By Farther Steps

Reformed and Reforming, semper reformanda to Christ's glory.

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Check out my Flickr account, the link is on the right side there. Just uploaded some new pictures from Chicago Botanic Garden, Raven’s Glen Forest Preserve and the beach at Waukegan.  They’re nice.

Developing Leadership

I’m reading J. Oswald Sanders’ classic Spiritual Leadership this week. In his chapter Can You Become a Leader, he has a list of diagnostic questions that got me thinking and wondering about myself.

After dealing with the unique attributes of a spiritual leader Sanders turns to natural leadership qualities:

Natural leadership qualities are important. Too often these skills lie dormant and undiscovered. If we look carefully, we should be able to detect leadership potential. And if we have it, we should train it in and use it for Christ’s work. Here are some ways to investigate your potential:

  • Have you ever broken a bad habit? To lead others, you must master your own appetites.
  • Do you keep self-control when things go wrong? The leader who loses control under adversity forfeits respect and influence. A leader must be calm in crisis and resilient in disappointment.
  • Do you think independently? A leader must use the best ides of others to make decisions. A leader cannot wait for others to make up his or her mind.
  • Can you handle criticism? Can you profit from it? The humble person can learn from petty criticism, even malicious criticism.
  • Can you turn disappointment into creative new opportunity?
  • Do you readily gain the cooperation of others and win their respect and confidence?
  • Can you exert discipline without making a power play? True leadership is an internal quality of the spirit and needs no show of external force.
  • Are you a peacemaker? A leader must be able to reconcile with opponents and make peace where arguments have created hostility.
  • Do people trust you with difficult and delicate situations?
  • Can you induce people to do happily some legitimate thing that they would not normally wish to do?
  • Can you accept opposition to your viewpoint or decision without taking offense? Leaders always face opposition.
  • Can you make and keep friends? Your circle of loyal friends is an index of your leadership potential.
  • Do you depend on the praise of others to keep you going? Can you hold steady in the face of disapproval and even temporary loss of confidence?
  • Are you at ease in the presence of strangers? Do you get nervous in the presence of you superior?
  • Are the people who report to you generally at ease? A leader should be sympathetic and friendly.
  • Are you interested in people? All types? All races? No prejudice?
  • Are you tactful? Can you anticipate how  your words will affect a person?
  • Is your will strong and steady? Leaders cannot vacillate or cannot drift with the wind.
  • Can you forgive? Or do you nurse resentments and  harbor ill-feelings toward those who have injured you?
  • Are you reasonably optimistic? Pessimism and leadership do not mix.
  • Do you feel a master passion such as that of Paul, who said, “This one thing I do!” Such a singleness of motive will focus your energies and power on the desired objective. Leaders need a strong focus.
  • Do you welcome responsibility?

How you handle relationships tells a lot about our potential for leadership. R. E. Thompson suggestes these tests:

  • Do other people’s failures annoy or challenge you?
  • Do you “use” people, or cultivate people?
  • Do you direct people, or develop people?
  • Do you criticize, or encourage?
  • Do you shun or seek out the person with a special need of problem?

These test mean little unless we act to correct our deficits and fill in the gaps of our training. Perhaps the final test of leadership potential is whether you “sit” on the results of such an analysis or do something about it. Why not take some of the points of weakness and failure you are aware of and, in cooperation with the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of discipline, concentrate on strengthening those areas of weakness and correcting faults.

Baby Steps

When I read Joe Thorn’s post it kind of clicked. A friend in California is in the best shape he’s ever been and he’s in his 40s. Another friend in Ohio is working to qualify for the Boston Marathon by the time she’s 50. Seminary killed my fitness as I spent time either sitting and reading or at work. Now my job in IT has me sitting all day and on top of that I have two hours of commuting on each end which largely involves sitting. Yes, I do get off the bus and walk a few blocks but it isn’t enough.

So today as soon as I got home I jumped into shorts and ran for 20 minutes. I didn’t go far or fast but I didn’t stop either. I just went. Yea, I’m stiff and sore in weird places, but I did stretch and I am going to try to turn this into a habit. I’ll have to establish some goals and find ways to keep me motivated, but I want to get back in shape.

