by Steve | Jan 13, 2020 | January - February 2020, Magazine, Magazine Articles
The Rev. Dr. William J. Abraham speaks at the Fourth Global Gathering of the Wesleyan Covenant Association. Photo: Mark Moore.
By William J. Abraham –
We are at a crucial turning point in our culture, but also in the history of the Wesleyan church. We are at an absolutely crucial turning point in the history of the Methodist tradition. We now face a clear choice. Sometimes things are presented in strict either/or alternatives. The Lord did this when he said there was a “broad way” and a “narrow way.”
The broad way is straightforward. There’s going to be a church that is built on sex and gender. There’s going to be a church built on rebellion against the policies and practices of the church. There’s going to be a church that’s built on non-rational means of persuasion. It’s a church that will be built on individual personalities and even rock star public personas and a church that will be built on the shifting sand of post secular experience and cultural proclivities.
I do not want to be part of a church like that. Here’s an alternative. A church that is built on our Lord’s teaching on marriage – and the vision that informs it. A church that will be built on respect for canon law, for corporate discipline, and for civility towards our critics and our enemies. It’s a church that will be built on rational, respectful means of persuasion. It’s a church that will be built on hard consensus in conferencing and thinking and speaking and arguing together like they did in Acts 15. And it’s a church that will be built on the rock of divine revelation in the scriptures and the reliably annunciated material given in the great creeds of the church, especially the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed.
This is a stark and inescapable choice for United Methodists as we move forward.
We are unapologetically intending a fresh start for the people called Methodist across the world. This is not simply a parochial North American matter. We are a global church and we are interested in a fresh start for a global version of Methodism that’s built on Scripture and on the creeds.
What’s the primary task of Scripture? According to 2 Timothy 2:16, it is to make us wise unto salvation and to enable us to come and be all God wants us to be in the life of the church. It’s there to form us, to change us, to transform us. And that’s why there’s such magnificent diversity in Scripture.
Living a life of obedience will be a life of health and success in the appropriate way. And we need the book of Job when our children die and we face insoluble and difficult problems. In our everyday lives, we need Paul. And we need James. We need the synoptic material and the Gospel of John. We read it every week and preach it every Sunday because it makes us wise unto salvation. But one of the ways it makes us wise unto salvation is precisely that it gives us indispensable information about God and about ourselves, about how to come to God, and what the future is going to be like. That is absolutely crucial information that comes from God and is mediated through the scriptures.
Now, Wesley considered this in terms of a form of revelation. Revelation given solely in our conscience can be very, very wobbly. And there’s revelation given in law and prophets. That helps direct our misdirected consciences. And the full magnificent revelation is given in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ risen from the dead and coming again in glory to clean up the mess which we occupy.
When people talk about Scripture and divine revelation, it’s all about interpretation: You’ve got your interpretation. I’ve got my interpretation. And then you develop a set of buckets or whatever set of images you’ve got.
Here is where we must stand firm. When God speaks to us in Scripture, God is not incompetent. When he says “yes,” we understand it. When he says “no,” we can understand it. And otherwise we’ve got a totally incompetent deity. We have a God who didn’t make us in such a way we can hear him and understand him, and when he speaks to us in his word, he can’t get through to us. That’s not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s why we’re not intimidated by claims about relativism of interpretation.
God is not incompetent. He’s spoken to us and we’re going to stand by the revelation that’s given in Scripture. And we’ll be immersed in Scripture to be all God wants us to be.
Now, the place of the creeds has been more controversial. Why do the creeds exist? Why did the great shapers and framers of the creeds bring them into existence? Just as they developed a list of books, they developed a canon or list of doctrines. And those doctrines were straightforward. “I believe in God the Father.” “I believe in God the Son.” Add bells and whistles, and you got that in your head and you’ll not be fooled. You’ll not be fooled by television. You’ll not be fooled by heretics. The creeds were developed in relationship to baptism.
Read the gospels first. Read about Jesus first. Start thinking about what the good and life-giving Holy Spirit will do in your life first, then you’ll be ready for the meaty summary of the tradition. The goal was to provide crucial basic teaching for the Church as a whole. It was our forebearers in the North African Church that developed this material and we are indebted to them.
Here’s what went wrong when we lost the emphasis on the creeds as a part of our doctrines. We became prey to the temptations of what I call Big “L” Liberal Protestantism. In the 19th century we lost our nerve on the deep faith of the church. In the 20th century, it became an open season. We borrowed and we begged and we stole anybody else’s theology out there.
By the time we came along in the 1960s, it was a zoo. And it was an incredibly difficult period and it’s a miracle we have survived this long. The first reason for the importance of the creeds is we have to put those back in formally and clearly so we are absolutely secure in the core doctrines at the heart of the Christian faith and that are shared by Christians across the world, across space and time.
Now, there’s a new objection that’s come against all this material. When I was trained, the objection to the deep truths of the Christian faith was: It’s false, it’s irrational. How can you believe in that and science?
I spent a long time writing many boring books to defend all this stuff. Now, the objection is: It’s not false, it’s poisonous. This is bad for your health. These creeds have been put together by people who are power-hungry and trying to impose their view of God and Christ on the whole of the church. This is a matter of the raw expression of power-hungry church leaders in second, third, and fourth, and fifth centuries.
