The Healthy Church Heresy
Heresy.
I just dropped the H bomb.
I said it. I could not possibly mean it more.
But, my friends, I don’t say it easily.
The healthy church idea has been around for a few years now. It has always has affected me like the screech of fingernails grating across a chalk board.
However, many of you whom I love and respect buy into church health and promote it.
I’ve been planning to post this on the blog for some time. I’ve written it and rewritten it. Writing this has been a painful experience for me. If I didn’t believe this deeply and think that it is important, I’d simply hold my peace.
This post is wordy and deep. It's not my best writing. It is controversial. But, if I'm correct, it is crucially important.
Please bear with it. Give it careful thought.
I honestly believe that the notion that we should be about the task of building healthy churches is so far from biblical truth that it merits the designation of heresy. I won’t say that someone who embraces church health is destined to spend eternity weeping and gnashing teeth but I will say that the notion that we should be about the task of building healthy churches is out of touch with historic Christian belief in very important ways.
In my mind the healthy church movement, while faddishly popular and undoubtedly well-intentioned is misguided at best and, at worst, is theologically corrupt.
I have three objections to the healthy church movement; two of them place it firmly in the category of heterodoxy. Here are my three objections:
First, The healthy church idea is not biblical.
To people who claim to believe that the Bible is our only rule of faith and practice, this should be powerful. Consider this: If there is any chance that we should be about the task of building healthy churches the idea would certainly be plastered all over the letters of Paul. Paul, after all, described the church as the Body of Christ.
With the analogy of the church as a body already in his mind, we need to question why Paul never introduced the idea that the Body of Christ should be healthy. It is actually stunning to me that, while Paul describes the church as a body, he never touches on the notion of church health.
The closest Paul gets to calling us to the task of building healthy churches is in Ephesians 4:12 where he says that Christ will continue to gift the church with apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherd and teachers “to prepare God’s people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be…,” what? Healthy? No. This is the place Paul would have talked about healthy churches if church health was a theologically sound idea. But, Paul didn’t say healthy. What he said is, “…so that the body of Christ may be built up.”
The Greek word is oikodome a favorite of Paul’s when he is speaking metaphorically. The translations often render it with some form of the word ‘edify.’ The idea is not that of a healthy body but of a power-filled, built up body. Think the Governor of California, not Richard Simmons.
The notion of a healthy church is not biblical. When the Bible gets even remotely close to the concept of health, health is too anemic a concept to describe what Christ intends His Body to be. The church is to be much more than healthy. To seek church health is to sell the God of the church short.
Paul was not a lamebrain.
And, writing under the inspiration of the Spirit, he didn’t miss the essential truth of church health. If church health was a valid concept, rest assured it would be in the Bible. It is not.
Even though the Bible teaches that the church is the Body of Christ, the notion of building healthy churches simply has no root in Scripture. For those of us who believe that “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful…,” this should matter.
Second, The healthy church idea is a Christianized adaptation of deism.
Deism is an idea about the relationship between the Creator of the universe and creation that is distinctly different from the teachings of the Bible. In general, it is the belief that a supreme God created the universe, and that religious and ethical truths can be arrived at by the use of human reason and the scientific method. Deism is the belief that God is transcendent and that he allows his creation to operate according to laws and principles he established through the process of creation.
(Interestingly to those who are interested in this blog’s themes of postmodernism and emergence, Deism is the quintessentially modern way of thinking about God. Most Enlightenment thinkers who were not atheists were deists. In the postmodern world, it is likely that this very modern idea of a god who is distant and uninvolved in the lives of the people he created will be increasingly unattractive.)
Christianity is a theistic religion. Theism is the belief in a creator who is personal, involved in His creation and Who reveals Himself to His people.
A common tenet of deism is the ‘Clockmaker analogy’ which asserts that God created the universe, but doesn’t not interfere with its operation, that God is a cosmic clockmaker who made the clock, wound it up, and now simply lets it run.
The healthy church idea is really a Christianized variation of the Clockmaker analogy.
This healthy church variation is built on two ideas.
One idea is that the Church is, indeed, the Body of Christ--that it is an organism, not an organization.
The second core idea in church health is that a gracious God created principles around which all life in His universe can function and experience health.
The most refined approach to church health is Natural Church Development devised by Christian Schwartz. Natural Church Development (NCD) articulates the most brazen Christianized adaptation of the Clockmaker analogy with which I am familiar. NCD’s use of the word “Natural” suggests a deistic way of thinking. NCD asserts a view of God that really is not rooted in theistic beliefs.
NCD maintains the existence of six “biotic principles” or life principles. Schwartz believes that an important key to growth of a congregation is that is seek to provide the proper environment and to minimize obstacles to natural development. This is done by observing those principles which apply to life in all of its forms. (FYI, the six biotic principles are: Interdependence, Multiplication, Energy Transformation, Multi-usage, Symbiosis and Functionality.)
The heresy here is that the God of NCD (and every other system which envisions spirituality as natural or healthy) is too much like the god of deist. The god who is a distant a clockmaker who has wound up the universe.
In church health, God is not the maker of a complex mechanical device. Instead, he really is merely the designer of a complex bio system in which in which life principles need merely be embraced. For healthy church people church growth is natural. It is not supernatural. It is not spiritual.
Church health is not theism. It is not historically Christian. It is a form of deism. It is Enlightenment Religion.
Understand this:
In NCD, Christian Schwartz plugs Jesus into his “natural” system, and the reality is that the principles Schwartz touts could as easily be applied to a Church of God congregation or one that is Episcopal or Baptist. But it could also fit in a Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah’s Witnesses or a Mosque or even, with very little adaptation, your local chapter of the Independent Order of the Odd Fellows.
In reality the idea of church health bears the stamp of an only slightly tweaked deism more than it does of Scripture. It certainly is well-intentioned. But, it is heresy.
Third, In practice, the healthy church idea is anti-Trinitarian.
I know, love and respect many church health people.
All of them proclaim pure theological orthodoxy: God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, our Lord, born of the virgin Mary. The judgment of the living and the dead. The Holy Spirit. The Holy Christian Church. The communion of saints. The forgiveness of sins. The life everlasting.
They proclaim it all.
But, they don’t practice it all.
Unitarianism was the theological movement within the institutional church that corresponded to the secular religion of Deism.
Unitarianism acknowledged Jesus but denied His divinity or His miracles or that He came in fulfillment of prophecy. Unitarians are very serious followers of Jesus. Many Unitarians take His teachings more seriously than some Christians do. Unitarians regard Jesus as an ideal model for the ethical life a person can live. But, Unitarians see God as a transcendent creator who has established eternal principles of truth which can be understood through the study of science and the use of human reason. For them, Jesus is not God.
In Unitarianism, God is the distant clockmaker of the Deist.
Sadly despite what it proclaims, in practice, the God of the church health movement more closely resembles the Unitarian’s distant creator than the Trinitarian God of historic Christianity. While advocates of church health will have difficulty admitting it, their theology is ‘Binitarian.’ (There is such a word, see http://www.reference.com/search?q=Binitarian .)
Binitarianism is the belief that God is an absolutely single being; and yet there is a "twoness" in God.
