Jameswmiller's Blog

I mentioned last week that there were several creative proposals for reconfiguring an eroding denomination. The Presbyterian Church (USA) has been losing members for over 40 years, and with the decentralization of ordination standards that will begin soon, it is at the place of changing or dying.

Fortunately, that reality may make it more interested in creative alternatives to the status quo. There are at least five of them in the works that I’d like to discuss. Today I’ll describe the first.

Glenkirk Church is proposing that the denomination should begin to allow churches to reaffiliate with different Presbyteries (local governing bodies consisting of a few dozen churches). So for instance, there are around eight Presbyteries in Southern California. A church could reasonably move from one to another while still being within related geographical bounds. All things considered, it’s a fairly simple move.

The reason for doing something like this is to create circles of shared mission, shared theology, and trust within a diverse and fractured larger body. I’d compare this to the familial unit existing within a diverse nation. I like having a family with shared values. One of the reasons my wife and I got married was because of the values that we shared. I’m sure she would insist that it was because I was so handsome, but I’m going to go with “shared values.” Because I’m so humble. And handsome. But I digress. We had certain shared values, which created trust and intimacy between us, and we teach those values to our children.

At the same time, she and I live in a diverse nation with all kinds of different values, some of which we don’t agree with. But I like living in a diverse nation, because it means I’m free. It means no one is going to move in to try to take my values away from me. So shared values within a family and diverse values within a nation is a functional combination.

Presbyteries are responsible for things like deciding who gets ordained as a Pastor and how the property of a church is used. So allowing churches to align with Presbyteries that have shared values creates trust an intimacy. Churches can be free to do like-minded mission from a shared theology and be confident about issues like ordination and property. At the same time, churches can still belong to a diverse denomination, which means that the churches are free to maintain their own values.

The advantage to this is that it may well stop the denomination from dying, if it’s done reasonably soon (at its current rate, the PC(USA) will cease to exist in 35 years). It also brings an end to the in-fighting. Those who see disadvantages to it are either those who don’t like change of any sort, or those who don’t want to live in a diverse nation, because they want complete control.

I would say that the choices are either death-by-status-quo, or something that looks a lot like this.

David Platt’s “Radical” is a familiar refrain, that Americans have baptized the American dream rather than living the way Jesus wants us to. It’s a worthwhile call to reconsideration of Jesus’ message and to self-sacrifice, and while lacking in novelty, it has clear necessity.

Platt summarizes the challenges of the book himself (183): “Real success is found in radical sacrifice. Ultimate satisfaction is found not in making much of ourselves but in making much of God. The purpose of our lives transcends the country and culture in which we live. Meaning is found in community, not individualism; joy is found in generosity, not materialism; and truth is found in Christ, not universalism. Ultimately, Jesus is a reward worth risking everything to know, experience, and enjoy.” He closes the book with a challenge, that his readers do 5 things: pray for the entire world, read the entire Word, sacrifice money for a specific purpose, spend time in another context, and commit to multiplying community (evangelize).

There’s nothing new to his challenges, only Platt’s palpable enthusiasm. There are some meaningful stories of the experiences of his congregation (4,000 member church in Alabama, quasi-Baptist non-denominational). The book brims with enthusiasm for evangelism and generosity for the poor. He pushes hard for the doctrine that those who never hear of Jesus are still going to hell, so better do something about it. And he attempts, but doesn’t necessarily succeed, to push against materialism.

And this is where the book could be found wanting. He talks about selling his home to move into a smaller one and to give more money away, but then confesses that he just bought another house and filled it full of stuff. The sections on materialism sounds like a suburban American teenager talking about how radical Francis of Assisi was. And sure, he was radical, but talking about him and imitating him are worlds apart. It will be interesting to see if Platt, when he’s an older man, as he’s still in the first half of life now, has either a different message or a different lifestyle.

That said, I’d give this book to anyone who was tired of a tame, acculturated Christianity that doesn’t look anything different than the agnostic next door. That may be what made it a New York Times Bestseller. Platt, at least, realizes that Christians are called to a different life and a different world. And again: I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

There are some new notions about denominations that are percolating.

After decades of infighting and decline, there is a growing movement to restructure the Presbyterian Church (USA) in ways that are creative, open-minded, and entrepreneurial. I’m finding a renewed fascination with some of my friends and colleagues around the country who have been holding on to some great ideas that they’re just starting to publicize.

