I want to pull two together two strands that seem unrelated but recently have been useful in my ministry: denominational polity and teaching the church about hard topics.

Denominational Polity

First, consider the function of what is known as a “resolution.” Robert’s Rules of Order, the most widely used source for organizational governance in the English-speaking world (certainly in America), says that a resolution is defined as a formal main motion that is put into writing to address an important, formal, or complex question.

I heard it explained similarly a few years ago: a resolution is the official sentiment of a specific body of people at a given moment in time.

Too often we jump to questions of enforceability or authority—“Is it binding or not?” (Depending on the organization and its specific rules, some resolutions are more or less binding.) However, a resolution adopted by a religious body is typically an official statement or opinion of that body at a moment in time. It may not be enforceable, but it is intended to provide clarity and guidance. It’s often designed to help people take a stand in the context of confusion within the body and/or in the face of the watching world.

Beyond squabbling over “enforceability”, a better question would be: “Is this statement good, right, and true? And if so, how might we act in accordance with its affirmations and denials?” To be clear, I don’t think it’s wrong to debate whether a resolution is the best tool to address an issue. Sometimes a more aggressive, binding, and/or comprehensive approach is required. At times, some issues might be best left for another day.

However, resolutions have their proper place. Frankly, I think our latent legalism (whether of the rigid sort or the antinomian/licentious sort) is what causes us to jump to questions of authority or enforceability. A wise, virtuous, spiritually confident people would spend much more time concerned with the language and/or merits of a resolution. And if we determine it has merit, we should consider what a faithful response involves on our part as individuals and members of the larger organization.

The Pull of Pornography

Second, pornography is unquestionably a massive moral scourge on the world. Porneia (which is usually translated from Koine Greek as “sexual immorality” or “fornication), is a multi-faceted, ancient problem. Sinful desire isn’t new, nor are its many manifestations. What’s uniquely modern is its accessibility, brutality, affordability, and many opportunities for addictive experience.

By now many readers may know of one of the most significant data points which represent the prevalence of pornography use: In 2023, Pornhub totaled over 2.14 billion visits during a single month—more than Instagram, Netflix, Pinterest, and TikTok combined. 28,000 people visit porn websites every second. And that is now old data!

Health care professionals, counselors, legal experts, law enforcement, and many other professional groups have joined the chorus of Christians expressing concerns over what pornography use is doing to adolescent development, relationships, crime rates, and more. Calls for regulation—and in some cases bans—are increasing. Still, pornography is a multi-billion-dollar industry. The purveyors of porn will not go away quietly.

Putting the Pieces Together

So it is with great appreciation that the 2026 Resolutions Committee of the National Association of Free Will Baptists offered the following resolution to the delegates at this past Convention:

WHEREAS, God’s Word teaches that God created human sexuality to be expressed, experienced and enjoyed exclusively within the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman for one lifetime (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:4-6); and

WHEREAS, Jesus warned that sexual thoughts about an individual who is not one’s spouse is adultery of the heart (Matthew 5:27-28); and

WHEREAS, God’s Word condemns sexual immorality, which is any sexual thoughts and/or activities outside of a covenantal marriage between one man and one woman (1 Corinthians 7:2; Hebrews 13:4; Ephesians 5:3; Colossians 3:5; 1 Thessalonians 4:3; Revelation 21:8); and

WHEREAS, All previous pornography resolutions have largely become outdated due to advancements in technology and in few cases too vague; and

WHEREAS, Contemporary research validates these moral judgments, demonstrating that habitual pornography consumption rewires the neural pathways of the brain, fuels addiction-like compulsions, escalates users toward more extreme content, and correlates with higher rates of sexual aggression and relational dissolution; and

WHEREAS, Pornography is often an introduction to various forms of immoral sexual content, normalizing such behavior as adultery, homosexuality, violence, rape, incest, and other dehumanizing acts; and

WHEREAS, Pornography not only debases its consumers but also objectifies those it depicts, many of whom are coerced, trafficked, or economically exploited, thereby dishonoring the image of God in each human being; and

WHEREAS, Civil government is ordained by God to restrain evil and to promote that which is good (Romans 13:3-4), and long-standing obscenity statutes—though inconsistently enforced—demonstrate the state’s rightful authority to prohibit material that is destructive to public morals; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the delegates to the National Association of Free Will Baptists meeting in Columbus, Ohio, July 2026, unequivocally denounce pornography in every form as a blasphemous distortion of God’s gift of sexuality, a violent assault on the image of God within in each human, and a destructive force upon individuals, families, churches, and society; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we reaffirm our previous condemnations of pornography and declare anew that all production, distribution, and consumption of pornographic material is sin against God and our neighbors; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we call upon pastors, churches, and denominational entities to proclaim the liberating power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, to demonstrate personal sexual purity, to consistently practice personal accountability, to provide practical discipleship and recovery programs, and establish accountability structures that offer compassionate, Christ-like care for those struggling with unbiblical sexual thoughts and behavior; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we exhort parents and guardians to cultivate homes of purity, employing wisdom, technological safeguards, and clear instruction to protect children from exposure to sexualized media; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we urge state legislatures and the United States Congress to enact comprehensive laws that ban the creation, publication, hosting, and distribution of pornographic content in all media and to provide vigorous enforcement mechanisms—including age-verification and civil liability—in the ultimate effort to eradicate pornography nationwide; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we appeal to governors, attorneys general, and local officials to employ every constitutional means presently available to suppress obscenity, to defend existing community-standards ordinances, and to ensure that the dignity of individuals and families is protected from this insidious material; and be it further

RESOLVED, That upon adoption of this resolution by the National Association of Free Will Baptists, that the clerk of the same be instructed to send a physical copy to the following: the Attorney General of United States of America, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the Senate Majority Leader of the United States, as well as both the President and Vice President of the United States of America; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage believers to support legislative and legal efforts to eradicate pornography and to advocate for victims of sexual exploitation; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we commend and partner with ministries, counselors, and organizations laboring to rescue and restore those harmed by the pornographic industry and by sex trafficking; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we commit ourselves to persistent prayer for spiritual awakening, imploring God to purify His church, to heal broken lives, and to lead our nation to repent of the scourge of pornography; and be it finally

RESOLVED, That we joyfully affirm God’s good and perfect design for human sexuality within the confines of covenant marriage between one man and one woman, and we pledge to teach, model, and steadfastly defend this biblical standard in our churches, homes, and public witness as we pursue a permanent end to pornography.

Delegates to the Convention adopted this resolution unanimously, and without discussion.

Readers will first notice the length of the resolution. It far exceeds any resolution I can remember being adopted at a local, state, or national level. I don’t attribute the length exclusively to its authors being verbose, though there’s certainly more than one way to state something. I attribute the length to the massive scope and significance of this issue in modern times.

Drafters of the resolution were aiming to address the many theological, biblical, spiritual, moral, legal, social, physiological, mental, economic, technology, and political elements of this topic. While some of these layers are inherent to the topic, some of them are tied to the desire to not only understand the issue, but to respond in kind.

To put it another way, I appreciate that the resolution (1) recognizes the multifaceted nature of the issue; and (2) seeks to respond to those many facets.

Too often we try to simplify complex issues. (“It’s wrong. Period. Move on.”) Overly simplistic analysis then leads to overly simplistic solutions. (“Don’t do it.” Or, “Just do it. “What else needs to be said?”) This resolution does a reasonably effective job at balancing description and analysis (“WHEREAS”) with responses and application (“RESOLVED”).

I want to linger on that latter question of response/application. Too often we come to a meeting, address an issue officially, and then return home feeling as if we’ve done the work. Seldom do our resolutions, statements, or “stances” translate into fresh faithfulness and obedience.

I am especially concerned about the very small number of delegates who do the work of a national body on behalf of their organizations but then fail to connect that work back to the work being done in their particular locale. Small wonder that so few lay members appreciate the significance of what their denomination does!

My own latest effort to correct this problem has involved taking the resolution above, making copies available to every participant in our ministry, and then taking two weeks during our Midweek Bible study to walk through the resolution. My goal is to raise awareness of the importance of this issue, educate people about its many dimensions and dangers, and help us think of practical ways we can push back against this grave moral atrocity.

Surely this is just a first step. The hard work takes on many forms. It involves cultivating an environment where those struggling can name their struggles, at least to someone, without fear of undue outrage and rejection. It requires us to realize that private, hidden sins are just as deadly as public, visible sins. It means finding practical paths for forgiveness and reconciliation where trust has been broken. It demands we learn about mortification of sin, alongside truth and grace.

In short, awareness and education must quickly give way to the development of virtues like humility, repentance, and holiness.

I hope we can all work together to not stand on words alone, but see how those words map onto all-too-true realities of everyday life—both in calling something what it is, and charting a faithful response to it.

Share

In Newsletter 175, I wrote about the “ethics of improvement.” Specifically, I was using Blake Crouch’s novel Upgrade as a springboard to offer some reflections on the contemporary scientific landscape and the ethical challenges it creates for Christians.

The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) has lately been producing a series of short videos that touch on some of the tough topics Christians and churches are confronting. In a recent video, Jason Thacker briefly speaks to the matter of prenatal or genetic testing during pregnancy. I see this as dovetailing with some of the issues raised in Crouch’s novel.

I should also add that the ERLC, though an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention, has a plethora of print and digital resources on their website that I have found very useful in my own church. I can imagine many evangelical churches benefiting from their work, even if they aren’t Baptist.

If you’ve often wondered—as so many of us have—how we cultivate a life and public testimony of virtue given the perils of modern politics, then Nathan Beacom’s latest article is for.

In “Vice Cannot Build Virtue,” Beacom warns about the Machiavellian impulse toward using brute power and dubious means to achieve noble ends. Indeed, one prominent postliberal political theorist wrote explicitly about using “Machiavellian means to achieve Aristotelian ends.”

Beacom explains (and warns):

Read the whole piece. It’s one we desperately need to heed in a moment like this.

Luke Burgis, The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion

Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Nationalism, and Socialism Is Destroying American Democracy

Craig Fehrman, This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark

Ryan Tinetti, The Quiet Ambition: Scripture’s Surprising Antidote to Our Restless Lives

It’s not too soon to make your plans to attend the annual Theological Symposium, a Free Will Baptist-sponsored event which I had the privilege of coordinating for the better part of a decade.

This year’s symposium will be October 5-6 on the campus of Welch College in Gallatin, Tennessee. I will be presenting a version of a paper I’ve presented elsewhere entitled, “You Shall Be as Gods: Modern Technology and the De-naturing of Human Creatureliness.” To my knowledge, it’ll be one of the few papers presented on this subject matter in recent years, so come on over and hear it, along with a slate of other well-conceived presentations.

If you enjoy Churchatopia, would you take time to share a link to this Substack site and/or some Churchatopia content that you have benefited from?

Share

Today’s editorial is adapted from a book review which originally appeared at the now defunct Center for the Study of Ethics and Technology, and later at the Helwys Society Forum in 2019. However, given all the current conversations surrounding Artificial Intelligence (and how helpful the work of Craig Gay has been on making sense of the modern world) I thought it was a good time to give it a new hearing.

The world is changing quickly. The nature of the change varies from region to region, but behind these economic, social, and political “accelerations,” to use Thomas Friedman’s term, lays one unified force: modern technology.

“Modern automatic machine technologies,” as author and professor Craig Gay states it, are reshaping our present and, in so doing, are reshaping the future. Believers and unbelievers agree on this, though some are more sanguine than others about that fact. In the face of this situation, Gay seeks to address the lack of discernment through his book Modern Technology and the Human Future: A Christian Appraisal (IVP, 2018).

Gay is not a latecomer to the body of “tech criticism” published in recent years. His 1998 book The Way of the (Modern) World offered substantial analysis of the nature of technology. (I still regard this as one of the very best books that no one ever mentions.)

Gay’s background with technology is extensive, as he explains in the opening pages. He makes clear his personal and professional indebtedness to modern technology and its many goods. Indeed, he argues that we must acknowledge those benefits if we’re to engage in honest evaluation of modern technology. Thus, he offers this book-length treatment in the spirit of helping readers assess the true measure of both the harm and the benefit that modern automatic machine technologies bring to human life and society (xii).

How is Modern Technology Impacting Human Being?

In chapter one Gay carefully reviews the multi-faceted implications of our modern technological milieu, specifically for “cognitive life,” as seen in our habits of thought, concentration, and learning, as well as in the workforce and personal relationships. His aim in describing the impact that technology is having in these areas may cause the skeptical reader to see the problems as tied solely to intent or agency. Better foresight should block certain negative effects—we hope!

The technological narrative itself is one of good intentions, creativity, and the inherent human proclivity to fail to imagine the possible consequences of unhinging technological development from considering technology’s proper ends and nature. As philosopher Bruce Little once remarked to me, in a technique-driven culture, ends become irrelevant (I think he learned that from Jacques Ellul and Neil Postman).

Gay cites George Grant who famously noted how difficult it is to “comprehend technique beyond its own dynamism” (34). In other words, standing outside of the effects, mindset, and culture that technology creates and seeing it with clarity is very difficult, much like the adage of the fish who cannot objectively evaluate water.

Yet Gay manages to provide significant reasons as to why all parties should agree that modern automatic machine technology isn’t entirely beneficial. Drawing on the work of McLuhan, Berger, Carr, and other recent research, Gay convincingly shows the disruptive effects of technology on human concentration, the workforce, and social relationships.

These disruptive effects, however, have been offset (at least in most people’s minds) by the gains and benefits technological advancement brings. No one wants to challenge this status quo. A hyper-technological future seems much more appealing than a pre-technological past. Progress, if defined in terms of material welfare, is hard to debate or challenge. Of course, if we begin with the assumption that whatever is easier is best, then, on that basis, evaluating the true costs of machine technology is hard because we’re not thinking that perhaps something that requires toil may actually be good or healthy for us.

One of the more original and nuanced aspects of Gay’s book is his attention to the role of money in technological development. The logic of money is a far-reaching and often unexplored reason why we cannot “comprehend technique from beyond its own dynamism” (58). There is too much at stake. Gay contends that the main reason why “there has not been more resistance to modern technological development” is due to how closely it is connected to economic interests (57).

Where Are We Headed?

Gay utilizes two metaphors from physics to help readers understand the nature of modern technological development. The momentum of technology has increased profoundly in the last 150 years, driving civilization further into a future for which it isn’t prepared. Inertia refers to the direction of this development, best known as automatism. Momentum and automatism constitute factors that increasingly make embodied human beings unnecessary, and so overcoming them will require a concerted effort (60).

How this trajectory has been set is the focus of chapter two. The emergence of money and later of capitalism provided a potent environment for industrialization not only to occur but also to transform the way that human beings thought about time, space, and technological possibility. Ironically, many religious influences contributed to this emerging mindset.

As Gay explains, within the new Protestant ethic, “believers were all but mandated to improve the material conditions of life by inventing new devices, increasing productivity, diminishing the costs of production, hastening transport, facilitating communications, and opening up new markets for distribution. This ethic was naturally open to the practical empiricism of early-modern science” (71). One hears the echoes of Francis Bacon here, except it was being expressed in a nation on the precipice of a total economic and technological transformation.

Drawing on the analysis of Lewis Mumford and Max Weber primarily, Gay explains the social and economic context created by, anticipated by, and followed by technological development: “The fact that a good deal of modern technology has developed within the context of the market economy also helps to interpret the increasingly dizzying pace of technological change, as well as the restlessness and insatiability that characterizes contemporary culture” (82). The demand for growth, combined with the ideology of human progress, and the willingness of people to believe in the promises of technology constitute the main drivers of modern technology’s momentum and inertia (77).

These developments have also produced an environment where more and more people are convinced “that ‘reality’ is something that we can redesign” (84). “The assumption that reality can be mastered also contains the implicit metaphysical assumption that no mysterious and/or incalculable forces bear upon our spheres of interest and activity” (88-89). This precludes not only God’s existence but also the notion of a telos to the universe or any final human purpose beyond material well-being.

The Technological Worldview

How have so many found themselves caught in the momentum and inertia of modern technological development?

In chapter three, Gay explains that machine technology was always intended to function automatically, mostly independent of human engagement, unhindered by human error or limitation. It is clear to many observers, however, that this has left behind countless laborers in the modern economy. As undesirable as this is, there is still a widespread feeling that this trend is simply inevitable. We must accept it. Gay attributes this to a technological worldview, a worldview in which technology, as Martin Heidegger once argued, is the prevailing metaphysic of the modern age.

Our technologically-savvy milieu encourages the view that modern life is mostly a series of problems to be solved with technology. This is further exacerbated by the way the logic of money and capitalism propels people to embrace means which focus more on quantitative achievements than on qualitative ones (as these are the same to many modern people). Furthermore, our commitment to progress requires such innovations. The technological worldview promotes “instrumentalism, functionalism, and the engineering mentality,” which in the end objectifies the natural world as well as people (98).

The tools themselves aren’t all that have fostered the technological worldview. Drawing on the dated but helpful analysis of Lewis Mumford, Gay reminds us that a “change of mind, a new way of looking at the world and a new estimation of human purposes within it” predated the rise of modern machinery (99). Described as the “mechanical world picture,” Gay outlines how Cartesian thought, Protestantism’s “duty of mastery,” and other medieval-to-modern developments contributed to the means-oriented, problem-solving, technique-driven mindset that is the technological worldview. His analysis of Heidegger’s ideas (Think “enframing”.), or the modern way of seeing the world and envisioning human purpose, is especially insightful. If the world is merely a collection of raw materials to be used, then any inherent value and telos of human life suffer the same fate as the technologies that have long since been surpassed by their modern, automated successors.

Automatic machine technology has increasingly drifted from a vision increasing the flourishing of ordinary embodied human life. So, is there “something outside of ourselves that might direct and discipline—and thus give order to—human making and willing”? (129). Gay tries to point to this something in chapter four.

Where We Are and Who We Were

Secular thought is in no position to offer society a credible response, protest, or critique of current technological developments or of the prevailing technological worldview. However, the implications of the gospel have the unique resources to do just this. If we understand the gospel not as an escape to an ethereal world, but as the in-breaking of the kingdom of a reigning, resurrected Christ, who took on flesh and dwelt among us, then we have an answer.

Gay acknowledges that not all churches are equally prepared to offer this response, for so many Christians have acquiesced to modern technology due to a “mistaken ‘otherworldliness’ and this fascination with technological possibilities” (134). They have overlooked the significance of embodiment, incarnation, and resurrection. However, for Christians willing to “re-remember,” the Christian faith offers a reason to celebrate God’s creation, the gift of human embodiment within that order, and the vocations to which God calls us in this world.

This recovery of memory is possible when creation, fall, redemption, and consummation are the matrix through which we understand reality, including who God is, what the world is like, who human beings are, and God’s good design for them. Gay’s main thrust continues to be the centrality of the body as the “very means by which and in which our spirits are enabled, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, to love God and neighbor and to do our necessary work in the world” (153). The nature of this work is significantly altered, undermined, or even rendered unnecessary by automatic machine technology.

This latter concern is woven throughout the book. Though modern technologies undoubtedly make our lives easier, cheaper, and more convenient, promises of a better life often obscure the ways in which dealing with natural limits and resistance are essential to learning, developing virtues like patience, and depending on God’s grace to help us overcome adversity, not on our cleverly devised tools.

Drawing on Luther’s theology of the cross, Gay suggests that love of neighbor often entails alleviating forms of suffering but also that suffering is the place where “the living God often chooses to meet us” (165). In other words, relief from suffering and hardship requires discernment in order to avoid some of the idolatrous tendencies inherent in technological remedies.

What Can We Do?

How might we begin to “comprehend technique beyond its own dynamism”? (58) Naturally the earliest chapters implicitly and explicitly provide affirmations that are essential to this discernment. But Gay offers a bit more in chapter five. Specifically, he calls for repentance for our prideful pursuit of autonomy, which is itself built on the lie that it is up to human beings to define who they are. He also says that we must repent of the vision of the world in which creature nature is inert, raw material waiting for us to determine its value and use.

Beyond these, we must “refuse to abet the disintegrating tendencies” in our world, while recognizing our responsibility to make the world “endurable so that the gospel stands some chance of being heard” (170). Christians should seek to model grace and freedom as much as possible, which help reject the latent determinism often assumed in our modern technological society. Gay teases out what this may entail, especially when it comes to family life and social life more generally.

His suggestions are more than a mere five-step plan. He insists that Christians must think deeply about what constitutes genuinely human purposes and how those sorts of purposes might be attained appropriately. We must “insist that personal ends simply cannot be achieved through exclusively impersonal means” (188). So then in the pursuit of cultivating a vital social life, for example, constant manipulation and compression of time and space, no matter how impressive, may not be acceptable concessions to make.

The book ends with a personal conclusion and an epilogue that discusses how the Eucharist is a key Christian practice infused with the assumptions and affirmations that can help Christians see and reject technology’s false promises more clearly. Gay concludes by saying that insomuch that technology can “enable us to become more fully ourselves, more delightfully related to one another, more thoughtfully engaged in and with created reality, and better attuned to the voice and will of the living God,” then it may serve a proper place in Christian life” (227).

Response

Followers of Craig Gay’s other writings had long waited for a fuller treatment of technology, and they won’t be disappointed. His analysis ranges from the economic to the theological, from the medieval age to the present, and from the philosophical to the practical. Though some of his arguments are repetitive in places, he helpfully situates the reader to understand technology from “beyond its own dynamism,” to return to the Grant quote that drives Gay’s effort.

The book’s subtitle is important: “A Christian Appraisal.” However, Gay is not committing himself to a purely theological appraisal, though his work provides helpful theological insight. But this is worth pointing out as it reminds the reader that this is an interdisciplinary effort by a professor of interdisciplinary studies. It also may account for some interesting choices when theological analysis is provided.

The use of Augustine alongside Irenaeus points to how the Reformed tradition could further illuminate Gay’s suggestions for how technology could appropriately foster authentic human beings. The creation or cultural mandate, as developed by Dutch Reformed theologians working with Genesis 1 and 2, would have been a fruitful place for Gay to extend his discussion about how technology might have a place in human beings’ work as image bearers. Gay hints at this in places, but he might have further discussed it since many in the Christian community believe that the cultural mandate still provides a basis after the fall for cultural engagement.

Gay’s contribution is sweeping and impressive. He engages the most important parties and considers layers of this discussion sometimes overlooked. Gay is right when he cites George Grant. The challenge to make sense of technology from beyond its own dynamic impact will require honesty with history, science, economics, and Scripture. But it first requires honesty with how our own lives are so deeply implicated with the benefits of technology.

Share

In Newsletter 222, I re-published a previously authored article on the Mosaic law. Namely, I tried to show that the conventional perspectives on this portion of Scripture sometimes missed some of the finer points of biblical teaching.

Thus, it was with some interest that I came across this multi-authored excerpt entitled, “Some of the Strangest Old Testament Laws and What They Mean.” In addition to having a hermeneutic that enables us to deal with the entire canon, and some important theological categories in place, it helps to have some Old Testament and/or Ancient Near Eastern scholars to help us make sense of some of the Mosaic law.

For example:

“You shall not eat any flesh with the blood in it. You shall not interpret omens or tell fortunes.” —Lev. 19:26

To remain in right standing with the Lord, under no circumstances may the cove­nant people eat meat with its blood, for to do so could lead to idolatry (Lev. 17:7, 10). In pagan rites the blood of a slain animal was manipulated to conjure spirits of the underworld. Israelites are forbidden from engaging in the occult and seeking omens, as is customarily done among their neighbors through reading the stars, inspecting an animal’s internal organs, observing the movement of birds, and the like (2 Kings 17:17; 21:6). The Lord expressly forbids ascribing power to false gods and impersonal forces that feign to foretell things to come. He alone knows the end from the beginning because he directs all human history to accomplish his will (Isa. 45:20–22).