In practice, the God of church health is a Father-Son duo Who make salvation possible through the Christ Event. God became flesh and lived in the world without sin. He gave His life on the cross as a sacrifice for sin. He rose from death so that He could be the firstborn among many who have eternal life. And, He ascended into heaven. He is, at this moment, at the Father’s right hand interceding for His people.
In church health practice, the rest of the story is that the Father-Son duo has now set in motion all the principles that empower churches to be healthy. NCD calls those principles, the 'biotic' principles. Biotic principles apply to every form of life. In other variations of church health, the concept of universal life principles may not be as clearly defined, but the concept is present and it is essential to the very idea of church health.
The God of church health is not a Trinity.
Church health does not practice belief in a God Who is an absolutely single being; and yet that there is a "threeness" in God. Just as Unitarianism acknowledges Jesus and values Him but denies His divinity, so also church health acknowledges the Holy Spirit, values him but denies the Spirit’s divinity. In practice, in church health, as is the cases in many cults, the Spirit is a force of God, not God Himself.
In the way church health actually functions, God is a Father-Son team who make salvation possible through the Christ Event.
God is not a single being who is a clockmaker creator.
Rather, He is a gracious two-fold Being who created the church to be organism. Through the incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus and the application of universal life principles the church can function and thrive just like every other living organism can.
In church health, life principles edge the Holy Spirit out of the Trinity.
Hence, the very language of church health: Church health advocates the existence of HEALTHY churches, not spiritual churches, or Spirit-led, or Spirit-empowered churches.
In church health it is the biotic principles--life principles, health principles--that are key, not the presence and power of God the Holy Spirit.
The Book of Acts describes the ministry of the church built on a belief in God as Trinity. In Acts the primary activity of the church of was to engage God in prayer seeking empowerment by the Holy Spirit and the central act of obedience to the Gospel was Repentance.
Acts 1:14 describes the first activity of believers after the Ascension. “They all joined together constantly in prayer…” Acts 2:42 notes the essentials of life in the early church. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Acts 6:1-7 describes the church in the midst of a great internal crisis in which some widows were being ignored and on their way to starvation to which the apostles reacted by saying, “We will devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word.”
The core proclamation of the early church was a call to oneness with the triune God through the act of repentance. (Acts 2:38 & 3:19)
For the church health advocate, church growth is scientific, not spiritual. It is natural, not supernatural. It is strategic. It is not prayer and repentance based. I have yet to hear a church health advocate suggest that church growth is founded on the biblical call for repentance.
The truth is that the God of the church health is not the God of Scripture. Its practice tells me so. The God church health worships and serves--the approaches it employs to bring about health and growth--are not those of the church modeled in Scripture.
No matter how passionately a church health advocate may proclaim faith in the doctrine of the Trinity, when it comes to the practice of ministry, church health doesn’t serve a Trinity powerfully present in the world. It serves a binity who is the gracious and eternal creator of natural, life principles.
Church health’s God resembles the deist’s distant clockmaker more than it does the God sought and served by the disciples of the early church.
Church health is, indeed, well-intentioned. It is advocated by many people whom I love and whose commitment to Christ I respect. But, it is theologically corrupt.
But, it will never bring about what church health advocates call renewal.
posted by bill Sloat at 7:44 AM
41 Comments:
Mr. Sloat, I think you're spot-on my friend.
Something also to note is that for the most part, in my experience, the "healthy church" model isn't really a "Christian" model at all, it is a business viability model pure and simple. ...and it usually costs a lot of time, energy, and money to determine!
Secondly, the use of the word "heresy" is justified on many levels. The biblical use of the word primarily speaks to divisiveness as opposed to doctrinal imprecision or to doctrinal variation. In other words, it's primarily an orthopraxy issue over an orthodoxy issue. (though, often it's hard to tell them apart)
Therefore, often times, I see much of our denominationalism or "denominational distinctions" being nothing more than divisiveness clothed in sheep's clothing. For some, this distinctiveness is part of the "healthy church" business plan.
i.e. let's offer some "Wendy's" choices instead of just "McDonald's" or "Burger King."
Do we or do we not believe Christ's repeated plea in John 17 that we would be one as He and the Father were one?
...ok, I'll stop for now.
bill,
excellent post. i plan on a more thorough reply that it deserves when i have more time.
sean,
i understand what you mean as far as denominations being overly distinct much of the time. i was recently talking with a renown presbyterian professor, who was advocating for combining of many of the splits between denominations in that theological stream (e.g. pca, opc, etc.).
the question remains, though, when are our "distinctives" necessary?
do we draw a line on eschatology? we haven't yet.
on baptism? the efca doesn't.
on the Trinity? most certainly!
so where's the line?
Walt Said:
"the question remains, though, when are our "distinctives" necessary?
do we draw a line on eschatology? we haven't yet.
on baptism? the efca doesn't.
on the Trinity? most certainly!
so where's the line?"
Walt, I know what you are saying. In many ways I struggle with the same questions. And honestly, I think it's uncomfortable to think of some of the implications. But I think the emphasis should be on guarding the "oneness" of Christ's Body as 1 Cor. 1:10-13 would speak imperatively. I'm not suggesting a "water down" approach to ecumenicalism, but I think way too many of our "distinctions" are simply not worth dividing over.
I mean, how many of our "distinctions" are simply institutional, cultural, or traditional and have no bearing on hermeneutical methods?
...Well, it's clear to me as I begin to write this, that I'm still wrestling though these issues and so maybe I'll end here and let others join in the conversation.
Xapis,
Sean
BTW, Walt, I see from your profile that we likely come from the same theological background. ..and THAT theological background is one of the slowest to move in this arena. :-)
Bill
Your email to me titled “Tar and Feathers” requested me to read your post and respond preferably via the blog.
Here is my response: And now I will show you the most excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
May God’s love be our guiding factor for without it we are but noise.
Shall the goal be to renew the ERC a pastor and a church at a time through the working of the Holy Spirit.
David,
Thank you for your reply. Knowing you as I do, and reading the tone of your post, I sense that you took my article emotionally.
As I said, the writing of the article was difficult for me because I know that nearly everyone in leadership in the General Conference and in our Region is a promoter of Church Health and that you are among them.
I love and respect and admire you all.
And, if I didn't think that you were all very wrong and if I didn't think the error you were making was of great consequence for the church, I would not have gone through the anguish of writing what I wrote.
Nor would I have put myself in the position of facing the ire and potential backlash from nearly everyone in CGGC leadership for saying things that I know that none of you want to hear.
Regarding your quote from 1 Corinthians 13:1-7, there's something that you need to understand that is very important about me and those who share my calling.
We love.
Believe me, we love.
I know of three commands in the New Testament regarding love among Kingdom of God people. Two of the come from what we call the Great Commandment:
Jesus said that the greatest commandment is: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."
Jesus said that the second is like it: "Love your neighbor as yourself."
And, as John tells the story, shortly before Jesus was taken from the disciples He gave them a new Commandment: "Love one another."
David, because you are a shepherd by calling, you define love primarily in terms of the New Command--as love for one another.
Here's what you need to understand. If you think about it, you'll see that you can see it clearly demonstrated in Scripture:
No one loves with greater intensity or passion than the prophet.
