Back In The Saddle

Ah…a week away on a mission trip and another of vacation and I’m finally back in the office. This week our church is having VBS, but I ended up withdrawing from the class I was planning to take at Northern Seminary. My intent was to audit the class. One, it was much cheaper to audit, and two, there was a lot of weekly work to do, plus I was only taking it because of an interest in the subject, not the grade.

Nevertheless, I got the required reading and have actually finished one of the books - The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, edited by Kevin Vanhoozer. Reading that one got me interested all over again in a book I’ve had on my reading list for a while, but have never gotten around to: Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context, by John Franke and Stanley Grenz, so I’m one chapter into that one now. I suspect what I’ve read so far will generate a few posts over the summer. In addition, I have The Postmodern God: A Theological Reader which is edited by Graham Ward and I’ve gotten through one chapter of Stanley Hauerwas’ book A Better Hope: Resources for a Church Confronting Capitalism, Democracy, and Postmodernity.

While all of that should provide some food for fodder, I’ll try not to get too technical in the discussion of them. It’s pretty heavy philosophy/theology and while I enjoy that sort of thing, I’m aware that many don’t. Hopefully there will be some practical things that come to the front that can be discussed here without us all feeling like we’re in a college class room.

Here are some things that are on my mind right now, some related to my current reading and some not: Read more

Psalm 137 For The Year 2010

Alan Roxburgh shares this poem that was written by a participant at a conference he was leading a few years ago.

137 For 2010

In the midst of this crazy world I look around and
wonder what has happened.
How do I talk to a kid with a ring in his nose?
Does “The Old Rugged Cross” mean anything to him?
He asks me to sing a song about “my Jesus”.
From what I can tell he is from another planet,
or am I the stranger here?
I think it’s time to sell the wurlitzer.
So how do I tell Martians about Jesus,
when the only language I speak is 1955?
How do I write a headline for them
that doesn’t screw up the Good News?
I kind of wish it were the way it was,
but it’s not. So I need to figure out
how to sing the old lyrics
with a whole new tune.

This Week on Shapevine

Man, o man, is this ever a good week to tune in to Shapevine.com. Tonight (April 21st) at 6 PM CST you can catch Sally Morgenthaler. Tomorrow afternoon (April 22nd) at 3 PM CST you can have an online convo with Len Sweet who will be talking to Peter Rollins.

[Funny side story: Last summer I was flying to San Antonio to the Southern Baptist Convention and on the plane I was reading Peter Rollins’ How (Not) To Speak Of God. I noticed that the guy sitting next to me kept glancing over at what I was reading. He introduced himself as Danny Forshee and we had a nice conversation. Then he leaned up not-so-quietly to talk to the guy sitting in front of him (who he obviously knew) and proceeded to tell him that I was emergent <GASP!!>. I got a kick out of that.]

Anyway, if you want to get your emergent on, or if you want to be a part of some interesting conversations (you can even ask questions), check out Shapevine this week.

The Church - Autonomous?

Those churches that are a part of the "free-church" tradition have, for several hundred years, advocated a principle called "local church autonomy."  I can hear those words ringing in my head all the way back to my childhood in the Baptist church.  But it isn’t unique to Baptists.  John Hammett notes that there are more than 50 Christian denominations in America that practice "local church autonomy" and/or some form of congregational rule - a form of government in which the local congregation has the final say in doctrinal and practical matters.

Interestingly, James K. A. Smith suggests that the language of "local church autonomy" didn’t appear until after the philosophy of Immanuel Kant gained notoriety.  Kant advocated the "autonomous self" as a foundation for human experience.  It is this Kantian idea of autonomy that provides a common foundation for both liberal and fundamentalist streams of the theological spectrum.  It’s true.  There isn’t a fundamental difference in the fountain from which sprang John R. Rice and John Shelby Spong.  It was the fountain of autonomy.

