by Steve | Jul 1, 2016 | In the News, Uncategorized
An Open Letter to the People of The United Methodist Church:
As clergy and lay leaders of healthy, vibrant orthodox United Methodist congregations, and as teachers preparing the future clergy leaders of our denomination, we welcome the creation of the Wesleyan Covenant Association. In these times of great uncertainty about the future of The United Methodist Church, we believe it is important for orthodox congregations, clergy, and laity to work together, to support one another, and to encourage each other. We long for a church committed to sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the last, the least and the lost.
Committed to the Wesleyan expression of orthodox Christianity, we believe the church can and must do better. We are alarmed by the growing loss in average worship attendance in many of our annual conferences. We regret the now numerous instances where colleagues in ministry have broken covenant with the rest of the church and sowed the seeds of schism. We are grieved by the actions of annual conferences that have decided not to conform to our Discipline. And we are disappointed in leaders who have failed to maintain the good order of the church. Consequently, the work of faithful pastors and laity has been undermined, healthy congregations have left the denomination, and thousands of United Methodists have gone in search of other places to worship and serve.
We believe the Wesleyan Covenant Association will give orthodox United Methodists hope for the future and serve as a source of encouragement as the church works through a critical period of discernment. We want to serve in close partnership with our brothers and sisters in Africa, Europe and the Philippines. And we want to be prepared to act as one in light of the important work and recommendations of the Bishops’ Commission on the Future of the Church. We encourage all orthodox clergy and laity to remain steadfast and faithful in these uncertain times. We believe the Wesleyan Covenant Association will bind us together and make us a strong, united witness for Scriptural Christianity.
We believe that God is “doing a new thing.” We believe a new and better day is coming for the people called Methodist who are committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the authority of the Scriptures, and the church’s being a missional force determined to reach a lost culture. We yearn to step into this new future together with others of like minds and hearts.
Please visit the Wesleyan Covenant Association website (www.wesleyancovenant.org) to learn more about it. We also hope you will plan to join us in Chicago on October 7, 2016, for the first gathering of the association.
We are confident you will be hearing more about the association in the weeks and months ahead, and we trust you will join us as we band together for the sake of a vibrant, Wesleyan expression of orthodox Christianity.
In Christ,
Billy Abraham, Perkins School of Theology, Dallas, Texas
Bill Arnold, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky
Ryan Barnett, Kerrville First UMC, Kerrville, Texas
Keith Boyette, Wilderness Community UMC, Spotsylvania, Virginia
Madeline Carrasco-Henners, Luling First UMC, Luling, Texas
Ferrell Coppedge (lay), Mount Bethel UMC, Marietta, Georgia
Bryan Collier, The Orchard UMC, Tupelo, Mississippi
Jennifer Cowart, Harvest UMC, Byron, Georgia
Jim Cowart, Harvest UMC, Byron, Georgia
Dan Dalton (lay), Dalton & Tomich, Detroit, Michigan
Maxie Dunnam, Christ UMC, Memphis, Tennessee
Walter Fenton, Good News, The Woodlands, Texas
Scott Field, Crystal Lake UMC, Crystal Lake, Illinois
John Gaulke, Altoona UMC, Altoona, Iowa
John Gerlach, Trinity UMC, Windsor, Connecticut
Jeff Greenway, Reynoldsburg UMC, Reynoldsburg, Ohio
Joy Griffin (lay), International Leaders Institute, Carollton, Georgia
Wes Griffin, International Leaders Institute, Carollton, Georgia
Jeff Harper, Evangelical UMC, Greenville, Ohio
Jeff Jernigan (lay), Powder Springs, Georgia
Rick Just, Asbury UMC, Wichita, Kansas
Charles Kyker, Christ UMC, Hickory, North Carolina
Jessica LaGrone, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky
Thomas Lambrecht, Good News, The Woodlands, Texas
Jim Leggett, Grace Fellowship UMC, Katy, Texas
Kenneth Levingston, Jones Memorial UMC, Houston, Texas
Pat Miller, The Confessing Movement, Indianapolis, Indiana
Carolyn Moore, Mosaic UMC, Evans, Georgia
Mike Morgan, Marion First UMC, Marion, Iowa
Norman Neel (lay), San Augustine, Texas
Martin Nicholas, Sugarland UMC, Sugarland, Texas
Craig Peters, Shueyville UMC, Shueyville, Iowa
Rob Renfroe, The Woodlands UMC, The Woodlands, Texas
Chuck Savage, Sardis UMC, Atlanta, Georgia
Branson Sheets, Covenant UMC, Winterville, North Carolina
Stephens Sparks, Indianola UMC, Indianola, Mississippi
Greg Stover (retired elder), West Ohio Annual Conference, Lake Waynoka, Ohio
Andrew Thompson, Springdale First UMC, Springdale, Arkansas
Richard Thompson, First UMC, Bakersfield, California
David Watson, United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio
Max Wilkins, The Mission Society, Norcross, Georgia
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* Church names provided only for identificational purposes.