This is just nonsense. This is appallingly bad history. Our North African hero, Augustine, my favorite theologian out of the early period, was a genius and churchman of the highest caliber. He was run out of his cathedral five times by the government, no less.
The point of the creed is not only to preserve the truth summary that’s meaty and accessible, but also as protection of the church against the elites. Scottish philosopher and theologian Donald MacKinnon has written, “The whole exterior framework of the Christian church is the poor man’s protection against the tyranny of the wise who would rob him of the heritage of the gospel.” That’s why you must have canon law and bishops who can teach and bishops who know the faith and are not trying to abandon the faith. “In one sense, one might say, too, that her visible structure, her articulate doctrinal standards, her ordered sacramental life, represents the very lashing of the Church herself to her historical moorings.”
Let me continue with MacKinnon: “The whole church is an organ of the gospel … Those aspects of her life that most perplex hankerers after ‘spiritual religion’ are due to the fact that she proclaims, not a possibility of spiritual achievement, but a work of redemption wrought by the Son of God through human flesh and blood.”
“Again and again,” MacKinnon says, “we have seen the pressure of external circumstances upon individual members of the Church, who have held high office within her and have usually been endowed with great personal gifts, a pressure with issues in individual demands that the Gospel of God be transformed into a human philosophy. And it’s been the external organization of the church, the character of the gospel, that has preserved its saving truths for Christ’s little ones. It is through the institutions” – practices, doctrines – “of the church that the gospel is preserved from the idiosyncrasies of its members.”
There are two key reasons why I think we have to take the creeds seriously. One, the absence of a formal commitment to the creeds has left us vulnerable to persuasive attacks on the deep elements of the Christian faith and we need to correct that mistake in the history of Methodism.
And the second deep reason for this fabulous material is to protect the sheep from the wolves. Who is going to protect little ones who will be eaten alive by church leaders and phony intellectuals? Who will protect the little ones from all of that?
It is the deep structures, doctrines, sacraments, and life in the church and it’s crucial we be clear about the significance of Scripture and the creeds in the life of the church. We have our work cut out for us. What we need is a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
William J. Abraham is the Albert Cook Outler Professor of Wesley Studies at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology. This article is an adaptation of his presentation to the recent gathering of the Wesleyan Covenant Association in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
by Steve | Jan 13, 2020 | January - February 2020, Magazine, Magazine Articles
The Rev. Kenneth Levingston preaches at the Fourth Global Gathering of the Wesleyan Covenant Association. Photo: Mark Moore.
By Kenneth Levingston –
Let me now remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the Good News I preached to you before. You welcomed it then, and still stand firm in it. It is this Good News that saves you, if you continue to believe the message I told you – unless, of course, you believed something that was never true in the first place. I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said.” – I Corinthians 15:1-4, NLT
This is the word of God for the people of God.
The resurrection is still true. The church in Corinth had a cultural issue and a church issue. Because the walls of the church are permeable, whatever is in the culture cannot be kept out of the church. If we’re not careful, the teachings and the moorings of the culture become the norms for the church, and Paul has a church filled with everything going on in Corinth. Arrogant people. People who believe they have a gift that no one else has; that they have knowledge God hasn’t given anyone else.
Earlier, Paul wrote, “I hear there’s divisions among you” (I Corinthians 11:18). In other words, You are fussing and arguing over who is a better preacher. Paul? Apollos? Listen, Apollos never saved you. Doesn’t matter who the preacher is as long as Jesus is being preached.
Paul challenges the community with issues they raised to him – about lawsuits and marriage and idols and food they could eat. Sometimes we focus on the minor things and forget the major things God’s called us to do. While we’re legislating, God is calling people. Sometimes we fail miserably to listen to what God’s called us to do and to preach the good news, the Gospel. It’s the good news of Jesus Christ who came to redeem us from our sins. It’s the good news that says to a shaken world that Jesus still saves. The blood still cleanses and the Holy Spirit empowers and lost people can still be saved. We have a need to tell people that story over and over again.
I didn’t know God was telling me the story of redemption when I was eight years old. Raised by a single mom, I would pick up soda bottles and you could take them to the store next door and you would get a nickel for the bottle. I figured out pretty quickly, there’s bottles everywhere. I would take the wagon and look in the ditches and sometimes dig deep in the mud to find a bottle. Most of the time they were broken and unusable.
Sometimes I would find them and they were filled with dirt and mud – but they were precious to me. I lined them up in my wagon, but the store owner didn’t want unclean bottles. On the side of my house I had a hydrant and I would wash them and get them clean and put water in until the dirt was softer and agitate it and I would do that until they were pristine and I would take my two or three or four bottles and walk in the store. She would ask how many I brought in. We would get a nickel for each bottle. She gave me 15 cents or 25 cents – and cookies were still two for a penny. I said, My goodness, we’re going to have a time in here today.
Redemption occurred when I took something that seemed to have no value to someone that valued it. Later on in life I could see myself in those bottles. I could see myself on the side of the road filled with my sin and brokenness and corruption and meanness and evilness and someone saw something in me and began to tell me about a God who loved me and would clean me up and shake me up and pour me out.
We have to let people know that no matter what the world says about them, we have a God who redeems. When we present ourselves to God, God cleans from the inside out and offers us eternal life. When you know that, it doesn’t matter what the world is doing. We stand in the power of the resurrection because we know who God is and we know what God has done. Jesus died for you. Jesus Christ died for my sins. He didn’t die because I was nice and worthy and for me to live my best life now. That isn’t worthy of the Savior.
