Bursting the Seminary Bubble – Part 2

Richard Bledsoe has posted an interesting article in two parts on the Biblical Horizons blog.‎

“The great question for the emerging East, for Asia and other awakening third world areas, for an emerging nation like China is, ‘what fate awaits them?’ They are now emerging from an analogous paganism that the West emerged from centuries ago. Here an amazing quotation from David Aikman, the Time Magazine religious editor. He is a quoting from ‘a scholar from one of China’s premier academic institutions, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing, in 2002.’

‘One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world,” he said. “We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West has been so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.’”

“Mao swept China clean of its old ways, gods and traditions as [the Caesars] did the Persian and Grecian Empires centuries before. They left enormous vacuums that were then filled by Christianity, and so did he. He ironically undid the possibility of his own Communist authority in his quest for modernity by sweeping everything ‘old’ away… he was, unbeknownst to himself, merely the servant of the God of the Bible.”

or Desperate Housewives and Accidental Bride-icide

One Good Friday at a Baptist church we used to attend, we were treated to the creepy sight of a mannikin onstage in a wedding dress. [1] The lady speaker (who is not the pastor) told us of a dream she had in which she saw the church as a bride. In the vision, Jesus was brushing the bride’s hair. Ew.

I’m sure all the women thought this was wonderful, particularly those who have been hurt by men. But along with (hopefully) every male in the building, it made me squirm. I was supposed to be imagining Jesus lovingly brushing my hair? For a start, I have no hair. My haircut of choice has been referred to as “The Belsen.”

The church is a bride, but she is a warrior bride. Christians are only the bride corporately, NOT individually. This is extremely important, and it is a factor that went straight over the head of this godly woman. She defended it later with a remark about being tired of the Christian military symbolism she grew up with. But the Bible uses both, and we need to use both and use them appropriately. This problem certainly is the fault of men who are domineering but also of men who are passive. This subtle confusion between the Divine and human needs of women is not the solution.

As individuals we might be insecure and needy, but the church as a body is never these things. The menopausal, lonely divorcee-type believer, stalking Jesus week-to-week (and sometimes from church to church), is not to become the norm. The church is to look after the lonely such as widows so that they too can be warriors secure in God’s love. Even this ministry is a corporate work to be headed by corporate-thinking godly males. See the book of Acts.

At this same church, one Sunday was set aside for testimonies. This is something this church does really well. It was a fantastic time. A couple of men testified about how the men should really be taking the lead in spiritual things, and there were some tears. But then an older, single, vocal, well-meaning and “on-fire” lady got up and thanked God for this new awareness, proclaiming with passion that the women really need to be protecting the men! Now THAT was a cold shower.

Jesus is not a bridegroom to men or to women. David Morrow reports men who feel inadequate because their wives are in love with Jesus, a perfect male who doesn’t even need to use deodorant. [2] This ravishing, bodice-ripping husband-Jesus is a demonic idol.

For individuals and for families, Jesus is the army captain who must be obeyed. This is the imagery men respond to particularly. I don’t swoon at the thought of having my hair brushed. Sure I need comfort from time to time, and the Spirit supplies this (and mostly through the church), but what I need more than that—and fairly frequently—is a good kick in the arse. How is discipleship presented in the New Testament? Boot camp.

Is it any wonder statistics show that churches with woministers shrink? Focussed only on compassion and comfort they cease to be furrowed, fertile ground. The end result of this imbalance is always a sterile ward for palliative care. [3]

There is no place for any sort of feminism in the church. It’s time for men to take the lead. It’s also time for the coddling, defensive, scary sisterhood to burn the travelling pants.

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[1] Interestingly, the word ‘mannikin’ is from Middle Dutch, and is a diminutive form of ‘man.’
[2] David Murrow, Why Men Hate Going to Church.
[3] See also, First Church of Sleepy Hollow, How To Grow Your Church and Christian Gangs.

God chooses certain men to do great works. Their work is duplicated and multiplied in the institutions they found. When these men are gone, those who remain tend to rely on systems. The machine must be maintained for pride’s sake, regardless of whether it is being used by God or not. This violates two basic biblical principles.

The first is the head-and-body principle. God lifts up the head (some great teacher) and a body naturally forms.[1] This is good. This is discipleship. But it should result in more heads. Every church should be an academy. Every church should be able to find their next pastor within their ranks.

