone. I asked if he had heard of the book. He was familiar with it. I asked him what he thought about the supernaturalism in it. He said “oh, that stuff happens all the time among us.” I suppose this is what the New Testament would call miracles, signs and wonders. For example, walking out of the high security prison; shades of Peter. Having handcuffs and bonds fall off, like Paul. Being lifted over a high wall and being ‘teleported’ from one village to another, shades of Philip. There was even type of miracle that happened to Yun’s wife that I don’t even see in the scriptures. She needed to sneak from one village to another in the dark. It was a dangerous area with dangerous gangs of men. When she was lost or needed to get of the path, a small, floating light would guide her. This is the kind of stuff that ‘the enlightened’ really struggle with. They feel a need to explain. The explanations tend to go to natural phenomena or the hysterical imagination of the person involved. Funny that God’s creation can do things that God can not, or that anything that happens to someone else that we have never experienced must by definition be caused by their over heated imagination.

Here is what I have learned so far:

Find different forms of supernaturalism. God’s creativity doesn’t seem to be limited. He does what is needed and doesn’t seem to care that some people will insist that is it impossible. After all, it wouldn’t be supernatural otherwise.
Look for how different worldviews affect our view of supernaturalism. The Chinese worldview is affected by the Enlightenment through communism, however the underlying worldview is Animist/Taoist/Buddhist. They don’t seem to be predisposed, by default against supernatural power, which amounts to unbelief, so they get more.
How the Chinese house churches interact with and respond to supernaturalism. I think the thing I am most impressed with is their utter obedience. They wake up from a prophetic dream, get out of bed and leave town. God tells them to escape from prison and they get up and walk out. Never mind they have two broken legs, that there are four security doors between them and freedom and that no one has ever escaped from this prison before. God said it, they did it. There is no rationalization, there is just obedience. The one time Yun mentioned his own rationalization, of waiting to obey until after harvest was over, led to his second imprisonment because he did not leave in time.
Notice how the Chinese brethren view scripture and how this affects their view of supernaturalism. They seem to have never heard of the doctrine of cessation. It is probably a good thing. I can just see someone trying to explain it to them, and what a great laugh they would get out of it. More than likely they would feel a need to pray for the poor soul that believed such nonsense.
Note how supernaturalism affects ministry, strategy and the flow of the gospel and church planting. Miracles happen and when they do it is not uncommon for people to come to Christ and churches to get planted. However, this is not always true. Some miracles are just for the believer, such as getting out of prison, escaping persecution, direction, etc. But I think they would find the whole idea of ministry apart from supernaturalism rather strange. They do set goals on occasion, whether this is under divine direction or not is sometimes not mentioned. But, in general they are not setting goals and objectives, marshaling resources, reasoning through what step to do next. They just follow the Lord, and incredible things happen. (I have considered using one of my independent studies to contrast these at least two different ministry paradigms, since this seems to be one of the things that distinguishes most house churches from more institutionalized churches).
Look for triggers to supernaturalism and barriers to supernaturalism. Some of the triggers seem to be the following, trust, a clean heart, obedience to God’s call despite the seeming ‘illogical nature’ of such, past obedience to supernaturalism, fasting and intense prayer, desire for God’s presence and power, a close personal walk with Jesus, etc. There is a theme here and it is faith. Not a surprise because Jesus and the NT writers say lack of belief or faith stops supernaturalism. I think one reason that certain segments of the western Church don’t see or recognize much supernaturalism is because their enlightened worldview does not allow it. In other words, the Enlightenment creates unbelief, unbelief leads to lack of supernatural power, no power no miracles, no miracles leads to a reinforcement of lack of belief. Eventually we need to codify this doctrinally, which is what the doctrine of cessation is.

Trust and Obey

2005-09-03T12:36:00.000+02:00

September 3, 2005

Fixing and Faith or “Trust and obey, for there is no better way, to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey”.

I have been through a ministry issues with a couple of friends of mine for a few weeks and this has clarified in my mind some issues about supernaturalism and a paradigm shift in ministry that I have gone through tacitly but not explicitly, until now. These last few days have allowed what has been tacit to become explicit in my mind.

My old paradigm of ministry and how it was done went something like this. God gifts us gives us talents, experience, abilities, etc.; resources of every kind. Then, in the power of the Spirit, we go out and fix the problems, needs, etc. so that Kingdom work can be done. We do this through goals and objectives, bringing resources together, working in teams, training, and on and on. God is involved in this process, kind of in the background, making things happen through what we are doing, and he is very pleased that we love him so much that we are doing his Kingdom work with him and for him.

I now realize that I don’t believe this anymore. I know from experience that many of those who do this are doing it with a good heart, and because they love God, and love his Church and Kingdom. The problem here, as I see it, is not a lack of love for God, spirituality, or having a good heart. The problem is one of paradigm.

Let me explain how God has been working in me over the last number of years, and how I believe ministry is really done. God is doing something, probably long before I am involved in any way. He calls me into ministry, often times in strange and inexplicable ways; ways that don’t make good sense. I have to trust the Lord of the Harvest that he knows what he is doing, and my only part is to be obedient to what he has asked me to do, even when it seems strange and doesn’t look like it should work.

I do not have to figure out timing. I do not have to figure out resources and finances; I do not have to try to figure out how other people are going to respond. I do not have to look at a policy handbook and make sure that it is being done in the appropriate way. I have to be obedient and trust God that, as strange as it seems from my perspective, he knows what he is doing. I have to be obedient, I need to walk in the Spirit, and do what is right; period. Part of doing what is right is treating everyone involved in sensitive ways (i.e. loving others as I love myself), but it doesn’t mean, that I have to make sure they don’t get hurt. Perhaps the very thing God is doing right now is wounding them so he can use them in a deeper way. Certainly, it is not my place either to decide that they need a good wounding.

I believe that when we try to do it right from out perspective, all we do is get in the way and lose our chance to see God’s powerful hand at work. In the first paradigm, where I have live most of my ministry life, and where I find myself often still, I have to work hard and love God. In the second paradigm I have to have faith. That is actually much harder that working hard. God seems to do things in such strange ways. He doesn’t seem to realize that if we do things out of order, or with out the resources, all sorts of chaos will break out. We can see it all so clearly. But we don’t realize, that unintentionally, we have just usurped God’s throne. We have decided that we need to fix it because he isn’t doing a good enough job. The biblical phrase comes to mind, who are you O man…? We do this with such good hearts, with such good intentions, but all we are really doing is lacking faith and making a mess of things. Does this mean that the sovereign Lord does not still work through all our goofiness? He is sovereign and his Kingdom advances, but that does not expiate our arrogance of telling him how he should have done things.

Trust and obey, for there is no better way, to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey. I have no idea which old saint wrote those words, or how many times I have sung them. But that old saint understood! I have sung those words a thousand times, and didn’t get the message. I don’t have to fix it. I don’t have to make it happen. I don’t have to follow the appropriate policy procedure; I have to trust and obey, no matter how weird it seems.

Here are some of the lessons I think I am learning from this:

Finite fixing is flawed and fatal. (How’s that for alliteration?) Organizations love to fix things. Those who can fix problems are held in high regard, those who don’t are not ‘their kind of people’.

Once again I see the problem with organizations. For all the right reasons we write policy so that things can be done in decency and in order (the mantra verse of the grey flannel suit crowd, sorry for the sarcasm) and work together. Then God comes along and does things backwards, upside down, and in the wrong order and we can’t go along with what he is doing, because it doesn’t fit the box; our lovely, comfortable, cushy box. Who are you O man? I can hear the organization men now, “but you are in this organization, and as long as you are in it you have to function by the organizational procedures or the organization will fall apart”. That is just restating the problem. Who are we O men? God is sovereign; he is the Lord of the Harvest, and the Head of the Church. When we build something that gets in the way of his sovereignty we need to dismantle it, not write another policy, which will just get in the way of the next thing God does. Organizations are designed by men to do men’s work. I am not interested in doing men’s work. God designed the Church to be an organism, with a Head and a Spirit. We have something that IBM doesn’t have, and that something is everything, the Triune God.
Faith is a trigger to see the supernatural. When we fix it ourselves, we ruin our own chance to see the powerful hand of God.

God’s ways are harder and simpler at the same time. They are more difficult and easier at the same time. From one perspective, it is easier to work hard than to trust God to bring order out of chaos, especially when the chaos is so evident. Why do we think that God puts so much emphasis on faith? Because it is incredibly hard to have faith; much easier to do it ourselves, make a mess of things, and congratulate ourselves for what we accomplished in the flesh, not knowing what it would have been like if we had trusted and obeyed. On the other hand it is simpler and easier. There is noting complicated about doing what the loving, sovereign Lord tells us to do. There is nothing hard about letting him get work done in his power through us. We obey, he does incredible things; often in supernatural awe inspiring ways. If we haven’t been awe struck lately, we are probably not trusting and obeying.

He who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. How much of my Christian life and my ministry life (as if those two could be separated) are not seeking but “doing”, in all the wrong ways? I act as if God isn’t, rather than that he is.
Doing things God’s way is messy and uncomfortable. It involves pain and suffering.
I am reading The Heavenly Man now for the third time. Reading that is watching ministry done in the ways that I am describing. It is full of supernatural power, miracles, strange commands from God that turn out causing incredible ministry happen. The very thing we (or at least I) long for we stop by trying to fix things.

I am again reminded of when Israel chose kingship over the messy, insecure idea of waiting for God to raise up a judge. Kingdoms, with their power, organization and human hierarchies make such good sense to us. Now we can get some work done; now we can protect ourselves from the heathens! I am also reminded of what God said to Samuel when Samuel got so angry about this “Samuel, they are not rejecting you, they are rejecting me”.

Supernaturalism Journal Post

2005-09-01T11:40:00.000+02:00

Journal for Supernaturalism Class

September 1, 2005

I’ve Been Thinking About This for a Long Time

I’ve been thinking about doing this class for a long time and looking forward to it. One of this issues that has struck me as I have begun to move in simple church circles in Europe is how much they take supernaturalism for granted. It is an integrated part of their strategy and ministry. My former worldview of the Enlightenment does not allow for such things. In fact, supernaturalism is the chief bugaboo in the Enlightenment; it goes against the basic premises of the Enlightenment which are only the natural exists, man is the highest order of existence, and human reason can explore and understand existence. To believe in supernaturalism one must go against all of these premises. Postmodernism has rejected the Enlightenment because it leaves individuals feeling empty and has led to nothing but men, using their natural tools or “reason” and will, organization and power, destroying each other through war. Competing enlightened philosophies of capitalism, fascism, and communism have led to incredible carnage, particularly in Europe and Asia. The biblical world view takes supernaturalism for granted, so it would reject the Enlightenment, but for different reasons. Since the biblical worldview is focus on God and his being rather than man as its focus it would reject the Enlightenment at each of its premises.

A few premises of the Enlightenment contrasted with postmodernism and a biblical worldview

Enlightenment

Man is the center of everything
Only the natural exists
Human reason can understand and is the basic tool for exploring existence
The five senses are the only real things we can use as entry points in understanding reality
Science is the combination of human reason using the five senses to understand reality. Science can explain everything that truly is. If science can’t measure it and explain it, it doesn’t exist and is false.
Ergo, supernaturalism is smoke and mirrors, something we make up to comfort ourselves, explain the mysterious. It is for small, superstitious minds. The strong and wise don’t need the supernatural.
The Enlightenment places man and his reason at the pinnacle or reality. It ignores God, and usually denies God. At best it is deistic it its understanding of reality.

Postmodernism

Man is a major player on the world scene, and postmodernism is focused on mankind, but does not assume that we are at reality’s center
More than the natural exists, to merely focus on the natural leaves man feeling empty
Human reason is good and helpful, but it can’t explain everything
The five senses are helpful, but they are not entry points into the mysterious and spiritual, which is part of reality and human longing
Science is helpful, but can only explain the natural world not the supernatural world.
The supernatural is just as real as the natural, it is just harder to explore and human reason is not adequate to understand it.
Postmodernism is focused on man and often individual men, i.e. it is self centered and ‘my community/tribe’ centered. It seeks to understand natural reality through human reason and has a longing to experience the supernatural, but no clear way to do so.

Biblical Worldview

God is the center of everything; man is a created being, created in the image of God, but not even close to equal to God. The image of God in man was marred but not destroyed at the fall.
The supernatural exists, and is more real and important than the natural. They co-exist, and are interrelated.
Humans were created to experience the natural world and the supernatural world. God has placed a longing for himself in man, but God is supernatural, not natural. The natural world is part of God’s creation, not God himself (which is a pagan concept). God is intimately involved in his natural world and with his creation mankind. He did not wind up the world and let it go to observe from afar. This is the heresy of deism. (The conservative evangelical view of ‘cessationism’ is a combination of the biblical and enlightenment worldview which starts out with a biblical/supernatural worldview but turns into an enlightened/deistic worldview which has God becoming a deistic supernatural non-player after the completion of the written Bible. It is basically a deistic heresy.)
Part of the image of God in man is reason. It is only a part, it is the part that he gave to us to understand and explore his natural creation. Over thousands of years we have used this to understand his created world in more and more detail. However, human reason is not adequate to understand the supernatural realm, which is just as real as the natural. Reason, is just a minor tool to explore this realm. Hence the Bible and God’s strong emphasis on seeking, belief and faith as entry points into the supernatural, just as reason and the five senses are our entry points into the natural. The supernatural realm is actually more important that the natural in the biblical worldview.
The five senses are our only points of entry into the natural realm, they can also be used a point of entry into the supernatural, but they are not adequate to fully explore the supernatural. For this, among other things, we need to seek, we need faith, we need and open heart, and we need a strong relationship with the living God. Merely seeking the supernatural apart from a relationship with the living God is an invitation to experience the demonic side of supernaturalism with destroys the human soul.
Science, and the scientific method, is of limited use in exploring the supernatural. We however do not need to ‘turn off’ reason to explore the supernatural; just keep human reason in its place.
Supernaturalism is real and actually more important than understanding the natural world. Man can get along just fine without understanding the whys and hows of the natural world, but ends up in spiritual trouble if they do not understand, seek and explore their relationship with the creator God.
God is the pinnacle of reality, man is a created being, one created to have relationship with God, but it is a complex relationship; it is filial, servile, one of both friendship, and dependence. The fallen nature of man is to seeks independent ‘godhood’ which would be the real explanation of the Enlightened worldview.

The semi-deistic god of conservative Evangelicalism

Surprisingly, postmodernism is much closer to a biblical worldview than is the Enlightenment. It has room for the supernatural and longs for it. It rightly understands that to leave out the supernatural leaves a “god shaped vacuum” in the soul of man that Blaise Pascal so rightly discerned. But, since it is man centered, instead of God centered, and because it does not have the guidance of the Bible, it is still a very dangerous worldview. It may not be quite as flawed as the Enlightenment, but it is quite dangerous because it tries to explore the supernatural without the guidance of the Bible and the Holy Spirit.

The Enlightenment leaves us without God or, as best, with a heretical deistic God. It is a very dangerous and man worshiping worldview. The mixing of this with the biblical worldview in conservative Evangelicalism barely gave us a view of the biblical gospel; it is a stripped down version. It is enough to get us to heaven, but leaves us with very few tools to explore God’s supernatural reality beyond an also stripped down version of the Bible and doctrine which discounts God’s real and intimate reality in our lives today. It is no wonder that this almost heretical form of Christianity focuses on heaven but has very little view of a powerful spiritual life now. We pray, but don’t expect much. We have a strong view of Christian duty and rules. We pray because that is what good Christians do, but when we get a powerful answer to prayer we are stunned. This doesn’t happen too much because we have closed off God by our unbelief. (Yes, I know these are strong words, but I have lived this flawed view of the faith, so I speak from experience). We have good doctrine, as long as it doesn’t get too supernatural. When the Bible does get supernatural, which is on almost every page, we discount it by pushing it into the past of history. This leaves us with a semi-deistic god, not actually with the god of the Bible.

I’m not too sure that classic Pentecostalism offers us a whole lot better view. It seems to me that it has delved into a bit of magic (manipulation of God or the gods), a bit of the Enlightenment (often legalistic rather than New Covenant), and man centered by the semi-deification of specific men (another manifestation of the Enlightenment). At least they have a view of the supernatural and some experience in it. I find I long for a purified biblical worldview. But I am just as messed up as my Evangelical and Pentecostal brethren. Perhaps, hopefully, this course will help me think and experience a biblical worldview.

Ideas for a Paper

I have actually been thinking about this class for a long time. I wrote this down during a ‘brainstorm’ while I was in London on a ministry trip.

Dec. 2, 9:35 PM
London
The Royal Horseguard Hotel

Paper Idea
Supernaturalism Faith and Magic

Deconstruct Cessationalism (should read Cessationism)

Define Faith in the New Covenant
Magic= Making God Jump through our hoops
Supernaturalism – a biblical view
How do we make peace w/ supernaturalism but not fall into the trap of magic and seeking signs
Learn to discern true supernaturalism from false (Catholics as model)
True supernaturalism based on the character and person of God
False manifestations focus on the technique, person, personality, sensationalism, hype, coercion, signs, pride, etc. This is looking in the wrong direction, it is looking either at the event or the person not at God.

