discipleship-september-october-2009

RADICAL CHRISTIANITY ❘ WHY JOHNNY CAN’T PREACH ❘ WHAT BABY BOOMERS NEED

MODERN REFORMATION

Discipleship: Wisdom for Pilgrims’ Progress VOLUME

18, NUMBER 6, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009, $6.50

MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Eric Landry Managing Editor Patricia Anders Marketing Director Michele Tedrick Department Editors Mollie Z. Hemingway, Between the Times Ryan Glomsrud, Reviews Michael Horton, Final Thoughts Staff | Editors Jason Ching, Digital Production Assistant Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Elizabeth Isaac, Proofreader Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Contributing Scholars Michael Allen Peter D. Anders James Bachman J. Todd Billings John Bombaro Jerry Bridges John N. Day Adam S. Francisco David Gibson W. Robert Godfrey T. David Gordon Gillis Harp D. G. Hart Paul Helm John A. Huffman, Jr. Daniel R. Hyde Ken Jones Julius J. Kim Philip J. Lee Jonathan Leeman Richard Lints Korey Maas Keith Mathison R. Albert Mohler, Jr. John Warwick Montgomery Kenneth A. Myers Roger R. Nicole Robert Norris J. I. Packer Craig Parton Mark Pierson Lawrence R. Rast, Jr. Donald P. Richmond Kim Riddlebarger Rick Ritchie David Robertson Rod Rosenbladt Justin Taylor Kate Treick David VanDrunen Gene E. Veith David F. Wells Donald T. Williams William Willimon Todd Wilken Paul F. M. Zahl Modern Reformation © 2009 All rights reserved.

1725 Bear Valley Pkwy.

Escondido, CA 92027 (800) 890-7556 info@modernreformation.org www.modernreformation.org ISSN-1076-7169

1 YR 1 YR 1 YR 1 YR 1 YR

$32 $25 $39 $58 $65

2 0 0 9

|

v o l u m e

1 8

n u m b e r

6

Discipleship: Wisdom for Pilgrims’ Progress 14 What Is Discipleship Anyway?

Younger Christians today don’t just want to know Jesus Christ as a theory or an experience—they want to follow him. But does this mean moral and social activism, or is there more to being a disciple of Christ?

by Michael Horton

19 Lifestyle and Discipleship Is Christianity something we can simply meld into the lifestyle “to which we are accustomed,” or is it a radical transformation into a discipleship that illuminates the fullness of the gospel in our daily lives?

by Michael Spencer

23 A Necessary Gift: Ordained Leaders and the Transmission of Wisdom What self-respecting citizen of democracy would choose submission when we can pursue autonomy? In fact, why should any Christian submit to church authority at all?

by Paige Britton

27 Why Johnny Can’t Preach Since our primary media today is image based and electronic, is it any wonder people no longer really read or write? If this is so, argues the author, how can they possibly learn to preach properly?

by T. David Gordon

31 Dewey’s Copernican Revolution If, as John Dewey declared, the student is the sun that education revolves around, why shouldn’t it be all fun and games? Or do Solomon’s wise words still hold true?

by Shane Rosenthal

12 Celebrating Calvin Ten ways modern culture is different because of John Calvin.

by David W. Hall PHOTO BY HANS HUBER/WESTEND61/GETTYIMAGES

S UBSCRIPTION I NFORMATION US US Student Canada Europe Other

TABLE OF CONTENTS s e p t e m b e r / o c t o b e r

2 YR $58 2 YR $70 2 YR $104 2 YR $118

In This Issue page 2 | Letters page 3 | Between the Times page 4 Ex Auditu page 8 | Preaching from the Choir page 11 | Interview page 36 Required Reading page 39 | Reviews page 40 | Final Thoughts page 48

S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 3

IN THIS ISSUE

Grow Up! Like you, perhaps, I tuned in to ABC News recently to learn the story of Brooke Greenberg: a sixteen-year-old girl the size of an infant with the mental capacity of a toddler. Doctors are baffled by her body’s inhibited development; it’s the only case in all known medical history of a virtually ageless person. As a parent, I sometimes lament the passing stages of my children’s development: I will never feel their fine baby hair between my fingers again; I will never hear their sweet little voices try out new words as they learn to speak. But as much as I mourn that loss, I recognize that it is part of their growth and maturity. Eternal infancy, like Brooke Greenberg’s, is not normal either in human development or in the faith development inherent in our being Christians, the recipients of God’s living and abiding word (1 Pet. 1:23).

The making and sustaining of disciples is an integral part of the Great Commission.

In the catalog of any major Christian publisher, discipleship resources are always prominently displayed. But I wonder if, in our mad dash to get our congregants into a discipleship class or group, we miss what Jesus actually set out to accomplish. Discipleship is more than just a status (“I am two-thirds the way through a discipleship course at my church”); discipleship is a way of being. To be a disciple is to be a follower of Jesus, a believer in the gospel, a baptized pilgrim progressing—as the great Puritan John Bunyan put it—to the City of Zion. Maybe the feeling of many pastors that discipleship is like herding cats indicates that we’ve taken a step in the right direction: away from programs and classes and into the application of the whole Bible to the whole life.

In this issue of Modern Reformation, we’ve asked our contributors to reflect on the growth process of the Christian life, specifically the relationship between wisdom and discipleship. Editor-in-chief Michael Horton starts us off by defining discipleship beyond the currently popular categories of experience and incarnation.

Baptist writer and popular blogger Michael Spencer (aka “the Internet Monk”) asks American Christians if their faith has been accommodated to their lifestyle or if their lifestyle has been transformed by their faith.

Presbyterian laywoman Paige Britton turns our attention to the ordained leadership of the church as the disciple-makers necessary for discipleship to occur. And Presbyterian minister and college professor T. David Gordon laments the fact that many of those ordained leaders are not fit to train the disciples for whom they are charged to care. Where Dr. Gordon looks broadly at media-ecology as a threat to disciple-making, Shane Rosenthal (producer of the White Horse Inn) looks specifically at educational theories and practices that have put the disciples in charge of their own progress: self-feeding has a long and infamous history.

Will we, can we, grow up in our faith? The mission of Modern Reformation is to help Christians know what they believe and why they believe it. Our purpose isn’t merely to inflate the minds and egos of our readers; we see this as an important part of personal discipleship. The best kind of discipleship experience is a shared one; so if you have benefited from Modern Reformation and are interested in helping someone else grow in their faith, hope, and love, encourage them to sign up for our free trial subscription offer: they’ll get this issue and access to over eighteen years worth of material in our online archives.

Eric Landry Executive Editor

4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

NEXT ISSUES November/December 2009 Zion January/February 2010 Recovering Scripture

LETTERS y o u r

Donald T. Williams’ article, “For the Sake of the Story” (May/June 2009), identifies an issue that many evangelicals appear to have overlooked or neglected. When examined, C. S. Lewis is not as evangelical as many evangelicals would have us believe. Nevertheless, Williams himself needs to consider three points. First, “vicarious penal substitution” is certainly not the only view of atonement embraced by orthodox believers—although it is primary. Second, “total depravity” is a distinctly Calvinistic concept that, once again, is not embraced by all orthodox evangelicals. Third, it is entirely “safe” to deny “inerrancy” while affirming the truth and trustworthiness of Holy Scripture. Although Williams considers these issues as “lapses,” it might be more accurate for him to see Lewis as exercising an orthodox form of Christian latitude. An appreciation of Lewis among more conservative evangelicals may require an application of Richard Baxter’s dictum: “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”

TheVeryRev.Dr.DonaldP.Richmond Reformed Episcopal Church Apple Valley, California

Author’s Response Donald Richmond wants me to reconsider three points that I mentioned in passing as examples of doctrinal problems some evangelicals have with C. S. Lewis, noting that those points are “not embraced by all orthodox evangelicals.” Because at that juncture I was only giving examples, not trying to characterize an evangelical consensus (if there is such a thing anymore), I am not sure what I am supposed to consider. I agree that penal substitution is not the only theory of the atonement, but it is “primary” (which is what I said). As to whether a denial of inerrancy is “safe,” I submit that the history of institutions that have made that denial hardly sup-

ports Rev. Richmond’s contention.

Baxter’s dictum we ought by all means to follow; but first we should have to agree on what is “essential.” And there—as Lewis himself pointed out— is the rub.

Donald T. Williams

Thank you for your great magazine.

I am also worried about growing biblical illiteracy among Western Christians and the tendency to preach things other than Christ from the pulpit. May our Lord bless you and the important work you are doing.

Juha Mikkonen Finland

I just wanted to say that your ministry has been very helpful to me. I agree with R. C. Sproul that you are modern day prophets, proclaiming the gospel and Scripture to a needy and yet hostile people. I am in the PCA church and I am surprised at those I know who think you too conservative and divisive. I, however, am not one of them. You say many hard things to this contemporary church, which upsets many people, but they are true things and need to be said. Many Christians have lost the gospel, and I see works choking sermons, books, and discussions all around me. I can only pray that God would use me to proclaim his truth in the gospel as clearly and powerfully as you all.

t h o u g h t s

a n d

o u r s

concepts for expressing truths. Because one may begin with a false premise and hence come to a false conclusion does not negate the possibility that the inbetween thought processes may have been valid.

Since it seems that today is as it was in the days of the Old Testament judges (Judges 17:6; 21:25) with everyone making definitions that suit them, one cannot help but think of 1 Corinthians 1:21 and 2:2. It is only the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ that brings light to darkness.

Thank you also for the May/June issue of Modern Reformation, and thank you to Professor Anders for his article "The Real Christ Has Stood Up." We read Modern Reformation cover to cover and then pass it on to be read by others.

Joyce Lonsdale

Ryan Wormald

Thank you for Peter Anders' response to my letter (May/June 2009) regarding his article "Clashing Narratives" (September/October 2008). I do indeed believe in objective truth, God, and all that the Word infinitely, eternally is. I agree that philosophical thought provides useful language and

Modern Reformation Letters to the Editor 1725 Bear Valley Parkway Escondido CA 92027 760.741.1045 fax Letters@modernreformation.org Letters under 200 words are more likely to be printed than longer letters. Letters may be edited for content and length.

S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 5

BETWEEN THE TIMES t h e

g o o d ,

t h e

b a d ,

a n d

David McNew/Getty Images News

ANGLICANS GET HELP FROM SADDLEBACK

The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), composed mostly of congregations that left the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, held its first assembly in June.

Over 700 members attended the Dallas-area gathering and nine provinces from as far away as Africa, Asia, and South America sent official delegations.

“We are reaching out to North America in particular and the whole world with the transforming love of Jesus Christ,” said Archbishop Robert Duncan, the former Episcopal Church bishop of Pittsburgh.

Formed after Episcopal members fled over theological differences over scriptural interpretation, the ACNA has already been recognized by the Anglican Communion’s two largest provinces, Uganda and Nigeria. The ACNA claims 100,000 Anglicans in 700 parishes and includes 28 dioceses. The assembly featured welcomes from the Rev. Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, and Metropolitan Jonah, leader of the Orthodox Church in North America.

Jonah offered to begin talks toward full communion with the new church, identifying Calvinism and the ordination of women as two major stumbling blocks.

Warren brought participants to their feet by saying that the former Episcopalians’ exodus was “a historic event” and that God was “calling you out” of the Episcopal Church.

6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

t h e

u g l y

i n

c h u r c h

n e w s

“We will stand with you in solidarity as God does something new in your midst,” Warren told delegates. He also offered the use of the Saddleback campus for ACNA meetings.

Q: HOW DO YOU PUT THE IRS IN ITS PLACE? Catholic Answers, a Californiabased apologetics organization, filed suit in federal court against the Internal Revenue Service for violating the right to free speech.

The action stems from the federal agency’s response to two of the group’s 2004 e-mail newsletter that said that Senator John Kerry, D-Mass., should not be allowed to receive Communion because of his public advocacy of abortion.

After a three-year investigation, the IRS said the newsletter articles dealing with the proper reception of the Sacrament by Catholics constituted “political expenditures” and assessed excise taxes for the group to pay.

According to copies of the articles provided in the group’s lawsuit, nowhere was the election of Kerry or any other candidate supported or opposed.

Karl Keating, the group’s founder and president, said the IRS has been using vague criteria for decades to intimidate nonprofits into silence on moral issues.

“The intimidation has become so bad that nowadays, most churches and nonprofits in America are scared to death even to talk about moral issues that are deemed ‘political’ (such as

Notable Quotables “And though we’ve made progress, there are still fellow citizens, perhaps neighbors or even family members and loved ones, who still hold fast to worn arguments and old attitudes, who fail to see your families like their families, and who would deny you the rights that most Americans take for granted.”

—Barack Obama, speaking at a gay pride event held at the White House.

“[H]asn’t devout Catholic become a cliché, rather like oil-rich Kuwait? It would seem that only Catholics and Muslims qualify as devout, since devout Catholic has appeared in our pages four times in the past year and devout Muslim twice. Zero for devout Jews and Protestants.”

—Paul R. Martin, stylebook editor at The Wall Street Journal, criticizing the way his paper uses the term “devout.”

“My messages will be very light on Scripture. They’ll be stories, primarily, with lessons. They’ll be biblical concepts, but my platform on the ‘Hour of Power’ and the cathedral on Sunday mornings is as an outreach to the unchurched.”

—Sheila Schuller Coleman, who will succeed her father Robert Schuller at the Crystal Cathedral, saying her sermons won’t sound like those of a preacher.

BETWEEN THE TIMES t h e

SAME SEX, DIFFERENT ADMINISTRATION The rapid pace of legal changes to the institution of marriage is a top concern for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, according to a report from Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky.

Six states have redefined marriage to include same-sex couples, and others provide benefits equivalent to marriage. At the same time the bishops met in San Antonia, President Obama instructed federal agencies to extend family benefits to same-sex partners of their employees. Obama also said he would work to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, saying it’s discriminatory. The law, passed in 1996, says no state has to recognize a union recognized as a marriage in another state. It also affirms that marriage is the union of one man and one woman according to federal law.

In his report, Kurtz said the church’s teaching about the “truth, beauty and goodness” of marriage between one man and one woman is “a received truth, not something we arbitrarily create.”

He said the key points that the church should emphasize are that marriage is inherently related to sexual differences and the complementarity of men and women; that marriage is for the good of children, who are themselves “a great good of marriage”; that marriage is a unique bond reserved to men and women by nature; and that same-sex marriage has negative effects on religious rights.

EAT, PRAY, BROADCAST? The federal government’s Public Broadcasting Service has banned member stations from airing new religious TV programs, but permitted those

t h e

b a d ,

a n d

that already carry “sectarian” shows to continue doing so. A complete ban had been proposed earlier, forcing stations to give up their PBS affiliation if they continued broadcasting religious lectures and local church services.

A handful of PBS stations are operated by Catholic or Mormon organizations. Others simply air religious programming.

There is no word on how the ban will affect spiritualist staples of public programming such as Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra.

PRESIDENTS CAN’T BE CHOOSERS

t h e

u g l y

i n

c h u r c h

n e w s

By the Numbers 44 Percentage of Americans aged 18 to 29 who say that religion is very important to them, compared with two-thirds of adults aged 65 and older, according to a Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends survey. A third of adults aged 65 and older say religion has grown more important to them over the course of their lives, compared with only 4 percent who said it has become less so.

230,000 Square-footage of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints’ new Church History Library. For Mormons, preserving history is a sacred mandate. The facility holds journals, letters, business agreements, minutes of church meetings, and photos.

Pool/Getty Images News

abortion). If you’re wondering why you don’t hear more about abortion in your parish, especially during election time, this is why. It’s IRS intimidation,” Keating said.

g o o d ,

President Barack Obama’s closely watched church search may never reach fruition.

“How we handle church when we’re here in D.C. is something that we’re still figuring out,” he told a group of religion reporters.

The family attends chapel services at Camp David when they spend weekends there, but they may never choose a particular church. Obama cited the disruption that his presence causes as one major reason. Instead, the family may rotate churches.

“Obviously that takes away somewhat from the church experience of being part of a community and participating in the life of the church,” he said.

He said he misses having a home church but that the controversy over the sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor and mentor who espouses Black Liberation Theology, had made him sensitive to how church

$10,000 Amount of taxpayer funds that women who donate their eggs for research can receive from New York State. $14 million Amount for which Deborah and Ariel Levy are suing because they weren’t told their two-year-old daughter had Down syndrome when she was in utero. Had they known, they say they would have aborted her.

17.2 Percentage of Americans who are Baptist.

50 Percentage by which Southern Baptist membership will fall by 2050 unless the aging and predominantly white denomination reverses a fifty-year trend and does more to strengthen evangelism, reach immigrants, and develop a broader ethnic base, according to LifeWay Research.

S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 7

BETWEEN THE TIMES t h e

g o o d ,

t h e

b a d ,

a n d

membership can be interpreted.

The White House is also considering bringing in pastors of various denominations to pray with the family.

AFP/Getty Images

HIS WORDS ARE TIMELESS BUT HIS BODY IS DATED

Carbon dating tests on what are believed to be the bones of the apostle Paul “seem to confirm” that they do belong to the early church figure, Pope Benedict XVI said. The news came on the heels of another St. Paul announcement—the discovery of a fourth-century icon depicting St. Paul inside a tomb. The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano said it is the oldest known icon of St. Paul.

Paul’s white marble sarcophagus, located under the Basilica of St. Paul, was unearthed and opened in order to conduct the tests. The bone fragments found inside dated from the first or second century. The sarcophagus also held grains of incense, purple linen with gold sequins, and a blue fabric with linen filaments.

“This seems to confirm the unanimous and uncontested tradition that they are the mortal remains of the Apostle Paul,” Benedict said at a service in the basilica.

St. Paul was beheaded in Rome in the first century during the persecution of early Christians.

SATURDAY NIGHT SPECIAL More than 200 people attended an “Open Carry Celebration” at New Bethel Church in Louisville, Kentucky. Pastor Ken Pagano held the Saturday-night service as an opportunity for believers in gun rights but said

8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

t h e

u g l y

i n

c h u r c h

n e w s

it was not a religious service.

“This event is not taking place on the Lord’s Day,” Pagano explained on his website. “This is not a Church worship service, where the focus is on Jesus and our responsibility to Him. Rather, this is merely a Church hosted event, similar to any other event that any other Church may do to celebrate their heritage. It would be our hope to see this event become a nationally celebrated, annual occurrence on the last weekend of June.”

The Assemblies of God church had volunteers on hand to check weapons for ammunition. Attendees recited the Pledge of Allegiance and sang patriotic songs such as “America the Beautiful” and “My Country Tis of Thee.” The evening also included a raffle for a free handgun and screening of gun safety videos.

Pagano said he held the service to promote firearms safety and responsibility, to promote Second Amendment rights, and “as Christians, we wanted to create a venue to share our faith with people.”

HINDU NATIONALISTS AVOID INTERNATIONAL SCRUTINY Members of a U.S. religious liberty watchdog group were denied visas to India, where they hoped to investigate recent outbreaks of violence against Christians and other religious minorities.

This is the first time a democracy has blocked a visit by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

“We are particularly disappointed by the new Indian government’s refusal to facilitate an official U.S. delegation to discuss religious freedom issues and government measures to counter communal violence, which has a religious component,” group chairman Felice Gaer said in a statement.

Hindu nationalist groups had pressured the Indian government to deny the visas, calling the visit an intrusion into the internal affairs of India. Much of the problem with religious liberty has happened in areas governed by

Hindu nationalists, such as Gujarat and Orissa. Those two states have seen widespread violence against Muslims and Christians. Hindu riots in August 2008 left more than 100 people dead and nearly 5,000 houses and over 250 churches burned.

The commission, whose members are selected by the president and congressional leaders, advises the administration and Congress regarding the conditions for religious liberty overseas.

I ZAKAT PROBLEMS The fight against terrorism has interfered with Muslim donors’ religious freedom and unfairly harmed Muslim charities, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The report, based on interviews with Muslim leaders and experts on antiterrorism laws, says overly broad statutes have forced the closure of nine Islamic charities and impeded Muslims’ ability to fulfill zakat, their religious requirement to make charitable donations. One of the five pillars of Islam, zakat is the Muslim obligation to give 2.5 percent of one’s savings to the poor.

“Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together,” President Barack Obama said in a June speech about Muslims. “Rules on charitable giving made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That’s why I’m committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat.”

Defenders of the rules say they aren’t targeted at Muslims but toward federal laws against material support of any terrorism. They were enacted by Congress in 1996. Still, enforcement stepped up after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when the U.S. government determined that some Muslim charities were funneling donations to terrorist groups such as al-Qaida. Under the regulations, anyone who gives to a charity that supports terrorists can be accused of giving material support to them.

Increasing the tension between religious liberties and national security

BETWEEN THE TIMES t h e

groups is the way many terrorist organizations work. Groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad actually do run hospitals and feed orphans and widows.

And that’s not the only problem, according to supporters of the rules.

According to “The Reliance of the Traveler, A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law,” there are eight categories of recipients for zakat. The seventh is jihadists.

“It’s not just that we know, based on experience, that zakat often tends to find its way to jihadists. The inconvenient fact is that it is supposed to find its way to jihadists,” writes Andrew McCarthy, author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad.

Steve Mack/FilmMagic/Getty Imagse

THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE SEVERANCE PACKAGE

The Rev. Brad Braxton, senior pastor at historic Riverside Church in Manhattan, resigned less than a year after his appointment. In an e-mail to the congregation’s 2,000 members, Braxton said that preexisting tensions among members had been too much for him.

“The consistent discord has made it virtually impossible to establish a fruitful covenant between the congregation and me,” he said.

Braxton had been selected after a yearlong nationwide search and had been supported by an overwhelming number of parishioners. However, factions at the church disagreed with his theology.

The church, once led by Harry Emerson Fosdick and William Sloane Coffin, has a proud progressive histo-

g o o d ,

t h e

b a d ,

a n d

ry. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., announced his opposition to the Vietnam War there.

Though the parish is nondenominational, it traditionally embraced an interfaith approach, welcoming Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists. Braxton, an ordained Baptist minister, preached that Jesus alone is the way to salvation.

Some members felt his focus on personal salvation was heresy at Riverside.

“Here, we believe you achieve salvation by doing social justice. Out in the world. And we have people from all backgrounds,” said member Constance Guice-Mills, in an interview with The New York Times.

SACRED FRUITS OR THEOLOGICALLY NUTTY? A majority of the Episcopal Church’s 111 standing committees withheld consent to the election of the Rev. Kevin G. Thew Forrester as the bishop of northern Michigan. The standing committees’ decision, barring last-minute vote switching, would mean Thew Forrester is the first bishop-elect to be vetoed by Episcopal leaders since at least the 1930s. Fiftysix withheld consent while 29 gave consent, according to a survey by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The remaining had yet to decide or had declined to reveal their vote.

While Thew Forrester, the rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Marquette, Michigan, was overwhelmingly elected by his own diocese, he was heavily criticized on theological grounds. He had altered the Episcopal baptismal rite and reworked the Apostles’ Creed. He replaced the Book of Common Prayer’s Easter Vigil liturgy with something called “Kindling the Ancient Fire: Sharing Stories of LifeDeath-Rebirth, Receiving the Sacred Fruits of the Earth.”

