On Church Growth

I love Paul's statement in 1 Cor 3:6 on planting and watering. I think that is THE seminal verse for church growth. We are meant to be gardeners. Gardeners don't make things grow, they tend gardens. They do everything they can to make sure that the garden is healthy and then let God do the growing.

I've also seen that growth is not just a one dimensional thing. In any healthy church there will be seasons of growth in width (numbers) as well as in depth (discipleship), often alternating. The only true measure of growth is the area (width times depth).

Numbers is the only growth that is easy to measure so, sadly, it is the one that most of us focus on. This becomes a real problem when we focus on it to the exclusion of more important things, like truth and the Word. Turn on the TV and you'll see that it's really easy to grow in numbers - just sell out the Gospel and tell the people what they want to hear.

Gardening is hard work, but it is the only way to bring healthy growth. It also takes lots of patience. But the good news is that God takes care of the really hard work - changing hearts.

Pastors, don't bear a burden you were never meant to bear. Don't try to grow numbers or change hearts; let God do that. Tend your garden - plant seeds, water liberally and pull weeds (un-Biblical ideas). Free yourself from the burden only God can carry and be free to tend your garden with joy.

ybic (Your Brother In Christ)
KevinS

Generous Apologist in training

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Church Growth - The expansion of the church (can be local or universal) in either numbers or depth of discipleship.

Unhealthy Church Growth - Artificially causing a church to grown in numbers by selling out some aspect of God's Word and/or telling the people what they want to hear rather than telling them the truth.

Topics?

Hey folks, I have more than a few topics that I plan on writing on. But even so I am always up for people sending me topics to talk on. So, if you have something you want me to talk about, please send it my way. I might not get to it that day, but I will reply to as soon as I can. Have anything you want to how a generous apologist would handle, of for that matter any general theology? Just send them my way.

ybic (Your Brother In Christ)
KevinS

Generous Apologist in training

What is the Bible

You may have noticed, but in case you haven’t let me say, that in general I try to avoid big, theological words. They tend to obscure the real issues and scare people off. Sometimes they are hard to avoid, but I try. As I go I try to add definitions of the big and/or important words. I realized yesterday that I have left out one very important word. It’s not big in the number of letters it has, but it is very important so I’m going to correct my oversight and define it now. The Bible.

OK, so most everyone knows what the Bible is, but have you ever tried to define it? I’ve heard many nicknames (the Word, the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures, the Divine Love Letter, that-big-black-book-I-carry-but-seldom-read) but few definitions. It’s very important to try and define it because how you define something often controls how you treat that thing. So here’s my definition for the Bible:

That Bible is the Word of God, written in human languages, for all mankind.

Well, it doesn’t sound earth-shattering, but it is important. Trust me. As you can see it has three parts; each one is very significant.

The Bible is the Word of God. A book is only as good as its authors. The Bible was written by many human hands but God inspired it all. Whether you believe in a literal, word-for-word inspiration (aka dictation) or something more like divine inspirations of concepts, either way the Bible comes from God and therefore has authority. Everything that God felt was important, we have in the Bible today and equally there is nothing in the Bible that God did not want there.

The Bible is written in human languages. This one seems like a DUH but it too is important. All human languages have rules - this form of the verb gets used in that context, the plural of this noun is that, etc. So when you read you can’t just pick and choose what you want, you have to understand and follow the rules of language to get the real meaning of what was written. The Bible is no different. No matter how “divinely lead” you may feel, you can’t read ‘red’ in the Bible and think “yellow” and be correct. The only way to get at what the Bible really means is to use the common rules of the language(s) it is written in - then figure out what you are doing to do with that meaning. (More on that one another day.)

The Bible is for all mankind. (This one is harder to cover in brief, so don’t expect much depth today.) The Bible in the Book of John it says: “But these [the words of Gospel of John] are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:31 NIV) Notice that it doesn’t say “these are written for priests to know and explain to you how to be saved”. It doesn’t say that it is written for priests or theologians or Saints or people without piercings and tattoos who eat all their veggies and clean up their rooms at night. It is written so that the person reading (a non-believer is implied) might know Jesus and believe in Him for eternal life. The Apostle John wrote several books of the Bible, but this one is different. Here he used very simple language to express some very profound things. The Greek words used would be about the level that a high school dropout of the day could understand, maybe even simpler. John wrote it in simple language so that ALL would be able to understand and then choose to believe or not. He wrote his Gospel for all mankind - the Bible was written for all mankind - not just a select (usually self-appointed) few.

If the Bible is written to all of us, then all of us should be in there reading it. If the Bible is written in human languages, then there are rules to help us understand what it really means. If the Bible is God’s Word, then it has authority and we had better understand it to see what God expects of us. You need to accept all three to really understand how to treat the Bible and what place it will have in your life today.

ybic (Your Brother In Christ)
KevinS

Generous Apologist in training

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The Bible - The Word of God, written in human languages, for all mankind.

