How should a church select its elders? Should those men, particularly teaching elders, go away for several years to seminary before assuming the task of shepherding? Ronald Allen, Anglican missionary to China from 1895-1903, sheds light on such questions in his seminal work, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? He begins by pointing out that those elders we see in the New Testament were selected primarily based upon their moral character, not their intellectual competency. Says Allen:

“They were not necessarily highly educated men, they cannot have had any profound knowledge of Christian doctrine. It is impossible that St. Paul can have required from them any knowledge of Hebrew, or of any foreign language… It is not probable that he expected or demanded any profound knowledge of Greek philosophy. It is inevitable that he must have been satisfied with a somewhat limited general education, and with a more or less meager acquaintance with the Septuagint and with his mystical interpretation of it, with a knowledge of the brief outline of Christian doctrine set forth in the Epistle to the Thessalonians, and some instruction in the meaning and method of administration of the two sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

The qualifications of elder were primarily moral. If they added to moral qualifications intellectual qualifications so much the better, but high intellectual qualifications were not deemed necessary. Very early there grew up a class of teachers who by virtue of their spiritual insight into the meaning of the Old Testament, or the sayings of Christ known to them, occupied a place of great importance in the Church; but they were not necessarily elders. This is the state of affairs depicted in the Didaché, and the Didascalia agrees with this. ‘If it be possible let him (the bishop) be a teacher, or if he be illiterate, let him be persuasive and wise of speech: let him be advanced in years.'”

In our day, laments Allen, “The examination test is made the real test of fitness for the priesthood. Moral qualifications may suffice for the office of catechist, but if a man is to proceed further he must pass an examination of a very artificial character. In other words, we select by examination.”

He goes on to name four (I’ll only list three) “very serious consequences” of such a selection process, each of which is being experienced in spades in our day and land:

“(1) The young men so educated are sometimes, by that very education, out of touch with their congregations. They return to their people with strange ideas and strange habits. They are lonely, and they have to struggle against the perils of loneliness. They are not even the best teachers of people from whose intellectual and spiritual life they have so long been absent. They do not know how to answer their difficulties or to supply their necessities. They know so much Christian doctrine and philosophy that they have forgotten the religion of their country. The congregation has not grown with them, nor they with the congregation. They come, as it were, from outside, and only a few exceptional men can learn to overcome that difficulty.

(2) The grave men of the church, the natural leaders of the village life, and the natural leaders of the church are silenced. The church is not led and administered by the people to whom all would naturally turn, but either by a foreigner, or by a young man who has come with a foreign education. In this way a great source of strength is lost. The real elders of the community are not elders in the church, and the whole church suffers in consequence.

(3) The natural teacher, the divinely gifted preacher, is silenced. The only teacher is the foreign-educated minister. There is no opportunity for the church to find its prophets, nor for the prophets to find themselves. The prophet is in danger either of losing his gift or of leaving the church in order to find opportunity for its exercise.”

For the record, I’m the very thankful beneficiary of a wonderful theological education. In fact, irony of ironies, I first read Allen’s work while in the hallowed halls of the seminary I attended. One could certainly overcorrect and throw the baby out with the bath water. Still, it seems to me the current model of selecting and training clergy needs to be reconsidered along biblical lines. While the current schema of pastoral training has produced much good fruit, it’s no doubt aided and abetted the modern tendency to make the “examination test” the exclusive qualifier for ministry at the expense of the “moral tests” which clearly seem to be of utmost importance to St. Paul (Titus 1:5-9, 1 Tim. 3:1-7).

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In his little book on the nature of faith, Transcending All Understanding, the Roman Catholic Cardinal and German theologian Walter Kasper draws upon Augustine to argue that faith is as much an attitude or disposition as it is a set of presuppositions:

“Augustine differentiated three meanings of religious faith—the content-oriented belief that (credere Deum, to believe that God exists), the belief of trust (credere Deo, to believe God in the sense of trusting God) and the belief of the journey (credere in Deum, to journey toward God, and to do this in common with all the members of the Boyd of Christ).

