by Steve | Jul 20, 1989 | Archive - 1989
Archive: How Many People Does Bill Hinson Pastor?
New Year’s Day 1989 found Dr. William H. Hinson, pastor of the world’s largest United Methodist church, living on the streets. And though Hinson was there for only one night (with four other Houston clergymen) to experience and dramatize the plight of the homeless, it wasn’t an empty gesture—Bill Hinson’s 13,500-member church responded to their pastor’s experience with $20,000 over the $35,000 homeless-aid budget.
By Amy Rabinovitz
“The wonderful power of First UMC, Houston is the way the people understand the beautiful Methodist balance,” says Hinson. ” They aren’t afraid of paradoxes—personal holiness and social holiness, pietism and activism. They accept paradox as both/and rather than either/or.”
Such balances characterize the ministry and charisma of this southern-bred preacher.
In person he is soft-spoken and gracious. In the pulpit, dramatically distinct.
His sermons are replete with down-home homilies of old saints in nursing homes and young couples in distress, but equally peppered with serious concepts from Scripture.
His strong preaching is “a gift of the Lord, an endowment to someone He’s called to the pulpit,” but in addition to inspiration, Hinson has added a certain amount of perspiration. “I minored in speech in college and took as many preaching courses as the seminary curriculum would permit. When I went to Boston University for my master’s degree in homiletics I studied with A. K. Chalmers, a flamboyant and dramatic preacher. I earned my doctorate under the direction of John Brokhoff, a strong, biblical preacher.”
Bill Hinson also displayed a delicate balance when he came to Houston in 1983. After the retirement of the highly-respected Dr. Charles Allen, some outsiders predicted the church would lose ground. But by respecting the existing, strong structure while pursuing aggressive church growth, Hinson avoided the settle-in-and-die syndrome.
“This church has 500 people on the administrative board, and during my first summer as pastor I met personally with 367 of them.” (The others, he explains, were out of town and unavailable.) “That entire summer I listened and asked questions. ‘What are your dreams?’ ‘What do you want to see God do through our church?’
“Over and over I heard that they wanted to serve. The possibilities of this church are staggering. We’re strategically located in the heart of one of America’s largest cities. We’ve been on ABC television for 35 years, so thousands beyond our sanctuary walls look to us for spiritual guidance.
“Countless people feel involved in the church. One television viewer, a 100-year-old woman who hadn’t been in our church in 20 years, wrote and asked us to turn the television cameras to a certain area so she could see who was sitting in ‘her’ section.” (Yes, the cameras ministered to the home-bound member’s request.)
With the people’s mandate for ministry, Hinson initiated several discipleship programs including three Bible studies—a men’s breakfast study, a women’s afternoon study and a lunchtime businesspersons’ study—which he personally taught. These Bible studies have been a source of support and guidance for both pastor and church. In his guide to church evangelism, A Place To Dig In (Abingdon Press), Hinson credits the church’s 100 percent increase in giving to the power of laity nurtured through core groups such as these.
The church also initiated Disciple Bible Studies which have grown from 4 groups to 20, with an additional 20 slated for 1990; and an Aldersgate Club, numbering 700, in which members agree to try to bring others into the church.
The catalyst for two new programs came when Hinson heard about a young couple expecting their first child. During her pregnancy the wife had to stay in bed for several months. The couple dropped all activities, but not one person from church called and asked why they hadn’t been attending.
“When they told me their experience,” Hinson remembers, “I realized that the worst thing isn’t when a member drops out. It’s when no one notices.”
Bill Hinson preached this couple’s story from the pulpit. He called the staff together and asked for ideas. The result was the Barnabas Committee, which follows up with each new member and helps newcomers find a place in the church. A Nurturing Committee reviews each Sunday’s attendance and calls anyone who has missed three weeks.
Opportunities for such extensive ministry are a far cry from Bill Hinson’s home church, the 22-member First Church, Snipesville, Georgia. It was there he was called to the ministry, and from there he was sent to his first congregation (39 members).
Hinson attributes much of his ministry’s success to his wife, Jean. “She is the best Christian I’ve ever known and a model of how to listen to people. She has been a nurturer and supporter to me. Her own quiet commitment to Christ is a great source of strength. She helped me balance my family time, and when I had to be away she involved the children in such a way that they became a part of my ministry. As a result all three of our children, Elizabeth, John and Cathy, are deeply committed to the church.”
The Hinsons were serving in First Church, Albany, Georgia, when Bill was called to Houston. Though he had already achieved a reputation as a powerful preacher who carefully tended his congregation, he was a dark horse candidate for Houston.
“I was at a pastors’ conference in Alabama and, as pastors will, everyone was talking about who was going to fill the spot in Houston. Everyone’s name was mentioned but mine.”
In the end a funny turn of the Lord’s hand helped Hinson. “I had been interviewed by several members of the committee, but I hadn’t talked with the chairman. So I kept waiting and waiting for him to call. Then one cold Monday in February he called and asked if I’d be preaching Sunday.
“Saturday night I couldn’t even pray. Jean asked me why I was home so early, and I said, ‘I feel like it’s been decided. Either I’m going or I’m staying, but I’m happy either way.”‘
The normal pattern of the Houston committee was to fly in Saturday night, watch the early service on television and attend the second service.
