Church in New Modes

Last updated on: December 17, 2011 at 8:32 am By Scot McKnight

While both Erin and I see ourselves as somewhat of an anomaly, I think there is a reason for our weirdness. We are both women who pursued our theological training in a Baptist setting. Female Baptist seminarians have a far greater challenge than most seminarians in finding positions within local church settings. Both Erin and I are leaders, both are apostolic in our call, both of us are very creative and we are both willing to take risks.

The institutional structures in most Baptist expressions of the church are none of the above. Thus, to be who God created us to be, we had to go outside the traditional church walls. The funny thing is that we are both being called back into “the church” to help change the structures so that others who are shaped like us, do not have such a hard time living their call while staying connected to the institutional church. (more…)

Weekly Meanderings

Last updated on: December 16, 2011 at 9:10 pm By Scot McKnight

What do you have for me?, asks the penguin.

Joel Willitts has a good post reflecting discussions of leaders on what to teach youth.

There’s more to it than this, inasmuch as “peer review” means not self-publishing, but the elitism danah points out in the academy is obvious.

Rachel Held Evans offers a bold call for women to practice Pentecost: “The breaking in of the new creation after Christ’s resurrection unleashed a cacophony of new prophetic voices, and apparently, prophesying among women was such a common activity in the early church that Paul had to remind women to cover their heads when they did it. While some may try to downplay biblical examples of female disciples, deacons, preachers, leaders and apostles, no one can deny the Bible’s long tradition of prophetic feminine vision. I believe that right now, we need that prophetic vision more than ever.”

Tim Keller’s piece seeing common ground on the Christian and the State discussions, but I see significant differences between those whom he sees taking middle ground: Carson, Hunter, Strange and Volf. In particular, Hunter’s proposal of a “faithful witness” strikes me as a form of anabaptism (not the neo-anabaptism that is more caustic about empire) … and so I’d like to suggest that there is another philosophical view that is much more ecclesially-shaped (church as politic) and that forms an important alternative to the transformation, two kingdoms and common ground approaches he mentions.

I liked this article on the world’s 25 most beautiful college libraries, but they forgot St Mary of the Lake in Mundelein IL, just as gorgeous as some of the libraries in this post.

Mike Bird, down in Australia, reposts 10 suggestions for better preaching. Hanukkah, messianic style.

Gary Gutting’s good piece on college education: “First of all, they are not simply for the education of students. This is an essential function, but the raison d’être of a college is to nourish a world of intellectual culture; that is, a world of ideas, dedicated to what we can know scientifically, understand humanistically, or express artistically. In our society, this world is mainly populated by members of college faculties: scientists, humanists, social scientists (who straddle the humanities and the sciences properly speaking), and those who study the fine arts….Students, in turn, need to recognize that their college education is above all a matter of opening themselves up to new dimensions of knowledge and understanding. Teaching is not a matter of (as we too often say) “making a subject (poetry, physics, philosophy) interesting” to students but of students coming to see how such subjects are intrinsically interesting. It is more a matter of students moving beyond their interests than of teachers fitting their subjects to interests that students already have. Good teaching does not make a course’s subject more interesting; it gives the students more interests — and so makes them more interesting.”

I will be reading and blogging about Hans Boersma’s new book. Here’s a taste: “Christianity was not Hellenized, according to Boersma (and countless other scholars of rank); rather, Hellenism was Christianized. Early Christians such as Clement of Alexandria, in the words of Peter Brown, “cut twigs from the rank, dried-back and brittle bushes of pagan literature, and graft[ed] them on the succulent root-stock of Christ’s truth.”[3] It is in fact the thinner strands of evangelicalism, which instinctually refuse the sacramental perspective, that border on Gnosticism.”

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Fretting Over Phoebe (Mike Bird)

Last updated on: December 10, 2011 at 6:34 am By Scot McKnight

From Mike Bird, who does for Phoebe a bit of what I do for Junia in Junia is Not Alone. Dr. Michael Bird (PhD, University of Queensland) is Lecturer in Theology at Crossway College in Queensland, Australia. His research interests include the Gospel of Mark, Pauline theology, New Testament theology, and evangelical ecclesiology.

“I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me” (Rom 16:1-2 TNIV).

I love messing with my students. Yes, I know it catches them off guard, but exposing their assumptions and ignorance is both enjoyable and actually educational too. When I get to my Romans class, I ask the students four questions:

So who actually wrote Romans?

“Paul,” they immediately reply in chorus.

“No,” I retort, “Who physically sat down and penned the letter to Paul’s dictation?”

