Let's Reform Christian Missions

Let’s reform Christian missions.  

One day, our family was together in the car and my father happened to mention a problem with one of the missionaries serving in our mission.  My older brother commented, ‘It seems that the only requirement to be a missionary is to be able to crawl across the border!’  After many years of missionary work on different continents, that once humourous comment from one little boy to his family has continued to ring in my ears.  Crawling across the border seems, at times, a higher requirement for missions when the requirements seem to be: (1) are you a Christian?, (2) do you ‘feel’ called?, and (3) have you raised your support?  I would like to focus on reforming missions with respect to theological education and mission training--one of several topics for reforming missions in our day.  (And I know there are exceptions to comments made here, with some great examples of good practice.)

I think, for example, of the Cambridge seven—missionaries at the end of the 1800s who, with an advanced level of education, committed themselves to mission work in China.  Preceding them was a skilled doctor already on the mission field.  You can read about them in J. C. Pollock’s biography, The Cambridge Seven.  Imagine if the mission force we fielded today were made up of highly trained, well-educated, and skilled missionaries.  One of the challenges the mission agency my parents worked with decades ago was that the understanding of ‘calling’ was so spiritualised that there was some pressure to accept people into ministry not because they were skilled but despite their lack of skills.  ‘God calls the meek and the lowly.’  Yes, He does.  But that does not stop them from getting the best training around.  Jesus turned fishermen into world-class apostles.

A number of mission agencies require some theological training.  It is very minimal, and nothing like what would be obtained through seminary training.  There are a few reasons for this under-educated mission force today.  First, seminary education is far too expensive—for anyone.  The Church needs to reform theological education in radical ways, and this should have happened twenty years ago already.  The expense of seminary education is especially challenging for missionaries, who are not paid large salaries by any means. 

Second, the notion of ‘missions’ has expanded greatly as ‘Evangelical’ mission theology and practice has emphasized holistic missions—that is, the notion that missions is not limited to evangelism, church planting, theological and ministry training, and Bible translation.  A holistic mission will have teachers, well-diggers, and, well, anything that can be framed as a service to others.  The plethora of mission ‘jobs’ has, to a large extent, reduced the pressure for some Bible school level of education, let alone seminary training.  Relatedly, we are forever being told things like, ‘Everyone is a missionary,’ or ‘Missions does not have to be over there, it is also right here.’  This is like saying, ‘We are a priesthood of believers, therefore nobody is a priest/pastor.’  Nor is ‘next-door ministry’ the same as foreign missions—if you think so, give it a try!  (Or don’t—please don’t!)

Third, missionaries are eager to get to the field, and education can stand in the way.  In fact, in my parents’ day, their mission board required both a basic, Bible school education and ministry experience before being sent to the field.  While missionaries can easily be sent early and then educated on the field today (such as through online studies), many missionaries find themselves overwhelmed with life and ministry once on the field and hard-pressed to add a programme of study on top of this (but they could—and this is one possible solution to the problem). 

Fourth, the trend in the West, at least (including in countries like South Africa), is towards non-denominational churches.  This is a result, in part, of mainline denominations giving up orthodoxy and, in part, frustration with the alternative denominational structures and definitions.  That is a discussion for another time.  The result of this, though, is that these non-denominational churches themselves are under no pressure to educate their ministers, let alone value education for their missionaries.  They might more likely appoint someone to minister and then suggest some theological education afterwards.  But the sending ‘group’ is not greatly committed to theological education for ministry preparation. 

Fifth, a number of large mission agencies (and there are some great exceptions) that are non-denominational—and therefore lack denominational standards—do not want to scare off recruits with too high standards.  The agencies may be dependent on a constant flow of new recruits contributing a percentage of their fund-raising to the mission as missionaries come off the field and leave the mission.  Standards cannot easily be elevated in the non-denominational world of church and missions. 

Sixth, undertrained missionaries might not be able to get away with being poorly trained if they are, say, pilots, but they often can get away with it if they are involved in lay theological education—study groups, discipleship training, and the like.  One reason for this is that only about 5% of all those in ministry in the world have had any formal theological education.  The problem of people without any ministerial training—let alone theological education—is so bad in South Africa that the government is threatening to require churches to have ministers with some education.  (There can be nothing good about government control of the Church, but the Church needs to wake up and set its own standards.)  In such a climate, how much more education does a missionary need? 

It is thought that Jesus’ ministry lasted three years (the reasoning does not make sense to me, but I’ll go with the idea it lasted awhile).  Was it because he wanted to heal one more person in another village?  Certainly, he wanted his kingdom message and ministry to reach the villages and towns of Israel—but this is accomplished by Matthew 10.  I appreciate that the Gospels are not chronologically arranged, but there was still more to Jesus’ ministry.  It is captured in the fact that those whom he called were called ‘disciples’—students.  Jesus’ public ministry took place around his teaching of his disciples.  When this training was completed, Jesus ended his earthly ministry by going to his death in Jerusalem.  Whether they could read or not, could speak Greek or not, knew the Scriptures or not, understood the plan of God or not (they didn’t) at the beginning of their calling as disciples, they were educated by Jesus in all this by the end of their in-service training.  This same approach to training for ministry—and missions—today could easily be replicated.

So, let’s reform missions.  Let’s send our ‘Navy Seals’ team, not our ‘Crawl Across the Border’ team.  Let the best of the best be recruited and sent by the united churches.  This starts with having a clearer understanding of ‘mission’ than the blurry concept of ‘holistic missions’ that we have had. 

It also involves sending-churches networking together (the independent church is the death of missions.)  These networks must define, articulate, and fund the mission.  They are the ones to send missionaries, support them, encourage them, and enable them.  Right now, most of Evangelical missions is turned upside down, with missionaries having to run around to independent churches and try to get funding.  Where this is the case, it is a fundamental dereliction of duty on the part of the Church/the churches. 

