Why do we believe…we should run the Church like any other secular organization? (Conclusion: Because of syncretism with Western Culture)

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

Leslie Newbigin was a British missionary who lived in India for forty years. When he arrived in India he saw with clarity the insights and idols of the Eastern Indian culture.  While Indian Christians were more susceptible to the subtle pull of “the way things always were” everything was so foreign to Newbigin that clearly saw how certain things, like the immolation of widows or worshiping the gods in Hinduism, was incompatible for with the Christian faith.  However, as he lived there for four decades, Newbigin also saw some of the insights of the Indian culture that were more in-line with the Gospel and eventually he became more Eastern in his thinking and being. Then something incredible happened.

He retired.

Upon returning home to Britain he came and saw Western Christianity through Eastern eyes.  He saw clearly for the first time idols within Western culture that previously he had simply swallowed as “the way things always were” and mistakenly assumed they were compatible with the Gospel…when they were not.

I have really been formed by Newbigins understanding of the relationship between the Gospel and culture. Newbigin believed the Gospel always exists within a culture.  The Gospel is transmitted by people and communities which inevitably are influenced and shaped by their culture. This was true for the cultures that transmitted the Bible (the Hebrew/Ancient Near Eastern cultures and later the Greaco-Roman culture) as it has been for subsequent generations of Christians (From Germanic tribes that were converted to Egyptian Coptic Christian, etc.).

For Christians, the Gospel should always be positively critiquing that culture from within.  The Gospel acts as a lens through which we the insights and the idols of any given culture.  The Gospel is how we know where a culture “gets it right” and where a culture “get it wrong.”  Where this happens, the Church can affirm from the scriptures where a culture get’s something inherent to God or how He has established church and at the same time be a powerful prophetic voice calling out the problematic beliefs of a culture, inviting change and providing the insights and truth offered by the Gospel.

For example, in Western culture our belief in reason and scientific study has led to many breakthroughs in science and modern medicine.  This is a good thing.  Our God is a God of order and constancy.  The world reflects this and the periodic table doesn’t change randomly.  As such, God’s creation is knowable and we can reliably interact with it.  It is this constancy that makes it possible to create medicine to cure diseases or plan more bountiful food harvests to feed a hungry world.  However, in our individualistic nature we can lose sight of how God exists forever in community and created us to exist in community. The American ideal, the myth of the ruggedly independent  individualist, is not compatible with our call to be the Body of Christ. Christians are to be deeply interconnected with one another, not singular superheroes for Christ. This idol in American culture, this value gone awry, has led to a break down of communities, family, and led to feelings of isolation and despair.  To use a real life example, one of the main draws of gangs is that they offer a place to belong and something bigger for a person to be connected to, especially to rootless youth, often second generation immigrants.  The fact that people are willing to risk death and imprisonment for community and a place to belong speaks to how powerful the need for others really is, despite Western ideals concerning individualism.  The Church can provide the powerful truth in affirming this need for community and, just as importantly, work to provide this community.

This, Newbigin believes, is how it should be: Christians understand the Gospel and, with this at their starting point, seek to understand what is good and bad from their culture and act, speak and live in their culture in a new way.

However, there are two other situations that exist more commonly in regards to the relationship between the Gospel and the Culture.  First, the culture can be left unexamined by the Gospel. Second, and far more insidiously, the Gospel, instead of critiquing a culture, can bet contorted or misused to affirm the values of culture, including its idols, as “biblical.”

The first option I think is the most common, especially people born into a culture that already has dealings with Christianity.  It is especially dangerous to people from such a cultuer that are raised in a Christian home.  There is a Chinese proverb that says, “Don’t ask a fish about water.” The truth is simple but profound; whe we grow up with something, we commonly leave it unexamined and actually know very little abou it. 

For many Western Christians this means we do not understand our culture and mistakenly believe the Gospel, as it exists in Western culture, is the Gospel. I know I did. While sincere in our faith and desire to honor God, we never stop to examine the dominant culture to the detriment of our faith and witness in this world.  We have confused the teachings of Western culture with the teachings of the Gospel. We have confused what it means to be a Westerner with what it means to be a Christian. Lacking the discernment necessary to distinguish between the two, we  simply go along with teachers, pastors, and writers who encourage this confusion and affirm Western values uncritically through a questionable use of scriptures.

Where this leaves many Western Christians is in a state of syncretism – that is the belief in two religions, or aspects of two relgions, at the same time.  In one hand we hold Western values, many shaped by Secular Humanism, and in the other hand we hold the Gospel.  We have the Bible and the Constitution.  Instead of giving our first alliegance to the Gospel, identifying the tension between the two and acting accordingly, we leave Western values unexamined or worse, claim that Western values are the values presented in the Gospel, which is not always the case.

This was for me put in high relief as two sisters of mine, Janelle Bobbitt and Melissa Duron began questioning this syncretism.  When they began questioning values from culture and asking questions like, “Is it consistent to to teach that euthansia and abortion are wrong (because its against God’s Law), but killing in war and in captial punishment is right (because government says so)?” they were treated by fellow Christians as if they were losing their faith.  Other assumed that they, by questioning values from culture that may or may not line up with the Gospel, were questioning the Gospel itself.  

Either making this situation worse, or as a result of this confusion, I fear the Gospel in the West has been pared down to things only concerning salvation and ones private morality. The Gospel stops at salvation, sin, personal holiness and final destination. The rest of the Bible never makes an appearance.  We are told about how we are freed from the penalty of our sins and made new creations by believing in the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus Christ but never told about what Jesus taught for three years.  Many of the teachings of Christ are in direct contradiction to Western values, but this tension goes unnoticed and Jesus goes disobeyed by sincere Christians because we have promoted some of these Western values as biblical ones.  (A funny, but not-too-funny-when-you-think-about-it, fake ad campaign from Mad TV pointed this out.)

Far from being a clear representation of orthodox Christianity we practice and believe things that are inconsistent with the Gospel and have absolutely no qualms about doing so. Instead of critiquing culture, the Gospel has been made to mirror the culture.  Instead of being conformed no longer to the pattern of this world, we have selected read scriptures to suggest that the pattern of this world is the Gospel.

I believe it is this syncretism that has led to the sitaution where the local Church is run like just about any other secular organizaiton.  It is because we have accepted Western values about education, leadership, organization, money, and consumerism that we run the local church  like a religious industry: We hire religious experts, educated and trained for competency at graduate schools, to help develop and run programs.  These programs deliver the “products” that attract consumers who usually are drawn to the best product they can find in town.  (Examples of the products I’m talking about here are “good fellowship,” “good teaching,” “good worship,” “good youth programs,” etc.)  Church membership then is usually dictated directly by the ability of any local congregation to follow the latest trends and fads of the culture the Christian sub-culture which seems pertually two two steps behind.  I am here painting an extreme picture to make my point clear but I think this sitaution is far more pervasive and heinous than anyone is really willing to admit.

This is the iChurch.  This is the church in the West.

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Why do we believe…we should run the Church like any other secular organization? (Finances)

Posted on February 14, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

This post was part of this series but was also in response to a question from my friend Mike Lang who writes:

Hey Kevin, Bonnie just showed me your blog. You are a good writer and you are honest. I will be reading this “series” you are starting on… and I got an idea for you to look into. I am just finishing up a little certificate program on Not-for-Profit (Charity) Management and it has me wondering lately, do we “fund raise” and run our churches like non-profit businesses? The two seem eerily similar to me after taking these courses and it has me a little concerned…

Anyway, I’d like to hear a little more in depth what the Bible has to say about how a church should be run (financially… but what ever you think is relevant) and I thought it might be interesting for you to write about. Plus you are smarter then me so I think I’ll let you do all hard work… 🙂 Looking forward to reading some of your stuff,

Mikey Lang

Mikey, thanks for the kind words and the encouragement.

I think you really hit the nail on the head.  In my experience most Churches approach finances like a non-profit.  The Church does something that requires money and then raises this money through a tithe. This sounds very similar to a non-profit that doe something, which costs money, and then makes that money through donations.  While this does not inherently raise cause for alarm I think we should think a lot more about our relationship to money and how finances work in the Church.

In my experience the Church makes decisions about how to “do” Sunday services and be a Church.  This involves choices about lighting, nurseries, staffing, electricity, etc. etc.  These choices dictate the Churches costs.  These costs are then put on the congregants with most churches expecting 10% of the income of their congregants.  There are some Churches that incur little to no costs and there are some Churches whose annual electricity bill is more than most pastors make in a year.

To be clear on what I am saying all Churches make decisions that dictate how much money they must make which they usually cover from “taxing” their congregants 10%.

But what does the Bible have to say about this?

From a broad perspective, in my reading of the scriptures the Bible says actually very little on how a Church “should” be run.  And maybe that’s the point.  We are the Body of Christ who are to meet regularly to encourage one another in the faith, practice the sacraments (communion, baptism, etc.), bear witness to Christ in this world and devote ourselves to the teaching of Jesus and the apostles.  These are incredibly broad brush strokes where there is great freedom.  For example, is there anywhere in scripture that suggests Churches should meet together on Sundays or only on Sundays?  Is there a size limit to what we can call a local congregation? What language should the mass/service be in?  Wait, why do we even have an official mass/service anyway? Can we use electric instruments? Is baptism by full-immersion or sprinkling?  Do we need a nursery? How often should we take communion?  Weekly?  Bi-weekly?  Bi-annually?

These are all good questions to ask and historically the Church has provided different answers to these questions from their own traditions. I think God left the guidelines for the “how-to’s” of Church intentionally broad to allow for many Christians throughout time, from vastly different cultures, to be a Body of Christ for Him in their context that was both faithful and relevant.  There is freedom in the nuances of many things the Church does so that the Church can represent Christ in a variety of contexts. To use a question about worship to illustrate my point… If a Church uses Christian hip-hop sung in English over a bumping sound system in their worship is this more or less valid than hymns sung in Chinese in the basement of a house in persecuted China?