Blank faces, deep thoughts, then some bright spark will blurt out, “Oh, oh, that guy, what’s his name, um, Tertius.”

“Correct-a-mundo” comes the teacher’s approving reply who points students to Romans 16:22 which says, “I, Tertius, who wrote down this letter, greet you in the Lord” (Rom 16:22 TNIV).

Moving on… (more…)

Galli Defends the Chaplain

Last updated on: December 4, 2011 at 1:52 pm By Scot McKnight

Someone has sketched five kinds of pastors, demeaning what is called the “chaplain” approach, but Mark Galli defends the chaplain kind of pastor.

What do you look for first in a pastor? What is the essential gift of the pastor?

It’s becoming increasingly common to infer that when a pastor becomes a “chaplain,” the church is in trouble. A few years ago, one website encouraging “innovative” ministry listed five types of pastors that a church might call: Catalytic, Cultivator, Conflict-Quelling, Chaplain, and Catatonic. The page clarified that “each of these types carries positives and negatives,” but it seemed clear that the further one went down the list, the more problematic was the pastor. At the top of the list were Catalytic pastors, who are “gifted in the prophetic and tend to be charismatic leaders. These pastors have lots of energy and are focused on the mission of the church … that is, reaching the community for Jesus Christ. In the ‘right’ church, they’ll grow it without a doubt.”

A Chaplain pastor, on the other hand, was mired near the bottom. A Chaplain pastor is “wired for peace, harmony, and pastoral care. This is the type of pastor that has been produced by seminaries for several decades, though a few … a very few … seminaries are retooling. Chaplain pastors eschew change and value status quo. They don’t want to stir the waters; rather, they want to bring healing to hurting souls.” And if that weren’t bad enough, “Chaplain pastors don’t grow churches. In fact, a Chaplain pastor will hasten a congregation’s demise because they tend to focus on those within the congregation rather than in bringing new converts to Jesus Christ.”

The assumptions here are all too common, I’m afraid. So we hear in many quarters that pastors should be leaders, catalysts, and entrepreneurs, and the repeated slam about pastors who are mere chaplains. (more…)

Moving Right is Never Wrong

Last updated on: November 30, 2011 at 6:55 pm By Scot McKnight

A friend and I, after the Clark Pinnock tribute at AAR/SBL, were chatting about how the Evangelical Theological Society and conservative evangelicalism in general seem to have a special radar for folks who in their view are moving to the left theologically. A set of expressions came to my mind and I want to flesh them out here:

Among conservative evangelicals moving to the right seems never to be wrong.

Moving to the left, however, is either on the way to being wrong or is in fact already wrong (for the right).

To the left is a slippery slope, to the right is faithfulness (even if it is extreme).

I wish to challenge the very notion that going to the right is never wrong, and I want to contend that going left is sometimes the right thing to do. I have three witnesses.

Question: Do you think the above theories are accurate? Why or why not?

First, Jesus. The singular folks who were most opposed to Jesus were the Pharisees. Though today the Pharisees are often misunderstood as religious bigots and miserable legalists and anal-retentive religious folks, and each of those stereotypes has no bearing on what they were actually like (so we should equating “hypocrite” and “Pharisee”)… though they are misunderstood, their central platform was faithfulness to Scripture and scrupulous attention to detail and constant vigilance in observing Torah. In other words, they were zealots for the Torah and if they wanted to add to Scripture, as long as it was founded in Scripture, they were right. Anyone who looked left was in trouble. (more…)

Weekly Meanderings

Last updated on: November 26, 2011 at 1:53 pm By Scot McKnight

Good Morning!

Michael Mercer, “For this I give thanks,” on what makes him grateful for his evangelical past.

Nate Stratman, at The Burner, on the pastoral implications on youth for pastors.

Tony Jones on a napkin — the top 25 books in Christian history/theology/spiritual formation.

Thomas Froese: “KAMPALA, UGANDA—Remember Kienan Hebert, the three-year-old in one of Canada’s biggest feel-good stories of 2011? Kienan was abducted from his B.C. home and later returned by, of all people, his abductor. Twitter and Facebook lit up. Christians proclaimed God is alive and well and listening to prayer.” (HT: PH)

I’m glad John Stackhouse called our attention to the death of CS Lewis, on the same day JFK died.