Critics charged that the changes obscured the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross, the problem of sin, the will of God, and the identity of Jesus.

t h e

u g l y

i n

c h u r c h

n e w s

The Right Rev. Paul V. Marshall expressed concern that Thew Forrester would proclaim unambiguously the gospel of Christ in all its fullness.

“As a Church we are increasingly a laughingstock. Not because we welcome lesbian and gay people, and carry on social ministries that enact the sacrifice of Christ on a corporate basis, and certainly not because of our latitude and the conversation it engenders.

We are a laughingstock because we do not consistently proclaim a solid core, words as simple as ‘all have sinned and come short of the glory of God [Rom. 3:23],’ yet ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself [2 Cor. 5:19],’” Marshall, the bishop of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, wrote in a statement on his blog.

Opposition to his election cut across theological divides with both conservative and liberal dioceses voicing opposition.

S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 9

EX AUDITU e x a m p l e s

o f

c h r i s t - c e n t e r e d

s e r m o n s

The True Shepherd of Israel

A

man and his wife decided to take a vacation somewhere exotic. Being the in-

Baptist was beheaded.

When we come to verse dependent sort, they didn’t want the guided tour, being on a bus with a bunch 30, we pick up the story of the disciples and their misof people they didn’t know. So, they decided that when they landed, they would sion. The mission is over and they return to their go to the rental car counter and take care of their own sightchief Prophet, the Lord Jesus. They report all they’d done and seeing. The wife said, “Don’t you think you should get a map, taught. Evidently it had been a busy time for them. Mark just in case?” Being a man, the husband replied, “It’s okay, tells us that many people were coming and going; and in fact, honey, the rental car has GPS. We’ll have no trouble getting it was so busy that they weren’t able to find a moment to sit around.” down and have a bite to eat. The crowds are considered a Their flight arrived in this foreign city, and fortunately the bother here. They’re annoying and they prevent people from people at the rental car counter spoke some English. They taking care of their normal daily needs. got into the car and entered into the GPS the address of their The Lord Jesus sees this. He’s concerned for his disciples, hotel, which was on the other side of the city, at the end of the special group of twelve men who are part of his inner cira maze of roads. But after about thirty minutes on the road, cle. Why would he be concerned? Because he’s a man and he has a human nature. He knows what it’s like to be tired the GPS went blank. They pulled over to the side of the road (remember him sleeping in the boat?), and he knows what and the man, being a man, tried to fix it. He checked the powit’s like to need a break. er, tried to turn it on and off, even banged it a few times, but Some of you are tired. Some of you are worn out. Lisnothing would work. The GPS was dead. There they were ten to the words of your Savior at the end of Matthew 11: in the middle of a strange city where few people spoke Eng“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I lish, no maps, no GPS, no cell phones, no AMA. For some, will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from this would be the greatest challenge ever. But for most peome, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find ple, this would be a nightmare. Totally disoriented, totally rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is lost, not knowing which way to go. light.” The Lord Jesus still extends his call to come. Come That can happen when you go on a vacation, but it can to him with your weariness and your burdens. You can pray also happen in the middle of daily life. Something can come along—maybe the death of someone you love, maybe sickto him and bring these things to him; and you can know that ness or an accident—something can come and knock you off he’ll not only listen but also extend his help. He’ll do that your feet and totally disorient you, making you wander in by encouraging you with his Word. He’ll give his help through the wilderness of doubts and questions. That disorientation the Holy Spirit, the Comforter whom he’s sent to dwell in us. can happen temporarily or it can be more long term. If we He’ll give his help through the encouragement of Christian reflect on it enough with an open Bible, we begin to realize brothers and sisters. When you pray to him, he will not fail that we are pilgrims in a strange land and that so much of to answer because the concern he shows for his disciples in what we see happening around us can be disorienting and this passage is the same concern that he still has today for his confusing. It makes no sense. people. Remember what it says in Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ We can be like sheep without a shepherd, except as beis the same yesterday and today and forever.” He will hear lievers we know that we do have a shepherd, a Good Shepand act. herd, in Jesus Christ. We know this because it’s revealed to So he does in Mark 6 as well. He knows the disciples’ need us in the Bible, and that truth gives us comfort and enand he acts on it. He wants to take them on a retreat. He couragement for our pilgrimage. And we see it particulartells them to come with him to a quiet place so that they can ly in Mark 6:30–44. rest up a bit. It’s important to note that when he says “a quiet place,” literally that says “a wilderness place.” The word The Lord Jesus Revealed as the True Shepherd of Israel here was used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament Earlier in Mark 6, the Lord Jesus had sent out his discito describe the place where the people of Israel wandered beples on a preaching and healing mission. He commissioned fore they entered the Promised Land. them to be his prophets. In the verses right before Mark 6:14– We know they’re at the Sea of Galilee because they get 29, we find out what often happens to prophets: following into a boat to travel to this “solitary place.” Again, that’s the in the footsteps of other Old Testament prophets, John the same word as in verse 31; it can also be translated “a wilder10 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

ness place.” From Luke’s parallel account, we know that this was somewhere along the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, near a place called Bethsaida. The Sea of Galilee is not a huge lake and as a boat was sailing across, it would be easy to keep your eye on it from the shore. The crowds did exactly that.

As the boat departed, they watched very carefully and started running to the place where they thought the boat might land. Mark tells us that these people came from all the towns and that they ran on foot. Although the straight-line distance is about four miles across (assuming they were near Capernaum when they got into the boat), it extends to about ten miles if someone were on foot running around the shore of the lake! But somehow they managed to outrun the boat and arrive at the landing point before Jesus and his disciples.

Now comes the biggest surprise in this text. Yes, there’s a miracle that takes place, but by this time in Mark we’ve come to expect miracles from Jesus. No, there’s a bigger surprise here. Jesus and his disciples were trying to escape the crowds, trying to head out on a retreat so that the disciples could rest and eat. But now they arrive at their destination and who’s there waiting for them but the crowds! Thousands of people! I think any one of us on a good day would probably be annoyed at this.

That’s why verse 34 is so surprising. “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them.”

What? We expect to read, “Jesus became exasperated with them” or maybe “Jesus was frustrated with them,” but “Jesus had compassion on them”? Who is this? That’s exactly the question Mark wants us to ask.

Jesus is the one who has compassion on the crowds. That means he has pity and sympathy, that he is moved in his heart for them. Psalm 103 expresses the same kind of compassion and sympathy that we find here, attributing it to God himself. Psalm 103:13 says, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.”

These beautiful words are echoed here when Jesus is said to have compassion on these crowds that chase him around the lake. Who is Jesus? He’s the one who reflects the compassion of the Father, because as Paul says in Colossians, he is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15) and in him all the fullness of God dwells (Col.1:19).

You also need to see your Savior here with his perfect obedience. You might become exasperated, frustrated, or annoyed with other people and their expectations. Sometimes your frustrations are reasonable and can be vindicated from the Bible. At other times, they may be rationalized with the Bible to cover up the fact that it’s sin, or we may not even bother with what the Bible says—then it’s just naked sin. We all know it’s true: we are lacking in the perfect love and compassion for our neighbour that God’s law demands. But Beloved, fix your eyes on your Savior and cling to his perfect obedience, his perfect love for his neighbour, his perfect patience and compassion. Through faith in him, resting and trusting in him, all those merits are imputed to you as well.

His perfect righteousness is also your perfect righteousness.

His compassion is yours.

Jesus is the one who has compassion on the crowds be-

cause “they were like sheep without a shepherd.” In the Old Testament, the people of Israel were said to be “like sheep without a shepherd” when they were without a leader. In the Bible, God often calls his people sheep, which is simply an accurate description of who we are. It’s not meant as a compliment. He didn’t say we were as wise as owls or as resourceful as coyotes or raccoons. He said that his people are like sheep. If he wanted to build up the self-esteem of his people, or if he wanted to make them feel good about themselves, calling them sheep was not the way to do it. Calling them sheep, calling us sheep, is meant to give an accurate picture that humbles us before God. Sheep need a shepherd for survival, to show them where to go for food, to protect them against predators. When sheep don’t have a shepherd, they’re prone to wander, to fall prey to wolves, bears, and lions. When sheep don’t have a shepherd, they’re liable to starve. Sheep that want to be independent and do things their own way die.

That’s why Jesus has compassion on them. He knows that these sheep are out wandering and starving in the wilderness. These sheep are his, and the shepherds who were supposed to take care of them took care of themselves instead.

The religious leaders in Israel, the priests and the scribes, were false shepherds who lined their own pockets and let the people wander. These people were victims of false shepherds who gave them stones, scorpions, and serpents for food. No wonder then that Jesus had compassion on these people, that he felt sorrow and pity for them. They had been cheated and robbed by these so-called shepherds.

Now notice how his compassion translates into action. He knows what they really need. These sheep without a shepherd have been starving for spiritual food. That’s why it says at the end of verse 34, “So he began teaching them many things.” He gives them the gospel of the kingdom of God, proclaiming to them the good news, as he has done so often already in Mark. He gives them spiritual truth that will truly feed their hungry and thirsty souls. So he continues to do today. His sheep are still journeying through the wilderness to the Promised Land. Some might ask with Psalm 78, “Can God spread a table in the desert?” Yes, he can! That’s exactly what Jesus Christ does for us, week in and week out.

He spreads a table in the desert and feeds us with his Word.

In the desert, every direction looks the same; it can be disorienting to be in the desert. So much uncertainty and confusion. But the Good Shepherd comes and feeds us and gives us direction, shows us the way of life, the way forward from the desert to the Promised Land.

But I can hear someone saying, “But what about his concern for the disciples? What happened to their need for rest and his attempt to meet that need?” That’s a good question.

You can look at it from a couple of different angles. From one perspective, the disciples were sheep with a Shepherd.

They were disciples of Jesus. Remember the parable of the lost sheep? If the Good Shepherd tends to the needs of the one lost sheep, wouldn’t he then also tend to the needs of the five-thousand-plus lost sheep and leave the Twelve who are in good hands already? From another perspective, what the S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 11

crowds needed as lost sheep was also what the disciples needed most. More than rest, they needed the teaching of the Lord Jesus. Believers never outgrow their need for the gospel.

And the disciples also needed to see their Good Shepherd and his compassion, so that in their ministry in due time they would go and do likewise.

His compassion for the sheep without a shepherd doesn’t stop with his teaching them. He is a Good Shepherd who takes care of all of the needs of his sheep. When his disciples approach him late in the day, they again draw attention to the fact that this is a remote place—literally a wilderness. “It’s late and all these people are still here preventing us from having our retreat. So, Jesus, please send them away to places where they can eat, send them away from us now.”

He answers in a sort of teasing way, “You give them something to eat.” Again, notice how he doesn’t see the crowds as a nuisance but as his calling. He came to be their Shepherd, so how can he send them away? Their reply to him is incredulous, almost sarcastic. They ask, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii (or eight months of wages) and buy bread for them?” After all, it’s not likely they had eight months of wages on them. Eight months of wages would get you over two-thousand loaves of bread, but where are you going to find someone with two-thousand loaves of bread for sale? And how are you going to get two-thousand loaves of bread from there to here? It’s a sarcastic question.

But his next question is not sarcastic. He asks how many loaves are on hand and tells them to go and find out. After a bit of searching, they discover that in the whole crowd there are only five loaves of bread and two fish. From John’s Gospel we know that this food belonged to a young boy. It’s not much.

Jesus directs them to sit down in groups on the grass, and the people were seated in groups of hundreds and fifties. All of this is reminiscent of Israel in the wilderness in the Book of Exodus. If you read Numbers 2, you’ll find that the Israelites were carefully and methodically arranged in their camps in the wilderness, so here too in Mark 6.

Verse 41 says that he took the loaves and the fish, he gave thanks, he broke the loaves, and then gave them to his disciples. Compare verse 41 with what Mark writes in 14:22, “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples.” The exact same verbs are used in those verses: took, gave thanks, broke, and gave.

This is not a coincidence. When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, this is also the Good Shepherd feeding his people with his crucified body and shed blood. At the Lord’s Supper, the Lord Jesus reminds us that he is the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep. This joyful event here in Mark 6 is pointing ahead to the Sacrament, but also beyond it to the Great Marriage Feast of the Lamb, when our Savior will feed us for eternity at a lavish banquet for which there is no earthly comparison.

At this feast in Mark 6, Jesus miraculously provides the food in great abundance. We don’t know how he did it, nor does it really matter. What matters is verse 42: “They all ate and were satisfied.” Again, we have shades of Israel in the 12 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

wilderness with the manna provided by God. There, God’s people ate and had exactly enough. Jesus is reenacting that event, but he goes one step further because there’s more than enough. There are twelve basketfuls of leftovers! There are even more leftovers than the amount of the original food.

This is a sign of abounding grace. This is the sign of a Savior who lavishes his people with everything they need and more. The number of people fed? Mark tells us that there were five-thousand men, so we can expect that there would be some women and children in addition. This therefore was a miracle, the feeding of thousands of people with a few loaves and a couple of fish.

What does it reveal to us about Jesus Christ? We discover in this text that he is the true Shepherd of God’s people, the Good Shepherd who not only takes care of spiritual needs but also physical needs. He’s a Savior for the whole person, body and soul. What happens here is prophetic of his saving work in all its fullness. Yes, he saves our souls with the sacrifice of his body and blood once offered on the cross; but Scripture also tells us that he saves our bodies. At the last day, our bodies will be raised from the dead and reunited with our souls. Body and soul are under the curse of sin and Jesus Christ delivers from the curse of sin on the entire person, both body and soul. He is a complete Savior; he is your Savior, your Good Shepherd. He will never disappoint, never fail you or forsake you.

You may have times in your pilgrimage here on earth when it seems like the world is spinning out of control and you’re disoriented, unable to find your bearing. It happens.

At times like that (as at all other times!) let your thoughts and your hearts flee to Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd. He promises to lead you and guide you like none other can.

When it seems like the foundations are shaken, he’ll encourage you with the knowledge that there is solid ground under your feet. You can confidently and joyfully say with the psalmist, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I’ll not want.” This is God’s Word.

Wes Bredenhof is pastor at Providence Canadian Reformed Church in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Speaking Of… Let the most Blessed be my Guide, If’t be his blessed Will, Unto his Gate, into his Fold, Up to his Holy Hill: And let him never suffer me To swerve or turn aside From his Free Grace, and Holy Ways, Whate’er shall me betide.

—John Bunyan, The Pilgrims Progress

PREACHING FROM THE CHOIR p e r s p e c t i v e s

o n

m u s i c

a n d

t h e

c h u r c h

Excellence and the Worship Wars

H

ow should we approach the “Worship Wars” as pastors and ministers of music?

structures, and cadences that make for a singable melody We must first realize that the question is not whether music is old or new but and harmonic felicities that can make that melody more whether it is good. We cannot discern the best contemporary worship music with- memorable or even haunting. Think of how Slane (“Be out knowing those marks of excellence that made the best Thou my Vision”) rises and falls like an ocean wave, the genof the past stand out. Biblical truth, theological profundity, tly rolling ABA structure of Ebenezer (“Oh the Deep, Deep Love poetic richness, musical beauty, and the fitting of music to of Jesus”), the men’s voices in Diadem (the “complicated” vertext in ways that enhance rather than distort meaning are sion of “All Hail the Power”) punctuating the flowing women’s the marks of excellence in any age. These criteria are not arline in the chorus, or the inner parts moving against the still bitrary, but derived from biblical teaching about the nature melody in the third measure of Nicaea (“Holy, Holy, Holy”). of worship and an understanding of the nature of music.

A good fit between the words and their musical setting is essential Protestant hymnody insists on biblical truth. The earliest to great worship music even when text and tune are both congregational songs for Reformation churches were paraexcellent in themselves. The most egregious violation of this phrased Scripture texts. The metrical psalms of Sternhold and principle may be A. B. Simpson’s “A Missionary Cry”: “A hundred thousand souls a day / Are marching one by one away.

Hopkins (1549) was the most popular book in Elizabethan / They’re passing to their doom.” If ever there was content England. By the eighteenth century, writers such as Watts, demanding a minor key and a dirge-like tempo—but this song Cowper, Newton, and the Wesleys felt free to compose words is set to a completely inappropriate snappy march tune! Exof praise that were not strict paraphrases of Scripture. But amples of good fit are the meditative, plainsong-derived they still felt obligated to ensure that their words were scripmelodies of Picardy in the contemplative “Let all Mortal Flesh tural. Often hymns were printed with the biblical references Keep Silence” and Divinum Mysterium in “Of the Father’s Love appended to every verse that justified their content.

Begotten,” or the sprightly, joyous rhythms of Ariel in “Oh Theological profundity also marks the best of past hymnody.

Could I Speak the Matchless Worth.”

Even simple folk praised a majestically transcendent God with Biblical truth, theological profundity, poetic richness, mua graciously incarnated Son who saved them by grace through sical beauty, and appropriate fitness are not matters of style. faith. The best texts not only lifted them up in worship but also helped them interpret their own religious experiences They are the marks of excellence for worship music in any in biblically sound ways. So we sing to One who is “Immortal, age, but only knowledge of the Bible and musical history can invisible, God only wise, / In light inaccessible hid from our tell us this. Only musicians who are classically and historieyes.” We give our “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King cally (as well as biblically and theologically) trained are poised of Creation.” Has anyone ever applied the specifics of the to guide the church in a judicious appropriation of the best atonement to the experience of conversion better than Charles new music as a supplement to her rich heritage.

Wesley in “And Can it Be?” Every hymn in the hymnbook was contemporary when Poetic richness is a virtue that must be pursued carefully, beit was written. Some of their authors crop up more often cause a text that is too allusive can be confusing for average than others because their work manifested truth, profunpeople and thus hinder rather than enrich worship. Neverdity, richness, beauty, and fitness more powerfully and retheless, appropriate kinds of literary excellence have a role. Exliably. The church should still cling to their work, both for amples include gems such as: the use of the questions in “What its intrinsic merit and because only an informed familiariChild is This?” to capture the wonder of the Incarnation; the ty with that merit can help us discern and propagate the best appropriate military metaphors in that great meditation on spir“new songs” being written today. itual warfare, “A Mighty Fortress”; or the choice of a simple, evocative word like “wretch” in “Amazing Grace.” Little touchDonald T. Williams (Ph.D. University of Georgia), teaches at Toccoa es that make a text more intellectually suggestive or emotionally Falls College and sings baritone with the Toccoa Falls Singing Men. His powerful without making it unnecessarily difficult will show most recent books include Mere Humanity: Chesterton, Lewis, up in hymns that survive the test of time, while texts that are and Tolkien on the Human Condition (Broadman, 2006), just rhymed prose with tunes attached are more forgettable.

Credo: Meditations on the Nicene Creed (Chalice, 2007), and Musical beauty might be thought to be in the ear of the hearThe Devil’s Dictionary of the Christian Faith (Chalice, 2008). er. To a certain extent, it is. Nevertheless, there are contours, S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 13

Celebrating Calvin Ten Ways Modern Culture Is Different Because of John Calvin

by David W. Hall Music in the Vernacular: The Psalter

9

One of Calvin’s early initiatives was to translate music designed for use in public worship into the language of the day. Realizing that what people sing in a holy context has enduring impact on how they act, Calvin wanted worship—in all its aspects—to be intelligible.

Shortly after his settling in Geneva, he urged a talented musician, Clement Marot, to translate the Psalms into mid-sixteenth-century French. Calvin wanted participants in worship, not only the clergy, to be able to understand and reiterate the truths of Scripture—this time in poetic structure. His democratizing of holy song and other elements of worship made parishioners participants in Divine Liturgy; simultaneously, it also boosted the endeavor of artists.

Hymns and songs powerfully lodged distinct ideas in the popular mind, especially when aided by reading the Bible in the common language and sermons that were understood by the masses. The singing of the Psalms afforded these Protestants the occasion to confess their beliefs, and some anti-Protestants even went so far as to view the singing of the Psalms as an inherently subversive act!1 Marot never completed his translation and arrangement of the Psalms, but Calvin’s disciple Theodore Beza was as committed—if not more so—to this project, which would both alter the nature of Protestant worship as well as further engrain scriptural teachings into the Puritan mind. Beza even sponsored a hymn-writing contest shortly after Calvin’s death in his attempt to match the poetry of the Psalter with singable tunes.

Perhaps the largest single printing venture of the sixteenth century, Beza’s French translation of the Psalms into metrical form went to press in Geneva’s old town.2 This

Psalter, which became the international songbook of expansionistic Calvinism,3 went through numerous editions (27,400 copies were printed in 1562 alone). Stanford Reid notes that to a greater degree than “all the fine theological reasoning, both the catechism and the Psalter entered into the very warp and weft of the humblest members’ lives. For this the credit must largely go to the first pastor of Geneva.”

Other importers of Calvinism to the West, besides the various Psalters, were the Geneva Bible and Beza’s New Testament Annotations, which inspired readers ranging from Shakespeare (in his plays composed during the 1590s, Shakespeare quoted from the Geneva Bible)4 to American colonists with “scores of marginal notes on covenant, vocation...deposition of kings, the supremacy of God’s Word [over human tradition], and the duty of orderly resistance to tyranny.”5 Beza and Marot’s hymnbook of metrical Psalms, which became surprisingly popular, paved the way for acceptance of other ideas championed by the enormously influential Beza.6 Accordingly, art was elevated and became useful for cultural progress.

When Puritan settlers colonized North America, one of the consistent best-sellers of the day was the Bay Psalter, a thinly disguised revision of Calvin’s Psalter. Calvin’s disciples knew that the faith that sings powerful truths will also pass those truths on to future generations, and worship music set in the vernacular was a strong step in that direction.

The very name of John Calvin stirs up controversy. For those who have been primarily on the negative side of the divide—and for those on the opposite ridge— Modern Reformation is featuring a series in 2009 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Genevan Reformer’s birth (July 10, 1509). Rather than focus on biography or theology, this series looks briefly at ten areas of culture irrevocably transformed by the influence of Calvin and his band of brothers and sisters.

Love him or hate him, he was a change agent. We think for the better.

14 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

The Power of Publishing Ideas: The Genevan Presses

10

If Martin Luther seized on the potential of the printing press, Calvin and his followers elevated the use of the press to an art form. With the rise of the Gutenberg press, the Reformers seized the new media with a vengeance to multiply their thought and action plans. Perhaps no first generation Reformer seized the moment like John Calvin. Expressing his thoughts with clarity and regularity was part of his life.

The ability to defend the views of Calvin rapidly in print magnified the lasting impact of his thought.7 The number of books published in Geneva rose from three volumes in 1536 to 28 in 1554 and to 48 by 1561. The number of volumes printed in Geneva the five years prior to his death was a stunning average of 38 volumes per year (a tenfold increase in 25 years). The average dropped to 20 per year after his death.8 By 1563, there were at least 34 presses, many manned by immigrants.9 Shortly after Calvin’s death, one contemporary wrote: “The printed works flooding into the country could not be stopped by legal prohibition. The more edicts issued by the courts, the more the booklets and papers increased.”10 Geneva also developed an extensive and efficient literary distribution system. A childhood friend of Calvin, Laurent de Normandie (who later became mayor of Noyon), developed a network of distributors who took Genevan Calvinist publications into France and other parts of Europe. Many of the books were designed to be small for quick hiding, if need be, within clothing.11 Thousands of contraband books were spread throughout Europe during Calvin’s time, and several distributors of literature became Protestant martyrs.12 So successful was Calvin’s city at spreading the message that all books printed in Geneva were banned in France beginning in 1551. Calvin’s Institutes (along with at least nine of his other writings) had been officially banned in France since 1542, but that could not halt the circulation of his books.