I was planning on keeping this quit till I was sure I’d stick with it, but by saying it publicly maybe the shame and guilt will keep me motivated. :)

Here we go, running with baby steps.

World Conquerers?

This was going to be a “these two things” post but the subject matter didn’t seem to lend itself to it.

First, you’ve probably seen the news reports of the “oldest church” (please attached the word ‘building’ to the end of that) being discovered in Jordan. Archeology is interesting but the building isn’t what got my attention as much as an an inscription on the church built above the discovery. It describes the early Christians as “the 70 beloved by God and Divine.” It is believed that the site was built by Christians who fled Jerusalem during the first persecution there. No later than 70AD.

This got me thinking about the Church and how she grew. There were more than 70 Christians at that point but the Church was pretty small and geographically restricted. In Sunday school a few weeks ago, I put up a map that showed all the cities with churches in them by 100AD and it was pretty impressive. From a Western perspective, it was pretty much every spot in the known or ‘civilized’ world at the time. In a very short period, the church blossomed, even when she faced opposition and persecution. As I’ve been working on Colossians, I’m impressed with how much emphasis Paul puts on the gospel in the first chapter where he reports how it is bearing fruit not just amongst the Colossians but all around the world (1:6)  and how it has been proclaimed “in all creation under heaven” (1:23). The phenominal success of the church was the triumphing power of the gospel and it conquered the world. Amazing.

So when I saw how Josh Buice talked to some Westboro cult members, it jarred me.  Props to Josh for obeying the prompting of the Spirt to talk to them. He was attending the SBC meeting and the cult was protesting outside. This one statement really caught my attention:

These people are part of the world that we are called to evangelize (Matthew 28:18-20), and it would have been ultra hypocritical to sit in a Convention Center and talk about the Great Commission without fulfilling it less than 400 yards away.

I mean really! Awesome. I wish I would obey more often and recognize opportunities like that. What the cult was saying is what struck me. Their perverse logic has twisted even hyper-Calvinism into a distorted mess. When Josh asked how many people are saved through their false message, the cultist he was speaking with replied, “The Bible says that it will be like the days of Noah in the last days, and how many were saved through Noah’s preaching?” They are preaching a false message in which the expect very little fruit. Imagine if the church that met in that cave in Jordan preached the same message and got the same results! Colossians would be a very different letter.

To be fair, you don’t have to be a member of the Westboro cult or one like it to adopt a similar mindset. On my first short term mission trip I found that the same poison had crept into my thinking. My partner and I spent the day preaching to a crowded room of people in a bamboo building. At the end, we asked how many people wanted to become Christians. Nearly the entire room raised their hands and to my great, great shame the first thing that passed through my mind was “They don’t understand. They’re not getting it.” God was good to correct that faithless notion that evening and build my confidence in the gospel and destroy my confidence in my ability to preach it. He saved an amazing number of people in that one week period despite my faithlessness. I’m so glad that I didn’t develop a false theology to justify my error.

It’s Obama Then…

Finally, what we’ve been expecting for a while. Obama finally took the Democratic nomination. Of course we’re still waiting for the other shoe to fall and the announcement of the Obama Clinton 2008 ticket, but that’ll have to wait for a bit.

So now that Obama is the nominee, I have some questions for him.

1. Given the information we had at the time, what were the grounds for your opposition to invading Iraq? Granted, in hindsight invading was the wrong thing to do, but when Mr. Obama opposed the invasion he didn’t have the benefit of hindsight. How would President Obama make decisions to go to war based on this track record?

Added: I heard a piece on Obama on PRI’s The World. He was addressing a pro-Israeli PAC and affirmed three times that he would do whatever he could to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. This post immediately came to time. Since Obama has a history of not doing that when it came to Iraq, why on earth should we believe him now?

2. What change? It is not helpful to run based on what you’re not. McCain is not George W. Bush and has opposed him in the past. To say that you’re for change and to simply mean “I’m not them” will only play with the crowds for a little while. And when it comes to running against McCain, that will only work if it can be maintained that he is a Bush clone. He clearly is not. The other problem is that individuals will read their idea of “change” into such statements. For many blacks, “change” might mean the end of marginalization of African-Americans in American politics. For those opposed to the Iraq war it will mean a withdrawal. For those who are hitting hard economic times, ‘change’ will mean jobs. And so on. How many of these expectations can Obama really deliver on? Really?

