evangelicalism
- theological institutions (Southern Seminary being the chief example)
- theologians - D. A. Carson, Albert Mohler, Wayne Grudem, John Piper, Mark Dever
- charismatic teachers - Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, Voddie Baucham, Josh Harris, C. J. Mahaney
- mouthpieces - The Gospel Coalition website, Desiring God’s website, and The Resurgence website, among others
- inquisitors - Tim Challies and Kevin DeYoung being the prime examples
- councils - we call ‘em conferences, though. Desiring God holds a big one every year, T4G is every other year, and so on.
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Strong enough to bring about change. In an evangelical ecosystem already dominated by leaders with strong personalities, Matt Chandler comes in to this leadership position as an already-established “brand”, separate from Acts 29. His story is fairly well known within evangelical circles, reluctantly accepting the pastorate of a dying Baptist church in the Dallas area only to turn it into a thriving multi-campus megachurch. More recently, his diagnosis of brain cancer and the following struggle through surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy have been the subject of many a blog post and tweet over the last two and a half years. In short, Matt’s standing within the evangelical community is strong and distinct enough from Mark Driscoll’s that Matt has a reasonable chance of effecting real change where it’s needed, rather than just existing in Driscoll’s shadow.
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Leaders set the culture. While Chandler’s theology is close in line with that of Driscoll and the Acts 29 network, culturally the lanky Texan will provide a sharp contrast to the Seattle spark plug. Over the past decade, young Acts 29 church planters have picked up not only Driscoll’s theology but also his personal style. There seems to be a contractual obligation for Acts 29 pastors to love Mixed Martial Arts, tattoos, beer, and alternative music styles. Now, I don’t know whether Chandler is a fan of MMA or not… but that just illustrates my point. If Pastor Matt can help separate the cultural stylism from the heart of Acts 29 ministry, it will be a very good thing.
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Some distance from the controversy. There have been a couple of widely-discussed controversies in the past few months concerning Mars Hill Church in general, and Mark Driscoll’s leadership strategies in particular. I don’t want to comment on them here other than to say that it appears less than coincidental that the Acts 29 move comes on the heels of those issues. Maybe this move will help provide some distance and perspective for Acts 29 pastors who may be finding themselves uncomfortably trying to deal with these controversies.
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Room for Pastor Mark to refresh and grow. Whether you love him or hate him, you’ve got to acknowledge that Mark Driscoll has been one busy dude over the past 10 years. Taking a church from zero to thousands, writing a gazillion books, teaching all over the evangelical conference circuit, and founding and growing a church planting network of 400+ churches, all while trying to also be a good husband and father to a growing family is enough to run anyone ragged. Add to it the stress from being a flashpoint for some contentious cultural issues (Don Miller named him “Mark the cussing pastor” for a real reason, after all), and maybe it’s time for Pastor Mark to back it off just a bit and recharge. Bringing in Pastor Matt to fill a prominent role could help that happen.
- I like and admire a whole lot of what I know about and experienced of President Reagan.
- I’m not sure where I stand on the whole end-times thing. I used to buy into the whole “Left Behind” scenario - let’s face it, that’s what I grew up in. Today I’m not so sure. Left Behind doesn’t seem plausible, but I’m not entirely convinced by the amillenial position, either.
- Obviously not everyone that holds to the premillenial view hates the environment and/or is primarily motivated by fear
- Obviously the Republican party holds some views that are good. The Democrat party does, too.
- I have some non-dispensational libertarian friends who are gonna tell me I’m completely off base on this one.
Biblicism and the Reformed Evangelical magisterium
One of the long-term hallmarks of the American evangelical church has been a congregational independence free from strong denominational ties. Sure, the denominations exist as broad placeholders with certain doctrinal distinctives, but the range of actual beliefs and practices among churches even within a single denomination is often large. In practice, theological interpretations mainly happen at the individual congregation level. This seems reasonable given that the popularly accepted definition of evangelicalism includes “biblicism” as one of its four key characteristics. [ref]Per British historian David Bebbington as referenced in this Wheaton College post. The other three characteristics are conversionism, activism, and crucicentrism.[/ref]
Within less-evangelical denominations that have a well-defined hierarchy, doctrinal disputes and practice are better kept in-house; the Presbyterians are more than willing to govern their doctrine and practice, and the Catholics have their magisterium - the teaching authority of the church which speaks authoritatively on doctrine.