We can solve the problem of theological education/ministry training mentioned above, but it will require radical changes.  The first ‘error’ in theological education is to understand it as academic education, mirroring tertiary education of the colleges and universities.  What made this work in the past was lower costs in education, a still-Christian ethos in the culture that meant that higher educational institutions were Church-friendly, and denominations that practiced internships or curacy as they received and further-trained graduates for ministry.  Today, the Church must take back theological education entirely.  This is not in the least a suggestion to lower academic standards.  In fact, the cultural changes in the West are so undermining the academic integrity of the universities that the Church needs to own the educational process, not turn it over to institutions.  There is a lot to be said here, but one benefit of doing so will be to reduce the costs of education radically.  Another benefit will be that training may last as long as desired—it might even be life-long learning (why not?).  A third is that people will be trained for the work needed—and missionaries would get the theological training they need without trying to involve costly seminaries.  Most importantly, such education would have nothing to do with government loans for education—an albatross around the neck of Christian education that will ultimately (I am surprised it has not already) bring about its downfall. 

Also, the need for missions is too great to have so many missionaries.  I must admit that I love the irony of that statement.  Imagine, however, a military campaign against a formidable foe that enlisted a rag-tag army of farmers and persons without the greatest commitment to the cause.  They are there because they can be and not much more.  This was Gideon’s situation as God told him to cut back his forces for the fight (Judges 7).  God’s reasoning was that a large force would claim glory for any victory.  The point, however, is that there is such a thing as having too large a force, for whatever reason.  As long as the Evangelical churches replace support for long-term missionaries with mission exposure trips for their youth in the summer (as valuable as this can be for those participating), and as long as they send anyone who wants to go for whatever they want to do, the mission force will be made up out of the untrained, uncommitted ‘too many’ with no clarity of the mission rather than the highly trained, committed few who know exactly what the mission is.

If we focus on the mission, the Church, and the best mission force, we will also move away from ‘the West to the rest’ version of missions of the 19^th and 20^th century.  We can involve the Church in its global reality in our day, recruiting from wherever and sending to wherever to accomplish the mission (not whatever).

Finally, we can now reform theological education from being the residency-based, highly expensive education that it has become to online, tutorial education wherever one lives.  (This is what we are developing at the Ridley Institute, a ministry of St. Andrews Church in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina that reaches from South Carolina to South Africa.)  A Church-based, tutorial educational model can train missionaries already on the field at low costs.

So, let’s reform missions. 

Ministry, Not Leadership: The Call to Renunciation

One of the differences between understanding Christian ministry as ministry versus leadership is that ministry in Scripture is thought of in terms of renunciation.  Since the 1980s, the language of ‘leadership’ has largely replaced the language of ‘ministry’, at least in Protestant, Evangelical circles.  My purpose here is to explore one way in which a call to ministry is not a call to leadership.  It involves renunciation, not the acquisition of authority.

When Jesus called his first disciples, Luke tells us that they ‘left everything and followed him’ (5.11).  Later, as a follow-up after Jesus’ challenging words to the rich man who sought eternal life, Peter said to Jesus that he and the other disciples had ‘left everything and followed’ him (Mark 10.28; Matthew 19.27).  Similarly, Jesus affirms a model for ministry that involves renunciation.  In fact, all who would be disciples of Jesus were called to a radical renunciation, even of natural relationships if they encumbered one’s following of Jesus.  Jesus said, ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple’ (Luke 14.26-27).  When one person pledged to follow Jesus wherever he would go, Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’ (Luke 9.58).  Another would-be disciple asked to be allowed to bury his father first.  (While some suggest the request has to do with waiting a longer time, according to the Jewish practice later placing a deceased person’s bones in an ossuary, the passage does not open itself up to reasonable interpretation but to radical challenge.)  Jesus responds, ‘Leave the dead to bury their own dead’ (Luke 9.60).  A third, would-be disciple asks to be permitted first to say farewell to his family, but Jesus replies, ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God’ (Luke 9.62).

Traditionally, ministry in the Church was understood as renunciation.  Broadly speaking, ministry was thought of as a renunciation of the world.  Benedictine monks would take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.  The trajectory of renunciation ran strongly through centuries of thinking about ministry, even to bizarre, extreme forms of asceticism not at all advocated here.  Asceticism mistakenly understands the value of renunciation to be in an embrace of suffering for its own merit, rather than suffering as a possible, at times probable, consequence of devotion and service.  Asceticism is not the point; the point is that ministry was conceived by Jesus as anything but leadership.  The origin of this trajectory was in Jesus’ own definition of discipleship.  For him, ‘leadership’ was the antithesis of ministry.  He told his disciples to pray for labourers, not leaders (Mt. 9.37-38).

The language of ‘ministry’ does not entail service out of positions of authority or means.  It includes terms such as (1) labourers (cf. Mt. 9.37f//Lk. 10.2; Mt. 10.10//Lk. 10.7; Mt. 20.1ff; 1 Cor. 16.16; 1 Tim. 5.18); (2) slaves (e.g., Mk. 10.43-45); (3) servants (e.g., Mt. 18.23ff; 23.22; 24.45ff; 25.14ff).  A slave might have oversight and responsibility, but not office and personal authority.  If he has authority, it is derived authority, as an ‘apostle’ or ambassador (one sent), and he serves God and delivers the true Gospel.  A slave is ‘under the power/authority of another’ (the Roman, legal definition of slavery).  The concept of leadership has to do with acquiring authority and means, and ‘servant leadership’ involves serving others out of such authority and means.  A leader does not renounce these but seeks to acquire these in order to lead others.  Jesus’ Messiahship, surprisingly, was not about taking the reins of power in order to serve; it was about renouncing equality with God, emptying himself, taking the form of a slave, humbling himself, and being obedient to death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2.6-8).  His ministry took place through renunciation.

