Help for Shepherds

In churches of Christ, we structure our churches based on what we believe to be the biblical model of church leadership. Namely, congregations are autonomous and each is governed by elders who live up to a set of Scriptural criteria. It's not a perfect system, but I'm convinced that there is much wisdom in it.

One of my greatest areas of concern for us is the imbalance in terms of training opportunities. Ministers, who are leaders but not authorities in our congregations, have many chances to learn and grow. I've just completed all the work on my MDiv, and I could not overstate just how much I have benefited from the classes I've taken and from the friendships I've made in these classes.

Elders, on the other hand, are expected to live up to a certain criteria, yet have very few opportunities for growth and learning other than what they get from week to week at the worship services. Some elderships study books together or have workshops together, and I think this is wonderful, but I have wished for a long time that there was more available for them.

The conflict that results from this situation is that sometimes you have a minister, who might have a vast education but no authority, working with men who have complete authority but often limited education (in terms of ministry...they may be well educated in their respective career vocations). I think often, the elders have a better sense of what the congregation is like because of their time invested in the congregation. Ministers move in with no prior relationship with the people, and push for this or that, based on what they've studied. I think each party has things that they bring to the table, but it is still often a recipe for conflict.

I am of the opinion that though there are some rotten eggs out there, most elders care deeply about the church and want to do a good job. I think they want their churches to prosper and they want to honor God with their service. It's a rather thankless job much of the time. I think most of them do the best they can, but often don't really know where to go to get information about how to be a better leader. It was so difficult starting off as a minister with no experience, and I can only imagine how a new elder must feel with such great responsibility and high expectations placed on him.

And now for the purpose of this post...

There are some workshops for elders in other places, but there really hasn't been much in the Tennessee area that I'm aware of. At the Harding University Graduate School of Religion, I am so excited that Dr. Eddie Randolph is now putting together a group called The Shepherds Network.

Their first workshop is going to be March 25-27, 2011 at HUGSR. What I love about how it is organized is that it is NOT just a place where elders show up and a bunch of college professors tell you what you ought to be doing. Though there are some professors--some really terrific ones!--who will make some presentations, a large part of the workshop involves elders connecting with and helping to mentor other elders. They're even going to study some test cases together, which can be such a great exercise. In churches of Christ, we do not have nearly enough fellowship between our sister congregations, and part of what they are trying to do is to increase the amount of fellowship between us. For a movement that was founded on the principle of uniting all Christians, this ought to be a great fit for us.

Here are their "Core Values" as listed in the brochure about the workshop:

• To provide encouragement for elders and their wives
  
• To assist elders in networking with other elders
  
• To provide resources and case studies to help elders address a variety of needs
  
• To provide a network of relationships with elders in other congregations
  
• To develop new and prospective elders
  
• To provide renewal for experienced elders
  
• To develop and facilitate elder-­‐to-­‐elder coaching
  

If you are within a reasonable distance from Memphis, I would encourage you to tell your elders and their wives about this effort. I would love to see lots of good Christian men and women finding encouragement and renewal from this effort, and I will be praying that it is a success.

You can download an informational brochure here: http://www.box.net/shared/7sxzyek6tk

Persian Influence and Israelite Apocalypticism

Perhaps all I'm really doing is embarrassing myself, but I just hate to think that I would spend days of my life researching a topic, and then the only person I would ever share my discoveries with would be my professor.

I know the thought has been burning in your mind: "Why, with the similarities of a metaphysical dualism, a deterministic world view, a complex system of both angelology and demonology, and fully developed ideas of resurrection and judgment, surely the post-exilic Jews must have gotten all their apocalyptic ideas from the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism! After all, they lived under Persian rule for 200 years."

If you want my thoughts on the matter, knock yourself out. I don't promise that it is well reasoned or well written. I only affirm that it is my own work.

What's even better is that this means I am FINALLY done with my work for the fall semester, and I'll have a couple of weeks to regroup and start getting ready for spring semester!

My Grad School Papers

On the one hand, I know that most people will have no interest in reading papers. On the other hand, a good part of why I blog is for my own sake. I've been working very hard on my MDiv, and really don't want to loose track of all the papers I've had to write. Though I have decided not to include some of them, I have now made .pdf files of several of my papers, and have made them available for download for anyone who is interested.