But the theological understanding of faith has often been narrowed down to the first aspect. Faith was often one-sidedly understood as belief that and as the affirmation of propositions of supernatural realities. If belief is understood only in this narrow content-oriented fashion, then the crisis of faith consists in the fact that nowadays even many baptized Christians no longer accept all the church’s teachings with respect to many crucial points of doctrine—for example, the existence of angels and demons, the Virgin Birth and sexual morality.

The knowledge of faith has in many ways fallen to a new low today. This is a very serious phenomenon, for a faith without a content is an untenable faith, without an object in the twofold sense of the word. It quickly evaporates and is in danger of getting confused beyond recognition with other positions, movements, ideologies and utopias.

…But belief is much more than the affirmation of propositions such as one finds in a catechism. Belief is also an act and a carrying out [Augustine’s second usage of the word]; indeed, it is an attitude that determines one’s whole life. An aspect of the contemporary crisis of faith that should not be underestimated is the fact that many of the fundamental attitudes of belief—reverence, humility, trust and devotion—have become foreign to us. The act of faith and the content of faith have both come under attack today.”

We’ve all met individuals with “right belief” whose pride, flippancy, or sarcasm nevertheless hinders a true, deep faith in the triperspectival way in which Augustine speaks. So, the upshot of Kasper’s argument is that the church’s responsibility is twofold vis-à-vis spiritual formation. To be sure, she must faithfully disseminate doctrinal information, but just as crucial to the wellbeing of the flock is the cultivation of certain attitudes and sentiments conducive to the church’s lofty dogmas. Achieving the latter can be as difficult as doing the former. But J.I. Packer’s teeter-totter principal may be of help: do that which causes you to have a lofty view of yourself and you’ll necessarily have a diminished view of God. Conversely, insofar as you’ve humbled yourself before God, God will appear all the larger. As you go down, God goes up, and visa versa.

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In his wonderful book Beyond Doubt (available for order at Hearts & Minds Books), Cornelius Plantinga Jr. offers sound advice to those seeking to be salt and light in their workplace: (more…)

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Even if one knew nothing of Peter Robinson’s past, one would still find him to be one of the most interesting conversationalists alive today. His long-running show Uncommon Knowledge is simply the best of its kind–handily beating, in my reckoning, Charlie Rose and Conversations with Bill Kristol.

In his early 20s, having never written a speech in his life, Robinson landed a job in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building as a speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush. Soon thereafter, he moved to the West Wing, filling the same position for President Reagan. It was this young speechwriter who, after interviewing a family in East Berlin (the Soviet sector of Berlin), penned the famous words for the President, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Virtually the entire White House, the military complex, including Colin Powell, put pressure on Robinson to remove the directive from the speech. Yet, he (rightly) thought it’s what Reagan would have said had he met with those families in East Berlin. So, he stuck to his guns.

The below video in which Pat Sajak interviews Robinson, conducted at the Reagan Library on the occasion of the speech’s 30th anniversary, is a noteworthy piece of media in its own right for two reasons. First, Robinson’s journey is remarkable, and the exchange gives a glimpse into the inner life of a man many of us feel like we’ve come to know through the years. Second, and most importantly, it shows the power of words, particularly words spoken by the President of the United States. I commend the whole interview to you:

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I recently had a student get injured. Not seriously so, but enough to warrant a few sick days. I told the student I wanted to pray for her, that God would heal her ailment. She responded, “Thanks, but instead please pray that I’ll be more faithful in having quiet times. I don’t think God has much interest in my body, but I know he cares about my soul.” I asked the student if she was able to do the readings from class while she was out. “Yes,” she said hesitantly, “I’ve been up to my eyeballs in Plato!”