A Primer on Postmodernism

2005-08-22T15:55:00.000+02:00

The intention of A Primer on Postmodernism is practical; to help those in the ministry to understand the Western world’s shift to postmodernism. While its intention is practical, it is not a how to book. Rather his intention is that ministry practitioners would have an understanding of the values and philosophical basis of postmodernism so that they would be able minister effectively in it.

To do this he must first describe postmodernism and contrast it with the Enlightenment or modernity. He desires to show those who are unfamiliar with postmodernism the signpost of postmodernism that surround them in everyday life. He lays out the foundational values and philosophical underpinning of the emerging worldview. Grenz shows us the philosophical foundations of postmodernity by highlighting three significant postmodern philosophers and their contribution to postmodern thought. He demonstrates the modern/enlightened philosophical basis of Evangelical Christianity which creates a cultural and philosophical conflict with the postmodern worldview in which it ministers. Finally Grenz intends to awaken the minister’s need to grapple with the questions that postmodernism raises about what we do, how we view our world and how we communicate our message and life. He does this by laying out the areas where we, as Christians, need to stand our ground and where we need to reassess some of our philosophical and theological sacred cows.

Chapter one gives a general outline for the philosophical underpinnings of the postmodern worldview shift. Specifically Grenz develops how the modern or enlightened mind views the world. He then contrasts this with the postmodern worldview; and finally outlines the philosophical stress points that postmodernity creates for Evangelical Christianity.
Chapter two outlines postmodern thought and the history of its development. It develops postmodernity as a cultural phenomenon in the arts outlining how it expresses itself in architecture, art, theater and literature. Finally, he gives us a view of postmodernity in popular culture, showing us its expressions in film, television and other media.

Chapter three deals with the postmodern view of knowledge and science; specifically it deals with the concept of the metanarrative and how postmodern thought challenges the modern hubris of being able to know with certainty. This particularly challenges the modern understanding of science and its ability to help us understand our world.

Chapter four lays out the historical development of the modern worldview by outlining the worldview shift from the ancient worldview to the Renaissance and finally the Enlightenment. He particularly focuses on the Enlightenment highlighting its anthropology, outlook, principals, and view of religion. He particularly outlines the contribution of Immanuel Kant.

Chapter five shows how postmodern thought challenges the modern worldview. First he shows how Friedrich Nietzsche challenged the Enlightenments view of self. Grenz shows how postmodernism deals with our understanding of text, in contrast to the enlightened view. Finally he deals with language itself, contrasting postmodern understanding of how language works compared to the modern understanding.

Chapter six outlines three foundational values of postmodern thought. He does this by highlighting three significant philosophers and their contribution to postmodern values. First he highlights Michel Foucault and how postmoderns view the use of power and the control of knowledge. Next he explains deconstruction and the nature of language through the development of Jacques Derrida’s philosophy. Finally he highlights postmodern pragmatism, the desire for what works, as opposed to what is true, through the work of Richard Rorty.
Chapter seven answers the question “So what?” for Evangelical practitioners. He encourages us to stand our ground on our validity of the concept of truth, but asks us to consider that we have common ground with the postmodern rejection of the enlightened understanding of the limits of knowledge. He also deals with how postmodernism rightly challenges our individualistic, dualistic and rationalistic understanding of the gospel.

Grenz does an outstanding job of outlining the philosophical underpinnings of the Enlightenment, postmodernism and the how Evangelicals need to grapple with both. However, as outstanding and accurate as it is, the book gives too much of a philosophical twist to postmodern ministry. The average person we meet today in the West is a postmodern. But, the average person we meet today has never heard of Derrida, doesn’t know what a metanarrative is, and could probably care less about Jean-Francois Lyotard, Michel Foucault or Richard Rorty.

Most of us deal with street postmoderns, not philosophical postmoderns. Nevertheless, we do need to understand how postmoderns think, what they value, and how they view their world. While this is heavy on philosophy, it does outline the underpinnings of postmodern thought, values and worldview. One just needs to be careful to not address most postmoderns as philosophers, but as people who have a specific worldview; one which they probably would struggle to put into a coherent philosophical framework.

Transforming Mission

2005-08-22T15:52:00.000+02:00

I. What is the main idea or thesis of the author?

In every age of the Church, and in every major expression of Christianity, mission has been an integral part of the activity of the Church. Yet the way mission has been conceived has been different. This is because by its very nature the Christian faith is missionary and because humans, by there very nature, filter their perceptions and actions through the worldview they possess. In fact, the major expressions of the Christian faith have arisen in and have been defined by the worldviews they expressed themselves in. In each worldview theology was distinct and therefore mission was distinct.

The Church incarnates itself within its worldview; from a theological and missionary point of view this has both negative and positive aspects. It is positive in that it allows Christianity to be understood by the worldview it finds itself in. But this is not neutral. The worldview in turn shapes Christianity and mission. Bosch takes us on a tour of how the history of changing worldviews changed Christian thought, theology and mission. He points out both the positive and negative aspects of these shifts; and projects into the future of the current shift toward postmodern thought and reflects on how the theology and praxis of missions will be shaped by this.

II. What is my interpretation of the author’s thesis?

It is the tendency of most Christians to be unaware of just how much their view of our faith and practice derives from the non-Christian worldview around us. In effect, each worldview limits our understanding of doctrine, practice and what our relationship with God looks like. For example, Protestantism has been strongly shaped by the Renaissance and Evangelicalism by the Enlightenment. One significant danger of this is that we assume what we are practicing is “the right way” of expressing our faith. We are therefore blind to what we are missing and the extraneous or even harmful elements we have added. This is also true of the way we view missions and the missionary mandate of the Church.

Therefore, we need to have a clear understanding of our times in order to express our faith in ways that make sense to the people around us. We also need to reflect clearly on how the worldview around us will shape and perhaps warp our missionary practice.

This is particularly true now since we are in the time of a worldview paradigm shift from the Enlightenment to the postmodern worldview. To help us in this task, we should review our two millennia of history to see what shaped Christianity in the past; not only for how that warp our faith and missionary practice, but also to help us look for elements our worldview would tend to make us overlook. Bosch is very good at finding the value in each major expression of the faith while clearly pointing out how each worldview has reduced Christianity, the gospel, and missionary practice to less than what it really is.

III. What would a serious application of this book look like?

There are a number of strategic issues we will need to face as we develop a missiology for the postmodern age. Postmodernism is a worldview that does not have much patience with metanarratives, intolerance, institutionalism and hierarchical power structures.

The gospel by its very nature is a metanarrative; if we present the gospel as one more metanarrative, we will fail to engage most postmoderns. Instead, we need to let them see Christianity in our lives through relationship and God’s power. This implies a New Covenant lifestyle and supernaturalism.

Bosch deals adequately with the issue of intolerance in his last section on “ecumenism” by which he means that we must find ways for all current expression of the faith to work together without fighting; otherwise we will create a significant barrier for the preaching of the gospel. In addition, he points out, we need to be able to engage and dialog with other faiths in gracious ways. Unfortunately, this was the only strategic postmodern issue Bosch dealt with.

The institutional nature of most current forms of Christianity is a significant barrier that we must deal with. Postmoderns are highly cynical of institutions and particularly institutional religion. Christianity is not by its nature institutional. This is an historical incrustation which started manifesting itself about the middle of the third century. We need to find organic or at least more organic ways of expressing our faith. As we look at the New Testament we see a powerful expression of organic Christianity.

A related issue is hierarchical power structures. Again, this is an historical incrustation, which went hand in hand with institutionalism, has damaged the Church, and which makes it less fit to engage the postmodern world. We need to ask ourselves what a non hierarchical, non clerical Church would look like. How can we express leadership in the Church in the postmodern world, have all the biblical elements, yet be non hierarchical? We have not really asked that question in the Western Church for about 1750 years. That is a question I want to grapple with in my project paper.

The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity

2005-08-22T15:49:00.000+02:00

I. What is the main idea or thesis of the author?

Jenkins is telling the story of the significant shift in global Christianity in the last century, and the coming century. This is the story of a shift from white to color, from North to South, from power to weakness, and from wealth to poverty. In telling us this story he helps us gain perspective on what this means for the Church and other world religions now and what it could mean in the future. To do this, Jenkins steps away from the classic view of Christianity being the religion of the North and West to a more realistic view of Christianity truly being a dynamic global phenomenon.

II. What is my interpretation of the author’s thesis?

I was pleased to find that Jenkins is willing to take an objective look at Christianity as it really is, not as we see it through our ethnocentric eyes. He is willing to put this in the context of 20 centuries of Christian history and to see the dynamics of change through that history. Christianity has never been a strictly Western phenomenon, and has actually rarely been dominated by the West.

Jenkins is careful with his research and scholarship. He is honest about what we know and what we can merely surmise. He states this openly. He is even more careful with projecting into the future. Yet, he is able to show the trends of history, where we are now and where we may be going.

We seem to be going towards a Christianity of the South, dominated by Africa, Asia and Latin America. This is a Christianity that is at home with supernaturalism. It reads the New Testament as its current reality, a reality of persecution, injustice and poverty. It sees wisdom in the truths of the Bible and has no problem with a literal hermeneutic which speaks directly to them. This is a conservative church, with a concern for social justice. This does not square with the liberal elite or the socially insensitive conservatives of the North. The Southern Church is taking its own path. And as it does it is gaining power and control.

Further, we should not be surprised to find that the Southern Church sees the crumbling neo-pagan north as a mission field. With their small resources they are willing to send missionaries into the emigrational streams north to Europe and North America. While their initial focus will be their own people it would not be at all surprising to see them gain a voice among the whites, given their comfort with supernatural power in a society that is hungry for supernaturalism and but allergic to an anemic institutionalized Church.

Jenkins is also quite open about Christianities historical failures, particularly our failure to understand and adequately interact with Islam. His Chapter Eight entitled The Next Crusade outlines in stark terms the geopolitical and religious fault line that crosses the African and Asian continents, and in a more complex way Europe, and eloquently outlines the potential for violent interaction. He is quite accurate in asserting that currently Islam is the violent aggressor, but is not quick to excuse Christianity currently or in its history.

III. What would a serious application of this book look like?

We need to come to grips to the realities of Southern Christianity. I believe it is the Holy Spirit’s work in His world to counteract the stark sterility of the Northern churches Enlightened theology and practice. The Holy Spirit is giving us a wake up call. Not that the Southern Church perfectly exemplifies biblical purity, nor has the Church in any of its manifestations or phases of history. But I believe that Holy Spirit is outlining some important issues for his Church. We should not be afraid of supernaturalism, we should embrace the poor and oppressed, we should shrewdly, innocently and boldly stand up for justice. We should not be surprised by persecution and know how to live and thrive in a hostile environment. We need to strategies and models that multiply disciples of Christ and biblical leadership. The seminary model, for example, will not be adequate for the rapid growth of Southern Christianity; in fact, it is proving itself inadequate now.

As a proponent of simple or house churches I find hope in these issues. These are all areas that simple churches are already grappling with and for which it is finding contextualized solutions. Supernaturalism, multiplying leadership, dealing with persecution and respect for the Bible as a literal and clear guide to life and practice are all common simple church themes. One area that North American and European simple churches particularly are going to need to more adequately grapple with is the areas of poverty, racism and social injustice. Many of us come from churches which have virtually ignored these issues and we will tend to continue to do so if we are not cross pollinated with brethren from the South. Conversely, our Southern brethren may struggle to adequately grapple with this issues of how their own societies treat women and how the Bible may call them to a fresh look at this issue.

Missional Church

2005-08-22T15:46:00.000+02:00

I. What is the main idea or thesis of the author?

The Church in North America has strayed from its biblical roots and theology and finds itself in crisis. It finds itself dealing with this crisis by trying new methods and techniques. This will not suffice because the focus of the Church is off base. The North American Church’s structures, theology, strategies and traditions are based by the legacy of Christendom. However, the society no longer considers itself Christian and does not look to the Church to take leadership in society and the control of moral values, we have been marginalized.

Guder is arguing that we need to get back to our missional center instead of our former cultural center. The church needs to understand itself as sent ones, as having a mission. This mission is not of our making, we are sent by God to accomplish His Kingdom purposes. Therefore our theological focus and the focus of our praxis is the Missio Dei, the mission of God. If we do not return to what the Church was designed to be, we will become increasingly irrelevant in the post-Christian society in which we find ourselves.

II. What is my interpretation of the author’s thesis?

I find myself strongly agreeing with Guder that we are longing to return to our privileged status in Christendom rather than realizing our new role in society and functioning from where we actually are. This marginalization is actually healthy for the Church. It can become an advantage to us if we use this marginalization to refocus us on who and what we were designed to be. Further, it should draw us back to the triune God as our source of power rather than our social standing within society. The Church was designed to be at the margins, our former position at the center is the result of history, not a birthright. We function better at the margins.

I find Guder’s historical analysis helpful. This is not merely a theological problem; it is a historical, strategic and spiritual one. The fact that we had such a central place in Western society for so long harmed the Church; for example, how we handle leadership viewing clergy as a separate, privileged, sacred class. This has caused us to tend to rely on ourselves rather than God.

The Evangelical Churches negative response to postmodernism is not merely based on the fact that we have learned to function within the Enlightenment and feel comfortable there; it also reflects a desire to go back to our position of honor within Christendom; a position that our society is no longer offering to us.

Although Guder’s suggestions offer a radical departure from the status quo, there are times that he still seems stuck in it. He shows how denominations and denominational thinking are a result of history, struggles to think outside of that paradigm. He realizes that seminaries are a historical add-ons based on Enlightenment thinking, but doesn’t seem to be able to step away from the model. As radical as Guder is, I think the solutions may be more radical that he can imagine.

III. What would a serious application of this book look like?

Guder wants us to focus our theology, our structures and our strategies on the Missio Dei. Everything we do and are is based on our “sentness” into the world by God. This would be a radical shift, because significant historical encrustations have attached themselves to the Church in the last twenty centuries. This would mean stepping away from the clergy/laity distinction, for example. It would mean going to multiple contextual models of church structure and practice. It would mean reassessing theology and missiology. In fact, theology would be missiologically focused. These would be radical steps; however they are warranted. The transition will be painful, and in fact it will probably come from the margins of the establish church, not from its traditional center. The transition is too radical and disruptive for most mainstream churches. Reformation has always come from the margins, so we should not be surprised by this.

As a proponent of house church, I find Guder’s suggestions much less painful. In fact, I find them refreshing. Since house churches are already at the margins and are a fresh movement of the Spirit for postmodern times, they are in a unique position to develop missional structures and values. Since they are going back to an ancient model of Christianity, which also happens to be strategic in postmodern times, they are not encumbered by the historical incrustations and expectations of Christendom.

House churches can be and often are small, lean and intensely spiritual. They have a structure that is easily reproduced at every level. This allows them to be focused missionally. Further, they have fewer cultural boundaries with the postmodern world which tends to be anti-institutional, anti-hierarchical and longs for intimate community. All of this allows for an opportunity to build missional theology, structures and praxis into the genetic code of house church movements.

Business as a Calling

2005-08-22T15:41:00.000+02:00

I. What is the main idea or thesis of the author?

Business is more than making money for one’s self and investors, at least it can be. The business world is a place where humans can find fulfillment and purpose. In fact, for some this is their calling, what they were designed to do. Business is a place where fulfilling communities can be formed and sustained. Business is a place where people’s creativity can be used to make the world a better or a worse place. Business is a place where people can be challenged, testing there intellectual and moral fiber in real and practical ways. And business is a place society can be enriched, not only by the good and services that business develops, but by philanthropy through the wealth that business produces.
Many perceive business as an immoral or at least an amoral practice. Novak makes the point that good morals are good business. Without basic morals, businesses eventually fail and business and society are harmed. Finally, Novak points out that business, to be successful, needs a specific environment. This environment is characterized by both a free democratic society and a capitalistic economic structure. Both of these factors are necessary, neither is sufficient in itself.

II. What is my interpretation of the author’s thesis?

I think that Novak makes a strong point that great good can be done through business and the wealth it produces, if business is conducted morally and used for society’s good. I think that he tends to paint business and the business world a bit more positively that it actually is. For example he uses Kenneth Lay and Enron as an example of business done well, yet now we know it was the worst kind of fraud.
He rightly chooses Andrew Carnegie, with all his flaws, as an example of how one can do great good with their wealth. He also uses Carnegie to draw out a number of principles about the appropriate use of wealth. However, He is a bit too easy on the so called “robber barons”. To describe Cornelius Vanderbilt, for example, as anything but greedy and heartless is to understate the case. I think that Novak could have done a bit better if he had spent less time defending business as a good and more time describing how business is and has been used for good and then contrasting that with how it is and can do great harm.
A number of times Novak expresses his frustration at the intellectual elite and their disparaging views of business and capitalism. He is correct that it is an imperfect system, but better than any of its existing alternatives. It is very easy to have an unbalanced view of the business world and use the worse examples, like Enron, to paint with too broad of brush.