If God had locked down the particulars of the Body of Christ more, it would have inevitably caused problems. Can you imagine the persecuted Church in China being told that the only worship God accepted was Gospel hip-hop, sung in English, through a sound system? Sadly, this is what many Churches have done.  Many claim their model for dealing with one aspect of Church life is the one true “biblical” way and in doing so set up a new Law that the New Testament does not support and is incredibly problematic.

I fear that anything I have to say on this issue might be doing just that.  However, I believe that the Bible is not silent on money or how the Church should approach finances.  A powerful aspect of the early Church was that it practiced a radical approach to money and finances…

The Fellowship of the Believers

42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

(Acts 2:42-47)

I think there is a very serious argument from scriptures that there is one biblical way to approach finances in the Church and it is to have our possession in common and take care of each others needs equally.  How many Churches today come in any way close to resembling this?  The vast majority of Churches, especially Churches in the West, have rejected this Biblical precedent entirely.

We can, and do, produce a variety of excuses for why we do not approach finances like this in the Church today. We say such a precedent was for “back then” and not for today.  We suggest that our money is just that…our money, that we earned through our work, and is ours to do as we wish.  We say it would not work practically today.

This scripture was not for “back then” as there is no caveat in the Bible that suggest such a thing.  Tertullian writes that “we have everything in common but our wives…” apparently he and his fellow Christians still took this seriously and he was not a member of the Acts Church.  Far more importantly is the attitude towards money we should have as Christians.  Our money is not our money.  Luther writes centuries later scolding Swabian peasants for thinking that their money was their money, to do as they wish.  The Bible teaches that the whole world (including our finances) belong to God.  Our jobs, our ability to work said jobs, the educational opportunities needed to get to that job, were all given by God.  It’s all His.  God does not invite you to give 10% of you salary to Him – everything you have is God’s and it is yours to steward, not yours to do with it whatever you wish.  While it might not be practical today, do we honestly think it was practical for the early Church?  Do we think they hated money or did not need it like we do?  Do we think that practicality should stop us?

The bottom line is that such a financial approach is offensive and inconcievable to many Christians because we are far more loyal to the values taught to us by Western Capitalism.  We have been taught we deserve the money we make and it is our money.  We are also taught that people earn their money from their hard work.  If a doctor and a janitor both give their salaries to the Church and are taken care of equally this violates our notion that the doctor deserves more money, more comfort, and more material happiness than the janitor because of his status in society.

I admit fully that this is a difficult teaching for me to follow as well.  I live in an intentional community where we try to do four meals a week together where we all pool our money and have meals in common.  Even in this small thing I can find fault, ways to complain, and am concerned that my $3.50 per meal is really getting my money’s worth.  I am way more conformed to the pattern of this world than I would like to admit.

Ultimately, such an approach is not practical because it is so counter-cultural but this does not mean it is impossible or we shouldn’t do it.  When we attempt it, beautiful things happen. One Church provided for the sudden medical expenses of their pastor.  After he was through his medical fiasco he suggested, “If we can do it for me, we can do it for everyone.” The church has subsequently banded together to provide for the medical costs of its own members.  Some Churches have taken on the task of getting its members out of debt and teaching financial stewardship.  The debt of some members are being taken care of by the money from other members.

The status quo is to provide a service experience to the congregants, and then charge the congregants 10% of their salaries for this service.  The biblical precedent involves no Sunday service but does involve everyone’s needs being taken care of.  It seems we are interested in financially supporting the wrong thing…

The Fellowship of the Believers

42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

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The Devil that you know… – Denial Part 2

Posted on February 12, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

“…and the truth will set you free.’” – Jesus in John 8:32

November 2008 – I am sitting in a circle of chairs with other men at my home church. It is the third time I’ve attended this group and after listening to their stories and remaining silent for the first two weeks I for the first time introduce myself honestly. “Hi, my name is Kevin and I’m a sex addict”. They respond with a “Hi Kevin” in affirmation. I share only half of what I had planned, as if God wants to make sure I come back to share the other half. Instead of condemnation, shock, or disgust I receive nods of understanding, soft smiles and affirmation. I have crossed over from feeling “terminally unique” to joining a community of Christians who support one another in their recovery from the very same thing. This is the first time I’ve confessed this sin to anyone since I was thirteen. I am twenty-four.

March 2009 – I am parked at the ministry house I have been living in for several months. I have already spent many minutes trying my best to craft a set of lies to avoid expressing my true feelings about a situation (lest I offend someone) and make the situation appear so that I hadn’t failed but things just hadn’t worked out (lest I let someone down). In the midst of my attempts to devise a good lie the words of Jesus come to me from the Holy Spirit like a thunder bolt. “…and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” I realize that this is not an isolated incident by any means. I have often spent hours crafting lies to avoid offending anyone or letting anyone down. I pick up my phone, call the people I was planning on lying to, and tell them the truth. In this situation everything actually works out for me. There are no negative repercussions, only positive consequences from my truth-telling. I realize this won’t always be the case, but I know I have to continue to be honest to deal with reality.

In my previous post I explained how my surroundings had encouraged me to stay in denial.  This however did not excuse why I choose to stay in denial.  There are two reasons why I stayed in denial despite many opportunities to step out of denial.

First, I had no hope.  Beneath my duplicity I had a nagging belief that this was all a show, that I was being dishonest and in reality I was truly hurting.  I could have at any time chosen to deal with those feelings and beliefs alone or after finding a safe person.  But I didn’t.  I didn’t because I knew if I was honest about my life I would have to acknowledge that I was broken and hurting and at the time I had no hope that anything could fix me.  In my mind honesty would not be the first steps towards healing but the first and only step to despair.  It was simply a risk not worth taking.   The Devil that I knew (denial – and its familiar consequences) was less dreaded to me than the Devil that I didn’t know (honesty – and its unfamiliar consequences), so I chose the Devil that I knew.  In recovery lingo, the pain of change was greater than the pain of staying the same, so I chose to stay the same.

Secondly, over the years I have lied countless times to cover up my failures and this created an image I felt comelled to maintain…with more lies.  I lied to avoid letting others down and keep my performances for affection as pristine as possible.  The lies crafted an image that was impossible to maintain without more lies.  The image that I created was that of a golden child who excels at everyone, is loved by all, and never lets anyone down. Striving to maintain this image was exhausting to say the least; it was impossible to do and always required more lying. I doubt many really saw me this way or had these expectations for me but I honeslty believed if I did not keep performing I would be rejected. This image I had crafted became my slave master, one that never relented, never let up, and was never satisfied.

When I actually started being honest about myself, owed entirely to the work of the Holy Spirit and safety of the recovery community of my home church, I was relieved to find that the sky didn’t fall, the universe didn’t collapse, and I was okay.  As I continued to hear stories from the recovery community I slowly began to believe that God might be both powerful enough to heal me and gracious enough to restore and redeem me.  When I introduced myself in front of 150 of my peers at our young adults service the way I do in a recovery setting. “Hi, my name is Kevin and I am celebrating my recovery from sexual addiction, co-dependency, and unbelief” I broke down the image I had so carefully crafted over the years. It was truly one of the most freeing experiences of my life.  Once again, the Word of God did not return void, and as I started to step into honesty I started to step out of the captivity of denial. 

I wrote this journal several months ago and have only continued to become more transparent and honest with both myself and with others.  One of the core beliefs of sexual addiction is that “if people get to know me, they will reject me.” This belief, the belief that my behavior controls the rejection or approval others extend towards me, and the belief that the approval or rejection of others determines who I really am have historically kept me trapped in lies and dishonesty. I never performed enough as it was, so I certainly had to lie about my failures and lie about my true desires lest I offend anyone. 

That day parked in front of the 511 ministry house was a watershed moment for me.  It was like God flipped a switch and I really feel He dealt with one of my character defects in a powerful and instantaneous way in that moment.  While I still am tempted to lie, or speak half-truths, the compulsive secrecy and lies is just gone.  I don’t think I could even go back to that if I tried.  It’s just not in me any more.  Even if I did try my recovery groups would call me on it.

As I have been honest I have discovered some wonderful freeing truths.

Some people will reject me once they get to know me.  This is okay.  Some people in this world just are not going to be up for being in relationship with me and this does not dictate my value as a person. Such people reject me for their own reasons, and quite frankly I would rather have someone reject me for who I am than like me for something I am not as this would just require me to consistently pretend to be someone else around them.

Far more common than this reaction, most people respond well to my transparency and honesty and do not reject me based on my past sins or current struggles as a human being. In fact, I think many of my new friends would suggest that my authenticity is what attracted them to me as a person and as a friend in the first place.  The wider world is far for forgiving and gracious than my family of origin and I am very slowly learning it is not as unsafe as my homelife.

Furthermore, my honesty and transparency about my past has freed other to talk honestly and openly about their stories as well.  Some have just voiced issues they would not otherwise have brought up.  Others, sparked by something I have shared, have gotten into recovery or counseling and are getting a lot of healing and freedom.

 The truth has to truly set me free and this freedom motivates me to be all the more candid and honest in life and in my writings. 

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Why do we believe…women cannot lead in the Church? (Anecdotes and insights from my own life)

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

I promised I should explain my own journey regarding my beliefs concerning women in ministry in a little more narrative format, so here it is:

Growing up I did not really think much about women in ministry.  I grew up in a home where both of my parents worked, cleaned and cooked and no one really complained or talked about how such decisions were made.  The culture of my home church upholds a complementarian view of gender relations but there are obviously some exceptions given the large nature of my home church.  I for the most part went along with it and did not think to much about women in ministry until around the time I was getting ready to go to college.