The ones I've included are:

• Principles For Long Term Effectiveness In Ministry
• Christian Responsibility And Environmental Ethics
• I Corinthians 5 Exegetical Paper
• Karl Barth and Natural Theology
• David Lipscomb and the 1906 Division Of The Restoration Movement
• Personal Theological Reflection Paper
• The Function Of Solomon's Temple
• The "Everything You Need To Know About The Mexico Trip Book"

I've added a permanent link on the upper right hand corner of my blog, so if you ever feel like trudging through, you're welcome to take a look at these. From time to time, I will probably add more. Because of the program I used to make them into .pdf files, some of the formatting became a bit skewed, but the content is all there.

I don't promise that they're good, but I worked so hard on them that I would really hate for them to simply vanish and never serve the purpose of sharing the information that I learned.

6UP

Today got off to a really good start. I have been planning to dedicate this entire semester to refreshing my Greek and Hebrew skillz so I could pass a couple of exams at the grad school which would give me 12 hours of credit; 6 for Greek and 6 for Hebrew. My advisor is Dr. Black, who encouraged me that I should go ahead and let him give me the Greek exam over the phone. So I did, and I passed. When I got to work this morning, I had 39 hours, but as of now I have completed 45/84 hours for my MDiv. Cha-CHING!

Now I will start working on refreshing my Hebrew...

It's Paper Time

As much as it pains me, I'm going to have to decrease the amount of blogging I do for the next few weeks. I've got three papers:

1. I am writing about a proper interpretation of Genesis 6, what it means for God to "repent" or "relent". Did God know it would all go wrong, or does he deny himself foreknowledge? That sort of thing. It's a theological paper instead of an exegetical paper. That's due April 10th.

2. I have one for Christian ethics where I am going to tackle the subject of environmentalism. It's not a subject that I'm especially interested in, but it seems that you can't brush your teeth without someone screaming at you to "Go green!" as you do it. I'm going to try and decide what a Christian's responsibility is to his/her environment. This will end up being a sermon a few months down the road at OH.

3. I have to do a book review for my Providence & Suffering class. I think I'm going to use C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed. It's due near the end of April.

I may do some posting between now and then, but not with much frequency. I wish you all the best, and I'll look forward to posting more regularly once the grad school storm dies down.

-Mark <><

Reinhold Niebuhr and Italian Socialist Pacifists

I just finished taking a test for my Christian Ethics class. One of the books we read for class is Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man & Immoral Society. I don't think most of my readers are interested in a lengthy expose about Niebuhr's societal overview, but I did find a tidbit that I thought was worth sharing and worth reading.

Niebuhr is not a pacifist. He believed that people in groups always act out of self-interest, and that sometimes it is necessary to use coercion, violent or not, to bring about needed changes in order to make the world a better place. His critique of pacifism is that it doesn't work in really changing anything. Hauerwas came along later and argued for a form of pacifism that is a bit different than what Niebuhr seems to think pacifism is about, but that's for another post.

I wanted to share an example that Niebuhr gave. He is not critical of the principles given below, but he argues against their effectiveness in bringing about change. The situation is that in Italy, fascism was rising to power, and to combat it, the socialist leaders adopted pacifist principles as their strategy. Here are those principles:

1. Create a void around fascism.
2. Do not provoke; suffer any provocation with serenity.
3. To win, be better than your adversary.
4. Do not use the weapons of your enemy. Do not follow in his footsteps.
5. Remember that the blood of guerrilla warfare falls upon those who shed it.
6. Remember that in a struggle between brothers those are victors who conquer themselves.
7. Be convinced that it is better to suffer a wrong than to commit it.
8. Don't be impatient. Impatience is extremely egoistical; it is instinct; it is yielding to one's ego urge.
9. Do not forget that socialism wins the more when it suffers, because it was born in pain and lives on its hopes.
10. Listen to the mind and to the heart which advises you that the working people should be nearer to sacrifice than to vengeance.

Niebuhr concludes by saying that despite how noble this list is, the Italian socialists were annihilated by the fascists, their organizations were destroyed, and their workers were subjected to a state which is governed by their enemies. "Insofar as they exclude coercive means they are ineffectual before the brutal will-to-power of fascism."

I find some principles in that list that I think are worth applying to my own philosophies and ethics as a Christian. At the same time, Niebuhr's realism is pretty overwhelming.

