Mountain Songs

Part II: A less-than-fully triune God

2012-01-19T14:15:00.000-08:00

Let me be clear about this first problem. I do not think most evangelicals, when pressed, would deny the Trinity. I would be shocked if that were the case. What I am criticizing here is the lacuna in much contemporary evangelical worship when it comes to addressing and speaking about God. The lacuna takes various forms. Many evangelicals seem to have a very limited vocabulary and speak only of "God" or "Lord," while others will speak of "Father" and "Jesus." The Jesus-is-my-boyfriend variety will often use "Abba."

What is the common link between all of these variations? In some sectors, an almost complete lack of emphasis on the Holy Spirit. To be sure, there is a great emphasis on the Spirit in missional-postmodern theologies, but this has little if any effect on evangelicals who will almost always pick up a devotional book over a theological study. Evangelicals speak of the church as the "body of Christ," but rarely will they speak of the church as the community of the Spirit. Those who do, however, tend to swing in the opposite direction. In these sectors of the American church, people will pray to the Spirit, pray for the Spirit, and speak about the guidance of the Holy Spirit. People in this camp are either pentecostal, or they are in the younger age bracket (18-30) and often attend an "emergent"-like church.

The common bond in all scenarios is thus a less-than-fully triune God, i.e., an emphasis on one or two persons of the Trinity rather than all three equally. This usually takes the form of a Father-Jesus binitarianism, in which preachers will speak about the relation between the Father and the Son, as if that exhausts the nature of God. Some churches are even worse, and are solely Jesus-centric. I grew up in this environment, and two proof-texts were always cited to justify this limited language of God: (1) Matthew 6:9-13 & parallels (the Lord's prayer, specifically, "Our Father in heaven..."), and (2) John 14:12-14, which states:

"I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it."

Combined, the two passages have convinced most evangelicals that the only proper way to pray is, "Dear Father ... in Jesus' name, Amen." If the person is creative, he or she might say, "Dear Jesus," or "Lord in heaven," or maybe "Abba, Father." While I am comfortable with people sticking with the Pater Noster, the John 14 passage and the idea that prayers must end with the name of Jesus is far too limiting. It also betrays a biblical literalism at the expense of good theology, because if Jesus Christ is part of the Godhead, we should be able to pray to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and still follow what Jesus says in the gospels.

The issue of prayer aside, I wish to address something more sinister. I sense that part of the problem is a subtle leaning toward modalistic monarchianism. This ancient heresy stressed the oneness of God to the extent that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit became modes of God's one being. They were the manifestations of God's singularity, but not individual hypostases. The point is that evangelicals by and large speak about God with two main metaphors, God as father and God as ruler or master. The former is the comforting, affirming God that is "seeker-friendly," and the latter is the commanding God that separates us from the world and demands allegiance (and often becomes the means by which some Christians enforce their personal political ideologies).

These two metaphorical extremes—father and ruler, friend and master—are not unbiblical, but they do not give a complete picture of God's nature as a being-in-communion. They, in fact, lean towards a monarchal god, in that they present God as a benevolent ruler in the sky. The attraction to monadic metaphors is obvious: they require less creativity in our worship and they are more understandable in terms of worldly, human analogies. So Christians will sometimes say to a child, "God is like the President for the whole world," or "God is like a perfect father for all people." The fact that I have met people at my old church who honestly thought God was male only goes to show that these "analogies" (horrible as they are) often only end up making God in our own image.

Solution: I am not of the persuasion that we should avoid speech about God altogether in order to keep God a total mystery and free from our mistaken metaphors. That would be an even greater mistake. Silence is not permitted by the gospel. The gospel, the "word of the cross," compels us to speech. What we need is to think, speak, and worship using language that is as trinitarian as possible—and, when it isn't cumbersome or distracting, gender-free as well.

If we are going to be truthful in our speech about God, we must insist that our imagery present God as a "communion of mutual otherness" (Jüngel), as the glorious and beautiful triune mystery which is never reducible to a divine monad nor to three individual gods. We must worship the triune Creator as a being-in-becoming, a God who is not static but is dynamically involved in the world and revealed this in the incarnation of Jesus and in the continuing presence of the Holy Spirit who is the deposit given to the church until the consummation of creation at the eschaton. We must affirm the trinitarian rule—opera trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa—that whatever any of the three persons does, the other two persons of the Trinity do as well. The Son suffered, and thus so did the Father and the Spirit (though not in the same way). The Spirit guides the church, and thus so does the Father and the Son (though not in the same way). The Father created the cosmos, and thus so did the Son and the Spirit (though not in the same way). When we isolate the three persons from the other two, we either wander into modalism or tritheism—both of them condemned heresies. We must hold all three together in our confession of God as Lord.

So as a way of helping the church move forward, I will quote a couple prayers written by the great German theologian, Eberhard Jüngel, that he composed to help churches use trinitarian language. These are from a translated essay, "Trinitarian Prayers for Christian Worship."

We thank you, dear heavenly Father,

That every morning your grace comes fresh and new. Today also you

quicken us with your inexhaustible power of life. Eternal God, we

sing your praise now and forever.

Lord Jesus Christ,

You are the spring that stills our thirst for life. We thank you with our

hearts and mouths and hands.

God, Holy Spirit, come,

Open our hearts, open our mouths, open our hands, that we might

magnify God's name with our thoughts, our words, and our

courageous acts, singing a new song before all the world!

You, we praise; you alone, our triune God. Amen.

Lord our God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

We cry to you. See how our world has grown old! Come Holy Spirit

renew the world. And give us, too, a new and confident spirit, able t

withstand the assaults of unbelief.

Lord Jesus Christ,

You are the bright day who expels all our darkness. Come to us now

with your creative word, that we might praise you and the heavenly

Father who sent you.

Dear Father, almighty God,

Through your Son Jesus Christ, you have entrusted yourself to us.

Make us so trust you and one another that we become witnesses of

faith in this world of mistrust and suspicion, demonstrating to all how

much you love them. For this we love you, you eternal God, you

human God, you coming God. Amen.

Lord God, merciful Father,

We thank you that you alone are our judge. You make us hope and

you give us courage, for you judge us with righteousness and

compassion. Lord, have mercy upon us.

Dear Lord Jesus Christ,

We praise you, for you have allowed yourself to be judged on our

behalf. You gave yourself up to judgment out of love for us. You give

us confidence and you make us free, for your love is strong as death.

Your love frees us from our guilt and liberates us from the powers

into whose hands we have fallen Your love leads us to the Father's

side where you intercede for us and rule the world with grace and

mercy. Christ, have mercy upon us.

Come, Holy Spirit,

Speak to us, that we have ears to hear in a world hard of hearing.

Come, Holy Spirit,

Awaken us from the nightmares that oppress us.

Come, Holy Spirit,

Renew us through and through, that, in a world of violence, we

become instruments of peace and, in a time of injustice, we become

witnesses of compassion. Amen.

The Shortcomings of American Evangelicalism, Part I: Introduction

2012-01-05T18:50:00.001-08:00

Part I: Introduction

I confess to being a little hard on evangelicals on this blog, but that is only because I grew up as one. To paraphrase Paul:

Are they Christians? So am I. Are they evangelicals? So am I. Are they descendents of the radical Reformation? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, argued more frequently, been ridiculed more severely, and been exposed to the ideas of Catholics, mainline Protestants, and liberal politics again and again. ... I have labored and toiled and have often gone without finishing my papers ... Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.

And as Paul also states:

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from conservative American evangelicalism, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.

It is in light of my own evangelical heritage that I feel a sense of responsibility to speak prophetically against the current state of evangelicalism in America today. The word "evangelical" once meant exactly what the word means: "according to the teaching of the gospel." The German word for evangelical is what identifies Protestants, whereas "evangelical" in the United States designates a subgroup of Protestants. In fact, nowadays it designates its own subculture and a powerful voting bloc that pursues governmental control more actively with each passing day. We are a long ways from the Reformation here in America. In fact, to be more precise, we are a long ways from the gospel.

What I wish to do in this post is outline the major heresies of contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of these have been documented by other scholars and online commentators, but I have not seen all of them addressed at one time. I will address them in the following order:

A less-than-fully triune doctrine of God—often modalistic or binitarian;

a docetic christology;

a pelagian soteriology;

a docetic-dictated-propositional Bible;

a gnostic eschatology;

and a Constantinian doctrine of church-state relations

The Grace of Living Well & Dying Well

2011-10-03T12:18:00.000-07:00

The Grace of Living Well and Dying Well (Part One)
     One reason Dietrich Bonhoeffer can impact twenty-first century preaching and preachers is that he lived well and died well. This reason will be posted in parts. Today will focus more on Bonhoeffer’s example and the testimony of those who knew him. Later this week, we will concentrate on the Biblical foundation for this impact and the personal application. I will also highlight Bonhoeffer’s poetry while he was in prison in yet another post.
       Bonhoeffer’s legacy is based on more than just his works. Bonhoeffer lived for the glory of Jesus even as he risked his life opposing Nazi oppression. The source of strength for him to live well, and eventually die well, was the grace of God.
     His good friend, Eberhard Bethge delivered a lecture entitled “The Living God Revealed in this Church” in Coventry Cathedral on October 30, 1967[1]. In that lecture, he expressed his concern that Bonheoffer’s legacy was marred by misunderstanding the source of power that sustained Bonhoeffer’s life. For example:
     The isolated use and handing down of the famous term “religionless Christianity” has made Bonhoeffer the champion of an undialectical shallow modernism which obscures all that he wanted to tell us about the living God.[2]
      That source of power was actually God’s grace that Bonhoeffer relied upon during the times he stood alone for the cause of Jesus; and during the times he displayed the image of Jesus through his words and action. Bethge summed it up with the phrase: “secret discipline.”[3]To Bonhoeffer:
     “Secret discipline meant…all that power to deepen and sustain Christian life: prayer, meditation, common worship, the sacraments, and experiments in life such as Finkenwalde had been, all in fact that helped to fit the Christian for a life of love lived with God and for his fellow men.”[4]
     Most modern readers of Bonhoeffer who are enthralled by his writings can completely miss why he lived and wrote the way he did:
     The Letters and Papers from Prison, which are the most widely read and quoted of all Bonhoeffer’s works, explore extensively the problems of identification which face the Christian in the present century, while saying little about that secret discipline by which his identity as a Christian is maintained. But what the writer did not say he was living daily and hourly, and the eloquence of his life counterbalances the reticence of the letters.
      His life had in fact represented a continuous effort to hold the two in balance, an attempt complicated by powerful inwards and outward pressures, so that at certain stages the scale tipped more heavily to the one side and certain stages to the other.[5]
     While Bethge believed that many readers may miss the reason why Bonhoeffer lived that way, Kelly and Burton believe many are actually attracted to Bonhoeffer because of his intense relationship with Jesus. They write that genuine community was a key component to Bonheoffer’s spirituality:
      One of the main reasons why readers find Bonhoeffer’s writings so compelling lies in the inner strength and intensity of his relationship with Jesus Christ developed in the practical everyday life of a Christian community. When he wrote his account of his community-sustained spiritual life in the Finkenwalde seminary, he was not reminiscing about an agreeable, idyllic experience of a like-minded group of dedicated seminarians.
     He intended to share with others this experience, with its joys and trials, its mutual support and enduring friendships, that it might serve as a model; for forming moral leaders and for the creation of new forms of church community throughout Germany.[6]
     “Moral leaders” will be the fruit of the “new forms of church community.” Bonhoeffer shared his “experience” at Finkenwalde in the pages of “Life Together.” If this “new and different” way “to be the church” became a reality, then vibrant followers of Jesus would be produced:
      In depicting that community in Life Together, Bonhoeffer also acknowledged the urgent need for the church to discover new and different ways to be the church. He thus emphasized the courageous following of Jesus Christ within a genuine community formed along the lines of the gospel, not the typical kind of church gatherings where strangers met and remained strangers, and whose dull blandness offered little resistance to the political ideology that had gained the allegiance of most churchgoers.
      In Bonhoeffer’s spirituality, effective moral leadership and one’s personality strengths are supported in and through the sharing of convictions that takes place in genuine Christian communities where the teachings of Jesus Christ, not political ideology, should inspire believers.[7]
     In such communities, the followers of Jesus should be inspired to “live out the gospel more intensely and thus cope more courageously with the crisis then overwhelming the German people and churches.” Kelly and Nelson speculate that the German landscape would have been transformed and the atrocities committed during the war could have been avoided if genuine Christian communities were formed within the churches:
     In hindsight, one wonders whether the slaughter that took place in the war and in the death camps could have been avoided had the Christians of Germany professed their faith in truly Christian communities like that directed by Bonhoeffer.[9]
     Bonhoeffer himself served as a prototype in both his life and his death. An early example of this was that he displayed intensity during theological debates with his students at Finkenwalde, and yet he deeply cared for each of them. His assistant, Wilhelm Rott wrote that Bonhoeffer “always had time for the brethren.”[10] His compassion for his fellow believers grew out of his own passionate and personal relationship with Jesus Christ.[11]
     Bonhoeffer was “a man of deep, personal prayer.”[12] It was his fervent spirituality that sustained him and motivated him to stand for the truth of the Word of God:
      His practice of quiet meditation on the Word of God helped him to become a unique advocate for truth and freedom as his own country was being overwhelmed with mendacious distortions of the truth by the Nazi government, The truth, as Bonhoeffer saw it, was that Jesus Christ was being crucified anew in the persecution of the Jews and dissidents and later in those murdered in the death camps and on the battlefields of World War II.
      Many passages from his collected writings underline his conviction that the main task of Christians was not to stand on the sidelines in silence or to kneel in pious prayers for deliverance and safety while violence was being done. From his efforts in the church struggle and from his family connections in the resistance movement, Bonhoeffer was aware of the criminality of his government.[13]
      Bonhoeffer’s resolve to spend time in prayer and scripture meditation strengthened him to stand up against the Nazi government:
“His determination to resist Nazism was reinforced by his daily meditations on the biblical texts. It was in fact his dedication to prayer, as Bethge has observed, that kept Bonhoeffer’s conspiratorial actions from degenerating into self-righteousness, that buoyed his spirits with unflinching perseverance, that kept his pursuit of justice in line with the gospel. No prayer seemed complete for him unless it was linked to prophetic action for justice.”[14]
       Bonhoeffer’s final published book was a “lengthy commentary on the Psalms.” It earned him a monetary fine from “Reich Board for the Regulation of Literature.” After Bonhoeffer appealed the fine, the Board threw at him a “strengthened prohibition against any further publishing venture on his part because of the ‘dangerous dogmatic and spiritual connections’ that conflicted with the prevailing Nazi ideology.”[16] It was Bonhoeffer’s longing in the commentary to “retrieve the Psalms as the prayer book of Jesus Christ himself”:
     “It is not only “the prayer book of the Bible,” as Bonhoeffer declared, but also a tapping into the strength of one’s personal communion with Jesus Christ, the sustenance of the faith of Christians caught in a life-and-death struggle with evil.
     …The Psalms are God’s mode of enabling the followers of God’s son Jesus to speak to and with Jesus. God hears those in the language of Jesus who, as God’s Word, allows his followers to enter into his own prayer and thus to find their way with Jesus back to God. Bonhoeffer argued that this prayer is God’s gift to the followers of Jesus because it focuses them not on themselves but on Jesus, the biblical center, who leads them to pray as God wants.”[18]
         Bonhoeffer wanted to put into the hearts of German Christians a practical way of enriching their prayer lives. For him, “the Psalms enabled him to cope with his own shifting moods amid all the vicissitudes of his ministry, including his imprisonment. The Psalms taught him that God was near in all the sorrows and joys, successes, and disappointments that had marked his own days.”[19]

At the Finkenwalde seminary, Bonhoeffer often incorporated the Psalms into the “regular community prayer services.” This practice also encouraged and strengthened him even“during the most dismal days in Tegel prison.”[21]

      Psalm 31, in particular, helped him to concede that his life was still consigned to God: “My time is in your hands” (verse 15), he prayed, though Psalm 13 permitted him, nevertheless, to air his impatience and demand an answer to the agonizing question: “how long, O Lord?”
      It was predictable, therefore, that the prayers Bonhoeffer composed for his fellow prisoners were filled with the spirit of the Psalms. Their constant theme was to trust in God’s love and acceptance of whatever God has permitted in their regard.[22]
      Bonhoeffer entered the Tegel Prison in Berlin on April 5, 1943.[23] There he ended each day in prison with praise[24] to God and prayer for his family and the people around him: “He commended into God’s hands at close of day his loved ones and his fellow prisoners, and even their wardens, as well as his own person. He asked for strength to bear what God might send and the courage to overcome their fears”[25]His devotion to Christ exceeded his own prison cell:
      In the all-pervasive distress of prison life, he would say to God, “I trust in your grace and commit my life wholly into your hands. Do with me according to your will and as it is best for me. Whether I live or die, I am with you, and you, my God are with me.” These prayers, which were circulated illegally among the cells, manifest many of the insights that helped guide Bonhoeffer’s own actions on behalf of peace and freedom and exude his concern for Christian community even in prison.
         Fellow prisoner and conspirator, Fabian von Schlabrendorff wrote that Bonhoeffer was concerned for the spiritual and emotional well-being of his fellow prisoners: “To the very end, Bonhoeffer took advantage of (their) condition by arranging prayer services, consoling those who had last all hope, and giving them fresh courage. A towering rock of faith, he became a shining example to his fellow prisoners.”[27] One student of Bonhoeffer’s spirituality, F. Burton Nelson realized “with a new appreciation the source of Bonhoeffer’s spiritual stamina and vitality—his constant, daily, childlike relationship to God.”[28]
        Bonhoeffer’s fervent relationship with Jesus would also maintain him during his two years of imprisonment. This can be seen in a letter from prison to Eberhard Bethge on August 21, 1944:
       “It is certain that we may always live close to God and in the light of God’s presence, and that such living is an entirely new life for us; that nothing is then impossible for us, because all things are possible with God; that no earthly power can touch us without God’s will, and that danger and distress can only drive us closer to God. It is certain that we can claim nothing for ourselves, and may yet pray for everything; it is certain that our joy is hidden in suffering, and our life in death; it is certain that in all this we are in a community that sustains us. In Jesus God has said Yes and Amen to all, and that Yes and Amen is the firm ground on which we stand.”[29]
      In the lonely darkness of a Nazi prison cell, Bonhoeffer’s spirit was not only strengthened and encouraged through the presence of Jesus, but ironically by the “community”[30] of Christ’s body. Not even the barb-wired fences and guarded cells could separate Bonhoeffer from the experience of fellowship with his brothers and sisters in Jesus:
      But whether they were physically present or close to him in prayers and meditative reflections, Bonhoeffer experienced intense comfort from the thought that they were all “in a community that sustains (them).” He specified that such community in Jesus Christ was the “firm ground” on which he had taken his stand…Separated from his family and friends and denied the physical support of the Confessing Church while in prison, Bonhoeffer was strengthened by the thought of his being remembered in the prayers offered on his behalf.[31]

         It was Bonhoeffer’s friendship with Eberhard Bethge that gave him the most joy and comfort. In his last letter to Bethge, dated August 23, 1944, he opened with: “Dear Eberhard, It’s always an almost indescribable joy to get letters from you. The peace and quiet in which your last letter was written was especially splendid.”[32] Later in the letter, Bonhoeffer writes:
         “Please don’t ever get anxious or worried about me, but don’t forget to pray for me—I’m sure you don’t! I am so sure of God’s guiding hand that I hope I shall always be kept in that certainty. You must never doubt that I’m travelling with gratitude and cheerfulness along the road where I’m being led. My past life is brim-full of God’s goodness, and my sins are covered by the forgiving love of Christ crucified.”[33]

          By early 1945, “interrogations were taking a much more serious turn. Communication could no longer be maintained between those who had privy to conspiracy…Bonhoeffer…and others were being examined under torture, all were on trial for their lives.”[34]
      Yet, there were glimmers of hope because “there were curious elements in the interrogations…Their captors were plainly ill at ease. They could not remain unaware of the crumbling fortunes of the Nazi party…the British and Americans from the West and the Russians from the East were converging on Berlin.”[35]
      At the same time, Hitler gave the orders that the trials of the conspirators “be prolonged in order that they might be forced to reveal as much as possible about the nationwide network of whose existence he was now convinced.”[36]
      The uncertainty of the future “had not dimmed Bonhoeffer’s radiance or disturbed his peace.”[37]Fabian von Schlabrendorff would later write about Bonhoeffer:
      “He was always good tempered, always of the same kindliness and politeness towards everybody, so that to my surprise, within a short time, he won over his warders, who were not always kindly disposed. It was significant for our relationship that he was rather the hopeful one, while I now and then suffered from depressions. He always cheered me up and comforted me; he never tired of repeating that the only fight which we lose is that which we give up.”
       On February 7, 1945, Bonhoeffer was moved to Buchenwald concentration camp.[39] There were twelve cells in the camp. Bonhoeffer was in cell number one. The author of The Venlo Incident, British Captain S. Payne Best was in cell number eleven. Captain Best verifies that even in Bonhoeffer’s final weeks, days and hours, he lived for the glory of Jesus. Bonhoeffer was deeply grateful for the fact that he was alive.[40]
     In a letter, dated March 2, 1951, to Bonhoeffer’s sister, Sabine Leibholz, Best wrote that “Bonhoeffer was different; just calm and normal, seemingly perfectly at his ease…his soul really shone in the dark desperation of our prison.”[41]Bosanquet explains that Bonhoeffer “was passing the last landmarks in his spiritual journey”:
      “The struggles of the Tegel days had ended in victory, and he seems to have attained that peace which is the gift of God and not as the world giveth. The struggle to abandon to God his rich and treasured past, the struggle with the last vestiges of his pride, the struggle to suffer, in full measure and yet in gratitude, his human longings and to remain open to others in the midst of his own pain; all this had led him to the experience of the Cross, in which at least, through a grasp of reality so intense that it fused all the elements of his being into a single shining whole, he learnt what life can be when “we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously not our own sufferings, but the sufferings of God in the world.”
       Out of this death to the last vestiges of self Bonhoeffer seems to have been raised up quietly, unspectacularly into the last stage of his life, in which he was made whole, made single, finally integrated in Christ. In a way more complete than any that had gone before, the Christian had become “the man for others, the disciple “as his Lord.” As we look back, struggling with such help as we have to pierce the obscurity that surrounds him in these last months, this seems to be the truth.[43]
      As a man for others, Bonhoeffer’s generosity to his fellow prisoners became a constant theme. This was seen on April 3, when the prisoners were informed that they were being transferred to another facility. Sixteen prisoners and their luggage all tightly crammed into an eight passenger van. The van was powered by a wood generator that filled the van with fumes. The van would often break down, so the prisoners just sat until the van could move. Captain Best describes one of the stops:
“There was no light, we had nothing to eat or drink nor, but for the generosity of Bonhoeffer, who, although a smoker, had saved up his scantly ration of tobacco and now insisted in contributing it to the common good, anything to smoke. He was a good and saintly man.”[45]
         Captain Best also noted that while everyone, including Bonhoeffer, alternated between “hopes and fears”, Bonhoeffer did reach the stage of knowing that he could face any trial without fear: “He had always been afraid, that he would not be strong enough to stand such a test, but now he knew that there was nothing in life of which one need ever be afraid.”[46]
      The prisoners finally made it to Schonberg on April 6. On April 8, a Sunday, Bonhoeffer led a small worship service for the prisoners: “He gave an exposition of the Scriptures for the day: ‘Through his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5) and ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again into a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’ (1 Peter 1:3).”[47]Captain Best writes that Bonhoeffer…
“…spoke to us in a manner which reached the hearts of all, finding just the right words to express the spirit of our imprisonment and the thoughts and resolutions which it had brought. He had hardly finished his last prayer when the door opened and two evil-looking men in civilian clothes came in and said: ‘Prisoner Bonhoeffer. Get ready to come with us.’ Those words ‘Come with us’—for all prisoners had come to mean one thing only—the scaffold.”[48]
     Bonhoeffer then “gathered his few belongings. In a copy of Plutarch that he had received for his birthday he wrote his name in large letters and left it on the table.”[49] As the other prisoners said their good-byes to Bonhoeffer, he talked to Captain Best privately and gave him a message to pass on to his “English friend Bishop Bell”:
“Tell him that for me this is the end, but also the beginning. With him I believe in the principle of our universal brotherhood which rises above all national interests, and that our victory is certain—Tell him too that I have never forgotten his words at our last meeting.”[51]
     There was a “trial” that lasted through the night: “the prisoners were interrogated once more and confronted with one another. All were condemned.”[52] Early in the morning on April 9, 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by hanging. Bosanquet writes:
“So the morning came. Now the prisoners were ordered to strip. They were led down to a little flight of steps under the trees to the secluded place of execution. There was a pause. For the men about to die, time hung a moment suspended. Naked under the scaffold in the sweet spring of woods, Bonhoeffer knelt for the last time to pray. Five minutes later, his life was ended.”[53]
     The camp doctor was an eye-witness of Bonhoeffer’s final minutes:
“Through the half-door in one room of the huts I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps of the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly seen a man die so entrirely submissive to the will of God.”
[54]

More on Edwards

2011-07-11T12:41:00.000-07:00

A Faithful Narrative
of the Surprising Work of God
by
Jonathan Edwards

A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God is Jonathan Edwards' own account of the mighty way in which God moved among the people of Northampton, Massachusetts and other nearby communities in the early stages of what has become known as The Great Awakening. There is much to be learned from Edwards regarding the nature of true conversion and how God's Spirit works in awakening and converting sinners. A Faithful Narrative is reproduced here in its entirety with the hopes that many will profit greatly from the observations of the greatest evangelist ever to grace the American continent.
The Narrative is divided into three sections:
I. A General Introductory Statement,
II. The Manner of Conversions Various, Yet Bearing a Great Analogy,
III. This Work Further Illustrated in Particular Instances.

Faithful Narrative (1737)
INTRODUCTION
As reports of the awakening of 1734-35 in and around Northampton spread, provincial leaders began to inquire into the truth and nature of the phenomena. Edwards expanded an initial brief description of the revival into a London publication in 1737, and again for a Boston imprint the following year, followed by translations in German and Dutch. A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton put Edwards and his church before the eyes of an international audience. Here Edwards provided a social and demographic profile of the town and a sophisticated portrait of the religious psychology that he observed among his parishioners. In particular, he made famous two of his converts, the dying Abigail Hutchinson and the four-year-old Phebe Bartlett, by including extended accounts of their religious experiences. A Faithful Narrative became nothing less than the model for future revivals, a manual for conducting and monitoring them.
Edwards wrote the Narrative to dispel rumors and to clarify how conversion to Christianity occurs. Edwards gives a background of the town and its relatively mundane history prior to the Awakening of 1734.
In the book Edwards describes God's grace by using examples of various people from his local congregation, such as Abigail Hutchinson, a young woman who died joyfully. These examples illustrate the psychology of conversion by grace. He outlines several universal steps in conversion:
First, Edwards explains how the conversion starts when individuals with an interest in Christianity attempt to live righteously through their works and study scripture attempting to avoid sin and damnation and to "earn" salvation.[1]
Next, Edwards describes how these individuals inevitably fail to live up to the Old Testament legalist standard, and they experience despair at their failures and inherent sinfulness, often believing they have committed "unpardonable sin."[2]
Then, Edwards describes how successful converts experience "converting grace" and "awaken" to see that forgiveness is available to all who have faith that Jesus' sacrifice atones for all sins. This salvation is impossible through works which are simply evidence of faith, and only possible through Christ's sacrifice.[3]
Finally, this revelation of grace is followed by a sense of joy or an internal "new light" from the Holy Spirit and a desire to spread the Christian gospel and leave sin behind. Also, true converts experience a greater sensitivity to their "heart sins", such as pride and judging others, sins with which they were largely unconcerned before conversion when they were primarily concerned with legalism or their own "saving" works. Even though this change has occurred, many Christians "have no imagination that they are now converted."[4]
[edit] History and impact
Edwards published the "Narrative" in England in 1737, Boston in 1738, and later in German and Dutch, and it brought him a large international following. Prominent Christians such as George Whitefield, a British minister, came to visit Edwards in Northhampton after the publication.
The "Narrative" remains popular and modern day evangelists such as Timothy Keller often refer to this and other Edwards works as models for their ministry.[5] The song Amazing Grace, written in 1772, is sometimes compared to the "grace experience" described in the "A Faithful Narrative."

