Erik
Erik is a pastor in Merrimack, New Hampshire.
Homepage: http://pastorerik.wordpress.com/
Yahoo Messenger: prchr2000
AIM: misterd48
The Spotlight Is On You!
Posted in Church, Cross Posts, Other Bloggers, Videos, Worship on February 23, 2012
The guys who lead music for our congregation (it’s mostly men, and we don’t have a “worship leader”) are not like this, but here ya go:
Many of us have wound up in services where the worship leader was either over emotional or way, way too friendly (in a Rock Hudson meets Liberace at Elton John’s place kind of too friendly, if you get my drift).
So, I provide for you an oldie but a goodie – Jon Acuff’s Metrosexual Worship Leader Scorecard. I think it is safe to say that all of our musicians would score very low on this card – which is a good thing, like in golf.
Here is the scorecard for those who don’t want to click the link:
As a service to churches around the world, here is an easy rating system by which to analyze to what degree your worship leader is a metrosexual.
1. Has a faux hawk hair style = +1
2. Has more product in his hair than your wife = +1
3. Has Rob Bell, black rimmed glasses = +1
4. They are not prescription, but just for effect = +2
5. Attends the Catalyst Conference = +3
6. Performs at the Catalyst Conference = +10
7. Owns Puma, Vans or Diesel sneakers = +2 per each pair
8. Wears jeans on stage = +1
9. Wears designer jeans on stage = +2
10. Wears Wrangler or Rustler jeans on stage = -3
11. Has a goatee = +2
12. Wears one of those Castro revolution looking hats = +2
13. Drinks coffee on stage = +1
14. Drinks some kind of coffee you did not know existed = +2
15. Brings a French Press on stage and makes his own coffee during service = +5
16. Has a handlebar mustache = -3
17. Good at Frisbee but hates getting all “sweaty” = +1
18. Has a haircut that covers one of his eyes while singing = +1
19. Owns a white belt = +2
20. Owns suspenders = -3
21. Wears a scarf with a t-shirt = +1
22. Wears a winter knit hat even in the summer = +2
23. You think he covered a My Chemical Romance song last week = +3
24. Drives an Audi or VW, silver of course = +2
25. Uses the words, “postmodern, relevant” or “emergent” nonstop = +2
26. Cringes a little when people say the “H word.” (Hymnal) = +3
27. Has ever said some form of the phrase, “That song is so 1990s” = +1
28. Owns a Grizzly Adams red and black flannel shirt = -2
29. Named his kid after a color or a number = +2
30. References Norwegian punk bands you’ve never heard of = +2
31. Wears a tie = -1
32. Wears a tie as a belt = +2
33. Looks as if he might exfoliate = +2
34. Has a man bag or European Carry All = +2
35. Brings said bag on stage with him = +2
36. Has a tattoo = +2
37. Has a visible tattoo = +4
38. Wife accompanies him on stage and plays tambourine = -4
39. Was formerly in a punk new wave band = +2
40. Knows the names of all the people on the scripted MTV show, “the Hills” = +3
41. Refuses to drink anything but Vitamin Water = +2
42. Your wife ever says, “he needs a barrette for his hair.” = +2
43. Has a nickname with “the” in it, as in “the edge,” = +2
44. Owns every Nooma video = +2
45. Has a soul patch = +3
46. Won’t play barefoot on stage until he gets a pedicure = +2
47. Refers to California as “the left coast” = +2
48. Currently subscribes to Dwell or Details magazine = +2
49. Owns a pair of lady jeans = +2
50. Twitters you from his iPhone = +2
51. His toddler dresses cooler than you = +2
52. He wears graphic t-shirts over button down, long sleeve shirts = +2
53. Ever says “we got a hot mic here” = -4
54. Shops at the Gap = 0
55. Shops at Urban Outfitters = +2
I scored one of the worship leaders at North Point and he did pretty well. At some point I will do a lady version, but for right now, I feel like a 55 item list of analyzing worship leaders is enough to earn me a new batch of “you are weird” emails, and at the end of the day, that’s all I can ask for.
What does your worship leader score?
Informal Church?
Posted in Church, Theology, Things We Shouldn't Discuss, Worship on February 22, 2012
USA Today reported last week on the trend toward churches going “informal” as if this is a recent event. This is a trend that has been going on for the past forty years, and if you include the insanity of bus ministry, even longer.
At our congregation, we are very casual but we still have a white church building and formal music (by formal, I mean the musicians practice and do actual songs). There is still a message from the Scriptures, an offering, and the opportunity for people to deepen their relationship with the Lord and other believers.
