Was doing the daily office today using my daily office site (dailyoffice.novuslumen.net) and came across this hymn selection. Thought it was an apt reminder in our overly indulgent hyper-paced world. Enjoy!
Take Time to be Holy
Take time to be holy, speak oft with thy Lord;
Abide in Him always, and feed on His Word.
Make friends of God’s children, help those who are weak,
Forgetting in nothing His blessing to seek.
Take time to be holy, the world rushes on;
Spend much time in secret, with Jesus alone.
By looking to Jesus, like Him thou shalt be;
Thy friends in thy conduct His likeness shall see.
Take time to be holy, let Him be thy Guide;
And run not before Him, whatever betide.
In joy or in sorrow, still follow the Lord,
And, looking to Jesus, still trust in His Word.
Take time to be holy, be calm in thy soul,
Each thought and each motive beneath His control.
Thus led by His Spirit to fountains of love,
Thou soon shalt be fitted for service above.
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So it has been nearly four months since I have blogged steadily. After outing myself from the Emergent conversation for theological reasons and taking two of their primary voices to task, life got in the way of consistently maintaining this space.
I’ve made a return appearance for a few reason: 1) to update my life; and 2) to share some projects that I am working on for the future.
First, since my last posting, I have finally graduated with my Master of Divinity (specialization in Church Planting and Development). After 3 years of Greek and Hebrew languages, Old Testament and New Testament exegesis, Systematic Theology and Practical Theology, I’ve made it to the end. Whew! I have yet to process that event, and think I will soon. I can say one thing, though: the person I was before this experience is very different than the person afterward. Perhaps that is inevitable. It is hard to imagine another scenario, me thinks, considering the amount of personal introspection, theologizing, and textual wrestling that occurs in an M.Div program. Hopefully I will have the chance at the end of the summer to contemplate that New J. Allen Bouma post-M.Div program.
Despite enduring 3 years of intense academic work I am not walking away so easily! While I am certainly not a professional student, I’ve continued my academic endeavors by extending my, professional with the Master of Theology program. The Th.M is designed to extend the M.Div in an academic field of choice. In my case Historical Theology. I have already completed Early Church and Reformation Church coursework. Currently, I completing coursework in the Medieval Church and Modern Church. This Fall I will focus on contemporary theology, as well as a Pauline Exegesis class. I will wrap-up with my thesis this spring on an unknown topic. So far I’ve written historical theological comparative examinations between Pelagius and Doug Pagitt, and Luther, Calvin, and NT Wright regarding justification. This summer I am writing similar comparative examinations between Thomas Aquinas and Open Theists, and Albrecht Ritschl and Brian McLaren.
I am continuing my education for three reasons: First, I am specifically interested in firmly grasping the historical progression of theology in the Church in order to adequately and competently contend for the historic Christian faith. Over the past decade, evangelicalism has suffered patent, audacious assaults upon this historic faith, through such movements as the Emerging Church. Through my initial education in this field, I have become increasingly disturbed by the willful disregard for the faith that both the Communion of Saints and Holy Spirit have given the 21st century Church. I wish to better understand this progression in order to better support and safeguard historic Christian orthodoxy.
Second, I wish to attain further academic study in this specific field in order to equip the Church pastorally. The majority of American Christians are woefully historically ignorant and many American churches neglect to teach the foundational elements of the Christian faith. I desire to stand in this gap by equipping members of a local congregation and broader Church to understand these elements and resist teaching that is inconsistent with the Holy Scriptures, Rule of Faith, and gospel of Jesus Christ. While I have already engaged such pedagogic efforts in my current pastoral teaching context, I recognize I need to be further equipped in order to better serve the Church.
Finally, because I desire to engage theological discourse at a higher level, I recognize the advantage of and need for being credentialed specifically in this field. Whether I adjunct at a local university, write for church leaders and congregants, or speak at church conferences centered on theology, it will be necessary to prove why my voice should be heard. While my work and conduct should certainly speak for themselves, possessing a Master of Theology will also be necessary for establishing that voice.