“That Sunday in early service all I could think about was the chairman watching me on TV. The Lord couldn’t have gotten into that service because I wasn’t thinking about Him. So I bombed. I was awful. I went to Sunday school knowing that I should stay in Georgia. And that was okay. Then after class the chairman walked in and told me, ‘We had the wildest time. Our plane iced up in Atlanta, and we had to rent a car and drive like mad to get here. We just arrived.’ The next service I preached for the Lord.”
By the time he got home that afternoon, “I told Jean to go to the alley behind the liquor store and get some boxes. Any God who could work all that out could put me in Houston.”
That the hand of the Lord is on this preacher is obvious in several ways, including this 150-year-old church’s defiance to all downward trends. Though membership in United Methodist churches has dropped 18 percent and the denomination influences only about the same percentage of Americans as it did 160 years ago, First Church claims more than 600 new members a year, and the ministry has expanded into video and cable TV. In 1988, 200 of the 673 new members came through professions of faith.
God was also evident when a fire caused millions of dollars of damage to the church and heavily damaged their magnificent organ. Hinson had only been pastor six months. Houstonians were so distressed over the loss that one person wrote to the local paper, “That fire wouldn’t have happened if Dr. Allen were still pastor.”
However, Bill Hinson views the experience as having a good side. “The church grew even while meeting in a hotel ballroom. And going through the trauma, challenge and suffering together created a unique bond between us.” He likens it to being together for five years of normal emotional involvement.
If Bill Hinson has a mission, it is to share the need for leaders to challenge and enable the laity. As one of the key organizers of the Houston Declaration, he was responding “to what I saw over and over again in my travels—an alarming gap between the official church position and what people actually believed and wanted.
“The Houston Declaration started as just a few phone calls between friends, talking about the pattern we saw developing.” By coming together and organizing a statement, Hinson and the other organizers of the Houston Declaration have encouraged thousands of people. “This General Conference was more responsive to the grassroots than any in my memory,” he says with pleasure.
Even fiery issues, however, are balanced by Bill Hinson ‘s southern-gentleman approach, and his ministry is, in many ways, like one of his favorite hobbies. “I love to plant things. When I first got to Houston I planted an oak tree. Not one that would live only 50 years. One that would live more than 100.”
A thoughtful expression lights his face. “I like,” he explains, “to plan for the long haul.”
Amy Rabinovitz resides in Houston, Texas, and is a staff writer for Chosen People magazine.
by Steve | May 21, 1989 | Archive - 1989
Archive: What John Wesley Might Say to the United Methodist Church
By Rober Tuttle
“There is nothing new under the sun” (ECC. 1:9). The Hebrew Scriptures would seem to suggest that John Wesley’s words to the church of the 18th century are just as relevant now as they were in Wesley’s day. To be sure, he has just as much at stake.
Although United Methodism has not been a Wesleyan church for more than 75 years, Wesley’s words are gaining fresh authority among many Methodists today. Once again the Church in general and the United Methodist Church in particular seem ready to listen. After all, people today still need salvation; Wesley speaks to that. People today still need to fear sin as much as death and hell; Wesley speaks to that. People today still oppress each other; Wesley speaks to that. People today still need fellowship and accountability; Wesley speaks to that. People today still need to experience love as the beginning and end of their faith in Jesus Christ; Wesley speaks to that as well. Let me illustrate.
In the year that Wesley died (1791) he edited and reprinted the Large Minutes for circulation within the Methodist connection. With a few editorial adjustments for clarification we can use that document to test the theory that Wesley’s admonitions to early Methodism are just as relevant for United Methodism today as they were in Wesley’s time, perhaps painfully so:
“Personal religion either toward God or man is amazingly superficial among us.
“I can but just touch on a few generals. How little faith is there among us! How little communion with God! How little living in heaven, walking in eternity, deadness to every creature! How much love of the world, desire of pleasure, of ease, of getting money! How little brotherly love! What continual judging one another! What gossiping, evil-speaking, tale-bearing! What want of moral honesty!
“And the Methodists in general will be little the better, till we take quite another course with them [our people]. For what avails public preaching alone, though we could preach like angels? We must, yea, every traveling preacher must, instruct them from house to house. Till this is done, and done in good earnest, the Methodists will be little better than other people. Our religion is not deep, universal, uniform; but superficial, partial, uneven. It will be so till we spend half as much time in this visiting as we now do in talking uselessly.
“In ourselves there is much dullness and laziness, so that there will be much ado to get us to be faithful in the work.
“We have a base, man-pleasing temper; so that we let men perish rather than lose their love. We let them go quietly to hell, lest we should anger them.
“Some of us have also a foolish bashfulness. We know not how to begin and blush to contradict the devil.
“But the greatest hindrance is weakness of faith. Our whole motion is weak because the spring of it is weak.
“Lastly, we are unskillful in the work. How few know how to deal with men so as to get within them and suit all our discourse to their several conditions and tempers; to choose the fittest subjects and follow them with a holy mixture of seriousness, and terror, and love, and meekness!
“Too many of them [our people] will be unwilling to be taught, till we conquer their perverseness by the force of reason and the power of love. …
“And it is still harder to fix things on their hearts, without which all our labour is lost. If you have not, therefore, great seriousness and fervency, what good can you expect? And, after all, it is grace alone that must do the work.
“And when we have made some impressions on their hearts, if we look not after them they will soon die away.
“But as great as this labour of private instruction is, it is absolutely necessary. For, after all our preaching, many of our people are almost as ignorant as if they had never heard the gospel. I speak as plain as I can, yet I frequently meet with those who have been my hearers many years who know not whether Christ be God or man. And how few are there that know the nature of repentance, faith and holiness! Most of them have a sort of confidence that God will save them, while the world has their hearts. I have found by experience that one of these has learned more from one hour’s close discourse than from ten years’ public preaching.
