Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
FALL/WINTER ’10 | VOL.38 NO.2
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con te n ts
FALL/WINTER ’10 VOL.38 NO.2
The Ministry Magazine of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
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ON THE FRONT LINES
Ministering to a Pre-Christian Community in Massachusetts Anne B. Doll
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What Is Ethics All About? Esther Byle Bruland
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Wonderfully Made–Terribly Fallen
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Ethics in the Workplace
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To Live in Justice
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Dennis P. Hollinger
David W. Gill
Eldin Villafañe
FACULTY PROFILE
EMERITI MEMBERS Dr. Richard A. Armstrong Dr. Robert E. Cooley, President Emeritus Rev. Dr. Leighton Ford Mr. Roland S. Hinz Dr. Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. President Emeritus Rev. Dr. Robert J. Lamont Mr. Richard D. Phippen John G. Talcott, Jr. Rev. Dr. Paul E. Toms
Ruth Hawk
President Dr. Dennis P. Hollinger
How to Make Ethical Decisions in a Complex World Patrick T. Smith
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BOARD OF TRUSTEES Mr. Joel B. Aarsvold Dr. Claude R. Alexander, Jr. Mrs. Linda Schultz Anderson Dr. George F. Bennett Rev. Dr. Garth T. Bolinder Rev. Dr. Richard P. Camp, Jr. Mr. Thomas J. Colatosti, Chair Mr. Charles W. Colson Mrs. Joyce A. Godwin Dr. William F. Graham Rev. Dr. Michael E. Haynes Mr. Herbert P. Hess, Treasurer Mr. Ivan C. Hinrichs Rev. Dr. John A. Huffman, Jr. Mr. Caleb Loring III Rev. Dr. Christopher A. Lyons Mrs. Joanna S. Mockler Fred L. Potter, Esq. Shirley A. Redd, M.D. Mr. Timothy B. Robertson Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, Jr. Mr. John Schoenherr Mrs. Virginia M. Snoddy Joseph W. Viola, M.D., Secretary J. Christy Wilson III, Esq. Rev. Dr. John H. Womack William C. Wood, M.D.
Garth Rosell
Vice President of Advancement Mr. Kurt W. Drescher
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SEMINARY NEWS
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FOCUS ON ALUMNI
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OPENING THE WORD
Chris Castaldo
Catherine Clark Kroeger
Director of Communications and Marketing Mr. Michael L. Colaneri
Senior Communications Advisor and Editor of Contact Mrs. Anne B. Doll Graphic Designer Ms. Nicole S. Rim Assistant Editor of Contact Mrs. Ruth Hawk
Inquiries regarding CONTACT may be addressed to: Editor, CONTACT Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary 130 Essex Street, S. Hamilton, MA 01982 Tel: 978.468.7111 or email: rhawk@gordonconwell.edu www.gordonconwell.edu GORDON-CONWELL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY DOES NOT DISCRIMINATE ON THE BASIS OF RACE, GENDER, NATIONAL OR ETHNIC ORIGIN, AGE, HANDICAP OR VETERAN STATUS.
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Photography Mr. Tom Kates Ms. Nicole S. Rim
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ministering to a
p r e c h ri st i a n c ommunit y in massac huse t t s an n e b . do ll
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astor PoSan Ung often talks about “persevering” as he describes his church’s ministry of evangelism and discipleship in Lynn, Massachusetts. Six years ago, the native of Cambodia and survivor of the Cambodian holocaust planted Living Fields Church in this northern Boston community. It is a city “trying to develop, to gentrify itself,” he says, but a “struggling city” plagued by “gang activity, violence and poverty.” Lynn is also home to part of the nation’s second largest Cambodian population, yet less than 0.5 percent are Christian. In 2004, Pastor PoSan, who attended Gordon-Conwell and has taught evangelism at the Boston campus, rented space in an office building and set out to advance the gospel among a people group he characterizes as pre-Christian. “This means that there simply aren’t many Christians and that they see Christ as a foreign god,” he explains. “They’re
mostly Buddhist, but Buddhism is very nominal for them. They are more driven by materialism, instant gratification, gambling, etc. So we need to gather as a Christian community amongst them, trying to be salt and light.” Today, his congregation is mostly Cambodian, with a sprinkling of Korean American, Caucasian American, Vietnamese and Pan Asian members. Assisted by a few volunteer staff members, he is reaching out to children, youth and adults, beginning with corporate worship where non-believers “can hear the Gospel and learn from the worship of God.” The church then connects visitors through fellowship, relational evangelism activities, and ministry and discipleship groups that meet nearly every evening of the week. These opportunities can range from community dinners to outreach music lessons, one-on-one discipleship and Bible studies in both English and Khmer, their native language.
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ON THE FRONT LINES
“lynn is also home to part of the nation’s second
largest cambodian population, yet less than 0.5percent are christian.”
Outreach also extends to children, who PoSan says “need the blessing as well.” Each summer, the church stages a Vacation Bible School for about 100 children—an effort he describes as “huge…because this is a pre-Christian community. It’s not like we have parents who sign them up…and drive them to the event itself. We need to go door-to-door to invite them and register them. Then we go door-to-door to pick them up, bring them to our VBS and take them back home. It demands quite a bit.” The annual VBS, which he views as both evangelism and outreach, has drawn a number of children to the church on Sunday mornings. Here, he says, “they can gather in a safe environment to have fun” and participate in activities that help them “learn God’s Word, praise God and pray.” But this, too, is 1
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1. PoSan with Living Fields youth 2. Pastor PoSan evangelizes to Buddhist monk from Lynn 3. Lynn, MA’s Buddhist temple was formerly a Baptist church 4. Morning devotions at Dormitory Ministry 5. Shop catering to the many poor in Lynn 6. Ministering at evangelism outreach in local park
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challenging “because little children require transportation.” Their participation is sometimes determined by the number of drivers available to pick them up. In a pre-Christian community, it is quite a challenge since “‘the workers are few,’ yet God has been stretching us to do what we can.” In 2007, Pastor PoSan embarked upon yet another major ministry, purchasing a house in which young adults who are new believers could live and be discipled. “I was just wracking my brain and heart before the Lord, and wondering why I wasn’t seeing more mature disciples among the Cambodian people,” he recalls. “I have attended to that question through every stage of ministry that God has allowed me to do. I wanted to preach the true gospel, helping people to see God for who He is, and to know that our only true hope is in Christ…But still, over the years I do not see true disciples maturing.” The pastor says that one day, as he wrestled with this dilemma, he was walking out of the church office and spotted a pool of sewage water in the gutter. “I felt the Lord asking me, ‘If you had an infant lying in that pool of sewage water, what would FA L L / W I N T E R ‘ 1 0
happen to it? If it didn’t die, it would simply be unhealthy.’ “I realized that with all our effort in the community, people spend one or two hours a week in the ministry our church is offering. In those few hours of Sunday worship or outreaches, about 10 minutes is spent in God’s Word. And in that 10 minutes, how much time is spent reflecting on God’s Word and prayer? Five minutes? Maybe not. So it’s no wonder that these babies are actually sickly or dying because they are not getting enough nutrients. They’re not living in a context where after they attend church, they get to go home to find their identity as Christians in their family. Rather, they receive discouragement and hostility for their faith. They’re the only Christians in their family, and it’s extremely lonesome.” 3
He points to one new believer who is often accused by his grandfather of bringing shame to the family name by attending a Christian church. His grandfather leads a Buddhist temple. And when another member became a Christian and started attending Bible study, his mother told him, “You’re being stupid.” Given this reality, Pastor PoSan realized that Lynn’s new Christians needed to “be nurtured and experience God’s love in a tangible way.” He wanted to have a discipleship community where these young adults “could live and experience what Christian living looks like: how we pray regularly, how we respond to life’s challenges, how we search the Scriptures for wisdom...how we have reverent training in God’s Word—and for more than five minutes! My prayer is that by experiencing this learning community for two or three years, they will grow, be equipped and ready to return to their homes to become a different kind of neighbor, a different kind of son/daughter, or future husband/wife. That they would, in turn, know how to make disciples among their own friends and families.” Since purchasing the discipleship house, Pastor PoSan has nearly single-handedly renovated the facility, retrofitting the first floor apartment as a men’s dormitory and the third as a dorm for women, with the middle floor for living and ministry space. But the renovation is still a significant work in progress, sandwiched
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in among the pastor’s myriad ministry responsibilities. In addition to the ongoing task of making the facility functional, currently a key need is to renovate the basement as a place for Sunday worship/gathering space. The congregation is rapidly outgrowing its rented quarters. “This is completely a walk of faith, because it takes a lot to do this,” he admits. “I don’t know how God is going to provide, but I trust He will in His timing.” Through the church’s ministries of outreach and discipleship, he adds, “God is allowing us to persevere, and it is bearing fruit.” He points to the response of an international student from an elite family in Cambodia. “The young man met us as he was earning an MBA in Boston after studying economics and law in his homeland, and pursuing additional study in Taiwan on a fellowship. “At first, he was just interested in getting to know us,” Pastor PoSan recounts. “But an opportunity came for the gospel to be presented to him, and his response was, ‘I don’t care.’ That was quite a moment of formation for all of us…With such great effort, how was it that the gospel seemed to fall on deaf ears? You can imagine the dynamic in our hearts. But knowing God was ministering in that moment, I realized that He was calling me to trust that salvation belongs to the Lord and to find our joy in being obedient to Him.” 5
The ministry team, therefore, continued to invite the young man to church, but he didn’t show up until a month later. “I was serving communion, and he wanted to receive it,” Pastor PoSan remembers. “I asked him how he was doing, and he said that he needed Jesus. At the end of worship, he told me that he had always been the master of his own life, and he realized he couldn’t save himself from his sin and that only Jesus could.” As the pastor prepared the man for baptism, he expressed the desire to grow, even asking PoSan to teach him how to better understand the Bible and to disciple him. After the new Christian completes his degree, he wants to attend seminary, then return to Cambodia as a professor where he desires to make disciples. “He told me, ‘Pastor, I’m going to have thousands of students, and I’d like to know how to disciple,’” PoSan notes, “so God is using this little church in this faraway place to do a work halfway around the globe—maybe not today, not this year, but maybe in 10 or 20 years. Who would have thought that God would do that kind of ministry…in a place like Lynn? “Doing all this is quite a task when you don’t have many resources,” he says, “but God has been gracious to bring us a great harvest, and He is allowing us to persevere in this mission field that’s located in our own backyard.”
Pastor PoSan Ung on Discipleship Rev. PoSan Ung grew up in Brooklyn, NY, as a Cambodian refugee. He earned a Bachelor of Science from Brown University before attending Gordon-Conwell. As a missionary with Boston’s Emmanuel Gospel Center (EGC), he was examined and approved by EGC and the Christian Cambodian American Fellowship PoSan, left, mentors pastors (CCAF). In addition to pastoring Living Fields Church in Lynn, MA, in Cambodia he is the Minister-at-Large for CCAF and is the Cambodian Resource Coordinator for Asian Access, through which he trains and mentors pastors in his homeland of Cambodia. (pastorposan@livingfields.org)
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omething happens when you do discipleship in an intentional and in-depth way. We can talk about transformation superficially, something that we kind of desire and wish for. But I think that in the path of discipleship, transformation happens as we obey what the Lord commands. We don’t normally obey what he commands, as our inclination is towards sin. Thus, we need disciplers, people who would teach us what we need to know and then call us to do that.
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“Many times, we just leave it at people are saved. They make a certain profession and they say ‘yes’ to a set of questions and that’s it. I don’t think so. God has given us a greater privilege to greater things. And that is to witness transformation...to be disciple-makers through the power of God who works through the Word, works through the Church, sending us out. And that comes through calling people to obey God’s commands, while trusting in the sufficiency of Christ’s work on the cross. “Speaking into people’s lives is not only sharing a prayer need, but saying, ‘How are you doing with that specific struggle, and what do the Scriptures say regarding it?’—excavating the issue. Learning that takes a real understanding of the reality of mercy and righteousness. God loved us and saved us in his mercy, but he saved us for his glory, so that’s righteousness in our lives. He doesn’t merely save us from hell and leave us where we are. He saves us though we were a stench to his nostrils. But his plan for us is hope and a future that is His glory. We need to call people to this righteousness while showing great endurance, mercy and gentleness. “The challenge of a discipler is that when you walk with a disciple, there is great need for wisdom and vigilance in calling them to obey. Sometimes we miss those opportunities or we shy away from them, afraid that it might offend. But we need to care more about them than ourselves. The following steps are examples of what to consider when calling a disciple towards obedience:
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Make sure that you present God’s wisdom, grounded in His Word, as opposed to wordly wisdom.
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Once you have godly wisdom, seek the Spirit for leading and discernment, whether it’s the time/place to present God’s Truth.
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Refrain from correcting/rebuking if a judgmental or condemning spirit is at play.
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Assess their hidden depth of sickness and offer the medicine of God’s Love and Truth.
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Esther Byle Bruland, Ph.D., MATS (’81)
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Unlike other professionals, pastors relate to their members in a multitude of contexts. We are with our people in church, but also in their homes, at barbecues or softball games, or numerous other social settings, and our interactions with them (which are required and expected) relate to a wide range of interests and concerns. Our members also sometimes serve on boards or committees in the church that have authority regarding our salary, job performance and other matters that affect us personally and professionally. These waters can be very difficult to negotiate at times, especially when it comes to questions of honoring confidentiality and maintaining proper boundaries.
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Gordon-Conwell alumnus shared these thoughts in response to the question, “What seems to be the most recurrent ethical concern that you have faced in your ministry?” I asked several alumni this question and, under promise of anonymity, received a wide range of responses. Let’s hear a few more. “The struggle to wisely apply God’s life guidelines versus lapsing into behavior that Jesus deems foolish demands constant attention,” voiced one. A similar commitment to high personal ethical standards shone through most responses. One alumnus focused on the intersection of these standards with the challenges of the pastoral role, noting, “It is so crucial for the pastor to constantly strive to be totally honest and truthful at all times. People almost assume, based on living in a culture filled with people in authority who lie, from politicians to preachers, that all authority figures
lie.” He reflected on the protection this high ethical resolve provides:
Over 25 years ago, at my first church, I learned the “hard way” that careless words spoken in jest could come back to haunt you. I found that my words could easily be twisted and used against me out of context. After that ministry of five wonderful years, I had a group of individuals, looking to take over control of the church, attack me. They went back over four years of ministry and brought up conversations and comments I had supposedly made (in many cases, I couldn’t even remember the conversation) and used them to impugn my integrity. Since then, I have always been ultra-vigilant to make sure I am truthful and honest in my ministry in everything I say and write. It is a blessing to know that I have done everything I can to make sure I speak the truth, even though there will always be times when others try to interpret my comments differently or take them out of context.