Susanna Wesley

2011-05-10T12:03:00.002-07:00

Susanna Wesley; Mother of John, Charles
Susanna Annesley was born Jan. 20, 1669 to Dr. Samuel Annesley and Mary White, his 2nd wife. She was his 25th and last child. He was a nonconforming, Puritan clergyman in London. At 12, Susanna stopped attending his church and joined the COE. The following year, she met Samuel Wesley, 6 years her senior, at her older sister’s wedding. Samuel, the son of a nonconforming clergyman, had joined the COE to further his education. After graduating from Oxford, Exeter College, and ordination in the COE, Susanna and Samuel were married in 1688; she was 19 and he was 26. Susanna was married to Samuel through sickness and health, 19 pregnancies and good and bad times for 46 years until his death in 1735. Susanna and Samuel Wesley had 19 children. Nine of her children died as infants. Two sets of twins, four children died. A maid accidentally smothered one child. A review of the baptismal records suggests that Susanna was pregnant 12 years of her 24 years of marriage. Following her husband’s death in 1735, she left Epworth where she had raised the family for 38 years and lived with her kids; Emily, Samuel Jr. , and Martha. Finally, she joined Joht at the Foundry, the new center for Methodism in London, in 1740, and remained there until her death in 1742. At Susanna’s death at age 73, only 8 of her children were still alive.

Ethical Formation

2011-03-23T07:58:00.001-07:00

Some critics of liberalism will point out the hazard of dealing with abstract ethical categories and definitions. In terms of the individual, there is a danger in focusing on the person merely as a “locus of dignity or as a bearer of rights.” Rather, our ethical perspective should be set by a conception of the individual as a particular person, embedded within a particular community and formed by particular conceptions of virtue and vice. On this point, Stout and Hauerwas share a piece of increasingly rare common ground. However, this brief alliance is broken up again, Stout alleges, when Hauerwas draws on MacIntyre’s notion that modern liberal discourse is inevitably and “expressively” incoherent due to its insistence on abstract, universal propositions.
Similar to his previous charge, Stout suggests that this is simply not how most modern individuals will actually go about rationally justifying their ethical choices. Few outside the graduate school classroom will ever appeal to remote ethical theories. Further, Stout argues, several traditions situated within modern “liberal” society have leveled sustained critiques of just such a “systematic” and abstract approach to ethics. He identifies three primary dissents: first, the Burkean preference for custom over intellectualist claims; second, the pietistic polemic against abstract contemplation; and third, the essayist tradition’s proclivity for satirical and philosophical complication of the supposedly ready-made formulations of systematic ethics. These diverse objections, all of which Stout is careful to place in some relation to the modern liberal context, reinforce the idea that liberalism doesn’t always work in the same way that both its proponents and its sharpest critics often allege.
If ethical character is most commonly shaped, not by abstract ideas, but by stories, personal examples, homilies, and so on, then we’re led to wonder what sort of exemplars should be held in esteem by the community. Both Hauerwas and Stout would agree on the basic notion that certain qualities and persons should be looked to, and remembered, for ethical formation. Stout, however, objects to what is implied in Hauerwas’ language of an “ethical aristocracy.” There is less to object to if this were merely a metaphor to describe the chosen aspects and qualities which a community should esteem. However, Stout suggests that democratic exemplars are not so much a new class of ethical elite, e.g. canonized saints, but rather “representative individuals” whose excellence serves to raise up both themselves and others around them to similar virtue. At root here is a fundamentally “spiritual” concern which Stout traces back to the medieval conciliarists and “Protestant radicalism” in the English Civil War. Excellence should not be presumed to be limited, in other terms, to an institutional or ascetic elite; virtuous examples might be identified in the most common of places. Along these lines, Stout enlists Barth and some strain of Montanism (even as he maintains that one might remain an anti-Montanist democrat).
There is a further complicating factor in what Stout views as Hauerwas’ Wesleyian perfectionism. Intriguingly, Stout highlights the similarities between Hauerwas’ 20th century critique of ethical theory and the 15th and 16th century humanist move away from the medieval genres of the fable and morality play. For as humanism began to develop “thicker,” more intricate, dramatic narratives and characters, the inevitable consequence was an increasing level of ethical complexity. And with that complexity came a difficulty in extracting more broadly ethical “lessons.” Gradually, the “culture of paideia became the culture of Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Marguerite de Navarre.” The irony in this development, regarding Hauerwas, is that the humanist drive toward “thicker” ethical examples led away from an “ethical aristocracy.” Plato’s Socrates offers us an ethical example with harder edges than, say, Shakespeare’s Prospero, although perhaps not a more useful or a truer one. For Stout, our ethical task requires a “more improvisational kind of explication.”
In a similar way, Stout sidesteps the critique offered by Seyla Benhabib, who had suggested that engaging the social theory of Habermas would provide him with “a firmer basis” in contemporary thought. For Stout, however, it seems that the very “firmness” of some contemporary social theories – which rely on certain “assumptions about the effects of rationalization … on religious worldviews” – is suspect. Stout wishes to avoid a totalizing account of modernity. And while both Hauerwas and Benhabib begin by emphasizing the moral complexity of thick narrative, expressive ethics, he believes both turn away from this commitment at critical moments – Benhabib in her critique of Hauerwas, and Hauerwas in his critique of liberalism.

Puritan Civic Tradition

2011-02-22T11:38:00.002-08:00

In general terms, we can see the Puritan civic tradition as an acclimation and intensification of the older theology for the New England context. Yet it was this intensification which eventually made the Puritan canopy unsustainable. Puritan preaching in the mid-18th century reveals a growing sense of despair at the perceived declension of social morals. The body politic was failing to live up to the terms of the “special commission” which had originally established the American Christendom. Even after the initial wave of religious revivals in the 1730s, Jonathan Edwards lamented “the moral and religious state of these American colonies,” which now suffered from “wild and extravagant notions, gross delusions of the devil, and strange practices.” Perhaps most interestingly, Edwards targets this onslaught of vice as advancing “under a pretext of extraordinary purity, spirituality, liberty, and zeal against formality, usurpation, and conformity to the world.” Edwards, like the Puritan civic tradition as a whole, perceived the rising tide of Enlightenment rationalism and unbridled individual liberty as a threat to the old political order. This moment of crisis called the fundamental legitimacy of Puritan society into question. How could American Christendom continue in its current form if the populace as a whole was not attentive to the moral claims of the civic order? Some voices in the early 18th century had called for a relaxation of the formal requirements for membership in the ecclesial-civil commonwealth (among them, Edwards’ grandfather, Solomon Stoddard). However, by the 1740s, the Puritan leadership was increasingly embracing even more rigorous requirements for moral purity.
In all this, it is perhaps best not to view these latter days of the American Christendom as a decisive break with the old European reformers, but rather as evidence of the early Protestant civic tradition in extremis. In order to save New England society from the flood of unbelief, Puritans like Edwards did not lessen their demands for spiritual piety, but rather hoped and prayed that the Spirit of God would work moral renewal in the commonwealth. Despite his doubts for the immediate prospects of a covenantal renewal, Edwards clearly had the union of a faithful society and a pure congregation in view. Even “when the day is so dark here in New England,” Edwards wrote, there must be hope for a renewal of the earthly people of God as “one holy and happy society,” united in mutual affection and service of God.
In effect, while the earlier Protestant tradition often defined civic society in pedagogical terms, as a distinct preparation for an eternal citizenship, Puritan civic perfectionism tended to collapse the action into one juridical moment. (This is not to say that elements later embedded in the Puritan tradition were not present in earlier generations. In particular, the political contributions of the Zurich school of Ulrich Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger had a lasting effect on the developing strand of Reformed “federal theology.” See Charles S. McCoy and J. Wayne Baker, Fountainhead of Federalism: Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenantal Tradition.) If it is true that a political community can only enjoy divine favor by demonstration of true submission to divine lordship, then the proleptic nature of political engagement becomes rather irrelevant; something more immediate and explicit is required. The New England experience indicated to the Puritans that Christendom – in name only – was not sufficient to protect civic virtue. (A very similar point is made repeatedly in the political writings of the reformer Martin Bucer [1491-1551]. In his counsel to the Protestant King Edward V, Bucer presses his argument that even in a formally Christian state, moral persuasion more effective than edicts; see Bucer’s De Regno Christi. In Virtue Reformed, Stephen Wilson suggests that Bucer served as an early model for the Puritans’ “higher expectations for renewability in the ecclesiastical and civic spheres” and requirements for “visible sainthood.” However, Bucer’s practical concern for persuading the citizenry of the goodness of political reforms strikes a different note than many of the Puritan calls for moral purity.) At the same time, heightened rhetoric calling for a renewal of the moral basic for Christendom only contributed to the formal dissociation of civil and spiritual society in the American republic. As a result, there was less room for a natural or pedagogic conception of civil society. If that foundation were to exist, it would have to be supplied by other, less theological, means.
The dissolution of Christendom in the New World proceeded along many parallel lines. In his brief account, O’Donovan recognizes several operative causes, including: the growing complexity of the American religious demographic, the rise of heterodox doctrines which relativized the social importance of true worship, as well as the Puritan emphasis on the personal ministration of the Holy Spirit in individual believers. O’Donovan suggests that “all these factors coincided to support the disestablishment thesis.” The First Amendment was not intended to prosecute religious belief or even participation in politics; however, it provided the conditions for a subsequently “anti-religious line of interpretation.” In effect, the American civic tradition committed a kind of “heresy.” While “the creed asserts: cuius regni non erit finis; and the apostle, that ‘at the name of Jesus every knew shall bow.’ The First Amendment presumes to add: ‘except….’”
Even in its largely symbolic and attenuated form, this critique of the American civic tradition remains persuasive on many points, and certainly provides one means to account for the subsequent assimilation of theological concepts into the democratic tradition. However, while not trying to demand too much of O’Donovan’s brief account of American civic theology, two paradigmatic questions arise when considering the antecedent history of the Puritan Christendom. First, how explicit can secular testimony to divine lordship be without straining tensions to the point of breakdown in the social order? Second, after the fall of Christendom pro forma, in what way must individual Christians participate differently in the structures of political authority? Does the absence of public testimony to the lordship of Christ detract from a pre-existing theological confession that the kingdoms of the world have in some sense already been given over to Christ?

More on Pneumatology

2011-02-10T13:50:00.001-08:00

emphasis and approach they are all concerned with rediscovering a theological rationale for the global scope of the Spirit’s renewing works.
This pneumatological development in contemporary theology presents a tremendous challenge to historic or traditional Christian theology. It summons us to rediscover an appreciation of the world-wide scope of the Spirit’s renewing work; it calls for traditional theology to engage in critical examination of its own way of thinking about the Holy Spirit. Alongside this positive challenge, the current development also poses a serious threat to major tenets of Christian doctrine. In their attempt to construct a new model of theology which is expanded to its cosmic breadth, contemporary theologians all too often begin with certain universal frameworks which are drawn from philosophical categories that can hardly be reconciled with the biblical perspective. In their discussions of the Spirit’s work, what is most often lost in the New Testament distinctive of the Sprit’s work.
To specify this problem, which we will seek to demonstrate full in this study: 1) In their concentration on the immanence of the Spirit, the fundamental link between Christ and the Spirit is obscured, or not fully appreciated. The immanence of the Spirit is cut loose from the historical transcendence of the person Jesus, with the result that their conception of the Spirit invariably degenerates into a vague spiritual universalism which undercuts the true relevance of Jesus to the modern world. The universal immanence of the Spirit is overemphasized at the expense of the particular transcendence of Jesus. Their concentration either on god or on the Spirit who is ontologically severed from the historical Jesus revealed in Scripture ends up with a modalistic collapse of the persons in the Godhead into monotheism, which leads to a virtual denial of the traditional doctrine of the Trinity.

Pneumatology in Contemporary Perspective

2011-01-26T07:32:00.002-08:00

A remarkable turn to pneumatology has been witnessed in contemporary theology during the last several decades. In his article, “The Cinderella of Theology: written in 1957, G. J. Sirks noted that after a long period of concentration on Christology in contemporary theology, emphasis began to shift in the direction of pneumatology. He made a profound statement in saying, “The first half of the 20th Century was a time of Christology; the second half will have to be a time for Pneumatology, the Doctrine of the Spirit.” It seems his prediction had merit, as a transition has been made from a period of christocentric theology to that of pneumatology theology in the closing decades of the 20th Century, and on into the 21st Century there seems to be no signs that this change is losing momentum. In his last years, even Karl Barth, the master architect of christocentric theology in the 2oth Century envisioned such development of pneumatic theology in which his chritologically formulated theology would be recast into a pneumatic setting. It is often pointed out that the recent pneumatological turn in contemporary theology came as the fruition of this master’s vision planted in his disciples, while at the same time it was their revolt against his rigid christocentricism.
Many theologians after Barth have reacted against the Christological bias and transcendental overtones in Barth’s theology which make it difficult to conceive a genuine correlation between God and creation, and so the cosmic dimension of the Spirit’s renewing work. The recent theological writings which are oriented toward divine immanence, the secular world, creation, and eschatology all reflect such critical response to Barth’s christologically restricted theology, and represent serious attempts to overcome the inability of Barthian christocentrism to relate theology to the quest for renewal in the vast territory of the world.
The new pneumatological orientation in contemporary theology is not only a protest against excessive christocentrism, but it also provides a way of responding to the pressing issues raised by the modern world. Confronted with pressure for a new comprehensive theological paradigm that corresponds to the emerging global issues of our time, contemporary theologians have found it imperative to turn from a “theology of the word” to a “theology of the world.” They stress that theology must be fundamentally oriented to the world, and our theological horizon must be expanded to embrace the whole range of reality in the world. These new accents in contemporary theology are expressed in various fashions, as seen in the quest for the immanence of god, secular Christianity, emphasis and approach they are all concerned with rediscovering a theological rationale for the global scope of the Spirit’s renewing works.
This pneumatological development in contemporary theology presents a tremendous challenge to historic or traditional Christian theology. It summons us to rediscover an appreciation of the world-wide scope of the Spirit’s renewing work; it calls for traditional theology to engage in critical examination of its own way of thinking about the Holy Spirit. Alongside this positive challenge, the current development also poses a serious threat to major tenets of Christian doctrine. In their attempt to construct a new model of theology which is expanded to its cosmic breadth, contemporary theologians all too often begin with certain universal frameworks which are drawn from philosophical categories that can hardly be reconciled with the biblical perspective. In their discussions of the Spirit’s work, what is most often lost in the New Testament distinctive of the Sprit’s work.
ecological theology, and theology of hope. Despite their differences in

Pneumatology in Contemporary Perspective

2011-01-21T11:32:00.000-08:00

This work is prompted by the challenges and problems raised by the recent pneumatological orientation in contemporary theology. In their attempt to develop a new pneumatological paradigm which corresponds to emerging global issues, contemporary theologians all too often begin with a universal framework which is extraneous to Scripture. It is mainly due to this departure from the biblical foundation that contemporary pneumatology is plagued with a sterile antithesis between immanence and transcendence, objectivity and subjectivity, the church-centered and the world-centered, the anthropocentric and the cosmocentric, and the past-centered and the future-centered.
Against such pneumatological trends, this study attempts to underscore the biblical distinctive of the Spirit’s renewing work. What I propose to do is to demonstrate to excessive tendencies in contemporary thoughts on the Sprit, and offers the possibility of developing an effective pneumatological model in which various problems of polarities and ambiguities are overcome and a sound theological rationale is provided for the Spirit’s renewing work in the world. A viable pneumatological option, which this study envisages in reaction to contemporary pneumatic trends, is biblically-grounded, Christ-centered, church-based, world-transforming, and eschatological. In order to achieve this goal, the Spirit’s renewing work will be discussed in light of the basic structures of biblical pneumatology; the Christological-pneumatological foundation, ecclesiastical context, cosmic scope, and eschatological character. A selective survey of the distinctive features of the approaches to pneumatology in contemporary theology will be provided in order to identify the current flow and direction of contemporary pneumatology and to set the state for further discussion of a biblical option.
This study will commence with a reflection on the relationship between the Christological and pneumatological which is fundamental for understanding the Spirit’s renewing work in the individual, the church, and the world. We will then apply this reflection to a discussion of the Spirit’s renewing work in the church and in the believer. The Christological and pneumatological foundation of the church and sanctifying grace will be considered, and sanctification will be discussed within its ecclesiastical context. The following chapters will discuss the cosmic scope and eschatological thrust of the Sprit’s renewing work.
To indicate briefly the results of the study, the biblical perspective on the integral but distinct relationship between Christology and pneumatology provides the key to solving the perennial problem of tension between transcendence and immanence, objectivity and subjectivity, and preserves biblical trinitarianism from both extremes of christocentrism and pneumatocentrism. This perspective not only enriches our understanding of the nature of sanctification and the church, but also offers the possibility of explains the universal seep of the Spirit’s work without discounting the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. By welding the missiology of the church with the work of the Spirit, biblical pneumatology sets Christ into a framework which is cosmological and eschatological. So, the eschatological missions of the son and the Spirit are viewed s focally located in the church, but are also seen as operative in every phase of the new creation in which the whole course of nature and human history is taken up into the divine plan of cosmic renovation. Finally, these objectives can be properly understood only within the already – not yet structure of New Testament eschatology which decisively corrects the theological imbalance as triumphalism and pessimism.

Worship...Politics...& John Calvin

2011-01-05T13:07:00.000-08:00

John Calvin has proved to be surprisingly useful for modern ideologies. Despite the common caricature of Calvin as the stern Genevan authoritarian, many scholars have argued that his theology was in fact a dynamic, even revolutionary, cultural and political force. In more popular accounts, Calvin has been portrayed both as a liberal and a civic republican, a proponent of secularism and a renovator of theological politics, a capitalist and a sort of pre-Marxist revolutionary. However, while the rather pliable Calvin has been conscripted into radically divergent camps, these ideological interpretations still have to wrestle with what we might call “the historical Calvin” – that is, the John Calvin who – despite (or on account of) his notions of freedom, equity, and liberty – was rather reluctant to embrace more revolutionary political measures in his own day.
While the political dimension of Calvin’s theology has many facets, it might be useful to approach his writings with an orienting question about his view of the relationship between religious worship and external (civil) order. In many contemporary discussions of political theology, there appears to be an operative assumption that the division between church and state is fundamentally institutional. However, at the outset of Calvin’s discussion of civil authority in Institutes 4.20, the political parameters do not neatly map onto this modern distinction. Rather, Calvin’s doctrine of the two governments (in the Latin version, duplex regimen) appears to resist a simple spatial demarcation of the ecclesial and the civil. What is civil is properly “external,” while the spiritual kingdom encompasses matters of faith and doctrine. On the surface, Calvin allows, these two governments appear quite “divorced” from each other. And, at least in the modern conception of church and state, the terms of this divorce would look quite definitive. If the distinction between the two governments consisted entirely of earthly jurisdictions, then it might be possible to partition off specific spiritual duties from what is common to the entire society. However, Calvin suggests at the outset that it is impossible to entirely dissociate the two governments.
In Calvin’s earliest texts, the political order is a good and proper thing, in that it provides the conditions for human flourishing. Yet, according to Calvin, this basis for civic order was confronted by two primary threats: first, the anarchy of radical Christians who argued that civil power was fundamentally anti-Christian; and second, the tyranny of unbounded princely power which dares to challenge (or simply ignore) the “overlordship of God himself.” To rebut both these positions, Calvin’s political theology adopts a rather marked dialectical narrative. First, Calvin establishes that the kingdom of Christ “in no way inheres” in earthly instantiations of power or social hierarchy (4.20.1). In this way, “the spiritual kingdom of Christ and civil government are things far removed from one another.” For Calvin, this move appears to accomplish two primary ends: on one side, it rejects the “Judaic folly” that earthly objects can enclose and delimit the authority of Christ; on the other side, it allows the Christian to live according to two orders, one in which she may be in subjection to earthly power structures, and another (spiritual) order in which there is “neither male nor female, neither slave nor free.”
After denying that the civic order can in any way determine the conditions or reality of Christ’s spiritual kingdom, Calvin proceeds dialectically to restore –contingently – the conditions by which the two regimen overlap. Or, to state things more precisely, Calvin suggests that civic life, while not sufficient to achieve the conditions of Christ’s lordship, nevertheless serves a proleptic function in advance of that spiritual kingdom. Christians must take care not to deny the compatibility of service in both civil and spiritual life. Rather, “while we are still on earth, Christ’s spiritual rule establishes in us some beginnings of the celestial kingdom.” Calvin even suggests that the external “aids” of civic life are “necessary for our journey” toward Christ’s kingdom. Because Christians are eschatologically prior to the fullness of the kingdom, they must not reject the pedagogic function of the external civil powers, or otherwise risk depriving human beings of their humanitas.
The emphasis on the pre-perfected status of both civil and spiritual kingdoms is a crucial distinction. In each regimen, the pilgrimage is still not yet finished (4.20.2). This penultimacy points out a crucial distinction in Calvin’s political thought regarding the religious quality of external order. Calvin clearly sees the defense of “true religion” as falling under the jurisdiction of the civil ruler – even commending the Duke of Somerset for making the “restoration of religion” his “principal object” (Dedication to Commentary on 1 Timothy. See also: Calvin’s preface to the French New Testament (1543), and his commentary on Isaiah 49:23). But how does this duty not conflict with Calvin’s argument that the spiritual kingdom does not “inhere” in earthly things? If the distinction of spiritual and earthly kingdoms were concerned primarily with specific instantiations of power, the tension would appear to be irreducible.
On this account, it may be useful to make a careful distinction between the spiritual kingdom in se and the protection and observance of true worship. For Calvin, the gospel is the content of the spiritual kingdom, and in light of this overwhelming perfection, everything else is a “matter of indifference” (4.20.1). And yet, Calvin clearly favors the external civil protection and promotion of what he considers true worship of God. In fact, he articulates a two-fold benefit deriving from the establishment of civil order: most fundamentally, it preserves “humanity amongst men” which works toward the “cultivation of upright conduct and decency.” But alongside these clearly external, even secular, virtues, Calvin also grants civil power the duty to establish “a public form of religion amongst Christian.” Therefore, rulers have duties which are simultaneously oriented to the entire populace as well as observant Christians. However, it seems crucial to note that in each case, the authority of the civil ruler is public, or external in nature. Providing for the public worship of God, therefore, is a valid – even necessary – duty of civil authority. After all, kingdoms not founded on Christ tempt God’s judgment (Commentary on Daniel 2).
The external-spiritual distinction raises a number of issues. Perhaps most basic is the question of whether external ordinances can claim any proper relation to the spiritual reality. For example, if the state is able to sanction “true” worship, can it likewise claim to represent God’s kingdom on earth? Calvin clearly wants to reject this latter claim (even though he often fails to emphasize this point when addressing political rulers). But if the magistrate has a necessary duty to promote specific instantiations of public religion, how can Calvin divest the state of sacral authority?
In one sense, Calvin does not wish to strip the magistrate of the sacred. Every individual, most especially a Christian, owes proper obedience to the state as God’s “deputy” (Commentary on Romans 13:4). Even a tyrannical state can, to a certain degree, promote the common good and ordering of society – unlike anarchy (Commentary on Romans 13:3). However, the key to delimiting this divinely-derived authority is the realization that such authority does not reside in the magisterial office itself, but in God’s overlordship. Magistrates “are deputed by God and do his business,” and accordingly, “they must give an account to him.”
When it comes to confronting the implications of a powerful and antagonistic state, Calvin is not especially prone to utopian illusions. “Kings and nations rage” against the Lord’s anointed, and so the Christian life is often one lived “under the cross” (Institutes, 2.15.4). Life under tyranny may be a marginal good (insomuch as it avoids anarchy), but it also lead to wretched conditions of existence (Commentary on Romans 13:3). This realization should lead the Christian to see that “the happiness which is promised to us in Christ does not consist in external advantages such as leading a joyful and tranquil life,” nor in wealth or physical security, which belong properly to the future heavenly kingdom. Because the “kingdom of Christ consists in the Spirit, and not in earthly delights or pomp… we must renounce the world” (Institutes, 2.15.5). Passages like this strain the tension of Calvin’s external-spiritual dialectic to the breaking point. While one might expect Calvin’s emphasis on the spirituality of the kingdom to alleviate his demands for civic piety, it seems that – if anything – the opposite is true. Calvin becomes increasingly concerned with the magistrate’s obligation to protect the church and its pure worship. The inner reality of Christ’s kingdom only serves to reinforce the external religious duties of the state.
Calvin’s contemporary interlocutors are not likely to embrace the fullest application of his political dialectic (even the most ardent theocrats would probably demur from his world-renouncing habit). Yet, what aspects of Calvin’s political thought might still have purchase today? What thematic elements are most relevant to the late modern – or perhaps even post-secular – world?
At least two themes may prove useful. First, Calvin’s distinction between external and internal kingdoms (although not unique among the early Reformed) suggests that, although “godly kings defend the kingdom of Christ by the sword,” political power cannot command the heart of an individual like the Word of God can. As Calvin writes in his commentary on John 18:36, “Neither the laws and edicts of men, nor the punishments inflicted by them, enter into the consciences.” Rather, princes “accidentally” defend the kingdom of Christ “by appointing external discipline” and by protecting the church from wicked persons (this kind of language may find a close cousin in Barth’s description of the church’s “unassuming witness” to the kingdom of Christ in the civil community). Even granting this much, Calvin points out that “the kingdom of Christ is strengthened more by the blood of the martyrs than by the aid of arms.” Any external, civic orientation to the kingdom of Christ is strictly provisional, but nonetheless a proper and good thing.
A second potentially significant theme in Calvin is his early emphasis on how the civil community protects common humanitas. The state, as external regimen, protects and fulfills the original creation ordinance for human flourishing. Yet, because it is external, civic life is desacralized and essentially ordinary. However, on the same account, it is also the proper locus for creational participation in the rule of Christ through the transformation of the Spirit. As J. Todd Billings writes of Calvin, the insistence upon the necessity of Christ and the Spirit for human flourishing and regeneration “does not mean that God must violently intrude upon the ‘natural,’ fallen human.” The fact that every individual shares this basic need for the divine gift should drive us “to embrace the whole human race without exception,” since all bear the image of God. This realization in turn should drive us toward a voluntary, rather than a coerced, participation in the terms of civic life. This definition opens up a secular dimension which make otherwise be closed to religious life and observance. After all, for Calvin worship is an integral part of the civic order. If anything, a political community without the worship of God is hardly a true community.
In this way, the clear eschatological end of human society tends “toward free, voluntary participation of persons in the various structures of society,” even when “this eschatological tension is stretched to the breaking point.” Calvin envisions both the ecclesial and civic communities sharing overlapping external goals. The church maintains a position that is “eschatologically privileged,” as it is a place where coercion has been abandoned (at least in theory!). As such, the Christian community presents a pedagogical model for the state. Because Christ has already taken up His kingship, His people are called to orient their temporal lives according to the anticipatory terms of Christ’s lordship. Therefore, civic life after the ascension is itself a pedagogical activity. And perhaps on that account, the reality of Christ’s spiritual kingdom provides political theology with the means to set favorable terms of engagement with civic life – without pretensions, but not without hope.