III. What would a serious application of this book look like?

While I am currently not working in the business world I do think that he has made me think of a number of issues. First, one should view business as a potential good and understand that there can be a very effective, symbiotic relationship between business and ministry. To do this we need to be sure that any business that is connected to ministry is conducted by the highest moral standards and that those who are conducting this business have a philosophy that this is there calling and through business they are doing God’s will.
Second, I have many friends in the business world. With some of these people I have some influence. I can use this influence to encourage them to use their positions or their businesses to do even greater good than they are now experiencing. Further, if they are interested, I can help them think how to strategically connect their businesses to ministries for which they have an interest.
Finally, while we should speak out about business that is being used to harm society and the poor, such as banks that redline poor neighborhoods or companies that manufacture harmful products, we should not paint with too broad of brush. Most businesses do good; at least through the products and services they provide. Some businesses go even farther than that, intentionally conducting their business in a way which helps society. As Christians, we can do great good through business if we intentionally view business as an opportunity to do God’s will. However, it is very easy to turn a blind eye to the potential of business as a force for evil. We need to remember that everything we have is not really ours but God’s and He would not want us conducting business in an immoral way or investing in businesses which do.

Exclusion & Embrace

2005-06-07T18:02:00.000+02:00

Reading Report

LDR 701/SFM 701 The Transformational Leader
Date of course:
January 10-21, 2005
Student
Ross Rohde
Book
Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion & Embrace. Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN, 1996 Read 192 of 192 pages.

I. What is the main idea or thesis of the author?

As the title of the book implies Miroslav Volf, in his book Exclusion & Embrace highlights the human need for identity and how our rejection of “otherness” creates human conflict. Humans strive to deal with conflict of otherness by arranging society under various models. Volf suggests that we should concentrate on what kind of “selves” (people) we need to be in order to live in harmony in the face of otherness. He is asking the questions: How Should people think about their identity? How should they relate to the other? How should they go about making peace with the other? His answer is self donation through the imitation of Christ. This is a scandal. It will not only be a potential source of healing but a source of danger. There is the danger that we will be further violated, there is the danger we will be misunderstood, there is the danger that we will be mocked. But our goal should not be the absence of danger but rather the pursuit of peace as Christ demonstrated it.

II. What is my interpretation of the author’s thesis?

Christianity has always been paradoxical, particularly when compared with human society’s way of dealing with issues. Christ’s behavior was scandalous. His views of society, man’s relationship with God, leadership, man’s relationship with others was and continues to be counter intuitive. To donate oneself to those who are the source of pain and violation in order to achieve peace is counter intuitive. It not only seems counter intuitive, it seems idealistic and naive. Yet this is what Jesus did and what Jesus taught. This adequately deals with Jesus’ teaching on turning the other cheek. This adequately deals with considering others as more important than ourselves. This reflects Jesus’ teaching on loving our enemies. This also reflects Jesus’ propitiatory death on the cross. These are all teaching that we struggle with and often try to avoid in one way or another. Yet, if we are Christian, we are to be little Christs. We are to live in imitation of Him. While this seems idealistic and naive, Volf demonstrates this teaching in his own life being a Croatian yet offering himself as a donation of peace to Serbs.

Volf never claims this will always work or that we won’t be taken advantage of or that we won’t be wounded or killed in the process. This is dangerous behavior, not merely behavior that appears to be dangerous. Yet it is Christ’s model for peace, and it is the only thing that can create lasting peace.

III. What would a serious application of this book look like?

Volf uses Jesus’ story of the prodigal son as an example of what this could look like in real life situations. The father donated himself to his estranged son and received him back into the household. This after the son had “unsoned” himself. While the son’s behavior separated him from the family relationally and physically the father never let go of the relationship between them. There was always room for forgiveness with the father. There was always room for reestablishment of relationship. This is not dependant on relational performance but rather grace, which by definition is unmerited.

Further, Volf would advocate a pacifistic political stance as Christians and extensive effort to find peace among religions. This does not mean that we say that all religions are right or true, but rather we pursue peace and dialog with them instead of merely pointing out where we feel we are correct and they are not.

Transforming Power

2005-05-02T13:30:00.000+02:00

Reading Report

LDR 701/SFM 701 The Transformational Leader
Date of course:
January 10-21, 2005
Student
Ross Rohde
Book
Linthicum, Robert. Transforming Power. InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, 2003 Read 216 of 216 pages

I. What is the main idea or thesis of the author?

Robert Linthicum explores the theology of power and how it can be used effectively for doing Kingdom work. Unlike many evangelicals, Linthicum is not afraid of power. For him the issue is not, is power evil? It is what kind of power and how are you using it? Linthicum has a more sophisticated view of power than most evangelicals. This allows him to explore the idea in more depth and with more precision than most evangelicals. For example, he distinguishes between unilateral power, relational power and spiritual power. Unilateral power is the power one person has over another. Relational power is the power we share with others and spiritual power is the power of the Holy Spirit used in conjunction with unilateral and particularly relational power.

Linthicum is not content for us to know about the theology of power, he is interested in the use of power for the good of God’s Kingdom. The second section of the book is devoted to biblical principles and strategies for exercising power. Finally he ends his book with an exhortation to “get on with it” to go out and make a difference through the godly and appropriate use of power.

II. What is my interpretation of the author’s thesis?

The abuse of power in the Christian Church is one of the most significant problems that we face in our interaction the postmodern world. Postmoderns are skeptical about the use of power. Because Linthicum’s understanding of power is more sophisticated he is able to develop a more useful paradigm for the use of power in a postmodern setting. The real issue is not power itself, but how power is used and if it is abused. So actually more useful questions would be, what kind of power; and how is it being used?

The use unilateral use of power is dangerous, be it the ‘lower’ form of dominating power or the ‘higher’ form of constitutional power. One way or another, when we use power ‘over’ people we stand a high risk that we will abuse them and that they will feel abused. Unfortunately, this is quite common in the Church in both its ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ forms. Other names for this would be titular power or hierarchical power. This is wielding power from position or title.

A much safer use of power is to use relational power. What ever power I have I can share for the good of the Kingdom and for the good of others. This is not using power for my good but for the good of others or the common good. Still, human nature being what it is, this could be manipulated, principally by fooling ourselves into thinking that we are sharing when we really aren’t and by telling ourselves that we are sharing power when we are actually wielding power. Therefore, it would always be good to share power not as a paternalistic gift given but as a transaction discussed. Good questions to ask are: is this by mutual consent? Are we in agreement? Does everyone know and agree with what is happening?

I am much less comfortable with Linthicum’s view of spiritual power. I particularly struggle with the view that spiritual power can be unilateral. At best unilateral power can be given by fallen humans as a paternalistic gift. While the triune God does share spiritual power as a unilateral gift, I have strong doubts about the ability of humans to do so without at least shades of abuse and paternalism. I am in agreement with his views of the use of spiritual power as a relational transaction.

III. What would a serious application of this book look like?

I have been thinking a lot about the use and abuse of power in the postmodern setting. I find Linthicum’s understand of the use of power quite helpful. Power is to be used in relationship. It is a mutual transaction between individuals and groups. True power, in the setting of the Church, should be the sharing of spiritual power between knowing and willing participants. Any appropriate use of power in the Church is going to come from God, through His people, for the good of His people and the community around them. It will produce Kingdom work, and it will not wound the beneficiaries or those through whom the power flows.

I believe this means that we need to have a whole new understanding of what the use of power looks like. It is not a two dimensional structure flowing down a human hierarchy from top to bottom. Rather, it is a three dimensional flow of power from God, through his people based on God given giftedness. Instead of a flat, triangular hierarchical flow of power from top to bottom, based on title and position; we would have a spherical flow of power, coming through various gifted Christians, based on their gifts. Power would flow between these individual from God to each other by mutual consent. The only top to bottom power transaction is coming from God through his people for the good of his people and the society around them.

We have become so accustomed to the abuse of hierarchical power that many Christians struggle to conceive of power functioning in any other way. Yet it is our ‘addiction’ to hierarchies that sets us up for the abuse of power.

The Essence of the Church

2005-04-26T10:47:00.000+02:00

LDR 701/SFM 701 The Transformational Leader
Date of course:
January 10-21, 2005
Student
Ross Rohde
Book
Van Gelder, Craig. The Essence of the Church. Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI, 2000 Read 208 of 208 pages

I. What is the main idea or thesis of the author?

Van Gelder explores what it means to be church. He is not trying to find what the next great technique will be, how to do church, or even how to be pragmatically successful. That would tend to give emphasis on the human dimensions of church life. The Church, as reviled in the Bible, is much more than a human institution. Biblical theology and ecclesiology must take precedence over sociology and pragmatism or what we end up with is a caricature of the Church or a warped understanding of the Church. Van Gelder ends his book with a final thought: It has been the argument of this book that we need to rethink the church from the framework of a missiological ecclesiology (page 184). In other words, he is not merely asking what the church is; nor how do we do church, but what is God doing through the church. This does relate to what the Church is and how we go about expressing our “churchness”.

II. What is my interpretation of the author’s thesis?

I appreciate Van Gelder’s biblical, missiological and holistic approach to ecclesiology. For too long we have been pragmatic, trying to use the social sciences to answer our questions rather than returning to the scriptures to find our path. This reflects our humanistic enlightened worldview more than our spiritual connection with God. I believe we have inadvertently made the Church into something that it wasn’t intended to be, and in doing so we have lost much of our witness to a spiritually hungry world, which would say to us, we are looking for something, but when we look at you we are not interested.

However, while I appreciate Van Gelder’s approach I would have liked to have seen him be more introspective of his own presuppositions. At times I felt he would state a good principle and then step away from it as he would describe its application. In Chapter five, for example, he speaks of the core Biblical images of the Church. The core biblical images for the church all develop a common theme: the church is a social community. These images help us understand that the visible church in the world, with all its organizational and institutional characteristics, is to be understood primarily as a social fellowship of persons (page 107-108). I believe he rightly points out that the biblical images of the church are social and communal, but they are also organized organically, not institutionally. We are the People of God, we are the body with Christ as the Head, we are the communion of saints living under the authority and power of the Spirit, and we are the creation of the Spirit. Van Gelder would have done better to question his own presuppositions about the institutional nature of the church.

While he acknowledges that the New Testament Church was predominantly house church networks which he describes fairly well, he doesn’t seem to understand the dynamic relation between their big expressions of networks and their small expressions of individual house churches. Instead he ends up describing the current congregational nature of the church with its institutional organization and denominational structures. He does this uncritically. He takes for granted that this is just the way it is. His “justification’ is that we need to understand the historical development of the church, as well as its biblical and contextual elements. While I would agree that the church needs to contextualize itself and that we don’t want to merely copy 1st Century practice, we need to clearly delineate, as much as possible, between biblical principle and 1st Century contextualization. We need to understand our history without assuming that history is neutral or that the church has always made wise decisions in its contextualization.

For example, the Church is never biblically described as having an institutional organization. There is no doubt whatsoever that it ended up patterning itself after the Roman government. This process probably started sometime in the second century and was fully developed and finalized at the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D. But just because it happened, doesn’t mean it was healthy. This historical development has become an unquestioned tradition in the last 1700 years, but it has done damage to what the Church was designed by God to be. Because Van Gelder was uncritical of this historical reality he was not able to discuss the problematic nature of this development. While Van Gelder is somewhat critical of the clergy/laity distinction he again seems to take it for granted and doesn’t particularly address its problematic nature.

III. What would a serious application of this book look like?

I want to give credit to Van Gelder’s holistic, biblical and missional approach to ecclesiology. This is well worth emulating. We should go to the Bible first in seeing what the biblical design for the church really is. We should not only look at the form of the Church but see how this is related to the Missio Dei, what God want to do through his Church to redeem his world. It is this holistic approach that reflects on not only form but mission and how those are related to each other that helps us get away from a strictly pragmatic sociological approach which reflects the Enlightenment more than God’s divine lordship, guidance and power over and in the Church.

Book Report Stewardship by Peter Block

2005-03-21T16:28:00.000+01:00

Reading Report

LDR 701/SFM 701 The Transformational Leader
Date of course:
January 10-21, 2005
Student
Ross Rohde
Book
Block, Peter. Stewardship. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, CA, 1996 Read 264 of 264 pages

I. What is the main idea or thesis of the author?

This is a book about leadership. Specifically it is about leadership in a business context, but by extension some principals can be related to Christian leadership. This is about a paradigm shift in our thinking and governance of business from a compliance, status based system of management to a democratic system of stewardship. Stewardship is about responsibility, it is about governing the resources of others under our control for the owners benefit. Stewardship is about service and not doing what is necessarily in our own interest. This is in direct contrast with the typical paradigm of the use of power in business which is leadership. Stewardship moves power and choice down and to the edge of the organizational chain where actual work is done. Leadership centralizes and pushes power up the hierarchical structure.

II. What is my interpretation of the author’s thesis?

The author’s concept of stewardship is much closer to the biblical paradigm of leadership laid out by Jesus in Matt. 20:25-26, and Luke 22:25 where service is our paradigm and not power over, or as Jesus calls it “lording over” others. Stewardship as the author sees it is serving the business and serving those who are “under us” in the hierarchy to make them successful. To apply this to the Church it would mean serving the Kingdom as under God’s authority and serving those whom we lead. The application breaks down though because a business setting is a human organization using human power to accomplish human goals. The Church is a supernatural organism, using divine power to accomplish divine goals. Because business is human it must use the human form of organization, which is the hierarchical power structure. As much as Block wants to step away from this, he can not completely do it. However, the Church can function as a non-hierarchical organism, and in fact was originally designed to do just that. The Church rarely actually functions as it was designed to, having imported the human way of doing business based on human effort; but that is another issue.

Having said this Block’s view of leadership as stewardship takes a huge step forward in coming back to the biblical view of leadership that the Church seems to have mostly lost over the last twenty centuries. We can not however, just apply these principals into the Church because, as good as they are, they are still not designed to function as God’s divine power working through humans. This is what we need to get away from in the Church.

III. What would a serious application of this book look like?

A serious application of this within a business setting is clearly laid out in Block’s section II, “The Redistribution of Power, Purpose and Wealth”. However I don’t believe that we can fully apply these principals to a church setting. There are however some principals we can apply. The first is the basic premise of the book, leadership isn’t about power for oneself, it is for the good of others. This is very clearly biblical in its outlook. The redistribution of power in many churches and Christian organizations is necessary. They are top down organizations, with human leaders called pastors or presidents or directors. It would be impossible looking at their organizational structure to distinguish them from a secular business. And, they run like a secular business. People at the top make decisions; people at the “bottom” carry out orders. This is exactly what Jesus told us not to do. Even if we were to apply Block’s stewardship principals, we would at least be closer to what the Bible and Jesus himself describes as leadership. A flatter hierarchical structure is at least better than a steep one.

Churches and Christian organizations are not about money, and profits. There is not really any wealth to share. The rewards come from Jesus and not from the church or the organization, or at least they should. So these aspects of Block’s principals do not directly apply.
This book does highlight though just how far many churches and Christian organizations have strayed from where they should be. As Block describes business he is unfortunately describing many churches and organizations. If nothing else, this should serve as a wake up call.

Thoughts on Leadership

2005-03-18T13:38:00.000+01:00

Dear Rick,

I have some technical questions. How do we know that a translation of a Greek word in the N.T. hasn’t been tainted by our own cultural presuppositions? I am looking up the word proistemi (proisthmi, 4291 in Strong’s) in the lexicons. It comes out as everything from to rule over to giving aid. Naturally, in 1 Thess. 5:12 it ends up coming out as ruling over. But couldn’t that be our view of what leadership is like; ruling? And isn’t that in direct contradiction to what Jesus says in Matt 20:25-26, and Luke 22:25? How do we make sure even the lexicon and or translation hasn’t become culturally biased and how can we try to find out what a word really means in context? Doesn’t pro+histemi mean to stand in front or before?

I ask this to make sure I’m not doing the same thing. It seems to me that ruling over, is something Jesus strictly forbade, yet we see it in the translations of the English Bible. Every time I see a word that could convey this type of leadership, lead, rule, rule over, etc. in the N.T. I find that it can be taken that way, but it also has much milder meanings. Naturally the way the word was used in the Greco-Roman world would have a secular worldly connotation, but can’t Paul be using the word in a new way just like he does for “church”? I want to know if there really are elements of ruling over someone in the N.T. conception of leadership or if we have bad translations which have put the world’s concept of leading right back into the Bible. This really is the focus of the paper I’m working on, so it is not just a question of being curious. I don’t want to taint what I am writing right back the other direction more than the text allows. I know enough about language, translations and history to be a bit suspicious of what I am seeing. Yet, I’m not sure I have the tools to honestly ferret this out. Can you give me some advice?