There are no tattoo parlors and about the only workout people get is sitting down and standing up occasionally. (A couple of us raise our hands from time to time, but it is the Baptist kind of hand raising which is far less aerobic than other denominations.)
What Elizabeth Crisp of USA Today does not understand is that the issue is not about formal versus informal. These folks worshiping with tattoos or singing praise songs on exercise equipment are still practicing a formal faith. It still places demands on them. There is still a liturgy (probably just called an order of worship, but the same thing).
An informal church is something more like the Unitarian Universalists who allow you to believe anything and still go to wherever it is that good people go, but no one wants to place a label on it. An informal church is one that says you can read the Bible however you want because the meaning isn’t as important as checking that task off. Actually, an informal church says whatever sacred text is fine with us – Bible, Bhagavad Gita, the collected works of Anne McAffrey, whatever.
The issue is not formal versus informal. It is about doctrine versus marketing. It is about whether our form of worship is dictated by what we believe or if it is dictated by how many people we can attract.
There’s nothing wrong with updating your music or changing presentation. There’s nothing wrong with worshiping in a converted space (we met in an old boat store for years) or not having an offering.
But there is something wrong with congregations abandoning doctrine so they cane more attractive. There is something wrong with compromising the faith or tweaking the gospel so people will find it attractive. There is something wrong with the belief that you can do whatever you want as long as it brings people in. And that applies as much to crazy bus ministries, controversial preaching, and odd ball special events as much as it does to worshiping in a gym or offering free tattoos.
The church is defined by our beliefs. Within those beliefs, there is room for tremendous diversity of practice. But there is no room for corrupting the gospel to become more attractive, or compromising the purity of truth so people don’t get offended.
My suggestion to all the church leaders who go down these avenues is to read Paul’s letters to the Corinthians and the first three chapters of the Revelation, because this isn’t a matter of my opinion versus someone else’s. This is a matter of Scripture and whether it is truly our rule for faith and practice.
Only Six Months Until Football
Posted in Personal on February 22, 2012
If you don’t know me well, then you don’t know that I don’t watch other sports.
I watch football.
Since I was five years old, I have been a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan despite the fact that I have never been to Tampa and did not even step foot on Florida soil until my friend Ryan graduated from Wizzo school at Pensacola Naval Air Station.
I also cheer for the New England Patriots because they are the home team, but generally speaking, I am just a football fan – a professional football fan.
Once the Super Bowl came to a close, I had nothing to look forward to for the next six months until pre-season football.
FFFOOOOTTTTTBBBAAAALLLLL!!!!!!!
Check What the Preacher Says!
Hey, I’m a preacher.
But I’m also a human being, and sometimes I make mistakes.
I am not going to get into a long-winded diatribe on everything that can go wrong in extreme fundamentalism, but I happened to watch one of Pastor Scott Anderson’s videos. Pastor Anderson is the pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, and a couple of years ago, he garnered some internet fame for his outrageously titled message “He Who Pisseth Against the Wall.” It’s on Youtube, and you can check it out if you really want to.
Anyway, I decided to check his youtube channel and I came across this video of him preaching Genesis 1. You don’t have to watch it if you don’t want to.
Here’s the problem. In the first few seconds of his message, Pastor Anderson says:
Genesis chapter 1, beginning in verse number 1, the Bible reads, ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.’ And of course, those are some of the most famous words in the entire Bible – the words that start out the Bible.
And it’s amazing because there are so many phony, false versions of the Bible out there today – if you don’t have a King James Version. And they already start tampering with God’s Word in this verse. Unbelievably, I mean just right out of the gate, Genesis 1:1, they make a change to this verse.
You see, the Bible says that in the beginning, God created the heaven – singular, not plural. He created the heaven and the earth. And that’s very important because what God created there in verse number one is not referring to the sky and the earth. It’s actually referring to the heaven as in the place where God lives.
So, what is my issue with what Pastor Anderson said? I don’t really have an issue with him, but the Hebrew Scriptures do. You see, what he says disagrees with what appears in the actual Hebrew text.
The word translated as heaven in the King James translation is ha-shamayim. You see that last bit – the yim at the end? That is the Hebrew equivalent of putting -s on the end of word to make it plural.
The reason that other translations of the Scriptures translate ha-shamayim as “heavens” is because it is plural in the original language.
I don’t know Pastor Anderson, and to be honest, I don’t really mind that he is a King James Only fundamentalist. My point is not to ridicule him.
