lifeasmission
exploring the mystery of life and mission as one and the same
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Archive of "bible" Category
Toward a Missional Vision of Theological Education: Character Formation
Previous posts in this Series:
Preliminary Thoughts | The Root of the Problem | The Fruit of the Problem | New Soil | Community Rootedness
In my last post I tried to make a case for the necessity of theological education of missional leaders being rooted in missional community. With this as a contextual prerequisite, I would further suggest that the ultimate aim of a missionally oriented process of leadership training is the formation of Christlike character.
more of this artist’s amazing photography here
It is too naive to suggest that Christendom was wholly uncritical of the character of Christian leaders. It is more accurate to say that there’s an inherent assumption within Christendom that if we can only ensure that our leaders believe all the right things, their character will follow suit. This has turned out to be a deeply lamentable mistake.
It may be necessary for me to reiterate at this point that I am no anti-intellectual. You would never find me downplaying the importance of continuing study, exposure to new perspectives and ideas, or deep, thoughtful reflection. Instead, I would suggest that a missional vision of theological education will only value intellectual dimensions of training inasmuch as they contribute to the formation of Christlike character in missional leaders. Therefore, we might expect a missional vision of theological education to…
1) Train leaders how to think as opposed to telling them what to think. This is only possible when we humbly buy into the reality that our systems of truth are all fallible and trust that encouraging leaders to follow Jesus is preferable to warning them of the dangers of venturing outside of a particular theological grid. Thus, through books, articles, media, speakers, discussions, conferences, etc., we may freely (and wisely!) expose leaders to various biblical/theological traditions and perspectives. Where the rubber meets the (missional) road, so to speak, is in the questions we encourage students to ask of what they are being exposed to. I won’t go into them here,* but I submit that a missional vision of what it means to be the Body of Christ inclines us to ask different questions of all that we learn than that of Christendom.**
2) Conjoin all intellectual study with missional practice. Only given the assumptions of Christendom could we have divorced religious study from community based missional practice and witness. A missional vision of the church and theological education is characteristically and relentlessly incarnational. Missional theology is nothing if not that which we come to know about God as we participate in God’s mission in the world through the Body of Christ. In this light, I would suggest that each and every aspect of intellectual study find its place within a structure of missional practice which includes both personal and corporate spiritual disciplines.
3) Develop a community based assessment of a leaders process of character development. When character formation is the central issue in the equipping of missional leaders, time frames are perfunctory. It’s not one’s ability to make it through a process that qualifies them as a leader, but the manner in which they participate and their holistic development from start to finish. It takes a community to discern these things. As valuable as having the commitment and support of a community is to a leader in training, their willingness to speak the truth in love regarding their development is every bit as essential. Incorporating various means of mentorship and scheduling regular checkpoints between leaders and communities are key components of a missional vision of theological education.
What we know and what we can do as leaders isn’t just meaningless w/o Christlike character, it’s actually negative, destroying the very nature of what it means to follow Jesus and participate in God’s mission in the world. As Jesus was only worth following inasmuch as he said and did as God said and did, so too are his disciples w/o power and authority if they are not leading out of this sort of Christlike character.
This is all relates to the subject of my next post, the shaping of convictions. Hope to have some helpful dialogue before then though, so let’s have at it!
*You can find a very helpful article on this subject here.
**In proposing this I readily (and happily) admit that we will always be coming from a particular (hermeneutical) vantage point. I will explore this further in a future post, but the notion of some completely objective posture in the formation of leaders is neither possible nor desirable.Some Struggles with John Piper
When I was a sophomore in college, I helped to lead a high school mission trip to Russia. On the plane, I was reading a book someone had recommended, “Desiring God,” by John Piper. Through the first 1/2 of the book, I was looking for a way to throw it off the plane – I thought it was crap. By the end of it, I was transformed. I had a completely different take on the nature of Christian faith and discipleship that has stood the test of time.Once I started to get into Podcasts, Piper’s was one of the first ones I subscribed (iTunes link) to. I still listen to it with some regularity and commend it to you.
