What is Faith?

Welcome back from summer folks. Hope to hear from you sometime soon. We'll leave this topic running for at least September to give a chance for people to ease there way back in here.

We certainly are not going to take it easy on the topic though. I want to talk about the nature of faith. What is it?

This can be addressed from one or two angles. First one might come from outside the Church. Is faith incompatible with reason, i.e. a shot in the dark? What?

Second one might come from inside the Chruch and ask what the human side of salvation entails. It might go like this: When were you saved? What did you do right in that moment to be saved? Anything? How do you know that is the moment? Is there a moment? If not, what?

Even with the second angle we come back to the question: What is faith? Is it an emotional gravitation? A choice of the will? A covenant with a club? A line in the sand crossed with sincerity or with words? Is it just another word for worldview, or theory?

Central to Christianity is the verse: "By grace you have been saved through faith." So what is faith?

I'd love to hear it get personal, philosophical, biblical, theological, and/or more. Remember how close this hits to home and respect one another while we talk. But remember also how important this issue is and respect it enough to talk about it!

Again, welcome back! Let's give it another go!

What is Pastoral Leadership?

Okay, you can still chime in on that last one if you want (in fact, Trembling just added something while I was posting this), but here's a new topic dedicated to Tuna, who is taking a class on leadership next week. I just did a paper on pastoral leadership and in my research came across some very polemical outbursts against contemporary pastoral leadership trends. I, of course, liked these very much.

Here's some stuff from Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon's Resident Aliens and Andrew Purves' Reconstructing Pastoral Theology.

The problem is compounded because our church lives in a buyer’s market. The customer is king. . . . Pastors with half a notion of the gospel who get caught up in this web of buying and selling in a self-fulfillment economy one day wake up and hate themselves for it. We will lose some of our (potentially) best pastors to an early grave of cynicism and self-hate. What a pastor needs is a means of keeping at it, a perspective that enables the pastor to understand his or her ministry as nothing less than participation in the story of God. . . .

Atheism slips into the church where God really does not matter, as we go about building bigger and better congregations (church administration), confirming people’s self-esteem (worship), enabling people to adjust to their anxieties brought on by their materialism (pastoral care), and making Christ a worthy subject for poetic reflection (preaching). At every turn the church must ask itself, Does it really make any difference, in our life together, in what we do, that in Jesus Christ God is reconciling the world to himself? (Hauerwas and Willimon)

We live in the time of the entepreneurial pastor who understands ministry according to business practices that are focused on marketing and selling a product. . . . [Isn’t it a sort of] ministerial programmatic triumphalism, in which God’s salvation and blessing are tied to a special kind of pastoral competence and seeming contextual and contemporary relevance? . . .

Shepherding has been developed as an imitative rather than as a participatory approach to ministry. . . . The effect is to cast the pastor back upon his or her own resources.... [leading to Jesus’] replacement by an ethical Christ-principle separated from him. . . . Of course, a pastor must develop interpersonal skills and understand emotions, human development, and the complexities of human relationships and family systems. But none of these supplies the ground, the basic content, that gives pastoral work its specific identity as Christian. (Purves)

What do you think?

How Christian is Evangelicalism?

I remember as a kid growing up I sometimes marvelled at how lucky I was to be born into the very denomination that was right. I mean, everyone in church believed what they were saying, and so it isn't a big leap in logic for me to then assume everyone else was wrong. How lucky I was to be right!

I have since come to realize that people all over the world in all sorts of denominations and streams of Christianity have probably grown up thinking the same thing. And recently I've begun to wonder, not about my denomination so much as my tradition as a whole:

How Christian is Evangelisalism anyway? Consider the following:

-We tend to reject or ignore church tradition between the Apostles and Martin Luther. This sounds like Mormonism which says that the period between Peter and Joseph Smith was the dark ages of depravity and silence from God.

-We have turned the church into a corporation complete with a mission and value statements meant to accomplish that mission, which for all its biblical language, is basically to grow the corporation in numbers, the meeting of felt needs, and impressiveness. This sounds like consumerism and customer service; Westjet and Walmart (except you always get friendlier greeters when you pay them)

-Our spiritual gifts classes are all about being who God made you to be. Serving the church becomes the means to the end of self-fulfillment instead of the other way around. Sounds a lot like Oprah.

-Conversion is all about an individual praying a certain prayer, giving assent to a certain doctrine, which can only be revealed to us. Sounds like gnostic secret knowledge and enlightenment.

-Thus preaching becomes motivational speaking and worship motivational singing. Sounds like Tony Robbins and (insert favourite music here).

-The sacraments of baptism and communion are about us and our obedience to God, our proclamation of faith, our rememberence and recommitment. Where is God? Does Christ need to be in the room?

-The Bible is the authority. But whose Bible? Whose interpretation? For us this basically means each of us are the authority, and we choose whose commentary to use and go from there. Hence we have guys like George Barna telling us that the church is anywhere one person is following Christ the way they want to. This is evangelicalism taken to its logical conclusion.

-Western evangelicals are among the wealthiest and most consumptive societies in the world and many of us are just going with the flow in that regard. Sounds disturbingly like Isaiah 58.

-The Reformers did not intend to split with Catholicism, but it was inevitable, and necessary. Now evangelicalism has even split with the Reformed church. How far can this go? What is Christian about all of this?