“And undoubtedly this private application is implied in those solemn words of the apostle: ‘I charge thee, before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and dead at his appearing, preach the word, be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering.’
“O brethren, if we could but set this work on foot in all our societies and prosecute it zealously, what glory would redound to God! If the common ignorance were banished and every shop and every house busied in speaking of the word and works of God, surely God would dwell in our habitations and make us His delight.
“And this is absolutely necessary to the welfare of our people, many of whom neither believe nor repent to this day. Look round and see how many of them are still in apparent danger of damnation. And how can you walk and talk and be merry with such people when you know their case? Methinks, when you look them in the face, you should break forth into tears. … O, for God’s sake and for the sake of poor souls, bestir yourselves and spare no pains that may conduce to their salvation!
“What cause have we to bleed before the Lord this day, that we have so long neglected this good work! If we had but set upon it sooner how many more might have been brought to Christ? And how much holier and happier might we not have made our societies before now? And why might we not have done it sooner? There were many hindrances, and there always will be. But the greatest hindrance was in ourselves, in our littleness of faith and love.”
Relevant? Not only for the United Methodist Church but for all of us! Is it not time to repent and renew our faith and trust in Jesus Christ that we might experience renewal in the church—beginning with me?
All quotations are taken from Wesley’s Works, Vol. 8, pp. 302 ff (Jackson, 3rd edition).
Robert Tuttle is professor of evangelism at Garrett- Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, and is a contributing editor to Good News.
by Steve | May 20, 1989 | Archive - 1989
Archive: On Holy Ground
This Indian-born lecturer removes his shoes to preach to people no one notices
By Sara L. Anderson
It has been said of Sam Kamaleson, “He has spoken in face-to-face encounters with more church leaders than anyone in the world.” “Sam who?” you ask. Through speaking for World Vision and his work in establishing pastors’ conferences around the world, Sam Kamaleson’s influence is widespread. Still, he is not well-known to the Church at large, partially because those to whom he ministers are not well-known.
It is with this grassroots level of leadership that Kamaleson, World Vision’s vice president for evangelism and leadership enhancement, works. “They roll up their sleeves and work in the mud and dust,” Sam says of the people to whom he ministers. “They are the crust, the salt of the earth. Whether we are there or not, they are going to go because the Lord has called them, and we learn from them. If we don’t relate to them, we are not relating to the Church.”
Yet it is with quiet humility that Kamaleson works, humility communicated by politeness and cultural sensitivity. While talking with individuals or groups he never crosses his legs, observers note, since in many cultures showing the sole of your shoe demonstrates contempt. His concern for individuals is obvious. Asbury College President Dennis Kinlaw says, “He’ll take my hand and speak to me, and when he’s through it’s as if I’ve been baptized in love.”
Kamaleson surreptitiously removes his shoes before he preaches, says Kinlaw, who has shared many a conference platform with him. When Sam is behind the pulpit “he’s standing on holy ground,” explains Kinlaw.
That holy ground, which has stretched around the globe, was consecrated in India. A sixth-generation Anglican, Kamaleson strayed from the Church when he left home to attend the University of Madras to study anatomy. “I didn’t think the Church and its message were so essential,” he recalls. However, his roommate, a Hindu, heard a street-preaching team and turned to the Lord. “It was his life and witness and his perseverance in prayer that led me to the Lord,” Sam says. Kamaleson became part of the struggling but vital Methodist congregation there because it was closest to the campus. Then Methodist missionary J.T. Seamands, now professor emeritus at Asbury Theological Seminary, visited Madras with his quartet. After leaving, J.T. continued to encourage Sam in his commitment to Christ, sending letters and sheet music. (Sam was a singer as well.) “I found that the range of J.T.’s voice was very similar to mine,” Sam says, flashing a wide smile. “So in my anatomy classes I was copying music instead of studying anatomy.”
J.T. Seamands was no stumbling block to Kamaleson’s education but instead persuaded Sam to attend Asbury Seminary. “I came because of the music,” Sam says, “then got hooked on theology.”
During his time in the United States, Sam worked with Mennonite farmers in northern Indiana in preparation for the veterinary work he hoped to do back in India. He saw that as a way to reach people in rural areas for Christ.
But when Sam returned to his home church J.T. Seamands, the appointed pastor, could not serve the parish because one of his daughters was ill, and the family had to return to America. So Sam promised the congregation of Emmanuel Methodist he would be its pastor for one year. That year eventually stretched to 13 incredible years.
David Seamands, J.T.’s brother and the Methodist district superintendent who had appointed him to Emmanuel Methodist Church, also greatly influenced Sam. Like his brother, David encouraged the young pastor through letter-writing, and he led Sam into what we call the “second experience of grace.”
Under Sam’s ministry Emmanuel Church blossomed. “In three months we couldn’t close the altar in any service, including prayer meeting,” Sam recalls. “People always came forward to receive the Lord.” During this time the church recorded 300 percent growth in attendance and giving. “We had to pull the walls down three times,” Sam says.
But Sam did not forget his commitment to rural ministry. He instituted the Salem Project in Banishpet, India, an agricultural project with a basic philosophy he developed at Asbury. The first goal was for the community, not just one person, to evangelize. Second, the community would live in the context of the country. For instance, since India is primarily an agrarian society, it should be an agricultural fellowship. Third, the community should be self-sufficient, contribute to and speak to its environment.
