My Conversion to Egalitarianism (John Frye)

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 10:07 pm By Scot McKnight

How “He” became “She”

This is the story of my conversion from the hierarchical view of the role of women in home and church to the egalitarian view.

My seminary training landed me exegetically and theologically in the hierarchical camp. I use hierarchical, not complementarian because the nub of the issue is a functional hierarchy. While competing views of the crux interpretum (1 Timothy 2:12 in context) were acknowledged in seminary, a lot of attention was paid to the pronouns in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 with the multiple use of “he.” It was pointed out, of course, that Paul writes “husband of one wife/ one woman man,” so elders [expanded to mean ordained leaders] clearly had to be men.

Genesis 1 and 2 were probed to establish the creational supremacy of man over woman in view of 1 Timothy 2:13-15. The view held that women were equal in essence with men, but unequal in function, just like the Father, Son, and Spirit are equal in essence, but unequal in function. The stakes were raised when we were taught that to hold any other view than the hierarchical view was to question the inerrancy of the Bible. Added to this was the dreaded slippery slope argument that to buckle on hierarchialism within the home and church was to open the door to countless unsavory consequences.

Years into my pastoral ministry I came across many godly believers and evangelical churches that did not hold to hierarchialism in home and church. These folks had a high view of Scripture, a deep commitment to the Trinity, a Christ-focused faith, and ardent evangelical passion for the lost. How can this be? I wondered.

Thus began my journey into the available literature on all sides of the subject. It became apparent with all the ink spilled on the topic that the one, the only one text that really mattered was 1 Timothy 2:12 in context. Fine scholars made the best cases they could from the verse to support either hierarchialism or egalitarianism all the while marshalling other Scriptures to bolster their views.

I went to Fuller Theological Seminary for D. Min. studies. In my cohort were pastors and church leaders from a variety of traditions—Methodist, Presbyterian, non-denominational, Baptist, Vineyard, Seventh Day Adventist, and Lutheran. Several members of the cohort were ordained female pastors. I still clung to my biblical pronouns.

That is, until I met God powerfully through a female Lutheran pastor as we celebrated the Lord’s Table. This ordained pastor opened the Word and my heart caught fire. She led us beautifully to the Savior, our Risen Host at the Table. She prayed and God’s Spirit maneuvered skillfully in my soul.

I was scrambled: from my point of view, a woman in evident disobedience to the Word of God was God’s agent to renew my life. How can this be? I faced a crisis. Was I ready to stand before God the Father, Jesus the Son, in the presence of the Spirit and declare that this sister in Christ, an ordained pastor, was serving contrary to the will of God? Was my handful of masculine pronouns sufficient to annul the life transforming work of the Spirit through this pastoral colleague? I wasn’t ready to face God about such an important issue that would disallow 50% of the body of Christ from pastoral and leadership ministries based on only one hotly debated text and a few pronouns. I converted to egalitarianism. Even more, I think I was ushered into egalitarianism.

I can hear someone push back: “You let experience determine your exegesis.” You bet I did. Especially because that experience at the Table was so God-filled that I would have been a fool to deny it. I felt I could no longer strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Someone may say, “God used that woman in your life in spite of her disobedience.” All I can say to that is, “Get a life.”

One has to make an exegetical decision about 1 Timothy 2:12 in context. Is this contested text an ad hoc teaching or is it timeless truth? Based on exegetical, theological, historical and cultural study, I concluded that the 1 Timothy 2 text is ad hoc, aimed at addressing a particular problem in that particular time in that Ephesian church. Being the recipient of a God-encounter through the ministry of a female pastor is what tipped the scales for me.

How willing are we as pastors to let Spirit-filled life experiences be part of the process of shaping our theological and pastoral conclusions?

Marks of Love (Brad Strait and SMcK)

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 10:07 pm By Scot McKnight

A Discussion with Scot McKnight Below is an online interview/dialogue on spiritual growth I [Brad Strait] had with Dr. Scot McKnight, a New Testament Professor at Northern Seminary and the author of Christianity Today’s Book of the Year, The Jesus Creed. This dialectic is offered both here and on Scot’s blog on Patheos.com)

Brad: In Genesis 28, Jacob puts up a marker at Bethel after a dream of heaven’s real presence on earth. He says, “God is in this place—truly. And I didn’t even know it! …This stone that I have set up as a memorial pillar will mark this as a place where God lives.”

In Deuteronomy 27, Moses has the Israelites build a similar marker where they cross the Jordan River into the Promised Land, while “rejoicing in the presence of God, your God.” These are markers of spiritual growth.

Do you have ‘markers’ of spiritual formation and God’s presence visible in your life? Some examples I’ve seen recently:

• Two gray-hair women are overheard talking at church, discussing how to connect with their shut-in neighbor. “What could we do to help her?” they ponder.

• A father hands a supermarket gift card to one of our ministry staff. “Would you give this to some young family that might be struggling a bit? Don’t mention my name.”

• Another couple, watching the winter thermometer plummet, heads to the store to buy a pile of hats and socks, and then drives to the Denver Rescue Mission.

• A working mom prayerfully looks for older couples pinching pennies in the grocery store. Speaking quietly, she simply says to them, “I have a favor to ask. At church they are challenging us to tangibly love our neighbors. Here’s $50. I know you don’t need this, but I would like to help buy your groceries. No strings attached. May I please do that?”

• Two friends share with a pastor that they have promised each other to start anew speaking the truth in love—truth-telling—to each other.

• Another man comments after a guest speaker’s challenge for the Church to live more engaged with our culture, “All I could think of was the Jesus Creed—to love God and to love others!”

As our church has been studying your book, The Jesus Creed, we’ve also been reciting Jesus’ words from Mark 12:29-31 each day:

“’Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

This text challenges us with Jesus’ quintessential ethic of love, what Thomas à Kempis called “a whole dictionary in just one dictum.” Over six weeks of reading and study, we’ve begun to see ‘markers and pillars” appear in our congregation. As a pastor, I think of them as signs of spiritual formation and spirit-led growth.

Scot, what kind of markers do you look for in growing Christians?

Scot: What a wonderful opening, Brad, and I can’t even add to that. All I can do is Amen! it. The secret of letting the Jesus Creed is to learn to “measure” ourselves by our love for God, our love for ourselves, and our love for others – these become the standard by which we measure our discipleship.

But I don’t want to get too scrupulous here. None of us is full of love and none of us loves as God loves – all and in utter fullness. But we are called to love and love must then become our measure. I have created a “Love Test” to help us each measure ourselves in our journey of spiritual growth. So here is my Love Test.

Brad: What do these markers reveal or proclaim, do you think?

Scot: They are concrete, realistic signs of God prompting us to love others as we love ourselves. We might ask ourselves regularly: What act today demonstrated that I love others?

Weekly Meanderings, 6 December 2014

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 10:07 pm By Scot McKnight

Yes, let’s do it! The Steffen method of boarding a plane.