The World As God's Body

2010-12-23T09:55:00.003-08:00

In this essay I will attempt to review a typology of God-world relationships to see which views of creation and providence are both consonant with the Christian tradition and appropriate for the 21stCentury. Upon examining four traditional models, I would like to introduce a new concept that would prove to be fruitful upon its application to the church, the planet, and the people of the world. Models of God and the world will include; deistic, dialogic, monarchical, agential, and the world as God’s body.

The first model we will consider will be the deistic one, which arose during the 17th century scientific revolution. It is also the simplest of the five that we are going to review. It imagines God as sort of a clockmaker who winds up the clock of the world by creating its laws and then leaves it to run by itself, with the qualification that God intervenes periodically in natural disasters, accidents, and personal crises. The model has the advantage of freeing science to investigate the world apart from divine control, but it essentially banished God from the world. Of the models we will look at, it separates god and the world most thoroughly; god is externally related to the world as a mechanic is to a machine, who, after getting it going, only tinkers here and there when necessary. To me this model is sterile, distant, impersonal, and is oddly one assumed by man contemporary Christians as well as non-believers.

A second view of god and the world, the dialogic one, has deep roots in both Hebrew and Christian traditions; God speaks and we respond. It has been a central view within Protestantism and was highlighted in the 20th century existentialism. In its contemporary form, the relation between God and the world is narrowed to God and the individual. In the writings of Soren Kierkegaard and Rudolf Bultmann, this position focuses on sin, guilt, and forgiveness and has the advantage of allowing for a continuous relationship with God, but does so at the expense of indifference to the natural and social worlds. In its even more contemporary form, it embraces both Christian and New Age theologies. For Christians the focus is the god-world relationship which focuses on the saved individual, while the New Age folks approach it in a way that is to comfort and satisfied the individual. The dialogic position assumes two tracks; religion and culture with each left to run its own affairs. God and human beings meet but not in the world, only in the internal joy and pain of human experiences. The deistic model kept God and the world totally separate and the externally related, while the dialogic model allows them to touch, but only at one place, the inner human subjects.

A third model- the monarchial one, sees the relation between God and the world as one in the which the divine, all-powerful king controls his subjects and they in turn offer him loyal obedience. It is the oldest of the models, and the one that lies behind the traditional creation-providence story, and one that is still very popular in 2011. It is a personal and political model, which corrects the impersonalism of the deistic model and the individualism of the dialogic. It also underscores the deity of God, because the monarchial imagery calls forth awe and reverence as well as a sense of purpose or vocational meaningfulness, since membership in the kingdom involves service to the King. The model certainly underscores and dramatizes divine transcendence. It accomplishes on of the tasks of a model of the God-world relationship: It emphasizes the power and glory of god.

A fourth model, the agential one is also old with strong backing in both Hebrew and the Christian traditions. God is here assumed to be an agent, a person whose intentions and purposes are realized in history. God is seen as the creator and redeemer of the world, as well as its caretaker. God oversees the world in the guiding it as father, lord, lover and king. When it falls away like a rebellious child, he calls one back through divine sacrifice and compassion. This model has contributed a great deal to the traditional creation-providence story. Along with the king-real model is the backbone of that story, for it is the source of the overarching purposes and goals that are the story’s structure.

In a new and unique model, the world as God’s body as introduced by Sallie McFague, Distinguished Theologian in Residence at Vancouver School of Theology, we are encouraged to focus on the neighborhood in which we live. This model understands the doctrine of creation not to be primarily about God’s power but about God’s love: how we can live together, all of us, within and for god’s body. The world as God’s body is appropriate for our time and is consistent with the Christian incarnational tradition because it encourages us to focus on the people and the planet in which we live. It understands the doctrine of creation not to be primarily about God’s power but about God’s love; how we can live together, all of us, within and for god’s body. It focuses attention on the near, on the neighbor, on the earth, on meeting God not later in heaven but here and now. Creation modeled as God’s body supports and underscores an ecological view of the world. It is entirely opposed to the cult of individualism endorsed by modern relation, government, and economics.
In the model of the world as God’s body, God is the source, the center, the Spirit of all that lives and loves, all that is beautiful and true. This is true transcendence: being the source of everything that is. Our universe, the body of God, is the reflection of God’s being, God’s glory; it is the sacrament of God’s presence with us. Because God is incarnate, meeting God is not a momentary spiritual affair, but God is the reality that surrounds us; as all things are not only created by Him and for Him, but He upholds the universe by the word of His power. In Him we live and move and have our being. This is truly the good news of the advent, God has come to us, God is present, and we can meet with him. This is the second implication of the model; it allows us to meet God now, on the earth, at home. We do not have to go elsewhere, or wait until we die. We don’t even have to be religious, just hungry, thirsty, and have a pure heart.

O’Donovan and American Christendom – I

2010-12-21T09:30:00.002-08:00

Christendom is often seen as a uniquely European development. But does that really hold up?
As Oliver O’Donovan argued in The Desire of the Nations, the legal and political structure was embedded in scholastic and early modern constitutionalist theory. Its fullest expression lay in the “fruitful constellation of social and political ideas which came together in a decisively influential way in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.” According to O’Donovan’s narrative, the symbolic end of Christendom arrived in the United States Constitution’s formal adoption of ecclesial disestablishment. While the early Protestant civic tradition assumed the magistrate’s explicit submission to the rule of Christ, the emerging American civic tradition dispensed with that formal conception of Christendom, and “effectively declared that political authorities were incapable of evangelical obedience.” While O’Donovan cites various Christian parties who supported this dismantling of Christendom, he argues that by accepting a formal secularity (in the more modern sense of the term) the American civic tradition “gave away more than [it] knew.” This critique of disestablishment highlights an important aspect of the early Protestants’ implicit reliance on the patronage of the civil magistrate. Certainly, in the migration from the Old to the New World, that civic tradition underwent a crucial transition. Yet, O’Donovan’s narrative gives very little attention to the uniquely American project of Christendom in Puritan New England. However, the disintegration of the Puritan Christendom raises critical questions about O’Donovan’s political narrative. In the decades leading up to the adoption of the First Amendment, late colonial Puritans were still trying to defend a civic tradition which was under direct assault by the very secular and social forces which O’Donovan laments. A reconsideration of how Christendom was reshaped by the dynamics of the Puritan experience may lead to fruitful deliberation on what conditions are necessary to maintain an explicitly theological system of civic virtue.
The civic theology of the American Puritans occupies a transitional space between the Old and New Worlds. As descendents of the Protestant civic tradition – largely mediated through the evangelical wing of the English church – the New England Puritans had inherited the concept of a “national covenant.” According to the terms of this covenant, God established conditional relationships with specific peoples in which He promised to extend corporate blessing or judgment depending on the nation’s fidelity to the terms of the covenant. In effect, this particular instantiation of Christendom implied a far more tenuous status for political legitimacy. Since the nation was under the direct lordship of Christ, the entire body politic fell under the purview of divine judgment. In the context of this “federal” theology, all citizens of the Puritan commonwealth fell under the terms of the visible-political covenant established at the founding; corporate disobedience resulted in corporate penalty, whether in war, natural disaster, famine, or other temporal means of chastening.
This synthesis of moral and political terms served to establish a basic social cohesion – or what Mark Noll has termed the “Puritan canopy.” At the same time, like the early Reformed tradition, the idea of a national covenant did not preclude certain distinctions of ecclesial and magisterial roles. For example, Jonathan Edwards wrote of how civil authorities properly “have nothing to do with matters ecclesiastical, with those things which relate to conscience and eternal salvation, or with any matters religious as religious” (emphasis original). But he clarifies that there are some civil matters which do “concern religion.” Civil interest is what lies in the general interest, and may therefore intersect with religious affairs precisely because “many things by reason of religion become their civil advantage.” That is, the civil authorities ought to defend religion because religion itself is of general public interest, even as they justify and fulfill their task in a non-ecclesial context.
This presentation of civil authority stands within the bounds of early Reformed civic theology. Yet, at the same time, it appears to open the possibility for a re-definition of ecclesial establishment. While many European forms of Protestant political power abided by the settlement of cuius regio, eius religio, the American Puritans allow for a more dynamic relationship between the body politic and divine lordship. In other words, while the nation as a whole is represented by a legitimate political authority, there is a sense in which the terms of the national covenant are not exclusively channeled through the head of state. This is not an acephalous view of society so much as it is an emphasis on the political – and therefore moral – agency of the entire nation. Within the broadly theocentric framework of the national covenant there was concerted movement for moral reform – one which could often be expressed in moral rigorism.

Puritan ecclesiology

2010-12-03T11:31:00.003-08:00

Somewhat counter-intuitively, David Hall suggests that Puritanism formally held to a more traditional Calvinist definition of ecclesiology – one in which visible holiness was not an essential mark of the church. The early Reformed tradition, wary of the perceived danger of Anabaptist separatism, resisted the inclination to seek “a church besmirched with no blemish.” Calvin enforced the point that the visible church would be “weighed down with the mixture of the wicked” until the end of the age. Hall argues that the “New England Way,” while notionally accepting this earlier theology, is nonetheless a “mixture of traditions – on the one hand, the Reformed system, on the other, the development of voluntarism.” In a key distinction, Puritan ecclesiology introduced the necessity for adult members to testify publically to their true experience of faith as a way to “differentiate ‘visible saints’ from counterfeits,” which eventually lead to the 1662 synodical terms of the half-way covenant.
The figure of Solomon Stoddard casts a complex shadow over the subsequent history of this ecclesial covenant. In several ways, Stoddard retrieved elements of the earlier tradition. Like Calvin, he was skeptical that the visible church was capable of accurately discerning the saints from the hypocrites. And like some of Presbyterian contemporaries, Stoddard approximated a more instrumentalist view of the eucharist as a “converting ordinance.” Consequently, he argued that the half-way covenant, by restricting access to the eucharist, had fomented a pastoral crisis that “hindered the progress of evangelism.”
While Stoddard’s argument recalls themes (largely sacramental) from earlier Reformed theology, Hall argues that it would be a mistake to view him exclusively as a defender of the classic tradition. Stoddard and his theological heirs were fervent evangelists, and were at least as supportive of the emerging evangelical “heart-religion” as was Edwards. Perhaps most striking is the way in which Stoddard recalls and intensifies the classic federal theology while simultaneously extinguishing the distinction between civil society and the congregation. On the former point, Stoddard is clear: Israel’s national covenant in the Old Testament has continuing validity in the Christian age and the New England commonwealth. (“The Nature of a church is the same under both Testaments: A Church is not one kind of thing in the Old Testament and another in the New: But it has the same essence and definition,” Solomon Stoddard, Instituted Churches [1700]. Interestingly, Stoddard sharply distinguished the continuing application of the national covenant from the defunct ceremonial Passover laws, since the his rivals appealed to the latter as legitimating the restriction of access to communion.) On the latter point, Stoddard collapses the distinction between the nation and the visible church, but crucially maintains that the invisible church of the elect cannot be extensively identified within either the citizenry or the congregation. With the invisible elect out of focus, the national covenant itself became determinative of the bounds of visible ecclesial identity (The characterization of Stoddard by his long-time antagonist, Increase Mather, helps to underscore the way in which his proposal was received in the voluntaristic American context; according to Mather, Stoddard wished to see “Enclosures about the Churches demolished, and whatever distinguishes them from the wide and wild World Extinguished.). Stoddard’s considerable influence carried the revision in parts of New England even as it encountered stiff resistance in Massachusetts from Edward Taylor (1642-1729) and both Increase (1639-1723) and Cotton Mather (1663-1728). While both sides in the debate claimed formal adherence to the half-way covenant, and were each driven by pastoral concerns, it seems evident that the integration of society and church was becoming more difficult to preserve with each subsequent generation. As Jonathan Edwards’ response would demonstrate, a split was emerging between the increasingly rationalistic civic society and the pietistic resistance within the visible church itself.

More on Edwards

2010-11-29T08:55:00.000-08:00

While researching Edwards and reading through some of his Miscellanies, a few of his statements stood out (all from volume 13 of his Works):
Edwards is more than willing to state that “heathen philosophers” can be “inspired” by the Holy Spirit. Then he offers this backhanded caveat: the biblical evidence is clear that even Balaam’s ass was inspired, so why not Plato? That said, the very fact that he’s willing to extend inspiration to the unregenerate seems to follow quite well from his overall philosophy of history and creational theology, even as it appears to problematize his theology of religious experience. He’s even open to the idea that the unregenerate philosopher may have received spiritual “benefit” from the inspiration.
Edwards falls very much within the Puritan federal tradition, that is, the idea of a special, divine covenant made with the New England colonies. This covenant is temporal, not extending beyond earthly prosperity or judgment. Harry Stout believes that this belief is a default position for Edwards, and perhaps not fully consistent with his more original theological and philosophical writings. I’m not entirely convinced by this last suggestion, but it definitely presents an interesting tension.
At the same time that he fell back on the national covenant, Edwards also maintained a stance concerning civil authority, in se, which made distinctions typical of the early Reformed tradition. He wrote that civil authorities “have nothing to do with matters ecclesiastical, with those things which relate to conscience and eternal salvation, or with any matters religious as religious” (emphasis original). But he clarifies that there are some civil matters which do “concern religion.” For “by reason of the profession of religion and the difference that matters religious make in the state and circumstances of a people, many things become civil which otherwise would not.” Civil interest is distinguished from matters of conscience, the “favor of God,” and the world to come. Rather, civil interest is public interest, and may therefore intersect with religious affairs precisely because “many things by reason of religion become their civil advantage.” That is, the civil authorities may choose to defend religion because religion itself is of public interest, even as it justifies and fulfills its task in a non-ecclesial context.

More on Barth

2010-11-09T13:16:00.000-08:00

In the turbulent European political milieu of the 1930s, Barth advanced a civic theology that was strongly resonant of the early Reformed tradition. Active in the late years of Latin Christendom, the magisterial Reformed paradigm had been concerned to establish both church and state on properly biblical grounds. While the distinction of jurisdictional powers was maintained in divergent ways, there remained an insistence that both secular and ecclesial rulers owed their authority to divine ordinance – an ordinance which could be reversed if the authorities proved disobedient (although the development of resistance theory was a gradual and not uncontested development). In 1931, Barth approximated the essence of this earlier magisterial doctrine: the church “contains the state in itself” as it represents Jesus Christ alongside the state, only more expansively and directly. Likewise, the fifth article of the Barmen Declaration (1934) stresses that the actions of the state, which are often coercive, are legitimate insofar as they reflect their “divine appointment,” or order (Anordnung). Church and state alike derive their legitimacy from God’s ordination. While they fulfill their commissions in different manners, each is closely tied to the same divine administration. Civil and ecclesial authorities together share the same goals of peace, order, and accommodation of the preaching of the Word.
Similarly, in his essay, “Gospel and Law” (1935), Barth critiqued a key element of the German Protestant consensus of his time: namely, the idea that law and gospel are clearly demarcated both in soteriological as well as theopolitical terms. For Barth, God’s gracious action must be the precondition and substance not only for the redemptive covenant of grace but also for the covenant in creation: “We must first of all know about the Gospel in order to know about the Law, and not vice versa.” The very possibility for reception of the law of creation (creationis lege) is itself evidence of grace. Likewise, it is impossible to speak of the civil realm as if it were not itself an institution of grace (in his Ethics, he refers to the state as an instance of Calvin’s “external means of grace”). Christians must reject any stringent juxtaposition “between the divine gift and the divine task, Gospel and Law … the Christian experience of salvation and Christian service to the glory of God and the benefit of one’s neighbor.” Rather, the “common origin” of these twinned realities is Christ, and therefore they remain integral to each other.
In his early statements, Barth appears to affirm some sense of the old corpus christianum, and of the continuing relevance of the order of Christendom. Considering his theological nemeses at that time, and threatened imposition of theological compromise with Nazism in the German church, Barth’s recapitulation of Calvinist language seems quite instinctual. However, by the end of the Second World War, Barth appears to be somewhat less comfortable with what Oliver O’Donovan terms the “anachronistic Christendom-feel of [his earlier] classic Calvinist assertions.” Does the notion of a corpus christianum hold any weight when secular society has clearly begun to move away from its (explicit) religious commitment?
In his post-war essay “The Christian Community and Civil Community” (1946), Barth resumes his theme of the unity of gospel and law, and therefore of church and civil authority. However, he does so while expanding on his earlier allusions to the church’s role as a “witness” to the state and the coming Kingdom of God. Since for Barth neither the church nor state can claim to embody Christ’s Kingdom, but merely point to it by analogy, each is (or should be) responsible for its discrete actions before God – the church as an explicit witness, the state implicit. The particular role of the church is therefore to call the state out of its “neutrality, ignorance, and paganism” to repentance and proper fulfillment of its divinely ordained mission. What remains rather ambiguous in these later formulations, however, is the extent to which Barth believes the civil order can truly extricate itself from its “natural” state, i.e. paganism. In fact, at times Barth sounds rather pessimistic about the temporal realm, perhaps especially wary of the myriad ways in which the state is able to flaunt its role as God’s “deacon.” While not revoking his older position, Barth now appears rather more skeptical that the state can act with a proper knowledge of Christ. Perhaps this tension between what the state is (de facto) and what it ought to be comes through most clearly when Barth writes of the potential for the existence of both good and bad states: “the reason [that good states exist alongside the bad] is not that the true ‘natural law’ has been discovered, but simply the fact that even the ignorant, neutral, pagan civil community is still in the Kingdom of Christ.” (Oliver O’Donovan objects to Barth’s association of the “natural” origin of the state with “paganism.” Yet, on account of passages like these, Barth appears to make “pagan” a provisional, not definitional, qualification. The state is not yet redeemed, but there is no aspect of creation that is not the realm of redemption.) The disparity between the state as it acts and the state as it is called to be reinforces Barth’s reliance on the church’s prophetic role as witness.
Barth’s skepticism about the civil community’s testimony to Christ seems to inform his more programmatic suggestions. While Barth clearly wants individual Christians to involve themselves in political causes, they make these civic decisions and judgments in an analogous relation to the Kingdom, and not by direct representation. In other words, Christians as individuals, and as members of the church, are “unassuming” witnesses to the Kingdom, as they are careful not to identify themselves with its full instantiation. (At the same time, the Barmen Declaration seems to imply that the “unassuming” and analogous witness of the church to the state can actually appear quite definite in moments of extremity.) Practically speaking, because even sanctified Christians are liable to deep confusion and error, the prospects for true witness are not assured. Both church and state must be wary of the encroachments of insinuating ideologies. In the end, Barth’s preference for language of analogy implies that church and state have a kind of indirect participation in the Kingdom – although that participation generally takes the form of earthly proclamation. While the church witnesses to Christ explicitly, and the state implicitly, in both cases the witness and participation are qualitatively not yet redeemed. This raises a question: What is the substance of the connection between sign (earthly political witness) and thing-signified (the Kingdom)?

2012 & BEYOND

2010-10-29T09:45:00.001-07:00

2012 & BEYOND
We are dealing with a serious sense of disconnect in a lot of our churches. Certainly the mantra of how to effectively reach out to society in culturally relevant ways, without compromising our message or mission has been discussed in Seminary courses all over the nation the last few years.
I am concerned about the fact that many do not seem to realize that the nation has changed. The generation that elected President Obama is not the same generation that elected President’s Clinton or W. This generation is quite different and they are not up and comers, they have arrived.
I am of the opinion that many, if not most leaders in the evangelical church do not understand them. They are environmentally conscious, not offended by same sex relationships, culturally and ethnically sensitive as it pertains to the treatment of others, and well educated. They think critically, are influenced more by education and social relationships than they are history or the church, and are fairly intolerant of the viewpoints of those they perceive the be out of touch with reality as we start the second decade of the 21st Century.
I could certainly list some of the deficiencies of this group, and strategic ways to convert and disciple them, but the point of this particular blog is to convey one simple fact; the leaders of the evangelical community do not understand how this group of people think, and so the church is out of touch with the group of people that elected President Obama.
The nation is not changing, it has changed, and we are going to have to think differently both and relate to people more effectively if we want to become more relevant in the years ahead.

AS A FULLER ALUM, I AM POSTING THIS WEEK'S BLOG BY OUR PRESIDENT, DR. RICHARD MOUW; AS IT MAKES FOR AN INTERESTING READ

2010-10-25T12:03:00.000-07:00

Halloween: Gargoyles and Pumpkins
I have written before about Halloween. I actually like the yearly event. This goes against the grain of some Christian views about the subject these days. I’m glad my parents—themselves not known for their love of “worldly” things—did not get into an anti-Halloween way of thinking. Indeed, they would host the teenagers from church for a Halloween party: ghosts, goblins, witches—the whole thing. Halloween brings pleasant memories from my childhood.

Traveling around Norway this past summer on a two-week vacation, I reflected on some Halloween related matters. Phyllis and I organized our sojourn in good part around visits to the marvelous “stave churches.” Twenty-nine of these structures—built in the 12th and 13th centuries—still stand. The roofs of these churches always have decorated beams extending outward. Often they feature carved crosses, but typically they also feature gargoyles, thus mixing both Christian and pagan symbolism. Obviously the function of the gargoyles was to ward off evil spirits.

When the Lutherans took over these church buildings at the time of the Reformation, they did not remove the gargoyles. This was a wise architectural decision, but also an interesting theological one. The Lutherans were apparently a little more lenient in this regard than the Reformed. In his book Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries, Alastair Duke observes that, while the Calvinists had no plans to abolish the Devil from the world, they insisted nonetheless that the faithful get rid of any hint of “magical” remedies for warding off evil—even though such devices had “brought comfort and consolation to previous generations.”

This banishment, says Duke, occurred at a time when there was no “scientific explanation for meteorological change, “nor any “effective remedies for disease”—which means, he argues, that “it required great faith to forsake such well-tried palliatives and protective measures. We should perhaps be not too surprised if only a few possessed that confidence.”

The truth is, of course, that there existed a “superstitious” underground, even in the strictest Calvinist environs. This was certainly true in Dutch Reformed Holland, Scottish Presbyterianism and Puritan New England: amulets, numerology, hexes, and the like.

Halloween masks and carved pumpkin faces are remnants of measures that were designed to protect people from the power of evil. I’m not arguing that we should revive their original uses. But Halloween is one important occasion for reminding ourselves that the power of the Evil One is still with us. Scary faces will not keep him at bay. But they can be a reminder of the need to be on guard against his wiles. With all of our advanced technologies, we still have not found automatic ways to resist him. The struggle is a spiritual one, but sometimes spiritual battles can be assisted by visible reminders of the Enemy’s presence. After all, Luther threw inkbottles at the Devil, even though he did not really think he could hit him! With that in mind, we should feel free to carve some scary faces on some pumpkins this time of year. And, given the way things are going in the Christian world, it might even be a workable idea to put a few gargoyles on the roofs of our churches!

VANHOOZER & WRIGHT

2010-09-29T12:43:00.000-07:00

Differences over theological method seem to be at the heart of the controversy over the New Perspective on Paul in Reformed circles. Of course, as is often the case in church disputes, the underlying methodological assumptions often remain unstated. On one side, a tradition of Reformed (or broadly Protestant) orthodoxy (RO) inherited a particular understanding of how to interpret the sprawling Pauline canon. Formed by the 16th century disputes with Rome, and subsequent polemics against antinomianism and heterodox views of the atonement, RO has stressed the legal aspects of justification and imputation (or, at least, that’s how it is often presented). On the other side, the New Perspective school (NP), which is itself quite diverse and difficult to pin down, emphasizes the occasional setting of Paul’s theology – his particular focus on Jewish-Gentile relations and (particularly in N.T. Wright’s version) the covenantal narrative of Jesus-as-faithful-Israel and our incorporation into that “faithfulness.”
Both sides operate with rather distinct assumptions about both Paul’s theological aims, and – perhaps more crucially – about how a contemporary theology of Paul should be done. The NP critique of RO (again, expressed most directly by Wright) centers on the charge that RO simply does not understand the origin of Paul’s theology (ad fontes). This “humanist” concern stresses, perhaps ironically, the literal reading of Paul’s theology of justification, sonship, and so on. According to Wright’s NP, the contemporary church must recover this lost theology in order to avoid an overly legal understanding of the gospel.
On the other side, RO is put into the interesting position of defending a more properly “theological” or ecclesial interpretation of Paul (albeit, one that excludes non-Reformational strains of theology). According to the accepted history, the notion of a logical ordo salutis emerges out of 17th and 18th century pietism, and later, from within RO itself. The articulation of this causal order of salvation had several uses, but was particularly relevant for the post-Reformational churches seeking to correct erroneous interpretations of redemption (e.g. antinomianism, perfectionism, Amyraldism, Arminianism, etc.). While defenders of RO would certainly classify their interpretation of Paul as the true and literal one, it is still clear that the RO methodology is, according to Alasdair MacIntyre’s usage, “tradition-dependent.” The irony of this situation is that one would assume that the NP would be more likely to adopt such a “traditional” hermeneutic (since its recasts soteriology as ecclesiology) and that the RO would reject it as an accretion to scriptural doctrine.
And so, it would seem that the NP and RO are at some sort of methodological impasse. However, several Protestant theologians have recently made an effort to reconcile the two views, or at least to establish some sort of doctrinal détente. For instance, Wright’s methodology has run into criticism from his erstwhile ally, Richard Hays, who argued at the recent Wheaton Theology Conference that Wright needs to incorporate an ecclesial-theological hermeneutic into its theology. Otherwise, Wright risks presenting the NP as a sort of “fifth gospel,” an indispensible key to the church’s comprehension of the original apostolic teaching. Hays suggests that the NP should admit that, as Christians, we necessarily read Paul (and the whole Bible) through an incarnational and resurrection-hermeneutic. We come to the text with certain canonical assumptions, as the people of God. The “occasionality” of Paul’s theology is therefore important, but should not obscure the theological framework of our biblical faith. We must trust that the Spirit is still active in preservation of the Tradition.
Perhaps even more relevant to the debate between the NP and RO is Kevin Vanhoozer’s recent effort to reconcile the warring tribes. Vanhoozer acknowledges and appreciates Wright’s emphasis on the corporate soteriology of Paul. At the same time, he wants to question the NP when it assumes that the corporate nature of salvation somehow excludes individual application. At base, Vanhoozer implies that the church must “perform” Paul’s theology; the occasional character of his epistles does not limit possible application to the first century church. In addition, Vanhoozer goes beyond Hays’ methodological proposal to suggest that the NP and RO might actually find common ground on the doctrine of adoption. Adoption, after all, is uniquely relevant both to RO’s concern for how we are accepted by God and to the NP’s focus on our inclusion into God’s family. Here, Vanhoozer draws on the WCF and, more specifically, Calvin to propose the notion of “incorporated righteousness.” Could it be, Vanhoozer asks, that the court that declares us righteous before God is the same court that adopts us into His family?
While the ordo salutis structure in the WCF might lead some to assume that it sides firmly with the perspective of RO, Richard Gaffin and Robert Letham suggest that the Assembly relies on the soteriological framework of union with Christ. While Lutherans traditionally place union subsequent to justification, Gaffin argues that such a temporal-logical sequence cannot be found in Westminster theology. Implicit in Gaffin’s argument is the plea not to place too much weight on the fact that the WCF has the chapter on justification (XII) preceding its chapter on adoption (XIII). Rather, the declarative function of justification and the inheritance of God’s adoption are two sides of the same coin.