Mark Regnerus on Catholic Contemporary Music — or lack thereof: “Our transition from evangelical to Catholic has shed light on the role of music in one’s faith tradition. (It’s also gratefully revealed little that’s distinctively Protestant about most CCM.) For many evangelicals, CCM is a hallmark of their cultural consumption patterns. Sure, there are different tastes and preferences, from the cheesy to the edgy, from the very to the barely (Christian). But one fact seems pretty clear: most performing artists in the CCM world run with evangelicals, so far as I can tell. Very few are Catholic. Why is that?”

Newt Gingrich, an overpaid historian? John Fea: “In a recent GOP presidential debate in which Gingrich was asked to explain why he earned $300,000 from Freddie Mac, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives claimed that he had given the mortgage company advice in his capacity as a historian. Later it was revealed that Gingrich had actually received between $1.6 and $1.8 million for his supposed work as a historical consultant. By one definition, Gingrich is a historian. He has a Ph.D. from Tulane University where he wrote a doctoral dissertation entitled “Belgian Education Policy in the Congo, 1945-1960.” He taught history at West Georgia College (now University of West Georgia) and, believe it or not, was influential in starting an environmental studies program there. When he did not receive tenure at West Georgia he set off on a political career….Is it really possible that the leadership of Freddie Mac wanted a historical consultant to help them think about the way in which the past, in this case the history of housing in America, informs the present? If so, why wouldn’t they hire someone who knows something about this field? It is more likely that Gingrich is not telling the truth.”

Brad Wright analyzes why some leave the faith: part one, part two.

Karl Giberson: “Survey results recently reported by Christianity Today clarify once again the sober truth that evangelicals are not making much progress in accepting well-established mainstream scientific ideas about origins. Particularly disturbing is the finding that only 27 percent of evangelical pastors “strongly disagree” with the statement that the earth is 6,000 years old. A higher number “strongly agree” that the earth is just 6,000 years old, a conclusion refuted by mountains of evidence. Seven in 10 evangelical pastors “strongly disagree” that “God used evolution to create people.”

Tim Dalrymple: “As it turns out, however, evangelical churches are arguably the least-politicized of all the major churches. At a recent meeting of the excellent Faith Angle Forum, David Campbell, author of American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, presented his updated research. When asked whether they heard sermons on political or social issues once a month or more, here is how America’s major religious groups responded:

Jewish: 41.4%
Non-affiliated: 30.5%
Black Protestant: 29.6%
Catholic: 20.7%
Mainline Protestant: 16%
Evangelical: 13.7%

I don’t have figures for Muslims, but the only religious group that definitely had a lower percentage of sermons on political/social issues was, interestingly, the Mormons. Only 2% of Mormons said that they heard a sermon on social/political issues at least once a month. (My thanks to Dr. Campbell for sharing the exact figures with me.) But isn’t it interesting that liberal secularists rarely complain about the “politicization” of the Black Protestant or Mainline Protestant churches?”

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As Christ Submits to the Church

Last updated on: October 31, 2011 at 7:42 pm By Scot McKnight

Those who know the discussions about women in ministry as well as those about the relations of husbands and wives know the name Alan Padgett, and those who don’t know the name need to do (and should have known it). Alan is one of the few theologians who has actually written on most of the debated passages in the Bible about women. And he has given us all a gift in taking all those writings, condensing and clarifying them into one very readable and important book: As Christ Submits to the Church: A Biblical Understanding of Leadership and Mutual Submission. I cannot speak enough to the alertness of this book to the history of interpretation, cultural context of each passage, and how to read such a text in the light of a gospel-centered (and he’s on the side of the angels when it comes to “gospel”) approach to the Bible (historical, canonical, and Jesus-centered).

It is impossible to get into each chapter of this book in a single review, unless this were to become tediously long (just to explain how he gets to his conclusions), so I want to emphasize some of the highlights of this exceptional book.

A gospel-shaped view of marriage and women’s ministries is shaped by the pattern of Jesus’ life, which is voluntary surrender to the other, and not shaped by authority and power.

He traces the roots of the present conflict between egalitarians and complementarians, whom he accurately calls man/male-centered leadership [some will see this as harsh; I see it as an accurate description; keep reading], and shows that this isn’t simply a feminist issue but arose in the Reformation (he mentions Argula von Grumbach), the Radical Reformation (he mentions Margaret Fell Fox), and Phoebe Palmer.

Why are we so attracted to “authority” and so afraid of “mutual submission”? What does the life pattern of Jesus tell us about church “hierarchy” and about the ministry of women?

The current heat has been set by Charles Ryrie, then Letha Scanzoni/Nancy Hardesty, Paul K. Jewett, Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, the Evangelical Women’s Caucus that broke into two groups, leading many into the Christians for Biblical Equality, and saw responses in George W. Knight, John Piper, Wayne Grudem, et al.

