Concomitant Individualism

Concomitant.

Now that is a good word.

Don't worry, I didn't know what this word meant either until I looked it up today, but it is a good word. Worth adding to your vocabulary.

Con-com-itant: (adj.) accompanying especially in a subordinate or incidental way [Dictionary]

The phrase "concomitant individualism" came from a quote from a book I was re-reading today-- Worship, Community, & The Triune God of Grace by J.B. Torrance (1996). JBT taught systematic theology at Aberdeen Scotland and he has done a lot of work on the Trinity. In this book he discusses the practical implications of the doctrine of the Trinity in our view of worship. I blogged on this book last year (click here).

Torrance uses the phrase "concomitant individualism" (go ahead and say "concomitant" out loud….it will be good practice for when you use it in a sentence and show off your intelligence to all your friends) when wrestling with shifting values in American culture and how the church should respond.

Individualism and concomitant individualism (go ahead and say it out loud again) is the unavoidable byproduct a over obsession with reason in Western culture. What so wrong with individualism you ask? Read JBT below:

But what happens in a secular culture where belief in the objectivity of God and of moral law recedes? Then, as Allan Bloom has argued so powerfully in The Closing of the American Mind, everything goes into flux (Heraclitus), and we witness a closing of the (American) mind, with a resultant collapse into narcissism, a preoccupation with the self—my rights, my life, my liberty, my pursuit of happiness. Religion then becomes a means toward self-realization. All the interest is in self-esteem, self-fulfillment, self-identity, the human potential movement and possibility thinking, leading either to nihilism of post-modernism or to the neo-gnosticism of the New Age movement which identifies the self with God. Know yourself. Realize your own identity. Then you will know God in the depths of your own spirituality…"

"What is the Christian answer? Is it to go back to Plato's Republic, as Allan Bloom suggests, to recover the objectivity of truth, beauty, goodness, justice. Is it to revive the older notions of natural law and moral law discerned by the kindly light of reason, with their concomitant individualism? Or is it not rather to return to "the forgotten Trinity"—to an understanding of the Holy Spirit, who delivers us from a narcissistic preoccupation with the self to find our true being in loving communion with God and one another – to hear God's call to us, in our day, to participate through the Spirit in Christ's communion with God and one another—to hear God's call to us, in our day, to participate through the Spirit in Christ's communion with the Father and his mission from the Father to the world—to create in our day A NEW HUMANITY of persons who find true fulfillment in other centered communion and service in the kingdom of God?"

J.B. Torrance, Worship, Community, & The Triune God of Grace, pg. 41

Concomitant individualism drives the consumerism that is eating away the soul of the Church in North America. I know that may sound like a pit of an overstatement, but I am NOT trying to exaggerate here. The "Me Church" is absolutely killing us. Check out this parody video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9dvVp0Nxjo

The idea that church exists to meet "my" needs distorts the church Jesus is working to build. Christians are good at dressing up their concomitant individualism in God-talk and Scripture verses ripped out of context. Think of how we often view worship in Christian community. We so often hear people talk about how worship made THEM feel. We hear about THEIR favorite songs and how the preacher gave THEM such wonderful insight on how to live THEIR life.

I am not becoming a cynic. I have my favorite worship songs. There are musical styles in church music that I like and some I don't like. I don't like old songs. And in our church we define old as anything written before 1991. Nothing from the 80s please! It isn't really old lyrics that bother me as much as old music. So I have things that fit my tastes when it comes to worship. There are certain Christian pastors and teachers that I like to listen to and there some I don't. The point is we cannot let these thoughts dominate our view of worship.

I found Torrance helpful in connecting the experiential significance of the Trinity to corporate worship. He describes the Trinity as a self-contained, self-sufficient, self-giving community of persons. God was intimately happy with the enjoyment of himself (Jonathan Edwards). He did not need anything to make him more God or more glorious.

We are standing on the outside like children in a crowded room of adults who are chatting passionately. We are jumping up to try to get a view into their conversation, but we are too little. Trinity community is just like that. God is a self-sufficient community. He does need anything. He certainly doesn't need us to add to him in any way. But because of this grace, he has opened himself up by the Son and the Spirit and invited us into to participate in this divine community. Now that will stick a dagger into the heart of consumer Christianity!