God loved us so much that he came down and died for me. That tells me I’m somebody. That tells me who I am. When you take that gospel message to people who are on the margins of this world and you tell them God loves them where they are but God has something so much better for them, it will turn their lives inside out, upside down, and they can begin to live in the power of God.
We are in a church where there’s a large number who have decided the Scripture is no longer Scripture, that it no longer means what it’s always meant from generation to generation. My brothers and sisters, we’re on the cusp of reclaiming the place where we lift Scripture high. We honor the word of God. When I don’t agree with Scripture, it doesn’t make Scripture wrong. It makes me wrong. Because I can’t put my mind around what Scripture says, doesn’t invalidate Scripture. It means I have growing up to do.
At the end of the day we want to follow what the Word of God says. In the Word there is life. In the Word there is power. In the Word there is healing. In the Word there is hope for a world that is broken.
“He was buried,” Paul writes in our text. I think he wants to make sure we don’t think about this metaphorically and allegorically. Paul wants us to know he was buried, dead, dead. Not swooned or passed out or catatonic. He was dead, dead – dropped over the shoulder of Joseph of Arimethea and put in a tomb wrapped up and walked away from. He was dead. Rock put in front of the tomb. Nobody in. Nobody out. He was dead. Paul wants us to know the only way to overcome death is by the power of the resurrection.
If the resurrection is true – and I believe it to be true – then we have hope in this world. Not only was Jesus buried. He was raised on the third day. If it was Easter Sunday morning, this is what I would say to my congregation: They kept him in the grave all night Friday. Did you hear me? Not a sound, not a peep, all day Saturday. Weeping and mourning. But early on Sunday morning – before the rooster crowed and birds sung a hymn, before Peter, James, and John got up and wiped sleep from their eyes – Jesus already got up. On the third day he got up!
Here is a God who went into a tomb sealed on the outside – guards all around. Since he got up from the dead, since he’s up right now, it’s time for us to stand up, rise up and be the people God’s called us to be.
Here’s the better news. He didn’t just do it for himself. If he died and rose again, he’s the first fruit. If he died we can die – and live again. When you get rid of the fear of dying, what else do you have to be afraid of in this world? If I know I’ll live forever what will you do to me? How can you threaten me? You can hurt me physically and talk about me – but you cannot touch my soul. You can’t touch my heart. You can’t shake my faith.
I believe in the resurrection. My sisters and brothers, remember what Paul said to the church in Rome: “nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.” He wants you to know that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow – not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.”
That’s why I’ve got joy. That’s why I believe in the resurrection.
The Rev. Kenneth Levingston is the senior pastor of Jones Memorial United Methodist Church in Houston. This article is an adaptation of the closing sermon he delivered at the recent Global Gathering of the Wesleyan Covenant Association in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
by Steve | Jan 13, 2020 | January - February 2020, Magazine, Magazine Articles
According to the Japan Times, “a 2011 survey by research company Bridal Souken found that in the first several years of the new
millennium, Christian-style weddings accounted for about two-thirds of Japanese unions, and currently a majority still prefer this
type of ceremony over Shinto or secular ones.”
By Nako Kellum –
I am from Japan. Interestingly enough, Christians make up less than one percent of the entire Japanese population, yet, according to a recent article, more than 50 percent of Japanese couples chose to have Christian weddings. The reasons for this are unclear. Perhaps it is the atmosphere of the church, or the appeal of the traditional wedding gown to future brides. It should be noted that these Japanese weddings are officiated by Christian pastors, complete with hymns, prayers, and Scripture readings. I have been to a few of these, and I have discovered that there is a hymn that is sung every time. It is, “What A Friend We Have in Jesus.”
The hymn itself is not usually associated with weddings here in the United States, so I asked my friend – a professor at a Christian university in Japan – why he thought this hymn is used so often. He said that the hymn is sung often at Christian schools in Japan – what we call “mission schools” – and people are familiar with it.
Mission schools were started by foreign missionaries, and many Japanese send their children to these schools for the excellence in education that the schools provide. My professor friend went on to explain to me that at the university where he works, they sing this hymn at convocation, as well as during graduation. “What A Friend We Have in Jesus” came to Japan a little over a century ago. I think it is a great way to introduce Jesus to people who have no idea who he is.
“What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear! / Can we find a friend so faithful, who will all our sorrows share? / Jesus knows our every weakness; take it to the Lord in prayer.”
Jesus is our friend. Jesus himself said it in John 15:14, “You are my friends.” In my 8 year-old daughter’s words, Jesus is our BFF – our Best Friend Forever. He is the best, the most faithful friend we can ever have. Sometimes we have to be reminded of that.
I went to one of the “mission schools” in Tokyo called Aoyama Gakuin University which was founded by Methodist missionaries in the 19th century. Having been brought up in a Buddhist family, with influences of Shintoism as well, I was not a Christian. I knew about Jesus from my world history classes in high school. In the textbook, Jesus was introduced as the founder of Christianity. I knew about Jesus, but I did not know Jesus.
I knew about God, too.
Actually, I knew about a lot of “gods.” I prayed to and gave offerings to my ancestors, whom we believed achieved a god-like status after death. I went to Shinto shrines, and prayed and gave money to many gods. Shintoism, as you may know, is an indigenous animistic religion of Japan.
