Yearly Archives: 2011

discipleship, Ministry

Get the Focus Off the Externals

12:50 PM Do you remember the words of missionary martyr Jim Elliot?

We are “sideliners” — coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers. Oh that God would make us dangerous!

I thought of these words today when I read this comparison between being “imprisoned” by church traditions and literal imprisonment for the sake of Christ. As many of you know, I often travel to Asia, Africa, and the Middle East assisting the persecuted church. I have seen the suffering, up close and personal. As much as I deplore many of our unbiblical church traditions, I find the comparison unhelpful and inaccurate. Of course many of us feel trapped in our manmade traditions. And yes, we are called to suffer for the sake of Christ (Phil. 1:29). But the suffering of the persecuted church is, in my mind, in another category altogether, and I will continue to do whatever I can to make Americans who are cozy sitting in their padded pews (or on their living room sofas) as uncomfortable as possible about it. Not only do I make no apologies for it, I think that with every passing year it becomes more and more obvious to me that the most important thing we can be doing in our churches — regardless of our ecclesiology — is to get rid of our lukewarm insipid faith and take up the cross of self-discipline, suffering, and real sacrifice for the sake of the Gospel. If I have any prayer for the readers of my blog, it is that God will use it to help you take steps in this direction in your personal and congregational life. Jesus is calling all of us to a radical lifestyle lived from obedience that affects the world. With tears in my eyes, I say that as long as we are content to live out a religion of externals (home church versus institutional church, the Lord’s Supper as a full meal versus the Lord’s Supper as bread and cup, etc.), we will continue to miss the mark. Never in the history of the world has there been so much discussion about the church and Christianity but, I feel, so little real knowledge of God. Jesus made it clear that His mandate for each of us is to do the will of the Father by going into the fields just as the Father sent Him (John 4:34-38). This means that “missions” is not just one of several options for our churches. God is not asking us to give money to missions. He is asking us to make missions the central passion and thrust of our lives and congregations. When I think of your church, is that what I think of? Or of my church? Tragically, many of us have developed a church-first mentality that is distracting us from our main task. I should know, because I have been the chief of sinners in this regard.

There is a way out of this mess. New Testament Christianity is not reserved only for super saints who are doing all the “right” things church-wise. It is for every believer, whatever your church structure, whatever your location or occupation, whatever your circumstances in life. Jesus wants to live His life through us in the world. The only question is: Will we let Him? Our problem today is that we want it all, and we want it now. But we have to choose our priorities. Yes, I will continue to call us back to the Scriptures as far as church life is concerned. But my constant prayer is that God will help me to do it with a broken heart and with a renewed willingness to make a deliberate calculation to accept sacrifice and suffering for the sake of following Christ.

For more on this subject, see my essay Paper Perfect Churches.

(HT: Threads)

(From Dave Black Online. David Alan Black is the author of Energion titles Christian Archy, The Jesus Paradigm,  Why Four Gospels? and the forthcoming Will You Join the Cause of Global Missions?. Used by permission.)

Ministry

Reading for a Church Leadership Workshop

11:02 AM On Dec. 4 I will be holding a church leadership workshop in Durham, NC. I thought you might be interested in the reading assignments that must be completed prior to the workshop. If you are interested in the topic, you might want to take a look at them yourself. You can print out the list and check off the boxes as you complete your reading.

□ The Book of Acts.

Essays by Alan Knox:

□ 1. Elders (Part 1) – Introduction Continue reading Reading for a Church Leadership Workshop →

Book Extracts, discipleship, Ministry

Missional Task is the Basis of Christian Unity

8:42 AM Hello Internet friends,

Some of you who have been reading this site for a while may recall that I’ve been working on a new book called Will You Join the Cause of Global Missions? My desire is to reflect accurately what Scripture teaches in the area of associating with non-Christians and their world. I’m not especially concerned with our hallowed manmade traditions of doing missions. I feel like I’ve hit on some insights that provide a framework that allows me to combine the twin foci of unity and missions that we see throughout the New Testament. So if you’ll bear with me, I think I’ll introduce you to a few quotes from the forthcoming book. For starters, here’s something to chew on:

Jesus’ disciples enjoyed community simply because Jesus and not a set of dogmas was at the center of their life. They never tried to “build community.” They didn’t have to. Community was the result of being united in the Christian mission; community emerged naturally when they committed themselves to something bigger than themselves. And so it is in the church today. It is my personal observation that most Christians begin to enjoy genuine community only when they begin to serve the poor, evangelize the lost, and plant churches. The glue that unites them is the missional task of loving their neighbors. A shared sense of mission drives them to community. Their congregations are mission-shaped. Like Jesus, they literally go. For them the Bible, not tradition, is normative, and they hold themselves accountable to each other in love even while they work closely with the surrounding neighborhood, developing strong links between Christians and not-yet Christians.

I think it’s very clear that the New Testament affirms Christian mission as the basis for our unity in the Body of Christ. I feel compelled, out of fidelity to Jesus, to repudiate the notion that cooperation is impossible on a practical level. I’ll leave you with this teaser thought: Jesus prayed for our unity in John 17. Can Jesus pray a prayer and it not be answered?

Enjoy the Lord’s Day!