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thers echoed this theme of the need for ethical vigilance. A 30-year senior pastor focused on administrative vigilance:
Shepherding church staff brings its share of ethical challenges. I have found that most are Christ-centered and dedicated to serving others. On occasion, though, even with agreed-upon personnel guidelines, some will stray. For instance, my current office manager is a dedicated disciple
work sheds helpful light on the interplay of convictions, settings, choices and consequences. This descriptive mapping reveals that Christians have taken various routes in deriving norms they would label as Christian. In his benchmark Survey of Christian Ethics, Edward L. Long, Jr. characterized three major routes: the deliberative (drawing especially upon reason and philosophy), the prescriptive (drawing especially upon prescriptive codes, including biblical revelation), and the
Ethics helps us map out this territory and pursue the good, the right, the true, the just, the virtuous, on paths characterized by these same qualities. of Jesus. By contrast, the office manager who was here when I came was discovered to have spent hours each day using church technology to pursue her personal sales on eBay…It is a delicate task to call for accountability when a staff member’s attitudes or activities are in conflict with biblical directives and with a church’s purpose and mission.
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s these comments reveal, ethics has a broad scope, ranging from personal and interpersonal to corporate accountability and beyond. Add denominational challenges, and the mix gets even stickier. One pastor asked, “How do I reconcile my sense of call to work for renewal in [my denomination] with the apostate nature of that denomination on the national, conference and seminary levels?” Perhaps it surprises some Contact readers that the top ethical concerns of these respondents have little to do with the headlines of the day. Much of ethics is like that. Hanna Arendt wrote strikingly of “the banality of evil.”1 A great deal of the work of ethics lies in untangling evil and good in everyday situations. In fact, I would like to suggest that much of ethics, as a discipline, involves helping us find our way through the tension-filled territory George Eldon Ladd characterized as the “already but not yet of the parousia.”2 More recently, Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. has reminded us that what we experience daily is Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be.3 Ethics helps us map out this territory and pursue the good, the right, the true, the just, the virtuous, on paths characterized by these same qualities. Some of this territory is well-mapped. Limiting ourselves to specifically Christian ethics, we find, for example, the history of Christian ethics describing ever more thoroughly the topography of ethical challenges encountered by Christians across time, culture, ecclesiology and so on. This FA L L / W I N T E R ‘ 1 0
relational (drawing especially upon a relationship with God as a primary source of norms).4 Long similarly looked at how Christians have applied norms, once derived. Again, he discerned three major historical approaches to this task: the institutional (including Catholic, Protestant and other expressions), the operational (including various applications of influence and power) and the intentional (including separatism and special groups).5 Long updated and expanded his original survey, including new attention given to virtue and character ethics.6 Not every route from ethical challenge to norm derivation to norm application is equally desirable, just as not all routes from points A to B on a map are optimal. My family learned this the hard way some years ago, when our well-meaning AAA agent in Michigan prescribed what looked like the best connector route between Gettysburg and the Pennsylvania Turnpike at Breezewood. As we drove Route 30 on a dark, rainy November night, though, we white-knuckled and prayed our way through twists and turns that became iced with freezing rain in the higher elevations of the mountains we were crossing. No, not all ethical routes are equally sound or desirable, and not all can deliver the destination they promise. Christians holding to the authority of the Bible seek routes rooted, as Dennis Hollinger puts it, “in the very nature and actions of God and in [a biblical] worldview . . . [and emerging] out of a personal relationship with God through Christ . . . nurtured and sustained in the context of the body of believers, the Church.”7 Sometimes, even given this sound basis, the way seems uncharted. My son was given a GPS device, the kind that does not receive automatic updates. He installed it in the family car, and I find it intriguing that en route to the grocery store in a newly-developed plaza, I seem to go right off the map into a gray area. This device depicts what it’s like to confront g
new ethical challenges, such as those presented by the latest biotechnologies. We can traverse clearly demarcated routes to a point, but then we have to forge our way through new developments. Several articles in this issue of Contact model how Christian ethicists go about this task. As ethical agents, we rarely have to think long and hard about the ethical decisions we make. Ideally, ethical decisions and actions flow from characters formed by lifelong habits of virtue—these being formed based on God’s revealed Word, carefully interpreted and applied. But as fallen people, even biblically-formed people, we don’t know or do the right thing without fail. The discipline of ethics helps us work systematically through the values, stakeholders, responsibilities, accountability systems, sources of norms, consequences and so on, in our ethical decision-making.
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denominational executive alumnus spotlights our need for this discipline:
In serving over 16 years in regional ministry, time and time again I have watched pastors breach a boundary that has brought untold pain and confusion to congregations large and small. No, it’s not the “common” boundary and ethical issues that often seem to rise to the surface in our thinking: sexual or financial misconduct. Those are destructive ethical breaches for sure, but the one that came first to my mind is the boundary breach of failing to disengage from a congregation when God has called them away, either to a new ministry or into ‘‘retirement.” Often, under the guise of “pastoral concern for the flock,” these leaders confuse the congregations where they have served and frustrate the new shepherd...[who ends up constantly] tripping over the not-sodistant “memory” of the previous pastor.
Reinhold Niebuhr famously said, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”9 So with the continuing work of ethics. Our capacity for justice enables us to do it, and our inclination to injustice requires that we do it. All the while, we anticipate the day of God’s shalom, when this work will find its completion in “the webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight . . . .”10 As we traverse this tension-filled territory, not the way it is supposed to be, may we do so with humility...but also with conviction and hope, because in the already-but-notyet world in which we make our ethical deliberations and decisions, the in-breaking of the Reign of God has begun. 1 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York, NY: Viking, 1963). 2 George Eldon Ladd, The Presence of the Future (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974).
3 Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995).
4 Edward L. Long, Jr., A Survey of Christian Ethics (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1967). 5 Ibid.
6 Edward L. Long, Jr., A Survey of Recent Christian Ethics (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1982).
7 Dennis Hollinger, Choosing the Good: Christian Ethics in a Complex World (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2002), pp. 20-21. 8 Ibid., See, for example, pp. 20ff.
9 Reinhold Niebuhr, Children of Light, Children of Darkness (New York, NY: Scribner’s, 1972), p. xiii. 10 Plantinga, p.10.
Ethics performs this work of clarifying and discerning at every level, from personal ethical decisions... all the way up to matters large and complex in scope...
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t can seem good to extend pastoral presence to former church members. However, as Dennis Hollinger helpfully warns, the pastoral inclination and the ethical are not always the same.8 For this reason, professional codes of ethics guide caring pastors to clarify and keep healthy boundaries, lest harm be done in the intent to do good. Ethics performs this work of clarifying and discerning at every level, from personal ethical decisions (e.g., being truthful) all the way up to matters large and complex in scope (e.g., should I support my nation’s involvement in this war?).
Dr. Esther Byle Bruland earned an MATS degree from Gordon-Conwell, and a Ph.D. from Drew University. She is the author of two books, A Passion for Jesus, A Passion for Justice, co-authored with Stephen C. Mott, and Regathering: The Church from They to We. She has also written many articles, including the widely read “A Time to Die,” originally published in Today’s Christian Woman, 2006, March/April, Vol. 28, Issue 2, and still available online at http:// www.kyria.com/topics/missionallife/service/11.34. html. Dr. Bruland teaches and writes in Pennsylvania. She can be reached at ebruland@verizon.net
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Wonderfully Made t e r r i b ly fa l l e n a framework for bioethics Dennis P. Hollinger, Ph.D.
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The contemporary world of medicine and biotechnology has brought incredible gains to the human race. Through these advances, people who a century ago would have died are today alive. An infertile couple can share in the biblical mandate to “be fruitful and increase in number” (Gen. 1:28). A dying patient can experience less pain and suffering. In a tragic accident, organs can be transplanted to a person in need. A person with neurological and nerve impairment can have functions restored. Thus, we can view medicine and biotechnology as a gift of God’s common grace for which we give thanks.
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t the very same time, these gifts raise some of the most difficult ethical questions humanity faces in the 21st century. Medical/technological breakthroughs mean that we have unprecedented potential control over life and death. Humans in the modern (and postmodern) world have fixated on control over the forces of nature, including one’s personal life, destiny and offspring. Leon Kass, a former chair of the President’s Commission on Bioethics, notes that the new technologies tend to blind us to the negative side of their utopian dreams. “Nearly all are wedded to the modern technological project; all march eagerly to the drums of progress and fly proudly the banner of modern science; all sing loudly the Baconian anthem, ‘Conquer nature, relieve man’s estate.’”1 As a result, we now have the capacity to terminate a life when pain becomes burdensome or one’s life is no longer deemed “worth living.” We can control life at its beginning, determining whether an embryo will live when it seems inconvenient or unplanned. We can control, to some degree, the outcome of our offspring by selecting embryos that fit with a preconceived desire or predetermined medical need. We can transplant an organ from a dying patient to a needy patient, but can, in the absence of guidelines, also hasten death to procure the organ. And invariably, we face the challenge of who gets the organs when there are not nearly enough available. We are on the verge of being able to transplant a chip into the human brain that will allow a quadriplegic some movement and bodily control. But with the technology, we face the prospect of actually changing human nature as we now know it.
With unprecedented control over life and death, we need an ethical framework to guide us and bring wisdom to these complex issues. That is a great challenge in a secular, pluralistic culture where there are few agreements on moral frameworks and assumptions. But as Christians, we bring some significant paradigms, principles and virtues to the bioethics discussion. Above all, we bring a broad basic framework from the biblical story, namely, that we are wonderfully made, but terribly fallen. This is not the whole of a Christian contribution to bioethical discussions, but it is an essential paradigm that contributes much. Moreover, it is framework that can, in part, be understood by even a secularist.
Wonderfully Made
In the biblical story, humans are made as a special creation, set apart from the rest of the created world. The Genesis account of creation provides two fundamental understandings that are essential to bioethics: the goodness of creation, and humans formed in the image of God. The physical and biological world is a good creation of our Maker. After each day of creation in the Genesis narrative, God proclaims the material creation to be good. After creating humans in his image, there is the grand summary, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). Though the world is now fallen in every facet, there is still an essential goodness to the world that God has made and continues to sustain. The goodness of the physical/biological world means that Christians can work with this world to meet human
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need. The cultural mandate to have dominion over the world (Gen.1:28) and “take care of it” (Gen. 2:15) is a mandate to work with God’s creation as trustees or stewards. Thus, Christians need not hesitate to enter the world of medicine and biotechnology in which we develop mechanisms of care and healing from God’s created world. Understanding and caring for God’s world can, of course, be misused, especially when we venture from stewardship to self-centered control over his creation. But the goodness of creation and the related cultural mandate are invitations to work with the biological world for the glory of God and the good of humanity. As the Psalmist put it, “What are mere mortals that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned them with glory and honor. You have made them rulers over the works of your hands, and put everything under their feet” (8:4-6). A second essential understanding from creation is that humans are made in the image of God. Biblical scholars and theologians have long debated the meaning of the imago dei, but clearly, in part, it means that humans are set apart in a special way from the rest of creation, and thus are endowed with dignity and intrinsic worth. While Christ is the ultimate image of God (Col. 1:15; 2 Cor. 4:4), and believers are made anew in the likeness of Christ, there is a creational image that extends to all humanity. Thus, James could appeal to the
treating persons as things rather than as precious beings made in God’s image. Thus, the call for physician assisted suicide (i.e. a form of euthanasia) is typically rooted in a functional dignity determined by a person’s own sense of worth, or the value others place upon her. The drive to clone a human being overlooks the inherent dignity of the human person in its attempt to duplicate a living being for the value it might bring to science. The same can be said for cloning to produce embryonic stem cells, or cloning to bring a child into the world totally outside of the loving intimacy of husband and wife. While the new reproductive technologies have the potential to address the anguishing infertility of a couple, some of these technologies have the capacity to turn reproduction into manufacturing. Christians can judiciously utilize many of these technologies, but great care should be given to preserve the dignity of our offspring in the way they are utilized. Similarly, the gift of cadaver organs for transplants is a marvelous way to extend the life of another, even in the midst of tragic loss. But in deciding who gets the organs amid excessive shortages, we must ensure fairness and justice, protecting the dignity of every human being. Thus, organs should never be distributed on the basis of social status. Humans are wonderfully made. Their dignity and worth should be preserved in every facet of medicine and biotechnology.
But as Christians we bring some significant paradigms, principles and virtues to the bioethics discussion. Above all, we bring a broad basic framework from the biblical story, namely, that we are wonderfully made, but terribly fallen.
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imago dei and its implied dignity in discussing the misuse of the tongue to slander a person: “With it we bless the Lord and Father, with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God” (3:9). We understand that “human dignity… is not tied to a claim that human beings are divine or inherently worthy apart from God, nor is it a function of human autonomy independent of God whereby people assume the authority to declare their own worth. Instead, human dignity is grounded in humanity’s unique connection with God, by God’s own creative initiative.”2 The intrinsic dignity of human beings is a major principle for bioethics. From conception to the grave, a human being should be treated with a value that is not dependent on physical or cognitive capacity. Today, there is a tendency in our culture to replace intrinsic dignity with functional dignity, meaning that a person’s worth depends on the degree of functionality with which he or she can perform, or a value that is determined by others. This easily leads to FA L L / W I N T E R ‘ 1 0
Terribly Fallen The Christian worldview not only posits a good creation with humans made in the image of God. It also portrays another side of human nature: We are terribly fallen. Though God gave humans the ability and task of caring for the world, we have frequently turned that stewardship into a pillaging of the earth, acts of injustice for our own self-centered gain, and, at times, even moral malice while seeking to do good. Thus, in bioethics we must constantly be aware of the human proclivity to distort God’s designs and misuse his good natural resources and the artifacts and technologies made from them. In Genesis 3, the story of the Fall depicts distortions in the multiple spheres of life: with God, self, others and nature. Thus, like Adam and Eve, we attempt to take life into our
own hands on our own terms, and we deceive ourselves in the midst of our dominion and care for God’s creation. Selfdeception is one of the major marks of fallen humanity, and it can play a significant role in distortions in the moral life, including bioethics. Several years ago while teaching in Kiev, Ukraine, I visited the Great War Museum. In one section of the museum depicting the atrocities of the Nazi regime throughout Europe, I noticed a glass case containing a rather strangelooking white glove. I asked the interpreter accompanying me to read the statement beside the case. He soberly read, “This glove was made from human flesh.” Part of what makes this so heinous was the involvement and even leadership of leading scientists and doctors of that time. Men and women trained in the top medical and science schools of Europe acquiesced to unspeakable evil under the guise of science and medicine.
resource for therapy, healing and human good. But simultaneously, because the gifts and their “masters” are fallen, they can be used to defy God’s designs for life, and deface the most precious of God’s creation: Humans made in the image of God.