When I was contemplating resigning my role as a student pastor in 2004 to pursue more theological education, I decided to take some time off to think, pray, reflect, and ask questions. I traveled to Minneapolis, visited Bethlehem Baptist Church where John Piper preaches, and had the chance to talk with him for a while after one of the services. An alum of Fuller Theological Seminary, I expected him to be encouraged that this was one of my options. He wasn’t. He said that they had gone down a dangerous to path toward Christian liberalism.
I went to Fuller anyway and discovered that John was wrong.
My idolatry of Piper broken, I began to notice some other aspects of his theology that I had a really hard time with.
I think he gets the issue of God’ sovereignty wrong – not because I believe the opposite, but because I think the whole Calvinist/Armenian debate is flawed at its core. Both positions assume that salvation is something one can have and therefore argue about who secures our having it – God or man. With good intention, some will attempt a middle road and say it’s a both/and issue. It’s not. It’s a neither/nor issue. When you begin to understand that “salvation belongs to God” (Rev. 7:10) and is therefore something we can only participate in, never have, the whole debate changes.
I also lament Piper’s view on women. Again, he will argue the “conservative” side of the complimentarian/egalitarian debate, which I think begins with flawed premises. Do men and women compliment each other or are they equal? That question isn’t nearly biblical enough to be of any real value. A more important question, at least as the Bible is concerned, is, how do men and women, who only together image God, as couples and singles, function together in doing and equipping others for ministry. And the plain answer is that they serve as co-laborers – that each and every aspect of ministry, from preaching and teaching, to caring for children, suffers when not practiced by both capable and gifted women and men.
There was much bally-who in the blog-o-sphere last week when Piper connected a tornado in Minneapolis to a meeting the ELCA was having regarding the issue of homosexuality (here’s the original article and a follow up one). I have listened to Piper enough that I think what he meant to say was that whenever natural disaster strikes it is an opportunity for us to remember and turn to God, but he seemed to be saying quite a bit more than that and it calls for some accounting.
Lastly, he’s got a bad take on the woman at the well (John 4). Like perhaps the majority of preachers, he is quick to assume the moral degradation of the woman Jesus encounters, frequently noting that “she’s sleeping with her boyfriend.” As I take into account the cultural factors at play in this passage as well as the fuller scope of Jesus’ ministry, I find this interpretation to be maddening.
Women had not rights in Jesus’ day; they had not power to divorce a husband; they were property. Unless they were from a royal or extremely well off family, they had almost no hope of being able to provide for themselves. As the Bible makes clear, the ability to produce children more often than not determined a woman’s worth.
While we might trip over some of the translated language, I think it’s much more faithful to the text to understand this Samaritan woman, not as a whore (essentially what Piper and others tend to d0), but as a shamed and broken victim of injustice. When Jesus notes that this woman had had five husbands, he’s not digging her for her sin – when did Jesus ever do that except for the religious leaders?! And when he says that the man she now has is not her husband, he’s not some *&$%^&# calling her out for “sleeping with her boyfriend” – again, just doesn’t fit the Jesus of the gospels. He is calling out the source of her shame and injustice so that he can heal it – something he did all the time.
I love John Piper as a brother in Christ. His passion and zeal for the supremacy of God captivates and inspires me. But here’s the final thing about John and this gets me more than anything else. I have never heard him say (and he’s really public!), “I might be wrong. There are other followers of Jesus who believe differently than me and they just might be on to something.” Even if he has said something like this at some point – it is quite definitely not a theme in his teaching the way I wish it was. I’m not talking about being wishy-washy. I am taking about some good ol fashioned humility and firm trust in God’s work over his theology.
I am not writing this to disparage. Beginning with myself, I would ask anyone who has some theological issues with another brother or sister in Christ, to think first and foremost about who they really are and what they have done for the sake of the gospel. I am no anti-Piperian. I consider John a true partner in the gospel and would run to his defense on most occasions. But this is just some stuff that I really struggle with enough to hope that others would as well.
Believing the Right Way
As I have mentioned before in a post on “What is Missional?,” Western Christians are bifurcated into two main groups – those who emphasize believing the right things (classic conservatives) and those who emphasize living the right way (classic liberals). Thankfully, there are people like Pete Rollins who desires to help people embrace not a middle-ground, but an altogether alternative paradigm, believing the right way, illustrated in this blog post of his from this past January.Without equivocation or hesitation I fully and completely admit that I deny the resurrection of Christ. This is something that anyone who knows me could tell you, and I am not afraid to say it publicly, no matter what some people may think…
I deny the resurrection of Christ every time I do not serve at the feet of the oppressed, each day that I turn my back on the poor; I deny the resurrection of Christ when I close my ears to the cries of the downtrodden and lend my support to an unjust and corrupt system.
