Meador: on Intervarsity and Black Lives Matter

Jake Meador over at Mere O has a really good piece today on the white evangelical response to the messages at Urbana last month, and more generally to the Black Lives Matter movement:

We do not have to endorse everything about the organization Black Lives Matter. We shouldn’t feel like we cannot ask questions—even critical questions—about speeches like the one given by Michelle. But we also should not be instinctively suspicious of the claims of our black neighbors. Our nation’s history is such that we should have no difficulty believing our black neighbors when they tell us about what life is like for black people in America today. Indeed, given our nation’s appalling history it would be more surprising if they didn’t have any problems.

Definitely worth reading the whole thing.

Too much knowledge about the Bible a bad thing?

In a recent update of Christianity Today’s Leadership Journal they interviewed Josh McDowell about, among other things, current trends on the belief in the inerrancy of the Bible. Here’s how the first bit went:

Q: Trust in the inerrancy of Scripture, even among some evangelicals, has waned in recent years. Why do you think this is? There is no one reason. I think one of the major reasons is the information glut on the Internet. The Internet is so gigantic. It has leveled the playing field. Atheists and agnostics have such ready access to our kids. It didn’t use to be this way. Now, information—good and bad—is just one click away. Pastors, youth pastors, professors, and others are being confronted with deep theological, philosophical, and historical challenges to the Scriptures that no one would even hear about until their fourth year at a university. Believers are being confronted with so many opposing positions on the Scriptures—issues the majority from past generations simply didn’t confront. This has tended to undermine people’s belief system. That is why we need to redouble our efforts to communicate biblical truth.

Gutenberg Bible.jpg
"Gutenberg Bible" by Raul654. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

I think McDowell’s point is valid, but I’m a little disturbed about what it seems to imply. If I were to boil the Q&A down, the reasoning might go like this:

  1. “Trust in the inerrancy of Scripture” is waning. This is bad.
  2. This is happening in large part because Christians have more information than they used to have.
  3. If Christians having this information causes a bad result… maybe Christians shouldn’t have this information?

Now, McDowell doesn’t go fully there - he says that we just need to try even harder to communicate biblical truth - but I get wary any time I hear an argument that says the problem was caused by people knowing too much.

If you have an argument that you’re fully confident is true, shouldn’t you welcome the fact that people want to understand more about the Scripture, where it came from, how God uses it, and so on? If there are “deep theological, philosophical, and historical challenges to the Scriptures”, shouldn’t Evangelical leaders be addressing them head-on rather than decrying their broader availability?

Am I overreacting here?

I’m a bit put off by the phrase “trust in the inerrancy of the Scripture”. Of all the things Christians are called to trust in, that’s not one of them.

It seems likely to me that Evangelical leaders have often briskly asserted “inerrancy” as a linchpin for maintaining beliefs about other things (young-earth creationism, homosexuality, complementarianism, etc, etc) either without fully teasing out the difficult nuances of what “inerrancy” means, or (more likely) without dealing with the reality that many preachers will teach on “inerrancy” without any appreciation for those nuances.

Generations of Christians before may have gone through life without ever really stopping to think about what “inerrancy” meant, but as the internet broadens our social and intellectual horizons, the right response isn’t to decry that broadening, but to teach with more detail and nuance what we mean by the word.

For those of you still reading this post who are getting concerned about me putting the word “inerrancy” in quotes: I believe that the Bible is God-breathed, and profitable for doctrine, correction, reproof, instruction, etc. I also agree with John Piper’s nuance of “without error in the original manuscripts”, given his understanding of “error” [emphasis mine]:

A writer is in error when the basic intention in his statements and admonitions, properly understood in their nearer and wider context, is not true.

Revisiting the evangelical worship experience

A self-professed “child of the 1990s’ Christian subculture” recounts her experience revisiting that culture after many years away from it:

When I pulled into the parking lot for the concert, I immediately had a sense of foreboding. I had mostly come to see a favorite singer-songwriter, well-known in Nashville but still touring with larger acts in other parts of the country. For this concert, she was touring with an old high school favorite, and I didn’t think much of it, except that it might be fun to hear them play again. I hadn’t looked into it any further than that, and had been to plenty of church-based concerts in the years since leaving the evangelical church (for lack of better term), so I had no reason to think this one would be any different. Except that it was.

Susan does an excellent job of not questioning the motives or intentions of the concert audience while still asking some pointed questions about the motivations of the performers and producers, and about how the “worship experience” is managed and (potentially) manipulated.