The Salem Project, officially known as Bethel Agricultural Fellowship, has met those goals for 21 years now. The list of its ministries seems endless:
- A hospital with 30 beds and 3 doctors. “We do complicated surgery; we have specialists visiting every week—skin, eye and surgical specialists, ” Kamaleson explains. Postnatal and prenatal counseling are provided, and skin diseases like leprosy are treated. Bethel also operates a government-recognized center for tuberculosis prevention, with free medicine and other assistance provided.
- A training center, Bethel Bible Institute, which prepares people for missions.
- Provisions for needy children. “In a society where economic conditions can be very trying, children bear the brunt of it,” Sam says. The Bethel Community cares for destitute children, murderers’ children (society ostracizes them), children of leprous parents and orphaned children. The community cares for 600 children there and nearly 3000 in other locations in India.
- Agricultural projects. Young men with promise are brought in from the surrounding villages to stay on the campus for 10 to 21 days to learn everything they need to know about the cultivation of hybrid seeds. “At graduation they receive a packet of hybrid seeds and a Bible,” Sam says. “Most of them make commitments to the Lord before they leave. When they return to their villages they become the center around which to form a congregation.” This is how churches are built (with the help of World Vision).
- A vocational training institute. Young men with mechanical aptitudes are taught skills ranging from cabinetmaking to electronics, and use these skills to support themselves when they leave the community.
Bethel’s influence has produced marvelous results.
First scenario: “We’ve been able to influence murderers in prison,” Sam says. “Their children are our wards, and when they come to know the Lord they often write their fathers saying, ‘Although we can’t live together on planet Earth, there is a Father’s house. And there we will never be separated, Dad, if you’d only receive the Lord Jesus Christ.’
“That of course breaks even the hardest of criminals, and they will write to us and ask, ‘Can you send me the book?’ So we send the Bible,” Sam explains. “And in every major prison we’ve got a nucleus of believing prisoners who have caused a ‘revolution’ to happen there.”
Second scenario: Some of the children of leprous parents now have university degrees. “One fellow has specialized in Islamic studies. … He wants to be a channel to properly articulate the gospel,” Sam says. He adds that one girl has earned a degree in commerce. “These are children of lepers, who had no place to go except to contract the disease themselves.”
Third scenario: The Tamils, people deported from Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, had been involved in bloody and deadly conflicts with another group of people. World Vision projected a program to help rehabilitate those Tamils belonging to a militant group, the Tigers. “We started with 25 or 30 people at a time. They got converted.” Now back in Sri Lanka, “they’ve got congregations going, and I write to them regularly,” Sam says.
A majority of Sam’s activity now revolves around his work with two types of World Vision-sponsored pastors’ conferences. The first is by invitation. A group from any dot on the world map may ask World Vision to come and address some biblically-based theme. For instance, a group in the Pacific islands determined that one of its main problems was how the people, as Christians, could cope with tourist traffic. World Vision brought in speakers from around the world to address the issue.
It takes about two years to put together such a conference and develop the funding (World Vision pays different percentages, depending on the socio-economic condition of the area). The conferences have broad appeal. One held in Nairobi, Kenya, drew 1,700 pastors from 70 denominations; another in Bolivia drew the same number.
Sam, an Indian citizen, has an easier time gaining entry into some of these countries, and he has even been able to minister behind the Iron Curtain. “We get into corners where prominent teams cannot,” Sam says.
The second type of conference, a non-agenda conference, helps executives and top denominational leaders learn to build relationships with each other. Most regular conferences are centered around a rigorous agenda, but in these meetings discussion and worship are free-flowing.
In Ecuador, where united conferences had not taken place because denominational heads couldn’t agree with each other, World Vision hosted a three-day, non-agenda conference for 35-40 leaders. “The second evening we were speaking about the Holy Spirit in an informal way, and the Spirit going to Moscow. I’ve lost my son!’ He began to cry. Nobody knew what to do. I put my arms around him and intuitively responded, ‘I have two grown sons; I know what you are talking about. Brother, let me pray for you.’ Then one by one they put their hands on us. This was a breaking point.”
The session went on until 2:00 a.m. As a result, the first national pastors’ conference took place because the denominational leaders had come together. That has happened in more than one place. “Let the Holy Spirit work among us,” Kamaleson says. “Amazing things do happen.”
When asked what he admires most about Sam, Kin law’s response is immediate: “Integrity.” He explains that even in situations with hostile people Sam is not defensive, but he’s clear-headed and direct. Sam’s that way with people of any religious or political persuasion. Yet in his dealings “he is never unfaithful to Christ as the truth, even while asking others what he can learn from them.”
If we were to ask Sam the reason for his quiet success, he would immediately call attention to his wife. “My wife is more than a partner to me,” he says. “She is a teammate. And her understanding releases me to do all that I have done. Yet that is not my identity. Being a child of God is my identity.”
Sara L. Anderson is associate editor of Good News and associate editor of Bristol Books.
by Steve | Mar 24, 1989 | Archive - 1989
Archive: The Missing Cross
Has the Church stopped preaching the message of Calvary?
By David F. Wells
The New Testament never says that Christ lived for us, thirsted for us, was tempted for us or became weary for us, true as all this is. What it says, and says repeatedly, is that He died for us.