Conclusion
Wonderfully made, but terribly fallen. This paradigm does not solve all the ethical quandaries we face in the world of medicine and biotechnology. But it is a basic framework in which to carry out the related vocations, and through which we all will make some of the hardest decisions in life. No other worldview paints the human self in quite the same way as God’s Word. Nevertheless, it is a paradigm that resonates with the way human beings universally experience life and
...in bioethics we must constantly be aware of the human proclivity to distort God’s designs and misuse his good natural resources, and the artifacts and technologies made from them. Being terribly fallen, humans have the capacity not only for great acts of heroism and seeking good for the human race, but also the capacity to do evil, even in the name of therapy, science or alleviating human suffering. Scientists and physicians are, of course, not alone in this tendency to take the good world with its potential for technological advancement and desecrate it with actions that deface human dignity and ignore even the most obvious ethical obligations or virtues. It is evident in all domains of society and among all the professions. At times, unethical practices fall prey to re-classification that subverts even our natural moral sensibilities. As Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. puts it, “Vices…masquerade as virtues—lust as love, thinly veiled sadism as military discipline, envy as righteous indignation….Deceivers learn how to present something falsely, and they exert themselves to make the presentation credible.”3 This is evident, for example, in the use of autonomy as one of the cherished principles of biomedicine. Unfortunately, autonomy has been used to undermine human dignity and defend the right to snuff out a human life when it is burdensome or unwanted. Cloning is sometimes called by its scientific procedure, somatic cell transfer, to soften the moral blow of the act. Human enhancements through biotechnology that threaten to change the basic contours of human nature are at times simply labeled “acts of compassion.” Being terribly fallen, we must be cautious even in the most laudable efforts to apply medicine and biotechnologies to the human race. As good gifts of God, they are a wonderful
the world. And it is a paradigm that can guide believers into the exciting new world of medicine and biotechnology with both hope and realism.
1 Leon Kass, Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002), 4. 2 C. Ben Mitchell, Edmund D. Pellegrino, Jean Bethke Elshatain, John F. Kilner and Scott B. Rae, Biotechnology and the Human Good (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007), 71. 3 Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 99.
Dr. Dennis Hollinger is President and Colman M. Mockler Distinguished Professor of Christian Ethics at Gordon-Conwell. He was previously President and Professor of Christian Ethics at Evangelical Theological Seminary, Myerstown, PA; has held administrative and teaching positions at Messiah College and Alliance Theological Seminary; and served as adjunct or visiting professor at seminaries in Russia, India and Ukraine. He has also pastored several churches, including Washington Community Fellowship on Capitol Hill. Dr. Hollinger has written four books, and co-edited the Eerdmans book series, Critical Issues in Bioethics. He is a Distinguished Fellow with the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity and on the board of reference for the C.S. Lewis Institute. He pursued his M.Div. at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, his M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees at Drew University and postdoctoral studies at Oxford University.
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Ethics Wo rkpla c e in the
D a v i d W. G i l l , P h . D .
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t doesn’t take an academic survey or blue ribbon government commission to
prove the point that we have an ethics problem in the workplace and business world. Every day, the media run stories of executive misbehavior, improperly-tested products, worker mistreatment, dreadful customer service, employee theft, environmental pollution and so on. Think about the recent subprime lending debacle, the Bernie Madoff scandal, the BP oil spill, and Toyota’s cover-up. It often feels like an epidemic from top to bottom of the business world. Most of us have been negatively affected one way or another by these problems; these are not just news stories about others. 14
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“We are being trained to react to rare circumstances in our rearview mirror. We become experts in allocating blame but not much else.”
Before we get hysterical, though, this perception needs to be balanced a bit. The reality is that most business managers and employees actually do spend their days trying to do the right thing by each other and by their customers. The bad apples and big scandals are the exceptions, not the rule. It is almost certainly the case also that today’s media and communications environment has given much wider exposure to problems that in the past went unreported. It is just harder to hide today. Still, we do have serious ethical problems in business and the workplace. One of the ironies of this situation is that over the past 30 years, business ethics—both as a field of study in business school and as a management practice and concern—has received greater and greater emphasis, but with no apparent impact on the way people and organizations actually behave. Over the past 30 years, almost all Fortune 1000 companies have adopted codes of ethics and training programs, and the majority of business schools now have required courses in business ethics and social responsibility. But how effective have all of these been? Maybe we’re not doing it the right way.
Damage Control or Mission Control?
One problem with “business ethics as usual” is that it is too often an affair of crisis management and “damage control.” The ethics program (or ethics course) focuses almost exclusively on discussion of serious problem cases: the wreck of the Exxon Valdez, the Union Carbide plant explosion in Bhopal, exploited workers in Kathy Lee Gifford’s clothing supply chain, Ford’s Pinto safety scandal. No doubt we can learn something by analyzing these cases. But let’s face it: These are rare and extreme circumstances for most of us. Even more important, we are reacting to situations after they occur. Result? We are being trained to react to rare circumstances in our rearview mirror. We become experts in allocating blame but not much else. Consider sexual harassment training, often the most significant ethics training program in an organization. It takes place primarily out of fear of lawsuits and brand scandals. It focuses on what not to do, what not to say. The tone is threatening. The style is legalistic. Why don’t
we work positively and constructively on how to build respectful relationships and communication on our team? A much more effective approach is what I call “mission control” ethics. In this approach, we start by clarifying the purpose of our organization. What is our mission and vision? If our mission is simply and narrowly to “move money from your pockets to mine,” we are going to have trouble. The love of money or the mission to tear down our barns and build bigger ones—by itself—isn’t going to get it done, ethically speaking. Creating and delivering good and beautiful products and services, fixing the brokenness of our world, healing the hurting and wounded…those are themes that get people out of bed in the morning eager to bring their best, most ethical self to work. In this mission control approach, “ethics” becomes something positive: a description of “how we need to treat one another (and all of our stakeholders) in order to excel and succeed in our mission.” This is where Christians can contribute a great deal of insight and truly “salt” the marketplace. Those uplifting mission and vision themes come straight out of the Bible. Our God is Creator and Redeemer. We, and all people, have been made in the image and likeness of a Creator and Redeemer, and we flourish when given a chance to express those aspects of our humanity.
Rules or Character?
A second problem with much of the business and workplace ethics out there is its overemphasis on getting the rules straight—to the neglect of individual character and corporate culture. Much of today’s ethics training reacts to crisis cases and ethical dilemmas by appeal to a set of rules and some kind of decision-making formula (borrowed from the secular moral philosophy rooted in the European Enlightenment) for analysis and response. Christians, of course, can share the best set of moral rules on earth: the Ten Commandments. The Decalogue is a powerful template for ethical guidance that leads to justice, fairness, freedom and care for others. But, by contrast, Christians emphasize that the transformation of character is more fundamental and important than possessing even
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the best set of rules. The Law, by itself, fails to result in consistently righteous and ethical behavior. This means that we must be born again by God’s Spirit as new people with a new nature before the Law can be fulfilled in us (Romans 8:34). In a modest but significant way that echoes this cosmic truth, a person’s character is always more important than the rules or principles they espouse. Hence, even in business, it is more crucial to hire for character and work at building healthy, value-embedded organizational cultures than it is to get our code of ethics written and distributed. As Christians, our agenda is to cooperate with God’s work of sanctification in us so that we personally have a strong, ethical, God-honoring character that we take to our workplace. And as Christians, we can promote an emphasis
partnership and community context for ethics is a constant, inescapable theme throughout Scripture. In our organizations and workplaces, and in our personal wrestling with difficult issues, we Christians should exemplify and promote this focus on team and collaboration.
on ethical character and culture in our organizations (over against a narrow focus on ethical rules and codes). One step deeper, we can immerse ourselves in the Beatitudes and other biblical accounts of character so that we can promote the specific virtues and values most likely to empower and reward ethical decisions and actions.
about money, property and wealth than he did about heaven and hell, homosexuality or praise music. We Christians are vastly undereducated on these work and business themes in Scripture, and that prevents us from being the kind of salt of the earth and light of the world Jesus intended. Are we going to wake up and get serious about it? And as we have seen, it is not just that Christians hold and advocate particular ethical positions on specific business topics. Rather, it is the whole, overall structure, the shape and process of ethics that needs some Christian salt and light. Get the mission and vision straight and in a central place. Hire for character, not just skills and credentials. Build a valueembedded culture and team—don’t just write a nice code of ethics. And emphasize team and collaboration in the quest for wise ethics. Don’t yield to the individualism of our era. Working for better business and workplace ethics is not an option in the Christian life. It is a mandate for a 24/7 discipleship. And attached to the call to biblical discipleship and ethics is the promise that we ourselves will be “blessed,” our neighbors and colleagues will be loved, salted and illuminated, and God will be glorified.
Salting and Lighting the Workplace
To be sure, the Bible has a great deal to say about workplace topics like leadership, service, money, property, wealth and poverty, honesty, fairness, integrity, care of creation, diligence and justice. There is a great deal in Scripture about law and justice as well as how to relate to Caesar, how to do business in Babylon and how to treat migrant labor—all very current topics. Jesus had more to say
“As Christians, our agenda is to cooperate with God’s work of sanctification in us so that we personally have a strong, ethical, God-honoring character that we take to our workplace.”
Individualism or Collaboration?
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A final weakness of contemporary business and workplace ethics is its individualism. In health care and many other arenas, “autonomy” is king of all ethical values. “Self-determination” and our personal “informed consent” trump everything else. In the ethics training typical of today’s corporations, workers are required to go sit alone in front of computer screens to work their way through a series of cases and multiple choice responses. In this case, the “medium is the message.” “It’s ethics time, people. Go sit alone in front of your computer!” But that is exactly the wrong message. Ethics is a “team sport” not a “solo sport.” The Enlightenment ethics tradition of Kant and others is radically wrong. Dispassionate, rational individuals reasoning their way to and from abstract universal maxims is an approach that leads directly to the postmodern despair and nihilism we often see in today’s culture. More and more business and thought leaders have woken up to the “wisdom of teams” and the essential role and power of collaboration. Nowhere is this team and collaboration more important than in ethics. Wisdom comes in the process of listening, conversation, debate and the search for consensus. Christians know this! They know from the Bible that it is “not good for man to dwell alone.” Jesus sent his followers out “two by two,” not one by one. The Ten Commandments, Sermon on the Mount and indeed, all biblical ethical guidance, is given to a people, a community, not to an isolated pilgrim. What two or three bind on earth is bound in heaven. The FA L L / W I N T E R ‘ 1 0
Dr. David Gill joined the Gordon-Conwell faculty in 2010 as its first Mockler-Phillips Professor of Workplace Theology and Business Ethics. He is also Director of the Mockler Center for Faith and Ethics in the Workplace. David has been a professor in the fields of Christian ethics and business ethics for more than 30 years, teaching at New College Berkeley, North Park University, St. Mary’s College of California, Fuller Seminary, Regent College and elsewhere. Among his seven books are It’s About Excellence: Building Ethically Healthy Organizations (2008), and Doing Right: Practicing Ethical Principles (2004). He earned an MA from San Francisco State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California and has served as a corporate consultant. He can be reached at dgill@gordonconwell.edu
“But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.� Amos 5: 24
tolivein justice the message of amos for today A Sermonic Essay on Social Ethics and Justice
eldin villafaĂąe, ph.d.
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EDITOR’S NOTE Dr. Villafañe’s article is based on a chapter from his book, Beyond Cheap Grace: A Call to Radical Discipleship, Incarnation, and Justice (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2006).
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f there is a word that describes our times, it is the word “crisis.” A crisis describes a situation that is unstable, decisive or crucial in the personal or social life of a nation. It is interesting to note that the word “crisis” has its linguistic roots in the Greek word Krisis (and the verb Krino), and can mean “to select,” “decide” or “judge”— and can also mean “justice!”1 All crises are, in essence, moments of judgment—moments of searching for justice.
The Concept of Justice
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ustice is a complex concept easier to sense than to define. It has multiple definitions according to the many existing schools of thought. Justice, as Karen Lebacqz reminds us, is “a bit like the proverbial elephant examined by blindfolded explorers. Each feels a different part—the foot, the ears, the tusks—and consequently each describes the beast differently—gnarled and tough, thin and supple, smooth and hard. The elephant itself [in this case justice] is not encompassed by any of the individual descriptions.”2 According to my “touch of the elephant,” beyond Aristotle’s definition of justice as the virtue of giving and receiving what one is due or what one has a right to—and beyond the valuable contributions of John Rawls or Robert Nozick, among others,3 there stands the richness of the biblical concept of justice.4 The Scriptures use various words to speak of justice, but mainly the words tsedek and mishpat in Hebrew and dikaiosyne in Greek. We can translate these words as “righteousness,” “judgment” or “justice.” Justice as tsedek speaks about a general living in right relationship with someone, while justice as mishpat is somewhat more particular. We can speak of mishpat as deciding what is “just” when two people differ or disagree or when one has injured the other.5 Dikaiosyne can have both of these meanings. FA L L / W I N T E R ‘ 1 0
Furthermore, Scripture presents us a rich and nuanced understanding of justice. At heart, it speaks of a concept of justice that I want to underline—that is, justice as “fidelity to the demands of a relationship.”6 The picture that Scripture paints is that of the human person created in and for communion—created to live in community. In the Old Testament, above all, one sees the importance of living in relationship with God and with each other. Individuals were in relationship with God through the covenant that existed between God and his people. “As a member of this covenant community, each person was in relationship with every other person, including the poor and needy, one’s family and even with strangers and aliens. Out of these relationships arose responsibilities and demands. The just person was faithful to these responsibilities and demands.”7 As Gerhard Von Rad wrote, “There is absolutely no concept in the Old Testament with so central a significance for all relationships of human life as that of tsedek [justice].”8 The Word of God presents justice ultimately as rooted in the righteousness of God.9 It is grounded in God’s holiness and moral character—in God’s very being. Our God is just and righteous in God’s self and therefore faithful to God’s self (as a triune God), and faithful to the demands of God’s relationship with all creation. As the psalmist reminds us, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne” (Ps. 89: 14), and “For the Lord is righteous, he loves justice” (Ps. 11: 7). Our God is a just God, a faithful God who keeps God’s promises. Our God is a God who loves justice—a God who demands justice of all!