As a result, Geneva was identified as a subversive center because of its publishing; and the 1551 Edict of Chateaubriand forbade, among other things, importing or circulating Genevan books.13 Distributing such works for sale could incur secular punishment. However, many books still filtered across porous European borders. Some shrewd printers, unwilling to be thwarted by state censorship, cleverly responded by employing typeset fonts that were commonly used by French printers and published under fictitious addresses.14 This new medium and its energized distribution pipeline allowed Calvin‘s message to transcend Geneva’s geographical limitations.

Calvin’s thought spread throughout Europe and sailed over the Atlantic with various colonists, cropping up frequently in sermons and pamphlets in different colonies. If English sermons in the seventeenth century were still referencing Calvin’s Institutes as a robust source for opposing governmental abuse, American colonial sermons conveyed his sentiments even more. “Probably no other theological work,” wrote Dartmouth historian Herbert Foster, “was so widely read and so

influential from the Reformation to the American Revolution....In England [it] was considered ‘the best and perfectest system of divinity’ by both Anglican and Puritan until [Archbishop William] Laud’s supremacy in the 1630s. Oxford undergraduates were required to read Calvin’s Institutes and his Catechism in 1578.”15 “Most colonial libraries seem to contain some work by Calvin,” and “scarcely a colonial list of books from New Hampshire to South Carolina appears to lack books written by Calvinists.”16 Even the Scottish philosopher David Hume, a fan of neither Knox nor Calvin, admitted: “The republican ideas of the origin of power from the people were at that time [about 1607] esteemed as Puritan novelties.”17 Calvin’s ideas, then, took on a life of their own and became the actions emulated by many others, due in no small measure to the printing press and Calvin’s wise employment of the latest technology. A strong case can be made that the most determinative religion at the time was Calvinism or one of its offshoots. Long after his death in 1564, Calvin would live on and continue to mentor many through his writings, which are still widely available today.

David Hall (Ph.D., Whitefield Theological Seminary) is senior pastor of Midway Presbyterian Church in Powder Springs, Georgia, and executive director of Calvin500 (www.calvin500.org). He is the author of several books, including The Legacy of John Calvin (P&R, 2008), and The Genevan Reformation and the American Founding (Lexington, 2005).

W. Stanford Reid, “The Battle Hymns of the Lord: Calvinist Psalmody of the Sixteenth Century,” Sixteenth Century Journal, vol.

2, no. 1 (1971), 43, 45. Reid comments: “Whether one thinks of the fourteen martyrs of Meaux who sang the 79th Psalm, the five scholars of Lausanne in Lyon who sang Psalm 9, or others who turned to other parts of the Psalter as they went to their deaths, one can see how in the last great struggle of faith, the Psalms indeed were true battle hymns” (46). These Psalms, once engrained, fit “every occasion and form of resistance.”

2E. William Monter, Calvin’s Geneva (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1967), 181.

3Reid, 36–54, speaks of the Psalms as the battle hymns of “one of the earliest modern resistance movements.” Reid also describes Calvin’s view of church music as a via media between Luther’s liberal embrace of contemporary music and Zwingli’s elimination of music at the Grossmunster.

4See David L. Edwards, Christian England: From the Reformation to the Eighteenth Century (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 146. In “A Translation Fit for a King,” Christianity Today (22 October 2001), David Neff argues how biblical translation powerfully aided the flow of liberty: “Logically, it is a fairly short step from the biblical language of liberty to the secular politics of liberty.” For more, see: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/013/6.36.html.

5Robert M. Kingdon, Calvin and Calvinism: Sources of Democracy (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1970), 40.

1

(continued on page 47) S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 15

DISCIPLESHIP: WISDOM FOR PILGRIMS’ PROGRESS

What Is Discipleship Anyway?

BY

MICHAEL HORTON

14 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

W H A T

O

ften in reaction against the perceived narcissism of consumer-oriented faith and practice, a lot of younger Christians are talking about discipleship these days. On the one hand, this is very hopeful. Basically, we’re seeing the children telling their Baby Boomer parents, “Enough about you and how you can have your best life now.” Many of these younger believers endured lonely lives, letting themselves into the house after school, watching their parents’ self-indulgence and unraveling marriages. Now they share their generation’s more general concern to look beyond their own immediate gratification to care about God’s creation, to seek justice and charity for their neighbors, and to witness to Christ’s transforming hope by actively exhibiting a life of love and service to others.

In short, they don’t just want to know Jesus Christ as a theory or even as an experience; they want to follow him. Not bad, all things considered!

On the other hand, this promising emphasis on discipleship today is threatened by a strong tendency to reduce “following Christ” to moral and social activism—apart from, and sometimes even against, a concern for doctrine.

We’ve heard the mantras: “deeds, not creeds,” “living the gospel,” “being the church, not going to church,” and the familiar line from St. Francis: “Always preach the gospel and if necessary use words.” Much of this new emphasis looks to the Anabaptist heritage for its understanding of discipleship. “Anabaptists see the Christian faith primarily as a way of life,” writes Brian McLaren, focusing on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount rather than on Paul and the doctrines concerning personal salvation.1 Younger Christians are offering a bracing and important wake-up call to shift our self-identity from consumers to disciples. But what is discipleship?

A Disciple Is a Learner ur Western culture has distinguished sharply between theory and practice, and this has affected our view of the relationship between doctrine and life.

In the Old Testament, “following after” or “walking after” the Lord involved the head, the heart, and the whole body.

It meant understanding and embracing the truth, responding in faith and thanksgiving, and offering one’s entire self in obedience. Your heart must be moved by something other than emotional exuberance, but how can you say that you know God if you do not trust him or follow his commands?

In the New Testament, disciple means “student.” To be sure, the context is not that of a lecture hall, with students taking notes that will be closely reviewed for a final exam.

Rather, it is of an outdoor mobile “classroom” in which the tutorials take place in the context of daily occurrences and analogies from familiar experience. Nevertheless, this relationship provokes questions and answers, conversation, and even debate. Jesus’ miraculous signs were always connected to the reality they signified: Jesus as the Bread from Heaven, the Lord of the Sabbath, the Healer who opens blind eyes and preaches the gospel to the poor, the Resurrection and the Life. Both his disciples and critics come

O

I S

D I S C I P L E S H I P

A N Y W A Y ?

to him with questions, and much of the sayings related in the Gospels have to do with his answers in the form of “teachings.”

Jesus’ disciples weren’t just taking notes. They weren’t in the lab, but in the field watching Jesus inaugurate his kingdom and hearing him explain what was happening.

Even they, however, did not really understand the doctrine he taught until the dramatic events of which he spoke were fulfilled and the Spirit opened their eyes to understand the prophetic Scriptures with Christ at the center (Luke 24).

Discipleship in the Gospels abbi means “teacher” and that’s what disciples called their masters. Jews of Jesus’ day were well aware of various schools that evolved around the teachings of a religious leader in the community. Disciples attached themselves to a particular rabbi, coming regularly to the synagogue and sometimes attending the teacher on walks or daily rounds to members of the community. Compared to an ox, the disciple accepted the “yoke” of the master. Hence, in pronouncing his curses upon the religious leaders of his day, Jesus could say, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others” (Matt.

23:4–5). By contrast, he invites all who are “heavy laden” to come to him for rest. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matt. 11:29).

Two sisters, Mary and Martha, were among Jesus’ closest disciples. We are told that Mary “sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving.” When Martha complained that Mary was making her do all the work, Jesus replied, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:38–42).

In Matthew 10:24–42, Jesus teaches us what it means to be a disciple in his kingdom. First, “a disciple is not above his teacher,” so Jesus’ followers should expect to be persecuted if the enemies of his kingdom regard the teacher himself as “the master of the house of Beelzebub [Satan]” (vv. 24–25). Second, a disciple “acknowledges me [Jesus Christ] before people” on earth, even on pain of death, and so is acknowledged by the Father in heaven (vv. 32–33).

Jesus came not to bring peace but a sword that divides family members, and only those who take up their cross and follow him can be his disciples (vv. 34–38). You cannot be a disciple of various masters. Following Christ means giving up all other spiritual, moral, and religious authorities as the source of ultimate and saving truth. The goal of this discipleship is not to find a better, more effective way of selffulfillment, but to lose your life in order to find it in Christ (v. 39). Those who receive the disciples and their Word in fact receive Christ himself, and those who reject them reject him (vv. 40–41).

We also learn what it means to be Christ’s disciples from

R

S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 15

trated disciples in John 6, “the flesh is of no help at all.

The words that I have spoken to gathered around the feet of Christ, to receive his Word, you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do to deepen in the apostolic teaching, to participate in not believe….And he said, ‘This is why I told you that no Holy Communion and the prayers. one can come to me unless it his Great Commission. First, he possesses all authority in is granted him by the Father’” (vv. 63–65). We are told that heaven and on earth. There is no other Savior and Lord. many followers turned away at this point “and no longer Second, and on this basis, we are commanded to go walked with him.” “So Jesus said to the Twelve, ‘Do you throughout the world spreading the gospel, “baptizing them want to go away as well?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded and we have believed, and have come to know that you you” (Matt. 28:18–20a). Being Christ’s disciples means are the Holy One of God’” (vv. 68–69). bringing people into the sphere of the church’s ministry of preaching and Sacrament. It involves being instructed not Discipleship and the Apostolic Ministry just in the basics of biblical teaching but in everything that he Book of Acts tells us what this actually looked like.

Jesus commanded for our doctrine and life. Through these Even on the day of Pentecost, as the Spirit was poured means instituted by Christ, the Master is still with us along out, the result was Peter’s public proclamation of the Emmaus Road, opening our hearts to receive him and Christ on the temple steps, from the Old Testament Scripall of his benefits (v. 20b). tures, followed by baptism. “And they devoted themselves Disciples have to swallow everything that Jesus said, to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breakhook, line, and sinker. Learning this lesson the hard way, ing of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). Both the conthe disciples heard Jesus drive away the crowds of consumers tent of their message and these practices distinguished this by teaching “hard doctrines” (John 6). Jesus did not imagcommunity of disciples from the world and were the source ine that his example was enough to win the day. In fact, and means of their disciple-making in the world. To be sure, he knew that he was going to Jerusalem to accomplish what the teaching they received radically transformed their praconly he could accomplish by himself, alone, upheld by the tice. In fact, a riot broke out in Ephesus because the idol Spirit. The primary sign of discipleship was the acceptance trade around the cult of Diana was threatened by the spread of Jesus’ teaching concerning himself. No one would have of the Word. Nevertheless, the Christian community was been offended if Jesus had merely tried to make the world first of all a church gathered around the feet of Christ, to a better place. Charges of blasphemy and even the offense receive his Word, to deepen in the apostolic teaching, to expressed by the disciples themselves were due to his teachparticipate in Holy Communion and the prayers. As a reing. Because Brian McLaren sees discipleship merely as folsult, they shared their worldly goods in common and no lowing Christ’s moral example, he can say, one was lacking in temporal needs.

Throughout his ministry, we encounter the recurring emI must add, though, that I don’t believe making disphasis of Jesus on his teaching, his words that bring life. ciples must equal making adherents to the Christian It is through hearing the gospel that sinners are saved and religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) cirit is through hearing that same message that disciples are conformed to Christ’s image (Rom. 8:29; 2 Cor. 3:18). cumstances to help people become followers of JeWhen the apostle Paul speaks of “growing up”—besus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewcoming “mature in Christ”—his first thought is not imitating ish contexts.2 Christ’s moral example but of being recipients of “the work of ministry” that Christ gave I don’t hope all Jews or Hindus will become members of the Christian religion. But I do hope all who feel for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain so called will become Jewish or Hindu followers of to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Jesus.3 Son of God, to mature adulthood, to the measure of Jesus offends the crowd of so-called disciples in John 6 the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may by telling them that he has come down from heaven to give no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves eternal life to all whom the Father has given him (v. 39). and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by hu“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the man cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eterin every way into him who is the head, into Christ, nal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (vv. 53– from whom the whole body, joined and held together 54). “It is the Spirit who gives life,” Jesus said to his frusby every joint with which it is equipped, when each

The Christian community was first of all a church

T

16 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

W H A T

part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Eph. 4:12–16) From this ministry of preaching, teaching, and Sacrament—which builds us up into Christ as adherents of one faith—every member expresses his or her discipleship as a new creature through daily interaction with believers and non-Christian neighbors (vv. 17–32). Only then can he or she follow Christ’s example of love and humility: “Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:1–2). Notice that we are not called to imitate the inimitable: namely, Christ’s sacrificial offering for sin. However, we offer up ourselves as living sacrifices of praise, as Paul says in Romans 12, “in view of the mercies of God” (v. 1). Furthermore, this constant transformation occurs not by avoiding doctrinal investigation but “by the renewal of your mind” through God’s Word (v. 2).

Discipleship Today have referred to the process of Christian growth in terms of drama, doctrine, doxology, and discipleship. The great truths of the Christian faith arise out of a dramatic narrative. These doctrines are not abstract formulas; rather, they summarize the impact of God’s work in creation, redemption, and consummation. Furthermore, they are meant not to lead us simply to information but to doxology: praise and thanksgiving. And those who are filled with praise are energized for a specific kind of discipleship in the world, defined by the new understanding we are gaining concerning the grace of God that has appeared in Jesus Christ.

Conservatives have tended to take the doctrine without adequate grounding in the drama or story of Scripture, and much of evangelical worship over the past generation has focused on praise without adequate grounding in the drama or the doctrine. And now the current emphasis on discipleship is threatened by an inadequate grounding in these other important aspects of Christian maturity.

Like improvisational theater, “discipleship” collapses into one-man shows. Only when it is generated by a common script, with the Spirit as the casting director and Christ as the central character, is it the community theater that sweeps strangers and aliens into the inheritance of the saints.

Writers in the Emergent Church circles focus on the kingdom-living of disciples, such as Dan Kimball here quoting Mark Oestreicher:

I

My Buddhist cousin, except for her unfortunate inability to embrace Jesus, is a better “Christian” (based on Jesus’ description of what a Christian does) than almost every Christian I know. If we were using Matthew 25 as a guide, she’d be a sheep; and almost every Christian I know personally would be a goat.4 This assessment, however, rests on several misunderstandings. First, our Lord’s description of Christian prac-

I S

D I S C I P L E S H I P

A N Y W A Y ?

tice in Matthew 25 is given in the context of his warning of imminent persecution after his ascension. Although visiting prisoners, clothing the naked, and giving a cup of cold water are virtuous practices that Christians should be engaged in, they do not necessarily distinguish Christians from non-Christians. In its context, Jesus is referring specifically to those who are willing to risk their own lives to comfort their persecuted brothers and sisters. Earlier, in Matthew 10, Jesus says that disciples must receive those who are sent in his name—in spite of the threat of persecution. “And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward” (Matt. 10:40–42). When Jesus is turned into a generic moral example and his redemptive work is perceived chiefly in terms of a transforming social vision that we continue and extend, the gospel becomes a new law.

Second, although I’m sure that Oestreicher might wish that his cousin embraced Christ, he says that she “is a better ‘Christian’ (based on Jesus’ description of what a Christian does) than almost every Christian I know.” The assumption here is that Christian identity is determined by a generic moral behavior rather than by the faith that bears its own kind of fruit. Ironically, this assumption is too narrow with respect to the morality of non-Christians and too broad with respect to Christian identity. It’s too narrow because someone like Mahatma Gandhi does not have to be a Christian at all in order to seek greater justice, peace, and love among people in the world. This is the law of our creation, inscribed on the conscience of every mortal (Rom. 1–3). Yet it’s also too broad because it can easily lead to the assumption that people like Gandhi are righteous before God, apart from faith in Christ, because they are righteous in our eyes according to their works. I am sorry that Oestreicher feels compelled to conclude that in terms of civil righteousness his Buddhist cousin may be superior to “almost every Christian I know.” That is not my experience, but that’s beside the point. The main point is that his cousin does not have to be a Christian in order to be good to her neighbors. Conversely, Christians will always live in a manner that is inconsistent with their confession of Christ.

Calls to repentance are entirely appropriate. Younger generations are especially offended by the narcissism, greed, and wastefulness that have ravaged their lives and threatened their future. They see the impact of such arrogance on everything from a lack of concern for creation-stewardship to the economic crisis to overreaching foreign policies that have weakened a great nation’s moral authority on the global stage. Christians have even more reason to be concerned about justice than their non-Christian neighbors. Being disciples of Christ, however, is not the same as being interested in solving the global crises that concern all human beings.

In every legitimate jeremiad against ungodliness, there is the danger of self-righteousness and works-righteousness.

We can too easily generalize and deflect sin to others, as if it were possible to separate the sheep from the goats ourselves—especially in terms of moral superiority.

S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 17

We will never be able to draw a sharp contrast between light and darkness, good and evil, righteous and sinful, based on the works that we see. Even the best works of the holiest Christians in this life are imperfect. This is not a cop-out but biblical realism. We are saved by Christ’s righteousness, not ours. We are being sanctified, but this work remains incomplete until we (individually and corporately) are raised in glory. In this respect, the church’s existence as the harbinger of Christ’s heavenly kingdom is ambiguous. The visibility of the church in this age lies, however, in the public preaching of the Word, the administration of the Sacraments, and the governance of the church under the Scriptures. Only by identifying the place where God is at work creating light out of darkness can there emerge a people who display, however inadequately, the effects of Christ’s redeeming work that one day will be completed at his return.

Worldliness and Wordlessness top words and you stop the Word that breaks into this present evil age with the powers of the age to come.

Turn a culture into a mindless repetition of slogans from advertising, politics, entertainment, and pop-psychology, and there is no longer any place for Paul’s practice of “reasoning” in the synagogues and public halls as reported in Acts. Everything becomes an Oprah show, with objective claims reduced to subjective experiences, feelings, and hunches.

The anti-doctrinal tenor of our churches is consistent with the anti-intellectual tenor of our times. We have become worldly at the places where we thought we were most pious. It is not a mark of faithfulness but of worldliness to identify Christian discipleship with emotional experience or a moral and social activism that eschews doctrine. It is not a sign of maturity when Christian communities no longer wrestle with the uniqueness of Christ and the objectivity of a gospel that can only be proclaimed and defended because its content is Christ’s victorious life and obedience rather than ours. It is the Word of God’s law that puts a stop to our spin, our endless resourcefulness in weaving fig leaves to cover our guilt. It is the Word of God’s gospel that clothes us with Christ and gives us a new identity. Jesus Christ lived the law and bore its curses for us. Therefore, there is no “gospel” for us to live at all. Rather, we live in the light of the gospel that we have heard, with faith toward God and love and service toward our neighbors.

We need sound doctrine, not because we are intellectualists but because we need the surprising good news that we have been saved not by our discipleship but by Christ and his work. We need this doctrine not simply to know how to be saved from God’s wrath but for the knowledge of how we have been liberated from the tyranny of sin.

Anyone can rise to the occasion and help to make the world a better place, but only through faith in Christ can a sinner be united to Christ and bear the fruit of the Spirit, whose fragrance penetrates this passing age with the scent of the age to come. We need the doctrine in order to know what God is doing in this time between Christ’s two comings, as

S

18 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

he gathers us to receive his good gifts through preaching and Sacrament, as we respond to him in prayer and praise, contribute to the up-building of the saints through the gifts he has given us, and reach out to the world through witness and service.

Christian discipleship is founded on words: specifically, the word concerning Christ. “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17). Neither our faith nor the faith of others comes by doing but by hearing the good news of what has been done for us by another. Dan Kimball is simply wrong when he invokes St. Francis’s advice about a wordless preaching of the gospel and says, “Our lives will preach better than anything we can say.”5 Everything in the New Testament points to instruction in the faith that yields true discipleship, genuine maturity, and generous fruit-bearing. Our Buddhist cousins, Muslim neighbors, and burned-out church-goers need to encounter disciples of Christ who point away from themselves, witnessing to Christ as the Savior of sinners—even hypocritical Christians.

And, ironically, when we are seeking Christ rather than a generic social and moral impact on the society that we could have apart from him, something strange happens. A communion emerges around the Lamb, drawing people together “from every tribe, kindred, tongue, people and nation” into “a kingdom of priests to our God” (Rev. 5:9). From a justifying and sanctifying communion with Christ that they share together emerges a foretaste of genuine peace, love, and justice that can orient our ordinary lives and animate our activity in our worldly callings.

The contemporary interest in discipleship should be welcomed. Jesus does call us to discipleship, not just to “making a decision.” This discipleship is a lifelong walk of pilgrims together toward the Celestial City. Yet this call begins not with the feverish though well-intended activism of Martha, but with the humble delight of her sister Mary in her Savior’s teaching. Before we can serve, we must sit, listen, and learn from the Master who calls in Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” ■

Michael Horton is J. Gresham Machen Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido).

Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 206.

2McLaren, 260.

3McLaren, 264.

4Mark Oestreicher, quoted in Dan Kimball, The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for a New Generation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 35.

5Kimball, 79–81.

1

DISCIPLESHIP: WISDOM FOR PILGRIMS’ PROGRESS

Lifestyle and Discipleship I’m fascinated by the parts of the Bible that leave us to wonder what happened when the story is over. For example, how did the formerly demon-possessed man live after he moved out of the cemetery, gave up his chains, and returned to family and community? How did Lazarus live once he’d removed the wrappings? What was Zaccheus’s life like after he started giving the money back to those he’d robbed? And how did that prodigal son and his snarky older brother work out their future in their father’s house?

We can all speculate on what happened next because we know that something happened next, because we know something important about Jesus: he makes disciples. Christian faith and experience take on a form in the world. That

form, which we call Christian discipleship, is the next chapter, the next act, the next destination in the ongoing experience of belonging to the living Christ.

Jesus didn’t invent the concept of being a disciple. The rabbis of Jesus’ time undertook students and followers in a “follow, listen, imitate” relationship as a typical form of rabbinic training. John the Baptist had disciples. The graduate seminar was replaced with meals together, weeks on mission, and hundreds of hours of conversation. Disciples in Judaism were not learning three hours a week. It was a life-consuming, life-transforming vocation.

Christian discipleship grows from that historical soil, but it is distinctively shaped by Jesus. It’s clear in the Gospels that many of the disciples experienced a dynamic call from Jesus to “drop their nets” and “come follow me.” Discipleship with Jesus was crucially focused around coming to understand Jesus himself. The midterm exam was not “tell me what you’ve learned about the kingdom,” but “who do you say that I am?” This reflects the primary course material in Jesus’ brand of discipleship: Have you come to grips with what it means that God has come to you?