While Reformed Evangelicalism is still loosely grouped into tribes (Acts 29, The Gospel Coalition, Southern Seminary alumni, etc.), I think we are seeing the emergence of a Reformed Evangelical magisterium of sorts. Its hand has been evident the past several months in the reaction to, among other things, Rachel Held Evans' new book. I don’t want to address the book in this post - I did that previously - but rather the reaction to it.
Let me say up front that I have great respect for everyone I’m going to mention here, and that I have learned much from and appreciated the teaching of nearly all of them. My goal here is not to suggest that they have nefarious intents or are necessarily intentionally working to form this sort of authoritative cabal, but that its emergence may point to a lack of confidence in the sufficiency of the tenet of biblicism.
Seeing the organization of this Reformed Evangelical cabal isn’t difficult. There is a nicely defined structure that includes:
If a member gets too far out of line, this group is quietly self-regulating. See: Acts29 moving from Driscoll in Seattle to Chandler in Dallas. See also Mahaney leaving his Maryland church of nearly 30 years under a cloud, only to re-emerge as pastor of a new church in Louisville, KY, safely in Al Mohler’s backyard.
Among the larger group of individual pastors that follow these leaders, doctrinal alignment is maintained by conferences and publishers. As an aspiring author, your first book likely won’t get a look from one of the big names, but if Challies reviews it positively, your second one might. A cover blurb from Driscoll, Keller, or Chandler will help ensure that your book gets accepted at the book sales room at the next conference, and from there you’re all set on your track to successful blogging, authoring, and maybe even your own speaking gig at the next conference!
Get a vote of disapproval, though, and you’ll be on the outside looking in, anywhere from just being ignored (which I’d imagine is bad for an author’s prospects) to having the full court press turned against you (as Rachel Held Evans has had the past few months).
Now, from one perspective, this sort of unity seems like a positive thing, right? We have Baptists, Presbyterians, Free Church-ians, and independents of every stripe coming “Together for the Gospel”. And indeed, this tent is apparently big enough for diversity on sacramental issues like baptism and communion. But touch one of the “third rails” like women’s roles or origins and you’re gonna get dropped like a hot potato. (Recently a professor at Cedarville College got fired because he believed the “right things” about Adam and Eve but not for the right reasons.)
A few of the authors who go where angels fear to tread are given a grudging pass, typically because their academic credentials are too impressive to totally ignore. Think here of Scot McKnight, whose Junia Is Not Alone argues hard for the egalitarian position, but who also taught at TEDS alongside D. A. Carson. And also, oh, that N. T. Wright guy who says some amazingly liberal stuff on social gospel and the environment, but who wrote some stunning stuff on Jesus.
Academic credentials don’t ensure asbestos underwear, though. Pete Enns (a tenured professor) got run out of Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia, back in 2008 after publishing his book Inspiration and Incarnation, which argued for a re-evaluation of how we read and interpret the Bible - and especially the early parts of the Old Testament. And if you’re a woman without a theology degree, like the aforementioned Evans, well, sorry. You’re toast.
Ask any of these guys (or your local adherents to their creed) why they put the big focus on these specific doctrinal issues, and what you’ll probably hear is this: “the gospel is at stake”. I think it’s clear, though, that what it really means is “our version of the gospel is at stake”.
And this is where the idea of a magisterium comes in. In the Catholic tradition, the magisterium is the teaching authority of the church. The church leadership speaks an authoritative interpretation of Scripture, and the matter is settled.
In the evangelical tradition, however, we don’t have the strong denominational and hierarchical structures to pronounce and enforce Scriptural interpretation. And even though we love the Scripture (a pastor I know and love proudly says he has such a high view of Scripture that “it’s not bibliolatry… but *wink* it’s just almost bibliolatry."), it’s apparent that while we also love our congregational independence, that independence is just insufficient to protect the evangelical doctrinal turf. And so evangelicalism falls back on its informal magisterium.
I don’t think one can conclude from all this that a magisterium is a bad thing, nor can one conclude that the solution is to move our evangelical churches into some hierarchical denomination. But what is clear is that no matter how loudly some leaders of evangelicalism may cry that we need to simply “believe what the Bible says”, it’s never quite that simple.
Advent... or not
‘Tis the season of Advent, or at least lots of church bloggers are telling me. A time of anticipation, longing, and waiting. Even evangelical churches that aren’t big on use of the church calendar seem to mark out the time for Advent.
It’s curious in a way. We evangelicals don’t observe much of the rest of the traditional church calendar. Christmas? That’s a single day. (That 12 Days of Christmas song is just some weird anachronism.) Pentecost? We remember the story, but don’t mark the day. Lent? Heck no, that’s a weird Catholic thing. Ascension? Is that even a thing we remember?
