Tag Archives: church

Startling words for the modern church

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I read an article on Ben Witherington III’s blog the other day that I thought was worth sharing. Witherington posted the text of the address which President Timothy Tennent gave at the September Convocation of Asbury College. I thought it outstanding, and obviously Witherington did as well.

You can read the full text of the speech, titled Our Mission to “theologically educate”, online. (Witherington called it: “The Clarion Call to Watered Down (sic) Evangelicalism”) Let me cite a few quotations that I found interesting:

  • Evangelicalism is awash with the constant drumbeat message of informality, the assumed wisdom of consumerism, reliance on technology, love of entertainment, pursuit of comfort, materialism and personal autonomy – all held together by easy-to-swallow, pithy gospel statements.
  • Evangelicals are, of course, masters at dodging any criticism that we ourselves could ever be co-opted by culture. We disguise our lack of theological reflection by our constant commitment to “relevance” or saying that we are reaching people “where they are.”
  • If we spent as much time really immersing ourselves into apostolic orthodoxy as we do trying to capture, if I can use Tom Oden’s phrase, “predictive sociological expertise” on the latest cultural wave coming, our churches would be far better off. We have accepted almost without question certain definitions of success and what a successful church looks like. However, we must not forget that, as I told this past year’s graduates, if the cross teaches us anything, it is that God sometimes does his greatest redemptive work under a cloak of failure. Only sustained theological reflection is able to penetrate and unmask the pragmatic, market driven assumptions which largely go unchecked in today’s evangelical churches.
  • No one set out to cheapen the gospel, diminish God’s holiness or downplay the cost of discipleship. It’s just happening. A baseball cap here, omitting the word “wretch” from Amazing Grace there. The pressure to bring in new members made it best to just drop the required confirmation class for membership. Besides, people are just too busy to attend a new members class and it might hurt our annual membership goals. The call to career missions slowly became short term missions which slowly became vacations with a purpose. It all happened so seamlessly. We brought in a new youth director. He doesn’t have any biblical or theological training, but, oh, how the youth love him. You should see the new worship leader we have! He doesn’t know any theology, but he’s just picking the choruses each week, and he can really play the guitar! You see, it happens in ten thousand small skirmishes, rarely in any big, bloody battle.
  • Evangelicals have become experts in finding a thousand new ways to ask the same question, “What is the least one has to do to become a Christian.” That’s our defining question. We’ve become masters at theological and soteriological minimalism. We are the ones who have boiled the entire glorious gospel down to a single phrase, a simple emotive transaction, or some silly slogan. It is time for a new generation of Christians, committed to apostolic faith, to declare this minimalistic, reductionistic Christianity a failed project! It is wrong to try to get as many people as possible, to acknowledge as superficially as allowable, a gospel which is theologically unsustainable.
  • We have, in effect, been criss-crossing the world telling people to make God a player, even a major player in our drama. But the gospel is about being swept up into His great drama. It is about our dying to self, taking up the cross, and being swept up into the great theo-drama of the universe! Christ has come as the Second Adam to inaugurate the restoration of the whole of creation by redeeming a people who are saved in their full humanity and called together into a new redeemed community known as the church, the outpost of the New Creation in Adam’s world. Discipleship, worship of the Triune God, covenant faithfulness, suffering for the sake of the gospel, abiding loyalty to Christ’s holy church, theological depth, and a renewed mission to serve the poor and disenfranchised – these must become the great impulses of our lives.

Tennent had a lot more to say. It’s a long piece, long for a blog, anyway. But it’s worth your time to read it, even if you don’t agree with all he has to say.

To bash or not to bash

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How do we avoid “bashing”? That is, how do we speak frankly about past mistakes and present ills without coming across as someone who sees no value in a given institution?

Church bashing. America bashing. Whatever bashing comes to mind. I’m trying to learn how to critique constructively rather than criticize destructively.

As I’ve pointed out before, there were always be some who prefer a Photoshopped version of history, that edited version where everything our group did was right and everything others did was wrong. Some will go the other way, validating what others have done without valuing anything that we have done in the past.

So where’s the line? How do we avoid the extremes? I’d appreciate any insights you have to give.

What I never heard growing up

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Abilene Christian University has been hosting its Summit this week. Besides getting to teach two classes on the work in Cuba, I’ve been able to spend some time talking with church leaders from different places.