None of what has been said implies a renunciation of learning or the acquisition of skills.  Studying the Scriptures, gaining basic business skills, learning how to facilitate group discussion or run a business meeting, becoming capable in guiding a service of worship, and so forth may well be necessary training for a minister.  In Roman society, a slave might be sent somewhere for training, and many households had a slave who taught the children.  The acquisition of skills and roles of oversight are not inconsistent with service.  The mistake of conceiving of ministry as ‘leadership’ is not the mistake of seeking adequate training to serve well.  The mistake comes in focusing on the office or personal power of the leader rather than the function or service of the minister.  The result is that, far too often, persons advance in levels of leadership, hold offices of authority, and do less and less actual ministry as they reach lofty levels of power in denominational headquarters or a senior ‘pastor’ position in a megachurch that removes them increasingly from serving people.  Advancement is defined in terms of increasing authority, pay, and privileges.

Perhaps this is why Jesus had no physical office, held no office hours, preferred the countryside to the town and the town to the city, wandered the hills of Galilee with his disciples, found quiet places to pray, and opposed all religious ‘leaders’ every time he met them.  If we have come to think that we need to train leaders for the Church in order to do the ministry of the Church, perhaps we have forgotten that the ministry of the Church is to people and not about office, power, and the running of programmes.  The servant fulfills his duty by caring for the undesirable, needy 'Samaritan' lying in the street; the leader requires a large following with a healthy budget to operate programmes of ministry and so reach his potential.

Understanding Romans 3.21-4.25, Part One: The ‘Faith of Christ’

In Romans 3.21-4.25, Paul presents two passages from the Old Testament as proof for his argument that God reckons righteousness to those who have faith in Jesus Christ.  I am well aware that this simple statement needs to be argued point by point, since alternative, scholarly views have been presented and because those using English translations will struggle to see some of the points.  Here I take up the first point in the phrase from above ‘to those who have faith in Jesus Christ.’

Does Paul argue that righteousness comes through our faith in Jesus Christ or through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ?  This issue has long been noted—before the so-called New Perspective on Paul.  The issue arises, first, because the syntax of the Greek could go either way: pistis Christou (or variations of this) could mean (1) faith in Christ (translating the Genitive as Objective) or (2) faith of Christ/faithfulness of Christ (translating the Genitive as Subjective). 

Since the issue will not be decided by Greek grammar, we have to look to other issues to make a decision.  One of these issues might be whether the theology works: Is this bad theology? or Is this good theology? or Is this theology that fits with other Scriptural teaching?  Well, it is not heresy.  The author of Hebrews depicts Christ as a high priest who was tested as we are and who can sympathize with us while remaining without sin (Heb. 4.15).  Paul commends the virtues of Christ to his readers: the humility of Christ (Phil. 2.1-11), the meekness and gentleness of Christ (2 Cor. 10.1), or the generosity of Christ (2 Cor. 8.9).  Indeed, a narrative and virtue interpretation of the Gospel of Christ is appropriate.  However, none of these texts locate the salvific work of Christ in his sinless virtues—key as these are to our understanding of Christ.  Hebrews locates salvation in the sacrificial work of Christ (chs. 8-10 explicate this in terms of the sacrifice of atonement).  Paul, as we shall see below, also locates the salvation Christ brings in his sacrificial work.  Put bluntly, we are not saved by Christ’s faithfulness to the covenant, as essential as that was, but by Christ’s sacrificial work—his dying for our sins.  In the words of 2 Cor. 5.21, we do not become the righteousness of God because Christ knew no sin but because He who knew no sin was made to be sin for us.  Being faithful to the covenant meant obeying the covenant law of God; faithfulness implies sinlessness, not becoming sin in an exchange that would allow sinners to become the righteousness of God.

A further argument that has been put forward in favour of seeing ‘faith of Christ’ as his faithfulness has to do with Rom. 3.22, which reads (in the ESV translation): ‘…the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.’  The words in italics comprise the contentious phrase: should it, alternatively, be translated, ‘faithfulness of Jesus Christ’?  Many think so in part because, they argue, the words ‘for all who believe’ would be redundant if Paul had already reference our faith in Jesus.  Why would Paul say that righteousness comes through our faith in Jesus Christ and then, immediately, add the same thing—‘for all who believe’?  This argument about redundancy, however, is not quite fair.  Switch the wording in the verse and one can see that this is not redundancy: ‘the righteousness of God for all who believe through faith in Jesus Christ.’  Righteousness comes (1) through believing (not through works) and (2) through believing (i.e., ‘faith’) in the righteousness of God that He provided through Jesus Christ (not any sort of believing/faith).

What clinches the argument that Paul is speaking of our faith in Jesus Christ, not the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, however, is that, when he elaborates on his point after Rom. 3.22, he does not elaborate on Christ’s faithfulness but on our faith in Christ.  This is so immediately after v. 22.  V. 24 says that we are saved through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, not his faithfulness.  V. 25 further explains that this redemption comes through Christ’s sacrifice of atonement by his blood.  V. 26 repeats the contested phrase, ‘from faith of Jesus,’ but by this point the emphasis has fallen on Jesus’ work, not his virtue of being faithful.  Indeed, it is God’s virtues of forbearance and righteousness that are in view: ‘in the forbearance of God, to show forth His righteousness at the present time, in order that He might be righteous and the one who makes righteous from faith of Jesus’ (my translation).  Paul is saying that God is righteous and that sinners are made righteous by Him as they put their trust in the righteousness that God puts forward, the redemptive, sacrificial work of Christ.  It is God’s righteousness that is in view, and it is a righteousness accomplished through Christ’s blood sacrifice for sinners.  Introducing the notion that Christ’s work was in some sense faithful, while not erroneous, is foreign to the context.