Promptly upon getting the answer to that question, the Gospels tell us that Jesus refocused his personal journey toward the cross and began to teach his disciples with new intensity the complete course of discipleship. Where their first semester homework was to get with a friend and go heal the sick, now they were signing up for classes such as “Being Servants,” “Carrying Your Cross,” “Washing Feet,” and “Starting Over When You’ve Betrayed Me.” The entire discipleship experience with Jesus was ironic. Once they had captured his rabbinical teaching method and bought into his kingdom message, he became the Messiah who would disappoint those wanting a political kingdom, who would be rejected, spit upon, tortured, and killed. To be his disciple was to take all of this upon oneself willingly in a full understanding that cross, kingdom, and New Creation were joined together in and by Jesus.

In other words, the disciples were probably puzzled at times as to what it meant to be a disciple. The longer they were at it, the less sure they were as to what this meant.

Were they changing the world by the power of the Spirit? Were they throwing themselves against the evil powers that ran the world and likely to end up like Jesus? Were they proclaiming something done entirely by Jesus, something to which their own discipleship had been only an inadequate prelude?

All the Gospel writers love the word “disciple,” but Paul never uses it as noun or verb. How does a term that is used throughout Luke and Acts not appear in a single epistle in the New Testament? Does this mean we aren’t disciples today, that the term is restricted to those who were with Jesus in the first century? That’s unlikely, because one of the most famous statements about discipleship in the Bible tells

BY

MICHAEL SPENCER

S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 19

I chose this subject partially because the term “lifestyle” is a particularly American/Westand rhetorical challenge, we are now called out of the ern term, with a number of connotations related to how classrooms, conferences, and church auditoriums to we live in a variety of visible areas where the consumer demonstrate the life that adorns the doctrine. culture particularly asserts itthe apostles to “make disciples” of all nations, baptizing self. Lifestyle has to do with money, houses, discretionary them, and teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded spending, our use of leisure time, consumer spending, conin the context of Matthew’s Gospel (Matt. 28:17–20). spicuous consumption, clothes, money spent on children, Today, “discipleship” is one of the most common terms vacations, toys, cars, and entertainment. Lifestyle intersects in the Christian vocabulary, but scratch the surface and with our sense of entitlement. It puts our ideas of “what you’ll find confusion and uncertainty are never far away. we’ve earned” on display. The phrase “the lifestyle to which For example, discipleship is a constant concern among I am accustomed” is often humorous, but only because so Christians; perhaps one of the largest concerns among Chrismany of us don’t take it as a joke. tian leaders. But ask typical church leaders how many inAmerican Christian culture often sees no problem with tentional discipleship ministries they have that are not strictdefining our conceptions of normal Christianity within our ly classroom shaped. The answer likely will be awkward, assumptions about lifestyle. When we discover this, the imwith the standard confession that this is an area where “we plications for discipleship are obvious and far-reaching. need improvement.”

In the Franco Zeffirelli film Jesus of Nazareth, there is a The contemporary model of the pastor is, on the one scene in which Peter begins the actual process of followhand, the entrepreneur, the “vision caster,” and the likable, ing Jesus. He has crossed the Sea of Galilee with Jesus and unifying motivator. For others it is the ideal of the “Edthe other disciples. Now he is sending his boats back across wardsian” pastor, spending hours alone in his study to the sea. He pushes the tiny vessel into the fog and watchemerge on Sundays preaching sermons with irresistible thees as a lone young fisherman looks back at him, uncomology. What about what Bill Hull called the “Disciple Makprehending. In a moment, Peter’s entire previous lifestyle ing Pastor”? The Epistles and the Book of Acts show leadfades into the early morning mist. His security and ideners taking intense interest in the process of the behavtity are now gone, to be found in an unknown future with ioral/devotional formation of their converts. Paul’s own Jesus. This scene captures the aspect of discipleship that methods reveal an intense concern for discipleship using Western Christians have struggled to find, value, and practhe methods of Jesus, investing hours, months, and years tice. Our lives are deeply invested in the ostentatious evin developing relationships that allowed him to say “folidences of the American dream of personal prosperity, a low me as I follow Christ” and to use himself as a living ilprosperity so pervasive that to not have a flat screen telelustration of applied Christianity. vision is considered real poverty.

Contemporary church life seems designed to create a On two occasions this year, I’ve had discussions with inkind of Christian who looks to the church itself for inforternational students, one from Africa and one from Asia, mation, motivation, and direction. If the church can proregarding their admiration for Joel Osteen’s presentation duce its own brand of disciples, then it has done its job. But of Christianity. They were confused when I went into such are church programs imitating the discipleship we see in detail to say that Osteen was not teaching the gospel of Jethe Gospels, or are they redefining discipleship into sus or the New Testament. For both students, Osteen repchurch-sponsored activities? resented a welcome fusion of their own ideas about the Where is all of this going? Let me summarize: We apAmerican lifestyle and a personal belief in a God who expear surprisingly unsure of how discipleship fits into the ists to help you find “happiness” and success.

New Testament as a whole. While we know Jesus was a These students were puzzled as I pointed out again and disciple-maker, our contemporary versions of Christianiagain that Osteen and Jesus had radically different teachty often struggle with or omit entirely any meaningful ings about money, possessions, and the relation of the inprocess of discipleship that can’t be labeled as teachdividual to money as a resource. As I insisted that one could ing/preaching or supporting a church program. As a result, not honestly hear what Jesus said on money and not be the continuing emphasis on Christian doctrine takes place challenged to abandon the Osteen prosperity message, they in the midst of a movement that is clearly shaped far more were clearly confused. They had never heard a presentaby the surrounding consumer culture and its own churchtion of discipleship that showed a possible collision between centered interests than by any recognizable process of disthe kingdom of Jesus and their version of a prosperous cipleship. Obviously, this is a multifaceted subject that could lifestyle. be taken up any number of places. I would like to consider Osteen’s message doesn’t grow out of anything said or the question of how discipleship affects the Christian’s done by Jesus, but out of the re-conception of the gospel lifestyle. as a material validation of a spiritual reality. With no con-

Without demoting our response to the intellectual

20 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

L I F E S T Y L E

nection to Jesus at all, Osteen’s words unite with our deeply held conviction that we deserve the best God has to offer, and where better to experience that lifestyle than in America where the best can be had for a price?

One does not have to look among the fans of the outright prosperity gospel to see this tension. In thousands of churches, Bible studies, and small groups, there is a massive disjunction between what it means to be a disciple of Jesus and what it means to have whatever possession, experience, or fashionable indulgence that seems appealing.

The weakness of Protestantism on the subject of personal discipleship in an affluent culture has laid groundwork where the logic of the prosperity gospel rarely bumps into anything that seems to be at cross-purposes with being a disciple of Jesus.

The result is the Christian who feels manipulated or guilt tripped when the simple ethics of having Jesus as Lord appear anywhere near where his definition of “normal and entitled lifestyle” has taken root. Discipleship, now relegated to discussions around a class or small group, becomes not being legalistic, pious, or pharisaical. The actual processes and content of discipleship are lost in the fog between easy-believism and a too-academic version of what Jesus commands his apostles to make: Jesus-imitating disciples.

In an increasingly post-Christian world, this kind of discipleship will simply not suffice. Christians who want to define discipleship themselves within their own cultures and subgroups now find that the challenges to Christian belief are not being made by those who merely disagree with our ideas. A newly aggressive secularism, armed with the rhetoric of the new atheism and the confidence that religion itself can be portrayed as the root of all evil, now demands a response from a fully embodied, experiential, and engaged Christianity. Without demoting our response to the intellectual and rhetorical challenge, we are now called out of the classrooms, conferences, and church auditoriums to demonstrate the life that adorns the doctrine.

A disconnect between discipleship and lifestyle has created an evangelicalism that is openly siding with the wealthy. Church plants rarely happen among the poor. The spirituality of poverty sounds simply nonsensical to many evangelicals. To take the New Testament’s views on economics seriously would force vast numbers of evangelicals into choices they simply are not equipped to make because they have been told they do not apply. For those who take the lifestyle and economics of Jesus as seriously as a St. Francis or a John Wesley, there are few places to find support and encouragement.

For many contemporary Christians, the call to discipleship in the post-Christian world has called them to look at the church in new and realistically critical ways. Why is the gospel of so many Protestants orthodox but not transforming? Why do our churches resemble the culture’s version of organizational success rather than the culture-crossing, community-creating, church-planting movement that Jesus empowered with his very own Spirit? Why are so many evangelical leaders engaged in the promotion of doc-

A N D

D I S C I P L E S H I P

trinal reformation and worldview articulation but not in the creation of the processes of transforming, missional discipleship?

Today’s Christians often resent the fact that our previous position of influence in the culture has installed a version of Christian ethics—detached from the gospel but still surprisingly solid—in the minds of millions of our secular peers and neighbors. They wonder, and are entitled to wonder, why we can’t seem to answer questions of lifestyle in ways that seem congruent with Jesus. As one song asks, “Would Jesus wear a Rolex?” Almost everyone knows that he wouldn’t, but that doesn’t explain why so many of us do.

You can find debates on the resurrection here and there, and Christians are excited about their skill in presenting the evidence for a risen Christ; yet this culture asks us to present not only the evidences for the resurrection of Jesus but the evidence of a resurrected Christian life, community, and ethics.

There will always be Christians who will rightly and necessarily point out that we must present Christ and not ourselves. They will say that we are running the danger of entwining law and gospel. They will warn that we will confuse our hearers if we talk about the call and substance of discipleship and not the gospel, the gospel, and only the gospel. I concur completely with the danger these watchmen see and find of great concern, but I would counter with a similar set of warnings.

We must not separate one Christ into several. The Christ who called and trained disciples is the Christ on the cross, is the mediator and Lord in the Epistles, and is the one, exalted, reigning King of the Kingdom that will triumph.

We must not think ourselves wiser than God. Discipleship is the ongoing process of sanctification, growth and maturity, all biblical admonitions. It is God who puts these components of the Christian experience into one life of faith.

We cannot call legalism what God has called the power of the gospel in real time.

We must not think that we defend the gospel when we make discipleship less than what Jesus did with the months and years he invested in his disciples. He did not just preach to them or teach them. He trained them for ministry. He released them to serve. He created community. He confronted and corrected their characters. He sent them among the hurting. He taught them the reality of the kingdom of God. But that was not all. He took them to the cross and to the empty tomb, gave them the Sacraments, and called them to build the church. His investment in discipleship was deep and ongoing. It was his constant and ongoing invitation to them to live their “yes!” to the good news. As they learned all that the good news comprehended, their definition of discipleship expanded.

We must remember that discipleship includes the dynamic processes of Christian experience: knowing, growing, building, serving, forgiving, loving, and risking. It is the transforming knowledge of God in the Spirit that experiences the transforming power of the Word.

S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 21

Yes, discipleship will always be imperfect. We would be greatly mistaken to think that anything we do as Christians will shed anything other than an imperfect light on the gospel, but Jesus said we are light and salt nonetheless. We are a community on a hill. We are exemplars of a kind of kingdom that this world will only know in Jesus. As disciples, we are the first outposts of that kingdom. As our pioneer has staked out the ground and given it to us by his blood, we come to build a city that glorifies our King and live out the fullness of the Savior’s gospel. Imperfect as we are, Jesus says, “Follow me.”

It will be flawed, but so will be our theology, our debates, our worship, our preaching, and our teaching. In all these things, we depend upon Jesus to be what we can never be.

We are properly warned not to obscure the gospel by a wrong emphasis on discipleship. I suggest we not hollow out the gospel by disconnecting it from discipleship. What can evangelicals do?

study, and loved the church. He also knew what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus. There was no choice about living the life. Racism was not an academic challenge. It was a challenge to the life Christians claimed to be living.

It is this discipleship, a discipleship that illuminates the fullness of the gospel, that we desperately need in our churches. ■

Michael Spencer, aka “the Internet Monk,” is a writer and communicator living in a Christian community in southeastern Kentucky.

The Pilgrims Progress Thus far did I come laden with my Sin;

• We can include the economic and lifestyle questions in our discipleship, and we can actively look for examples and mentors to show us how to answer those questions with integrity.

• We can actively critique our consumer culture and particularly seek to find ways to see how our involvement in that culture dilutes and pollutes discipleship.

• We can listen to the church of the poor and the voices of the church in developing countries, churches that have much to teach us about living with suffering and simplicity.

• We can listen to church history and see where Christians have integrated discipleship and lifestyle constructively and where we went astray.

• We can learn from communities in various traditions that have found ways to forge a church community that embodies lifestyle values that reflect a serious engagement with Jesus’ view of money and possessions.

In the 1940s, Clarence Jordan was a recent graduate of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary with a doctorate in Greek. Instead of teaching Greek, Jordan went back to his native Georgia and founded an interracial community farm called Koinonia. For the next twenty-plus years, Jordan and his fellow Christians were disciples of Jesus as they studied, preached, taught, worked, lived together, sold pecans, and gave a witness to racial reconciliation.

It was the church—Jordan’s own Southern Baptists— who gave him the strongest opposition. Eventually the Klan and local racists began to inflict intimidation tactics and violence on the little community, but they stood firm. Without help from the government, without Focus on the Family trumpeting their situation, without whining or argument, Koinonia’s Christians prayed, suffered, and faithfully followed Jesus together. It would be three decades and more before the application of the gospel of Jesus that was read in those segregationist churches made it into the hearts of the white believers in the surrounding county.

Jordan loved the Bible, loved the gospel, loved academic 22 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

Nor could ought ease the grief that I was in, Till I came hither: What a place is this!

Must here be the beginning of my bliss?

Must here the Burden fall from off my back?

Must here the strings that bound it to me crack?

Blest Cross! blest Sepulchre! blest rather be The Man that there was put to Shame for me!

This Hill, though high, I covet to ascend, The Difficulty will not me offend.

For I perceive the Way to Life lies here: Come pluck up Heart, let’s neither faint nor fear; Better, though difficult, the Right Way to go, Than Wrong, though easy, where the End is wo[e].

O World of Wonders! (I can say no less) That I should be preserv’d in that Distress That I have met with here! O blessed be That Hand that from it hath deliver’d me!

Dangers in darkness, Devils, Hell, and Sin, Did compass me, while I this Vale was in: Yea Snares, and Pits, and Traps, and Nets did lie My Path about, that worthless, silly I Might have been catch’d, entangled, and cast down: But since I live, let Jesus wear the Crown.

—John Bunyan

DISCIPLESHIP: WISDOM FOR PILGRIMS’ PROGRESS

A Necessary Gift

Ordained Leaders and the Transmission of Wisdom

By Paige Britton Three years ago, my family and I found it necessary to leave the little local evangelical church where we had been members for about thirteen years (I intend no slight to that congregation; we were concerned about the effect of a style of preaching on our young son). Like refugees, we arrived at the Presbyterian church a few hundred yards farther up the street, finding a friendly congregation that was lively with families, sound in doctrine, and godly in leadership. As it happened, I had just spent the last decade in serious personal study of Reformed theology, which had abruptly captured my heart and mind some time earlier, and now I delighted to hear preaching that reflected this understanding.

One would think all these things would make for an excellent fit, but there was one major catch: in this PCA church, women may not teach the Bible and doctrine to mixed company, the very calling that seems to best define me. As the “Let’s Get Acquainted” class wound along into new members instruction, I began to drag my feet. Entering into membership in this church would, I knew, be something like voluntarily submitting to having my wings clipped. To my mind, the gravity of the membership vow made it important that I make my peace with this area of personal loss before joining, or else not join at all, if I knew I could not submit wholeheartedly to the authority of the elders in this place.

S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 23

Now, this article is not going to treat the question of women teaching Sunday school in the PCA, nor will I be exploring my personal angst as a Presbyterian with clipped wings. That’s another story for another time. It is legitimate to wonder why I would voluntarily join a church where I could expect to encounter uncomfortable limits, but the larger question raised by my membership dilemma is this: Why should any Protestant Christian, woman or man, submit to church authority at all? In fact, what self-respecting citizen of democracy would choose submission when she is free to pursue autonomy?

These are more than just academic questions, of course, because contemporary sentiment has pretty much ruled against voluntary, wholehearted acceptance of authority in general, and Christians are hardly immune to contemporary sentiment. The extreme alternative to structured authority in the church is an attractively organic non-structure, in which the common priesthood of believers is celebrated without the “Big Brother” feel of a church hierarchy—a vision that has recently been re-popularized in the writings of guides such as Frank Viola and George Barna. What follows is an answer to this perennially trendy approach to “doing church” organically, an answer that holds up the necessity and the gift of ordained leadership, and which hopefully offers another dimension to the picture of growing up in wisdom and discipleship in the Body of Christ.

Going Organic Is Expensive s I made my acquaintance with the Presbyterians, I realized that while I was pretty far ahead on the learning curve, I hadn’t quite arrived yet. Covenant theology and extravagant grace were familiar themes, but now I had to figure out the difference between “teaching elders” and “ruling elders,” and try to remember which was bigger, a presbytery or a session.1 All this polity! Was it worth bothering about?

As is my wont, I dove into the documents to catch up on the details, namely the Westminster Standards and the PCA’s Book of Church Order. Reading the latter, I was struck by the PCA’s treasuring of its pastors, from “under care” to honorable retirement. I have observed from Paul’s accounts and from the lives of friends that pastoring is often a difficult and thankless calling, as is the role of ruling elder; and while the theory may shine more brilliantly than the practice, the wide net of support and mutual accountability described in the BCO was encouraging to see. I know that the Presbyterian system is not the only permutation of ordained leadership among reformational churches, but it is certainly carefully considered.

Contrast this with the “organic” vision of Viola and Barna, in which the absence of designated leadership is lauded (chapter 5 of their book Pagan Christianity is titled “The Pastor: Obstacle to Every-Member Functioning”).2 According to these authors, if an organic church is planted properly, “those believers will know how to sense and follow the living, breathing headship of Jesus Christ in a meet-

A

24 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

ing. They will know how to let Him invisibly lead their gatherings….[T]hey will minister out of what Christ has shown them—with no human leader present!”3 This is a self-consciously antiestablishment vision, charged with enthusiasm and anthropological optimism, and its promoters take pride in tracing its roots to the Anabaptists and the “Radical Reformation.” Anything short of a spontaneous, free, and authentic group experience of the Savior is, in their view, unbiblical and pagan.

What do we lose if we jettison a structure of authoritative leadership in the church? No slur on farmers intended, but what is true at the grocery checkout is true in the church as well: going organic is expensive. Here the pinch is felt not in the wallet but in the health of the body of Christ.

Ordination, as a commission and a covenant, sets apart from the congregation selected men who promise to love and guard that local expression of Christ’s body.4 Whether ordained laity or clergy (and Presbyterians are careful to speak of the parity or equivalence between these groups), the elders’ charge is to “pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock….[C]are for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). In church discipline, Sacraments, doctrinal matters, and instruction, the oversight of elders is intended to preserve, protect, and defend the faith and the people. Without leaders who are set apart for and dedicated to this task, the church and its proclamation of the gospel are fair game for the ravening wolves without and the wayward saints within.

Granted, ordination brings one into a position of visibility and influence that can be gravely abused. But although every pastor or elder is just a jar of clay, God has seen fit to entrust designated human officers, answerable to God, with his gospel and his church. Submitting to the authority of these ordained elders means that I agree to listen to them, even if this entails receiving their admonition—or accepting uncomfortable limits. Implicit in this respectful listening is the commitment to disagree appropriately and graciously, if I feel I must disagree, and to be an agent for unity, not discord, in our church, an understanding that prompted my serious reflection before joining.

Choosing formal submission to a Presbyterian session over autonomy in another sort of congregation seems an odd move for a daughter of the 1960s who was raised on Free to Be You and Me, but it is a decision that reflects my trust that those who govern our congregation are themselves governed by the Lord, the Word, and one another, and my understanding that their calling is a necessary gift to the rest of us. Three aspects of this gift especially pertain to the transmission of wisdom and are sketched out below.

Guardians of a Good Deposit uard the good deposit” (2 Tim. 1:14) is both a royal imperative and a practical necessity.

Someone needs to guard the treasure, “the faith once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 1:3), because the gospel is communicated truth, and our enemy the devil is the father of lies. “Has God really said…?” is the open-

“G

A

er for many an ear-tickling teaching. Jesus himself warned his followers to expect false prophets in sheep’s clothing (Matt. 7:15ff.), and he urged his disciples to inspect the fruit and distinguish the good from the bad. Warnings of heresy imply orthodoxy: there is a canon of content for which the church must contend.

Significantly, the guardians of the good deposit do not create the treasure, they preserve it. The gospel—and ultimately the whole good news of Scripture—is something objective, outside us. This means that its guardians must know it well, in its parts and its whole, and listen to it before trying to speak about it (cf. Prov. 18:13). The treasure actually governs its guardians.

In the fourth century, once the Roman persecutions had calmed down after Constantine’s conversion, Christian leaders had a spacious place in which to sit and listen to the Word, to determine its boundaries, and to sort the fruit that had grown in the meantime in and around the church. Out of these seasons of careful consideration and debate, and again in the wake of the Reformation, came creeds and standards that delineated a “Rule of Faith,” an outline of orthodoxy, normed by the Scriptures.

The outlines are important, because it is inevitable that Christians will find that parts of Scripture are “not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all” (WCF I.vii). Within an orthodox confession of Christ, we may yet disagree over whether women should teach Sunday school to mixed groups, or whether infants should be baptized, or (within limits!) just what is happening at the Lord’s Supper. But if we claim to remain within the bounds of orthodoxy, we may not disagree that we have been rescued from the kingdom of darkness and brought into God’s household by nothing less (or more!) than the death of his only Son. Who gets to be the guardians? Can’t any believer do the job as well as any other? So say the proponents of the organic approach to doing church, who cast the Word out on the sea of the congregation and optimistically expect it to return intact. Kevin Vanhoozer observes that, biblically speaking, communities of the saints are not necessarily known for their great track records when it comes to telling right from wrong (e.g., Israel demanded a king; the Galatians gave ear to the Judaizers; the Corinthians were just a mess).5 Group-speak might not be the best answer to the question of guardianship.

The practice of ordaining elders to “guard the good deposit” springs from the examples and teaching in Acts and the Epistles and acknowledges the high calling, the sober responsibility, and the practical necessity of designating individuals who will devote themselves to the task “by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us” (2 Tim. 1:14). Timothy is charged to entrust Paul’s teaching “to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2), which is a subgroup of the saints. The fact is, the Bible is a very thick book and we are finite individuals. God’s household needs cooks and carpenters as well as guardians and teachers; we cannot all devote our full attention to matters of orthodoxy and heresy. Designated guardians, governed by the Word

N E C E S S A R Y

G I F T

and the checks and balances of the church, ensure that there is a treasure to pass along—which brings us to another aspect of ordained leadership, the transmission of this treasure through instruction.

Speaking the Truth in Love ne of the stumbling blocks in the way of accepting church authority in the form of a body of pastors and elders is the contemporary misperception that the presence of authority equals the presence of a topdown hierarchy in the church. Protestants are understandably allergic to notions of ecclesiastical hierarchy— Luther and Calvin both being quick to point out that the plowman, the housewife, and the preacher have equal worth in the sight of God. At the installation service for a friend of mine, another pastor counseled my friend to remember that as a teaching elder he is still “just one of the sheep” and that he will need nourishment and grace just as much as anyone, or even more.