In this approach, often called the Steffen method, adjacent passengers in line will be seated two rows apart from each other. The first wave of passengers would be, in order, 30A, 28A, 26A, 24A, and so on, starting from the back. (For a typical airplane there would be 12 such waves, one for each seat in a row and for odd and even rows.)

Pic credit.

Do you eat eggs for breakfast?

Katie Zezima, liberals and conservatives agree on this one:

Controversial court rulings are often followed by protests. Or confrontation. Or social unrest. This week’s decision by a grand jury not to indict a New York City police officer in the death of a Staten Island man added an unexpected entry to the list: rare bipartisan consensus.

Opinions on a grand jury’s decision not to bring charges against a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager were largely split along party lines. Republicans generally approved the decision, while many Democrats did not.

The political reaction to a New York grand jury’s decision not to indict a police officer in the death of Eric Garner, who died after the officer put him in a choke hold, has resulted in a rare consensus, with both conservatives and liberals reacting with outrage to the decision.

“There is no excuse that I can think of for choking a man to death for selling illegal cigarettes,” wrote Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. “This is someone being choked to death. We have it on video with the man pleading for his life. There is no excuse for that I can even contemplate or imagine right now.”

Jon Merritt’s excellent collection of black leaders responding to Ferguson and NYC.

SMcK: I make one point. The national conversation in Ferguson was about racism; the national conversation in Staten Island became police brutality. Justice can move forward in the USA if we reduce police brutality and those most to gain are African American males. By reducing violence we establish less racist and unrestrained violence.

Pete Enns has a nice post about passages about God in the Old Testament that have helped him in his faith. [HT: JS]

Sing or dance?

Jessie Eisinger and Justin Elliott:

The American Red Cross regularly touts how responsible it is with donors’ money. “We’re very proud of the fact that 91 cents of every dollar that’s donated goes to our services,” Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern said in a speech in Baltimore last year. “That’s world class, obviously.”

McGovern has often repeated that figure, which has also appeared on the charity’s website. “I’m really proud” that overhead expenses are so low, she told a Cleveland audience in June.

The problem with that number: It isn’t true.

After inquiries by ProPublica and NPR, the Red Cross removed the statement from itswebsite. The Red Cross said the claim was not “as clear as it could have been, and we are clarifying the language.”

The Red Cross declined repeated requests to say the actual percentage of donor dollars going to humanitarian services.

But the charity’s own financial statements show that overhead expenses are significantly more than what McGovern and other Red Cross officials have claimed.

In recent years, the Red Cross’ fundraising expenses alone have been as high as 26 cents of every donated dollar, nearly three times the nine cents in overhead claimed by McGovern. In the past five years, fundraising expenses have averaged 17 cents per donated dollar.

A good reason to know about Excellence in Giving.

Walk or run?

Statement of the week: Don Lemon, in an interview on CNN with Chris Cuomo, when Chris was pressing against (almost) the legitimacy of Charles Barkley’s Ferguson comments — unvarnished articulation of his sometimes unpopular opinions — said “We have to stop demonizing people for telling us what they think.” [Approximate words.] Don Lemon is right and importantly right. To silence the voice of some will make them go underground and wait for an opportunity to erupt.

I’m sorry, but it’s hard for me (an outside observer) to see how this is consistent with Pope Francis.

At a time when Pope Francis is calling on clergy to live more simply, a Chicago-based abbey has purchased a lakefront Sheboygan mansion as a hermitage for its last remaining monk and a private retreat center for a small society of priests who work to preserve the Latin Mass and other traditional rites of the Roman Catholic Church.

Christ the King Abbey, a once schismatic Alabama monastery that reconciled with the church in 2011, bought the 7,112-square-foot estate at 2528 N. 3rd St. for $700,000 earlier this month.

It will be home to Brother Sebastian Glentz, one of two Benedictine hermits who brought the Alabama abbey back into communion with Rome; and a spiritual refuge for the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius in Chicago, a traditionalist community with whom he now lives.

Glentz — who is known as “Father,” though he is not a priest under church law — said he does not consider the 17-room home overlooking Lake Michigan ostentatious, given its intended purpose as a retreat center.

And the Rev. C. Frank Phillips, who heads the Canons Regular in Chicago’s River North neighborhood, said the purchase is “not really” out of step with Pope Francis, who himself lives in a suite of rooms in the Vatican guesthouse.

[HT: PEP]

Excellent professor Ken Schenck’s review of the revision of Don Dayton’s important book. Worth a good read. [HT: JS]

Camp Bow Wow and non-compete clauses for workers, yes, that’s right:

It’s so absurd it almost seems like a Woody Allen-esque meditation on the limits of capitalism. But here it is: Camp Bow Wow, a dog-sitting chain, makes its workers sign non-compete agreements that bar them from plying any of the “trade secrets” they learn walking dogs at any other animal day care centers for up to two years, according to the Huffington Post. The company declined to discuss the matter with HuffPo.

Sue Manning:

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Some silken-haired beauties are eager sidekicks to motorcycle riders, wind whipping their thick locks as passers-by watch the wild ride with envy. That is until the slobber starts.

These passengers are pooches – mastiffs, Labradors and Chihuahuas often clad in goggles and tiny leather jackets that fly along in blimp-shaped buckets attached to the side of motorcycles. They are set apart from other pets by speed instead of breed.

They are also the stars of “Sit Stay Ride: The Story of America’s Sidecar Dogs,” a documentary that was largely funded by an online crowdfunding campaign and gives a quarter of its proceeds to shelters and rescues. The movie is also available for free to any animal welfare agency wanting to screen it as a fundraiser.

The documentary by filmmaking couple Eric and Geneva Ristau is the unique story of 15 dogs and 18 riders who spend all the time they can on three wheels.

Allan Bevere, Ferguson, churches and racial reconciliation — let the pastors show the way:

Many of us know the old adage– Sunday morning is the most segregated time in America. We Christians have been very comfortable staying within our “own groups.” Those groups are not only racial, but that is my focus in this post. The followers of Jesus Christ who have the ministry of reconciliation have failed to show the culture around us what that reconciliation looks like in Christ between people whose skin colors differ. We have worked to change laws, but not hearts; what we ultimately have is a heart problem.

The day after the grand jury decision to acquit Officer Wilson, I placed a phone call to an African American pastor I met several weeks ago at a luncheon. We exchanged contact information to schedule a time to meet for lunch. But I suppose with the busyness of our days, neither one of us contacted the other.

So, on Wednesday of last week I called him and we are going to meet for lunch. I want to talk with him about Ferguson and the larger issues that have once again bubbled to the surface. I will do some talking, but first and foremost I will be listening. I will be listening to his story because I know that is the only way I am going to learn. And I also hope we can discuss how our two communities of faith might get to know each other, that we might listen to one another, and to share our different stories in the larger narrative of the story of the gospel that all of us embrace.