During my senior year at university, a Christian friend of mine invited me to a Christmas concert that was sponsored by her campus ministry group. For the first time in my life, I heard the message from John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.” For the first time in my life, I learned, and I believed, that God, who is the Creator, is real; I learned that I am created by him, that I am loved by him, and that God gave his only Son Jesus for me, so that I can go back to him and live with him forever. It was the best thing I had ever heard! I decided to receive Jesus.
I wanted to know this God, to know Jesus more. I started reading the New Testament Bible that was given to me at the concert. I read through it like I would any other book, but what I found was that Jesus was not like any other “gods” I knew. The gods I knew used to be humans. The gods I prayed to in the Shinto shrines used to be emperors and leaders. (Some of them were not even humans!) My ancestors, whom we thought had achieved a “god-like” status, were merely human beings, just like I am. I never once felt like those gods knew me, or cared for me. They were not personal. I used to try to please my ancestors by giving them food offerings on the household altar. I used to ask for things at the Shinto shrine, like health, or victory at the next archery match, or the ability to do well at school, as if these “gods” were vending machines.
However, Jesus is not like that at all. In fact, he is quite the opposite. He is God, but he became human. He lived among people, healed people, and spoke about amazing things like forgiving one’s enemies. He confronted religious hypocrites, and put his own life on the cross for us. At last, I met a God who is so personal. He loves me and sacrificed himself for me; he is always with me, and I can trust, and count on him. It is difficult to describe, but in the end, I felt like a heavy burden was lifted off of me.
Consequently, I understand how people were confused about who Jesus was, and why the Nicene Creed was written. At that time, there was a pantheon of Roman and Greek gods in the culture, just like there are a plethora of gods in Japan, but none of them were like Jesus. Jesus is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.” “Through him, all things, including you and me, were made,” and “for us and for our salvation he came down from heaven.” No other “god” did that for you.
So, I started university as a Buddhist, and graduated as a Christian. After graduation, I started working as a flight attendant that spring. But then, I got lost. I had to live close to the airport so I was away from my church and away from my home. Surrounded by new people and immersed in a new job, I did not know what it meant to live as a Christian. I knew that I would live with Jesus forever, but what did it mean to follow Jesus in the here and now?
God was merciful and gave me a Christian co-worker, who took me to her church. I shared with the pastor that I felt like I was lost, and I did not know what it meant to live my life as a Christian. The pastor shared with me Matthew 6:33, “Seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness.” She explained to me that as a Christian, we needed to live knowing Jesus as our Lord, and not just our Savior. This meant that to be in right relationship with Christ, we had to put our full trust in him, and that full trust was best expressed in obeying him. It was a pretty simple strategy as a new Christian, though it was not an easy way to for me to live daily.
The second half of John 15:14, after Jesus says, “You are my friends,” reads, “if you do what I command you.” When we confess in the Apostle’s Creed, “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,” we are confessing that Jesus is more than our friend, as he is the Lord who has authority over us. “Jesus is Lord” is actually one of the earliest creeds that Christians professed. This was extremely counter-cultural at the time since it was not the Roman emperor whom Christians worshipped and obeyed as “lord.” Instead, they confessed that their first and best loyalty was to Jesus, not the emperor, and this was very dangerous.
Jesus is Lord and “sits at the right hand of the Father.” This means that he is above all “gods,” all rulers, all governments, all churches, all people, all created things … everything we like, love, and cherish. We are called to put ourselves under his authority, and to be loyal to him, and him alone.
During World War II, a faction of the Methodist Church in Japan tried to be loyal to both Jesus and the emperor. They merged with other churches and created one unified Protestant church. One of the reasons was a true desire to be ecumenical, but a darker reason was to cooperate with the government so that the government could better control the Christian churches. The new church pledged that they were Christians and Japanese at the same time. But, they also confessed that their first duty was to be loyal to the Japanese Empire. A small faction of Methodists in the Holiness Movement, however, continued to teach and preach about the Kingdom of God, and how the Lord would come back, and establish his Kingdom on this earth. They claimed that someday Jesus would rule all of the nations of the world, including the Japanese Empire. They were a threat to the empire, so many of the pastors and the leaders were put into prison, and some died there. In fact, one of the leaders put into prison was the founder of the denomination I belonged to in Japan.
My point is this: If Jesus is just our friend, it may not cost us that much, but there is a cost when we choose Jesus as Lord of all, and decide to live under his lordship. The Japanese Empire, as you know, lost the war, and it’s not the Empire any more. The Emperor, who was considered to be divine, renounced his “divinity” after the war. For you see, only the Lord Jesus sits on the throne forever.
Where is your loyalty? We may not have to choose between an emperor and the Lord Jesus, but we have to choose between the “empire of me,” and Jesus, every single day. I know I do. There are certain things I do that the Lord wants me to stop doing, and there are certain things he wants me to do that I do not want to do. As a new Christian, I tried to be obedient to the Lord, and I started learning to listen to him. For example, one of the things I knew the Lord wanted me to do at that time was to quit drinking. As a flight attendant, it was part of the lifestyle. We would arrive at the airport, go to the hotel, clean up, and drink together, so we could relax and sleep better in different time zones. And, we were encouraged to study about wine for work, so I was justifying my drinking as “part of my job.” I am not saying alcohol consumption in and of itself is good or bad, but at that time in my life, I knew the Lord wanted me to quit. I remember while working on a flight from Tokyo to Munich, my co-worker who was studying to be a sommelier was teaching me about wine, which I found very interesting. I remember telling her I did not think I could ever quit drinking. Later, when we arrived in Munich, we went to a well-known beer restaurant. To my surprise, though, I did not order anything to drink. It was not because I thought I should not do so, but because I did not want to do so. I did not want to drink at all! And this was in Germany, where there is plenty of good beer and wine.