However there are moments when I affirm that resurrection, few and far between as they are. I affirm it when I stand up for those who are forced to live on their knees, when I speak for those who have had their tongues torn out, when I cry for those who have no more tears left to shed.
His perspective shows both the short comings of language and the shallowness of the things we typically consider most important. This is indeed the sort of belief that I think the Bible calls us to.
Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete. (Lk. 6:46-49)
Some years ago, discussions and arguments regarding the inerrancy, infallability, inwhatever of Scripture ceased to be all that meaningful to me. It’s difficult to see this as an incredibly meaningful debate to Jesus. On the other hand, it’s easy for me to imagine God caring deeply about the extent to which we are seeking to bring our lives into harmony with the reality held out to us in the Bible.
I wonder who truly has the “higher” view of Scripture – the one who contends for its inerrancy or the one who demonstrates its truthfulness by the way they live?
If you’re really into this sort of discussion, feel free to have a glance at a paper I wrote on the topic of the opportunity afforded the Christian faith by the cultural turn toward Postmodernity here.
The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible by Scot McKnight
I had the good fortune of receiving an advance copy of Scot McKnight’s newest book, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible from Zondervan who asked me to post a review, which I am happy to do.Scot begins with the following assumption:
Everyone of us adopts the Bible and (at the same time) adapts the Bible to our culture… Everyone picks and chooses. I know this sounds out of the box and off the wall for many, but no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves otherwise, it’s true. We pick and choose [what to adopt and how to adapt].
He then goes on to suggest that we do well to…
1. Approach the Bible as a story – “Until we learn to read the Bible as Story, we will not know how to get anything out of the Bible for daily living.” (Sidenote, Scot could have said this better. How it comes across is out of harmony with the larger scope of what he is trying to communicate. This sentence by itself perpetuates approaching Scripture as a commodity – what can I get out of it for my daily life? – but this isn’t really what he means I don’t think.
2. (Re)Learn how to listen as we dwell in Scripture – “Our relationship to the God of the Bible is to listen to God so we can love him more deeply and love others more completely. If God’s ultimate design for us is to love God and to love others, we can only acquire that love by learning to listen to God.”
3. Practice discernment – “The pattern of discernment is simply this: as we read the Bible and locate each item in its place in the Story, as we listen to God speak to us in our world through God’s ancient Word, we discern – through God’s Spirit and in the context of our community of faith – a pattern of how to live in our world.”
The final part of the book is an exercise in trying to follow this 3-pronged approach to Scripture by wresting with the issue of women in ministry.
Kudos to Scot for writing a book that makes much of the excellent work being done in biblical hermeneutics accessible and for providing a resource to those of us trying to help others embrace a missional paradigm of the church that pertains specifically to the place of Scripture within that paradigm.
As all college professors should be, Scot is clearly more concerned with the formation of people than the conveyance of information. This aspect of his character bleeds through the pages of his book and, all by itself, should merit an audience for what he has to say about how we approach and use Scripture.
Perhaps my favorite line in the book, “… God designs all biblical study to be a ‘useful’ process that leads us to the Bible in such a way that it creates a person who loves God and loves others.” I would want to tweak this only slightly to read, “… God designs all biblical study to be a ‘useful’ process that leads us to Jesus in such a way that it creates a people who love God and love others.” But again, I think in the larger scope of what Scot is saying, this sentiment comes through.
It is just this sort of sentiment that I think holds great promise to help correct both those who elevate the Bible to an almost idolatrous level as well as those who would merely cast it off as impossibly relative or irrelevant. More than this, Scot’s book can be helpful in freeing the Bible from the grip of Western individualism by helping readers to understand the primary role of Scripture as a centering text for a community.
If you value the Bible, and perhaps especially if you think you’re got a pretty good handle on the Bible, I’d highly recommend picking this book up when it comes out.