More precisely it says that He died for our sins, bearing them as His own, assuming responsibility for them and suffering the full wrath of God in consequence. In view of the clarity and insistence of this apostolic witness, the fact that it is so commonly misunderstood is remarkable.
Protestant liberals expressed an optimism that grew out of their evolutionary understanding of life. They announced the coming kingdom that would consist of the realization of God’s universal fatherhood and man’s corresponding brotherhood. Jesus was the historic pioneer of this message, they said, and His pioneering in revealing God’s love is redemptive.
This concept evoked the scathing response from (H. Richard) Niebuhr that it offered a God without wrath who had brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a real cross. The shallow optimism that underlay it was shattered by the First World War in Europe and the Depression of the 1930s in America.
Salvation as Freedom from Societal Sin
Although the same optimism has not reappeared, there is nevertheless a widespread understanding of Christ’s death that is still classically liberal. For instance the 1973 Bangkok assembly of the World Council of Churches defined salvation as freedom from societal sins. Working back from the effects of sins, it then deduced from these the nature of the Atonement.
Sin was here conceived in a purely horizontal manner: what we need to be saved from is racial oppression, economic injustice, sexual prejudice, class distinctions and psychological inhibitions. Jesus is important because He exhibited freedom from and opposition to these evils. Indeed His example, by which the love of God was revealed, has provided our redemption. The Church’s mission is to call persons to a full humanity through Jesus, whose “salvation” brings liberty, unity, justice and peace.
During the last ten years the same model of understanding the work of Christ has been used in the so-called political theology that has refined the horizontal understanding of salvation in relation to the political order. Salvation means freedom from economic injustice, political corruption and class oppression.
Towards this end a Christian-Marxist dialogue has been established, and the cost of discipleship has been described in terms of revolution by Jurgen Moltmann or, at least, active resistance by Daniel Berrigan. Similarly James Cone has made black racial identity the basis for his assertion that “Black Power” demands are Gospel correlates. Different as these concepts may be in details, they agree that sin is a disruption of just horizontal relationships in society, that salvation is the rectification of these and that insofar as Jesus is important it is because He pioneered this movement as a revolutionary or at least a dissenter.
Sin undeniably has horizontal ramifications. While government exists to curb lawlessness, it is sometimes the vehicle of it; minorities are oppressed in spite of the laws and sometimes because of them. Given man’s inherent greed, it is a foregone conclusion that the American economic system, even if it is preferable to the alternatives, will never deliver equitable treatment to all who are embraced by it.
Denial of Vertical Dimension
The basic divergence in interpreting Christ’s death, then, does not arise because some think of sin societally (horizontally) and others think of it only religiously (vertically). New Testament faith acknowledges the horizontal dimension, but the new liberalism denies the vertical aspect.
Is sin most to be feared because it breeds distrust, foments greed, causes personality to disintegrate, fuels cruelty and leads to institutional corruption? Not according to the New Testament. It is most to be feared because it draws down the wrath of God. What makes our predicament hopeless on the one hand, and what necessitates a Gospel on the other, is not man’s inhumanity to man, ghastly as that sometimes is, but the fact that the world lies under God’s condemnation. Therefore the Atonement cannot be understood merely as the genesis of societal reform; it must be seen, centrally and primarily, as God’s provision for averting His own anger.
This vertical dimension of the Atonement gives God’s love its real sanctity, but for several reasons it has not been as prominent in evangelical thought and preaching as I believe it is in the New Testament.
Understanding the Wrath of God
It is obvious that the notion of God’s wrath is subject to serious misunderstanding, for it could be equated with human anger. Human anger is invariably tainted with and becomes the servant of evil. With anger comes malice, hatred, revenge, jealousy, distrust and uncontrolled passion. Clearly God’s anger is free of these defilements. What, then, is divine wrath? According to Frederick Godet it is:
… moral indignation in all its purity, the holy antipathy of the Good Being for that which is evil, without the slightest alloy of personal irritation or of selfish resentment. It is the dissatisfaction which is excited in a pure being by the sight of impurity. The wrath of God, so understood, is a necessary consequence of the profound difference which separates good from evil. To deny this would oblige us to consider evil not as the opposite, but simply an imperfect form of good [Godet’s Biblical Studies: Studies on the New Testament, ed. by W. H. Lyttleton, London, 1985, p. 152].
Emil Brunner, who speaks of wrath as “the negative aspect of holiness,” goes on to say that it [wrath] is necessarily an “objective reality” that stands between God and man. The price of affirming all this may be the appearance of “foolishness,” as Paul said—a lack of sophistication; but it is that kind of “foolishness” in which God excels.
And is it really so unsophisticated? What the divine judgment tells us is that good and evil are not equally ultimate. They are not on the two ends of a cosmic seesaw tilting up and down eternally. The days when error can be on the throne and when truth can be condemned to the scaffold are numbered. The time is coming when God’s zeal will “burst into flames.” What opposes His will on earth and in heaven will be destroyed.
This fact alone gives us both a mandate and a rationale for interpreting life in moral terms. This is what provides a major incentive to be moral; and this is why the New Testament, which is so intensely ethical, insistent upon our choosing good, is so often eschatological. To speak of God without acknowledging His wrath is to assume His ethical indifference. More than that, it is to require man’s ethical indifference too. What at first sight may appear to be rather cross, and has no doubt been treated crassly in innumerable “fire and brimstone” sermons, is actually of the essence of the nature of God and the whole moral order. Inevitably, then, it is of the essence of the Atonement too.