Well, either we’re going to deal with this or not:

As Kevin Williamson rightly notes, “Stupidity and cowardice are a costly combination.” Yes, I know this is not a new problem, but we’re currently running a two-trillion-dollar budget deficit, and the National Debt has increased by 20 trillion since 2017. It is getting worse, and neither major political party is serious about it.

Lord, help us. And may He have mercy on both us, our children, and grandchildren.

Luke Burgis, The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion

Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Nationalism, and Socialism Is Destroying American Democracy

I can’t imagine many Churchatopia readers are shedding too many tears to see the demise of Rep. Eric Swalwell’s political career. Whether philandering with a Chinese spy, or plausible sexual assault allegations, his years as a California Representative to the U.S. House have been a disgrace.

That said, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Who could forget this one glorious moment during his ill-fated 2020 presidential campaign?

At least someone pointed out the obvious! Too few listened.

In more heartfelt news, I sent my four-year-old off to his first day of preschool last Thursday. Talk about a mixture of emotions! He was very excited until we actually pulled up in the parking lot. But we all survived.

Sigh. Parenthood.

If you enjoy Churchatopia, would you take time to share a link to this Substack site and/or some Churchatopia content that you have benefited from?

Share

Over 20 years ago I took my first course in Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament. My intellectual journey has never been the same.

College Greek

I first took Greek 1 and 2 with Dr. Paul Harrison at Welch College. It was an early morning class meeting, which didn’t gel well with my sophomoric, undisciplined mindset and academic habits. Though I had been an overachiever for most of my school years, my first two years in college were filled with too many shenanigans and distractions. I was always on a collision course with this important ancient language.

In general, I have fared well throughout life and academics with foreign languages. Though I’m not fluent in Spanish, mine is rather strong considering I haven’t taken a course in decades. I picked up a lot of Turkish during a short missions trip years ago. Modern languages haven’t been especially arduous. Yet my experiences with Greek and Hebrew have been rather different.

I survived Greek 1 with a D, my first-ever D at that point. But I continued to sink during Greek 2. I went into the final exam with profound trepidation. I was never one for pulling all-nighters, but the closest I came to one involved prepping for Dr. Harrison’s massive final. I don’t remember my final score, but I do remember my final grade: F.

Years later it still pains me to type that letter. Chalk it up to lack of discipline, cognitive limits, panic attacks, and an unexpected breakup. The simple fact is that I failed at Greek, literally and intellectually. I just couldn’t get all the declensions, paradigms, and forms to stay in my mind.

The humiliation was profound. I would have to take a course over in order to satisfy the requirements for the B.A. degree. Other classmates (by their own admission) had taken shortcuts to avoid Greek. I couldn’t let myself do it. I knew there was a good reason that Koine Greek had been a standard part of pastoral education for centuries. While that reason didn’t feel especially noble as I prepared to retake Greek 2, I plunged ahead. I managed another C, barely missing a B. Yet I would take it.

My final year in college left me with two more Greek exegesis courses. This time I would move to two new professors, Dr. David Outlaw and Dr. Stanley Outlaw. (Yes, son and father.) They were very different in their approach to the subject.

The dynamics were also different because instead of a classroom full of future pastors, there were only three of us sitting around a conference table. Once again, it was an early morning class. I did my best to meet the course requirements, even if I felt uneasy the entire time through. Having set such a low bar of expectations, it was hard for me to hope for much. Shockingly, I earned an A first semester and a B second semester. (If you’re keeping score, that means I earned an A, B, C, D, and F in my first five Greek courses!)

To this day, I don’t attribute my “success” in second-year Greek to greater comprehension so much as the Outlaws were rather merciful, ironically enough.

I left college hoping that my Greek woes were behind me. They weren’t.

Seminary Greek

My M.Div. program required me to take two Greek courses (essentially the ones I already had taken), and a third exegesis course in Hebrew or Greek. I ended up taking three courses with two different professors. Once again, I found myself in trouble.

Vocabulary was never a problem; grammar was. I struggled to memorize the countless endings which Greek attaches to nouns and verbs, which in turn made it difficult to translate. My first professor was rather caustic and tended to chase rabbits. I knew I needed a change. So for my second and third Greek courses I switched over to one of the best known Greek teachers in the evangelical world, David Alan Black.

Anyone who has had Black as a professor knows him to be passionate, energetic, brilliant, pious, and hortatory. Indeed, I think I could have appreciated all of those qualities had I taken him for New Testament Survey. Instead, I had him for two semesters of Greek. Regrettably, by this time I was not only on my fifth Greek teacher, but my fifth different methodology or pedagogy.

People often speak of professional football in terms of schemes or systems. A quarterback learns an offensive system installed by his offensive coordinator and/or head coach. If he’s smart enough and works hard, he can learn the system in an off-season. Of course, it takes some players a few years to master a system. Teams who constantly fire coaches and change systems disadvantage their quarterback and offensive players.

Similarly, my deficient ancient language skills were disadvantaged by being exposed to so many different approaches.

I ended up surviving undergraduate and graduate Greek with passing grades (As all the way to Ds). Shockingly, these poor grades didn’t entirely sink me. I still graduated with honors at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. But I didn’t care. I was grateful (and humbled) by having survived.

“The Field”

The bigger question one should ask of such experiences is, “Has your Greek benefited you in your work as a pastor?” The answer is, “Yes, with some caveats.”

I once had someone explain the difference between reading the New Testament in Greek versus English in this way: Reading it in Greek is like watching a film in color on a big-screen television. Reading it in English is like watching one in black and white on a 13-inch television. Some may resist that characterization, but I think it’s fitting.

Can one watch the same film and understand what is happening, plot-wise, on either television? Absolutely. However, would the cinematography, special effects, and more be missed on the smaller, black-and-white television? Absolutely. (Interestingly, the timing of this illustration is ironic as there has been so much recent discussion about the difference between watching Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in IMAX, 70 mm, IMAX 70mm—as he intended—or some other format.)

In truth, the English text does obscure many of the subtleties, nuances, idioms, and more that the Greek contains. Most of us rely on multiple translations, biblical commentaries, and study Bibles to bridge the gap—which they do quite well. But having a working knowledge of Greek certainly gives one a leg up. It enables one to read the more critical, technical commentaries more effectively, and ideally, to avoid many of what D.A. Carson calls “exegetical fallacies.”

However, as the years have gone by I have fallen prey to the common adage concerning foreign languages: “Use it or lose it.” Because I haven’t used my Greek nearly enough, I have lost a substantial amount of it. I made up my mind to remedy that some time ago, but wasn’t sure the best way how. In some ways, the problem is quite the opposite of what one might imagine. There isn’t a lack of resources for biblical language study. Quite the contrary—there’s too many!

Ultimately, I was recently able to take a Greek immersion workshop at my alma mater with Dr. David Maxwell, a polyglot if I’ve ever met one. (Seriously, I can’t think of a field or skill he doesn’t know—languages, history, theology, music, etc.)

Maxwell explained to us students that there has been a movement in Latin and Greek instruction to treat these “dead” languages as living languages, ones in which hearing them is just as important to the learning process as reading them off the page.

God designed us to acquire language first by hearing and speaking, not reading and translating. So for two and half days, Dr. Maxwell spoke to us students almost entirely in Koine Greek, and we were expected to speak back in it. Yikes!

I was definitely on the unprepared side. It was obvious that all of the other students had taken Greek more recently than I had. Still, most of us had our bumps in the process. We engaged in learning exercises foreign to anything we had experienced in traditional Greek instruction. We had to listen and respond. We had to describe pictures of biblical scenes, summoning to mind all the Greek vocabulary and grammar we could muster. We had to converse with one another in Greek.

While a lot of my dormant Greek vocabulary slowly returned, so much of it remained locked away in the recesses of my mind. In truth, it made me wonder if I had ever really “known” it to begin with.

By day three I was feeling slightly more confident, though overwhelmingly, I felt humbled and motivated. I was humbled by how far off the mark I was. I was motivated to return to my Greek textbooks and Greek New Testament to wrestle with this special language which God chose to give the New Covenant in.

Education’s Proper Ends

Mark Twain famously said, “Never let your education interfere with your schooling.” I’ve often thought about that phrase. It’s easy to see how it could begin a problem. In my case, I let the difficulties of “for-credit Greek” intimidate, frustrate, and occasionally terrify me. Yes, I have had bad dreams more than once about Greek!

But in the end, Greek is yet another tool that I’ve been blessed to be exposed to. While it isn’t my strong suit, I appreciate it for the challenge it is. If I approach it rightly, it won’t terrify. It won’t make me arrogant or proud. It’ll give me an extra tool to till the soil that is God’s Word. And in turn, it may just help me bring Scripture to life better for the people God has entrusted to my care.

That’s why this struggling student won’t give up on the struggle.

Share

Derek Rishmawy is one of my favorite, younger evangelical writers. I first encountered his work at Mere Orthodoxy, but I have appreciated the wider hearing his insights have received in recent years.

Lately I ran across some brief reflections of his concerning some of the problems associated with leaving one’s ecclesial tradition. He offers five practical considerations, including the following:

It’s not long, so take a look. Those who have been reading Churchatopia for a while will recognize some similar sentiments I expressed in response to the Matthew Barrett affair last year, though I tried to focus more on the substantive questions raised in his initial “farewell post.”

Still, I appreciate Rishmawy’s willingness to challenge the tenor and attitude associated with a lot of these ecclesial transition stories.

Thank you, Alex Nowrasteh!

In a recent, helpful Substack article, he writes of many lazy social commentators and social scientists who use the category or word “culture” to explain away complex phenomena:

9Marks, Church Matters Volume VIII: Pastoring and the Conscience

Luke Burgis, The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion

Joseph H. Sherrard, The Augustinian Pastor: Deep Wisdom for Modern Ministry

We had an outstanding young man intern at our church this summer. Zane Harmon is a Welch College student with a bright future ahead. We appreciate the fine, southern Illinois community and church which produced him, and for the commitment he showed to growing in ministry understanding and skill.

Pray for him and the many Christian college students preparing to begin the fall semester. We welcome further inquiries from college-aged young men interested in ministry internships in Missouri.

If you enjoy Churchatopia, would you take time to share a link to this Substack site and/or some Churchatopia content that you have benefited from?

Share

This editorial represents a fuller exploration of a seminar I presented as an ENGAGE Seminar at the Vertical Three Conference in 2019.

My first encounter with apologetics dates to the early 2000s.

I learned about Lee Strobel’s book, namely, The Case for Christ (1998). I heard about Christians debating, especially William Lane Craig and the now disgraced Ravi Zacharias. And my Youth Pastor and two other thoughtful Sunday School teachers often provoked me to think deeply about Scripture.

Fast forward about 10 years. My Master of Divinity emphasis was in apologetics. I then began seeing interest in the subject grow in my denomination, especially in the subsequent six or seven years.

As with any widely discussed issue, errors creep in and sometimes become lies. An error doesn’t have to be malicious or intentional in order to become a harmful lie. In fact, I increasingly tend to think that the worst lies are those we deny on paper but propagate in practice.

Make no mistake: if a Christian, church, or denomination gets serious about anything important, Satan will pervert it, confuse it, and derail it. That can happen with apologetics, too. Before I mention such lies, let’s think a little more foundationally.

What is apologetics? Definitions abound, but I’ll offer a few interconnected ones:

First, apologetics is a reasoned account of why we follow Christ and believe the claims of Christianity. I personally see this as the most accessible way to explain it to believers.

Second, it's any number of reasoned responses intended to defend an aspect of Christian truth. The utility of this approach is that it encompasses a diverse range of specific arguments about various topics, such as the historicity of the resurrection, the problem of evil, or other distinct issues whether they be textual, theological, philosophical, historical, etc. I also tend to refer to this as “lowercase-a apologetics.” In reality, it’s something we do rather often if we discuss our faith in public.

Finally, it's a hopeful, respectful, loving appeal to and defense of the reasons we trust Jesus. Call this one “uppercase-A apologetics.” It’s the closest way we can connect the discipline or field of apologetics to Scriptural texts which directly ground this practice, whether we’re talking about 1 Peter 3:15, 2 Corinthians 10:5-6, or related texts.

So, what are some lies that undermine our apologetic efforts?

Lie #1: Apologetics is primarily about what you know.

Yes, this is a lie. Even if it happens to be the case that the “smart folks” whom you know are especially interested in what one calls apologetics, apologetics is as much about who we are (character and testimony) as what we know (information and arguments).

The touchstone passage that justifies this is 1 Peter 3:14-17:

Notice the attention in this passage to how we give an answer to those who ask and how we live. It’s most certainly the part emphasized over intellectual ability or rhetorical technique. The form our defense takes isn’t unrelated, but issues of personal character are, at the very least, just as important.

In some ways this should encourage the apologist. We cannot control the outcome of our evangelism or apologetics, but we can control how we share the message and how we live it out before people. So, if we minimize character, we do at our peril.

In fact, Christian love is our best tool to reach a lost world.

According to Titus 2:1, 10, there is a form of life that best fits or suits the gospel and shows forth its attractiveness.

The New Testament, especially John and 1 John, shows that love identifies, attracts, and alienates. Specifically, Christian love alienates some, attracts others, but always identifies us as Christians:

These passages have not only been very meaningful to me, but they were crucial to the perspective of one of our most influential evangelical evangelists of the last century, Francis Schaeffer.

In The Mark of the True Christian, Schaeffer says Jesus is praying for the unity that should be evident among true believers (17:21). But what produces unity? Love! Love is the mark Jesus gave Christians to wear before the world (13:34-35). Only by this mark will the world know that we are Christians.

But Schaeffer says that what Jesus said in John 17:21 challenges us. In John 13, if an individual Christian doesn’t love other true Christians, the world has a right to judge that he isn’t a Christian.

But in 17:21, Jesus is saying something more profound: we can’t expect the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, that Jesus’ claims are true, that Christianity is true, unless the world sees real unity among Christians.

Have you ever tried witnessing and all the person can ask is why are there “all these denominations”? Or they bring up all the hypocrites in the church? It’s frustrating, understandable, but also illogical.

It’s frustrating because usually the conversation is moving out of the arena of reasons, arguments, and explanations into the arena of behavior, conduct, and integrity.

It’s understandable because division and/or hypocrisy are morally unattractive.

But it’s also illogical. What does the hypocritical deacon at the Baptist church on the corner have to do with the proposition, “God exists”? Logically, nothing. Practically, everything.

The logical consistency of Christianity isn’t tied to the consistency of our practice, but the persuasiveness of Christianity is tied to the authenticity of our practice. The absence of love, and the unity it produces, destroys apologetic efforts.

If love is in fact the final apologetic, as Schaeffer said, then it must be displayed among Christians and toward skeptics. Ultimately what is most convincing to people is the life our message creates.

Lie #2: Apologetics is an individual activity.

In reality, apologetics is as much about the body as it is the individual.

Returning to First Peter, this short epistle is written to a community, not a person. (“Y’all be ready to give a reason/answer/defense”!)

Think of all those William Lane Craig and Ravi Zacharias YouTube debates I mentioned above. What Sunday School class or small group was praying for them? Who were they accountable to if they erred? What church were they helping equip? No believer is an island, regardless of vocation/ministry. (Perhaps one of the most plausible reasons for Zacharias's fall is because his apologetic ministry was too isolated and private.)

When we reason, argue, reason or debate, we do so as members of a community bearing witness to a message, a Savior, and a Lord. If we succeed, it will be due in no small part to others’ help. We’ll certainly need their help to disciple the new convert whom we reach.

The church and ecclesiology aren’t mere footnotes in this subject, though some give that impression. As we saw above, character and testimony are central to the apologetic enterprise. People are increasingly calling this emphasis “ecclesial apologetics”, but it’s nothing new. As Stanley Hauerwas wrote nearly 50 years ago, the church should be seen as a “community of character.”

So make no mistake: your approach to apologetics reveals your view of the church.

As soon as someone overcomes skepticism, Satan will raise new doubts. New believers will be especially vulnerable. Churches must stand ready to be bulwarks of truth and love. If we ever needed strong churches, it’s now.

Lie #3: Apologetics is exclusively about evidence.

Evidence is merely one dimension of apologetics. It’s an important one, but not the only one. However, let’s ponder “evidence” for a moment.

How or when do you deploy evidences? What do the partially excavated ruins of a biblical city mean? What’s a reasonable amount of weight to assign to that evidence? And what precisely does it prove? How do we get from, “This is the city mentioned in 2 Samuel” to “Repent and believe”?

Apologetics tears down intellectual strongholds, but many times those have more to do with assumptions people have than just more information. Because of this, evidence alone can’t always get the job done.

Consider a classic objection to Christianity: “How could a loving God send people to hell?”

Such a person is starting with all kinds of assumptions about what love is or isn’t, what justice is or isn’t, etc. This is why, as Cornelius Van Til put it, apologetics is a theological discipline as much as a practical one. It deals with the entire lexicon of Christian truth, not just one narrowly-defined question.

Additionally, biblical truth unmasks faulty human assumptions. So as important and useful as evidences are (and they come in many forms!), we need to surround evidences with good theological and spiritually sensitive reasoning.

If I had an hour-long talk to teach about apologetics, I wouldn’t begin with giving lots of evidences. I’d begin by summarizing basic Christian doctrine, then giving a crash course on critical thinking and argumentation. If you don’t know your faith, or what a good or bad argument is, evidences won’t go very far.

Lie #4: Apologetics proves the faith.

Apologetics shows the faith first by way of life, and second with a sound, reasoned account.

This one can be a little tricky to explain because it seems like a repeat of Lie #1. It’s related, but different.

Try to think in terms of how people know what they know (epistemology) and how people tend to come to conversion (evangelism). How and when are people actually nudged into the Kingdom? Ponder that for a moment.

C. Stephen Evans was quite helpful to me years ago when he spoke of seeing apologetic arguments or evidences (the Classical Proofs to be more exact) more as “pointers,” not proof. This is helpful because it suddenly demystifies apologetic arguments. They aren’t wands we wave past people’s faces, leading immediately to a Damascus Road experience.

I contend that we should expect for reasons or evidences to work more after the fact (a posteriori) than before the fact (a priori). They often do more to affirm the rationality of a Christian’s belief than serve as irrefutable proof for unbelievers who then breathlessly ask, “What must I do to be saved?”

To put it another way, the reasons and arguments associated with apologetics often do as much (if not more) to strengthen the faith and understanding of those who are already believers instead of those who don’t yet believe.

Of course, unbelievers do deserve reasons—and sometimes God uses them! Yet let me offer a caution here. What seems to “work” to us may not be working, and what seems to not work may in fact be working. Give it time!

Greg Bahnsen wrote an important article many years ago about the inevitability of self-deception in apologetics. In that article he underscores the fact that we cannot assume that we are dealing with epistemically neutral people. No, everyone is deceived in some way. Sin has touched not only our choices or desires, but also our intellect. This doesn’t mean common grace isn’t at work. It doesn’t mean the faculty of reason isn’t operative. But we do need to acknowledge its tendencies and limits.

I well recall meeting regularly with Trent years ago. He had many questions about and objections to the Faith. He seemed especially troubled by the miracles in the Old Testament, as well as how commonly made scientific claims could be reconciled with the Bible. It seemed like my well-formed responses to his questions often weren’t breaking through his skeptical mind. Thankfully, he kept attending church services, reading, and meeting with me.

Eventually Trent was received into the church as a believer. I don’t remember one single conversation where he said, “You know, the impressive record of Christian scientists really was the turning point. I assumed that becoming a Christian must not be intellectual suicide after all!”

Had Trent thought or said that, it could have certainly represented a stepping stone in his change of heart. But I tend to think that the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, and experiencing love from our church did as much to open him up to the possibility that he was wrong as did any of my individual arguments.

He did need reasons, explanations, and arguments, but he needed to exercise faith in response. (He did seem moved by one argument, which involved me asking how he could believe in the resurrection but struggle with miracles that happened to have occurred earlier in biblical history!)

Strong arguments will never be irresistible because the depraved mind instinctively resists truth. The evidence does not demand our verdict (though a fair-minded person will tend to feel an obligation to offer a response to our arguments).

Remember: most people don’t come to faith after a debate or argument. So, we need to have realistic expectations about apologetic efforts.

Lie #5: Apologetics and evangelism are the same.

Actually, apologetics is what is sometimes needed when evangelism faces obstacles and roadblocks.

Jesus did not say, “For whoever shall be convinced of the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Nor did he say, “That whosoever assented to Him shall not perish.” He said whoever shall “call upon” and “believe.”

Responding to the call of the Gospel certainly requires knowledge, but it is more than knowledge. You cannot call upon who you do not know, but you don’t have to call upon/surrender to who you know.

Martin Luther’s formulation of true faith is helpful. Saving faith involves knowledge (notitia), assent (assensus), and trust (fiducia).

To put it very crudely, an apologist seeks to hear something like, “Well I guess you’re not crazy or irrational after all. Tell me more.” An evangelist seeks to hear, “Lord, please forgive me, and receive me.” Both ultimately care about repentance and faith, but apologetics is sometimes what’s needed when evangelism isn’t yet effective.

Conclusion

Intellectually minded people will always gravitate toward approaches that focus on ideas and arguments. But remember, people in rebellion against God manifest their rebellion in the intellect, too. Therefore, we need a whole-Bible approach to this important practice.

Remember the fullness of Biblical teaching. Remember what sin does to people’s thinking. Remember the limits of information and facts. And rely on the Lord as you evangelize, and as you prepare to do apologetics.

Share

In Newsletter 226 I revisited some of my previous reflections on the so-called “pastor shortage problem.” My key contention was that much of this problem is connected to issues of attrition—and not mainly retirements and/or deaths.

This raises another important question: what can we do to help stem the tide of pastors leaving vocational ministry?

Let me offer five suggestions:

1-Pray daily for workers. I’m very pleased with the new 9:38 Initiative sponsored by the NAFWB Executive Office. This new prayer initiative is, as far as I know, the brainchild of an Indiana pastor who thought that Matthew 9:38 provided the impetus for such a practical effort. It’s a call to pray each day at either 9:38 a.m. or 9:38 p.m. for more workers—especially pastors, missionaries, deacons, and teachers.

2-Give to programs designed to support struggling pastors, such as the Refresh Counseling Program.

3-Familiarize yourself with Clergy Renewal Programs, such as the one funded by the Lilly Endowment. Consider whether this is something you’d want to nudge your church leaders to consider supporting for your pastor.

4-Appreciate, encourage, and support the pastor(s) you already have. Besides the commands in Scripture to love and encourage ALL Christians, we have special admonitions to pray for, support, and submit to those who labor in the Word (Gal. 6:6; 1 Thess. 5:12-13; 1 Tim. 5:17-18; Heb. 13:17).

5-Pray for and nurture the spiritual growth of men of all ages, especially those who demonstrate teaching and leadership potential, and a concern for the well-being of others. These are the pool of prospective pastors/elders within your own church! Stop waiting for someone from some far-off place to show up to shepherd you. Your next shepherd could be walking among you now.

Let me say on the record that my church does all five of these, though I think we (including me!) could do much better on #5. (This commendation says more about them than me.)

Mike Sacasas delivers again! In his latest post—”You’re A.I. is Not a Tool”—he takes to task this predominant talking point about not only A.I., but nearly all modern technologies. I confess that I’m not immune to the problem of citing people who articulate things I myself have said elsewhere (here and here), but truly, Sacasas says it much better:

While there appears to have been a shift in the last 15 years or so in popular assumptions about the purported neutrality of technology toward at least the suspicion that our devices, etc. are not, in fact, merely neutral instruments at our command but rather frustrate, resist, or otherwise evade uncomplicated mastery by their users, such that their users might properly be said to be used in turn by their devices, it is nonetheless true that the myth of technological neutrality remains broadly entrenched.