This argument continues in ch. 4.  Romans 4 is further proof of what has been argued about the meaning of Rom. 3.21-26.  Paul, as is typical of his theology, is concerned to anchor his teaching in what we find in the Old Testament.  Had Paul intended to speak of the faithfulness of Christ in Rom. 3.22, 26, he would have needed to introduce verses from the Psalms about the faithful, righteous sufferer who trusts in God—there are a number of possibilities.  He would then have had to argue that we sinners are righteous because we participate in this righteous sufferer’s faithfulness to God.  But this is not what Paul does.  Instead, his focus is on our faith, not the faithfulness of Christ.  He turns to two Scripture passages: Gen. 15.6 and Ps. 32.1-2.  The first speaks of Abraham’s faith in God’s provision of salvation.  The second says that ‘the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered’ is blessed, and ‘the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity’ is blessed.  God’s work is His forgiveness, to which those forgiven respond in faith.

These two Old Testament texts are connected—as any Jewish interpreter of the 1^st century would have recognized—by their sharing a word: ‘reckoned/counted’.  This is one of those places where English translation gets in the way.  In Gen. 15.6 we have ‘reckoned,’ and in Ps. 32.2 we have ‘counts’.  The same word is present in the Hebrew (hshv) and in the Greek (logizomai) for both passages.  Moreover, Jewish interpretation accepted as a rule that interpretation of the Old Testament could be done by linking texts that share a common word.  This is what Paul is doing in Romans 4 by linking Gen. 15.6 and Ps. 32.2.  Even so, the verses capture the related theological points that Paul is making: God reckons one righteous on account of faith in Him, and sinners have righteousness before God because He does not reckon their sin--not because someone else has been faithful.  Paul makes a lot of this word ‘reckons’ in Rom. 4, using it eleven times.  God’s reckoning sinners righteous occurs through their faith in His promises and His work, which is fulfilled in Christ’s blood sacrifice for our redemption.

Finally, where the question of ‘faith of Christ’ arises elsewhere in Paul, we have some clarification from him that he is thinking of our faith in Christ, not Christ’s faithfulness.  Where we first meet the issue in Paul is in his earlier letter in Gal. 2.15-21.  Once again, grammatically, the translation could go either way (Objective or Subjective Genitive).  However, Paul’s full statement in this paragraph comes in v. 20, where there can be no mistaking that he has in view our faith and that the object of our faith is Christ’s deliverance of himself for us.  He says, ‘I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal. 3.20).  Salvation comes through our faith in what God has done in Christ’s sacrificing himself for the sinner, not through his faithfulness as the one true, righteous Israelite who remained faithful to the covenant.

A corollary of this theology for Paul has to do with the location of boasting.  He makes the point in Galatians and in Romans.  Boasting has no place, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ (Gal. 6.14).  If salvation came through our own works, then we would have something to boast about.  But it does not.  It comes entirely through the work of Christ.  In Romans—in the context we have had in view in this exposition—Paul says that boasting is excluded because ‘one is justified by faith apart from works of the law’ (Rom. 3.27-28). 

As Paul unpacks his argument about boasting, works, and faith in this paragraph (Rom. 3.27-31)—which leads to his further exposition of this teaching in ch. 4’s interpretation of Gen. 15.6 and Ps. 32.1-2—he focuses on ‘faith’ per se.  That is, he focusses on faith versus works, not on Christ’s faithfulness.  Paul might have said, ‘There is no boasting in our own works because we have been unfaithful to God’s covenant, His Law, whereas Christ is the one who was faithful to the covenant.’  But he does not say this.  Instead, he contrasts our actions with God’s action in Christ, which is the righteousness that God accomplishes through Christ’s sacrificial death.  Again, where boasting and Christ are presented together in Paul’s thought, the boast is in the cross of Christ, not in his faithfulness (Gal. 6.14).   We are talking about the work of Christ, not His character.

Or, as we read in Ephesians, salvation is not through works, which would allow boasting (2.9) but by faith as a gift of God (2.8).  Focus is on the gift, God’s grace, rather than on Christ’s faithfulness.  Moreover, elsewhere Paul does speak of divine faithfulness, but it is not phrased as the faithfulness of Christ; it is the faithfulness of God (1 Cor. 1.9; 10.13; 2 Cor. 1.18; 1 Thes. 5.24).  One possible exception is 2 Tim. 2.13, which speaks of Christ’s faithfulness, but it is His faithfulness to us: ‘if we are faithless, he remains faithful.’  A few verses earlier, Paul spoke of the salvation that is in Christ Jesus (v. 10).  He also spoke of the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus (1.13).  What is it that Jesus has done?  He 'has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel' (1.10).  Only in Hebrews do we meet the theology of the faithful service of Christ (2.17; 3.2, 6; 10.23; 11.11; cf. Rev. 19.11).  That faithfulness is not His own obedient righteousness but is to His work.

So, while a theology of ‘the faithfulness of Christ’ is Biblical—as in Hebrews—it is apparently not a Pauline theology.  For Paul, ‘faith of Christ’ and related phrases is about our putting our trust in God’s salvation of sinners through the sacrificial death of Christ.  Our righteousness comes through Jesus’ shed blood.  To be sure, he was faithful, but this is not Paul’s understanding of soteriology.  Christ was also humble, gentle, meek, and generous, but this is not Paul’s understanding of soteriology.  Salvation comes through God’s gracious gift in the work of Christ, in His sacrificial death, in His shed blood.