The Full Work of Christ
The work of Christ is a complex mystery, and the New Testament writers ransack their vocabulary to find language to express it. Their chief words are: redemption, by which Christ delivers sin’s captives from their bondage at the ransomed price of His life; sacrifice, by which our guilt, both as subjective shame (its psychological dimension) and as objective blame (its metaphysical dimension), is dealt with; propitiation, the way in which God’s wrath is diverted; and reconciliation, the restoration of fellowship between God and man.
The theme of reconciliation probably takes in as much of the work of Christ as any. Reconciliation presupposes a prior hostility between two parties. At first sight it may appear that man is hostile toward God but that God is not hostile toward man, for in Romans 5:10 and 2 Corinthians 5:20 only man’s reconciliation is mentioned. And in 2 Corinthians 5:18, Ephesians 2:16, Colossians 1:20 God is spoken of as reconciling us to Himself. If this were the case, then Christ’s work would be directed only toward changing our distrust of God and not toward changing God’s disapproval of us.
In the other instances of reconciliation in the New Testament (Matt 5:23, 24; 1 Cor. 7:10, 11), however, the focus actually falls not on the enmity of the offending party but on the need to assuage the anger of the person against whom the offense was committed. This pattern is duplicated precisely with respect to the Atonement. In Romans 5:8-11, for example, what is underlined is not primarily that Christ has changed our feeling about God but rather that He changed God’s feelings about us. The enmity to which Paul refers (v. 10, “For if while when we were enemies, we were reconciled. … “) is clearly God’s, not ours; otherwise He would have said: “If, when we felt enmity toward God, we were able to lay it aside through Christ’s death. … ”
On the contrary what Paul affirms is that in reconciliation no less than in justification we are helplessly passive; we must be reconciled and we must receive rather than effect our reconciliation (v. 11).
We are, therefore, separated from God by sin, and God is separated from us by wrath. For reconciliation to be effective God must be able to look on us without displeasure, and we must be able to look on God without fear. And what was required has been done, as the words of that well-known hymn affirm:
“Bearing shame and scoffing rude/In my place condemned he stood/Sealed my pardon with his blood/Hallelujah. … ”
In the reconciliation of Christ sin is expiated, wrath is propitiated and our alienation from God is overcome.
The Church’s Only Message
Our redemption is not achieved by Christ’s revealing God’s love to us; rather, Christ reveals God’s love to us by achieving our redemption. Indeed the apostle John goes so far as to say that we would not even know the real nature of love (1 John 3:16) unless God had undertaken to shoulder our guilt and make common cause with us in our sin.
Divine love, therefore, is not even understood outside the context of this Cross. It is with the Cross that we must begin, and it is with the Cross that we will end (Rev. 5:9, 10). The simplest message of the evangelist and the most profound message of the theologian are the same: Christ bore our sins, mediating between the estranged parties. There was no other Gospel known in the early Church; there should be no other Gospel known in ours.
Dr. David F. Wells is professor of historical and systematic theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Manchester, England.
by Steve | Mar 23, 1989 | Archive - 1989
Archive: The People’s Pulpit
Preaching is not a spectator sport. It is up to you to help your pastor preach better.
By John Brokehoff
In his best-selling Lake Wobegon Days Garrison Keillor describes his pastor’s sermons: “He mumbles, he murmurs. It’s a lot of on-the-one-hand-this, on-the-other-hand-that. He never comes straight out. He never puts the hay down where the goats can get it. It’s a lot of talk, and many a Sunday I’ve walked away with no idea what he said. Can’t remember even where he started from. You never had that problem with the old preachers. There never was a moment’s doubt. It was ‘repent or be damned.’ We need that. This guy, he tries to please everybody. Just once I wish he’d raise his voice and pound on the pulpit. That way I’d know he wasn’t talking in his sleep.”
Does this describe your preacher? If so, it helps explain why our denomination lost 70,000 members in 1987.
But whose fault is it? Is it the preacher’s? Is it the seminaries’? And what are the people doing about this kind of preaching?
One thing they are not doing is going to hear a sermon. Only 30 percent of the UMC’s membership bothers to worship. Empty pews are a sign that something is wrong with the sermons in that church.
In addition, many people are dropping out of church. In 1985 a survey asked 782 Lutherans who had become inactive why they had dropped out. Forty-two percent said it was because of irrelevant sermons. Many still attending church endure dull sermons but do not know what to do.
Protestants believe in a free pulpit—no one but God should tell a preacher what to say.
But preaching is not a spectator sport. The people in the pews are as responsible for effective preaching as the person in the pulpit. But what can they do to make their pastor a better preacher? What is the people’s part in preaching?
Be In Church
If a preacher puts 20 hours into preparing a sermon, it is discouraging to have less than a church full of people to hear it.
Pierce Harris of First Methodist Church, Atlanta, was one of the most popular preachers in the South during the 1900s. His church was packed at both morning and evening services. He claimed the secret to his success was a packed church.
In a crowded church you get the feeling something wonderful is happening. More people mean more enthusiasm. The singing sounds like thunder. The prayers are more fervent.
A half-filled church is depressing, and it discourages the preacher. But when a service is well-attended the preacher will likely be determined to do an even better job the next Sunday. Understanding the responsibility of bringing so many to the knowledge of Christ drives the preacher to his/her knees.
To help your pastor be a better preacher, be in church every Sunday.