I confess that I am astounded by how blithely some insist that it is all as simple as learning to use AI well, as if we had not just undergone a nearly 20-year, society-wide experiment showing that a so-called “tool,” say a smartphone or a social media platform, will (mal)form even the most vigilant and virtuous user into its own image and shape. This is the blindness at the heart of modern technological hubris. It is the firm but misguided conviction that our “tools” exist entirely outside of us and thus, if taken up with requisite skill, can be “safely” deployed.

But AI is not a tool in this sense, it is an environment which envelops the user and works on us from the inside out while we naively think that we remain unchanged by our use so long as we are using it carefully and intentionally. The care and intentionality is [sic] beside the point, and our confidence in such vigilance probably works against us in the long run.

You must read the whole piece.

9Marks, Church Matters Volume VIII: Pastoring and the Conscience

Luke Burgis, The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion

Joseph H. Sherrard, The Augustinian Pastor: Deep Wisdom for Modern Ministry

Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Nationalism, and Socialism Is Destroying American Democracy

While I greatly appreciate the small but loyal readership here at Churchatopia, here’s the evidence that I couldn’t survive off my writing skills:

Check out those royalties from my 2016 book…!

That said, Biblical Beliefs (2013) has had a bit of a renaissance in the last six or eight months selling a few dozen copies.

If you enjoy Churchatopia, would you take time to share a link to this Substack site and/or some Churchatopia content that you have benefited from?

Share

Naturally, answering such questions requires more context and background in order to answer precisely. However, I have given much consideration to these kinds of questions through the years. I have many Catholic neighbors, friends, and serve in a predominantly Catholic region. This isn’t theoretical for me and many others.

In that spirit, I offer some key questions for those whose situations may parallel the scenario raised above.

1-How broadly or narrowly defined should our organization’s statement of faith be given the stated mission of the organization?

2-Is our organization’s statement of faith essential to our organization’s purpose? If so, how might involvement by parties not in agreement with the statement of faith potentially undermine, even if gradually, our organization’s purpose?

3-When all factors are considered, are the advantages to being more “inclusive” outweighed by the disadvantages to such inclusivity?

4-Are we communicating, intentionally or not, to staff, supporters, and constituents that core Christian beliefs are insignificant by having a “bigger tent” approach?

5-By taking a cursory or surface-level examination of the content of Christian belief, are we knowingly fostering an environment where many ministry participants and stakeholders use the same words while having very different meanings?

6-Will key stakeholders, backers, and/or core leaders lose confidence or gain confidence in the precision, clarity, and effectiveness of our mission of the organization by taking a more inclusive approach?

7-Are there acceptable ways in which those whose beliefs lie outside our statement of faith can be participants or “co-belligerents” in some arena of our work?

8-Are there participants in our organization who might discover that they have a different understanding of the organization’s purpose, and accordingly, will inevitably disagree on the organization’s strategies and policies?

By no means is this a comprehensive list of relevant questions, but I think they likely touch most of the bases.

Beth was a childhood friend of my mother’s. She and her family would come to visit their relatives in my South Carolina hometown during the summer, making the trek from the far-flung state called Missouri. (How’s that for irony?)

Beth and her husband Randy had two sons, Ryan and Sam. Ryan was a year younger than me, and Sam was perhaps three years younger. While they were younger than my brother and I, they were close enough in age to pal around with whenever they were at church services and events during summer visits.

But the connection to these Midwestern boys that lingers most in my mind is that my mom gave them my hand-me-downs. I’m not sure how the practice began, but my mother would pass along clothes I could no longer wear to Ryan. Presumably, Sam would eventually get what Ryan outgrew.

I remember thinking how odd it was to see Ryan wearing a polo shirt in Sunday School that used to belong to me. Besides being odd, I even regarded it as a little sad. “Poor guy! He can’t even get his own shirts.” Yet it never seemed to bother him at all. Moreover, I wore some of my own brother’s clothes after he outgrew them!

We were all living in hand-me-down land, lest any child should boast.

I’ve thought a lot through the years about the cultural phenomenon that are hand-me-downs. It encompasses much more than an outgrown t-shirt or other apparel. It extends to toys, pet supplies, jewelry, and household wares. It isn’t entirely confined to children, though it is disproportionately practiced by those raising children or who have recently raised them.

My mother-in-law has given my wife clothing and dishes. I’ve inherited cufflinks, neckties, and similar items after relatives have passed away. But our experience at this stage of life has overwhelmingly involved clothing and toys.

Just last week an 11-year-old new to our church was delighted that he could pass off a Monster Jam truck to my 4-year-old who is going through “monster truck phase.” My son just as well had plucked it off the shelf at Walmart himself.

A friend of my wife recently moved to Oregon along with her husband and two little boys. As they are both generous and were unable to take everything along, they left behind an indoor trampoline. My kids can’t stop slinking downstairs every day to jump. It’s a small but tangible link to Harrison and Hollace.

A recently-deceased church member taught my son during the latter years of her life. She would often bring Hot Wheels cars to class to give to the little boys. As it turns out, these Hot Wheels were vintage; they belonged to her sons who are now in their late 40s. Ponder this. A brand-new Hot Wheels car played with in the late 1970s was later played with by grandkids in the early-mid 2000s, and more recently by my son in the early-mid 2020s.

While the toys stand out more for me, time would fail me to have my wife list the articles of clothing now donned by both my children which once belonged to a niece, nephew, church friend, or neighbor. Conversely, our children’s clothing and toys are now under the roofs of neighbors, friends, and younger children in the family.

We’re always upgrading in today’s world. Before we leap to denouncing the worldliness of unbridled consumption, some of this is quite unavoidable.

One of my tech-savvy church members reminded me recently that essentially all televisions must be replaced after around seven years. My heart sank as mine is now about five.

He’s not wrong. It’s simply “planned obsolescence” permeating our lives—the economic practice of building things with the aim of them being outmoded and mostly useless within a short period of time. (Not hard to see where such a practice has a clear profit incentive for corporate America.) While not every product is subject to the same abbreviated timeline, it seems increasingly pervasive.

Hand-me-downs, of course, defy this logic. They are a gentle but intentional rejection of the premise that the things little ones play with, wear, read, or watch are irrelevant and/or useless after a year or two.

Hand-me-downs resist the logic of rapidly growing landfills. They deny the unspoken claims of Mattel, LEGO, Hasbro, Disney, GAP, Oshkosh B’gosh, Carter’s, Gymboree, the Children’s Place that more is always the answer.

Hand-me-downs are, in the most fundamental sense of the concept, a form of stewardship.

A hand-me-down, given with thoughtful intentionality, says that someone has valued this item, and they value it and/or the recipient so much that they offer it with the hope that it might be desirable to another. They feel that it might still have “life” enough to be valued by another.

At its best, passing off hand-me-downs isn’t thoughtless dumping on others. (We could just as easily drive to Goodwill or the Salvation Army as a friend’s home.) No, a hand-me-down represents an attempt at cultural stewardship. As such, it is both spiritual and practical.

The cultural stewardship that is embodied in a hand-me-down is practical because it meets a need—or at the very least, a reasonable want. Kids need clothes—regardless of what some toddlers seem to think. Kids need to play, and thus, tangible artifacts are needed. Even if cardboard boxes, twigs, and pinecones are more noble than a Disney princess (A worthwhile argument for a future article?), plastic has its place.

The cultural stewardship of a hand-me-down is spiritual because it reflects an effort to deliver more than mere utility to another, but joy, beauty, learning, and more—depending on the specific form of the hand-me-down.

I’ve written previously about the disappointments sometimes associated with creation and culture. It’s far too easy to mistake the creation for the Creator. Is this not idolatry at its basest? Take the added step of confusing cultural productions for the Creator—or His purest gifts in creation—and we’re really in a mess.

However, as I said before:

Sometimes you just sit in the grass and watch your kids play in the leaves you raked. They love it, and you love that they love it.

Sometimes you watch a mostly meaningless game with a friend, enjoying some smoked meat, and the game ends up being unpredictable and exciting.

Sometimes you get asked to speak in a few churches or ministry settings, and people receive you with kindness and bless you with generosity.

Sometimes you get to eat barbeque and fish stew—in the span of just a day or two.

Sometimes your kids have a complete blast getting and giving candy on Halloween.

Sometimes you discover an unexpected delight at an overpriced coffee chain: the Pecan Crunch Oatmilk Latte.

Sometimes your church surprises you with a very creative and generous pastor appreciation gift.

Sometimes you just have a chat with some neighbors while you’re both in your yards because the weather gave you the occasion to do so.

It seems to me that hand-me-downs, properly understood and contextualized, are part of this larger category. With them we bless other households, if only for a season. And who knows if that household won’t bless another afterward?

Share

Did you see the special guest article by Robert Picirilli on creation, science, and Genesis last week? Be sure to circle back around to that and read it carefully.

“Is that the only way for a Christian to think? Must we give up a straightforward reading of Genesis? I would suggest that we do not have to take that painful step; nor do we need to provide a definable date for the creation of the universe. And, before proceeding to develop this approach, I hasten to say that I have no argument with the view of the composition of the universe that Haarsma has briefly described (and which I have even more briefly summarized). I just don’t agree with the implications some draw from that picture, and I am confident that harmony with what is at root a secular view of science cannot be achieved by affirming the billions of years and making Genesis fit.”

I have periodically called attention to the beautiful mess that is embryo adoption. It is not without its complexity or challenges, but I do believe it is defensible and necessary in a fallen world like ours.

There is an informational webinar fast approaching that I want to call attention to. You can register to attend here. Or why not share this link with someone who you think might be interested?

Julian Sancton, Neptune’s Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and Ghosts of the Spanish Empire

9Marks, Church Matters Volume VIII: Pastoring and the Conscience

Luke Burgis, The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion

Joseph H. Sherrard, The Augustinian Pastor: Deep Wisdom for Modern Ministry

Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Nationalism, and Socialism Is Destroying American Democracy

Yes, for the thousandth time, I know there’s another “Jackson Watts”—Jackson T. Watts, to be exact:

W. Jackson Watts is the fellow who produces most of what you read here.

Jackson T. Watts pastors a church in Tennessee and has different parents. But hey, mere distinctions and all that…

If you enjoy Churchatopia, would you take time to share a link to this Substack site and/or some Churchatopia that you benefited from?

Share

Introduction

For some years I have argued that we who take the Bible seriously do not have to accommodate the billions of years claimed by some scientists for the age of the earth. Everyone in Christian circles is aware that there is some division among evangelical Christians between those who view the earth as old and those who view it as young. Those who think the earth is young are suspicious of those who think it is old; and the latter suspect that the former do not understand well the basis for the claims of science. My point of view, which I will develop here, is that we do not need to be forced into saying just how old the earth is—and thus when biblical creation occurred.

Many of the scientists who posit that the earth is billions of years old do so on a secular basis. That is, they do not believe there is a God, or at least that the Bible must be taken at anything like face value. Their observations and theories are constructed without reference to God.

At the same time, some scientists who profess faith in God and confidence in the Bible likewise adopt the “old earth” view. I need not venture, here, into their motivations for this, which may be varied. Common among these motivations is the confidence that much of the scientific enterprise must be accepted and trusted; and, in that case, we must make room for the long ages of history that scientists (secular and otherwise) see evidence for in the structure and development of the universe. Further, if that much is admitted, then the Genesis account of creation cannot be taken as straightforward historical narrative, describing creation in terms that can be taken as precise and exact. Instead, Genesis—especially the early chapters (perhaps through chapter 11) can be taken as some sort of narrative composed to represent truth broadly and phenomenally rather than specifically and directly.

The word myth gets floated around in such discussions, but I will not depend on that word; it has too many meanings to provide a stable basis for argument. All we really need to know about this view is that Genesis doesn’t really mean, and never was intended to mean, that God created everything in the universe, including every basic kind of animal life, and human beings, in six twenty-four hour days. The creation account isn’t meant to be that kind of history, say they; it is another kind of “history” that tells the truth in a different way.

A Recent Example

With this probably inadequate introduction I turn to the view of the universe that often seems to demand such a view of the creation account in Genesis 1 and 2. A recent issue of Christianity Today (November-December 2025, pp. 34-37) carries an article by astrophysicist Deborah Haarsma entitled “The Incarnation According to Astrophysics,” which describes, as part of its purpose, a contemporary and scientific view of our universe in its magnitude, complexity, and evident history. I will attempt to summarize this view for my readers, and to do so with full sympathy. I have no doubts about the accuracy of the article in this regard.

Haarsma first comments about the contemporary surge in numbers of people who profess no organized religious belief; when surveyed, they give science as their most common reason for this. It is “among the top reasons that people doubt,” she notes. Then she proceeds to lay out the case against religion, as she sees and accepts it, although she succeeds in turning it into a case for faith in God—and in understanding the incarnation, which she is primarily writing about. As she expresses her approach, she insists, “To reach people in today’s tech-dominated world, we must bring together the discoveries of modern science with the ancient truths of Christianity.”

The view of the universe that she is representing as “the discoveries of modern science” goes something like this. In our (Milky Way) galaxy alone there are an estimated 100 billion stars, of which only about 5,000 are visible to the naked eye. Even so, our galaxy is only a tiny part of the whole. There are clusters of galaxies that contain hundreds of galaxies that can be detected by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Indeed, research provides grounds for a serious estimate that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe, each containing billions, if not trillions, of stars. That seems, by the way, to relegate our little solar system to a category that might be judged insignificant.

There’s more. Consider the stuff that makes up the universe, most of which is not stars. Data from satellites shows. Haarsma reports, that some 27 percent of the universe is what’s called “dark matter,” and 60 percent is “dark energy”—both of them mysterious entities that are not fully understood but are indirectly detectible. Indeed, what scientists know—including all the stars and the atoms listed in the standard periodic table—comprises only about 5 percent of the universe.

There is yet more. Consider the atoms that make up physical things. These have come from the stars. When certain stars collide, the atoms within them are freed to roam the universe and settle where they will. Thus even our human bodies, like the planets in our solar system, are made up of these atoms that have come from the stars—“stardust,” Haarsma poetically calls this material. She notes that Carl Sagan, not so poetically, called this material “star stuff.”

Haarsma does not focus on the process or discuss the time required for all this complexity to form. She leaves unsaid, in this article, the obvious implication: namely, that such processes have required billions of years to arrive at the present state of our still-expanding universe as we know it.

Of course, the Christian will affirm that, no matter how complex and huge (or how little understood) the universe may be, God created it all. But if one accepts the picture I have summarized, with its implications, the view that God created all the universe in one week, in the simple manner described in Genesis, begins to sit somewhat uneasily in our thinking. The question we cannot avoid is, How can we—or can we at all—fit such a picture of the universe into the biblical account? The answer that many give is to accept the billions of years and, as I have already indicated, to jettison anything like a “literal” view of Genesis 1-2.

A Possible Direction

Is that the only way for a Christian to think? Must we give up a straightforward reading of Genesis? I would suggest that we do not have to take that painful step; nor do we need to provide a definable date for the creation of the universe. And, before proceeding to develop this approach, I hasten to say that I have no argument with the view of the composition of the universe that Haarsma has briefly described (and which I have even more briefly summarized). I just don’t agree with the implications some draw from that picture, and I am confident that harmony with what is at root a secular view of science cannot be achieved by affirming the billions of years and making Genesis fit.

An alternative answer to the question whether the scientists’ billions of years is the only way forward builds on a relatively simple idea: namely, that whatever God created he brought into existence at some point in the cycle of existence. Indeed, there are various implications of this, but all of them seem necessary if, in fact, God created ex nihilo by the authority of his commanding word.

I think we begin with two questions and the assumptions that come from answering them positively. (1) Did God ever create—bring into existence—anything that did not exist prior to his creative action? (2) Did he create “from nothing? That is, did he create by speaking things into existence, as Scripture declares in Hebrews 11:3 and in other passages like Psalm 33:6, 9? I proceed on the assumption that the Christian tradition holds dear these two truths.

In that case, then, the following assertion seems unarguable: if God by his word brought into existence things that did not exist prior to his speaking, the methods of science do not allow for confirmation of this or for determining how long ago he did so. When I refer to the methods of science, I mean—without argumentation or detail—what we call the empirical method, which is based on observation plus reasoning. It goes without saying that scientists do not have access to autonomous, fiat creation and can therefore not provide for it in their calculations. They are not able to include divine creative acts in their observation and reasoning, at least not as long as they limit themselves to pure scientific method.

I begin at the simplest level, with that old teaser that asks which came first, the chicken or the egg. (This could be done with any other lifeform, of course.) I am enlightening no one when I say that eggs come from chickens and chickens from eggs. That is the cycle of life for that animal. If God brought into existence, by his word, either a chicken or an egg, and some scientist could come along and examine it, he or she would not be able to determine that God created it or to settle on a time when that creation occurred. A scientist who knows about chickens and eggs must be sure that this particular chicken, if that is what presents itself, came from an egg produced by yet another chicken that came from an egg produced by still another—ad infinitum. Or, if the scientist should discover that chickens and eggs evolved from even lower lifeforms—well, one can see that this leads on to an even larger cycle of life.

Another illustration arises from a question: How old was Adam when God created him? Or Eve, for that matter? The Bible does not tell us, but there is one thing we can be sure of: if God created human lifeforms he did so at some stage of human life. The Genesis record seems, on its surface, to represent Adam, immediately after his creation, as an adult—perhaps a young adult, say, of twenty, old enough to tend the garden mentioned in the account? Would an unsuspecting scientist who happened on him there in Eden conclude that he was twenty years old? (It matters not whether you prefer some other age.) Had this occurred, if we assume that the scientist understood how human beings develop—from fetuses in a female womb that, in turn, result from female eggs (ova) fertilized by male sperm—the scientist might have included nine months in his calculation. Indeed, in a way more sophisticated, the scientist might have included the line of humans, with genes passed on from one generation to the other ad infinitum, to consider how old this family of humans.

It hardly matters how “old” Adam was, or Eve, when they were created by God’s spoken word; one may as easily ask if they had DNA or genes, and where they came from? Indeed, it strikes me as obvious that an Adam, formed from clay and given life by the breath of God—or, for that matter, created in any other way—would have had genes that represented the fruits of many generations past, as genes must.

When we deal with cyclical lifeforms, there is no place to start—other than to accept that God spoke into existence a developed form, one that otherwise must come from a prior form. Nor is any form of existence too complex or large to avoid this. So let us leave specific lifeforms to look, once more, at the picture of the universe described by astrophysicist Haarsma, outlined above. There seems to be no doubt that the vast universe, which enfolds multiplied millions of stars in ever expanding activity, some dying while others are forming, is also a cycle. What if God created—spoke into existence—this complexity at a given (or should I say chosen) state of existence? Could that mean that he did so with the light from some of the stars already having reached the earth for Adam and Eve to see and to enjoy their illuminating the night sky?

Let’s bring this down to terms more manageable in our limited thinking. What if God created our earth already in orbit around our sun, revolving on its axis—and thus benefitting from the motions and gravitational pull of the moon and stars? If he spoke them into existence, that seems likely. How else, I would ask, could he have created it?

What if, then, he was a God who delighted in beauty and complexity and created the universe and earth in a developed state? I repeat, how could he do otherwise? What if Adam and Eve, living on the earth he created could already see and enjoy stars beautifying the night sky? What if the state of the earth, when God created it, was such that there were already mountains to relieve an otherwise unbroken horizon? Or valleys to provide pastures for flocks? Or rivers with their beds already cut deeply into the earth to carry the flow to the sea, awaiting evaporation back into the skies to fall again? Or caves to explore? Or varieties of trees with different colored blossoms in the spring? (The flood of Genesis 6-8, with catastrophic worldwide effects never seen before and never to be repeated, also bears on the shape of things today. Pursuing this now goes beyond my purpose in this article; it is significant that 2 Peter 3:6-7 refers to the antediluvian world as (literally) "the then world" in contrast to "the now heavens and earth.")

You can carry that on, perhaps endlessly. I would suggest that there is no way for God to create anything that did not previously exist without that created thing appearing to have an age that it did not have. I realize that some may object to this on the grounds that God was falsifying the record. No. I am not suggesting that he placed in the rocks fossils of animals that never existed. I am suggesting that there was no way for God to create things, things that did not exist before he spoke, except to create things that would appear to have a history within the cycle of life and existence. No one should be deceived by that, once the cycle of existence is understood and one comes to faith in the God revealed in the Bible.

Some Implications

One implication of this is that a person who believes the Bible does not therefore need to decide how old the universe or the earth is. The pressure of making such a decision is relieved. If one prefers, then, the date may be left undetermined. One may be satisfied to know that, if God created at all—whether in six days or not—science cannot, as science, determine how long ago that was. A person who chooses this response will be confident that the world isn’t as old as secular science posits. At the same time, he or she may take the position that the biblical data are not complete or specific enough to provide a date and were not intended to do so.

By the same token, a person can adopt a six-day creation and young earth. If, indeed, God created a developed universe and manifold lifeforms, one gains nothing by accepting the billions of years postulated by secular science.

Indeed, if we choose to credit the billions of years, we have gained absolutely nothing in reaching a harmony between the Bible and any so-called scientific view of the age of the universe. In that case we have only moved back the point of contention to an earlier time in history. Secular science, given the meaning of secular, can never accommodate an eternal, creating God. Then we who hold to the truth of the Bible, regardless how we interpret Genesis 1-2, may as well resist the implications that the universe is too old for its age to be measured in anything less than multiplied billions of years.

We would like to see scientists saying something like this: If the universe and the earth were not supernaturally created by God, then judging from the evidence we can observe, they must be billions of years old. That would be honest and relieve the tension that results from their claims. Then everyone would understand that old-earth estimates based entirely on the reasoning of empirical science depend on autonomous science. Such estimates, therefore, reflect assumptions that rule out a world created by the word of God out of nothing. Bible-believing scientists could say such a thing, of course; secular scientists could but have no reason to do so.

If God created at all, he might as well have created those billions of stars that Haarsma describes so well, all at one utterance. That would have been no harder for him than to create a single cell from which all the stars ultimately developed in billions of years. But it would be more coherent with the biblical account, regardless how that account is interpreted. Anyone who has read my In the Beginning: Exploring Genesis, knows that I am not embarrassed to take the creation account as reporting genuine creation by the spoken word of God, more or less as Genesis describes it.

For more from Picirilli on Genesis, be sure to pick up a copy of his latest work!

Share

A few years ago I was teaching an adult Bible study on the subject of revelation. I was trying to show the value of general revelation, but also why special revelation was necessary for clearly understanding the gospel.

In illustrating my claim, I critically used a quip from the notoriously quotable G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), the British author, apologist, and literary critic: “Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.”^[1]

Some readers will be more familiar with a variation of this quote from the neo-orthodox theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971): “The doctrine of original sin is the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith.”^[2] Niebuhr was actually echoing another publication, the London Times Literary Supplement. (It’s unclear to me if that publication borrowed from Chesterton, seeing as how he was British and cross-influence seems plausible.)

My intent in questioning Chesterton was to help our congregation understand that we need the full revelation of Christ not solely to see the solution to our problem, but to understand the problem itself.

One well-read church member then politely questioned whether I was interpreting Chesterton fairly. Orthodoxy, Chesterton’s thoughtful diatribe-turned-classic, mostly refutes mistaken notions about Christianity and progress. It is by no means a conventional survey of Christian doctrine, though it’s well worth your time if you can get past all the Anglophile references.