Aside from my education, I am launching out into what might be the most significant thing I have ever been part of, or will be for that matter: a church plant in urban Grand Rapids, called Church of the Resurrection. I’ll post more on this in the coming weeks, but the short of it is that we are visioning a community that sits at the intersection of where life happens in our southern GR community. We desire to be a church that is missionally engaging, theologically rooted, and biblically uncompromising in order to help people explore new life together in Jesus Christ. In about 3 weeks my wife, Melinda, and I head to Denver to complete the final part of our denominational courting process, the Covenant Assessment. It should be an intense 4 days, but also a good reflective time. While we believe God has given us a kernel of vision for church plant, we are also looking forward to a final exercise in discernment through the assessment. If all goes well there, we will head to Boston three weeks later for another 4 days of training, which should extend the training I have received through my seminary education. Again, I’ll post more on this later, but check out our digital spaces for more info: www.therezchurch.org and facebook.com/therezchurch.
In addition to this plant project I am in the process of putting a second book together that is based on my first, called “God’s Story of Rescue.” I originally anticipated it releasing this Fall, but will most likely see a release next Spring, to potentially coordinate with the launch of the church community. It will be a shirt book of around 150 pages that explores God’s Story of Rescue through creation, rebellion, rescue, and re-creation. It should be a good primer for many Christian, while also acting as a portal for non-Christians into the gospel. I am excited about this project and hope it will be well-received in Grand Rapids, where I will market and distribute. I also have vision for 6-series of shorts books (120 pages) that explore the six major components of that Story and the Christian faith, but that must wait for another year.
Needless to say life has been busy, progressing in an interesting ebb and flow. While there has been a struggle adjusting to post-M.Div life, especially while waiting for more clear direction on the job front, I am incredibly thankful for life, the good, rich life God has graciously wrapped me in.I am also incredibly thankful for a wife who is patient, encouraging, wise, and loving during this process of career exploration and transition. So thanks, darlin. I could not do this ebbing and flowing without you!
Though I have returned to my historical MIA self at novus•lumen, I’d like to come back and stay awhile. I’m glad the initial controversy of the year has died down, because I’d like to write about some other things that are more local and contextual to Grand Rapids, mainly my church plant visions and the way I perceive the missional needs of my city. Since I also consider myself a theologian in addition to a pastor, I’ll probably also make commentary on particular theological ruminations, commenting specifically on contemporary theological trends. Hey, I can’t help myself!
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Thomas Nelson is releasing a new book called Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ
You can learn more by going to www.theJesusManifesto.com.
Endorsements by Rowan Williams, Matt Chandler, Calvin Miller, Ed Young, Jack Hayford, Shane Claiborne, Ed Stetzer, Reggie McNeal, Mark Batterson, Gregory Boyd, David Fitch, Steve Brown, Dan Kimball, Margaret Feinberg, Mark Chironna, Francis Frangipane, Todd Hunter, Alan Hirsch, Chris Seay, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Anne Jackson, Craig Keener, Ken Ulmer, Tommy Barnett, Sally Morgenthaler, and others.
I was contacted a few months ago to read and review a pre-release copy. Things have been so crazy that I couldn’t make the deadline for an official review, but will do so shortly. By in large I really liked this book. I am no the biggest fan of Viola’s stuff, but this particular book gripped my attention and my heart, especially in light of my previous frustrations with certain contemporary veins of Christianity as evidenced in my last set of posts.
In short, the book is a call for the Church, especially her leaders, to return to the centrality of Christ. It is a passionate, emboldened call for the 21st century American Church to peal away the American crap we’ve attached to the Cross and also return the vital elements of belief in Christ that we’ve taken away. While a fairly short, quick read, it offers a vision any pastor, church leader and Christian needs considering much of the hanky-panky coming out of evangelicalism.
I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
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Post Series
0: Intro
1: Narrative Question
2: Authority Question
3: God Question
4: Jesus Question
5: Gospel Question
Theological Foundation Recap
6: Church Question
7: Sex Question
8: Future Question
9: Pluralism Question
10: What-Do-We-Do-Now Question
11: Final Thoughts
The question Brian is trying to answer in this chapter is this: “Can we find a way to address human sexuality?” That’s the question of the chapter he has proposed. The real question floating through all of Brian’s rhetorical BS is this: “Is homosexual behavior normative in the Scriptures and part of the way God intended things to be at creation?”