When in Romania I heard of a horrible situation where men were not stepping up to lead in the Church so women we stepping up to lead to fulfill the need.  The problem was that the denomination and many of the older members of the Church did not believe that women were supposed to be in leadership.  The women were in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.  If they led they were criticized, yet if they did not lead, no one would.  At the time I felt that this was ultimately a sign of the failing of men to step up into leadership, and their failing had put women between a rock and a hard place.  The blame was on the men in the congregation…not the belief that women shouldn’t be in ministry.

Another pivotal moment came at TWU, a Christian University where the vast majority of the students were female.  One night, on the way to Street Evangelism, one of my sisters was obviously troubled.  When I probed I found out it was because she felt called to be a children’s pastor, however in a recent class the professor had brought up the “biblical arguments” against female leadership in the Church. The professor did not come down on any one side of the issue, probably to challenge the people in the class to think for themselves, and my sister was shaken.  She feared she either might actually be forbidden from doing what she felt called to do and was passionate about or might not find a church that would let her be a pastor.  I reassured her that many churches are usually okay with having women at the head of children’s ministries, but I also advised her with something that has stuck with me. I rather distinctly remember saying: “I do not think a church should stand in the way of clear calling and clear gifting.  If your church bars you from leadership where you are called and gifted because you are a woman, find another church.” This has stuck with me.

After this encounter I really began examining what I believed about women in ministry for the first time, but it was still a new notion to me.  I remember relating to my friend Matt Pfiffner around that time that I would feel uncomfortable having a female senior pastor.  While I was not against it on any theological grounds, I had never been in a church with female pastors preaching from up front or even on the elder board.

After I finished my degree in Biblical Studies and thought a lot about how we approach and apply the Bible today and especially as I pursued ministry in Modesto right before coming to Pasadena things continued to unravel.  In my time in Modesto I had many more experiences of women in ministry and the Church’s inconsistent policy towards women in ministry and women in leadership.  I saw a lot of women do a lot of hard work for the Kingdom of God as leaders and in ministry. For example…

Most of our leaders at our young adult ministry, Catalyst, were female.  As a local service coordinator I found getting young adults to serve others was like pulling teeth, except for the ever humble and ever modest Lyz Enlow.  My most faithful intercessor was Gayleen Terry, a pastor at First Baptist Church.  Bethany Croney was irreplaceable as a co-worker and as someone who shared the vision of what the 511 and 512 ministry houses could be. Joanne Nishiguchi led worship at the Tapestry youth ministry I was involved in while  Janelle Beckman administrated and organized the whole deal.  Janelle Bobbitt passionately pursued a call to be a witness to Muslims and literally traveled across the world to pursue God’s call. Angela led the weekly youth outreach at the Modesto Gospel Mission.  Various sisters and aunties in the faith (whose names I will not reveal for confidentiality reason) helped lead the Celebrate Recovery ministry that is banging on all cylinders at BVG.  Then there was Celebration Center and Pastor Susan Bagely, probably the starkest example of what I am talking about.

Celebration Center is a church near the Modesto Gospel Mission, in the Airport District in Modesto. Like most airport areas, this is the poorest neighborhood in my hometown.  It does not even have a supermarket in it to buy fresh groceries.  Under the leadership of Pastor Susan Bagely (and her husband Craig) the church grew from fifteen people to three hundred and has clear and practical discipleship program that takes four years to go through.  You know, the sort of program my huge mega church is trying to figure out for male leaders. I was blessed to visit this church when my friends  Angela and Leo Hitchcock graduated from this very discipleship program and the church was full of “my kind of people,” all celebrating the growth and achievements of their own members.  It was just a great day  for the church family and you could feel it in the room.  Yet how did this happen?  All under the leadership of a female senior pastor…

These are just a few examples from my own brief experience over roughly two years of ministry in the Church.  Regardless of what is believed, said, or preached, I saw a lot of hard-working women answer a call to ministry and do amazing things.  I met women (and men) who “got it” like Bethany Croney did, and were willing to live their lives conformed to the Gospel.  At the same time I saw many men, who were supposedly setting the example through their “leadership,” make decisions based around pursuing the American dream of comfort and stability…while going to church on Sunday.

Furthermore, during this time I continued to see glaring inconsistencies when women are barred from leadership. It struck me that at Tapestry we were trying to Discover, Develop and Maximize the gifts and calling in our youth, unless of course the youths happened to be female and called to full-time ministry.  This we disallowed.  At YFC there were people on staff who did not agree with women in senior pastoral leadership but at the same time worked side-by-side with them in the trenches of youth ministry. Our home church sends out many female missionaries, but has no female pastors or elders.  What gives?

I really think the ban on women in ministry has a lot more to do with culturally defined gender roles than anything biblical.  One of my friends who went to our senior leadership looking for training in ministry was very dismissively told to not be so concerned about getting training because soon she would be marrying her boyfriend (now her ex) and her husband and family would be her ministry.

Seriously?  This is what we tell people who feel called to ministry?

After all is said and done my position is, and probably has been for some time, what I articulated to my friend in Canada.  Where clear calling is matched with clear gifting the Church should train and vet such persons for leadership in the Church, regardless of gender.  To do otherwise is not supportable by scripture nor is it practical in any way shape or form.

P.S. – One might be tempted to think that I believe women in ministry will be a silver bullet that solves the Church’s problems.  This is hardly the case. Just as I think God gifts and calls people to ministry irregardless of gender, I also think that some people, from both genders, want to be in ministry for all the wrong reasons and are going to hurt a lot of people.  I think there are some women who are gifted and will make great pastors and leaders in the Church.  I also think that there are women who are going to be horrible pastors and are entering ministry for the wrong reasons.  I once was shocked when friend of mine asked a female pastor who had entered a position of leadership recently, “So what’s it like being in authority over men.”  The female pastors response was a chilling, “I love it.”  I cannot really convey the dark satisfaction and delight this female pastor conveyed at having authority…specifically authority over men.  It honestly frightened me.  If this question was reversed and a male pastor was asked how it was to have authority over women, and the response was the same, I probably would have gotten a chill down my spine all the same.  It really sounded like this woman was out to get power over men, not shepherd and train up a congregation, filled with women and men, for the work of service.  Both men and women can get into ministry for the wrong reasons can hurt a lot of people, and certain people need to be removed from ministry or prevented from ever having leadership in the Church. I am just suggesting that barring women from ministry or certain types of ministry is not biblical and shouldn’t be done.

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Why do we believe…women cannot lead in the Church (or at least not at senior leadership levels)?

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

Growing up I have seen and heard a wide variety of rules and beliefs concerning women in church leadership. Some of these rules are unspoken while others are very clearly defined and codified. One one extreme there are some Churches that affirm and ordain women for ministry at all levels of Church service, including senior pastor positions.  For simplicity’s sake I’ll refer to this stance as the Libertarian stance. On the other end of the extremes are churches that ban women from any kind of leadership in the Church. This I’ll refer to as teh Hierarchical position.  My focus in this post is on the position I have encountered the most and position I find the most inconsistent.  This position is the gray area between the two extremes where women are allowed to lead in a variety of roles with a few notaable exceptions, usually the most senior levels of leadership.  This complementarian position is articulated well in Mark Driscoll’s book Vintage Church (Discoll 63-80). Driscoll provides support for this position that I have found common to many who adhere to this view including this four fold assertion:

1. Men and women are created equal but different

2. That the OT priesthood was all male

3. That Jesus had twelve male disciples and excluded women from senior leadership positions

4. That Paul forbade women from having authority over a man in 1 Timothy 2 writing, “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.  I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet…”

While nothing like this is on paper in our governing documents, this complementarian approach to leadership is the unspoken standard at Big Valley Grace Community Church.  We have no female pastors (come to think of it, all of our pastors are Caucasians except for our Spanish pastor, but that’s another post altogether…) and no female elders but we do have many female “Directors” that direct several of our ministries, including our Women’s ministry, our Counseling ministry, our Elementary program, our Food Services program, and our Early Childhood programs.

While I went along with this during my formative years to lack of education, lack of reflection, and a lack of experience, I now think this position is internally inconsistent and unbiblical.

To respond to Driscoll’s points I would suggest this.

1. To suggest men and women are created equal but different is shockingly similar to arguments used by segregationists.  Men and women are different but both represent the image of God.  There are clear biological differences between the two sexes.  There are also culturally defined gender stereotypes regarding what men and women “should” be like. However, I do not see how either these biological or even culturally defined differences between men and women would or should preclude women from leadership or more specific to the complementarian stance certain types of leadership.  To be completely crude, does we honestly believe that the gifts required to effectively lead a local congregation are somehow imparted in the male genitalia or some more abstract “maleness” as defined by our culture that women do not have access to because of their gender?  Does “what it takes” to lead the church reside in the amount of testosterone one has in their body?  Much more importantly when the gifts of the Spirit (including the gifts of teaching, administration, discernment and knowledge…gifts very useful for church leaders and teachers) are promised to Christians I do not find anything in the scriptures that suggests certain gifts are for certain genders.  The Bible does not promise certain gifts to men and certain gifts to women, it just promises gifts to Christians. This would imply that at some point and time the gifts especially suited for church leadership will be given, by God, to both men and women. Does it make sense that God gifts certain women for leadership but then bars them from leadership in the Body of Christ, or that God gifts certain women for leadership in the Church but does not gift them enough to be full qualified for senior leadership?

2. The Old Testament religious system involved many things including a variety of sacrifices, laws and practices that are no longer applicable because Christ fulfilled the Law on our behalf and our righteousness is in Him, not in our obedience to the Law.  This arguement is basically an appeal to go back and make parts of the Law applicable while still claiming freedom from the Law under the blood of Jesus Christ. I love the Old Testament and we can understand so much about God, humanity, and this world from the whole scriptures which include the Old Testament and the Law, but I am so glad that I no longer live under the Law, the sacrificial system or the culture of the Ancient Near East. To suggest that certain specific aspects of the Old Testament, its Laws or specific practices of that ancient culture, are applicable today after the person and work of Jesus Christ is ridiculous and heretical.