The churches I grew up in didn’t follow the church calendar, so the only taste I got of it was when visiting my grandparents’ Lutheran church on occasion. 17th Sunday after Pentecost? What the what? It’s not until this past decade as I’ve gained friends in more liturgical denominations that my awareness has been heightened to the greater observance of the calendar. (Kari, for instance, has done some lovely posts on Advent, Lent, and Ordinary Time.)
Seeing how the larger church observes the calendar helps me understand some of the celebrational whiplash that I feel throughout the year. Why do they do Lent for 40 days but then Easter is just one day? Oh, Easter is actually supposed to be celebrated longer than just the day? *lightbulb*
It also helps me explain the dissonance I felt on the first Sunday in December when our church worship kicked off with Angels We Have Heard on High. (It was assuaged briefly this past week when we opened with O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, but quickly returned when we closed the service with Joy to the World!.)
Don’t get me wrong - I love the Christmas hymns. But it does feel like we miss something when we bypass all the anticipation and spread our Jesus-is-born celebration across the whole month of December.
Could it be that the anticipation of Advent is the tension that stretches the boundary between heaven and earth so thin that when we finally do reach Christmas Eve, our hearts can glimpse heaven breaking through?
At the end of Sally Lloyd-Jones' beautiful Jesus Storybook Bible, she writes about the revelation to John, and she says this:
One day, John knew, Heaven would come down and mend God’s broken world and make it our true, perfect home once again.
And he knew, in some mysterious way that would be hard to explain, that everything was going to be more wonderful for once having been so sad.
In the same way, Advent makes Christmas more wonderful, if only because the heightened anticipation makes us keenly ready to celebrate Jesus' birth.
Let us anticipate together His coming.
Closely intertwined
I think it may take the American evangelical church another decade or so to really realize how closely intertwined they are with the Republican party, but my prayer is that the realization hits sooner rather than later. What compounds the issue is that our view of American exceptionalism makes us prideful enough that we are resistant to learn from our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world on the topic.
-- me, in an email a few minutes ago
Some thoughts on Matt Chandler's move to lead Acts 29
So, it’s official: Matt Chandler will be taking over as president of the Acts 29 church planting network, moving the A29 headquarters from Seattle to Dallas. Pastor Matt will be taking over from Mark Driscoll, the fiery pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, who helped found the network over a decade ago. While others have served as president of Acts 29 at various times over the past 10 years, it is still Driscoll (and, to a lesser extent, Darrin Patrick of The Journey in St. Louis) who primarily comes to mind when you say Acts 29.
The move from Driscoll to Chandler is a significant one, for several reasons:
Time will tell how this move affects both pastors, their churches, and the Acts 29 network as a whole. We should take the time today, though, to lift up both of these men, their families, and their churches in prayer, asking God’s blessing and protection on them as they serve.
15 Reasons to Show Grace
A couple of days ago I posted a link to Rachel Held Evans' “15 Reasons I Left Church” on my Facebook wall, along with this comment:
While we may not agree with all of Rachel Held Evans’ reasons, or her conclusion, those of us who are church leaders should be aware that Rachel is not alone - there are undoubtedly people sitting in our pews thinking the same things.
To lay my cards on the table: I resonate with 7 or 8 of the 15 reasons that Rachel lists at my current church, and have been there with another couple of them at previous churches. On a few of the items I disagree with her doctrinally, and the frustrations I’ve had over some of these issues haven’t driven me to leave my church… but that may be because I’ve chosen to simply be quiet about some of the topics rather than being vocal and stirring the pot. So I was curious to see what sort of responses I’d get on FB, and I wasn’t disappointed.
The responses ran the gamut that I sort of expected; a couple friends identified with it quite strongly; a couple more felt the pain and frustration in her post but materially disagreed with most of the content or with how she said it; one graciously said that she “didn’t get it at all”, but that it was unhelpful whining. A college acquaintance reposted the link and got several responses from other college folks universally accusing Evans of whining and “making it all about her rather than about God”.
I’m not surprised by these reactions any more, but I am significantly saddened. Questioning is not sin, and wrestling with theological issues is a sign of healthy, involved, real faith, not a pointer toward apostasy. As Chaplain Mike over at InternetMonk.com so eloquently ranted a couple of weeks ago:
It is Islam that sets forth submission and unquestioning acceptance as the ultimate in piety — not Christianity nor our parent faith as expressed in the Hebrew Bible. The faith we follow is one of lively dialogue between the Creator and his creatures. We question, complain, express our anger, cry out in pain, and bargain with God. Sometimes, if you believe the Bible, God even changes his mind at our behest. Like Jacob, we refuse to let him go until he blesses us. Like Moses, we argue with God. Like the psalmists, we groan and hurl curses toward the heavens. On the other hand, preachers like [name redacted - that’s not the point] want us to get in line and behave. They rebuke our messiness, our humanness. They use the sovereignty of God to shut us up.