by Steve | Apr 23, 2015 | Uncategorized
Remembering Ira Gallaway
By James V. Heidinger II
2015
Dr. Ira L. Gallaway, one of United Methodism’s most influential evangelical leaders over the past four decades, died March 16, 2015, at the age of 91. A memorial service celebrating his life was held Sunday, March 22 in Estes Chapel on the campus of Asbury Theological Seminary (ATS) in Wilmore, Kentucky. The setting was especially appropriate as Ira had served on the ATS board of trustees for more than 40 years, with several of those years as board chairman. Dr. Timothy Tennent, current ATS president, led the service, and Dr. Maxie Dunnam, a former president of the seminary, gave the memorial message for his long-time friend and colleague in ministry. Dr. Steve Martyn, a professor at the seminary and long-time friend of the Gallaway family, also participated in the service, as did I.
It would be difficult to overstate the impact Ira had on The United Methodist Church. He answered the call to ministry in 1956 and went to Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. After serving at Highland Park (Dallas), Hutchins, Kirkwood (Irving), and Walnut Hill (Dallas) churches, he became district superintendent of the Fort Worth East district. In 1971, he went to Nashville, Tennessee, to serve as General Secretary of the United Methodist Board of Evangelism. While there, he was influential in bringing future leaders to Nashville, including Maxie Dunnam to the Upper Room and Joe Hale, Eddie Fox, and George Morris to the Board of Evangelism.
In late 1972, Ira began a 17-year appointment as senior pastor at First United Methodist Church in Peoria, Illinois, one of the largest UM churches in the North Central Jurisdiction. Biblical preaching and regular Bible study were at the heart of his ministry there. Ira hosted the Upper Room’s first Cursillo spiritual retreat at Peoria First, which would soon become the very successful Walk to Emmaus program. A few years later, Ira joined laity from Peoria First to go to Hong Kong, to lead a Walk to Emmaus, which has grown and moved on into mainland China. One of those Peoria lay persons, Mrs. Joan Krupa, recently completed a three-year term as the first female chairperson of the Asbury Seminary board of trustees.
Ira, helped always by his lovely and gifted wife Sally, was a major leader in the cause of Scriptural Christianity and renewal within the denomination. He was a charter board member of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, founded in 1981 by Dr. Ed Robb and others. Then, he and the late L.D. Thomas were key leaders in the founding of the Mission Society for United Methodists in 1984. Ira had shared with me his sense of God’s providence at work as he contacted his friend H.T. Maclin regarding who might give leadership to a new mission-sending agency. To Ira’s surprise, H.T. had just resigned from his jurisdictional staff position with the General Board of Global Ministries, and he said, “Ira, how about me?” And so it was. Ira served for many years on the Mission Society board, and chaired it for several years.
Ira also played a key role in enlisting six prominent United Methodist leaders to serve on an invitation committee to invite other pastors from the denomination’s largest churches to come to Houston as an expression of concern about the church’s drift from its traditional doctrine. Some 48 leading pastors from 42 churches in 18 states gathered in Houston and signed what became known as “The Houston Declaration.”
Ira was also on the Coordinating Committee for the gathering of United Methodists in January, 1992, hosted by Maxie Dunnam, then senior minister at Christ United Methodist Church in Memphis. That conference resulted in “The Memphis Declaration,” a statement affirming the church’s traditional stance on human sexuality and calling the church to a new emphasis on mission and world-wide evangelism. More than 200,000 United Methodists signed the Declaration.
When the Confessing Movement within the United Methodist Church was launched in April of 1994, Ira helped the new movement on a part-time staff basis as it established its headquarters in Indianapolis.
Ira was much involved in helping the Methodist Church in Costa Rica, traveling there often to speak and teach. And in retirement, he and Sally were involved with the Four Corners Ministry with the Navajo Indians.
All of these ministries speaks much about Ira’s heart and his leadership in renewal efforts within the denomination. Ira was unquestionably a natural leader. He was fearless, and courageous, and a man of deep conviction, and he lived by those convictions. God used Ira to touch countless lives across the years. This was evidenced by the number of families from First Church Peoria who came all the way to Wilmore, Kentucky for his service.
