Paid Pastoral Staff? A Calling to the Ministry?

Andrew Hamilton has an interesting post, something I haven’t thought very hard or long about. In it he asks this question:

“Can anyone provide a compelling biblical argument for the existence of paid pastoral staff within a local congregation?“

It’s an interesting question. He concedes that you could probably make more than one good pragmatic argument for paid pastoral staff he then also mentions his own experience of calling to ministry as perhaps a compelling argument. That got me thinking even more. If I re-phrased his question then we have another question that is often taken for granted or thought very little about:

“Can anyone provided a compelling biblical argument for the existence of a subjective call to the ministry of a local congregation?“

Life is becoming more and more complicated the more I study the Bible – the questions just keep on coming, and often they’re questions that impinge upon me directly – like questions about paid pastoral ministry. Anyone got any thoughts on these questions?

Narrative-Realism or Preterism? Help Me

Can anyone help me out with a bit of theological jargon and terminology that I’m trying to get my head around? I’ve been reading a fair bit of the articles on Open Source Theology and I keep coming up against, what many of their authors call the ‘narrative-historical argument’ or the ‘narrative-realist’ approach. Andrew Perriman, one of the authors, even describes himself as doing ‘biblical theology after Christendom in a narrative-realist mode’. In reading the various articles however this narrative-realism seems to sound a whole lot like classic preterism. My question for all the budding theologians out there is what is the difference between the two (preterism and the narrative-realist approach)? Or are they pretty much the same thing – in which case this narrative-realist approach is not really all that new. Help me please…

Theology of the Fall for Dummies

Theology of the fall in popular culture.

Healthy Critique

Some of the heat that has been directed my way due to my post about Hillsong Cape Town has disturbed me somewhat at the ability (or lack thereof) of Christians to critique and ask hard questions of themselves. I understand that when one is part of something that you believe in you’ll defend it tooth and nail – but shouldn’t Christians be slightly different? After all we should be fighting tooth and nail for one central issue and that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and its centrality to life and practice. For everything else shouldn’t we be prepared to critique and be open to critique?

In the last two years of blogging I’ve followed a lot of different types of Christian blogs and if truth be told I’ve learned an absolute ton from Christian traditions other than my own. I’ve learned things from (wait for it…) Roman Catholicism, the Emerging Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Neo-Monasticism, Pentecostalism and even stuck in the mud Reformed folks. By reading widely and interacting with the different expressions of faith I’ve been able to critique my own expression and refine it in order to be more faithful in following Christ. Going back and forth between the scriptures and these various traditions has been a thoroughly fruitful exercise. And so I think that when we become unable to critique we lose much and are worse off for it. We also might be (and I say this tentatively) exposing the idols in our life and practice when we discover areas that we are unable to critique (i.e. what do I value above the gospel?).

The Sexuality of Jesus and the Gospels

My brother, who got a much bigger share than me from the family gene pool when it comes to academic intelligence and skill, has a fascinating question about the sexuality of Jesus and the Gospels.

Tim Chester on the Sermon

Tim Chester has begun posting a dialogue that he has had with an enquirer regarding the role of the sermon in church life. Its something I need to think more about from a theological point of view. In some ways its a bit scary to think about just in case I discover that it puts me out of a job!

Cultural Influence – The Decision we All Face

I engaged in a fascinating tutorial today which my church history professor took on the subject of the rise of scholasticism in Medieval Christianity. We spent a significant amount of time discussing the impact that the re-discovery of the works of Aristotle had upon the western church. As the westerners came into conflict with the Arabic speaking world through the crusades they came back into contact with large amounts of Aristotle’s work which had been faithfully preserved by the Arab scholars. The Aristotelian worldview and the culture it created confronted the lethargic western church and forced it to respond. Now what is fascinating from a historical point of view is the church’s response. Historically the church has responded to these cultural shifts in one of three ways:

1. One of the most common response is to condemn this foreign influence as being from the devil, damn it to the pit of hell and completely reject it.