One of the best is one that I’ll share in my next post. But for now, let me tell you about one that is sort of generic and vanilla, but is at least peaceable.

In 2008, the General Assembly, which is the highest governing body of the Presbyterian Church (USA), suggested that Presbyteries (smaller governing bodies usually consisting of a few dozen churches, usually geographically close together), draft what it called a “Gracious Dismissal Policy.” The idea is that churches have been suing, withdrawing, and withholding money with no results except decline and conflict. A Gracious Dismissal Policy is a nice way of agreeing to disagree and let the church go to another denomination with a defined arrangement. Such policies require widespread approval from the congregation that wants to leave and sometimes a financial cost paid by the departing church.

A lot of churches have left. Most of them are going to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC).

As I say, this is not the most interesting proposal. It has pros, like the end of embittered conflict and an open and honest agreement about how to say goodbye. It has cons, like the illogic of Christians running away from people that they ought to be influencing or assuming they’re going to find a denomination that is without conflict or disagreement.

That said, my main observation about Gracious Dismissal Policies is this. In 1983, the PC(USA) declared that it owned the property of all the congregations in the denomination, regardless of whether or not anyone outside the congregation had helped pay for the property. The denomination did this because it was afraid of churches leaving. I can only see two biblical examples of someone saying that they claim the land under and authority over a people in order to create unity. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the example is Pharaoh. In the New Testament, the example is Caesar.

I have yet to find a place where Jesus said, “What’s yours is mine.”

So I think it’s wise for Presbyteries to follow through and create these policies. Some have; others are working on it. But it isn’t the most creative proposal. And I’ll cover one of those next.

Glenkirk Church exists to lead uncommitted people to become fully devoted followers of Jesus. That’s what we do. Everything we do gets tested against that mission statement. Last year 50 adults in the life of our church professed faith in Jesus for the first time. Another 150 children did as well. That’s what we do. We’re here to love lost people in a broken world into a relationship with Jesus.

During any given week, I preach, I counsel, I lead, I visit, I study, I administrate, and I moderate. When I’m done with all of that, I think about denominations. Because to my mind, denominations are bureaucratic structures created to support all of the important things churches do. They’re fundamentally secondary to the local church.

But at this stage in our church’s life, I find myself forced to turn my thoughts to issues concerning the denomination, putting aside the other matters I’m usually about. In the life of Glenkirk, such concerns have consistently caused sadness, stress, and exhaustion, rarely love, joy, or peace. Here we go again.

This year the Presbyterian Church (USA) is likely to change its constitution, which has required its ordained leaders either to be faithful within a marriage between a man and a woman or chaste in singleness. Removing that language will permit the ordination of homosexuals and couples who are cohabitating by local churches that desire to do so (Glenkirk will not). Congregations across the nation will experience this as a moral compromise in the PC(USA), and fellow Christians in other church bodies will say the same. Furthermore, the PC(USA) has been losing members for 44 years at an increasing rate. This will make it worse, just as it has with the UCC and the Episcopalian Church.

This is my one call to this conflicted, shrinking denomination this year, especially to those who disagree with me theologically. We are going to have to graciously give each other room to do ministry in different camps. There are leaders who are so immature as to be hungry for a forced unity, as though that would be some sort of victory. Forced unity is no unity at all, and it’s a bad witness to the world. We’re going to have to set each other free.

To that end, several people are working on creative structures that will allow us to separate graciously from one another without a fight. I imagine this is the best that we can hope for. There are creative teams working now on reconfiguring church structures so that churches can align with others who have kindred theology and mission. My hope would be that on either side of these debates, we would graciously give each other room to do ministry.

Soon I’ll write about what those creative structures might look like.

Church structures are a temporal manifestation of an eternal reality, and it’s the eternal reality that counts. There’s a good chance that dozens of people will choose to follow Jesus at Glenkirk this year. There’s no other way I want to spend my time. We have nothing better to do.

Batterson’s “Soul Print” is an encouraging book aimed at helping us find our calling in life despite our challenges. As opposed to a formula for finding our spiritual gifts and a place in which to use them, the book is primarily a call to humility, integrity, and perseverance, using King David as the primary example. In that sense, the book gives us insight into the guy with a lot of character who wrote it. It’s a refreshing change to the literature of large church pastors which tends to revolve around evangelism and marketing. This one is about character.