On the other hand, the reality is that we are not all created equal in our ability to learn, understand, know, remember, or articulate what we have learned. Calvin was a pastor and professor, not a plowman. There is a hierarchy of sorts—based on gifts and callings, opportunities and experience—that furnishes the church with teachers and students. But this is no Gnostic hierarchy of knowledge, in which a privileged few secretively and impressively train a privileged few. This is the topsy-turvy hierarchy of service, in which those who have been given the most are to cheerfully come alongside those who have less. Ours is the hierarchy in which the Master washes the feet of his apprentices.

In Ephesians 4, Paul uses the language of gifting to explain the presence of pastors and teachers: the ascended Christ “gave gifts to men….He gave…pastors and teachers to equip the saints” (4:8, 11–12). We joke about those who have the hubris to consider themselves “God’s gift to mankind,” but the biblical reality is that God does give gifts in the forms of people, including these servants of his whom he has called and set apart to lead and to teach. Note, too, that those who have this role are ultimately answerable to the Gift-Giver: “we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (James 3:1); and church leaders are “those who will have to give an account” (Heb. 13:17). The honor of the office is inextricably tied to “response-ability” to the Head Officer and was never intended to be a means of selfaggrandizement.

Now, not to look a gift preacher in the mouth or anything, but really we cannot help it: there he is, speaking to us Sunday after Sunday, and we people in the pews (or folding chairs) are going to know his love for us by the way he teaches. Does he comfort, exhort, and encourage? Does he reprove and rebuke with all patience? Does he correct misconceptions with gentleness? Does he proclaim the whole counsel of God, setting out the gospel plainly and boldly, rightly handling the Word of truth, so that we are startled out of our subjectivity and confronted with our

O

S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 25

Lord?6 The apostle’s words treat relational attitudes and content rather than style and flourish, which deliberately call attention to the speaker. Paul himself eschewed the “lofty speech” and eloquence of the professional rhetoricians of his day, “lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power” (1 Cor. 1:17; 2:1).

I find this picture of loving instruction compelling, because it binds together the preacher’s responsibility to guard and to communicate the good deposit and his calling to carefully shepherd the real people before him. It’s a picture that leaves no room for self, which means it is a challenge and a half to fulfill (if the preacher is anything like me!). William Willimon quotes Chrysostom on this subject: “In toiling long and hard on his sermons, the priest must at the same time be utterly indifferent to the praise of his hearers.”7 The Larger Catechism echoes Paul’s idea that instruction must be both true to God’s Word and considerate of the flock, explaining that preachers should speak “wisely, applying themselves to the necessities and capacities of the hearers” (Q159). Even the brilliant Calvin, writes Andrew McGowan, “was concerned to expound the great doctrines of the faith in a way that would be comprehensible to the men and women in the pews….He preached in a simple, conversational style, used familiar vocabulary and spoke in short sentences.”8

Can’t this pattern of example and imitation occur organically in the church, rather than relying entirely on ordained leadership? Certainly it can and does—and in fact it must, given that women are sometimes called to mentor other women (e.g., Titus 2:3–5) and elders are finite beings. But in the verses listed above, the assumption is that certain designated leaders have been given the responsibility to speak and to walk, carefully and visibly, before the congregation, so that the Word of God may be made more tangible and accessible to all. It is the elders’ special task to pass along the objective content of the faith through the subjective media of their speech and their lives.

In the great medieval cathedrals, the stained-glass windows depicting scenes from Scripture were called “the Bible of the poor.” Perhaps in the word-deed ministry of ordained leaders we have something similar. Ordination, like the bright colors of the windows when the sun shines through, sets these leaders apart and calls our attention to them; their life and doctrine, like the details on the panes, ought to communicate the wisdom of godliness. Given this good gift from the Father of lights, the least the rest of us can do is “obey, so that their work may be a joy and not a burden” (cf. James 1:17; Heb. 13:17)—and pray that they may have God’s grace to fulfill their calling with integrity. ■

Patterns of Christ peaking the truth in love from the pulpit or in a classroom is only one of the ways that God’s wisdom is passed on from pastor or elder to flock. Since this wisdom is both a canon of content and a way of life, it must be embodied as well as spoken, a calling that non-preaching elders can fulfill as well. Here the charge to the apprentice is at once “heed my instruction” and “walk with the wise to grow wise” (Prov. 4:1; 13:20). Listening to a fine sermon online may be edifying, but observing and participating in a godly person’s life turns theory into lived reality for us. We may think we know what it means, say, to bless when cursed; but until we see this lived out threedimensionally, we may not clearly understand the cost or the trust involved. Connecting the dots between the gospel and our everyday responses and responsibilities is the point of any mentor-apprentice relationship in the Body of Christ.

Paul expresses this idea simply when he urges the Corinthians to “be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1). Elsewhere he uses the image of a “type” or pattern to follow: “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example [Greek typon] you have in us” (Phil. 3:17; cf. 1 Tim. 1:16; 4:12; 2 Tim. 1:13; Titus 2:7). Peter, too, cautions the elders that as they lead they should not “lord it over” the congregation but be “examples [typoi] to the flock” (1 Pet. 5:3). The use of the word “type” in these verses suggests the intriguing idea that even as Old Testament “types” pointed forward in history to Christ, those who “type” or pattern Christ for the church point in a backward-looking chain through the New Testament eyewitnesses to the humility of Jesus himself.

Paige Britton is grateful for the gift of three fine teaching elders and the many active and inactive ruling elders at Faith Reformed Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Quarryville, Pennsylvania.

S

26 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

“Teaching elders” are pastors and “ruling elders” are ordained laity. A “session” is a church’s shepherding body of teaching and ruling elders, and a “presbytery” is a network of mutually accountable churches in a geographic region.

2Frank Viola and George Barna, Pagan Christianity? (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2008), 105–43.

3Viola and Barna, 234. See also Frank Viola’s Reimagining Church (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2008).

4Space does not permit me to make a defense here of an allmale ordained leadership, but I believe this arrangement can be defended theologically, without denigrating women or flattering men.

5Kevin Vanhoozer, First Theology: God, Scripture and Hermeneutics (Downers Grove: IVP, 2002), 219.

6Cf. 1 Thess. 2:11–12; 2 Tim. 2:15, 25; 4:2; Acts 20:27; 2 Cor. 4:2; Eph. 6:19.

7William Willimon, Calling and Character (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), 20.

8Andrew McGowan, The Divine Spiration of Scripture (Nottingham, UK: Apollos, 2007), 202.

1

DISCIPLESHIP: WISDOM FOR PILGRIMS’ PROGRESS

Why Johnny Can’t Preach The editors of Modern Reformation have kindly asked me to write a bit about my new book Why Johnny Can’t Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers (P&R, 2009). The title is a double theft. The “Why Johnny Can’t” part is stolen from Rudolph Flesch, Why Johnny Can’t Read: And What You Can Do About It and Arthur Whimbey and Myra J. Linden, Why Johnny Can’t Write: How to Improve Writing Skills; and the subtitle is stolen from Marshall McLuhan’s famous aphorism: “The medium is the message.”

Each theft is significant, if not entirely morally upright.

Two significant books published within about twenty-five years of each other (1966 and 1990) traced the decline of two significant cultural practices (reading and writing), raising questions about how this happened. How it happened, of course, was largely this: a previously typographic culture, whose primary medium was books, had become, after the mid-twentieth century, a post-typographic culture,

whose primary media were image based and/or electronic. But if our culture as a whole cannot or does not read or write as it once did, how does this affect preaching, which requires the careful reading of ancient texts and the compositional act of producing a sermon?

The second theft is also important. Marshall McLuhan’s famous (albeit slippery) aphorism surely contains some truth: the medium is the message. That is, the presence of certain media in a culture alters that culture’s cultural habits and alters individual sensibilities or consciousness. For example, compare the time of my childhood (pre-Sony Walkman) to my daughters’ childhood. When my family drove each weekend from Richmond to the Chesapeake Bay, we often sang folk tunes and well-known hymns in the car during the trip. When contemporary families travel together now, the only “together” part is physical. Each will be podded, cocooned in a world of his or her own music. Mu-

BY

T. D A V I D G O R D O N

S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 27

sic is now private rather than shared, and music is listened to rather than performed. The fundamental social nature of music has changed almost entirely, utterly altering its role from that of all previous human cultures; and this change has occurred very rapidly, without argument. Commerce thrust its tools, sword-like, into our culture and we, heedless of McLuhan’s aphorism, welcomed the thrust. The medium, that is, had a remarkably profound effect; and if the purpose of a message is to have an effect, then the medium was a “message.”

So, my concern was and is to examine how this shift of dominant media, with its resultant change in cultural and individual capacities and sensibilities, has affected preaching, the distinctive medium of one religious subgroup in our society. The painful part of the book, the beginning part, includes a chapter on the assumption in the title: Johnny Can’t Preach (at least, not as he once could or did). There is no reason to explain why preaching is poor if preaching isn’t poor. An early chapter of the book consists of the reasons and observations that have led me and many others to conclude that preaching, in our moment, is ordinarily mediocre at best.

I expect to encounter some resistance to this premise from ministers who are already tired of people complaining about their preaching. The last thing they need, from their point of view, is someone siding with their critics. But the matter is too important, too vital to the church’s health and mission to be silent on it. If preaching really is in decline, few things could be more important to discuss. When my physician told me in 2004 that I had Stage III cancer (25 percent chance of survival), I didn’t want to hear this diagnosis. However, if the diagnosis was true, my only chance of recovery depended upon accepting the diagnosis and acting upon it. So also with the church. If preaching is indeed ordinarily poor, if preaching is not doing what it needs to do, then the health of the patient—the church—demands that we face the diagnosis squarely.

Part of my diagnosis is simply to employ Robert Lewis Dabney’s “Seven Cardinal Requisites of a Sermon,” from his Lectures on Sacred Rhetoric. Briefly describing Dabney’s seven requisites (unity, order, movement, point, instruction, exposition, and evangelical tone, or Christ-centeredness), I argue that few sermons today have all seven; many, indeed, have none of the seven. Another part of the diagnosis consists of the all-too-frequently-heard observation about ministers: “He’s not a great preacher, but....”

This is the most common statement people have made to me in the last thirty years about their ministers. Whether on the East Coast or the West, in the North or South, this is the almost-universal comment I hear from people. It’s a polite way of saying that the minister has many good qualities that are sincerely appreciated, even though his preaching doesn’t help much. Imagine saying about a chef, “He’s not a great cook, but...”; or about a mechanic, “He can’t fix my car, but...”; or about an author, “He can’t write, but....” In no other area would it be acceptable to say such a thing, yet it is routinely said today about ministers.

28 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

Johnny Can’t Read he substantial part of the middle of the book addresses the two causes for the impoverished state of the contemporary pulpit, causes already well documented by the two books I referred to earlier: Why Johnny Can’t Read and Why Johnny Can’t Write. Many MR readers are familiar with the 2004 report of the National Endowment for the Arts, indicating that reading is in significant decline in our culture (Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America. Research Division Report #46, National Endowment for the Arts). In January 2009, the NEA released another report, indicating that the reading of poetry is especially in decline. According to their report, in 2008 only 8.3 percent of the adult population had read a poem in the previous year, down from 17.1 percent as recently as 1992.

In fifteen years, the already-small percentage had been cut by more than half.

The consequences of such cultural changes are significant in their own right, as we continue to descend into a kind of electronic-media-borne Philistinism. But I leave it to others to lament that cultural tragedy (e.g., Martha Bayles, Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music, and John H. McWhorter, Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care). My lament, as a churchman, is for the church and her pulpit. What are the consequences of reading little, of reading less literature, and of reading even less poetry?

Reading/skimming for information is not the same as reading a text. When we speak about reading a text, we speak about reading something in which how the thing is said is considered to be a true part of what is said. We read Robert Frost’s “After Apple-Picking” or his “The WhiteTailed Hornet” as much to appreciate the craftsmanship as to discern what he is saying (which, in his case, is rarely an easy task itself). To distill either of these poems into a oneclause “point” of the poem is to miss the point. So, reading literature, and especially reading poetry, trains us in the sensibility of reading carefully and contemplatively, of appreciating not merely what a text supposedly “is about,” in its minimalist sense, but appreciating what is actually said.

This kind of careful reading of texts has obvious implications for a ministry that, in its basic nature, is expositional.

Although Marshall McLuhan referred to the book era as “The Gutenberg Galaxy,” his student Neil Postman referred to it as “The Age of Exposition.” McLuhan designated that culture by the inventor of its dominant medium; Postman designated it by the cultural practice that this dominant medium fostered: exposition—the explanation of and arguments about texts. Such a cultural medium (Gutenberg’s printing press) fostered such a cultural activity (expositing texts).

On the rare occasion that I have heard someone cite Frost’s “good fences make good neighbors,” I remind them that the statement is not Frost’s own point of view but the view of the narrator’s neighbor. It is one of only two lines in the poem that is repeated and the other is: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” which is also the first line

T

W H Y

of the poem, written from the narrator’s point of view. That is, I argue with their reading of the text, and I do so by citing the text. Postman’s point is that this was a commonplace activity in a textual, expository, typographic culture.

Reading texts carefully, mulling them over, and arguing about their meaning are activities of a particular kind of culture. A text forces its thoughtful readers to defend their reading of it or, at a minimum, to justify their reading of it. And those reared in such a culture pick up this cultural habit of reading texts carefully and discussing/debating what given texts affirm or deny.

All true Christian preaching is expositional; the point of every legitimate Christian sermon is properly derived from the text itself. Every sermon should justify or defend a particular reading of a particular text before deriving theological or practical conclusions from it. But in a culture where people rarely read texts, in a culture where people “skim” books, looking for overt information, exposition disappears.

There is an extraordinary dearth of exposition in today’s pulpits. It is rare for an expository argument to be made in a sermon; indeed, some people even object to the presence of expository argument. Once, while pastoring in New Hampshire, I met with a couple who found my preaching objectionable to determine if there were ways I could improve. After some gracious small talk, I asked what specifically bothered them about my preaching. The wife said: “Well, your preaching is too philosophical.” This surprised me. I didn’t recall ever mentioning any philosophers in any of my sermons, and I actually have not even read as much philosophy as I would like. So, I indicated that I wasn’t sure I understood what she meant by “too philosophical.” Her husband then explained: “We’ve been in PCA churches for almost thirty years now, and all our previous ministers simply told us what to do or what to believe. But you always try to show us from the Bible what we should do or believe.”

For this couple, exposition was simply a waste of time.

Apparently, they approached sermon-listening as they did the grocery aisle, as a matter of picking and choosing what one likes or dislikes. They wanted simply to hear the minister’s opinions and decide for themselves whether they agreed or disagreed. But they didn’t care to know what the Bible said about anything, at least not in a sermon. Well, I obviously could not accommodate them, because—with Robert Lewis Dabney in the nineteenth century or Haddon Robinson, Joey Pipa, or Bryan Chappell in our own moment—I believe that authority and exposition go hand in hand. No exposition, no authority. The only way a sermon becomes God’s authoritative declaration to his creatures is through a patient demonstration that the point of the sermon is justly derived from the text.

Some complaints, however, about “expository preaching” are legitimate. On the one hand, there are those who read a verse, make some comments about it, then read another verse, make some comments about it, and repeat the process until they run out of verses. Such preaching does not perceive or communicate the text as a unit. Each verse, arbitrarily designated with a number by medieval scribes

J O H N N Y

C A N ’ T

P R E A C H

(some of whom could not even translate the Greek texts they copied), is taken as its own unit, and the congregation is subjected not to a unified sermon but to a disjointed group of sermonettes. On the other hand, there are those who enter the pulpit with virtually every exegetical note they made in the process of their study, and then regurgitate all of this material in a disorganized exegetical lecture, rather than a true, unified expository sermon.

True expository preaching avoids both of these errors.

It preaches the natural literary units of Scripture, not the arbitrarily numbered verses of the medieval scribes. And it only offers the amount of expository argumentation or evidence necessary to demonstrate that the point of the sermon is justly derived from the text—nothing more. Dr. Vern Poythress of Westminster Seminary taught this by saying: “Give your people bread; not the bread factory.” A culture that was accustomed to reading poetry needed little help with exposition. They were trained to read texts carefully, and it became second nature to them to do so, and to derive reasoned and reasonable judgments about the author’s meaning.

Poetry also trains the sensibility of the significant. When not addled by narcissism or narcotics, poets do not write about the trivial. Poets do not write about hula-hoops or “The Biggest Loser.” Why expend the laborious effort at craftsmanship that poetry requires merely to observe what is trite?

Television, by contrast, is essentially trivial. It either has triviality as its overt content or, on the rare occasion it attempts to address what is consequential, it does so in a trivial manner. Imagine, for instance, The NewsHour on PBS doing a tenminute television spot and calling it “in-depth coverage.”

Most of us know perfectly well that a significant matter of public policy can hardly be defined or introduced in ten minutes. Only by television’s preposterously silly habit of “covering” news items in fifteen or twenty seconds can a tenminute discussion be considered “in-depth.”

People who watch large amounts of television, therefore, tend to become tone-deaf toward significance. They rarely see it and therefore do not notice it when it does appear. But the Holy Scriptures routinely deal with matters of the gravest consequence. Almost nothing in the Bible is trivial. The Bible contains the narratives of the two Adams, with all their freighted consequences, consequences that a poet such as Milton grasped perhaps as acutely as any. Ministers who spend substantial time watching television become like the culture of which they are a part.

Everything is ironic, nothing is important. Such ministers, even when they read passages of Scripture fraught with profundity or weight, are unable to perceive the profundity or sense the weightiness. They—like the bustling, commercial, trivial culture of which they are a part—are tonedeaf to all that is significant about human life poised precariously between God’s judgment and grace. As Wordsworth put it: “For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.”

A final benefit of poetry is the way it develops diction.

Preaching, like poetry, is an essentially aural phenomenon.

S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 29

We don’t “see” a sermon; we “hear” a sermon. When oral language is well employed, the communication is aided not only by the use of a well-developed and apt vocabulary, but perhaps even more so by the cadences and rhythms. There is a natural and appropriate tendency for the pace to quicken as we move toward our major subpoints, and an equally natural and appropriate tendency to retard the pace, or even pause, as we articulate the weightier matters. It would require far too much to do all of this consciously; it is the natural by-product of an individual whose own diction has been shaped by exposure to those who have great command of oral language. Reading a poem well, for instance, requires that one read it many times. Typically, I will read a poem silently at least two or three times before reading it aloud.

When reading it aloud, I am forced to make decisions about tone, about pace, about rhythm. A skilled poet leads the reader gently and skillfully in this endeavor, because his wise choice of words seems “natural” to the reader.

Charles Grosvener Osgood’s Poetry as a Means of Grace is composed of chapters that were originally delivered in 1940 at Princeton Theological Seminary as the Stone Lectures.

The Stone Lectures are a very significant reality. Abraham Kuyper’s well-known Lectures on Calvinism, for instance, were originally given as Stone Lectures in 1898. That Osgood was invited to give the lectures says a good deal about how highly regarded he was. In these lectures, he urged seminary students to commit themselves to becoming lifelong readers of poetry, because of the inestimable benefits it would have on their preaching—and he did this fifteen years before commercial television appeared, and probably thirty to forty years before television replaced reading as the primary medium in our culture. So, if Osgood expended so much effort to attempt to persuade ministers to read poetry in 1940, imagine how much more effort he would expend were he alive today in a culture that is almost illiterate by the standards of his culture; that is, our generation of preachers needs the benefits of reading verse far more than Osgood’s generation did.

And yet precisely here some of my readers of Why Johnny Can’t Preach are unconvinced, albeit courteously so. This is my fault in the book—not Osgood’s—for not spending more time recounting his reasoning and arguments. Many of my readers agree with me negatively (that television watching is not going to develop good ministers), but are hesitant to agree with me positively (that few things would do more good than for ministers to be lifelong readers of verse).

I am delighted, however, that several of my readers have informed me that they have found copies of Osgood in used bookstores and are reading him. [Editorial note: Osgood’s book can be found online via popular book distributors.]

Johnny Can’t Write y second substantial thesis is that Johnny’s inability to write has negative consequences on his preaching also. Ours is no longer a compositional culture. Ask a college student today how often he wrote a “composition” in high school, and he will look at you as

M

30 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

though you were a Greek professor. He doesn’t even know what the word “composition” is, unless it is a musical one.

But my late father told me that when he was in high school, he wrote compositions weekly in every class except mathematics. In my generation, I also composed, though less often in school than my father. In my four years of college and for three years at seminary, I wrote my parents a letter every week (to which I received weekly replies). Each week for seven years, I had to assess the previous week, make some decisions about what, if anything, important had happened, and then decide in what order to arrange my narrative of those events in a letter. I was composing.

I was making the decisions all composers make about what to include or exclude and where. In the process, like my father before me, I was unwittingly developing the sensibilities of a thoughtful composer, sensibilities utterly lost on those who communicate with their “friends and family” via cell phone.

A sermon, obviously, is also a composition. The minister asks the same questions any composer does: Should I include this or not? Should I exclude that or not? If I include these three things, in what order should I put them and why? But for many ministers today, the only time they compose is when they compose a sermon, so they are less adept at the practice than were their predecessors. Their sermons do not have what Dabney called “order”—earlier points do not necessarily prepare the way for later points.

Things that should be there are excluded, and things that should not be there are included.

Conclusion hy Johnny Can’t Preach develops these matters more fully and addresses a few others before concluding with a chapter on how things could improve. If my voice adds anything to the chorus of commentators on the contemporary church, it does so because I bring a media-ecological perspective to the question. From that perspective, it is inevitable that when Johnny’s ability to read and write declines, his ability to preach will decline also. And the matter will worsen with the widespread prevalence of electronic technologies that cultivate the habit of scanning rather than reading, and the habit of IM-ing or textmessaging incomplete sentences. Until or unless individuals make countercultural choices and cultivate the sensibilities necessary to preach well, the matter will worsen. ■

W

T. David Gordon is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and associate professor of religion at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania.

DISCIPLESHIP: WISDOM FOR PILGRIMS’ PROGRESS

Dewey’s Copernican Revolution Last fall, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an article outlining some of the challenges facing public schools in our time. The report included a school official who was quoted as saying that middle schools in the area should no longer be thought of as “cold, instruction-driven places.” I was amazed by that particular comment. How could any school official in the business of educating and instructing today’s youth possibly characterize instruction as being “cold”? Wouldn’t it be like a doctor saying that today’s hospitals are no longer “stale medicine-driven places”? But the article continued, “‘I look at them and I tell them, you are the center of your universe right now,’ said Mary Ann Goldberg, principal of Wydown Middle School....‘We are orbiting around you to help you. If you think it’s all about you, it is all about you.’”1

I for one certainly don’t recall being orbited around while I was in junior high school. If I had been, I probably would have asked my teachers to blast K.C. & the Sunshine Band throughout the school’s P.A. system. Actually, that’s probably inaccurate because I’m not sure that a person at the center of the universe needs to ask anyone “permission” to do anything at all. So, I probably would have said: no more social studies, no more math, no more English, and certainly no more homework! The school year would have been approximately two months long and, outside of art and woodshop, I’m not sure what other classes I would have chosen to continue. Now, obviously I have taken Ms. Goldberg’s words in an absurd direction, for no school would ever allow students to make such decisions.