My point is that even pastors and preachers can make mistakes. Don’t accept things they say – whether it is some famous megachurch pastor or the pastor of your local congregation – wholesale without question.
In Acts 17, we see an example of how we should approach preaching:
The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness,examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.
When Paul went to Berea (a small town to the east of Mount Olympus in Greece), he preached the gospel to the Jews there. Instead of just saying, “Oh, Paul looks respectable and is interesting. He must be right!” the Berean Jews daily examined the Scriptures. They tested what he had to say against the Scriptures.
Lazy Christians will fall for false teaching.
Take the time to interact with the Scriptures as a community, not just as an audience. Ask questions. Dig deeper. Have discussions. Grow together.
A Little Bit About Galilee
Sunday, I taught the latter half of Luke 4. After Jesus leaves his hometown of Nazareth, he travels to the town of Capernaum where he casts out the spirit of a defiling demon, heals a fever and spends an evening healing people before heading south toward Judea.
All of these place names can get very confusing if you’re not used to dealing with the space of Roman Israel, and one of our members asked if we could put up a map of the region while I was teaching. I thought I would do one better and provide not only a map but a little bit of background to help understand Jesus’ primary areas of ministry.
Jesus spent most of his time in what is known today as the West Bank. During his day, this region was divided into three toparchies: Galilee, Samaria, and Judea. Each was a distinct ethnic region, populated by people who considered themselves distinct from the other two, which is why Jesus is called a Galilean instead of a Jew. Usually, when the New Testament speaks of Jews, it is speaking of those who lived in Judea, from which the word is derived. (Of course, it is nearly impossible to refer to the followers of Judaism outside of Judea as anything but Jews today, so we are sort of stuck with the anachronistic term.)
Most of Luke’s narrative takes place in Galilee, so that’s where we will focus.
Galilee is the region around the Lake Genesaret (the Sea of Galilee), the largest body of freshwater in Israel. It is bordered by Syria to the north, Mt. Carmel and the Mediterranean to the west and the Jezreel Valley (Megiddo) to the south. To the east and southeast was a region called Decapolis (ten cities), which was sparsely populated. To give a sense of scale, the trip from Capernaum to Jerusalem is about 100 miles.
Because Galilee sits to the north of the Jezreel Valley, it is not part of the historical land of Israel. According to 1 Kings, Solomon gave the land to Hiram, king of Tyre. The very name Galilee comes from the Hebrew term for region or district. In Isaiah 9, the area is called Galilee of the Gentiles – literally “the region of the foreigners.”
The Romans gave jurisdiction over the region to Herod the Great, and upon his death in 4 BCE, rule passed to his son Herod Antipater as ethnarch (“prince of the people”) of Galilee. Before Herod took over, the people of the region practiced Judaism, but it was not quite the rabbinical Judaism of Jerusalem. Herod subjugated the population and “converted” them to the rabbinical form of Judaism. This happened only briefly before Jesus’ time.
In 20 CE H. Antipater constructed his capital on the southern shores of Genesaret. He dubbed his capital city “Tiberias” in honor of the reigning Caesar. This marked a change in Galilee’s fortunes, shifting the capital away for Sepphoris, a city near Nazareth. At the time of Jesus’ ministry, Galilee was what we might call an “emerging market.” In just a few decades, it had gone from something of a backwater to a center of fishing industry as well as doing a fair business in tourism.
When Jesus was in Galilee, he spent most of his time in and around a town on the northern shore of Genesaret, called Capernaum. This was a mid-sized town of a couple thousand people at the time, and it appears to have been populated mostly by Jews although Antipater’s construction projects had probably brought an influx of Gentiles.
Capernaum was not a major town in the region, but it was not negligible either. Most scholars estimate that the population of the region was around 350,000 at Jesus’ time, but even that might be a little bit high. It depends what you consider Galilee, but I digress.
Anyway, that’s just some background for you.
The Creation Story of Genesis 1 as a “Temple Image”?
Posted in Ancient History, History, Theology, Things We Shouldn't Discuss, Videos on February 20, 2012
Out of Ur recently posted this video of Peter Enns asking readers’ questions to N.T. Wright. It is not secret that I find Wright a very thought provoking writer and thinker, so I was intrigued to hear what he had to say.