Justice in the Book of Amos
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f there is one book in the Bible that speaks insightfully and relevantly to the issue of justice for our time, it is the book of Amos.10 At the heart of Amos’ message is the call to live in justice. Amos had a passion for justice. He was a prophet “par excellence” of social justice. The message of the book of Amos can be presented under three basic themes or theological motifs defined by justice, namely: (1) justice among the nations; (2) justice in the nation; and (3) justice and piety of a nation. We will look at each in turn.
1. Justice among the Nations. Amos begins by indicting various nations for their wickedness and injustice, beginning with the nation to the north of Israel (Syria), then moving on to the nations to the west (Philistia and Phoenicia), the south (Edom and Ammon), and the east (Moab), and finally indicting the sister nations, Judah and Israel. In these early chapters and throughout the book of Amos, we are confronted by the fact that God calls all people, all nations to account for their behavior. God’s standards of justice are universal, for they are rooted in God’s righteousness, God’s holiness, yes, God’s character. Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. puts it this way: “There was no monopoly held by any people, race or religion on righteousness; justice, goodness and truth were the standards for all mortals on planet earth or they would have to explain any deviations to Yahweh himself!”11
It is important to note that the injustices committed by these nations are similar to the injustices that we tragically see today among the nations. Let me underline a few:
5 Damascus (Syria) is accused of cruelty, violence, and atrocities because she has “threshed Gilead with threshing sledges of iron” (1:3). 5 Gaza (Philistia) is accused of slave trading “because she took captive whole communities and sold them” (1: 6). 5 Tyre (Phoenicia) is accused of breaking a covenant or treaty “because she…disregarded a treaty of brotherhood” (1:9).
5 Ammon is accused of imperialism and atrocities “because he ripped open the pregnant women of Gilead in order to extend his borders” (1:13).
Lamentably, each one of these injustices can be seen in our day and contributes to the reason why we live in times of global crisis:
5 Cruelty and violence among nations have been institutionalized and commercialized by the modern “threshing sledges of iron” that represent the lucrative market of weapons or armaments of war. 5 The slave trade is the cruel experience of the Sudan in Africa, where entire ethnic groups are sold in the market. In other cases, just as cruel, young girls and boys are sold into slavery and prostitution by the Asiatic market and others.
The Word of God presents
justice ultimately as rooted in the righteousness of God. It is grounded in God’s holiness and moral character— in God’s very being. w w w.gordonconwell.edu/ c o nta c tma g a z i ne 19
5 The breaking of treaties is seen clearly in many nations whose loyalty is dictated, not by covenant or treaty among sovereigns, but by the sovereign and universal globalization of the market. Modern treaties are not worth the paper on which they are written if the “god” Mammon reigns!
Sooner or later, what the nations sow, that they shall reap. God is still sovereign—over creation (5:8), over history (9:7), over the nations (1:3 – 2:6). God demands justice among the nations!
2. Justice in the Nation. As often happens in the history of nations, political stability and economic prosperity brought about self-sufficiency and indifference among the Israelites. But God placed a “plumb line” in Israel, with equal implications for Judah and for the nations. The “plumb line” revealed a society inclined toward idolatry, oppression, exploitation and violence—indeed, to injustice. Judgment would come on Israel, for
They sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as upon the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. Amos 2:6-7
It is critically important for us today to understand that the standard of justice placed before the king and the dominant class (the governor, landowners, business people, judges and military), as well as all the people, is that of justice toward the poor. We will all be judged by how we treat the weakest members—this is the heart of Amos’s message. Why is this so? I believe that the teaching of Scripture is clear (in Amos as in the other prophets) that beyond God’s intrinsic love and championing for the stranger, widow, poor and needy lies also the reality of idolatry. As the commandments teach us: “I am the Lord your God…You shall have no other gods before me… for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God” (Exod. 20: 1-5). While many of the Israelites may not have worshiped idols of wood or rock (as many may not today), yet they rendered “worship” to the god of wealth (Mammon). The desire and anxiety for riches (greed), an obsessive note in the lives of the dominant class, led to their oppression of the poor and needy and the corruption of the courts, the market, the religious system and the society at large. Washington Padilla reminds us that a central note of Amos was of “social injustice as the specific form that the sin of idolatry assumes in society.12 The lesson is clear: idolatry is at the heart of social injustice and the eventual downfall of a nation. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a neverfalling stream. Amos 5: 24
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A central concern in the book of Amos, and in all the biblical teaching about society, is that God has a passionate concern for justice for all—especially the poor, the weak and FA L L / W I N T E R ‘ 1 0
the oppressed members of society. God demands justice in the nation!
3. Justice and Piety of a Nation. The Israelites had forsaken the needy and oppressed. They pretended to worship the true God by the multitude of their offerings and gifts. They even excelled in the composing of music for temple worship (6: 5). There was a form of revival— yes, the temples were crowded yet it was an abomination to God. Listen to God’s words:
I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream. Amos 5:21-24
Throughout Scripture we can find important truths about worship that relate authentic worship to our behavior toward the poor and oppressed. The words of Amos are echoed by the prophet Isaiah when he says: Is such the fast that I choose a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice…to let the oppressed go free…? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; When you see the naked, to cover them and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Isa. 58: 5-7
The fast or worship that pleases our God is accompanied by acts of mercy and justice toward the poor, the broken and the oppressed. Furthermore, such true worship has the great promises of God’s blessings. The prophet Isaiah continues: Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer…The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Isa. 58: 8-9, 11 There is a seamless relationship between ethical behavior and true worship, between justice and piety. Who we are and how we behave are intimately related in our giving worth to our God. For true worship, whether expressed in our daily walk or in a building called a temple or church, must be “in spirit and truth” (John 4:23). In the New Testament, for example, we find these profound and disturbing words in Matthew 25:42-45:
For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did
There is a seamless
relationship between ethical behavior and true worship, between justice and piety. Who we are and how we behave are intimately related in our giving worth to our God.
not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.” They will also answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?” He will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” There is a great mystery here, for as we serve with justice the poor and needy in our midst, we are in a deep yet spiritually profound sense doing it to the Lord. We are ascribing worth to our Lord. We are worshiping him. May our worship be in spirit and in truth. May we in our worship live in justice! 1 F. Büchsel, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume, by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1985), p. 469. 2 Karen Lebacqz, Six Theories of Justice: Perspectives from Philosophical and Theological Ethics (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1986), p. 9.
3 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
4 Among the many excellent texts on Biblical justice see, Chris Marshall, The Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach to the Bible’s Teaching on Justice (Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2005); Enrique Nardoni, Rise Up, O Judge: A Study of Justice in the Biblical World (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004); and Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). 5 Lois Barrett, Doing What is Right: What the Bible Says About Covenant and Justice (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1989), p. 21; see also, Bruce C. Birch, Let Justice Roll Down: The Old Testament, Ethics, and Christian Life (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), pp. 153-156. 6 John R. Donahue, S.J., “Biblical Perspective on Justice” in John Haughey, ed. The Faith That Does Justice (New York: Paulist Press, 1977), p. 68.
7 Bread for the World Educational Fund, “Biblical Basics on Justice,” pamphlet (New York: Bread for the World, n.d.), p.2. 8 Gerhard Von Rad, Old Testament Theology (New York: Harper and Bros., 1962), Part I, p. 370; see also, Stephen C. Mott, Biblical Ethics and Social Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 59-81. 9 E. Clinton Gardner, “The Righteousness of God and Human Justice,” Justice and Christian Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 29 – 53.
10 Among the many and excellent texts on the book of Amos, see Mark Daniel Carroll, Contexts for Amos: Prophetic Poetics in Latin American Perspective (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992); James L. Mays, Amos: A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969); and Douglas Stuart, Hosea-Jonah, Word Biblical Commentary 31 (Waco: Word, 1987). 11 Walter C. Kaiser Jr. Toward Old Testament Ethics (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1983), pp. 12-13.
12 Washington Padilla, Amós-Abdías, Comentario Biblico Hispanoamericano (Miami: Editorial Caribe, 1989), p. 14; see also, Brian S. Rosner, Greed as Idolatry: The Origin and Meaning of a Pauline Metaphor (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2007).
Eldin Villafañe, Ph.D., Professor of Christian Social Ethics, was Founding Director of Gordon-Conwell’s Boston campus, the Center for Urban Ministerial Education (CUME) and also Associate Dean for Urban and Multicultural Affairs. He has served as a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School, held leadership positions with his denomination and in Hispanic theological associations, and ministered in the urban setting as Minister of Education at the Iglesia Cristiano Juan 3:16 in the Bronx in New York City, then the nation’s largest Hispanic church. He holds an M.A. from Wheaton Graduate School of Theology and a Ph.D. from Boston University.
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HOW TO MA KE
ETH I CA L D EC I S I ONS
I N A
COM P LEX WO RLD
PATR IC K T. SM ITH , P h . D . ( can d . )
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A WE LL - K N OWN AN D WEL L -WORN JOKE shared regularly when I was in grade school goes: “How do you clean Dracula’s teeth?” The response: “Very carefully.” When I think about the question, “How do we make ethical decisions in a complex world?” the response of the childhood joke somehow seems appropriate.
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o be sure, there are many moral questions whose answers are very clear. For instance, we must not torture innocent people just for the fun of it. The immorality of this activity ought to be beyond dispute. Yet, we face many pressing ethical questions in our contemporary context that are difficult, and defy simple and unreflective responses. Unfortunately, we live in an age where many important ethical discussions are not thought through carefully and too often are reduced to clichés. When this happens in the Christian community, we are woefully unprepared to help ourselves and equip others to make good ethical decisions in a complex world.
THE B I B LE I N C H R ISTIA N ETH ICS Many orthodox Christians correctly affirm the Bible, first and foremost, as the inspired narrative of God’s loving plan of redemption for His creation. Does the Bible also help with ethical decision-making? Certainly. Divine revelation through Scripture has a primary role in Christian ethics. We must, however, take care not to misunderstand the nature of
Scripture, nor to misuse the Bible in ethical decision-making. We must not think of the Bible as simply a book of moral precepts to be mined for making ethical decisions. If we do so, I think we miss its point. Further, this approach increases the likelihood that we will err or misuse the Bible in ethics. The moral prescriptions of the Bible are authoritative for the Christian community when they are properly interpreted and appropriately applied in our contemporary setting. Even with the high view of Scripture held by most evangelical Christians, many matters are not nearly so straightforward that one can find a verse or passage containing direct instruction on what to do in a given situation. Take, for example, the medical treatment of terminally ill or imminently dying patients. On one hand, Christian theology recognizes that human life is valuable and a tremendous good of which we are to be faithful stewards. On the other hand, it also recognizes that our human existence this side of the new heavens and new earth is not the highest good and that there is a time to die. Hence, it is often complicated to determine on purely biblical or theological grounds exactly when someone should forego various kinds of therapeutic treatment at the end of life.
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“ THE MO R AL PR ES CR IPTIONS O F THE B I B LE A R E AU THO R ITATI VE F OR THE CHR ISTIA N COMMUNITY WHE N TH EY A R E P R O P ER LY I NTERP RETED A N D APPR OPRIATE LY APPLIE D I N O U R C O NTE M P O R A RY S ET TI N G .”
Further, “there are no direct discussions about war, genetic engineering, environmental pollution” and a number of other contemporary issues.1 So there is a deliberative process that must take place to discern how prescriptive biblical principles may be applied in complex situations. This is why the discipline of hermeneutics is so important in all facets of Christian discipleship. Regardless, Scripture has a prime place in Christian ethical reflection.
C OMP LEX ITY O F D O IN G ETH ICS
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Ethics is complex for several reasons. First, we are fallen creatures living in a fallen world (Gen. 3). As Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. notes, “sin distorts our character, a central feature of our very humanity. Sin corrupts powerful human capacities—thought, emotion, speech and act—so that they become centers of attack on others or of defection or neglect.”2 This certainly in no small way affects how we live and the ethical decisions we make. A second factor is that “we sometimes encounter competing ethical claims”3 (more on this below). Third, our individual decisions are often affected by a “plurality of publics.”4 In other words, a number of people or groups have a legitimate stake in ethical decisions. To whom is one primarily responsible in making decisions? Last, the empirical facts may not be easy to discern or ascertain. It is widely recognized that in applied ethics many moral judgments hinge on non-moral facts. To illustrate this last point, consider the ethics of organ transplantation. Of course, many take it to be morally unacceptable to harvest the vital organs of people who are not yet dead for the sake of saving others’ lives. Since “successful transplantation requires that organs be removed from cadavers shortly after death to avoid organ damage due to loss of oxygen, there has been keen interest in knowing precisely when people are dead so that organs can be removed.”5 And determining this is an empirical matter once the theoretical criteria have been established. Therefore, the FA L L / W I N T E R ‘ 1 0
empirical facts are crucial in assessing the morality of organ donation in a particular case.
C RITERI A FOR MAKI N G ETH I CAL DECIS IONS
In the midst of such complexity, the real, perhaps inevitable, possibility exists that ethical dilemmas will arise. An ethical dilemma can be understood as “a conflict between two or more value- or virtue-driven interests.” 6 In such circumstances, it is important to have some tools that can assist us in making sound ethical decisions. The following model represents just one such framework.7
1. GATHER THE FACTS. In many cases, issues are
resolved by becoming clear on the details of the case. We need to ask, “What is the context of the ethical deliberation?” Given that we make ethical decisions in specific circumstances, if we don’t have the facts, moral assessment is not possible.
2 . D ETERMI NE THE ETHI CA L I SSU ES . Sometimes
we face situations that present personal and professional difficulty, but may not constitute an ethical dilemma. Here, it is important to identify as specifically as possible what are the competing moral interests that stand in need of resolution.
3 . D ETERMI NE WHAT V I RT U ES A ND P R IN C IP LES HAVE A BEA RI NG ON THE CASE . If the conflict we
are addressing actually is an ethical dilemma, then, of course, there are competing values or principles that underlie it. After identifying these principles, the task is to determine which ought to be afforded more weight in the context where unavoidable moral conflicts emerge.