Some of us were discussing the common tendency to bash one’s upbringing. Seems to happen a lot in church circles. Those of us present acknowledged that some people had had horrible experiences in churches of Christ, yet each of us had had very positive ones. As always, it seems dangerous to paint with too broad a brush when discussing any religious group.

We also talked about the tendency to say, “I never heard about _____ when I was growing up in the church.” As I thought about it, I remembered teaching some lessons when I was in my twenties that led one of my old teachers to say, “Tim, I don’t feel convicted by this.” What he was saying, I now see, was that he had taught about these new discoveries I had; I just hadn’t heard it.

So maybe that’s an appropriate saying. Instead of saying, “My church never taught ____,” it seems much better to say, “Growing up, I never heard ____.” Maybe it was taught, and I just didn’t hear it.

I didn’t get to hear Mark Hamilton last night, but someone posted on Facebook a quote from Mark’s talk: “We will not be held accountable for what our grandparents think the Bible means. We will be held accountable for what we think the Bible means and what we do about it.”

Seems to be a good attitude to have. Not worry so much about what others have said or haven’t said. Spend our time figuring out what the Bible says, and do our best to live it.

The imitation of other Christians.

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When I was young, we had a cat. A female cat. Those were the days before the big “Spay and neuter” campaigns, so this cat had lots of kittens over the years. However, she had some serious shortcomings as a mother. The biggest one was the fact that she had no idea how to carry a kitten.

Instead of lifting her kittens by the nape of their neck, she would put her teeth on any available body part and drag her offspring across the porch. Apparently, she had never been carried when she was a kitten, so she hadn’t learned the proper form.

That brings me to the other side of the coin of yesterday’s discussion. As a church, we need to be focused on Jesus, on imitating Him. But we also need to be aware of the need to set an example for one another. That’s a frequent admonition in the New Testament, either to set an example for others or to follow the good example set by others.

I think Paul said it best to the Corinthians, when he said, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 11:1) It’s not just “imitate me.” It’s “imitate me as I imitate Christ.” The Corinthians had seen Paul; they hadn’t seen Christ. But as far as Paul’s life lined up with what they had been taught about Christ, they were to imitate it.

Older Christians have a responsibility to teach younger Christians. Much of that teaching will happen whether we are aware of it or not. I remember one evening when we were hosting some young people in our home in Argentina. The need arose for me to discipline my son, and I did so on the spot. (It involved physical violence toward his sister with a Lincoln log… but we won’t go into that) After punishing my son, I spent some time playing with him in his room before returning to the group. One young man commented, “You know that we are learning how Christians should raise their children by watching you.” That was a sobering thought.

We should imitate good examples. And we should seek to be good examples for others. I like what Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2: “And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” (2 Timothy 2:2) If we do it right, we create a chain of disciples, all seeking to imitate Christ and learning to do that by watching others do the same.

The early church

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Had an interesting thing happen at the Lipscomb Summer Celebration at the first part of this month. I went over to where the Spanish classes were being held, and the brother in charge apologized to me for not having invited me to speak. I told him that wasn’t a problem, that I was there to listen but would be happy to speak for them at some point in the future. Then one of the men said, “But you can help us out, right?” I said that I would be happy to the next year or some other time. He said, “No, I mean today.” Long story short, I was asked to give a talk that afternoon on “The Early Church.”

So obviously, this wasn’t a class that I spent weeks preparing for. But as I put my thoughts together, I realized something that I should have realized before. We often look to the early church as our model. The early church didn’t, at least not primarily. Sure, there were things that they learned from one another. But their goal was to imitate Christ.

The apostles didn’t go around saying, “Look at the church in Jerusalem and do the things they do.” They said, “Look at Jesus and try to imitate Him. We will try to imitate Him as well, so you can look at us and imitate us, but only as we imitate Him.”

Fact is, when we set out to imitate the early church, we have to ask “Which early church?” The church in Jerusalem where thousands still lived according to Jewish law? The chaotic Corinthian church? The confused Galatian church? We talk about “the early church” as if there were uniformity across the landscape… and there wasn’t.

If our churches are made up of people who are doing their best to imitate Christ, we will have the right kind of church.

Pretty obvious, I know. But sometimes I’m a little slow to pick up on these things.