In the final years of his life, Ira lived at the Wesley Village Retirement Community in Wilmore. While there, he continued to serve as a consultant and emeritus member of Asbury’s Board. He was preceded in death by his wife, Sally, his two sons, Jerry and Timothy, and two grandsons, John and Zachary. He is survived by a daughter, Cynthia, and son, Craig (wife Deb), thirteen grandchildren, and five great grandchildren. The theme for his service of celebration was the theme to be inscribed on his grave stone in Glen Cove Cemetery near Coleman, Texas. It is simply: “Thank You, Lord!”
For this good friend, colleague, and bold leader within the United Methodist Church, we also say a heartfelt “Thank You, Lord!”
James V. Heidinger II, editor emeritus of Good News.
by Steve | Jan 1, 2015 | Uncategorized
By Kenneth Tanner
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 ESV)
“Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17 ESV)
On a wall in the chapel of the Saint Catherine’s Monastery, a remote wilderness abbey at the base of Mount Sinai in Egypt, hangs an icon.
It’s not a poster of Brad Pitt or a reproduction of the Apple or Microsoft logo. This is a religious icon, perhaps the oldest in the world – a special painting the first Christians called a window into heaven.
This figure of Christ Pantocrator, or Christ the Ruler of All, is no ordinary icon. No surviving icon of its era looks anything like it. It seems fresh, as if painted yesterday.
Believed to have been given to the desert monastery in the mid-sixth century by the Byzantine emperor Justinian, it survived a period when icons were destroyed in many urban churches, was preserved against deterioration in the arid climate, and was secured from invaders by an order of protection the prophet Muhammad himself granted after the monks of Saint Catherine’s gave him shelter and hospitality.
The icon shares sixty-three points of precise alignment with the image of Jesus “burned” into the Shroud of Turin, five times the number of alignments needed to match fingerprints.
For many, this is the closest thing we have to a photograph of God.
Note the difference between the left side of the face (in which some see evidence of Christ’s torture and passion) and the right side (in which some discern his transfigured, resurrected radiance).
The icon tells the story of Good Friday and Easter.
The eyes stand out. Something about them is not quite right. For some, they have an unsettling quality. One of my childhood friends had a lazy eye. He was wonderfully unconscious of his difference, but I often was distracted by it. More frequently than I’d like to admit, I caught myself staring.
The more time I spent in prayer looking at this unique image of Jesus – the Pantocrator – the more the asymmetry of the eyes troubled me. I pondered why the artist would paint Jesus with a physical “imperfection.”
Eventually I realized this was not a problem with the artist or the image but rather a limitation of my imagination, a failure to see everything there is to see in Christ. After all, the word became flesh in Jesus (John 1:4) and was made like us in every respect (Hebrews 2:17).
Jesus took on everything it means to be human. One early Christian pastor taught that “what has not been assumed has not been redeemed.” Jesus grew tired, donned a cloak against the piercing cold and burning sun, could catch a virus or suffer a wasting disease, and if all that is true, he might also have borne some physical “defects.” Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering servant warned us that Jesus had “nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him” (53:2b NLT).
Still, I discovered it wasn’t just a matter of accepting that Jesus might have had physical imperfections. I had never absorbed into my heart the reality that the divine became one with matter in Jesus. Real flesh, real bones, real heart.
My encounter with the Sinai Pantocrator helped end my inherited mental image of Jesus as a stick figure in a Bible story – a Sunday school flannelgraph character – and experience the full-blooded actuality of how things are in Jesus Christ; even the possibility that the sinless one’s participation in our nature involved bearing physical infirmities, just as daily he grew thirsty, hungry, and weary.
Icons of Christ help us consider that Jesus is no abstraction – no mere thought, no matter how beautiful; no protagonist in a children’s story told to make us feel better – but the express image of the unseen all-holy God made vulnerable (Colossians 1:15), made like us “in every way.”
We see in Jesus the sacred reality of our humanity as God intended it from the beginning; his was the first human life to fulfill that intention. The Sinai icon helps us comprehend that we become most truly human when we embrace the humanity of God in Jesus Christ.
Embracing the humanity of God, icons help us visualize such an incredible possibility; that we might, by grace, become transfigured partakers of the divine nature in clay (2 Peter 1:4).
I have a sort of odd pastoral practice. I keep small wood-mounted reproductions of this Sinai icon in my backpack to give to strangers and friends. I started this about ten years ago on Chicago’s trains, subways, and buses. My commute was four hours round trip. Eventually folks figured out I was an undercover man of the cloth, commuting and working just as they did every day – someone imperfect enough that they eventually came to share with me their questions about God.
The icon gave me a way to show them the gospel and allowed me to use fewer words when I did so. Fifteen hundred years after its creation, the icon still hangs in the shadows of the mountain on which God forbade the worship of idols.
The reason this isn’t ironic is that icons are not idols. Idols are objects that we make and worship in place of the living God. In Jesus Christ, God has acted to make a perfect image of himself (Hebrews 1:3).