This approach, sometimes known as graded absolutism or ethical hierarchialism, sees moral rules and principles as prima facie. This simply means that at first glance or all things being equal, these rules carry moral obligations in most situations, but may be overridden by other ethical considerations in situations where there are genuine moral dilemmas. “Clearly,” for a Christian ethic “biblical principles are to be weighted more heavily.” 8
4 . LIST TH E ALTERNATIVES. A very important part
of this model is to ask: “What are the courses of action that may be taken?” When this is done, we’ll see that some decisions eliminate themselves. We should always strive to be as creative as possible to get around a moral dilemma. The more alternatives that can be generated, the better likelihood we have of discovering an option that minimizes the potential negative consequences of our decisions.
5 . C O M PAR E THE ALTERNATIVES WITH THE VIRTUES AND P RINCIP LES EMP LOYED. It may
well be the case that most, if not all but one or two alternatives, can be ruled out when we apply the relevant principles and values to them. “In order to make a clear decision, [we] must weight one or more virtues/values more heavily than others.”9 One worry with the graded absolutist approach or ethical hierarchialism is that some may simply “use the notion of prima facie rules as a smokescreen for picking and choosing which rules [they] wish to adhere to in any situation.”10
In order to avoid this scenario, certain conditions must be met when overriding a prima facie rule: (1) Justifiable public reasons must be offered in favor of the overriding principle; (2) It should be done as a last resort; (3) “We should seek the action that least violates the principle being overridden;” and (4) The overridden principle should leave “moral traces,” which is an awareness of the moral weight concerning the decision being made.11
6 . C O NS ID ER THE CONSEQUENCES. If one has not
been able to completely rule out possible alternatives when applying the rules, then the positive and negative consequences of the decision should be determined and assessed as well as can be done.
7. MAKE A DECISION CONSISTENT W ITH A C H RISTIAN ETHIC. We must avoid the “paralysis of analysis” and make a decision. Sometimes this means choosing the best available alternative even if not ideal. Whatever decision is to be made, it should be as consistent with a Christian ethic as humanly possible given the unique features of the scenario.
To consider how these steps can be applied in a concrete situation, take the example of a man hiding Jews during World War II. The facts are that soldiers are tracking down people of Jewish background and unjustifiably executing them. The man is asked in a very forthright manner if he knows their whereabouts. That individual has the opportunity to protect human lives by concealing the location of Jews on his property. The ethical issue here is that there is a moral conflict between telling the truth and saving a life when it is in one’s power and ability to do so. In determining what virtues and principles bear on this case, it is important to reflect on the biblical teaching that God is a God of truth. He expects His people to be truthful and lying lips are an abomination to God (Proverbs 12:22). Also, God places a high value on human life and expects us to do the same (Matthew 22:37-39). When we have an opportunity to save the life of another or to prevent evil from coming upon others, we have a responsibility to do so. What are the alternatives for a person in this situation? To tell the truth or deceive in order to protect human life, it would seem. (For the example employed here to illustrate how the criteria may be used, let’s assume no other alternatives are available.) When comparing the alternatives, it seems that there is an unavoidable conflict. The question now becomes, “Which of the moral principles, both deeply ingrained in Christian ethics, ought to be afforded more weight?” When one considers the consequences, it is almost certain that human life will be lost unjustifiably by revealing the location of the Jews. Some may decide that while lying is not ideal, the principle of saving a life through some form of deception is morally permissible, given the situation. However, these same individuals should also stress that it is morally imperative not to make this a common practice for the sake of mere convenience. Deception should only be chosen when there is an unavoidable conflict with grave consequences in the balance.
C H ARACTER AN D C OM M UN ITY C OUNT
It is important to know that ethical decision-making cannot be reduced simply to identifying and applying rules and principles. A crucial part of Christian ethics is about determining what we ought to do in this way. Applying guidelines, while important, is only part of a proper Christian response. Just as important is reflection on, and development of, the kind of persons we are to be. Christians must strike a balance between what some have labeled decisionist ethics and virtue ethics.12 The former category provides answers to the question, “What ought I to do?” whereas the latter addresses the question, “What kind of person should I be?” Most certainly, character counts. Moreover, ethics is a profoundly communal exercise. We are created as social beings. Certain shared moral responsibilities and moral bonds are moral requisites of
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“ TO BE A C HR I STI A N I S TO B E S HA P E D BY TH E VA LU ES , C O M M IT M E NTS , A N D WOR LDV I EW O F THE C O M M U N ITY O F FA ITH TO S UC H A D EG R E E TH AT O N E B EG I N S TO INTER NA L IZE C ERTA I N V I RT U ES A N D DIS POS ITI O N S … ”
genuine community. It is difficult, indeed, to overstate our interdependence with one another. Therefore, we most often do not make ethical decisions in isolation. Nor do we grow in character apart from the community that helps form and shape it. Kyle Fedler describes these points nicely when he writes: “[T]he development of Christian character is absolutely central to the Christian life. To be a Christian is to be shaped by the values, commitments, and worldview of the community of faith to such a degree that one begins to internalize certain virtues and dispositions….While belief and action are vital to being a Christian, one must also allow oneself to be shaped and molded into a particular kind of person, to develop a set of virtues that reflect what we as Christians claim to believe about the world.”13 This is why being a member of a local church body is so important for followers of Christ. In the context of the Christian community, we can see the transforming power of the Holy Spirit at work in the lives of God’s people. Making ethical decisions in a complex world is not merely a deliberative process, though it is certainly no less. We make ethical decisions in the midst of complexity in a holistic way that includes with our mental deliberation the appropriate kind of character that is developed by reflecting on God’s Word and His world amidst the community of believers (Romans 12:1-2).
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1 Dennis P. Hollinger, Choosing the Good: Christian Ethics in a Complex World (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2002) 18. 2 Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995) 2. 3 Hollinger, Choosing the Good, 18.
4 Richard A. McCormick, “Ethics Committees: Promise or Peril?” Law, Medicine, and Healthcare, September 1984, 150-155.
5 Ana Smith Iltis and Mark J. Cherry, “Death Revisited: Rethinking Death and the Dead Donor Rule,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Volume 35, Issue 3, June 2010: 223. 6 Scott B. Rae, Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics, Third Edition (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009) 107. 7 Ibid., 106-108. 8 Ibid., 107.
9 Rae, Moral Choices, 107.
10 Kyle D. Fedler, Exploring Christian Ethics: Biblical Foundations for Morality (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 25. 11 Ibid.
12 Ibid., 6-7. 13 Ibid., 41.
Prof. Patrick T. Smith, Assistant Professor of Theology and Philosophy, has served on the faculty of Michigan Theological Seminary and the adjunct faculties of William Tyndale College and GordonConwell’s Boston campus. He held academic and administrative positions at Wayne State University and provided theological education to pastors and leaders in Africa. He is Ethics Coordinator for a hospice center in Michigan, and a member of the state Board of Directors for the Michigan Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. He often speaks at professional meetings; at conferences, health care organizations and churches; on radio; and on college and university campuses. He is on the steering committee for the Bioethics Consultation Group of the Evangelical Theological Society. He holds an M.A. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and is a Ph.D. candidate at Wayne State University.
For Further Reading:
A Select Bibliography of Books on Christian Ethics Davis, John Jefferson. Evangelical Ethics: Issues Facing the Church Today. Revised and Expanded. New Jersey: P & R Publishing, 2004. _________________________ Fedler, Kyle. Exploring Christian Ethics: Biblical Foundations for Morality. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006. _________________________
Life. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic Books, 2009. _________________________
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003. _________________________
Kaiser, Walter C. Toward Old Testament Ethics. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983. _________________________
VillafaĂąe, Eldin. Beyond Cheap Grace: A Call to Radical Discipleship, Incarnation, and Justice. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006. _________________________
Meilaender, Gilbert. Bioethics: A Primer for Christians, Revised Edition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. _________________________
Gill, David W. Becoming Good: Building Moral Character. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000. _________________________
Mott, Stephen C. Biblical Ethics and Social Change. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1982. _________________________
________. Doing Right: Practicing Ethical Principles. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004. _________________________
Plantinga, Jr., Cornelius. Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be; A Breviary of Sin. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995. _________________________
Hays, Richard B. The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996. _________________________
Rae, Scott and Paul M. Cox. Bioethics: A Christian Approach in a Pluralistic Age. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999. _________________________
Hollinger, Dennis P. Choosing the Good: Christian Ethics in a Complex World. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2002. _________________________ ________. The Meaning of Sex: Christian Ethics and the Moral
Rae, Scott B. Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics, Third Edition. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009. _________________________ Stassen, Glen H. and David P. Gushee. Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context.
Witherington, Ben. The Indelible Image: The Theological and Ethical Thought World of the New Testament, Volume 1: The Individual Witnesses. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009. _________________________ ________. The Indelible Image: The Theological and Ethical Thought World of the New Testament, Volume 2: The Collective Witness. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009. _________________________ Wright, Christopher J. H. Old Testament Ethics for the People of God. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004. _________________________ Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Justice: Rights and Wrongs. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.
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FACULTY PROFILE
Garth Rosell, Ph.D.
Professor of Church History Ruth E. Hawk Dr. Garth Rosell, Professor of Church History at GordonConwell, is passionate about God’s work. The son of Mervin (“Merv”) Rosell, one of the well-known evangelists of the 1940s and ‘50s, he learned early the truth by which those men lived: That it was God’s power that made their ministries possible.
“We need to be reminded of a spiritual truth that these mid20th-century evangelists knew very well,” Dr. Rosell explains, “namely, that our ministry is actually God’s gracious work through us, and it is enabled entirely and solely through the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Dr. Rosell sees God at work not only in his own life but also in the lives of his students and at Gordon-Conwell, where he has served for more than 30 years. As a child, he grew up witnessing the faith of his parents and their famous evangelist friends, such as Billy Graham. Their influence, he says, made it easy for him to accept Christ at the age of seven, after one of his father’s evangelistic services. “It built something into me that made it natural to fall in love with Christ,” he says. “It was a winsome, loving wooing into the family of faith.”
He went on to earn an M.Div. and a Th.M. from Princeton Theological Seminary, where he became interested in 19th century American religious history and earned a Ph.D. on that topic from the University of Minnesota.
His long and fruitful career at Gordon-Conwell began in 1978. After teaching for eight years at Bethel Theological Seminary, he was called to serve as Gordon-Conwell’s Professor of Church History and Chief Academic Officer by the seminary’s first president, Dr. Harold John Ockenga. Dr. Rosell responded because he was drawn by the seminary’s vision of equipping men and women through whom God could work to renew the church and society.
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“They [the founders of Gordon-Conwell] had a deep commitment to educate a whole new generation of men and women who were theologically grounded, biblically centered, passionate for the spread of the gospel, deeply committed to the church and the renewal of the church,” he says. “That’s what’s kept me here all these years.” Since then, he has served under all six of Gordon-Conwell’s presidents, taught at all four campuses and served in a variety of administrative and faculty positions, including helping to found and direct the school’s Ockenga Institute and chairing the faculty’s Division of Christian Thought for 17 years.
Despite his administrative accomplishments, however, his real passion is his students. In recent years, he has gradually stepped down from all his administrative roles, in order to focus on his teaching and writing. His greatest satisfaction comes from seeing the work God does through his students.
“To watch students who have sat in my classrooms go out and serve God faithfully, that is the greatest joy,” he says. “This is just a little part of God’s working out of that vision [of Gordon-Conwell].” In addition to teaching, Dr. Rosell has recently published The Surprising Work of God, a study of America’s 20th century spiritual awakening, and he is currently working on a history of Gordon-Conwell for its 50th anniversary celebration in 2019. He also loves spending time with Jane, his wife of 45 years, and his son and daughter and two small grandchildren. His desire for the seminary remains steadfast: to see God continue His work in and through the school and its students. “My prayer for the future,” he says, “is that God’s hand of blessing would remain on our beloved seminary, and that the mission and vision of our founders would remain vital and alive throughout the coming years.”
SEMINARY NEWS
Gordon-Conwell Introduces New Degree in Ethics and Society health care or biomedical technology and research in their postgraduate studies and vocations. The MAET program will train students to understand the Christian’s ethical responsibilities in family, church and society, and will equip them to think and live ethically. The program is also designed to foster spiritual maturity and provide participants with a sound grasp of Scripture and theology.
Gordon-Conwell students can soon pursue a new Master of Arts degree in ethics and society. This 60-credit degree program, to be launched in the Fall 2011 semester, will provide graduate level training in Christian ethics across the ethics spectrum, including theological, philosophical, social, sexual and workplace ethics, and bioethics. The degree is especially suitable for those who plan to deal with the subjects of peace, justice, poverty, the environment, the marketplace,
Board Names Two New Trustees The Gordon-Conwell Board of Trustees has welcomed two new members in the past 18 months. Dr. Claude R. Alexander, Jr. is Senior Pastor of The Park Ministries in Charlotte, NC.
The Park Ministries (previously University Park Baptist Church) has grown from fewer than 500 members to more than 8,000 since Dr. Alexander became pastor in 1990. The church has also expanded to three campuses and more than 80 ministries and developed a television and a radio ministry during his tenure. Dr. Alexander is a frequent speaker and has served on a number of boards, including the Board of Directors of the United Way. Charlotte Magazine has ranked him among the 75 most influential persons in Charlotte, and the Charlotte Business Journal named him as one of Charlotte’s top 40 leaders under 40. He holds an M.Div. from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and a D.Min. from Gordon-Conwell. He and his wife, Kimberly, have two daughters.
The degree will consist of eight core courses in ethics along with 12 other courses, including biblical studies, theology, language and electives. Students will have the opportunity to take up to four courses of their concentration at member schools of the Boston Theological Institute (BTI), a consortium of nine theological schools in the Boston area. “We are excited to give our students the opportunity to wrestle with the important ethical and social issues of our day,” says Provost Frank James. “Our highly experienced faculty, along with the resources of the BTI, will equip students to approach ethics, and social and justice issues, from a thoughtful Christian perspective. We anticipate that students will leave this degree program ethically competent and spiritually mature.” For more information, contact Admissions at 1.800.428.7329 or admrep@gcts.edu.
Tim Robertson is Chairman of Bay Shore Enterprises, LLC, an investment holding company.
Mr. Robertson previously served as President and CEO of International Family Entertainment, best known for The Family Channel. He is also a founder and owner of Major League Lacrosse, a professional, six-team outdoor lacrosse league launched in 2001.