Pubs, Prostitutes & the PCG: Part II

2010-09-11T13:38:00.000-07:00

Pubs, Prostitutes & the PCG: Part II

Another evening I was enjoying some dialog at the hotel with the man at the front desk who is from North Africa. It seemed that the passersby were fairly seedy, and my wife pointed out that it appeared a couple of ladies on the corner were not window shopping, but apparently were prostitutes.

Along this road you found some hookers, some homeless, and lots of people addicted to drugs. A couple of streets up the economic conditions improved to more college students or young adults hanging out, then the business sector, the bridge, and over to the University.

During my visit, I couldn’t help but think that a lot of the people I came in contact with, and those Demetria and I spent a few minutes talking to were living in a different world than the people we were meeting at Seminary, and both groups are living in a different world than our crowd in Joplin. Along the strip of sickness and suffering was a little shop with a sign that read, The River Foursquare Gospel Church. Having served as a minister in the Foursquare Church for a decade before moving to Missouri, my heart was touched, as I recalled how Aimee Semple McPherson had a heart to reach the lost and minister to the hurting, using all of the resources and talents at her disposal to do so.

My next thought was more sobering. How many of the folks on the street, in the pub, or even the liberal theologians at the Seminary would be shunned by many of the fundamentalist I am around in Missouri? Perhaps the most important question is simple; what is condition of the heart of God towards all of these people, and are we in alignment with it?

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Pubs, Prostitutes & the PCG

2010-09-11T13:19:00.000-07:00

Pubs, Prostitutes & the PCG

During our time in the great Northwest this July I had some time to reflect. The kids were with their grandparents just north of Seattle, and I went up to Vancouver with Demetria for her Masters of Divinity Residency at Vancouver School of Theology.

It was a beautiful time on the campus of UBC and we had lots of fun going to the beach, eating sushi, drinking coffee and meeting some very seasoned, intelligent people. Most were from the Anglican, Presbyterian, and United Church of Canada, respectively.

It proved to be fairly expensive to stay on-campus so we drove about 8 miles to a motel each night, just south of the hockey stadium. Downtown Vancouver is pretty cool, lots of bookstores, coffee shops, ethnic food, and apparently venues that host punk rock bands.

Adjacent to our hotel was a pub that served as the venue for breakfast each morning. At night they served everything from burgers to salmon, chicken salad and such. While having dinner I was the recipient of a lecture on health care from the heavily tattooed bar tender who was convinced we would be better off following the Canadian or French model. Despite his gruff exterior I found his arguments to be somewhat convincing

Sacramental Theology from a Pentecostal Perspective; by Demetria Bryant

2010-09-03T10:54:00.000-07:00

Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen devotes a chapter of his Introduction to Ecclesiology to exploring a distinctively Pentecostal approach to ecclesiology, and it is telling that he begins by asking about such an approach, “Is there any?” The question is quite justified, echoing the questions posed by Paul D. Lee in light of Pentecostalism’s history:
If Pentecostalism is a movement, is it useful or valid to talk about ecclesiology at all? What does ecclesiology mean to a Pentecostal? At first, Pentecostals were so busy spreading the “good news” of the fresh outpouring of the Spirit “in the last days” that they became unconcerned about forming a denomination. The premillenial urgency of the imminent Kingdom made Pentecostals focus on their readiness, through personal conversion and regeneration, thereby rendering any ecclesiological deliberation rather irrelevant or at least secondary.
Indeed, the influence of this early strong eschatological bent—which has by no means completely dissolved over the movement’s continued life span, but persists as a quickening element in much of its common piety—likely helps to account for a relative dearth of doctrinal, philosophical, or systematic theological reflection that has characterized Pentecostalism historically. Of course, recent decades have seen this trend changing, to be sure. Nevertheless, when we come to consider Pentecostal sacramentology, the question, “Is there any?” could be asked with as much justification as in sacramentology is a part. My own initial answer is, Yes: it is still largely in an undeveloped form, but the resources latent in Pentecostal spirituality hold the case of ecclesiology, of which much potential for developing a conscious theological appreciation of the sacramental character of worship in general, and of those ecclesial rituals that have historically been explicitly recognized as “sacraments” in particular. My goal in this thesis is to investigate that potential so as to demonstrate how, if shaped in a certain way, this area of Pentecostal theology can aid doctrinal rapprochement between Pentecostals and other groups of Christians in the face of some existing divisions. I intend to direct my focus to the Eucharist, but first I must clear a space for talking about sacraments generally from a Pentecostal perspective. That will consume the first part of the paper, and in the second and third major sections I will proceed to engage some theologians of other traditions to determine where Pentecostalism might be able to appropriate some of their ideas.

The Wisdom of Esther

2010-08-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

Conservative theologians have historically battled over the canonization of the Book of Esther because God is not even mentioned in it. It is probable that the religious conservatives of Esther's time judged her for becoming the queen in a heathen court, but it was all a part of God's strategy to save her people, which also included those religious conservatives. The Lord could have saved them another way, but he chose this way for his own reasons.

God gave Esther the wisdom to remain quiet about her faith and heritage until the properttime. I believe that God still places many "Esthers" in positions of secular authority and visibility in music, politics, business and entertainment. At the proper time they use those positions to initiate justice for people and advancment for the church.

Primary Elements of Renewal

2010-08-04T08:22:00.000-07:00

Substitutionary atonement is the heart of the gospel. The father of American liberalism, Horace Bushnell, commented late in his life that there is something in the sacrificial view of Christ's death which speaks to needs deep in the human heart as nothing else can. It is certainly empirically true in history that a failure to assert the Trinity and the sacrifical death of Christ has invoolved a waning of spiritual life in the church. Lets review some of the characteristics of renewal.

1) Justification. Substitutionary atonement is the heart of the gospel.
2) Sanctification. Salvation is repentant faith, this faith starts the process that transforms the believer.
3) The Indwelling Holy Spirit. During this century it is mainly among Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians that there has been a full recognition of the Holy Spirit's place in the church. There is a dimension of corporate waiting upon the Spirit for missionary outreach which is necessary to transcend a self-oriented individualistic piety and begin to carry out the acts of Jesus in the earth today.
4) Authority in Spiritual Conflict. Christ's death and resurrection resulted in the defeat and destrctuion of hte powers of darkness (1 Jn 3:8)

PRECONDITIONS OF CONTINUOUS RENEWAL

2010-08-03T08:27:00.003-07:00

Knowledge of God and knowledge of self are preconditions of spiritual life because revival involves awakening. It is perception of one's own sin (measured by the holiness of God, not by common human estimation) that opens one's heart to the need for justification by faith. However, the 2nd Great Awakening rationalist religion began to stress the goodness of humanity and the benevolence of the Deity, among both evangelicals and liberals. For example, DL Moody centered his message on the truth that "God is Love" and greatly toned down the mention of hell and the wrath of God.
It is important to understand that the American Puritans did overstress "hellfire and damnation." At the same time they interjected the mysteries of God's sovereignty into the foreground of their preaching in a way that was not only paralyzingly inappropriate but without precedent in Augustine, Luther and Calvin. It is only through the cross that we can begin to understand both God's overwhelming love and mercy for sinners and his wrath against sin. The tension cannot be removed by attempting to change God's character.

Continuous Renewal & Its Essential Elements

2010-07-25T12:06:00.000-07:00

Redemption is participator, not imitative. It is grounded on grace appropriated through faith, not merely on obedience. Spiritual life flows out of union with Christ, mere imitation of Christ. When the full dimensions of God’s gracious provision in Christ are not clearly articulated in the church, faith cannot apprehend them and the life of the church will suffer distortion and attenuation.

Essential Elements of Renewal

I. Precondition of Renewal: Preparation for the Gospel
a. Awareness of the holiness of God (justice and love)
b. Awareness of the depth of sin (in one’s own life and in one’s community)
II. Primary Elements of renewal: Presentation of the Gospel
a. Justification: you are accepted in Christ
b. Sanctification: you are free from the bondage of sin in Christ
c. The indwelling Spirit: you are not alone in Christ
d. Authority in spiritual conflict: you have authority in Christ

III. Secondary elements of Renewal: Outworking of the Gospel in the Churches Life

a. Mission: following Christ into the world, presenting the gospel in proclamation & social demonstration
b. Prayer: expressing dependence on the power of the Spirit, individually & corporately
c. Community: being in union with the body, in micro communities and macro communities
d. Disenculturation: being freed from cultural blinds-destructive and protective
e. Theological Integration: having the mind of Christ towards revealed truth and towards one’s culture

The book of Acts shows us that the Christian movement cannot go on to achieve its full maturity unless its mind is fully articulate by theologians like Paul (Acts 9-28) and its cultural limitations transcended by a clear separation of the absolute Christian message from its relative cultural incarnations (Acts 10-15).

FACTORS ACCOUNTING FOR THIS CYCLE

2010-07-05T15:42:00.002-07:00

Generation gap: Renewal is always a need due to the entropy in human nature which guarantees that the vigor of spiritual life will constantly run down, especially in each subsequent generations, unless it is renewed through the channel of dependent prayer. The typical response of God to these prayers is to pour out His Spirit and reviving the declining life of his people, raising up new leaders and turning the hearts of the laity to himself. Sometimes the prayer begins with the laity and other times it originates among the leaders.

The powers of darkness: The spiritual conflict with the powers of darkness continues. Just as in any battle, the boundary lines shift constantly as territory is won and lost. Often the real enemy to be fought in not the visible oppressing powers but the idolatry and apostasy by which the powers of darkness have reoccupied the hearts of God’s people. Behind the human power structures of evil there are malignant forces of superhuman power and intelligence directed by satan. Every expansion of the kingdom of God involves combat with and displacement of these occupying powers. The most important battleground is the hearts of the people.

Biblical Models of Cyclical and Continuous Renewal

2010-06-14T09:06:00.002-07:00

Judges provides the following cyclical pattern:
1) Appearance of a new generation
2) Popular apostasy
3) National Affliction
4) Popular repentance and agonized prayer
5) The rising up of new leadership and restoration

This patter of apostasy, crisis, prayer and deliverance can be seen in major awakenings after reformation and recent American history.

We see from the example of Moses a general principle concerning deliverance of God's people: redemption comes under the direction of leaders whom god raises up in his sovereign mercy in response to the deep longing and intercession of the laity generated under the pressure of defeat or suffering.

We will look at other factors on my next post. (Go Lakers!!!)...

Later Revivals

2010-06-07T09:19:00.001-07:00

The leaders of the Reformation, the Puritan and Pietist movements and the first two great awakenings included trained theologians who combined spiritual urgency with profound leaning. Men who had mastered the culture of their time and were in command of the instruments needed to destroy its idols and subdue its innovations. Later revivals depended more on lay evangelists without formal theological training. While not without positive effects it also lead to a progressively shallower spirituality among evangelicals and a loss of intellectual command.
This was combined with a gradual movement into a kind of worldliness which Edwards had attacked: a covetous immersion in affluence. The dynamic prayerful concern for God’s kingdom was replaced by religious forms and legalistic moralism, camouflaging the laity’s ultimate concern for the feathering of their own nests rather than the enjoyment of God and the advancement of His glory. There was an increasing disunity among branches of evangelicalism and a growing individualism.
There is no single or simple explanation of this transformation. Perhaps the root cause of the decay of evangelicalism in American was the replacement of the old comprehensive concept of revival with the post-Finneyan machinery of revivalism. One cannot minimize the critical and complex interrelationship between reformation of doctrine and structures and spiritual revitalization in the church. Reformation grows out of awakened spiritual interest and spiritual renewal seldom persist long without continuing reformation
The easy road to revival often results in only a simple shift of human depravity to the other side of the coin. It is simply a movement from asceticism (American work ethic with its pride, ambition, avarice, envy, self-righteousness, conformity and respectability) to licentiousness (uncontrolled lust, riotous indulgence in a sensory experience and resistance to authority) or vice versa. Each sees the faults of the other and yet cannot see its own roots in human depravity. Each condemns the other while missing the biblical solution to both. A similar process also happens inside the church.

WOMAN PREACHER IN THE HOUSE

2010-06-01T08:14:00.002-07:00

In 1827, Harriet Livermore (1788-1868), the daughter and granddaughter of Congressmen, became the second woman to preach in the House of Representatives. The first woman to preach before the House (and probably the first woman to speak officially in congress under any circumstances) was the English evangelist, Dorothy Ripley (1767-1832), who conducted a service on January 12, 1806. President Jefferson and VP Aaron Burr were among those in the “crowded audience.”
Sizing up the congregation, Ripley concluded that “very few” had been born again and broke into an urgent, camp meeting style exhortation, insisting that “Christ’s Body was the Bread of Life and his blood the drink of the righteous.”
My hope in sharing this is not only to substantiate the leadership role in the Body of Christ that women play throughout church history, but also to reflect on this setting. We would be fortunate if our national leaders heard such a word today; to repent, be reconciled to God, and walk in purity while serving in humility. It is not too late for the United States to really be a light to the world in many ways, like we have it times past.

THE AWAKENINGS AND ELEMENTS OF RENEWAL

2010-05-24T16:16:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Edwards and the Jesus Movement

At some point near the end of the 19th Century, revivalism became redefined as a movement centered on mass evangelism rather than as a comprehensive renewal movement affecting the whole church and the surrounding culture. It became Fundamentalism, a desperate attempt to hold on to the consensus of Reformation orthodoxy and to enforce it politically within major denominations. This effort failed. The result was that the evangelical stream divided, and the components involved in its original wholeness were distributed in varying combinations among ‘liberals,’ ‘moderates’ and ‘conservatives.’

As early as the 2nd century, the church begins to adopt the OT concept of decline and renewal as part of the historical life of the church. For example: New spiritual life broke out in the church wherever Lutheran doctrines were preached. However, subsequent generations were able to turn Luther’s teaching into dead orthodoxy. The one-sided emphasis on justification, along with the resulting neglect of sanctification and the uses of the law, often produced what Bonhoeffer has bitingly called ‘cheap grace.’ The counter reaction was the birth of Puritanism and Pietism.

HOLLYWOOD

2010-05-18T16:59:00.001-07:00

I have had the benefit of living in a lot of places, and visiting even more. I want to reflect on some cities that I love today. I have lots of post to do about early American church history and other topics dealing with Contemporary Theology, and will be blogging a lot over the summer. However, I occasionally throw in some stuff just for fun.

I have to say living in Phoenix has been my favorite. It is clean, easy to get around in, and has people living there from all over the world. The fashion, music, art and sports are all top-notch. I spent most of my adult life so far in Arizona and wish I still lived there, I really miss it.

Although it is hard to live without lots of sunshine, I think Seattle is a pretty cool city. The people are forward thinking, the food and music are great, there are lots of educational opportunities at UW and other places, and it is by the water. Seattle would be a cool place to live I think.

All in all, how can a person beat living in Southern California? I grew up there in the 1970s and have always wanted to go back. I spent ten or twelve years trying to get back, but landed in Phoenix instead and would go to California and visit a couple of times a year. I hope to be spending more time there in the near future. Los Angeles is probably the place I would like to live most. The Lakers, the Dodgers, a rich spiritual history, and even Hollywood, what else could a person ask for? Perhaps surf and sun? This to go along with millions of beautiful, creative and mildly eccentric people. Los Angeles has it all.

Back From Boston

2010-05-10T18:42:00.002-07:00

My time spent at Gordon-Conwell was amazing! GCTS is part of Boston Theological Institute; which includes Boston College, Boston University, Harvard Divinity School and an Eastern Orthodox Seminary as well. It feels like such an honor to be working on a doctorate at such a fine institution.

Boston was lovely, although I spent most of my time in the Northshore. Demetria was able to fly up for the weekend and we enjoyed going to the beach in New Hampshire; we also enjoyed seeing such a larger concentrations of Irish & Italians, it was lots of fun! We were able to go to an artsy theatre and watch the film The Runaways; which really took me back to my childhood in California in the 1970s, the whole experience was surreal.

During our residency we visited some of the famous sights of the 2 Great Awakenings, along with some cool historical stuff involving Samuel Adams, Paul Revere and even President Washington. It was overwhelming at times. While visiting the former pulpit of George Whitefield, my friend Scott who is an Anglican Priest read from some of his memoirs, and the weight of his words really could be felt in that setting. It is remarkable to think of the influence both Whitefield and Edwards had on our nation (or what was to become our nation) at that time.

I managed to get home at a decent hour on Friday and prepare for the MC Graduation on Saturday night; Demetria graduated with a BA in Biblical Exposition; with honors of Cum Laude and even gave the valedictorian speech. The last couple of weeks have been off the charts. Congratulations to my brilliant, sexy-Sicilian wife and best friend. The Lord is faithful!

Benjamin's Portion

2010-04-21T09:26:00.000-07:00

Benjamin’s Portion
The First Decade of the 21st Century
Benjamin was the last son born to Jacob and in many ways represents the last day church; which is composed of the last spiritual sons to be born.
He was one of three people mentioned in the Bible who were born in Bethlehem along with King David & Jesus. Bethlehem literally means “house of bread: and the last day church certainly has more spiritual food and resources available to it than any other previous generation.
Benjamin had another unique characteristic- he was the only one of the patriarchs names by his father. The rest of the boys were named by their mothers. God Himself is going to name the Church in this last generation. Benjamin means “son of my right hand” in the Hebrew vernacular and it is exciting to note that God’s right hand is where Jesus sits. God’s right hand represents authority and power. There is something being entrusted to the last day church that exceeds that of any other. God has truly saved his best wine for last.

Ill will kills and Good will heals

2010-04-13T08:58:00.001-07:00

Ill will kills & Good will heals
Isaiah 30:15 says “in returning and rest is your salvation & in quietness & confidence is your strength.” Conversely we see in Judges 9:23 that the adversary seeks to get you into strife & fighting by ill will.
What causes ill will? Several things can contribute; 1) Neglect 2) Divorce 3) Trials 4) Loss of a job or a friend 5) Being cheated 6) Thoughtlessness 7) Some one getting in the way of your will for a situation or circumstance.
We can overcome ill will by abiding in peace and the rest of the Lord. Proverbs 16:32 says to rule over your spirit, to command your emotions and mood. We can demonstrate self-control according to Galatians 5:23 by the inner working of the Holy Spirit.
In times that are trying for many, the joy of the Lord and peace that surpasses understanding, along with faith, hope and love that are ours in him must become the norm for our lives. His good will toward us and good plans for our future override the temporal stresses of life and the ill will we face coming from the world, the flesh and the adversary.

THE OLD GROUP

2010-03-25T07:17:00.000-07:00

THE OLD GROUP
I want to take some of the ideas from my friend Marcus Lawson and share them with you, and dialog with some of his concepts myself as they pertain to the reality of church life in the second decade of the 21st C. I hope the brief overview will be helpful.
Every church or ministry that is over 4 years old has an “old group,” those people who love the Lord and have sincere motives, but feel like they must have their say in case anything gets too far out of hand. These people love the thing they call church, but are unwilling to admit how they must change-or that change is even necessary.
I talk to many pastors and folks who attend traditional denominational or even charismatic churches about this. While they always acknowledge how their pastor “preaches the truth” and that he “really wants God” they often diverge into mentioning the “old group” who really runs the church. When the pastor starts to preach about miracles or healing, they rise up and straighten him out. And if he goes too far outside of their comfort-zone, they stage a walkout while making sure they inform everyone why they had to leave. Too often phase three is to say the pastor has come under the influence of the devil, and try to destroy his career and family in the process.
Unfortunately our current church system fosters this behavior because instead of challenging people, discipling them and encouraging them to mature, they are kept busy and happy doing anything except being equipped to actually do the work of the ministry. That way they stay immature and struggle with anything new. A spiritual person is given to constant change, but a natural person is content with keeping “things the way they are.”
We make a grave error when we think that those who don’t like change or new things are simply being cautious or more conservative. It is possible that instead, they are filled with fear and unbelief!? As Christians we must love change and be willing to keep changing! The Scriptures teach us that as a natural person does not even understand the “things of the Spirit,” it is clear our God is a God of new beginnings and this requires change.
In more ways than one, we have been left behind in the things of the Kingdom. Apostolic Christianity born of a Kingdom message and a biblically accurate gospel is erupting in Africa, South America, Asia and even Russia, but is slow to be received in the American religious system, and occasionally it takes the outside eyes of others to help us see our spiritual deficiencies.
In the 1990s thousands of missionaries from other nations flooded the United States to help prepare us for a spiritual awakening. These missionaries to America came here to preach the gospel of the Kingdom, declaring God’s reign and describing His ways and means. While the gospel preaches salvation in Jesus, it also calls us to a higher level of commitment to the advancement of His Kingdom in the earth.

The Divine Equalizer

2010-02-26T08:52:00.001-08:00

“And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women I will pour out my Spirit in those days.” (Joel 2:28-29 TNIV)
The outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as prophesied by Joel and declared to be upon us by the Apostle Peter (Acts 2:16-18) is certainly the divine equalizer. The Lord made it clear the he would pour out his Spirit on all flesh. All people everywhere can now experience the outpouring of power. The rich and the poor, the young and the old, women and men, and all ethnicities are able to receive the promise of the Father. God is showing himself to be consistent as he is no respecter of persons.
It is amazing how the Pentecostal movement has changed the church, impacted the world and actually redefined Christianity. What started in 1906 as a prayer group on Bonnie Brae St. in Los Angeles, California has now become the second largest expression of the Christian faith, numbering over 500 million people world-wide, all of this happening in just over one century.
As remarkable as this is, what is equally amazing is how the Pentecostal experience empowers minorities and promotes gender equality. When the Spirit of the Living God is poured out on one’s life, they are empowered for service; empowered to lead in his church and empowered to impact the world around them. These ideas of gender equality and multi-cultural Pentecostalism need to be explored in greater detail. I am hoping to touch on these themes in the weeks that lie ahead.

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU DON'T FEEL FED

2010-02-24T11:39:00.002-08:00

1. Check and see if there is a root of bitterness. (Heb. 12:15)
2. Examine yourself and see if you are in the faith. (2 Chr. 13:5).
3. You may be in the wilderness of temptation (Matt. 4, Luke 12) Peter went fishing while Jesus did not eat or drink for 40 days.
4. It may be time to feed yourself. (1 Cor. 13:11). Growing up your parents worked for it, then prepared it, but you still have to put it in your own mouth.
5. Here are 4 ways you feed yourselves:
I. Agree with the Word when you hear it
II. Release your faith when hearing the Word
III. Be willing to be corrected and move on with God
IV. Except the truth even when it hurts you, knowing that dying to the flesh is actually life to your spirit.

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU DON'T FEEL LOVED

2010-02-19T10:51:00.002-08:00

1 John 4:16 7 17
Jude 20 / 21

1. First; check & see if you are keeping yourself in the love of God (Rom 5)

2. Second; are you showing love to others
a) find a need and fill it
b) return good for evil
c) love first and sow good, then wait for the harvest (Gal. 6)

3. Third; love yourself!
a) be honest with your self, adit to yourself where you are wrong
b) let other people point out your faults, and try not to be defensive
c) discipline your feelings and emotions. Claim your new identify in Christ

4. Fourth; develop self control (Rom. 10:1-3)
a) human zeal is a natural resistor to God's love
b) zeal demands too much of you and others
c) zeal is one of the strongest forms of the self life! (I will don it! I won't ...)
(Luke 9:23) Deny yourself and take up your cross daily.
(Proverbs 3:5-6) Trust (confidence) in God gives you the power for self-control

ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL?

2010-02-15T08:35:00.000-08:00

I found it interesting spending time with my instructor Michael Scott Moore at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is a brilliant man who is a graduate from Princeton Theological Seminary, and went on the complete his PhD at Drew University. He ran into problems getting accepted into Princeton to do his PhD, which were the quotas. That fact that Dr. Moore is a male and a WASP did not work to his advantage. Such is the world in which we live.
That being said, it was enjoyable to spend time with him and my fellow students. We had a couple of courses together at the extension site in Tucson and would enjoy lunch, talking about missionary endeavors and the advancing kingdom of Christ around the world. I found it interest that we could so easily disagree with each other. We had a mutual respect for one another, and although we did not see eye to eye on a lot of issues, at least we were able to carry on a respectable dialog. Somehow, even if others did not share my vantage point of some issues, I felt a sense of affirmation in knowing they at least tried to understand where I was coming from, and form intelligent responses to my arguments.
I have since found it much harder to carry on those types of conversations. No doubt being at Fuller was a unique opportunity to interact with other leaders from a wide range of expressions in our Christian faith. However, I am concerned about some of the things that I encounter working with my more conservative friends. It seems that if a doctrine or even an opinion is stated that does fall into agreement with someone’s presupposition, they get riled up rather quickly. It may be anxiety, irritation, or in some cases flat out anger, but the response is never pretty.
My point of concern is two-fold; one, what does it say about us if we cannot even discuss viewpoints that others have that do not coincide with our own? Two, does it matter how the rest of the church, and the world view us? Perhaps our point of view is that as long as our core doctrine is aligned properly nothing else matters and God will fight for us. Although I admire my friends who want to live holy and sanctified in this era of human history, I am not convinced such a posture is conducive to effective missiological efforts. The way I explained it to some of my students is that we are in the world but not of the world. We do live sanctified unto the Living God because we are not of the world. However, he has left us in the world for a purpose, and that is to advance the kingdom. We need to engage the culture, speaking the truth in love, if we are going to make disciples of all nations.