The new humanity (referred to by Torrance) is made up of persons wrapped up in Trinitarian life. We do not live for self like the old humanity. We do not live for self in any of its forms: self-actualization, self-ish pleasure, self promotion, etc. We live in Trinitarian community, a community focused on God himself and not us.

Anne Rice's New Book

I just ordered Anne Rice's new book, Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana. This is the sequel to her 2005 work, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt.

Read my review of Out of Egypt here.

I really enjoyed the first book and I am looking forward to reading the second in the series. Anne Rice, who is known for the Vampire Chronicles. A renewal of her faith in the late 90s and committed her writing career to the Lord. She has vowed to write books only for Jesus.

The following is an editorial she wrote in the Washington Post about her spiritual journey.

My Trust in My Lord
by Anne Rice

Look: I believe in Him. It’s that simple and that complex. I believe in Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the God Man who came to earth, born as a tiny baby and then lived over thirty years in our midst. I believe in what we celebrate this week: the scandal of the cross and the miracle of the Resurrection. My belief is total. And I know that I cannot convince anyone of it by reason, anymore than an atheist can convince me, by reason, that there is no God.

A long life of historical study and biblical research led me to my belief, and when faith returned to me, the return was total. It transformed my existence completely; it changed the direction of the journey I was traveling through the world. Within a few years of my return to Christ, I dedicated my work to Him, vowing to write for Him and Him alone. My study of Scripture deepened; my study of New Testament scholarship became a daily commitment. My prayers and my meditation were centered on Christ.

And my writing for Him became a vocation that eclipsed my profession as a writer that had existed before.

Why did faith come back to me? I don’t claim to know the answer. But what I want to talk about right now is trust. Faith for me was intimately involved with love for God and trust in Him, and that trust in Him was as transformative as the love.

Right now as I write this, our nation seems to be in some sort of religious delirium. Anti-God books dominate the bestseller lists; people claim to deconstruct the Son of Man with facile historical treatments of what we know and don’t know about Jesus Christ who lived in First Century Judea. Candidates for public office have to declare their faith on television. Christians quarrel with one another publicly about the message of Christ.

Before my consecration to Christ, I became familiar with a whole range of arguments against the Savior to whom I committed my life. In the end I didn’t find the skeptics particularly convincing, while at the same time the power of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John swept me off my feet.

And above all, when I began to talk to Jesus Christ again it was with trust.

On the afternoon in 1998 when faith returned, I experienced a sense of the limitless power and majesty of God that left me convinced that He knew all the answers to the theological and sociological questions that had tormented me for years. I saw, in one enduring moment, that the God who could make the Double Helix and the snow flake, the God who could make the Black holes in space, and the lilies of the field, could do absolutely anything and must know everything --- even why good people suffer, why genocide and war plague our planet, and why Christians have lost, in America and in other lands, so much credibility as people who know how to love. I felt a trust in this all-knowing God; I felt a sudden release of all my doubts. Indeed, my questions became petty in the face of the greatness I beheld. I felt a deep and irreversible assurance that God knew and understood every single moment of every life that had ever been lived, or would be lived on Earth. I saw the universe as an immense and intricate tapestry, and I perceived that the Maker of the tapestry saw interwoven in that tapestry all our experiences in a way that we could not hope, on this Earth, to understand.

This was not a joyful moment for me. It wasn’t an easy moment. It was an admission that I loved and believed in God, and that my old atheism was a façade. I knew it was going to be difficult to return to the Maker, to give over my life to Him, and become a member of a huge quarreling religion that had broken into many denominations and factions and cults worldwide. But I knew that the Lord was going to help me with this return to Him. I trusted that He would help me. And that trust is what under girds my faith to this day.

Within days of my return to Christ, I also became aware of something very important: that the first temptation we face as returning Christians is to criticize another Christian and his or her way of approaching Jesus Christ. I perceived that I had to resist that temptation, that I had to seek in my faith and in my love for God a complete certainty that He knew all about these factions and disputes, and that He knew who was right or who was wrong, and He would handle how and when He approached every single soul.