If Jesus is just a friend, he would have sat with me at the beer restaurant, drunk with me. But, because he is also my Lord, he knew I needed to quit, and he wanted me to quit. And because he is my Savior, he delivered me from the desire to drink. It was a good thing, because about a year and after this flight, He called me to go to a seminary where drinking was not allowed. He is more than a friend who knows what is best for me, or a friend who shows me the best way to live. Jesus has the power to change my life.
I cherish my human friends. One of my best friends lives in Japan. We have been friends since seventh grade, and thanks to technology, we can talk to each other for free, and we can see each other’s pictures on social media. But for me, there is nothing better than actually seeing her in person and spending time with her when I go back to Japan. I let her know as soon as I get my plane ticket when I am going back, and we spend hours together just talking. For me, Jesus is like this. I want to see him face to face. I know Jesus feels the same way about us. Right now, we cannot be face to face, but someday, he will come back and we will see him face to face.
When I do get to see Jesus, I want him to say to me directly, “I love you, and I know you love me, too, because I know how you lived.” I want to stand in front of him, look him in the eye, and to be able to say without hesitation, “I love you, and I love your lordship.”
The Nicene Creed says, “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” Our friendship with Jesus will never end. It will only get stronger and deeper as we continue to love him by loving his lordship and submitting to him.
Jesus is more than my friend. He is my everything. He is my all in all.
Nako Kellum is co-pastor in charge at First United Methodist Church of Tarpon Springs in Tarpon Springs, Florida. This article is adapted from her address to the Wesleyan Covenant Association gathering in Tulsa in November.
by Steve | Jan 13, 2020 | January - February 2020, Magazine, Magazine Articles
Cara Nicklas speaks at the Wesleyan Covenant Association’s Global Gathering in Tulsa. Photo: Mark Moore.
By Cara Nicklas –
Several years ago, I contemplated giving up the practice of law to go into ministry. It’s not that I didn’t like dealing with my clients. I just got frustrated with the judicial system and especially grew weary of dealing with other lawyers. Full-time ministry just seemed like a more noble cause than being cussed out by my opposing counsel.
I spoke with my pastor about my idea. “We need Christian lawyers,” he told me. “I think you are doing what you need to be doing.” That wasn’t the response I expected. Within a couple of months after that conversation, God led me to my present law firm. During the first summer at the firm, the lawyers, along with several law students who clerked with our firm, met each week for a sort of book club. We read the book, Redeeming Law, by Michael Schutt. In his introduction, he writes: “we will explore the potential for law … to be a ministry of good works to those around us, a calling from God to love and serve our neighbors with the skills and opportunities he has given us.” Our book club explored how a career in law could be used to grow in Christ and work for him – how we could be in ministry to our clients and to the world. For the first time in my career, really, I began to think deeper about what it meant to integrate my faith with my calling as a practicing lawyer. That meant thinking deeper about my own theology.
Many people think doing theology is solely the work of pastors and seminary professors – not laity. So, when we hear the word “theologian,” we think of Drs. Billy Abraham, Sandra Richter, or David Watson. The names of laity don’t come to mind.
But as Christians, the question is not whether we should or should not be theologians. If a broad definition of a “theologian” is “one who seeks to know God,” then each of us as Christians must be theologians. The critical question is, “Will we be the best theologians we can be given our circumstances, or will we evade the responsibility, and say, ‘That’s someone else’s job?’”
In a world that is increasingly “unchurched,” where in some quarters of our culture people are dismissive of our faith, and in other quarters people are downright hostile to it, we no longer have the luxury – if we ever did – to completely farm-out the critical work of being good theologians. We do not have nearly enough theologians in our churches. And that shortfall diminishes our effectiveness as disciples and ambassadors for our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Many pastors think if they take a serious dive into theological matters in a sermon, they will lose the laity. In fact, some pastors are convinced laity are not even willing to wade into the theological waters with them. There’s some truth in their supposition. Laity are used to being entertained and amused, and therefore we kind of unwittingly expect our pastors to do the same. And in our consumer oriented culture, we’re not adverse to church shopping until we find the pastor who’s the most entertaining.
But clergy, here’s the hard truth: You do have to find ways to hold our attention in a YouTube, Facebook, Twitter world. More than ever we need you to work hard, very hard, to not only teach us the timeless truths of our faith, but to equip us for sharing them with others. Many of us laity don’t realize it or we’re afraid to admit it, but we are theologically malnourished.
All of us, laity and clergy, have to do more than read and study the Bible; we also have to read and study Christian theology. Theological study better informs our reading of Scripture. Theological study will challenge us to think hard about the nature of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
We will need to ask ourselves difficult questions because our friends, our work colleagues, our family members, and that curious little eight-year old in the Sunday school class we volunteered to teach, will ask us hard questions. Some will ask because they’re trying to challenge our faith, but most will ask because they’re genuinely searching to know more about God and want to be in relationship with Him. It simply will not do to respond to them by saying, “Well the Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it.”