2. Another approach is to adopt it wholesale to the point that it completely replaces one’s Christian worldview.

3. The third approach is to find some sort of compromise and integrate the foreign influence or new culture with the Christian worldview.

These three responses are evident so often in the pages of church history. We see them being expressed in the enlightenment period and how the church confronted Darwinism – we see it a bit today as the church confronts the current culture shift and post modernity. What I find interesting is the that many evangelicals tend to see the third response in a purely negative light. We’ve been trained to think of the concept of compromise in completely negative categories. This is actually extremely arrogant because it has to presuppose perfect knowledge of the divine revelation and its interaction with culture. When we paint the concept of compromise in purely negative terms it highlights a smug belief that we hold about our personal possession of absolute truth and that, functionally, we see ourselves as completely above reproach in all areas pertaining to the clash between divine revelation and culture. Yet the Bible itself tells us that this is not true – we don’t know all and are constantly revising and (hopefully) bettering our understanding of divine revelation and its relationship to the prevailing culture. Compromise CAN be positive when a new culture causes us to reflect upon the divine revelation with fresh insight and re-adjust our previous convictions that were in fact based upon faulty interpretations often derived from previous cultural influence.

The acknowledgement of this should bring about a great humility when dealing with the clash between the text and the culture. Its not a call for cultural relativism but rather a careful realization of existing cultural presuppositions and the onset of new ones. The reality is that everyone (even the fundamentalist) is working with and trying to negotiate these cultural presuppositions as they aim to be faithful to the divine revelation. I suppose the decision we all face then is whether or not to be honest about our cultural baggage and humble when we come to the Bible.

Can you Defend Contextualization Exegetically? An Open Forum

Here’s a post by Gordon Cheng that suggests that Paul’s address to the Athenians in Acts 17 doesn’t really advocate contextualization (be sure to read the comments). What do you think?

As for me, you’ll know if you read this blog that I’m a bit more in the contextualization camp – but in terms of defending my position exegetically (defend from scripture – sorry for the jargon) I need to give it a bit more thought.

Alright peeps – your turn (and remember no essay length comments!)…

Harmon on New Testament Unity

Matt Harmon outlines 5 reasons in support of the theological unity of the New Testament documents. He also helpfully points to further reading on the subject.

Idolatry in Noble Tasks

I think sometimes I get myself into some sort of internal conundrum trying to have a water-tight take on specific doctrines. I don’t think I’m trying to get all my important doctrines squared off into neat little boxes so that I can take the moral high-ground on everyone else and point fingers. That’s really not my intent. I think I quest more for neat formulas because I vest confidence in those formulas as I proceed in ministry and life.

So for example, at the moment I’m frantically scratching my head over the doctrine of the church. There are a number of loose ends that I’d love to see neatly tied up. Why? So that I can tell the world off because they’ve all got church wrong? No – simply so that I can do church properly myself. And herein lies the problem. It becomes a trust problem. My confidence in ministry and life becomes vested in how well I’m able to intellectually tie together my framework about specific doctrines. Now even though many of those doctrines might be closely tied to Christ, they are themselves not Christ and my pursuit of them can therefore become idolatrous.

I wonder if some of us truly believe that we can become idolatrous in our doctrinal quests and miss the Christ under whom all our doctrines should be subservient? I must quest for knowledge, I must quest for truth, I must quest for doctrinal clarity where possible, but I must quest with Christ as my master and nothing else. Anything less is religious idolatry and depreciates the very point of knowledge, truth and doctrine.

Quote of the Week

“This internet is a wonderful tool, isn’t it? Incredible insight with very little actual knowledge.“  – Michael Spencer responds to some would-be Christian watchdogs prowling around the internet looking for minute discrepancies to devour without understanding.

2008 Preliminary Reads

Here are some of the reads I’m intending to attempt along with all my college reading in the first two months or so of the year:

A Clear and Present Word – Mark D. Thompson

I’m busy with this one at the moment – almost halfway through. Thompson makes quite a compelling case that not only is God a speaking God but he is a speaking God that intends for his communication to be known by those he has created. I just finished a brilliant section where he tackles the issue of human language and exposes the potential problems it poses for communication between a transcendent God and his human creations.