Why do I talk so much about this trust now? Because I think perhaps that with many Christians it is lacking, and in saying this I’m yielding to the temptation I just described. But let me speak my peace not critically so much as with an exhortation. Trust in Him. If you believe in Him, then trust Him. Trust what He says in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and trust what He says about having conquered evil; trust that He has won.

Don’t ever succumb to the fear that evil is winning in this world, no matter how bad things may appear. Don’t ever succumb to the fear that He does not witness our struggles, that He is not with every single soul.

The Sermon on the Mount is the portion of the New Testament to which I return again and again. I return to the simple command: “Love your enemies.” And each day brings me closer to understanding that in this message lies the blueprint for bringing the Kingdom of God to Earth. The Sermon on the Mount is the full blueprint. And it is not impossible to love our enemies and our neighbors, but it may be the hardest thing we have ever been asked to do.

But we can’t doubt the possibility of it. We must return to Jesus Christ again and again, after our failures, and seek in Him --- in His awesome majesty and power -- the creative solutions to the problems we face. We must retain our commitment to Him, and our belief in a world in which, conceivably, human beings could lay down their arms, and stretch out their arms to one another, clasping hands, and bring about a total worldwide peace.

If this is not inconceivable, then it is possible. And perhaps we are, in our own broken and often blind fashion, moving towards such a moment. If we can conceive of it and dedicate ourselves to it, then this peace on earth, this peace in Christ, can come.

As we experience Easter week, we celebrate the crucifixion that changed the world. We celebrate the Resurrection that sent Christ’s apostles throughout the Roman Empire to declare the Good News. We celebrate one of the greatest love stories the world has ever known: that of a God who would come down here to live and breathe with us in a human body, who would experience human death for us, and then rise to remind us that He was, and is, both Human and Divine. We celebrate the greatest inversion the world has ever recorded: that of the Maker dying on a Roman cross.

Let us celebrate as well that throughout this troubled world in which we live, billions believe in this 2,000-year-old love story and in this great inversion -- and billions seek to trust the Maker to bring us to one another in love as He brings us to Himself.

Source: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2008/03/go_tell_it_on_the_mountain_aga.html

Good Friday 2008

Today is Good Friday.

It is a day of prayer, fasting, confession, repentance, and reflection on the sorrow of the cross.
It is good, because of death, Jesus' death.
It is not a "happy-go-lucky" kind of "good."
It is a redemptive good.
It is a reflective good.
It is a soul-searching good.

It is good, because it prepares us for Easter Sunday. You cannot experience the JOY of the RESURRECTION without reflecting on the SORROW of the CROSS.

I am preparing for two services today. Our church will host a noon-time community worship service as a part of the SAMA's Holy Week services. (SAMA is the Sumter Area Ministerial Association based here in Americus.) We will then hold our annual Good Friday Service tonight at 6:30. I am humbled that a few pastor friends will be in attendance.

My message tonight grows out of reflections from this week. Here are my thoughts on the cross for this Good Friday.

Forsaken

The death of Jesus was a shock to his followers. His original twelve disciples left their families and gave up business to follow Jesus who they thought was their king.

Earlier, James and John, the Zebedee brothers, had asked Jesus to give them places of honor in the kingdom Jesus would build on earth. Jesus replied… “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” (Mark 10:38 NIV)

“The cup” was not the sweet wine of victory, but the bitter cup of suffering.
“The baptism” was not with water, but with torture and ultimate death.

They just didn’t get it. They didn’t know what they were asking…

On the night when Jesus was arrested, the Bible says: "Then everyone deserted him and fled" (Mark 14:50 NIV).

When Jesus was arrested it was dark, not only because it was NIGHT, but because Jesus felt the coldness and darkness of abandonment and rejection.

We worship Jesus as God
And he is a God who understands human suffering.