Stirrings in Los Angeles

2010-02-02T12:17:00.000-08:00

Stirrings before the Revival
It makes for a fascinating study to survey the spiritual landscape of Los Angeles before the outbreak of the revival at Azusa Street took place. In 1916, Frank Bartleman, a Los Angeles native and participant in the revival left detailed accounts of the stirring that was taking place before the revival, and his experiences during the event itself. Bartleman has proven to be a great source for first hand accounts of revival events, and someone enjoyable to teach on all over the nation and even the world as we reflect on the mighty move of God, which birthed the Pentecostal movement.
Bartleman had this to say about the days preceding revival in Los Angeles, “it would be a great mistake to attempt to attribute the Pentecostal beginning in Los Angeles to any one man, either in prayer or in preaching…’Pentecost’ did not drop suddenly out of heaven. God was with us in large measure for a long time before the final outpouring. It was not a mushroom of a night by any means. As 1906 drew near, it seems that Los Angeles was ripe for a spiritual awakening. Several area churches had been in intercession for a revisiting of the outpouring of the Spirit like in the first century church. Bartleman, a Holiness evangelist was stirring the city with his call for revival. He said that “day and night the Spirit was heavy upon me…until it seemed I must die.” Bartleman was born in Carversville, Pennsylvania on December 14, 1871. He was the son of immigrants. After a difficult childhood he found Jesus on October 15, 1893. He later testified that “the Spirit entered powerfully into my soul.” Soon, Bartleman accepted the call to ministry. He soon found himself evangelizing in the South. While there he witnessed the ill treatment of African Americans. Concerning this he noted “there seemed little justice for the man whom God had made with the black skin.” He developed a love for African Americans and other people groups, who were struggling for equality and opportunity for a better lifestyle, feel that it was these people who “needed our help the most.”
Bartleman lived by “faith,” which often meant living on the verge of poverty and even starvation. His family endured tremendous hardships as they traveled across the country, finally arriving in Los Angeles on December 20, 1901. He said that “the Spirit had led us to Los Angeles for the ‘Latter rain’ outpouring.”
Joseph Smale was also making an important spiritual contribution in Los Angeles. Smale was actually born in England on July 7, 1867. He was educated in Spurgeon’s College in London. He started his public ministry as a street preacher in England’s capital city. Later he pastored a church in Great Britain for three years. Upon resigning the church he immigrated to the United States and assumed the pastorate of the Baptist Church of Prescott, Arizona , a city of particular importance to many who are from that part of the country as it was formerly Arizona’s capital city and still a hot spot for tourism even to this day.
Smale left Arizona and moved to southern California where he became the pastor of the prestigious First Baptist Church in Los Angeles on January 22, 1898. From the beginning, Smale had problems at the church with ten percent voting against his election. These comments from the new pastor were an indication that he was dealing with a more traditional type of church and people. “Reformation is not the first need of humanity, but regeneration. If you would have pure politics, clean government, a moral society with peace and contentment reigning, men must have new hearts, and they must let God work through them as they seek to do his will.”
Smale led the church through a successful building program, but he was always an evangelist at heart. Evening services at First Baptist were always directed toward the lost. Occasionally D.L. Moody would show up and serve as the guest evangelist at their church.
At another point later in the history of this work, a group of the laymen in the church got together, conspired against their pastor, and asked for his resignation sometime n 1902. During three business meetings, one of which lasted eleven hours, members of the church said a number of derogatory things about their pastor. The church minutes reported, “While our pastor was speaking the weight of complaints had been almost perceptibly vanishing and the turning of sympathy toward him could well nigh be felt.” He managed to weather these storms and the church continued to grow and push toward a spiritual awakening. In 1905 Pastor Smale preached a series on “Is There Eternal Punishment for those Who Die Christ-less?” After the series was preached, it seems he was worn out from the stresses he had faced without and within at his church and in the community. He took a sabbatical and visited the Holy Land, Egypt, Greece, and Wales. While in Wales he visited Evan Roberts, who led the mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit there. When Pastor Smale returned to the United States, his first sermon preached back home in Los Angeles was “The Great Welsh Revival.” The service ran long and they elected to continue with the theme and focus, so on Monday and Tuesday he preached sermons on the subject. On Wednesday he intended to do the same but said that “the Spirit took over the meeting” and there was not chance to preach. It was reported that that the Holy Spirit had come upon some of the people in that service in a remarkable way. The next Sunday, revival broke out.

Seymour Goes to Los Angeles

2010-01-27T10:04:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles
Two hundred and thirty years ago, the area now knows as Los Angeles was inhabited by the Gabrielinao, a tribe of Native Americans. These generally peaceful and affable people had helped the land virtually undisturbed for centuries. The Spaniards first visited the area in 1542. More than two centuries later, on August 6, 1771, a group of soldiers, sailors, and missionaries established San Gabriel, the first European missing near present-day Los Angeles.
When the company arrived at the site, they were immediately surrounded by a party of armed Indians who they assumed to be hostile. Fearing the loss of life, a priest unveiled a canvas with a painting of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The natives were “subdued” by the image and threw down their bows and arrows along with their beads and other decorum at the feet of the painting. The incident changed the attitude of Native Americans who then welcomed the European guests to their area.
By decree California’s Spanish governor Don Felipe de Neve on September 4, 1781, the first settlement was established in the area. The founding settlement was established in the area. The founding name was el pueblo de Nuestra Senora la reina de Los Angeles, or, in English, The Town of our Lady the Queen of the Angels. The original party of colonists was composed of eleven men; three Spaniards, two blacks, two mulattos and four Indians-and their families. It is not often reported that twenty-six of the original founders were black.
Heads of households were required to be “a man of the soil, healthy, robust, and without known vice or defect.” Three families left within six months, leaving the town with a starting population of only 32. By 1790 the city had grown considerably with a total population of 141, eighty of whom were under sixteen years of age. Although no blacks were listed, the group included 22 mulattos, 1 European, 72 Spaniards, 7 Indians and 30 mestizos. The area provided a pleasant climate, adequate water and good soil. The colony grew beyond all expectations. In the 1830s, a decade after Mexico declared its independence from Spain, the population reached 1,000 making Los Angeles the largest settlement in California.
In 1846 the United States gained control of California through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. On September 9, 1850, the territory became the thirty-first state to join the union. At statehood, Los Angeles was a humble agricultural village with only 1,610 people. The town had no railroads no natural harbor and very few streets. However, this was soon the change. The gold rush in 1848 started a great migration to the northern part of California and an increased demand for the cattle raised on the rancheros around Los Angeles. From 1850 to 1860, the population of Los Angeles grew by 172 percent to 4,385. In the next decade they had a 27 percent growth to 5,728.
The result of this growth was a great deal of social unrest. Under Spanish rule, law and order were easily maintained by the church and the strong Catholic family. One traveling preacher observed, “The name of this city is in Spanish the city of Angels but with much more truth it light be called at present the city of demons.” Taking not that there was not a Protestant church or minister in the city in 1856, the Star reported the situation “presents a case of destitution, we are certain, without precedent in the state.
The Mexican/Spanish majority in California was almost totally Catholic, but Protestant Christianity made some early inroads into the state. Some of the trappers and traders who worked their way into the state were Protestant Christians, and it is interesting to note that the President of Harvard, Edward Evertt, exhorted miners to go to the West Coast “with the Bible in one hand and your New England civilization inn the other and make your mark on the people and the country.” The Los Angeles press also appealed for missionary assistance.
The California Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal church organized on April 6, 1865. California had over 4,000 “free people of color” at the time. The first AME church in the state had been dedicated in San Francisco more than a decade earlier, on February 22, 1852. The Episcopal Church and African Methodist Episcopal Zion church were also involved in early missionary work among California’s black population. It can be contended that although Los Angeles went through many changes, it remained a Mexican pueblo until the 1880s. In 1887, competition between railroads led to a rate war, causing the city to grow dramatically. Los Angeles experienced a real estate boom and completed the transition from pueblo to American city.
In 1880, the census showed 11,183 inhabitants. Because Los Angeles had a population of less than 10,000 previous to this time, governance of the city had been controlled by acts of the state legislature. By 1889 the city had drawn up its own charter and began self government. A mayor along with nine councilmen and a board of education were elected. By 1885 the population had reached over 20,000, but this was only the beginning as we all know. By the year 1890 the city was over 50,000. Only a small percentage of the city, around 1200 people was African American. Many of these had fled the oppression they had endured in the Southern States. In another ten years Los Angeles was over 100,000, and by 1910 the population was 319,000.
When the revival started on Azusa Street in April 1906, there were approximately 228,298 residents in Los Angeles. This was more than double the figures from federal census taken only is years previously. Los Angeles was the seventeenth larges city in the United States.
The population of the city is only one facet in the story of this growing, sprawling urban area. Another aspect was that it had developed a reputation for racial equality. It is accurate to note that Los Angeles was, always had been and still remains a multicultural city. It is also justified to argue that in general, African Americans were treated better in Los Angeles than they would have been in Texas or other parts of the South. But to say that there were not still obstacles to overcome at this time in our national history would be inaccurate.
It is true that the city offered more opportunities and equality, but African Americans in Los Angeles still did not have the privileges for advancement that were available to the whites. It is fair to say that a de facto segregation pervaded the city and blacks and other non-whites were often refused food in restaurants, rooms in hotels, tickets at theaters, and denied other public accommodation. They were also denied communion by religious congregations, denied affiliations by commercial organizations, and membership in metropolitan associations.
Los Angeles newspapers were filled with advertisements and cartoons that were insulting and demeaning to African Americans. There was a definite tension between the races. On April 6, 1906 a young black man named John Davis was taken into custody but he managed to run away, fearing he would be lynched. A mob of over 100 African Americans tried to prevent him from being arrested by a police detective. This event happened just days before the revival at Azusa Street broke out. In the midst of this turmoil, God sent William Seymour, a humble servant of the Lord who was larger than life, about petty strife, racial tension, and lived in a higher realm of faith, hope and love.

Management Myths

2010-01-14T12:48:00.001-08:00

1.I can only manage me. I have the power to choose how I act, how I respond, how I speak, how I think and how I live. I cannot manage everyone else and God did not call me to the Holy Spirit for everyone else.

2.I must know what is important. The leader must know their priorities. What is the most important area to spend your time? Where should the money you have be spent?

3.I have to say no. A leader cannot serve effectively until they know how to say no. Many leaders struggle with time because other people have failed to manage their time and create a crisis for the leader. In these cases much time can be lost. The leader must sometimes say “No” and not allow their time to be controlled by a faux emergency.

4.I must smile. In a recent conversation someone mentioned to me that they were told some incorrect information. They asked how they should respond. I replied, “Just smile.” There are times it is best to not try and correct certain people and not engage them in a useless and meaningless educational effort. Just smile!

-here are some beneficial points on managment from our General Bishop, Charles Scott, enjoy!!!

1stgame.jpg

2010-01-09T14:20:00.001-08:00

Mutual Submission

2010-01-04T06:32:00.000-08:00

I am interested in the idea of mutual submission. It certainly seems to be an idea inspired by the Holy Spirit as Paul instructed us in Ephesians 5:21 to “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” We are all familiar with the passages that offer instruction for the family, and they are quite clear. Children are to obey their parents, wives submit to their husbands as unto the Lord, and husbands love their wives and even follow Christ’s example who laid down his life for his bride.
It seems reasonable that laying down our life for our spouse involves putting their needs ahead of our own, and submitting or inclinations and desires to prefer theirs. This does not cause the wife to become head of the home, but certainly empowers her to become a partner, part of the decision making team, and also to feel secure in knowing that she is loved, cared for, and will not be dominated by another person’s self seeking inclinations.
We are living in trying times, when the definition of family is being redefined by society. It is wise to stay aligned to the anchor, God’s Word. His plan works. Mutual respect, cooperation, love, and yes even mutual submission help advance the kingdom of God, as healthy families create healthy churches, and a healthy witness to a watching world.

Wedding Bells

2009-12-14T08:21:00.001-08:00

It was a lot of fun to be at our friends wedding this weekend. They are a lovely couple and it was clear that God has put them together. There is certainly a lesson in that. Marry the person that God has appointed for you to marry. Other than giving our life to Jesus, what could be more important?
The late Kenneth Hagin said that in his sixty-plus years of ministry, God had often told people who took the time to inquire of him regarding his will not to get married, though Brother Hagin had never experienced God saying yes. From his perspective, people could ask God for permission to get married, & if it was not his will, he would say no. Can you imagine that? God is willing to save us from a lot of heartache if we would follow the example of King David and inquire of the Lord before we make major life decisions. God often leads us by closing doors & avenues, as often as he does by opening them. One of the keys is to be fruitful where we are at, and remain patient, and he will open things up in his timing. When he does, there will not be as much uncertainty, and often we will experience a greater sense of peace… & life.
Hope some of this helps someone. Happy Holidays! J Bryant

WILLIAM SEYMOUR: HEARLD OF A MULTIETHNIC PENTECOSTALISM

2009-12-02T12:16:00.000-08:00

In 1883, when William was thirteen, his parents purchased a little over four acres of land in nearby Verdunville, about a mile and a half east of Centerville. The following year the family moved there. Adjacent to the Seymour home, the Baptists had started a church. There is some speculation that the Seymour’s may have attend the church from time to time because it was so close, but they maintained their membership in the Catholic Church in Franklin.
During this time, after the Civil War, Simon made bricks for a living and also planted crops on the small family plot. During the period of reconstruction the Methodists and Baptists sent evangelists and teachers throughout the South to establish schools for the children of former slaves. The Freedmen’s Bureau, a grossly over-burdened and under-funded Federal agency bore primary responsibility for their ongoing welfare. The census for 1880, when younger brother, Simon, was both enrolled in school where they received basic literacy skills. When they were not in school, they worked as farm laborers.
Simon Seymour had become sick with intestinal problems while serving in the Union army. It had required hospitalization. During the summer of 1891 these problems became acute and he was placed on disability even though he was only 54. This continued to spiral into a steady decline and he died in November of 1891. The next few years were very difficult for the Seymour family. They managed to keep their property. William was 21 when his dad died and took on the primary responsibility for caring for him mom and younger siblings. They continued to grow a little corn, a few potatoes, and some other vegetables, but they had very limited income from the sources. As a result, in 1895 William left Louisiana and made his way to Indianapolis.
Indiana
During this time period it was not common for former slaves to leave the South. African American immigration to the urban centers of America, especially to the North and the West did not really start taking place until the 1920s. At that time, the African American communities in New York and especially in Chicago and Los Angeles grew by leaps and bounds. In the 1890s most African Americans believed that it was just too risky for them to travel to unknown areas of the country. It was the unfortunate case that after the Civil War angry whites were developing new strategies to keep African Americans disenfranchised. They wanted to maintain a cheap labor force that they could control, and they did so both through legislation and intimidation. In spite of the prejudice and racism of so many whites and the rising number of “Jim Crow” laws throughout the South, most African Americans chose not to move. There were exceptions to this rule, like a planned migration to Kansas that brought around sixty thousand African Americans there between 1874 and 1878.
The primary reason that African American men the age of William Seymour left the South was almost inevitably related to economic opportunity. They had job offers other places or they felt they could find a job somewhere else. William Seymour chose to move North, to Indianapolis so he could find work that was not n the fields of some former plantation. While Indiana had been aligned with the North during the Civil War, and it was home to many Quakers and holiness people who had worked to free the slaves, it was also on the way to becoming a stronghold of white supremacy and in the 1920s, of the revitalized Ku Klux Klan. After 1831, and for a generation to follow, all African Americans in Indiana were required to register with county officials.
In spite of these apparent dangers, William Seymour moved to Indianapolis and settled within the boundaries of the historic African American community at 127 ½ Indiana Avenue. His room was in a two-story apartment building with a central staircase. The area in which it stood was decidedly industrial in nature, with a railroad spur line running within 65 feet of his room. The stagnant Central Canal where neighbors emptied their garbage ran within a half block of Seymour’s apartment. It was a nosily place because of it’s proximity to the trains. By 1898 he had found more suitable housing, this time on a narrow street at 309 Bird. He was surrounded by large yards, horse stables, a few small apartment buildings and a Methodist church. This place was also a bit closer to Indianapolis’ downtown area where he worked.
Each edition of the Indianapolis City Directory published between 1896 and 1898 listed Seymour as being employed as a waiter. He was employed in three different upscale hotels in Indianapolis during the years that he lived in that city, the Bates House, the Denison House, and the Grand Hotel. President Lincoln actually stayed at the Bates House at one time. The Grand Hotel served as the unofficial headquarters of the state and national Democratic Party in the city. President Grant had stayed there at one time. The Denison Hotel served as the state headquarters to the Republican Party for a number of years as well. The fact that Seymour, being from the fields of Louisiana found jobs at such posh settings says a lot about the favor of God on his life as well as his ability to adapt, to learn and to serve.
It was during Seymour’s time in Indianapolis that he had his conversion experience. In 1914 Charles Shumway, a Methodist minister who was writing a baccalaureate thesis for the University of Southern California, interviewed William J. Seymour. He noted that while Seymour was in Indianapolis, he had been converted in a “colored Methodist Episcopal Church.:” While we do not know which congregation that was, there are several possibilities. Bethel African Methodist Episcopal church is one such possibility because it was the strongest African American congregation in the area at the time and it was fairly close to Seymour’s second apartment. Another possibility is the Meridian Street Methodist Episcopal Church, which stood across the street from his second address as well. A third possibility was the Simpson Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church in the city. It was led by an African American pastor.
While it was during this time that William Seymour would have become familiar with the work of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, Shumway tells us that Seymour soon left the Methodist church over two important issues. First, the Methodist Episcopal Church, like most Protestant churches of that period did not subscribe to the doctrine of premillennialism. Premillennialists believe in a literal return of the Lord before a literal period of one thousand years (millennium) during which He will rule over the earth. The Methodist church held to an “amillennial” position that is a position in which the millennium is viewed as a figurative or spiritual reality and not a literal reality to which the return of the Lord might be connected. Most other Protestants were optimistic postmillennialists, who embraced a form of Social Darwinism, that is the progressive evolutionary theory by which society would become better over a thousand years, after which the Lord would return and rule forever. Second, Seymour differed with the Methodist church on the role of “special revelations.” The Methodist church did not give them much value. Seymour did.
Mother Emma L. Cotton, an African American preacher and a friend of Seymour’s was an early participant in the Azusa Street Mission. She claimed that Seymour was converted and sanctified among the Evening Light Saints. Today we know this group by the name Church of God (Anderson, IN), and we have been blessed by their musicians like the Gaithers and Sandy Patti. It is possible that Seymour was converted at an AME church, and then went on to worship with these other saints while living in Indianapolis. They were very active in Indiana during the time Seymour lived there. His time with them may help to explain several key ideas that he took hold of. The Evening Light Saints were big on preaching about and longing to produce a new “Reformation” in the Church. Interestingly enough, the Evening Lighters also practiced racial and gender equality at a time in our national history in which this was not fashionable.
In recent years, several historians in the Pentecostal movement have claimed that Seymour served as a minister with the Evening Light Saints during his time in Indianapolis, but as of yet they have not produced any evidence that documents this claim. When William Seymour ultimately arrived in Los Angeles, he was committed to a policy of non-sectarianism, the equality of the races, and the equality of women and men. It is possible his time with the Evening Light folks helped shape his views in these areas. That said, it should be noted that he did not remain with the group for long.
During the summer of 1900 Seymour returned to his home in Verdunville, Louisiana. He was working as a farm laborer at the time the census was taken. His younger brother, Simon, would continue to live on the family farm. His sister Julia had become the primary on-site family caregiver for their mother, and her younger brother Jacob who was physically handicapped. Throughout the years of his absence, William had probably continued to contribute to the family income.
Oral tradition originating in the African American “Apostolic” tradition in Indianapolis suggests that during his stay in Indianapolis, William Seymour had been influenced by another holiness preacher and teacher, Martin Wells Knapp. In some respects, Seymour’s position was closer to the theology of Martin Wells Knapp than he was to that of Daniel S. Warner. In 1900 Knapp had established “God’s Bible School and Missionary Training Home” in Cincinnati, Ohio. It looks much the same today as it did at that time. The motto of the school was “Back to the Bible.” The advertisements for the school that circulated in various publications described it as “Pentecostal” and like Warner’s work in Indiana, as “non-sectarian.”
The term “Pentecostal” was commonly used across the holiness movement at the time. It did not identify the school as having sympathies with those who spoke in tongues, but rather, with those who held to two works of grace-salvation and sanctification. This history runs deep and is still and issue within the various Pentecostal denominations today. Many believe that after salvation there is simply a subsequent filling, or baptism of the Holy Ghost that allows for holy living and demonstration of the ministry that Jesus did by his power today. That said others still believe in distinct baptism that is called a work of sanctification, thus you will still hear some older evangelist say they are “saved, sanctified, and Spirit-filled.”
The ads that ran for the school claimed that the scriptures were being taught by sanctified, Spirit-filled teachers. So the term “Spirit-filled” became language commonly used to denote teachers and other ministers who were part of the holiness movement. Later Pentecostals would appropriate the term “Pentecostal” for themselves, filling it with new meaning to identify those who believed that they had received the same baptism in the Spirit that the believers had received on the day of Pentecost that is described in Acts 2. So, the term “Spirit-filled” would also indicate those people who had received what they understood to be the baptism in the Holy Spirit with the biblical evidence of speaking in other tongues. Eventually, holiness people would release their grip on these terms in their desire to distance themselves from tongue-speaking, “Spirit-filled” Pentecostals. One powerful example of this eventually came when in frustration the line between speaking in tongues and baptism in the Spirit, dropped the designation “Pentecostal” from its name in 1919 to become simply the Church of the Nazarene.
Three important factors must have attracted Seymour to study at “God’s Bible School” that year. First, Knapp’s school was racially inclusive; blacks and whites studies did by side. Second, Knapp was an avowed Premillennialist. He taught that Jesus would return prior to a literal millennium. Third, Knapp took “special revelation” seriously. A decade earlier, Martin Wells Knapp had authored a book titled “Impressions.” It described how to discern whether a person had received “impressions” from god or “impressions” from Satan. Knapp was unique, for such subjects were not mentioned too often in traditional white, Christian circles and when they were discussed, they were typically set aside in favor of rational understandings of God’s direction based largely on the interpretation and application of biblical texts.
It is safe to content that William’s interest in “special revelation: may actually reflect another aspect of his years of formation. He had undoubtedly heard appeals to dreams and visions within southern Louisiana’s African American community. There are many “slave narratives” going back to the 18th century, that speak of slaves talking and receiving guidance through visions and dreams, hearing voices, and having different states of altered consciousness like visions and trances. All of this suggests that the role of what might be described as “special revelation” was widely accepted within the African American community.
Seymour was certainly aware that similar things were frequently invoked in the “Hoodoo” tradition which was prevalent around Centerville and Verdunville. He was aware of the possibilities and potential dangers that this type of phenomena would bring about. Dreams and visions had provided direction to many people in God’s Word, both in the Old Testament narratives, and among the Spirit-filled believers in the early church. William most likely found some resonance in the way Knapp wrote about the need to take visions, dreams, and internal voices seriously, while warning his readers to discern the spirits in order to recognize which manifestations came from God. Seymour’s attention to this subject would pay dividends when people at the Azusa Street Mission, both black and white, and soon people from various ethnic background who lived in Los Angeles, and eventually people from all over the world began to claim to be seeing visions and having “prophetic” type of experiences. The words “prophetic experience” would include a wide range of similar yet unique spiritual encounters such as a vision, dream, trance, being caught up into the Spirit and the like. William was often required to seek God for guidance, and be able to interpret dreams for others.
While Knapp ran the Bible school, he also managed a publishing company know as the Revivalist Office. Among his publications were a number of books that circulated throughout the holiness community, which were often distributed by merchants who carried them door to door. He published a magazine called God’s Revivalist. Students were offered courses in English grammar, rhetoric, orthography, penmanship, reading and music. The curriculum was very basic, and students evidenced various levels of previous schooling.

Demetria's work on Bathsheba

2009-11-21T07:29:00.000-08:00

Bathsheba

Bathsheba play an important role in the effort to make Solomon king, but the type of women she really is, the outline of her character is sort of blurry. She also plays an important role of mediator in the prophet-politician encounter between Nathan and David. , and this is not unusual given the other mediator figures in Kings. Not to mention the roles played by female mediators generally in the ancient Near East. Still, this is not the only role she plays. By combining two verses together, we can determine a couple of things. One, that she is the daughter of a man named Eliam and two, that a man named Eliam is the son of Ahithophel, one of David’s royal counselors ( 1 Kings 23:34). Whether these “Eliams” are one and the same person is one and the same is not easy to determine. To complicate matters further, the only name we have in Chronicles is “Bathshua” (1 Chron. 3:5). So, we simply cannot say for sure whether Bathsheba, as some confidently argue, is in fact the granddaughter of Ahithophel, no matter how this might make the episodes involving her more dramatic.
Faced with sketchy details, many simply colorize her character. Alice Ogden Bellis, for example, portrays the young Bathsheba as “an innocent victim of David’s lust.” Other authors view her not as a “victim” but as a shrewd conspirator who entraps David, then replaces him with the fruit of her womb, the result of their sexual relationship. Another author takes an anthropological approach, and suggests that David’s seizure of Bathsheba is a classic example of a king abusing a subordinate (Uriah.) Others simply wonder whether the lack of clarity regarding these events might actually be part of the author’s strategy, i.e., to make the reader reflect on Bathsheba’s character.
Initially, in 2 Samuel, Bathsheba is a “flat” character whose function is simple a) to be a married woman and b) t have adulterous sex with David. Later, as Abishag replaces her, her role matures from “sexual partner” to “favored wife” to “queen mother.” So, some it is fair to claim that the second mention of Abishag the Shunammite attending David in 1 Kings 1; 15 so strongly contrasts with the paragraphs’ opening description: “Bathsheba, who was once young and attractive like Abishag, is herself now again, and has been, in a sense, replaced with Abishag, just as she comes for the purpose of replacing David with Solomon.”
Later, when Adonijah comes to Bathsheba to ask for Abishag as a “consolation prize” (or more likely, as his ‘agent’ to help bid for the throne), Bathsheba’s response is measured and cautious. Either she is naïve, or indecisive, or last but not least, she intentionally plots revenge to try to cripple David.
All of these possible interpretations are interesting, but we need to examine them carefully against the story’s intra-textual context. Reading this story in this context allows us to see something which we should not see otherwise-that the story of “Bathsheba’s Plight” is really the story of Bathsheba’s plight. It seems to me that many interpretations fail to observe that in this episode, and others Bathsheba goes through a string of injustice. Not all of the stories are identical but issues raised are clear in 2 Kings *:1-6, 1 Kings 21:1-29 and 2 Kings 21:1-26. These Biblical stories take us deep into the lives of the social down and outers, as well as rich and powerful people.
Both Bathsheba and the homeless Shunammite are powerful women forced by tragic circumstances to beg for help. The parallels are remarkable. Both women lose their sons: Bathsheba at the hands of God (2 Sam. 12; 18); the Shunammite women by an unnamed illness (2 Kings 4:21). Both women find themselves marginalized by circumstances beyond their ability to control; the Shunammite by famine, Bathsheba by Jerusalem’s ever changing political situation. Both women work alongside God’s prophets to get their message through to the king: Bathsheba with Nathan, the Shunammite with Elisha. Both women have their sons’ lives prophetically saved: Elisha miraculously; Nathan politically. Also the preservation and maintenance of her ancestral land is an issue (Ruth 3:1). Like Esther, Bathsheba has to figure out how to save innocent blood, her own relatives’ no less, from coming destruction (Esth. 4:11).
The point of the deepest parallels comes when each mother has to gather their courage and go up before the king. Having just lived with the Philistines for seven years the Shunammite returns to Israel only to find herself thrown into an unjust situation, the loss of her ancestors’ estate that was rightfully hers. Bathsheba’s plight is even more desperate. Waiting for David to keep his promises, she wakes up one morning to find herself thrown into a dangerous role of “rival queen mother.” The “son of Haggith” (Adonijah) and the “son of Bathsheba” (Solomon) cannot occupy the same throne at the same time. So becoming somewhat desperate. She apparently decides that the only way out of their situation is to beg for mercy. Otherwise both she and her son will become criminals. The story shows us the harsh realities of an unjust situation. Life can become hard when promises are ignored and the land is seized, when children are sacrificed and covenants are broken. This theme is a raw nerve in Israel’s memory, it throbs constantly, and nags persistently and simply will not go away. Bathsheba’s plight is the same as Naboth’s, the peasant farmer who stands up to his powerful king. Her pain is the same as that which surrounds and invades the lives of those parents who watch in horror as Manasseh kills their children in ritual human sacrifice. Preservation is what motivates this mother; we are talking about survival, not selfish-ambition.
I know of another mother who is fighting hard, like Bathsheba, to save her son. She wants to save him from many things: financial struggles, social troubles, spiritual death, and marital anguish- all of the demons who haunt young people today. The odds against the mom are stacked against her. Her ex-husband, the boy’s biological father, is physically abusive, religiously fanatic, sexually perverse, and emotionally disturbed. Instead of providing for his son, he stalks him like a predator. Between the rounds of being drunk and jobless, he shows up to harass his ex-wife and tear down his son, even when the court orders are supposed to keep him always.
The son loves his mother very much and wants to love his dad as well, but he is so full of rage that he does not know what to do. Because of this rage, no one really knows what to do with him either. Our church had tried hard to welcome him into the youth group, but it did not work. The kid picks too many fights with the other kids, and other parents are asking his mother and the youth pastor to “do something” about him- but no one really knows what to do. He has enough rage inside him to fuel ten more teenagers not just himself.
To make matters worse, his Mom is dying of a terminal disease. Many doctors have pronounced her incurable, and many times her friends have taken her to the emergency room. Her only request has been to see her son graduate from high school, a request she puts before the Lord every day. Her plight really reminds me of Bathsheba’s plight, and leads me to suggest the following possibilities for interpreting this text.
First, life is not always fair, and stories- especially biblical stories- do not always have neat and tidy “happy endings.” We need to be honest, with others and with ourselves. To argue otherwise is to live in a fantasy world, and not the world of the Bible. Simply put, it is poor theology. Who knows what Bathsheba is thinking when she first receives that summons from David? Who knows what she feels when she first hears the news about Ammon’s murder, then Absalom’s rebellion, then Adonijah’s coronation? It is clear that David’s death does not force her into a future as hopeless as the Hindu widows who throw themselves on their husband’s funeral display. Still it does not appear that she imagines that she will have to plead for her son’s life from his own father.
Second, justice is postponed. To put it another way, people do not always do justice on our timetable. As in the story o Tamar, sometimes there is a long wait (Gen. 38). As in the story of Jesus, sometimes justice fails to be dished out in this life at all! Naboth’s relatives watch helplessly as Ahab and Jezebel get away with murder. The parents in Manasseh’s kingdom lose their children to the horrors of child sacrifice. “They did not see the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance” (Heb. 11:13).
Third, God remains faithful. One of the members of our church, for example, anonymously took on responsibility for this family as a special project. Checks arrive monthly to pay for rent and food and court costs and medical bills and anything else she needs. Just as Nathan helps Bathsheba, so God uses a Christian couple who happen to be wealthy farmers to save his sister-in-Christ and her family. Faithfully and regularly the checks come, even as progress in the families’ lives seems to be slow. The farmers do not just talk about serving, they serve. What they do not do is stand around complaining about the “irrelevancy of the “Church.”