The book is divided into five chapters. The first is about patience and recognizing that during God’s “divine delays,” God is actually teaching us skills we wouldn’t otherwise have, looking at David as a shepherd. The second is about choosing markers that identify our victories and God’s work in our lives, drawn from the story of David and Goliath. The third is about integrity and respect, exploring David’s relationship with Saul. The fourth is about humility, looking at David’s dance in the buff. And the fifth is about moral integrity and holiness, drawn from David’s tryst with Bathsheba.

Batterson concludes with a hopeful reference to the new name believers will be given in heaven, which “will make your entire life make sense. All the pain. All the joy. All the fears. All the hopes. All the confusion. All the dreams.”

If we find fault with the book, it has to do with the literary style, which seems rushed and a little immature. Speculating about the nature of Saul’s relieving himself in a cave when David cut off a corner of his robe doesn’t exactly lend itself to exegetical insight. And overall, Batterson could use a touch of poetry. Most of it is outright moralistic storytelling, along the lines of fairly obvious sermon illustrations, and while it may fit the genre of the book, it doesn’t make for great writing. But for a casual read, the stories are interesting, and the bottom line is a worthwhile message.

That said, it’s nice to see a solid, large-church, evangelical investing in matters of character, and given that, I’d recommend the book. Here’s the legalese: I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review. That said, I wanted to read it anyway and I’d recommend it regardless.

SUMMARY
I have to admit two things about reviewing Rob Bell’s book, “Love Wins.” I knew that I liked Rob Bell when I took a doctoral class (DMin) from him at Fuller Seminary, when I got to sit in a room with thirty other people and ask him questions and pick his brain for a few days. I like him a lot. He’s a good guy. Secondly, I figured out in that class where I thought he was likely to go wrong theologically, and I asked him about that specifically. He’s done it in this book. And I’ll get to that. But first, a summary.

Rob Bell can claim in interviews to be an evangelical and not to be a universalist because he’s redefined those terms. Evangelicals claim Scripture as their highest authority. Universalists believe that everyone goes to heaven rather than hell. Bell cites scripture authoritatively, but at the end of the day defines the character of God along the lines of what he believes most intuitive, and perhaps most popular. Evangelicals are going to disown him on that one, as when John Piper tweeted, “Farewell, Rob Bell.” Bell does seem to believe in a literal hell, and that people go there. However, he creates a bit of a loophole for the universalists and insists that he can’t imagine a God who would make people stay there forever. So he’s a circuitous universalist. It’s not that there’s no hell, it’s just that it’s purgatory (although he doesn’t call it that). That’s the book.

BELL ON THE BIBLE
Developing an understanding of God’s self-revelation is a messy thing. God speaks, but then someone else writes it down, and then we read it. In that process, there’s a middle man, who has a vocabulary that means certain things to him. The words in his vocabulary change meaning over time and through translation. We’re never wholly “in the mind” of the guy who wrote them down. And we’re only assuming that God meant by the words he uses exactly what the guy wrote. So you have to come down pretty clearly on how much you take that guy at his word.

Imagine someone telling you about meeting a famous person that you already know a lot about. In part you listen to what he says for new information. In part you read what he says through the lens of what you already know about the celebrity. See, if the reporter is the Bible and the celebrity is God, evangelicals have always relied more heavily on the words of the reporter than our intuitions about the celebrity. That’s where Bell is not an evangelical. He trusts his intuitions enough to interpret the reporter through them.

So when Bell writes, “Is God our friend, our provider, our protector, our father—or is God the kind of judge who may in the end declare that we deserve to spend forever separated from our Father?” (p53, ebook) he’s created a dichotomy between a caricature of the biblical image of God and his own intuition for what God is like. Clearly, he favors his intuition. And intuitively, Bell isn’t into hell.

The result is a routine tweaking of the Scripture to bring it into submission to his intuition. His presentation of the biblical images of hell skirts around the overall effect of the many teachings of Jesus culminating in weeds being burned or people being thrown into darkness. He even does some exegetical contortion to get “eternal punishment” (Mt. 25) to be “a period of pruning” (48), disregarding that that parable follows on the heels of another in which people are thrown into darkness and another in which the God-figure says, “I never knew you.”

Bell will claim things like, “untold masses of people suffering forever doesn’t bring God glory” (56) and that the biblical portrayal of hell “isn’t a very good story” (57) and that a God who would allow hell to exist is only “sort of great” (50). Intuition trumps Scripture.