Have you ever felt abandoned?
Have you ever felt rejected by someone you loved?
Have you been cheated on?
Have you been lied to by someone who said they loved you?
Have you felt betrayed by your friends?
Have you ever felt isolated?
Have you ever felt alone?

You are not alone, Jesus really and truly understands what you are going through. He doesn’t merely understand, because he is God and he knows everything. Jesus understands, because on the day of his death, he felt the same rejection, the same isolation, the same feeling of being forsaken.

After nails were driven into his hand and feet and he had suffered bleeding and dying on a Roman cross, he felt as if even his own Father had forsaken him. Out of his agony of body and soul, he screamed: My God, my God why have you forsaken me?!? (Mark 15:34)

I wonder…
At the cross, where were the crowds?
Where were the crowds of people celebrating his entry into Jerusalem?
The haters were there.
The soldiers were there.

Where were the ten lepers he touched?
Where were the crowds he fed?
Where were the people he healed?
Where was the woman with the issue of blood?

Pilate was there.
The criminals were there.
The religious leaders who felt threatened by him were there.
His mother was there weeping.

Where was Nicodemus?
Zacchaeus?
Bartimaeus?
Where was Peter’s mother-in-law?
Where was Peter for that matter?

In addition to the cruelty and excruciating physical pain of the cross, Jesus experienced the loneliness and agony of abandonment and rejection.

The English word “excruciating” comes from the Latin word excruciates, which has two Latin roots ex, meaning “from” and crux meaning “cross.”Excruciating literally means “from the cross.” It appeared in the English language in the sixteenth century to express the meaning of intense pain and anguish.

Jesus had a real human body and so he felt real physical pain, excruciating pain. But Jesus also had a real human soul and so he felt real emotional pain, the despair of a soul that had been forsaken and rejected.

He fulfilled his own prophecy:
The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. (Luke 9:22 NIV)

The death of Jesus is not the testimony of a revolutionary dying for a cause.
Many revolutionaries have come and gone.

His death is not a story of inspiration to motivate us to live a life of self-sacrifice. Many inspirational stories have come and gone.

The cross is the pinnacle of both human history and the climax of God’s salvation history.

Jesus suffered rejection at the cross for our sin.
He suffered the rejection and abandonment we deserve.
The penalty for sin is not just physical death, but the second death, a death after death. Jesus called this place hell.

What makes the wrath of hell so awful is not the flames and fire and heat, but the reality that God is not there.

God’s ultimate punishment for sin is not sadistically torturing people with fire, but completely abandoning us and turning us over to our sin if we choose not to repent.

The Bible uses a number of metaphors to describe hell:
o Fire and brimstone (Revelation 14:11)
o Lake of fire (Revelation 20:14)
o A place where not even worms die (Mark 9:46)
o Tormenting flame (Luke 16:24)

But maybe the best description of hell is simply “darkness.”
Jesus tells a story of a master who gave his servants a bunch of money and one of them did nothing with it. The Master called that servant “worthless.” Then the master said, "And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 25:30 NIV)

What makes hell horrible is that God is not there.

Currently, everyone experiences God’s common grace. He power and presence in sustaining all he created. It is hard for us to really understand God's common grace, because it is all around. It is by his grace we have air to breath, sunlight, rain, vegetation, gravity, relative social order, etc. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:17 NIV).

In hell, God’s common grace is removed. It is an empty and lonely eternal existence of abandonment and rejection that will torment all who choose to remain in their sin.

At the cross, Jesus suffered the hellish wrath of abandonment for us. He became our substitute. His act of sacrifice became a way for us to be rescued from our sin.

Romans 5:6-9 NIV You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. [7] Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. [8] But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. [9] Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!

Our response:
Prayer
Confession
Repentance
Communion

May your Good Friday be sorrowful and may your Easter Sunday be a celebration!

Tori Vreeland

I am an uncle!

My sister-in-law, Jenny gave birth to Victoria Annette Vreeland yesterday at 1:36pm. The baby weighed 8 pounds 13 ounces and she was 20 inches long. My brother Jeff and sister-in-law Jenny (that's right, there are two Jenny/i Vreelands in the world) are going to call her Tori. What a great name!