3. It is inescapable that Jesus was male and that all of Twelve disciples were male.  However, Jesus had a history of bucking the patriarchal systemof His day and throughout the New Testament one can see the elevated role of women, even through the patriarchal lens of the culture within which the Old and New Testament were written.  Jesus spoke to women he should not have, Jesus performed miracles for women, women were the first to visit the resurrected tomb of Jesus Christ, etc.  Furthermore, Jesus certainly trained Twelve male disciples he also taught large groups of people, such as say the Sermon on the Mount. It would be ridiculous to suggest and impossible to support from the scriptures a belief that Jesus either shooed away all the women before teaching or that only men heard and learned from his public teaching.  Jesus did not have women in his Twelve disciples but he certainly taught women.  Furthermore, Jesus did not institute the various levels of leadership within the Church.  While he did promise to build his church upon the rock of St. Peter, Jesus did not institutionalize or draw up a constitution for how to run the Church, and Jesus certainly did not draft these formal documents including the exclusion of women from “senior levels of leadership.”

4. Overall, the interpretation of these verses brings up one of my greatest complaints about how we interpret the Bible and I need to write a minute on hermeneutics to continue explaining my point.  Often people, on both sides of this issue, lose sight of the forest for the trees.  In fighting vehemently for one a position we spend lots of energy and time debating minute details of the Greek or Hebrew stretching the bounds of what we can really say about language, culture, and authorship.  Theologians from the compelmentarian, libertarian and hierarchical camps fall into this trap to varying degrees.  F0r example, a debate currently rages about what “kephale” (head) really meant in Paul’s day and the authorship of certain letters in Paul are disputed.

First of all, what can be said about what certain words mean several centuries ago in a dead language is incredibly difficult.  Languages change over time and using Hebrew as an example a given word might have had different connotations throughout the Bible because it changed over the several centuries the Old Testament was being written in. To bank far reaching doctrines on highly disputable meanings of words that are not that common in the New Testament is a dangerous exercise.  Second of all, the authorship of scriptures is ultimately, for me, unimportant.  God has seen fit to preserve certain scriptures in our canon and I trust that the books that survived the persecutions and later the councils are there for a reason.  They are authoritative and we should seek to understand how God would apply them and the truths contained therein today not try to weasel out of them by inventive acts of scholarship in an effort to discount them because what they say offends our modern sensibilities or our traditional values.

I feel here I should be explicit on one point.  In a class at Fuller a professor said something that struck a chord with me.  It was something I was working my way to as a scholar but I had previously failed to articulate.  They said, “The Bible is sexist, irredeemably so.”  One cannot escape that the culture that transmitted much of our scriptures many Modern Western readers would see as a sexist culture.  This comes through at many points.  For example, there are sexual laws regarding men and not for women in the Old Testament; homosexuality is forbidden but lesbianism is not directly addressed.  This should not be surprising.  The Gospel has, and always will, exist within a culture.  This should also be freeing because we can understand certain scriptures as descriptive of the culture, not the content of the Gospel.  Not everything in the Bible is to be flatly understood as a prescriptive commandment for today. On the flip side, however, we cannot escape the sexism inherent in certain parts the Bible completely.  I fear that some theologians, in an effort to make the Bible fit our modern understanding of gender equality, have had to practiced poor scholarship or dismissed parts of the Bible that are offensive to them outright.  This is not good, and this is ultimately not necessary.

As such, I love the interpretive approach taken by Ray Bakke in Theology as Big as the City,a book on urban ministry, and Scott McKnight in The Blue Parakeet, a book on how we interpret and apply the Bible for today.  In addressing this issue both take a much more broader and holistic view of the scriptures.

Both authors point to the simple fact that in the Bible we see women in leadership, even in Paul’s writings. Bakke points out that Paul’s letter to Philippians highlights how apparently at least three women were in leadership (Lydia, Eudoia, Syntche) and there was no call for males to replace them as leaders nor any mention of silence, submission or coverings. (Bakke 155) McKnight explores how the actions of many women were recorded in the Old Testament despite its patriarchal context before also highlighting the mention and role of several women in the New Testament. McKnight brings out the work of Mary who “influenced her messianic son, her New Testament writing son James, and provided information to Luke as seed for stories that got his gospel off to a great start,” Junia a female apostle that Paul credits with being outstanding, (Romans 16:7) Aquila (Acts 18:2-3 and Pheobe (Rom 16:1-2). (McKnight 176-185)

Women acted in leadership in the Bible.  This creates a tension for those that suggest Paul’s ban on women in leadership is as authoritative for all of Christians throughout time. If one believes this, one must wrestle with the fact that both Paul and God were apparently totally fine with women in leadership  at numerous times in the history of the people of God.

On the other side of the debate, one cannot simply dodge these scriptures.  Paul wrote these words for some reason and we should not say, “Well women had been in leadership so that ends the debate.”  For me there is only one solution that can harmonize my training with the languages, my hermeneutic for interpreting and applying scripture, my experience of women in ministry, the scriptures that speak of a radical unity at the foot of the cross (where there is no Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female), the scriptures that promise the gifts of the Holy Spirit and offer no suggestion that certain gifts are male or certain gifts are female, etc. This solution is the belief that Paul’s words banning women from having authority over a man are a very specifically directed towards the Church in Ephesus to address a situation that was specific to that church at that time.  As such, this ban on women in authority over men, was not meant to be prescriptive for all Christians across the world throughout time.

Once I began investigating this option, I found a lot of satisfactory information backing up this belief.  Like most of Paul’s letters, 1 Timothy was written to address issues that had arisen in the local church.  Here, Paul is confronting very specific issues that most likely stem from the huge influence the Cult of Artemis had in Ephesus.  Understanding that Cult and the likely confrontations it had with orthodox Christian practice and belief make sense of Paul’s ban on women in ministry and other things that seem to be internally inconsistent with Paul or confusing, such as his statement that women “led” in the Fall whereas in 1 Corinthians the fall comes through Adam and the cryptic statement that women will be saved through child-bearing.  If people are really interested I can write more about this in a separate post.

While other passages are brought to bear on this issues, such as Paul’s remarks regarding “headship” or submission in Ephesians 5, again I think we miss the point.  Getting caught up in what “headship” means, and its implications for gender roles in the family and in the  we forget that literally a few sentences before making such remarks Paul exhorts all Christians (presumably both male and female) to, “21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” While Ephesians  many of these passages are to be understood more as descriptive of the cultural context the Bible was written from and written to and not prescriptive for all Christian throughout time.  For example, in Ephesians 6 Paul also encourages slaves to submit to their masters.  Do we then honestly believe slavery is and should be part of all Christian families?

At the end of the day I have seen no convincing argument from scripture that suggests women should be barred from Church leadership or certain types of leadership.  I think any such rules banning women from leadership is more indicative of how we interpret and apply the Bible (which is often inconsistent even with itself) and continued gender stereotypes in our Church.  It has not escaped me that the places women are allowed to lead at BVG, with the exception of possibly the counseling ministry, are stereotypical roles for women in complementarian households. They can’t teach men, but we will let them cook, take care of other women, and take care of children.

That is really the end of my argument on this issue…but I did not arrive at these convictions over night.  And I should explain my own journey in a little more narrative format (for those of you who loves story) which I’ll do in my next post.


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Christian Dating: Online dating and www.plentyoffish.com, www.match.com

Posted on February 4, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

After one has addressed whatever personal work they can and need to before beginning to date most most of my peers probably need to address the size of their dating pool. Contrary to a lot of what I have been talk part of dating is a numbers game. This statement might offend the sensisbilities of some (sensibilities shaped by Romantic/Christian notions concerning how people “should” meet one another) but I think it is true.

If you meet the same eligible singles every week at Church, work, and school and fail to connect with them you are probably not going to connect the next week or the week after that.  In a situation where you are not meeting new eligble singles your dating pool has become stagnant. New arrivals to your dating people may happen by circumstance, such as during certain seasonal changes (like the school system rotating and new people coming to campus), or happy coincidence but for the most part you are not meeting new people.  In this perdicament you can either lower your standards to date someone you previously were not attracted to or try and figure out new ways to meet people.

In regards to these two options I do not think anyone should ever lower or change their standards.  There is a tension here.  Part of dating is in fact figuring out what you want from a significant other, so you might want to date people you might not normally think are “your type.”  However, at the end of the day I don’t think people should someone just because that person is practically available.  To steal a line from class this morning start with what you want and figure out how to attain it, don’t just start with what is practical and try and force what you want into it.  This inevitably will lead to efforts to change other people to suit your desires instead of finding out what your desires our and then finding a person that fits the bill.

Furthermore, I would not my future significant other to have tried to get with other men but, having failed to attract their attention, to “settle” for me nor would I want the woman that I end up with to feel that I settled for her because I was essentially too lazy to put effort into dating.  I think it far more prudent for most singles to to put some thought and effort into meeting new singles and find ways to increase the size of their dating pool.  The real question is how to do this.

There are a number of methods many Christians try.  I could join the singles ministry at my church, or another church, or join some singles activities at local recreation centers or invite my friends to set me up with people they think I would be compatible with, or accept more invitations to go out with groups of people I do not know.  All of these options have pros and cons but as previously mentioned I have begun to investigate online dating, doing both research into it and experiencing it for myself. I want to devote some blogs to my thoughts and experiences on this topic.