Pacifists and non-pacifists tend to disagree about whether the rightness and wrongness of actions is determined by their ontological value versus their teleological value. Are things inherently wrong, or if we do wrong things for the right reason, does that make them ok?

Another facet I find very interesting is individual ethics versus societal ethics. I don't believe in vigilante justice, but I believe that government is appointed by God to "carry the sword." I can't do it, but we can. Niebuhr has some really fascinating observations about the general badness of mankind when groups go unchecked by other groups.

I love grad school

Every time I start thinking that I'm getting smarter, I find myself humbled again. I'm only in the first week of my 2 classes for this semester (Powell for Christian Ethics and J.M. Hicks for Providence and Suffering), and I'm already feeling way in over my head. Hicks is such a prolific writer and powerful thinker. Hopefully he wouldn't mind me sharing a portion of the lecture for this class. We're talking about understandings of how God operates within the world. After a numerous-page whopper of an explanation, he summarizes the major epistemic theologies in this way:

So, what is your perspective on divine providence? Are you…?
1. A modern semi-Deist who thinks God is a cosmic spectator rooting for shalom in the world?
2. A postmodern process thinker who sees humanity and God interdependently becoming” as they both move toward shalom, but God is only involved in the directing and persuasive aspects of the human being as a Coach rather than a player. 3. A postmodern Open Theist whose relational understanding of God means that he does not intervene in the world except to persuade human agents toward his goals and ends.
4. A premodern Open Theist whose relational God is not only persuasive, but active in response to the prayers of his people and occasionally intervening in the world for his purposes. God, then, is a Player-Coach who occasionally joins the team on the field.
5. A premodern occasionalist (Dominionist) whose God depends on the prayers of his people and is only active as those prayers call upon him. His intervention can be rare or common, depending on the prayers of his people; but it is occasional and relative to the prayers of his people.
6. A premodern occasionalist (Redemptivist) whose God only acts in the major work of redemption in Israel and the foundation of the church; his acts are basically miracles and acts of special providence in the history of Israel and the foundational history of the church.
7. A premodern concurrentist who believes in libertarian freedom and divine middle knowledge (Molinist) so that God is able to orchestrate history to achieve his purposes through human acts. As a player, God is always on the field, acting in every play and achieving his goal through the free acts of human agents.
8. A premodern concurrentist who believes in libertarian freedom but not in divine risk (Thomist) because God is always act work to achieve his purposes in every moment of human history according to his plan which does not change.
9. A premodern concurrentist who believes that volitional freedom and divine determination of every event is compatible, both with philosophical and biblical theology; thus, Calvinist (whether Bartian, Molinist or Classical).
10. A premodern determinist (Fatalism) who believes that everything is determined in such a way that human freedom has no significant role in the outworking of history.

Perhaps another question is….are these the only options?

It's going to take me a while to comprehend all of this. God is indeed much bigger than my brain. Do you know where you stand? Are you prepared to argue one while being able to discredit the other views? I'm a bit dizzy, myself.

33 Down

I'm slowly but surely working toward my MDiv at the Harding Grad School of Religion in Memphis. It is an 84-hour masters degree. It appears I may end up doing mine with an emphasis in systematic theology. As of right now, I have completed 33 hours. (I just saw the fall semester's grades posted online) I started off slow, because I was just beginning my first ministry job and Carolina was finishing her MBA. I'm now able to take about 12 hrs per year, doing school part time and work full time. It's going to be a while before I finish, but it always feels good to make progress. I've really enjoyed most of my classes, and I'm definitely growing through the experience.

The only depressing part is that I have friends who will be called "Dr." who will have had to take less hours for their doctorate than I'm taking for this masters. Then again, I'm doing this because I need the education more than because I need a fancy title for my name. I will be so proud when I finally finish this thing.

Rethinking the 5-Finger Exercise

Last week was intense for me. 5 days of solid class and a 6th day with a big nasty test. I learned a lot about the American Restoration Movement, but I think I learned a lot more about how American history helped to shape our thinking and approach to religion. Not just in the Restoration Movement, but most of the denominations that sprang up in America all have some similar philosophies at their roots. I may blog some on that later, but for now: the 5 Finger Exercise.

In churches of Christ, we are very adamant about having "No Creed But the Bible". In general, I think this is a good thing. No matter how well-written a creed might be, because it is written by men and is meant to summarize key concepts in the Bible, it's always going to be lacking something somewhere. It doesn't bother me that in churches of Christ we don't recite creeds.