Theology - The study of God and the things of God.

Theologian - Someone who studies hard and trains themselves diligently to make the hard to understand things of God even harder to understand. (Hopefully not.)

Scriptura

It would be wrong to deny that there are differences between Roman Catholics and Protestants. It would be even more wrong to deny that there far more similarities between the two. One of the chief differences comes down to authority and I thought I’d say a word on it here.

One of the cornerstones of the Protestant Reformation was the idea of Sola Scriptura (Latin for “by Scripture alone”). The idea being that the Bible alone should be the basis for faith and practice in a believer’s life. In contrast, the Catholic Church believes in Apostolic Succession, the idea that when the 12 Apostles died they passed on the office of apostle and it has since passed down to this very day. Because of this, someone (in this case the Pope) has the same rights as the Apostles to introduce new doctrines and practices. So the Protestant Reformers believe in the Bible alone for faith and practice while the Catholic Church believed in the Bible AND the teachings of the Popes.

In fairness, I must also mention that this issue doesn’t just touch on Protestant and Catholic differences. There are others out there who believe in authorities beyond the Bible. Some believe they have the Apostolic Succession, some that they have modern day prophets and still others that they have other forms of modern day revelation (seers, angelic visitations, etc). How then can those that believe in the Bible alone and those that believe in the Bible plus some other authority ever get along? Should they even try? I believe that in most cases they should, by being generous.

Having been in several and witnessing several other debates on whether the Bible is the only source of authority for believers I’ve come to one inescapable conclusion: the odds other neither side will give in. So the choices then would be to either cut off ties with the other side of the issue or somehow agree to disagree and be generous on this point. I know both Protestants and Catholics that feel that the other side are not really Christians. They choose the former solution, but that leads to ill will and they miss out on opportunities where they could minister together for the good of all. How then can we be generous about this point? By focusing on what we do have in common, the Bible.

All Christians believe that the Bible authority to teach faith and practice in our lives. Some believe in other authorities as well (Pope, seer, prophet, etc) but on the authority of Scripture we all must agree. As I posted before, the best way to handle differences it to focus on what we have in common rather that what we differ on. In this case the authority of the Bible.

What I propose then is that instead of fighting over Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), we instead accept the idea of Prima Scriptura (Scripture first) and agree to disagree on whatever is left that the Bible doesn’t speak to. The idea is that the Bible should come first as the authority for faith and practice. Then if some group wanted to accept some other authority, that’s fine for them, just as long as the other authority doesn’t contradict the Bible. If, however, someone has a “new” authority that contradicts the Bible, then that is a different issue that we cannot be generous about. We know that the Bible is from God. We know that God cannot contradict Himself. Therefore any “revelation” that contradicts the Bible contradicts God and cannot then be from God.

Whether you are a diehard Protestant or a hard-core Roman Catholic or believer in modern-day prophets and/or revelations let’s all agree to the authority of the Bible first. If these other authorities don’t contradict the Bible, let’s agree to disagree. Then, when ministry opportunities arise that are totally within the Bible, we can work side-by-side as brothers and sisters in Christ. When ministry goes beyond the Bible, we must agree to disagree, possibly debating the point, but always with grace and generosity as befits believers in Christ.

There is a catch though. A difference that goes beyond the Bible can be OK, but one that contradicts that Bible is not. The catch is that the only way we can tell the difference is if we know what the Bible really says. You can’t be generous with money when your pockets are empty, nor can you be generous in your faith when your mind is empty. Scriptural generosity requires first that we know what the Bible says. But that is a post for another day.

ybic (Your Brother In Christ)
KevinS

Generous Apologist in training

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Sola Scriptura - Latin for "by Scripture alone". The idea that the Bible should be the sole authority for faith and practice.

Apostolic Succession - The idea that the authority of the 12 Apostles was passed down through the ages to the modern day so that some today hold the same authority as the Apostles did, including creating new doctrines and practice.

Prima Scriptura - Latin for "first by Scripture". The idea that whatever other authority for faith and practice you want to follow, you must first accept the Bible as primary and that all other sources of authority cannot contradict what the Bible says.

Brevity

They say short blog posts are good blog posts. So far I've found this harder than I thought it would be. I apologize for the long posts. I'm the contemplative type (a la Sacred Pathways by Gary Thomas then updated in Courageous Leadership by Bill Hybels). We tend to contemplate a lot (hence the name) on something and then pour out all that we came up with at once. It's hard to condense hours of contemplation into sound bites, so bear with me folks. Hopefully they won't all be novels. bo)

ybic (Your Brother In Christ)
KevinS

Generous Apologist in training

Differences

Generous apologetics assumes that there are differences between people in belief and practice. There are several ways we could confront the differences between ourselves and others. The goal is to be able to address those differences in a meaningful yet loving fashion, so some ways are better than others.