Well over two millennia ago, Plato gave an analogy that helped shape much of Western philosophy going forward. Here’s the most famous (though, not best) interpretation of the allegory: There are people in a dark cave facing a wall. Behind the people is a fire and behind the fire is an opening to the outside world. In that world, people walk, talk, dance, live.

Inside the cave, however, the people can only watch their shadows. Having never seen the outside, “real” world, the cave-people foolishly think the dancing shadows are ends in themselves, actual things. They aren’t, of course; they’re only shadows, “receptacles.” Freedom, for Plato, is recognizing the ultimate vapidity and illusiveness of the material world. Physicality—“objects”—lie in the realm of mere opinion and shadow. It’s in the incorporeal, metaphysical world of forms that true life can be found.

Having just completed readings surrounding this interpretation of the cave illustration, I asked the student, “how has this view shaped the church, do you think?” Substitute “objects” with “creation,” “form-world” with “heaven,” and you start to see the origin of the disembodied world many modern Christians inhabit. A view that leads us to think that only the spiritual world is real, and God takes no interest in concussions or broken bones.

This view stands in stark contrast with the biblical understanding of physicality. In Genesis 1 we see a world made by God. It is good, indeed, very good. Sin enters the world and distorts this goodness, but never eradicates the Creator’s handiwork. Sin is like rust on a ship; it’s not integral to the structure of the object. The ship existed before there was rust and will exist after the rust is removed. Indeed, the removal of the rust will only make the ship more of a ship.

The Christian view of creation can be seen well in this exchange between Mr. Rogers and one of his neighbors, Jeff Erlanger:

Jeff was born with a tumor that left him bound to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. In the video, his handicap is pronounced and his young age only makes the disability more agonizing. Watching the episode, I can see why Plato wanted to understand the world as mere shadow. It explains and relativizes so much of the torment and agony of life. In understanding ourselves as more than physicality, there is hope. However, what do we lose when we understand ourselves as less than physicality? While Plato’s analogy can interpret our pain, I don’t think it can account for the beauty and dignity of this world.

Mr. Rogers no doubt sees Jeff’s brokenness, but he also sees his worth. To Jeff, he warmly sings, “It’s you I like. Every part of you. Your skin, your eyes, your feelings.” He saw the boy—the whole boy, body and soul—as real, as an end, as a creature. The wheelchair did not typify Jeff to Mr. Rogers. Nor was the “real” Jeff simply his spirit. In that moment, Rogers did what he did so often; he recognized and named the humanity in the other. Jeff was not a shadow to Mr. Rogers, he was real, he was worthy, he was loved.

When recounting so many of the difficulties of being handicapped, Jeff reminds us that there is such difficulty for everyone, those inside and outside of wheelchairs. Jeff knows we are all on a scale of brokenness, all in need of healing in myriad ways. So, in addition to praying for my student’s quiet times, I also prayed for her ailment, despite her earnest wishes. Because denying the goodness of our bodies won’t take away the badness. God did not place us in a cave, he placed us in a real-life neighborhood. The question is: will we see creation as a trick of the eye, or as a gift from the Creator? To do the former, ironically, is to choose to live in a cave of our own making. To do the later, however, is to be reminded of our Creator’s love for his creation when we hear Mr. Rogers’ song:

It’s you I like,
It’s not the things you wear,
It’s not the way you do your hair–
But it’s you I like
The way you are right now,
The way down deep inside you–
Not the things that hide you,
Not your toys–
They’re just beside you.

But it’s you I like–
Every part of you,
Your skin, your eyes, your feelings
Whether old or new.
I hope that you’ll remember
Even when you’re feeling blue
That it’s you I like,
It’s you yourself,
It’s you, it’s you I like.

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Heath Lambert released a response to the criticism leveled at him by me and others. First, I want to say I’m thankful for him, his ministry, and his humility. In apologizing for his sermon, he hedged no bets. While I don’t know Dr. Lambert well, I had the opportunity to take a few classes with him at Boyce. I’ve only ever known him to be a fine, upstanding Christian. His response to the sermon only bears out what I already knew to be true of him.