God has made Jesus the “visible image of the invisible God.” When iconographers depict Christ in the icons they write – in their parlance, icons are “written,” not painted – the writers are not fashioning a god for themselves but rendering an image of what the Father, Son, and Spirit have already done in the incarnation of the one God in Jesus Christ.
It is not idolatry that God became flesh in Jesus, and it is not idolatry to depict what God has done and hang these depictions in our homes and houses of worship just like we hang family photos or images of contemporary leaders. We would never think to tear such images up or deface them, because these pictures represent the people we love. Almost no one worships these depictions. Christians do, however, worship a God who clothed himself in clay, in the same material stuff with which he made our ancestors in his image in the Garden of Eden.
Women and men are made in the image of God, female and male together bearing all that is in God, and so it shouldn’t surprise us when our incarnate Lord looks like us. The Sinai icon reminds us that we are one with him and he is one with us.
Ponder with me for a moment the mystery that we’ve entered when we encounter Christ in the Gospels . . .
When Jesus is on the Sea of Galilee with the disciples, and storm winds and waves frighten even seasoned fishermen, we find the God who made the waves, the wind, and the wood the boat is crafted from – who made everything and holds everything together – tired and asleep in the hold of the ship.
God is asleep on a boat, even though our first thought as readers is that, of course, Jesus, a mere human, is napping (and that is true, too).
When the disciples awaken Jesus and he surveys the situation (and their hearts), he rebukes their fear, and then a mere man stands up on two feet in a vessel sloshing with lake water and speaks: “Peace, be still.”
Someone just like the rest of the disciples – with breathing lungs and a beating heart, sleepy and finding his sea legs – makes the wind stop gusting and turns the waves to glass with his words. As readers, we think Jesus is God and this awe-inspiring ability fits his divinity, but Jesus is also merely human, no more special in his biochemistry than anyone else in that boat on a sea gone wild.
When we read every story about Jesus with the sort of contemplation that icons allow – realizing this protagonist is in every moment God “all‑in” and human “all‑in” – we begin to discern that something has happened forever in God and something has happened forever in us, because the Son who breathed the stars into fiery existence and set their courses in the sky, who made the orchid and the hummingbird, humbled himself and was made like us in every way: weary, thirsty, hungry, aching, longing, striving, rejected, fallen, marvelous clay that we are, that we might be as he is, as God from all eternity. World without end.
The Sinai icon reminds us that in Jesus Christ, God leaves fingerprints, leaves DNA , wherever he goes (Jesus is human without measure); that Jesus breathes the spirit of the Father’s loving-kindness on all things (Jesus is divine without qualification).
His blood, his touch, his stops of breath reconcile the creator and the clay that as female and male alone in all creation bears the image of God.
Jesus walks with us, walks as us now, and we participate by our prayers, by our touch, by our faith and compassion – sometimes even by our blood – in the renewal of all things.
We see the likeness of Jesus in every human. Would that they might behold in our faces the icon of his vulnerability, self-sacrificial love, and resurrection in this wild, wonderful world he became human to restore to life without end.
Kenneth Tanner is pastor of Church of the Holy Redeemer in Rochester Hills, Michigan. His writing has appeared in Books & Culture, The Huffington Post, Sojourners, National Review, and Christianity Today. This essay originally appeared in Disquiet Time: Rants and Reflections on the Good Book by the Skeptical, the Faithful, and a Few Scoundrels (Jericho Books). It is reprinted by permission. This article appeared in the January/February 2015 issue of Good News. Artwork is Christ Pantocrator from Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai.
by Steve | May 29, 2013 | Uncategorized
By Luke Billman
What would make two young adult United Methodist men move their entire families to one of the “Sexual Tourism” capitals of the world? What would make them leave the comfort of family and convenience in America to live in Brazil? Only a move of God!
Both Nic and I grew up in The United Methodist Church. We were surrounded by great men and women of faith our entire lives. Our father has served in the Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference for over 30 years, along with our uncle, grandfather, Nic’s father-in-law and my mother-in-law.
You can imagine the amount of United Methodist activities we were involved with from birth! While we enjoyed growing up in this atmosphere, we felt God moving us in a particular direction outside our comfort zone. Nic was working as a youth pastor at a UM congregation in the Susquehanna Conference and I was working in construction in Philadelphia. Two totally separate career paths, but God had placed a calling on our family line long before we were born.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5). I can picture the Lord giddy over our spirits before we were born seeing the things that we are going to bring to fulfillment for His kingdom, but I never thought that I was going to play a part the way our families are now.