BY

SHANE ROSENTHAL

S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 31

a newer, more anthropocentric approach. As early as 1814, Sir Walter Scott deIt is rarely easy, and those who attempt to make it so scribed in some detail a shift he perceived to be taking end up dumbing down the content of what is to be place in the education of his time. Serious study was betaught. ing replaced with “instructive games,” and students thereBut that’s just it. If a school is in a position of authority fore had no “reason to dread the consequences of study beto allow or disallow this sort of thing, then no matter what ing rendered too serious or severe.” So he offered the folschool officials say, the school is really in charge and stulowing poignant critique: dents must orbit around it.

It may be a surprise to some readers that the approach It may...be subject of serious consideration, whether of this particular school administrator is not new by any those who are accustomed only to acquire instruction stretch of the imagination. For example, in his book The through the medium of amusement, may not be School & Society, first published in 1899, John Dewey combrought to reject that which approaches under the asplained that the older and more traditional schools were pect of study; whether those who learn history by the “passive,” “mechanical,” and “uniform” both in curriculum cards, may not be led to prefer the means to the end; and method. “The center of gravity,” he wrote, “is outside and whether, were we to teach religion in the way the child. It is in the teacher, the textbook, anywhere and of sport, our pupils may not thereby be gradually ineverywhere you please except in the immediate instincts duced to make sport of their religion.3 and activities of the child himself.” But he went on to say that a change was coming upon the world of education and Here we find a fantastic evaluation of this new approach. was beginning to disturb the old center of gravity. “It is a If the means of education is amusement and entertainment, change, a revolution, not unlike that introduced by then students just might begin to prefer the means to the Copernicus when the astronomical center shifted from the end. And this is especially dangerous in an age like our own earth to the sun. In this case the child becomes the sun that is defined almost entirely by entertainment. After all, about which the appliances of education revolve; he is the MTV is much better at amusement and titillation than the center about which they are organized.”2 typical math teacher.

A few thousand years earlier, Solomon offered a radiIn his classic work The Idea of a University, first published cally different approach to pedagogy when he wrote that in 1852, John Henry Newman warned, “Do not say, the “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. people must be educated, when, after all, you only mean, 9:10). Now, this is something you’re not likely to hear in amused, refreshed, soothed, put into good spirits....I do not say that such amusements, such occupations of mind are our day, and not merely because of the religious characnot a great gain; but they are not education....Education ter of the assertion. The concept of fear itself is almost comis a high word.” Newman then outlines some of the poppletely missing from our institutions of education across the ular slogans about education in his time, saying that, board. Education, we are told, must be fun, engaging, dynamic, relevant, and accessible. But how does fear relate Learning is to be without exertion, without attention, in any way to the acquisition of wisdom? To put it simwithout toil....Whether it be the school boy or the ply, fear implies a kind of authority. We fear a police officer when driving down the highway because he has the school girl, or the youth at college, or the mechanic authority to arrest us. We fear a bear in the woods because in the town, or the politician in the senate, all have of its ability to harm or kill us. And children fear parents been the victims in one way or another of this most and teachers because of their ability to impose consequences preposterous and pernicious of delusions.4 for disobedience.

But why is the fear of the Lord the true beginning of wisNewman’s point here is that the attempt to make learning dom? Because it’s a way of saying, “You are not your own” fun and amusing actually ended up devaluing the quali(1 Cor. 6:19) and that you are accountable to someone bety of education itself. Wisdom requires thinking, exertion, yond the scope of parents, principals, or policemen. At the toil, and attention. It is rarely easy, and those who attempt end of the day, God is at the center of the universe and we to make it so end up dumbing down the content of what all orbit around him. All authorities are derived from and is to be taught. A simple example is the difference between find their ultimate source in God himself. the older approach of requiring children to memorize quesBut post-Enlightenment Europe was not content to keep tions and answers from a particular catechism, versus a typthe spotlight on God’s sovereign power indefinitely. As man ical Sunday school class of churches in our own day, combecame the measure of all things, pedagogical views began plete with crayons, glue, and cartoon pictures of Bible charto shift away from the older, more authoritarian model to acters. Today’s children may be more entertained, but are

Wisdom requires thinking, exertion, toil, and attention.

32 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

D E W E Y ’ S

they better equipped in things Christian?

Of course, the close of the nineteenth century witnessed the rise of what became known officially as the school of progressive education, which, more than anything else, was founded upon the writings of John Dewey and his call for a Copernican revolution in the world of pedagogy. In his very influential book My Pedagogic Creed (1897), Dewey went so far as to argue, “The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences.”5 Notice how he bristles at the idea of a teacher imposing ideas and habits as an external authority in the life of the child. For Dewey, this model is more about power than education. What he didn’t realize was that the two are inextricably linked.

Teaching implies a master/disciple relationship, which itself implies a hierarchy of authority.

Later in his career Dewey elaborated further on this point as he outlined the differences between traditional versus progressive education: To imposition from above is opposed expression and cultivation of individuality; to external discipline is opposed free activity; to learning from texts and teachers, learning through experience; to acquisition of isolated skills and techniques by drill, is opposed acquisition of them as means of attaining ends which make direct vital appeal; to preparation for a more or less remote future is opposed making the most of the opportunities of present life.6 Traditional Education Imposition from above Learning from texts and teachers Acquiring skills by drill Preparation for the future Progressive Education Expression of individuality Learning through experience Making vital appeals Making the most of the present According to Dewey, traditional approach to education was guilty of imposing things from above and outside the life of the student. Its focus was on texts and teachers in order to prepare the child for the future. By contrast, the new progressive approach shifted focus to the present experience of the child, attempting to make vital appeals, allowing for self-expression and individuality. But how can the student make the most of the present when he is forced to study irrelevant Latin verbs? How can Latin possibly have any vital appeal? In fact, Dewey himself argued along these lines: “It is unsound to urge that, say, Latin has a value per se in the abstract.”7 So, the new criteria for determining the value of Latin became the student’s own perception of

C O P E R N I C A N

R E V O L U T I O N

its usefulness, as Dewey himself admitted, “When pupils are genuinely concerned in learning Latin, that is of itself proof that it possesses value.”8 In fact, historian Richard Hofstadter actually cited this as one of the sources in his book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1962). As he observed, “An urgent desire to learn Latin or any other such subject is not a ‘natural’ impulse in any child.”9 And so wherever progressive education was in full force, Latin began to disappear as a required subject in schools across the country. In our day, it’s hard to find a school that offers this classical language even as an elective.

According to Hofstadter, Dewey’s project of educational reform was part of a larger goal of the reformation of society. And this could not take place “unless the child is placed at the center of the school, unless the rigid authority of the teacher and the traditional weight of the curriculum are displaced by his own developing interests and impulses.”10 So the teacher is not one who uses his authority to impose ideas and habits on the child, but rather is seen as a learning coach who introduces the child to new and vital experiences.

By the mid-1920s, progressive education began to be so widespread that it caught the attention of Princeton New Testament scholar J. Gresham Machen, who complained that it was not only decadent but contributed to a wholesale “depreciation of the labor of learning facts.”

In fact, Machen observed that the new approach ended up discouraging “hard work,” and had produced a serious decline in the education of his day.11 In the summer of 1932, Machen elaborated further on this point in an address delivered to the Bible League of London, This child-centered notion of education seems to involve emancipation from a vast amount of drudgery.

It used to be thought necessary to do some hard work at school. When a textbook was given to a class, it was expected that the contents of the textbook should be mastered. But now all that has been changed. Storing up facts in the mind was a long and painful process, and it is indeed comforting to know that we can now do without it. Away with all drudgery and all hard work! Self-expression has taken their place. A great discovery has been made—the discovery that it is possible to think with a completely empty mind.12 Machen seems to be arguing that hard work and drudgery cannot in fact be removed from the experience of the student if real education is to take place. And this is because real education requires hard work and labor. Memorization, for most people, is difficult, painful, and tiring, rather than refreshing and exciting.

In February 1941, Mortimer Adler added to this discussion in a little known essay he published for The Journal of Educational Sociology titled “Invitation to the Pain of Learning.” In this article, he observed that one of the biggest reasons American education is so “frothy and vapid” is that both parents and teachers “wish childhood to be unspoiled S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 33

thing should be required of them!”16 This lack of effort was, in Stout’s thinking, the sound-bites to C-SPAN, and we generally prefer to “see result of a student-centered curriculum. Stout then rethe movie” rather than “read the book.” counts some of the discussions she had with her colby pain.” Childhood, it is thought, “must not be made to leagues about this issue. “Sure, everyone has those probsuffer the impositions of discipline or the exactions of duty, lems; that’s just the way students are nowadays,” said a which of course are painful.” Rather, Americans had come few. “Students get bored easily and expect to be enterto believe that it must “be filled with as much play and as tained,” said another, “so you have to make the class as exlittle work as possible.” And so he writes that elaborate citing as possible.”17 In the end, however, she came to reschemes began to be devised to make learning fun and exalize that the pervasive attitude in modern educational circiting, by the creation of games and other methods. As a cles is not conducive to real learning. “We have created result, agencies of education had ended up turning the enschools that are child-centered in the extreme, where every tire nation “into a kindergarten.” “It must all be fun. It aspect of schooling is organized around...what children want must all be entertaining...learning must be made as effortless and perceive to be in their best interests and not what is as possible—painless, devoid of oppressive burdens and of in reality the best for them.”18 Stout therefore concluded irksome tasks.”13 by arguing, “If we teach kids that they are the center of the universe and that schools revolve around them, they will But like Machen, Adler was unconvinced of the effeccome to believe that they are entitled to everything they tiveness of this bold new approach, and his principal objection want in schools, whether that be good grades, easy asrested with the fact that thinking itself was difficult work: signments, no homework, or turning up in class only when it pleases them.”19 Anyone who has done any thinking, even a little bit, knows that it is painful. It is hard work—in fact the Sometimes the art of acquiring wisdom is referred to as very hardest that human beings are ever called the “cultivation of the intellect.” But think about that upon to do. It is fatiguing, not refreshing. If allowed metaphor of cultivation for a moment. Spreading mulch to follow the path of least resistance, no one would is not what most would consider a “fun” or an “exciting” ever think. To make boys and girls, or men and activity. Frankly, it’s a rather difficult and unpleasant task! women think—and through thinking really underBut this particular burden serves a crucial function since go the transformation of learning—educational agenit provides the soil with the nutrients it needs for a good cies of every sort must work against the grain, not with harvest. It also requires a great deal of patience, for the lait. Far from trying to make the whole process painbor is intensive, yet there are no immediate rewards. One less from beginning to end, we must promise them must wait until harvest day to enjoy the fruits of labor. the pleasure of achievement as a reward only to be Christians are called to make disciples of all nations. But reached through travail.14 are we to do this without any discipline or effort? Even Peter admits that some of Paul’s writings are “hard to understand” (2 Pet. 3:16). If some portions of Scripture do This was essentially the point of the thought experiment in fact contain difficult concepts, then it seems reasonable I presented at the beginning of this essay. For if I was rethat we should attempt to prepare our followers for the difally at the center of the universe, and it was really the job ficult work of proper biblical interpretation. And this reof the school to orbit around me, then as an immature sevquires the slow and patient work of personal transformaenth grader, I would have preferred only the fun and easy tion through mind-renewal (Rom. 12:1–2). classes, and would certainly have chosen to opt out of any The author of Hebrews was up front about the fact that subject I perceived difficult or labor intensive. But thinksome of the things he wished to convey were in fact “hard ing itself is difficult. According to Adler, pain and work are to explain.” But this was amplified by the fact that the resimply the “irremovable and irreducible accompaniments cipients of his letter had become “dull of hearing” (Rom. of genuine learning.” He therefore recommends that we 5:11–12). Unfortunately, our culture, with its focus on en“leave entertainment to the entertainers and make edutertainment and instant gratification, has conspired against cation a task and not a game.”15 us, making us guilty of this in the extreme. We don’t like In her book, The Feel Good Curriculum: The Dumbing Down to be lectured or preached at, we prefer sound-bites to Cof America’s Kids in the Name of Self-Esteem, Maureen Stout SPAN, and we generally prefer to “see the movie” rather writes a great deal about the problems she personally encountered as a teacher in today’s educational clithan “read the book.” Visit the youth center of a typical mate. Despite giving her students numerous detailed inmegachurch on Sunday morning and you’re likely to see structions about their assignments, many “simply refused kids playing basketball, ascending rock climbing walls, or to do what was required of them.” What she didn’t realsitting on couches playing X-box. You might discover that ize at the time was that her students “didn’t think that any“youth worship” basically amounts to a Christian rock con-

We don’t like to be lectured or preached at, we prefer

34 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

D E W E Y ’ S

cert, and that the morning message is delivered in an entertaining and upbeat style familiar to those who’ve watched Comedy Central. But as Christian Smith documented in his survey of over 5,000 religious youths, the great majority of teens, even among those who attend church regularly, cannot articulate even the most basic elements of the Christian faith when asked to do so.

According to George Barna, the fundamental principle of Christian communication is the fact that “the audience, not the message, is sovereign.”20 So here we find John Dewey’s Copernican revolution, not “out there” in the secular schools but right in the center of mainstream evangelical Christianity. And while today’s public schools offer their own competing versions of “child-centered” education, your local Christian bookstore sells Joel Osteen’s Become a Better You faster than any other product. Churches in your neighborhood are busy presenting relevant and dynamic messages to help you live life in today’s world; but because the Bible’s teaching about justification, atonement, satisfaction, propitiation, imputation, resurrection, and predestination are too deep, lofty and “theological,” those topics simply don’t get a lot of coverage.

In the Book of Proverbs, Solomon personifies wisdom as a chaste woman who plays hard to get (8:17). In order to catch her, one must wait outside her gates, watching for her with great patience (8:34). Folly, on the other hand, is a prostitute who is on every street corner (7:12). She attempts to persuade men with her smooth words and seductive speech (7:5; 21), and she’s an easy lover who is always within reach. But Solomon goes on to explain that whoever finds wisdom finds life (8:35), and those who are not “attentive” to her words end up following the adulterous woman who brings them down to the chambers of death.

“For many a victim has she laid low, and all her slain are a mighty throng” (7:26–27).

If we are interested in the pursuit of wisdom for ourselves and our children, then we ought to reconsider the importance of Solomon’s proverb, that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” In a day of child-centered schools and market-driven churches, we desperately need to recover the sense of fear. God is at the center of the universe, not us. Or, as the King James translators expressed it in their translation of Psalm 100:3, “Know ye that the LORD, he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” ■

Shane Rosenthal (M.A., historical theology, Westminster Seminary California) is producer of the White Horse Inn radio broadcast. He currently serves on the board of Providence Christian Academy, a classical school near St. Louis, Missouri.

Valerie Schremp Hahn and Kevin Crowe, “Middle Schools Stand Out,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (1 August 2008).

2John Dewey, The School and Society (New York: The University of Chicago Press, 1900), 51.

1

C O P E R N I C A N

R E V O L U T I O N

Walter Scott, Waverley (London: Penguin Books, 1985), 46–

3

47.

John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1905), 144.

5John Dewey, My Pedagogic Creed (New York: E. L. Kellog & Co., 1897), 9.

6John Dewey, Experience & Education (New York: Touchstone, 1997), 19–20.

7John Dewey, Democracy & Education (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916), 284.

8Dewey, Democracy & Education, 284.

9Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), 377.

10Hofstadter, 363.

11J. Gresham Machen, What Is Faith? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1925), 15.

12 J. Gresham Machen: Selected Shorter Writings, ed. D. G. Hart (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2004), 136.

13Mortimer J. Adler, Reforming Education (New York: Collier Books, 1977), 233–34.

14Adler, 233–34.

15Adler, 235.

16Maureen Stout, The Feel-Good Curriculum: The Dumbing Down of America’s Kids in the Name of Self-Esteem (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2000), 2.

17Stout, 2.

18 Stout, 36.

19Stout, 208.

20George Barna, Marketing the Church (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1988), 145.

4

Speaking Of…

“F

or what is more consonant with faith than to recognize that we are naked of all virtue, in order to be clothed by God? That we are empty of all good, to be filled by him? That we are slaves of sin, to be freed by him? Blind, to be illuminated by him?

Lame, to be made straight by him? Weak, to be sustained by him? To take away from us all occasion for glorying, that he alone may stand forth gloriously and we glory in him? When we say these and like things our adversaries interrupt and complain that in this way we shall subvert some blind light of nature, imaginary preparations, free will, and works that merit eternal salvation….For they cannot bear that the whole praise and glory of all goodness, virtue, righteousness, and wisdom should rest with God. But we do not read of anyone being blamed for drinking too deeply of the fountain of living water.”

—John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 35

INTERVIEW f o r

d i a l o g u e

i n

a n d

o u t

o f

o u r

c i r c l e s

An Interview with Julia Duin

What Do Baby Boomers Need in a Church?

White Horse Inn host Michael Horton recently talked with Julia Duin, religion editor for The Washington Times. She has won numerous local and national awards for her religion coverage and is also the author of Quitting Church: Why the Faithful Are Fleeing and What to Do about It (Baker Books, 2008).

First of all, what interested you in doing the research and ultimately writing this book?

I was going through some of the experiences I describe in Quitting Church as I was one of about 400 people who left a certain church in northern Virginia. While I was looking around, I noticed that the Baltimore-Washington area is filled with very smart people, and I therefore expected the churches would reflect this. Instead, I found that many churches were stuck in the seeker-friendly mode where everything was simplified, dumbed down, and that everything appealed basically to one set of people—essentially, young couples with kids. There was not a whole lot to appeal to people who had been believers for, say, more than five years. This did not give me a reason to get out of bed on Sunday mornings, so, anecdotally, I stayed home on Sundays.

But I began to find other people who felt the same way. Some were going into home groups. I found that people from my college Christian fellowship group were not in church anymore because they weren’t finding what they needed.

I was running into a whole bunch of people, mostly the over-35 set, who were just very unhappy with evangelical churches. They were basically products of the Baby Boomer/Jesus movement/charis-

3 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

matic renewal generation: they came into the church in the 1970s and slid out during the purposedriven church era of the late 1990s.

While you were doing your research, what did you come upon as some of the major reasons that people gave you for their leaving?

And we’re talking about evangelical churches here, not mainline churches, right?

Absolutely. In fact, as I researched the book, I found several subsets of people. We all know how men are supposed to be unhappy with church, but I found professional women and singles who were also unhappy. One of the reasons is that people who are perplexed and disappointed with God are not getting meaningful answers from their churches. In fact, they’re encouraged not to think about their pain.

Now, remember, these are people who have been in Christianity for, say, twenty years—they’ve been there, done that; they’ve been through all the programs; they’ve been through everything. But they’re not seeing some of the simple basic questions of life solved.

And they’re saying, “Well, I’ve been in this for a while. I’m not a new believer anymore, and I’m not getting answers.” Why not?

Another reason is that there is a lot of bad pastoring. People aren’t getting decent answers to their ques-

tions. People aren’t connecting with a pastor who could help them.

Many pastors are walled off by church secretaries and appointments. I ran into a situation where I had to wait a month to get an appointment. So where people weren’t connecting with pastors, they joined home groups; but the home groups were not good for pastoring reasons. When someone has major problems or questions, the home groups aren’t helpful.

They’re good for fellowship.

I also discovered that a lot of people found that no one missed them at church. This is certainly true in some of the large churches. They felt as if they didn’t make a difference in their churches. If they were gone, no one noticed. So I found an amazing dissatisfaction among people who are very mature. It’s what I call a spiritual brain drain.

When they leave—twenty years after they’ve become Christians and after a church has invested in them to train them as mentors—all that goes out the back door.

Where are they going?

A lot of them aren’t going anywhere.

I would count George Barna and also John Eldridge, The Ransomed Heart author in Colorado Springs, as those who aren’t going to church. Again, there are a number of talented people who are just gone.

George Barna suggests that maybe the era of the church is over; and now people, if they really want to be sold out, need to get on a good website and be

lone-ranger Christians out there.

There’s a great deal of debate on this. I recently attended a press conference at Baylor University where they basically pooh-poohed George Barna, saying that he was wrong about people leaving church and that they think 36 percent of the American population is attending church. I challenged them on it. I said, “Come on, you really don’t believe one-third of the American population is in church each week. They’re in the supermarkets maybe, but they’re not in church.” I agree with some of the 2005 surveys that have come out that say it’s more like 18 to 20 percent.

Barna says there are all these revolutionaries out there. I don’t know if they’re watching religious TV, but I’m not convinced that they’re sitting in Christian coffee shops somewhere ready to do great things. I think they’re just floating about, like little satellites.

One report I came across recently says that attendance numbers in America’s megachurches continue to grow at very fast rates according to the latest research on the country’s largest churches. Protestant congregations that already have at least 2,000 people in a typical weekend have an average rate of growth for five years of around 50 percent. How do you account for that? On one hand, it sounds like megachurches are growing, but you’re suggesting that evangelical churches, which is where most of the megachurches are I would assume, are declining.

Ten percent of America’s 331,000 congregations have more than 300 members. But more than half those attending religious services go to 33,000 or so churches. However, the other 90 percent—that is, most churches—are small. Isn’t it interesting that although most churches are small, most people are in large churches? For instance, 28 percent of all churchgoers are Roman Catholic, but only 6 percent of all

congregations are Catholic. They’ve always been huge because of the shortage of priests—it’s one priest to every 3,640 Catholics—which is why the smaller Protestant congregations can pick them off.

I think people go to megachurches because of the programs. Sure, they may be growing. In fact, Baylor University’s recent study’s figures show that they’re much more theologically conservative than smaller churches, which is why they’re growing—people like the theological conservatism. Still, how many people are members at these places? How many are really there?

Does anybody know how many people are in these megachurches?

It’s all attendance; it’s not membership. I talked to Joel Osteen the other week. He has one of the largest churches in the country with an attendance of about 42,000. He doesn’t know any of these people. It’s more like a rock concert. Are these people being discipled? Does anybody track them? I don’t think so. I’m a little leery of anybody who says that megachurches are growing. Does that mean that another 10,000 people are going to Joel Osteen’s church? I’m not too sure the megachurches are healthy.

And how many of those people who show up next Sunday at a megachurch were at their smaller church down the street three weeks ago where maybe they were baptized and went to Sunday school; but now they want to go to the big flashy church? People may be moving from rather unpleasant church circumstances, but they’re jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

Yes, there are a couple of books out about that. Christine Wicker, former Dallas Morning News reporter, just wrote a book called The Fall of the Evangelical Nation where she made that case: a lot of the church growth is basically people moving from smaller churches to large churches. She also pointed out that

the attendance figures seem totally blown up. The Southern Baptists say they have 16 million on their rolls, but 6 million actually attend services. That’s quite a drop. If they’re getting actual attendance of 6 million, you wonder about all the other denominations and what they’re getting. It doesn’t sound good.