3. Doug Wilson got me thinking more about this next question. Beyond the fact that abortion is murder of the most helpless of all people, how can Senator Obama continue to support the abortion industry and claim (even implicitly) to represent the interests of black Americans? Blacks in America receive a disproportionate number of abortions. Early advocates of abortion in America were racists and saw it as a way to purify the human race. Given these past and the present realities, how can our first viable black presidential candidate strongly support such a horrible institution?

4. This question is really a specific application of question 2 above. America is facing a “perfect storm” in our economy. The housing market is tanking and I believe that it will only get worse throughout the summer. Over the past 10 years, the credit market has been ravaged by foolish mortgage lending practices. People either started upside down on their homes or too out all-too-easy-to-get home equity loans that were based on a falsely inflated value of their homes. Oil is well over $100 a barrel and might be heading higher as China puts a greater demand on the market while America and the West are not easing their demands. Four dollars at the pump is pretty common and we can probably expect that to rise in the near future. Diesel is inching towards $5 per gallon. This is impacting a number of things including food prices as it costs more to transport the food and many fertilizers are based on petroleum. With many folks tapped out on their homes, spending more money on gas and food, the economy has got to slow down as there simply isn’t much credit left to fall back on. While we haven’t hit two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth yet, but I’m pretty sure it is coming. Obama speaks of McCain as more of Bush’s economics, but hasn’t explained what kind of change he has in mind. What will you do Barak?

5. This question is related to question 3 above but takes it in a different direction. Chuck Colson wrote a thought provoking editorial in Christianity Today a month or so ago about the silence of the candidates on the prison problem in America. A huge proportion of America’s population is behind bars. A disproportionate amount of that incarcerated population is black. The fact that America doesn’t know or care is bad enough, but our elected officials are supposed to be our leaders. That may mean bringing problems to our attention. Of all of the candidates, I would think that the one who has a background in Black Liberation Theology, or at least sat under that kind of preaching for a while, would be taking a leadership position on this issue instead of simply promising generic change. Mr. Obama, where are you on prison reform, legal reform, sentencing guidelines, etc? What can we do about such a large prison population?

All that to say that while I am glad that America has finally gotten around to the first viable black candidate, I’m not excited about Obama being that candidate. He seems to be running a pretty empty campaign. He’s banking on his youth and energy but I would like more than that. I want to know what he’s going to do. Personally, I’d be happier with Colin Powell or Tavis Smiley as candidates, but they’re both too smart to run. I’m not crazy about McCain and so I’m left wondering who to vote for. One of the things that we have to keep in mind is that we’re probably facing some retirements on the Supreme Court and a string of judicial appointments. Which candidate would make the best decisions for these appointments? Which will handle the situation in Iraq best? Who can lead us through rocky economic times? Who can heal the political rifts that have been widened under Bush’s heavy hand? We need to look beyond race and image to some concrete issues. I’m tossed if I can figure out who’ll be the best president at this point.

The Colossian ‘Heresy’

This weekend I start a 14 week Sunday school class on the book of Colossians. This is a class I’ve been looking forward to for a while. Somehow in my preparation, I missed the fact that Colossae was damaged and maybe destroyed by an earthquake in about 61AD. One person in the class asked about that and I said I didn’t think that was correct but I’d have to look into it. Doh. Forehead slapping moment. I’ll correct that on Sunday.

Anyway, as part of the introduction to the book I asked about the ‘Colossian Heresy’. That is, why was Paul writing to the church? Some have hypothesized that there was a growing heresy at Colossae and Paul was writing to correct it. They look to chapter 2 to find the nature of the error and see in it a Greek element and a Jewish element. The Greek part of the error involved philosophy and visions and angel worship and asceticism. The Jewish element involved circumcision and observing days and the law.