And not only do I want to build relationships in general, I want to build relationships as Christians who gather for worship and who gather around the Table of our common Lord. I believe that reconciliation can be found at that Table. As Christians it’s time for us to step back somewhat and focus a little less on doing (though that should not be neglected) and work on just being– just being the one Body of Christ in all our diversity, knowing that our common faith puts that diversity in divine context.It’s time for the church of Jesus Christ to take seriously its ministry of reconciliation, including racial reconciliation in the church itself. Only then can we be that witness, that city on a hill shining forth to the world that racism, even in its most subtle forms is not the way of God.

Nancy Beach, Mary and women during Advent:

This is why all of us would do well to return again and again to the moments described in the gospels as Jesus ennobled and treasured the contributions of women. Jesus was a radical on many fronts, including his view of women. So as we approach Christmas, I urge women to be inspired by Mary. Know that our God SEES you, that He will not abandon you, that He has a vital role for you to play and will equip you with what you need. The road may be extremely difficult on many days, but please do not despair and do not give up! Take your seat at whatever table you are invited to join. Find your voice and speak up with that rare combination of grace and truth. Lean into other women (and men as well) for support and understanding – do not do this journey alone!

Emily Yahr, on sleep:

1) Although there is debate about the magic number of sleeping hours, experts here recommend a solid eight. That said, 40 percent of American adults are sleep-deprived; the average American sleeps less than seven hours per night during the week. Meanwhile, 70 percent of adolescents also fall behind the recommended amount.

2) Lack of sleep is a serious problem in our constantly moving, 24/7 society: People are getting thousands of hours less sleep than they once were. As the documentary puts it, sleep is being “decimated” by our overstimulated culture with so much technology and gadgetry that distracts everyone all the time. Plus, people are overworked, so they no longer have enough time to do the things they want during the week. As a result, they stay up even later on weekends so they can compensate.

The Best (Six) Years of Your Life — college:

College, as the saying goes, is supposed to be the best four years of your life. But there’s increasingly a new norm for students: spending six years getting a degree.

Even the government now measures whether students graduate on time if they do it within six years, rather than four.

Taking longer to graduate isn’t cheap. It costs $15,933 more in tuition, fees and room and board for every extra year at a public two-year college and $22,826 for every added year at a public four-year college, according to anew report by the nonprofit Complete College America.

At a time when total student debt has surpassed $1 trillion, getting students to graduate on time has become critical.

So what’s the reason behind students spending so much extra time getting their degrees?

Colleges have added too many unnecessary degree requirements and remedial courses that keep students in school for much longer than needed, according to the report.

How long did it take you to graduate? Your children?

What to say?

Americans are obsessed with parenting advice. Bloggers, magazines, whole Web sites urge us to do more. Or less. Be more Chinese, they implore. Or more French.

But despite this constant flow of advice, we have very little idea how to make kids happy. Quantitative measures show that American children areamong the most miserable in the developed world, and there’s a growing gap between our kids and those in other nations. America’s teens “trail much of the world on measures of school achievement, but are among the world leaders in violence, unwanted pregnancy, STDs, abortion, binge drinking, marijuana use, obesity, and unhappiness,” according toadolescence scholar Larry Steinberg.

At their core, a country’s policies and practices are driven by belief systems. And while other developed countries are taking a supportive attitude toward their future citizens, America seems mired in the ancient, dehumanizing beliefs about children that will continue to hold our kids back, and eventually the country as well.

What More Is Required? (Damaris Miranda)

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 10:11 pm By Scot McKnight

From Arise Newsletter.

Damaris Miranda received her doctorate in clinical psychology and masters in social work from Rutgers and her master of divinity from New Brunswick Theological Seminary. She has served for over forty years in urban ministry and currently co-pastors with her siblings atAction In Christ International. Damaris is also on the staff of a major medical center where she provides mental health services to children and their families. Damaris is a speaker, retreat leader, and singer-songwriter.

I was born into the Christian church. I was dedicated as an infant, educated in Sunday school, and baptized at the age of twelve. At fourteen, I chose to become a follower of Christ, a commitment that has endured for over forty years of dedication and service. But, it has never been enough. Not enough to receive the respect and support accorded male leaders and ministers in the church. Not enough to quiet the questions and knowing glances all too familiar to women in ministry, letting us know that we are tolerable substitutes until the true minister arrives–the male minister. Being a woman in ministry or church leadership has been, and still continues to be, an uphill battle. Being a single woman in ministry introduces additional challenges.

I. Single

The person who inspired me to follow Jesus was a young, single woman. To my teenage eyes, she seemed nothing less than angelic. At twenty-four, she received God’s call to share in faith and partnership with the people of Guatemala. Our current global experience, along with recent demographic changes in our country, have made the Guatemalan people a familiar face for many of us–perhaps in our neighbor, our coworker, or our family member. At the time, it seemed a distant land, an unknown culture, for a young woman born and raised in Queens, New York.

She left her family, friends, home, and profession as a New York City teacher and followed God’s call to live and work among the people of Guatemala City and some of the surrounding Mayan villages. She successfully pioneered and established Christian communities there, led by indigenous leaders. Together, the work flourished and a lovely chapel was built. People traveled from miles around to worship on Sunday mornings.

As the ministry grew, more staff arrived from her sponsoring organization in the United States. She loved the people she served and they loved her back. Then, she received the news. She was informed that since the ministry was now established, she would need to step down to make way for a male leader to serve as the proper “head” of the work.

In keeping with her loving character, and years of socialization, she “submitted” to the decision of her sponsoring organization and turned over the leadership of the ministry to the male appointee while she took on a supportive role. She was able enough to pioneer a thriving ministry in a land that was foreign to her, but she was apparently not able enough to lead that ministry once established. This is just one example of the fine distinctions women in ministry are asked to negotiate by a church willing to benefit from their work, gifts, prayers, and support, but often unwilling to acknowledge their leadership.

I could not articulate the deep sense of betrayal and confusion I experienced when she resigned from the leadership of the ministry she had loved and sacrificed to establish. I was not experienced enough then to understand why it felt as if the wind had been taken out of me.

II. Single, Never Married

My best friend as an adult was a single woman who left her home and family to answer God’s call to minister among the poor and disadvantaged youth and families in New York City, particularly the South Bronx–a devastated urban community at the time. She believed, as St. Francis taught, that it is better to be a sermon than to preach one. She developed a work of mutual love and respect among the people she served.

She became director of a dedicated, interracial team of young adults involved in Christian urban renewal efforts. In spite of her graduate theological training and ordination, the Christian ministry she served for many years never considered her for higher levels of leadership in their organization. These were reserved for white males. Over the years, she was often invited to preach or teach at churches where her prophetic message of equality and social justice were not well received, and she was not invited to return. As incongruent as it may seem for a Christian ministry, she was eventually asked to resign because of her advocacy for the poor and disenfranchised.

In time, she established a campus ministry in schools and colleges throughout New York City that has impacted the lives of thousands of students.