However, the prophet has a 'love-orientation' that is foreign to the way the shepherd loves. We prophets love God--and particualar God's TRUTH--more than we love people.
Think of the audacious things Isaiah or Jeremiah said to people in their day.
Think of John the Baptist--Elijah having come to prepare the way for the Christ--looking into the faces of the people who left their homes and traveled into a harsh wilderness to hear his teaching saying, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?"
Think of Jesus, as prophet, saying to the Scribes and Pharisees, "You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?"
Tell me that as a shepherd those passages do not make you cringe. Tell me that you can imagine saying those things yourself.
Tell me how, when Jesus called the Scribes and Pharisees snakes and vipers that to speak in such a way is necessarily a sin. Tell me that when Jesus said it, it was not love.
David, my friend and brother, you are judging me by your own gift and calling and by your own love-orientation.
Perhaps, I need to be more focused on the love one another command. In fact, certainly, I do. But, try to see this issue from the eyes of the love that beats in my heart.
Here's what my love sees:
It sees church health people substituting a convenient, but unbiblical metaphor for the God who reveals Himself to us in the Word and Who became flesh to make Himself known to us, Who created us, Who suffered for us, Who gave up His life for us and who now lives in us.
I honestly believe, from the depths of my soul, that church health is an affront to my Triune Lord.
I honestly believe that church health destroys the conept of Trinity.
I honestly, from my heart, believe that church health robs the Holy Spirit of His divinity.
And, for what?
Fo a clever little metaphor slightly tweaked from the religion of the Enlightenment, from a concept of God that deminishes the role of prayer and expunges from Christian experience any meaningful reference to the act of repentance, which is a crucial truth in the New Testament from before Jesus spoke a word in ministry into the Book of Revelation.
So, be careful when you judge me and tell me to be a man of love.
Don't forget that in the verses you quoted that you reminded both of us that "love...rejoices in the truth."
That's how I love, brother. And, I love deeply!
That's why I went to the trouble to write this article. That's why I put myself in the position of making you angry and falling prey to your judgment.
Trust me!
For me and from my perspective the whole thing is about love.
Love for HIM!
Love for the Trinity.
Love for truth, in which I take my greatest delight.
Wow.
My church began working through NCD before I was here. I’ll admit that I have never been sold on it in a powerful way. I do believe, however, that it has helped in some important ways.
I’m not sure what to think about the premise that healthy things grow. This is true organically, but I will agree readily that it is not a particularly biblical idea. My experience is that in the church, mission doesn’t ever happen by accident or as a by-product.
In my thinking, church health is a good thing. What it is not is the most important thing. Our mission, our purpose for existence must come first. If we are ‘healthy’ and happy and making no impact with the Gospel and God’s kingdom, we have failed and we are far from healthy.
However, those movements focused on mission often have issues that are also important. A tool like NCD can help look at some of these basic things. It is a tool and must not become a driving force. But as a tool to help congregations look at some things that they have never thought about, perhaps it is useful.
Churches with prophets and no shepherds are lacking.
One thing that I don’t care for in NCD is surveying what people think as a measure. I am less concerned with what people think and more interested in what God thinks about us, our church and our faithfulness to what we’ve been called to.
The enlightenment has major issues, but God has ordered his creation in such a way that we can use the best of our reason, understanding and research to be as effective as possible with what He has revealed to us. We can take some things that would work for the business world or another religion and use them – communication theory being one example. These things are not bad.
The absence of the Holy Spirit in our ecclesiology and in the life of the church as a whole is deeply problematic and very troubling. Bill has rightly pointed that out.
However, any system has the potential to do this. We could take the 6 aspects of Missional DNA from The Forgotten Ways are try to make it a framework absent from the empowerment and direction of God the Holy Spirit.
Every single one of us has been and probably is guilty of being a practical heretic. Heck, we are often practical atheists.
To be truly Trinitarian is challenging. Incredibly challenging. I don’t think that the desire to be healthy churches is our biggest problem.
Our problem is being churches who don’t think deeply, trust radically, and live missionally.
Wow, Dan M., good thoughts!
Let me say this to begin.
When I look at church health (the NCD form or others) and compare it to the Book of Acts, here's what I see:
Church health praxis that is entirely disconnected from ministry as it is modeled in the Word of God that is supposed to be the only authority in the Church of God, "our only rule of faith and practice."
That the people who lead us can, on one hand, acknowledge the Word as our only authority and, on the other, embrace the kind of praxis that church health leads to is, very simply, beyond my comprehension.
Who models and teaches prayer in church health that bares an even in a remote way the way prayer was practiced in the Book of Acts?
Who points out the reality of sin in church health and says, "God has made this Jesus, whom YOU crucified, both Lord and Christ?"
Who, in church health, even utters the one word that was spoken first by John the Baptist and Jesus and the Apostles: the word REPENT?
No one.
No one.
No one!
Sean pointed out rightly that heresy is most importantly an issue of orthopraxy, i.e., what is done, not what is believed.
I would like someone here to open the Bible and to use it to defend church health on the basis of what it actually does.
It is unbiblical in practice. It completely ignores the biblical model for ministry.
And, in our CGGC context, it in entirely un-Winebrennerian.
Are there principles in the church health way of thinking that might be useful?
That certainly is possible.
But to the degree that church health substitutes health concepts for the deity of the Holy Spirit, it is the kind of theology that people got burned at the stake for in previous centuries.
And, on the level of praxis, it is humanistic, not spiritual.
Do churches benefit from using NCD? Well, compared to the spiritually lifeless and dying churches that abound in the West, perhaps. But, compared to what God does, when His people walk in the Spirit--like He is doing right now in many parts of the world--no, NCD doesn't do what the Spirit does.
As far as The Forgotten Ways is concerned, you are right.
It's a useful book but it has its problems and shortcomings. Does it stray as far from historic orthodoxy and orthopraxy as church health does?
Not even close.
Bill,
Your ideas are based upon some unwritten assumptions that may be worth exploring further.
Throughout the past few weeks, many comments have been made about what it means for someone to say he or she is part of the CGGC. You wrote in your last post about something being "entirely un-Winebrennerian."
The assumption here is that there is something unique and special about being a part of the CGGC. Only someone working from this perspective has a real chance of agreeing with your statements.
Of course someone who doesn't agree that Winebrenner's vision should drive the contemporary CGGC will disagree with you. Of course someone who doesn't agree that we should be firmly biblically based will disagree with you.
So...we need to continually return to the question of what it means to be part of the CGGC.
A commitment to church health may make complete sense to someone OUTSIDE of Winebrenner's vision for the CGGC. A commitment to leadership that emerges from something other than scripture may make complete sense to someone OUTSIDE of Winebrenner's vision fo the CGGC.
To be part of the CGGC means that we carry on John Winebrenner's vision of the church as presented in Scripture. Pure and simple.
How much can we eliminate from our faith perspective and still remain part of the CGGC? Can we eliminate a commitment to church health? Yes. Can we eliminate a commitment to having a regional or denominational leader? Yes. Can we eliminate our regional structure? Yes. Can we eliminate (although I am not suggesting we do...) Winebrenner Seminary from our training program? Yes. Can we eliminate a commitment to the Bible? NO. Can we eliminate our commitment to carrying out John Winebrenner's vision for the Church? NO.