We should prepare ourselves to give thoughtful answers to the questions that are likely to come our way: What can we know about the Triune nature of God? Why do we believe it took Jesus’ death on the cross to liberate us from our slavery to sin and fear of death? How do we discern the prompting of the Holy Spirit in our lives? Why do good people suffer? Why do some prayers get answered and others don’t?
To be sure, all the theological study in the world won’t provide us with definitive answers to all hard questions. We do ultimately live by faith. However, we need to demonstrate to people that we take their questions seriously, very seriously. We have to help them see that many Christians – from St. Augustine to our favorite Sunday school teachers – have wrestled with them. And while we might not have definitive answers to all their questions, we have very good partial answers that are drawn from the treasure house of rich resources that our faithful ancestors have handed down to us. And answers that give us an assurance that our faith is not built on sand, but upon a sure foundation that fills us with hope and trust that God is good, and is working his good will for us and for all creation.
Responding to sincere questions in helpful and effective ways is predicated on our having done some serious thinking about them ourselves. We cannot simply be “Bible quoters” who post or “like” an occasional Bible verse to make a point. Bible quoters are given to tossing off a verse, or sometimes even less than a verse, as an answer to a person’s genuine good theological question. And consequently, Bible quoters run the risk of doing more harm than good. For example, Bible quoters are given to quoting the Scripture out of context, and so in an awkward attempt to console someone they’ll say, “For everything there is a season,” or “God never gives you more than you can handle.” Their grieving friend is left to wonder, “Does God cause bad things to happen to me?” Or their work colleague is left thinking, “My twenty-one-year old son’s drug addiction is killing him, and it’s breaking my heart. What I’m confronted with right now feels like far more than I can handle.”
And then there are some Bible quoters who recite Scripture as a way of absolving themselves and others of any responsibility to act with Christian maturity and integrity. They’re the ones quick to remind us we are to “love our neighbors,” and to “judge not, lest we be judged.” They toss these verses off as if Jesus intended the church to be a community without good order and proper boundaries for how we love one another, and how we hold one another accountable for our actions.
Bible quoters can turn Scripture into simplistic clichés. They use it in a way that fails to speak a true word of grace and comfort, or as a license to do as we please. Life is far more complicated than that, and life in the church, in the community of faith, is far richer and deeper than tossing off Bible verses as self-help clichés.
In a post-modern world where “the truth” is malleable, where some people are cynical, where information (good and bad) is found by a few clicks on a keyboard, and where people are lost and genuinely seeking, we need to be better theologians. When we think theologically about whether truth is relative, it impacts whether we view the Bible as just another inspirational book among other books on the shelf or a collection of writings that reveals who God is and what he wants for us as his children. If you know truth is found in the Bible, it impacts your daily walk with God and your witness in the world.
It is hard work, and yet also rewarding and faith building work, to think theologically. For the sake of the church and the church’s work in the world, we must do it. And yet many of us, particularly we laity who are often on the front lines every day, can feel conflicted between the clear biblical mandate to share the Gospel and the cultural pressure not to offend, to keep our faith private, and out of the public square. We can perpetuate much of the misguided theology we hear in today’s culture and in our own churches either through silence or by espousing a gospel message we think might be more attractive to the next generation.
We Christians must be a light in the world. We must proclaim the truth. We cannot keep the Gospel private. Discerning the truth is hard. Being a Christian theologian is inherently an endless and humbling task. We will never know all there is to know about God. But the wonderful, marvelous, and awesome thing is that God invites us to know about him. He has graciously revealed himself to us in Scripture as our Father, in the Word made flesh, and through the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit.
Many people – from our bishops, to church officials, and to leaders of various advocacy groups – are coming to the painful realization that there will be some kind of separation of The United Methodist Church next year. In the near future, we who are called Traditionalists will no longer be able to tell ourselves other people are keeping us from being a healthy, vibrant branch of the church catholic. It will all be on us. We live in a time when there is heightened skeptism, cultural influence, and distrust and criticism of the church. We must become fully equipped to be ambassadors of Christ in these changing times and that necessarily requires us to think deeper theologically.
My husband and I raised our sons in a small community on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. Our friends in the community often refer to it as Mayberry – the fictional location of of the old Andy Griffith TV show. My younger son, Evan, especially had an incredible group of core friends who were believers with parents whose values lined up with ours. Throughout his upbringing, Evan and his friends held each other accountable. His friends and their parents living in Mayberry helped Evan grow and become confident as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Then Evan went to college. He no longer lived in Mayberry. As a biology major, Evan had friends who did not share his beliefs. He began to engage in lots of conversations about Christianity which required that he start thinking much deeper about why he believed what he believed. He would discuss with me the points being made by his new friends and he would ask how he might best respond. He might call and ask, “What do I say to those who suggest the Old Testament laws no longer apply?” or “How do I respond to someone who says it isn’t necessary to go to church to be a good Christian?” That required that I think deeply about how to respond to the particular questions raised by his friends. These were thoughtful, highly intelligent people who had been raised in the church but had come to reject it. Trite answers to their questions would not suffice.