We might conclude by noting that this theology is already present in Isaiah 59, which Paul uses in Romans.  He quotes Isaiah 59.7-8 in Romans 3.15-17 to affirm that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (which he states in Rom. 3.23).  He quotes from the same chapter of Isaiah, 59.20-21, in Romans 11.25-27 to affirm that all Israel will be saved.  However, as we read on from Romans 3.15-17 to Romans 3.21-26, we find that the theological argument of Isaiah 59 is still in view.  Isaiah, having established that there was no justice or righteousness due to the pervasiveness of sin, then says that God puts on righteousness and salvation (v.17), just as Paul says, ‘But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the Law’ (Rom. 3.21).  God is, of course, righteous, but the emphasis falls on His doing righteousness.  He brings judgement where judgement is due (Isaiah 59.15-19).  He also brings redemption.  Isaiah says that ‘a Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression’ (v. 20), just as Paul says that, while ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Rom. 3.23), they are made righteous ‘through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith’ (Rom. 3.24b-25a, ESV).  The word 'redemption' appears in Isaiah and in Paul.  Paul interprets Isaiah: it is not Christ’s covenant faithfulness as the one righteous Israelite but His sacrificial death for our sins that Paul thinks of when he says, ‘the faith of Christ.’  While the Greek could be understood as either Subjective or Objective Genitive, Paul’s theology is surely focused on the Objective: our faith in the salvation God put forward for us in Zion when our Redeemer removed transgression from sinners and made us righteous.

The Need for Church 'Leaders'?

The following conversation was heard somewhere in central Florida on a rainy afternoon under an awning at a soda fountain.

Mickey: So, as I understand it, you think the Church needs leaders?

Donald: Yes.

Mickey: And you think that what we need to do is train more leaders for the Church?

Donald: Yes.

Mickey: Is a teacher of the Scriptures a leader?  Let us say, a Bible professor?

Donald: Yes.

Mickey: Is this Bible professor a leader because he has been taught how to lead or because he has been taught the Bible and can now teach the Bible to others?

Donald: Because he has been taught the Bible.

Mickey: Then, being a leader is irrelevant to the Bible professor.  He does not need leadership training.  He does not need to know how to run a business or corporation.  He does not need to know how to be the president of a country.  He simply needs to know his Bible and how to teach it.

Donald: Why, yes, I suppose so!

Mickey: Is a pastor a leader?

Donald: Oh, yes.

Mickey: Is he a leader because he has been taught how to lead people or because he has been taught how to pastor a church?

Donald: What’s the difference?

Mickey: A leader knows how to get people to follow him, how to push an agenda through, how to develop and build things—programmes, buildings, church membership or attendance.  He may sit in an office, have a secretary who makes appointments in his schedule, and go to meetings.  A pastor is like a shepherd.  He is out in the field with his sheep.  He goes to those in need.  He carries the injured and wards off attacks from the enemy.  He takes the sheep to green pastures and finds streams for them to drink.  Would you rather hire a leader or a pastor for your church?

Donald: A pastor.

Mickey: Does a pastor or a teacher do better if he has power or respect?

Donald: Respect.  Many people with power are not liked by others, and people who get power often do bad things.

Mickey: If you were to study leadership, would you not be studying how to gain power and how to use it effectively?

Donald: I suppose.  But couldn’t I be a leader because people respect me?

Mickey: This is a step in the right direction.  However, would people respect you because you are a good pastor or teacher or because you have leadership capabilities?

Donald: I see what you are saying.  If I respect my pastor or a Bible teacher, it is because they do what they do well, not because they have power and authority for what they do.  Respect is different from power.

Mickey: Perhaps this is why, when Paul gives some criteria for overseers or elders and deacons in 1 Timothy and Titus, he lists qualities that would help the person do the job well and that make people respect them.  That is, he is concerned about the functioning of a person who has been put in a position of responsibility, not the electing a person to an office that has power and authority.

Donald: I like that.  Functioning instead of office, responsibility instead of authority.  It is not a matter of status and position but of respect and function.

Mickey: And the word Paul uses, which sometimes gets translated as ‘bishop’, is ‘overseer’.  An overseer is someone with responsibility, a leader is someone given the power of an office.  His other word is ‘deacon,’ which means ‘one who serves.’  Jesus said, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10.42-45).

Donald: Isn’t that servant leadership?

Mickey: No.  Servant leadership is when a person gets power and authority to lead others and then uses it to serve others.  Jesus’ understanding of service is slavery.  Slaves had absolutely no power.  They simply served.  A servant leader needs power and authority.  A slave does not.  Jesus did not go to Jerusalem to take over the government so that he could rule well as a servant leader.  He went to Jerusalem to give his life as a ransom for many.

Donald: Shazam!  The Church doesn’t need more leaders after all, not even servant leaders.  It needs people trained in ministry—in service.  It needs people who know how to pastor and how to teach.

Just then, Minnie came back with the drinks—two chocolate malts and one strawberry milkshake.

Mickey: Thanks for serving us, Minnie.  I don’t suppose you thought of yourself as a leader by going to get the drinks?

Minnie (looking puzzled): Of course not!

Donald quacked up laughing—literally.

Is Diversity a Christian Virtue?

It is no surprise that many Western Christians have hopped onto the ‘diversity train’; it is yet another example of Christians being shaped by culture rather than shaping culture.  The morality of tolerance of Postmodernity has morphed into the morality of diversity, multiculturalism, and inclusion in Western Tribalism.

The meaning of the terms ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’, of course, goes further for the culture than it does for culture-laden, Western Christians.  The culture enshrines the diversity of non-binary identity, homosexuality, and transgenderism.  It celebrates the inclusion of non-Christian religions if they undermine Christianity, and then it celebrates secularism over against any religion.  Intersectionality crowns individuals with the greatest number of minority identities.  Western woke culture opposes borders, loathes its own history, assumes that the ‘other’ is better, and it believes that any love of one’s own way of life is some sort of fascist nationalism.  It pursues multiculturalism so that it can be ever more inclusive; anything else is quickly labelled ‘racist’.

In such a cultural climate, Western Christians inevitably come under pressure to virtue signal their own support for the new morality of diversity and inclusion.  This decidedly post-Christian ethic gets some initial support when it is linked to traditional Christian values.  Christian mission has sought to take the Gospel to all nations.  It has celebrated the inclusion of all people in Christ.  Christianity says the division between people is overcome by Christ our peace (Ephesians 2.14), is not racist, and does not disvalue women (despite some unfortunate examples to the contrary in its history). 