If someone chooses to move away from John Winebrenner's vision that is fine. But that person is no longer working within the framework of the CGGC. If someone chooses to use a source other than the Bible for guidance of how the church should be structured that is fine. But that person is no longer working within the boundaries of the CGGC.
What happens when a person realizes that he or she is no longer in agreement with the CGGC? There are two options: stay and fight or leave. If the day ever arrives that I can no longer support these two distinctives (commitment to Scripture and J. Winebrenner's vision) then I will leave. I can't fight the bare bones fundamentals. I can fight about what it means to carry out J. Winebrenner's vision in 2009, but I can't say his vision doesn't matter AND still call myself a CGGCer.
Part of the problem with these discussions is that we often use similar language to talk about very different things.
Thank you for returning us to John Winebrenner's vision for the church. I don't know the full extent of harsh feedback you are receiving so it's easy for me to applaud your effort.
But the time may come when some who question what's been said here need to leave. YOU are not the radical. All you are proposing is that we stay true to who we are as a tradition.
Thanks.
this will probably be short to the point of inadequacy, and i hope to respond more fully later, but quick thoughts while i can:
on the issue of loving God and one another: my definition of love is to find one's joy in the beloved's joy. if your joy is tied to the joy of another, you want to maximize that person's joy. we know from Scripture that we are most joyful when we rightly behold the wonderful glory that is God's through His grace, which is most clearly shown in the Cross of Christ.
therefore, the most loving thing that we can do is to constantly point people to Christ and His awesome gospel.
this comes through acts of service which imitate God serving us, through showing grace to others as we have been given grace from Him. It also means showing rightly Who He is and what He's done, which means correction and rebuke when the occasion calls for it.
on the issue of the "health" of a church: over and over the Bible uses natural metaphors for both believers individually and the church corporately. i don't know the details of what you mean by "church health"; i would mean that a church is healthy when it's lovingly and joyfully following its Lord as laid out in His Word.
one example as to why "health", in itself, is a good term to use: the Bible, and Jesus in particular, constantly talk of knowing men by their fruit. Galatians talks about the "fruit of the Spirit." a healthy tree naturally produces its fruit based on its nature. the reason why speaking like that is not heretical or anti-Trinitarian is because the only way we have a nature that will produce the fruit of the Spirit is if the Spirit has changed our nature through regeneration. thus, a "healthy" Christian will be constantly drinking the pure water of the Word, being fed by the Spirit, and thus produce those fruits, because that is the new creation's nature.
i'm all for shutting down the intrusion of so many business and other practices that have been undiscerningly brought into the Body (which makes it very unhealthy) and getting back to Scripture, but i'm also big on not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. the old "reject, receive, redeem" paradigm with respect to how we take things from culture seems pretty good to me.
i hope to write more soon. God bless you, brothers, that your work may indeed bring much fruit for His glory and our joy in Him.
I've not studied in depth NCD, but we (our Region not our church) had Kent Hunter (The Church Doctor) consult with us. In person, he said that he and Christian Swartz taught the same thing.
Let me key in on a specific example of the NCD program -- small groups.
Until the beginning of 2008, our church (The Crossover) did not have small groups. Would it have helped to have small groups? Sure. It would have created some fellowship and personal connections that were lacking (painfully lacking in all honesty).
We participated in 2007 in Hunter's 40 Days of Vision. This was a preaching series of his values (and NCD's) and the implementation of a small group program.
What struck me most was when Hunter was explaining this to pastors at a meeting (actually held at our church) and a pastor (it was Anita Brown for those who enjoy details) asked, "What happens to the small groups after the 40 days?"
Hunter's answer was "They continue."
Anita asked a great follow-up. "What do they study?"
Hunter's answer, "Whatever they want. It doesn't matter. There are great small group books at your local bookstore."
My heart sunk. I knew we would not implement small groups during the 40 days of vision because the vision had to be more complete than 40 days worth of values and then drop to a whatever.
The vision has to be the discipleship of followers of Jesus Christ. Nobody talks about ongoing discipleship of followers of Christ.
In my opinion, all systems of the church have to be formed around the discipleship of the followers of Jesus Christ. A church has/must be structured to produce multiplying disciples.
Hirsch talks in chapter 5 of The Forgotten Ways (and I might point out that this chapter is very hard to read and difficult to follow, but this one point I think I got), that discipleship starts with Christology.
1. It starts with the follower and the group of followers (the local church) following Jesus Christ on a daily basis in their community through the power of the Holy Spirit.
2. Through following Jesus Christ, the follower/followers incarnate Christ in their community (not in their church but in the social domains - work/fun/family). They become Jesus (we are the Body of Christ) in their situation.
3. Through becoming Jesus ("in his steps" and such) by following Jesus, they begin to understand God's mission for the community they find themselves in. People may be hungry, lonely, addicted, unemployed, confused, uneducated, ... And Jesus/the followers of Jesus bring healing.
In simpler terms, Hirsch says, Christology determines missiology, and missiology determines ecclesiology.
Jesus Himself determines the local mission. And the local mission determines the structure of the local church.
Brent,
Well composed and carefully thought out.
Your last two sentences very aptly summarize what you say:
YOU are not the radical. All you are proposing is that we stay true to who we are as a tradition.
You are essentially right that all I am proposing is that we stay true to who we are.
I'd go just slightly farther and add that officially we claim to BE true to who we are. Officially we make the assertion that we are still carrying on the ministry that John Winebrenner began. If you doubt that, read the Introduction to We Believe.
All I'm doing is taking us at our word. I'm saying that if we want to be who we claim, then it's all Winebrenner all the time for us, baby!
I am, of course, also pointing out that the Emperor ain't wearing a stitch of clothing, because, in actual practice, it's nowhere close to all Winebrenner all the time.
If you doubt that, just read We Believe starting on the first page after the Introduction.
Now, this issue of radicalism is one that we need to think through. You are correct that in calling us back to Winebrenner that there is a sense in which I'm the most conservative person in the whole CGGC. I want as little to change as possible from the 1825-1844 period.
However, the reality may very well be that the most radical person in this movement's history has been Winebrenner himself. Take a look at my thread on the day he was baptized.
Winebrenner was a movement guy to the extreme! He could propose an extreme instantaneous shift in a teaching and practice as fundamental as baptism and expect that change to be accomplished in one afternoon.
The Shepherd Mafia that runs this joint is anything but radical. Shepherds are cautious and conservative and caring and comforting and they don't like change.
When confronted with the things that Winebrenner said and did they develop a rash.
I'm just guessing here that not one of them really buys this, "no authority but the Bible as our only rule of faith and practice" principle, which is the intellectual basis upon which Winebrenner built everything.
Here's something that's fun for you to try: Start going around the Allegheny Region pointing to your Bible and saying, "Only rule of faith and practice."
When someone pulls out the NCD material, shake your head and point to your Bible and shout the word, "ONLY" and then say "rule of faith and practice."
I may not be the radical. I may be the ultimate conservative. But, because I'm all Winebrenner all the time and HE is the radical, I am the radical.