It’s like saying, “Italy is Catholic.”

Exactly. We’re all wondering where these people are. Supposedly the number of unaffiliated people has gone up from 8 percent to 14 or 16 percent, but only 4 percent are atheists. The others are spiritual, but they’re not in a church. There are a number of people just floating about.

When I was growing up in evangelical circles, it was always the mainline Protestants or liberals who were nominal. Is it the case that evangelicals are becoming— ironically, in the pursuit of relevance—now the nominal part of American Protestantism?

I think there is a danger of that. I don’t know if they’re becoming nominal, in terms of just losing their salt. But that is a great question, and I think we don’t know yet. A number of folks are fighting to make sure that doesn’t happen. I see a lot of what we call the New Reformed Churches. I visited one in Seattle: Mars Hill, which is Mark Driscoll’s church. They’re bursting at the seams. There must be five or six branch churches now around Seattle, which is one of the more unchurched places in the country.

Driscoll says that people don’t want to hear the watered-down gospel stuff, and so he preaches a very strict gospel.

I think evangelicals could become nominal if they don’t watch out. There has been the seekerfriendly church and the purposedriven church and all that—which I think started as really good ideas—but they’ve contributed to a real dumbing down of the service.

S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 3 7

This is great for new believers, but after five years, you’ve got to do something for your more mature cohort.

Willow Creek, one of the bigger megachurches in the country, conducted a study in summer 2007 where they found out that 25 percent of those questioned were very unhappy, very dissatisfied with their church experience and were basically ready to bolt. As a response, the Willow Creek folks said that they needed to teach them how to be self-feeders. In other words, they need to learn how to get their own spiritual food, which is totally the wrong answer. They absolutely missed the point. No, you’ve got to have better teaching!

They need stronger stuff: meat, not milk. I am just not seeing it in a lot of places. It seems a lot of pastors think that their believers are stupid, that they need to have the basics over and over again. After a while, people just say: “Hey, I could get this on TV.” Are people really even getting the basics? If you think of the basics, for example, being the articles of the Apostles’ Creed, where you see in study after study, most evangelicals really can’t say the creed, or even identify basic teachings of the Bible or the basic plotline of the Scriptures, what does it mean to call this movement “theologically conservative” if they’re not conserving anything?

Actually, I will say as someone who has grown up Episcopalian: we can say the creed because we say it every Sunday. One good thing about going to a liturgical church is that we chant the words every single Sunday; so we do learn the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and all that. But, yes, in most evangelical churches they wouldn’t know the creed if they fell over it.

They might teach its precepts, but they don’t know it, and they don’t know what we call the Thirty-nine Articles in Anglicanism.

What are they conserving? Good 3 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

question. I think the typical pastor is totally torn. They say 50 percent of all pastors quit in the first five years anyway; so here you have an occupation under tremendous stress, expected to minister and be all things to all people—but what they need to do is just teach more basics. In fact, I was at a Pentecostal church last week where they were handing out stuff saying, “We expect you to be reading the Bible to your kids, and here’s everything you’re supposed to read.” I thought, “You must be kidding.

You want me to read Titus to my three year old?” But then I realized that they actually have standards at that church and that they expect you to do the reading. I’ve rarely ever been told that I’m expected to be biblically literate.

Isn’t that amazing at a time when people are saying that we need more discipleship? What does “disciple” mean? It means learning the faith and following Christ as someone who understands who he is.

I think people don’t know apologetics, they don’t know how to defend their faith. The way church is structured—you walk in, sing a couple hymns, listen to a sermon— it’s not one for taking in information and then reprocessing it out.

You almost need some kind of back and forth Plato style, or rabbinical style answering of questions. I’ve listened to a lot of sermons and then I’ve found myself in the middle of an argument where I know there is a good response for it but I can’t repeat it. There must be a better way of organizing where you actually school people more, teach them more, where they’re taking notes and then they have to feed it back, where you cement that in your home groups or in your families. I think the whole system of the way we run church is awful, and it’s not good for retaining information. In this day and age where you have everything coming against you—and some very knowledgeable people are arguing

against Christianity in every single way—you’ve got to be schooled in the basics and people aren’t.

We all know about the Mormons, and we know what they do.

During high school, they go to something called “seminary” early every day and study; and then they go to school for the day. After three years, these kids know their faith, or they at least know enough to be missionaries. We may disagree with what the Mormons say, but they have a knowledgeable laity. I think the whole way we do church is too passive; it’s not participatory; it needs to be rethought. That is my problem with megachurches. It’s like going to a rock concert, which is why—and I know I’m going all against the survey data—I don’t think megachurches are going to last. I don’t know when they’re going to die; I just don’t think they’re going to last. I don’t think that form of Christianity is going to hold.

The age of Wal-Mart will finally be unappealing.

If times get hard, you’ve got to have fellowship, you’ve got to have some group that you’re accountable to, and you need people to pray for you. Can you get that in a megachurch? I don’t think so. I’m not going to pick on Joel Osteen, but I’m just curious—I wonder how knowledgeable a typical megachurch member is about the Bible? I’ve asked him in an interview, “Why don’t you mention Jesus?” He answered, “Well, I do give the plan of salvation.” I said, “In your book, I don’t even see Jesus’ name.” How schooled are those 47,000 people who show up at one service a week? How trained are these people? I doubt they’re much trained at all.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t agree with you more, Julia. Thank you for all of the work that you’ve done to help us understand this phenomenon a little bit better.

REQUIRED READING FOR 21ST CENTURY CHRISTIANS mode r n reformation must-re a ds

Readings on Discipleship and Growth A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

Why Johnny Can’t Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers

by Eugene Peterson InterVarsity Press, 2000 Peterson, a pastor-poet at his best in this classic work, charts a course for discipleship that ignores the quickfix schemes so prevalent in our churches. Focused on the Psalms of Ascent, Peterson helps us grow in faithfulness to the Faith.

by T. David Gordon P & R Publishing, 2009 As he explains in his article in this issue, Gordon believes that modern media have created hurdles for minister and parishioner alike. Here, he substantiates the charge and offers the solution.

Calling and Character: Virtues of the Ordained Life

Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World by Being Different

by William H. Willimon Abingdon Press, 2000 With special emphasis on the ordained ministers of the church, Methodist bishop Willimon uncovers the difficult and deeply rewarding discipleship of pastors.

by Tullian Tchividjian Multnomah Books, 2009 What does a Christ-centered life look like in the halls of power, the public square, and the neighborhood? Tchividjian seeks to recover the gospel from its present obscurity and make it the guiding star for the normal Christian life.

SEE ALSO: The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When Grace Transforms by Terry Johnson (Christian Focus)

(Touchstone)

Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind by Mortimer Adler (Collier Books/Macmillan)

What is Faith? by J. Gresham Machen (Banner of Truth)

Making Kingdom Disciples: A New Framework

by Charles H. Dunahoo (P & R Publishing)

Spiritual Mothering: The Titus 2 Model for Women Mentoring Women by Susan Hunt (Crossway Books)

S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 3 9

REVIEWS w h a t ’ s

b e i n g

r e a d

The Gospel According to Söderberg

R

ural Sweden is dotted with pristine, government-subsidized Lutheran

er is embellished with metallic foil letters, the spine perfect-bound, churches whose pews and pulpits are mostly empty—even on Sundays. and the volumes look like slim, adless versions of Vogue crossed with So it’s worth taking a close look at Bible Illuminated: The Book, a new ver- National Geographic. On one page there’s cat-eyed Angelina Jolie, sion of the Good Book and on the next an Indian woman giving birth amid clangthat in one year has ining bangles and bright cotton dresses. And although every creased Swedish Bible iota of Scripture is printed, it is the photos—edgy, aggressive, sales by 50 percent and graceful, at times political, and almost always contemporary— received more press that dominate. Indeed, a good deal of reading Bible Illuminated than a new Volvo modis looking at Bible Illuminated. el.

The editors, working with the American Bible Society (of Bible Illuminated is the which the Good News Translation, used in Bible Illuminated, elegant brainchild of is a proprietary text), did establish a clear way to link phoDag Söderberg, the tos with the verses they “illuminate.” The verses are either founder and former highlighted in blocks of yellow, printed in red, or repeated CEO of one of the in pull quotes. That way, readers can easily spot those verslargest advertising firms es, read them, consider surrounding verses, and so on. In this in Europe. In 2007, he kind of ripple-effect reading, photos are intended to be like founded the company windows directing the reader past themselves and into ScripForlaget Illuminated ture. They also direct where reading is to begin. But, of course, (now called Illuminated having images connected to verses means that some sentences World) with the express get read more than others. Which means that, in this repurpose of making clasvamped Bible, the natural autonomy of the book is undersic works of literature— cut by the sensibilities of the editors. And while the images Bible Illuminated: The including, especially, the are there to catch the reader’s gaze, they may distort (perBook: New Testament Bible—more widely haps destroy) his or her effort to understand Scripture.

by Robert Wuthnow read.

Toward that end, Illuminated World, 2008 he undertook to present 283 pages (paperback), $35.00 them in the casual and Modern Reformation invites you to submit entertaining format of a a book review for publication in the glossy magazine. Söderberg wasn’t the first to think of makReviews section of an upcoming issue this ing a Biblezine. In 2003, Thomas Nelson printed the best-sellyear. We would like to give you the opporing original Revolve, which it styled for teen girls. tunity to critique, evaluate, and consider Bible Illuminated did so well in Sweden that Illuminated books both good and bad from your World decided to publish it elsewhere, and looked first to the reformational perspective. Thoughtful land of the Good Book business itself, America. The New TesChristians will examine the most important tament was published here in October 2008; and the Old Tesbooks of the day, and we want to tament, featuring a black-and-white photo of a couple about encourage interaction with books that to kiss on its cover, will come out this fall, at which time it inspire and instruct, or maybe frustrate and will also go on sale in Finland. France, Germany, Poland, concern. Submit your review of Spain, and South Korea have expressed much interest in 1,000 words or less in an email to printing Bible Illuminated as well. reviews@modernreformation.org.

Why is Söderberg’s Bible so popular? Because it’s the right Please reference the guidelines mix of cool and polite. It’s cool because it echoes the suave and suggestions available at look and feel of other magazines. You can read it on the Metro www.modernreformation.org/submissions. ride home and no one would guess it’s a Bible. The soft cov-

4 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

Bible Illuminated is selling well for another reason: It’s polite, since it isn’t religiously exclusive. Christianity is presented not as the only true religion but as one among many, and Scripture as world-class literature not as the inspired Word of God. This isn’t surprising, given that Söderberg describes himself as a “spiritual but not particularly religious” man and says that he made Bible Illuminated to reacquaint “today’s reader with one of the most important historical and cultural”— note he doesn’t say religious—“texts.” He says his version doesn’t even “support a specific faith.” Even so, it would be a mistake to think that Bible Illuminated lacks a message— indeed, a gospel.

Consider one of the most conspicuous sections of Bible Illuminated: a photo essay in Mark. It opens with a picture of Muhammad Ali warming up in his red boxing gloves. Next to him is a verse mentioning John the Baptist: “God said, ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you to open the way for you.’” What follows is a photo essay beginning with a somber picture of Nelson Mandela gazing skyward. Turn the page and there are portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Bono, Mother Teresa, Angelina Jolie, Che Guevara, Princess Diana, Al Gore, and John Lennon—among others.

At the end, their names are listed alongside their deeds. The message is loud and clear: It doesn’t matter who you say Christ is, savior or prophet or teacher; what matters is whether you love your neighbor as yourself and demonstrate that love, especially for “the least of these.” This is the gospel of amplified action.

Thus does Bible Illuminated sever the Second Great Commandment from the First. The result is Christless Christianity. This gospel is articulated further in Luke, which contains the only significant extra-biblical text in Bible Illuminated: a section entitled “Eight Ways to Change the World,” a spinoff of the eight Millennium Development Goals drafted in 2000 by the United Nations. The goals include universal primary education and the eradication of extreme poverty and world hunger, and they’re supposed to be met by 2015. At the close of “Eight Ways” there’s a special exhortation to the reader, “This Is Where You Come In,” which says, in part: We are not asking you to give us all your money, to wear a hair shirt, or to stop eating ice cream. We ask only that when you leave, you make a pledge to do one thing, just one thing—to help make the world a better and fairer place. Remember—every action, no matter how small, will create a tide that will help to change the world.

The alternative to joining the “tide,” according to Bible Illuminated, is inaction. On the Biblezine’s inside covers there are tidy rows of people—between ages 18 and 35, the target audience of Bible Illuminated—sitting slack-jacked before computers at DreamHack, the biggest annual video game session in the world (and held in Sweden). Individual portraits of these people’s faces appear in the Book of Acts, glowing red or green or blue by screen light. They’re the perfect foils to the portraits of Gandhi and company in Mark. The choice the

reader is asked to make is between getting lost in a vacuum of pretty pixels or helping others. Bible Illuminated does not address the reader as if he is in need of salvation; instead, it sees the reader as one who can save others.

People of any faith, or of no faith, can agree that doing good is good, but they won’t agree on God’s name or even whether he exists. Bible Illuminated seeks to find the common denominator most pleasing to most people. This is grounded in agreeable actions (“Eight Ways to Change the World”), not in exclusive beliefs, in “deeds, not creeds” as the popular phrase goes. It’s probably no accident that the only image that directly speaks about salvation is an Andy Warhol silkscreen that declares, “Repent and Sin No More!” Nor is there much reference to sin and souls (outside the New Testament text itself) in Söderberg’s Bible. After all, the easiest way to forget sin is to forget the soul. Remember Flannery O’Connor’s prescient novel Wise Blood, in which the protagonist Hazel Motes, before he founds “The Church of Truth Without Christ Crucified” (of which he is the sole member), comes to the conclusion that the only way to escape sin is to have no soul.

No book has been more tinkered with than the Bible. As one Shaker pilgrim said during the Second Great Awakening, “Ten thousand Reformers like so many moles / Have plowed all the Bible and cut it [in] holes.” Since then, the moles and the holes have only increased. But what cannot change is God’s Word. No amount of pictures or other visual static can alter the truth—that Scripture is clear and communicates directly to those who read or hear it. To paraphrase Martin Luther, Christ will open our understanding to understand his Scripture. We will not. Christ is the Word; and wherever the Word is presented in full—whether in the still small voice of the book or in the roaring pop culture chorus of a sleek magazine—there is room for his grace to abide and to be at work in us.

Katherine Eastland is an assistant editor at The Weekly Standard and member of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland. A longer version of this article first appeared in The Weekly Standard under the title “God’s Polaroid.”

From Age to Age

by Keith A. Mathison Presbyterian and Reformed, 2009 812 pages (hardback), $39.99 Some years back, the late E. J. Young was speaking in a church and responded to a question asking for an overview of the Bible.

Dr. Young’s response was full, yet simple and edifying. In From Age to Age, Mathison has written a similar overview of the Bible with a focus on eschatology. The S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 4 1

format is simple: survey various books in the Protestant canonical order and then summarize the findings at the end of each section. He seems aware of and sensitive to various trends in philosophy and culture in his helpful introduction, where he orients the reader to his biblical theological approach. Approximately the first half of the book is given to the Old Testament and the second half treats the New Testament with an intervening excursus on the intertestamental period. Mathison repeatedly shows us how the text of Scripture invites us to look to the future with an eye to Christ. Some examples will illustrate this. In Part 1, the Old Testament, he sees the historical books in the Old Testament as theological history that is history pointing toward its intended goal: to showcase the kingship of the Messiah. In Part 2, he writes of Luke’s Gospel as history with a view toward “providing Theophilus with a certain historical foundation for his Christian faith.”

The strengths of Mathison’s book are many. First, it is an excellent contribution to surveys of biblical literature and redemptive history. If someone should desire to read a helpful overview of the ebb and flow of biblical revelation, then that person would do well to turn to Mathison’s book.

Second, to his credit, Mathison has read widely and interacts with a range of scholarship, and he often respectfully represents many different views on an issue or a passage even while not shrinking from giving his own opinion; however, it was apparent to this reviewer that he mostly engages and leans upon conservative secondary literature.

Third, Mathison is aware of the importance of the New Testament for rightly interpreting the Old, and he seems favorably disposed toward apostolic hermeneutics. See, for example, his treatment of Psalm 16 or his treatment of Matthew 5:17. He is aware of recent literature pointing to the significance of Exodus and second Exodus motifs peppered throughout the Scripture, and insights demonstrating that Jesus’ ministry is the fulfillment of the New Exodus. Indeed, he sees the intimate connection of the New Testament books with what has preceded them in the Old Testament.

Fourth, the real goal of Mathison’s book is to set forth what the Scriptures teach about eschatology. For him, this is not merely the Scripture’s teaching about the end times or “a study of the consummation of God’s purposes at the end of history” as he states it; rather, it also includes “a study of the stages in the unfolding of those purposes.” To this end, he is following in the venerable footsteps of Geerhardus Vos and other likeminded biblical theologians. Indeed, throughout the book, he tries to describe the distinctive eschatological contribution of each biblical book or section of Scripture with which he is interacting.

Fifth, he is sensitive to and tries to bring the reader into the various genres in which the Holy Scriptures have been written.

Sixth, Mathison and the editors at P & R did a good job producing a clean and readable book that is free from errors as far as this reviewer could see.

Finally, and most importantly, there is hardly a section of the book that does not take pains to show Scripture’s constant preoccupation with fulfillment in the work and min4 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

istry of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Although there are numerous strengths in Mathison’s book, there are some areas in which this reviewer was somewhat disappointed. First, even though two chapters are given to Genesis in the beginning of the book, there is very little development of the doctrine of common grace as clearly taught and emphasized in that portion of Scripture. Second, the discussion on Hebrew poetry is overly facile. In a work of this size and considering the importance of Hebrew poetry, more could have been done in this area. Third, his discussion on the overall structure of the Psalter could have been developed more and should have reflected engagement with some of the significant work that has taken place on that subject. Fourth, although Mathison argues appropriately that eschatology is about more than merely end times as stated above, nevertheless his own eschatological (end-times) millennial commitments come through in the book. He is sympathetic with postmillennialism. This becomes apparent in a number of areas.

For example, readers should be aware of Mathison’s views of Daniel 7, which influence many of his interpretations in the Gospels, especially of the Olivet Discourse, the Book of Acts, and so forth. Mathison recognizes the frequency with which our Lord and the biblical writers referred to Daniel 7; however, instead of interpreting that Old Testament chapter as having primary reference to the second coming of Christ, he views Daniel 7 as a prophecy of the inauguration of the messianic kingdom, since Christ receives there his kingdom from the Ancient of Days. This suggestion, in the opinion of this reviewer, is inexact, and it leads Mathison to misinterpret a number of biblical passages that allude to or cite Daniel 7.

Indeed, I would suggest that there is nothing in Daniel 7 (or Daniel 2) that would suggest that there is an appearance of the kingdom in power (or especially a kingdom in power as a realm as some postmillennialists suggest) before the consummation; that is, the second coming of Christ. This is not meant to suggest that Christ’s present spiritual kingdom is not powerful in the sense that the church is advancing and growing here on earth. Nor does it deny the fact that as we recite the Lord’s Prayer, “we pray,” along with the Westminster Larger Catechism #191, that the kingdom of sin and Satan may be destroyed, the gospel propagated throughout the world, the Jews called, the fullness of the Gentiles brought in...that Christ would rule in our hearts here, and hasten the time of his second coming, and our reigning with him forever: and that he would be pleased so to exercise the kingdom of his power in all the world, as may best conduce to these ends.

Mathison does recognize the already/not-yet dynamic of the kingdom of God, which he states explicitly in various places throughout the book, including an illustration of Vos’s twoage diagram on page 496. Along these lines, he acknowledges that the inauguration of the kingdom does not mean

the end of suffering. However, his postmillennialism leads to an overemphasis on the victorious conquest of Christ’s kingdom over all cultures and nations. Let the reader understand, this reviewer is merely drawing attention to one area—a very important one—of which readers should be fully aware if they are to take up this book. After all, one’s eschatology (“view of last things”) will greatly influence how one understands the Scripture’s unfolding stages of God’s purposes.

Finally, and related to the last point, a partial preterist hermeneutic leads Mathison to interpret passages, which are usually understood as having association with the final judgment and the second coming of Christ, instead as referring to events that have already occurred (this is not to imply that Mathison is any friend of full or hyper-preterism). This move makes a goulash of some passages he treats, especially in the Book of Revelation.

In spite of the previous criticisms, Mathison’s book is an excellent introduction to the Bible for any new or mature Christian who wants an overview of the Scriptures. He writes clearly and at a level that will be accessible to many.

Bryan D. Estelle is a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and associate professor of Old Testament at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido. He is recently the author of Salvation through Judgment and Mercy: The Gospel According to Jonah, and editor and contributor to The Law is Not of Faith: Essays on Works and Grace in the Mosaic Covenant.

Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back

by Frank Schaeffer Da Capo Press, 2008 448 pages (paperback), $16.00 Crazy for God is a sassy, angry, honest, revealing, vulnerable, unsettling, insightful, frustrating book. In other words, it sums up Frank Schaeffer. It is not, however, the tell-all, reject-all book about his parents and evangelicalism that I thought it might be.

I do have serious misgivings.

He has been accused of dishonoring his parents, especially his aged, impaired mother who is not able to defend herself.

Reading the book is much like sitting in as a damaged child of famous parents unburdens himself to his therapist. If say-

ing such things at all, or saying them in public, breaks the Fifth Commandment, then he is guilty, but I’m not ready to declare that this is the case.

As I read the book, the words of the psalmist, “If I had said, ‘I will speak thus,’ I would have betrayed the generation of your children” (Ps. 73:15), came to mind. The psalmist wrote honestly of his doubts only after they were resolved. But what if one has not resolved his doubts and no longer believes they can be resolved by any “answers”? Is he bound to hold his peace? I don’t know.

Schaeffer’s language is earthy. He uses both the “s” and “f” words freely. If Paul had this kind of thing in mind when he directed “let no corrupt communication come out of your mouth,” then Schaeffer is guilty. It does seem that he could write a soul-baring book with the same punch with less frequent use of such language. That he uses it at all will offend many.

He is a man who is still angry with his parents for who they were, what they did, and how they reared him. But this book is not a hate-filled temper tantrum. He has come to terms with his experience of his father better than of his mother, but he has sincere affection for both. The descriptions of times of tenderness and intimacy with his father are moving. His appreciation of his mother’s frustrations in marriage and life shows genuine empathy, while his sensitivity toward her in the times he spends with her in her frailty is admirable.

One reviewer has said that Schaeffer is obsessed with sex, but I don’t think obsession is the right word. He has the fascination and conflicted feelings about sex that is not uncommon among those who grew up in fundamentalism. In addition, he has an excuse for his “level of interest,” if he is telling the truth about his parents. His mother was unusually open with her children about her intimate marital relations (distinguishing her from the vast majority of fundamentalists) and his father’s sexual needs were (shall we say) intense.