He has served on many cable, educational and nonprofit boards, such as the board of Regent University of Virginia Beach and the board of the Children’s Health Foundation of Norfolk, VA. He has also been a member of the Council for Virginia’s Future and the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Commission for Higher Education for Virginia. Mr. Robertson holds an M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell and completed the Executive Program in Business Administration at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. He is an active member and leader at Galilee Episcopal Church of Virginia Beach, VA, and lives in Virginia Beach with his wife, Lisa, and their five children.
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SEMINARY NEWS
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Patristics Scholar Appointed to New Cooley Chair in Early Christianity
Jacksonville Campus Names New Assistant to the Dean
Donald M. Fairbairn, Ph.D., has been appointed the Robert E. Cooley Professor of Early Christianity at Gordon-Conwell. Dr. Fairbairn previously taught at Erskine Theological Seminary in Due West, SC, as Professor of Historical Theology. He has also taught at several North American and European seminaries and Bible schools. He has authored books in Russian and English, most recently, Life in the Trinity: An Introduction to Theology with the Help of the Church Fathers. He has written articles on patristics, Eastern Orthodoxy and Christology. He holds an M.Div. from Denver Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. The Cooley Chair, an endowed faculty chair based at the seminary’s Charlotte, NC, campus, provides GordonConwell and the wider Southeast community with a senior scholar in patristics and historical theology. This chair allows the seminary to contribute careful scholarship to the growing interest in the early church.
Ryan M. Reeves, Ph.D. (cand.), has been named Assistant to the Dean of the Jacksonville campus of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and Instructor in Historical Theology. He replaces the previous Assistant to the Dean, Kent Gilbert, who accepted a position at First Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville. From 2003 to 2006, Prof. Reeves served as Research Fellow and Editor at Teleios Research Institute, a non-profit organization in Orlando, FL, where he created numerous teaching curricula for use in churches and seminaries worldwide. From 2007-2009, he participated in course planning and department management as the graduate representative to the Church History Subject Committee at Cambridge University. He has guest lectured at Cambridge University and Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS) and has presented papers at overseas conferences. Prof. Reeves is completing a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. He received M.A. and M.Div. degrees from RTS.
Gordon College and Gordon-Conwell to Celebrate 175th Birthday of A. J. Gordon
Dr. Davis Wins Biblical Exposition Award
Gordon-Conwell is partnering with Gordon College in a yearlong celebration of the 175th birthday of A. J. Gordon. Rev. Gordon, who pastored Clarendon Street Baptist Church in Boston for more than 25 years, founded the Boston Missionary Training Institute in 1889 to prepare men and women for Christian service. This institute would later become Gordon College and the Gordon Divinity School. In 1969, the divinity school merged with the Conwell School of Theology to become Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Rev. Gordon died in 1895. The 175th birthday celebration will consist of a series of events held at the college and at the seminary, culminating in a celebration on April 19, 2011. Events include a chapel led by Gordon-Conwell professors Dr. Haddon Robinson, Harold John Ockenga Distinguished Professor of Preaching; and Dr. Scott Gibson, Haddon W. Robinson Professor of Preaching; and student and leadership symposiums involving the seminary community. For more information, visit www.gordonconwell.edu/ Gordon175.
Dr. John Jefferson Davis, Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics, recently won a first place Evangelical Press Association (EPA) Higher Goals Award in the category of biblical exposition for his article, “2 Timothy 2:12, the Ordination of Women, and Paul’s Use of Creation Narratives.” Dr. Davis’ article argues that Paul’s use of creation texts indicates that 1 Tim. 2:11-15 does not prohibit the ordination of women. It appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of the Priscilla Papers, the Christians for Biblical Equality’s scholarly journal. His article is the 9th in that journal to win an award from the EPA, and the first by a Gordon-Conwell professor to win first place. The journal, which discusses biblical equality, was founded in 1987 by Gordon-Conwell Ranked Adjunct Associate Professor of Classical and Ministry Studies, Dr. Catherine Clark Kroeger, and her husband, Richard. Gordon-Conwell Ranked Adjunct Professor of Theology and the Arts, William David Spencer, is Editor. Dr. Aida Besançon Spencer, Gordon-Conwell Professor of New Testament, is its editorial consultant. The Papers have an international subscription of more than 2,000 individuals and college and seminary libraries.
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SEMINARY NEWS
Mentored Ministry in a Kayak April Seipp
When Matt Drayton began his Mentored Ministry position with Pastor Bob Leroe, his new mentor considered Matt’s previous experience as a kayaking instructor and gave him two options: “We can talk in my office, or we can talk on the Ipswich River.” Matt chose the river. Over the course of the next two and a half years, as part of Gordon-Conwell’s Mentored Ministry Program, they kayaked a dozen rivers around the North Shore as they discussed life in ministry and how to prepare for it. Bob is the pastor of Cliftondale Congregational Church in Saugus, MA, but served as a chaplain in the U.S. Army for 25 years. Matt was pursuing his M.Div. degree at Gordon-Conwell in order to become a chaplain with the Navy. “I was so blessed to find Bob Leroe,” Matt says. “He had the perfect mix of pastoral and chaplain expertise.” The experience was so beneficial for Matt that he nominated Bob for Gordon-Conwell’s new Outstanding Mentor Award, which was presented at Matt’s ordination in May 2010. Bob has mentored seven GCTS students over the past 10 years, and asks the Mentored Ministry office to refer possible chaplain candidates to him. Not all of his former students have gone into the chaplaincy, but he still keeps in touch with each one. The Saugus pastor was motivated to get involved with the program because of a disappointing experience when he was a brand-new chaplain on active duty for the first time. He asked another chaplain to mentor him, and the man turned him down. “I went to a seminary (not GCTS) that trained me to be a theologian, not a minister,” Bob recalls. “So often practical skills are left out in seminary.” The first funeral he ever attended was one he conducted as a chaplain. No one told him how to do it. As he gained experience in the Army, he made sure to pass on his knowledge to other chaplains he supervised. He found it difficult to retire from the chaplaincy, but his involvement with the Mentored Ministry program helps. “I feel like I am still influencing the military indirectly,” he says. Bob emphasizes practical skills in his mentoring approach. His students participate in a variety of ministry settings including funerals, board meetings and pre-marital counseling sessions. They meet together afterward to discuss the experience. The hands-on training gives students the opportunity to test their leadership under the supervision of a seasoned minister, sometimes with humorous results. Matt’s favorite story from Mentored Ministry happened while he was assisting Bob in leading a Sunday service. When the choir came up to the front, Matt stepped aside to make room and his shirt caught fire from an altar candle. A woman in the choir began hitting him with a Bible in an attempt to put it out. “It took a little while for the congregation to realize what was happening,” Matt laughs. The woman succeeded, but not before a four-inch hole was burned in his shirt.
Matt says Cliftondale will always be his home church, even after he goes on active duty in January. Bob explains that the church will continue to pray for him, as they would a missionary overseas. As he transitions from seminary life to full-time ministry, Matt sees his time spent with Bob as invaluable. “I would not be getting a job as a Navy chaplain without this Mentored Ministry experience,” he asserts. “It set my course for the next 20 years.” Mentored Ministry is required for all students receiving an M.Div. or M.A. in Educational Ministries, though the program design differs among campuses. In Boston, most students at CUME are already engaged in a ministry context, so the program primarily seeks to bring mentors alongside them. The mentors can then help students be more intentional about setting specific growth objectives. Similarly, Charlotte focuses on finding long-term mentors who will invest in the students for two or three years within a particular ministry context. “To get the most out of your seminary experience, you have to do ministry,” Matt says. “You can think theory all you want, but you’re not going to be a better minister until you get in there. Everyone should have the opportunity to be mentored by someone like Bob, who is willing to invest in the ministers of tomorrow.”
Mentored Ministry Fast Facts • More than 200 students participated in Hamilton’s Mentored Ministry during the past year, with nearly 150 mentors volunteering their time to the program. • The total number of students and mentors at the three other seminary campuses included 29 at CUME, 70 in Charlotte and 12 in Jacksonville. • Students have the opportunity to learn in various contexts including overseas missions, inner city ministries and local church parishes. Mentors must have at least five years of fulltime ministry experience and be approved by the seminary. • The mentor application is available online and the seminary offers a mentor orientation for those new to the program. Students can find a position on their own and then complete the approval process. • Ministers can also apply and post an available ministry position through the Mentored Ministry office in order to connect with a student. For more information, please contact the following: HAMILTON Katherine Horvath khorvath@gordonconwell.edu BOSTON CUME Frank Tully ftully@gordonconwell.edu CHARLOTTE/JACKSONVILLE Dr. Steve Klipowicz sklipowicz@gordonconwell.edu w w w.gordonconwell.edu/ c o nta c tma g a z i ne 31
DEVELOPMENT NEWS
What If? Kurt W. Drescher Vice President for Advancement
What if #2. Recently, one of our preaching professors spoke at a local church involved in a capital campaign. Dr. Jeff Arthurs preached one of the best sermons I have ever heard on stewardship. Jeff challenged this church to consider serious questions like: “Who is God?” “Who are we?” “What character qualities make for a good steward?” “What are the implications for everyday life?” It got me thinking. What if our churches taught sounds biblical principles of stewardship regularly, not just when they had emergency budget needs or were in the midst of a capital campaign?
What if #3. As I was making my “What if” list, one of my favorite passages of Scripture came to mind: Ephesians 3:2023. “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen” (NIV). I hear in this Scripture the freedom to ask and dream big, to plan beyond our abilities, to trust God for the outcomes and to give our Heavenly Father all the glory. I have probably read these verses dozens of times. How is it that every time I read it, I get a little more fired up? What if the big “C” Church really took profound promises like this to heart? Would the spiritual landscape change?
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n a recent Saturday, I spent the evening watching the current popular movie, Letters to Juliet, with our younger daughter. This is not an endorsement, but the movie raised an important question—“What if?”— that got me thinking. I have asked myself this question a number of times, but I’m not sure I’ve ever made a list of “What if’s” until now.
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What if #1. Some weeks ago, one of our partners at GordonConwell described the joy she experiences by giving from what God has given her. Her extended family owns a vacation home, and during the summer they divide up weeks when various members will use it. My friend confided that some in her family do not want to share their home with people outside the family. I saw the grief on her face, because I know she receives significant joy not from owning and controlling this gift from God, but rather, from sharing it liberally with others. What if more people were like my friend, sharing openly and generously the gifts that God has entrusted to them? FA L L / W I N T E R ‘ 1 0
This is just a handful of the “What ifs” that have been running through my mind lately. The exercise has prompted all kinds of other questions for me personally and professionally, such as: “What if our family watched less TV?” “What if we prayed more or read the Bible more or gave more or invited more people over to our home?” “What if” is a great question. I challenge you to make a list of your own. Once you have started this list, you’ll find that other questions rise to the surface: “Then what?” or “Now what?” It is simply not enough to make the list. We are called to act on what we have learned. We are reminded in James 1:22, --- “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” There is not a lot of wiggle room in that verse.
At Gordon-Conwell we are blessed to have many partners who have dared to asked the “What if” question and wondered what God might do if they invested in the ministry of the seminary. We are immensely grateful that they have wrestled with this question and have trusted God to multiply their Kingdom investment. We absolutely could not do what we are called to do without these many partnerships. We take no credit for the way the seminary has been used for these many years. It all goes to our great God. What if more of us asked the “What if” question? Then what? I will leave you to wonder what God might do through you. Kurt W. Drescher is the Vice President for Advancement at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is an active member of Grace Chapel, and lives with his wife and two daughters in Reading, Massachusetts.
SEMINARY NEWS
Generous Donation Funds Major Book Collection Gordon-Conwell has acquired a substantial book collection through a generous gift by Randall and Alice Mathews in memory of their son, R. Kent Mathews. Kent was a world traveler, a lover of books and a compassionate follower of Jesus Christ. He was killed by a drunk driver in France while working with profoundly disabled adults at the L’Arche ministry in Trosly-Breuil north of Paris. The collection, which has been housed at the seminary’s Center for the Study of Global Christianity, includes more than 10,000 books and over a million documents on topics such as Christianity and other world religions, church history, missions, linguistics, Christianity in different countries and
Seminary Offers Financial Aid to Military Veterans Gordon-Conwell Seminary has increased the financial aid available to military veterans by joining the Yellow Ribbon Program, a government initiative to assist veterans pursuing higher education.
The program, open to qualified veterans who receive the maximum benefits under the Post-9/11 GI Bill, provides payment for tuition not covered by those benefits. GordonConwell will pay up to 50 percent of the eligible remaining tuition, which will then be matched by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
Funds are available to all students at the South Hamilton campus who meet VA requirements, including individuals who have served at least 36 months on active duty or have been honorably discharged from active duty for a serviceconnected disability. Dependents may also be eligible. Interested students should contact the Department of Veterans Affairs to determine their eligibility and then notify Gordon-Conwell Student Financial Services at finaid@gcts.edu if they qualify. More information is also available at http://www.gibill. va.gov/school_info/yellow_ribbon.
much more. The books, which will remain at the Center, will be incorporated into the Gordon-Conwell library collection for eventual check-out.
According to Dr. Todd Johnson, Director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, “The books complement well the library’s existing collection and will significantly benefit students and the entire seminary community, as well as scholars from other academic institutions.”
Randall Mathews served in stateside pastoral ministries, and with his wife and family in overseas ministries in France and Austria. Alice Mathews, the Lois W. Bennett Professor Emerita of Educational Ministries and Women’s Ministries, served as Academic Dean of the Hamilton Campus from 2007 to 2009. She is widely known for her participation with Dr. Haddon Robinson and Mart DeHaan in the daily Bible-teaching radio program, Discover the Word.
Charlotte Counseling Students Earn High Marks on National Exam Students earning degrees in Counseling at the Charlotte campus recently scored 26 percent higher than the national average on the National Counselor Exam and 10 percent higher than students at schools accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP).
Officials of the Charlotte counseling program were notified of the students’ favorable performance by the National Board for Certified Counselors.
The Charlotte campus’ counseling program this year also became an official testing site for the National Counselor Exam. According to Dr. Maria L. Boccia, Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling at Charlotte and Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology, “This allows our students to take the exam in their last semester, and therefore accelerates their ability to secure their Licensed Professional Counselor Associate license and begin their post-graduate practice sooner.” Commending students on their test results, she noted, “They have worked very hard and have reaped the rewards of their efforts.”