This is an important chapter for me because I sit on the board of directors of a local LGBT/Christian bridging organization and have gay friends. I share this because what I am about to say in this post is not from an outsider who is disconnected from the issue, but one who has relationships with the community. Through my own relationships and pastoral experience I have come to approach the issue of homosexuality with a two-fold recognition: the Church must recognize both the reality and revelation; she must sit in the tension of the real life stories of those who have (and still are) waded through same-sex attraction for themselves and what God has revealed through the Holy Scriptures regarding His original intent for humanity.
In my experience, when that tension is broken, sides form at both polarities, resulting in disaster. Conservatives try and deny the reality of a whole community of stories and hold tightly to revelation. Liberals hold so tightly to reality that they neglect and outright reject what God has revealed to humanity through the Holy Scriptures regarding sexual practice and behavior in general, and homosexuality in particular. Brian falls into the later trap. While agree with his condemnation of how the more conservative Church has handled and treated the gay community—actually I would say that handling has been downright disastrous— Brian’s own position results in a disastrous handling of such an important contemporary issue.
For all of my effort at trying to take Brian and his work seriously, this chapter did it for me. Brian is one of those individuals who is able to say a whole heckofalot without saying anything at all or even addressing the real issue. He is at his best in this chapter. Instead of actually dealing with the Text, which explicitly condemns homosexual practice in several areas, he attempts to divert attention by constructing false, nonsensical arguments.
From the start he breaks out the Straw Man “fundasexuality.” Here Brian dismisses the genuine position that homosexual practice is not the way God intended things to be by reducing the conservative position to “a reactive, combative brand of religious fundamentalism that preoccupies itself with sexuality.” The term applies “to the organizing, angry, dominating fundamentalism that declares war on those who differ. Fundasexualityu is rooted not in faith, but in an orientation of fear. Its proponents fear new ideas, people who are different, criticism or rejection from their own community, and God’s violent wrath on them if they don’t fully conform to and enforce the teachings and interpretations of their popular teachers and other authority figures. It is a kind of heterophobia, the fear of people who are different.” (175)
So instead of actually dealing with the idea that homosexual practice is not the way God intended things to be, Brian over inflates the position of conservatives and reduces them to a gross caricature. Convenient but inexcusable.
Next, Brian breaks out his “Greco-Roman six-line narrative” false construct to attack the Platonic dualism of…wait for it…male and female! “Whatever we humans are, we aren’t simply metaphysical male or female souls riding around as passengers in male or female vehicles.” (176) What?! Whatever you think of the creation narrative in Genesis 1 and 2, it is clear God created the Human in male and female forms. These are not false human, societal constructs imposed on others. God created the Human in this way to reflect His own Image and Likeness, as male and female. To Brian, however, male and female are not timeless and perfect in essence, but instead can change and evolve over time.
At this point I am positively creeped out…but I move on. He next attacks the conservative reading of the Text by insisting episodes like the Copernicus/Galileo debate make such discussions on homosexuality null and void. If the Church got astronomy so wrong, then they can certainly get sexuality wrong, too. Just as we “were pressured to label the observation of retrograde motion as a deceptive appearance—not a reality,” so too has the Church pressured the world to label the experiences of gay people a deceptive appearance, “because the reality demanded by the dominant paradigm is that they are rebellious and dangerous sinners, a twisted abomination, a deceptive moral aberrance.” (177)
Again, Brian skirts the issue of whether homosexual practice is not the way God intended things to be. He continues this skirting even in addressing the violent God image. Apparently those of us who take God’s entire self-disclosure seriously “claim that God chooses one tribe and rejects or considers inferior other classes or types of people simply for being who they are—whether they’re Gentiles, Jews, women, nonwhites, non-Christians, or gays.” (178) What Brian does here is fascinating: 1) He falsely labels our view of God as overly exclusionary, which is simply ridiculous—God welcomes all people, but on His terms not ours; 2) He changes the category of homosexuality from a moral, ethical act of rebellion against God to an ontological category of being. No where, however, does the Holy Scripture treat those who practice homosexuality as an identity of being as Gentiles or women. The category “gay” to use Brian’s own language is an ethical violation, an act of moral rebellion. It is disobedience to the way God intended things to be.