One method to deal with differences would be to just dive right on in with the biggest point of contention. That would be like a Protestant coming up to a Roman Catholic and telling them the top ten reasons that praying to Mary is Satanic... needless to say that wouldn't go over so well. This method is great if you really love arguing with people. If, however, you'd rather work things out - possibly winning the other person over, or at least agreeably disagreeing - then you'd probably want something better.

Another method, one I think is more suited to mutual respect and working out issues, is to start not with the greatest point of contention, but instead start with what you can actually agree on and then work on that foundation towards the points of contention. In the example above, our Protestant and Catholic friends could start by agreeing that salvation is by faith in Christ, that God is actually as He presents Himself in the Bible, etc. They may just find that they have most important things in common. After that, agreeing to disagree on Mary's role in the church may be a lot easier to do, or at least they can do it respectfully. One major advantage of this method over the former is that if you start with contention, then the other people will likely shut their minds to whatever good you may have to say. But by starting on with you can agree on, perhaps they will remain open to hearing you out. And perhaps one of you may realize that their belief contradicts the foundation they've already agreed to, and hopefully then they would change.

My hope is that I will follow this latter method here. I hope to talk about several issues that are points of contention in the church today. I will try to start with common, agreeable ideas and then building on that foundation move on to the issue at hand. Hopefully then I won't alienate any readers that disagree with me. Maybe I will convince some people, maybe I won't. But if all I do is get people to really listen to the opposing side, then I will consider myself a success.

ybic (Your Brother In Christ)
KevinS

Generous Apologist in training

Generous Apologetics

Well, I suppose that if I am going to be audacious enough to title my blog “Generous Apologist” I had better dive right on in and start with what I mean by “Generous Apologist” or more generally “generous apologetics”. (Bear with me; this is my first blog so I’m learning as I go.)

Apologetics comes from a Greek work apologia (απολογία), which means “speaking in defense” so apologetics is giving a rational defense for something. Christian apologetics then is giving a rational defense for the Christian faith. The problem is that many apologists (especially us amateurs) narrowly define the faith that they are defending. You end up with Protestant apologists, Catholic apologists, Calvinist apologists, etc apologists. It’s hard to step away from our denominational/theological backgrounds and just be Christian apologists. Generous apologetics is an attempt to do that very thing.

In generous apologetics the goal isn’t to find THE right theological interpretation. It is more about finding which interpretations are possible and which are impossible, and then, perhaps, to find the one answer from the possible that is most likely to be correct. But most importantly, the generous part is that whatever our own, personal favorite interpretation may be we need to acknowledge that other possible views may exist and if someone else’s view is different from ours then they are not automatically wrong, they may just be different.

I feel the need to distinct generous apologetics from liberal theology. They may sound similar, but they are very different. In liberal theology most everything is up for interpretation. One person’s ideas are no more or less valid than another’s and we all end up agreeing to disagree on everything, which basically means we agree on nothing. In generous apologetics, there is an absolute standard (in this case the Bible) which sets boundaries on what is possible and what is not. Within those boundaries we are free to be generous with each other’s views. Outside of those bounds we don’t just agree to disagree we are forced to accept that some things are wrong.

Here’s my favorite example. If I say the word ‘red’ different people will get different ideas. One might picture fire engine red, another might picture brick red, while still another might be thinking of a bright rose red. None of these are “right” or “wrong” - all are possible within the meaning of ‘red’. If someone thinks of an orangey color, is that ‘red’? That’s a tough one. It’s hard to say really where ‘red’ ends and ‘orange’ begins. But if someone is thinking of green, then we can know for sure that they have the wrong color. We can be generous about the shade of red, but we need to take a hard line about it really being a red. Likewise, if one person wanted to believe that Jesus had blue eyes while another believed that they were brown then we can be generous about that difference. However, if one person wanted to believe that Jesus was just a good moral teacher and another that He is God Almighty, this is something we can’t afford to be generous about.

This difference is my “safe” example in that most everyone can see that these two views have a difference Jesus and can’t be the same faith. But I promise you, there are some differences out there that are less obvious and therefore sneak under people’s radar. Want to hear about those? Well then you’ll just have to keep coming back to this blog to see following installments. I’ve already gone too long for one post. I wanted to start this journey off right so I went a bit long. But now that I’ve started the journey, care to take it with me?

Take a look at the rest of my blog. Or you can go to my blog home and see all my posts.

ybic (Your Brother In Christ)
KevinS

Generous Apologist in training

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Apologetics - A rational defense of, or the systematic reasons behind some action, idea or belief.

Christian Apologetics - A rational defense of the Christian faith, protecting the doctrines/practices of Christianity.

Generous Apologetics - A rational defense of the Christian faith that recognizes that some doctrines/actions are essential and must be accepted with others are a matter of interpretation and people can agree to disagree. The idea that the essentials of Christianity forms boundaries, sometimes narrow, sometimes broad, within which we are free to believe and act as we would like and still have unity in Christ.