But first I should back up in space and time to a college class in Canada several years ago.  In a class on marriage and family online dating was one topic that was discussed.  It was a relatively knew phenomenon and we in the class seemed to hold it up with a mixed bag of stigma and curiosity.  The most interesting aspect I found was that the internet and the dating site can act in many ways like a chaperone used to a long time ago.  Back in the days of yore, a young suitor would “come calling” upon an available lady.  They would sit opposite one another, never touch, and engage in conversation.  At all times a chaperone would be present to make sure no hanky-panky ensued.  Apparently in the days of yore, the young men spat game like no other, so there was great risk of hanky-panky ensuing from a simple conversation. More to the point, young men would have to determine if they were really interested in a young lady from conversation alone. To win her heart over and against other suitors, the young man would have to do so through verbal communication because physical touch was prevented by the chaperone. I think one can see how evolutionarily speaking those with the ability to spit game won out on these romantic escapades more and passed on their skills to their progeny, so I guess it should not be so surprising that young men from the days of yore had very good “verbal intimacy/communciation skills.”

Online dating sites in many ways function like a chaperone in that they force the interaction to focus more on conversation than physicality.  While pictures are part of the process and physical attraction is still a component, interacting online emphasizes conversation . Conversation is center-stage, especially during the initial contacts as expressing oneself and being attracted to how the other person expresses themselves is key.  Only after establishing a rapport through written communication will there be presumably be phone calls, and eventually in-person meeting and dates.

The class was several years ago and since then the internet dating arena has blossomed.  It is increasingly less stygmatized but as a recent Facebook status udpate shows, it still draws a lot of debate and arguments concerning it from Christians.  I honestly do not see why.  Some sense it is the last call for the desperate.  While this might be the case for some, I think the use of online dating as a “last resort” has more to say about people’s presuppositions regarding dating than it actually being a mark of desperation in their character.  Some think of online dating as “artificial,” believing that dating and or getting to know someone should be more “organic.”  How “organic” is it to cruise churches for available singles?  My parents were set up on a blind date by my aunt and my uncle.  How “organic” was that?  Is their marriage invalid because of they met?  I think the continuing stigma of online dating comes from the fact that there are a lot of romantic movies out there and there are tons of anecdotes about how Christian couples have met in the natural course of their life through a more “organic” fashion.  We need to do away with these notions.  First, this is real life, not the Notebook (sorry ladies).  While I want romance for my life and to be part of my marriage I am living my life, there is no script and I am not Ryan Gossling.   Second, those anecdotes regarding organic meetings are great for the Christian couples who met and are married but I’m still single and the “organic” approach has not worked for me so far.  Should I really assume that something that isn’t working will magically work given another two, or five, or ten years?

With this conviction in mind and the desire to only give advice on something I had experienced I signed up for three sites and want to put my initial reaction to each before moving onto my next post.

I created another gmail account to use just for these online dating sites.  I really did not want to be spammed by people or by the companies involved in online dating and off I went.  I would encourage everyone to create an alternate email account if they try online dating.  It has also kept me from being distracted by content from the dating sites when I am trying to check my work/class email.

www.plentyoffish.com – This is the first site I signed up for as it is free.  I have a friend who has met up with several guys from this site so I knew I probably wasn’t going to get axe-murdered for registering or seeing whose out there.  The set up is pretty straightforward and you answer a handful of questions about yourself, plug in some of your likes and dislikes and you are ready to go.  I have to be honest, this felt like the Myspace of online dating sites.  Many of the pictures were self-shoots from odd angles and were cropped in suspicious ways.  Reading some site reviews this, and other sites, had been used in scams so I was (and am) still a bit skeptical.

One of my initial surprises in taking this site was the sheer volume of people trying internet dating.  Searching within a relatively small area I was presented with pages and pages of women in my age bracket in my area looking to date.  My initial thought was, “Where the hell have I been for the last six years?” Going to a bar, club, church, diner or other places available singles are supposed to gather pales in comparisson with the sheer volume of singles we are online and looking to date.  Only after I plugged in some additional criteria (such as religion and some wants) did I narrow the search to roughly four pages of results.

I did not contact anyone from this site (though I have received some interest from women through this site) mostly because I wanted to move on and explore other sites.  I also was a bit frustrated by the compatiability options and assessment offered by the site.  I had a feeling I could contact 100 women on plentyoffish.com before I met 5 I would actually want to even be friends with, let alone take out on a legit date.  But this was before even trying anything, and I totally own that.

www.match.com was up next and while its layout was different I had pretty much the exact same impression of it that I did www.plentyoffish.com

After these two experiences I had a conversation with my counselor before signing up for eHarmony. We talked over a few things in regards to my new adventures.  First, he communicated that the general flow of online dating is emailing, phone-calls, then a fifteen minute coffee date or something else equally “leavable,” and then finally, if all that goes well, a more lengthy date.  The reason for the fifteen minute coffee date is because some people misrepresent themselves online, for example posting photos of themselves…from fifteen years ago.  Other times you can just walk into a date and not feel that spark or chemistry.  You do not want to be locked into a two or three hour date with someone you are turned off by.  Second, I made a general rule of only checking these sites twice a week which he affirmed.  I can get compulsive and online dating could easily become another Facebook that I check way more than I need to.  By setting up another email account it is not always in my face and I check it on my terms.  I feel online dating should not intrude into your life, but it should be something that you intentionally choose.  Third, I talked about my desire to use my experiences in online dating (and dating in general) as fodder for discussion; this whole process is a mirror that I can use to examine my own life more with.  I wanted to pay close attention to how I felt as I was making moves in this area of my life and my motives for my actions in this arena.  Finally, we both agreed that facing and experiencing rejection online was probably the safest place to experience rejection.  One of the core beliefs of sexual addiction, that has definitely been part of my life, is the belief that if people get to know me they will reject me.  Consequently  I struggle with handling rejection more than most people; it is no that I experience more often I just feel it at a much higher volume as it were.  As such, online dating is a form of exposure therapy for me, helping me increasingly tolerate rejection as I heal from a very real and deep-seated fear of relationships, rejection and ultimately abandonment by other people.

In all of this I have to sometimes remember that I am not just here to have stuff to write about, or work on my issues, but I do actually want to go out on some dates.  With this in hand I signed up for www.eHarmony.com one night and my experiences there will be the content of my following posts.

P.S. The Gonzaga family has a bit of a history with www.eharmony.com In the process of this all I remembered that my sister did a commercial for them. She’s the one that looks like my twin.  Hooray for Ginger! 🙂


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Why do we believe…we should run the Church like any other secular organization? (Training our leadership – Addendum)

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

This is one of my laziest blogs but I decided to let the writings of others highlight my point.

Qualifications for Christian leaders according to the Bible:

1 Timothy 3:1-13

Qualifications for Overseers and Deacons

1 Here is a trustworthy saying: Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. 2 Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3 not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. 4 He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. 5 (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) 6 He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. 7 He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap.

8 In the same way, deacons are to be worthy of respect, sincere, not indulging in much wine, and not pursuing dishonest gain. 9 They must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience.10 They must first be tested; and then if there is nothing against them, let them serve as deacons.

11 In the same way, the women are to be worthy of respect, not malicious talkers but temperate and trustworthy in everything.

12 A deacon must be faithful to his wife and must manage his children and his household well. 13 Those who have served well gain an excellent standing and great assurance in their faith in Christ Jesus.

Titus 1:5-9

Appointing Elders Who Love What Is Good

5 The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you. 6 An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. 7 Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. 8 Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. 9 He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.

 

Qualifications for Christian leaders according to certain select seminaries:

***

The degree of Master of Divinity (M.Div.) certifies completion of a program of theological studies designed primarily, although not exclusively, to prepare the candidate for ordination to the Christian ministry. The requirements reflect the intention of the School to provide an education that is theologically informed, professionally competent, academically rigorous, and oriented to the life of the church.

Minimum requirements for graduation include the following distribution of courses in the curriculum:

  • Area I: Twelve credit hours distributed between Old Testament and New Testament. Elementary Hebrew and Greek do not meet this requirement, but are counted toward the total number of hours needed for graduation.
  • Area II: Twelve credit hours including at least one course in Theological Studies and one in Christian Ethics. Only three hours toward the Area II requirement may be counted for work listed under Denominational Courses.
  • Area III: Nine credit hours in Historical Studies, including at least one of the following introductory courses: 700a, 700b, or 701a. Only three hours of Denominational History courses may be counted toward the Area III requirement.
  • Area IV: Twelve credit hours, including three hours in preaching or communication.
  • Area V: Nine credit hours. (The three credit hours of Ethical Studies may be taken in this area rather than Area II.)
  • Supervised Ministries: Three credit hours.

Additional Requirements

  • Every M.Div. student is required to take one course (three term hours) in a non-Christian religion or one course in the relationship between Christianity and other religions.
  • All M.Div. students are additionally required to complete a sixteen-hour seminar on preventing ministerial misconduct.
  • No course may be counted toward meeting the requirements simultaneously in more than one area or toward meeting more than one of the distributional requirements with­in a single area.
  • For students with special and clear vocational plans, the Professional Studies Committee may approve a course of study that differs from the indicated area minimum requirements.

(Yale)

***

The Th.M. program is designed to produce competent Bible expositors who are qualified to serve God effectively as pastors, missionaries, or leaders in other areas of vocational Christian ministry.