However, I feel the need to defend myself a bit. I suggested that Dr. Lambert leveraged his position at ACBC to get Dr. Johnson fired. I called that fact “indisputable.” Lambert calls this charge “baseless,” “unsubstantiated,” and “slanderous.” Lambert says: “It would never occur to me to try to force, cajole, or blackmail [Dr. Mohler] into anything.”

Far from being baseless, it remains indisputable that Lambert used his position to professionally harm Dr. Johnson. If he did nothing else besides claiming his colleague was terrible at his job, a faithless teacher, etc. *That* was him putting Dr. Johnson’s job in jeopardy. Surely we aren’t supposed to believe Dr. Lambert expected the public to assume he was in favor of such a dangerous man teaching young pastors after hearing that sermon. Dr. Lambert cares too much for pastoral education to want a terrible theologian instructing students.

I don’t think Dr. Mohler was blackmailed. I think he was put in an unfair, untenable situation in which one faculty member publically accused another of being dangerous, if not unconverted. This in no way questions Dr. Mohler’s integrity, as Lambert implies. To the contrary, Dr. Mohler would have been derelict not to have seriously reconsidered Johnson’s employment after hearing Lambert’s allegation. I’m not the one who questioned Dr. Mohler’s integrity, Lambert did when he implied Mohler hired, aided, and abetted a wolf in the sheep pen.

Again, I don’t think there was some grand conspiracy which Lambert orchestrated. I don’t know what part, if any, Lambert’s well-known opinions of Johnson played in his termination. But I do know that Lambert leveraged his position to professionally harm Johnson. There is video evidence of him doing just that.

While I wish Dr. Lambert didn’t blame-shift on that last point, I’m still appreciative of the statement and consider him a brother in Christ. One mistake doesn’t make a man or an institution. I still heartily recommend Boyce College to students, and happily so!

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Update: Dr. Lambert has issued an apology here and I wrote a follow-up here. I also removed a line which I thought was too definitive in retrospect.

A petition began yesterday to protest the “wrongful firing” of Eric L. Johnson, longtime professor of counseling at Southern Seminary. Though I hold Johnson in high esteem, I hesitated to sign the document for a few reasons. First, I want to give Albert Mohler the benefit of the doubt. I went to Boyce College (Southern’s undergraduate school) largely because of Dr. Mohler. In the few opportunities I had to watch him up close, I saw a warm, compassionate, faithful follower of Jesus. I honestly don’t think there is a finer Christian statesman alive today.

While I was disappointed to hear of Dr. Johnson’s firing, it’s easy to think of reasons such a move may have been warranted, however sad it may be. Southern is known as a “Biblical Counseling” school. Perhaps students who would like to study Christian Psychology are simply going to other seminaries, like Covenant, TEDS, or RTS. Maybe Dr. Johnson’s classes weren’t full enough to merit his salary. Or perhaps Dr. Mohler wanted continuity in the department. While that move isn’t wise in my estimation, it’s his to make and, frankly, understandable. Or maybe there’s some other reason to which I’m simply not privy.

Then I watched the video linked in the petition. The video is of Heath Lambert, Executive Director at the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, publically condemning Eric Johnson. He quotes a section from Johnson’s Foundations for Soul Care, leaving out key sentences and paragraphs. He says Johnson’s words are “a total and utter mockery of God’s Word.” He paraphrases Johnson’s thesis as,

“There’s all this stuff in there [the Bible] about anxiety, but it’s general and can’t really help you. The Bible has this general level of sophistication. The Bible – translation – can’t even help you with the spiritual items it brings up.”

He then says, “I think that’s slander. Honest, I do.”

He says of Johnson:

“The reason that he is wrong, the reason that his counseling advice is bad is because he has not been faithful to the teaching. He has not been faithful to the Word. He is a horrible theologian.”

