In case you’ve been wondering what we look like, this is us, Seattle Metro Church as it currently stands (or sits). BACK ROW: Jesse, Richard (holding Daniel), Lukas, David. FRONT ROW: Justin (me), Amy (my wife), Dawn, Amy (holding Joshua).

There has to be a dialectical response to ecumenicalism and dogmatism that balances the need to be faithful to the biblical text without condemning everyone who is not exactly like us.

Signposts had a post a few weeks back that asked whether it was fair to use Paul’s writings to make moral decisions today:

I am wondering if we are placing some unfair expectations on the bible. It seems to me that whenever the Church encounters a perceived moral or ethical issue it runs to the bible. Not a bad practice but one that maybe full of problems. I am wondering if we asking something of the bible that is unfair.
There is no doubt that books of the bible like Leviticus were written to construct laws of behaviour for society and laws for judaism. But, can we say the same thing about Paul’s letters or the gospels? What would Paul think of the attempts to solve an ethical issue in 2003, in parts of the world that he didnt even know existed, by dragging out parts of a letter that he wrote to a Church in say Corinth or Rome?

To answer the question directly, no, we can’t expect the Epistles or Gospels to provide a model for civil government, nor should we legislate morality in a pluralistic society. They were intended to guide the church, not the government. But I think it’s overwhelmingly obvious that we can and must use them to discern God’s will, including moral standards that may be unpopular.

I offer this not as a chance to bash Signposts, but as a case in point that we must take doctrine seriously. The homosexuality issue has surely shown us that much. For the Christians that have not been able to look at the Bible and agree that homosexuality is wrong according to God, there may be little hope of ever being able to discern God’s will again. We have to be faithful to Scripture.

It is hugely unpopular to criticize the doctrine of another church group these days. It comes off as dogmatic or judgmental. Barring circumstances where it would be counterproductive (e.g. getting in people’s faces), we need to do a much better job of calling each other to task.

Having said that, though, we can’t respond by being overly picky and dogmatic about every little thing. The Bible can be interpreted well, though not perfectly. I’m not saying that if we get our hermeneutic right, we’ll all be one big happy and doctrinally unified church. People will come to different conclusions about many things, and that’s fine. What’s not fine is when we say that it doesn’t matter how you interpret the Bible.

Take this example from the recent PBS special “Family Fundamentals: What happens when conservative Christian families have children who are homosexual?” The web site offers two theologians’ interpretations of the various texts dealing with homosexuality. The “pro” commentator offers this:

Paul was ambivalent about sex, certainly male-male and female-female sex, but also sex between husband and wife. Those finding a pro-family agenda in Paul must ignore his broader attitude about sex and marriage.

In other words, the issue is Paul’s attitude, and not God’s will. Read the site to see what I’m talking about. We have to take the text more seriously than that, or it’s useless except as a cool fantasy storybook.

But how do we do this without being jerks to everyone that disagrees with us? (the link is to an extremely well-designed fundy everyone-is-wrong-but-me site; via Jordon Cooper). How do we determine what we think the text says to us? First, I think there are good and bad hermeneutics, and we need to have more inter-denominational or cross-border discussions on what defines good hermeneutics. We will not come up with an ironclad set of rules that will lead us to identical conclusions, but we can at least agree to take the text seriously and search for assumptions - starting points - that we can agree on.

I know this will probably never happen between the Anglican church, the Orthodox church, the Catholic church, and the evangelical world. But within the evangelical world, we need to take responsibility for actually having a hermeneutic. If you’re a pastor or teacher in your church, make sure you teach your people hermeneutics.

The situation we find ourselves in, quite perplexingly and dangerously, is that we often believe things that we cannot really reconcile with Scripture. Take the example of women being allowed to do everything men can do in the church. I personally hold this standpoint, but I do it fully confident that I am interpreting all of the relevant texts fairly. I don’t think most people can do that - we just kind of gloss over it because we think it’s obviously not applicable to us today. That is bad hermeneutics, or rather, a lack of exegesis.

Seems our 2.4 GHz cordless phone has been on the fritz lately, for no apparent reason. So I call tech support, and they tell me it’s the battery - can’t maintain its voltage. They offer to sell me a replacement - no, an upgrage AND replacement all in one - for $20. With double the voltage, they say, it will last longer. I decline the misinformed offer and thank them for the info.

I get a small screwdriver and disassemble the battery pack. Do you know what’s in those things? NiCd AA batteries. They’d cost $5 at the store. After some prying and electrical taping, I’ve rebuilt the pack with NiMH batteries I had for the digital camera, at a cost of about $6. It works. No static.

Victory, sweet victory.

After talking with Amy and hearing from a few people about their opinion of “devos,” I have the following thoughts:
-The term “devo” has connotations of being for kids rather than adults
-Some people have had bad experiences with being “devo-ed out” - particularly at Christian colleges, where it’s not hard to find three a week, in addition to regular church services
-The devo incorporates too many bad elements of the worship service, such as: one person leading, with everyone else as passive participants; the potential to view one’s own spirituality passively or consumeristically rather than taking personal initiative and responsibility for spiritual growth; the tendency to constantly sing a short list of “Jesus is my boyfriend” songs that are facile and dull; the inherent limitations of a “devo talk” (mini-sermon) format; the lack of generativity; the subculture feel - if you don’t like devos, too bad for you.
-It has become clear that we need spiritual gatherings that are more than just discussion. It has also become clear that some planning benefits the gathering tremendously, as does having someone keep us on track when having a business discussion.
-On a practical level, there has to be a leader, or everyone will look around wondering what happens next, and a lot of time and impact will be wasted. The leader doesn’t have to “deliver” the gathering, though, just facilitate it.
-We need to incorporate more generativity - eliciting the creativity of the Body
-I didn’t think music would be a problem if we chose good devo songs. That’s probably wishful thinking, assuming everyone can tolerate what I like. I do think, though, that a small church group should be able to find some music they like and can sing together. That’s not too much to ask, and hopefully there will be enough diversity between groups to accomodate everyone well. Liturgical elements can help bridge the gaps because it’s foreign to everyone, so that’s not an issue.
-We need a new word for our gatherings that doesn’t have the connotations of existing terms.