Pray For The Preacher
The best thing you can do for a preacher is pray. Ask God to give your preacher insight into the meaning of the Word and to enable him/her to articulate the truth so that it is understandable. Above all, pray that the Holy Spirit empowers your preacher. To be enthusiastic, sincere, earnest, zealous and concerned for the souls of people, a preacher needs the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Don’t wait until Sunday to pray. Ask God each day to fill your pastor with wisdom and unction.
When I served as a pastor, I had the congregation pray silently just before the sermon while the organist played a stanza of a hymn. The people prayed that they would rightly hear the Word, and they prayed for the one who would preach.
Respect your preacher’s need to pray before the service. Often just before the worship service church people come to the pastor with information, complaints or a joke. Your preacher needs at least 10 uninterrupted minutes before the service to be alone with God and to get in the spirit of worship.
Confine The Preacher
Many pastors are too busy doing things they should not have to do. Roy M. Oswald, director of training at Alban Institute, claims that one of every five clergypersons in the United States is burned out. The health insurance program of one denomination reports that heart attacks among clergy have increased 67 percent in the last few years.
A pastor is commissioned to preach the Word and administer the sacraments; he is to be the congregation’s theologian-in-residence. The pastor is not called to manage the church property, raise the annual budget, lead the youth, type stencils for the Sunday bulletin, enlist church school teachers and attend every meeting of the auxiliaries.
The average preacher spends only a few hours each week getting ready to preach; the minimum time needed is 20 hours. Many pastors admit they do not get to read one serious book in a year. Is it any wonder that today’s preaching is hardly worth listening to?
You can help your pastor by protecting him/her from the rat race of church activities. Jethro advised Moses not to try to handle all of the people’s problems but to turn them over to able men. Your pastor, like Moses, is to deal only with great matters.
Methodist Bishop Arthur J. Moore was known internationally as a great preacher. What was the secret of his success? After his six o’clock breakfast his wife would give him a bottle of milk and lock him in his study until lunchtime.
The people who want better preaching must insist that their preacher spend his/her mornings, five days a week, in the study praying, thinking, studying, planning, writing and reading. The church should budget a certain amount each year for books and the preacher’s continuing education.
The leaders of the church should encourage a new pastor not to feel guilty about taking time for study. They should emphasize, “Spend time with God. Learn what His Will is, and tell us Sunday mornings. Study so that you may lead us into deeper understandings of the truth of God’s Word.”
Dialogue
Dialogue with the people is vital to good preaching. In recent years some pastors have invited worshipers to participate in pre-service or post-service dialogues.
In the pre-service dialogue a representative group of six to eight persons meets with the pastor to discuss the text and subject for the next Sunday. The purpose of the dialogue is not to tell the preacher what to say but to help in the preparation of the sermon. The group faces questions like
- What are your needs? Does this portion of scripture address those needs?
- What are your problems? Does this text or any other passage solve that problem?
- If you were writing the sermon, what would you emphasize?
- Can you think of any illustrations or life situations that speak to this subject?
- As you face this text, what questions come to mind?
In an hour’s discussion, the participants help put the text into daily life. They suggest fresh insights and applications. The dialogue helps the preacher immeasurably; his sermon will likely be more relevant to the needs of his congregation.
A post-service dialogue, held with or without the pastor, is open to anyone to discuss the sermon. It is not a gripe session. It provides participants with further explanation or corrects any misunderstanding about the sermon’s points. In turn, the preacher learns how to improve. The discussion leader asks,
- Did the congregation get the central theme?
- Was the congregation able to grasp the main points?
- Did the pastor get the message across?
- Were there any points that needed further clarification?
- In what ways could the pastor improve?
Respond
If there is no response to the sermon the preacher feels the effort was futile. When John the Baptist preached, “the multitudes were questioning him, saying ‘Then what shall we do?”‘ (Luke 3:10). When Peter preached on Pentecost, the people asked, “Brethren, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37).
On their way out of church people often tell the pastor, “I enjoyed It.” But it would be more helpful to look for some good in the sermon and say, for example, “That was a thoughtful sermon,” “That was creative” or “The sermon made me think.” Such commendations would inspire your preacher to do an even better job the next Sunday.
The best response to a sermon is to re-dedicate your life to Christ. A sermon is not intended to entertain or even primarily to educate; a sermon is intended to motivate people to give their lives to Christ.
Both the people and the preacher are responsible for the quality of preaching. We have blamed the preacher for dull, ineffective sermons; but perhaps the people are not doing their part.
John Brokhoff is professor emeritus of preaching at Candler School of Theology in Atlanta. His wife is a UM evangelist in the Florida Conference.
by Steve | Mar 22, 1989 | Archive - 1989
Archive: At the Lord’s Table
By George Anderson with Ruth A. Snyder
This pastor found Christ through the witness of a laymen’s luncheon in June when I arrived at First Avenue North and North Broadway in downtown Billings. The luncheon took place on the hotel’s second floor where business luncheons normally do. The banquet room was filled with people I had never seen before.
I took my seat next to Willis Jones and looked around the room. The tables were arranged in a U shape. I noticed then that many pastors had not shown up; that was predictable. Both saved and unsaved pastors resent and fear laymen’s efforts to convert them. I don’t think that conversion was their motivation for inviting me to the Northern; it didn’t matter if it were. I was there because the lay leader had asked me to come.
As we were finishing our dessert a young, pleasant-looking man stood up. I learned he was the Presbyterian minister we had been invited to meet that day. As he spoke it became evident he wasn’t there to preach or to talk about his local congregation; he was there to report on a weekly Bible study in Bismarck that was, in essence, a prayer and support group for Governor Bill Guy. The underlying message, though, was that Christ is alive in Bismarck.