Post-Christendom – Stuart Murray

I’ve read a fair amount of good reviews about this one so I thought I’d better check it out. I’d like to also match up the way he qualifies post-christendom with the current South African Christian context and see how true his picture rings here.

Neither Poverty nor Riches – Craig L. Blomberg

I live in South Africa where poverty and riches live side by side in a way that is found almost nowhere else in the world. I think, therefore, a thorough knowledge of what the scriptures say on the issue, authored by a proven biblical scholar, is a must for me and other ministers in this country.

iPod therefore I Am

George Whitefield College is running its annual ‘Summer School of Biblical Christianity’ from 23 Jan to 1 Feb 2008 at their campus in Muizenberg, Cape Town. They’re offering courses on Biblical Theology, Church Response to Contemporary Issues, New Testament Greek, Old Testament Hebrew, Advanced Exegesis and Post-Graduate Research. I’ll be attending the Post-Graduate Research course.

What was really interesting to me is that Mark Norman will be down from Pretoria to teach 6 sessions on understanding postmodernism entitled ‘iPod therefore I Am‘. Here’s his schedule:

Part 1: Understanding Postmodernism – The differences between ‘Premodern’, ‘Modern’ and ‘Postmodern’ societies.

Part 2: Postmodernism and the Problem of Truth – A Christian critique of postmodern views of knowledge and truth.

Part 3: Postmodernism, Terrorism and Fundamentalism – The new global war and what it means for the church.

Part 4: Postmodernism and African Thought – How post-colonial African thought relates to postmodernism and its relevance for the church.

Part 5: Postmodernism and the Use of Language – A study of postmodern approaches to language, with special relevance to Jacques Derrida.

Part 6: Postmodernism and the Stories We Live In – Are you living in the Christian story?

Mark’s talks will take place in the mornings of each day prior to the other Summer School classes.

For more information contact GWC  (021) 788-1652

Or see the college website.

Thanks for all the Literature Bart and Co.

After watching those Ehrman lectures I was wondering to myself how I might pastor people who came to me distressed after reading a book like ‘Misquoting Jesus‘ or far less scholarly literature like the ‘Da Vinci Code‘. So I did some searching around to see how many people have written academic responses to these sorts of works but written them at a popular level – as Ehrman himself does. Now we all know about the glut of literature written in response to the ‘Da Vinci Code‘ but what else is out there?

What I noticed, without having read much of it at all, but through reading reviews by other top scholars, is that there seems to be a whole lot of really decent literature out their refuting people like Ehrman, Price, Pagels and of course Mr. Brown.  Top evangelical scholars like Darrell Bock, Daniel Wallace, NT Wright, and others have written quite a few works. And so in once sense I’m glad that Ehrman and co. wrote these books because its made a whole lot of good Christian scholarship, in this area, available to so many more people than we previously had. As has always been the case in history, the church is writing theology for each occasion and there is some quality coming out.

Restorative Eschatology – An Open Forum

Due to the success of the last Open Forum I’ve decided to make them a regular occurrence here at ‘…daylight‘. This time I want to build upon something I noted in the last forum and one of the comments that was posted in response. I noted that our gospel definitions did not include the subjects of heaven or hell and that this was peculiar because often evangelicals are accused of reducing the gospel to a ‘get out of hell free’ ticket. Chris Gensheer who blogs at Intersection made the following astute comment in response:

One of the reasons why I think “heaven and hell” were not mentioned is because I think there is something of a turn within evangelicalism from a “turn or burn” eschatology, to a restorative eschatology.

So here’s the topic of the new forum. What does a restorative eschatology look like? Does it mean we all become post-mills? Does it mean that the New Creation is realized in this age as more and more people live out what it means to follow Jesus? Or does it mean that even though this world will pass away, because of the New Creation we must live with a restorative hope that works itself out in the present age?

