On New Testament Ministry

23: Daily Inspirational Bible Verse (Photo credit: [Share the Word])

Professor Black posted this up on his blog this week.

Looks like he has made an addition or two, but nonetheless, I really like these convictions.

Someday, I’ll add a few of my own…

• I am convinced that the house church rather than the sanctuary church was the New Testament norm.

• I am convinced of the normalcy of tent-making leadership.

• I am convinced that the church exists in part to equip all of its members for ministry.

• I am convinced that the leadership of the church should be shared for the health of the congregation.

• I am convinced that top-down structures of leadership are unquestionably more efficient. Efficient in doing almost everything other than equipping, which is the primary task of leadership.

• I am convinced that the process of appointing new elders is best done on the basis of recognizing who is already serving as an elder in the church.

• I am convinced that any local church that takes seriously Jesus as the Senior Pastor will not permit one man to become the titular head of the church.

• I am convinced that the essential qualifications for ministry in the church have little or nothing to do with formal education and everything to do with spiritual maturity.

• I am convinced that the church is a multi-generational family, and hence one of the things that makes the church the church is the presence of children, parents, and other adults.

• I am convinced that because every local church has all the spiritual gifts it needs to be complete in Christ, believers should be exposed to the full expression of the charisms (grace-gifts) when they gather, in contrast to specialized ministries that center around singularly gifted people.

• I am convinced that the local church is the scriptural locus for growing to maturity in Christ, and that no other training agency is absolutely needed.

• I am convinced that the local church ought to be the best Bible school going.

• I am convinced that Paul’s letters were not intended to be studied by ordinands (a candidate for ordination) in a theological college but were intended to be read and studied in the midst of the noisy life of the church.

• I am convinced that the church is a theocracy directly under its Head (Jesus Christ), and that the will of the Head is not mediated through various levels of church government but comes directly to all His subjects.

• I am convinced that the goal of leadership is not to make people dependent upon its leaders but dependent upon the Head.

• I am convinced that since all believers are “joints” in the body, ministry is every believer’s task.

• I am convinced that pastor-teachers, as precious gifts of Christ to His church, are to tend the flock of God by both personal care and biblical instruction, equipping God’s people for works of service both in the church and in the world.

• I am convinced that the role of pastor-teacher is a settled ministry in a local congregation.

• I am convinced that leaders should communicate that every part of the body is interrelated to the other parts and indispensable; every member will be appreciated, every charism will be treasured.

• I am convinced that the whole church, the community of all the saints together, is the clergy appointed by God for ministry.

• I am convinced that everyone needs to be equipped for his or her own ministry both in the church and in the world. If the church is to become what God intended it to be, it must become a ministerium of all who have placed their faith in Christ. The whole people of God must be transformed into a ministering people. Nothing short of this will restore the church to its proper role in the kingdom of God.

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Interpreting Scripture – The Pastoral Epistles As A Test Case

A nineteenth century picture of Paul of Tarsus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In an earlier post, I challenged Moises Silva where he was basically stating that his theology should inform his interpretation of a given text.

Building on that, I have found that interpreting the Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus) prove to be an excellent test case.

Scholars seem strongly divided into two main groups here, and it revolves around if Paul wrote these letters or not.  Now, as I will show later, there are actually dozens if not hundreds of possibilities and suggestions when it comes to how and when these letters were written. But let’s put that aside for the moment.  The two very general interpretive camps, as I see it, come down to the inspiration and authority of scripture.

Those who hold strongly to inerrancy, infallibility, and inspiration have a very difficult time accepting that anyone other than Paul himself wrote these letters.  Some may go as far as to say that he used an amenuensis (basically, someone we might understand to be a secretary) assist with the writing, but that the words are Paul’s as he was inspired by God to write them.

Those who are not as interested in inerrancy, infallibility and inspiration are seemingly quite ready and able to see other options, writers and possiblities for the production of these letters.

So, right out the gate, Silva’s model reveals it’s product – the text says what you believe it should say.  If the interpreter is an Evangelical, they read it as coming from Paul.  If the interpreter is not theologically predisposed, they read it as quite possibly coming from sources other than Paul.

Now this is where it gets interesting.

There are all sorts of theological issues embedded in these letters.  Probably the top three in contention these days are the issue of the role of women in ministry, the qualifications for ministry and the formation of scripture.

I would like to address these issues in future posts as I work through these three short letters because, for the most part, these issues can be interpreted in very different ways depending upon how the letters are approached.