At some point we have to ask: How Christian is Evangelicalism?

Heaven

Sorry things trailed off for awhile there folks. We're still taking suggestions on where to go from here, but in the meantime, we're back with a new topic:

Heaven. What is it?

Pearly gates and streets of gold? Does it come here or do we go somewhere else? Perfection? What is that? Worshiping God and enjoying him forever? What does that mean? Singing choruses and playing Bibleopoly with Jesus? What is this eternal bliss all about?



It used to be the basis of the faith to hold up heaven and hell and say: Where do you want to go? We're less sure what to do with that now, partly, I'd say, because it is unquantifiable escapism and really feels like it has little sticking power for a person's faith and little relevance to day-to-day life. Yes, we live in the hope of heaven, but what is that? What are we hoping for?



Does the Bible want us to think about heaven? What does it want us to think of it? What texts give you your notions of heaven and what do you imagine it to be? Give us your theological insights and your day-to-day heavenly lifestyle speculations.



This one is for the imagination and speculation, since there are more questions than answers. Give us your honest ideas and even your hopes (i.e. I hope we get to play frisbee there a lot).


With all of it we'll try to reflect on what stands up to Scripture.



And while you are at it, give us the top three "Bible heroes" and "saints" you would like to have words with in heaven.

I believe...

Creeds offer us a succinct statement of faith. They help us to understand who we are and what we stand for, and they set a standard to help us create boundaries. Creeds help us to...

• shape our beliefs,
• affirm our faith,
  
• define the church,
  
• worship appropriately, and
  
• mitigate heresy.

In short, creeds are like the church's swiss army knife...









One of the best known creeds, the Apostles Creed, has stood for centuries as a definition of the Christian church. Other creeds, like the Nicene Creed, were designed to define the divinity of Christ.

Creeds are powerful and succinct. When many people could not read, creeds were a memorable way to summarize their belief system. Today, creeds can act for us as a series of hooks from which we build our theologies. They leave just enough open to celebrate the multiple dimensions of the church while clarifying just enough to ensure that we avoid heresy.

But creeds are far from perfect. They're not inspired (in the same way that Scripture is) and while they may focus on one topic (like the divinity of Christ) other topics get pushed aside. There's little mention of the character of God the Father or the work of the Holy Spirit in the Apostles Creed. And they are old. I like the terms "from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead" and "... the Holy Catholic church" but those terms aren't recognized anymore for what they were meant to portray.

So for this topic, we're not going to discuss a topic; instead...

let's create a new creed... a creed for the 21st century.

Over the next three weeks, let's talk about some of the following things...

In week one (March 26 - April 1) we should talk about the content.*

• What do we like about creeds. What needs to change?
  
• Is there a creed we can build off of or should we start fresh?
• What topics need to be mentioned and what do not?
  
• What heresies do we need to address today?
• How should it be formatted?

In week two (April 2 - April 8) we should format some specific paragraphs or sections.*

• Is there a succinct way to state the specific beliefs we want to address?
  

In week three (April 9 - April 15) we should put it together and work out the kinks.*

• Now that the creed is all together, are there glaring omissions? Does it makes sense? Should it be rephrased or rearranged?
  

*The small print: This week-by-week calendar is not a strict rule, just a guideline to give us some structure in an activity that is completely new for each of us. Also, I don't want this to seem rushed. Fear and I might consider extending this post's timeline a bit if we find that we need more time. Fortunately, when it comes to creeds, we can stand on the shoulders of giants. Let's aim to create a creed we can generally agree on and be willing to live by. In fact, we'll post it as "The Holy Crap Creed" when we're done.

What is Right with the Church?

As the poll indicated, I had a few things on my mind to discuss this time around. All of them continue to be intriguing to me but here's what I'm going with. It sort of incorporates two of the topics I had in mind. It contains a comment and a question. You can comment on the comment and the question if you like, but try not to get totally sidetracked from the question. Here it is:

If George Barna's Revolution is correct, Christians are leaving the local church in droves. These aren't bedside baptists either. They are Christ followers who have had enough. They are channeling their energies into parachurch organizations and such, but have effectively ditched the "established" church. Barna seems to think this is a good thing. I do not.

I mean, I understand why they leave, but I think it is a travesty. I'm not sure what generation they are but I assume they are around my age, maybe a bit older maybe a bit younger. So if my topic this month were "what is wrong with our generation" I would say it is this loss of commitment to the local church. You can challenge this if you like, but I would like to focus our energy on the question:

Why should they NOT give up on their local church? Extenuating circumstances aside (because let's face it, there are always exceptions), generally speaking, why should they stay? Maybe you don't think they should. Go ahead and challenge my view, but then I still want you to try to think of what they'll be missing that they should make sure they get somewhere else. Basically:

Why commit to a local church? What does it have going for it? Give theological answers or specific practical ones. The topic is ecclesiological:

What is RIGHT with the Church?

God's Goodness

I will whole heartedly admit that God is holy, all powerful, and loving; when it comes to God's goodness though I am slower to respond with assent. I want to pose a few questions that I hope will help us to understand God's nature more fully. Why does the church assert God's goodness? What Biblical texts lead the church to this conclusion? If you agree that God is good what does this mean for you? How would you define God's goodness?
I hope that by the end of these few weeks I will be able to wholeheartedly say that God is good but I just can't say it right now.