CGGC shepherds really get sweaty palms when you try to explain to them how essentially radical we are.
Winebrenner was much more radical on sola fide than was anyone in the Reformation era. And, he was more radical on sola scriptura than anyone in the Reformation with the possible exception of the most wild-eyed of the Anabaptists.
We are one radical bunch when we live in the tradition of Winebrenner!
And, most of us are living in denial about that reality.
Bill, I'm not sure if you're ever considered this, but why not create something (a book or booklet) that brought Winebrenner to the masses in our denomination. Things from his ministry along with the Scripture he was dealing with in such a way that would challenge and inspire us all.
How can we be true someone so many don't know? If our pastors and leaders aren't all thinking deeply about Winebrenner's example, who can the rest of the people in our congregations ever be?
bill,
you said “For the church health advocate, church growth is scientific, not spiritual. It is natural, not supernatural. It is strategic. It is not prayer and repentance based. I have yet to hear a church health advocate suggest that church growth is founded on the biblical call for repentance.”
let me second dan m.’s thoughts that science (e.g. sociology) and strategy are not necessarily anti-Spirit. paul was very strategic on his missionary journey’s, basically hopping from city to city and leaving the rural areas unevangelized (which is why the word ‘pagan’, which originally meant one from the country, got its current connotation). our God is a God of order, as 1 cor. 14 speaks, and therefore it seems right that we should use what we understand of the order He’s created so that His kingdom might be built up.
this is not a defense of “church health” or ncd, because i really don’t know what the specifics of those are. if it is as you described, i thank God that He raised up such a prophet willing to denounce that which leads men away from dependence upon His grace. however, the word that paul often uses to describe sound doctrine in his letters, hygiaino, can also mean being or producing health. while the actual methodology may be in error, the linguistics of seeking to be “healthy”, from this and the examples i mentioned earlier, are not wrong when what “being healthy” means is defined correctly.
bill, i love your devotion to Scripture. it is honestly the biggest reason i’m still involved here (i used to be worried you guys were liberal/emergent types). your love and devotion to the Word are inspiring. my question would be, have you gone from sola Scriptura to solo Scriptura? from the Bible is our highest authority and only infallible rule of faith and practice, to the Bible is the only thing we can get anything useful from?
i say these things, not so that you would back down in the slightest, as i know you won’t. but i urge you, the way you’re wording things it seems that you’ve gone from all-shepherd to all-prophet as the rule, not Biblical balance. text is a limited medium, but i hope you can hear this as a brotherly concern.
brent,
i’m glad you brought up that presupposition, and i agree with the conclusions you came to. as far as the cGgc goes, if you don’t want to follow winebrenner, we love you, we count you as a brother, we pray that God blesses you, but this probably isn’t the place for you.
brian,
your critique of the lack of real, life-long discipleship is well made. this is perhaps a conversation for a different thread, but is the idea of small groups that are – from the one angle artificially, from the other intentionally – put together a good model for us to be following?
dan m.,
i completely agree. bill, some sort of introduction to the passion and vision of winebrenner is perhaps just the thing the cGgc needs right now to re-ignite it.
Mr.Sloat I agree with what you said that a church should be but to me they all describe a healthy church so my diffination of healthy must be different than yours. To bulid the body up, means to me to make it healthy. Paul wrote all his letters to churches who were having problems in other words they were unhealthy and he told them how to become well and to become one.
Walt,
I'm not sure who you mean by "you guys", because there are still some "liberal/emergent types" who participate here (only speaking for myself). And I don't know that it's fair to say "liberal" and "emergent" are the same thing; nor is it fair to imply that we aren't devoted to the Word. I don't think it's necessary for us to agree about everything to be able to converse. Just wanted to set the record straight. :)
I also have a general question for anyone. Is it being suggested that we need to become disciples of John Winebrenner or we need to leave the denomination? I can remember being told in 'Churches of God' history class that John was probably rolling over in his grave knowing the seminary was named after him. Which leads me to think he would be doing the same knowing people were saying we needed to be devoted to him (instead of devoted to Jesus) in order to be a part of the denomination he started. Let alone the whole 1 Cor. 1:11-13 thing. But maybe I'm misreading some of this. Just wondering. It's always kind of been my opinion that no one west of Pennsylvania (with the exception of a few Ohioans) really knew or cared much about John anyway. I could be wrong though.
To Dan’s point… I don’t think the answer is to try to be true to everything Winebrenner thought or taught, but rather to recapture the same radical spirit of faithfulness to Jesus and to contextualization of the mission of Jesus. Bill’s love of Winebrenner can make it sound like he’s advocating a mimic of all-thing Winebrenner, but Bill and I have talked about this a lot, and he advocates nothing of the sort.
To the “Healthy Church” question… I think NCD was developed with good motives, but was developed at a time when almost everyone in the evangelical stream was drinking from the shallow wells of the church growth movement. Being a “healthy church” is a good thing, but what that means is dependent on how we define health. Bill is defining health differently from NCD, and rightly so.
To Brian’s point (which seemed to be passed over in the flow of the conversation, but which is the “rubber meets the road” point)… ultimately, all this thinking must be played out in the one mission that Jesus gave the leaders of the first church: make disciples. Dallas Willard’s been saying it for years, and frankly, few have taken his cries seriously enough—the western church does not even have a viable commonly accepted concept of what a disciple is and looks like, or how one becomes one. We better get off our asses and get a bead on that, and attempt to do it in out own communities, or all other conversation may be a moot point.
walt,
let me second dan m.’s thoughts that science (e.g. sociology) and strategy are not necessarily anti-Spirit.
Whoa, Nellie Belle! (A little Roy Rodger’s Show, lingo, there--probably from before your parents’ were born.)
I know that when I get wound up about these things that I start froth at the mouth--you should see my lap top and the backs of my hands. Undoubtedly, I’m less than crystal clear in articulating my thoughts.
I’m not suggesting that science and strategy are antithetical to spirituality. All truth is of God.
What I am saying is that the notion that we should be about the business of building healthy churches is a theologically flawed idea it is foreign to Scripture. As I’ve said to you before, walt, natural metaphors abound in the Word. But, the church health metaphor is absent.
It would have been so easy for Jesus to have said, “I am the true vine and by father is the gardener…I am the vine, you are the branches,” be healthy branches. It would have been easy for Paul to have said that the Lord will continue to give the church apostles, prophets…so that the body of Christ may be healthy, but he didn’t.
The reality is that no healthy church devotee can define biblically what the qualities of a healthy church are because the term is absent from Scripture.
Despite all of the life and nature and organic metaphors in the word, no one was able to come up with the idea of building healthy churches without borrowing concepts from Deism.
Science and strategy are not anti-spirit but, from my observation, church health is unbiblical.
And, I’ll say this again too: Ministry in the New Testament was centered around God’s people giving themselves untiringly and passionately to prayer and to calling on all people to repent. The fruit of the healthy church idea--if you will--could not be further from the biblical reality.
I have been on the ERC Church Renewal Commission since it was formed in 2001. Twice in all those years we have advised a church to be in prayer--and then in both cases only for a period of 40 days. Only twice in over eight years! How’s that for ministry based on the New Testament model! And, in all those years we have never called a congregation or a ‘pastor’ to repent. Not even one time.