Schaeffer may be wrong in terms of the accuracy and balance of his memories and perceptions of his parents, but he does not seem motivated by a desire to smear and discredit them. His father had a temper, experienced periods of doubt and depression, was both indulgent and negligent toward his son, and allowed himself to be pushed by his son and others toward a political and public role that negated much of the good he had done earlier. His mother was vain, at times dismissive of his father, self-righteous, and for the most part (unlike her husband) blissfully unaware of her faults.

But Frank does not spare himself. He may confess his sexual sins with a little too much glee and be a bit too proud of his doubts, but for the most part he is honest—honest about his rebellion, his arrogance, his hypocrisy, his failures as a husband and a father, his intensity, and his impulsiveness.

He is also honest about his doubts and his rejections of the Christian faith. It is somewhat surprising that he is so honest about them inasmuch as he does not write to debunk faith.

Most markedly he has his doubts about God, not an uncommon doubt to have but an uncommon one to admit. He has dismissed the inerrancy of the Bible as a view that can S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 4 3

be sustained only by denying or explaining away the things that argue against it. He can no longer accept, and was never really comfortable with, the glib and formulaic expressions of Christian belief and practice so common among the old fundamentalists, the parachurch organizations, and the “faces” of current evangelicalism.

Yet he is not entirely without faith. He knows that his persistent search for meaning comes from somewhere. He does not expect to get closure in his search, but he takes even that as evidence of a universal quest for the infinite. He hopes that “maybe there is a God who forgives, who loves, who knows.”

Is this saving faith? Not exactly? He has not rejected Christian ethics, but, if anything, has become more consistent in their practice as he aged. Perhaps the fact that Frank cannot let go of his faith says he is in the grip of a God who will not let go of him.

He probably did not intend it to be so, but the book throughout points to the fundamental weakness of twentieth-century evangelicalism—its ecclesiology.

His father had little regard for the church as an historic and concrete institution. Both Francis Schaeffer and L’Abri were, like so many evangelical stars and all parachurch ministries, beyond the accountability to and the oversight of the church in her governing role. Revivalism, pietism, fundamentalism, liberalism, and spiritual pugilism had all done their parts in emasculating the church and putting the individual, his conscience, and his ministry outside the authority of the church. As Frank observes about his father, “Dad was our ‘holy tradition.’ He was bigger than any church.” And so it is with them all.

The weakness in ecclesiology is revealed also in the church’s worship. Frank got to the point that he could not put up with the tackiness of so much of evangelicalism. Take its music for an example: “How I wished that God had never made any men or women with a ‘ministry in music.’ I wish he would strike them all down so I’d never have to spend another minute listening to another fat lady (even the men were ‘fat ladies’ to me) sing another Jesus-is-my-boyfriend song synthesized to violins.” Preach on, brother!

His father’s funeral, which was held in a gym and not conducted by a minister, shows evangelical worship at its worst.

“Dad’s funeral embodied all the chaos, make-it-up-as-yougo insanity of evangelicalism. It was to funerals what ‘personalized’ weddings are to marriage, one where the young couple compose their own vows while some friend ‘really like into guitar’ provided the music.”

One of the most insightful paragraphs in the book comes from Frank’s experience of that funeral. “There is good reason we humans take refuge in the collective wisdom accumulated over time as expressed in the liturgies and cultural habits of long practice. And the arrogance of the Protestant notion that one’s individual whims are equal to all occasions manifests itself in innumerable bad hair moments and in dreadful worship services, let alone innumerable do-ityourself weddings. But funerals are supposed to be serious.

Creativity isn’t always good.”

Frank Schaeffer regrets his role in the rise and develop4 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

ment of the religious right, which is an example of the church getting confused about why it exists. This is a significant admission. I can remember thinking to myself in the 70s that his father had gone off the tracks with his Christian Manifesto and that Frank’s A Time for Anger was over the top. The church then was guilty of hitching its wagon to the various horses of politics, and the faithful still do not always understand that the kingdom does not come about in this way.

He has rethought his position on abortion. He remains essentially conservative though no longer absolutist. He scorns and skewers the liberal position far more than the conservative, but he now thinks that it was a mistake in the wake of Roe v. Wade for evangelicalism to move to the “no abortion for any reason” position. I can remember being in a seminary class pre-Roe where there was a discussion of abortion.

One student spoke of his wife’s having had an abortion upon a doctor’s recommendation, and there was no horror expressed. It still seems to me that it is impossible to draw a line, so it is safe and wise to mark the beginning of life and of its protection at conception, but we have got ourselves in a situation where rational discussion of national policy is impossible for either side.

For some reason Schaffer has turned sour and mean about Calvinism, identifying it with fundamentalism in its simplemindedness, rigidity, smug piety, and legalistic rules. On this he is wrong. But, perhaps, the problem is that he learned his Calvinism from his father, and his father never understood it either. Francis “didn’t like” Calvin. Added to Frank’s attribution of most of the things he doesn’t like about his parents to Calvinistic sources, and I guess you can understand.

Surely the book needs to be answered, as Os Guinness has sought to do. But what we need first to do (and Guinness I think has tried) is to hear Schaeffer. We may not like it. It may make us uncomfortable. Heaven, forefend! It may make us think. But hear and think we must because he’s telling us a lot of truth about ourselves.

William H. Smith is pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Louisville, Mississippi.

The Advent of Evangelicalism edited by Michael A. G. Haykin and Kenneth J. Stewart B&H Academic, 2008 432 pages (paperback), $24.99 Before George Marsden and Mark Noll were, David Bebbington was. This is to say, that before prominent evangelical historians became so because of their definitive and defining work on the history of evangelicalism, David Bebbington, whose name

is seldom heard in the United States outside academic circles, wrote a book arguably more important than any by Marsden or Noll on the history of evangelicalism. Part of the problem for Bebbington, a self-conscious Baptist from England who teaches at the University of Stirling in Scotland, was the subject of his book, well captured by the title, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (Routledge, 1989). Despite the United States’ global footprint, its citizens and believers tend to be a parochial lot, and so a book on the history of British evangelicalism would not appear to be useful for American evangelicals. Even so, for all of the literature on evangelicalism that historians such as Marsden and Noll have inspired since the Reagan Revolution made born-again Protestantism a subject with which to be reckoned (and sometimes endured), no American church historian has attempted a survey of evangelicalism as erudite, comprehensive, detailed, and economical (under 300 pages of text) as Bebbington’s study of British evangelicalism.

Even if Bebbington is not the church-narthex name that Noll and Marsden are, his definition of evangelicalism is one that many Americans have heard even if not being able to attach a name to it. Bebbington argued that four distinguishing marks had characterized evangelicalism from the early eighteenth century down to the time of his writing: an emphasis on conversion (conversionism), a zeal for holy living (activism), a stress upon biblical authority (biblicism), and an understanding of the gospel that centered in the cross (crucicentism). What contributed to the usefulness of Bebbington’s definition was not simply that it could be reduced to bullet points or even that it resonated with most Protestants who self-applied the term “evangelical.” No, the import of Bebbington’s work was that his definition stemmed from detailed observations of British evangelicalism over the course of a quarter millennia. In other words, he did not start with a definition and then look for Protestants from various churches who fit his pigeon hole. Instead, he looked at those who called themselves evangelicals and concluded that traits set evangelicals apart from Anglicans, liberals, Barthians, Lutherans, etc.

Too often the appropriation of Bebbington’s work, however, has included the definition but neglected the history.

Often missed is that his book begins with 1730. Many bornagain Protestants tend to regard their faith as synonymous with the one preached by Paul and practiced by Philemon.

Others with a measure of historical awareness may concede that modern evangelicalism is different from the church of the Acts and the apostles if only because of the intervening period in which Roman Catholicism dominated Christianity in the West. Here, though, evangelicalism is often the same kind of Protestantism advocated by the likes of Luther and Calvin. But by tracing the beginnings of evangelicalism not to 1530 but to 1730, Bebbington indicated that his subject was a new kind of Protestantism, one in which the revivals of the First Great Awakening transformed Protestantism to give the faith of the Reformers’ heirs at least a style if not a zeal that was distinct from older Protestantism. This did not mean that evangelical religion was without precedent; its pro-

ponents, from John Wesley and George Whitefield to Jonathan Edwards, did draw upon strains within English Protestantism both inside and outside the Church of England. Still, evangelicalism was sufficiently different from Puritanism and Anglicanism to classify it as new.

The reason for going on at length about Bebbington’s book before turning to the collection of essays under review is that The Advent of Evangelicalism is precisely an assessment of Bebbington’s implicit argument about the novelty of born-again Protestantism. It is not a hostile book since the editors dedicate it to Bebbington and several of the contributors are former students of the University of Stirling historian. And yet, for all the deference shown, seventeen different authors take their shot at Bebbington by arguing, or sometimes merely suggesting, that Bebbington may have erred by emphasizing discontinuity rather than continuity between evangelicalism and earlier forms of Protestantism. The argument for continuity comes in three different waves: one section providing overviews of regional patterns (Scotland, Wales, England, New England, and Holland); another section featuring specific comparisons (Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Puritanism, Edwards, and the histories of revivals written by revivalists); and one more section examining specific doctrines or practices (conversion, assurance, eschatology, and Scripture).

As readable and informative as all the essays are—though the book may be of most interest to historians who study evangelicalism—they suffer from a defect inherent to a project such as this. By letting Bebbington’s definition of evangelicalism set the terms, many of the authors wind up looking for features such as conversion or the centrality of the cross in earlier Protestant figures and eras. So, for example, Cameron A. MacKenzie can write that—despite differences among evangelicals, Lutherans, and Reformed—Luther was an evangelical. The reason? He had a high view of the Bible, believed in justification by faith alone, saw the need to oppose error in the church, taught that good works were the fruit of saving faith, and sensed continuity between his own teaching and the church through the ages. Another example is Paul Helm’s chapter on Calvin.

Among the four points outlined by Bebbington, Helm finds basic agreement between Calvin and evangelicalism, even arguing that Calvin’s comments on the change in his life in 1534 that led him to identify with the Protestant cause was akin to the kind of instantaneous conversion later advanced by the revivalists. Helm even holds out that Calvin attached enough importance to this conversion to give him evangelical affinities.

(The book concludes with a response from Bebbington who essentially has none of the challenges to his argument and insists once again, with great tact and deft historical touch, that evangelicalism represented a “revolutionary development in Protestant history” [432].)

If the contributors had followed Bebbington’s own approach rather than starting with his definition, they might have begun with older developments in Protestantism before seeking to find harmony between, for instance, the Reformers and the Awakeners. In fact, one of the greatest clouds hovering over this volume, aside from Bebbington’s gracious negative response, is the Reformation’s doctrine of the church and regard for worship S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 4 5

and the Sacraments. For instance, how exactly should Calvin, who said that outside the church there was no forgiveness of sins (“There is no other entrance into life, save as she may conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us from her breasts, and embrace us in her loving care to the end”), be harmonized with George Whitefield, who said of his ministry that it was indifferent to matters of church government, ordination, and liturgy (“It was best to preach the new birth, and the power of godliness, and not to insist so much on the form: for people would never be brought to one mind as to that; nor did Jesus Christ ever intend it”)? Historians such as David Bebbington and Mark Noll have argued on the basis of different impulses like these that evangelicalism was a new kind of Protestantism. Most evangelicals find little discomfort in that conclusion, but born-again historians, who would like to have as much comfort from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as from the eighteenth and nineteenth, are the ones, as this book demonstrates, who understand best the import of Bebbington’s or Noll’s arguments for their own identity as evangelicals. For anyone wanting to understand such disquiet, this book has it.

D. G. Hart is the author most recently (with John R. Muether) of Seeking a Better Country: 300 Years of American Presbyterianism (P&R, 2007).

POINT OF CONTACT: BOOKS YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE READING The Soloist

by Steve Lopez Berkley Books, 2008 289 pages (paperback), $15.00 How do you exegete “the poor will always be with us” and reconcile that with the command to love our neighbor as ourselves?

Enter Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times columnist, looking for a lead on a one-off story and finding instead a four-plus-year relationship with an exceptional musician living on Skid Row. This is a tale of common grace and is both a spurring on to love and good deeds, and a reminder that personal discomfort is often a necessary part of living the gospel before others.

Unlike many who are apt to read The Soloist, or see the 60 Minutes feature (March 22, 2009), or view the DreamWorks film released earlier this year, for me this is more personal.

In the early 1990s, Philadelphia’s corner of 18th and Spruce 4 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

Streets was a regular hang-out. Moses, Jimmy, and Billy were invariably panhandling on the corner, between Day’s Deli and the Great Scott Supermarket, trying to get enough money to eat a bit and get their next score. The very wealthy lived just one block north on Rittenhouse Square. The very poor, four blocks south. Tenth Presbyterian Church, with beautiful Tiffany windows depicting an angel over a field, was one block east. And Temple Beth Shalom Synagogue, with exquisite stained glass windows picturing the redemption of God’s people from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land, sat across the intersection.

The streets of Philadelphia, like New York, Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles, were flooded with the homeless—many winding up there after the mental institutions were closed in the early 1980s. Joining those struggling under the burden of mental illness were many others landing there, living hand to mouth due to an enslavement to drug addiction.

On cold winter days, nearly every heat grate over the subway system was a brief respite of warmth to too many people. And the city was overwhelmed.

But just like Lopez in Los Angeles, it takes only one person to make a difference. By God’s good grace, my husband Jeff saw Moses, Jimmy, and Billy as men, not so unlike himself. And today, one man’s story was dramatically changed.

Thomas (aka Moses) is now married to his common-law wife (Jeff was his Best Man) and has held a steady job for fifteen years and counting. He spent the night before his first entrance to America’s Keswick on our couch—afraid of change, but more afraid of not changing. He’d been hearing about the love of God in a community Bible study at Tenth and seeing it in the life of my husband. After cycling back through the strong call of addiction, Thomas returned to Keswick a second time and began a real journey of change, called by the Holy Spirit. Truth is, this far along, Thomas may still stumble. But even more sure, he is redeemed.

Why this background on a book review? Because when I read The Soloist, I believed it because I had seen it. This tender, clear-eyed, heartbreaking, and heartwarming account is told in the voice of a popular former Philadelphia columnist transplanted to Los Angeles. Bringing his same blend of compassion and tenacity to the problems of L.A. that he did to Philadelphia, Lopez unpacks the difficult and complex story of one man who hit schizophrenia head on. Ill prepared, in the intense environment of Julliard School of Music in the 1970s, and during an era when Thorizine was the solution that literally wiped out the very essence of what made a person a person, Nathaniel Ayers migrated to Los Angeles and lived on the streets for over twenty-five years before meeting the man who would become his friend.

But The Soloist is also the account of the journalist who became more and more a part of one man’s life. Starting with a single feature article, over the years Lopez grappled with his own frustrations as he revealed the difficulties of mental illness, homelessness, and drug addiction. What looked simple was not. Relationships with mothers, fathers, and siblings are a tangled web of love and despair. And the mystery of why Nathaniel could organize and keep track of every item

in his cart, but not his life, is heartbreaking.

As with any tale of redemption, there are many starts and stops. Anger, doubt, pride, self-preservation all enter into the story. But so do grace, mercy, friendship, and respect.

When Nathaniel becomes Mr. Ayers, a real change begins to form. Lopez himself is also changed. He enters into a world of classical music that soothes his own troubled soul, and extends himself to include an outsider into the very heart of his family.

It is rare that a motion picture does justice to the printed word. And while the DreamWorks production makes changes to the story to make it more “Hollywood,” it stays true to the thrust and purpose of the original story.

According to Lopez’s account at a local One Book, One Philadelphia event, Ayers continues to live in a one-room apartment on Skid Row. He has two goals: to use music as a therapy for others in the struggle, and to join and perform with a community orchestra. He may never reach either goal.

But right now, each day is a challenge to live fully.

Whether you have never seen a homeless person on the streets of a city—or you have seen so many that you are numb—The Soloist will make you think differently about people. By God’s grace, we will each see those around us as image-bearers of God. Even if they live on the street.

Diana S. Frazier is an avid reader and the former book review editor for Modern Reformation. She is a member of Cresheim Valley Church (PCA) and works in Institutional Advancement at CrossWorld, a cross-cultural missions agency.

“Where have you been?” I ask.

He says he’s been around, here and there. Nowhere special.

A car whooshes by and his mind reels.

“Blue car, green car, white car,” he says.

“There goes a police car, and God is on the other side of that wall....There goes Jacqueline du Pré,” Nathaniel says, pointing at a woman a block away. “She’s really amazing.”

I tell him I doubt that it’s the late cellist, who died in 1987.

Nathaniel says he isn’t so sure.

“I don’t know how God works,” he tells me sincerely, with an expression that says anything is possible.

Celebrating Calvin (continued from page 13) Herbert D. Foster, Collected Papers of Herbert D. Foster (privately printed, 1929), 93.

7Alister McGrath contrasts Calvin’s success with that of Zurich Reformer, Vadian, and identifies Calvin’s “extensive publishing programme” as one of the differences. Alister McGrath, A Life of John Calvin: A Study in the Shaping of Western Culture (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1993), 124–26.

8Monter, 79.

9 Robert Kingdon explains that the number was likely more since some were co-opted by others. In 1562, neighbors complained that paper mills were running round the clock. Robert M. Kingdon, Geneva and the Coming Wars of Religion in France, 1555–1563 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1956), 94. Jean Crespin even contracted to purchase bales of paper from outside Geneva (95).

10Documents on the Continental Reformation, ed. William G. Naphy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 87.

11Monter, 82. Robert Kingdon notes that the books were so well circulated that as early as 1560 the cardinal of Lorraine had successfully collected twenty-two pamphlets that had criticized him.

Kingdon, 103. Another historian in 1561 reported the spread to Paris of Beza’s Psalter, catechisms, and popular Christian books, “all well bound in red and black calf skin, some well gilded” (103).

12Monter, 82.

13Calvinism in Europe, 1540–1610: A Collection of Documents, trans. and ed. by Alistair Duke, Gillian Lewis, and Andrew Pettegree (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), 57.

14McGrath, 12. See also E. Droz, “Fausses addresses typographiques,” Bulletin of Historical Research 23 (1961), 380–86, 572– 74.

15Kingdon, Calvin and Calvinism, 37. The sermon referred to by Foster is a 1663 sermon by British minister Robert South, who referred to Calvin as “the great mufti of Geneva.” Collected Papers of Herbert D. Foster, 116.

16Kingdon, Calvin and Calvinism, 37. Other historians argue that the Puritanism of New England was “patterned after the Westminster Catechism and embodied the type of Calvinistic thought current in all of New England at that time.” See Peter De Jong, The Covenant Idea in New England Theology, 1620–1847 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1945), 85. Foster, 79, lists the numerous Americans who owned copies of Calvin’s Institutes. Patricia Bonomi has also firmly established that the majority of seventeenth-century Americans followed “some form of Puritan Calvinism, which itself was divided into a number of factions.” See Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 14.

17Cited in Charles Arrowood posted at: http://www.visi.com/~ contra_m/ab/jure/jure-chapter3.html.

6

—Steve Lopez, The Soloist

S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 4 7

FINAL THOUGHTS f r o m

t h e

d e s k

o f

t h e

e d i t o r - i n - c h i e f

Discipleship Unplugged

A

young American entrepreneur becomes enamored of the superbly crafted cuck-

you read, the more you want to keep on doing it. oo clock he picked up in a quaint Swiss village. A year later, he returns with Then it becomes a habit and it’s what you want to an idea: If he can figure out how the clock was made, he can develop a proto- do whenever you can.”

What if parents and youth type and put it on the assembly line in China for mass dispastors took that approach more often? tribution around the world. It can be made more quickly, Our children, as well as new converts to the faith, need efficiently, and therefore cheaply once the secrets of its contime to mature, and they need pastors, not programs. They struction are put down on paper. Locating the craftsman who need to belong to a community of disciples—older believers, made his clock, the American begins asking details about its fellow-saints from various walks of life and ethnic backconstruction. Soon, however, the craftsman runs out of angrounds—who simultaneously show and tell what it means swers, so the entrepreneur looks over his shoulder as he sets to trust in Christ and to love and serve their neighbors. There to work. “How do you make that squiggle?” he asks. “I don’t is no manual for this. Not even the Bible is really a manuknow,” the craftsman replies. “I’ve done it for years. I grew al of discipleship. Rather, it’s the unique story that gives rise up making these clocks with my father—this is his shop— to the doctrines, the rituals of baptism and the Supper, habits of praise and prayer, fellowship, and witness that it authorand it’s just in my blood, I guess.” Eventually, the Ameriizes as our canon. can did try to copy the clock, squiggles and all, but it wasn’t There is no quick-and-easy path to success. It takes a lot the same. You just can’t make a great piece of culture by forof work. Although we are not working for our salvation, we mulas that can be duplicated on an assembly line. are working it out as God “who works in us both to will and Christian discipleship is a lot like craftsmanship. It can’t to do according to his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12–13). No probe produced with formulas, principles, and steps. Disciples gram will form us to be a better husband and wife or father don’t come off of an assembly line. It takes time, energy, efand mother. These relationships take time, patience, and a fort, patience, and skill. It means belonging to a communilot of work. To succeed, we often have to change our prity that passes along habits—many of which cannot be statorities and daily routines. And we cannot do it alone. We need ed explicitly in so many words. The habits of a craftsman are the constant, ordinary, and sometimes all-too-familiar habits simply different from those of an entrepreneur or industrial manager. For many reasons, which have been wisely exof family worship, the Lord’s Day, fellowship, and personal plored by others in this issue, we are increasingly becoming Bible reading and prayer—especially when the burdens and a society—and a church—that has lost its habits of Christian distractions of our temporal callings threaten to become idols formation. Some say, “Well, if we can just get the doctrine rather than gifts. right, everything else will follow.” Others shout back, “No! Even private spiritual disciples will be of no benefit in shapDeeds, not creeds!” But neither answer gets the point that ing our Christian discipleship apart from the ordinary growing up into Christ cannot be reduced to intellectualism means of grace in the church and the distinct type of piety or activism. There is no doctrinal proposition or spiritual prothat arises out of it. Perhaps instead of “the Christian life,” gram that will conform us to the image of Christ. The gospel we should speak of “the Christian lifetime.” Even at the end must transform us over a lifetime of quite ordinary and someof our days, we will not be a finished piece of divine craftstimes even plodding habits that we cannot always articulate. manship; but one day we will be as exquisitely refined as JeThis is why the disciples walked with Jesus, talked with sus Christ. Living out these days from the established fact Jesus, observed his actions as well as his teaching. In this of Christ’s saving work in the past, and our liberation from process, it’s often hard to distinguish between doctrinal inthe guilt and tyranny of sin in the present, we “strain toward struction and practical living. Reading the Gospels, we look the prize” as Paul described it. Only with the gospel in our over their shoulders and say, “Ah, that’s what the kingdom hearts can we say with Paul’s confidence, “The sufferings of is!” this present life are not worth to be compared with the joy Recently, a young girl on National Public Radio was asked that will be revealed in us.” at a “Read to Grow” rally why she loved reading books even over the summer break. The interviewer asked, “What would Michael Horton is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation. you tell someone who says it’s boring and they just can’t get into reading?” She replied, “You’ve just got to start. The more 4 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G