Ross

Ross, I'm sure I won't be able to be any help at all in this dilemma. This is something that has troubled me a lot over the last few years, highlighted because I am a woman. The way the scriptures have been distorted and just plain changed over the years to dominate women is a bit of a sore spot with me. My study of "key" scriptures used to control women taught me so much about how scripture can be distorted. It got me thinking about how other cultural prejudices and bias could have mutated other passages. An example is headship. Often men are referred to as the having headship over women just as Christ has headship over the Church. But headship is defined by many as a relation of authority or lordship position, whereas the New Testament defines the headship ministry of Christ to the church as a servant relation designed to provide the Church with life and growth. For instance, in Eph 1:22-23 Christ is supremely and universally sovereign, but as head for the church, it is not said that he rules over it. Instead, he provides his body with the fulness of him who fills all in all. He causes the church to grow and flourish. Or in Eph 5:23 Christ is the head of the church as a savior, a servanthood, self-sacrificing function, not a lordship role. The thing is, "head" used figuratively in English refers to a boss, person in authority or leader. It didn't mean this in New Testament Greek. Christ is called head of the church only after the crucifixion, the supreme expression of his servant ministry as the giver or source of new life. Similarly, as head to his wife, a husband is a servant-provider of life, fullness and growth, not one who exercises authority over her. Anyway, my point is that through my study of scriptures having to do with relations between man and wife and women in body-life, I became concerned about the way scriptures have been translated and taught. That is one reason why I loved the idea of exegesis in the fellowship of the Spirit that you spoke of. I used to be so confident that my lexicon would steer me right, but now I'm not so sure. I rely heavily on balancing a particular passage with the "whole" of what the Word says about it, and if it flows with the primary scripture - Loving God and neighbor. I apologize for this probably being no help whatsoever. Just some of my rambling thoughts and concerns about this issue. I am looking forward to hearing your conclusions.
May peace overtake you! twila

Dear Twyla,

Here is what I came up with as I walked and meditated on this issue. That does not mean I am right, it is just where I am currently. I am going to Rick Cruse about this because he is a man of the Word, and is honest with the way he deals with Scripture. He also has more finely honed interpretation skills than I have. But, having said this here is where I am now:

Either we look at I Thess. 5:12 through the lens of what Jesus said in Matt. 20:25-26, and Luke 22:25, or we view the words of Jesus through the lens of I Thess. 5:12.

If we use the words of Paul in I Thess. 5:12 (proistemi- to lead, rule, stand in front) as a lens to view the Gospel passages we end up with hierarchical leadership, ruling from position and authority, wielding power. But Christian leaders will view this as service to those who are below them. If they are really kind people they may very well end up serving. If they love power and position they will do exactly what Jesus said not to do and they will wounding people and the cause of Christ. This is what we have done for the most part, and this is reinserting the world’s values systems of abusive leadership back into the Church.
If we use the words of Jesus in the Gospel as a lens to understand what Paul said in I Thess. we end up with something quite different. We see “standing in front” as a responsibility to serve. We view it as an opportunity to help. It is not a position of power. There are no titles, hierarchies or positions. This person is respected because they are helping others. I would suggest that understanding Paul through the lens of Jesus is better than trying to understand Jesus through what we assume Paul was saying.

Ross

Journal for Overture I by Ross Rohde

2005-03-04T21:19:00.000+01:00

Ross Rohde’s Overture Journal

January 10, 2005

Jon Sharpe: Introduction

Our introductory time was with Jon Sharpe, who explained the nuts and bolts of the program. I feel comfortable about the tension between being able to focus on what fascinates me, commonalities and distinctives of house church movements around the world, while still being guided and particularly expanded in my thinking. I still wonder if I will be able to do this in three to four years. I am looking forward to my time with Jon so that we will be on the same page and I will have clear direction as to what, how, and when.

I do know that I want to be able to go to Hong Kong to study so that I can meet the house church people in China. I am concerned that the rest of my cohort may not go to China because I like the idea of the relationships that can develop by studying together. I was particularly excited to learn that one of the cohort participants was a Chinese house church planter and leader. I will have to get to know him, but want to do that on a personal level and not just get to know him because I have an agenda.

I am also excited that this will expand my thinking. I really am tired of the Evangelical ghetto and the North American missions ghetto. I like the diversity of people I am meeting here. I want to get their perspectives and hear their stories. I am a bit disappointed that we only have two women participants and that one is not really part of our cohort. I like the idea of peer group learning. I suspect there is a lot to learn here from this group.

Brad Smith: Calling Based Leadership

I can’t believe this guy is from Dallas Theological Seminary. I am surprised they have not given him his walking papers. I find it encouraging and refreshing hearing some one else saying the same things and thinking about the same things I have been thinking about since I started my postmodern ministry journey.

I have gotten tired of the systematized functionalism of ministry models and systems. We seem to have tremendous faith in the model as if the answers lie in the models. Jesus never told us to trust the models, or the paradigms or the systems. We are supposed to trust Him. Brad mentioned that we don’t need the Holy Spirit any more to be successful in ministry, we just have to go through the forms. He is not suggesting this is good, just that this is what we have turned ministry into nowadays in the U.S. He sees this as broken, and I agree. We act as if all that counts is numbers, and that we don’t need Jesus to accomplish our goals. What happened to Jn. 15:5:

I am the vine, you are the branches, he who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

It was interesting to hear Brad give voice and vocabulary to the hermeneutical issues I have been struggling with. Particularly, he mentions the modernist view of foundationalism and the postmodern view of the impossibility to communicate truth through language. The arrogance of modernism to believe the could construct an unassailable foundation and then build all truth off of that foundation using human logic. However, the postmodern view is also rather stark and hopeless. If I can’t find truth even less communicate truth through language I am left in an existentialist funk. However, both are asking the wrong questions. The modernist needs to learn from the postmodern that the truth is not in the words or the human logic. The postmodern person needs to learn that truth is difficult to communicate; but then, Christian Truth is incarnational Truth. Our Truth is Jesus, not just a bunch of words and concepts. It was refreshing to hear someone else say this. It is even more refreshing to hear that he has found a way to survive at Dallas.

I had a chance to talk at the break with Brad about the concept of verbal plenary inspiration of Scripture. I posited that this was looking at the concept of truth from a modernist perspective. We believe truth to be communicated through language and it must be without scientific flaw or error or it can no longer be truth as we understand it. The Bible says it is the Truth. Therefore the Bible is verbally without scientific error or flaw.
A=B
B=C
therfore A=C

It is so simple and straight forward, but it is flawed in its conception. The problem is that the first proposition is wrong. Biblical truth is incarnational not propositional. The Bible is the truth, and it is God inspired. That is what it claims for itself. The Bible doesn’t claim for itself to be with out factual or scientific error. That is our cultural insertion of what we think truth is and how it must be communicated. The Bible claims for itself to be a communication of God’s truth. It can do that in any number of ways.

If Jesus tells us the story of the rich farmer, do we really have to believe that this specific farmer existed, or was he just a useful figure for Jesus to communicate the spiritual truth focusing on God and not wealth? If Jesus can communicate a truth through parable without all the details being exactly, scientifically infallible, why can’t God do the same thing in the story of creation? Why do we get so upset and spend so much time arguing with scientists about the details ad nauseam, often times incorrectly, when we can just say that the creation story is true? It tells us the truth that God wanted to communicate about creation, and doesn’t necessarily claim to be scientifically accurate. There was no such concept as scientific accuracy at the writing of Genesis. I would undoubtedly send a chill down the spine of my modernist friends with this statement. They think they are defending the veracity of the Bible, but in fact are merely defending their cultural definition of “truth” and their hermeneutical preconceptions.

It was also good to talk to Brad about postmodernism when we went on the first walk downtown in the afternoon. We see eye to eye. It is incredible that he was teaching this stuff in the early eighties. I was so late into this game. It is even more incredible that so many missionaries and church leaders still don’t know or are just hearing about this stuff, or even worse refuse to acknowledge that it exists or is significant. It is also pretty incredible that he has graciously been teaching this stuff (perhaps not all of this stuff) at Dallas Theological Seminary.

January 11, 2005

Jon Sharpe: Reflective Leadership

I found Jon’s distinction between vulnerability and transparency to be interesting. Transparency allows you to see through me, but on my terms. Sometimes it is truly transparent and sometimes it is opaque. It is easily used to manipulate, “see I’m being transparent, now you should be”. Vulnerability carries with it the possibility not only of change but of being hurt. It is giving access to our lives even when it is not particularly convenient.

I was also struck by what kind of ambiance allows maximum change. If we only allow time for academic or cognitive interaction there will be minimal change. I suppose this is because we can mentally compartmentalize the situation. I have analyzed it, now I understand it, my job is done. Because I confront my world through thinking, being a T on the Myers Briggs, this would be my tendency. A deeper more holistic experience is when actually enter into the situation. This involved our actual participation, tangible experience and emotion; hence the city walks and the ministry emersions. It is one thing to talk about theory, another to live something and interact with real people. This allows maximum change. This is what Margi and I have discussed about Jenni, her tendency to intellectualize the world. Her intelligence sometimes tends to isolate here from the world. This helps me think about what kind of situations will help her break out of her categories.

Jon challenged us to consider what our leadership style was. It was no great surprise that coercive leaders were not particularly effective. However, it was somewhat of a surprise that pacesetting leaders were also ineffective, because they tend to burn their team out. Both seem to have in common a view of others as objects to accomplish tasks. The other three value people as people. No one wants to be someone else’s object. We want to be respected as a whole person. Leadership is partially about seeing others accomplish, but if we don’t respect those others as people we destroy. This is done by focus on the task and ignoring the value of the agents of the accomplishment of the task. It seems to me that in the long run we accomplish more by helping facilitate change in people than by merely accomplishing tasks. By equipping people we assure their ability to accomplish task from that point on. However, if we harm them in the process, future task accomplishment is jeopardized.

Brad Smith: Transformational Leadership

Leadership was traditionally viewed as I have something and I can give it to you. This is transactional leadership. If you view leadership as change in both leader and protégé it can be viewed as transformational leadership. For too long leadership has been viewed as a top down proposition. Leadership view this way is a power transaction, I have it and I control your access to it. Further, you really have nothing to give me. It is a transaction of power. Transformational leadership is focused not on the power transaction but on the transformation of people. This is not about power as much as about human change. Both the “leader” and the “protégé” are subject to change and looking for change.

People who have power are the ones who don’t talk about it. If they talk about it, the subject is about giving it up; therefore it is better not to discuss it. Those who don’t have power think about it all the time. Minorities and women are much more aware of power and who has it. There is much talk about the power of privilege.

To walk away from the power we are given is to misuse it. The lack of awareness of the power we have can hurt people. This is a new concept for me. It seems so benign and somewhat vaguely noble to not be aware of the power we have. Yet ignorance can be used by the Devil to harm others.

We are not giving it away when we can so we are not good stewards. If you have the power you are responsible to use it and also to give it away. This is stewardship. One of my issues with power has always been watching people who have it hoard it and use it for their own selfish purposes. Therefore I have tended to fear power because of what it might do to my soul. Yet power, rightly understood, is not about me at all. It is about facilitating others. Yet, power, like money is inherently dangerous. It is difficult to give away, because it can be used for our own selfish motives. Yet this is not the way of the Kingdom. Thinking of power as a potential gift to others potentially frees me, yet I have to be vigilant that I don’t love and therefore hoard the gift for myself.

It was a bit jarring to hear Brad talk about acquiring power as a good thing. This has always been something I did not respect in others, the intentional acquisition of power. Yet again, if I view it as a potential gift to others it frees me. One of my own points of philosophy of ministry has been, whatever I have I can give away, yet I never thought of power in this light.
Anthony had a keen insight: when power is abused, the wrong person suffers. If our use of power does not free, help, empower or ennoble others then we are abusing not stewarding.

Ron Ruthruff: Incarnational Leadership

Ron said ‘Equality with God, Jesus always was and always will be, but it is not something to be grasped. Jesus understands that the nature of God is not to grasping for power. Instead he pours himself out. We need the same mindset.”

This seems to be in direct contradiction to what we had just learned in the session on transformational leadership. How do we acquire power and yet not grasp for power. The answer is that Jesus poured himself out. He was giving this away as a gift. He was willing to use his power for the good of others. This is not a resource he was holding. So, instead of a contradiction this was more like a paradox and in the end an example of how it really looks.

Incarnation can’t be preached, it is lived, we don’t talk about it we do it. Again, this has a lot to do with the giving away of power through emptying ourselves. It is easy to say and not easy to live. On the negative side every privilege is a potential danger to our souls, not because we have the privilege itself, but because we might hoard our wealth and therefore harm others who could benefit. This is not Kingdom living, but it certainly is a temptation. Sometimes it would be easier to not have the resource in the first place. But that is like the man in the parable of the talents who buried the money instead of taking the risk and investing it.

Conversation with Ronald Yu

I had a wonderful conversation with Ronald Yu today at break. Ronald teaches at the seminary in Hong Kong, is a Chinese house church leader trainer, church planter and church planter facilitator. He talked about his strategy of using micro loans to get a business started so that the church planter would have a business and therefore legitimacy. The church meets in the back room of the business, and further it is difficult for the police to monitor everyone coming in and out of a business. At the same time the loan gives the planter a way to make a living.
It turns out that Ronald knows Brother Yuen “The Heavenly Man”. I asked him what he thought of the book. He said that many had called Brother Yuen a liar because they could not believe the supernaturalism. But supernaturalism is just a fact of life in the Chinese church. God gives them what they need and they don’t have access to good health care and protection from persecution so God provides supernaturally what his children need. We talked significantly about supernaturalism because it is an interest of mine. I told him about the “person of peace” prophecies used for evangelism in Switzerland. The Chinese talk about the “house of peace” more than the person of peace, but they still use the strategy. He was fascinated though in the Lord using prophecy to find the person of peace and questioned me to see how God did it. He was particularly curious if all the information was there in the prophecy. I told him about how God gave part of the information and then it was confirmed by a CD ROM disk of the Swiss National phone book. This seemed to confirm for Ronald that God was in it (perhaps I am reading in here). However, I found it interesting that he did not just assume that something was supernatural without confirmation. He suggested later a book by Jonathan Edwards it had “affections” in the title. He suggested that this would help me understand supernaturalism. I am going to need to talk to him more about this book and what it contains.

Ronald and I had lunch together along with Bernie Chung. We discussed extensively how Chinese house churches function. I was surprised at how big they are. They can have up to 300 people in them and 30 is quite a normal size. We also discussed the difference between urban house churches and rural. This urban/rural cultural difference is proving to be a significant strategic barrier for the Chinese. One issue is monetary, which Ronald has partially solved with the micro loans. Another issue is that urban house churches are smaller because housing is smaller. Another strategic issue that urban Chinese are often recent emigrants so they don’t have the established networks for the gospel to flow along. Finally, young urban Chinese are not as open to the top down authoritarianism of the traditional house church leadership. This top down hierarchical power is the traditional Chinese form, but it is not setting well and is proving to be a conflict generator. Ronald is willing to help set me up to interview his friends when I go to Hong Kong. This time with Ronald was worth the trip to Seattle.

Discussion Group

In discussion group this afternoon we told our stories. We focused on telling the story of our ministries with five other colleagues. We were to do the following: Describe current ministry and what you are planning to do. What is going well, what you have to offer? What challenges are you facing?

The interesting discussion came with David DeVries. Dave is the son in law of Bill Keyes. He is the founding church planter and pastor of a large church in Castaic, CA. He is struggling with one of his staff members who has caught the house church bug and now wants to start a house church network. He shared right before I shared and I had to say I was one of those house church types. It made for an interesting discussion. We ended up making a date to have soup and bread together so that we could discuss his issues.

Dave had me read the ministry proposal that Bob, his staff member, had written. I asked Dave where his points of dissonance were. He struggled with a few things.

Bob seemed to have a root of bitterness towards the “institutional church”.
Yet, Bob wanted to have the institutional church fund this new venture.
Bob had identified his target group as 18-25 year old postmoderns, but was not networking with them (this is a really good strategic observation).
Bob seemed to be unwilling to move to the areas where he could find these people, although he was talking about getting a job at Starbucks, which is a good plan.
There were issues of competing for the same folk as his church was.
Bob has built a good team of advisors around himself, which is healthy. He is in contact with some people with Christian Associates, and Dave is a close friend with one of these named Phil. Phil has some inroads into Bob’s life that are being closed to Dave. Phil is willing to be a bridge of communication between Bob and Dave.

I brought up the following issues:
I brought up the issue of being enamored with a model and perhaps not seeing it as a lifestyle. The power is not in the model but in Jesus.
We can tend to look for God to bless our plan instead of following Jesus into ministry.
There should be signs that God is leading into this ministry. He should investigate this with Bob.
He should discuss with Bob what it would look like if God were confirming this ministry and what it would look like if God were to be leading somewhere else.
We discussed that this really is a different kind of ministry and that it takes time to acquire the new DNA. Bob will need time.
Bob will need space, and the tendency is for the established church to proscribe strategy based on their experience, yet since the DNA is different it ends up not being good advice. There is a tendency to control.
Even though Dave is unsure of what Bob is doing I tried to encourage him that there were strategic reasons why house churches make sense with some types of postmoderns. I explained the concept of sentient boundaries to him.
I also encouraged him that this has a tremendous potential to become contagious and reach a lot of people so to be careful not to stop it.