WILLIAM SEYMOUR: HEARLD OF A MULTIETHNIC PENTECOSTALISM

2009-11-05T12:24:00.000-08:00

The Grandfather of Azusa
Charles Fox Parham (1873-1929) presided over a Bible school in Topeka, Kansas. He was a true spiritual father, and many consider him the father of the modern Pentecostal movement. Even though he would later reject many of his own spiritual children, his part in this movement must be recognized and understood.
Parham was a seeker of God who was constantly challenged by what he viewed as the great chasm between biblical Christianity and the then-present state of the church. He sought the Lord for what he considered to be a true, biblical expression of Christianity. As he was keeping a prayer vigil on New Year’s Eve of the year 1900, he experienced the spiritual gift of “speaking in tongues,” or “glossolalia,” right after midnight on January 1, 1901, has understood then how this one event would be used to define Christianity in the twentieth century. Speaking in tongues or the use of other spiritual gifts is by no means unique in the history of the church. Many
Many reformers and revivalists had such experiences. Even so, Parham’s experience came at what could be called “the fullness of time,” or a time that was ripe for the harvest of a recovered truth. His experience created a high interest, at least partly because of the dry and lifeless state of the church at the time. Also, Parham was not known for emotionalism or exaggeration, but rather the opposite. He was conservative and resolute, which at the time gave even more credibility to his experience.
A couple of years after his baptism in the Holy Spirit, Parham’s health broke down and he was forced to move t Houston where he could stay wit friends. His strength was recovered and he began another Bible school in the Texas port city. William Seymour later became one of his students.
William Seymour was born in Centerville, Louisiana in May of 1870. Centerville is around 12 miles from the southern coast of Louisiana. His parents, Simeon and Phyllis were former slaves. Most immigrants entered the region through the New Orleans port in the 1700s and brought their languages and cultures with them. Many of the immigrants who moved into the area were of the Roman Catholic faith. To help settle the land many of them brought slaves with them. The fact that the control of this region moved back and forth between the Spanish and the French meant that ultimately a culturally diverse representation of French, Cajun, Spanish, Portuguese, and Afro-Caribbean cultures such as Creoles dominated in the region. This also resulted in a population of slaves who came in varying shades of color. Those of a lighter hug-often the offspring of forced interracial unions between female slaves and their white owners- were designated as “mulatto” and often were assigned jobs to work around the house. Slave’s weight darker skin was designated as “blacks” and had the difficult labor of working in the fields in hot and humid conditions.

2009-11-02T07:40:00.000-08:00

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

WILLIAM SEYMOUR: HEARLD OF A MULTIETHNIC PENTECOSTALISM

2009-11-02T07:31:00.001-08:00

WILLIAM SEYMOUR: HEARLD OF A MULTIETHNIC PENTECOSTALISM
The strength and longevity of anything that is built will be affected by the strength of the found it is built upon. The church that is built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ will prevail forever just as he has. Any other foundation will ultimately fail. We must not even build upon the foundation of church history, or revival. Only the Holy Spirit can truly build the church upon the true foundation, and openness to him in the work of the church is the most important element of true New Testament church life. Possible the greatest contribution to this since the first century we owe to the great saints who led the revival at the old, broken down mission in a dirt poor neighborhood of Los Angeles-Azusa Street.
The Apostle Paul also warned that we must be careful how we build upon the foundation. He declared that all “wood, hay, stubble” (I Corinthians 3:12 KJV) will be burned up and that only “gold, silver, and precious stones will remain.” So in studies of churches or movements we have to look for things that have proven to fall into one of these two categories. The great Apostle also promised that fire world test the quality of every work. Revival fire is one of the ultimate tests, and Azusa ignited one of the most powerful, most enduring fires in nearly two thousand years of church history.
In this paper we will examine the life and ministry of the revival’s primary leader, William Seymour. Emphasis will be placed on the sociological conditions of his time, and how his early life impacted his ministry training and his eventual leadership of what became a worldwide phenomena. The paper will also place emphasis on the ethnic diversity and the cultural aspects that was present as Azusa, and the subsequent effects these issues had on the Pentecostal movement and the Body of Christ as a whole.
The beginning of the Pentecostal Movement is usually marked from the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Azusa Street in 1906. There were a number of powerful ministries and movements which both experienced and promulgated the baptism of the Holy Spirit prior to Azusa Street, but none of them had the continuing impact that this one did. It was a true beginning, and it added something to the advancing church that has lasted. The movement has changed, and now has many different streams, but one can recognize what originated at Azusa as the source in most of the revivals that have set the course for the church in the century since Azusa Street.
William J. Seymour was certainly the leader of the Azusa Street Revival, but one must look back a little further at the life of Charles Parham, who was a mentor of Seymour’s to get the full picture of how the Pentecostal Movement evolved in the early 20th Century

Ministry Methodology

2009-11-02T07:30:00.000-08:00

Pix?
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

2009-11-02T07:25:00.001-08:00

Planning to add some material I have been working on about William Seymour & his early life

The 21st C Church; Pt IV

2009-10-26T08:14:00.000-07:00

A principle that we must keep in mind as we move forward into the plan of God for this hour is very valuable. It was made so clear by the example of our Lord that we cannot repay evil for evil. Too often the initial inclination after suffering injustice or offense is to respond in like manner. Most of the time, we move beyond that initial reaction and do not retaliate, but end up harboring negative viewpoints and unforgivness toward the people who have hurt us.
I have come to the realization that people are going to fail, because we all have short comings. We are going to do things that hurt and offend others, often times this is unintentional. The Lord made it clear that as we get closer to his return, offenses would abound, in fact he went as far as to say that it is impossible that offenses would not come. So offense is coming. How we respond to offense, how we handle our emotions, behavior and the challenging circumstances the Lord allows us to undergo are really what are vital. We can most likely measure our growth in this area. Things that used to infuriate us don’t rattle our cage so much any more. Things that used to really hurt don’t seem to sting. Really what has changed is our perspective. We are being transformed by the renewing of the mind, and being changed into the image of our Creator. He is the one who did not utter a work when he was reveled. When he was being scourged, he did not cry out, and perhaps most importantly, elected to go to the cross rather than turning loose the heavenly host to wipe us out, which he had the authority from heaven to do.
The most amazing thing about this is not only that Jesus taught to turn the other cheek, then demonstrated this while he was being murdered and tortured, but he takes it even further and forgives those who were doing to this to him. Then the Master prays that God will forgive them. Instead of crying out for justice or revenge, he became an intercessor praying for mercy of their behalf. What an amazing Lord. This is his nature. I do find comfort in his holiness as well, and that sin that goes unrepented of will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Still, his nature is to move in mercy and love. If we respond to our trials, hurts and offense with this mindset, and out of the strength of his Spirit who lives in us, then we will guard our heart from heart and mind from contamination. If we give in to hurt and anger, and want vengeance, then we actually empower the carnal nature, and the powers of darkness. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood. Our enemy is not the person in our church who stabbed us in the back or let us down. Our enemy is not even the lost in the world that has been taken captive by the enemy to do his will. Our enemy is the devil, and our warfare against the principalities and powers, spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places. As we see things in this light, it becomes easier to forgive our brother or our neighbor since they are not our enemy; they are not the source of what we are dealing with.
Beyond this reality, it is in our own interest to take on the nature of Jesus. It is better for us, for God since he is given glory when we bear fruit, and better for the people who love us. It is better for our enemy, because a soft answer turns away wrath, and it is better for the warfare that we are engaged in. Every time we deny ourselves and follow the Master’s example, the kingdom is advanced, darkness driven back, and power released to destroy the works of the devil. This is the hands-on strategy the Lord gave when he said the gates (or entry points) of hell would not prevail against the church he was mobilizing to go into all the world and preach the gospel of the kingdom.

The 21st Century Church: Part III

2009-10-14T18:46:00.001-07:00

Fit for the Master’s Service
The call of God to his church is this area is two-fold. It is to prepare the way of the Lord. Just as John the Baptist came “in the spirit and anointing of Elijah” to prepare the way for the Lord’s first advent, the Body of Christ is going to carry a corporate anointing to prepare the earth for his second coming. This calling is for both evangelism of the lost and purification of the church so we can become the bride. We are told in the scripture that the bride will be “without spot or wrinkle.” This speaks of purity and it speaks of perpetual vigor. To be without wrinkle indicates freshness, a spontaneity that will keep the bridge sharp and up to facing the tasks and demands of the times in which we live.
The call to transform the lukewarm Laodicea church into a warrior-bride is demanding. It can only truly be accomplished by God and through the administration of his grace. As we press into the second decade of the 21st Century, God is in the business of calling the church into his program, rather than allowing us to fashion our own while expecting him to adapt to it. There are various ways in which this will be accomplished. Some has to do with temporal judgments among the nations, and some has to do with pressure that he allows the church to face. Historically, the church always demonstrates more resolve and achieves great advances during times of persecution. That said I also believe that a message and new ministry is going to be demonstrated in the earth by new leaders of the church. These are the messengers of power that will see the restoration of the true apostolic ministry that was experienced by the first century church. These apostles and prophets will not live for themselves but only for their first love. They will not promote their ministry but do all things for the sake of the lamb. Because of their vision to recognize Christ, as the Baptist did, and their agreement with John that he must increase while we diminish, the Father will entrust them with power to advance the gospel of the kingdom into the far reaches of the earth. I believe these messengers will emerge in the upcoming years and catch many people off guard.
This will happen because they will not fit within the framework of the religious machinery of our day. The will be called out from the world to exercise authority over the lust of the flesh and the spirit of the age. Many of these leaders will be young, in their 20s and 30s and a large number of them will be women. The church is going to have to make room for these young leaders and remove barriers that would prevent women from stepping into leadership roles that God has ordained for them to fill. Let’s examine four of the qualities that these emerging leaders are going to possess.
One, they will be sanctified. The will not be tainted by the spirit of this world, and cannot be seduced with flatteries. Since their only agenda will be to promote the message and ministry of the cross among the nations, then they will not be vulnerable to a political or religious spirit as so many others have who have gone before them.
Two, they will be intimate. The prophet Daniel, as he spoke about the end of the age declared that those who know their God will be strong and do exploits. The key to walking in supernatural power and five-fold ministry operation of biblical stature is intimacy. Jesus set the tone for this as he was constantly withdrawing from the crowd to spend time alone with God. He went as far as to say that he message and his ministry were not his own, but he only did as he had been instructed by the father. The son was given the Spirit without measure because of his perfect obedience. This emerging leadership will step out of the counsel chambers of the Most High and begin to shake nations with the message that they preach and the demonstration of power. To the degree that we walk with God and are led by the Sprit, we will find grace to walk in increasing authority in these times.
Three, the will be tested. These leaders will prove to be strong and be able to stand firm. The first sight of discouragement of persecution will not send them to flight or into depression, but rather only strengthen their resolve to speak the truth in love, refresh from the nourishment that flows from the river of his presence, and press on to set the captives free. Even as Jesus set his face like flint to go to Jerusalem, so these leaders will not waiver in their forceful advance of the kingdom into the darkest places and furthest reaches of the earth.
Fourth, they will be action oriented. They will be fearless and be willing to answer the Master’s call to go into the entire world and preach the gospel. Many will have been snatched from the fires of sin and have been close to death at one point of their life. Others will have seen the dead raised, and others will have seen friends die courageously and at peace. A church that has been liberated from the fear of death and preaches the power of the resurrection is a church that will change the course of nations like the first century church did.
These things can only begin to shape up as new vision is cast, a new course is set and new levels of faith arise for a new millennium. This is not the time to shrink back in fear or complacency. The call of God in this hour is to begin to contend for a revival that is global, that is pure, and that wins the lost. A focus on equipping these new converts to do the work of the ministry must be instilled so they can in turn become leaders in the great harvest that is coming. What would the church do with 1 billion new souls if God added them to our churches? Would we have time to disciple them? Currently the answer is no. We do not have the time, the room or the resources. This must change is we are going to be able to effectively do all God has in store for us in the upcoming decades.

The 21st Century Church: Part II

2009-10-03T10:56:00.001-07:00

The Harvest
As we begin to review the words of our Lord, that the harvest is the end of the age, we can draw certain conclusions about this reality. The Harvest is going to be an ingathering of all that has been sown throughout human history. Because of this, we are looking at a climax of events, and escalation in their intensity and a true revealing of what is pure and what is not. The gathering of what has been sown will be of both pure and impure seed. This brings about a lot of clarity as it pertains to eschatological concerns. I initially grew up thinking that the antichrist was going to bring destruction on the world, and the church could do nothing about it so we should stay tucked away in a corner, hide out in the basement of the church and hope no one gets martyred before the Lord returns to snatch us up, before turning the rest of the plant over to the devil and his evil devises. Later, I began to learn about dominion theology and the belief that a great revival was coming at the end of the age, where truth and light would overtake the earth, evil would be destroyed, and the church would then welcome the king back to the planet. There is certainly a degree of truth, and some error as well in both of these positions. As we see the harvest more clearly, we can realize that there will be a simulation of both good and evil advancing in the earth. As darkness and lawlessness increase, the planet will suffer and be in peril in many ways. Depravity will broach the conscience of humanity, and sensual indulgences will overtake people, just as the Master taught, “as in the days of Noah” so shall it be before his return. However, there is good news in the midst of this. During times of increasing darkness and deception, God has determined for his church to arise and shine forth his glory in the earth. That means the greatest hour for the church is still in the future. The manifest presence of God’s glory will become the norm for much of the church. Miracles that we have not seen since the first century will begin to happen, and true apostolic Christianity will be restored to the body of Christ, so the church can both become the Bride and impact the world for a great reaping of souls as God has ordained for us to do. The coming glory is surely exciting, but we should note that the glory is not coming just so we can have revival as we have know it, but it coming because we need it. With a breakdown in the world’s economy, and plagues that are spreading without the constraints of the medical community, much of the world is already is a state of panic now in 2009. The church needs to begin to understand and practice the economics of the kingdom of God, so we can experience a transfer of wealth and have resources to help humanity in the upcoming times of peril and great need. We are also called to be a house of healing to the hurting in our land. The world needs to see a group of people who walk in covenant with God that are healthy as a result; spiritually, emotionally, financially and physically. What the medical community cannot do, the church of Jesus can, under his mandate that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him, so we are to go and preach the kingdom, and while we go he said to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons and raise the dead. His authority and his power have been delegated to us to evangelize the lost and heal the sick. I believe that God is raising up a group of young people who will be passionate for both. The Healing Revival that happened in the United States from 1947 to 1957 was undoubtedly the greatest manifestation of the miraculous that our nation has even seen. These great leaders like A.A. Allen, Jack Coe, William Branham and Oral Roberts were but the first fruits of this healing anointing that is coming upon the church. As plagues and disease seem to become “pandemic” in the words of our government, the church will begin to demonstrate power over demons and disease in order to testify of the greatness of our king. As evil increases, and sin abounds, the glory of the Lord will manifest in a global revival that exalts only the king of glory and not the ministry or message of a person. The coming revivalist will be those who follow the lamb wherever he leads them and will do all things for the sake of the gospel. The resolve that these revivalists will carry is yet to be revealed in our church. Having been deceived once by the pleasures of the word, they will have been forgiven much and therefore love much. God is calling these harvesters into his kingdom and equipping them with revelation of who Jesus truly is. It is certainly valuable to honor the historical narrative of Jesus, but having a good theology and belief system is not enough, since the scriptures admonish that even the demons have this. God is intending to reveal by the Spirit the present day realities of who his son truly is. The gospel of the kingdom is going to be preached in all the earth. This is the message that the king has come, the kingdom is advancing, and the battle for the lost is reaching a dramatic climax as we enter into the last chapter of human history. The issue is not how long this chapter will last be it fifty years of five hundred. The issue is to know him, love him, and impact eternity for him with the time that we are given.

The 21st Century Church: Part I

2009-09-28T19:08:00.000-07:00

As we take a look into the purpose and responsibility for the church in the 21st Century, we will quickly realize that the issue has been gone over extensively by the Para church organizations. It is right to look at developing social and political trends. It is right to be well informed and know how to relate to the people we are called to reach. However, in this particular work I would like to put more of a focus on God. The vantage point I am after and hope to share is one from his perspective. It is not so much what we discern and decide to be relevant. The priority is what is in his heart? What are his plans for this season in human history? What role does God want the church to play in the events that are unfolding on the earth? What is God calling his people to become, collectively? This should certainly be more important that how we determine, in our own wisdom and ability, to invest in and to try to operate as. Perhaps it is not so much what we are going to do as a church as the focus should be what God intends to do, what he will accomplish, and the fact that he elects to work through us.
The church of the 21st Century has a unique mandate. We are living in special times. These are times that the prophets of old saw, and wanted to be alive to participate in. Too often our focus has been on what we consider to be the end. Leaders in the Body of Christ have been able to discern the season of the times, and believed that we are coming to the end, and rightfully so. We can in fact discern from scripture that we are entering into the “end times”. We are given clear signs by our Lord that we can use to determine this. However, he tried to make it clear that when we see these things happening, we are not at the end, but actually are experiencing the “birth pains.” This time in human history is what I like to call the “beginning of the end.” We have certainly entered in to this season. It is time to be sober minded and alert. It is time to do all things for the sake of the gospel, to the place Jesus at his rightful place in our hearts and lives. This is not the place of the center, or just the place of lordship, but a place of becoming our all in all, our everything. It is one thing to make Jesus our highest priority and another matter all together to make him our only priority. Were we not challenged by the Master to seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness? These are an hour that God is calling his people to throw off complacency, repent of compromise, and receive fresh baptism of fire. Only the fiery baptism of the Spirit will liberate us from a complacent, lukewarm condition that we can so easily find ourselves in as the church in North America. It is truly time to seek after an encounter with the living God. The word of the kingdom will come forth and set free captives. The fire of revival will again burn in our land and bring forth a restoration of what has been lost. Upon this recovery, we will find ourselves in a position and condition that is pliable, strong and prepared for a genuine spiritual advance. Then we will be ready to participate in the great Harvest that Jesus said is the end of the age. Let’s take a look at this idea in grater detail.

The Role of the Pastor

2009-09-11T08:22:00.001-07:00

The Role of the Pastor
I am enjoying teaching a course titled Theology of Ministry at Messenger College. So many of my other courses deal with the “how to” aspect of pastoral ministry. In this class, I put some focus on taking care of your own life and spirituality, and not loosing sight of that during the inevitable pressures that will accompany pasturing a successful church.
The pastor’s own time with the Lord is something that cannot be lost and really should not even diminish. It is wise to daily ask God to lead and direct, to teach us and correct us, to keep us and protect us, and finally to shape us and to perfect his work in our lives.
Some of the responsibilities the pastor will be faced with are having expertise and a fruitful demonstration of both the supernatural and the field of theology. We see in 1 Cor.12:4-6 that God gives different gifts for different purposes. It would great if a pastor has some experience in moving in all 9 gifts. If they do not, they should at least be exposed to others who do, so they can be effectively integrated into the service and the work of the Lord one is assigned to oversee. The area of theology is another challenge. Questions will inevitably arise from people you work with about the trinity, the incarnation and eternity. A pastor needs to have a good understanding of theology and be able to operate as an apologist for the Christian faith. That being said, there are limits when it comes to our human reason. We will never be able to fully explain the things of God with our finite mind.
It is fair to note that the pastor is not sent to educate people in doctrine, but to infuse people with life. A successful pastor will be able to penetrate the fabric of the natural realm with the reality of heaven-invoke the life of God!
A pastor would do well to pray Saturday night in the empty sanctuary. This will bring greater results than clever systems or new productions. Methods are okay but they will not birth souls. A lack of spiritual power has created (due to a lack of emphasis) the weakest branch of the Body of Christ in North America. Zion needs to travail as the kingdom of God breaks in among us. It is my observation and opinion that much of the Anglo church in North America is spiritually weak. There are always exceptions, but all in all we have lost the mantle to move in miracles, signs and wonders. One of my great hopes for the church in North America lies in the Hispanic community. The Hispanic church seems to have a spiritual hunger derived from a background in Catholicism, they feel accountability. The gospel of grace has been exaggerated in the United States. This has caused to loose the fear of the Lord, and to value the temporal over the spiritual which is eternal.
Heady, doctrinal Christianity in Europe has emptied the churches and lost a generation to the indulgences of the flesh, the spirit of the word and the influence of the devil. This same process is developing in the USA; churches that are prayerless, powerless and don’t seem to understand what worship is truly about.
Hope is not lost for us, however. A return to the Lord, a change of our priorities and our lifestyle can move the hand of God onto the scene. Do not the hurting, the needy, the dying in our communities deserve an encounter with the Living God? He has not changed, and still will save us as we call on his name.

As We Gather

2009-09-08T06:47:00.001-07:00

There are many challenges we face as pastors and leaders in the Body of Christ. I have never enjoyed being a pastor really. I had been determined to engage the call to ministry on my life in a translocal context, and later to work in higher education with a focus on Theology. In spite of this, I cannot seem to break away from having a local congregation that I have oversight for, even though I am making a living working at a Bible College while Demetria and I are expanding our missionary endeavors.
I appreciate the Lord’s requirement to serve in a local body. By doing so, I can relate to the strains and pressures that other pastors are going through. I can offer opinions that have merit, because I am not speaking to an issue as a prophetic evangelist, or an apostolic missionary, but as a local pastor as well. It is great to be able to move beyond theory and personal opinion into actual application and implementation.
That said, what is the responsibility of the pastor, as we gather together two or three times a week as the people of God? The first thing that comes to mind is that the pastor has to be delivered from any type of fear; the fear of man, fear of failure, etc. Death has to come to the part of our heart that would fear how people would view us if we fail somehow. When the pastor is liberated from fear, he or she is free to follow the direction of the Spirit of God. The closer we can stay aligned with his plan and direction, the greater the anointing will be and the lighter our yoke that we have to shoulder.
Next, we see the book of Acts gives us snapshots into the vitality of church life. The supernatural dimension is at plan while we come together as a spiritual community. The kingdom of God breaks in; into our hearts, relationships, vision, plans, and our day to day interactions with others around us. We then begin to live for the purposes of the kingdom, not for ourselves. The book of Ephesians is also important, as it is a guidepost that will help us establish strong foundations for our local church, and help facilitate healthy growth in the community of believers.

THE EMERGENCE OF MULTICULTURAL PENTECOSTALISM IN THE 21ST CENTURY PT 2

2009-08-18T19:46:00.001-07:00

In order for the inner cities to be resurrected, the church will have to be radically changed. Certain foundational things will have to take place to prepare the ground for the revival that God intends:

1) Prayer. Before life comes to the church and people of the inner city, there must be prayer; mountains of prayer added to the prayers of Jesus. The church has the spiritual water and seed that the inner cities need. If God’s people will embrace His power and flow with Him in His mercy revival will come to the African American communities in urban America, and then to the world. The psalmist said, “Rule thou in the midst of thine enemies. Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power (Ps 110:2-23).
2) Repentance. After generations of powerful ministry, much of the black church is now only marginally effective. The white church now also seems baffled by how to help. Before the inner cities can be liberated by Jesus, black & white churches must go back and look at their sin. They must repent for their attitudes toward those of a different color and ask for their forgiveness. Some of this has already taken place and the results have been sensational so far.
3) Sacrifice. The liberation of the inner cities will require a new level of sacrifice that is strange to the moderns American church. It will mean days and nights of fasting and prayer. It will necessitate time away from the comforts of home and will require that wealth be used for more than personal affluence.
4) New ways of thinking. A new Great Awakening for America will require death to old, prejudiced thinking. It will require the removal of all racial calluses on our hearts. It will demand new wine and new ways of thinking, enclosed in new wineskins. When sweeping national revival came in the past, it was through people who had an enduring faith in a living god who answers by fire. It came through people willing to be broken, willing to ignore criticism and do whatever God demanded of them. The old way of dealing with racial issues has not worked. It is time to do something new. See Isaiah 43:18-21.
5) Working together. Blacks and whites have not been able to liberate the inner cities because they have not worked together and allowed God to tell them how to do it. To the extent we have done anything at all, we have done our own thing instead of doing His new thing. We have refused to see one another as equals. God wants to demonstrate in the inner cities what can happen when his people cooperate with Him and with one another to get people saved. He wants to raise up a people who are willing to do His will, regardless of the cost. He wants to show that now evil force can endure when His people make up their minds to storm hell together.
6) Godly optimism. If we think the inner cities are forsaken by God, we will forsake them. But if we think they are the greatest potential group of missionaries in the world, we will go after them until they are saved. God seems to use most powerfully those who have experienced his greatest grace & deliverances. God is all about redemption, and calling us to find the treasure that he has hidden in the unsaved (see Isaiah 45:3). We fail to recognize the potential for prosperity in the inner cities because we have become ignorant of the gospel, God is able!
7) Prophecy the potential. We must speak destiny into black America. Incredible power will be released when we share unqualified love and a clear message of God’s purpose for their lives. God has preordained a mighty destiny for black America, and He is waiting for His people to go and preach it to them.
8) Perseverance. God never gives up, and neither should we. If He had given up on us, where would we be? If he based our salvation on our sensitivity to him, all of us might be lost. But he knew his plan for us and sought us until we were saved. His power to deliver is not hampered by the desperateness of our circumstances.
9) Living what we preach. God is calling us to reach the world not only by proclamation, but by example. While we proclaim with our words that the kingdom of God is here, our lives must be involved in the lives of others, demonstrating that realty. Our lord has called us to be epistles, or living letters to be seen and read by all people. Society will be changed only as the salt gets out of the salt shaker and is applied to the points of human need.