In October 2008, God spoke to me and touched my heart in a supernatural way in my car on the way home from work. I was left with the overwhelming feeling that we were supposed to move to South America. I called my brother Nic to tell him about the awesome experience I just had and he answered the phone saying, “Dude, I’m in Brazil on a ministry trip, my phone is on airplane mode. I don’t know how you are talking to me now!” I proceeded to tell him what God had just told me and he said, “The Lord just showed up here too and told us to move to Brazil. He showed me all the child prostitutes on the streets and I saw them as my own daughters.”
It was clear to me then what God was calling us to do because what the Lord showed me was an old dilapidated sanctuary filled with mostly children and my arm was stretched out over them declaring freedom, deliverance, and healing. But how were we supposed to do that? How was that supposed to come to fruition?
Human trafficking
Human trafficking is the illegal trade of men, women, and children – mainly for sexual slavery or forced labor. This evil practice takes place all over the globe – even in the United States. After the World Cup and Olympics, the Super Bowl is a close second to bringing in trafficked women and children for the purpose of sex. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott claimed, “The Super Bowl is commonly known as the single largest human trafficking incident in the United States.”
Its atrocious that it happens anywhere but the numbers in Brazil are staggering. The number of homeless children in Brazil is between one and two million. We have encountered more children between the ages of 8 and 12 than any other, and have seen new born babies in cardboard boxes.
Traffickers target the favelas (slums) and attempt to buy children from their parents by convincing them the money could help them provide for their remaining kids. Brazil is also the fourth strongest economic power in the world right now, so these numbers don’t just exist in Africa or India like where I always pictured missionaries serving. It’s so prevalent in Brazil that certain travel agencies in the U.S. and Europe organize “sexual tourism” trips for groups of men to be able to purchase the services these precious children.
Because Brazil is such a sexualized nation they turn a blind eye to these things for the most part. There are even concession stands on the beaches that will direct Westerners to whatever it is they are looking for sexually. We work with investigators on our team that pose as “sexual tourists” asking where we can find underaged children and no one has ever acted disgusted by what they are asking for, and always direct them to a brothel or a corner where they can be found.
Because prostitution is legal here in Brazil it’s accepted culturally as a form of employment. Because the current president is attempting to lower the legal age of prostitution to 15 years old, society doesn’t react to a 14 year old prostituting. And because there are no laws in place to stop trafficking no one knows if the people prostituting are forced into it. We have encountered adults that have told us they started prostituting at 6 years old because an uncle or a father sexually abused them and they ran away.
“Your adversary the devil, prowls around like a lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). I don’t think our adversary is only alert during 9-5 business hours! Truthfully I believe he wants more to destroy the generation of children growing up now so he can, in his mind “weaken” the kingdom of God. We seek out the little ones he is looking to devour.
Have you ever looked at a child in your church and thought “the cure for AIDS could be in there” “The end to abortion is in there” “The cure for cancer is in there”? I know I have. Have you ever looked at a drug addict prostituting herself or himself and thought, “God knitted the cure for AIDS into his spirit before he was born” or “God stitched so much love into that guy he’s going to end the genocide in Africa”? So often what “the world” tells us stops us from seeing that beautiful destiny in a person if they are being devoured by the enemy. God called us to Brazil to see the true destiny and sonship and daughtership in each of the children we encounter.
Our modus operandi is to simply demonstrate the love of our Heavenly Father to the people we encounter on the streets. Our work days are usually from about 10:00 p.m. until around 5:00 a.m. because the people we are trying to save are “working” then.
Our ministry is in Recife, an enormous costal city in northeast Brazil. There is a park that we go to all the time. There are about 20-30 homeless children between 6-14 years old living in this park. Some are victims of trafficking, some ran away from the favela they lived in because it was dangerous, but all of them are precious in our eyes. We bring games and play with them, the girls on our team will paint the girls nails or do their hair, the guys will wrestle around with the boys and we just treat them the way we treat our own children. We show up and love them no matter what they are doing or what lifestyle they are wrapped up in.
Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and the man replied “who is my neighbor”? He was looking to exploit a loop hole. Everyone is your neighbor, including prostitutes, addicts, and transvestites. The church has built a reputation for being interested in hearing a person say a prayer for salvation and then moving on. This has happened so much in Brazil that we’ve encountered children that would kneel when we showed up with food because churches told them they had to ask Jesus into their heart before they were allowed to get the food they had to offer. We feel called to show up and love them just like Jesus did and then that opens the door for them to truly receive a revelation of what God’s love for them is, and that in turn creates a sincere heart change for them to walk out the destiny God has placed inside of them.
The first time Nic and I traveled to Recife, we went to this park. We were just loving the kids. I told them about the restoration home we were going to open there and a young boy around 10 or 11 years old just fell in my arms weeping and said, “Please remember me when you come back and start that house, if I had the chance I would leave living this way, if one person believed in me I would stop.”