That is the world we live in. Are we prepared for the Next Methodism where we will encounter more and more young people who question the need to attend church? Who question the teachings they heard growing up in the church? Are we as a church allowing and even encouraging our children and youth to ask challenging questions before they go off to college where they will surely begin to question their faith? It will take each and every one of us to prepare ourselves to respond to such questions.
A good theologian is one who seeks to know God more intimately. We don’t become theologians to merely win debates with atheists; we want to be good theologians so we can lead people to Christ.
When you and I practice theology together, we consider the wonder, the mystery, and the love of the One who Created us, who Redeemed us, and who empowers us to be his joyful and obedient disciples – proclaiming the Good News to a lost and hurting world.
Cara Nicklas is a United Methodist layperson, a General Conference delegate, and an attorney. This article is adapted from her address to the Wesleyan Covenant Association gathering in Tulsa in November.
by Steve | Jan 13, 2020 | January - February 2020, Magazine, Magazine Articles
By Shane Bishop –
I believe it happened in the springtime, sometime after Christmas and before Easter. 1999. I don’t remember the specifics of the “when” but I will never forget the “what” of this story. I arrived at church about 9:30 through the front glass doors only to see a woman in a wheel chair out the corner of my eye. I did not recognize her so I went to my office to get things ready for the service. When I emerged about thirty minutes later, she was in the same spot.
A quick glance verified that she was not in the chair to convalesce, but would probably be in that chair for the rest of her life. As I approached to introduce myself, something welled up within me. Something in my spirit said, “Reach out your hand and command her to walk in the name of Jesus.” This is the whole problem with reading the Bible. It puts ideas in your head and gets you in situations like this. In a split second I was right in front of her. Would I obey God and possibly set a miracle into motion, or would I miss God and make a scene? At the moment of truth, I held out my hand and said, “I’m Shane. I’m glad you are here today.”
It is a moment I will never forget. What if I really heard the voice of God? What if she would have reached for my hand, received healing and went, “Running and leaping and praising God?” Perhaps I did the right thing. A vain imagination. Perhaps I established that such a prompting was a waste of God’s time. I will never know. But I did make a decision; it would never happen again. From that moment on, when I feel the Holy Spirit “prompts” I err on the side of boldness. Sometimes it feels risky, but nothing feels riskier to me these days than quenching the Holy Spirit.
A failure to embrace the ministry of the Holy Spirit has produced a disconnect and a lack of firepower in the church today. The disconnect is that our current standard practice in church life does not even remotely resemble standard practice in the early church. The disciples didn’t refer people to medical professionals; they were healing the sick, raising the dead, curing those with leprosy, and casting out demons.
The firepower has to do with orthodox theology. If we don’t believe God can actually change people and we are not willing to boldly pray for and celebrate such transformations, we are open to every single criticism the culture hurls at us.
Paul writes from prison to people who are being relentlessly persecuted: “This is why I remind you to fan into flames the spiritual gift God gave you when I laid my hands on you. For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. So never be ashamed to tell others about our Lord. And don’t be ashamed of me, either, even though I’m in prison for him. With the strength God gives you, be ready to suffer with me for the sake of the Good News” (II Timothy 1:6-8, NLT).
To my way of thinking, The United Methodist Church has a problem – and that problem is me. Revival never begins when “they” change; it begins when I change. The question is not where I stand on the issues but whether I am standing on holy ground. And if I am standing on holy ground, why are my shoes always on?
We may all agree on Biblical authority and theology but did we used to love God more than we do right now? I have no doubt we feel fire in our bellies but is that fire the transforming Holy Spirit or the burning resentment we feel concerning what is going on around us?
Paul writes, “Fan into flames the spiritual gift God gave you!” and “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity” (v. 7). Uncertainty breeds fear and fear breeds timidity. To fuel our Holy Spirit fire and to counter fear and timidity, God has given us three spiritual weapons:
1. Power is the supernatural ability to do what God asks us to do. God will never ask us to do what God will not empower us to do.
2. Love is the supernatural disposition God gives his children toward the world. We are not going to reach people for Jesus if we think we are better than they are.
3. Self-discipline is supernaturally regulating our lives in God honoring ways. It can also be thought of as a sound or steady mind. This is not time to baptize the Chicken Little in all of us and pretend he is a prophet; it is time to make prayerful and bold decisions that are congruent with our callings, our understanding of Scripture and our mission.
Paul reminds us, “Never be ashamed to tell others about our Lord. And don’t be ashamed of me, either, even though I’m in prison for him. With the strength God gives you, be ready to suffer with me for the sake of the Good News” (v. 8). At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit gifted the church to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ. The Good News of Jesus hasn’t gotten worse just because of the utter disarray of our denomination. Whatever else we may be ashamed of, let us not be ashamed of our Lord!
In the aftermath of General Conference 2019, Christ Church is down 10 percent across the board. Unless we have an incredible last quarter, we will fail to grow for the first time in 23 years. I have lost church members; had friends walk away and have taken social media hits – some of them from people I once considered friends. This has been a discouraging time and I need the strength of Christ every day. Sometimes like Elijah, I get feeling sorry for myself and God simply says, “Stop it! You are embarrassing yourself. Do you have any idea of the price my disciples have paid for their faith over the centuries? Shake off your fear and timidity; tap into power, love, and a sound mind and get out there and proclaim the Gospel.”