Dave

(From Dave Black Online. David Alan Black is the author of Energion titles Christian Archy, The Jesus Paradigm, Why Four Gospels?, and the forthcoming book Will You Join the Cause of Global Missions. Used by permission.)

Christian Unity, discipleship

Changing in a Grace-Filled Way

1:02 PM This week in our Greek 3 class we exegeted Phil. 4:1-9, a passage full of references to the need for unity and cooperation in the cause of the Gospel. I want to say from the start that I have tremendous respect for my students who are trying to effect changes in their churches. I deeply appreciate the fact that they want to go about the process in a way that is conducive to unity and does not fight against it. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do think it is wrong to force change without at least doing our very best to build a consensus. Commenting on harmony in the church, Howard Marshall (New Testament Theology, p. 347) writes:

Such harmony could arise in two ways. One possibility is that there is considerable toleration of different points of view, so that people do not fight over differences of opinion on nonessential matters. The other possibility is that people are united because they are in agreement about how they should think and act.

Continue reading Changing in a Grace-Filled Way →

discipleship

True Homeland Security

7:10 PM Good evening, thoughtful bloggers of cyberdom! I want you to meet James. I thought of James while we were discussing Epaphroditus in Greek 3 class on Tuesday. James was my translator when I trekked among the Guji tribe in southern Ethiopia a couple of years ago. At the time he was a young and optimistic 24-year old, freshly graduated from the university. All who knew him loved him. His smile was infectious and so was his passion for the Gospel. Well, when Jason Evans (one of my elders at Bethel Hill) and I decided to minister among the Gujis, we needed a translator, but not just any translator.

Continue reading True Homeland Security →

Discussion

On the Authorship of Hebrews

Richard Ousworth has published a fine piece called What Are They Saying about the Letter to the Hebrews? (.pdf). Much of it is a review of Alan Mitchell’s recent commentary in the Sacra Pagina series. As someone who has published a number of essays on Hebrews, I was interested in this quote about authorship:

Let us begin, then, with authorship. It continues to be obligatory,
apparently, to quote Origen’s remark, cited by Eusebius (Church History
6.25.14) that ‘only God knows’ who wrote the Epistle, though in fact – as
Mitchell correctly points out – Origen did in several places defend the
Pauline authorship of Hebrews (see e.g. Letter to Africanus 8, Contra
Celsum 3.35 and 7.29). It is surprising, though, that Mitchell spends as
long as he does dealing with the only recent serious defence of Pauline
authorship, by D.A. Black in Faith and Mission 18 (2001). Some of
Black’s arguments are seriously flawed, and every modern commentary
offers a long and convincing list of reasons for thinking that, while there
are intriguing parallels between Hebrews and some Pauline theology –
and of course the reference to Timothy at the end of the last chapter – this Epistle simply cannot be of Pauline authorship in any meaningful sense.

I dare say I am honored to have been mentioned as someone who has given a “serious” defense of Pauline authorship. I strongly disagree, however, with the notion that Hebrews “cannot be of Pauline authorship in any meaningful sense.” If you’d like to know why, see my essay. Suffice it to say here that the external evidence continues to be overlooked in certain circles, and it is the external evidence that, in my view, is probative.

(From Dave Black Online. David Alan Black is the author of Energion titles Christian Archy, The Jesus Paradigm, and Why Four Gospels?. Used by permission.)

Books

New Book: Except for Fornication

1:58 PM This week I completed the editing of what I believe may well become one of the most important and helpful books ever to have been written on the difficult subject of Christian marriage and divorce. The book is entitled Except for Fornication: The Teaching of the Lord Jesus on Divorce and Remarriage.

From the author page:

Dr. H. Van Dyke Parunak is currently the Chief Scientist at Vector Research Center with Jacobs Engineering Group, Michigan. He has an AB in Physics from Princeton University, an MS in Computer and Communication Sciences from the University of Michigan, a ThM in Old Testament from Dallas Theological Seminary and his PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University. Dr. Parunak has over 100 publications in journals and highly-refereed conferences.

This book strikes me as a model of exegesis and interpretation. Not all will agree with its conclusions, but few, I believe, will be able to ignore its biblical arguments.

 

(From Dave Black Online. David Alan Black is the author of Energion titles Christian Archy, The Jesus Paradigm, and Why Four Gospels?. Used by permission.)

Ministry

Equipping is not Delegating

7:55 AM Equipping is not delegating. Think about it. Pastors who think they are equipping may only be delegating.

  • They enlist the help of other members but only to assist them do their own ministry.
  • They focus their training not on lay ministers but on pastors-in-the-making. (Think pastoral internships.)
  • They regularly express from the pulpit their hope that some members will hear the “call of God” to go to seminary and enter “fulltime Christian ministry.”

Continue reading Equipping is not Delegating →

discipleship

On Church Offices

8:03 PM Evening, blog peeps! Here are a few takeaways I had today from our discussion of Phil. 1:1-2:

1) The opening salutation is a window into Paul’s view of leadership in the church. Leadership is always shared. Paul’s ministry was a “co-worker” ministry! Note: “Paul and Timothy”; “overseers and deacons.” Clearly, Paul taught and practiced a “fellowship of leadership” (Michael Green). Continue reading On Church Offices →