So once again I’ll get the ball rolling: I’m not a post-mill, I’m more a-mill. I would argue however that because I believe that God will make a New Creation one day, and because I am positionally a member of the New Creation already in Christ, I must live restoratively now in this life.

Alright peeps, your turn (and remember be nice and no essay-length comments please). BTW – If you don’t understand some of the terminology in this post then follow the links for definitions.

Kimball on Hell

Dan Kimball has some very astute words regarding the subject of ‘hell’ which he preached on three times this last Sunday. He’s definitely worth a read and perhaps a decent, humble and thoughtful corrective to some emerging theologies that are preparing for Christianity without hell.

How am I to Respond?

Dion has written a post on discouragement. In it he mentions that one of the things that has discouraged him recently is the response of the conservatives to Desmond Tutu’s statements earlier in the week (See Dion’s mention of those responses here). Now I am a conservative and I did respond to Tutu’s words. I don’t know if Dion had me in mind when he wrote those posts, I don’t even know if he read my post. He definitely didn’t mention me or my blog in either of his posts and so as I write this post I write it not in response to Dion, or even someone like Gus who commented on my post. I write rather as a kind of open question to anyone who is willing to propose an honest answer. Here is my dilemma/question:

I wish to know how I ought to respond to someone like Tutu when he makes the statements that he makes. I, along with many other evangelicals, believe that homosexual practice is sin in the eyes of God. I absolutely detest homophobia and hope that in my life and ministry it will be evident to all that I am as accepting of homosexuals as I am of anyone else on this planet. Yet I still stand with a prolific leader of the church in my country making statements that I am convinced to my core are not in accordance with Scripture. How should I respond? Do I ignore my convictions for the sake of a percieved unity when in my heart of hearts I know that God (if he truly has spoken by his scriptures) laments those statements of Tutu’s?

I desire to be beyond reproach in the way I use this blog as a mouth piece. I desire to be gracious and display humility at all times when interacting with those with whom I disagree. But I cannot ignore my convictions. So how should I respond?

Preaching Errors According to Manchester #3

Part #1

Part #2

Simon Manchester’s third error – ‘System beats Text’:

Even more common than this manner-over-matter preaching is the system-beats-text preaching. This is the widespread danger of dragging every text through the grid of one doctrine that ignores the point of the original passage. For example, one overseas preacher seems to put every passage through the ‘justification by faith’ grid. He is clever and insightful and searching – you’re on the psychiatrist’s couch in no time! – but there is this sa/bad taste left in your mouth that the biblical book was in the service of an idea. ‘Bible-combing’ preaching also has its systematic strengths but often seems to neglect each biblical writer’s specific point in favour of the biblical overview. For example, if Jesus is teaching on people in prison (Matt 25:31-46), it is dangerous to start collecting ‘prison’ references and miss the point in the passage that Jesus will one day announce those who took his ‘brothers’ seriously. Much better to stay with the text in hand until the main point is clear.

My own view, for its worth, is that this is the single biggest problem in preaching in our ‘Reformed’ camp. I’ve often heard of it referred to as ‘the dreaded sack of knowledge’. The need to systematize everything just hinders us from seeing the point of each individual text. If God wanted us to have a systematics text book he would have given us one – but he didn’t, he gave us a story. We might find that certain doctrines would be better nuanced if we tried to avoid this trap even when we’re doing systematic theology. We need to preach the text, not our systems.

Last Day…Ever!

Today is my last day of undergraduate theology lectures ever! I’ve been a registered undergraduate student for over 8 years now in various disciplines (for those of you in the States – we don’t have the MDiv. type degree here in South Africa – if you’ve got an undergraduate in something else and you want to train for the ministry you have to another undergraduate in theology). One more year of postgrad next year and then its time to stop collecting letters after my name and start working!

Church: The Place to Encounter God?

I recently heard someone describe church as the place where we encounter God. My question is: Can this concept be derived from a New Testament understanding of the assembly? Is the assembly a place for encountering God – or is the assembly the place where those who have already encountered God, by encountering him at the cross, come together to meet with each other for the purpose of encouragement and partnership and praise?