Jesus Himself makes this clear. While there are no explicit passages condemning this conduct by Jesus, implicit references do exist. In Mark 7:21-23 Jesus explains that whatever defiles a person comes from their heart, and then lists sexual immoralities (in the greek PORNEIA), adulteries, licentiousness, etc…No first century Jew could have spoken of PORNEIA without having in mind the list of forbidden sexual offenses of Lev. 18 and 20, including incest, bestiality, AND homosexual practice. Furthermore, Jesus appealed frequently to Male-Female complementarity for marriage and sexual union. In Mark 10 when talking about divorce he appeals to the Torah, to Gen 1:27 and 2:24. In Mark’s view Jesus accepted the model for marriage and sexual union presented in Gen 1-2, understanding that it was ordained by God from the beginning of Creation. He shows no awareness of any other marital or sexual pattern ordained by God or part of creation.
Brian insists differently, claiming that “Jesus’ treatment of the marginalized and stigmatized requires us to question the conventional approach. We have many examples of Jesus crossing boundaries to include outcasts and sinners and not a single example of Jesus crossing his arms and refusing to do so.” (179) While this is true to some extent, the ministry of Jesus to be that of both love AND righteousness. While Jesus’ love for the marginalized moved him to go seek the lost and poor and blind, he also insisted on internal transformation with the intent of bring them to a higher ethical standard. Especially regarding incidents of sexual conduct recorded in the Gospels, Jesus accepts in love while truthfully confronting the sinner to change by sinning no more.
Brian ends this chapter with two Red Herrings: he attempts to divert attention from our beginning question—”Is homosexual behavior normative in the Scriptures and part of the way God intended things to be at creation?”—through the Ethiopian eunuch’s conversion in Acts 8 and the sexually sinful practices of heterosexuals.
First, Brian attempts to claim the Ethiopian eunuch’s conversion episode changes the paradigm regarding homosexuality, ushering in a new acceptance of the “sexually other.” “The sign of the Kingdom of God that began with Jesus—a place at the table for outcasts and outsiders—continues in the era of the Acts of the Apostles. The poor are accepted, and the sick. Samaritans are accepted, and Gentiles, including Africans, and here, even the ‘sexually other,’ those considered ‘defective’ who will never have a place in traditional religion or in the traditional culture based on ‘traditional family.’” (183)
The problem here is that Brian attempts to simply re-categorize homosexual behavior as a state of being. The revelation we have from God in the Text, however, consistently marks it as ethically morally rebellious behavior that violates God’s original creative intent. Here Brian is simply wrong at the categorical sense, but even worse in the biblical. Here he twists the meaning of Scripture to serve his agenda of normalizing homosexual practice, holding so tightly to the reality of homosexuality and flagrantly disregarding the revelation of God.
Brian ends the chapter by diverting attention to the question he refuses to answer—”Is homosexual behavior normative in the Scriptures and part of the way God intended things to be at creation?”—to heterosexual behavior. “What we have called traditional marriage—one virgin man and one virgin woman coming together and remaining sole sexual partners for life—isn’t working as it’s supposed to for heterosexuals.” (186) Brian points to premarital sex as the norm for Christians and non-Christians, divorce rates inside and outside the Church, contraceptives, internet pornography, cultural images of bodily perfection, catholic priest abuse scandals, and evangelical abstinence pledge violations as evidence “sexually unrestrained hedonism” among heterosexuals. (187-189)
While I completely agree with the sexual problems our culture faces in general, Brian spends nearly 5 pages addressing issues which have nothing to do with the chapters main premise that insists “we must pursue a practical, down-to-earth theology and an honest, fully embodied spirituality that speaks truthfully and openly about our sexuality, in all its straight and gay complexity.” (189) For Brian, being gay is the reality, regardless of the revelation of God which says otherwise. According to the Holy Scripture, gay practice is just that, ethical moral behavior that violates God’s creation. This is the clear case in Romans 1, which actually links homosexual behavior to idolatry and condemns it as a violation of God’s creation. God does not lift up homosexual practice as another alternative to heterosexual union. God insists that it is disobedient, rebellious practice that is far outside the way He intended things to be at creation.