Now, we have paid for countless churches to take the NCD survey. We talk about writing Mission and Vision Statements. But, repentance? Huh? What’s that? Based on our actual practice, we don’t even know that word.
The reality is that the church health people I know are devoted servants of the Lord. Many of them get as close to loving Him with all their hearts as anyone I know. But, their methods are not spiritual because they are not biblical.
Now, admittedly, these observations are anecdotal. I’ve been passionate about renewal and have been working for it intentionally for more that 20 years. If anyone reading this can offer testimonies to me of healthy church people advocating the kind of passionate, focused prayer and repentance that was the way of the early church, I will be blessed to hear about it. I will be blessed all the more if it turns out that this is the rule, not the exception.
But, I’ve been listening carefully for decades. And, I’m not hearing that word ‘repent’ very often.
the word that paul often uses to describe sound doctrine in his letters, hygiaino, can also mean being or producing health. while the actual methodology may be in error, the linguistics of seeking to be “healthy”, from this and the examples i mentioned earlier, are not wrong when what “being healthy” means is defined correctly.
walt,
Am I correct that you are an undergrad student?
If so, you may not be familiar with the terms exegesis and eisegesis. Both terms describe the manner in which a reader finds meaning in a text. In the sphere in which all of us function in these discussions, the text in question is the Bible.
Exegesis, the “ex” coming from the Greek preposition, ek (meaning from or out of) is the self-conscious attempt to draw of out of a text the meaning that is there. We often promote the “expository” method of preaching, or preaching which intends to be faithful in exposing or taking from a text it’s meaning and making it plain.
Eisegesis, the “eis” coming from the Greek preposition, eis (meaning into or in) is the process of putting into a text a thought or thoughts that began in the mind of the interpreter. Protestants have always decried this approach to interpreting Scripture.
Here’s what I am saying: You can only find a call to build healthy churches in Scripture through the process of eisegesis. You can zip back in time the to the Age of Enlightenment, tweak its ideas about God, mix in a little Jesus, conceive of God as the Father/Son duo which has put in place universal life principles that apply to all organisms--even the church--and, then, AFTER you have done that, open your Bible and look for a call to build healthy churches.
Et voila! I guarantee that you will be able to find church health theology on pret‘near every page!
But, if you approach Scripture exegetically won’t find a call to build healthy churches . You will see a community of followers of the teachings of Jesus engaged in a spiritual, not natural battle, seeking to abide in Jesus though devotion to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. You will see the Lord adding to their number daily those who are being saved. You will see a proclamation of the Gospel rooted in calling all people to a life of repentance.
If you let the text show you its own truth, you will not find church health.
You can put church health into Scripture, but you can not take it out of Scripture because it is not there.
bill,…my question would be, have you gone from sola Scriptura to solo Scriptura? from the Bible is our highest authority and only infallible rule of faith and practice, to the Bible is the only thing we can get anything useful from?
Well said.
When I say that Winebrenner was extreme in his view of the authority of Scripture, I might very well, to use your term, say his view was solo Scriptura. He was that extreme.
I’ll say it again. The cGgc has extremely radical roots. In our best days we were so vastly different from what the Shepherd Mafia has made us that to face up to the reality of our heritage stuns and challenges us. The intellectual basis of our movement is Winebrenner’s extreme statement about the authority of Scripture:
The Church of God has no authoritative constitution, ritual, creed, catechism, book of discipline, or church standard, but the Bible. The Bible she believes to be the only creed, discipline church standard, the test-book, which God ever intended his church to have…She believes the Bible, or the canonical books of the Old and New Testament to be the word of God, a revelation from God to man, and the only authoritative rule of faith and practice.
That word “only” makes his view--OUR view--something very close to solo scriptura.
Is that radical? Yup. And, it is the intellectual basis up which the Church of God movement operated when it was a movement.
Fran said:
Bill’s love of Winebrenner can make it sound like he’s advocating a mimic of all-thing Winebrenner, but Bill and I have talked about this a lot, and he advocates nothing of the sort.
Thanks, Fran.
I know that I come across as a freak here from time to time. So, let me say this about that and let me make this perfectly clear:
The only thing I want us to hold on to that comes directly from Winebrenner is his statement that I believe in the intellectual basis of the movement he began.
That statement is this:
The Church of God has no authoritative constitution, ritual, creed, catechism, book of discipline, or church standard, but the Bible. The Bible she believes to be the only creed, discipline church standard, the test-book, which God ever intended his church to have…She believes the Bible, or the canonical books of the Old and New Testament to be the word of God, a revelation from God to man, and the only authoritative rule of faith and practice.
The 'only rule of faith and practice' line still is in We Believe. We believe it. We just don't DO it consistently.
If we DID it, we wouldn't be waist high in all this "Building Healthy Churches" garbage.
Thanks Fran, and Bill. For a second I was starting to think Bill might be a radical or something. ;)
I have no problem with Bill's admiration of Winebrenner. In fact, I admire it. However, being from Illinois (and now Indiana), I wasn't sure if some of you Pennsylvanian's were aware that not everyone in the cggc even knows who Winebrenner is. And after learning about him at WTS, I always thought he would like to be forgotten - at the expense of Jesus. Plus, I just wanted to make sure we weren't trying to make a ... how would you say it... Quadrity (Trinity plus 1). :)
Fair enough, Dan.
I've said at least once that I have no interest in canonizing Winebrenner or his thinking.
But, I just won't let the Shepherd Mafia continue to assert that it is keeping us true to what he started.
They ain't.
I think the conversation that we need to start is about the Bible. I've thought that for a while now.
I think that we need to work hard to gain some consensus about the Bible.
Bill: In your view, would the term 'fundamentalist' apply to Winebrenner?
The fact is that we probably know things as the result of scholarship that he simply did not.
While much critical Biblical scholarship was misguided, we cannot ignore scholarship. I know that none of us here are advocating this, but it stands nonetheless.
We urgently need to embrace a doctrine of Scripture advocated by Scripture and not developed out of modernity (or a reaction to it)and imposed on it.
dan h.,
i apologize if i used to wide a brush with that comment. i did not mean to imply that liberal and emergent are the same thing, but from my experience they tend to run along the same lines, namely, undermining the authority of Scripture, the reality of sin as individual (not just societal), the reality and eternality of hell, and the like. i am unaware of anyone (with you as an exception, if you claim it) who calls himself an "emergent" (not emerging) and remains faithful to historic orthodoxy on those and other points.
fran,
i may have put my wording a bit strongly on the winebrenner thing. allow me to retract that, and second what you and bill have since said.
bill,
i understand what you mean. i can have that same prophetic passion at times, where i don't choose my words very well and am misunderstood. thank you for clarifying. and yes, i am an senior undergrad, and i am familiar with those terms. thank you for pointing that out; tis an accurate correction when seen in that light.
as far as sola/solo Scriptura is concerned, i suppose the base of that question is there anything we can use other than Scripture, as long as it holds in line with Scripture? i'm thinking regulative-principle-type stuff. i think, from what you've said, that is not what you mean by "only rule", but just double-checking.
i hope that clears up a few things on my part.