My church member’s point was that Chesterton was known for rhetorical flourish and wit. In saying sin could be proven, he simply meant, “Look around. Isn’t it clear that something is horribly wrong with the world?”

She wasn’t wrong. Some statements are meant to be taken “seriously, but not literally.” However, given the traction that both the Chestertonian and Niebuhrian quotations have had over the years, it’s worth asking the question: Are they right? Can we make sense of the doctrine of sin (hamartiology) apart from the doctrine of Christ (Christology)?

More practically, can people be shown their full spiritual need for Christ before we get to Him in evangelism? Or can we convince them of the spiritual condition and the world’s actual plight apart from special revelation?

First Things First

Stanley Hauerwas is one of the English-speaking world’s most controversial and widely discussed theologians. Reading him is both fascinating and frustrating. He’s the type of writer who makes you heartily ‘Amen’ one statement then cry “Oh me” after the next. Despite the latter, he’s the first theologian that got me thinking seriously about the relevance of Christology to this discussion.^[3]

I’ve heard him repeatedly attack Niebuhr’s statement, which would seem to discredit Chesterton’s remark as well. His point? What you believe about Christ will shape what you believe about sin, and vice versa.

So, what should we begin in saying about Christ?

Here we confessional evangelicals say that Christ is the God-man come to earth to fulfill God’s plan of redemption of the human race and the entire cosmos. He is truly God and truly man. He is the long-awaited son of David. He is the Messiah-King. He is the one who brings the Abrahamic Covenant to fulfillment. He lived a sinless life. He offered his life as a substitutionary atonement for sin. He was raised victoriously by the Father and vindicated in the Spirit. He has called the church into existence, and through His Word and Spirit, empowers it to fulfill the Great Commission until He returns to judge the living and the dead.

Thus far we find great consensus with other Christian traditions on the basic Christological questions (with perhaps some quibbling over the best understanding of the atonement). But when we look closer at the details of Jesus’s person and work, we uncover much more that impinges on the question of sin.

The Difference Jesus Makes

Jesus’s ministry of teaching and preaching is always connected to his ministry of healing. So often was he found healing people that it almost makes one wonder, “Why bother? Such people end up dying anyway of other illnesses. Poor Lazarus had to die twice!”

Yet the more we probe the nature and meaning of Jesus’s miracles the more we see that his healing wasn’t merely a demonstration of great compassion and divine power. It was a foretaste of the new creation his kingdom ministry was inaugurating. His proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom was good news for the spiritually captive, including the blind, the lame, and all whose lives were touched by the brokenness of a sin-cursed world.

The trouble is that when unbelievers see a world touched by the ravages of disease and physical decay, they do not see a world broken by sin. They see a world broken by manifestations of sin. And they mistake the manifestations for the root cause itself.

They see genetic mutations. They see treacherous hereditary conditions. They see the evolutionary-historical arc failing to take us where we’d like to go, which simply reinforces the need for funding the National Institutes of Health and organizations like it all the more. They see people being evil, without a larger moral account of something like “evil.”

Yet Jesus showed very clearly that physical maladies are but the visible outworking of the condition that is sin. Multiple encounters with the ill and diseased reveal this.

For example, in Matthew 9 Jesus famously heals the bed-ridden paralytic who was brought to him by faithful friends. However, instead of beginning with, “Rise and walk,” he begins with, “Take heart, my son; your sons are forgiven.” The scribes are deeply troubled by Jesus’s apparent blasphemy, to which he responds, “Which is easier to say: ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘Rise and walk’?”

It’s at this point that he addresses the surface problem of the man’s disability using the language of healing—but not before referring to His “authority on earth to forgive sins.” In other words, if he has the authority and power to reverse the effects of the Fall, he most certainly has the authority to forgive the ultimate reason for the Fall: human sinfulness.

Another encounter with religious leaders (Pharisees) in John 9 puts an even finer point on this larger lesson. Jesus encounters a man blind from birth. The disciples inquire as to whether it was his sin or his parents which explained his particular ailment. Jesus doesn’t deny the relevance of sin to disease, but instead, explains that the larger matter in view is that this man’s condition gives occasion for the power of God to be manifested in his life. He then healed the man.

Unbelieving Jewish leaders then interrogate the man, skeptical that true healing could have taken place. But their larger aim is to cast doubts on the identity and claims of this Jesus of Nazareth. Eventually they get the opportunity to confront Jesus himself. Jesus then turns an inquisition about physical blindness into spiritual blindness. He has no patience for those who would cast out a man who was healed simply for reporting what the Lord had done for him.

Jesus asserts,

Because the Pharisees won’t see that the blind man now sees because he has encountered the Divine power of heaven, they will remain in their blindness. The blind man and the blind religious leaders suffered from two different blindnesses, but both had an underlying origin known as sin and depravity, from which all forms of moral and physical problems arise. Jesus cares about the manifestation of the curse (blindness), but he really cares about the deeper, more subtle, serious expressions of the curse (rebellion).

Jesus pushes us past external accounts. He helps us see how the externals and internals of moral reality connect.

We can go a step further and say that Jesus helps us see the horizontal and vertical nature of sin. David makes clear in Psalm 51 that sin is never merely against our neighbor; it’s always against God our Creator as well. Special revelation, whether it comes from the lips of Jesus or the rest of Scripture, gives us a full account of the dynamics of sin.

It’s no small thing that the Bible is filled with so many words, categories, and metaphors for human sinfulness: missing the mark, transgressions, iniquity, perversion, corruption, disease, blindness, bondage, parasitism, etc.

So while sin’s manifestations are obvious on an experiential level—our consciences and bodies bear witness—sin’s true nature cannot be understood or addressed without the revelation of God in Christ.

A Contemporary Example

Our present debates in America over race illustrate this kind of moral diagnostic at work.

One side says that systemic racism is not only the best account of American history, but it is a present reality that accounts for the failure of modern societies like the United States to achieve full equality in every domain of life.

The other side contends that racism, while once a serious problem as evinced through slavery and Jim Crow, is a feature of the past, not the present. It’s simply a smokescreen for a progressive political agenda.

Now we must hasten to make two observations. First, both descriptions fail to account for the full diversity of perspectives on questions of race, justice, American history, and civil rights more generally. Indeed, like most contemporary political issues, we must learn to see policies as existing on a spectrum, not in terms of sides (as if there are always just two to be chosen among).

Second, we must also recognize that positions and assessments don’t always fit neatly into tidy boxes. Sometimes honesty with the data might lead us to more heterodox positions in which we don’t find our own views simply aligning neatly with one political party. Given how complex society and policymaking are, one shouldn’t be surprised.

With those caveats being made, one reason why political moderates and conservatives often fail to join their progressive neighbors on specific policy proposals in the area of race is because they cannot help but resist what they see as simplistic ways race and racism are deployed as an explanation for all social problems.

For example, one might point out the fact that black people often wait longer in line to vote at their precincts, or are less likely to vaccinate their children, or have insufficient access to public transit.

Now it will be obvious to most readers that each of these examples are quite a bit different. One would think that each would require some investigation into why these might be the case. The geographical dispersion of racial minorities across the country would be one factor to consider. The type of governance in municipalities where inequities exist would also be a factor. Election laws in each state, alongside efforts to recruit polling workers, seems relevant. How many homes are single-parent homes? In other words, a reasonable person would want to ask nearly one hundred overlapping but distinct questions to explain these disparities with accuracy.

Unfortunately, predictable claims of racism quickly surface in which entire classes of people and industries of people are assigned wicked motives. Of course, someone might fail to have wicked motives, but make decisions that adversely affect other people—and perhaps specific groups of people, identified along gender, racial, religious or other lines.

Yet if racism is understood in the conventional sense—the irrational hatred of a specific group of people sharing common racial characteristics—then we’re dealing in the arena of motives, which makes the category of systemic racism a bit more fraught since it’s hard to analyze the motive or heart of a system.

These observations aren’t meant to be any kind of summation of the entire racial justice discussion in America. However, my intent is to show that people of all political persuasions are vested in trying to find explanations for what are perceived to be—and in many cases are—moral problems. The judgment that something is a moral problem is itself not neutral. It is a claim about the way the world is versus how it ought to be.

So, a politically conservative person suspicious of progressive claims of bigotry, or a secular person convinced that systemic racism best explains all inequities in society, are both committed to a moral vision of the world. They are operating with some account of sin, but once Christian revelation is bracketed out of the analysis, some of sin's dimensions are lost entirely. There is no God to sin against. There are no image-bearers whose dignity is impugned. You simply have people doing things to others that some segment of society doesn’t like. It’s what Alasdair McIntyre called “emotivism.” Moral language loses its substance.

Halfway There

General revelation is incredibly important. It’s part of how God conveys the knowledge of His existence, power, and character to His creation. It’s connected to the moral law written on every human heart. It’s also associated with common grace, which explains how He enables even unbelieving persons to perceive and act wisely in a fallen world.

However, a fuller biblical account which presents us with Christ helps fill in the gaps people perceive in the world. People really sense something is wrong. Their God-given, moral intuitions can’t help but respond to injustice and immorality, even if those intuitions aren’t fully developed.

But if they don’t have a biblical account, they’ll describe those injustices in other terms. We’ll talk about systems more than sin. We’ll talk about policies more than perversions. We’ll talk about fairness more than righteousness.

Sin has vertical and horizontal dimensions, the former of which we can’t get to without Jesus.

Without a Christian theological account, all we have are our mistakes, misgivings, or “lapses in judgment.” We don’t really have what the Bible means by sin without a clear concept of duty to God and duty to man. Without Jesus, we’re left mostly with materialism or Gnosticism, neither of which will ever get us to real answers to our most pressing questions.

^[1] G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1908), 7.

^[2] Reinhold Niebuhr, Man’s Nature and His Communities: Essays on the Dynamics and Enigmas of Man’s Personal and Social Existence (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1965), 24. Niebuhr was arguably the most influential public theologian of the twentieth century. He wrote in depth about human nature, society, and sin, though many of his own doctrinal views would run quite contrary to our own.

^[3] Hauerwas strongly disagreed with Niebuhr on most things, which is why he puts such a fine point on this specific subject—he was trying to attack at the core sentiment behind Niebuhr’s quote above.

Share

I’ve written about apologetics on a few occasions here at Churchatopia, especially Newsletter 146. I’ve also presented a seminar on the lies we most commonly believe about apologetics—perhaps one of the best attended seminars I’ve ever given. So it was with special interest that I read and reflected on my friend Faron Thebeau’s recent article on “Apologies to Apologetics.”

Thebeau writes on the problem of evil and suffering with an eye toward the actual conversations that many of us have with people in our daily ministry. He writes:

One of the blessings of a relationship is the time that it affords to know someone well. My wife has known me for fourteen years now and she knows all the signs of my good days as well as my bad. In love, she has walked with me through it all and she trusts in my heart.

Now, imagine someone that crosses my path on my worst, most human day. An innocent misunderstanding augmented by frustration leads to unkind words. I could apologize profusely and try to explain that’s not how I really am – it’s not the kind of person I want to be. But they would feel completely justified in refusing to believe me.

My wife could step in and try to explain but they would discount her bias. They simply wouldn’t have a baseline relationship to measure from.

This is my fear of the current view many have of apologetics. It is an incredibly valuable tool – one that the Bible instructs us to hone. But it also requires an ear that is able to hear.

When someone’s view of the world is being filtered through tragedy and anguish, it becomes understandably difficult to see God’s goodness. Blunt insistence doesn’t change that. Apologetics must be wise to deal with that limitation.

Apologetics is far from mere abstractions, syllogisms, and intellectual saber-rattling. It’s deeply personal, pastoral, and circumstantial.

I rarely cite Church Answers articles anymore. I don’t avoid them because they’re incorrect, irrelevant, or uninteresting, but simply because they appear to have reached a kind of saturation point in the conservative Baptist world that I inhabit.

That said, I truly appreciated Sam Rainer’s recent article/post highlighting the centrality of evangelism to church health.

In “Why All Church Health Is Downstream from Evangelism”, Rainer asserts the following:

Read the whole article. It’s short, but clear and so relevant to the modern church.

Julian Sancton, Neptune’s Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and Ghosts of the Spanish Empire

9Marks, Church Matters Volume VIII: Pastoring and the Conscience

Kudos to my wife for her timely humor on the heels of the annual National Convention. It was a full, tiresome week, but a good one.

If you enjoy Churchatopia, would you take time to share a link to this Substack site and/or some Churchatopia that you benefited from?

Share

In 2021, I took to print to reflect on the so-called “pastor shortage problem.” As that topic continues to be top-of-mind for so many—and certainly churches going long periods of time between pastors—I thought it was an appropriate time to revisit it here. What follows is a brief article I originally wrote for Free Will Baptist Theology (www.fwbtheology.com), the official website of the Free Will Baptist Commission for Theological Integrity. It was entitled, “15 Factors Contributing to the Pastor Shortage Problem.”

This past March I published an article entitled “Reexamining the Pastoral Shortage Problem.” If social media and WordPress metrics are any indication, it struck a nerve. I view this as an affirmation that most readers agree that there is a shortage of available pastors, and we desire to see that need met. Where we may differ is what we think to be the underlying cause of this shortage.

In my earlier article I emphasized two overlooked factors. First, a substantial number of ordained pastors who begin serving churches do not continue to serve throughout their entire working life. Second, there is a substantial number of ordained men who aren’t completely willing to serve as pastors. They are content to preach as opportunities arise but not fulfill the New Testament vision of the pastorate.

We must reckon with these factors because they account for the pastor shortage problem as much as other popular explanations.

A prevailing narrative sounds something like this: “Young people just aren’t interested in serving the Lord.” Or, “Years ago when I was growing up our church was full of young people, many of whom were answering the call to be a pastor or missionary. We don’t see that anymore.” Exegeting such statements might uncover other more revealing issues that can advance this discussion more honestly and accurately.

Reexamining Our Assumptions

First, it’s uncontroversial to say that broadsides against entire generations—in this case, whoever the “younger people” in view are—are counterproductive to seeing more people arise to serve Jesus. It is tantamount to a volunteer recruitment strategy in the local church where we begin by saying, “You older people refuse to do anything to serve in our student ministry,” then expecting current workers to feel appreciated and new ones to emerge out of thin air. Certainly, there’s a place for analysis and even criticism, but lamentation about the state of Gen-Z or Millennials will likely do as much harm as good. And as Matt Pinson has noted previously, sometimes we don’t understand these groups as well as we imagine!

Second, let’s assume that someone was raised in an environment where many persons were answering some type of call to vocational Christian ministry. Where are they now? No doubt some persevered and have finished the race (or are still running), but how many didn’t? How many left, for any number of reasons? This question returns us to my earlier contention about the many men who begin in the pastorate, but don’t continue. There are more than we think.

Third, as you see those many faces in your church’s youth group from the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, how many do you see? Now compare that number to the number in those same congregations now. Are there more, about the same, or significantly fewer? If you answered the latter of the three, then you’ve identified another crucial factor contributing to our pastor shortage crisis. Assuming that our “pool of candidates” is limited to the “young people,” let’s say ages 12-18, then the pool is inevitably going to shrink if churches aren’t reaching youth for Christ. In other words, one of the massive culprits is the failure of local churches to engage in faithful evangelism.

Moreover, if we have a narrow vision about how and when God calls people into the pastorate, this will also partially explain why our shortages exist. Can God not call a 25-year-old, 35-year-old, or 45-year-old in our congregations to the office of pastor? Or have we assumed (unbiblically) that God only calls those on the precipice of a choosing a career?

A Multi-Factorial Problem

For those keeping score, more than one factor is driving our present need. No doubt some are more pressing and impactful than others. However, we must resist the urge to simplify complex problems. This is a multi-factorial challenge. By implication, this means that we will have to tackle it from multiple angles, regardless of how daunting it may be.

In my prior article I offered a list of suggestions that I thought would demonstrate and support a serious, practical theology of the pastorate. Let me restate those:

• A renewed commitment in the local church to explain the call to ministry, pray for workers, and encourage gifted men to consider the work;

• A concerted effort to demystify the call to ministry and balance the subjective aspects of the call with the objective, external aspects;

• A renewed commitment of local associations to forsake careless, hasty, or thin licensure and ordination procedures;

• A renewed commitment of local associations, and especially presbyteries, to support, care for, and encourage the progress and perseverance of those licensed and ordained;

• A refusal to maintain the licensure or ordination of pastors who fail to demonstrate a tangible commitment to shepherding a local church.

Each of these deserves its own article, seminar, forum, or panel discussion. We must work together to find consensus on how to accomplish these in our various contexts. However, let’s also set another list alongside this one to enumerate the factors creating this present crisis.

I believe these factors are (in no particular order),

1. Many churches do not regularly teach and preach on the vocation of pastor.

2. Many churches treat their pastor(s) so poorly that regardless of what is taught about the subject, their actions undermine the messaging. People don’t “answer the call” in that environment.

3. Some churches so mystify the call to pastor that few would likely perceive a calling.

4. Some churches communicate that the call to pastor is one which can only be accepted at a specific moment or period in one’s life, namely as a teenage boy nearing college-age.

5. Some pastors eventually stop pastoring due to various forms of burnout and do not return.

6. Some pastors resign due to moral failure or family issues they’re unable to resolve.

7. Some pastors are forced to resign due to health and or financial reasons.

8. Some pastors depart churches to serve in other denominations.

9. Some pastors transition to new forms of ministry, whether denominational administration, chaplaincy, or other parachurch ministries.

10. Some men ordained to the ministry have no intention to serve as a pastor, only preach.

11. Some men ordained to the ministry are only willing to pastor in a specific locale or region.

12. Some pastors retire in a given year (more or less, depending on the year).

13. Some pastors die in a given year (more or less, depending on the year).

14. Some churches won’t hire single men to serve as pastors, so these men continue as associate pastors (of various kinds) or continue to search in vain.

15. In some areas we may have an excess of churches. The location, dysfunction, and other challenging dynamics in some churches, especially in rural areas, make it such that perhaps the Kingdom would be better served by closure or a merger. A potential excess of churches artificially inflates the number of pastors needed.

The list could be longer than the one I’ve produced here. Additionally, each of these factors should be weighed differently against the overall problem. But I submit that until we resist simplistic appeals for more youth to enter the pastorate and pay attention to all the dynamics and issues at work, we’ll still be discussing this problem for decades to come. Failure to appreciate the range of factors will lead us to simplistic prescriptions that don’t address the problem adequately.

May God help us to see the situation as it is and obediently apply our hearts to biblically-based solutions.

Share

In Newsletter #224 I reported and reflected upon the death of Robert Louis Wilken, one of my favorite authors and scholars of the Christian faith. I have appreciated the tributes I have encountered online, including yet another one which appeared at The Public Discourse.

In Andrew Hofer’s recent tribute, he writes,

The work of Wilken helps us better understand the early church, and in fact, broader Christian history. I refer readers back to Newsletter #224 in which I highly recommend two of his works.

By now many are exhausted from the panic surrounding falling birthrates, especially in the West and more secularized nations. The phenomenon isn’t unique to post-Christian Europe, but extends to many Asian nations, and of course, the Americas.

As someone concerned about the intersection of fertility with economics and politics—and I think Christian citizens should be—we need to give more thought to the implications of falling birthrates for our social services. Both major political parties have refused to address entitlements, and a price is already being paid. The crisis will only deepen due to a failure to reckon with pro-natalist arguments.

Romina Boccia and Krit Chanwong tackle this disturbing collision of social forces in a recent piece at The Debt Dispatch:

Social Security’s long-term shortfall is likely significantly worse than projected. In 2025, the Social Security Trustees estimated that the program faces a 75-year funding shortfall equal to $27 trillion in present-value terms. But those projections rely on unusually optimistic assumptions about future US fertility rates. The Trustees are likely understating Social Security’s insolvency problem by assuming Americans will start having far more children than current trends suggest.

If fertility instead follows projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) or the US Census Bureau, Social Security’s 75-year deficit rises to at least $30 trillion. In other words, the Trustees and the Social Security Administration (SSA) may be understating the size of Social Security’s long-term financing gap by at least $3 trillion in present value terms . . .

The Trustees’ fertility assumptions are not a technical footnote. Because Social Security is financed on a pay-as-you-go basis, fertility projections directly shape estimates of the program’s long-run solvency. If the Trustees’ fertility assumptions are too optimistic, then Social Security’s financing gap is significantly larger than official projections suggest.

Read it and weep, friends.

Julian Sancton, Neptune’s Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and Ghosts of the Spanish Empire

9Marks, Church Matters Volume VIII: Pastoring and the Conscience

I recently received a special recognition from the good folks over at the Red Cross: my eight-gallon lifetime donation pin!

As I wrote about in a 2020 article “Bleeding for Others”, less than half of the U.S. population is eligible to donate blood, and less than 20% are willing. I encourage readers to investigate their eligibility and consider helping others live. It truly is a matter of life and death.

And on a lighter note, a little humor courtesy of a Konstantin Asimonov:

If you enjoy Churchatopia, would you take time to share a link to this Substack site and/or some Churchatopia that you benefited from?

Share

This weekend thousands of Free Will Baptists will converge on Columbus, Ohio for the annual session of the National Association. It will be the 30^th time I’ve attended a Convention, though my experiences have been diverse through the years.

I’ve been a competitor, judge, delegate, presenter/panelist, coach, committee member, and more. But one of my favorite roles has been as a member of the Commission for Theological Integrity. For years the Commission has held an seminar on Monday afternoon on a subject of great significance for Christian faith and practice.

This year’s seminar is entitled, “Creeds, Confessions, and the Church: A Free Will Baptist Perspective.” The presenters are Derek Cominskie, Kevin Hester, Jesse Owens, and Matt Pinson. The session will be held from 1:30-3:00pm on Monday in GCCC A124/125. I hope to see many of you there!

As I reflected recently on this topic, I recalled the odd and difficult year of 2020. Leaders of all kinds of institutions were trying to figure out how to be faithful in an environment of uncertainty and controversy.

When it came to the Convention, our denominational leaders opted for a special meeting of a subset of our delegates (the General Board) to conduct Convention business. Seminars were prerecorded and made available via YouTube, including the Theological Commission’s annual seminar.

That seminar topic paralleled this year’s topic. It was called, “Doctrine, Confessionalism, and Denominational Identity.” I was honored to be one of the presenters. While the video/audio quality of the video—which is still available on YouTube—was rather sketchy, I still think the substance of the presentations was among the best material the Commission has produced in last ten years or so.

In the interest of promoting the broader theme (and by extension, this year’s seminar) I have chosen to repost the transcript of my original remarks. My presentation was entitled, “Bridging the Divide: The Relationship Between Doctrine and Practice.”

The Problem

There is a problem often found in modern Christian thought. This dichotomy goes something like this: doctrine is very important to believe and teach. But then there is practice, which varies place to place. So, get your beliefs lined up with the Bible, and be sure to teach those in the church, but then your ministry practice can be determined by practical concerns, cultural context, perceived effectiveness, and other factors.

Most people probably wouldn’t put it quite that starkly. We know doctrine and practice do relate on some level.

For example, the Bible says we ought to pray. That’s a practice. We also believe the Bible teaches us truths about prayer and what to pray for, so we see a doctrine and a practice going hand in hand. But we generally think how you lead a church or practice ministry is driven more by context and practical concerns: “How big of a church are we? Are we rural or suburban? What financial resources do we have?” or “What stylistic preferences do people seem to respond to in our community?”