It’s worth reading the entire thoughtful post.

The Spiritual Pep Rally

Really good stuff on the Christian movie phenomenon, in the deliciously-titled “Do You Believe in Confirmation Bias?”

I do remain concerned, however, that when such anecdotal evidence [e.g. of Atheist professors persecuting Christian students] is amplified and looped in and through the echo chamber, it has a detrimental effect on God’s people. It promotes a culture of fear and a culture of antagonism. It reinforces the belief that those outside our circle are our enemies, to be battled, rather than our mission field, to be loved and evangelized.

To the extent it overstates our persecution, it pushes us to prioritize standing our ground and protecting our rights over being salt and light. To the extent it fixates on archetypal stories of our victimization, it makes us quick to assume evil intent when we face conflicts and slow to acknowledge our own roles in perpetuating them.

Perhaps—perhaps—it tempts us with the lie that those times and places where we have been wronged justify ignoring our teachers’ admonitions to treat those who question our beliefs with gentleness and respect.

Maybe the more pertinent question to ask in the face of Christian movies like God’s Not Dead and Do You Believe? is not whether they are accurate representations of the world we live in, but whether the way they respond—and invite us to respond—to that broken world will help us to remake it into something healthier, holier, and more reflective of kingdom principles.

[Christianity Today]

Farewell, Episcopalians?

There have been some strong reactions across the internet the past couple days to some remarks that Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Dr. Albert Mohler made on his daily podcast The Briefing. The provocative headline: “Controversies involving Episcopal leaders affirms liberalism and Christianity two rival religions”.

A little ways down in the piece it’s clear he’s not talking about political liberalism, but rather Protestant liberalism. And he says that Protestant liberalism (he singles out the Episcopal Church) and Christianity are “two rival religions”.

Why does he make this audacious claim? He points first to a recent tragedy where a female Episcopal bishop in Massachusetts was driving drunk and hit and killed a bicyclist. Mohler theorizes that the woman was appointed a bishop, even after one prior drunk driving conviction, because “the diocese was in a rush to elect a woman as bishop”. Secondly Mohler notes that the dean of a leading Episcopal seminary (also in Massachusetts) is stridently lesbian and pro-choice, and is stepping down from her job, Mohler conjectures, not because of those views, but because of financial mismanagement at the school.

Mohler says that these two examples demonstrate that the Episcopal church has a different “moral code”. (This seems fairly self-evident, albeit with the caveat that not everyone in those denominations may agree with those value norms.)

But then he audaciously claims that because of this different “moral code”, Episcopalians (and apparently, by extension, the rest of ’liberal Protestantism’) are not actually Christians, but rather, “rival religions” to “orthodox Christianity” (by which, of course, Mohler doesn’t mean Orthodox orthodox, but rather those that agree more closely with his set of beliefs).

By their fruit you will recognize them

Now we shouldn’t be hasty to discount Mohler’s evaluation criteria. After all, in Matthew 7 Jesus says that we will know false teachers by their fruit. “A bad tree bears bad fruit.”

So, to summarize Mohler’s argument, these two Episcopal leaders are exemplars of a set of moral priorities that demonstrate that liberal Protestantism isn’t, in fact, Christian.

But is it really reasonable to go from observing two pieces of rotten fruit to concluding that the whole section of the orchard is bad?

Alrighty then…

First, I’m more than a little astounded that Mohler would suggest that a “moral code” is what delineates “real Christians” from “rival religions”. (Apparently we don’t need to worry about theology much? Odd coming from the head of a seminary…)

But if, from a couple highly-visible examples, it’s appropriate to conjecture the “moral code” and thus orthodoxy of an entire branch of Christianity, let’s use Mohler’s own Reformed Baptist Evangelicalism as an example.

Let’s consider the case of C. J. Mahaney, who while being fawned over at conferences for writing books on humility was also running roughshod over staff without any accountability, had a history that included blackmail of rival leaders in his denomination, and who was at the helm of a denomination that covered up multiple accounts of child abuse.

And then let’s consider the case of Mark Driscoll, who built a megachurch on his reputation as “the cussing pastor”, bought his way on to the NYT Bestseller list with church money, and finally resigned in disgrace and saw his church shut down after a plagiarism scandal was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

What should we conclude from the “moral code” demonstrated by these two leaders (certainly at least “bishops” if there were a formal hierarchy) in Mohler’s theological circles? Is it fair to suggest that Reformed Baptist Evangelicalism is some sort of rival religion to Christianity because Mohler and many with him embraced these men until their patterns of sin finally became too public to ignore?