Degree Program

Bible Core

No. Name Hours
BE101 Bible Study Methods and Hermeneutics 3
BE102 Old Testament History I 3
BE103 Old Testament History II and Poetry 2
BE104 Old Testament Prophets 3
BE105 The Gospels 2
BE106 Acts and Pauline Epistles 3
BE107 Hebrews, General Epistles, and Revelation 3
19

Theology Core

No. Name Hours
ST101 Introduction to Theology 3
ST102 Trinitarianism 3
ST103 Angelology, Anthropology, and Sin 3
ST104 Soteriology 3
ST105 Sanctification and Ecclesiology 3
ST106 Eschatology 3
18

Language Classes

No. Name Hours
NT101 Elements of Greek 3
NT102 Elements of Greek 2 3
NT103 Intermediate Greek 3
NT104 Introduction to New Testament Exegesis 3
NT105 Exegesis of Romans 3
OT101 Introduction to Old Testament Language and Literature 3
OT102 Elements of Hebrew 3
OT103 Introduction to Hebrew Exegesis 3
OT104 Principles of Hebrew Exegesis 3
27

Degree Classes

No. Name Hours
BC101 Christian Counseling 2
CE101 Educational Process of the Church 3
HT101 The Church to the Modern Era 3
HT102 The Church in the Modern Era: Europe and America 3
NT113 New Testament Introduction 2
PM101 Spiritual Life 2
PM102 Evangelism 2
PM103 Expository Preaching I 3
PM104 Expository Preaching II 3
RS101 Orientation and Research Methods 1
RS102 Research and Summary of Christian Doctrine OR Thesis 2
SL105 Pastoral Leadership Internship 2
WM101 Introduction to World Missions 3
(Dallas Theological Seminary)  

***

The M.Div. prepares students for the broadest range of Christian ministries, especially in local churches. Students receive training in classical theological disciplines such as Old Testament, New Testament, church history and historical theology, systematic theology, ethics, and philosophy, as well as applied disciplines such as pastoral ministry, preaching, evangelism, and missions. In addition, students may use elective hours to pursue concentrations in any school at Southwestern in accordance with their ministry goals and academic interests. The M.Div. is the only approved first master’s degree for a student preparing for a pastoral or preaching ministry, as well as any other ministry largely comprised of biblical teaching.

Course Title Course Number Hours

Biblical Studies
Biblical Hermeneutics BIBST 3203 3
Basic Old Testament I OLDTS 3313 3
Basic Old Testament II OLDTS 3323 3
Basic New Testament I NEWTS 3313 3
Basic New Testament II NEWTS 3323 3
Elementary Greek I (prerequisite)1 GREEK 3313 (3)
Elementary Greek II (prerequisite)1 GREEK 3323 (3)
New Testament Greek I GREEK 4313 3
New Testament Greek II GREEK 4323 3
Elementary Hebrew I HEBRW 4313 3
Elementary Hebrew II HEBRW 4323 3
Hebrew Exegetical Method HEBRW 5003  3

Theological Studies
History of Christianity I CHAHT 3103 3
History of Christianity II CHAHT 3113 3
Baptist Heritage BPTST 3203 3
Systematic Theology I SYSTH 3003 3
Systematic Theology II SYSTH 3013 3

Ethics and Philosophical Studies
The Christian Home ETHIC 4303 3
Basic Christian Ethics or ETHIC 4313 or 3
The Bible & Moral Issues or ETHIC 4323 or
Development of Christian Character and Decision Making ETHIC 4333
Philosophy of Religion or PHILO 4313 or 3
Christian Apologetics PHILO 4373

Evangelism and Missions Studies
Contemporary Evangelism EVANG 3303 3
Personal Evangelism Practicum2 EVANG 3000 0
Introduction to Missiology MISSN 3363 3
Missions Practicum2 MISSN 3100 0

Preaching and Pastoral Studies
Foundations for Christian Ministry I or PASMN 3313 or 3
Women’s Ministries in the Local Church3 WOMST 4003
Christian Ministry Practicum2 PASMN 3000 0
Introduction to Expository Preaching or PRCHG 3313 or 3
Expository Communication of Biblical Truth4 WOMST 4043
Advanced Expository Preaching5 PRCHG 3323 3
Preaching Practicum2 PRCHG 3000 0

Additional Requirements
Spiritual Formation I SPFTH 3101 1
Spiritual Formation II SPFTH 3111 1
Applied Ministry – Disciple-making in the Local Church APLMN 4011 1
Applied Ministry – Mentoring APLMN 4021 1
The Ministry of Education EDMIN 3003  3

Concentration and Free Electives5,6,7
Concentration and Free Electives 15
Total
 91

(Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary)

***

The Master of Divinity degree is a comprehensive graduate theological program covering a wide range of general and specialized subjects, designed to prepare students for full-time service in the church of Jesus Christ.

The curriculum is controlled by a vision of Christ’s Church as the people of God—a living, worshiping, witnessing community, within which faith is nurtured and through which Christ is served in the world. The curriculum is designed to instruct students in the study of theology in its widest sense, so that they may grow in the knowledge of God, discover and develop their God-given gifts and become more effective members of the body of Christ. This involves a deepening understanding of God and God’s world through rigorous academic discipline; but it also involves, in part as the fruit of such discipline, personal spiritual growth and maturity, (I call total B.S. on this point) and the acquiring of the relevant skills that will enable students to use their theological insights effectively in practical Christian ministry.

 

144 Quarter Units

Biblical Languages 20 units
3 courses Introduction to Greek
2 courses Introduction to Hebrew
Biblical Studies 32 units
OT501 Pentateuch
2 courses Old Testament Prophets or Writings
NT500 New Testament 1: Gospels
NS501 New Testament 2: Acts through Revelation
NE502 Exegetical Method and Practice
1 course New Testament Theology
1 course New Testament Exegesis
Theological Studies 32 units
3 courses Church History
3 courses Systematic Theology
1 course Philosophy
1 course Christian Ethics
Ministry 32 units
1 course Foundational Ministry
3 courses Homiletics (8 units)
1 course Evangelism
1 course Christian Formation and Discipleship
1 course Pastoral Counseling
1 course Pastoral Ministry
1 course Missions
Practicum 4 units
Electives (area of emphasis, if desired) 24 units

(Fuller)

 

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Why do we believe…we should run the Church like any other secular organization? (Church Staffing)

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

In a previous post I talked about how we train our leaders seems to follow a Western model for education and how this is an incomplete approach to training Christian leaders.  This led me to one of the other ways we run the Church patterned after secular organizations: how we hire and staff our church.

When a pastoral spot opens up at a Church, most often someone with no previous affiliation with the local congregation is sought after to come in and lead with preference often going to those who have finished some sort of theological education.  To put it in extreme language this boils down to churches seeking to hire qualified religious experts to perform a task in our congregation, many of whom have no real connection to the local church.

If you doubt this is how we approach hiring in the church…Exhibit A: http://www.youthspecialties.com/jobs and Exhibit B:http://www.churchstaffing.com/. At either of these sites (and there are many more) I can post my resume, apply for ministry job and be hired to work at a church that I have had zero connection with before and be trusted to run a ministry and disciple people.

This approach to hiring and staffing seems to be yet another way we have transplanted something from culture into the church.  It is the culture that says we should train people to be compentent in their field through education and it is culture that says organizations should seek to hire the most qualified people to fulfill their needs. In countless secular organizations prospective applicants are enticed by payment and benefits, encouraged to apply, and then the organization runs them through an interview process picking their top choices. This approach to staffing, while arguably appropriate for businesses and companies, may not be the best approach for the church and I think it causes a number of problems of which I will just highlight two.

First, this approach represents a huge failure to disciple and train those gifted by the Spirit for administration, leadership and teaching already present in our own congregations.  I truly believe the Church should seek to above all raise up its own leaders from within its own congregation.  In any given congregation (regardless of if you have fifty people or 5,000) there are bound to be some people who have indeed received the Holy Spirit and some who have received spiritual gifts for leadership in the Church.  To ignore the gifts in our own congregation is to be unfaithful to steward those gifts in our own congregation as well as unwise.  Raising up our own also means the local congregation has an relationship with the pastor to be.  This relationship avoids a lot of problems caused by my next point.

Second, regardless of what is presented on a resume, an application, or a degree, a church cannot be sure that those hired are truly equipped, called or fit to do the task that they are being hired to do.  When a church hires an outsiders it hires a strangers.  Being sure of an applicants character, calling, or giftedness can be murky even when dealing with someone within the congregation, much less someone who is from another state or city. Hiring outsiders is a huge gamble and the influence of pastoral positions in the Church means that this is a very high stakes gamble. 

In my experience of church, the current approach to hiring and staffing of church has led to many problems.  It has lead to poor hiring decisions that has resulted in the pastor being fired or leaving. In my four years in youth group I had three youth pastors and this is a fairly typical experience as the average tenure of youth pastors is infamously short.  This undoubtedly contributed to my lack of disipleship growing up, my general disillusionment with Christianity, frustration and disappointment.  Who knows how it affected the wider church or the pastors involved.    How many of those pastors were fired or left based on conflicts that could have been avoided had the Church raised up its own?  More personally after college I twice turned to my home congregation for training in Christian leadership and was twice turned away.  I recieved an invitation to “hang-out” in the Youth ministry and later was told more direclty “I do not have anything for you to do.”  My church is more structured around its programs than it is discipleship.  I eventually had to go outside of my home congregation for ministry training. While I think I ended up exactly where God wanted me to learn (under Rev. Marvin Jacobo and with the Tapestry youth ministry) I think it is an obvious tension that I could not get trained at my home congregation.

To their credit, I think BVG has really recognized this tension and is moving to change its culture.  Our current youth pastor is one of our own, he is the son of another Pastor and has been at the church for years, and things are going great from everything that I hear. More importantly BVG is attempting to implement a discipleship program for men who feel called to ministry similar to one that was raging at First Baptist Church that producest some amazing long-serving pastors in Modesto, including my mentor and certain pastors at BVG.

For my last point I want to look at how the Church runs its finances and what that says about us.

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Christians and Dating: Things to do before starting to date…

Posted on January 27, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

Previously I mentioned that my next post on dating would be regarding my experiences with online dating.  However, in writing that blog I realized that there are a lot of assumptions and advice regarding dating that I felt I should make explicit.