I’m realizing how much of a vacuum we’ve created by deconstructing the worship service. To the extent that a devotional is the same thing, the same problem exists with home devos. What do we do now that we don’t do regular devos or worship services? So far all we’ve done is have discussions or meals together. Meals are great, and we’ve incorporated communion, which has been great, but I don’t think that’s enough in the way of corporate spirituality. It’s far too cognitive, and we should not relate to God solely in cognitive ways.

Granted, some of what goes on in worship services and devos is either pointless, emotionally manipulative, or both, but I think those are problems to address for the improvement of our time together, not a justification for throwing out anything remotely spiritual other than discussion.

In my Moving Beyond the Worship Service article, I stated that the primacy and reverence we have for this thing we call the “worship service” is unwarranted. There is no biblical mandate to have something like what almost all churches do weekly - it’s not a biblical concept.

But we do need to, well, do spiritual stuff together on a regular basis. I prefer to call this a devotional - not that we’re not devoted to God the rest of the time, but that it’s a special time to focus our hearts and minds on God and what He has done. This generally includes singing, praying, reading scripture, communion, and maybe some teaching and/or discussion. I don’t think we’ve gotten to the point as a church planting team where we’re comfortable with such a format, or that we have any idea of what kind of format we do want to explore.

In moving beyond the worship service, we need to move to something better, not just away from the old.

A friend sent me a link to this speech by Alan Keyes on the situation in Alabama, where a judge is basically defying higher judges’ orders by refusing to remove a large 10 Commandments monument from the courthouse.

I respect Keyes, from what little I know of him. But I think the entire 10c thing is an exercise in hypocrisy. Would Christians throw a fit if a selection from the Koran or Bhagavad Gita were posted in marble on courthouse steps? You bet. In a flash.

Most arguments that Christians have special rights when it comes to the government and religion are based on a misunderstanding of the founding fathers. They were not Christians; they were deists. Deists don’t believe in Jesus; they believe in a watchmaker God that created things in a marvelous way, then let them run, much like a watchmaker doesn’t follow you around adjusting things after you buy a watch - he lets it go to work as intended.

Grenz and Franke in Beyond Foundationalism explain that deism was popular in the 1700s because Enlightenment rationalism was at its peak, and the most pure form of religion was believed to be “natural religion,” which was based on reason and logic rather than specific revelations such as the biblical text. We have not inherited from them a legacy of Christian government. We have inherited a Christ-free, miracle-free, watered-down civil religion that is a distraction from the Gospel. We must define our religion apart from what the founders believed.

This is a free country, and despite any historical hegemony, Christianity is not the only show in town. If we want respect for our rights in the future, when Christianity’s hegemony is likely to decrease, we should respect other religions and not insist on concessions for ourselves that we would not grant to others.

I feel like those who contributed to our coming out here to plant a church are our “Paul”, and we are Timothys and Tituses.

In the Pastoral Epistles, there is a heavy emphasis in these exhortations on teaching sound doctrine, refuting false teaching, and maintaining holiness. Frequent mention is made of avoiding idle talk. The verse that stands out most is Titus 2:15, which says “Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you.” I think we can take confidence in the role God has called us to. We are here to be guides to others in their pursuit of God. We are here to be and to develop leaders for this church. We can exercise authority, and speak with confidence and authority on the things God has given us.

Does this undermine the priesthood of all believers? Not at all. Every believer is a priest, but not every believer is a pastor. But neither is a pastor what the modern church has made it. Anyone can lead a gathering, teach others, offer prayers, baptise, serve communion, forgive others, help the poor, give advice, visit the sick, and do all the other things that priests do. We have been made a kingdom of priests to serve our God.

Timothy’s role seems somewhat to be intended as temporary, until elders (overseers or bishops) could be appointed. Presumably, this could not always be done quickly. They were to be people of maturity and wisdom and experience, which you don’t have starting out.

Here’s where we run into difficulty accepting this: we want to approach everything with humility, as learners together with those we are teaching. Our inquiry process is not finished. We are “seekers” as much as or more than anyone else. We are committed seekers, but seekers still.

It strikes me that Paul doesn’t tell Timothy and Titus to go out and do all the work of the church, like helping the poor and conducting worship events. “Discharge all the duties of your ministry” does not seem to encompass what a modern pastor’s ministry does. Timothy’s role is to exercise godly authority and to teach solid Christianity, to pass on the faith to others who would do the same, maintaining the teaching faithfully.

Central to our role is power, love, self-discipline, and true humility (see Titus 3:2, 2 Tim 2:7). Humility is not incompatible with authority, but complementary to it. Authority must be exercised with humility because we are all learners, but with confidence, because it is rightful authority.

Ever wonder why we pray before meals? Perhaps the tradition has its root in this passage:

1TI 4:1 The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. [2] Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. [3] They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. [4] For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, [5] because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.

Interesting stuff.