Most stunningly, Lambert seems to question Johnson’s salvation:

“…you know when I was reading this some [9 years ago] when the book came out, and I was deeply troubled by it, and I was angry about it, and I was frustrated about it ,and then I realized something about this man. This isn’t just a demonstration of faithless teaching. It is a demonstration, is it not, of 1 Tim 4:16 of faithless living? It broke my heart when I realized that. This is a man, who denigrates Psalm 94 because he’s never experienced the consolations of Psalm 94. He can’t teach Psalm 94 because Psalm 94 never got into his bloodstream. He is a bad theologian because he doesn’t understand the teaching and the teaching never changed his life, and so he is a very bad counselor…. If we refuse to allow the Word of God to take root in our heart and change us then the overflow of that unchanged heart to broken people will be just as corrupt as [Johnson].”

After listening to this sermon, I signed the petition. Lambert’s treatment of Johnson’s words were horrendous on two fronts. As a Christian, he should have interpreted Johnson with more generosity, and as a counselor, Lambert should have interpreted Johnson with more honesty. How can a man who gets paid to listen have been so deaf to another’s words? At no point in the sermon did Lambert present Johnson’s position in a way in which Johnson would recognize. Thus, he never actually engaged with the rival position. He built a straw man and condemned that straw man to unemployment, if not hell.

The petition claims that Lambert was behind Johnson’s firing. While I don’t know that his pushing of Johnson was the only, or even main, cause of Johnson’s termination, after watching the video Lambert’s intentions are clear even if Mohler’s are not. Lambert implicitly accused Dr. Mohler of hiring, aiding, and abetting a wolf in the sheep pen. Lambert’s disgust—and I don’t think that’s too strong a word—for Johnson was palpable. Lambert put Dr. Mohler in an untenable situation. One of them had to leave, and Lambert knew his side (the Biblical Counseling side) had the institutional advantage.

Almost 15 years ago, John Frame wrote a prophetic essay entitled Machen’s Warrior Children. The essay argued that John Gresham Machen faced a serious and dangerous enemy: namely, liberalism. Facing a bonafide enemy of the faith, he fought. Those after him, argued Frame, adopted the posture Machen took toward liberalism in each and every battle going forward. Their side was the “Christian” one and the other side was the “faithless” one, no matter how trivial the dispute. For these people, everything was a fight to the death.

I respect and have learned from many in the Biblical Counseling camp. Their perspective is laudable and needed. But even if one thinks Dr. Johnson’s approach to counseling is anemic or flawed, he’s no enemy of the faith. His newest book (which I’m excited to read!) is endorsed by Kevin Vanhoozer, Jeremy Lelek, Michael Allen, Kelly Kapic, and Richard Winter. My goodness, Dr. Johnson’s theology is about as orthodox and mainstream as it gets in Evangelicalism. At least in this particular sermon, Heath Lambert embodies the sort of immature, pugnacious attitude against which Frame so eloquently rails. Lambert was busy winning a war when he should have been having an honest conversation.

Whatever institution Dr. Johnson ends up teaching at will no doubt be blessed to have him. Through his writing, speaking, and counseling ministry he’s ministered the gospel of Christ to thousands. That such a father in the faith has been treated this way is a disgrace and, frankly, an embarrassment to a school which I love and treasure.

Featured image taken from https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexandermason

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“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” –Jesus, Revelation 3:20

The old hymn commands, “let every heart prepare him room!” This is what a Christian is, after all: one who has welcomed Jesus. Welcoming has been part and parcel of Christian faith and practice since the beginning—first century Christians adopting diseased children, Paul instructing Philemon to receive his former slave back home as a brother, Jesus eating with the outcast, Israel welcoming the sojourners. Even if it isn’t easy to do, we can at least understand how to show hospitality to the weak and vulnerable. But God is not weak or vulnerable. How do we open the door of our lives to him? How do we “make him room?”