He ends up completely subverting certain teachings of Scripture. He suggests (60) that the image of the gates of Jerusalem remaining open in Revelation refers to heaven always being open (and thus hell being temporary), rather than the most obvious sense for the image: the gates are open because Jerusalem is finally safe. And he mentions once but never deals with the image of a “lake of fire” in Revelation, which parallels Jesus’ image in the story of Lazarus, which Bell writes off as a fanciful moralistic tale.

He also misuses Martin Luther, who once speculated that God is so powerful that he could bring people back from death and give them faith if he wanted to, though Luther states that there is no evidence that that has ever happened. Luther was talking about omnipotence. Bell uses that to cast Luther as a possible universalist.

WHAT BELIES IT
Now the exegetical sleight of hand is bad enough, but Bell actually coaches the reader on how to do it, and in this he’s to be held responsible as a Pastor. He tells the reader that we need a word to describe suffering and evil in this life, and “hell” is a good word for that, so we should keep the word (49). He says that if people ask you whether or not you believe in a literal hell, you can say “yes,” because Gehenna (37) was a real location and because the genocide in Rwanda was real (38). With a wink, Bell shows us how to avoid the conversation with people who really want to know what we think. And by the end of the book, Bell hasn’t ever come out and said, “Everyone gets to heaven in the end.” He’s only said, mostly in the form of questions, that he can’t imagine how a good God would allow hell to be eternal. Wink, wink.

BELL’S CURVE
I asked Rob Bell the question, “Given that your preaching is largely based on whatever subjects are most of interest to you at the present moment, what holds you accountable to the biblical canon?” He then told a story about a man in his congregation who knows the Bible well. He said that when that guy thinks Bell is off, he writes Bell letters pointing out his errors. And that’s it. One of the most influential voices in American Christianity is held accountable to theological orthodoxy by the kind of angry critic that most Pastors don’t invest a lot of time in. And when he said that, I had a pretty good sense that if Bell ever went sadly wrong, that’s how it would happen: a celebrity, alone, unchecked, applauded and protected by his fans.

I still like Rob Bell. He is, authentically, a good guy, and he really loves Jesus. Ultimately, he’s going to have to decide what happened when God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Because the sacrifice wasn’t just of a son, it was of an intuition for what is right and wrong and what a loving God ought to be like. Abraham chose obedience over intuition, and Abraham is forever after the father of faith.

What God does in the end is God’s business. Paul asks, in a passage Bell ignores, “Who are you, a human being, to in turn judge God?” (Rom 9)

Japan now wrestles with life, death, and disaster through the religious vehicles available to it. Less than 1% of the population is Christian, so most of the conversation will not be about Jesus. But, as someone asked me in church last Sunday, what are Christians supposed to think about God’s role in natural disasters?

Some Christians mistakenly think that non-Christians are somehow more susceptible to suffering because they are not watched over in the same way as Christians. This elitism fails to appreciate the plain biblical teaching that our fate does not reveal God’s favor (Ecc. 9:2, Mt. 5:45). Others attempt to point to some measure of sinfulness that provoked the wrath of some primeval, vengeful God, which again avoids the plain teaching of Scripture (Job 1:11, Jn. 9:3).

The reality is that natural disasters are simply the horrible, sad result of a fallen world. The world is broken, and it’s broken in every which way it can be. The Bible says that human beings have both corporately (Gen. 3:6) and individually (Rom. 3:23) rejected God. The result is that God lets us, to a certain degree, have our own way (Rom 1:24). He humbly steps back at our request. And consequently, all the world shows signs of its brokenness, not just our behavior, but the physical world itself. Natural disasters are a physical manifestation of the spiritual reality that we’ve told God to leave us alone. There’s no individual or local blame for such things, and Christians should never go looking to pin the responsibility on anyone. Everyone has pushed God away, and everyone suffers from a broken world.

What’s happened is that the world has been broken. God didn’t break it, we did. It’s broken down to its most elemental levels, in its DNA. And yet he loves us all the same. He loves us in our broken lives and in our broken world. Disasters are not a sign that God doesn’t care, only that he’s honored our request to let us have the world. Disasters are a sign that we broke the world. God gladly heals and gladly forms us into healing community. But we have to ask. And we have to respond.

If you’d like to donate to relief efforts in Japan, please support World Vision.