We began with this question at the beginning, one which we’ve carried through this chapter: “Is homosexual behavior normative in the Scriptures and part of the way God intended things to be at creation?” A better question might be this: If the event of rebellion (aka The Fall) had not occurred would homosexuality be part of our reality? From God’s divine self-disclosure there is no way you can answer that in the positive. Now because Brian believes that the Fall is actually an evolution, he would answer yes. But for those who hold to the historic Christian understanding of God’s Story—Creation, Rebellion, Rescue, Re-creation—there is no way one can see male-male and female-female sexual relations in the creation narrative.
In the end, Brian says “a new kind of Christianity must move beyond this impasse and begin to construct not just a more humane sexual ethic in particular, but a more honest and robust Christian anthropology in general.” (190) No, the Church must reorient Herself around Christ who is rescuing us from our moral rebellion and restoring us to the way we were originally intended to be at the beginning of creation, regardless of the issue. Brian is attempting to construct human sexual ethics and anthropology outside the creative intent of the Creator. May we instead take serious the ministry of reconciliation we’ve been given by God Himself, who is making His appeal to the world to be reconciled to Himself, including every manner in which our sexuality violates God’s original intent.
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Post Series
0: Intro
1: Narrative Question
2: Authority Question
3: God Question
4: Jesus Question
5: Gospel Question
Theological Foundation Recap
6: Church Question
7: Sex Question
8: Future Question
9: Pluralism Question
10: What-Do-We-Do-Now Question
11: Final Thoughts
After setting down his alternative theological foundation, Brian launches into an exploration of “be-ology”—what it means to be as a Christian and human. (160) A natural first question after such a jarring experience with the first 5 questions is this: “What do we do about the Church?” Or more specifically: What is the Church?
Interestingly, up until this point Brian has not used the word church. I found this incredibly odd and disconcerting in a book that is supposedly exploring a new kind of Christianity. Odd that he would not use the very word Jesus Himself used to describe the group of people who are his followers, i.e. Christians; disturbing that his new theology and faith is not specifically for the Church. For someone who describes himself as “a lifelong churchgoer and a veteran pastor,” I wondered why in 160 pages (and beyond this chapter) he never utters the word. I think the reason becomes clear when we explore the answers Brian provides to his question.
He begins this section, and rightly so, describing the fear and antipathy modern culture has toward the church. The sentiments he describes reflect one which someone exclaimed in a conversation I describe in my book I had with a fellow Starbucks barista: “The church is fucked up!”1 As Brian describes the current crisis, “When enough church leaders wake up and smell the Ben-Gay, when they realize that their faith communities are shrinking and wrinkling and stiffening, they start to ask the church questions very urgently: What are we going to do about the church?” (162)
He says that we should stop worrying about what forms the church takes (thanks you!) and start seeing “ourselves as servants of one grander mission, apostles of one greater message, seekers on one ultimate quest…What would that one mission, message, and quest be? Around what one grand endeavor can we rally? What one great danger do people need to be saved from and, more positively, what one great purpose do they need to be saved for?” (164)
In other words: Why does the church exist? According to Brian, “to form Christlike people, people of Christlike love…the formation of Christlike people of love naturally becomes the grand unifying preoccupation and mission of our churches.” (164, 165)
At one level this seems fine, but does the church in any way exist to save people as the earliest church themselves existed? Yes. According to Brian, the church exists to save people “from the great danger of wasting their lives, becoming something less than and other than they were intended to be, gaining the world but losing their soul.” (emphasis mine. 164)
In answering question 6, then, the Church must totally rethink the Her core mission and identify that mission along these terms. (165) That mission, then, is “forming people of Christlike love” (171) and “save them from…wasting their lives” (164)
That’s it folks.