At the same time, even if we resist the term "creed", at some point it becomes necessary for Christians to state what they believe in clear, presentable ways. When someone asks you who you think Jesus was, you can't just quote Scripture at them. At some point you have to say, "I believe..."

Even though we don't have a "Creed", the one thing that seems to be repeated more than anything is our "Plan of Salvation"; a.k.a. the Five-Finger Exercise:
1. Hear (Rom. 10:14-17)
2. Believe (Mark 16:16)
3. Repent (Acts 2:38)
4. Confess (Matt. 10:32-33)
5. Be Baptized (Mark 16:16; Acts 2:38; I Peter 3:21)
And some like to throw in...
6. Live faithfully until death (take THAT, Calvinism!)

Certainly, the plan has come under attack from time to time. Just like anything that is summarized by man, there will be things that are under emphasized. K.C. Moser caught a lot of flack when he pointed out that instead of focusing so much on the "plan" of salvation, we should focus more on the "Man" of salvation.

And it's true, Jesus' name is not mentioned in our 5 steps. I think we would probably contend that Jesus is meant to be at the center, because he is the one to whom we listen, in whom we believe, whom we confess, in whom we are baptized, and for whom we live. Even so, if this plan is the depth of our Christian knowledge, then Jesus is significant only as the one who got this plan of salvation in place. Unless we follow up with good Bible study, we miss out on the role that Christ should have in our lives, not to mention the Holy Spirit.

I have no problem with any of the "plan" that we typically use, but it is vital that we continue to teach our people after they have been baptized into Christ. These 5 Steps alone might work in getting us into Christ, but they alone do not provide the nourishment that our souls need to grow.

I learned some interesting stuff this week, though, about the 5 steps. For one, they originate with Walter Scott, someone who was Alexander Campbell's right-hand man. But what I find more interesting is that they were not originally the same 5 steps that we typically refer to.

Walter Scott's original 5 Finger Exercise went like this:
1. Faith
2. Repentance
3. Baptism
4. Remission of Sins
5. Holy Spirit & Eternal Life

(And yes, I see that he really put in 2 on step five. I guess we're trying to keep it all on one hand)

There are some things I really like about Scott's original plan. My teacher, Dr. Edward Robinson, pointed out that in the 5 Steps we use now, the emphasis is more on what WE do. I can see how some people would conclude that our view promotes a works-based salvation, if all they've seen of our teaching is the 5 Steps.

But look at these original ones. Faith is something we do. Repentance is something that we do. But three of the steps here are actions of God!

Baptism is an act of submission where in truth, God is acting. It is not a work that you do...you can't baptize yourself! Also, Scott emphasizes the remission of sins, which is what God does when we're baptized. And then there is his Holy Spirit & Eternal life step. Again, nothing that we do here.

I like the fact that Scott's 5 "Steps" doesn't even lend itself well to speaking in terms of "steps" because so much of it involves the actions of God. Rather than it being "Here's 5 things that you have to do to be saved", it is "Here are 5 things you should understand about how a person is saved."

At least, that's how I perceive it.

I'm not really advocating that we should revert to his original 5 Finger Exercise. I'm also not arguing that the present one is better than the former. To me, this is all a reminder that when we try to reduce the Word of God to formulas or creeds, there is always going to be room to improve what we've summarized because something will get left out. In churches today, I'm convinced we've got to strive for more Biblical literacy among our members. When people are only taught part of the Word of God, it only leads to more division; often with both of the disagreeing parties having huge gaps in their theological understanding.

My Statement of Faith

After many hours of labor, I have completed my statement of faith. It is a paper that spans over two semesters at the Harding Grad School. I had to write it for my Systematic Theology classes (part A and B). In total, it is about 30 pages. The purpose is not to write a high-level research paper, but to simply state what I believe, incorporating Scripture and a few secondary sources where necessary.

If you have any interest in knowing what I believe about the nature and being of God (theology proper), theological anthropology, hamartiology, soteriology, pneumatology, or eschatology, have I got a treat for you!

It's a .pdf. And yes, I know the footnotes are not flawless Turabian formatting. The program I used to make it a .pdf messed them up. At any rate, this is about a year's worth of thought. Whether or not anyone else ever sees it, I'm proud of it.

Here's the link to it.

If any of you have the endurance to read all or even part of it, I'd love to hear what you think.