Maybe you wrestle with doubt and questions on a daily basis. Or maybe you’ve gone to the same church your whole life and never had the slightest inclination to doubt or argue with what is taught. Maybe you’re somewhere in between. No matter where you are on that spectrum, though, the first response has to be grace.
Grace allows us to disagree with a brother or sister but embrace them anyway. There is a time for teaching and correction, but for the hurting brother or sister, that time comes after love has been lavished and healing has begun.
Jesus didn’t rebuke the doubters; he encouraged them. Even Thomas, who after three years of following Jesus around really had more faith - even Thomas Jesus graciously called close and encouraged him to believe. The rebukes were reserved for those who thought they had it all together and were judging those who they thought didn’t. Judging by the reaction I’ve seen over the past few days, it’s time to go back and learn that lesson again.
Are we overly focused on the cross?
There’s a thought-provoking post by Bo Sanders up on Homebrewed Christianity today wherein he asks what might be to many a startling question: have we overdone the crucifixion?
Sanders thinks that we may have. He observes that, for evangelicals on the blogosphere (and, I’d add, in the current publishing market) it’s “all atonement theory, all the time”.
He goes on:
Here is my concern: in the resurrection God spoke a new word over the world. I would like to live into that new word and participate with God’s Spirit who was given as a gift and a seal of the promise.
To obsess on the cross and related atonement theories is to live perpetually in the old word and to camp in the final thing that God said about the old situation.
As I reflect on my own journey, I can see how the churches in which I grew up did focus on the cross and atonement to the great neglect of the resurrection. Not that we didn’t have amazing Easter celebrations, but somehow we never connected the dots between Christ’s resurrection and our own eternal future. That omission is the reason that when, at age 30, I finally read N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope, it so rocked my theological world.
So I think it’s a question worth thinking about. Do we overly focus on the cross as opposed to the other symbols of our faith? Is the focus on the cross a reflection of the evangelical personal sin/death/redemption focus, whereas a focus on the empty tomb and resurrection might drive a more corporate kingdom/social perspective?
To look at it another way: one of my daughter’s favorite stories from the Jesus Storybook Bible (highly recommended if you have kids) is the one on the crucifixion. But if she requests that story, I make sure we have time to read two stories, because I refuse to stop reading with Good Friday; I want to get to resurrection morning. Is our focus on the cross a grown-up theological equivalent of continually reading the Friday chapter without the Sunday chapter? Food for thought, for sure.
Church shopping and cultural polarization
CNN.com has a blog post today exploring “How Church Shopping is Polarizing the Country”. Written by law professors Naomi Cahn (George Washington University) and June Carbone (University of Missouri Kansas City) who have recently co-authored a book on cultural polarization, the particular focus on church shopping intrigued me. Heck, I was church shopping not all that long ago. I’m helping cause cultural polarization? I must know more.
Fascinating (and saddening) are their definitions of the two polarized camps: traditionalists, who “…believe in an eternal and transcendent authority that tells us what is good, what is true, how we should live, and who we are”, and modernists, who “…would redefine historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life”. Modernists, they note, “…have become less likely to attend church at all.”
In previous generations, they say, both modernists and traditionalists tended to attend the same churches, typically right in their community. Today, though, the ability to church-shop has the traditionalists seeking out churches that affirm their “personal values”, and has modernists staying home.
The authors lament the decline of the mainline Protestant denominations that in previous generations housed both camps, and complain that today’s evangelical churches (full of like-minded traditionalists) are self-reinforcing in belief, and that evangelicalism’s close ties to the Republican Party serve to marginalize those who might be in agreement politically but not religiously (or vice versa). In the end, they say, traditionalists group together and talk only to themselves, and modernists leave church altogether, resulting in an increasingly polarized society.
There are certainly places where I disagree with the authors' views on the topic. I think that Protestants seeking churches where their beliefs are shared and reinforced is a good thing. And drawing rosy pictures of a post-WWII generation where everyone attended the same community church regardless of what they believed only serves to hide the fact that those weak, any-belief-is-OK churches in large part helped cause the modernist/traditionalist divide we see today, by valuing the form-over-substance mindset that was eventually cynically discarded by Generation X.