Mom and baby are doing great. Dad is wondering what he has got himself in to! Ha! Seriously, they are going to be great parents.

Check out that beautiful Vreeland nose on that kid! Jeff, my son Wesley, and I all have that beautiful round, predominate nose. What a great looking girl...

Pentecostal Scholars

I am at Duke University today.

I took this picture of the inside of the Duke Chapel with my cell phone. I can't believe I forgot a camera! The chapel is unbelievable.

I am delivering a paper tomorrow morning at the Society for Pentecostal Studies (SPS) meeting here at Duke university. Not in the Chapel, but in some tiny classroom.

My paper is entitled, "Rediscovering the Holy in the Spirit: Spiritual Transformation and Leadership Growth."

The SPS is made up of a group of Pentecostal/charismatic scholars (and scholar wannabes like me!). According to their website: The purpose of the society is to stimulate, encourage, recognize, and publicize the work of Pentecostal and charismatic scholars; to study the implications of Pentecostal theology in relation to other academic disciplines, seeking a Pentecostal world-and-life view…

I know that sounds like an oxymoron – "Pentecostal scholars" – but it is true. These are the good guys. These are the guys (and gals) who want to live an integrate life of the Scripture and the Spirit. See my blog post below. I am such a theological lightweight compared to the core group of scholars here, but they certainly challenge me.

I got here yesterday. Here is a brief rundown on the last 24 hours.

I spoke to a friend in Vancouver, BC last night over Skype, which allowed us to talk with video and audio over the Internet. Yeah, we were over 3,000 miles apart when we spoke.

This morning, I got a call from Richard Roberts (not the former president of ORU, but our missionary in Taiwan). He called my cell and we talked about the ministry in Taiwan.

You have to love technology.

I got four books from Baker Academic Books, which had all their books 50% off at the SPS conference. Oh my! I was like Jenni in a shoe store where all brown sandals had gone on sale.

Here is what I picked up:

John Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct?
I just had an email conversation about this book and then I go to the conference and there it was on the book table. Of course I had to buy it. You can't argue with providence like that!

James Wilhoit, Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered
This is hot off the press – February 2008. I am going to preach a series after Easter called "Inner Change." It will discuss my Trinitarian vision of spiritual transformation and I hope the sermons will be seeds for chapter in a book that I am writing on spiritual transformation. One of the messages (chapters) is one the role of Christian community in reflection of Trinitarian community in the process of transformation. This book will be helpful, I have already scanned through it.

Craig Keener, Gift and Giver
This book has been celebrated as a good discussion of charismatic theology. I have always had it on my list to add to my library. I got it for like 10 bucks today. Couldn't pass it up.

Graham Twelftree, In the Name of Jesus: Exorcism among Early Christians
I listened to a presentation by Twelftree today on this book. He teaches in the Ph.D. program at Regent University. He is a Vineyard guy from England. Interesting presentation today on the book. He researched exorcism (also known as deliverance or casting out demons.) His research revealed that there wasn't much talk of casting out demons in the early church. He also pointed out the gospel of John doesn't record Jesus casting out demons.

He ended his talk by saying that in the church we cannot make too much of "the power encounter" approach of dealing with demon spirits. The few records of exorcism in the early church was that they were very brief encounters, not long drawn out, and dramatic as portrayed in American pop culture (i.e. The Exorcist; The Exorcism of Emily Rose).

He ended his presentation with these words about the role of casting out demons (exorcism) in the local church: Although I do not wish to dispense with exorcism as part of the repertoire for contemporary ministry, I can no longer hold the view that, unless involved in exorcism, the church will fail to address all expressions of evil. The church is able to confront the demonic with an exorcist or with the Truth.

Wise words.

Tonight the keynote address is from Jugen Moltmann, a theological heavyweight. I have my moleskine ready...

Men who are influencing me

Men need the influence of other men in their lives if they are going to continue to grow spiritually and mentally. I feel the weight and responsibility of that as a Dad of two boys. Last Saturday, Wesley (my oldest) and I were sitting outside. We had been burning brush all day and we had taken a break. As we sat on our outdoor swing, Wesley put his hand on my shoulder and said, "This is good father/son bonding time." Very astute for an eight year-old.