With God, no poverty is permanent and hopelessness in not perpetual. Not one heart is too hard for him to melt. The power of God, the message and ministry of the Cross still transforms lives. But for the task of revival & transformation of our urban areas to be accomplished, thousands of new missionaries will have to be sent to our urban areas. I believe God is releasing a prophetic call for people to step into this calling for the days that lie ahead. The treasure is there waiting, and it is time for God’s people to take their light and bring it to the darkness.

One way I am working to practically accomplish this is by implementing some of the vision at Messenger College. I am asking God to give us 600+ students, so we can graduate 75 to 100 each year. I am hoping to see these graduates placed in our churches, districts & missionary departments as well, but am specifically asking God to send out dozens of graduates into urban areas to start new churches and strengthen existing works in the power of the Spirit. Please join me in praying that the Lord of the Harvest will send us his kids to train, and prepare to be sent forth into the harvest field. Only by His grace, and all for His glory!

THE EMERGENCE OF MULTICULTURAL PENTECOSTALISM IN THE 21ST CENTURY

2009-08-17T18:59:00.001-07:00

The Emergence of Multicultural Pentecostalism in the 21st Century

Over the course of the summer the Lord has been dealing with me a lot about the need for the Church to really arise and shine in urban America. It is fair to state that there are a lot of great churches, great folks and passionate ministries who have done great work in this area. However, God is planning to do some new things in our inner cities.

It became clear during the political debates of 2008 that the social and economic crisis in our cities is too great for our government to handle. We are overspent regarding our resources as we are fighting international skirmishes on two fronts, and the economic tsunami that hit has make circumstances seem even bleaker. That said God is not limited to working through our government and institutions. Certainly he does work with them and they can be tools for his purposes. Regardless of how successful these types of endeavors are, or are not they will never circumvent the role of the Church. The church has the mandate to change society by enforcing the rule of God in the hearts and lives of people. When light shines forth, darkness flees because it cannot over it.

I am convinced that a lot of the future success of the Pentecostal Church of God will be determined by how strong our Hispanic Pentecostal constituency becomes. We have to embrace and welcome this reality not only as a strong branch of our movement, but must welcome these leaders, young and old, male and female into positions of prominence within our denomination. They have much to teach us about the formation of spiritual community, ministry methodology and living in the passion & fear of the Lord.

In addition to this important development within the PCG, which I hope to elaborate upon in greater detail later, I would like to turn my attention to the African American communities in our inner cities, and the emerging leadership that will come out of these communities for the Church. Many folks are disappointed with the fact that we have just elected our nation’s first African American President, but the conditions of the black community are not improving as a whole. Although our government may fail, I want to decree this evening that God will not! African American leaders have the call to become the most powerful spiritual liberators our nation has ever seen.

From the time of slavery, the African American community has always had a faith in Jesus Christ. I am currently working on my dissertation and studying the life of William Seymour, whose parents were slaves. This man went on to be the father of modern day Pentecostalism that has changed the church and world over the last century. The best is yet to come. Most Americans, even in the church do not realize that everything needed to bring a powerful spiritual revival to our inner cities is already in place. While many see dry bones, I see an army, and want to prophesy along with others “let the dry bones live!”

All that is needed for another Great Awakening is the living water of the Lord Jesus and willing vessels. When Jesus is poured out on the dry ground of our cities, He will transform them into a fertile field that will bring forth His fruit for the nations. I’d like to go over some of the transitions that we need to implement in order to help facilitate what God is planning to do in the years that lie ahead. It will be fun to go over that together soon.

సెలెబ్రేట్ ది పవర్ అఫ్ గాడ్ అత వర్క్ ఇన్ యు!

2009-08-06T10:58:00.004-07:00

(Hab. 2:2)” Then the LORD replied: "Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it”.
There is a lot being written on vision. Having vision is of great value. Being able to implement the vision is another task altogether. As God has clarified some of our vision, Demetria and I are moving toward the implementation and development of three facets of this vision.
We are doing this by working in conjunction with others who have gone further, produced more, and can help us move into the realities of a new season of purpose. Yesterday, Elizabeth Grant, missionary to India and Eurasia for the past four decades with the A/G was elected to an executive office at General Convention. She has the experience, education (PhD Intercultural Studies @ Biola) and proven anointing to be a tremendous leader for the organization.
Demetria and I are reaching out to work with Beth & David Grant, and planning to purchase, build and staff homes for children in Moldova & N India who are trying to escape a life of slavery in the sex-trade. It will take hundreds of thousands of dollars to do this, and even with vast resources, we have to have the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit at work in the hearts of the children, or lives will not be healed and changed.
We are also sensing a call to do our part in raising money, enrollment, and helping to increase the spiritual intensity & vision at Messenger College. The PCG used to have 600+ students at their two campuses that were being trained and empowered for ministry. As we move into the second decade of the 21st C it is a joy and honor to be working with Bishop Scott & others to rebuild the institution from the ground up. I believe the students and income will increase in proportion to the anointing we are operating under in our ministry training endeavors. In other words, if we make a place for God to come and do his stuff, the way he desires to do it, he will draw the students and meet the need.
Finally, we share a burden to see a multicultural local church that lives for the advancement of the kingdom of God, and is established as a spiritual community that bears one another’s burdens in love. Can a local body learn to become the dwelling place of God? Can a local congregation experience a continual outpouring of the Spirit, and see lives set free, healed and transformed? Can those same people in turn train other young couples, future leaders, and help minister to other leaders who are hurt & burnt out, needing fresh oil and fresh fire? Our hope and heart say yes. May the Lord bring the right people together to see this become a reality over the next couple of decades!
Let’s end with a prayer focus offered by our General Bishop, Charles G Scott; “Be inspired! Refuse small thinking and small living; celebate the power of God at work in you”!
(Zech.4:6) "This is the word of the LORD: 'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the LORD Almighty!”

The Radical Middle

2009-07-26T14:12:00.003-07:00

The Radical Middle

Life in the United States has been a little odd in my estimation since around the 2000 election. We realized that the nation was split right down the middle. The 2004 election did not do much to change that, only demonstrating that the right held a slight edge over the left, but perhaps only in politics, not numeric representation. I cannot say that 2008 changed much, coming out of the GOP Convention; it was amazing to see McCain/Palin soar ahead in the polls. Then came the economic tsunami, and here we are. A democratic win near the proportion of the 2004 win for the right; the nation is really divided.

Sometimes Demetria and I find it both odd and hard to relate to the polarization that is happening in our nation. We consider ourselves to be moderates. This view means you have things in common with everybody, and differences with everyone as well. We are able to enjoy the common ground, and don’t get too concerned about having friends with differing viewpoints. I wish I could say that most or even some folks share the restraint, but in reality it is only a few who do.

Allow me to expand. People don’t know how to react when they find out you are for women’s ordination and equality in leadership roles, but are staunchly against abortion. They don’t understand how we consider homosexual activity to be sin, but advocate for taking care of the environment and showing concern for the poor. It seems our polarization is extreme, and folks tend to gravitate toward one extreme or the other.

Why do I have the feeling that the GOP will try to answer President Obama in 2012 with a far right candidate? Even if this brought the Republicans back to the White House, what will it do to end the polarization and help bring the nation into unity? I supported a moderate in 2008, and I hope he’ll run again in 2012 and do better; Mayor Rudy Giuliani. I can imagine the different reactions people feel when they find out that we both like him so much. He’s too liberal for the right, too conservative for the left, ergo, he is just right for where I sit in 2009.

Beyond the benefits of having a moderate leader help bring our nation together, like Ronald Regan did while I was growing up, I realize the authority of the political sphere can do only so much. Where does the church stand in all of this? The evangelical church in North America is going through major stress and transition. What are our priorities, and how do we serve in the context of our call అస్ we move into the second decade of the 21st C? These are important issues that I’d like to review in future posts.

APOSTOLIC PAPER:

2009-07-15T08:09:00.000-07:00

APOSTOLIC PAPER:
What is an apostle? The following are some of the characteristics that we see the Apostles possessed in the New Testament.
1. Apostles are spiritual fathers. Paul said that we have many teachers but not many fathers (I Cor 4:15). The same is true in the church today. There are many outstanding teachers and preachers, but not many fathers. Many are called spiritual fathers because of their age, just as most men become physical fathers when they are young. However, being a spiritual father has little to do with age. A spiritual father reproduces his ministry in others. Very few in ministry actually seem to do this. The focus of the apostolic ministry is to see Christ formed in the whole church.
2. Apostles establish churches. This was an obvious result of apostolic ministry in the first century. However, there is a big difference between establishing churches and building franchises. The churches in the first century were so unique that each one listed in Revelation needed a different word from the Lord, even though they all existed in the same general region at that time. The Lord is the only One who can build His Church. He uses Apostles and others in the five-fold ministry (Eph.4:11). If we are going to be part of a true Apostolic Church, we have to examine if what we are building is something that He wants to dwell in.
3. Apostles impart God’s Government. We cannot have a complete revelation of who Jesus is without understanding that He is the “King of Kings” (I Tim 6:15). Jesus is the ultimate representative of god’s authority, and if we are becoming like Him we will both walk in and help to establish his authority in the earth. His authority is not lorded over people like that of the Gentiles, but rather his authority is based on love. It is fair to mention that the government of God is not just a system or an organization, but an anointing. My former pastor often says “we only have true spiritual authority to the degree that the king lives in us.”
4. The apostle is a witness of His resurrection. Apostles had seen the risen Lord and were given the mandate to go proclaim his resurrection. In (Acts 1:22) we see that the office of the apostle was given to be a witness of His resurrection. In (Acts 4:33) power was given to the church to be a witness of his resurrection. In (Rom 1:4) Jesus “was declared the Son of god with power by the resurrection from the dead.” The resurrection was the central theme of the gospel preached by the first century apostles. When we receive the revelation of his resurrection in our hearts, our lives will be transformed, and we will be freed from the snare of the evil one, the fear of death. Someone who is “crucified with Christ” is free to live for the purposes of the kingdom and the King, doing all things for the sake of the gospel.

6 STEPS TO BIBLE PROSPERITY

2009-07-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

6 STEPS TO BIBLE PROSPERITY
Lets go ahead and look at the next three steps in our study, and draw some conclusions from the study of these scriptures and discussion on this topic.
4) DEAL HONESTLY WITH OTHERS. “Be not deceived; god is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Galatians 6:7
“…Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.” Psalm 15:1,2
5) HOLD TO FAITH. “…If ye have faith, and doubt not…all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” Matthew 21:21,22
6) HAVE PATIENCE. “Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.” Hebrews 10:35,26
Finally, having done all, you must stand and hold fast to the profession of your faith, for He is faithful that promised. While standing, don’t start trying to count your blessings and see how fast you are prospering; rather, look back and see how the Lord brought you through man things. Then expect Him to do even greater things.
Don’t try to figure out how the Lord will prosper you; simply follow His leading. The example of Jesus telling the disciples where to cast their fishing nets illustrates this. Never be tempted to bypass God’s truth and try to get rich quick, on your own. The power which God gives to get wealth comes through definite positive directions. As God leads, your walk will remain steady and you will make progress toward your expected end.
It is fair to mention that I am not saying “seek wealth.” I am teaching “seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you!” (Mt. 6:33) God is our source. That is the bottom line of true Bible prosperity.

6 STEPS TO BIBLE PROSPERITY

2009-07-08T07:12:00.001-07:00

6 STEPS TO BIBLE PROSPERITY
Lets take a look at the first few steps in the process to Biblical prosperity.
1) MAKE A DECREE. “Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall b established unto thee: and the light shall shine upon thy ways.” Job 22:28
Make up your mind that God’s Word means you, and make a decree. Making a decree is like driving a stake to mark your claim. The Word of God contains 32,000 promises, but few happen automatically. Most lie there until you dig them out and say, “God will do this for me!”
2) BRING YOUR TITHES. “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse…” Malachi 3:10
How much is all? The Bible speaks in other places about bringing the first fruits of all your increase. God will bless you according to the same measure that you give. And not only are you to bring tithes, but also you are to help the needy. You must rid yourself of all selfishness if you are to prosper according to God’s promise.
3) FORGET THE PAST. “…forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before.” Philippians 3:13.
Forget past failures, bad investments; forget the times friends or family have taken advantage of you. Forget your lack of opportunities; forget those things you have tried to done your own strength. Don’t carry grudges out of bad experiences. Jacob had many bad experiences, but after fourteen years of enduring, he came to prosperity by divine intervention.

SIX STEPS TO BIBLE PROSPERITY

2009-07-07T09:10:00.000-07:00

SIX STEPS TO BIBLE PROSPERITY
The following scriptures show us what God’s Word says concerning prosperity: “And his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand.” Genesis 39:3
Joseph prospered under very difficult circumstances. He was sold as a slave, yet his masters and all who knew him recognized that the Lord was with him and that all he did prospered. Lets look at Deuteronomy 8:18, “But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth…”
We are talking about actual financial wealth; houses, land, possessions. When Jesus spoke of forsaking houses, lands, mothers and fathers He literally meant that we were not to trust in our wealth, nor be bound by it, and we are not supposed to be entangled in our affections. His emphasis was upon putting our complete trust in God.
“Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that ye may prosper in all that ye do.” Deuteronomy 29:9
“Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law…turn not from it…that thou mayest prosper withersoever thou goest.” Joshua 1:7
Now that we have clearly established what God’s Word says concerning prosperity, let us consider the following six steps to Biblical prosperity; I’d like to add the first three to the blog tomorrow, and the last three by the end of the week. Blessings! J.Bryant

SIX STEPS TO BIBLE PROSPERITY

2009-07-06T08:40:00.000-07:00

SIX STEPS TO BIBLE PROSPERITY
“They are like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither- and whatever they do prospers. Psalm 1:3
“Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” 3 John 2
Prosperity is not a sign of godliness, but prosperity and health should match our spiritual growth. If we are to prosper according to Bible promise, we must not only work hard and intelligently apply our talents and knowledge, but we must also believe the Word of God concerning prosperity. “…Believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established; believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper.” 2 Chronicles 20:20
In order to proper we must be established; we must have a solid foundation and a lasting relationship with the Lord. We must sow our seed at the proper time, and then remain until the time of harves.
Sometimes we have to come to the bottom of the barrel before we learn the true source of prosperity. The widow of Zarephath had only a handful of meal and a little oil when the prophet of God asked her to make him a small cake from her meager supplies. Then he spoke by the word of the Lord and said that neither her barrel of mean nor the cruse of oil would fail until the famine was ended. She believed Elijah and did as he said and his words came to pass. I Kings 17
I would like to continue with this theme for the next few days, and will add the six-steps to focus on in future entries.

INCLUSION IN THE PCG?

2009-07-01T21:27:00.001-07:00

INCLUSION IN THE PCG?

I could really use some encouragement from some of my fellow Network Members tonight. We have spent the last several days at the General Convention for the Pentecostal Church of God. During this time we re-elected our two top officials, and authorized the General Board to pursue a move that would relocate our International Headquarters, and the Bible College I work for.
The part of the story that is painful for me is as follows. One of our members submitted a proposal that would amend the bylaws and remove restraints that are currently in place that prohibit women from serving on our general board, or as department heads within the movement.
I took the opportunity, and the three minutes allotted to speak and spoke out in favor of the motion. I made an appeal to the fact that women serve in key governmental positions, and as leaders of other nations. To bring it closer to home I made appeals to church history, using Aimee Semple McPherson, and then Kathryn Kuhlman as examples. Finally, our final appeal is to scripture, and I shared that women served in administrative positions in the 1st Century Church. As you can imagine, my remarks were not well received by some.
I was pleased that other members of our organization, some of them who were men, also spoke out in favor of the resolution. Others who spoke out against seemed to pull a few passages out of context and used that as their basis for refusing to allow greater freedom and leadership for women within the movement. All in all I am happy with the vote, as many men and women stood and voted in favor, although I noticed most of us were under the age of 40. Perhaps what was most upsetting is those who voted against; some youth pastors who I anticipated would be supportive, and even some female students from our college.
I could use some prayer that I do not allow offense to creep into my heart. I don’t want to make any room for the enemy to get a foothold in my thinking or emotions. That said, the question is, can I serve in and be ordained with an organization that will not allow my wife, or one day my daughters to serve in positions of leadership? The short answer is no. However, I do not think that means I need to quit and join the Foursquare Gospel Church or the Vineyard. What I would like to do is to continue to advocate for change. When William Wilberforce stood before the British Parliament to deal with an issue that was economically advantageous to the nation, and deeply entrenched in the culture, he did not get a positive response initially for his proposals to abolish slavery.
He was convinced of the worthiness of his cause, and with persistence and the help of the Holy Spirit, lived to see slavery in the United Kingdom abolished. It is my hope that one day, perhaps before my daughters are old enough to step out into the ministry and answer the call of God on their lives, they will have the freedom to fully do so in our organization.
Thanks for your consideration and support during this trying time. –Jason Bryant

Unity in Diversity

2009-06-15T07:13:00.000-07:00

Unity in Diversity
I enjoyed my time spent at Fuller Theological Seminary immensely! It was a real growing opportunity as I was able to study under some sensational professors who did their Seminary work at Princeton and others who worked on their PhD at Oxford. That said I found that the interdenominational focus of Fuller was a key to the institution’s strength. It forced us to listen to other points of view, have a greater understanding of why we believe what we do, and most importantly caused us to unify around that which was most important.
It is interesting to note that the Biblical pattern for unity is much different than it is today. Perhaps that is one of the reasons so much time and energy that are placed into “coming together” often feels wasted? I contend one of the reasons we have trouble coming together, as churches in our communities and on a more corporate level, are that we are trying to unify around too much.
The high priest Aaron wore 12 stones across his heart to signify his responsibility to minister to the needs of all of the tribes before the Lord. The 12 tribes made up a great nation, but they had diversity and large amounts of regional jurisdiction. They were, however commanded in the Torah to unify around 2 things: worship and warfare. Three times a year all 12 tribes had to come to Jerusalem, to break bread together and worship the living God. This commitment to God and each other helped keep their ties as relatives, and bonds as a nation strong. By not giving too much structure and mandate from headquarters if you will, which in this case would be Jerusalem, many problems were avoided.
The second issue they were united around was warfare. If one tribe was threatened by a neighbor, the other eleven tribes were there to support their cause. The used their resources; of numbers, weapons, food, skills and faith to converge into a mighty force in a moments notice.
The same should apply to us today. I can unify with my fellow ministers in the community around these two issues. Let us worship the Son of God together, and stand for what is clearly mandated in God’s word. We can go to war together to stand for truth, freedom and influence in our great nation. I am not one to advocate for trying to legislate morality, but I do feel that if we could pool our resources, we could offer superior alternatives in many areas to what the secular progressive society has to offer. We also need each other to defend our freedoms that God has given to us. I feel we can and should unite around these two issues, and would do well to leave the rest alone.
I see the value of the different faith expressions within the Body of Christ anyway. As a Pentecostal, I believe they could all benefit from a fresh encounter with God, and the Charismatic renewal movement proved this to be true. That said I do not devalue the traditions of others because they are different from my own. I need my friends in the rest of the church; Evangelical, Catholic, Orthodox to stand with me against the great evil we face in our day. I have a vision that we can unify around both warfare and worship, and do all things for the sake of the One who gave his all for us.

THEY WILL SEE VISIONS!

2009-06-07T20:19:00.002-07:00

THEY WILL SEE VISIONS!

It was an amazing time ministering today in Stockton, Missouri. My great-grandparents and my grand parents are from there. My dad and his brothers grew up there too, and we visited once or twice a year, each year when I was a kid.

The facility we met in is actually the old A/G building that my grandpa held the note on for a number of years. Eventually Stockton A/G got into a building program and moved across the way, and it seems the old facility stayed in the family. It is now being pastored by my dad’s cousin Jerry Bryant.

After hearing a good word today from dad, we moved into ministry time. Some old friends from California were there and really stepped out in faith for God to move on the people. I felt compelled to function more as an intercessor today than the person doing most of the praying. The Presence of the Lord was tender, and there were a lot of tears shed this morning.

The thing that really was amazing was the operation of the revelatory and prophetic gifting that Demetria was operating in. Folks would come up to receive prayer, and God was giving Demetria visions, and then Words of knowledge for them. The Word of the Lord is sharp and active, it cuts deep. I would watch the word of the Lord touch people’s hearts and they would begin to weep, it was remarkable.

I have always known Demetria to receive a lot of visions and to have an accurate prophetic gifting. It has been less frequent the last several months because it is hard to step out of mom mode. Now that the kids are starting school I imagine God is going to be moving Demetria out to minister again more often. We really are living in the days that were spoken of by Joel in chapter 2, and confirmed by Peter in Acts 2. As we enter into the last days, the beginning of the end if you will, the final chapter of human history, God said that if we want to be close to him, visions and dreams are coming with him. God is spirit and speaks the language of the spirit. I am grateful for his presence, for his anointing that breaks yokes, and that my wife is both a seer and orator of the language of heaven. Rich grace is upon our lives, and the best is yet to come!

UNDERSTANDING YOUR MEASURE OF RULE

2009-05-27T07:21:00.001-07:00

UNDERSTANDING YOUR MEASURE OF RULE
One of the challenges that we face as leaders in the Body of Christ is how to operate within the parameters of our calling. Most of us have been anointed to work in specific area and experience great success when we operate in our calling.
The times we are not as fruitful has a lot to do with not staying within our area of expertise. Too often pastors and bible instructors are overly opinionated. We seem to have an opinion to offer on everything. Although it is good to have a working knowledge of how the church and kingdom of God operate, we have to be careful not to become a self-appointed expert on everything.
One thing that is painful is the fact most folks do not realize that they have an extremely limited amount of understanding in the areas they are giving their opinion on. I consider it a blessing that I am aware of my own deficiencies. Because of this, I can inquire of others in the Body of Christ for insight when dealing with an area of their expertise and my own limitation.
I have a strong educational background in Theology & Church History. My ministerial experience focuses in on missionary endeavors, and prophetic equipping and operation. I feel I can speak to these issues with a great deal of authority, and can substantiate my viewpoints with both research and first-hand experience. That said there are other areas I am not privy to. I work hard at being able to do solid Biblical Exposition. Even so, in matters that get into the Greek or Hebrew translations of the text, I have to consult with my friends who flourish in this discipline.
There is something liberating about knowing what God has called you to do, being able to focus in on it, and do it well. As we allow others to work in their field, we unburden ourselves from having to be the assistant manager of the planet, and begin to experience what Jesus said was “an easy yoke, a light burden”. Learning to work together and staying within our measure of rule will help strengthen our own ministry and the overall effectiveness of the church.

CATTLE FARMS, HOMOSEXUALITY & THE FRENCH CONNECTION

2009-05-18T08:59:00.001-07:00

CATTLE FARMS, HOMOSEXUALITY & THE FRENCH CONNECTION
Although I love the fact that people seem to be a little nicer in general here in the Midwest, there is still a period of adjustment that we are going through as a family now that we live here. It seems like everywhere I drive, I am surrounded by cattle farms. Not only is the landscape different than in was out west for us; during our times in Arizona, California, and Washington, but the folks are a great deal different as well.
When you go into a restaurant, everyone seems to know each other, are actually related somehow, and for the most part everyone is Anglo. The world in the Midwest and the South is a different place that it is out west. I appreciate the work ethnic a lot of folks here have, and the general Christian influence that still seems to be a big part of society. Still, there are some limitations.
I share the concerns with most of my moderate to conservative-leaning neighbors that our nation needs to do our best to live in compliance with the Word of God. If the liberal agenda to “normalize” homosexual lifestyle goes on unchecked, we will feel the repercussions of this. That being the case, I am not anti-homosexual, just anti-homosexuality. Demetria, being from Seattle, and me living in Phoenix for the majority of my adult life, have both made friends through the years with people who are gay. First off, God loves gays. He wants them to change their lifestyle, but he loves them. Second, there are a lot of qualities that can be found within the gay community that I like. For example, good taste in fashion. If I am going to Macys or Saks to spend a few hundred bucks on a suit, I want it to look good and purchase something that will cooperate with my frame, coloring and style. As much as I appreciate Zeke down at Charlie’s Bait ‘N Tackle, he probably isn’t going to be able to help me with my suit, or share the same taste in art, food or music for that matter.
Part of the problem is the fact the church has not given room for creative worship and expression, at least in North America for the last 30 years. There is no place for a creative, artistic and passionate worshiper to express themselves in our framework for what church looks like. Why, if our God created the universe, and every snowflake that falls to the ground to be different, does the church that is called to represent him look so boringly uniform? If an artsy guy cannot find acceptance in the church, but only misunderstanding, ridicule and rejection, then they will acclimate to an environment where they can be accepted.
Do I think that a liberal, anti-god agenda will weaken America? Yes I do. I do not think that the apocalypse is upon us, however. We will most likely end up looking a lot like France does today; having a fairly healthy economy and fairly strong military, but certainly not a major player on the world’s stage, and far from a superpower. If we do not, as a church and a nation repent and return to the Lord, America will only be a shadow of her former greatness. The solution to me seems to be fairly straightforward: the church needs to return to the Lord and experience revival. We can then reach out to the hurting and the lost, and begin to change society from the inside out; this was the Lord’s strategy in fact, to change the heart first, institutions later. This is the only way our nation can be saved.