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FOCUS ON ALUMNI
Equipping Former Catholics Chris Castaldo, M.Div.’99
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e have free floating guilt, can identify the Ave Maria within three notes and likely have rosary beads somewhere in the attic. We also own at least one study Bible, listen to sermons in the car, and know that a “quiet time” is different from a nap. We are followers of Christ who grew up Catholic and are now Evangelical Protestants. According to The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, more than 15 million of us former Catholics in America now attend Protestant churches.1 We are among your elders, and nursery workers, and often comprise a sizable portion of your congregation. Some of us have walked with Jesus as Catholics before moving in a Protestant direction. Others of us were converted as we made the move. Either way, our ambition is simple—to know Christ more deeply and share him with Catholic friends. And this is precisely where the challenge begins. If we were to describe our experience of discussing religion with Catholic family, it would be with words like “contention,” “fear” and “exasperation.” We pray like mad for weeks leading up to the family reunion, and apply everything you’ve taught us in our personal evangelism class. But, for some reason, it still results in a train wreck. In using the word “evangelism,” I don’t
Gordon-Conwell Alumnus to Speak at Spring Pastors’ Forum Pastor and author Chris Castaldo will be speaking at the Hamilton campus on February 15, 2011, as part of the Spring Pastors’ Forum. During this one-day seminar, Chris will discuss his book, Holy Ground: Walking with Jesus as a Former Catholic. Rev. Castaldo received his M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell and is now Pastor of Outreach and Church Planting at College Church in Wheaton, IL. The forum is open to anyone. For more information, please contact the Ockenga Institute either by phone at 1.800.294.2774 or by email at ockenga@gcts.edu.
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mean to suggest that Catholics are categorically outside the pale of faith. Some appear to know Jesus, others don’t and there are many about whom we’re not sure (just as in Protestantism). Regardless, as a matter of our evangelical identity—called to pursue God’s mission of making disciples of all nations, indeed, needing to preach the good news to ourselves each day—we are committed to evangelism and discipleship. The challenge we face in relating to Catholics is threefold: theological, sociological and rhetorical. In terms of theology, several questions are in need of attention: Where do the lines of continuity and disagreement fall between Catholics and Protestants? How do we give an answer for our canonical hope? What constitutes our authority? Because the borders of our religious past and our evangelical present are often blurry, we need you to walk beside us with personalized insight and direction. Another skill that we often lack is the ability to navigate through complex cultural differences. For instance, Catholics often define their religious identity by the catena of traditions that emerge from one’s ethnic, institutional and liturgical experience. These are activities such as feasts, crossing oneself, ashes on the forehead, eating certain foods (or abstaining from them), genuflecting, lighting votive candles or having Mass said in the name of a deceased relative. We need help navigating through such traditions, in ways that serve the gospel instead of subverting it. The rhetorical challenge concerns common terminology that has a different meaning for Catholics and Protestants. Consider, for instance, the phrase “faith alone.” When we Protestants use these words, our hearts rejoice in the fact that justification is a gift from God. We no longer have to observe Holy Days of Obligation, clerical confession, or abstain from eating meat on Fridays during Lent to remain in good stead with God.2 But how do Catholics typically hear these words? To them, “faith alone” is more likely to mean cheap grace, walking an aisle, saying a sinner’s prayer without concern for obedience. Instead of being a glorious truth of salvation in which one’s heart rejoices, it is, from a Catholic point of view, a travesty, a compromise, an affront to the holy character of God. The opportunity for fruitful ministry among Catholics is enormous. Our communities are rife with Catholic families, and, given our relationships to these friends and loves ones, we former Catholics are especially poised to serve them. What we need from you, our beloved pastors, is a compelling vision for gospel outreach which is theologically attentive, contextually informed and winsomely communicated. Would you please help us? 1 The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S. (Executive Summary, April 2009),” Pew Research Center, http://pewforum. org/Faith-in-Flux.aspx. 2 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Par. 2041-43, Ed. 2 (Citta del Vatticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997).
Rev. Chris Castaldo serves as Pastor of Outreach and Church Planting at College Church in Wheaton, Illinois, and is the author of Holy Ground: Walking with Jesus as a Former Catholic (Zondervan, 2009). He received an M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell in 1999. He is married to Angela and they have four children.
FOCUS ON ALUMNI
Rhonda Gibson Named Director of Alumni Relations Rhonda Gibson (‘10, MAR) is the seminary’s new Director of Alumni Relations. Rhonda previously served as the Doctor of Ministry Student Accounts Assistant. Her husband, Scott Gibson (‘83, M.Div.), is the Haddon Robinson Professor of Preaching.
In reflecting on her new role, Rhonda had the following to say:
“Recently an electrician came to our home to install a light over the kitchen sink. For the past eight years, I’ve wondered (and complained) how the builder and we overlooked such a standard convenience. When the electrician checked the ceiling area before cutting a hole, he discovered a canister light that had been there all along, but it was never exposed. In a similar way, our graduates have been there all along, but we’ve only recently put more resources toward uncovering how they’ve been serving the Church.
“The alumni office wants to uncover Gordon-Conwell, too. We hope not only to discover more about what our alumni do, but also to communicate how Gordon-Conwell continues to prepare men and women to serve in vocations ranging from missionaries and ministers to professions in the marketplace. “It’s been a pleasure for me to be part of the Gordon-Conwell community for the past 10 years. From the perspective of being married to a faculty member, I’ve been able to get to know students, participate in events and study for a degree. Now it’s my privilege to be involved at a new level. I’m looking forward to helping uncover what’s been there all along.”
The seminary appreciates the vision and energy Rhonda brings to her position. She replaces Daryl Olson (‘05, M.Div.), who has served in a similar capacity since 2007. Daryl continues to work for Gordon-Conwell as an IT Business Analyst.
Alumni Gathered in Pittsburgh This Fall Gordon-Conwell continued its efforts to host alumni events in major metropolitan areas with a gathering of alumni in the Pittsburgh area. The event took place on November 12th, at Mt. Lebanon United Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. We were delighteded that alumnus Rev. Tim Janiszewski (’86, M.Div.) opened his church for this event, which was hosted by President Hollinger. If you would like to keep updated on upcoming alumni events, subscribe to the e-newsletter InCommunity by emailing alums@gcts.edu.
Alumni Participate in the 2010 Lausanne Congress in Cape Town During the week of October 1625, 4,000 Christian leaders from around the world converged in Cape Town, South Africa for the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, Cape Town 2010. These delegates, hand chosen by national committees, gathered to engage and pray for some of the Rev. Doug Birdsall, Executive Chair most challenging issues facing of the Lausanne the global Church today—issues Committee like HIV/AIDS, seismic shifts in global Christianity, the reality of Islam, poverty, the brokenness of the world, reconciliation and others. Gordon-Conwell alumni participated in this historic event on a variety of levels. Many were onsite at the Congress, including Doug Birdsall (’79, M.Div.), Executive Chair of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, the organization responsible for the Congress, and plenary speakers Tim Keller (’75, M.Div.) and Ramez Atallah (’72, M.Div.). Keller is the founding pastor of New York’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church, while Atallah is the General Secretary of the Bible Society of Egypt. A special alumni gathering for Gordon-Conwell alumni was also held during the Congress, hosted by President Hollinger.
Back on the Hamilton campus, many alumni came with members of their congregations to participate remotely in the Congress through a GlobaLink Conference on October 22-23. During this twoday event, attendees were able to listen to plenary speakers at Cape Town, as well as participate in small group discussions with other local pastors, church leaders and missions representatives. Gordon-Conwell continues the conversations that began at Lausanne’s Cape Town 2010 Congress, meeting one Friday evening per month throughout the remainder of the academic year at the Hamilton campus. This continuing conversation, to further explore the six major themes addressed in Cape Town, is open to alumni. Learn more at www.gordonconwell. edu/missions.
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ALUMNI NOTES
In Memoriam Harry Boehmke, M.Div., ‘53, passed away peacefully July 20, 2010, surrounded by family. Rev. Boehmke was an ordained minister for more than 40 years. Elwood Bannister, B.D., ’54, passed away January 2009 after more than 50 years of active ministry. His ministry included four pastorates in eastern Canada, service on the faculty and in administration at Atlantic Baptist University (now Crandall University) and serving with Canadian Baptist Ministries.
James Arthur Clark, M.Div., ‘56, passed away May 29, 2010, in Sebring, FL. Allen Guenther, M.Div., ‘69, passed away December 23, 2009. He is survived by his wife, Anne, and sons, Ron, Barry and Michael.
Jeffrey Woodyard, MATS, ‘83, passed away June 3, 2010, in his hometown of York, PA. Kenny Ye, M.Div., ‘01, passed away July 3, 2010, as a result of a serious bus accident in South Korea. He served as an associate pastor at Highrock Covenant Church in Arlington, MA.
Leon Jeanty, MAUM, ‘07, passed away unexpectedly May 31, 2010. He is survived by his wife, Mariana, and his three children, Verola, Lee and Nathan. He pastored two local congregations in Boston: Bethesda Baptist Church in Hyde Park and Ebenezer Baptist Church.
1950s
Gordon Danielson, M.Div., ‘59, and his wife, Martha Lee Danielson, of Penney Retirement Community in Florida, celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary in June 2010. To celebrate, they traveled to Austria and Switzerland, and attended a performance of the Passion in Oberamagau, Germany. They also welcomed their first grandchild, Weston Champe Slack, son of their daughter, Molly, and her husband, Matthew. Gordon observed the 50th anniversary of his ordination in September 2009.
1960s
Reg Dunlap, B.D., ‘60, after being Senior Pastor for 17 years at the historic Second Baptist Church in North Stonington, CT, is returning to the evangelism and Bible conference ministry in which he was previously involved for 30 years. He will travel with Bob Thompson, internationally known gospel singer, throughout the country. This church-centered ministry will specialize in meeting the needs of churches in the areas of Bible teaching, deeper-life conferences and teaching seminars. Reg may be reached through sermonseeker.com and preachtheword.net.
Frederick Gregory, B.D., ‘68, has lectures available at The Teaching Company website for courses on the Darwinian Revolution and the History of Science. Visit www.teach12.com.
1970s
Arthur Gerald, MTS, ‘72, is featured in an article in the Boston Herald. Rev. Gerald was recently named the 13th pastor of Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury, MA. Ronald E. Peters, M.Div., ‘70, has been named the eighth president of the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC) in Atlanta, GA. He began in September. 36
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Charles Sutton, MTS, ‘76, retired from active ministry in the Episcopal Church in October 2009, and was received into the Anglican Church in North America a few days later. John Currid, MTS, ‘77, is featured in a Times-Herald article for his work on the excavation of Bethsaida near the Sea of Galilee. Jack Wald, M.Div., ‘77, is quoted in WORLD Magazine in an article on the expulsion of Christian workers from Morocco.
1980s
G. Thomas Hobson, M.Div., ‘83, received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Biblical Exegesis from Concordia Seminary, St Louis, MO, on May 21. Rev Hobson’s dissertation is entitled “Cut Off From (One’s) People: Punitive Expulsion in the Torah.” He has also published “Aselgeia in Mark 7:22” (Filologia Neotestamentaria 21:65–74) and “Historicity: Does It Matter?” (Presbyterian Outlook, 7/6, 7/13, 8/3/2009).
Bard-Alan Finlan, MATS, ‘84, completed his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Sacred Music this past spring at the University of Southern California.
James Proctor, M.Div., ‘87, has been appointed Pastor of the Corinth United Methodist Church in Corinth, Maine. Lee Spitzer, D.Min., ‘89, M.Div., ‘81, has published his new book, Making Friends, Making Disciples (Judson Press, 2010).
1990s
Elsie Mokoban, MATS, ‘90, is grateful for her education at Gordon-Conwell and the scholarship that helped fund that education, because it helped prepare her for her ministry. She has been working for Intervarsity Christian Fellowship for the past 20 years and is featured on the InterVarsity website for her ministry at Indian River State College. Bruce Fawcett, M.Div., ‘91, has been appointed Academic Dean at Acadia Divinity College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada, where he also serves as Director of Doctoral Studies and Associate Professor of Leadership.
Lewis Klatt, M.Div., ‘91, won the 2010 Iowa Poetry Prize, awarded by the University of Iowa Press for his manuscript, Cloud of Ink. The annual Iowa Poetry Prize is one of the leading national poetry awards. Rachel Stahle, MA, ‘94, published her first book, The Great Work of Providence: Jonathan Edwards for Life Today (Wipf & Stock, 2009).
Lorne Bean, M.Div., ‘95, and his wife, Rochelle, along with their daughters Brianna and Tionae, were assigned to Bethel A.M.E. Church, in Bermuda, after nine years at their previous church.
David Colburn, MACO, ‘95, has had the first five of his 12 week-long studies through the Gospels published on Bible.org. The studies are daily, chronological and devotional. He hopes to publish studies on the entire New Testament and Old Testament by December 2011.
Catherine Beckerleg, MAOT, ‘96, MAR, ‘97, completed her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard in 2009 and is now Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College (IL). Eric Bennett, M.Div., ‘96, continues to serve with Jews for Jesus. He did several Christ in the Passover presentations in Memphis last March. This summer, he traveled to Israel with the ministry for an evangelistic campaign for 2 ½ weeks. He and his wife, Kathy, have one small daughter, Erica.
ALUMNI NOTES
Jo Ann Deasy, M.Div., ‘97, graduated in May 2010 with her Ph.D. in Congregational Studies from Garrett Theological Seminary. She is currently serving as interim pastor at Sojourner Covenant Church in Evanston, IL.
Neal Pearson, D.Min., ‘05, MAUM, ‘96, was inducted into the Warren High School Hall of Fame (Warren, OH) on May 1, 2010. He was one of 10 to be inducted this year.
Peter Sprigg, M.Div., ‘97, is a public policy analyst for the Family Research Council and often appears on television, especially to discuss issues of human sexuality. His most recent interview was on CNN.
Karl Dahlfred, M.Div., ‘06, and his wife, Sun, are serving as church planting missionaries in Thailand. You can read Karl’s blog at dahlfred.com.
Alan Keiran, D.Min., ‘97, is featured in an article on ThePilot.com. Dr. Keiran is chief of staff for the Office of the U.S. Senate Chaplain.
David Swanson, D.Min., ‘98, published his first book, Vital Signs: Discovering the Keys to Abundant Christian Living (Conversant Life, 2010). It can be purchased at drinkfromthewell.com and Amazon.
Susan Gleason, M.Div., ‘99, has accepted a call to pastor the First Presbyterian Church in Haverhill, MA. She is grateful to those who have prayed for her daughter, Rachel, as she recovers from brain surgery to correct a seizure disorder. Rachel has been seizure-free for 13 weeks. Prosperly Lyngdoh, MAME, ‘99, has been appointed Associate Professor of Missions at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. He has served as a missions professor at Barclay College and as a missionary pastor in Mumbai, India.