III. Single, Mother of Four

My mother was born and raised in poverty in Puerto Rico. She received God’s call as a young girl living in the countryside. She relocated to mainland United States to work, raise, and educate her three younger siblings, orphaned by the death of both her parents. She married, but her marriage dissolved and she became the single mother of four, for which she was often rejected, criticized, and judged by the Christian community she loved. She overcame cultural, language, and socioeconomic barriers to follow God’s call upon her life. She trained, became a missionary, and then became the first female chaplain in a men’s prison in Brooklyn, New York, where the inmates came to know her as “mama.” In spite of the years of sacrificial service, her church and denomination did not support her ministry or calling to pastor.

She initiated a home fellowship group, which eventually grew into a bilingual, interracial, inter-denominational congregation. We recently celebrated our 34th anniversary, in our lovely synagogue-turned-church building in the community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. She served as founder and pastor there until her recent death at age eighty-one.

These are but three of the single women called by God to the ministry and leadership of his church. Their dynamic witness has influenced the lives of hundreds for the kingdom of Jesus Christ. These women left behind home, family, careers, and country to answer God’s call. They overcame barriers of language, culture, poverty, lack of education and financial support to establish successful missions, churches, and Christian service organizations. What more is required of those called to the ministry and leadership of Christ’s church? The Christian church and community they loved should have been a haven of comfort and support. Instead, they received criticism, judgment, and devaluation of their ministries. And yet, is gender and marital status truly a factor to the God who called Sarah and Esther, Rebecca and Deborah, Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and so many others? As with the cloud and pillar of fire that led the people of Israel in the wilderness, I believe in this matter, our God moved on before us a long time ago. It is time that we, his people, catch up with our God.

Kathy Escobar on Lessons Learned as a Pastor

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 10:14 pm By Scot McKnight

Arise:

Kathy Escobar co-pastors The Refuge, an eclectic faith community in North Denver,
dedicated to those on the margins of life and faith.
She is the author of several books, most recently, Down We Go: Living into the Wild Ways of Jesus,
and blogs regularly at www.kathyescobar.com. She lives in Arvada, Colorado with her husband, Jose, and five kids.

I have been pastoring full-time for ten years now. A decade. It seems like yesterday that I received a phone call from a friend on a large church staff, asking me if I would consider coming to work there as a care pastor. I clearly remember the moment, because I thought he was asking me if I knew of someone who might be interested in the job. I was attending seminary at the time and had a lot of ministry friends. It never once occurred to me that he was asking me if I wanted the job.

I was so stunned I had to sit down on the floor while he clarified. “No, I am asking you. I would love for you to come on staff and work with us.”

In all the churches I’d been in up till that point, every single pastoral position was filled by men. Sure, I knew women’s ministry directors, but no women who were actually pastors leading men. I did, however, know a lot of women who were filling the roles of pastor without the title. Before that phone call, that was my reality, too. I had been a pastor for years, but no one had ever acknowledged that gift beyond thanking me for volunteering and leading other women.

It was a bumpy first few years for me as I entered into ministry in this more intentional way. I remember how scared I was to step into leadership. How often I doubted myself. How easy it was to defer to the men on the staff because they had more experience and power. How hesitant I was of sounding too strong. How I would beat myself up after teaching at our recovery service, uncovering all of the things that were wrong with my message. But over time, I slowly gained confidence. God’s spirit continued to strengthen me. I moved out of a steep learning curve and tipped over into feeling more certain that this was the work that I was called to do despite the obstacles (and there were certainly quite a few of those!).

After two years and some unexpected twists and turns, I, along with a friend and fellow pastor left our positions at that church. Together, we planted The Refuge. That was eight years ago. Shifting from a hierarchical complementarian leadership model to a co-pastoring, fully egalitarian one was an interesting transition, because it required me to participate in a different way than before. I couldn’t hide behind someone else’s authority. I couldn’t leave the decisions to the one with the “final say.” I had to step into full and equal leadership in our community in a way that I had never done before.

In the years since then, I keep realizing what a gift it is to be part of a community that values women as equals and lives it out in tangible ways. I am still learning and there are certainly challenges (not so much inside our community, but more so when I intersect with the broader church).

Here are some of the things I keep learning about equality in the church:

It won’t come without intention. The grooves of patriarchy are strong and deep. Even when people have sincere hearts and feel convicted by the Scriptures that men and women should be equals, change doesn’t drop out of the sky. It takes a lot of work to cultivate equality in the church and involve women and other underrepresented groups in all areas of life and leadership together. We need to work hard to invite women of all ages into leadership roles very intentionally and to call out their gifts.

We must provide ongoing support. Asking is a first step, but then we need to keep looking for ways to support the ministry work of women in unique life circumstances. Honoring issues related to childbirth and parenting is so important, in addition to providing training and encouragement so that women can sustain their work.

Equality is fostered through true friendship.The more we can practice friendship together as men and women, brothers and sisters, alongside each other in the body of Christ, the more we can learn to lead and live together as equals. Friends are never “over” or “under” each other; they are always alongside. My friendships with men over these eight years have been incredibly transforming and would have never happened if we had only intersected as pastors and leaders and not as true friends.

Many people think we’ve come further than we have. There is still a misperception that women have come a long way in the church and so talking about equality isn’t necessary. That is definitely false. Sure, things have tilted slightly and I personally see more women sitting at certain leadership tables than ever before, but we need to remember power is not so easily shifted. We have a long way to go until women have full and equal power alongside men.

It comes at a cost. Making choices about equality in churches and shifting power is no easy task. People may leave. Resources may wither. Feathers may be ruffled. It’s so important to cling to the reality that the ways of Jesus have always been against the status quo, come at a cost, and require sacrifice.

I believe wholeheartedly that the work of Christians for Biblical Equality is helping shift the tide and is bringing greater healing and wholeness to the church.

What Does Kingdom Mean?

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 10:24 pm By Scot McKnight

The burden of my new book, Kingdom Conspiracy, is answering this question: What does “kingdom” mean?

I want to begin this session by tapping on a few doors to see who opens the door and asking them what kingdom means. This gives us a sampling of kingdom usage in the church today. It is in no particular order, and we can discuss each but I have tried to give a brief label to how the kingdom is being used at the end of each citation.

Ed Stetzer, Southern Baptist leader

In his nice little sketch about megachurches vs. house churches, Ed Stetzer, well known research for LifeWay among the Southern Baptists, was trotting along at a nice pace about the church and house churches and church planting but then when he began to talk about all the forms of the church together it became kingdom. Why the change of terms? [1]

For him “kingdom” is the sum total of the churches in this world.

Kingdom = church universal

Stanley Hauerwas, Anabaptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, Catholic, ethicist.

This kingdom sets the standard for the life of the church, but the life of the kingdom is broader that even that of the church. …The church is not the kingdom but the foretaste of the kingdom. In the church the narrative of God is lived in a way that makes the kingdom visible. The church must be the clear manifestation of a people who have learned to be at peace with themselves, one another, the stranger, and of course, most of all, God. There can be no sanctification of individuals without a sanctified people. Like apprentices who learn their craft by working alongside the master-craftsman, we Christians need exemplars or Saints whose lives in body the kingdom way. If we lack such exemplars, the church cannot exist as a people who are pledged to be different from the world.”