To summarize my thoughts so far…

I think a lot of my peers (unmarried Christian twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings) are frustrated with the relationship advice we grew up with.  The general advice in regards to dating and relationships has often boiled down to the “One day my prince will come” approach for women, “waiting on the Lord,” and/or pursuing exclusive, serious relationships with the direct goal of marriage.  These approaches have not worked for us.   I, in a sense, feel lied to and I’m pretty angry about it.  For my friends who did meet their spouse in college or at Church the advice seemed to have worked. However, the rest of us who are single and want to be married must now learn how to date and in this process we need to unlearn some beliefs that were taught to us.  Many of us in this predicament have effectively zero experience in dating. Furthermore, one of our tensions is that we want to marry people with similar values about faith that we are compatible with.  The best “dating pools” of eligible bachelors and bachelorette exist in Christian schools and our local churches but these are very small communities that come with a lot of complications.

We are faced with two basic choices.  The first option is to complain.  We can complain about how all the good ones are married, how there are no good singles in our Churches, how all the ones we like are unavailable and/or uninterested in us, how men do not ask us out, how women expect all the men to initiate and take all the risks, how the Church’s false advice has not worked for us, how singles are second class citizens in the Kingdom (or at least in Churches), etc.  There is not a short list of things to bemoan when it comes to Christian dating.  Or we can take the second option, which is to take ownership of what we want and work towards it.

I encourage people to take the second option and am writing primarily for such persons.  Many of our complaints are legititmate and I believe the general advice regarding dating and relationships in Churches needs to be changed but complaining and throwing rocks at the Church is not going to get me a date.  Unless woman like cynicism. (That’s an honest question.  Is my cynicism towards the Church hot?)

Sidenote: The treatment of single persons as second class citizens in Churches is a very serious issue that I promise to write about elsewhere. Regardless of what is on paper the culture of many churches essentially idolizes marriage and family to the point that singles are effectively barred from leadership position in the church.  For example, the number of prominent Protestant pastors and leaders who are unmarried is completely dwarfed by those who are married.

Over Christmas break I was honest with the fact that I had not been dating, had very little experience in relationships.  I was also honest with the fact that I wanted to both experience dating and eventually work towards an exclusive relationship that might result in a marriage and family.  I want to date to have fun, get to know myself, meet women and figure out what I want from a spouse.  In preparing myself to get into the dating arena, that I will hereafter refer to simply as “The Game,” I thought a lot about what I needed to do and what I think one should do before one begins to date, possibly for the first time, and wanted to share those thoughts here.

First, assess if there is any personal work you need to engage in before you start dating. What I mean by this is there anything you need to deal with in your life that probably should be taken care of before you begin dating again.  Are there areas in your life you need to improve to increase your “datability” or things that otherwise are barriers to your future prospects dating.  Some areas of personal work are obvious. There are some practical personal and social choices that as a single person you might not have had to worry about but as someone who wants to date you might have to adjust ora t least consider.  Do you need to get back into the gym?  Do you need to shower more?  Do you need to buy some new outfits?  Do you need to accept invitations to go out?  Do you need to get some dental work done?  Do you need to work on making first impressions?   Do you need to learn how to flirt, or when you are being flirted with? What, exactly, would you even bring to a relationship?  Would you be a fun date?  Do you have hobbies/passions to share?  Are your finances in order? Some personal work is much deeper and more obscure.  Do you need to deal with obvious issues regarding relationships?  Do you have a pattern in what type of man/woman you are attracted to you that is negative?   Do you find yourself instantly relegated to the “friend” category when you meet others of the opposite sex? Do you have any emotional unfinished business from childhood?   What are your goals in dating?  What have been your past experiences in dating?  What do you want?  What do you not want?  To increase the effectiveness of this time of self-reflection I would encourage people to do two things.  First, ask some of your safest friends for their honest input and work on being open to their constructive criticism, even if you don’t at least initially agree with their advice.  Sometimes we are blind to the most glaringly obvious issues that others can see plainly. Second, especially in regards to the deeper stuff, I would encourage any person to read through How to be an Adult by David Richo.  This book is a very compact book filled with a lot of wisdom gleaned from David’s career as a psychologist.  It is a very short and very profound book on how to be a healthy individual. Reading this book will not fix you, but it will provide ample food for thought and ask a lot of questions you and your peers probably will not ask.

These questions should be asked and any resulting personal work should be worked on before adding another person into the equation. I cannot stress this point enough. You might have so much personal work to do that you cannot even get a date or you might have a lot of personal work to do that will prevent dates from being fun or fruitful.  I think you can either deal with these as best you can before you begin dating or you can choose to let them come to the surface when you go out, or try to go out, as the case may be.  While I’m sure there will be stuff that you will miss, you might as well deal with as much as you can beforehand. Such an attitude can only be helpful and who knows how long some of this personal work will take.

Second, double-check your attitudes and motivations for dating, relationships, and marriage.  I think many people, especially Christians, have unexamined beliefs about dating and relationships in general that need to be addressed or at least understood before one begins dating.  Do you believe a partner will fix your problems?  Do you think singleness is a curse to be escaped from by dating anyone that will have you? One main example that I want to explore more because of its prevalence and impact is the belief that a relationship or marriage will complete you and that dating is just a stepping stone to that.

This is a sick belief fostered by a lot of bad romance stories, anecdotal stories from real life and occasionally scriptures stretched to their breaking point.  First, while I am a romantic at heart, and hope romance is part of my future, I no longer believe (contrary to a lot of what I’ve been taught) that there is “special someone” who is the only person capable of and responsible for my wholeness.  It just does not work like that in real life. You can have romance and not stake your identity as a person on someone else.  Secondly, Jesus Christ was single.  Regardless of any verse brought to bear on the merits of marriage or the experience of loneliness that is at times experienced in singleness I doubt any Christian would suggest that Jesus died incomplete.  While it is not good for a man or a woman to be alone, I think these verses in Genesis that are sometimes used uncritically to advocate for marriage, unmitigated by God’s words regarding singleness are about our inherent need for community not marriage. This need comes from the fact that we are created in the image of a Trinitarian God who exists in three persons and always in community.  Without relationships I think humans are incomplete, but this is not the same thing as saying with a relationship (dating/marriage) one is incomplete.

Everyone should be a whole person (or as whole as they can be) before they start dating.  Hoping a relationship is going to complete you sounds a lot like co-dependency and fantasy. You are setting yourself up to be dependent or addicted to another person to make you okay to live in this world.  Do you really think that there is some magical person out there who, by dating or marrying you, will fix all your problems and heal all your wounds?  If you believe this or are otherwise not whole as a person before you start dating you are most likely destined to be disappointed in your dates because they don’t live up to your fantasy, or worse you will get into a serious relationship that you have to have in your life (no matter how destructive it is) because you come to believe they did fix you. This dynamic is often why people stay in abusive, destructive or futile relationships.

Furthermore, a lack of wholeness often indicates some sort of deeper woundedness one would like to deny or simply has never faced.  For me the gaping hole in my life, the one I tried to fill with many things (including my addictions, performance, and my ex’s) was the self-hate that was a consequence from the abuse that went on in my home.  I have come to learn that expecting a relationship to heal me was a foolish assumption that was unexamined in my life. I had no business dating anyone before I dealt with my past because relationships do not provide healing.  They can, ideally, provide love and support as you heal, but other people are not a balm or a band-aid.  You should not use someone, often unwittingly, to work out your issues with your dad or your mom, or your ex, or your lack of direction in life, or your need for affirmation, etc.  Everyone has their crap, deal with as much as you can as best you can before you start dating.

Third, ask yourself one last question (two if you are an addict). Obviously no one is ever done growing or healing as a person, has their finances 100% in order, is the ideal date they think they should be, and so on, so how do you know when you are ready to get into The Game?

I would suggest as a very rough gauge is your answer to this question: Do you accept yourself for who you are, where you are at?

This might seem counter-intuitive because I have just asked people to examine their life, most likely finding things they need to change.  What I am talking about here is not the recognition that there needs to be some improvement, changes or sanctification in your life, but self-acceptance as a person. Are you comfortable in your own skin?  With all the self-awareness you can muster from your season of self-reflection, are you okay with you?  If you cannot accept yourself as a single  then your self-worth is most likely ultimately in the hands of someone else, presumably the person(s) you hope to date.  If you are not “enough” by yourself, you will add way too much pressure to The Game, which has risks of its own already.  Consequently mistakes,  rejection and/or the loss of a relationship in dating (which are almost inevitably bound to happen) will be far more powerful and painful than they should be.  If you are okay with yourself as a single person, not dating, not in a relationship, not married, you will be able to navigate the dangers, risks and ups and downs of the Game healthily.  I have not until recently begun to accept myself as a person for who I am where I am at.  The consequences of dating before this have been sever.  A very short relationship, that was only official for two days, devastated me and was part of the reason I did not date for the next six years.  Obviously I am a special person and an extreme case, but I hope you get my point.

To my fellow recovering addicts there is far clearer line in the sand and that is the second question: are you done with your Fourth Step?

The general rule of thumb regarding addicts and dating is no relationships until after your Fourth Step or you at least have a year in recovery.  Many of you will not listen to me and you will simply switch addictions from heroin/cocaine/sex/alcohol/your ex to your new drug named Jim or Jill or whoever.  Switching addictions happens all the time and many people switch from easily identifiable immoral and/or illegal drug to something far more subtle and far more celebrated but no less harmful: romantic relationships.  You will use people like you used to use drugs and you will not deal with your issues.  In doing this you will ultimately short-circuit your healing, your sobriety, and end up hurting yourself and the person you are dating in the process. Sponsors regulate on your sponsees.  Sponsees listen to your sponsors.