Hammett qualifies local church autonomy with the phrase "under the authority of Christ."  But he then goes on to explain that the foundation of this notion is rooted in a belief that every believer possesses the Holy Spirit and that the Spirit speaks through each one, not some privileged number out of the group.  Now, I’m very much inclined to agree with him, but what I wonder is why we stop at the local church?  Isn’t the Spirit present in believers outside of that one local church?  Does the Spirit not also speak to/through those believers?  Is there a good reason we limit the "authority" of the Spirit’s voice spoken to/through those other believers other than that our names are on different local church rolls?

Hammett stipulates that there is no external ecclesiastical body outside of the local church to which the local church is answerable in an authoritative way, but I’m not talking about ecclesiastical bodies.  I’m talking about individual, Spirit-filled believers.  Yes, the New Testament shows us examples of local churches choosing their own leaders, determining doctrinal matters and administering their own church discipline.  But what is often ignored (or glossed over) is that the writers of the New Testament (some apostles, others not) don’t appear to be writing nice suggestions to the churches they addressed.  On one occasion the apostle Paul writes about a "rule" of his that applies to "all the churches."  As mentioned in an earlier post, the apostle John indicates that Demetrius erred because he was not submitting to John’s authority (and possibly the authority of others) and that when John arrived on the scene he would take appropriate action (3 John 9-10).  Yes, these two are apostles, but in a striking admission even Hammett acknowledges that Titus (a non-apostle) had a similar authority (the authority to appoint church leadership in a church to which he did not personally belong) and notes that he had such an authority due to his close relationship to the apostle Paul.

Is it just me or did we just take a step toward something very much like "apostolic succession?"  I mean, what about Titus’s close relationships?  Is it that far removed to suggest that the authority conferred upon Titus via his relationship to Paul might be conferred upon others because of their close relationship to Titus who had a close relationship to Paul?

No.  My point is that I don’t believe the New Testament is nearly so clear on "local church autonomy" as it might appear to some of us free-churchers.  Hammett notes that early Baptists were drawn to "associational" ties with one another and that early on the association existed to help advise the church in matters of doctrine and practice.  That function of the association has all but disappeared these days in favor of even greater "autonomy."  The church culture of our present day is not even all that opposed to practically thumbing their nose at such connections.  But as I’ve noted previously, I believe this is unwise.  Alone we are much more prone to error in both belief and practice.  Alone we shut our ears off to a good bit of not only what the Spirit is saying to other believers in other churches, but what the Spirit has been saying to the church for centuries and millennia.

We need to figure out how to recover our ability to hear the Spirit speak through others.  This doesn’t require formal denominational ties as long as we can maintain our connection to the larger church without falling back into some sort of self-reliant place of autonomy when we hear something we might not like or may be difficult to hear.  It also doesn’t mean that every pronouncement of an ecumenical council is authoritative for the church today.  But it means that we recognize that we are organically connected even if we are not organizationally connected.  To thumb our nose at other believers because they are not of the same flavor or brand as us is to thumb our nose at another part of our own body - which is a really odd picture.  I don’t believe we can maintain a position that says we are both organically connected and at the same time autonomous from one another.  The body metaphor that the apostle Paul uses for the church seems to me to require an organic view of the church and renders "local church autonomy" as something that begins to make little Biblical sense.

Book Reviews

Below you will find links to various books I have reviewed here at Caught In The Middle and elsewhere.

Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism, by James K. A. Smith

Colossians Remixed: Subverting The Empire, by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat

The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming The Mission Of The Church From Big Business, Parachurch
Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism and Other Modern
Maladies, by David E. Fitch

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5

How [Not] To Speak of God, by Peter Rollins

I’m OK, You’re Not, by John Shore

On The Move, by Bono

Wait Until Then, by Randy Alcorn (also reviewed Heaven For Kids, by Randy Alcorn in the same post)

Confessions of an Amateur Believer, by Patty Kirk

Heretic’s Guide To Eternity, by Spencer Burke

• Part 1
• Part 2

Quotable

I’m taking a breather in my series on the church until next week.  There have been a number of books I have that quote George MacDonald in them somewhere.  In fact, I recently read where C.S. Lewis considered MacDonald to be his "master" and Lewis was greatly moved by the writings of MacDonald, stating that there wasn’t a book he’d written where he did not quote George MacDonald.  What follows is from Creation In Christ.