Alan Padgett argues that “role” is a post-feminist term in this way: the first person to argue that men and women are equal in being but different in roles was George Knight (1977). The whole “role” thing then is very modern. (more…)

Fuller Lecture

Last updated on: October 30, 2011 at 5:09 pm By Scot McKnight

The kind folks at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena invited me to give a lecture on women in ministry, but they also filled up my schedule with a few additional items: including spending a little time with Rich Mouw, the President, and then speaking in chapel on the “Parable from Hell,” and then a conversation with Kara Powell, and then lunch with Kurt Fredrikson, and then I got to speak a bit in Richard Peace’s class, then coffee with my friend Joel Green … then a brief respite … dinner with David Moore and, finally, an evening lecture called “Junia is Not Alone” (here’s a summary).

Yes, that’s a busy day but it was a wonderful day at Fuller, the first time I’ve been at Fuller. I thought I had been there once but nothing looked familiar… so maybe I wasn’t there. What a beautiful place Fuller has become.

David Scholler was once a professor at North Park Theological Seminary, and then finished his career at Fuller before his untimely death, and it was an honor to step into his role at Fuller for a few minutes to give this lecture. It is customary for such lectures to be posted as MP3s but this lecture will be published as an inexpensive e-book (announcement coming soon) so we asked for the lecture not to be distributed.

I want to thank Kurt and David for looking after me, and to the Fuller Guest House (wow, I was a in a cool, modernized room), and to the students and faculty for this wonderful experience.

A Charismatic Reformation Day

Last updated on: October 28, 2011 at 4:53 pm By Scot McKnight

J. Lee Grady, at Charisma magazine, proposed a Reformation within the ranks of the charismatics, and I’m swiping the whole post. (It’s Sunday, after all, and he says to nail these everywhere. Brother, I’m nailing them here at Jesus Creed.)

In honor of Reformation Day, here are some complaints I’m nailing on the Wittenberg door.

Long before there was an Occupy Wall Street, Martin Luther staged the most important protest in history. He was upset because Roman Catholic officials were promising people forgiveness or early escape from purgatory in exchange for money. So on October 31, 1517, Luther nailed a long list of complaints on the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany.

Luther’s famous 95 theses were translated from Latin into German and spread abroad. Like a medieval Jeremiah, Luther dared to ask questions that had never been asked, and he challenged a pope who was supposedly infallible. Through this brave monk, the Holy Spirit sparked the Protestant Reformation and restored the doctrine of grace to a church that had become corrupt, religious, dysfunctional, political and spiritually dead.

I am no Luther, but I’ve grown increasingly aware that the so-called “Spirit-filled” church of today struggles with many of the same things the Catholic church faced in the 1500s. We don’t have “indulgences”—we have telethons. We don’t have popes—we have super-apostles. We don’t support an untouchable priesthood—we throw our money at celebrity evangelists who own fleets of private jets.

In honor of Reformation Day, I’m offering my own list of needed reforms in our movement. And since I can’t hammer these on the Wittenberg door, I’ll post them online. Feel free to nail them everywhere. (more…)

Saturday Book Review: Dale and Jonalyn Fincher

Last updated on: September 15, 2011 at 6:25 pm By Scot McKnight

This review is by Brandon Hoops, who blogs at Soulation: Breakfast Reading. He looks at a fine new book on evangelism by Dale and Jonalyn Fincher.

In today’s world, as in Jesus’ day, one of the most effective ways of interacting with people about the gospel is through relational dialogue — outside of the church’s walls, between Sunday’s, among the daily, commonplace and ordinary.

The challenge, I’ve learned after six years of campus ministry, is this path is untidy, it takes time, and Christians prefer gospel-manufacturing (streamlined programs and cookie-cutter souls) to gospel-gardening with its potential for dirt and weeds.

That’s why I appreciate Dale and Jonalyn Fincher. They aren’t interested in an evangelistic easy button or the pressures of prescription. As I read their book Coffee Shop Conversations: Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk, I didn’t feel confined to a box or stuck with some techniques for more “effective evangelism.” They show that freedom and originality, especially in everyday conversations, may be our greatest assets in going and making disciples. Not only that, they encourage us to get to know our neighbors beyond their labels, showing the beauty of getting into the mess of people’s lives and wrestling with their questions.

At one point they say, “We hope you will customize your conversations to the unique gifts God has forged in your soul.” (more…)

What city did David capture and make his capital?