SH A Peaceable Kingdom 97.

Kingdom is a society of perfection, perhaps a power (?) or an order but not the church, which is an inferior manifestation of the kingdom. But also the church is not the world.

Adelita Garza, a female evangelist, church planting pastor:

She declared that the answer to expanding ministry is the young women in Bible colleges and already in the pew — only they need leaders to believe in them, perhaps even more than they believe in themselves.

“This is not a gender issue, this is a kingdom of God issue,” she said.“What resources has God put in our hand to win this country, our world, for Jesus?” Garza asked. “The resource is every man, woman and young person who has been called by God to plant a church. If we use all our resources, our potential has just exponentially grown.”[2]

Kingdom here seems to suggest an ecclesial renewal movement of equality, a society marked by the way God wants life to be lived now.

D. Bonhoeffer, Christmas Night sermon, 25 December 1940 (DBW 16.616).

It is no longer a worldly throne and kingdom as it once was [under Israel] but a spiritual throne and kingdom. Where are Jesus’ throne and kingdom? They are where he himself is present, reigns, and governs with his word and sacrament, in the church, in the congregation…. We are called into this kingdom. We can find it, within the church, in the community of the faithful, when we receive the word and sacrament of the Lord Jesus Christ and submit to his authority, when we recognize the child in the manger as our Savior and Redeemer and let him bestow on us a new life grounded in love.

Kingdom here is very close to church but it is distanced from Israel (as was the case in Germany at least from G. Dalman on — see below). He is riding an early wave of the view that shaped George Ladd.

Yet, D. Bonhoeffer, letter “To the Young Brothers in Pomerania,” after his days in the underground seminary training of Confessing Church pastors, said:

With this word [of commitment to the Confessing Church] we were willing to pass through struggle, through suffering, through poverty, through sin, and through death to finally reach God’s eternal kingdom (DBWE 15.30).\

Kingdom here is very close to heaven or the new heavens and the new earth, or the future kingdom of God (on earth? in heaven?).

Gustav Dalman, The Words of Jesus, 137, 139, who wants kingdom to mean power, salvation, blessings of the new age, an eschatological reality (all italics mine):

There was already in existence, prior to the time of Jesus, a tendency which laid little stress on the Jewish national element in the hope for the future. This aspect of the future hope Jesus thrust still further into the background, placing the purely religious element decisively in the foreground, and He thereby_extended the conception of the “sovereignty of God” so as to include within it the blessings mediated by this sovereignty. For Him the sovereignty of God meant the divine power which, from the present onwards with continuous progress, effectuates the renovation of the world, but also the renovated world into whose domain mankind will one day enter, which is even now being offered, and therefore can be appropriated and received as a blessing.

It was not merely the content of the conception which forms the kernel of our Lord’s teaching that was new and original, but also His application of the term, despite the fact that the phrase selected originally belonged to the religious vocabulary of the Jews. The theocracy about to make its entrance into the world was something more than a gratifying realization of the hopes entertained regarding it [in the Jewish tradition]; it was a creative force bringing new ideas in its train.

Dalman: it is not what Jews thought it would be; it was not Israel; it was a power of God now at work – the future making its way into the present in salvation power.

Dan Jesse, a Kuyperian blogger, thinks with many in the American evangelical movement, that kingdom is much, much bigger than church. He says:[3]

Today there is a fundamental error occurring in the way we think about the Church. We confuse and collapse two concepts into one, leading us down a dangerous path. These concepts are the Church of Christ and the Kingdom of Christ. “Kuyper makes much of the fact that the Kingdom of Christ is much bigger than the institutional church.” (Mouw, 57) When we hold that the whole domain of Christ is in the institution of the Church, we limit the reach of Christ in His world and make Christ into something that He is not; an idol that only exerts power over a small part of Creation.

The Church is only a small part of the Kingdom of Christ’s Kingdom. It is important and has a great role to fulfill, but is not the fullness of the Kingdom. The church is where we as believers gather to worship – where we are shaped by the preaching of the Word, by participation in sacraments, by instruction in the church’s tradition and teaching, and by less formal patterns of fellowship. (57)

Kingdom = God’s common grace reign in this world, but much bigger than the church, which is but one small element of God’s kingdom.

John Howard Yoder, in what can be called his most important work, The Politics of Jesus, in a chapter called “The Kingdom Coming,” concludes with these lines that I think represent his view of kingdom and church:

Jesus was, in his divinely-mandated… prophethood, priesthood, and kingship, the bearer of a new possibility of human, social, and therefore political relationships….

This might sound like a Niebuhrian or Kuyperian theory at work but we must see his focus in this kind of language. He does not ignore the world, but instead sees the world through the lens of kingdom and church. The church is what God wants for the whole world but the kingdom is at work in connection with Jesus. I continue now in his words:

No such slicing [by the historical critics of the Gospels] can avoid his call to an ethic marked by the cross, a cross identified as the punishment of a man who threatens society by creating a new kind of community leading a radically new kind of life (52, 53).

Here kingdom themes, which focus more on the ethical and social than on the soteriological or Christological, come to their natural gathering in the community of Jesus, that is, the church.

Yet, when I look at his discussion in his Theology of Mission, I see more of a focus on the kingdom as a future ideal into which the church is learning to live in the here and now; he also suggests kingdom as a cosmic idea. Here the church is but a “sign” of the kingdom (282-288; admittedly, these are his incomplete thoughts in response to other missiologists.

Yoder gets much closer to Kuyper at some points.

On my blog, 10.9, by Peter TeWinkle:[4]

The shift [to kingdom language] was a definite part of my seminary training (2000-2002). Missional language was a big part of the conversation and kingdom was at the center of that. It was that kind of “down to earth” language that finally drew me into pastoral ministry. There was something for us to do rather than simply believe. However, along the way I have felt the same tension that many others have given into. That is, “If what God really wants is peace and justice, I’ll just do that. Who needs the church anyway?”

Kingdom, as it is being used, seems to have little to do with the church. The church can, if it chooses to do so, join in the great social peace and justice kingdom work if it chooses to.

Now my conclusions:

Everyone uses kingdom to their own advantage, or agenda… but few are rooting their ideas in the Bible. Few have looked at the Old Testament or contemporary Jewish sources (the rabbis are later) to see what “kingdom” meant at the time of Jesus when he used the term.

Instead, we have learned to use “kingdom” on the basis of how kingdom is being used as expressing a variety of theological ideas, not least how that term brings to expression how we think church and state relate and individual Christian and culture relate.

Here are some major uses at work in the church today:

Kingdom is an ethical system applicable to and worked out in the public and state: both progressives and conservatives use the term this way.