It’s funny, because I thought the Church was a community of redeemed and rescued people sent on mission to reconcile the world to God through Christ.
Does not Paul explicitly explain the mission of the Church in 2 Cor. 5:11-21 when he explains the God gave “us” the community of believers the “mission of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them”? Are we not Christ’s ambassadors who have been committed the message of reconciliation: “Be reconciled to God”? Is not God making His appeal through the Church to be reconciled to Him through Jesus Christ? And is not the basis of that reconciliation that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”?
While I am with Brian at one level, that the mission of individual church communities is to form Christlike people. Christlike formation, however, is part of sanctification! In other words, forming Christlike people who follow the way of love happens only after that have been made new through individual “transformation moments.” What is that transformation moment? When a person choses to be “in Christ” (that incredibly key, distinctive theological rallying point for Paul throughout his letters) and the old person goes a ways and the new person begins.
For Paul humans are born “in Adam” and live out of the flesh, their sinful nature (Rom 5:12-20). They are alienated from God and His enemies and by nature people of His wrath (Col 1:21; Eph. 2:3). But “in Christ” Paul also makes clear that this condition is a past condition. “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.” (Col. 1:21) “Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.”
These and other pieces of the Holy Scripture make plain that there was an old condition and a new condition; a moment when someone is not a believer/follower and when someone is. Even more important there is a time when someone is not reconciled to God and a moment when a person is through Christ. To put it in more exclusionary terms: a person is part of God’s community or they are not, part of the Church or not. Brian cannot voice this, however.
All of this is incredibly important to Brian’s definition and mission of the Church, which misses a vital, necessary piece: faith in Christ. The church is NOT simply a group of people who act like Christ and follow the way of love (though this is an important, vital part of having a real, genuine faith in Christ) and saved from wasting their lives. This is the Kiwanis, a great group of people who’s current motto is “serving the children of the world.” Service and love is not distinctive to the Church nor to Jesus. You could say the same thing for the PeaceCorp, though such Imperial comparisons might draw a lightning bolt or two from Brian.
No, the Church is the community of people who have been rescued from death through the forgiveness of their sins by faithing in the final sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, who by His own blood entered the Most Holy Place once and for all, thus obtaining eternal rescue and life for those who faith in Him. Consequently, those who are saved and believe in Jesus act as the continuing presence of Christ to spread His Kingdom Reign on earth.
That’s the Church, Brian McLaren.
As Paul writes in Ephesians 2: “Because of His great love for us, God, who is rich and mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions— it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”
The word “us” is used 4 times along side with/in Christ 4 times. Paul is speaking to the Church, the redeemed and the rescued and the reconciled in Christ. This is the message and banner of the Church: BE RECONCILED TO GOD IN CHRIST!
This is the very message of the earliest of the Church in Acts. They didn’t preach “live like Jesus” but “believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” (Acts 16) In the face of Jewish persecution and Roman imprisonment they didn’t proclaim “don’t waste your life” but “Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” (Acts 2) God raised Jesus from the dead, and the forgiveness of sins and freedom from sins in Christ was the consistent message of the Church, stemming from Her mission to go into all the world and make disciples of Jesus Christ. (Acts 13 and Matthew 28).
In reality, Brian’s church is not church at all, but a social club devoid of any power because it is disconnected from Jesus Christ as exclusive Lord and Messiah.
This Holy Friday I am reminded how important it is for the Church to boldly, confidently shout from roof-top to roof-tops that Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again! Through the Church God is dispensing His grace and forgiveness and reconciliation and rescue from sin and death, because it is through Jesus Christ and Him alone that all of this is accomplished. The power for forgiveness and reconciliation and life transformation and individual rescue from evil, sin and death is through death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, both of which are mysteriously missing from the mission and message of Brian’s church.
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- the (un)offensive gospel of Jesus, 37. [↩]