The Core Argument

I want to suggest that while context and prudential judgments about how best to minister are definitely important considerations, by itself, this perspective betrays something fundamental to Scripture. That is, the Bible holds doctrine and practice together in such a way that they cannot and should not be separated. They are symbiotic. That is to say, they’re mutually reinforcing and mutually dependent.

The Biblical Case

To establish this case let’s focus on an important phrase in the Pastoral Epistles: “sound doctrine” (ὑγιαινούσῃ διδασκαλίᾳ).^[1] Occurring four times in Greek (between 3-5 in most English versions), this phrase is usually interpreted as “true doctrine,” or “correct doctrine.” It seems like a synonym to other Pauline expressions of truth, such as “the good deposit” (2 Tim. 1:14) or the “the pattern of sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13).

But had Paul simply wanted to talk about truthful doctrine, he could have used clearer Greek words. The word “sound” here doesn’t typically mean “true or accurate.” Rather, it means, “healthy, or well.”

It’s curious that Paul uses a term that doesn’t specifically refer to a doctrine’s truthfulness, though he no doubt assumes that in the idea. Instead, he uses a word to describe doctrine that refers to the teaching’s effect, application, or fruit.

But just take the apostle Paul’s word for it. Let’s consider two of the four instances where “sound doctrine” occurs (1 Tim. 1:10; 2 Tim. 4:3; Titus 1:9; 2:1), namely 1 Timothy 1:9-10:

“…understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine…”

In this chapter Paul addresses false teaching, namely, an incorrect view of the relationship between God’s law and the gospel. He then gives a list of sinful activities or behaviors that are contrary to the moral law of God. Notice that as he concludes his list, he doesn’t say, “and whatever other sinful behaviors like these you can think of.” He says, “whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.” Paul doesn’t say, “Don’t teach a wrong view of the Trinity, or the atonement.” He says, “The law of God condemns these sins and others that are also contrary to sound doctrine.” Paul sees a life that flows from Christian truth. Moreover, the word “sound” conveys that true doctrine isn’t merely correct; it’s healthy. It’s wholesome.

The word “godliness” has the same basic idea.^[2] As Phillip Towner explains, godliness “defines Christian existence as the interplay of the knowledge of God and of the truth (cf. 4:3) and the observable outworking of that knowledge in appropriate ways.”^[3] The challenge, of course, is determining what’s appropriate!

Consider another example of this relationship as seen in Titus 1:9-2:1:

“He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach. One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, ‘Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.’ This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth.

To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work. But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine.”

Paul gives Titus qualities that should be seen in elders—both present and potential ones. Verse 9 says, “they must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.” Biblical elders teach what is true and show the connections between true doctrine and the lifestyle that follows it.

Paul then mentions the problems at Crete. It isn’t just that the content of Cretan teachers’ words is incorrect or false (It is! They’re called ‘liars’!). But they’re also called “evil, lazy, and impure.” These normally describe behavior as much as ideas. This is why good elders must hold doctrine and practice together.

This interpretation is reinforced by 2:1: “Teach what accords with sound doctrine.” Paul then gives a list of virtues to be modeled in the context of intergenerational relationships. To put it simply, doctrine forms disciples. To use Dr. Kevin Hester’s language, “theology grounds Christian living.” Pay attention to the unique phrase in 2:1: “What accords with sound doctrine.” To see the nuance here, consider a few other English versions: “But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine” (KJV); “You, however, must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine.” (NIV); “But as for you, speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine” (NASB). Note the stress of seeing the link between doctrine and practice.

From these passages, I make three claims:

Concluding Thoughts

Recall B.B. Warfield’s image. He says the study of doctrine (theology) and spirituality goes hand in hand. They’re like the right and left leg of a person. You’re going to be limited without both. To use another metaphor, doctrine and practice are like two wings on the plane. Which would you prefer to fly without?

Moving closer to Scripture, think of doctrine as the root or stalk of a plant, and practice as the leaves and flowers. The absence of fruit would tell you the tree was unhealthy or dead. This is why doctrine must not merely be correct; it must be sound. To be sound, it must be true. But “sound doctrine” calls attention to the practical results of such teaching being received, believed, and worked out in thoughtful life and ministry.

Let’s conclude with two final observations:

So, whether we’re talking about preaching (as a practice of the church, or in terms of its content) or justification by faith (as a belief to be held, or how believing it humbles us before God), separating doctrine from practice isn’t just unwise. It’s impossible.

^[1] The verbal form of this word is: ὑγιαίνω {hoog-ee-ah’-no}.

^[2] Stanley W. Outlaw, “1 Timothy,” in The Randall House Bible Commentary: 1 Thessalonians through Philemon, Edited by Robert E. Picirilli (Nashville: Randall House, 1990), 240. Godliness pertains to a “style of life which in both doctrine and practice brings one to a closer fellowship with God.” 1 Timothy 3:14-16 is another interesting example of how godliness (the lived expression of the faith) is linked to confession (the stated beliefs of God’s people). Paul refers to behavior in the household of God, but this paves the way for him to speak of belief in verse 16.

^[3] Phillip H. Towner, The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Letters to Timothy and Titus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 305.

Share

Last week I wrote about the intersection of heavenly and earthy citizenship, especially in the context of liturgy and worship.

I also ran across another robust example of this from Kevin DeYoung. It is a lengthy prayer he prayed in a worship service on June 28 at his North Carolina Presbyterian church. You can watch or read it in its entirety—“Giving Thanks for America.” I’ve also included an excerpt below:

One of the more interesting and sometimes challenging aspects of New Testament interpretation is encountering extrabiblical sources which the NT authors deploy in their writings. Perhaps one of the most cryptic and peculiar examples is Jude’s usage of 1 Enoch.

“It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, ‘Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him’.”

In “What is 1 Enoch and Why Does Jude Quote It?” Matthew Harmon provides a concise, helpful treatment of the matter.

I suppose for some of us ministering in contexts where the canon is in dispute from our Catholic neighbors, it’s especially relevant for us to know how to deal with these “other texts”!

Bobby Jamieson, Everything is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness

Matt Boswell, What if I Don’t Like My Church’s Music?

Beth McCord, Enneagram Type 1: The Moral Perfectionist

Julian Sancton, Neptune’s Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and Ghosts of the Spanish Empire

My family and I (along with a few thousand others) will be making our way to Columbus, Ohio this week for the annual Free Will Baptist National Convention. It’s going to be a full week!

I look forward to seeing some of you there. Be sure to say “hello.”

If you enjoy Churchatopia, would you take time to share a link to this Substack site and/or some Churchatopia that you benefited from?

Share

One of the most contested topics for Christians is church-state relations. “Faith and politics” often produces a lot more heat than light in our conversations.

Whatever our starting point for these discussions, we can hardly set them aside. They comprise a significant part of our experiences in the world. My friend Matthew Bracey likes to talk about the “stewardship of citizenship.” I think this is a useful phrase as it captures the notion of life in this world (citizenship) and the Christian disposition or response to anything God gives us (stewardship).

In the case of American Christians, then, we’re obliged to think carefully about what it means to work out our faith in this unique place we call “the United States of America.”

This obligation feels especially timely. Here we are on the heels of the 250^th anniversary of what is regarded by most as the founding of our nation. Special ceremonies, displays, and other acknowledgments have been common throughout this year, especially lately. We’re immersed in fireworks, television specials, and big discount/sales. And besides these things, Christians continue to worship Sunday after Sunday.

I noticed recently that many churches paid special tribute to the nation two Sundays ago, on the theory that many of their members/attendees would be absent on July 5^th due to the holiday weekend. I was asked by no fewer than three or four people on a recent trip home whether our church was having “anything special” for the Fourth. I personally witnessed one church commemorate the occasion, and knew of another that had a very big “God and Country” Sunday. Certainly, social media made it impossible to be uninformed about other related events.

So how do we honor our earthly citizenship? Is doing so even appropriate within a worship service?

Christians have long debated the proper ways to describe and express earthly citizenship. Orthodox Christianity has never disputed that Scripture uses citizenship as an image for Christian identity. The apostle Paul, among others, clearly points to “heavenly citizenship” as something to be received, celebrated, and lived out (Phil. 3:20). Yet how that heavenly citizenship intersects with and informs earthly citizenship is where the debate lies.

The debate is nowhere more practical than in the liturgical life of the church. How, if at all, should the reality of earthly citizenship inform the church’s worship? If patriotism can be squared with Scripture—and let’s assume it can—what influence can or should it have on what happens on Sunday when the people of God gather?

Through the years I’ve noticed a spectrum of views on the topic. It’s probably more accurate to describe these views as “expressions” since I don’t know that most Christians (or even many pastors) have taken the time to work out a full-orbed theory or view of Christianity and citizenship. So much of what we do stems from unspoken assumptions, sensibilities, and habits we’ve inherited from any number of sources: our home churches, college or seminary chapel services, soundbites from popular preachers, Christian politicians, etc.

At any rate, the two extremes of the spectrum go something like this: pep rallies for the United States as God’s special nation of promise, to outright political quietism in which one could hardly detect that the people in the service were actually on planet earth.

One extreme drapes the flag around the cross; another suspends the cross in mid-air, ensuring it never actually touches the ground.

One extreme sees public and political recognition of Christianity as a essential barometer for faithfulness; another sees the prayer closet as having no room for prayers about spiritual influence outside the home or the church building.

I grant that using such descriptions of either end of a spectrum may prejudice the discussion to favor my own. Yet I’m not suggesting that somehow the precise midpoint between these two poles is automatically faithful.

Faithfulness involves a wide range of considerations: intention, content, context, and more. So much of what is done in this area involves prudential judgments about how best to form worshipers to think biblically about the things of God. I wouldn’t pretend to offer a comprehensive template in a short newsletter editorial about all the different expressions that might be spiritually appropriate or wise.

However, we must resist the idolatries that can be fostered by (1) unthinking endorsement of anything and everything “American”; and (2) apathy or antagonism toward anything and everything “American”. We cannot make the nation the sole or even most important arena for Christian faithfulness and concern, nor can we ignore its relevance to people who must work out their heavenly citizenship as citizens of various earthly domains—those domains being best known as “nations.”

So, what did my own church do? At least in our worship service, we did three specific things.

First, I as pastor led the congregation in a collective prayer of thanksgiving, confession, and petition as we reflected on the occasion of the 250^th anniversary of the nation’s founding.

Second, another worship leader led us in a responsive reading which touched on several key themes of God’s providence over the nations, the need for the nations to acknowledge the Lord, how Christians should live with respect to their neighbors and the state, and the ultimate hope we have for people of all nations—being a Kingdom of priests for the Lord.

Finally, I used two different historical and civic illustrations in my sermon that I felt were appropriate to my topic and passage. One affirmed the wisdom and courage of the U.S. founders, and one challenged a common trope about self-reliance as being out of step with Scripture.

I have shared the transcript of the prayer and responsive reading below. My hope is that it might encourage us to consider some possible ways we might give liturgical shape to concerns about earthly citizenship which are subservient to heavenly citizenship, and not the other way around.

“Heavenly Citizenship on Earth”

-Responsive Reading-

(Acts 17:24-27; Ps. 33:12; 1 Pt. 2:11-17; Titus 3:1-2; Rev. 5:9-10)

Congregation:

“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”

Leader:

“And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.”

Congregation:

“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!”

Congregation:

“Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and exiles to abstain from sinful desires that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that when they slander you as evildoers, they will observe your good works and will glorify God on the day he visits.”

Leader:

“Submit to every human authority because of the Lord, whether to the emperor as the supreme authority or to governors as those sent out by him to punish those who do what is evil and to praise those who do what is good. For it is God’s will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good.”

Congregation:

“Submit as free people, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but as God’s slaves. Honor everyone. Love the brothers and sisters. Fear God. Honor the emperor.”

Leader:

“Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people.”

Leader:

“And they sang a new song:

Congregation

[Jesus, you] are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals,
because you were slaughtered,
and you purchased people
for God by your blood
from every tribe and language
and people and nation.
You made them a kingdom
and priests to our God,
and they will reign on the earth.”

A Prayer on the Occasion of the 250^th Anniversary of the Nation’s Founding

Heavenly Father,

We thank you for the blessing of citizenship in your heavenly Kingdom. It’s only because of your kindness and mercy to us in Jesus that we can be born again, forgiven, and adopted into your family. Thank you for the opportunity to live out that heavenly citizenship here on earth as part of the United States of America.

Lord, we thank you for the ways you have providentially worked in the founding generation of this nation up until the present. Thank you for helping us to endure these 250 years. We thank you for the positive contribution to the world that the United States has made. Help us to remember the many and diverse sacrifices that people of goodwill have made in helping lead and preserve our nation and the kinds of public virtues which please you.

Lord, we are all too aware of the sins and shortcomings of our nation. History tells us of countless examples of exploitation, enslavement, greed, and pride. We ask for your mercy, knowing that even people who have called you their God have committed these sins. Even now, we often fail to be the faithful citizens you’ve called us to be. We have not always loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have not always shown grace and mercy to those different than us. We have not been good stewards of the gospel message. Humble us, forgive us, and help us to rededicate ourselves to the work of faithful witness in the public square.

Father, as we look at the present and the future of our life in this country, we know that the challenges are great. Spiritual apathy and disinterest are real. Moral hypocrisy is common. The decline of the family is troubling. The lack of courage and integrity in public officials is discouraging. And we often wonder whether our children and grandchildren will enjoy many of the blessings we have enjoyed.

Please help us to put you and your Kingdom first. Help us as your people to do our part to love our families and communities, to fulfill our various callings, to respect legitimate authority, and to pray for those in high places. Help us not only be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word.

On this special anniversary, we ask you to make citizens of this nation prosperous, safe, wise, and more than anything, truly born again so that they can know the greatest blessing: salvation through Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.

Share

In Newsletter 219, I wrote about the importance of judgment. Here’s part of what I wrote:

I revisited this theme in a recent guest sermon given to the wonderful people of Tabernacle Free Will Baptist in Coward, South Carolina.

Click Here to Watch the Sermon (Starting at Minute-Mark 24:33)

Relatedly, Rachel Gilson has written an article for the Keller Center “What Jesus Actually Meant by ‘Judge Not’.” She writes:

I was deeply saddened to learn of the recent passing of Robert Louis Wilken. It’s without surprise that I learned of his death from this Mars Hill Audio post highlighting a 1995 interview Ken Myers did with him. Through the years MHAJ has done a wonderful job introducing me to some of my most cherished intellectual influences.

Wilken was a highly important scholar of Christian thought and history, especially as seen in the early church. His many books occupy a very prominent place in my mind as I think about the distinctiveness of God’s people in the earliest centuries of the church. Readers might enjoy this remembrance over at First Things.

I first encountered Wilken’s work in a church history course at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. The Christians as the Romans Saw Them was one of the best assigned texts I could have hoped to have had.

Years later I feasted on Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom—still one of the most important books I’ve ever read.

And then I suppose it was around 2018 or 2019 that I heard the then 80-something year-old Wilken deliver a lecture at Concordia Seminary. (What a special privilege to have attended the same school Wilken first attended!) I marveled at his clarity, candor, and wit. May he rest in peace.

And on the heels of today’s editorial, it’s a good time to highlight my friend Jesse Owens’s latest article over at the Helwys Society Forum, “Patriotism for Political Exiles.” He writes:

David Gibson, Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End

Bobby Jamieson, Everything is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness

Ron Hunter, Jr., David Gibbs III, How to Find the Right Pastor: A Handbook for Pastoral and Staff Search Committees

Beth McCord, Enneagram Type 6

Those who know me best know that my favorite activity is fishing. Though I go infrequently, nothing makes me feel more human than wetting a hook.

The paradox of fishing is that you can go to Montauk State Park for an entire day and catch one fish, and then cast about 25 times over a span of 30 minutes in a family-owned pond in your hometown and catch four fish. The success vs. failure ratios just makes no sense. I suppose this is, in part, what gives fishing its allure and power.

I’m reminded of something the sociologist Harmut Rosa wrote (which I alluded to in an earlier newsletter):

Rosa identifies the central feature of life that is distinctly modern: “The driving cultural force of that form of life we call ‘modern’ is the idea, the hope and desire, that we can make the world controllable” (2) . . . Weather, of course, is only one manifestation of the kinds of things we try to overcome. Rosa notes that modern people encounter the world as a “point of aggressions,” a set of objects or circumstances to “know, attain, conquer, master, or exploit” (4).

However, here’s the kicker:

Yet it is only in encountering the uncontrollable that we really experience the world. Only then do we feel touched, moved, alive. A world that is fully known, in which everything has been planned and mastered, would be a dead world.

Whether we’re dealing with extreme weather, the fragility of our bodies, or unpredictable days out on the river, sometimes we must simply learn to behold and submit to what we’re given. Indeed, as a Christian, we must behold, submit, and gratefully receive what the good Lord gives us.

So, if this summer you don’t get the juiciest watermelons, enjoy the boiled peanuts instead. If not the peanuts, then the fireworks. If not the fireworks (which may be cancelled due to dangerous, drought-like conditions), enjoy the World Cup and a glass of lemonade.

If you enjoy Churchatopia, would you take time to share a link to this Substack site and/or some Churchatopia that you benefited from?

Share

How big is your church? This question has been asked of all pastors by fellow pastors, neighbors, family members, and often on denominational reporting forms (just to name a few instances). I’ve often thought the question itself is consequential and meaningful but not for the reasons people often think. Church size is not just about the past or present faithfulness of a pastor or a congregation. It is also intimately connected to our ministry strategy, organizational dynamics, and a number of important leadership decisions about how we shepherd those under our care.

Because some people often misunderstood the topic of church size, I was incredibly gratified by the recent publication of David Peter’s Maximizing the Midsize Church: Effective Leadership for Fruitful Mission and Ministry (Kregel, 2019). Dr. Peter is Professor of Practical Theology and Dean of the Faculty at Concordia Seminary. He has also been a pastor and currently serves as an interim pastor. I was enthusiastic about offering an endorsement for his book and was pleased that he was able to answer some questions about his book that I think readers will find helpful.

Jackson Watts (“JW”): Dr. Peter, thank you for taking time to answer my questions and for writing this book. What motivated you to tackle this subject?

David Peter (“DP”): I teach courses in pastoral leadership, and in them I emphasize that a pastor should adjust his leadership style to fit the size culture of the congregation. In order to do so, one needs to understand the size culture and the appropriate leadership approach to it. I discovered that there are many books and resources available for leading small and large churches but few to none for midsize congregations. So I undertook to fill that gap with this book.

JW: Can you define what you mean by “midsize church?” What counts as one? How rigid of a category is it?

DP: I define the midsize church as having an average weekly worship attendance of 150 to 400. These are not arbitrary boundaries but reflect a consensus of research over several decades. Basically what this means is that, at about 150 AWA (average worship attendance), a tipping point arises in which the congregation’s culture of organization, communication, and leadership should change in order to function effectively. Another tipping point arises at around 400 AWA. So the culture of a church with less than 150 AWA is small, that of a congregation more than 400 is large, and the culture of a church in between is midsize. This is what I mean by “size cultures.” The boundaries are not hard and fast, so typically we speak of transition zones between size cultures of give or take 50 AWA. It is also possible for some midsize churches to function as small churches or even large churches, but these are exceptions and not the rule.

With this definition of a midsize church (150–400 AWA) I calculate that approximately 75,000 congregations in the USA qualify, or about one-fourth of the total number of Christian churches in America.

JW: Explain what you mean by the “discontent that is endemic to the midsize church.”

DP: Pastors and leaders of medium churches feel the pressure from two sides. On the one side is the expectation that the church will retain the feel of a small congregation with a very homogeneous composition and frequent personal contact with the pastor. On the other side is the pressure to function like a large church with many high quality programmatic opportunities that are polished and professional for members to benefit from. So the leaders of midsize churches frequently feel torn between these expectations.

Church members oftentimes are not content because their expectations are not being met. Church leaders are frustrated because they cannot meet the members’ expectations. Of course, the solution is to identify expectations that are appropriate for the midsize congregation and to pursue those. This is one of the goals of my book: to help leaders and members of these churches be more realistic about the nature of mission and ministry in medium churches and to embrace these realities and find greater contentment.

JW: I found it interesting that you argue that in many cases the differences between a smaller church and a much larger church are more reflected in how the church functions than in whether the church is rural or urban, whether it is ethnically diverse, or how the church is denominationally affiliated. Can you illustrate what you mean?

DP: Certainly denominational and theological differences between churches are important. The same is true for other demographical variables. I am not discounting those distinctions. However, the differences in size are frequently overlooked when comparing congregational dynamics.

An illustration is in the way the pastor functions. Pastors of small churches from various denominations and faith backgrounds will function similarly in how they lead and provide pastoral care. This will be very direct and personal; the pastor has regular and frequent one-on-one interactions with ALL members of the church. But a pastor of a large church does not have the capacity to do this. So he must delegate the responsibility of caring for members and of discipleship to others, such as the church staff. The members will have direct and personal engagement usually with staff workers but not with the pastor. This is true whether you are Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Anglican, or whatever. It is just a reality of the number of people involved and the limitations of the pastor.

JW: You suggest then that the wise pastor must do some “right sizing.” Churches that grow cannot just do “business as usual.” So it’s not only true that churches won’t grow by doing business as usual, but if the church is growing, then it must evolve in the way it communicates, operates, trains, etc. Can you give an example of “right sizing” working itself out?

DP: A major difference between a small church and a midsize church is that the former is more homogeneous in makeup and the latter is more heterogeneous. So to “right size” in a medium church, the leaders and members must embrace the heterogeneous character and not assume that everyone thinks the same way or does things similarly. There will be a greater number of programs and identity groups, as well as approaches to mission and ministry.

An example is the worship services. A small church will likely have one service that has the same worship style week after week. A midsize church will probably offer different musical styles and orders in multiple worship services. Accordingly, right-sizing the midsize church will include embracing greater diversity. I think this is a strength of the middle-sized church—one that should be celebrated and “maximized.”

JW: Many readers will be pastoring churches that are “pastoral sized,” according to Alice Mann’s categories. Can you help those readers better understand what the implications of this are for their ministries?

DP: The pastoral size church is one with average worship attendance of 50 to 150. It is in the category of the small church but not of the very small church (which would be 50 AWA or less). It is called the pastoral size congregation because organizationally speaking everything hinges on the pastor. The pastor is the hub of the wheel that is the congregation, and all the spokes connect with him. The pastor is involved in all aspects of the life of the congregation, visits with all of the members over time, provides direct pastoral care to all members of the flock who need it.

He attends all or at least most of the activities of the congregation, including all the board and council meetings, the youth group, the ladies auxiliary, etc. You get the picture. This is one of the reasons that the small church is homogeneous, because organizationally it is unified around the functioning of its pastor. This doesn’t mean that the pastor is not delegating work to others and equipping other leaders, but it does mean that the organizational life of the congregation centers in the called minister.

JW: Midsized churches, especially those on the lower end of the spectrum (closer to 150), have several vulnerabilities. What are some of those vulnerabilities that pastors will have to lead their churches through?

DP: The biggest vulnerability relates to the previous answer I gave: The pastor and the members need to make the shift from being pastor-centered to being group-oriented. The pastor will need to give up control of many of the goings-on in the church. He will need to train others to do some of the ministry that he had previously done. This can be difficult for some pastors who find personal value and fulfillment in attending directly to every need of every member of the congregation. Similarly, the members will need to give up the expectation that the pastor will be present at all their church activities and will be immediately available for all their needs. This tension makes churches with AWA of 150–250 particularly vulnerable.

Other vulnerabilities that I address in my book are the awkwardness of the hybrid character of midsize churches, negative self-image, and demands on leaders. But I also want to emphasize that there are many distinctive opportunities for churches of this size to embrace and capitalize on. That is the main focus of my book.