I hope I was helpful to Dave. One never knows at what level we are really communicating when we are discussing models with such distinct DNA. However, I feel I made a friend with Dave. I was concerned about this because last night at the pizza parlor I heard him discussing house church and his frustrations and when I realized I was in his group today I though that it could get interesting. But this ended up, at least for me, being a positive time.

January 12, 2005

Class Discussion

We had a particularly interesting class discussion early today. We rehashed some of our work from the earlier days. Jon Sharpe clarified something for me about the issue of stewardship of power. He said “Jesus was willing to give away anything horizontally as long as it didn’t get in the way of anything vertically”. This is true stewardship of power. Christ was more than willing to give anything away as long as it didn’t interfere with the ultimate good of knowing and being in relationship with God. Sometimes we can share things with people which will ultimately hurt them. This is true of power. I think of Lord Acton’s Razor “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. To give something to someone that will harm their soul in spiritual homicide. However, we need to be sensitive to God in this issue. This could be one more excuse our flesh could use to hoard power.

I was also struck by a comment that one of the students made, I think it was Steven Crawford. He used the metaphor of being a cup to hold power or being a funnel to channeled power. This metaphor causes me to think clearly about my function. A funnel collects broadly and distributes narrowly. It can focus and aim, but it can not hold.

I have always had fairly significant access to power, although I have feared it, and never really thought about the power that I had. I have certainly had enough access to power that I never felt the lack and was never concerned about it. I have always had options, perhaps not as much as others, but certainly enough to go and do as I desired. This is the ultimate test of my access to power. I have never worried a lot about not having power, because I had access. This is not necessarily true of significant wealth (although this of course is relative). Were I to have access to what I perceived to be significant wealth I wonder how easy it would be to act as a funnel and not a cup. In fact I suspect it would create a lot of tension and temptation. I suspect it would be easier for me to be a funnel of power than wealth. I certainly don’t crave power, at least I don’t think I do, but I find myself thinking about the comfort and freedom wealth could bring. God will need to work on me so that I can be a funnel of all the resources I have access to. Lord, consider it a prayer.

Another comment that Jon made that struck me was that “the truth of Scripture needs to be discovered in the community of the Spirit”. This is a partial answer to Saratoga Presbyterian’s concern that the right information, be given to the right people, by those who are authorized. Right information being defined as systematic doctrine, of course in the Reformed tradition, preferably Calvin’s Institutes, the right people being “the leaders” of the house church movement, and those who are authorized being “the clergy”. This is a top down presentation of information by the powerful which reestablishes their elite status and harms the church by turning people into the laity. They become ministry receivers and ministry observers instead of instruments of the Holy Spirit (ministers).

However, when we think of the truth of Scripture being discovered in the community of the Spirit it changes the whole perspective. The truth is discovered, it is not revealed from on high by humans. It is done in the community for the community’s good and with the joy and accountability that it brings. It causes the truth to become practical and applicable to life, instead of some static concept. And it is done in the community of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit leads us unto all the truth. He reveals the Scripture to us. He makes sure we apply it to our lives. This is a supernatural process, which is exactly why modernist Christians distrust it and want to go to systematic theology from the experts. They perceive it as safer, when in fact it has serious potential for becoming dead orthodoxy.

This does not take away the value of systematic theology, it does have value. But we need to see its severe limitations. It only answers the questions that the systematizers asked. It is warped by their worldview. It tries to eliminate mystery, when the deepest spiritual truths can only be expressed in mystery and paradox. And it gives the impression that all the significant questions are answered by the experts. It is a pretty good example of the arrogance of modernism, yet contains some of the benefits of modernism. As long as we see it for what it is; we can use it. It is helpful to understand certain issues and see some of the broad theological issues. It is when we don’t recognize its dangers it actually becomes dangerous.

Another helpful comment came from Ray Bakke today as he taught us about exegeting ministry. He mentioned the difference between pedagogy and androgogy. Androgogy is teaching adults the way adults learn; it is done in context, in community and through reflection of experience. Again this caused me to reflect on how we study the Bible in simple church. We assume that the Holy Spirit is leading us as individuals and as a community. We assume that our entire life is God saturated and that the experiences of life are meant for our development. The scriptures become a divine lens that through the direction of the Holy Spirit helps us interpret our lives and God’s lessons. This is done in community and it is a supernatural process. So, when we meet together and someone brings something they are learning from the scriptures it becomes a gift to the community, exegeted by the community, and applied by the community into practical growth, all under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Systematic theology could be useful in this situation, but it is not sufficient or necessary. The early Church did just fine without it. There scriptures were the Old Testament and the fractions of the New Testament they had access to. Paul felt free to leave a house church network sometimes as early as six months. How could he do this? He could do this because he had taught them to discover the truth of Scriptures in the community of the Spirit. If they knew how to do this they had what was necessary and sufficient for spiritual growth and health.

We often find that the Holy Spirit gives us the issue to discover. This invariably leads to deep ministry in at least the life on one person in the group. The Holy Spirit is exegeting our lives and leading us to the truth as a gift to our community. This is pretty good androgogy, and leads to an environment of deep spiritual growth and deep community. I think this is far superior to the clergy giving the laity systematic theology.

Jon Sharpe and Miriam Adeney: Global Leadership

I find it interesting that most Muslims are coming to Christ through dreams, healings and exorcisms. Again we see God moving in the supernatural to bring people to himself. I have heard a number of testimonies of Muslims who have come to Christ through dreams about “the man in white”. In China there are many forms of supernaturalism and prophecy is common in Switzerland and other places in Europe. I sure would like to know what the issues are around supernaturalism, how God uses it, what parameters He puts around it, how to determine false from true supernaturalism, how the Church has dealt with it historically? I feel that we will not crack the tough nut of the Spanish heart until they see God. We have tried preaching the gospel to them as a series of truths about salvation for over a hundred years and have gotten virtually nowhere. We need to show them God in ways they can’t deny and ways that touch their lives. I don’t think God has a problem with this; after all he is a supernatural being. I just wonder how to participate in it in a healthy way and not try to manipulate God. I have even thought of a title for one of my four unit independent study classes: Supernaturalism, Faith and Magic.

Field Trip

I was struck with the quality of the ministries we visited today: Zion Preparatory Academy, Vision housing for homeless women and children and Northwest Family Life a ministry to those who participate in family violence. The facilities were high quality and the people who were running them were of high quality. The objectives were ministry themselves were high quality. What struck me was that there was not a spirit of poverty; the “we don’t have any money so we have to do things poorly” view. They may have started with a vision and almost no resources but God did resource them and they did things with excellence.

The other thing that struck me was that foundations, corporations and wealthy non-Christians were the primary source of funding to overtly Christian ministries. This was because they were doing wonderful things for the community with excellence. It also struck me that the Church was not a major supplier, and even at times viewed these ministries skeptically or as competition. That is a pretty sad commentary, yet there was not a sense of bitterness, just a clear vision and a heart for those in need.

I was also struck my Nancy Murphy’s ministry to those who commit violence. She was a victim of family violence yet she deals daily with men and women who commit violence in the family. It would make sense that she would have ministry to the victims, but that she also reaches out to the victimizers is a real story of grace.

January 13, 2005

Your behavior will show what your real value is: Dissonance will show where we are in conflict. The dissonance shows up at the conflict between real and ideal.

We tend to talk a lot about our values, but there are different kinds and levels of values. It is true that when it comes to values it really doesn’t matter what we say; it matters how we live. We can say we value servant leadership and then use people to accomplish what we think ought to be done. We can say we value prayer, but not pray too much. It is our behavior that distinguishes between our ideal values and our real values. It is this dissonance between what we say and what we do that should be our indicator of areas we need to release to the Holy Spirit. Dissonance therefore becomes a tool to use in our spiritual growth. Just being aware of the issue of dissonance point out areas of growth should be helpful to me.

Jon Sharpe made an interesting final statement “As an incarnational leader I do not choose what I do, God chooses for me.” This ties in with the idea of the new covenant where Christ is living through me. It also speaks to the issue of stewardship. My life is not my own. I should not be making decisions based on what I perceive to be best for me and my own but what God asks me to do for His Kingdom. I am following Christ into ministry. The scriptures that relate to this that come to mind are, “I have been bought with a price, I am not my own.” “It is no long I who live but Christ who lives in me.” All of this goes so counter to what our flesh and our worldly system says to do. I am struck by how carnal I am and how much of the leadership I see in churches and in missions is so far off the mark.

Bob Ekblad kind of pulled the pin on a grenade and rolled it down the isle when he started talking about contextual theology. This was a significantly different perspective than the traditional evangelicalism that I was raised in. I found myself telling myself to not switch off because it was not what I was used to and sounded dangerous. I had to ask myself, what does he really mean by that? Don’t judge until you are sure that you understand what he is saying, rather than what you think he might be saying. Further, even if I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, what good points is he making. Since it wasn’t clear by the end of the class I decided to ask him out to lunch so I could ask some clarifying questions.

At issue was Bob’s concept of the context being part of determining our message. One lives in injustice so they use the context as a lens to go to the Scripture and help them interpret the Scriptures. If we do this, how do we keep from proof texting from our own point of view? It is easy to lose the complexity and nuance of Scripture and put in our own point of view. This is also an issue in the way we deal with scripture in the context of community in house church. The context can not only inform us but it can also blind us. For example, if one lives in upper middle class American suburbia it is easy not to see injustice in the way we live. Where are people being hurt? I don’t see anyone being hurt? What could I possibly be doing that is hurting anyone? Yet if we were to ask an intelligent informed African American about how our lifestyle harms, we would get a pretty long lecture.

Do we just assume that God will use the text, because it is contextualized, and that He will use this for good; that this would be the message chosen by the Holy Spirit? This certainly goes against the hermeneutical principals that I have been trained in. But then the hermeneutical principals I have been trained in actually have very little to do with what the Scriptures say about themselves but rather what the Enlightenment tells me about dealing with texts. In other words, even my hermeneutic has been contextualized, but until the last few years I did not realize it. Does having a contextualized hermeneutic mean we don’t need to worry about having a balanced or completely correct message? It seems that we end up having a message that is in conflict with other messages. We end up choosing unbalance and subjectivity rather than grapple with mystery. What are our tools that help us to grapple with not preaching an incorrect message?

This is where my struggle was when we went out to lunch together. I was doing my best to withhold judgment, really hear what he was saying and look for lessons even if I ended up not agreeing with what he said. However at the end, I found that he was much less controversial than he sounded. I’m not sure if he intentionally pulled our chain to make us think or not. If he comes to Spain (which is another story) I will have to ask him.

Here is his answer to my questions, which he then gave to the class just after we returned to lunch:

We need to be honest with your own theological presuppositions.
We need to be sound in our hermeneutics particularly the literary context and as much as possible the historical context.
We need to have knowledge of who we are working with and what there context is; how they view God and themselves.
We need to be aware of our own cultural context, who we are as readers, social class, nationality, what makes us unique, and how that colors our perspective.
We need to be lead by the Spirit as we deal with the text. The scriptures are a place of revelation.
Finally we need to acknowledge that Jesus is the interpreter of the Scripture. How did he deal with these concepts?

This seems honest to me. We are grappling with our own issues and the issues of our audience. We are still trying to be linguistically and historically honest with the text and we acknowledge the role of the triune God in biblical interpretation.

This is really not heretical at all. It is actually more aware of the realities of hermeneutics than what I was raised with. It is asking very valid questions and being as honest as possible with the reality. It is being honest with the postmodern critique of the Enlightenment’s treatment of text in that it acknowledges that I bring a lot into the text. This is going to happen anyway, we might as well acknowledge it and deal with it in an explicit way rather than have it happen tacitly and not be aware of how it has colored the text.

Finally, this seems more humble to me. It is grappling with real issues but acknowledges that interpretation is fraught with danger, mystery and the unknown. Yet, the Holy Spirit shows up in all of this and uses the written word to draw us closer to the living Word. The Enlightened hermeneutic I was raised with was actually rather arrogant. It assumed that if you went through all the steps, most of them having to do with grammar, we would end up knowing what the author meant by what he said. Considering the realities of human communication, significant cross cultural issues, textual issues, and at least 2000 years of separation from the context, this is an incredibly arrogant assumption. Yet, the Holy Spirit still can and does meet us in the Scriptures. That is mysterious in and of itself but it allows the reading of Scripture to be a supernatural experience rather than a mere grammatical exercise.

Dr. Miriam Adeney spoke to us about why Muslim women have been coming to the Lord based on her research. Predominant among those issues were three that struck me: dreams, healings, and exorcisms. There again is the supernatural in the role of our ministry to the world. It again underscores how our evangelical enlightenment upbringing ill prepares us to minister in a world outside of the World War II generation in the west. For the most part, it does not speak to the worldview of anyone in the West younger than 50 and just about any place outside of the West.

Non Pentecostal Evangelical theology does not have an adequate theology of the supernatural nor does it have an adequate practice. This has nothing to do with the Bible, but rather our pagan worldview we inherited from the Enlightenment which inherited its worldview from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. When Socrates is informing my spiritual life and practice more than Jesus is, I am in serious trouble. The problem is that we are not aware of where our doctrine really comes from because we have not been critical enough. Instead we usually assume that some great doctor of the faith has told us what is correct (or our denomination), so we assume that they must know what they are talking about. It doesn’t occur to us to question the presuppositions of their worldview and ours. What we end up with is a theology that is in direct contradiction with what the Scripture really teaches, but we can’t see it. Isn’t that what the Pharisees did? Man is scares me to realize how much like a Pharisee I can be.

January 14, 2005

Dr. Jeff Keuss gave us what he called Stages of Spiritual Questioning:

The Recognition of God – How and when did you first recognized God in your life?

The Life of Discipleship- When have you felt a part of a faith or spiritual community? What was it like?”

The Productive Life – “Which of your talents/ gifts do you feel good about and are willing to share?”

The Journey Inward – “Has your faith fallen apart? When? What was that like?”

The Journey Outward – “Do you have a glimpse of God’s purpose for your life? What does it look like?”

The Life of Love – “What does ‘Love’ mean when you hear “For God so loved the world’? How do you experience that love?”

I immediately thought about the fact that I was going to see my niece Kelly and Chuck her boyfriend. Having had dinner with them already and having spent the evening talking about some rich spiritual life issue, I thought that these questions might stimulate Kelly, particularly considering where she is in her journey with Jesus.

Sunday I spent from 11:00 A.M. until 10:30 P.M. with Kelly and Chuck. It seemed like just about every half hour some topic that I had been talking about the last week came up and stimulated our conversation. The entire eleven and a half hours was like a very fun, loving, house church time. It was very deep fellowship. It was also a blast. Unfortunately, I wasn’t taking notes, I was having fellowship and we were ministering into each others lives. So, I can’t seem to recall all of the issues that came up.

However, just before we went out at 9:00 P.M. to pick up some Thai take out I pulled out my little slip of paper with Jeff Keuss’ questions. Just as I suspected, Kelly zeroed in and it really got her wheels turning. That girl can think! The suffering she has gone through in the last number of years has really grounded her. It is so exciting to watch her honestly process her own spiritual life and soak up any little scrap that she is given. She is really on a growing curve. I am also excited to see how much Chuck respects her, has honest interaction with her, and treats here with kind sensitivity. He is being a good spiritual influence on her life. They are reading spiritual books together and discussing them. They were both just real and honest. She deserves someone like that.

This is so much different than the Kelly I knew a number of years ago. There wasn’t any projecting of an image. She was someone just grappling with life, spiritual and otherwise; trying to figure out how she should live. God is using her, and that will continue as long as she addresses life like this. It will be interesting to see if she continues to respond to Keuss’ questions. I suspect she will, but I may never hear about it.

Jeff Keuss also made the following statement: we need to create a space where obedience to the Truth is practiced through community. He went on to define what he meant by each of the four phrases.

Create a space- opening an aperture
There are times we need to be still and just wait to find out what God would say to us and take out of us. – Kenosis is emptying of ourselves, not to grasp for things that we see as important to our identity. Prayer life as listening not telling; sit in humility.

Where obedience to the Truth –
Obititae - to be obedient John 8:31-32. The truth will make you free. The word Truth comes from the Germanic root of the word which means to be married. What we are willing to be wedded to? Listen deeply to what has been grafted into us. Listening to scripture.

Is practiced
Our faith in Christ is nothing unless we show the “sign and seal of the saving work of our Lord, Christ Jesus.” John Calvin

To challenge the system, to be involved in social action is divine behavior. We should do what we say. We need to challenge the powers and principalities.

Through community
The Gospel is “truth through personalities.” Unity is found in diversity. Be creative and we do this together. The Bible was meant to be read in community. We are all unique, unrepeatable miracles of God. But we are still part of the body of Christ.