Yet some Liberal Christians have sought to enculturate the Gospel along this tribalist trajectory of diversity and inclusion.  Traditional Christian evangelism is undermined because, they believe,  insisting that Christ is the only way to the Father (John 14.6) is totalizing, oppressive, and unappreciative of others.  Christian belief that Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead (as we have said in the Nicene Creed through the centuries) sounds, well, judgemental and not inclusive.

Other Western Christians who are more orthodox than such Liberals in their theology have also come under the influence of cultural diversity and inclusion.  They have, like the culture, insisted on an ‘equality of outcomes’ rather than opportunity.  This means advancing people in institutions on the basis of their contribution to diversity rather than giving all an equal opportunity to advancement based on their abilities.  Diversity has, in this way, become a virtue rather than a condition.

While the analysis of the Church and culture along these lines could be pursued further, the main point to consider here is that Scripture has been commandeered to support what is, in fact, a culturally engineered theology of diversity and inclusion.  Three passages are often brought into the spotlight: Galatians 3.28; Colossians 3.11; and Revelation 7.9-10.

Galatians 3:28: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Colossians 3:11: Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

Revelation 7:9-10: After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

Do these passages support—even celebrate—diversity and inclusion?  The first two texts certainly do not in the sense considered above.  They state that ‘inclusion’ is in Christ, and, therefore, celebrate unity, not diversity.  They are phrased in the negative: neither … nor, not….  Had Paul wanted to celebrate diversity in the Church, he would have instead said, ‘In Christ Jesus there are both Jew and Gentile, both slave and free, and both male and female.’  Had he said so, he would have legitimated the diverse identities.  Note that such a statement would have meant that slavery would have been valued for contributing to diversity.  But this is not at all what Paul is saying.  In affirming unity in Christ, Paul relativizes ethnic, social, and gender diversity.

The third passage, from Revelation 7, has a similar intention.  Christian monotheism means evangelical universalism: One God means One Gospel for all.  The passage does not call for religious pluralism.  Quite the contrary; it insists that salvation belongs to our God and to the Lamb, Jesus Christ.  There is no other way of salvation.  As Richard Bauckham has argued, Revelation teaches that the victory of the Lamb is worldwide.  The author makes this point in several ways.  The word ‘Lamb’ occurs 28 times, that is, 7 (a number of completeness) times 4 (a number for the four corners of the earth).  The fourfold formula for the earth’s nations—every people, tribe, language, and nation—occurs seven times ((5.9; 7.9; 10.11; 11.9; 13.7; 14.6; 17.15).[1]  The focus of Revelation is on the unity the world finds in the worldwide victory of the Lamb.

The Lamb’s victory could not be more contrary to Western culture in its present, post-Christian phase.  As with the passages from Paul, the purpose of mentioning all nations, tribes, peoples, and languages is to depict the unity that the world’s diversity finds in the one Lamb.  (I have elsewhere argued that this passage depicts the undoing of the diversity of Babel in Genesis 11.)[2]  This passage, however, is the proof-text of those who want to advance the multicultural Church.  This ecclesiastical multiculturalism is put forward by its proponents to highlight the ethnic diversity of the Church rather than the unity of ethnic groups because of their common worship of God for His salvation through the blood of the Lamb.  We—the diverse peoples of the earth—celebrate God for the salvation He brings to all, not our diversity.

The Church is, of course, made up of great diversity.  It is inclusive of ethnic groups, social groups, and both genders.  This is not, however, itself a virtue.  It would be a vice if some tried to limit the Church and exclude certain peoples on such grounds.  But this diversity is more a condition of the Church, and it is a condition of the Church because the unity of the Church is a virtue.  This unity is found in the confession of unity:

Ephesians 4:4-6: There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Whereas Western culture wants to celebrate diversities of every sort (except, perhaps, white males and persons who do not celebrate the new, sexual ethic), the Church celebrates unity in Christ.  Practically, this makes a significant difference.  We value what brings glory to God, not to us in our multiculturalism.  We relativise our differences because of all being in Christ rather than celebrate our differences, thereby stealing the focus from Christ for ourselves.  We do not absolutise things that are indifferent.  We do not promote people in the Church to ministerial positions because we seek an equality in outcomes.  Rather, we value the diversity of gifts, services, and activities in the one Church provided by the Triune God:

1 Corinthians 12:4-6: Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.

Is diversity a Christian virtue?  It is a condition of the universal Church.  The Christian virtue is rather found in the Church’s unity in One God.

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[1] Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (New Testament Theology; Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), pp. 66-67.

[2] Rollin G. Grams, ‘The Rise of Identity Ecclesiology,’ blog (10 May, 2019); online at: https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-rise-of-identity-ecclesiology.html.

What is the Goal of Missions?

Two goals in missions are often affirmed as non-negotiable.  They sound contradictory and can even work against each other.  But they are, nevertheless, both wrong in their own right.  The first goal is: nationalise (or indigenise) the mission.  The second goal is: pursue multicultural identity.

The first goal arises out of mission dynamics in the post-colonial era—we might say starting in the 1960s and picking up steam in the  1970s.  In mainline circles, it was strongly supported as a corollary to decolonisation, liberation, and antipatriarchalism.  In other mission circles, it received milder support out of concern to strengthen the local church.  It became popular for missionaries to say that they intended to ‘work ourselves out of the job.’  Even Paul could be called forward as a witness: did he not say that his goal was to preach the Gospel where Christ had not been named before (Rom. 15.20)?  Other reasons might be listed, some from the perspective of the nationals.  Do nationals not know the culture and language better?  Are they not less expensive than a foreign missionary?  Are they not committed life-long to life and ministry in that context?