Kingdom is the power of God at work in the world. (Wherever that power is at work, there is kingdom.)

Kingdom is the church or, just the opposite, the kingdom is not the church but includes the church in a much larger story.

Kingdom is an ideal, a utopia, for the present but for others it is also heaven, the final perfection planned by God.

Kingdom is a creation doctrine concerned with the renewal of all things – including physical, social, moral, political, etc (Kuyper).

In this sense “kingdom” is language that “sanctifies” vocation and “justifies” our passions and “narrates” a story that gives meaning to all we do.

My big question:

Where, one might ask, does one locate “kingdom” in Systematic Theology classes?

Eschatology: future (and some present)?

Christology?

Soteriology?

God as creator?

Ecclesiology?

A problem today is this reductionism, this location of kingdom in just one of the loci of Systematics.

[1] http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2014/september/learning-from-megachurch-vs-house-church-debate-3-ways-to-b.html

[2] http://100.ag.org/centennial/second-church-planting-panel-offers-fresh-views/

[3] http://blog.emergingscholars.org/2014/10/the-role-of-the-church/

[4] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2014/10/09/kingdom-then-kingdom-now/#disqus_thread

A Modest Plea for Coaches to Stay Pastors (by Geoff Holsclaw)

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 10:25 pm By Scot McKnight

Geoff Holsclaw is my colleague at Northern Seminary, a fine young pastor and professor, and this post gets right to the heart of what I have myself been observing about too many young pastors — leaving pastoring to become “coaches.” Read and drop a comment.

By Geoff Holsclaw, A Modest Plea for Coaches to Stay Pastors

This post is by Geoff Holsclaw

When God called me to be a pastor I resolved I would never view the pastorate as a career ladder to be climbed.

Growing up I had seen and heard people talk about how some youth pastor had now become an associate pastor, with the implication being that someday he would be a senior pastor. Or the similar idea was to move from a smaller to a larger church, and the really successful would become mega-church pastors, or at least staff pastors at a mega-church.

But with many in my generation of a pastors and ministers (I’m 36), dissatisfied with the church growth movement and its lack of growing mature disciples, I didn’t want to think of pastoral success in terms of butts (in seats), bucks, and buildings. I wanted to think in terms of faithfulness and longevity wherever God called me to serve.

And so I, like many others, had given up on worldly dreams of influence and success, and settled into a “long obedience in the same direction.”

Or have we?

While it is true that in the circles I’ve been part of there is little ambition to be a mega-church pastor, I’ve begun to see something that might be analogous: the desire to be a church consultant/coach.

Over the last 10 years I have seen an increasing trend of those who talk about and then implement a “side business” of church consulting and coaching. I saw this initially with those connected to mainline churches (probably because they have an established infrastructure for such things), but now more so within evangelical circles.

Certainly there are a variety of reasons one would become a coach: because you were asked, because you feel you have something to offer, you need a little extra income.

But I think there is also a more subtle ambition at work here. It is sometimes expresses in words like “I feel God is calling me to lead leaders…” “I think God is calling me to greater influence…to influence the influencers…” “I want to pastor the pastors…”. I have heard these and similar sentiments as justifications for becoming a church coach, which often entails an exiting of local pastoral ministry.

The trouble is, this is exactly how mega-church pastors talk about leading their churches, and how they justify the conferences they speak at. Have we really come so far from climbing the pastoral “career ladder” when we sound like those whom we criticize for building their own kingdoms under the banner of building God’s church?

I Worry

I worry about this trend toward consulting/coach for two reasons. First it is taking good pastors out of the pastorate, out of leading the regular life of the regular churches. “But,” you might ask, “why is this bad if good coaches are making other into better pastors? Doesn’t a rising tide of pastoral maturity lift all churches up?”

Well, maybe. And this leads me to the second problem. Often these coaches and consultants have been leading church for less than 10 years (if not less than 5 years). Of course leading a church for any amount of time is a good and difficult thing to do. But a 5-year pool of experience is pretty small. What if the pastor being coached needs help with a problem that can only truly be known from a “10+ year” perspective on ministry? Because we so often map our experience on to the experiences of others and then advise from that place, if we are only pulling from 5 years of pastoral experience we are apt, in the role of a coach, to misunderstand the true needs and opportunities of the church being worked with. And if one is no longer pastoring a local community (and no, “pastoring pastors” does not increase your pastoral experience base), then that coach is never growing beyond those 5 years of experience (even if they coach for the next 20 years).

Personally, I have learned so much about myself and ministry in the last 3 years of ministry that I didn’t (that I wasn’t even ready to learn) in my first 7 years. Anyone else? Please leave a comment.

(Caveat: I know the true definition of “coaching” is not to consult and advise, but rather to ask good questions to help clarify the resources within a person and organization and help them see their own way forward. But only the best and most circumspect of coaches don’t slid into consulting through leading questions and suggested answers, if not outright problems solving on behalf of the one being coached. In fact, woman are usually far out in front of men in the ability to listen and perceive properly in coaching situations, so everything I’m saying here might not apply to women as much, certainly not the ambition.)

It’s Complicated!

Of course it is complicated. This is complicated and confusing because there are many valid reasons to offer and receive coaching. But that is exactly why I’m calling attention to this topic so that we can be more careful about what we are doing, so that we can probe and check our motivations and ambitions.

What about Being Bi-vocational?

I have often advocated for Bi-Vocational Ministry, and so a natural question could be, “Isn’t this a valid form of bi-vocational ministry?” Well, yes it could. Just like becoming a spiritual director, or a seminary professor, among many others, could be a valid second vocation. But the real question for me is whether these second vocations are pulling us out of our primary calling as pastors.

Many students have asked (and several church members have worried) that now that I have finished my doctorate whether I will pursue a full-time job as a professor to teach and write (to “raise up the next generation of pastoral leaders” as I could tell myself). My answer has been and continues to be, “God has clearly and compelling called me to be a pastor, and no matter has much I much love teaching and how much I might be frustrated with pastoring, I can’t do something else until God releases me from pastoring.”

And so my question is for all would-be coach, “Has God clearly and definitely released you from local church ministry to be come a coach? Is the calling as strong as your first call to the pastorate?” If not perhaps we are listening to the lesser spirits of worldly ambition and influence.

Not against Coaching

I’m writing this not because I am against coaching, but because I want to begin more testing and discernment about the increasing number of church coaches and those who do it and for what reasons. I want all of us who are thinking about becoming a coach to really remember our calling to the pastorate and to trust God in that calling until clearly released from local, pastoral ministry.

And so my modest plea is this: if you are a pastor, stay a pastor, and if you are a coach, then still stay a pastor.

Perhaps it all comes down to this (even if this is a change of topic): you cannot coach character until your own character has been tested and refined, and that process is just beginning in the first 5 years of ministry. If we aren’t coaching character, then we have just regressed to coaching technique, and if so, how far from “church growth” practice and ambition have we really come?