"But I do not know how to awake and arise."

I will tell you.  Get up, and do something the Master tells you; so make yourself his disciple at once.  Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have this day done one thing because he said, Do it, or once abstained because he said, Do not do it.  It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe in him, if you do not anything he tells you.  If you can think of nothing he ever said as having had an atom of influence on your doing or not doing, you have too great ground to consider yourself no disciple of his.

But you can begin at once to be a disciple of the Living One - by obeying him in the first thing you can think of in which you are not obeying him.  We must learn to obey him in everything, and so must begin somewhere.  Let it be at once, and in the very next thing that lies at the door of your conscience!  Oh fools and slow of heart, if you think of nothing but Christ, and do not set yourselves to do his words!  You but build your houses on the sand.

Authority - Part 2

Generally speaking I’m not a one-size-fits-all sort of guy when it comes to forms of church authority because there doesn’t seem to be one definitive model given as THE way even in Scripture. But the question of authority is not an unimportant one because it will have far-reaching implications in the
outworking of church life. However, as you will see my beginning point is to assume the primary role of Scripture.

There are matters in the question of authority that I think are important and I tend to take most of my cues from a broad reading of Scripture rather than from a handful of proof-texts. How does it seem the people of God view authority in Scripture? Again, in the interest of being brief I will likely generalize some issues, but hopefully I’ll still get the salient points across.

First, what I don’t believe about church authority. I don’t believe in apostolic, “baptistic” succession, ex cathedra pronouncements or a top-down hierarchy with a human or set of specialists sitting at the top and the rest of the peons sitting at the bottom waiting to be told how things are and will be. I don’t put it that way to offend my Catholic or Anglican brothers and sisters. In practice we Baptists are probably as bad if not worse about this sort of thing (if we assume such a thing is bad). Instead of popes we have mega-church pastors and seminary presidents we perch up at the top and we have trustees and “Blue Ribbon Committees” who make their pronouncements. It’s not uncommon in Oklahoma to hear our state Baptist offices referred to as “The Vatican.” Also, given the history of the Roman Catholic Councils and the reluctance of popes to speak ex cathedra on every little issue the Roman church is probably flatter than it might appear from the outside.

But I also don’t believe in unadulterated “local church autonomy.” I don’t believe it is good for churches to be “independent.” As James K. A. Smith points out in Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism, the notion of
religious autonomy probably has more to do with Immanuel Kant than with the apostle Paul. Jews in the Old Testament never viewed themselves as autonomous individuals separate from the larger community. One of the harshest punishments that could be meted out was to be cast out of the community. Even when a person was being vengefully pursued by the relative of one he accidentally killed he was not sent off to Egypt or Assyria or Babylon, but to a city of refuge – still within the borders of Israel. And the worst thing that happened in Israel’s history was when she was exiled and enslaved in another land. Cut off. That’s why excommunication is such a harsh thing in the New Testament. Paul considers it the equivalent of turning a brother over to the devil.

John also dealt with this issue in 3 John when he writes about Diotrephes who “does not acknowledge our authority” (3 John 9). John was not a member of the church to which he was writing , yet he considered himself to have some sort of authority among them, and if the “our” is more literal than literary then there were others he included in possessing such authority.

Another problem with strict local church autonomy is that it untethers the local church from her sister churches who are also a part of the work of God’s Spirit and of the same body of Christ. The apostle Paul tells us that Christ cannot be divided. It also makes the “bride of Christ” analogy into a rather strange one when we consider that one of the bride’s arms is out of fellowship with the other arm, or with an ear or an
eye. I understand that the bride of Christ is still messy, but surely our goal is not to maintain or foster the
messiness when there may be other, more faithful, alternatives. It really leaves the bride of Christ looking
something like this [Warning: one
mildly offensive word lies ahead. If that offends you, skip the link].