There is a qualification to this mission goal that would not undermine it but that should be noted.  It might even be stated as a sort of additional goal: partnerships in mission are valued.  The language of ‘partnership’ allows nationals to receive funding and some additional help, but it keeps foreign missionaries from becoming too involved.  It allows nationals to indiginise their churches, including, most importantly, the institutional authority.  While there are other reasons for the trend of ‘short-term’ missions (not meaning 1 or 2 years but the two-week mission trip from a church in the West), this is one reason for the rise in the 1980s of this popular approach to missions.

Let’s deconstruct this goal of nationalising the mission.  We might go back to Paul.  First, he did not mean that all missionaries should have as their goal to preach where Christ has not been named.  Not all missions is frontier work, as important as that is.  After all, Paul positively recognised those who came after his ‘planting’ to ‘water’ in God’s field (1 Cor. 3.6).  Moreover, Paul himself returned to churches that he had planted on subsequent mission trips.  Also, members of his mission team might be sent to previously established churches.  It seems that Paul was interested in building a network of relationships in various ways as churches related to one another, contributed to one another (with visiting ministers and funds, depending on the needs), connected with the Jerusalem Church, and connected with his ‘Gentile mission’.  Also, when Paul thought of mission activity, he did not think in terms of nationalising but in terms of gifting.  He understood the ligaments of the body of Christ as apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers (Eph. 4.11).  Gifts, not nationalities or even local knowledge, were the primary consideration.

That is where I think we ought to put the emphasis: gifting.  God gives gifts in the form of persons with certain ministries ‘to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ’ (Eph. 4.12).  This gifting is not just at the local church level—as in Rom. 12 and, to some extent, 1 Cor. 12.  (But more than the local church seems to be in view in the list of gifts in 1 Cor. 12.27-30, as in Ephesians 4.11.)  It spills over to enrich the whole Church.  
If the Church focuses on having national identity, it will inevitably prioritise ethnicity or nationalism over the gifts of ministers in the Church and over the unity of the Church.  This does not invalidate some of the concerns noted above, but it should relativise the arguments.  When Paul raised money for the Jerusalem Church—for whatever reason (scholars have offered several suggestions)—he chose representatives from different churches to accompany him with the funds.  Here was a reason to pay attention to location and nationality: nobody from one church could accuse others of misusing the funds, and having representatives from other churches showed the solidarity of the Gentile mission and of these churches with the (Jewish) Jerusalem church.  There are occasions when this kind of focus is necessary, but not as a general policy in missions.

The second goal noted at the beginning can be questioned along the same lines.  If nationalising was a goal that arose at the end of the Modern era, in a post-colonial context, multicultural identity is a goal that has arisen in a postmodern era.  Modernity valued freedom and equality, and these values reached their peek in post-colonial times.  Postmodernity values diversity and inclusiveness, and these values get expressed together in ‘multiculturalism’.  This was Tony Blair’s government’s gospel for its immigration policy.  It was the impetus for Britain’s involvement in the European Union.  It was the grounds for international policies of various Western governments, positive attitudes toward non-Western religions, and, of course, the non-binary sexual revolution.  The point is that the culture now had new headwinds, and Christian missionary goals could get caught up in them as well.

One trend, therefore, has been to celebrate the multicultural church.  Of course, this view tends to favour the urban, mega-church—which raises enough concern of its own.[1]  The theological downside of multiculturalism has shown itself in ecumenism and indigenous theologies that disvalue orthodoxy.  Local churches still operating with a 19^th century concept of missions also value the ethnic focus of international missions.  They want a collection of missionaries dressed up in local costume, waving foreign flags, speaking another language, and chatting about different foods and customs.

What is the problem with all of this?  Once again, ethnicity is the issue instead of the mission.  The focus in missions needs to be the mission.  Yes, the mission goes to the nations, but the mission is to proclaim the Gospel.  Churches that get excited about sending someone overseas are not necessarily engaged in missions.  Average, untrained Christians who can raise enough money (often from some mega-church) go overseas and come back with stories about some other culture.  They might actually do some ministry.  They might get involved in some project of value—digging a well, building a school, etc.  We could, actually, label anything that they do as ‘missional’ because, on this model for missions, the main thing is to engage in cross-cultural living, with a little ministry on the side.

What if, alternatively, we had a clearer definition of the mission?  What if it was so clearly defined around the proclamation of the Gospel that it involved evangelism, translating and teaching the Scriptures, and church planting?  And what if this focus of the mission took missionaries to such needy places as Boston or Birmingham?  Of course, many do ‘get it’ these days: they know that there is a need for mission in places that are not necessarily cross-cultural and where the Gospel may have once been known but is not anymore.  In fact, the Church once thrived in places like Turkey, Syria, and Egypt.  It once thrived in Boston and Burmingham.  The Gospel was once believed in the Church of England and the Episcopal Church.  In these contexts, ground-breaking mission work is needed once again.  When our focus is on the mission of proclaiming the Gospel, such places and denominations as these become our mission field.

This is not to suggest that Western missionaries should not still go overseas in missions any more than that they ought to work themselves out of a job overseas; it is to say that ministry is a matter of gifting and calling to where the mission needs us.  It is not to say that Christians do not value the multi-ethnic make-up of the Church; it is to say that communal unity is an outcome, not a goal in itself, of devotion to one God (Rom. 3.28-30; 15.5-9).  (One of the greatest misreadings of Scripture in our day is to read passages like John 17 as though it is affirming communal fellowship and unity rather than unity of faith through unity with Christ).[2]

If we prioritise the mission, we will not have ‘mission creep’, chase whatever sounds good as long as it is overseas, highlight cross-cultural experiences as missions, or drop the mission simply because we want to nationalise.  We need to train missionaries for that mission, no matter which country they come from.  The goal of missions is the mission!