We have become so individualistic in our culture that we really don’t know how to do such a thing without practice. First, we are not patient enough to listen to God. We are to busy telling him how he ought to fulfill our agenda. This is making ourselves the protagonist instead of Jesus. He is supposed to be the protagonist of our story. It is so hard to actually allow him to be so.
The issue of what we are willing to be wedded to reminds me of the values discussion we had with Jon Sharpe. Are these just ideals or are we willing to count the cost and ask Jesus to help us live this.

Finally the whole issue of actually exegeting the Scriptures and our lives in community, allowing Jesus to meet us in the midst is a significant issue. We have our spiritual growth and relationship with Jesus because of our culturally imposed individualism. It is hard for Americans to truly understand what community really is, yet we long for it. At least we long for it as long as it doesn’t get too messy and convicting.

Simple churches give us the framework to actually live this out. However, it is just a framework; we still have to actually do it. The framework itself is neutral. Unless we actually seek to have Jesus meet us in the midst; unless we are willing to be vulnerable instead of occasionally transparent; we will fail to have true community. And, we will miss the spiritual growth and the deeper aspect of our relationship with Jesus that we can have through this.

I also doubt the ability of anyone to truly understand the truth of the Scriptures, let alone the Truth, apart from the input of others. Basically that is what Keuss is saying. We can Lone Ranger our relationship with God, no matter what our culture and flesh tell us.

Ray Bakke talked about Roger Williams’ concept of ordination. When you baptize someone you are ordaining them because they become ministers. Call to ordination is not to status, it is to task. I give up my authority to work under and for the good of others and the Kingdom, but I have been given responsibility. This allows for women leaders, because they are not ruling over men, they are serving men in their giftedness. Williams turned hierarchy upside down. He had a more biblical view of leadership, leadership as service rather than the power, status and position view, which is so common in the Church today. This is also a better view of the priesthood of all believers rather than a quasi priesthood of the “clergy” which is a non biblical concept that just drives me crazy and has done unbelievable damage to the Church and the Kingdom of God.

Bakke also mentioned that inerrancy is not a Biblical word, however the Bible is the truth, which it does claim for itself. Jesus took the Bible very seriously. I won’t go into the issue of our understanding of verbal plenary inspiration again because I referred to it above. But it is refreshing to hear others grapple with this false cultural understanding of what truth means without demeaning the word of God and recognizing it as God’s truth.

January 17, 2005

Brad Smith talked about four ways we can deal things we tend to have trouble with such as sex, power and money.

Pietistic – I have got to be holy and this is a problem, so I will try to avoid it, hide it or ignore it.

Consumerism – I have got to have it; I want it.

Pragmatic – I will do whatever works.

Stewardship – Steward it well. It is my job to deal with this to maximize God’s agenda.

While I can see the church and myself doing all of these things I think there is a strong tendency for the pietistic approach and the pragmatic approach. What least common view and behavior is the one that God’s wants from us, which is stewardship. Stewardship asks “What is the Lord telling me to do with this? Stewardship is taking care of something that belongs to someone else, God. Knowing the goals of the owner and working towards that goal is what I should be doing. I am responsible but I don’t own that which I am in stewardship of. God is the owner. He is not only the owner of my wealth, he is the owner of my life. As Laura Trautner mentioned in church a couple of weeks ago, I am not the protagonist of my story. When I think of this and the parable of the talents and I look at my life, it causes me to realize how far I fall short. I tend to compare myself with others, which Jesus tells us not to do, instead of looking at the Scripture as my mirror.

I see so many Christians being pragmatic with their wealth rather than stewards of their wealth. This is particularly true of investment. Would Jesus care if the money we made from investment was harming others? Of course he would care. Yet, if I ask that question I am going to get less return on my money. But then, it isn’t my money and Jesus didn’t necessarily call us to a life of comfort, ease, and avoidance of difficulty. My culture and flesh demand that, but Jesus doesn’t. Nor is he impressed if we made a 16% average return this year on our portfolio instead of 7%. The parable of the talents isn’t really implying that God wants more bang for our buck, but rather are we leveraging our resources for his purposes.

I wonder what I would do if I had significant wealth, which I have mentioned above. My reaction of fear of dealing with this is the pietistic approach. However, I should be a steward of this wealth for God’s purposes. There is a dissonance between what I know is right and what I am, at this point, afraid I would do. In other words, it is time to ask the Holy Spirit to start dealing with me on this issue.

Bakke also mentioned that the Puritans never understood business as profit maximization, which would be greed. When source of capital and management of business comes from the same place, the attitude is different than when they are separated. But when those are separated we can do things we wouldn’t do face to face. The source of capital and the management of that capital being in the same community was much more common in years past. The concept of profit maximization is only about 40 years old and comes from Milton Friedman. Yet this is considered an unquestioned doctrine among many today in our society. Yet what would Jesus have us do when our maximization of profit harms someone? Again, we are allowing a pagan culture to drive our values more than Jesus does. Who do we really belong to?

There is nothing wrong with business. In fact I am surprised at how pro business this course has been. But when business is about me instead of helping others it can become sinful. Dennis Bakke’s view of being called to business to be about the Lord’s business is an interesting concept. He does not have to feel guilty about being a millionaire or a billionaire or what ever he is. He only has to steward what God has given him. If God gives him this wealth to do Kingdom work, then do Kingdom work.

Ray Bakke talked about the history of how we got the clergy/laity split. He also explored how this wasn’t really a dichotomy but a trichotomy with three classes of Christians:

Class A – Sacred job in sacred place (dessert or monastery).
Class B – Sacred job in a secular place, i.e. the society.
Class C Christians- secular jobs in secular place.

In fact the Roman Catholic church still call priests secular clergy – monks and nuns are the spirituals.

We have pulled this over into Protestantism and then Evangelicalism. Now we have regular folk who are class C Christians, Class B folk who are pastors, and the real spiritual folk, the Class A Christians, foreign missionaries. I have the M word on my forehead, yet I hate this class system with a passion. This is a real struggle with me and has been a real struggle for Phil and Becca Ault. I still don’t know how to resolve this because by functioning within the system I am functioning in I fail to live what I believe.

Still, I don’t think I am a Class A Christian, or a Class B Christian. I don’t think there is any such thing. There is obedience to a call. I suspect that we will be judged by our obedience and things like stewardship, rather than what position or ministry were had, or how much visible results we had.

Dennis Bakke’s idea of being ordained to work is a tremendous concept. The very thing that he has longed for is what we can provide in house churches. We don’t believe in a clergy/laity distinction. We believe in giftedness, stewardship (although we didn’t use that vocabulary), and call. We, as house churches have a unique opportunity to endorse ordaining everyone to their God given calling and doing that in community. Because we don’t have clergy/laity issues and because we are just getting started we can build this concept of everyone being released into the ministry God as calling into foundation of the DNA of the network. Now that it has become explicit instead of a vague tacit longing it will be more easily dealt with.

I see a potential problem with congregational forms of organization of the Church, just because it is too big. It, by its very size, forces a clergy/laity distinction. I suspect that just by organization alone, we marginalize people away from being “ordained into the ministry through baptism” as Roger Williams conceived it. It will be interesting to see how much clergy/laity DNA the Chinese house church movement has when they have house churches of 300. We will see if my theory holds water or not.

January 19, 2005

Reading the sanctuary

Reverend Lex Braxton “read” his sanctuary for us today. He told us how the church was formed in a cross to represent their Christology. He talked about how the church was also built to represent an African hut and the altar made of African wood to represent their African heritage. The beams made of cedar represented the Pacific Northwest. The stained glass windows were heroes of the African-American church and the older windows represented windows from the old sanctuary that had been donated by significant families which told quite a bit about the politics of the church.

This idea of reading a sanctuary is not new to me but I have rarely seen someone be so intentional about their symbolism. I think we do give clear messages with our architecture, our art and our symbolism. We also need to be aware how the unsaved will read our messages. Besides the things that Lex Braxton mentioned I would also like to read a couple of other things that I noticed in the sanctuary. The centrality and size of the pulpit spoke of the centrality of the preaching of the word of God or at least to preaching. The size also represented the centrality of the pastor. The chairs behind the pulpit spoke of the power of the elder or deacon board, but I noticed that the central chair, right behind the pulpit was larger and taller; again a symbol of the power of the pastor. The area of the pulpit was raised by three steps. This is a symbol of the clergy/laity distinction, with the clergy being more important and more powerful. The cross beams of the cross were used to house a large area for the choir, which means that choral music is important to their worship. The pews were lined up and facing one direction, the chairs on the platform and the pulpit the other. This is another clergy/laity distinction.

I think we need to analyze these things using the concept of sentient boundaries and the message they give to our congregation. If I were a new member in this congregation I would probably be pretty clear that my voice would not be respected and heard. I would not come from one of the old families. I would not be part of the vested power structure and if I felt myself significantly gifted and desiring to minister, I would feel stifled. This is architecture for observation of the ministry, not participation in the ministry in any significant way. As a non-African American I would suspect that I would be further marginalized. However, that would probably be a fair turn of the screw, since African Americans are so marginalized in most U.S. suburban churches for the same reasons.

If I went to this church just one time I would not return, unless it was to visit friends or enjoy a show. This is not a church where I could minister significantly or where I would grow beyond what was given to me by the powers above. Is this any way to significantly mature Christians?
If I were a non-Christian I would get some very significant power messages. If I were a postmodern I would not even think about coming back because of the institutional and power messages. These would be such significant sentient boundaries for me that I just wouldn’t return. I probably would not even be able to articulate this, it would be tacit, but it would keep me out of the Kingdom.

I also noticed something else that was a sentient boundary for me, although it was not in the architecture. Every time that Rev. Braxton mentioned a clergy, he mentioned their titles. For example he would call someone Rev. Dr. so and so. I didn’t even know the protocol on how to handle those two titles together. Frankly, it turned me off. It made the importance of clergy explicit and also that this is a status based culture. Titles are important. Having lived in Latin America for so long, and watching what a status based culture does to the church was uncomfortable. Now, I don’t know how this church deals with status, because I haven’t been able practice participant observation. But if I were doing an ethnography, status would be one of the first things I would zero in on.

This makes me wonder if the African American culture puts emphasis on status because it has always had so little and has been marginalized. It makes me wonder if this status thing is true of all African American culture or if this is a church thing, or even this churches thing. I think I know the answer to this, but I haven’t observed and tested so it is still and opinion. I wonder if Rev. Braxton (I call him that out of respect, because I suspect he would appreciate it) realizes the other messages his sanctuary is sending. However, again this whole status thing would be a big turn off with many postmoderns. However, I have no idea what the postmodern African American culture is like or actually even if they are postmodern; although I suspect they are in many ways.

January 20, 2005

Potential resources for poor communities

· Look for assets and resources that are already here
· Give information transfer and skill transfer by getting a carpenter to train carpentry
· Build asset based development through leverage- force them to green line
· Building Communities From Inside Out – John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight shows how to use assets that are already in the community to build the community- this is a philosophy of empowerment
· Urban equivalent of language/culture is to learn to understand community development-work at least two years before you plan anything.
· You should know how the urban flow of assets in the community

We should learn to do this for community development in simple church

How do we develop a community so that we make contacts for the gospel while developing the community?

One question Ray Bakke asked is “Am I the pastor of the church for this community?” In other words part of what the church is about is beings God’s assistance for the community. We should be a positive influence on the community in more than just spiritual ways. This should include financial, educational, artistic, and cultural to name a few. One of the requirements of an elder is that he be respected in the non-Christian community. This implies that such a person is making significant and positive contact there.

Four types of growing church in the city:

Mega church – people need a upper to worship.

Storefront church – need for intimacy, church as family.

Missional church – give me a chance to do something – can’t join, join a mission group- mission group nominates you when they think you are ready.

Liturgical Churches – something that goes all the way back to the early church – tradition .
How can we use the best of each of these, as house churches, without loosing our integrity? Here are just a few thoughts on how we can gain from each of these models.

Mega church – people need an upper to worship.
We can bring the network together and have significant celebrations. The different models for this type of gathering would in part depend on the size of the network: it could be an encounter, workshop, fair, conference, labyrinth, festival, etc. We should also consider having some part of bigger network celebrations have the involvement of the extended body of Christ and we should consider how to invite the not yet Christian community. They could be ministered to, but we should also consider how we can minister with them and allow them to minister to us. Perhaps we could organize with them the cleaning up of a creek, or vacant lot, the development of a park, or the collection and distribution of clothing, food and medical supplies for the communities needy or the needy in other areas of the world. This cooperation with the community at large is a way to let our light shine and reflect Christ without having a building, and while being a part of the bigger community, not just located in it.

Storefront church – need for intimacy, church as family.
Simple church, done well, already has this in spades. That does not mean we should assume that we can take community and deep commitment for granted.

Missional church – give me a chance to do something – can’t join, join a mission group- mission group nominates you when they think you are ready.

We should view part of our mandate as missional. What ministry is the Holy Spirit leading this individual too. How can we as a community and a network cooperate with the Holy Spirit in seeing this happen? Ministry calling can come to a group, a simple church, network, or multi networks. We should not get caught in the modernist trap of viewing everything as individualistic. We need to allow Christ to lead as different groupings of his body as well as individuals.

Liturgical Churches – something that goes all the way back to the early church – tradition.
How much farther back can we go than to the very beginning? However the earliest church wasn’t liturgical. That does not mean we can not incorporate elements from any point of our 2000+ years of history. Giving the history allows people to realize that they not only are part of the current worldwide body of Christ, but that we have mystical communion with the saints of 20 centuries and every continent. We should not just limit ourselves to liturgical, although we can use these elements, but what about African worship elements, or Latin American or Figian?

I don’t think, personally, that we should get stuck in a rut. When liturgies become ritual there is a tendency for them to lose their meaning for some and deepen their meaning for others. But the reality is that some meaning gets lost for some people in ritual. But, we can still gain the valuable meanings of all of these things. For example, we don’t have to recite the Apostles or Nicene Creeds each time we meet, but when we do we should explain the historical context and the rich meaning. Beating an African drum and participating in African dance may be fun, but if its context and meaning are not developed, we lose an opportunity to deepen in our relationship with Christ and experience Him in the midst of the community.

January 28, 2005

Transformational Leadership As a Two Sided Coin

While talking with Margi about the concept of Transformational Leadership I had a metaphor come to me that I think will be helpful in teaching about transformational leadership. Transformational leadership is like a coin, it has two sides. On the one side, lets call it heads, we have the image of Christ. Every Christian is being conformed to the image of Christ. This is part of the work that God is doing in their life. The image of Christ is His character. This is the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control as well as some other issues, like appropriate confrontation. The character of Christ looks the same in everyone. We should all be gracious, patient and loving.

However there are two sides to the coin. The other side speaks of the unique work that God is doing in every life, this would be “tails” of a European Euro. One side of all Euros is the same, but the other side is determined by the country it comes from. In this metaphor this has to do with the unique talents, personality and giftedness that God is building in the individual. Not every personality is the same, nor should it be. God distributes gifts, talents and experience as He wills. Even the same spiritual gifts may have different manifestation in different people.

We can discern the image of Christ in each individual by comparing their character to the character of Christ revealed in the Scriptures. As said above, this should be uniform. However, each person is uniquely made by God. They will have specific personalities, talents and spiritual gift mixes. This is what God is uniquely doing in their lives and we should not try to mold it to any specific design other than the design that the Maker is weaving in them. This design must be discerned by the power of the Spirit. God could use insight, the gift of discernment, the gift of prophecy, and the Scripture to do this. There is a great danger to try to conform unique individuals into a form that they can not and should not fit. This could be a particular denominational structure, the structure of a seminary, or a cultural structure. If this is not how God has designed them, to try to force them into one of these structures will damage their souls. Further, it will make them feel inadequate, different and out of place, when, in fact, they are just not designed to be that way. Our tendency is to believe that one shape fits all. Since God gifts some to have the gift of tongues, a little logical deduction could lead us to believe that all godly people should speak in tongues. This has been a fallacy with some Pentecostals. One person could struggle with outbursts of anger, while another may sharply express righteous indignation brought on by the gift of prophecy. We need to be careful to understand the unique individual and what God is doing in them so we are not too quick to judge.

Sin has marred the image of Christ in all of us and it requires more than a lifetime for Him to rebuild what we have lost at the fall. The same is true of the unique work God wants to build in us. We have not arrived in Christlikeness, nor have we fully become the unique person God wants us to be. Both the conformity to the image of Christ and becoming the unique person that God wants us to be is spiritual growth. To work on one without the other, would be damaging to the soul. Transformational leadership requires that we do both and at the same time. This is a process of cooperating with God in what He is already doing in the life.

To see what God is doing in conforming an individual to the image of Christ requires careful exegesis of Scripture. This should be done in the community of the Spirit because we are all blind to certain things and the Spirit can not be fully expressed in one individual. In the same way, to help someone become fully the unique individual that God is making them, the individual character needs to be exegeted in community. Again we tend to be blind as individuals so we need the power and insight of the Spirit in community to have a full picture. This may use the gift of discernment of spirits, the gift of prophecy, the gift of wisdom, as well as divinely given insight. It is the job of the community of the Spirit to discern what Christ is doing in the unique individual and cooperate with this supernatural movement. It is not our job to decide what that should look like. To do so is to take on the work of the Holy Spirit and risk damaging a soul.