Jesus in Bismarck, North Dakota? I thought, How could that be? I thought Jesus was a prophet who lived in ancient Israel. He was a good, selfless man, and to be a Christian was to copy His lifestyle. I believed Jesus was divine, but only with the same spark of deity which resides in us all. I had called Him Emmanuel— “God with us.” By that, I meant that God had represented Himself to us through Him. But I wouldn’t say He was God, because I didn’t believe it.
In my mind I quickly rummaged through my long-held theology. I had gone to seminary with the notion that by serving in ministry I would do something good for my fellow man. But in seminary I concluded that Jesus was not God and that God wasn’t God either. Instead I believed that the story of Jesus was a useful myth and that the God-concept was a useful principle. On these I tried to build a religion of ethics which would help mankind in its struggle to find significance in this hostile world.
However, I had already begun to notice problems with this kind of faith. First, it made little difference in my own life or in the life of anyone else whether we believed it or not. Second, it was hard to preach; few people understood what I was talking about, and those that did often left the faith altogether. (I was basically saying, “Be good and save yourself.”)
This speaker was saying that Jesus Christ is alive and that I could have a personal relationship with God through Him. He was saying our righteousness is not dependent on anything we do but on what Jesus has already done. The secret is not achieving, but believing.
I guess these ideas weren’t totally new to me, but suddenly they made sense. I recognized if Jesus is alive, as this man claimed, then obviously Jesus is God.
I didn’t have a relationship with Jesus, and I was failing in my efforts to be like Him. How could I be sure I was saved?
So I said in my heart, “I do believe, that Jesus is alive and is God, and I accept Him.” It was a quiet, unemotional resolve, but by the time the meeting had ended my enthusiasm was uncontainable.
I returned to my church office and immediately called my wife to tell her the news. We both cried. Already a born-again believer, she had waited patiently for years for me to understand my own spiritual anemia.
An hour later, there was a knock on my office door. It was Louie Kramp (the stranger on the stairway), Louie Sheldon (the luncheon speaker) and Fred Heyn (now a member of my church). They were there for a “follow-up” visit, to begin discipling me. We had a marvelous time; my heart was light as I spoke with them about Jesus. Louie Kramp told me then that my Jesus-is-God proclamation had taken him by surprise. He told me, “I thought, He’s a preacher and he didn’t know that?” We laughed together thinking about the incongruity of the moment.
In talking with these men I began to understand the Billings laypeople’s enthusiasm. Two years earlier Dick Halverson, who later became U.S. Senate chaplain, had brought a group of laypersons from around the country to Billings to meet with the city’s leaders. These men and women, respected in their fields, had flown into town at their own expense to witness to their faith in Jesus Christ.
As a result of this leadership week in 1960, hundreds of the city’s business, professional, academic and labor leaders made public professions of their faith in Jesus Christ.
Another phenomenal thing happened as a result of that weekend. Scores of small groups of laypeople began meeting throughout the city for Bible study and prayer. Some met for breakfast. Some met for lunch. Some met in the evenings. To this day, 28 years later, you can still find at least one Prayer Breakfast group meeting in almost every restaurant in the city, every day of the week.
The well-known National Prayer Breakfast, which takes place each year at the beginning of the congressional session, is only the tip of the iceberg. It is the visible part of a great movement of God among lay people of all faiths, walks of life and nations, drawn together by a common faith in Jesus Christ. Their objectives are to minister to and with the poor, to train up a new generation of leaders from among the young and to help people in leadership achieve maximum effectiveness for Christ in the exercise of their responsibilities.
That June day I had, by chance, been touched by a great laymen’s movement. Realizing Jesus is God changed my life, and now, nearly 27 years later, I say it with the same untainted enthusiasm I had on the steps of the Northern Hotel.
But the story doesn’t end there.
At my wife’s request, we invited three or four youth from our church to dinner with Louie Sheldon that same night. After dinner I asked Louie, “Tell them what you told me today. Tell them about Jesus.” He did. The young people listened politely.
After Louie left, Sherri, a leader in the youth group, told me, “I’ve attended this church all my life, and I have never heard anything like that. It has to be a bunch of baloney.
“My wife and I continued our work with the teens, motivated by our shared zeal for Jesus. One year later Sherri received Christ; she was the first in the group.
Then the enthusiasm for Jesus snowballed, and each of the teens gave his or her life to Christ. The group grew from 15 to 100 members. Some of their parents started attending church. No one could deny that the gospel being preached was attracting a large following.
Twenty-one years ago I moved my family to Washington, D.C., thinking I would leave the pastorate to work fulltime in the Prayer Breakfast Movement. But Jesus won’t let me leave the pulpit. In our 19 years at Mount Oak United Methodist Church we’ve seen workers in the Justice Department, the Pentagon, the Department of Labor, the Postal Service, businessmen and farmers come to know Christ.
As a senior pastor won to Jesus by laypeople, I take pains to wipe out the distinctions between laity and clergy. At least once a month during our worship service a layperson gives his or her testimony. We also offer a 10-week discipleship program to our laypersons.
The other day a visitor commented to me, “We came for several weeks before we could figure out who the pastor is.” That is a great compliment to us all.
George Anderson is pastor of Mount Oak UMC in Mitchellville, Maryland, and a member of the Good News Board of Directors.