JW: What is the primary difference between a church just below the midsized threshold and one that is in it? If one of our readers is making that transition, what are two or three things you would want to alert him of?

DP: I would say that the primary difference is in transitioning from being homogenous in orientation to becoming more heterogeneous in composition. As I said earlier, the small church is going to be more intuitively unified around the dominant families in the congregation and its singular pastor. But the midsize church is more diverse and heterogeneous, with a proliferation of program offerings, worship services, worship styles, staff workers, lay leaders, program boards, identity groups, educational offerings, mission opportunities, and so on. The way in which leadership and communication happens is very different between these size cultures.

To any readers who are going through this transition, I recommend that you be open to the church becoming more diverse in some congregational dynamics. Research indicates that young people value diversity, and this is something that you can celebrate about the changes in your church. To those who are pastors, I recommend that you give up the role of being the singular parson in your church and embrace the role of raising up other leaders—staff and lay—to partner with you. Learn skills of management and administration, including staff supervision, because you will need these skills. This will also require you to give up any sense of having your hands on everything that is happening in the church. You will need to release control to others. But in so doing you will multiply ministry!

JW: Since midsized churches are typically more program-oriented, what are some practical ways such churches can avoid the busyness and activity-obsessed tendencies found in a lot of American suburban life? It’s clear from your book that you’re not giving a blanket endorsement simply to do more and more programs the larger a church gets.

DP: This is an important insight that you have gleaned from the book. Although the midsize church has been described as the program church, programs do not exist simply for their own sake. They should serve people and promote people’s growth in faith and discipleship. So the focus must always be on developing the people and not the programs. It is also important to have clear objectives and outcomes for the programs that align with God’s priorities for His Church and to assess whether or not the programs are achieving these outcomes. The final chapter of the book focuses on productivity, which I equate with the biblical concept of fruitfulness. God calls us to be fruitful. He desires productivity—not just activity—that advances His purposes and priorities.

JW: You argue that the pastoral role functions differently depending on the church size. You’re not saying the nature of the office changes, are you? Say a little more about how the biblical definition of a pastor relates to leading churches of different sizes.

DP: God has identified priorities that those in the pastoral office are to attend to. These include preaching the Word, administering baptism and the Lord’s Supper, teaching the faith, and overseeing the doctrinal teaching of the church. Pastors of all sizes of churches are to see to the equipping of the saints for the work of service and for the growth in faith and spiritual maturity of members. They are to make sure that the members are cared for in spirit and body. And they are to participate in mission and to equip others to reach the lost. These priorities are constant, no matter what size the church. They are essential to the role of pastor, to the nature of the office, as you put it.

HOW this is done will differ depending on the size of the congregation. For example, the pastor of a midsize church may not do all of the monthly visits to homebound members. Other staff or trained lay volunteers might assist. In a small church, the minister will be the primary teacher of Bible classes, adult instruction courses, and youth discipleship formation. But, in a midsize church, the pastor will delegate many of these roles to other qualified workers, be they staff or volunteer. In this case the minister functions more according to what the Bible calls the overseer (Greek episkopos), overseeing that others carry out the functions.

JW: One last question. You very clearly say that we want to help move people from being consumers to contributors. How can all churches avoid fostering the consumer culture that can be found in churches of any size, in any region?

DP: The key to this is to help Christians to embrace Jesus’ call in John 15:8: “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples” (cf. 15:16; English Standard Version). In one sense being a consumer is not a bad thing. One must consume food in order to be healthy. Similarly, we need to consume the gospel in order to be fruitful, what Jesus means when He says: “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit” (15:5). So I want the members of my church to be consumers of God’s Word. The church offers much in terms of ministry and programs to feed the flock—but not so that they get fat and lazy. Instead, they regularly are fed and nurtured in the faith so that they produce the fruit of the Spirit and advance God’s Kingdom in the world. This means not living for oneself but living for Christ and for others to whom He sends us: “This is my commandment, that you love one other as I have loved you” (15:12).

JW: Thank you so much for your time and for writing this book. I pray many of our readers will take advantage of it. It’s a short book, but it says a lot.

Share

I was asked recently at an interdenominational pastors’ gathering if I was currently serving in the same church tradition or movement in which I was reared. I had to pause for a moment to think of how to answer accurately.

I did spend the first six or seven years of my life worshipping in the Southern Methodist Church of Turbeville, South Carolina (TSMC), my father’s home church. In a chronological sense, it's my “home church.”

In the theological sense, my home church is Horse Branch Free Will Baptist Church (HBFWB), also in Turbeville, S.C. While I came to faith through the ministry of TSMC, I wasn’t baptized until I was 12 or 13 as part of Horse Branch. Therefore, I would have to call HBFWB my home church.

Practically speaking, this label also makes sense. I have the deepest and widest recollection of the years at HBFWB. I was there longer. It’s the place I default to attending when I am home. HBFWB is comprised of the people who provided most of my biblical instruction, tolerated most of my nonsense, and supported me financially when I participated in extracurricular ministries and attended college. Thus, the Christian people known as “the Free Will Baptists” are my people, for better or worse.

Much has been written in recent years about the rise of non-denominational Christianity. Though I haven’t written a full-length article or response to this narrative, some people might be able to intuit my own thoughts from material I have published at Churchatopia and in other venues. Moreover, my 19 years of ordained, vocational ministry in Free Will Baptist churches and denominational service would clearly point to the truth that I believe in the purpose and value of denominational existence.

Now, one would be quite mistaken to think that I am a mindless cheerleader for anything and everything that denominations sometimes do, including my own. I actually think being a committed, virtuous participant in a denominational context requires one to be honest about the ways in which this “ministry trellis” falls short of its ideals and goals.

Besides the need for integrity, being rooted in a movement better positions one to observe those systems, attitudes, assumptions, and policies that are in the greatest need of reform, removal, or adoption. Sideline critics tend to lack both virtue and vision. Caring well and being committed aren’t mutually exclusive.

Along these lines, a recurring conversation I tend to have goes something like this: “People just don’t care about denominational life like they used to. Denominations like ours are a dying breed. We’d be better off downplaying our denominational identity. It only generates frustration on the part of leaders and confusion, disinterest, or outright opposition from laymen.”

I’ve heard more than one version of this sentiment in recent years. Perhaps more important, I have had moments where I felt it personally. While I’ve never gone far down that road of possibility in my own philosophy and practice, I’ve certainly had experiences that at least made this sentiment plausible. As we say, “I get it!” I really do.

I don’t aim to offer a full-throated, comprehensive repudiation of this sentiment. That would turn this weekly newsletter editorial into a saga. What I would like to do is start with a much more modest goal. I want to offer a handful of practices that I would consider to be low-hanging fruit for those leaders who (1) are convinced of the value and importance of denominational affiliation and identity; and (2) are sincerely trying to discern some ways they can promote awareness and appreciation in an environment where such awareness and appreciation may be waning or bordering on non-existence.

I realize that the church situations where conditions 1 and 2 prevail can vary quite a bit. I certainly would tailor my advice to each situation in the context of conversations or consultations with church leaders. But hopefully some of the counsel I offer here will touch the majority of situations described above.

(And given that it's summer, the season when most religious bodies convene for their annual or periodic meetings, it seems an appropriate time to address this theme!)

Use the Website

I’m amazing at how simple and how complex some church websites are. What surprises me more is how some of them can say so much without saying anything about the history, identity, and/or theology of the church. Granted, there’s no biblical prescription for the proper number of tabs or pages for a church website. But if we can go as far as talking about the pastor’s love for pickleball, Chihuahuas, or where he earned his honorary doctorate, it seems odd for a church website not to mention the denominational affiliation anywhere.

You don’t have to plaster it all over the masthead. You don’t have to have it in the domain name. You don’t even have to post the entire Statement of Faith. However, is there any harm to a short reference to the movement that gave birth to the ministry that the website is seeking to promote? You know, the movement whose people (and possibly institutions) funded the enterprise?

Use the “Bulletin Board”

I use “bulletin board” here to refer broadly to any kind of visual display in the building where news, notes, images, and/or ministry information might be listed. Presumably, the church has some tangible connections to a denominationally sponsored missionary and/or missions organization, camp, college, children’s home, or similar entity. All such ministries provide promotional literature, newsletters, or similar materials periodically. Why not inform people of the wonderful, legitimate ministry happening under the banner of the church’s denomination?

One need not include the denomination’s name in every third sentence or logo on every document. However, a pattern would seemingly emerge in the mind of an observant person: all of these people and places are connected. That valuable connective tissue is the denominational relationships and apparatus.

And by all means, keep your missionary prayer cards and the like up to date! Some of us are praying for a version of missionaries from 20 years ago.

Use the Budget

Most churches have an annual business meeting in which they describe the subsequent year’s budget proposal. What’s in it? More than likely, some of the aforementioned ministries are funded in it. It’s a fitting time to remind people of some of those things as you glance over a document.

Too often leaders miss out on those “educational opportunities.” We assume people know more than they know. We assume people won’t care if we tell them. Perhaps worse, we decide that since many won’t care, we don’t say anything at all. (By that logic, we should stop sharing the gospel with people who previously haven’t shown interest.)

If we want people to give, they should have an idea of what they’re giving to. Briefly tell people who and what these things are and why they matter. (To my own tribe, explain COOP. Explain Together Way, etc.)

Use the Membership Onboarding Process

There’s no better time to talk to people about matters of belief (confession), practice (covenant) and belonging than in the context of discussing how they unite themselves to a church. What are they “getting into?” To whom are they hitching their wagon? What theological commitments can they expect to hear taught? What partnerships does the church value?

I have written previously about various kinds of “first steps,” “next steps,” and/or new member classes. They can look different ways, though being evangelical, Arminian, and Baptistic somehow delimits the range of possibilities. As with most things, balance and contextual wisdom is incredibly important. Courses versus on-one-one conversations will look different. I simply want to assert that it is reasonable that the confessional community to which a church has historically belonged should arise in this setting.

Do the people walking through this process primarily care about that? Do they have an aversion to denominationally connected churches? Do they misunderstand the purpose of such relationships? Have they perhaps had bad experiences within denominations in the past? All are valid reasons to be careful and contextualize how we explain and characterize our denominational life. None are good reasons to conceal this altogether.

In fact, concealing denominational connections does more harm in the long run.

First, it's being dishonest with the prospective member. I wonder how they may feel when they discover this detail later.

Second, concealing this fact misses the opportunity to explain how one can be part of an imperfect denomination and imperfect church, while still striving to be a healthy church committed to being a positive part of a healthy denomination.

Third, concealing denominational affiliations is one of the most common forms of ingratitude we could be culpable of. Regardless of the church, it has somehow benefited (and likely currently benefits) from its denominational family.

People have labored to bring that ministry into existence. People, boards, and/or agencies have financed its work. They have prayed for it regularly. They have promoted it. They have provided partially or fully subsidized ministry resources, training, events, and other opportunities.

Has your pastor been published? If his work wasn’t self-published, his first publication was likely in and through a denominational resource.

Did you meet your spouse in a church setting or situation? I’ll bet it was a sister church, a youth camp, a denominational college, or the like.

Does your local, state, regional, or national church body have a free or affordable publication? Why not take out a complimentary subscription for all new members, at least for their first year with the church?

These examples only scratch the surface of the potential (and probable) ways that a church has been blessed historically through a denominational identity—and ways they can continue to bless. Why would we withhold all of these stories and possibilities from a newcomer?

Use the Service

Last but not least, if something isn’t important to the senior pastor, it tends not to be important to the congregation. Pastors can be as uninformed as any church member, but they tend not to be. They are usually the addressee and primary contact of denominational personnel and ministries. They are privy to conference dates, retreats, trainings, certificates, and more.

Can we not use the announcement slides on the screen and media channels? Can we not make an occasional announcement? Can we not use the bulletin and/or weekly worship guide? Could the pastor even mention one of these valuable opportunities in a sermon when appropriate?

As a pastor, I’m always seeking ways to help give my people some “sermon handles” that help them take the Word out into the world with them. It would seem like it would encourage and inspire such obedience by letting them know good work that is already happening in relevant areas and ways they can get plugged in.

Concluding Thought

I tend to be my own worst nightmare when it comes to missed opportunities. It seems like I end a day or service every week with the thought, “Why didn’t I mention that? That would be been a great time to highlight that!” Surely some of us need to stop pressuring ourselves to remember every worthwhile thing. However, denominational awareness and appreciation are worthwhile endeavors that don’t always require the heavy lift we associate with them.

As I say above, contextual wisdom and courage will be needed to tailor our messaging for our congregations. I cannot escape the fact that my current congregation isn’t surrounded by fellow Free Will Baptist churches. A minority of my members aren't lifelong Free Will Baptists. A majority come out of Catholic, irreligious, and “other Baptist” backgrounds. My people are busy, distracted, and mainly concerned about the ministry happenings associated with their own church. I believe it’s my responsibility to help them consider the full dimensions of Christ’s Kingdom—which include, but isn’t limited to, our wider Free Will Baptist family.

Such knowledge, properly deployed, is a source of encouragement, accountability, and opportunity for faithfulness.

Share

Regular readers of Churchatopia will have noticed that I continually return to the topic of euthanasia—which in modern terms has addressed under the category of MAID (medical assistance in dying). Despite the increased journalistic attention to the policies and practices associated with MAID, it still feels like the church in North America is mostly asleep concerning the rapid encroachment of MAID legislation—and perhaps more troubling, MAID-like reasoning and assumptions about life.

In “We Don’t Know How to Talk about Assisted Dying.” Valerie Pavilonis extends the discussion on this serious topic. Pavilonis touches on three dimensions of the subject.

First, she is concerned about the inability of advocates to see where medical assistance in dying is, conceptually speaking, more like suicide than not. In her words,

Second, it would seem that if this argument is true, then the many disclaimers and offers of help (such as calling attention to the suicide prevention resources) would accompany those settings in which MAID is being offered as a viable option. However, at present, they don’t.

Finally, Pavilonis raises legitimate concerns about the factor of social contagion. She argues that media coverage of suicide has a bearing on the social acceptability (and probability) of future suicides. And so as MAID becomes more common, media coverage of such deaths may produce a similar net effect of more MAID deaths.

I understand that much of the emotional and political oxygen has been taken out of the air due to other distressing ethical issues such as transgenderism, sports gambling, and more. These issues certainly merit our sustained attention. However, MAID is a quintessential “life-and-death issue.”

I’ve had mixed feelings about the work of Aaron Renn in recent years. On the one hand, he certainly offers a lot of food for thought in terms of evaluating our socio-political moral situation. On the other, like all typologies and/or taxonomies, his “Negative World thesis” generalizes at places that leave one wanting more precision.

Yet I would commend his recent, brief article, “The End of the Moral Majority.” Consider one of his key claims:

What his claim implies, I think, is that the hard work of persuasion, faithfulness, and compelling witness still lies before us. In a democratic system, excessive reliance on executive power, judicial victories, and worse, social media memes and soundbites are inadequate. Christian citizens must do far more to see their values and convictions instantiated into law.

However, one area where Renn’s analysis falls woefully short is his chiding of pro-life advocates for criticizing the 2024 Trump candidacy for its lack of commitment to pro-life measures. If one is trying to make the prudentialist argument, as Renn does, then one would have to say that political leaders should avoid all public policy decisions that don’t have majority support.

Well, by that light, a rather large number of positions taken by the current administration are ill-advised. To put it simply, if Renn is correct in his basic claim, then wise political leaders (and their constituencies) should focus on the long-term, focusing on areas where the “moralistic-majoritarian” situation will allow for modest, incremental steps. That is decidedly not how the current administration has operated. (For that matter, it’s not how the last one did either!) I’m not sure why pro-life advocates deserve singular critique for not paying attention to opinion polling.

David Gibson, Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End

Bobby Jamieson, Everything is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness

Ron Hunter, Jr., David Gibbs III, How to Find the Right Pastor: A Handbook for Pastoral and Staff Search Committees

Adam Higginbotham, Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster

I intend to forgo next Mondays’ normal newsletter due to vacation time spent in the Carolinas, a.k.a., the “Promised Land.” However, I’m sure something special will be provided in its absence for your edification.

In the meantime, enjoy the World Cup! The U.S. Men’s Team have looked quite good so far. As we near the 250^th anniversary of the nation and our political leaders fail to make this time about something bigger than their own electoral hopes, partisan spin, and massive egos, it’s nice to have something to take national pride in. (Rewatching Band of Brothers has also had this effect on me as well. The musical score moves me every time.)

*Normal content advisories apply.*

If you enjoy Churchatopia, would you take time to share a link to this Substack site and/or some Churchatopia that you benefited from?

Share

Over 20 years ago I had a brief but memorable conversation with Matthew McAffee. McAffee was then a bright, new faculty member at Welch College with wise insights into many subjects. [1]

Somehow the topic of the Mosaic Law came up. Many of us know the conventional, three-fold division of the law: moral, civil, and ceremonial. McAffee said something like this: “I think we’ve sometimes overstated those divisions as if they’re hard and fast distinctions. We make it sound like the civil and ceremonial weren’t moral.” (That’s at least how I remember the conversation.)

Over the years McAffee’s brief sentiment morphed into a slightly fuller thought: While the traditional three-fold division of the Mosaic Law into moral, civil, and ceremonial laws is generally helpful, if pressed too far, it can mislead us about the character of God’s law in the Old Testament. At best, the distinction introduces a division that isn’t always consistent in the Torah. At worst, it can cause us to imagine that some of God’s laws, statutes, or precepts were somehow amoral.

To think carefully about this, we need to revisit the conventional perspective on the topic, one that most of us assume when teaching and preaching on the subject.

The Conventional Perspective

The Moral law refers especially to the Ten Commandments. Thus, the Moral law has the distinction of having enduring, practical relevance. All Ten are restated in the New Testament, the Sabbath excepted. (This perhaps hints at Scripture’s more nuanced theology of Law as we move from the Old to New Covenant.)

It’s also important to remember that “Moral Law” in this discussion refers specifically to the Ten Commandments, and not exclusively the “Moral Law written on the heart” (Rom. 2). Those subjects are certainly related, but they aren’t always identical.

Jesus does show in the Sermon on the Mount that obedience to these commandments is more than skin-deep. It’s more than outward actions. Unjust anger and lustful intent are both violations of the Sixth and Seventh Commandments, respectfully. Keeping these commandments involves not only external actions, but a pure inner life. This demonstrates that we’ve grasped the beating heart of the second table of the law: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Lev. 19:18; Mt. 22:39) Nothing could be more practical and relevant.

The Civil and Ceremonial laws are the parts of the Mosaic Law that provoke more concern. Their strangeness and severity trouble unbelievers. (Incidentally, this is how many believers experience them, also!) But once we look closer at Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, we begin to see their unique function in the life of Israel.

These laws touch everything from worship to agriculture to hygiene to diet. God cared about everything in Israel’s life. In addition to His comprehensive care for them, the scope of these laws served as God’s guidance to His people before the watching world.

On the one hand, the distinct way of keeping God’s Law set Israel apart as holy (qodesh). On the other hand, this holiness testified to the character of God himself. It even caused the nations to marvel at the greatness and wisdom of Yahweh. Deuteronomy 4:5-8 express it well:

The Civil Law deals especially with how the people lived together in community and how to uphold justice, equity, and righteousness. It also provides specific provisions for how to right certain wrongs when they occur. While some of the penalties seem severe, we should be slow to shrink away in disgust.

First, perhaps our disgust reveals our own laxity concerning evil and injustice. Second, we should remember that God was both setting His people apart from the nations and establishing the seriousness of sin as a means of deterring people from it. These are just a few of the reasons why God was specific in ordering Israel’s civil affairs. It was for the good of them and their neighbors, as well as God’s name among the nations.

Speaking of nations, this is precisely why the Civil laws aren’t directly applicable to believers today. God’s purposes for the entire world meant that “Israel” would eventually give way to a global, multi-national people who would live under all kinds of legal and political arrangements. This is why the Moral law is so important: it provides the foundation and framework for God’s people, regardless of what governmental regime they live under. The church is a “holy nation” (1 Pt. 2:9), but it isn’t a specific geographic entity with a specific flag.

Finally, the Ceremonial laws typically refer to the sacrificial system, along with its instructions and provisions for holiness, purity, and sanctity. They are, in terms of pure word count, the most extensive of all of God’s law. This is understandable. After all, consider the range of potential offenses, the intricacies of the tabernacle and temple, and the extensive provisions for atoning for sin!

However, the situation is dramatically different for the New Testament believer. We could list any number of verses which point to the fulfillment of the law. In Future Grace, John Piper summarizes what I’m describing as the “conventional Protestant-evangelical perspective”:

Of course, significant parts of the law are no longer binding on Christians. You can see this in the verse just quoted [1 Cor. 7:19], where circumcision is made optional and actually contrasted with ‘the commandments of God,’ even though circumcision was one of the ‘commandments’ that Israel was to keep in the Old Testament times. The reason that parts of the Old Testament law are no longer binding on God’s people is that there has been a great fulfillment in Christ; and the way God is pursuing his redemptive plan is very different now than it was in the Old Testament, when most of his focus was on the ethnic people of Israel.

For example, the death of Christ has brought to fulfillment and to an end all the laws relating animals sacrifice (Hebrews 9:12). Moreover, laws that were designed to keep Israel ritually distinct from the nations, like food laws, and even circumcision, no longer function in the same binding way, because God’s New Testament plan is to overcome all ethnic barriers and assemble a new people from every tribe and tongue and nation (Mark 7:19; Matthew 21:43; Galatians 6:15). (pp. 158-159)

Piper’s summary of these issues is helpful. Thankfully, it isn’t merely the reasoning of a New Testament scholar. Any Christian can open his Bible to many passages and spot some of the “turning points” in redemptive history that Christ’s ministry initiated. Consider Mark 7:15-20:

The context of Mark 7 shows Jesus at odds with the Jewish leaders and their demanding perspective on ritual purity. The language of defilement/cleanness in reference to various foods reminds the reader of subjects addressed in Leviticus. Jesus is clearly introducing a new understanding of holiness, one which goes much deeper, one that refocuses moral scrutiny not on one’s diet, but one’s heart and actions toward others.

There are quite a few passages like this in the New Testament. Hebrews is full of them, passages in which the work of Christ is shown as putting the entire Old Testament “system” in proper perspective. (Hebrews 9:1-14 is especially helpful.) Yet something is still missing. Piper’s words above aren’t incorrect, but there is more to say about the three-fold division of the Mosaic Law and how the believer today views it.

A More Nuanced Perspective

Consider again 1 Corinthians 7:19 – “For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God.” Once we establish that circumcision isn’t commanded for believers today, we’re still left with the question: “Which commandments should be kept?”

Part of the answer is found in the Mosaic law itself: The Ten Commandments. In several instances the commandments resurface in the teaching of Jesus or the apostles (e.g., Mt. 19:17-19; Rom. 13:8-10). Such passages make clear that the commandments are summed up in the great commandments: Love God and love neighbor. We might say the two tables of the law are specific ways in which God and others are loved and honored. Of course, there are many ways to murder besides with our hands (e.g., thoughts, words). There are many ways to commit adultery (e.g., thoughts, eyes). But the commandments provide a kind of grounding for the many other ways we might love (or not love) God and neighbor.

According to both the Old and New Testament, law, life, and love are intimately connected. Is it possible to worship God with our lips while our hearts are far from Him? Absolutely. Is it possible to render external obedience while our hearts are impure? Of course. However, the biblical authors would come back and say, “The former isn’t worship at all, and the latter isn’t obedience at all.”