That broke my heart. He wanted one person in a nation of 287 million people. He only needed one. In a city of 5 million, he only wanted one! When we came back to the park a couple months later on another trip he saw me from a distance and just ran to us and in a warm embrace he cried in our arms. Feeding “the least of these” is good, caring about their salvation is good too, but being sincerely interested in a heart change is what our Heavenly Father is after!
We have a Restoration Home opened in Recife and are able to receive girls we meet on the streets now. We believe God wants to restore them to more than they ever were here; we believe He wants to restore them to a place of relationship equal to when He “knew them before He knitted them together.” We want to give them the best possible life and treat them like royalty, not hand-me-downs – private schooling and the best medical attention available in Brazil when it’s needed. All of these things are very costly in Brazil, but we serve a bigger God than the almighty dollar and He always provides what we need monthly to make this happen.
Luke Billman is part of the ministry team at Shores of Grace Ministries. He works with his wife Alisan, as well as with his brother Nic and sister-in-law Rachel Billman, directors of the ministry. If you are interested in partnering with their work or would like one of them to speak at your church or annual conference, you can check out their ministry’s website at www.shoresofgrace.com or contact them through Luke@Shoresofgrace.com.
by Steve | May 24, 2013 | Magazine, May-June 2013, Uncategorized
By Rob Renfroe and Thomas Lambrecht
In his recent Washington Post column, the Rev. Adam Hamilton stated that Bible verses that prohibit same-sex intimacy “capture the cultural understandings and practices of sexuality in biblical times, but do not reflect God’s will for gay and lesbian people.” This is not a new position for him to take. He came to the same conclusion in his 2010 book, When Christians Get It Wrong (his chapter on homosexuality is available at www.AdamHamilton.org).
Good News has great respect for the ministry and leadership of Adam Hamilton. His ministry is biblically based and effective. His written resources for congregational study have helped hundreds of churches engage Scripture and grow spiritually. We consider Adam to be an orthodox believer who affirms United Methodist doctrine—a brother in Christ. On this issue, however, we believe that Adam gets it wrong.
Not all interpretations of Scripture have equal validity. It is important to examine the supporting evidence for a particular interpretation of Scriptural teaching. Adam’s question, “Are the Biblical passages forbidding same-sex intimacy culturally bound and thus not applicable to us today,” is a fair and valid question. The biblical evidence, however, does not support his answer.
Adam compares the Bible’s teaching on sexual morality to the teaching on slavery. He maintains that the Bible’s teaching that “tacitly approved” slavery was culturally conditioned, even though at times in church history those same teachings were used to justify the practice of slavery, which we now believe to be unjust and immoral. In the same way, he says, it is possible to read the Bible’s teaching on same-sex intimacy as reflecting the cultural conditions of Bible times and not representative of God’s will for today.
However, the comparison between the Bible’s teaching on slavery and on same-sex intimacy breaks down. The Bible never commands the practice of slavery, but regulates (in the Old Testament) a practice that was already embedded in the culture. As a matter of fact, the most memorable image in the Old Testament is Moses standing before Pharaoh on behalf of the enslaved Israelite nation, announcing God’s demand, “Let my people go!”
In the New Testament, the apostles advised slaves how to live as Christians in a circumstance that they could not change. But the most compelling image in the New Testament is Jesus speaking in the Nazareth synagogue proclaiming “freedom for the prisoners” and “release to the oppressed.”
By contrast, the Bible’s teaching clearly forbids same-sex intimacy. It is not simply acknowledging a practice in existence, but actually commanding Christians not to engage in it. There is no ambivalence about this teaching throughout Scripture. That makes it less likely to be culturally bound.
The Bible’s teaching on slavery contains within it the seeds of slavery’s demise. The Old Testament regulations of slavery made the institution more humane than the ways it was practiced in surrounding cultures. In the New Testament, Paul encourages slaves who have the opportunity to become free to take that opportunity (I Corinthians 7:21). Paul also subtly encourages Philemon to free his newly-converted slave Onesimus (Philemon 15-16). Most importantly, the New Testament asserts that in Christ all are equal—there is no slave or free (Galatians 3:28). Paul reminds masters that they are subject to a Master in heaven, who will not regard them more favorably than their slaves (Ephesians 6:8-9). The reason for the apostles’ advice that slaves should serve their masters “with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ,” is to maintain a winsome Christian witness—“so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive” (Titus 2:10, also I Timothy 6:1-2).
All these qualifications and tempering of the Christian view of slavery show it to be culturally conditioned, and these qualifications eventually led to the ethical conclusion that slavery is immoral, not in keeping with the timeless will of God. There are no such qualifications or softening of biblical teaching regarding same-sex intimacy. Therefore, it is far less likely that such teaching is culturally conditioned.