Spiritual direction and transformational leadership are two ways to view the process of cooperating with God to help shape them into the unique person God wants them to be. Really they are much the same thing. Sometimes spiritual direction is viewed as a deep one on one discipleship process. While I don’t doubt the value of such a relationship, I do doubt the ability of one individual to ask all the right questions and have all the insight necessary for an individual to reach their full God given potential. The individual character must be exegeted in community to have a fully orbed perspective. This does not negate however the value of one on one discipleship or spiritual direction. It does however expose a danger; the danger of the shortsightedness of any spiritual director. A poor spiritual director might be arrogant enough to not see his own warped perspective and inadvertently try to conform someone to his or her own image rather than the image of Christ and the unique work that Jesus is doing in the individual. Therefore, it takes the body of Christ to help disciple an individual. It takes the whole body of Christ that an individual is exposed to for this to fully happen, even if it is not his or her “church”. If someone from another body has a word of prophecy, an insight, an exhortation or discerns something they should be free to speak.

A house church is an ideal setting for this type of discipleship or transformational work to take place. House churches, if healthy, have the intimacy, security and broad perspective necessary for the transformational process to work. However, it is doubtful that a group of six or eight people will have every spiritual gift and adequate insight to have a fully orbed perspective, so they should be willing to rely on other Christians to provide this. In a fairly large house church network there should be adequate spiritual maturity, perspective and giftedness for this to happen.

Finally I think if I were to teach this in a class or group setting in the United States I would bring a set of U.S. commemorative quarters. These are the quarters that represent different U.S. States. I would give a different quarter to each person and ask them to look at the “heads” side of the quarters and have different individuals describe it. I would ask the class if this is a fairly accurate representation of what they are looking at on their quarter. This is like the image of Christ, it looks pretty much the same in every individual.

I would then have them turn over the quarters and have different individuals describe what they see. There would be disagreement because some would have a wedge of cheese from Wisconsin, and others would have a horse from Kentucky. This represents the individual work that Jesus is doing in each person. There is no use arguing about it because each individual is unique and can not fully fulfill what God wants them to be without being unique. To allow someone to be whole, we must cooperate with God on both sides of their coin at the same time, the “standard” part and the “unique part”. If I were doing this same training in Europe I would not insult my European friends with a U.S. metaphor, I would just switch to a set of one Euro coins.

Book Report Orthodox Alaska by Michael Oleksa

2005-03-04T21:15:00.000+01:00

Reading Report

LDR 701/SFM 701 The Transformational Leader
Date of course:
January 10-21, 2005
Student
Ross Rohde
Book
Oleksa, Michael J., Orthodox Alaska, A Theology of Mission. St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood, NY, 1998. Read 252 of 252 pages

I. What is the main idea or thesis of the author?

The goal of this book is two fold: to articulate a Christian version of the traditional Alaskan world view and show the missiological and theological implications of this biblical, patristic and liturgical tradition that has evolved in the Alaskan context. This is done through telling the history of the Orthodox Church’s ministry to the native peoples of Alaska and highlighting its missiological implications.

What unfolds is a missiology that is distinct from traditional Evangelical practice and theory. The Evangelical assumption is that we bring the truth to the indigenous peoples, and presume that before our arrival there was no truth. Orthodoxy starts with the assumption that the Holy Spirit is already at work and therefore we can look for signs of His work and use it as a basis for the ministry. This is a similar perspective to the one articulated about twenty five years ago in Don Richardson’s book The Peace Child.

II. What is my interpretation of the author’s thesis?

There is much to be said for starting from the supposition that the Holy Spirit is already at work in a culture. This goes along with the point of Rom. 1:19-20:
…since what may be know about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

God does not leave himself without a witness and as in all ministry, we should follow God instead of trying to create it on our own ministry. Oleksa is strong on adapting indigenous art and traditional practices to the expression of Christianity in a new place. He gives many examples of this in the book. There is much to be said for this kind of contextualization. What surprised me though was that Oleksa was not consistent in applying his contextualization across all practices. Liturgy, the use of icons and patristic practices seemed to be beyond question to him. Perhaps in his mind and in the minds of the missionaries he was documenting, this would cause the work to be something other than Orthodox.

A good portion of my own missionary career has been spent in Latin America which has a number of syncretized forms of Roman Catholicism. Some of the practices that Oleksa documents and proposes are quite similar to the practices that the early missionary monks in Latin America used. The result was a religion that looks like Catholicism on the outside, but lost much of its internal integrity. This is the dark side of this type of missiology which Oleksa does not explore.

However, it would be easy to write off the good points of this type of missiology by an over reaction to the potential downsides. God is at work in every society. We do need to contextualize our ministry and express ourselves in ways that are understood in the new culture. We also need to make sure the truth we are communicating is what is being understood. This requires consistent feedback loops to make sure that the gospel has not taken a left turn along the way.

Having said this, evangelicals seldom contextualize their forms, expressions and theology enough. We end up preaching Western culture and the Enlightenment as much as we do the gospel. This causes as much harm to the new body of Christ as does syncretization. In fact, it is really a transposing of an already syncretized gospel from another place.

III. What would a serious application of this book look like?

It is wise to start where Oleksa suggests we start; where God is already at work in the society. We need to learn well the life ways of the people to whom we have been sent. We need to listen carefully and do our best to understand from and edic point of view, what their cultural ways are, what they mean, and how they are connected to their lives. This is not a quick process, and we are often in too much of hurry to get to the gospel and end up not expressing it in a way that will be adequately understood.

We need to not only listen and learn in the beginning; we need to continue to listen and learn. This is where the feedback loops that I referred earlier come in. How is our message getting across? What do they understand? What ways are they coming up with to communicate their new message to their cultural network? They can actually teach us how to preach the gospel to them, but that requires patience and humility. It will involve doing ethnographic study, which the Orthodox missionaries in Alaska did. It will involve developing relationships, it will involve intense listening and significant reflection. But, with God’s grace this will lead to an appropriately contextualized gospel that can easily spread and mature in its new cultural setting.

Book Report Divided by Faith by Emerson and Smith

2005-03-04T21:10:00.000+01:00

Reading Report
Course:
LDR 701- SFM 701 Overture I: Perspectives on Leadership
Date of course:
December 28, 2004
Student
Ross Rohde
Book
Emerson, Michael O., Smith Christian Divided by Faith, Evangelical religion and the problem of race in America. Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 2000 Read 224 of 224 pages

I. What is the main idea or thesis of the author?

The authors are trying to delineate how white evangelicalism effects racial relations between African Americans and whites in America. While acknowledging that much progress has been made since the American Civil War for African Americans in American society, much still needs to be done. They would also highlight that with each apparent victory for African Americans, white society finds a new way to isolate them from power, status and equal financial opportunity.

White American evangelicalism, due to its conservative U.S. American worldview, ends up perpetuating this problem; and in fact; evangelicals are more likely to perpetuate these issues than the average white American because they are, on average, more traditional and conservative in their worldview. This ends up being in violation of some basic Christian principals that evangelicals hold dear, such as love one another, and do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This violation is not intentional; rather, it is usually the unconscious result of a worldview that does not adequately deal with the reality of racial problems in the United States and a theology and praxis that is tacitly contextualized to perpetuate the problem.

II. What is my interpretation of the author’s thesis?

The first to plead his case seems just, until another comes and examines him. (Prov. 18:17).
When we use our white American evangelical worldview, answers to the racial and poverty issues that plague American society, seem quite simple. Since America is the land of opportunity, if people would just go out, get an education and work hard they could get ahead. If they don’t the problem must be with them. After all, it worked for me. Unfortunately, it really doesn’t work that way. We are almost completely unaware of how stacked the deck is against non whites and African Americans in particular. It takes an incredible amount of skill, initiative and good fortune for an African American to win with the deck stacked against them. When one does, our tendency is to look at this winning individual as the proof that the deck isn’t stacked. We are also almost completely oblivious to how our own lifestyle and values contribute to the problem and how much our worldview keeps us from fulfilling the golden rule with our African American brethren and fellow citizens. Further, it is against our self interest to pry into the matter too much because it might be convicting and require more of us than we would want to, or would be biblically compelled to give.

This book laid out the worldview I have functioned with in explicit terms. I knew intellectually that it had problems but had never investigated it much. Further, I had never had a clear sociological explanation of how the deck was stacked against African Americans; I had just heard that it was. Having a clear sociological explanation to the weak points of my white evangelical worldview; and then exposing that worldview to a biblical lens, was quite painful.

III. What would a serious application of this book look like?

One of the frustrating points of this book was that it was so clear in outlining the problem and did not attempt to find solutions. This resulted in stirring up my frustrations at the injustice without giving me a sense that there were clear answers.

There undoubtedly are answers, but they will be complex, not simplistic. First, they must address the issue from more that one perspective. To merely write new laws has proven an ineffective means of gaining African Americans equal power, status and access to wealth production over the last 140+ years. Yet, it needs to be part of the solution. Part of the issue is cultural, white culture, white evangelical culture and African American culture. Anthropologist Oscar Lewis wrote of ‘the culture of poverty’, where the coping mechanisms that the poor develop to cope with the pain of poverty end up perpetuating it. This is true; however, it is certainly not the entire problem, nor the root cause of the problem. Finally, the issues must be addressed morally and spiritually. This is actually an opportunity for us to express the character of Christ to our society and African American brothers. But our solutions to this point have been simplistic and self serving, ending up serving more as a salve to our conscience than helping African Americans. I do not feel that I have clear solutions yet, but long to investigate more.

He who oppresses the poor reproaches his Maker, but he who is gracious to the needy honors Him. (Prov. 14:31).

Book Report The lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman

2005-03-04T21:05:00.000+01:00

LDR 701/SFM 701 The Transformational Leader
Date of course:
January 10-21, 2005
Student
Ross Rohde
Book
Friedman, Thomas L. The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, New York, 2000 Read 512 of 512 pages

I. What is the main idea or thesis of the author?

The worldwide “system” which dominates world affairs, politics, and economy has changed from the Cold War system which started after World War II to globalization which could be dated from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Cold War system was based on division and competition between two global powers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Globalization is about the connectedness of all national economies and politics. Globalization has one dominant culture, the United States, one dominant economic logic, free market capitalism; one dominant morality, transparency and individual freedom; and one dominant political philosophy, democracy. The more a country, region or individual participates in these philosophies the more one ‘gets ahead’ economically in this competitive world. Globalization is represented therefore by the luxury car the Lexus.

There is also a counter current to the Lexus of globalization. This is the longing for our tradition, our ways, our culture; even if these issues slow down or isolate those who participate from the economic prosperity of globalization. Friedman’s symbol for this is the olive tree.

II. What is my interpretation of the author’s thesis?

Globalization is a paradox. On the one hand it is “moral” because it is demands transparency, and is against corruption. It is democratic and egalitarian. It is fair in the sense that anyone can participate and the more one follows the rules, the more one benefits, at least economically. On the other hand, globalization is highly “immoral”. Globalization favors those who are already in position to benefit from its logic. It favors countries that already have capital to invest, who have transparent laws, who understand how to capitalize in a free market economy, who already have access to wealth and who feel comfortable in the homogenized culture of the United States. In other words, the rich will get richer, and the poor will benefit much less, perhaps hardly at all. Globalization homogenizes culture and strips people of their comfortable uniqueness. The United States will continue to dominate under globalization and is has the power to manipulate the global system to perpetuate its hegemony.

III. What would a serious application of this book look like?

There is a strategic logic to the competing tensions of the rules and realities of globalization represented by the Lexus and the longing for the comfortable “usness” represented by the olive tree. The vast majority of the world’s population participates in globalization every day. They have access to world news and are affected by its realities. Many long to at least benefit from the economic lift of globalization. These are ministry opportunities. We, as followers of Jesus, can be the ones to capitalize the poor and train them to function within the system so they can benefit from globalization. We can champion transparency and opportunity for all, particularly the least advantaged.

However, the reality of olive tree thinking, the longing for our traditional ways, underscores the need for contextualization. To give someone the homogenized American evangelical expression of the Christian gospel ignores the human longing to be unique and culturally comfortable. We need to understand their culture explicitly and ask ourselves and them what are the elements and metaphors of the Christian gospel that speak to their hearts. We should be very careful about exporting ministry models which originate in the West, particularly the United States. These will most likely be rejected out of hand merely by being from the dominant and oppressive culture. Globalization is a reality, but we need to understand it well so that we can use it to aid people without striping them of their cultural identity, while strategically benefiting from the opportunities it provides.

Book Report Religious No More by Mark D. Baker

2005-03-04T21:01:00.000+01:00

Northwest Graduate School
Book Report

Student Name: Ross Rohde
Course Title: Perspectives on Leadership/Spiritual Resources for
the Transformational Leader LDR 701/ SFM 701
Date of Course: January 10-21, 2005
Title of Book: Religious No More Building Communities of
Grace and Freedom
Author: Mark D. Baker
Number of Pages Read:180

It is easy to be unaware of the chains that bind us. Mark D. Baker tries to bring to our awareness that, despite what we think, our natural tendency is toward man made religion, and more specifically legalism. Baker defines religion as “…our common human tendency to attempt through our efforts to gain security from God, the gods or something that acts as a god in our lives…” (page 37). Religion defines itself by rules so that we can have the security of knowing if we are acceptable or not. This is legalism. By defining whether we are in or not we end up separating ourselves into those who are acceptable and those who are not. This divides us or causes us fake outward conformity so that we can be acceptable and secure within the group. This in turn provides a false sense of security and a shallow and destructive form of community rather than the true, deep, secure community that we long for.

To demonstrate this Baker uses Paul’s writing in the book of Galatians for his scriptural foundation and his experience in Amor Fe y Vida Church in the Honduran town of Las Mesetas. Las Mesetas serves as a test drive of North American evangelical religion under the stress of extreme circumstances. The theology of the Las Mesetas churches comes from North America. The extreme legalistic results just show up more boldly because of the stressful context that theology is played out in. This legalism bears its inevitable fruit in fractured, shallow and painful community. Baker then shows how the lessons learned in Galatians and Las Mesetas can transform our understanding of our spiritual reality and how we can live in this new truth.

In chapter one we have a tour of the religious landscape of Las Mesetas and the relational communities that have grown up in that religious landscape. Baker shows how the legalism that is shown there is the result of importation of American Evangelicalism and then shows how this causes communities of fear, shame and exclusion. In chapter two “religion” is defined as our efforts to gain security with God through following the rules to fit in. Chapter three gives us three testimonies of people who have sought to escape this false religious context. North Americans see the scriptures through individualized and spiritualized eyes. Chapter four explores how this negatively affects both North Americans and those who have received the gospel as viewed through their lens. Baker shows us in chapter five how the traditional North American reading of Galatians tends to focus on a future salvation of individuals rather than an orientation of a holistic gospel practiced in community.

Chapters six through nine focus more specifically on the book of Galatians. In chapter six Baker develops one of Paul’s major themes which is: Jewish legalism could split the Galatian community with its religious emphasis on division and exclusion. Chapter seven explores another major theme, justification in Galatians is wrongly understood to be absolution from guilt by meeting the standards of an abstract law. Rather it is being brought into covenant relationship with God and his people. This is done through Christ’s faithfulness, not our faith. Chapter eight expresses that by stepping away from religion we can be who we really are which allows true community. Justification provides restored relationships and community with God and the people of God. This allows us to live a new lifestyle based on living in the freedom that Christ gives, which allows a new lifestyle of the Spirit and the life and ethics the Spirit gives, which is the theme of chapter nine. Chapter ten helps us think through how to respond to Evangelical religion today. It explores ways of experiencing the new freedom that justification offers. Finally in chapter eleven Baker goes back to Nueva Fe y Vida church as a case study of how we can struggle to live in the new freedom Christ gives us.

As someone who is trying to build winsome new community based fellowships in Spain and Portugal, Baker gives me a lot to chew on. Those of us who have been ministering in the starting of networks of simple churches in these two countries have been struggling with the question of what kind of “DNA” we want to see built into the foundation of the movement so that these elements naturally reproduce themselves. By DNA I mean the unspoken ethics, traits and values that become a natural unspoken part of who we are. One of the issues that has been discussed extensively and on which I, in particular, have pondered extensively is on the idea of communities of grace. Baker lays out two issues that are foundational to the concept of a community of grace. First is what grace, or in his words, lack of legalism and religion, is. Second, what do we really mean when we say community?

As I read Religious No More I long to see us develop the type of community Baker describes in the book. But this can not happen until we develop a new covenant ambiance of lack of religion and legalism. That can not be accomplished until we realize that we have religion and legalism built into our old North American evangelical “genetic code”, even though we don’t easily recognize it. Baker helps me think through the roots of my own genetic code so I can deal with the foundational issues that could inadvertently insert religious DNA into what we are doing. That would thwart the development of the communities of grace that we long for in Spain and Portugal.