A Church-based Bailout Heartcheck
I had a pretty elaborate post prepared on the whole economic crisis/bailout proposal that I was ready to publish, (instead, I will just point you to this great segment from This American Life, “The Giant Pool of Money,” which clearly and insightfully spells out just how we got in this mess) when another thought struck me – this great opportunity for the Church to shine. It was this bit of Jesus’ teaching that came to mind specifically.
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
This economic crisis is a great heart-check for the Church. Where… What… Who is our treasure? What a fantastic opportunity for the Church to witness to the watching world – to, in the midst of economic fright and despair, to be MORE generous, MORE sacrificial, MORE giving; to not “conform to the pattern of this world,” but to put on display a hope and a joy that is no way threatened, but is rather emboldened in times such as these.
But I wonder… will we shine? I fear that the extent to which the Church in the West has so wedded its identity with that of the American dream will make this very, very difficult. Thankfully, we worship a God who desires to work miracles amongst a repentant people.
Catching Up
I don’t really like it when a full week goes by and I don’t have a chance to blog – it’s like I get creatively constipated and then I don’t know where to begin.
Aside from just getting back into the swing of things and playing catch up since returning from Afghanistan, I have been busy doing a variety of things – getting the new house settled, wrapping up the online course I have been teaching, and training for a 1/2 marathon, along with other life-randomness. So, where to start? How about the 1/2 marathon.
My New Year’s resolution was to get a 1/2 marathon under the belt before the year’s end. I found out that there is one in Akron on Sept. 27, and since I had 2 friends doing the race (one doing the full marathon and another the 1/2), I decided to give it a go. Afghanistan came at a bad time in terms of training, so I hit it hard as soon as I made it back. Well, the left knee, as it has been doing for years, continued to give me trouble and I had to go see an orthopedist. He read through a previous MRI and did an x-ray. You should have seen his face when I told him I was training for a 1/2 marathon in 2 weeks?! He actually said, “You’re running on this?” I just started rehab this morning and we’ll see how much that helps. Next stage is a fluid injection to make up for the cartlidge that is damaged and/or missing, and then surgery will be a last resort. So, sadly, no race for me, at least not this month. There is another one here in Memphis in December, so perhaps then.
Semi-related, as a part of training and moving to midtown, I have been frequenting the downtown YMCA, which is a great facility. There is a trolly that goes back and forth, though it ends a mile from my house. The other day, I ran down to the Y, worked out some there, and took the trolly back, and ran the last mile. It’s a cool part of downtown Memphis that I was excited to experience for the first time.
My friend Joey stumbled on a newspaper article last week about a gathering in a local establishment called Beer and Bible, facilitated by Phyllis, Tickle, someone I have been wanting to meet ever since moving to Memphis. I had the opportunity to go and participate in the discussion last week and just loved it. It was about the most eclectic group of folks you can imagine who used the 7 deadly sins as a jumping off point for discussion.
I also had the chance to accompany my friend Jon and a few other guys who do some work with FCA at Carver HS to a football game. Carver is a school in urban Memphis with few resources and about 30 guys on the team. The team they played is an over-resourced suburban school with about 30 guys/position. Needless to say, Carver got crushed, but it was fun to be back on the sidelines of a HS football game.
What else? With the help of some friends, lots of painting at my new place has gotten accomplished and I also added a few pieces of furniture as I seek to create an inviting and hospitable sort of place. Pictures forthcoming.
The class. I am in the final stages of grading final papers for the first go-around of an online class for Fuller – The Emerging Church in the 21st Century. The class was filled with great discussion and insights. The majority of students feel as though they have a lot more clarity on what the EC discussion/movement is all about and I have reall enjoyed helping them to explore their questions, misgivings, and thoughts in general.
Lastly, while the website leaves a little to be desired, the atmosphere at Republic Coffee doesn’t. I am writing this from their location – one I very quickly become a huge fan of. If you’re around midtown, check it out.
Hi There…
Hey, I'm JR - welcome to the blog.
I'm just an average guy trying to shape his identity around God's dream for the world and his place in it. This blog is a place for me (and you!) to reflect on and discuss all that might mean. Looking for a bit more on me? Check out the about me. Peace.
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