This did get me thinking about the men who are influencing me today. I only have a personal relationship with one of these men. The rest of them have been influencing me through some kind of media (books, music, podcasts, etc.) This list changes as influences change, but these are the men who are shaping my thinking today. These men have produced the voices, the one-liners, the paradigms of thinking that are rolling around in my head. (And no, I am not hearing voices!) These are the men who are speaking to me, the men who are challenging me. These are in no particular order.

Mark Driscoll
http://www.marshillchurch.org/

I listen to his weekly, one-hour-long sermons every week. I first discovered Mars Hill Church in the late 1990s in my research on postmodernism. They were held up as an example of the postmodern church. Today no one is really using the term "postmodern" and Driscoll and the church has ceased to be identified by that title. In Driscoll I have a great deal of comradery, because he is a good mix of theological depth and pop culture-infused humor. He is the most persuasive Calvinist I have ever heard. He has helped me reframe salvation in terms Reformed theology. Don't get me wrong. I am not a Calvinist, but Driscoll and others (including Bruce Ware and Mark Dever) have caused me to take a few theological steps in their direction. Or should I say, God preordained that by his grace I would shift in their direction!

Eugene Peterson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_H._Peterson

I continue to quote him and ask myself, "What would EP think?" He was a Presbyterian pastor for some thirty years, taught pastoral and spiritual theology, and translated (paraphrased?) the Bible into modern English in recent years. He has written a number of books on pastoral leadership and spirituality. His recent trilogy Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, Eat This Book, and The Jesus Way have been extremely influential books. Peterson has a keen theological mind and a heart that is passionately in love with the local church. He is THE pastor of pastors.

Ignatius of Antioch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_of_Antioch

He has been dead for a long time. He died a martyrs death in Rome. He was thrown to the wild beasts. On his way from Antioch to Rome he was in chains, but wrote seven letters to seven churches. I read through them recently and they read much like the biblical epistles. He died in 110 AD and is one of the earliest church fathers. He was passionate about the establishment of orthodox Christian doctrine over the heresies of other groups, especially the Gnostics. I was reading one of his letters one morning and I was struck by the fact that here I was reading his writings some 1900 years after this man's death. I was able to do that, because he took the time to write. Ignatius has challenged me to continue writing.

Brian Zahnd
http://www.brianzahnd.com/

Brian is the only guy on my list that I know personally. He has been my pastor since I was in college and there was a time when I thought we were going in separate directions. Over the last three to four years he has been re-thinking, re-living, and re-preaching the Christian life in a way that is larger than any one Christian tradition. He continues to challenge me with his theological pursuits and his reading list. His teaching is dominated by five themes – cross, mystery, eclectic, community, and revolution. I listen to him weekly.

Bob Dylan
http://www.bobdylan.com/

I put Bob under Brian, because Brian gave me an introduction to Dylan back in 2005. At that time I had two of Dylan's gospel albums – Slow Train Coming and Saved. I was interested in Dylan's gospel albums, but I hadn't stepped into Dylan's world at that time. In December 2006, I got two Dylan albums for Christmas. Since that time, I have got deeper and deeper into the world of Bob Dylan. It is a strange and fascinating journey through the life of a poet. (Dylan says he has always been a poet first and a musician second.) I am now beginning to speak Dylan-ese, that is, inserting Dylan lyrics into my writing, speaking, thinking, and conversations. Many of Dylan's songs have become paradigms in which to sort things out. I know have 15 albums and a couple of bootlegs, and four DVDs. I have 185 songs to date. Dylan has released 44 albums, so I am only just beginning!

Wayne Grudem
http://www.phoenixseminary.edu/Default.aspx?tabid=155

Grudem is one of my favorite theologians. If I would ever do a Ph.D in systematic theology, I would study under him. I have found his abbreviated theology, Bible Doctrine: Essential Teachings of the Christian Faith, to be a helpful resource. I turn to it time and time again. He comes from a Reformed background, but has done some good work in the area of charismatic theology. He is thoughtful and thorough in his theological treatments. This book is a scaled down version of his larger Systematic Theology and an easier read for pastors or Bible study leaders. I highly recommend it.