Book Tag

Emily Hunter McGowan has tagged me for this little ditty on books.  I love me some books!  Here goes:

1. One book that changed your life.  Hmmm.  I’m going to have to probably mention two here.  First is The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard.  His challenge to "the gospel of sin management" really reoriented my thinking.  The second is actually an odd choice for me, but I would probably have to say A New Kind Of Christian by Brian McLaren.  I mention this book not so much because I think the book itself is the be-all or end-all.  It’s certainly been open to its own criticism and I don’t even think it is Brian’s best book.  However, the thought track that it started me on has truly changed much in my life.
2. One book you have read more than once.  I don’t often read books more than once, but one that I have is Jesus the Pastor, by John Frye.
3. One book you would want on a desert island.  I think I would want The Ultimate Survival Guide by John "Lofty" Wiseman.  That, or I would want the complete DVD series for Man vs. Wild, a television, a DVD player and a very long two-outlet extension cord.
4. Two books that made you laugh.  I don’t often read funny books, however, two that were really good are: The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams.  This isn’t just a book of comic strips.  It’s a book about life illustrated by one of the funniest cartoonists of our day if not all time.  The second is The Bachelor Home Companion: A Practical Guide To Keeping House Like A Pig, by P. J. O’Rourke.  Of course, this book only helps if you are a bachelor.  Otherwise expect to be beaten over the head and ears by your wife.  Ironically it isn’t as if bachelors need a book to tell them how to live like pigs, either.  But this was a truly funny book.
5. One book that made you cry.  I’m a man.  Books don’t make me cry.  OK.  Just kidding.  I don’t know that I’ve cried reading a book, but A Child Called It, by Dave Pelzer was probably the one book that had the greatest impact on my emotional state.  I wanted to vomit and it also aroused my homicidal tendencies.
6. One book you wish you’d written.  Well, I wish I had the keen insight of N. T. Wright.  I’m glad that I did not write one of his larger tomes (though I’m awfully glad that I’ve read a couple), but I do wish I’d written The Challenge of Jesus.  It would be definitive evidence of my intellectual superiority along with my uncanny grasp for who Jesus was and is.  People might even begin calling me His Grace, the Bishop of Sapulpa.
7. One book you wish had never been written.  This is tough because I generally think there is some value to most books including the ones with which I would violently disagree because I think there is something to be learned from them.  I think the worst books are those that are entirely unoriginal and just boring or incredibly superficial.  That said I think I’d have to go with the entire Left Behind series, mainly because I think they are deceptive.  If people understood up front that they are just fiction that would be one thing.  That they are taken so seriously and that the authors want them to be taken seriously leads me to view them as eschatological versions of The DaVinci Code.
8. Two books you are currently reading.  Countdown To Sunday by Chris Erdman.  A book on preaching that opens with the challenge to "open a vein and bleed for God."  Another is Scot McKnight’s A Community Called Atonement.  "Any view of the atonement that doesn’t take into account the community God is building is not a complete view of the atonement."
9. One book you’ve been meaning to read.  Oh, I have a whole shelf full of them.  Just one?  Really?  OK.  How about The Coming Of The Son of Man by Andrew Perriman.  Or Following Jesus by N. T. Wright.  Or The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark Noll.  Or The Incomparable Christ by John Stott (which I picked up on the sale table at Mardel’s for like two bucks.  Two stinking bucks!).  Was that just one?  Ok…well….just pick one, then.
10. Five people that I tag.  Hey, if you don’t like being tagged by these things just ignore this.  It’s no skin off of my nose.  But I’ll tag Todd Littleton, Marty Duren, David Phillips, Bryan Riley and Gary Snowden.  If I didn’t include you and you want to join in - have fun!  I pick YOU!