Mark tells the story (1:35-39) of Jesus being perfectly disciplined. He gets up early, he prays, he orders his time based on God’s mission rather than the opinions and needs of others. What does it look like to show hospitality to one so whole, so absent of need? Miguel Arteta’s beautiful new film Beatriz at Dinner gives us a clue. After her car breaks down at the home of a client, Beatriz—a new age massage therapist and holistic healer—finds herself stranded at an upscale dinner party.

At first glance, the movie is a contrast between Beatriz (Salma Hayek) and Doug (John Lithgow), a high-powered businessman. He is invited to dinner, the guest of honor, she is unexpected; he’s everyone’s employer, she’s an employee to his employee; he boasts, she demurs; he takes life—showing pictures of his prize kill from a recent safari expedition, she gives life.

Early in the movie, Beatriz weeps as she recounts that an angry neighbor killed her pet goat—“murder.” Throughout the dinner, Beatriz swears she recognizes Doug. Was he the man who built a hotel in her hometown that displaced a swath of the community? No, he’s too young. But how does she know him? By the end of the party, after proclaiming, “all tears come from the same source,” she looks Doug in the eye and mater-of-factly states, “you killed my goat.” On one level, the movie is about the conflict between good and evil.

The brilliance of the film, however, is found not in the leads, but in the near perfectly cast team of character-actors around the dinner table. As two radically opposing forces collide, we see tension, deflection, amusement, and horror in the onlooker’s faces. At its heart, Beatriz at Dinner isn’t about Beatriz or Doug at all; it’s about the guests at the dinner party, and the choice they’ll all have to make by the end of the evening. On the one hand, Doug offers power. Beatriz, conversely, offers the promise of healing, and healing in a way particular to each of them: cancer in one case, back-pain in another.

As the evening progresses, it becomes evident that what Doug and Beatriz have to offer is mutually exclusive. To whom will each guest show hospitality, Doug or Beatriz? While the woman who first insisted Beatriz come to the party attempts to straddle the fence, she too is forced to take sides. To get Doug’s approval, the guests must grovel—they must earn their place around the table. They can’t seem weak or vulnerable. They are valuable to Doug insofar as they’re useful, but not a minute longer. At one point, he jokes about leaving his third wife for a more attractive guest at the party.

Beatriz’s gift, however, is just that: a gift. It can’t be earned, only received. The difficulty, the predicament, the tragedy, is that no one can let down their pretense and airs to see their need—not now, not at a party, not when so much is at stake. To take hold of the hope Beatriz can offer (the unseen) requires abandoning that which Doug is currently offering (the seen). Alas, one can’t serve two masters.

Back to the Gospel of Mark. After describing how Jesus is whole, Mark immediately tells the story of a man who is broken (1: 40-45). When he encounters Jesus, the man isn’t told, as you might expect, to find healing by doing the good things Jesus just did. He’s not asked to earn his place in Jesus’ presence; he isn’t told how to pull himself up by his bootstraps. Rather, Jesus reaches down, out of pity, and heals the man of his leprosy directly. By running to Jesus the man was running away from every other form of salvation; he came bringing only his need, and that was enough.

Like Beatriz, Jesus joyfully comes to dinner, bringing healing with him. However, it’s not a given that we will welcome him. To the contrary, welcoming Jesus involves the painful, uncertain process of letting go of our pride and self-satisfaction. By showing hospitality to Jesus we’re necessarily neglecting those other masters in our lives who demand our complete loyalty and attention. Jesus stands at the door and knocks, ready to dine with us. How do we welcome him? One hymn tells us to “make him room;” another hymn—reminiscent of Beatriz at Dinner—tells us how:

“Come, ye weary, heavy laden, bruised and broken by the fall; if you tarry ’til you’re better, you will never come at all…. Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream; all the fitness He requires is to feel your need of Him.”

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