Robert Lewis
http://www.mensfraternity.com/

Last fall our church started a Men's Fraternity, a men's ministry pioneered by Robert Lewis at Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock. The book that we have been going through is The Quest for Authentic Manhood, written by Lewis. We are coming to the end of our course of study, but it has been good for me and then men at our church. I have become increasing passionate to reach men and connect men with Jesus and the Church. For so long the local church has been considered a woman's thing. One of the reasons is because we have failed to raise up strong, godly men in our church. MF has been a great way for us to do this, to raise up men who REJECT passivity, ACCEPT responsibility, and LEAD courageous. These three themes have been dominating my thinking recently.

These men are changing my way of thinking and, hopefully, changing my way of living.

Gonna change my way of thinking,
Make myself a different set of rules.
Gonna put my good foot forward,
And stop being influenced by fools.

Scripture and the Spirit

After some reflection on my previous post "Theology and 'the Supernatural' in the Life of the Church," I feel compelled to attempt to restate my point in a much more simple way. Last Wednesday, I took my small group through a scaled down version of some of the weighty themes of theology and supernatural experience. It was a disaster. I tried to cover too much material with not enough time and I ended up confusing the issues more than clarifying them. I could kick myself. I will forever remember the blank looks and squinted-eyes when I made comments like "the activity of the Spirit is not irrational, but it is non-rational." I think I ended up sounding non-rational. Aghhh….

I got a head full of ideas
That are drivin' me insane.

A much more simple way to make my point would have been to say that we are going to be a church that is devoted to both the Scripture and the Spirit.

It seems like I have rubbed elbows over the last 18 years with Christians who tend to go to one extreme or the other. Either they embrace the Scripture to the exclusion of the Spirit or they embrace the Spirit to the exclusion of the Scripture. My point is that we need an integration of both the Scripture and the Spirit.

Furthermore our Christian life needs to be defined in terms of Scripture over the Spirit. Our understanding of the Scripture ought to guide and shape our spiritual experience and not the other way around. Christians who define their faith by mystical, spiritual experiences never end up in a good place. God has given us the Scripture as the vocabulary to define our spiritual experience.

I am not suggesting that Scripture can be understood and lived out in purely rational terms.
I am not suggesting that having all the right information from the Scripture about God is sufficient for the Christian life.
I am not suggesting that the work of theology is only done by the power of reason.
I am suggesting (and firmly stating) that Scripture, and not the Spirit, is our final authority. This position is the standard for Evangelicals and for most Pentecostal/charismatics who I include within the Evangelical stream. Traditionally, Pentecostals and charismatics have been "people of the book." Charismatics movements that desire experience over the teaching of Scripture typically burn out or dry up.

I know there are some who would say, "Are you saying that the Scripture is more reliable than God?" Of course not.

Here is the issue— I do not doubt the reliability of the Spirit's guidance, but I do doubt my ability to hear and understand him perfectly. Remember that the Scripture was inspired by the Holy Spirit. Only the biblical writers were so inspired by the Spirit that their writings are unquestionably reliable. I can trust Paul when he says, "The Lord told me," because God the Holy Spirit was using him to write Scripture. I cannot always trust some guy who says, "The Lord told me," even if he has big hair, tacky clothes, a big TV ministry, and the title "Prophet" in front of his name. The Holy Spirit does speak, guide, direct, counsel, convict, and prompt people today. He does, on occasion, grant Christians experiences which are mystical, other-worldly, and transcendent. I have cherished the spiritual experiences—the divine encounters—that I have had with the Holy Spirit over the years, but I cannot build my faith on these. Experiences with (in?) the Holy Spirit are signposts on my spiritual journey, but they are not the soil in which my faith is rooted. Scripture as watered by the Spirit is the only fertile ground in which I can grow.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 NIV All Scripture is God‑breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

…I'm beginning to believe what the scriptures tell…