2000s
Gary Rodriguez, D.Min., ‘00, recently wrote a book entitled, Purpose Driven Public Speaking, which is designed to help aspiring and active speakers “develop and deliver purposeful talks with less fear and more confidence.” James Skillen, MATH, ‘00, is highlighted in a faculty profile article on the Calvin College website. Dr. Skillen teaches in the geology, geography and environmental studies department there.
Julena Doudt, MAME, ‘02, has recently been hired as a Charlotte, NC, region Area Director for CARES by Apartment Life (www.caresteam.org), a faithbased non-profit based out of Dallas, TX, that ministers among apartment communities. Dean Abbott, MATH, ‘03, and his wife, Rebecca Abbott, MAR, ‘03, recently welcomed their second child, Lucy Rose. She joins older sister, Daisy. Dean has accepted a position as Professor of Communication at Mt. Vernon Nazarene University in Mt. Vernon, OH. Rebecca received her doctorate in Worship Studies from the Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies. Jim McConnell, M.Div., ‘04, completed his Ph.D. in New Testament from Baylor University in December 2009. Since fall 2009, he has been a member of the faculty of the School of Divinity at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, NC.
Felix Orji, D.Min., ‘04, has been appointed a Canon by St. Francis on the Hill Anglican Church in El Paso, TX, where he began in 2005 as an associate rector. Rob Rienow, D.Min., ‘04, and his wife, Amy, have published a new book, Visionary Marriage (Randall House, 2010). It is a companion to their earlier book, Visionary Parenting, and seeks to equip married couples with a compelling, Bible-driven mission for their life together. There is also a corresponding DVD series. More information is available at VisionaryMarriage.com.
Mark Debowski, Th.M., M.Div., ‘05, and Kendra Debowski, MACO, ‘04, along with their son, Thatcher (4 years old), welcomed Adele Amadea (meaning “noble, serene; loves God”) into their family February 7, 2010. Mark is Lead Pastor at Bella Vista Church in Rockford, MI. John Lin, Th.M., ‘05, M.Div., ‘98 has been appointed Lead Pastor of a Redeemer congregation in the southern part of Manhattan.
Patrick Ware, M.Div., ‘05, is highlighted in a Frederick County Observer article on the Winchester Anglican Church where he serves as pastor.
Misty Mowrey, M.Div., ‘06, has recently completed eight years as Pastor of Rocky Fork Christian Church in Sanford, NC. She is teaching Language Arts at a public middle school while she waits for God’s leading to a full time pastorate.
Stephen Nyakairu, Th.M., M.Div., ‘06, is featured in an article on NashobaPublishing.com about baptisms at United Church of Shirley, MA, where he serves as pastor.
Charles Tieszen, Th.M., ‘06, M.Div., ‘05, completed his Ph.D. in Islam and Christian-Muslim relations at the University of Birmingham, U.K.
Brian Barry, M.Div., ‘09, is quoted in a WBUR.org article on the New England Diocese of the Anglican Church in North America. Rev. Barry serves as rector at Christ the Redeemer Anglican Church in Danvers, MA. Chris Blackey, M.Div., ‘09, and Kathleen Blackey, M.Div., ‘09, request prayer for First Baptist Church of South Londonderry, VT, where they serve as co-pastors. The church was completely destroyed by fire. They are thankful that no one was injured in the fire and that no other buildings were involved. They ask for prayer as the community mourns this building that has stood on the hill for almost 180 years, and they ask for prayers as they seek God’s guidance. An article about First Baptist appeared in the Brattleboro Reformer.
Bimini Cohen, MAUM, ‘09, and her Israeli husband, Oded, moved from Newton, MA, to serve the Lord with the Jews for Jesus Israel branch in Tel Aviv in April 2010. “The Lord is our Helper every moment of every day. We are finding a great curiosity here about Jesus and His claims of being the Messiah. Please pray for me to learn Hebrew so I can be more effective and fruitful. My years at GCTS are very precious to me—I was deeply impacted for God and His Kingdom. We will be returning to New England in the spring of 2011 for a three-week Christ in the Passover tour/teaching.” Cristina Richie, M.Div., ‘09, is completing her first semester as Adjunct Instructor of World Religions and Ethics at Newbury College in Brookline, MA. In April 2010, her first published article was printed in Black Theology: An Intentional Journal, entitled “The Racial and Economic Theories of James Cone and Martin Luther King Jr., Illuminated by the Sermon on the Mount.” In May 2010, she traveled to Victoria, BC, to present a paper for the AAR/ SBL/ ASOR entitled “Symbolism of Buddha Statues in Asian Art.”
John Bryson, D.Min., ‘10, has co-authored a video series called College Ready, which is designed to empower high school seniors or first semester college freshmen with a clear direction for starting college right and finishing it well. Nathan Creitz, M.Div., ‘10, is starting a church in Swampscott, MA, called Red Rock Community Church. For more information, visit redrockcc.org, and ChurchETHOS.com.
Danny Roman-Gloro, D.Min., ‘10, has begun the Ph.D. in Communications program at Regent University in Virginia Beach, VA. He was also recently awarded a Graduate Homiletics Scholarship from the Center for Excellence in Preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary in Michigan.
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IN MEMORIAM
In Memoriam Gordon-Conwell mourns the recent deaths of four very special individuals whose lives were spent in service to God.
Dr. Allan C. Emery, Jr.
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rustee Emeritus Dr. Allan Comstock Emery, Jr., an esteemed leader, longstanding board member and great friend of Gordon- Conwell, died at his home in Weymouth Heights, MA, September 26. Dr. Emery served the board from 1969 until 2001, was Vice Chairman from 1975 to 1993, succeeded Rev. Billy Graham as Chairman and served in that capacity until 1995. President Emeritus Dr. Robert E. Cooley, who worked closely with Dr. Emery, remembers him as “passionate about GordonConwell and about his service on the board, a man who dedicated a great deal of personal time to the seminary and supported it generously…Allan was very strong in his commitment to Christ and maintained the highest integrity in his leadership.” One of Dr. Emery’s greatest joys was the Weymouth (MA) Bible Club for high school students that he and his late wife, Marian, held in their home weekly for 33 years. He was also instrumental in bringing Billy Graham crusades to Boston in 1950 and 1964. Dr. Emery worked in the woolen industry, and was President of Boston Wool Trade and National Wool Trade Association. He was subsequently President of ServiceMaster Hospital Corp. of Boston, and President and Chief Operating Officer of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. A trustee of Gordon and Wheaton Colleges, he also served as President of the Evangelistic Association of New England (now Vision New England) and Boston Industrial Home-Union Rescue Mission, and was a Life Deacon at Park Street Church, Boston. He was awarded an LL.D degree from Wheaton. Dr. Emery is survived by two sons and their spouses, Allan Comstock Emery III and Lynn; Arthur Hancock Emery and Karen; daughter Annetta Emery Thurber and Richard; six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
David M. Rogers, Esq.
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rustee and Alumnus David Rogers (MTS ’96) passed away suddenly on July 25 while vacationing with his family at the beach in Isle of Palms, SC. “All of us at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary are shocked and grieving,” President Dennis P. Hollinger commented at the time. “David, an attorney, was in the first graduating class of our Charlotte Campus and has served on our board since 2001. He was also the chair of the Strategic Planning Task Force, the vice chair of our board, and until recently the chair of the Charlotte Board of Advisors. He gave sacrificially of his time, his energy and his considerable wisdom to our seminary, and he will be greatly missed.” David practiced law for more than 20 years in the area of civil litigation, serving with the South Carolina firm Carter, Smith, Merriam, Rogers and Traxler. He was a member of the South Carolina Bar Association and chair of its Torts and Insurance FA L L / W I N T E R ‘ 1 0
Practices section, as well as an organizer and Chairman of the Board for Greer (SC) State Bank, and an adjunct professor at North Greenville (SC) College. Since 2000, David had served as president of Joshua’s Way, a Christian, non-profit organization that partners with churches to provide foundational Christian teaching. The organization also does significant work in Ethiopia where David typically spent part of each year. He and his wife, Louise, started the organization in memory of their son, Joshua, who died in 1982. David Rogers is survived by Louise and their two children, Caleb and Kate.
Dr. Tom Little
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lumnus Dr. Tom Little (MTS, ‘77), and nine other members of a medical team were attacked and killed in Afghanistan in August in a suspected ambush by non-local fighters. An optometrist, Tom was leading the Nuristan Eye Camp Team from International Assistance Mission (IAM), an organization he had served for more than 30 years. According to IAM, “the team had just trekked 100 miles through the Hindu Kush Mountains, giving eye care to some of the poorest and most remote communities in Afghanistan.” Mission officials described Dr. Little as “a driving force behind much of what has been achieved in eye care in Afghanistan. He is irreplaceable.” As a manager of the organization’s Noor eye care services, he provided optometry care, established clinics and ophthalmic workshops, and had led eye camps for many years. In addition to these camps, Noor’s eye care includes hospitals, clinics, a training center for ophthalmology and ophthalmic professionals, and numerous outreach services. The work of the organization has benefited an estimated 5 million Afghans since 1966. “As a seminary community, our hearts go out to the families and friends of the 10 victims killed in Afghanistan,” says President Dennis Hollinger. “We particularly grieve the loss of Dr. Tom Little, who, as a Gordon-Conwell alumnus, had been inspired by the work and passion of Dr. J Christy Wilson, Jr. Before becoming a professor at Gordon-Conwell, Dr. Wilson spent 22 years serving in Afghanistan. Dr. Little was carrying on a great legacy.” Tom is survived by his wife, Libby, and three adult daughters, Molly, Nelly and Kattie. Their first grandchild will be born this fall.
Jean Kalland
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rs. Jean Kallan, wife of the late Dr. Lloyd Kalland, a long-time professor and administrator at the seminary, passed away April 8, 2010, after a three-week battle with cancer. Mrs. Kalland will be remembered for a life of service to Christ, gracious hospitality to others and considerable work with the Women’s Council at Gordon-Conwell. She is survived by her daughter, DJ; son-in-law, Paul; two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Opening
Isaiah 42-44
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The Potential of the New
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CATHERINE CLARK KROEGER, Ph.D. Ranked Adjunct Associate Professor of Classical and Ministry Studies
hen I was a little girl, I would watch from the window for the horse-drawn wagons that delivered our milk and groceries and ice for the old-fashioned ice box. Our favorite beast toured the neighborhood pulling the organ grinder’s magical instrument on a cart. How sad to see such wonderful horses replaced by trucks! How many changes have engulfed our world, and how swiftly they have come! When I belatedly entered graduate school some years after studying Greek in high school and college, I discovered that the ancient Greek language had not changed much. Then I received a distress call: the graduate student who was to teach biblical Greek with the use of a computer had fled. Would I attempt the innovation on such short notice? I had never touched a computer in my life, but I saw that it might be a way to help students stay afloat. At 8 a.m., I was introduced to the computer, and at noon I met the class. There were many bugs in the new program, but also great potential. Students who would otherwise have dropped the course after the first two weeks were learning. How many times that old dinosaur of a computer has been replaced since then! Increasingly, the familiar is swept away, and so many bewildering changes swirl around us in every aspect of our lives. To paraphrase the Psalmist, how do we sing the Lord’s song in the strange new world of technological contraptions, communications and circumstances? The mainline denominations that seemed so very solid are eroding more rapidly than our receding shore lines. Radically altered are the financial institutions on which we have depended for our security, while moral and ethical issues draw us into uncharted waters. Frequently, I find myself turning to ancient considerations of whole worlds that fell apart, as they were addressed by the prophets. The temple had fallen, polluted by idolatrous and obscene practices, ridden with actual idol shrines. Jerusalem, the Lord’s delight, lay in ruins, its inhabitants deported to a far-off land. They struggled to find meaning under the successive Babylonian, Median and Persian empires.
Into the confusion of crumbling cultures came the voices of the prophets. The people of God had failed wretchedly, and yet there was a promise of a meaningful future. Indeed, Isaiah had declared that Israel’s very mishaps would be used to declare God’s faithfulness, that they would indeed be His witnesses. Have no fear, do not be afraid Have I not told you and revealed it long ago? You are my witnesses, is there any other God beside me? There is no Rock, I know of none. (Isa. 44:8)
Out of the old, God was bringing something new. Though the Lord’s people were blind and deaf, “Who so blind as my servant, so deaf as the messenger I send?” (Isa. 42:19: 43:8), yet they were His witnesses (43:10, 12). Throughout all the bewildering upheaval—military, political, ideological, cultural and spiritual—there was a divine guidance to further the purposes of God. No need to recall the past, No need to think about what was done before See, I am doing a new deed Even now it comes to light, can you not see it? Yes, I am making a road in the wilderness Paths in the wilds (Isa. 43:18-19, Jerusalem).
Though often fumbling and stumbling as we traverse the wilderness, God’s witnesses can be sure that the road is there, lighted by the One who makes all things new.
Catherine Clark Kroeger earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. She is President of Peace and Safety in the Christian Home, a coalition of Christians providing resources and education to eliminate domestic violence in the Christian home. She is also founding president of Christians for Biblical Equality, a coalition of Christians united around the belief that Scripture supports the equality of men and women. w w w.gordonconwell.edu/ c o nta c tma g a z i ne 39
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“You will learn moral reasoning, not just moralizing.” Professor Patrick T. Smith
“We live in an era of bumper-sticker morality. It’s unfortunate that many important ethical questions are reduced to soundbites and clichés,” states Patrick T. Smith, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. “When this is the case, we can really miss the seriousness and difficulty of ethical questions, and how we should be discussing them. It is the aim of this program to equip God’s people to engage in moral reasoning about many of the complex ethical issues that affect all of us, Christian or not.”
Gordon-Conwell plans to offer a new degree, the Master of Arts in Ethics and Society for the Fall of 2011.*
*Pending ATS approval
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FA L L / W I N T E R ‘ 1 0
Find out more about the new Master of Arts in Ethics and Society by calling 1.800.428.7329 or visit us at www.gordonconwell.edu/ethics
We want to train students, pastors, chaplains, business and medical professionals, parachurch workers, and others who are interested in the intersection of ethics, Christian faith, and society. Gordon-Conwell’s new Master of Arts in Ethics and Society brings together Biblical studies, theology, ethical theory, philosophy and our cultural context to help students think clearly about difficult ethical issues and apply what they’ve learned in the real world.