Listen to Her

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 10:25 pm By Scot McKnight

From Arise newsletter, by: Adelita Garza is lead pastor of both the Spanish and English congregations at Puente de Vida(Bridge of Life) Church in Santa Paula, CA. She is passionate about seeing the lost come to Jesus and working toward the unity of the church. She received a BA in church leadership at Bethany College and an MDiv at Fuller Theological Seminary.

I agree with Adelita Garza: at the center of encouraging women in ministry and in changing a culture is role models. Our motto is “listen to her” and you will see that God has equipped women to teach and preach and lead. I have said this before: if you only hear sermons and teaching in the voice of a male you soon learn to think male voices fit sermons. (As some songs seem to be fit for a male’s or a female’s voice.)

So, (male) pastor, here’s my question: Are you willing to make room so your people can “listen to her”?

The whole time she was preaching, I was thinking “Oh, if I could only be like her.” I said it over and over in my 18 year-old brain as I observed the anointed woman preaching the word with great power and authority. It was in those few moments that I was convinced, not only in my head, but also in my heart that God could also use me. How could I ever forget this single moment? How could I ever forget evangelist Irma Contreras? Seeing her and interacting with her impacted my concept of women in ministry for life.

In an area where male leadership is predominant, female role models are essential for young girls and women responding to God’s call to ministry. I see a longing in the hearts of so many young women for someone to walk alongside them and coach them in their journey. I am challenged in every encounter I have with them, knowing that they are observing me, and feeling the responsibility to be an Old Testament Deborah, a New Testament Lydia, or a modern day Irma. How I would have loved to have a woman take me under her wings during my early ministry years. You and I can make a difference for young girls and women who are being called into ministry today.

One of the great obstacles for most of us women in ministry is time. Where can we possibly find the time to invest in these upcoming leaders? Let me share three ways I have creatively found myself being a role model in my day to day ministry life.

How have others encouraged you? Who was it? What did that person do? say? provide?

The first is what I call “one time encounters.” This would be just like my experience with Irma Contreras. I met her that one evening and though I never saw her again, she marked my life profoundly. This means that we should take advantage of every moment we know there is a young girl or woman in our midst to encourage and speak life into her soul. You may just be the one God is choosing to use at that moment to model life, hope, and truth to someone you may never see again.

The second is what I call a “seasonal role modeling relationship.” These are young women who are a part of your ministry for a short term. A good question to ask yourself is: Who do I already connect with in ministry? Who do I already invest time with in ministry? Be intentional in giving to her. In this relationship, ask her or allow her to ask you as many questions as needed to work through and process her own calling.

The third is what I call a “long term role modeling relationship.” These are the girls that are in your life for long seasons. As a pastor, I have the amazing opportunity to see little girls grow up in church. I see them fall in love with Jesus as they grow in worship and the word. It is so important that we create an affirming environment in the church where they can believe at a young age that God can and does call them to ministry, too. I think of Eden at my church. She is just seven years old and is already falling in love with the Chinese people. I recently told her mom I believed she was being called as a missionary to China. What a privilege I have to speak God’s divine purpose into Eden’s life at such a young age!

And it isn’t always just younger girls or clearly called young women you may be impacting. It can be the most unlikely person. What began as the inconvenience of sharing a small office with a woman (ten years my senior) who was helping out at church, ended up with the two of us serving together full time, and finally, seven years later, with her responding to God’s call to prepare to be a pastor. She says it was the observation of my character through ongoing, vulnerable relationship and sincere caring for her that most contributed to the growth that brought her to this point. The impact she describes took place not when she was awed by a superhero pastor, but rather when I allowed her close enough to see me in the midst of my hardships and conflict and loved her unconditionally through hers. As she saw me in my times of greatest weakness, she was able to trust that God’s strength would be perfected in her weakness, also.

Oh, may we grasp the incredible value and impact we can have as ministry role models willing to be real and vulnerable before our sisters in Christ. May we look not at the outward appearance, but at their hearts, and see the “unlikely” ones God has placed in our paths with his limitless potential! In his hands, our investments of time and love, like the loaves and fishes, will multiply exponentially to people we could never reach alone. Will you join me? How can you be intentional and real with that younger or older sister God has placed in your path today?

This article was previously published in Women in Ministry Mobilized E-Newsletter on 09/23/2012.

Judging the Cost (by Jonathan Storment)

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 10:27 pm By Scot McKnight

This post is by Jonathan Storment.

Judging the Cost

“You know how much I love you right?” –a brother talking to his addicted sister in the show intervention

“Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth” St. Paul

A few weeks ago I introduced a short series talking about what it feels like to be inside of “Christian Love”. Most of the time when someone starts an email or a conversation by saying that, I brace myself for the other shoe to drop.

And I don’t know if that is a bad thing.

Have you ever seen the show on A&E called Intervention? It is this heartbreaking show about people whose addiction has completely taken over their lives. The first part of the show is introducing you to the addict, and how their dependence has destroyed their careers, families, and friendships. And the second part of the show is their friends and family all gathering together and surprising them with an intervention, asking them to get help.

If you get a chance, watch the video above. I think this is a good parable for what it is like to live in Christian community. It is an actual intervention. A woman named Miriam is about to lose her family and her life to her addiction, and her friends are taking the step to judge her. It is gut-wrenching.

You can tell that her friends and family really do care about her. You can tell she is angry and bitter. This is an extremely awkward situation to have put on cable T.V. She doesn’t want to be in that seat. Nobody wants to be in that seat, but we all need seats like that from time to time, and church, at her best, has plenty of uncomfortable seats like that.

I know that we church people often judge each other from a cruel place. We try to make ourselves feel better about ourselves by pointing out the speck in our brother or sister’s eye (and it is often by calling attention to a sin we don’t struggle with…or worse, one we wish we could participate in). But sometimes it is not done from those places, sometimes it exactly what love looks like.

1^st Corinthians is the letter where Paul writes his famous poetic section describing love as something that always hopes, always protects, always trusts…but in that same letter Paul also writes them telling the church to expel the man who is sleeping with his step-mom, he tells them this just isn’t right, and that they have to take the hard steps of saying this is not what a Kingdom community looks like.

The same guy who writes those poetic things about love, writes these instructions for church discipline not in some other letter, years later as an older, kinder, more reflective church planter. He writes those words about love just a few pages later, because Paul envisions a love that confronts people when things are off.

It is often pointed out that Western Churches are not very good at Discipleship. The surveys show that Christians in America live shockingly similar lives to people who are not Christian. Churches are great at helping people become “Christian” but not very good at helping them become disciples of Jesus. We can get people into buildings or programs, but not much Jesus into people.

But the heart of this problem is not Church programming. I think it is the lack of real community in our lives.

There is a reason that the word disciple comes from the same word as discipline. Think of the way Jesus did this. Jesus gets twelve guys together and they live life with each other. I think to be inside loving community with Jesus was difficult. He called one of his best friends Satan (and you haven’t had a bad day until Jesus calls you Satan). He seems to always be irritating them. He is always challenging their value systems. He is constantly trying to help them see people and God differently. He is always correcting them, arguing with them, and putting ears back on people when one of them pulls out a sword at the wrong time.