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[1] See my criticism of the multicultural church as a goal in itself: ‘The Rise of Identity Ecclesiology’ (May 10, 2019); online at https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-rise-of-identity-ecclesiology.html.

[2] See Rollin Grams, ‘Stay or Leave? Is John 17 Grounds for Staying in Mainline Denominations in Our Day?’; online at: https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2019/09/stay-or-leave-is-john-17-grounds-for.html.

A Process of Punishment vs. A Process of Forgiveness

One of the great developments in our post-Christian, Western culture is the absence of forgiveness.  Instead of a process of forgiveness we are left with a process of punishment.  The two religions in the world that have put forgiveness at their centre are Judaism[1] and Christianity; what we have replacing them in the West are an unforgiving, postmodern tribalism and, especially in Europe, a growing Islam.

At the centre of the Jewish religion in Biblical times was the tabernacle or Temple.  The activity of the Temple was worship and sacrifice.  Worship was given to the one God who identified Himself—in the very midst of His people’s rebellion and sin—as the God who is ‘merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation’ (Exodus 34.6-7).

Before the heavy hand of justice falls on the children’s sins, God is steadfast in love, forgiving transgression and sin.  Even more profoundly, this God is able to bring justice through His love and forgiveness.  This God is worshipped through obedience and praise, not moral choice and self-justification.  One can only have forgiveness if there is right and wrong, and one can only have righteous judgement if there is justice.  Otherwise, there is only heartless condemnation according to self-made standards that shift with the wind.

The daily sacrifices at the Temple highlighted forgiveness in God’s presence.  The whole burnt offering, the sin offering, the guilt offering, and the peace offering required blood from the sacrificial animal to be placed on the altar.  There was a process of forgiveness.  It included the willingness of the worshiper, his acknowledgement of his need for forgiveness, his contrition, his acceptance that his wrongdoing was also sin against God, his penance, and his request, through his sacrificial offering to bear away his sin, that God would forgive him and be reconciled to him. This ritual process of forgiveness set things right: God has commandments for how we, His creatures, should live; He will forgive us when we come to Him in repentance and seek forgiveness.

Christianity affirms all this, adding only that there is no need for ongoing sacrifices.  We acknowledge that Jesus Christ ‘suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit’ (1 Peter 3.18).  Our faith is the faith of forgiveness—without, as Exodus 34 and the cross of Jesus remind us—ignoring or denying the reality of sin.  At the centre of Christian community is no longer the tabernacle or Temple but the cross of our Saviour who died to take away our sins.  And we are called to forgive as we have been forgiven.  As Paul says, ‘Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you’ (Ephesians 4.32).

The rejection of Christianity in Western society is also turning out to be a rejection of a process of forgiveness.  This was, at first, a surprising twist, since postmodern culture at first sought to include the marginalized and celebrate diversity.  This seemed to have some overlap with forgiveness, since there is a welcoming and inclusiveness to both.  Yet postmodernity at first denied any objective truth and therefore any need to be forgiven, and then it constructed a political correctness in Truth’s place that, like Sauron’s eye in J. R. R. Tolkien’s writings, probes the land for any who have not submitted in order to crush them.

We are left with only a process of punishment.  Franz Kafka saw this coming early in the twentieth century with amazing foresight.  In The Trial, written in 1914 or 1915 and published in 1925, a man, Joseph K., is arrested for an unknown crime.  Some inaccessible authority prosecutes him, convicts him, and has him executed by an apparatus.  The original name of the book better reveals the point of the story: Der Process.  Justice that lacks personal and human elements will become a cold, hard process.  Such a process is, in the language of electronic, social networking in our computer age, a mere algorithm before which there can be no contrition, no repentance, and no forgiveness.  There are only accusations and punishments.

A Western, post-Christian culture is today filled with stories of Der Process.  People are accused of sexual impropriety twenty or forty years later by single witnesses or even by a person who heard someone else claiming to have witnessed something.  There is no process of justice to determine the credibility of the complaint if the complaint fits a narrative, a politically correct narrative, that the public wishes to believe is true.  Accusers are shielded as victims from the accused; their accusations are brave and applauded while the accused is defamed, shamed, and tried in the court of public opinion.  Justice is served merely by accusing someone of some politically incorrect act, sexual impropriety, racial slur, or association (or collusion) with the wrong person or group.  One is condemned for refusing to go against one’s conscience rather than support the morality of the masses.  What fits the narrative must, it is believed, be true not because the person committed the act but because the social narrative is advanced by the accusation.

In such a society, not only is there no justice, there is also no forgiveness.  There is only the process of punishment, the apparatus.  People must be ‘outed’ for their past, alleged crimes against the politically correct narrative, not forgiven.  They are escorted from the public square with no opportunity to deny the charges, let alone admit them and ask for forgiveness.  There is no mercy, no grace.  Shrill voices ring out over loudspeakers with condemnation, with hate toward those accused of hate, finding cathartic relief through imagining violence against others.  The apparatus to bring punishment with neither justice nor mercy whirs into action.

We are well into Georg Orwell’s 1984, depicting, at the time of its publication in 1949, a future society in which bureaucrats would process politically incorrect crimes.  A godless society will make up its own sins, sins against the not-under-God State.  Its absoluteness cannot be questioned, and its impersonality has only a process without forgiveness.  Justice cannot be depicted as a blindfolded woman; it is better represented now as an awkwardly built, efficient machine erected by a Jacobin mob.  Instead of a tabernacle with sacrifices for repentance and forgiveness at its centre, today’s society has a Coliseum where crowds cry out for the blood of the accused strapped to the Apparatus.  Justice no longer has any place for forgiveness.  In a Godless age, it has been distorted into Der Process of punishment for socially constructed, politically incorrect crimes.

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[1] Cf. the powerful message by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, ‘An Unforgiving Age’; available online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MaU0kfkK-k&feature=em-uploademail (accessed 3 October, 2019).