In his book, Adam uses an interpretive lens to determine which Scriptures are applicable to today: love for God and love for neighbor. He believes any Biblical teaching that is inconsistent with those two commands is not currently binding upon us. We do not agree with the approach of taking one passage of Scripture as a filter by which to evaluate all the rest of Scripture. Instead, it is best to take each passage in its own historical and theological context. However, even using his approach does not necessarily yield a definitive answer on this question.
Is it loving to use gay slurs or “jokes,” hateful language, or even violence against gays and lesbians? Of course not, and we condemn such hateful behavior in the strongest terms. Is it loving for the church to place its stamp of approval on any behavior that people feel attracted to, as long as it doesn’t “hurt” another person? That is a weak definition of love, inadequate for our calling to “transform the world.” Is it loving for the church to condone what God has forbidden? John describes love this way, “This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. This is love for God: to obey his commands” (I John 5:2-3).
Adam mentions “a handful of Scriptures (five or eight depending upon how one counts) that specifically speak of same-sex intimacy as unacceptable to God.” But we believe the Bible’s teaching on sexual morality and God’s intention is based on far more than a few isolated verses. The thread of heterosexual monogamy runs throughout Scripture. (We recognize the presence of polygamy in Scripture as an aberration from the New Testament norm and God’s ideal.)
God created male and female for each other (Genesis 1 and 2), resulting in the two becoming “one flesh” and representing the image of God in their complementary maleness and femaleness. Jesus reaffirmed God’s original intention (contrary to the law of Moses’ accommodation to the people’s hardness of heart) in defining marriage as the exclusive permanent union of a man and a woman (Matthew 19:1-12). God designed the union of man and woman in marriage to symbolize for us the union of Christ and his church (Ephesians 5:21-33). The culmination of God’s plan is pictured as the great “wedding supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9).
This constant thread of heterosexual monogamy throughout Scripture, along with the specific prohibitions of certain sexual behavior (adultery, prostitution, promiscuity, same-sex intimacy) give us the basis for determining God’s timeless will for expressing our human sexuality. New Testament scholar and Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright puts it this way, “When you look at the grand narrative about male and female, from Genesis right through to Revelation, this isn’t just one or two arbitrary rules about how to behave with bits of your body. This is about something woven into the deep structure of what it means to be created in the image of God, what it means to be citizens of this God-given world. And until we learn to see ethics in that way, we haven’t actually got to first base.”
There are only a couple verses in the New Testament that explicitly criticize polygamy, which is otherwise “tacitly approved” in the rest of Scripture. Yet, based on the thread of heterosexual monogamy, along with some of the adverse consequences also recorded in Scripture, the church has come to see polygamy as contrary to the timeless will of God.
There are only a few passages in Scripture that explicitly address sex before marriage (rather than adultery or promiscuity). Yet, based on the thread of heterosexual monogamy and on religious traditions carried over from biblical times, the church has consistently affirmed that sexual relations ought to be reserved for marriage alone.
In our current culture, it is tempting to want to lower the bar of Christian expectations. Recent surveys have shown that 63 percent of young adults believe same-sex intimacy should be accepted by society. This is part of an overall trend in which another recent survey found that 44 percent of single women and 63 percent of single men have had one-night stands and that 42 percent of single adults would not date a virgin.
Good News believes that it is the wrong course for the church to abandon its teaching on sexuality in the face of the rapidly declining moral standards of our society under the guise of attempting to make the Gospel message “more attractive.” The Gospel message and the ministry of Jesus Christ will only be attractive to the extent that they demonstrate the power to transform lives and elevate human behavior to the original intention of our Creator.
Eminent theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg summarizes Good News’ perspective: “The reality of homophile inclinations, therefore, need not be denied and must not be condemned. The question, however, is how to handle such inclinations within the human task of responsibly directing our behavior. This is the real problem; and it is here that we must deal with the conclusion that homosexual activity is a departure from the norm for sexual behavior that has been given to men and women as creatures of God. For the church this is the case not only for homosexual, but for any sexual activity that does not intend the goal of marriage between man and wife, [including] particularly adultery.
“The church has to live with the fact that, in this area of life as in others, departures from the norm are not exceptional but rather common and widespread. The church must encounter all those concerned with tolerance and understanding but also call them to repentance. It cannot surrender the distinction between the norm and behavior that departs from that norm.”We understand the pastoral dilemma that causes Adam Hamilton to wrestle with the Scriptures over this contentious issue. Many of us have wrestled with the need to be pastoral, while also being faithful to Scripture, in leading people to the most important reality: a saving relationship with God through Jesus Christ. We are ultimately unconvinced that surrendering God’s ideal for human sexuality in the face of cultural pressure will result in faithful, world-changing disciples of Jesus Christ. Presented with love, understanding, and compassion, we believe Christ’s call to holiness of heart and life is the way to invite a fallen world to follow the “Author and Perfecter of our faith.”