When the Holy Spirit came down at Pentecost, the early church began to walk in the realm of signs and wonders. I am sometimes asked why we don’t see more miracles today and my response is most clear: we don’t pray for them, we don’t recognize them, and we don’t celebrate them.
Twelve years ago, I was preaching on a Sunday morning when all of a sudden an older gentleman by the name of Norman clearly went through a horrible physical episode and finally he just stopped breathing. Right there in the sanctuary, he laid stiff. There were two medical doctors in the pew with him. And after walking over they just shook their heads, no. I asked someone in the congregation to call an ambulance. Norman didn’t breathe for about three minutes or so. I asked everyone to extend a hand in prayer. I didn’t really know what to do. So everybody just started praying. You could sense the power of the Holy Spirit.
We were praying three or four minutes – waiting for the ambulance, praying that the ambulance would hurry up – and suddenly Norman loudly gasped and stood up.
How do you really talk about an experience like that? How do you explain it? Norman knew how to talk about that Sunday morning. For ten years of his life he said God raised him from the dead in church. I knew how the people in the New Testament would have talked about it. They would have said it was a testimony to the power of God.
Last year I conducted Norman’s funeral. I felt like the preacher who conducted Lazarus first and second funerals. And it prompted a question in me. Something of biblical proportions almost certainly occurred in the life of this man. How could we expect God to do great things if we’re not prepared to pray for them? If we’re not prepared to recognize them? And if we’re not prepared to give God glory for them? And the answer is, we just can’t. We must shift the narrative.
It is time to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit and not our own strength. It is time to teach good theology rather than disparage bad theology. It is time to tell our story and not have our story told for us. It is time for signs and wonders; not sighs and whiners. It is time to boldly celebrate who we are, where we are going, and what God has called us to be!
The early church didn’t defend their faith to the larger culture, they just proclaimed the Gospel, saw lives utterly transformed, and let the Holy Spirit do the talking.
“We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son,” we affirm with the Nicene Creed. “With the Father and the Son He is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the prophets.”
Let’s be Holy Spirit filled and not fear filled. In the power of the Holy Spirit, reach out your hand with me to a hemorrhaging world and say with Peter, “Silver and gold have I none but such as I have give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk!”
Shane Bishop is a United Methodist clergyperson and evangelist. He is the senior pastor of Christ Church in Fairview Heights, Illinois. This article is adapted from the address he delivered at the recent Global Gathering of the Wesleyan Covenant Association.
by Steve | Jan 13, 2020 | January - February 2020, Magazine, Magazine Articles
At the Wesleyan Covenant Association’s Legislative Assembly in November held in Tulsa, delegates affirmed the first draft of the WCA’s proposed Book of Doctrines and Discipline. What follows are highlights of the segment on social witness.
Since God first stirred the hearts of John and Charles Wesley to feed the hungry, visit those in prison, oppose slavery, and care for those in need, Methodists have believed in joining hands and hearts in the service of God and others, following the words of James 1.27 that the religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: “to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” We are convinced that faith if it is not accompanied by action is dead (James 2.17) and that, as Jesus reminded us, when we do not do what is needed to care for the least of our sisters and brothers, we likewise have not done so for Christ either. (Matthew 25.45)
It was in that spirit that the Methodist Episcopal Church became the first denomination in the world to adopt a formal Social Creed in 1908, spurred by the Social Gospel in response to the deplorable working conditions of millions. Though reflective of its own time, the statement is still remarkably relevant even today, calling for, among other things, “equal rights and complete justice for all men in all stations of life, principles of conciliation and arbitration in industrial dissensions, abolition of child labor, the suppression of the ‘sweating system,’ a reduction of the hours of labor to the lowest practical point, a release from employment one day in seven, and for a living wage in every industry.” … Our Social Witness represents a consensus vision of what it means to be faithful disciples in a world that remains in rebellion against its Creator, wracked by violence and unfettered greed. It is a summons to prayerfully consider how to “do good” and “do no harm” to all as we put our faith into practice. …
We believe that the Christian faith calls us to recognize that all persons irrespective of their station or circumstances in life have been made in the image of God and must be treated with dignity, justice, and respect
We believe that life is a holy gift of God whose beginnings and endings are set by God, and that it is the particular duty of believers to protect those who are powerless to protect themselves, including the unborn. We believe human life begins at conception and abortion ends a human life.
We believe that all should have the right to work without grinding toil, in safe conditions, and in situations in which there is no exploitation by others. We respect the right of workers to engage in collective bargaining to protect their welfare. We pray that all should be allowed to freely follow their vocations, especially those who work on the frontiers of truth and knowledge and those who may enrich the lives of others with beauty and joy.
We believe that all have been summoned to care for the earth as our common home, stewarding its resources, sharing in its bounty, and exercising responsible consumption so that there is enough for all.
We believe that human sexuality is a gift of God that is to be affirmed as it is exercised within the legal and spiritual covenant of a loving and monogamous marriage between one man and one woman. …
We believe that children, whether through birth or adoption, are a sacred gift to us from God, and we accept our responsibility to both protect and nurture the youngest among us, particularly against such abuses as enforced child labor, involuntary conscription, human trafficking, and other such practices in the world.
We believe that followers of God have been called to exercise self-control and holiness in their personal lives, generosity and kindness in their relations with others, and grace in all matters of life.
The entire document can be found at WesleyanCovenant.org.