Those that know me, will recall that I came from some pretty conservative theological roots.  None of my training for ministry, formal or informal, ever attempted to teach anyone but Paul the Apostle as the author to these letters.  After all, that is what the text itself says, right?

Right???

Any thoughts on this before I dive in?

On Pastoral Ministry And Financial Stability – Part 1 of 2

I just stumbled across a well written article on Pastoral Ministry (via Dave Black’s site) and the question of salary or pay for this work.

Why reinvent the wheel when someone else has already done so!

The full article is here.

I particularly liked the following concluding thought:

“If our churches truly implemented New Testament patterns of ministry, one wonders whether there would be any real need to support one, full-time pastor? If the local church had a functioning priesthood (as opposed to the passive, spectator event that is the mark of most churches) and an equally shared eldership, there simply would not be the urgency or necessity to hire someone on a full-time basis. This is because (1) leadership responsibilities would be shared; (2) one man and his gifts would not become the focal-point of the meeting; (3) corporate teaching would be shared and not left to one sole pastor; and (4) each member would actively participate and contribute to the meeting.” (Darryl Erkel)

Consider what would happen to the church if such a model once again became the norm?  I can think of ten things right off the top of my head that would make the church stronger, yet I cannot think of one single thing that would make it weaker.

So, the question as I see it is this:

What was the reason for the change?

Fundamentally, the answer is found throughout the Bible as we read story after story.  This is nothing new to God.  He has seen this over and over for years, centuries, millenia!

The answer centers around one central idea – God is not enough.

Ponder that, and I’ll post more on this topic later…

On Genre (and Rabbit Trails) – Part 1

As I begin my in-depth studies in Mark, I have been especially enjoying R.T. France’s work, and became sidetracked by some of his introductory comments and footnotes.  For some odd reason, I am one of those who read footnotes as voraciously as the rest of the text, often wondering why this is not covered with the attention and respect it deserves.  But enough about “rabbit trails”…

It appears that many these days prefer to see Mark classified as Greco-Roman biography.  Certainly, Ben Witherington  and Ernest Best make this case in their work on Mark.  Then another take is that it is generally uncategorizable, seemingly unable to fit neatly into any one category, thus the development of something new to the first century literature – gospel.

That said, a little rabbit trail caught my eye, especially since I am reading and writing with the earliest church in mind.  First, thanks to a footnote from R.T. France, I came upon H. C. Kee’s work Community of the New Age: Studies In Mark’s Gospel  and second, (thanks to a quote from Kee) is Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis.

First, in chapter three of his book, Kee is delving into the literary genre of Mark and begins by explaining why Mark doesn’t fit into the genre of a tragedy. 

To make his point, Kee quotes Auerbach stating that any one gospel account “fits into no antique genre,” and is:

“too serious for comedy, too everyday for tragedy, politically too insignificant for history – and the form which was given it is one of such immediacy that its like does not exist in the literature of antiquity.”

That alone would be enough to convince most that the gospels seemingly defy categorization, are altogether “other,” and are perhaps in need of a new classification.  But Auerbach goes on to pay the gospels, and indeed the earliest Christians, an even higher honor by stating “that the gospels evoke ‘the most serious and most significant sympathy’ within us because they portray:

‘something which neither the poets nor the historians of antiquity ever set out to portray: the birth of a spiritual movement in the depths of the common people, from within the everyday occurences of contemporary life, which thus assumes an importance it could never have assumed in antique literature.'”

 So, according to Auerbach, it is the general church community as a whole that makes this unique among writings and unclassifiable in genre.  The community not only maintains the essence of the gospel among one another, but also promotes and develops the gospel material into fruition among “common people” and in “everyday occurences.”  The picture this paints for me is one of vibrant gatherings of the church flourishing not in any technically religious manner, but in the everyday life shared with one another.

In short, I see that Mark was both writing with his immediate church communities in mind, those churches with which he had contact, as well as the churches throughout the Empire.  At this point, I doubt that his intention was to write a traditional Greco-Roman biography, though this may fit the bill from both a reader/hearer in the first century as well as an academic point of view today. 

No, I am inclined to see Mark as a more evangelistic/pastoral work, taking on some of the more popular methods of writing and transmission with the goal being to speak directly to the church at large in an edifying manner with the intent to preserve the tradition in writing.  Many see that the gospel of Mark is a collage of sorts drawn together with purpose, so in this way, nothing I am saying is new.  Yet, I think there is something to be said for a more holistic view, or one that takes in account not simply that the so-called Markan community needed a gospel, but that this was quite possibly what the churches were already saying and doing among one another, and therefore was preserved by the writer of Mark in narrative form.