Good News hopes that, as we continue to discuss the crucial constellation of issues around sexual morality, Scripture, and the church’s teachings, we will do so with grace and respect for each other. We encourage clergy and laity alike to delve more deeply into the interpretation of Scripture, including resources available on our website and others, so that we can move toward a common understanding of the church’s proper ministry in this age of sexual chaos.
The Rev. Rob Renfroe is the president and publisher of Good News. The Rev. Thomas Lambrecht is the vice president of Good News.
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This article is in response to “Homosexuality, Slavery, and the Bible” by the Rev. Adam Hamilton.
The Rev. Adam Hamilton responds to this article HERE.
by Steve | May 20, 2013 | Magazine, May-June 2013, Uncategorized
By Stan Self
A standard missiological approach is to divide people of the world into groups in order to be more strategic in our approaches to presenting the gospel and making disciples. Depending on the goal, the division may be by language, dialect, ethnicity, caste, nationality, culture, religion, politics, or any combination thereof.
Stan Self
Two of the most significant missiological divisions begin with the prefix un, meaning not. The first is the Unreached. These are people groups who, as yet, do not have enough followers of Christ among them to start and maintain an indigenous movement to Jesus. A required threshold for such a movement is thought to be at least two-percent evangelical Christian or five-percent Christian adherents within a particular group. Mission research points to 6,953 such Unreached People Groups around the world.
The second group is the Unengaged. These are people groups that are not only unreached but also devoid of any active church planting effort. According to the same research, there are 3,104 Unengaged Unreached People Groups. In the last two and a half decades there has been a good deal of focus on these two groups. Yet, in spite of this increased attention, roughly 30 percent of the world’s 7.1 billion people have not been reached with the good news of Jesus Christ.
Sadly, there are three additional missiological uns that are having a profound impact on the state of the Unreached and Unengaged and are at least partly responsible for their existence.
1. Uninformed. There is an amazing paucity of knowledge vis-à-vis the state of world missions in most local churches. Even those whose interest is high enough to attend one of The Mission Society’s Global Outreach Workshops are surprised to learn that the percentage of those in the world who would consider themselves Christian is less today than a century ago. Or that China will soon overtake the United States as the country with the most followers of Christ. Or that South Korea sends out more missionaries per capita than any other country. Moreover, many are amazed to find the Bible repeatedly states God’s desire that all peoples of the world come to know him and as his followers we are to take that message to them.
2. Unconvinced. Even in churches where effort has been expended to increase the knowledge of global missions, there are still some who are skeptical of the need or that they could be part of the solution. Such people typically think that missions is a job for someone else. They often think the task is too overwhelming, is only for the professional clergy or missionary, or that they could not possibly have any significant impact.
3. Unconcerned. To this third group, church is about family, fellowship groups, softball, picnics, fall festivals, and Sunday worship. They are so internally focused they are oblivious to the needs of the world. The Great Commission given by our Lord has simply never intersected their lives and certainly not their hearts. They are okay with the fact that there is a line item in the budget for missions and that there is this small group on the missions committee that has an interest in faraway places but it really has no bearing on them.
Most of these men and women are where they are because no one has ever suggested their world view should be tweaked. No one has ever told them that Jesus was including them when he gave the Great Commission.
Ironically, if local churches would begin to take it upon themselves to eradicate the uninformed, unconvinced, and unconcerned from their midst through solid missiological teaching and experience, that would go a long way in helping to eradicate the Unreached and Unengaged around the world. To do otherwise would be unpleasing to God.
Stan Self is The Mission Society’s senior director for church ministry.
As clergy and lay leaders of healthy, vibrant orthodox United Methodist congregations, and as teachers preparing the future clergy leaders of our denomination, we welcome the creation of the Wesleyan Covenant Association. In these times of great uncertainty about the future of The United Methodist Church, we believe it is important for orthodox congregations, clergy, and laity to work together, to support one another, and to encourage each other. We long for a church committed to sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the last, the least and the lost.
We believe the Wesleyan Covenant Association will give orthodox United Methodists hope for the future and serve as a source of encouragement as the church works through a critical period of discernment. We want to serve in close partnership with our brothers and sisters in Africa, Europe and the Philippines. And we want to be prepared to act as one in light of the important work and recommendations of the Bishops’ Commission on the Future of the Church. We encourage all orthodox clergy and laity to remain steadfast and faithful in these uncertain times. We believe the Wesleyan Covenant Association will bind us together and make us a strong, united witness for Scriptural Christianity.