Of course not.

Christians, of all people, and reformed, “total depravity”-believing Christians most of all, should be the first to line up to admit that we are all sinners, and that moral uprightness is (blessedly) not the criteria by which our faith is judged.

Yes, true faith will change how we live, how we calibrate our “moral codes”, how we allow God to make us more like Jesus every day of our lives. And by all means, let’s strive, vigorously, to champion righteousness within (and without!) the church.

But publicly dismissing an entire wing of Protestantism as a “rival religion” because their set of acceptable sins is different than your own is arrogant foolishness, and Albert Mohler’s listeners deserve better.

I have many friends and family in liberal Protestant denominations who I am happy to embrace as brothers and sisters in Christ, even when we disagree on moral priorities. I will continue to learn from them, and hopefully them from me. One day a perfect man will sort us out and open our eyes and show us how wrong we all were in various areas of belief and practice. Thank God that man’s name will be Jesus and not, well, anybody else.

A few thoughts on Mark Driscoll's Resignation

Mark Driscoll resigned today from the pastorate of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Driscoll has been embattled in several controversies over the past year including allegations of plagiarism, verbal abuse of staff. For the past several weeks he had been on a leave of absence while a small group of Mars Hill leaders investigated a long list of charges brought against him by many former church pastors, elders, members, and staff.

Driscoll’s resignation is he latest blow to a church already staggering under the recent closure of several campuses and the resignations of many other pastors and staff.

I will continue to pray for Driscoll, his family, and the many people who have been hurt by his words and actions over the past years. I hope this can be the first step in a process of healing and reconciliation for all concerned.

That might be a good place to stop this post, and yet there is more I think it’s worth saying. Perhaps you may think it uncharitable to say any more, but I think not. I get no pleasure out of Driscoll’s resignation, and want to hope that this is really his first step on the road to repentance. And yet to be as wise as serpents we should consider what he said as well as his actions.

Driscoll’s resignation letter is addressed to the Mars Hill board of investigation, but was clearly written with a broader audience in mind. In the letter Driscoll didn’t confess to anything that hadn’t been addressed before.

I readily acknowledge I am an imperfect messenger of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There are many things I have confessed and repented of, privately and publicly, as you are well aware. Specifically, I have confessed to past pride, anger and a domineering spirit.

A couple of thoughts here: first, that we are all imperfect messengers of the gospel. Which makes this a very non-specific confession of something that he doesn’t even identify as sin. Yes, he reiterates confession of ‘past’ pride, anger and a domineering spirit, but doesn’t address any of the multitude of very specific charges that have been levied against him. Second, he doesn’t address the plagiarism or the use of a quarter million dollars of church money to get his book on the NYT Bestseller List.

Driscoll still seems to be blaming others a lot for the situation:

many of those making charges against me declined to meet with you or participate in the review process at all.

And later:

Recent months have proven unhealthy for our family—even physically unsafe at times…

While these statements may be true, they seem to be deflecting attention from his faults and calling attention to his accusers. This hardly seems like a contrite spirit of repentance.

In addition, he says his resignation is not because he did anything wrong, but because “aspects of [his] personality and leadership style have proven to be divisive within the Mars Hill context” and it would be best “for the health of [his] family, and for the Mars Hill family, that we step aside”.

He also emphasizes that there haven’t been any charges of anything criminal, [sexually] immoral, or heretical, which would disqualify him from ministry. The Mars Hill board who investigated him also state that he is still qualified for pastoral ministry. My question here is how the scope of qualification has been narrowed so far that only crime, sexual immorality, or heresy will disqualify you. Consider 1 Timothy 3:

Here is a trustworthy saying: Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap.

This is a sobering text for anyone considering a call as an elder. But if we truly believe these are the qualifications for the office, Driscoll, by his own admission in many cases, is disqualified.

As a friend of mine noted, this move by Driscoll also allows him to leave on his own terms, and to suddenly place himself outside of any structure that could hold him accountable. (This, too, seems to have been a pattern of Driscoll’s over the years.)