Recovery is a very difficult process and it is very tempting to justify dating early because it is nice to have someone there for you.  The rooms and the groups are there to be your support, you do not need to be dating to have community.  I personally think every addict should get sober first, or at least be able to understand what this means for them in their program, before adding another significant relationship to their life.

When this is all said and done I think the first thing for many of my peers to do is to expand the size of the dating pool you are in.  As I have argued elsewhere online dating is a glaringly obvious choice that many people are not taking for some reason or still have a stigma with.  As I have put my money where my mouth is I will begin talking about my experiences in online dating in the next post.

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Why do we believe…Christians are not sinners?

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Speakfaithfully

Earlier tonight in conversation with friends it came up that today’s chapel preacher was exceptional.  When I probed deeper to figure out why it was such a memorable chapel the sermon was explained to me in brief.  One thing that caught me was that the preacher hit on the point that Jesus spent time with sinners and exhorted the audience to likewise follow our Lord and Savior in this practice and intentionally spend time with sinners.

This got me thinking…and then this got me mad.  With all fairness I was not at the sermon and I’m sure it was made with the best of intentions.  However, In advocating for something good she (and many others over the years who I have heard preach this argument) subtly invoked and tacitly reinforced something I hate: the belief and attitude that Christians are not sinners.  But I should explain what I am talking about here…

I assume Mark 2:13-17 and its parallels were being used, and whenever I hear this passage preached I hear it preached wrong or at least incompletely.  Usually it is rightly pointed out that Jesus spent time with people that the religious community of His day would frown upon. Jesus hung out with sinners in seedy places.  Lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors (who were seen as traitors to the Jewish people as they often financially extorted their own people with Roman authority) and more generic “sinners” were often people who Jesus spent time with.  When the Pharisees questioned Jesus about the bad company He kept, Jesus’ replied “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Jesus did not come to this world for people who have it all together and do not sin, Jesus came to call sinners to repentance and bring healing to the sick.

Many Christian teachers put the Church in the role of Jesus and suggest we, like Jesus, should spend time with the poor and the outcasts in our society and people we would not normally associate with.  The radical nature of this call depends on the preacher.  Should Christians be in bars?  Should Christians be in gay bars?  Overall the aim is good – Christians need to get out of the safety of our fellowships and reach out to others with the love of Christ and good news of the forgiveness, new life, and new identity offered through Jesus Christ.

A fraction of astute, radical or prophetic preachers may even point out that the Church has often sadly played the role of the Pharisees.  We judge and condemn people as sinners and avoid them. Instead of being a city on a hill, we are city in a gated community; we are really concerned with who is out and who is in. Instead of ushering sinful messy people into the new life found in Christ we make sure to keep such persons out of our fellowships. What’s worse is that this exclusivistic mindset, contrary to the Gospel as a whole, is often done with the religious approval of one verse that has become a truism in our Churches and in our culture.  

If Jesus spent time in a gay bar how many Christians would tell Jesus that, “bad company corrupts good character” (1 Cor 15:33) and question His reason for being there?

Regardless of if this second point is rightly touched upon  when this sermon is taught it carries an unspoken implicit message that we are not who we actually are in the narrative.  In calling us to be Jesus to people or not be the Pharisees to people we miss who we really are.

The only role we should play in this narrative is seeing the Church as the sinners Jesus came to save.

We cannot play Jesus for a number of reasons. First, we do not save people, we can only point them to the One that does. I cannot save myself, let alone other people by the work of my hands. So to combine an AA slogan with Christian theology – we will never be the living water that produces everlasting life, we can only point people to where we found this living water.  To suggest that we should be Jesus in this story is to really usurp His role. We did not come to save, nor are we able to.  Jesus came to save, and He can.  Secondly, and more to my point, no one is good expect God alone (Mark 10:18) so it is impossible for the Church to be Jesus to people.  Our lives, our grace, and our forgiveness extended to others should be signposts to the love, grace, and forgiveness we have recieved from Christ. Where preachers teach that the Church should “be Jesus” to sinners or to like Jesus to spend time with sinners such sermons can often convey or encourage the belief that Christians are not sinners, or Christians are above sinners in some way. When it is clearly stated, this belief is obviously contrary to core tenants of the Christian faith that all have fallen into sin and need God’s forgiveness.  However, when we are told to play the role of Jesus we forget our role in the story is to first recieve His forgiveness as sinners before telling others the wonderful news.

We should not play the role of the Pharisees, though we often have.  The name Pharisees literally means “separated ones.” The Pharisees, and other Jewish sects, piled rules upon rules and as N.T. Wright points out (in I believe the Challenge of Jesus) these rules and purity codes are a way of codifying who is and who is not “one of us.”  The Pharisees were concerned with who was in the “real” Israel to whom God was going to bring redemption and salvation and drew the lines around their community by these codes of conduct and belief.  Those who were abided by them were “in” and those who did not were “out.”  Many of these rules (and rules upon rules) are the basis for how the Pharisees condemned “sinners,” other sects and Jesus and His disciples.   How many churches define who are one of their own and who are one of “those people” by similar subtle, non-biblical, unspoken codes of conduct, dress and belief? (I promise to write more about this later.)  Many times these unspoken rules leave non-Christians, or even other Christians not previously affiliated with the church, alienated, confused as to what is happening in the service or community and generally hearing one clear message: “you are not one of us and you are unwelcome.”  Ultimately it is the Lord who judges the hearts of men and women; our role is not to decide who is and who is not inside the Kingdom of God by enforcing man-made rules, nor is it our place as forgiven sinners to be morality police, so blinded by our finger pointing and franctic attempts to decide who is in the Kingdom of God to see our own self-rigtheousness.

Our role, as I have said, in this narrative is to see ourselves as the sinners Jesus came to save. When we step out of this role, when we forget that we are sinners, we inevitably become the Pharisees or worse. Saying that Jesus spent time with sinners is to say that Jesus spent time with us! What are Christians but sinners who have been reached by the message of the Gospel and found forgiveness? There are not tiers to humanity.  Some do not need Jesus’ forgiveness more, and some less. While some people have sinned a lot, some a little, some have experienced grave consequences for their sin, some have not, this ultimately does not matter, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” (James 2:10 – NIV) Furthemore, Romans 3:22-24 reads,  “22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (NIV – emphasis mine)

There is just us, one big dysfunctional family of broken, missing the mark, sinful dirty people.  We are all in the same sinking boat in dire need of rescue that cannot come from anyone but Jesus Christ. 

The Church is a community of saints and it is a community of sinners.  In this dual identity we recognize that everyone is a sinner, and those who believe in the person and work of Jesus Christ are forgiven.  We have been, and until we are ressurected in glory, are sinful people who are yet now called sons and daughters of God through our belief in a crucified God. I fear that many Christians lose, forget, or never fully own their identity as sinners. When this happens we almost inevitably lose touch with the people who need the Church and its message of hope, salvation, forgiveness and new life the most.  Churches become containers for nice forgiven people instead of hospitals for the sick.  I think this is a huge problem in the Church today and is a foundational reason why I have had such a bad experience with so many chruches.

 This is especially tempting and difficult for people who have generally lived “moral” lives.  In this tension we are not alone and not without precedent. The disciples themselves did not get this point well either. When the sinful woman annoints Jesus’ feet with an expensive perfume the disciples ridiculously rebuke her and I would argue undoubtedly think of themselves as better than her (she was after all a female in a patriarchal culture and a prostitute/promiscuous woman).  Jesus rebukes his disciples, saying,  “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet.  Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

The sinful woman got the Gospel.  She had no choice but to get the Gospel or face condemnation.  Given her sinful past to pretend she had the moral high ground, was above others, or might save herself through her good works, she would have had to deny reality.  Fully knowing the depth of her sin she cast herself on Jesus’s mercy – this is the right thing to do, and the only way to forgiveness. The disciples, who apparently were generally speaking more moral people, and were probably tempted to think of themselves as above others, having the moral high ground, or being able to save themselves through good works (which they weren’t) did not have such a direct and real connection to their brokeness and consequently failed to love Jesus in the way that He should have been loved – with everything that they had. 

This why I love the recovery communities so much.  Christian or non-Christian, recovery communities are generally filled with people who are deeply aware that they have messed up their lives (and undoubtedly the lives of others) and need help and forgiveness.  It is the acknowledgment of this brokeness that can make even Atheists open to a spiritual force being the only hope for them. That is how powerful connecting with one’s identity as a sinner is. 

In a Christian context, such as Big Valley Grace’s Celebrate Recovery Community, it is like being part of a congregation filled with the sinful woman in the story.  It is a community of Christians deeply connected to their identity as sinners in need of forgiveness who love Jesus with an incredible compassion when they recieve it. Such persons are the most gracious, loving and inclusive Christians I know.  I literally begin to tear up thinking about how you, BVG’s CR, are my family and how much I love you all.

My basic belief on this issue is not that Christians need to go out there and sin more to be more aware of their need of forgiveness, I think Christians just need to think more about their sinfulness, both current and past.  All Christians, wether raised in the Church or not, addict or “normie,” clean-cut or rough around the edges, is a sinful person in need of Christ.  Without understanding and connecting with our sinful nature  we inevitably begin to think of themselves as better than others, misunderstand the Gospel, and fail to love Christ and others, like we should.

P.S.  To be fair, it is true that some people have recieved the forgiveness offered in Jesus Christ and become adopted sons and daughters in God’s family, and others have not.  So in one sense, one might argue rightly that there really are two categories of people, to be simple the saved and the unsaved. However, I would argue that this distinction cannot be made by human eyes (how do we know who is forgiven and repentant and who is not?), nor does the recieving of forgiveness ever obliterate the original need for forgiveness. Instead of this reality being used to exclude or to put Christians above others, the recieving of forgiveness should provide motivation for Christians to turn and help others.  Having been rescued from our dire straights we should point others towards rescue, not forget that we needed rescue ourselves.

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