AGITATION

2009-05-13T07:25:00.000-07:00

Agitation
Last fall I was at a meeting in Kansas City. Pastor Kathy Gray was sharing and leading in corporate prayer at WRC. She kept hitting the idea of being agitated, and would add the tag of something that satan was trying to do, and the folks would pray and push it off, pull it down, war against it. She’d say, “I’m agitated!” It was something to see, and clearly anointed.
This morning I felt the prompting of the Spirit to become agitated. I am agitated toward my own complacency. It is easy to settle into a routine where we are comfortable, at ease and self absorbed. Certainly I can say that my time of prayer, study and reflection are still taking place. Still, the complacency has more to do with a settling of sorts. A settling for a limited experience in the realm of the Spirit. A settling in a familiar flow of church service, conversations with colleagues and times of theological reflection.
This morning the Spirit of God stirred my heart to arise from complacency to a posture of spiritual vitalization. This posture has to do with a yearning to see heaven invade earth. This longing has to do with the consuming fire of the Spirit of God burning in our hearts. This longing is a calling to see the manifestation of the Kingdom on the earth. I am talking about the outbreak of the Spirit of God. Do the blind see? Are the lepers cleansed? Are the people of God overrun with tongues of fire on their heads and the creative miracle working power of God flowing from their hands? Are our words filled with power, as they were with Peter & Stephen in the book of Acts? I am talking about the kind of preaching that “cuts men to their hearts?” Do the nations fear the church of God? The nation of Rome feared the early church. The Queen of England was more afraid of the prayers of John Knox than she was the invading armies of France. Are we alive in the Spirit? As an old friend and mentor Jill Austin used to ask us, “Is your shadow dangerous?” If we are not a threat to the kingdom of darkness, and are not forcefully advancing the kingdom of God day by day, then we are in a lukewarm condition. This is a great deception, and our vision must be purified. If we truly see God, and His Christ sitting at his right hand according to Hebrews 2, we will burn with passion, become messengers that are a flame of fire who demonstrate the kingdom of God wherever we go. Let’s determine to make the adjustments in our lives to become all God is calling us to become and making available to us.
Like the Moravians not so long ago, we should begin to do all things for the sake of the gospel, and venture to win for the lamb the reward of his sufferings.

THE DISTINGUISHING MARKS OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD

2009-04-29T18:08:00.002-07:00

The Outpouring of the Spirit that was taking place in the early 1740s under the leadership of Jonathan Edwards was a sensational time in the history of our land. As the revival gained intensity and momentum, it also gained strong opponents. Edwards found himself defending the revival in from of a Yale College audience at a graduation commencement in September of 1741.
At this time he argued that "testing the spirits to see if they are of God" (1JN 4:1) involved using the right criteria. The problem with opponents of the revival, according to Edwards, was that they evaluated it with the wrong criteria. He stated that it is true that the work of revival involves some controversial issues, but should not be used as the primary focus to determine if what is happening is a genuine move of God. Here are the issues that he mentioned. He said that revival:
1. is often unusual or extraordinary
2. affects the bodies of participants
3. produces "a great deal of noise about religion"
4. stimulates the imagination
5. relies too much on the example of others
6. results in irregular or imprudent conduct
7. is intermingled with error and delusion
8. does not always keep participants from later scandal, and
9. produces preaching that focuses on the wrath of God.
But, Edwards argued, every new movement in church history was subject to many of the same complaints. These nine criteria prove nothing about the revival one way or another. Instead, according to Edwards, assessment of revival must be according to "five distinctive marks". God is at work when people:
1. esteem Jesus Christ as Son of God
2. turn from sin and lust to the righteousness of God
3. increase their love for the Bible
4. establish in their minds the objective truths of Christian faith, and
5. express genuine love for God and humanity.
Any serious evaluation by these criteria, in Edward's view, leads to the conclusion that the revival is the genuine work of God. What its participants need is pastoral guidance and care, not condemnation and opposition.
There is much to say, regarding both the controversial issues, and the distinguishing marks, and I hope to dialogue with Edwards viewpoints in future blogs.

HERITAGE USA

2009-04-29T17:35:00.003-07:00

The former Heritage USA built by Jim & Tammy Fae Baker of PTL sat empty for nearly 20 years. The demise of the ministry and hostility of others towards the Bakers turned the entire issue into a reproach for the Body of Christ. After a long season of abandonment and decay, it was exciting to see Rick Joyner and Morningstar Ministries purchase the property and begin renovations in 2005.

I was fortunate enough to visit the property a couple of times this past week in Ft. Mill, South Carolina. The restoration of the primary building is impressive. It hosts the sanctuary, the school (a few hundred kids were running around along Main St. & having lunch) many of the administrative offices and some of the rooms have been upgraded and are ready to host guests at the new Heritage, now Heritage International Ministries, or HIM. Taking a look around you can see how much work has been done and how impressive the restoration is, and also how much work remains. Perhaps what is most impressive about the experience is the spirit of the people. They seem to be given to passion for the Lord and for people. The are very hospitable, seem focused, creative and full of the joy of the Lord.

While there I had been hoping to see my former pastor, Rick Joyner and touch base with him about what God has been doing in my family over the last five years. I am also anticipating touching base with another old friend, Todd and hope to see him this weekend at one of the church services. That said, I had a powerful encounter with the Lord after lunch today. A member of the staff at MorningStar had a kind and gracious word from the Lord to me. I am always appreciative of the times when God speaks to me through a stranger. Strangers do not have to filter prophecy through a subjective lens the way friends and relatives would. The tenderness of the Lord's love, and the revelation of His desire being for me to draw away and spend time with him just took me over. I felt the power of his presence as I tried to excuse myself from the property and get back to the Seminary for a presentation dealing with the manifestations that were taking place under the ministry of Jonathan Edwards during the great awakening. I felt like God was going to give the good folks at Gordon-Conwell and illustrated sermon. The river of life still flows, the fire still falls, and the kingdom of God is advancing. May increase come to the ministry at HIM and the people of God there in every way, for the glory of the Lord.

REVIVE US IN THE MIDST OF OUR DAYS

2009-04-29T17:11:00.004-07:00

Hosea 6:1-2;"Come let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us, on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence."

The question presents itself to many, individual churches and a corporate expression of faith, what are we in pursuit of? Are we after revival, and if so what do we do in the meantime? These are viable questions that deserve concrete answers. The prophet Hosea spoke to the people at a time when they were not in revival. They had hope that their fortunes would turn, that times of refreshing would come from the Lord. While we wait, what do we do?

For the sake of clarity we should look at the process God uses so we can chart our progress. Revival is something that starts with the individual, as their heart returns to the Lord. Revival impacts the local church as revived individuals grow in passion for Jesus and their love for their fellow man. The next step beyond revival is Renewal. Renewal has more of a corporate application, as God breathes life to the almost dead, corporately and restores us to a former position of greater glory. Finally, as a movement or regional expression of the Body sustains Renewal, they have the opportunity to engage in Reformation. Reformation deals with the influence the church can have on society around them; locally, regionally, and even among the leaders of nations. Reformation changes society.

So what then do we do? The answer is clear. Rend your heart. Allow God to touch your heart, change your life, and use you to help stir the flames of revival among those he sends you to. A revived church can help revive others and lead to renewal. What do we do, when we are not in revival? We pray, along with Hosea, God revive us. We pray along with Isaiah, here I am God, use me. We pray along with Evan Roberts, God; bend us, bend the church, glorify your son. Revival starts in the hearts of God's people. He is willing, His hand is open, and He is waiting for us to respond.

CONTROVERSY?

2009-04-21T18:42:00.000-07:00

CONTROVERSY?

I find it odd that there has been so much controversy regarding the reality of angels over the past year. The majority of the controversy is built upon two sources. One is misinformation. Most of the accusations toward a key evangelist are simply misrepresentations of the truth. Statements are exaggerated, fragmented, and blended together to create enough ammunition to accuse one of doctrinal error. It reminds me of the plot against Jesus. Some said he would destroy the temple, others did not agree. The witnesses could not get their story straight, but that did not matter, because the truth was not the issue, jealousy was. The decision had been made, Jesus had to die.

The situation with my friend is not a lot different. He has gone on record to clarify that angels appear to be gender neutral in the Bible, and that he has not advocated for talking with angels, since God speaks to us by His Spirit and by His Word. He does, however acknowledge that the ministry of angels have been active in his healing crusades around the world. Why does this surprise us? These accounts are listed throughout the Old and New Testaments. It appears that as the kingdom comes to earth, angels are around and involved. I am of the opinion that they must have some sort of role to play, or God would not have given them the mandate to “minister for those who will inherit salvation” (Hebrews 1:13-14). Moving beyond the issue of misinformation, let’s deal with ignorance. It may be incorrect to assume that much of the body of Christ has read sections on angelology in basic systematic theology manuals. That said, let’s review a cursory list of some of the attributes and responsibilities that the Bible teaches us angels have.

The first question to ask is what is the function of angels? It is clear that they have primary functions.
They were created to bring glory to God (Colossians 1:16, Revelation 4:6-11, Psalm 148:2).
They are ministers of worship unto God (Isaiah 6:3, Revelation 5:8-13).
They have a type of priestly ministry in the heavenly sanctuary (Hebrews 1:7).
They execute the will of God in various capacities;
In controlling nature (Revelation 7:1)
In governing nations (Daniel 10:13, 21; 12:1).
In executing God’s judgments (Genesis 19:1, Psalm 78:43,49)

The next question to look at is what the ministry of angels involves. The scriptures give us a fairly long list of what they do and how frequent their involvement with the saints seems to be. Let’s look at their unique ministry.
They protect the people of God (Psalm 35:4-5, 34:7, 2 Kings 6:13-17, Isaiah 63:9).
They guide the believer at times (Acts 8:26, 10:3).
They minister to the physical needs of God’s people (I Kings 19:7).
They strengthen and encourage the believer (Matthew 4:11, Luke 22:43, Acts 5:19-20, 27:24).
They seem to have a special ministry to children (Matthew 18:10).
They serve as agents in the answering of our prayers (Daniel 10:10-12, Acts 12:1-17).
They carry those who die in the Lord to heaven (Luke 16:22).
They will come with Christ for the believers at the Second Coming (2 Thessalonians 1:7-8, Matthew 25:31-32).

As we are called to go into the entire world and preach the gospel, let’s welcome all of the gifts, resources and power from on high that God wants to give us in order to accomplish our mandate. As for this Theology Professor, angels are welcome at my meetings

TOUCH ME AND SEE

2009-04-13T11:38:00.001-07:00

Touch Me and See
I often think about the Lord’s directive to his disciples while visiting with them after his resurrection. “Look here, touch me, and see my hands, feet, side.” To look at Jesus is clearly transformative, as we are taught in Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth.
Luke 24:39 (New International Version)
39Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have."
2 Corinthians 3:18 (New International Version)
18And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
If we are transformed by seeing him, what is the result of touching him? The narrative in the synoptic make it clear that as many that touched him were made perfectly whole. That is an amazing reality; sicknesses, disease, insanity, demonic oppression in its various forms, all have to leave when the afflicted one touches Jesus. Reaching out to him in faith seems to be a good place to start, but actually touching the Master may be another issue. Finding how to walk with him, and bring his life, the reality of his reign into our lives is the most exciting thing I can think off, not to mention the glory it brings to the Master and the freedom to those oppressed by the devil.
“Touch me and see”. As we do, we can see the reality of his kingdom come.

Inclusion in the Red States?

2009-03-31T07:22:00.001-07:00

INCLUSION IN THE RED STATES?
Our great nation is certainly a unique and special place. We have heard it said over the last eight years that America is two nations, divided equally along the lines of the “red state” and the “blue states.” There is a degree of truth to this evaluation, but there is more to be evaluated than that.
America is actually divided along lines that run much deeper than political affiliation. We are divided along cultural lines that exist due to the complexities of socio-economic considerations, our cultural heritage and our geographic location. All of these issues contribute to the diversity we find in different parts of our great nation. I believe that our President has a good viewpoint on what makes our nation special. We all need to see the value of each people group and the cultural diversity within the United States. I am happy about my heritage and the Midwest roots that produced a conservative value system for my parents, and allowed for a high priority on our spirituality. I see the value of the culture in the south, and appreciate their strength, commitment to each other and their faith. I have also enjoyed growing up in southern California and seeing the value of the hard work and family focus among the Hispanic population in the southwest.
Some of the challenges we face have a lot to do with others in our nation trying to impose their viewpoints on others. A straightforward solution to resolve this type of conflict is to set social “norms” that govern the general population, along with ensuring liberty for individual freedoms for each individual. It is not the role of the government, or the neo-cons to monitor the behavior of the secular progressives in society. Nor is it the role of the secular progressives to try to change laws and social norms that have effectively governed our nation for the last 200 years. Let’s encourage the left to go be the left. We appreciate your contributions to culture, and your love for our country. For those on the left, allow America to grant you freedom, provide for and protect you. Do not, however try to change who we are. If you want lawlessness and atheism, you will loose the security and possibly the freedom you require to live as you do.
I find myself in an interesting position in 2009. Living in mid-America, I see how far behind we are in the area of inclusion. We need to see young leaders, minority representation, and gender equality become realities where we live and work everyday. With that being said, the Midwest and the South are never going to turn into San Francisco or Boston. Perhaps the red states need to become more progressive? It seems the blue states need a reality check. I hope the more moderate and grounded folks in the blue states can influence the rest of their contingency to come back to earth.
God certainly loves all of the people of our great nation. It is time for his truth and love to really shine forth, among all people groups in our great society. With him in control of our hearts and his church, America will truly be beautiful and once again serve as a light to the nations.

The Pleasure Seekers

2009-03-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

The Pleasure seekers
I have spent a great deal of time trying to ascertain why some churches seem to be able to sustain a move of God’s Spirit, while most cannot. There are many historical accounts, as well as fairly recent ones that deal with how leaders and churches were surprised by God. They would be conducting a meeting or having an ordinary day at church, and God would show up.
The Spirit of God would begin to move. Generally the response is positive; at least among the folks I know and work with. People are glad to experience a visitation from heaven. The real issue at hand is this; how do we respond to God?
In most cases, the churches went on with business as usual. Simply put, they enjoyed the touch of heaven, went on with their programs, and the increase of divine presence subsided. Why is this? It is clear that God has poured out his Spirit on all flesh. We are living in a time when God wants to move and advance the kingdom. So the question is not one of fire, but perhaps fireplaces. God wants to send fire. He needs two things to sustain what he wants to give; a sacrifice and a fireplace.
The sacrifice is something we have to offer to God, what it will cost us to be part of a sustained revival. We are not just talking about money, but also time. A sustained revival will require a lifestyle adjustment. Too many Christians in North America cannot accommodate a move of God. They don’t have room in their lives for it, and the local church is a reflection of this reality. They cannot build a fireplace for the Sprit because it requires adjustments, and a price that most people are not willing to pay.
Why is this? This issue at hand is one of loving our own pleasures and our comforts. We are so prosperous in the United States that we begin to live for our pleasures and desires. The issue is bigger than whether or not the desires are carnal. Even if they are not, they can become an idol if we put them at a place in our heart higher than our love for Jesus. How we spend our time is an indicator of what we love and value. Where our treasure is, there is our heart. A move of the Spirit among us can be sustained. It requires time, along with faithfulness in attendance and giving.
True followers of Jesus are disciples of the cross. We have to be willing to die to whatever in this world has a hold on us according to Galatians 2:20. When we do “all things for the sake of the gospel” we will find that his grace is much greater than we have ever dreamed. We can begin to walk in health, provision and purpose. We can become carriers of the divine presence and ministers of his truth and glory in the earth. Make a decision to pursue the Kingdom of God first, above all things. Life is too short and the opportunities too great to live in a lukewarm state and become a pleasure seeker.

THE POWER OF YOUR FAITH TO RECEIVE THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

2009-03-13T07:13:00.000-07:00

THE POWER OF YOUR FAITH TO RECEIVE THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
I want to begin to work on a theme at times while writing this blog. I most certainly will deviate from the theme and add other entries concerning other topics as well, but I would like to deal with a theological framework we will call Praise & Restoration.
The topic deals with God’s grace toward us and the provision he has made for us through the work of his Son. Since the way has been opened, we have to seek out truth and determine how we can come up to the high places in the Spirit. We start from a posture of praise and thanksgiving, and begin to climb the mountain of God. His truth and his treasures are revealed along the way, but the greatest aspect of this is the reality of meeting with God himself.
As we do, he will begin to restore to us what we have lost while we take our position seated with Jesus in heavenly places, allowing us to begin to walk with kingdom reality and authority in the earth. The message is quite simple; the king is here! Repent, and enter in.
Let’s begin by examining ways we can receive the ministry of the Holy Spirit. (Gal.3:5) teaches us that God is the one who ministers to us his Spirit. He has sent his Spirit to comfort, guide, teach, and empower his church. The ministry of the Spirit allows us to fulfill the great commission, brings transformation to our lives and brings the life of God to us personally. We see in (Rom.5:5) that “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by his Holy Spirit”. Let’s examine these points in greater detail.
1. The power of the Spirit displaces the self-life. (Gal.5:16) says, “Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh”. To walk in love is to walk in the Spirit.
2. The Spirit is ministering the love of God to us in three ways:
A. Wind: as God breathed into man the breath of life man received vitality, value, meaning and ability.
B. Fire: as in (Isa.6) coals of fire are used to purge unclean lips
C. Rain; as in (Ps.68) rain is used to revive the weary congregation.
We now can see that love revives joy, peace, hope, patience and faith. All of these things are ministered to us by our heavenly Father as we open our hearts by faith and receive with gladness and submission the work of his Spirit. As we do we can begin to walk in faith, power, and purity and will not be lacking in any good quality or fruit as we endeavor to serve the Lord, edify one another, and impact the world.

The Land of Even

2009-03-09T11:17:00.001-07:00

The Land of Even
There is a wonderful promise in the book of Malachi, when the Lord instructs us to test him and see if he will not bless us when we honor him with our tithe. In the midst of an international economic crisis, the issue of money seems to be on everybody’s mind.
As a kid growing up in California, I was blessed to be raised in a minister’s home. We were always taught to tithe. Perhaps even more special is the private lesson that God taught me concerning offerings. I had been saving my money for a drum set. One Sunday our church hosted some missionaries to India, and as the offering was taken up, I felt the compulsion of the Holy Spirit to give my money to the work of God in India, so I did. That Sunday night I brought in my entire savings (around forty-one bucks) and gave it all in the offering. I knew this was the right thing to do. Within about ten days, God was dealing with another young man at our church, though he was a little older. He was our drummer on the worship team, and God blessed him with a new set of drums at a reasonable price. He told his parents that the Spirit of God laid it on his heart to give his other set to me. This set was used, but in good condition, and was the full set up, worth at least four or five hundred dollars. God gave me so much more than I could have ever gotten for myself.
Since that time, I have always found God to be so faithful in the area of money. Anytime I give above my tithe, God returns to money to me, generally very fast and often at an increase. The times I have been under financial stress are when I foolishly got behind in my giving, intentionally or not. Recently, I have learned a lesson about different positions we find ourselves in regarding our finances. These are what I’d like to call the land of lack, the land of even, and the land of plenty.
I found myself between jobs in 2007 and part of 2008. I foolishly withheld some of God’s tithe, or redirected the monies in a way that I felt I cold justify, but was not entirely obedient to bring in my first fruits to God. Over that ten month period, I struggled more financially that I had in years. I occasionally felt that I did not have everything that I needed, and will say that I was living in the land of lack due to my disobedience.
Since that time, I have repented and grown in my faith, deciding that God would get the first ten percent of everything that I bring in regardless of my circumstances. If I cannot make the budget, then he will provide another way. Immediately after I made this decision and put it into practice, my financial situation turned around. I started off receive several hundred dollars that I did not know I would have that came in from an unexpected source. Later, some of my bills and prices went down, so my monthly budget is now much less than it was, but I seem to have better service and a better situation than I did previously. Finally, my tax return came in about three thousand dollars higher than I had anticipated, and I was able to wipe the slate clean. At this point, I am on a manageable budget and feel God has done a miracle, and I am living in the land of even. I have what I need and am blessed.
There may yet be another place that God wants to take me concerning money. It is something he has laid on my heart, and I believe it is the land of plenty. I believe God that I can pay cash for my next vehicle. I believe God is going to bring us as a family into a position that we own our home, cars, and have the needed resources to travel and do the work of the ministry. As we move beyond tithing into faithful giving of our offerings, I feel that increase will help us take possession of what he wants us to have, not just bought from the bank. It is not going to happen overnight, but the process is in motion and his faithfulness toward us is great. I am glad to have left the land of lack and to be finding rest as I abide in the land of even; there is a lot less pressure here. Now I patiently cast my vision on my inheritance, in the natural and supernatural, as he provides our daily bread and blesses us by supplying all of our needs. More importantly is the true riches he wants to give, the riches of his presence and the manifestation of his kingdom. May it come, as we enter into the land of plenty.

Follow the Cloud

2009-03-06T10:06:00.001-08:00

Follow the Cloud
There is something to be said for being in the geographic will of God. It says in the book of Jonah, 1:3, “but Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” (Italics mine)
Apparently God desired for Jonah to be at a certain spot geographically, and a particular time. If Jonah would have followed the prompting and leading of God, God’s Presence would have been with him. So much happens when God’s Presence moves with us. Simply put, lives are transformed. The salvation of the lost, freedom to the oppressed, and healing to the afflicted all take place when the tangible presence of the Lord is in operation.
It required obedience to walk in the knowledge of his will, and a surrender of our plans, desires, and boundaries we have set up to ensure our comfort. Upon responding to his revealed will, we find ourselves in the place of the supernatural operation of the Spirit. The kingdom begins to touch earth, and God is involved with the circumstances he has called us to as the events of our lives unfold.
To be outside of his geographic will remove us from that special grace to walk with him. If we miss the geographic will of God, are we still saved? Certainly we are. Does God still love us and want to bless us? Absolutely, He does. Still, it is much better to be in the perfect will of God than the permissible will of God.
I never anticipated that I would live in the Midwest. I always intended to go back to California after graduating from Bible College. Later, I determined that if a move to California did not fall into place like I had hoped, I would be quite content to stay in Phoenix, Arizona, or to move to Seattle, Washington where my wife’s family live. All three of these options seemed good and comfortable, as I love being out West and living in metropolitan communities. Apparently, God had other plans. In fact, the planning that my wife and I had done began to unravel. Step by step, God began to redirect our line of thinking, and more specifically, our geography. As soon as we submitted our plans to his revealed will, things fell into place almost immediately. The transition into a new dimension of God’s call was accompanied by grace to quickly find housing, schools, new friends, new spiritual communities, and to arrive at a place where we have a workable budget, lacking nothing.
The greatest aspect about living in Webb City, Missouri and working at the Bible College is the peace we have knowing we are in the center of God’s plan for us at this time, and right in his geographic will, down to the street we live on and home we live in. God’s presence is with us, and will be with you, when you find the “where” aspect of his will for this season of your life.
I want to encourage you to follow hard after God. Being near him and letting him work through your life, there is truly nothing like it.

Private Walk with God

2009-03-04T09:46:00.002-08:00

Private Walk with God
Show me your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; on you I wait all the day. The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him, and He will show them His covenant. Psalm 25:4, 5, 14
I would like to put some emphasis on the value of developing the spiritual disciplines, and cultivating our own personal relationship with the Lord. This area should be at the top of our priority list for a number of reasons. Fellowship with our Creator is one, developing character so we can lead in His Church is another, and placing value on the things of the Kingdom is following in the example of our Lord.
As we determine to seek him daily was can ask him to (1) lead and direct my path, (2) to teach and correct my thoughts and words, (3) to keep and protect my soul, and to (4) shape and perfect my life.
As we discuss our “private walk with God,” we are talking about our commitment as leaders in the Body of Christ to a day-to-day, even moment-to-moment quest to “abide” in a life-pattern t before God that offers him worship, obedience, and a vessel he can work through to see the manifestation of his kingdom on the earth.
Learning to walk with God will change who we are; producing love and power, fruit and gifts, and will strengthen the Body of Christ while impacting the world around us.

Revisitng Eschatology

2009-02-27T13:32:00.002-08:00

It has become clear that our view of Eschatology will make a significant contribution to our overall Theology, and thereby affect how we walk with the Lord in the earth. I had published a short book (a little over 50 pages) that dealt with the issue. It was not an academic work, but designed to provide some perspective and hopefully application for lay people.

The book did not explore all of the contemporary beliefs concerning the end times in the Body of Christ. It did try to establish the fact that our focus as the Body cannot be on escaping to heaven while we are removed from the affairs of society. I tried to challenge the reader to live strong for the purposes of advancing the ministry and message of Jesus in the earth, regardless of how bad things seem to be at different times in our history. To that end, I let the issue go.

Now I am feeling compelled to revisit the issue and do a more comprehensive work on the topic. I was fortunate to study under one of the world's leading experts on the issue while attending Fuller Theological Seminary. My former professor and current friend earned his PhD at Oxford University. His focus was on the church of England in the 18th & 19th Centruy. He has a better understanding of the origins and reasoning behind the developments of dispensationalism than just about anyone else on the planet.

Because God allowed me to work with this man, and because most of the people in my life; my students, family members, and coworkers all are passionate about the issue, I have the responsibility to state what I know. I feel God is directing me to do more work in this area, so I have began the process. I hope to offer an honest evaluation of the history of dispensationalism, and the impact it has on the 21st Century Church. Additionally, I hope to give fair treatment to the belief's, strengths and weaknesses of other camps in the area of eschatology. By his grace, we can lay out an honest and adequate academic work, that will offer a glimpse into the heart of God and release of his truth, to help position us to accomplish his purposes in this hour. By his grace.

Hispanic Leadership

2009-02-26T13:17:00.000-08:00

Last night during worship at WRC in KC, the Lord showed me something unique. It was great to have a fairly good representation of Hispanic folks at the service, along with a lot of other folks from other states, from Africa, Europe, New Zealand and Alaska.The Lord spoke to me about the significance the Hispanic church is going to have in the US and how they would help spread the fires of revival. I really feel that God has allowed large numbers of people to come here from Mexico, and it was for a purpose.From a strictly political standpoint, there is a national consensus that we have to be more selective regarding who is let into the country because of the dangers we face with terrorism. There are also some law breakers who have committed serious crimes that need to be arrested and deported. That said, we need to realize the benefit of the fairly large influx of people who have moved here from Latin America over the last few decades.The European Church has become cerebral and lifeless, void of the power of God over the last 30 or 40 years. The church in the US is on the way to becoming the same thing, and our popular culture is becoming worse. Secular humanists define the social trends and they are atheist with no fear of God or adherence to his laws. In the Hispanic community this is most often not the case. There is a general fear of the Lord and reverence for God that many have, due in part to their background in Catholicism. There is a call for strong young men to become preachers, evangelist, and prophets not only to their communities and regions, but to the body of Christ in America as a whole. There is a call to young women, middle-aged ladies and even grandmothers to move in intercession for the salvation of the lost, and revival in the churches. We would do well to invest in the expansion and development of these churches, and to welcome their leadership as we are in pursuit of God and working toward the advancement of His Kingdom together.-Jason

Ministry Methodology

2009-02-25T08:28:00.000-08:00

Old Time Fire?
Too often I find myself in situations where the discussion about our ministry strategies turns toward how we can keep in step with the cultural trends. The issue is debated by from friends and colleagues from every area of life; seminary, church, work, social engagements with friends, and even with family members, most of whom are ministers as well.
There seems to be a consensus that we need to be privy to the realities of how people live in the 21st Century. Additionally, we can benefit from the advances in technology and use it as a tool to help us with our mandate and mission. That said, new ministry trends and techniques will not birth souls.
Our call to edify the church does not just deal with the existing church, but those who are to be added. We will not effectively win the lost just by creating an accommodating and comfortable environment for them. If that is our strategy, then when things become uncomfortable in the world and their walk with God, they will leave the church and possibly the Christian faith.
Our methods do need to change so we are in sync with how people live today, but our message and ministry must stay true to our heavenly mandate. The message of the cross providing deliverance from sin must be at the heart of all we aspire to do. This is an hour of salvation and we must work with the Sprit of God to reach the lost and add to the church. The preaching of the cross and the manifestation of the Spirit will still change our lives, churches, and the world. We need the fire of God to fall on us again. We need to remain under the cloud of his presence until we are changed, and empowered to reach the world.