It will be interesting to see what becomes of this situation over the coming months. This isn’t the end of difficulties at Mars Hill; there are still the Global Fund shenanigans to deal with that may yet bring additional charges. Will the neo-Reformed types who once championed but more recently distanced themselves from Driscoll take this opportunity to now declare him again fit for ministry and bring him back into the regular rotation of conferences and book deals? Or will there be a longer-term awareness that there is confession, repentance, healing, and reconciliation that needs to occur?

If you’ve read this far and think I’ve been unfair to Mark, take a few minutes and go read some of the other statements of confession that have come from Mars Hill pastors: Lief Moi, Jeff Bettger, Kyle Firstenberg… Then compare them in detail and tone to what Driscoll is saying. One of them is not like the others, and we should not be afraid to ask ourselves why.

Let’s continue to pray for the Mark Driscoll and his family, for Mars Hill Church, and for all those who have been affected, both positively and negatively, by Driscoll over the years. God’s heart is for grace, healing, and reconciliation. Ours should be, too.

Paul Tripp on the inadequacy of external accountability

Pastor, author, and counselor Paul Tripp recently resigned from the Mars Hill Church (Seattle) Board of Advisors & Accountability. There was a lot of speculation at that time as to why Tripp was resigning, and in what capacity he might stick around as a consultant and counselor. Tripp cleared that up today with a statement on his website wherein he describes the inadequacy of that sort of external accountability.

It’s because of this love [for the church] that I accepted the position on Mars Hill Church’s BoAA. But it became clear to me that a distant, external accountability board can never work well because it isn’t a firsthand witness to the ongoing life and ministry of the church. Such a board at best can provide financial accountability, but it will find it very difficult to provide the kind of hands-on spiritual direction and protection that every Christian pastor needs. Unwittingly what happens is that the external accountability board becomes an inadequate replacement for a biblically functioning internal elder board that is the way God designed his church to be lead and pastors to be guided and protected. So, since I knew that I could not be the kind of help that I would like to be through the vehicle of the BoAA, I resigned from that position.

(Emphasis mine.)

I think Tripp’s point here is key - that healthy, functional leadership comes about by having a local group of elders who can support, protect, and guide the pastor(s). There is no substitute for “firsthand witness” to what’s going on at the church.

All of us involved in church leadership, whether pastors, elders, or other, should be reminded that mutual, humble accountability to people right there within the local church is the best way to stay on track.

Looking back at my thoughts on the Acts 29 Leadership Change

My post from March 2012 about Matt Chandler taking over the reins of Acts 29 has seen some renewed activity this past week with the news that Acts 29 booted Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church from membership in the church planting network.

Last week’s move is a significant one, seeing (as Wenatchee the Hatchet has documented) that for most of its existence, Acts 29 was, both by leadership and funding, nearly indistinguishable from Mars Hill.

In 2012 I had four key thoughts:

Chandler was a strong enough personality to bring about change.

This seems to have borne itself out; it can’t have been easy for Chandler and company to call on Driscoll to resign, but under Chandler’s leadership Acts 29 has done exactly that.

Chandler could help change A29 culture

Not sure that this has really happened, but I’m hopeful that it will start to as days go by. For too long the A29 church planter model appears to have encouraged not just the Mars Hill church style but the Mark Driscoll leadership style - brash, vulgar, MMA-loving, trash-talking, in-your-face “leadership”. One good that could come out of Driscoll’s current woes is for some of his acolytes to recognize the folly of emulating that persona.

Acts 29 could start to get some distance from Driscoll’s controversies

Well, that one clearly hasn’t happened yet.

Driscoll could have some room to rest and grow

I was hopeful that with A29 leadership off his plate, Driscoll might have time to relax, refresh, and recharge. Perhaps I was a little bit optimistic.

Regardless of where you stand on Acts 29 and Mark Driscoll, this is no time for gloating. I continue to pray that Driscoll will come to real repentance and seek reconciliation with those he has harmed, and that the Acts 29 network will be strengthened, not damaged, from Driscoll’s ouster.

They Took the Post Down

As a follow-up to my last post: Leadership Journal last night took down the controversial post, replacing it with this note:

A note from the editors of Leadership Journal: We should not have published this post, and we deeply regret the decision to do so. The post, told from the perspective of a sex offender, withheld from readers until the very end a crucial piece of information: that the sexual misconduct being described involved a minor under the youth pastor’s care. Among other failings, this post used language that implied consent and mutuality when in fact there can be no question that in situations of such disproportionate power there is no such thing as consent or mutuality.