My Way Or The Highway

"People are not primarily looking to cooperate with our plan for their lives."

Joe Myers
in Organic Community

On Wednesday nights in our church we’ve been looking at John’s epistles/letters.  Last night we finished 3 John, a letter in which the apostle John calls out a man named Diotrephes not only for his own rigid practice of refusing Christian hospitality to traveling evangelists and missionaries, but for also demanding that others follow his course.  Those who would not were being put out of the church by Diotrephes’ own personal pronouncements.

Can you imagine how that sort of thing would go over today?  Just ask Chan Chandler or Frank Harber.  But there seems to be a growing trend in evangelicalism as a whole, and among Southern Baptists in particular, to lead with a heavy hand.  As an example, Pastor Dwight McKissic of the Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas recently appeared on TBN with several former Southern Baptists-turned charismatic/Pentecostals.  As a result pastors from all over the SBC now feel the liberty to tell Pastor McKissic what he should do to remedy the situation and how he must distance himself from these others.

Now, I’m no fan of TBN.  Just ask the people at our church.  Generally speaking I think a person’s soul would be more edified by watching static.  But I don’t know that Charles Stanley is less of a Baptist because he puts money into Paul Crouch’s pockets every time he buys airtime from TBN.  God knows Jan needs the money for pink hair dye and botox injections.  It’s not a venue I would choose, but I don’t suspect Charles Stanley, or Dwight McKissic, or Jack Graham are looking to cooperate with my plan for their lives.

Instead of cooperation we need more collaboration.  Joe Myers writes that "the spirit of cooperation is a rigid spirit, one that stifles creativity and discovery."  He’s writing from the context of the local church.  Of course  his ideas apply to larger organizational structures as well.  But in the local church people aren’t necessarily looking for ways to join in our program for their lives.  The structures we’ve established tend to serve the organization, not the people of the organization.  They perpetuate what we already have going, or what we want to get going.  Instead, people generally want to have some say in their own contribution to the group.  What’s amazing is that Baptists, of all people, are lost on that notion.  Of all church structures Baptists is theoretically one of the flattest - meaning there isn’t a top-down structure in Baptist church life.  There is no one (again, theoretically) sitting at the top telling others what to do and how to do it.

There are challenges with this structure, and perhaps even problems, but those are issues for another day.  But we are living in a strange day indeed when the Baptist police seem to be patrolling nearly every corner these days, blowing their whistles and making citizen’s arrests.  My way or the highway will not work for Baptists and will not work for evangelicals as a whole.  I know that there are many who are fearful of collaboration.  They are fearful of people in other denominations.  They are fearful of people who speak in tongues.  They are fearful of people who baptize infants.  They truly feel that collaboration rather than cooperation will lead to a broad ecumenical capitulation of certain distinctives and probably the good news about Jesus as well.  They see slippery slopes everywhere they turn, and the only way they believe we can maintain solid footing is to make sure everyone is doing things as they deem fit.

And it will end up killing us.  It already is.

Books, Books, Books

You know…I had a really long post written out about the relationship of emergent and postmodernism and after I went back and scanned it I realized that even I didn’t want to read all of that. I don’t figure you would either. So here’s one that’s shorter and hopefully sweeter.

If you have any interests in what postmodernism is saying and if it has anything of value for the contemporary church (and I would resoundingly say that it does), then go read James K A Smith’s book Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism. It’s 160 short pages. He attempts to write in a way that is understandable to the average person. At times he succeeds fantastically. I enjoy how he introduces each chapter with a contemporary movie theme to illustrate what he’s going to say. There are several spots where I was left thinking that the “average person” I know would probably find some of the content difficult. I’m pretty average and I found it difficult. Nevertheless, it is more than worth the effort especially if you are engaged in ministry or for that matter if you are a follower of Jesus who is interested in engaging the broader culture around you.

There you have it. I guess that was just one book, wasn’t it?

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