Greetings Bill Sloat
You state:
"The Book of Acts describes the ministry of the church built on a belief in God as Trinity."
This is simply not true!
Throughout the Book of Acts, there is simply no explicit or enunciated doctrine of the trinity.
Rather, the Book of Acts portrays ONE GOD.
Whilst Jesus of Nazareth, is portrayed as the one man whom the ONE GOD resurrected, exalted & immortalized, and made him,
both Lord & Christ.
For more info, please see
The Book of Acts
And on the subject of the Trinity,
I recommend this video:
The Human Jesus
Take a couple of hours to watch it; and prayerfully it will aid you to reconsider "The Trinity"
Yours In Messiah
Adam Pastor
Back to the Healthy Church thread:
Bill: In your view, would the term 'fundamentalist' apply to Winebrenner? --Dan M.
No, Dan, in my opinion.
Fundamentalism was a respectable but reactionary theological movement that came out of Princeton Theological Seminary in the late 19th century, long after Winebrenner died.
It represents a different paradigm entirely than what Winebrenner was about. Briefly, Winebrenner was concerned with recreating the New Testament church. Fundamentalism was concerned with preserving core historic doctrines of the Reformers from the attacks of the theological liberals who surfaced after Winebrenner's death.
as far as sola/solo Scriptura is concerned, i suppose the base of that question is there anything we can use other than Scripture, as long as it holds in line with Scripture? i'm thinking regulative-principle-type stuff. i think, from what you've said, that is not what you mean by "only rule", but just double-checking. --walt
Walt,
I am perfectly aware that Winebrenner was extremely radical--in truth, he was far more radical than most cGgc people.
And, I am too.
I am calling us to return to his radicalism.
There are two terms that are often used to describe theologies of Winebrenner's type. One of the terms is restorationist--i.e., Winebrenner wanted to restore the New Testament church.
The other term is primitivist--i.e., Winebrenner wanted to return to the primitive form of Christianity that existed in its first generation.
I'm calling for a return to what is primitive--what is raw and radical and pure.
What might we become if became Winebrennerians who read Scripture on our knees?
What might be if we joined in community and let apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teaches BE themselves, seek the power and presence of the Holy Spirit and accept no authority among us except the God-breathed Scriptures?
hmm...I'm not sure how to respond to that.
I should have known that you'd answer the fundamentalist question from a church history perspective.
What I was getting at is, how do you think Winebrenner would have responded to biblical scholarship, new understandings, science, etc. Fundamentalist the way I use it is to not engage, entrench, etc.
The primitive thing is interesting. I need to think through that some. I guess my position would be that we must be in direct continuity with the early church, but I'm not at all sold that things ought to look Exactly like that. Certainly there were contextual elements. There are a lot of questions we might have about ministry the New Testament doesn't directly answer. I think that the early church gives us what is non-negotiable and a framework for how to look at other issues.
Dan.
Yes. You should have known my answer would be from a history perspective. That's where my thinking comes from. That's how I can be so aghast at the shepherd dominated leadership culture.
What I was getting at is, how do you think Winebrenner would have responded to biblical scholarship, new understandings, science, etc. Fundamentalist the way I use it is to not engage, entrench, etc.
Yikes, Dan! You are hitting me right where I live. I think I have an answer to that question but I doubt I can explain it well enough not to get myself in trouble.
The Fundamentalists responded to the science and higher biblical criticism of the late 1800s by retreating to classic Reformation theological concepts. Fundamentalism was a theological movement.
Winebrenner began a ecclesiological movement which was too radical to be confined by Reformation thinking in the first place. I am convinced that he would not have retreated to the five theological concepts of the Fundamentalists.
Here's what I think. This is where I may get myself in some trouble.
In the late 1800s primitivism was expressed most energetically in Pentecostalism.
I don't think that Winebrenner'd'a jumped on the tongues thing, but I suspect that he would have seen the primitive nature of gift-oriented Christianity.
If Winebrenner had still been around, I suspect that the Church of God might have responded differently to the spiritual gift stuff. Just my guess.
There is a way that we turned from primitivism at that point.
The primitive thing is interesting. I need to think through that some. I guess my position would be that we must be in direct continuity with the early church, but I'm not at all sold that things ought to look Exactly like that. Certainly there were contextual elements.
I agree. And, so did Winebrenner.
The goal of the Primitivist is to access the spirit of New Testament Christianity in one's own place and time.
I don't want to recapture the form of what the early believers did. I want to participate in who they were in Christ.
bill said: "The goal of the Primitivist is to access the spirit of New Testament Christianity in one's own place and time. I don't want to recapture the form of what the early believers did. I want to participate in who they were in Christ.
The question I've been asking over the years really comes to this, "in what ways have today's forms, now considered normative, impacted the participation of who they/we are in Christ?"
I would answer that forms have a direct and significant impact and that much if not most of what we would consider normative forms in the institutionalized church have been detrimental in both the spiritual and missional reality of the Bride of Christ.
Stepping into a prophetic mode, one could ask, "in what ways have we the church made idols out of forms and practices in the name of the institution and have placed these these beyond question resulting in a near-abandonment of our first love?" In other words, have we lost the wine for the sake of old, torn wineskins?
I have found in my years of leadership, that most "Church Health" practice concentrate 90% of it's energies on cleaning or painting old wineskins, while the wine turns to vinegar and the children eat sour grapes.
Anyhow, Brother bill. I know we have slightly different conclusions then on what wineskins would be most appropriate for today's culture, climate, and world-view. I don't think there is just one answer, but I know that things much change. ...and that change will likely require uncomfortable examination and corporate repentance in the Body of Christ.
Sean,
"in what ways have today's forms, now considered normative, impacted the participation of who they/we are in Christ?"
In ways too numerous to count. In ways so significant that it will take generations to complete the process of repentance, if we become serious about repenting.
I would answer that forms have a direct and significant impact and that much if not most of what we would consider normative forms in the institutionalized church have been detrimental in both the spiritual and missional reality of the Bride of Christ.
It is scientifically impossible for me to be in more total agreement with you!
Stepping into a prophetic mode, one could ask, "in what ways have we the church made idols out of forms and practices in the name of the institution and have placed these these beyond question resulting in a near-abandonment of our first love?" In other words, have we lost the wine for the sake of old, torn wineskins?
Can one say, "Amen!" to a rhetorical question? Or, is it "Amen?"
In fact, I am coming to the end of a series of 'messages' the end of which, I hope, will be the congregational decision to put an end to the sermon--the classic unbiblical form.
If we have a consumerist adaption of the Gospel, the major reason for that is the reality that people expect to consume truth when they gather for worship when the biblical model is that they participated as a community is communicating it in a variety of forms, none of which even remotely resemble the sermon!
We certainly have standardized things that are not essential in our structural and worship practices.
However, some people have done little more than change the structures thinking that the 'new wine' would come along with new styles.
Now we have different ministries and some of our churches have thrown out hymnals and pews thinking that style was the problem.
Style is the the problem. A mission driven church can sing from hymnals and sit in pews.
We've set up structures in a way that might not be necessary, but neither is it always wrong.