The first nuance, then, that contemporary Christian teaching must make clear about the law is that obedience is a multi-dimensional exercise in loving God and neighbor.

The foundations for this are laid in the Old Testament law but fleshed out more fully as Scripture unfolds and the work of Christ is completed. To cite one of many connections between law and love, consider 1 John 5:2-3: ^“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.” We keep these commandments with our mind, desires, and will.

Second, as we look back at the Mosaic law, we need to see that the civil and ceremonial laws were integrated into and often flowed from the moral law. You might even say that the civil and ceremonial were manifestations of the moral law in very concrete instances.

Consider Leviticus 6:1-7:

Here Yahweh brings together all three “forms” or “divisions” of the law in one passage. The law concerns someone who has broken one or perhaps two commandments: stealing and bearing false witness. What is the remedy? Restitution is appropriate to the offense—a provision of Civil Law. But that’s not all. The priest is involved because a sacrifice must be made as a guilt offering, making atonement for the thief/liar—a provision of the Ceremonial Law.

Such a passage is helpful if for no other reason than it highlights the full impact of Christ’s sinless life and sacrificial death. His substitutionary sacrifice made it possible for theft and lying to be forgiven by grace through faith. Now, might the laws of one’s state call for a specific kind of punishment for such offenses? Yes, and the violator must submit himself to the governing authorities in such an instance. However, in terms of a full cleansing from sin and the prospect of forgiveness, one need only bring his sin to the feet of Jesus, who bore the curse of sin for thieves and liars alike.

Third, many passages show that the three-fold division of the law isn’t nearly as stark as we’ve often made it out to be. They remind us that God took all forms of obedience seriously.

Leviticus 19:17-19 is another example:

Sometimes the versification in our English Bibles make it impossible to discern where one “thought” or principle ends and another begins. Regardless of versification, these verses at least exemplify how seamlessly the Holy Spirit led Moses to compile the law—despite the apparent differences in material. These verses set love of neighbor, livestock breeding practices, agricultural practices, and apparel guidelines side by side. They remind us that when God gives a Word to His people, all of it matters.

Finally—and this is the real kicker—the apostles sometimes offer portions of the Mosaic Law as enduring wisdom for believers and the church today.

I won’t pretend to know all of the legitimate examples, but I’ll focus on a distinct agricultural practice repeated twice in the New Testament.

Deuteronomy 25:4 says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain.” Presumably, it is cruel to an animal to press it into hard service while keeping it from being nourished from its own labors. On its face, this is a kindness to God’s creature. However, the Holy Spirit showed the apostle Paul (and by extension, his audience) a specific New Covenant application: pay your pastors fairly.

Who knew that being likened to an ox (for reasons besides strength) could be favorable?! Gospel workers—pastors, evangelists, missionaries—are worthy of financial remuneration. They have given their life to the preaching and teaching of the Word and tending the flock. Their labors, their “plowing and threshing,” warrants sharing in the fruit of their work.

Imagine church members who knowingly and willfully withhold giving, and in turn, do not compensate (or fairly compensate) their pastor(s). What should we call that? Wrong? A sin? Unloving? Those are moral descriptions. When God’s commands are broken—regardless of their “type”—it is immoral.

When God’s people sinned in the Old Testament, it violated not merely a specific category of law with its accompanying punishments. It was a deeply moral act—immoral in the case of disobedience.

Likewise, for believers today, all disobedience is immoral. Now, are there “weightier matters of the law”? Jesus said so in the context of debates with the Pharisees and scribes. Some were zealous to tithe, but not zealous about love, mercy, and justice. It remains possible today for us to engage in partial obedience, which is ultimately disobedience. The value of bringing the Mosaic Law into this discussion is to see that those vast portions of the Torah aren’t just strange and severe. They reveal God’s wisdom to His people Israel among the nations–and even in some instances, ongoing wisdom for life today.

I will stress that because of the way Christ fulfills the Old Covenant, we should not primarily attempt to mine the various Mosaic laws for “practical guidance or wisdom.” Instead, we should mainly do what the author of Hebrews does: see how Christ is the glorious and awe-inspiring fulfillment of all the laws neither we nor Israel could ever keep! This should be our focus. We shouldn’t speculate about the shadows but celebrate the substance (Col. 2:17; Heb. 10:1). Christ’s work is the ground of all proper Christian obedience.

Conclusion

One significant contribution of the Mosaic Law, namely, the Civil and Ceremonial, is that they show the lengths to which God goes to call out a people for His own glorious name. They show that despite our complaints about “not knowing God’s will,” even were that will to be given in minute detail, why should we think we would succeed in keeping it? Israel was given a moral roadmap like no other, yet they careened into the ditch repeatedly.

The greater contribution of such laws is that they highlight the glory, greatness, and genius of Christ’s provision for sinners in the New Covenant. He kept the Law at all points. He corrected religious experts’ misunderstanding of the Law in countless ways. Then he let dozens of lawbreakers betray him, arrest him, beat him, condemn him, and crucify him. He did this to show himself to be the Lord of life, law, and love.

Even if the Law of Moses’s meaning to Christians today requires careful theological and spiritual discernment, it was always moral and will always be meaningful.

[1] Coincidentally, I was blessed with bright, young Old Testament professors both at Welch College and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS). While at SEBTS, I studied with Dr. Heath Thomas. Though now the President of Oklahoma Baptist University, Thomas was then an impressive young faculty member who brought passion and precision to the study of the Old Testament. I suspect McAffee and Thomas had many things in common in that respect.

Share

In Newsletter 192 I wrote about some of the disappointments associated with creation and culture. I had not yet begun to preach on Ecclesiastes at that time, but lately I have been. Little did I know just how much this challenging book has to say on the matter of disappointments—in vivid detail!

Just peruse this portion of chapter two and see if it doesn’t sum the matter up better than I ever could!

This is a wise article on a biblical concept that is seldom discussed, certainly in mainstream discussions of pastoral leadership and ecclesiology. The authors describe what they call “pastoral avoidance.” They summarize:

At least seven times in the pastoral epistles, Paul directly charges Timothy and Titus to “avoid” and to “have nothing to do with” ideas and people who pose a threat to their flock. This is jarring since one of the main purposes for these letters is to encourage Timothy and Titus to engage false teaching and teachers. Yet here is where the paradox emerges: Paul teaches a pastoral virtue of avoidance—showing that sometimes the wisest form of engagement is careful restraint.

Certainly, some forms of avoidance are cowardly and unwise. However, the plain teaching of the pastoral epistles reveals an approach that is thoroughly pastoral, wise, and arguably, quite courageous!

Joseph Loconte, The War for Middle Earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933–1945

David Gibson, Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End

Bobby Jamieson, Everything is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness

I was grateful to have a conference paper published in an academic journal recently. But it’s extra special whenever you hold the final product in your hand.

If you enjoy Churchatopia, would you take time to share a link to this Substack site and/or some Churchatopia that you benefited from?

Share

It seems a bit too strong to make such a claim, but I think we must. We dance around it in another settings. We speak of how people are always watching our lives, even when we’re not speaking. We even say, “Actions speak louder than words.” All we need to do is take an additional step and say, “Our silence and/or inaction when words and/or actions are needed convey something to others.”

It’s telling that the two words for the main church officer in the New Testament that modern people use most are “pastor” or “preacher.” I’ll wager that no reader belongs to a church where they call their pastor or preacher, “Leader,” or “Leader Joe” (or whatever his name is). Besides how Hitler-esque that would feel, “Leader” doesn’t function in modern English the way “Fuhrer” did in twentieth-century German. However, whatever the reason, so much ministry training focuses on shepherding and preaching at the exclusion of leadership.

Leadership is hard. Leading is controversial. Leaders can be perceived as divisive. Leading brings together practices like communicating vision, forging consensus, collaboration, organization, mentoring, strategic planning, and much more. I’m not suggesting that leading is always more difficult than caring for and feeding sheep. I’m merely pointing out that many of us feel more “out of control” when we’re exercising leadership than when we’re sitting and listening to people or preparing to deliver a sermon or lesson.

Yet I maintain that preaching and leading aren’t two radically separate functions of the New Testament pastor. They are complementary responsibilities that, when executed biblically, support and reinforce each other.

Key Problem

Avoiding ministry leadership in the pulpit is malpractice. Literally, it’s mal (bad) practice. This is true for at least three reasons.

First, whenever the preacher cannot convey leadership (meaning direction) from the pulpit it causes congregations to lose clarity and confidence.

Uncertainty and ambiguity characterize nearly every generation. Even when the spirit of an age is buoyed by optimism and certainty, honest people admit that not everything is clear. Christians know best that human error creeps into every human enterprise. Ethical tensions are real. Not every question is straightforward. Therefore, discernment is essential.

Likewise, the lack of clarity in uncertain times and situations can cause a church to lose its nerve, leading to a lack of confidence in its message and mission. Whether it’s a prolonged pastoral transition, a messy church discipline situation, opposition from the neighbors, or a threatening new law, churches can grow weak and discouraged.

Clarity and confidence expressed from the pulpit about the appropriate direction can help the church regain its footing amid such ambiguity and discouragement.

Second, a lack of pulpit leadership gives a greater place for power and preferences to dominate.

No one had to show up in a church service to teach people to misuse power and influence. No one had to say, “Make your preferences matter most.” Fallen human beings are already vulnerable to that type of cultural discipleship. We’ve all been nurtured in worldly, fleshly influences. These temptations are omnipresent.

A pastor’s inability to stand before his people and say, “God’s Word says, ‘Go this way, and forsake that way’,” cedes ground to those who would misuse their power and indulge their preferences.

Third, failing to lead from the pulpit represents a missed opportunity.

Theodore Roosevelt popularized the concept of the “bully pulpit.” The notion runs parallel to what I’m arguing for, though a few clarifications are needed.

In Roosevelt’s day, bully didn’t mean “abusive” or “mean-spirited” as it does today. It meant something more akin to “excellent” or “ideal.” TR thought that the presidential office provided a first-rate pulpit for communicating his message, making his case, and persuading people of a particular course of action. In that way, a public position or role functions as a bully pulpit.

The pastoral role provides an optimal pulpit, literally and metaphorically. “Pulpit”—whether you have a small table, podium, or lectern—refers to the place from which a preacher communicates the Word. (Historically, Protestants placed these in the center of the main worship space to symbolize the centrality of the preached Word—in distinction to the Lord’s table in the Catholic tradition.) Preachers today should allow their physical pulpit to remind them of the importance of the Word driving their preaching, not pet projects or agendas.

Nevertheless, the pastor will be well aware of conversations, challenges, initiatives, and special efforts transpiring in the life of the church. He should think very carefully about how the Word informs, corrects, and provides direction to individuals, households, and indeed, the entire congregation’s life together.

It is an honor and privilege to stand before people week after week. We dishonor it if we fail to stand on the Word. However, we act unwisely if we don’t allow the Word to speak to the issues of the moment, whether they be congregational, cultural, or even a specific crossroads in the church’s life.

Suggestions

As we seek to lead, we must make faithful exposition the norm. Without that foundation, the preacher runs the risk of making every local headline or special ministry initiative the basis of his preaching. Faithfully walking through text after text, in context, with an eye toward everyday life is the soil out of which healthy ministry grows.

Relatedly, we need to show how God’s Word informs, supports, and/or challenges the direction of individuals, households, and the church. Everyone is already headed somewhere. Every household has a direction. Surely, every church will end up somewhere if they continue doing what they’re doing. Even to be adrift is to have a sort of direction, even if it’s an unplanned, unknown direction! God’s Word needs to be brought to bear on questions of direction, whether it confirms, challenges, or charts direction.

Finally, we need to use illustrations thoughtfully. Sometimes these will arise quite organically and logically. It’s probably an appropriate time to preach through 1 Timothy or Titus if you intend to lead your church through a significant change in polity. If there is confusion about the role of men and women in the church, putting Genesis 1-3, 1 Corinthians 11, and related texts on the sermon calendar might be prudent. Conversely, sometimes it’s best to trust God to provide fitting, contextually relevant illustrations as you work through books of the Bible.

A Few Cautions

As we think through direction and application, I’d say it’s important to distinguish between direct and indirect pulpit leadership. Very seldom would I encourage pastors to draw an essential connection between a specific text and an upcoming vote on whether to build that new youth wing or not. While sometimes God’s Word implies a general orientation on a specific issue, it simply won’t line up with a specific vote on a pet project. Be able to discern when it’s justifiable to show how a passage helps shape priorities, and when it might be meddling to make that passage a ringing endorsement of an ultra specific ministry tactic or program.

Similarly, don’t let headlines or special initiatives dictate direction. The latest foreign conflict, proposed legislation, or egregious criminal act probably should make it into the church’s prayer life quicker than the church’s preaching and teaching. We need to distinguish between special, serious, urgent situations where the church needs to speak, and those which are made to appear urgent by 24-hour cable news networks.

And as I imply above, not every special initiative of the ministry requires a full sermon to justify it. For my money, this is why regularly scheduled meetings of the members are positive. They provide a tailored time and space for the Senior Pastor to speak to his people about ministry direction without feeling the burden to turn every other sermon into a glorified stump speech.

Ultimately, character trumps everything. You can’t lead people where you’re not willing to go yourself. We need to encourage and urge people to walk together, and to follow faithful examples. The leader must be that example. Otherwise, we’re no better than the military officer commanding troops who has never been in combat himself.

This is why my final caution is especially to new pastors. I would never suggest that you wait seven or ten years to earn everyone's trust before you lead. Churches can't afford such a delay. However, it's not hard to understand why young leaders with big ambitions get themselves into trouble in years one, two, or three.

Try to lead people when your preaching still leaves something to be desired and you barely know all of your people's last names. Try to lead when you haven't preached and pastored well for a steady season. It probably won't work.

Imagine you have been a part of an enterprise your whole life. A new leader half your age parachutes in and starts giving orders. How would you receive him? This is, I fear, how many churches experience their new pastors.

Character is essential to every ministerial role: shepherding, preaching, and leading. But people with good character already know that, don't they?

Related Resources:

John Currie, The Pastor as Leader: Principles and Practices for Connecting Preaching and Leadership

R. Scott Pace, Jim Shaddix, Expositional Leadership: Shepherding God’s People from the Pulpit

Robert Picirilli, Teacher, Leader Shepherd: The New Testament Pastor

Share

In Newsletter #219 I unpacked some of the different dimensions of the concept of judgment in the New Testament. These reflections originated in a sermon series I preached in 2019—one that I still think is one of the most important ones I’ve done.

I revisited this theme in a sermon given at the Desoto Free Will Baptist Church this past Sunday night. You can view that below:

Recent Desoto FWB Message

Chuck Lawless is always earnest, practical, and spiritually oriented in what he publishes online. As someone who has interfaced with him directly, I can say that his sincerity and heart for the church comes through in those settings as well.

I came across this simple list of things he says he would do more often were he pastoring today. It tracks closely with the kinds of reflections that I’ve read from other older men who look back over their active pastoral years.

The one that connected with my own heart most was the need to pray more. Similarly, another that I know I need to excel more in is “calling out the called.”

The one that I found most intriguing was filling the baptistry and discussing its significance, even when a baptism wasn’t scheduled. (The reference to feet washing struck me in a similar way.)

The one that encouraged me the most, as I have invested so much effort in this thus far, is forging relationships and friendships with other pastors.

It’s a very fine and meaningful list. Check it out.

Molly Worthen, Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump

Joseph Loconte, The War for Middle Earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933–1945

David Gibson, Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End

Bobby Jamieson, Everything is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness

*Due to so much traveling and the extensive agenda of recent meetings, I am still trudging through quite a few books closely!

It was my honor and privilege to serve as Moderator of the Missouri State Association of Free Will Baptists from 2023-2026. People were exceedingly kind, encouraging, and patient with me during my term of service. Missouri is a wonderful place to pastor and serve.

If you enjoy Churchatopia, would you take time to share a link to this Substack site and/or some Churchatopia that you benefited from?

Share

I call it exciting, but it’s also sobering for three reasons. First, I have long commented—publicly and privately—about the many limitations of summer internships. (Frankly, I’m a fan of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod approach, which typically means something more like a year-long internship.) Nevertheless, I think some good can come from ten weeks spent wisely in the right environment.

A second reason this experience is sobering is because it marks the twenty-year anniversary of my own pastoral internship. I hadn’t even thought of that until recently. Besides making one feel rather old, it causes me to smile with gratitude as I consider the many wonderful people I met in that North Carolina church so many years ago. I still see some of them. Certainly, I think of them and pray for them. A healthy internship experience will foster those types of memories.

Finally, an internship experience is sobering because you realize that you have offered yourself up as a mentor, a counselor, a trainer, a helper. While we are intentionally welcoming other area pastors, church leaders, and laymen into the process, I have a tremendous responsibility in leading the effort to instill, encourage, model, advise, and nurture. For this young man’s sake, I pray I deliver.

In place of the normal Monday newsletter, I offer some provisional insights to current and/or prospective pastoral interns. Specifically, I’m thinking of the type of counsel I’d offer on how to maximize this kind of experience.

First, keep a daily record of what you do, what you learn, what you feel, what surprises you, and what you think about what you’re doing. You will never regret having such notes to revisit down the road. Besides the benefit of processing the web of busyness and emotion in a day, journaling is a discipline that pays many beautiful dividends if you can learn it early in your ministry.

Second, regardless of the size of the church, there will be a significant number of people who will remember you for years to come if you show yourself to be faithful or to be a wastrel. We don’t remember the “meh” meals, vacations, or people as much as we remember those which left us much better off or worse off. Decide what kind of impression you desire to leave on people, pray toward that end, and then act accordingly.

Third, despite the brevity of most internship experiences, make learning people’s names a priority. Surely the size of the church figures into how achievable this is. But even when you’re not as successful as you’d like to be, it means a lot to people when you try. It’s not just ancient Hebrew culture in which there was significance in names. We all notice (and care) about who remembers and doesn’t remember our names.

Fourth, ask tons of questions, and then listen carefully to the answers. Ask about the church’s history. Ask members about their testimony. Ask the supervising pastor about his greatest joys and greatest sorrows. Ask people in the community about the church. Ask questions until you start to sense you’re annoying people. You probably aren’t, so go ahead and keep being a student.

Fifth, pay attention to words and phrases you hear used frequently, and those you seldom hear. The language of the people and the pastor can tell you a lot in a short amount of time about what they value, what they expect, what they seek, what they fear, what they desire, and what they’re missing.

Sixth, regardless of how well the church and pastor have prepared to host you, take every opportunity to thank people and express gratitude. More often than not people have set aside time and resources to make your experience possible. It’s possible that a few have put a considerable amount of time into the internship. You’ll probably never know who all lobbied for the intern program, who is helping fund it, and who is praying for its success and benefits. In all things, show yourself to be grateful.

Seventh, remember that you’re not going to be around long enough to convince everyone how smart you are. So, focus on learning. Even when you teach, you’re probably learning as much (or more) from the “doing” as your audience is from you. Don’t be discouraged or frustrated. This is just how things tend to work.

Certainly, there’s more to be said on this important subject, but these are hopefully some starting points for those involved in these enterprises.

Share

It’s sad to say, but too true: we often don’t address subjects of vital biblical concern until they are under full-scale assault from the world. Such is the case with the body.

Articles, podcasts, and books which deal with the body have thrived in our current cultural environment. Consider one reason: the perils of transgender ideology and its real-world impact have forced churches, parachurch organizations, theologians, and church leaders to take to the trenches. Wouldn’t it have been more optimal to have been articulating a positive, practical, biblical vision of the body before this cultural moment? How many lives (read bodies) could have been saved? How many lies would have been less salient in the minds of believers, and possibly, unbelievers?

I don’t fault any particular leader, writer, or ministry. I’m surely complicit in the problem. Sometimes we wait for the “need to know moments” before we speak up. Even when we teach and preach expositionally through Scripture, we never quite touch every area where we might need to pursue a more developed account of a particular subject. Scripture—especially the pastoral epistles—gives specific mandates for preachers and teachers to set forth a positive case for truth, while also being prepared to counteract lies. In other words, the Bible assumes we will be both proactive and reactive. Of course, ideally we’d be less reactionary at times.

My own reading of church history is certainly not that of an expert. However, I feel I can say with reasonable confidence that we observe two tensions simultaneously: Christians being vulnerable toward an overly permissive view of the body, and Christians being vulnerable toward an overly pessimistic view of the body.

Both errors are made possible by cultural forces, but they are ultimately spiritual and theological errors. They fail to appreciate what it means to receive the body (and even materiality more generally) as God’s gift to His creatures. They also fail to acknowledge the finite and fallen condition of the body which awaits future redemption.

Key Pillars of a Theology of the Body

You can be as detailed and sophisticated as you want in your theology of the body, but I reckon that the challenges boil down to these tensions and challenges.

That said, let me attempt to frame the matter a bit more with the following premises:

1-Our Bodies Are Created. (Gen. 2:7)

We can do no better service to the youngest to the oldest than to point them to the created status and inherent dignity of human bodies. Rather than being the accident of time plus matter plus chance, the body was intentionally designed by a sovereign and loving God.

2-Our Bodies Are Good. (Gen. 1:31)

While it may be logically possible that a loving God could create beings with bodies that weren’t good, it certainly seems improbable. Moreover, the biblical texts will spell out the fact that humanity in God’s image (which includes soul/spirit and body) is “very good.” Get premises #1 or #2 wrong, and the rest of the structure of biblical thought collapses.

3-Our Bodies Are Us. (Gen. 2:20, 23)

This premise seems self-evident, until we begin to reckon with the kind of confusion and alienation people experience in a fallen world. Yet the proper response is to remind people that personal identity, for all its elusiveness and vagaries after the Fall, is grounded in the body-soul duality.

Theologians and philosophers have sought to describe this connection in various ways. (For my money, I think there are at least two options that accord with orthodox, evangelical theology.) But the simplest way to put it is that we experience our full, God-intended sense of identity within the context of an embodied existence.

This is not to say that a soul (or what many would describe as our personal consciousness) cannot exist outside a body. Most understand this to be what the intermediate state requires. But this state is inherently temporary. Resurrection is our destiny, whether in eternal judgment or eternal bliss.

To put it very simplistically, you’ve never met somebody without a body. Literally, every body is a some-body.

4-Our Bodies Are Gendered. (Gen. 1:27; 2:18-23)

There is some debate about the best way to speak of sex and gender given the etymology and development of these terms. Certainly, we need to be consistent in our usage of these in an environment where both terms are so contested. For our purposes, let us simply use them interchangeably.

A body is, by its very nature, a sexed and/or gendered reality. (Sexual dimorphism is the technical language.) Unlike some beings in the whole of God’s creation, we aren’t asexual. Nor does our self-conception determine our reality. No, the body tells a story. We must heed that story and the Storyteller. Besides telling us part of who we are, it tells us about our dependence upon other beings to fulfill the Cultural or Creation Mandate.

5-Our Bodies Are Subject to the Curse. (Gen. 3:16-19)

One of the great cognitive and practical challenges in a theology of the body is to remember premise #5 from the very beginning. That is to say, while these premises make canonical sense, they must be viewed as being simultaneously true all the time. I ONLY experience embodied existence after Genesis 3. This means that even as I affirm God’s good design, I must also affirm sin’s negative consequences.

I affirm the glory of the body while also affirming the reality of my high blood pressure, my bad ankle, and/or my frustration with my lack of muscle tone. The psychological and the anatomical are connected. They were made this way, and I experience sin’s effects on both simultaneously.

We do well to spend more time thinking about the initial verdict on Adam and Eve’s transgression. They are told they will continue to procreate, but not without pain. They are told they will continue to work the soil, but not without thorns and thistles. These tensions reflect the enduring goodness of creation, the permanence of the creative, human task, as well as the enduring consequences of sin.