The post, intended to dissuade future perpetrators, dwelt at length on the losses this criminal sin caused the author, while displaying little or no empathic engagement with the far greater losses caused to the victim of the crime and the wider community around the author. The post adopted a tone that was not appropriate given its failure to document complete repentance and restoration. There is no way to remove the piece altogether from the Internet, and we do not want to make it seem that we are trying to make it disappear. That is not journalistically honest. The fact that we published it; its deficiencies; and the way its deficiencies illuminate our own lack of insight and foresight, is a matter of record at The Internet Archive. Any advertising revenues derived from hits to this post will be donated to Christian organizations that work with survivors of sexual abuse. We will be working to regain our readers’ trust and to give greater voice to victims of abuse. We apologize unreservedly for the hurt we clearly have caused.

/signed/ Marshall Shelley, editor, Leadership Journal Harold B. Smith, president and CEO, Christianity Today International

I offer my thanks to the editors for making this decision, and encourage them to examine the processes that led them to publish it in the first place, in hopes that they won’t make a similar decision next time.

Take down that post?

As if it had been too long since the last evangelical church sex abuse scandal, Leadership Journal (an imprint of Christianity Today) posted a long online article this month titled “My Easy Trip from Youth Minister to Felon”. Tagged as an article on topics including “adultery”, “failure”, “sex”, and “temptation”, it’s a long-ish first-person account of a youth pastor describing his progression into what sounds like an extramarital affair. Then on the last page you find out the “other woman” in question was a teenager in his church. Suddenly a cautionary tale about temptation turns out to be a story about a pastor grooming and abusing an underaged girl in his congregation. Disgusting.

My intent here isn’t to provide a full summary or address the article - RawStory.com reported on it and many Christian bloggers have chimed in. The Twitter hashtag #TakeDownThatPost quickly sprang up, and I found myself sympathetic.

But then my friend Randy chimed in with a slightly different approach. And that led me to a different, more interesting question. Rather than calling for the editors of the publication to reconsider and take down the post, might it be more appropriate to simply raise awareness that the publication has chosen to post such content, and then let people form their own opinions of the publication and its editors?

Now that’s a conundrum.

What’s the right approach?

Because on one hand Randy’s proposed approach seems pretty attractive. It allows me to just state the facts. If anything, the factual headline (RawStory.com: “Ex-Youth Pastor describes felony sex crimes as extramarital friendship in Christian Journal”) draws far more attention than a “#TakeDownThatPost” hashtag. And let’s face it, if some organization with which I didn’t expect to align did something like this I wouldn’t be campaigning for them to self-censor - I’d just point out where I thought they went wrong and leave it at that.

But this is Christianity Today we’re talking about. I typically respect them quite a bit. Only two weeks ago I recommended their editor Mark Galli’s recent piece on sanctification. Their executive editor Andy Crouch wrote one of my favorite books from last year. I’d like to think there’s some restorative action I could encourage rather than just throwing them under the bus. And to simply draw attention to their unwise action and let others draw conclusions seems an awful lot like I’m trying to drag Christians’ names through the mud, which also doesn’t seem like a good idea.

If you can’t say something nice…

I suppose there’s another option: just don’t say anything. It’s not like the world is looking to me for comment on every issue, right? I was starting to feel that way and then I saw the story going around Facebook and local friends personally looking into it. Now I feel some amount of compulsion to comment, if only to let them know that they’re not alone in being upset about CT posting this article.

So where does that leave me?

I’m not a CT subscriber, so I can’t vote with my feet by cancelling a subscription. I sent an email to the editor of Leadership Journal this morning expressing my concern. I don’t feel like there’s a lot of value in actively joining the Twitter crowd and propagating the hashtag. So what else do I do? (Do I need to do anything?) Pray for the situation, sure - for the victim, the jailed man, the countless other victims out there. But other than that I’m not sure there’s much to do, or much more to say that others aren’t saying more eloquently than I would.

If the abuse scandals of the Catholic church, Sovereign Grace Ministries, Bill Gothard, Vision Forum, and others haven’t yet made it clear enough to us in the evangelical church: covering up, weasling around the topic, addressing it as only sin/repentance and not as a crime, characterizing pastor/youth sex as ‘relationships’ rather than predation - this has got to stop. Let’s not bring even more disrepute to the church than the abusers already have. Let’s again call our elders to be above reproach, and hold them to it.

While we may all personally want to shy away from casting the first stone, God is not mocked. As a church body it’s well past time that we find the pile of millstones and remind ourselves how Jesus advised they might be used.