That is Discipleship according to Jesus.

At one point in Jesus’ ministry he talks about the Cost of Discipleship. He tells the people who are considering following him to think long and hard about it before they do. This is not because he doesn’t want more disciples, but because he wants them to know just what they are getting themselves into. This isn’t a religious country club you are signing up for, this is a new way of being in the world, and it is not going to happen overnight, and it is not going to be easy, but it can happen.

That is why the last few weeks I have written about being a part of a local community of faith with which you make some kind of internal pledge to stick it out. Because I work in the Bible Belt, and for as long as I can remember our churches have had a problem with creating disciples, mainly because we don’t have any mechanism to lovingly confront each other, because we know if we do, people would just leave, and go to the church across the street.

But to follow Jesus involves being pruned, and shaped, and challenged, and changed. It involves submitting yourself to the community around you because of the deep awareness that we have that we are not perfect, and that we actually may not be able to see ourselves clearly at all times. This is not for everyone to speak into your life, but for a few specific people to be able to speak into it.

Part of judging the Cost of Discipleship is realizing the cost of judging. It is painful, it is awkward, it is embarrassing. We will never want it at the time, but it is the only way to become the women and men that God made us to be.

So back to the video clip: It is the show Intervention on A&E. It always centers around a person struggling with substance or alcohol abuse. They are destroying their lives and so the friends and family gather to confront them and plead with them to change.

If you want to be reminded of what the human condition looks like, try watching an episode. And pay close attention to the way the person who is addicted responds. They almost always use words like freedom, or talk about minding your own business. They blame the other people there for the way that their lives have turned out, or accuse them of trying to control them. And they almost always say something like, Don’t Judge Me. But for you, the viewer, you have a different perspective. You are not addicted, and you are not emotionally involved. You can see that what these people want has nothing to do with impeding freedom or condemning their friend. It is out of deep love that they have mustered the courage to confront, and in the more successful interventions they ask their friend to choose between their relationships or their addiction. And while it is painful to watch someone in that seat, it is even more painful to be in it yourself.

But part of the Cost of Discipleship is to allow love to put you in seats like that. And when it does happen, (and it will, because you are not perfect) don’t immediately reach for words like freedom and independence, because those words don’t belong to you there. You gave that up. That is the Cost.

So sit in the chair and open up to the people that you have allowed to love you – to actually love you. Because the only thing worse than being in that seat…is not having a seat like that at all.

Did Shemaiah Know? (RJS)

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 10:31 pm By RJS

I’ve been listening to the prophets lately (again), this week in Jeremiah. In chapter 29 we hear about a conflict between Jeremiah and another man Shemaiah (According to wikipedia Hebrew: שמעיה SheMa`YaH “God Heard”) the Nehelamite. Jeremiah has this to say:

‘This is what the Lord says about Shemaiah the Nehelamite: Because Shemaiah has prophesied to you, even though I did not send him, and has persuaded you to trust in lies, this is what the Lord says: I will surely punish Shemaiah the Nehelamite and his descendants. He will have no one left among this people, nor will he see the good things I will do for my people, declares the Lord, because he has preached rebellion against me.’ (29:31-32)

There are a number of similar passages scattered throughout the prophets and other parts of the Old Testament, where prophets are in disagreement. We know from our perspective that Jeremiah was right, but did Shemaiah know? Did he know that the message that he had was not from the Lord? That the Lord would in fact send the people into exile for a long, long time? That he was was preaching rebellion? The answer doesn’t seem obvious. Certainly today there are many times when the issues seem muddied and unclear. It seems hard to know who really is preaching and teaching the truth. A few issues are clear, but many others are not.

A personal example. I believe that I have an important message concerning the way that science, intellectual integrity and Christian faith are compatible. I am convinced that there are things that I am called, trained, and gifted to do that most others are not. Of course quite a few Christians out there will say I’m the false prophet misleading the people of God. How am I to know that I am right and called by God to make a difference? Shemaiah or Jeremiah?

And there are other areas where a similar set of questions arise.

There was an interesting series of comments on a recent post of Scot’s Anne Graham Lotz, Jimmy Carter, and It’s Time. One woman who grew up in a complementarian church, but is now in seminary and feeling out her gifts commented in a way that shows the tension, the difficulty we often have knowing where we stand.

I still wrestle with fear that I am “out of my place”. I still feel guilt at times, as though I am doing something wrong. I would still be terrified to stand in a pulpit. Complementarians would assure me that this voice is the Spirit’s, but I am not so sure.

This one leads to a personal example as well. As a woman, not in or contemplating professional ministry, this comment (the whole thing, not just the bit I’ve clipped) really struck a chord. I still wrestle at times with whether I could actually be called to teach, to have a ministry in a church context in a university town despite feeling that as a professor and a Christian I need to get involved and have an impact, that I have something unique to offer. Is the more or less complete lack of support from the pastors a sign that I’m wrong … or that they are wrong? Is it just “not my place?” And to get back to the first example, how are they to know if I have a true message, a valuable perspective, or not?

Another commenter suggested in response to the first “And complementarians will say that you’re giving in to the culture while in fact, they’re the ones who reflect the sinful culture.” But how we are to know whether it is the complementarian or egalitarian perspective which is now (or has been) reflecting a sinful culture?

And a separate exchange really nailed it.

I am a 37 year missionary; both my husband and I preach. … The real issue is not what these men think, the real question is what does God want. I know He uses me and many other women as they yield themselves to His voice.

I am not saying you are wrong, but how do you know that?

How does she know what? That Satan is at work stroking men’s egos or that God has called and uses her?

How she knows how God wants to use her. (We already know about the egos of men)

The same way men know how God wants to use them.

Which is?????????

Is your question about gender or about how any of us can know what God wants us to do?

It is in fact about how we can know what God wants, but focused on this issue. … Not to mention, just in regards to our everyday walk we need to be careful how we answer that/how we make our decisions.

Well, nailed the question, not the answer. The answer is much harder. And it isn’t restricted to this issue alone. There are so many positions proclaimed with authority and with little humility. Humility seldom attracts the attention or followers, while a bold provocative message does. But the growth of a following is not a reliable indication of the truth of a message. The growth of a church is often not a result of the movement of the Spirit, but of human psychology and sociology. This is important … success as measured in the eyes of the world (and too often the church), numbers, power, followers, charisma, is not a reliable indicator of the faithfulness or lack of faithfulness in any message.

How do we know if we are standing in the sandals of Shemaiah or of Jeremiah?

How do we know whether another is following in the footsteps of Shemaiah or Jeremiah?

I have some thoughts – but would like first to open the discussion focused on this issue. How can we know? I posed the same kind of question in a slightly different fashion in an earlier post Following Aslan, this may jog some thoughts as well.

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