6-Our Bodies Will Be Redeemed. (Rom. 8:22-23)

Just as Christ’s death and resurrection bring hope to the human spirit, they bring hope to the human body. Would any other salvation make sense? Can we imagine a God who gives up on the material reality of His creation, caring only about salvaging the immaterial stuff? As Al Wolters memorably wrote, God doesn’t make junk. The apostle Paul (along with other biblical writers) declares, “No—this salvation is for all of creation, which presently groans.”

It is an already/not yet salvation. We experience the blessing of justification, adoption, sanctification, and more presently. These blessings have consequences for our whole being. Death has been defeated, though the final stinger hasn’t yet been removed. Bodies still decay and die. But better things are to come!

7-Our Bodies Belong to God and Others. (1 Cor. 12:15-16)

If #6 is true, we should live like it now! How do we do this?

Genesis 1-2 AND the faithful guide of the New Testament show us what it means to live as redeemed people with bodies awaiting redemption: remember who you belong to.

We’ve always belonged to God and others. We were never made to be out on an island. We were made for socialization, relationship, partnership, and community. We were never “our own.” Indeed, this is perhaps the lie which undergirds every great lie in the modern world: we belong to ourselves.

God only gives redeemed people pictures of redeemed life which are corporate in nature. We are members of a family. We are a bride who has a bridegroom. We are stones in a temple. We are members of a body.

Why should I view and behave in my body in a God-honoring way? I belong to Him. Why should I view and behave in my body in a selfless way? I belong to others.

Whose Body? Whose Morality? (An Aside)

I’ve always found it interesting to consider the moral and legal justifications for the abolition of slavery.

One approach is to say that human beings shouldn’t be owned because we belong to ourselves. Call it “self-ownership.” This is how we eventually get to, “My body, my choice.”

Another approach is to say that human beings cannot be owned because a human isn’t the kind of thing that can be owned. It’s not consistent with our nature and design.

You figure out which one makes biblical sense.

Conclusion

So, I offer these “building blocks” to help ground us in a biblical, evangelical theology of the body. Lose one of them, and you’ll wander into error.

A final thought. One of the more understandable reasons why some Christians wander into error has to do with terminology.

The main problem that comes to mind concerns the most common rendering of sarx in our English Bibles: “flesh.” To any native English-speaker, “flesh” is about material substance. Only a theologically-informed Bible reader sees “flesh” and has a second association: fallen, human nature.

It’s true that a few uses of “flesh” in the Bible refer to material beings without any moral significance. But the New Testament largely uses “flesh” in a decidedly negative way. For this reason, some Christians are tempted to think of bodies in a negative way. (It’s easy to do this when we consider how problematic bodies can be on this side of the Fall!)

I offer this observation because I don’t want to be uncharitable or naïve about how Christians arrive at pessimistic accounts of the body. Yet I want to argue that regardless of how innocently people arrive at a negative view of the body, it results in the same potential errors: if we denigrate the body, denying its God-intended value and purpose, we will either be more prone to trying to justify ourselves by asceticism and worldly self-denial (the path of 1 Timothy 4:1-4) or to please ourselves with lascivious, self-indulgence (the path of Ephesians 4:17-19).

Ultimately, we cannot escape bodily concerns. Whether food or eating, suffering or death, exercise or self-expression (tattoos, clothing, piercings), procreation or infertility, or a thousand other issues of imminent ethical concern—bodies are implicated in everything.

For Further Reading:

Gregg Allison, Embodied

Matthew Lee Anderson, Earthen Vessels

John Kleinig, Wonderfully Made

Nancy Pearcey, Love Thy Body

Timothy Tennent, For the Body

Share

Recently I republished a dated but still relevant article I once wrote about why novels are much better than their film adaptations. I mentioned in the article how originality seems increasingly difficult to come by in a environment where studios offer up the same franchises in the cinemas, whether as sequels, trilogies, reboots, etc. (And I made that observation well over a decade ago!)

The Dispatch reported on these dynamics in today’s box office.

Now note part of the industry-insider explanation of this approach:

Money talks! But we knew that already.

I appreciate all the publishers, Christian and otherwise, who are willing to share the stories of detransitioners. We need journalists to exhibit the kind of honesty, integrity, and courage required to do this. And in a recent edition of CT, the editors have done just this.

Kyla Gillespie writes poignantly about her experience as a gender-confused person who pursued transition, only to discover that it didn’t deliver hope and healing like Jesus could.

Notice the difference that Christian community and hospitality made:

God, help stories like this abound more and more, and help us to need fewer stories a generation from now!

Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry

Molly Worthen, Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump

Joseph Loconte, The War for Middle Earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933–1945

David Gibson, Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End

I am grateful to my old friends over at the HSF for inviting me to pen a guest article recently. You can view that article on church transfer growth here.

There likely won’t be a Newsletter next Monday as I catch up after vacation and the Missouri State Association meeting begins. However, I hope to offer some interesting and/or valuable content in its place.

As always, thanks for reading!

If you enjoy Churchatopia, would you take time to share a link to this Substack site and/or some Churchatopia that you benefited from?

Share

Some have suggested that “Judge not, lest you also be judged” is the best-known verse in the Bible. That may be true; I have no way of verifying that empirically. What I am confident of is that for every person who knows that phrase, far fewer know the context and actual meaning of Jesus’s words in Matthew 7.

One could camp out on this problem alone, but I’ll be bolder: the term and concept “judgment” is a rich, multi-faceted concept in Scripture and life that requires careful understanding, explanation, and application.

Making Sense of Judgment

There are two major challenges with gaining clarity on this. The first challenge is terminological or lexical. The second is moral.

“Judgment” does a fair bit of work both in English and Greek. There are variations of the word in Greek that can be rendered as “judge” (an action or person), “judgment” (a verdict), or “discernment” (perceiving something), to name just a few. Of course, these distinctions hold up in modern English as well. As with most linguistic scenarios, we have to pay attention to usage and context to discern what is meant or implied.

Judgment can be a decided negative action, morally speaking. Being judgmental isn’t a godly quality. Judging or discerning can be a positive and essential moral activity. Or, it can be a more neutral sort of activity inherent to being a human being with senses, intuitions, and unique backgrounds.

In short, we have to do the patient, careful work of attending to language to determine what a passage or person means, and we have to put forth the effort in conveying what we actually mean.

Yet the moral challenges to maintaining clarity about “judgment” are just as important and common.

People love darkness, not light.

Correction feels insensitive and often unjust.

We want to be liked and admired, not hated and avoided.

Therefore, the stakes are elevated whenever we engage in conversations in which moral judgments (implied or actual) or involved.

As an aside, I can never forget a passage from Richard John Neuhaus’s wonderful and overlooked book, Freedom for Ministry. To paraphrase, Neuhaus points out that a life of holiness can sometimes have a dual effect on those around us. While it can portray the beauty of Christ in attractive fashion, it also can appear threatening. A life of moral purity stands over and against observers as a sort of implied moral judgment on their way of life.

You decline the beer or edible offered to you at a graduation party, and someone may well get defensive and say, “I guess you think you're better than me, don’t you?” This says far more about them than you, but it can lead you to wonder, “Did I come across as judgmental?”

Sometimes things just land the way they’re going to land regardless of motives or tone.

Types of Judgment

My own reading of the New Testament has led me to conclude that there are six related but distinct forms of judgment and/or discernment that Christians are implicated in.

First, there is an unavoidable judgment of people, places, ideas, and situations. The classical conservative tradition would call this something like “prejudice.” Just as I cannot help but judge a large shaggy dog to be a danger or a delight, I cannot avoid reasoning about all that I encounter in the world around me. God made me that way.

It’s true that the Fall shapes my default assumptions and judgments about certain things. My son appears to default to a fearful reaction to dogs because he has had several dogs jump on him early in life. Perhaps he’ll grow out of it, but his early conditioning has made him wary of these creatures. Is he judgmental? It’s more accurate to say, “He discerns dogs to belong to the category of risk or threat at this point in life.” This is not a moral claim as much as it is a biological and/or rational claim.

Second, some judgments are limited, hypocritical, and/or unfair views of people. This seems to be the type of judgment Jesus is most concerned about in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere. It’s a sin that we need to avoid, and one we need to repent of when we commit it. We never see the whole picture. We often see the speck in others’ eyes but not the log in our own. We often fail to give people the benefit of the doubt, assuming the worst instead of the best. We attribute to malice what could be attributed to ignorance. This is wrong.

Third, there is a temporary, humble judgment of others and ourselves that we have in view of God’s future judgment. This is when I lovingly pay attention to the spiritual well-being of others and notice a moral issue. Moved by love, humility, and patience, I aim to see them restored to right fellowship with myself, others, and/or God. We must be discerning people if we are to be a holy and helpful people. How else can I correct a brother or sister in sin if I don’t judge? Yet I must judge justly, following the right process and standards.

Fourth, the church exercises the keys to the kingdom when it owns its responsibility to discern or show judgment in the body. When a member of the body refuses to repent, the church may have to intervene as a collective. They may have to place the member under the discipline of the church. Paul urged the Corinthians to do this in 1 Corinthians 5. Failing to judge would have left them without a clear moral sense of the situation, and in turn, the inability to walk down the path of discipline and restoration.

Fifth, God judges us perfectly now, and will exercise final, perfect judgment of us in the future. These two could technically be distinguished (temporally speaking), but they fit together logically. They refer to the perfect, moral gaze of our great God and Savior. He sees us as we are now. He knows our hearts. We may see (judge) ourselves to be innocent, but we aren’t thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges (1 Cor. 4:4). Moreover, we will stand before Him in judgment one day (2 Cor. 5). This is serious business. He will have the final verdict. All our earthly verdicts are provisional. This doesn’t mean they are illegitimate or inaccurate. But the Just Judge of Heaven will have the final word.

Finally, judgment sometimes refers to the future place of believers in judging the world with Christ. Paul alludes to this in 1 Corinthians 5-6 when he is concerned about the church’s inability to arbitrate moral issues internally, leading to lawsuits against one another. While the nature and exact timing of this judgment is debated, Scripture speaks of its reality rather clearly.

Putting it Together

Christians can’t afford to be the kind of people who skim over the surface of words and concepts. We don’t have the luxury of falling back on cliches and slogans. We have to be the kind of people who can handle passages and principles that bear upon everyday life. I can’t help but think that “judgment” is near the top of that list.

We are moral creatures. Therefore, we’re always judging. The only questions are: “What kind of judgment am I engaging in?” Is this type of judgment appropriate to the situation?” And, “Can I stand before the Lord content with the type of judgments I render?”

Share

In a much earlier post I highlighted Luke Burgis’s fascinating book, Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life. It’s one of the more interesting books I’ve read in the last few years.

Besides Burgis’s forthcoming book, he writes regularly on Substack. A recent article challenges one to think about what it means to live well.

Burgis is writing about a lot of interesting issues that concern the intersection of Jerusalem (religion), Athens (reason), and Silicon Valley (technology).

While this article is behind a paywall, it’s an incisive critique of discriminatory hiring practices at The New York Times. Shocking, right?

Still, I think Andrew Sullivan’s review of the recent case against them by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is worth careful attention. Too often conservative critics of statism, progressivism, Critical Theory, Wokism (and the rest of the -isms one can think of) is based more on gut-level reactions, memes, and Fox News talking points.

Serious conservatives—and honest classical liberals—need to put in the time to understand some of these concrete cases where bad ideas and practices have run amok.

Sullivan briefly summarizes the legal (and I would say moral) principles at issue:

Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry

Molly Worthen, Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump

Joseph Loconte, The War for Middle Earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933–1945

David Gibson, Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End

My family and I are enjoying some hot and humid days in Florida this week. I think my kids deserve a gold star (or more) for surviving the drive down here. I think my wife and I deserve a Nobel Prize.

Share

I wrote in a recent newsletter about having read and enjoying Project Hail Mary. I also enjoyed the film adaptation of it. Yet it brought to mind the old truism: though a film may be good, the book is always better. This sentiment has surfaced in every conversation I’ve had when discussing the film and/or book with people. While I’m quick to recommend both, I always offer this qualifier. I also urge people to read the book first.

Why? Depending on your personality, you might be the type of person who would rather end your experience on a high note than a low one. Thus, watch the film and enjoy it, but then read the book and really enjoy yourself. No, besides the book being the basis of a film adaptation, there’s something special about letting the sights and sounds of a story hit your mind before it hits your eyes and ears. Therein lies the paradox of novels being better than their film adaptations.

Incidentally, I wrote about this phenomenon 14 years ago at the Helwys Society Forum. In today’s editorial I am republishing that article here, with very light edits. Besides it being a common experience we have in our cultural life, I also offer some insights into what this might have to do with Christian faith and practice.

Originality is not a virtue often found in Hollywood. Of course, this claim is counter-intuitive. Yearly we are ushered into a cinematic world of 3-D creatures, romances with unlikely characters, and thrillers with unexpected killers. The annual profits are staggering when one considers the billions invested in production and earned in ticket sales. Surely the film industry is a place we encounter cultural and aesthetic excellence. Yet experience tells us otherwise.

As we peer closer at the Box Office, we discover the lurid, the profane, and the gratuitous [1]. We cautiously scrutinize the films we watch to protect our children (and perhaps us from wasting two hours and $15). However, there is a less obvious but more important phenomenon in much of modern cinema: a lack of originality.

Consider the fact that the majority of the films produced in studios today are based on (a) a novel, (b) a true story, or (c) an earlier film. While creative adaptations abound, the basic plot of countless films is typically dependent upon another work. I think that these facts, especially (a) and (b), provide a lens for probing a concession that most people make: The novel is almost always better than the film.

This is an important truism because it enjoys overwhelming assent. A reasonable explanation for this points to an important concept we’re often unaware of: form and content. When we compare novels to films based on novels, we must not only evaluate their actual content—though this is relevant to this discussion. Instead, we must analyze these two forms—their limitations, their differences, and our experience of them.

There are three primary aspects of the medium of film that hinder it from accomplishing what the novel can. This is an important discussion not merely for aesthetic purposes. It is also illustrative of an important part of Christianity—the nature of it being a word-centered faith. Comparing a novel to film can help demonstrate for Christians some key issues concerning words versus images.

Knowledge of the Characters

I only need to read a few pages into a novel to decide whether I want to continue reading. Good stories are compelling because they have good characters, though perhaps not morally-speaking. Good characters are interesting, unique, or compelling. Great writers know how to introduce their uncommitted readers to their story’s main players since they are persuaded to continue when they identify with a character.

Screenwriters for films have the same task before them, only they have don’t have the same tools to accomplish this. In novels, authors are often omniscient in telling us the thoughts, feelings, intents, and motivations of the narrative’s characters. Even if it’s just the main character, this still exceeds film’s potentialities. With film, we are typically reduced to reading the minds of characters based solely on their words and deeds [2]. While this seems adequate enough, it typically isn’t. Though it is the way we normally experience the world, it is still unsatisfying in the imaginative activity of watching versus reading.

This is why the novel exceeds cinema in this respect: it clues observers/readers into forthcoming twists and turns before they happen—yet we still can’t see them coming because of the complexity of the characters. Ironically, this is actually truer to reality, for humans are complex creatures whose actions fall somewhere between the entirely predictable and totally chaotic.

How 600 Pages Became 120 Minutes

Perhaps a more obvious reason for the parity in excellence of novels versus films is the pace of story development. This is a challenge for all screenwriters when they attempt to reproduce the character development, plot sequence, and organic tension of a novel into a film that, in most cases, must stay under two or two and a half hours to meet budget constraints.

Examples abound concerning the success of such enterprises. Based on critic reviews plus box office success (profit), the novel-based films that have been successful have often been in the three-hour range (or have been produced as multiple films). Series such as The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are examples of this. While some complain about the length of these films, they were far more successful than comparable projects.

Certainly, length does not equal success. There are countless other factors that make films excellent or shoddy. Instead, I am suggesting that there is a direct relationship between the nature of the novel and the task of condensing, editing, and fitting a story into a relatively brief visual presentation.

Character development and a well-conceived plot are essential to a good story. Depicting the characters through their actions, words, and motivations takes time. Allowing the plot to develop in a realistic, organic way cannot be easily condensed either. One might even say it requires patience. This is simply a virtue that film does not easily elicit.

The Intangible: Imagination

The imagination is perhaps the most neglected feature of modern American education. Children are lulled into an aesthetic coma by an over-emphasis on test-taking strategies and how to use A.I. “responsibly,” while reading, writing, and listening to good stories are marginalized. Literature, however, is crucial because it engenders the imaginative capabilities and horizons of human beings. Conservatives understand this from the great examples set forth by Tolstoy, Austen, and Lewis. Even good secularists understand this, and thus Shakespeare is common fare in most colleges and universities. Yet little reflection is given to how film often stifles this as opposed to unlocking it.

The visual presentation proffered by filmmakers confines viewers. They are less apt to bring their imagination to the story. As novelists provide readers with an incredible array of verbal depiction and detail, there is still space for readers to develop their own personal signification by their participation with the story. Although objectivity is certainly possible with the novel, the readers’ subjective experience is involved as they visualize the story as presented and fill in the gaps with their imagination. Films give a rendering of the story as told by the author (and rewritten by the screenwriter). The cinematic presentation then becomes a brute fact we can accept or reject. Our participation is mostly irrelevant.

Why Christians Should Care

If readers are persuaded by this analysis, then they must begin to consider its implications for Christianity. This is pertinent because Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox traditions have contested the role of images in worship. More broadly, however, for thousands of years religions have been partly defined by and divided over whether spiritual things can or should be visually represented.

The Judeo-Christian tradition begins its consideration of such matters with the infamous Golden Calf in Exodus 32. But this is only the beginning. Israel is constantly forbidden to construct an image of Yahweh (Ex. 20:4), as well to gather for herself images of other nations’ gods. Yet Israel fails repeatedly. However, the crucial distinction for God’s people, especially compared to other faiths, is that we worship what we cannot see. This is fundamentally tied to the nature of faith itself [3].

What does this have to do with the novel versus the film? Christians have always been tempted to fashion, venerate, and trust images over words [4]. Yet Baptists particularly have always been a word-oriented people. The discussion of films versus novels anecdotally illustrates the important cautions that Christians should take when it comes to the church’s life.

This discussion has especially had a bearing on debates over the nature of Scripture. Some call for conservatives to repent of their modernistic, western obsession with propositional ways of thinking of truth. This criticism does carry some validity. One example is the crime that some “word-centered folks” commit when dealing with the affective function of biblical texts. It should indeed give us pause when one tries to squeeze every metaphor, whether it be a majestic eagle (Isaiah/Obadiah) or roaring lion (Amos), into a theological proposition. These images are often meant to move us in pre-cognitive ways as opposed to imparting literal information. Certainly, images can sometimes translate into propositional statements. However, care should be exercised when doing this [5].

Because film as a medium is limited when compared to a novel, it challenges Christians and innovative church leaders to recognize the risks involved with images. It is always a temptation to think that we need more than Scripture. But images, ironically enough, do not expand our religious horizons. They often confine them. Furthermore, they require a verbal context to be understood. We often say, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Perhaps we should paraphrase: A picture requires a thousand words of explanation [6].

Conclusion

Despite our penchant for images, Scripture emphasizes the Word as the means for conveying truth. Though Jesus used parables in his ministry, there were verbally expressed and aurally received. Additionally, they were not used primarily to teach—for the secrets of God’s kingdom were given to the disciples, while to outsiders everything was given in parables to confound them, not to enlighten them [7].

Ultimately, our experience of reading the novel reminds us of a crucial truth: that the Living Word (Christ) and the written Word (Scripture) are God’s gift to the church. Thus, we should steward them accordingly.

[1] Quentin Tarantino’s films frequently garner rave reviews from film critics and audiences, yet they are arguably the most violent, profanity-laden productions in contemporary cinema. Other directors who would fit this category would include Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, and David Lynch.

[2] A notable exception would be those films that include a narrator who gives occasional or frequent voiceovers would be an exception. But even narration in film cannot be as full as descriptions in film.

[3] J.I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 1973), 44-49.

[4] Two titles have especially shown how this is increasingly true in the postmodern world: David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005); Arthur Hunt, The Vanishing Word: The Veneration of the Visual in a Postmodern World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003).

[5] Kevin J. Vanhoozer’s “The Semantics of Biblical Literature: Truth and Scripture’s Diverse Literary Forms” is perhaps the best treatment of this issue from an inerrantist position. It can be found in Carson and Woodbridge’s Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986).

[6] Kenneth A. Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians & Popular Culture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1989), 163-165. Cultural critic Ken Myers offers a helpful illustration in All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes:

“Here are seven simple sentences: 1) The cat is on the mat. 2) The cat is not on the mat. 3) The cat was on the mat. 4) The cat likes to be on the mat. 5) The cat should not be on the mat. 6) Get off the mat, cat! 7) If the cat doesn’t get off the mat, I shall kick it. Of these sentences, only the first could be presented visually, and then only with some uncertainty.”

Myers proceeds convincingly to show how difficult it would be for a person viewing images of these relatively simple actions to come away with an unambiguous interpretation.

[7] Mark 4 clearly spells this out. I’d be willing to grant some credence to the argument that for people already inside the kingdom [believers], spiritual images actually do have some value. However, one would need to quickly qualify this by emphasizing that (a) Christ is the image of the invisible God; (b) ordinances are the chief pictures/images given to the church; and even so, (c) images are limited by their very nature.

*For the sake of space constraints, I was unable to attend to the positive aspects of visual art culturally and spiritually. While this is a corollary discussion to this essay, I feel it merits a separate treatment apart from the concerns here. For more information, see “Assessing the Arts” by Alex Harper and Jackson Watts.

Share

In no small number of past newsletters, I’ve touched on themes of church membership, church leadership, and polity. Indeed, these must be among the four or five most commonly addressed themes on Churchatopia.

So it was with great interest that I finally read Jonathan Leeman’s Don’t Fire Your Church Members: The Case for Congregationalism (B&H Academic, 2016). A buddy of mine was reading it and encouraged me to pick it up. I only regret that I didn’t read it sooner!

While there are some aspects about Leeman’s approach and the publisher’s packaging that has perhaps hurt the book’s circulation, Leeman clarifies and confirms so many of my intuitions about Baptist ecclesiology, which is surely just to say, “Biblical ecclesiology.”

The book is full of both principled and practical nuggets, including this assertion:

These aren’t peripheral issues. These strike at the heart of what it means to be a church, a church member, and a church leader.

It’s gratifying to see some progressives (though of the more classically liberal stripe) come to terms with the legitimacy of the Supreme Court’s handling of cases concerning so-called racial gerrymandering.

To be clear, I think much of what has been happening in recent months in response to President Trump’s demands for “red states” to redraw congressional maps is bad politics and ill-advised. The net effect so far may well have been to make it more likely than Republicans lose seats in the upcoming congressional elections. (So much for all the claims that our President is playing four-dimensional chess when we can’t make heads or tails of his words or actions.)

I digress.

Joe Klein puts the matter aptly when it comes to race, representation, society, and the law:

And this:

And this:

Ouch!

Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry

Ashely Alker, 99 Ways to Die: And How to Avoid Them

Molly Worthen, Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump

I recently learned that my Faith & Research Conference presentation at Missouri Baptist University was chosen for publication in Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal. You can access this journal online free of charge.

A version of this paper will be presented later this fall at a public event. I’ll share more about that down the road.

Also, I was able to preach recently for the First Free Will Baptist Church of Desoto in a Sunday evening worship service. Continue to pray for this dear congregation as they search for their next pastor.

Share

Share