The second is the principle of harvest. It has a beginning and an end. When that Bible study you started which was highly enjoyable and edifying comes to its natural end, let it go. When that home care ministry is running out of steam (and volunteers) but you want to keep it running in honour of the now deceased woman who founded it, let it go. (She’s in heaven thinking “Let it go, people. Let it go.”) Some churches come to a natural end. There’s no shame in that if it is a natural end. What’s creepy is when it is kept going for no good reason. Somebody new turns up with fresh ideas and they are the weird one (like Marilyn!).

God’s work is always fresh because it is cyclical.[2] New life comes from fresh seed.[3] Watchman Nee wrote:

“David served in one generation—his own. He could not serve in two! Where today we seek to perpetuate our work by setting up an organisation or society or system, the Old Testament saints served their own day and passed on. This is an important principle of life. Wheat is sown, it grows, it ears, is reaped, and then the whole plant, even to the root, is plowed out. God’s work is spiritual to the point of having no earthly roots, no smell of earth on it at all. Men pass on, but the Lord remains.

Everything to do with the Church must be up-to-date and living, meeting the present—one could never even say the passing—needs of the hour. Never must it become fixed, earth-bound, static. God Himself takes away His workers, but He gives others. Our work suffers, but His never does. Nothing touches Him. He is still God.”

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[1] This is true for both good and evil, although evil is always eventually exposed as impotent. See Totus Diabolus.
[2] I don’t know Watchman Nee’s position on Bible prophecy, but this has a huge bearing on eschatology. Postmillennialists, to my mind, have the best understanding of history and how God works in and through it (typology). And yet this results in postmillennialists being the very ones who don’t live in the past. Closed ranks with open minds. For a great read, see James Jordan’s How To Do Reformed Theology Nowadays.
[3] This death-and-resurrection sequence of living ministry is the true apostolic succession. See Apostolic Succession?

I recently read The Lost History of Christianity – The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa and Asia- and How It Died by Philip Jenkins (2008). It is a magisterial introduction to a rich but largely forgotten history. The lands Jenkins has in mind were well and truly the centre of the Christian world for well over a thousand years, even after the Muslim invasion of these lands from the seventh century.

To understand the Middle East, Africa and Asia as the centre of Christian gravity at any time might now seem as natural today as arguing that the Buddhist homeland was once Buddhist. But Jenkins argues that even in 1200 AD there were 21 million Christians in Asia and the proportion of the world’s Christians living in Asia and Africa was 34 per cent. These Christians are different from us, but they had a rich and vibrant church life of academia (far above anything the Western Church approached until at least the 14th century), liturgy (which may be the source of Gregorian Chants) and mission (particularly the Syrians, who quite successfully reached into India, central Asia and China).

Before England had an archbishop of Canterbury – possibly even before Canterbury had a church – the Syrian church had established metropolitan sees in Merv and Herat, modern Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. Before Poland was Catholic, before Good King Wenceslas ruled a Christian Bohemia, the church in Bukhara, Samarkand and Patna had all reached metropolitan status. Our mental maps of Christianity are too small, and we can’t understand Christian history without Asia – or Asian history without Christianity.

Which makes the decline of these churches all the more tragic. The number of Christians in Asia in 1500 had fallen from 21 million to just 3.4 million. Most of these great churches ceased to exist, whilst the ones that did were small, marginalised and associated ethnic minorities. Churches who’s leaders had once commanded the respect and obedience of at least a quarter of the world’s Christians (and had prayed for the gospel of Yeshua to transform lives in Tibet and Java) was reduced to scratching out an existence in the hills.

Jenkins tells the stories of the churches and what happened to their survivors in the 20th Century. He also offers advice on what to do when churches die, particularly such large slabs of area where almost all Christian history has been totally eradicated. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Church history, particularly for those interested in the meaning of that history for today.

I recently read a book by a mainline pastor who longs for the churches of his denomination to grow again. Comparing those churches to growing churches, he hinted throughout the book at what he could not bring himself to say forthrightly: growing churches are usually characterized by conservative theology…

Thom Rainer’s works… have shown that churches that grow by reaching non-believers have a theology that is best described as conservative and orthodox. The bottom line is this: theology really does matter if we want to grow biblical, healthy churches.

We conservatives know this truth, and we are quick to remind others of this fact. What we are not so quick to acknowledge is the focus of this blog: we do a poor job of teaching the very theology that we claim is so important.

We think that our church members understand and believe our basic doctrine, even while those same members are learning their theology from TV talk show hosts, popular television preachers, or the latest religious novel.

Do an anonymous survey of your congregation’s beliefs, and see what you learn. If the majority knows and believes basic biblical doctrine, your church is more an exception than the norm.

Read more for practical tips on teaching theology.