When the Nag Hammadi Library was discovered in the 1940s we suddenly had Gnostic documents and thereby access to an ancient Christian heresy in a way that we hadn’t for over a thousand years. Some scholars suddenly found Gnosticism everywhere from popular Christian culture to Colossians. The idea that the Colossian heresy was Gnosticism soon got challenged since Gnosticism didn’t bloom till about 150 and obviously Colossians is much earlier. Okay, so it isn’t Gnosticism, it is proto-Gnosticism. Well, that doesn’t really help that much because the Jewish elements of the Colossian heresy don’t fit in Gnosticism. So then the heresy became a “syncretic proto-Gnosticism with Judizing tendencies.”

What a mess. In first year Greek I did some work on Colossians and came across some scholarship that suggested that maybe there wasn’t a Colossian heresy. That got me thinking. First, Galatia embraced a heresy and Paul’s tone with them was sharp and to the point. “Paul, an apostle to the church at Galatia. Grace, etc. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?! Why have you so quickly abandoned the gospel?!” There is a section in Second Corinthians where the Greek is almost untranslatable. Paul is so angry it is just a string of words and you have to figure out what he’s saying. But you don’t get that with Colossians. If the Colossian church was on the verge of heresy, I would expect more spit and fire from Paul. Now, it could be argued that since he didn’t know this church he adopted a softer tone. I suppose, but that just doesn’t sound like Paul.

So what was going on? What would prompt the kind of firm but loving response from the Apostle? My theory is that Paul has only a cursory, second-hand understanding of the struggles of the Colossian church. But he knows what kind of problems other churches have faced when attempting to integrate Jews and Greeks. There had been a tendency toward legalism and Judiasm amongst the Jews so Paul talks about real, New Covenant circumcision and how the law related to Christ. Amongst the gentiles there was the draw of Greek philosophy with its own peculiarities and catchwords (like pleroma which he uses a few times in the letter.) So as this congregation of Jew and Gentile forms into the body of Christ, whatever their background, it all has to be understood in light of Jesus. Whatever the issue is, Jesus trumps it. Paul didn’t have to know exactly how the church was wrestling through her different issues to know what the answer was. 1Since later Gnosticism was rooted in Greek philosophy it isn’t surprising that some of the issues at Colossea could appear Gnostic to us later on. The same basic philosophies are present but that doesn’t mean that Gnosticism was present at Colossea. It also excuses those who thought they’d found it there in my opinion.

See, the problem with fixing the Colossian error is that we can then strand it in the past. I mean how many evangelical churches are facing Judizing tendencies or are about to embrace Greek philosophy? Not many, some but not many. For most of us we can largely not see the message as applying to us. We’ll hip pocket it so that we can straighten out other folks. But what if there isn’t a specific error that’s being addressed? That might make the principle of Jesus’ supremacy that much more applicable to us. We don’t have to see it against Gnosticism to see how it might apply in our lives. If our tendency is toward legalism, Colossians has an answer. If your tendency is toward visions and mystic experience, Colossians applies.

Sure, even if there is a specific error we can still get the same principles, but I know for me tying it to a specific error rather than a tendency makes it that much harder for me to apply it to myself and my situation and my church. It makes it much easier to put it on the bookshelf and forget it.

↩1 Since later Gnosticism was rooted in Greek philosophy it isn’t surprising that some of the issues at Colossea could appear Gnostic to us later on. The same basic philosophies are present but that doesn’t mean that Gnosticism was present at Colossea. It also excuses those who thought they’d found it there in my opinion.

The Poisoned Social Gospel

I’m pretty sure this will be posted and linked to and all that all across evangelical blogs, but I have to quote it here. This is from a pastor’s colloquium at The Gospel Coalition.

“The social gospel has poisoned the church twice.”  The first time, of course, was when the social gospel was first introduced as a (theologically) liberal agenda that minimized the preaching of the gospel.  But the social gospel is poisoning us again, [Tim] Keller argued, because today evangelicals are so concerned about falling into the error of the old social gospel that we do not put nearly the emphasis that the Bible places on caring for the poor.

This is so true. If a Christian engages social justice issues, there seems to be a line of other Christians standing there yelling ‘Social Gospel!!’ I have seen this done to Derek Webb even though he totally denies the accusation. Let’s hope that when someone with Keller’s reputation condemns the practice the community listens. When I defended Webb I was ignored.