Book Report: The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin

2005-03-04T20:55:00.000+01:00

Book Report: The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin

In Partial Fulfillment of:
Perspectives on Leadership/
Spiritual Resources for the Transformational Leader
LDR 701/ SFM 701
255 of 4000 to be read

How does a believer deal with the philosophical challenges that living in a pluralistic society poses? Further, how does the Christian confidently live in the pluralistic society? In the past Christianity was the default religion of the West. This is no longer true. In fact, our worldview is challenged, questioned, doubted, and denied by the predominant worldview that surrounds us. How can we give a coherent answer? What are the real questions that are being posed to us by our surrounding society? How would they understand our point of view? Where do there presuppositions come from? How do we answer? These are the types of questions that Lesslie Newbigin tries to answer in The Gospel in a Pluralist Society.

Newbigin clearly shows that we do not have to surrender to the predominant worldview around us, but we should honestly engage it. We do have cogent answers to the questions they pose. We do not commit intellectual suicide by believing what we believe, and although the basic suppositions of Christianity must be taken by faith, this is not different than any other worldview, including the scientific, rationalistic worldview of the Enlightenment or the skeptical and pluralistic worldview of postmodernism.

In Chapters one and two Newbigin defines for us what he means by pluralistic society, outlines its value systems and shows how these are in direct conflict with a biblical world view. Unfortunately, Newbigin does not clearly delineate between the Enlightenment and Postmodernism which views itself in direct conflict with the Enlightenment. He tends to blur the lines but at least speaks of the Enlightenment and Post-Enlightenment. Perhaps this is due to the time when the book was written, 1989, when, although postmodernism was becoming the vocabulary of choice, it was not yet on everyone’s lips.

In Chapters three through nine Newbigin takes on some of the presuppositions of the pluralist society and tries to outline how the church can deal with this philosophically and confront the pluralistic society in appropriate ways. He deals with what it means to know (chapter three), the challenge of the scientific worldview in chapter four, rationalism vs. revelation in chapters five, the Christian view of history, history with a purpose, goal and end, as apposed to history as the mere compilations of what has happened. In chapter six he deals with how revelation is crucial to the Christian understanding of history, if history is God’s story then he must reveal its meaning. In chapter seven he deals with the logic of election if history is viewed from God’s perspective. God must choose his messengers to reveal his purpose to the world. Chapter eight deals with the biblical claim for itself that it is the right view of history and how we, as Christians, can communicate this in a pluralistic society. Chapter nine shows that the Christian view of history with a goal and climax gives hope with the opposite effect with an unbounded history.

Chapters ten through twenty deal with the true mission of the church in a pluralist society. Chapter 10 tells us how to answer the question “Why are you pushing your faith on others?” Chapter eleven describes true mission as what God does through us, not what we do. Chapter twelve deals with contextualization, how we make ourselves understandable to a culture without succumbing to its false values. In chapter thirteen Newbigin deals with the exclusivity of the Gospel, to preach anything else is less than Christian. Chapter fourteen addresses the issue of how we, as Christians, can work with people of other faiths. Chapter fifteen shows how we deal with the values of distinctive cultures; our role is to affirm and critique cultures based on Jesus and the gospel. Chapter sixteen shows how Christians should deal with the power structures of society. In Chapter seventeen Newbigin shows that the idea that society is becoming secular and will eventually do away with religion is false. In chapter eighteen Newbigin proposes the congregation of believers to be the vehicle of the Christian message in society. In Chapter nineteen he outlines the role of the clergy in leading the people of God to fulfill its biblical mission in society. In Chapter twenty Newbigin concludes with an encouragement to avoid timidity and anxiety and have confidence in Jesus and the gospel.

I find myself substantially in agreement with Newbigin. He very helpfully lays out a philosophical basis for functioning in the postmodern society we live in. I do have a few criticisms, but that should not be taken as a general disagreement with his work. First, Newbigin does not clearly delineate between the Enlightenment and the emerging postmodernism which he calls post-Enlightenment. They are two different and often contradictory things. I suspect this is due to the time the book was written, but for one to clearly understand how to confront the challenges of today’s society one needs to clearly understand if they are dealing with an enlightened rationalist or a suprarationalist postmodern. Secondly, Newbigin seemed to tacitly ignore the supernatural aspects of the Christian reality. This is particularly obvious in chapter 16 where he sees principalities and powers as social values and power structures rather than the demonic entities behind such things. But this bias is also shown in his answers to how to deal with the pluralist society we face. His answers are all philosophical; his answers aim at the mind and do not involve supernatural power encounter, which is actually very effective in the postmodern world and what we see in the New Testament.

Book Report A Theology As Big As the City

2005-03-04T20:51:00.000+01:00

Northwest Graduate School
Book Report

Student Name: Ross Rohde
Course Title: Perspectives on Leadership/Spiritual Resources for
the Transformational Leader LDR 701/ SFM 701
Date of Course: January 10-21, 2005
Title of Book: A Theology as Big as the City
Author: Ray Bakke
Number of Pages Read:240

This book is about process; specifically the process God used to teach Ray Bakke about the realities of urban ministry. The book addresses a number of challenges that the urban context requires us to deal with; each chapter gives different models for urban ministry as we reflect of the Bible and redemptive history.

Chapter one is Bakke’s own story, how God moved him from being the product of a logging and farming community to dedicating himself to over 30 years of urban ministry in Chicago. This was not only a cultural transformation but one of perspective, values and theology.

Chapter two through four deal with Genesis. Chapter two shows a God who is interested not only in individualistic salvation but redemption of His entire creation. Chapter three uses the city of Sodom as a model of modern cities, places where much institutional evil is done but places that can be redeemed by the presence of God people in the midst of structural sin. Chapter four deals with Moses and his mother as models for urban leadership; Moses’ mother is a woman who was willing to stand up to unjust systems and beat the system. Moses himself is a model a number of leadership principals.

Chapter five through seven deal with the era of the Judges, the Hebrew worldview and the poetic Old Testament. Chapter five is the story of Ruth seen as a drama that illustrates history with a divine goal, not merely cycles. Chapter six deals with the theology of place exemplified through the Hebrew worldview and our evangelical tendency to have a theology of persons and programs without dealing with the context in which it functions. In Chapter seven we see poetry that conveys ageless truth that speaks to modern urban contexts.

In Chapter eight through eleven we learn from the prophets and the exile. In chapter eight we glean lessons from Isaiah about viewing the city as an interconnected whole with bloodlines that go back to other places. Chapter nine shows us Jeremiah’s letters to those in exile and holds Daniel up as the epitome of one who blessed his context while in exile. Chapter ten views the city as a family system connected to its suburbs and surrounding towns. In chapter eleven Obadiah contrasts Jerusalem and Petra. Jonah shows the danger of wrapping the gospel in a nationalistic flag and Nahum shows us how revival without discipleship is dangerous. Chapter twelve shows us centripetal evangelism in Chronicles. Chapter thirteen deals with the books of Esther, Nehemiah and Ezra and how each was used of God to deal with a plan to exterminate the Jews and then rebuild the Jerusalem and its temple. Chapter fourteen is the story of the Diaspora Jews, their Greek cultural influence and how that prepared the future Church to be multicultural.

Chapters fifteen through twenty five expound New Testament lessons about urban ministry. Chapter fifteen gives us a Jesus with bloodlines from the pagan world who shed that blood for the world. Chapter sixteen shows us Jesus’ urban ministry and how he trained his disciples to be multi-environmental ministers. Chapter seventeen is a tour through Acts 1-12, how the Church became multi-ethnic, multi-racial and multi-lingual. In chapter eighteen we learn how to balance truth with love through the story of Paul, Barnabas and John Mark. Chapter nineteen is Paul’s contextualization tour as he adapts to different urban contexts. Chapter twenty shows us you only get the answers to the questions you ask. If we ask Philippian type questions we get evangelical ministry, if we ask Colossian type questions we get ministry that challenge the structural issues of the city. Chapter twenty one shows us through the story of Philemon how the gospel leads to social change as it takes root. Chapter twenty two shows how the book of Hebrews still allows us to be a people with an ethnic identity. Chapter twenty three tells the story of Romans 13 and Revelation 13; when to obey the civil authorities and when to practice civil disobedience. Chapter twenty four contrasts the destruction of Rome i.e. Babylon and the unfolding of the New Jerusalem, which gives us hope in an urban context. Chapter twenty-five is a tour through lessons we can glean from Church history. In Chapter twenty six Bakke shows a model adapted from John Wesley which helps him contextualize his urban theology. His model has four foundations: the Bible, history, the Church and the city context itself; all mediated by the common factor of his own experience.

This is a book with strategic urban lessons in each chapter. I would like to reflect on just one which comes from chapter fourteen. The simple church ministry I am working with is developing networks of simple churches in Iberian cities. All of these cities have migrant streams; particularly from North Africa and Latin America. God is already opening up ministry in these streams, particularly the Latin American stream. How do we contextualize Latin American, North African Spanish and Portuguese house churches? How do we minister to the social needs of these groups in a context of social disparity? How do we express love and fellowship between the relatively affluent Spanish and Portuguese and groups they traditionally despise? These are real issues confronting our ministry. We need to develop ways to build the right kind of DNA into the foundation so that we live our lives in biblically sound ways with people from the migrant streams.

Book Report A Primer on Postmodernism

2005-03-04T20:46:00.000+01:00

Book Report: A Primer on Postmodernism by Stanley J. Grenz

In Partial Fulfillment of:
Perspectives on Leadership/
Spiritual Resources for the Transformational Leader
LDR 701/ SFM 701

211 of 4000 to be read

Chapter seven answers the question “So what?” for Evangelical practitioners. He encourages us to stand our ground on our validity of the concept of truth, but asks us to consider that we have common ground with the postmodern rejection of the enlightened understanding of the limits of knowledge. He also deals with how postmodernism rightly challenges our individualistic, dualistic and rationalistic understanding of the gospel.

Missional Church Book Report

2005-03-04T20:34:00.000+01:00

Reading Report

LDR 701/SFM 701 The Transformational Leader
Date of course:
January 10-21, 2005
Student
Ross Rohde
Book
Guder, Darrell L. Missional Church. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI, 2000 Read 288 of 288 pages

I. What is the main idea or thesis of the author?
The Church in North America has strayed from its biblical roots and theology and finds itself in crisis. It finds itself dealing with this crisis by trying new methods and techniques. This will not suffice because the focus of the Church is off base. The North American Church’s structures, theology, strategies and traditions are based by the legacy of Christendom. However, the society no longer considers itself Christian and does not look to the Church to take leadership in society and the control of moral values, we have been marginalized.
Guder is arguing that we need to get back to our missional center instead of our former cultural center. The church needs to understand itself as sent ones, as having a mission. This mission is not of our making, we are sent by God to accomplish His Kingdom purposes. Therefore our theological focus and the focus of our praxis is the Missio Dei, the mission of God. If we do not return to what the Church was designed to be, we will become increasingly irrelevant in the post-Christian society in which we find ourselves.

II. What is my interpretation of the author’s thesis?
I find myself strongly agreeing with Guder that we are longing to return to our privileged status in Christendom rather than realizing our new role in society and functioning from where we actually are. This marginalization is actually healthy for the Church. It can become an advantage to us if we use this marginalization to refocus us on who and what we were designed to be. Further, it should draw us back to the triune God as our source of power rather than our social standing within society. The Church was designed to be at the margins, our former position at the center is the result of history, not a birthright. We function better at the margins.
I find Guder’s historical analysis helpful. This is not merely a theological problem; it is a historical, strategic and spiritual one. The fact that we had such a central place in Western society for so long harmed the Church; for example, how we handle leadership viewing clergy as a separate, privileged, sacred class. This has caused us to tend to rely on ourselves rather than God.
The Evangelical Churches negative response to postmodernism is not merely based on the fact that we have learned to function within the Enlightenment and feel comfortable there; it also reflects a desire to go back to our position of honor within Christendom; a position that our society is no longer offering to us.
Although Guder’s suggestions offer a radical departure from the status quo, there are times that he still seems stuck in it. He shows how denominations and denominational thinking are a result of history, struggles to think outside of that paradigm. He realizes that seminaries are a historical add-ons based on Enlightenment thinking, but doesn’t seem to be able to step away from the model. As radical as Guder is, I think the solutions may be more radical that he can imagine.

III. What would a serious application of this book look like?
Guder wants us to focus our theology, our structures and our strategies on the Missio Dei. Everything we do and are is based on our “sentness” into the world by God. This would be a radical shift, because significant historical encrustations have attached themselves to the Church in the last twenty centuries. This would mean stepping away from the clergy/laity distinction, for example. It would mean going to multiple contextual models of church structure and practice. It would mean reassessing theology and missiology. In fact, theology would be missiologically focused. These would be radical steps; however they are warranted. The transition will be painful, and in fact it will probably come from the margins of the establish church, not from its traditional center. The transition is too radical and disruptive for most mainstream churches. Reformation has always come from the margins, so we should not be surprised by this.
As a proponent of house church, I find Guder’s suggestions much less painful. In fact, I find them refreshing. Since house churches are already at the margins and are a fresh movement of the Spirit for postmodern times, they are in a unique position to develop missional structures and values. Since they are going back to an ancient model of Christianity, which also happens to be strategic in postmodern times, they are not encumbered by the historical incrustations and expectations of Christendom.
House churches can be and often are small, lean and intensely spiritual. They have a structure that is easily reproduced at every level. This allows them to be focused missionally. Further, they have fewer cultural boundaries with the postmodern world which tends to be anti-institutional, anti-hierarchical and longs for intimate community. All of this allows for an opportunity to build missional theology, structures and praxis into the genetic code of house church movements.

Ministry Project Topic Statement

2005-03-04T16:52:00.000+01:00

In the last fifty year there has been a growing movement of house church networks around the world. The modern day manifestation of this started in China just after the communist take over of that country, but has now expanded to many countries and is found in every inhabited continent of the world. Although these house church networks have often sprung up independently of one another, there are significant common characteristics. These characteristics are quite distinct from the congregational churches which have become the norm since the Constantinian reorganization of the fourth century. What are these commonalities? How wide spread are they? How do house churches contextualize themselves? How do they deal with the problems that are common to all churches such as evangelism, discipleship and training? How similar are they to the fist century churches we read about in the book of Acts and the Epistles? Do they make contextual sense in the emerging postmodern world?

It appears that the Holy Spirit is doing something new in His world. Actually it is the revival of something that is quite old. What is happening today is quite similar to the first century church. The basic question that should be answered is what is the Holy Spirit doing around the world in house church movements? Current house church movements in various world wide contexts would need to be researched to answer this question. Specifically the research would focus on commonalities and contextual distinctives in the specific following areas: leadership patterns, leadership development, evangelism, discipleship, supernaturalism, and the use of and understanding of the scriptures. Further, the role of women in leadership would be investigated in the section on leadership patterns.

For each of the above mentioned areas an independent study class will be developed to focus on the current literature and teaching on these various areas. The reading and writing for these classes will be used to focus what needs to be specifically researched in each area. This will be the basis of the questionnaire that will be used in interviews with house church leaders in various countries around the world. These house church networks will be visited and hopefully face to face personal relationships with these leaders will be developed so that the research questions will not be an abstraction but will be discussed in context and through a building trust relationship. Further, if personal relationship with these leaders is developed it allows for ongoing research to be carried out. It is expected that the research questions will need to be refined as the investigation unfolds.

It should be noted that the author has been involved from the very beginning of a small but growing house church network in Spain which began with a conference in October of 2002. There are three small networks of house churches in the Madrid area, Santiago de Compostela and in Alicante. Further, there is relational connection with missionaries working to start a network in Portugal and with two small networks in Santander and Bilbao, Spain. It is hoped that this research and writing will enhance this ongoing ministry as well as inform other house church movements around the world.

A preliminary working bibliography would include the following books:

1. Berger, Peter L., ed. The Desecularization of the World, Resurgent Religion and World Politics. Grand Rapids, MI: Willliam B . Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999.

2. Banks, Robert, and Banks, Julia. The Church Comes Home. Peabody, MA: 1998.

3. Clinton, Robert J. The Making of a Leader. Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress, 1988.

4. Crabb, Larry, The Safest Place on Earth. Nashville, TN: Word Publishing, 1999.

5. Dale, Tony, and Dale, Felicity, Simply Church. Austin, TX: Karis Publishing, Inc., 2002.

6. Deere, Jack, Surprised by the Voice of God. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996.

7. Hattaway, Paul, and Yun, Brother, The Heavenly Man. Grand Rapids, MI: Monarch Books, 2002.

8. Lund, Robert. The Way Church Ought to Be, Volume 1: Ninety-five Propositions for a Return to Radical Christianity. Albany,OR: Performance Press, 2001.

9. Murphy, Ed, The Handbook for Spiritual Warefare. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1992.

10. Simson, Wolfgang. Houses That Change the World. Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster Publishing. 1998.

11. Sweet, Leonard, Aqua Church, Loveland, CO: Group, 1999.