There is a difference between doing things a certain way and thinking that they NEED to be done that way.
Bill - I'm thinking of a book like Mark Noll's Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and thinking that we're still living in that problematic heritage - the whole evangelical church that is. I guess I'm just thinking through a lot of things right now...
The sermon thing is interesting. We'll have to talk more about that sometime.
Anybody here familiar with the recent book Total Church? I just ordered it after reading some interviews with one of the authors.
bill,
from your previous comments, i take your idea of primitivism to mean acting as a church corporately and as believers individually ought, as taught by the Scriptures, not a return to looking just the way they did. am i following you? if so, i say "amen, brother."
also, you said,
What might be if we joined in community and let apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teaches BE themselves, seek the power and presence of the Holy Spirit and accept no authority among us except the God-breathed Scriptures?
i like the general feel of this idea: Spirit-led, balanced giftings working in harmony, and Scripture as authority over all. sounds good and Biblical to me. however, the "accept no authority except Scripture" i feel compelled to warn against. i believe Scripture as highest authority, but the Scripture commands us to obey other authorities, like the government, church leadership, parents, etc. the NT often commands order and submission (e.g. 1 Cor. 14, 1 Peter 2&3)
Also, the same God who gave us His special revelation in the Word gave us general revelation in the world. so while all things should be tested by Scripture, using methods not mentioned in Scripture is not anti-Biblical. we use cars, yet the Bible doesn't mention those. we speak english, which wasn't spoken by the early church. Scripture is our highest authority and our clearest revelation from God about Himself and His works. at the same time, we may and often ought to use the cultural tools given to us, as long as they are not in opposition to Biblical principle. i'm all for being Biblical, but that also means not being legalistic like the pharisees or stuck in one culture like the judaizers. rather, we are to contend for timeless truth (cf. Jude 3) while contextualizing to the situation God has placed us in (cf. Acts 17)
you also say you want to "put an end to the sermon--the classic unbiblical form." i'm a little surprised at you here, in that sermons are preached throughout Acts, and the Epistles often call for the proclamation of the Word: monologue, not dialogue, except where the monologue is being tested (cf. 1 Cor 14). sermons are extremely Biblical, from beginning to end.
i hope this is constructive criticism and balanced encouragement for you, brother.
walt,
you also say you want to "put an end to the sermon--the classic unbiblical form." i'm a little surprised at you here, in that sermons are preached throughout Acts, and the Epistles often call for the proclamation of the Word: monologue, not dialogue, except where the monologue is being tested (cf. 1 Cor 14). sermons are extremely Biblical, from beginning to end.
What's clear to me is that there is some preaching in the Book of Acts--but not as much as you might think.
If you ever get to a seminary, walt, you'll get a definition of the sermon in your homiletics classes that defines the form in a way that you won't find it in Scipture, I'm afraid.
And, interestingly, in the only description of followers of Jesus in worship in Act 20:7f, Paul is not described as preaching (Kerusso) but as discussing or discoursing (dialegomai). And, the verb didasko (teach) appears twice as often in acts as kerusso.
Preaching plays a much less prominent role in the New Testament than life in our sermonphilic church culture would lead us to believe.
In fact, by far most of the appearances of the English word 'preach' in the Book of Acts translate the verb euangelizo--the verb form of the word, 'gospel,' often translated 'preach the gospel.'
(It is tragic that there is no easily translatable verb form of the word gospel in our language.)
bill,
perhaps we have different definitions of a sermon. mine is Biblical teaching in monologue, generally done exegetically (whether preaching through one passage of Scripture or systematically referencing several). this seems to occur throughout the Bible, from moses to the prophets to the apostles to other church leaders. and aren't we called to "preach (kerusso) the word" (2 tim. 4)?
you mention that "the verb didasko (teach) appears twice as often in acts as kerusso." i'm not very familiar with greek, but isn't teaching also generally done in monologue?
you also said that "by far most of the appearances of the English word 'preach' in the Book of Acts translate the verb euangelizo--the verb form of the word, 'gospel,' often translated 'preach the gospel.'" isn't the gospel generally preached, not dialogued over in these circumstances?
and just to go off of proverbial wisdom, "he who walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm" (prov. 13). isn't listening to teaching of those wiser and more learned in Scripture better than listening to those who have little idea of what they're talking about? i'm all for learning from our fellow believers, but it seems to me that not everyone should teach the assembled people of God; thus one of the qualifications of an elder is "able to teach" (1 tim. 3).
why does preaching seem so wrong to you?
walt,
If sermon means only to speak in a monologue then I guess that there are sermons all over the Bible.
While I've never done an intentional study, I'm not aware of much exegetical speaking in the Bible.
From what I can tell from Paul's teaching to the Corinthians he regarded five forms of communication as being appropriate for worship:
Interpreted tongues,
Revelation,
Knowledge,
Prophecy, and
Teaching.
No form of the word preach appears in 1 Corinthians 11-14 as far as I know.
While at least four of those five would, by definition, be monologues, neither would they be sermons as we think of sermons.
All four of those parts of worship could involve some level of monologue I suppose.
I believe that we must not devalue the descriptive teaching of Scripture and only look at the prescriptive.
What there is not example of in the N.T. is a specific exegetical monologue on one particular text. They tended to preach big picture stuff - salvation history.
I believe that the proclaimation of God's Word - is extremely important (even central).
I think that it can take different forms however and the way we do it is not the only way.
I understand Bill's struggles though and I'll be interested to see how you come out on this and how your worship gatherings change.
By the way, since we're in Winebrenner's heritage, we've got to preach!
dan m.,
if there's no exegetical preaching in the NT, what do you make of what Jesus does with the Isaiah text in Luke 4?
walt -
no is too strong of a term. What I should have said was the the apostolic preaching that we have recorded was mostly bigger picture stuff rather than exposition of 5 or 10 verses.
I am not saying that there is anything wrong with shorter passage exposition - I use this method mostly and will tomorrow morning. I'm just saying that it is not THE only way. There are other faithful ways of proclaiming God's word.
We don't know what Jesus said on that occasion after the first line. I think he was picking up the story where it left off in those people's minds and showing how he fulfills it - perhaps in a very similar way to what Peter does in his sermon after Pentecost.
Fair enough?
dan m.,
i'm sorry if my words came off with a tone of arrogant challenge; that was not my intent. my problem was primary with calling the sermon, or an exegetical exposition of Scripture, as the "classic unbiblical form," as discussed earlier.
i definitely agree it's not the only way to do things; the idea of freedom in worship, in as far as it follows the principles of Scripture, is pretty important in my mind. otherwise, we'd all have to learn hebrew or greek and our churches on sunday would be very uninviting, which i think is in conflict with some basic tenets of our faith.
so yes, fair enough.
cool. You'll recall that the statement about the sermon being an unbiblical form was not my statement.
It is interesting what we mean when we say 'biblical' or 'unbiblical' In my mind for something to be unbiblical, it would be in OPPOSITION to the teaching/example of scripture.
Furthermore, I care mostly about glorifying God, his church and his mission to the world and I care very little whether a ministry concept comes from the ideas of Hebrews, Greeks, Constantine or the Enlightenment.
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