However, within the microcosm that is the evangelical church, there are good lessons to be learned here. We need to be vigilant to ensure that we limit our “distinctives” to the fundamental Gospel truths. As soon as our teaching, or even our church culture, becomes, even by way of unspoken assumptions, ‘the gospel plus conservative politics’ or ‘the gospel plus homeschooling’ or ‘the gospel plus pre-millennial dispensationalism’, etc., we will alienate those who either desperately need to hear the Gospel or who could be vibrant, participating members of our local body.
The good news that Jesus Christ is Lord of all is polarizing. We should not be surprised when law professors find it so. But there is still a lesson for us here: let the Gospel be polarizing, not the cultural things we are so apt to add on to it.
The "Left Behind" influence on the Religious Right
It’s been a common observation over the past several years that one of the practical results of a “Left Behind”, dispensational view of the end times is a lack of care for the environment in general - heck, if it’s all gonna burn anyway, why should I care? But the other day it struck me that there is another connection that I haven’t heard commented on - a connection between the rise of dispensational end times views and the rise of Republicanism within the evangelical church.
Now, let’s be fair to Tim LaHaye - just because his “Left Behind” books became so popular this past decade doesn’t mean that he dreamed the whole “left behind” scenario up. Think back to Hal Lindsey’s Late, Great Planet Earth, published in 1970, which became the non-fiction bestseller of the 70’s. While we were politically tired out and frustrated by Vietnam, Watergate, and Carter’s “malaise”, Lindsey also got us thinking about premillenial, dispensational end times. And a primary component of that movement, even though it’s not often stated that way: fear.
Fear was, and still is, a huge motivator in that paradigm. Fear of the coming one-world government. Fear of The Antichrist. Fear of “the mark”. Fear that somehow we won’t make God’s “cut” and that we’ll be left behind. Fear of the beheadings. Come on, folks, remember A Thief In The Night? What other bad 1970’s zombie film would ever get shown in high school church youth groups?
Then came 1980 and Ronald Reagan proclaimed that government was the problem, not the solution. And the Late, Great adherents heard that and figured that any political movement that took us further away from that scary impending one-world government was a good thing. And now for the past 30 years the Republican party, and, indeed, the entire Republican platform, has been considered the default “right” position for evangelical Christians in America.
Now, this is no sort of comprehensive analysis, but it’s an interesting topic to think through.
Finally, a set of disclaimers so that I don’t get kicked out of every group I’ve ever belonged to:
Culture Warrior or Disciple?
The Internet Monk’s latest post deserves more than just a bullet in my overnight links.
Michael Spencer describes “Bob”, a man he met this past summer. Bob is “a very dedicated conservative evangelical, and a pleasant enough fellow….when he [isn’t] angry.”
Bob was your stereotypical culture war evangelical. He was a Jesus follower, but his passion was what was going on in America, particularly the issues we broadly call the culture war: atheistic advances in the public schools, restrictions on Christian practice in the public square, the aggressive agenda of homosexual rights advocates.
Bob was obviously devoted to Christian and conservative media, particularly radio. He believed what he heard. Dobson. Point of View. 700 Club.
We all know people like this. We all get multitudinous email forwards from people like this. Some of us are people like this, or have those tendencies. And here’s iMonk’s word for us:
Go live like a disciple.
It’s hard to say this, but Bob isn’t seeing the big picture. Our American culture war is not worth the demise of authentic discipleship. Trading following Christ in love, even in post-Christian times, for fighting and defensiveness, is a bad trade. Bob is frightened. Our faith says “Fear not.” Bob says prepare to fight. Our faith says prepare to love.
I am particularly impressed that these days should call us together in real community, not separate us according to Christian media audience niche. There are some helpful voices out there in the culture war, but I’d like to suggest that it’s time to listen to your pastor- assuming he’s showing you how to follow Jesus- more than James Dobson or some angrier, more paranoid manipulator of fear.
You should really go read the whole article. Good, good stuff. Amen.
The war by? on? Christians in America...
Stanley Kurtz has an excellent (if a bit long) column today discussing the current edition of Harper’s Magazine - cover story: “The Christian Right’s War on America”.
He argues that by accusing the “Christian Right” of being hateful and “at war with America”, Harper’s (as just one participant in a trend by the media) is themselves promoting “hatred” of a group… the Christian Right. He writes:
According to Harper’s, conservative Christians are making “war on America.” Can you imagine the reaction to a cover story about a “war on America” by blacks, gays, Hispanics, or Jews?
It’s worth reading the whole article.