I’m not completely convinced that Wright gets everything right (sorry, unavoidable pun) but I did find his shifting of the focus from literal vs. metaphorical to concrete vs. abstract to be worthwhile, and I do agree with him that we need to do our reading of the Scriptures on a case by case basis. Particularly, it is more important that we delve into the original intention (I call it the original matrix) rather than oversimplify with blanket interpretational schemes.
What did you think?
Uranium: Tom Zoellner
Posted in Book Reviews, History, Reading on February 20, 2012
One of the great things about living in Southern New Hampshire is access to GMILCS – that’s Greater Manchester Interlibrary Catalog System for the uninitiated. GMILCS is a network of over twenty libraries, including a couple of college libraries, that pool their resources and allow their patrons almost unfettered access to them. Need a book? Request it online and within a couple of days it will be waiting for you at your local branch. Want to download an ebook or an audiobook? Odds are you can get one for immediate download.
This is a far cry from the days when I would sit in the Belvidere Public Library where my sister was a page. I had an orange library card with a metal impression number, and when I wanted to get an interlibrary loan, I had to fill out a form and wait a couple of weeks for it to arrive. I love our libraries.
Most recently, I downloaded Uranium by Tom Zoellner. Just a couple of clicks on my phone and the files download directly. I can do the same thing with my iPad, but my phone is more convenient – even if the audio quality is sometimes iffy.
Here’s a subject I thought I knew a lot about but really knew nothing about. Uranium’s history is fascinating. I learned about interesting places like Joachimstahl in what is now the Czech Republic and Shinkakolobwe in the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), as well as some interesting people. Some were genius, some were ruthless, but all were interesting.
Did you know that the USA and the USSR spent tens of TRILLIONS of dollars on nuclear weapons we never used? Or that a rogue Pakistani nuclear physicist named Abdul Qadeer (A.Q.) Khan is responsible for the mess of nuclear centrifuges that exist in places like Libya and Iran? Or that Israel has never signed the Nuclear Proliferation Pact and refuses to acknowledge that they possess nuclear weapons – called the worst kept secret in the intelligence community?
Uranium changed the world several times. It brought power and it brought destruction. It’s existence and use is part of the reason that cancer numbers have skyrocketed across the world (and believe it or not, is probably indirectly responsible for my wife’s cancer). Zoellner’s book is a great overview of uranium’s effect on our world. It is worth a read, or a listen.
And if you live in the Greater Manchester area and don’t take advantage of our extraordinary library network, you don’t know what you’re missing.
A Thought on Evangelism
Posted in Church, History, Medieval History, Theology, Things We Shouldn't Discuss on February 17, 2012
One reason why Christianity has been the most successful of all world religions in crossing cultural boundaries is its adaptability. To be sure, this has not been manifested in all places and at all times, some missionary endeavors have been based on the premise that any rival belief system is of the devil and must be obliterated. Contrariwise, there have been occasions when, for the sake of number crunching, religious fundamentals have been sacrificed. On the whole, however, wise evangelists have understood not only that the gospel may be garbed in a variety of national costumes but that incorporating fresh customs and thought patterns actually enriches the life of new churches.
(Derek Wilson, Charlemagne, p 18)
Wilson’s words are actually a description of the success of Celtic Christianity in the 8th-12th centuries, but they apply equally to our postmodern world and our approach to evangelism.
In the past, the supremacy of the Western culture allowed Christianity an attitude of cultural supremacy in evangelism. In fact, the modern type of evangelism virtually required an attitude of superiority. Evangelists demanded that people of different views adopt their belief system, and that belief system was a dominate, colonial one in many cases. (I am aware that most evangelists were not representatives of state churches, but many of them still held onto the cultural trappings of their western dominions.)
In the postmodern age, we are confronted with a world that does not share our values and does not have a necessary reason to adopt our culture. For some, this is a discouraging notion. For me, it is an encouraging one. For the first time in a long time, the church is free to incorporate fresh customs and thought patterns – to enrich the life of the church of our age. This was the state of affairs in the birth of the Gentile church under Paul, in the birth of Celtic Christianity, in the subtle emergence of the Chinese church that thrives underground to this day.
That’s what I think anyway.
Following Up on the Authority and Reading of the Scriptures
Posted in Ancient History, Church, History, Theology on February 16, 2012
A couple of days ago, I posted about Peter Enns’ book The Evolution of Adam. It was interesting to watch how people reacted to the idea that Adam might not have been a historical person. There were some great comments and discussion, and it became obvious from the start that there are two camps – a dichotomy of opinion. What the debate really hinges on is our understanding of how to read the Scriptures.
For the moment, let’s put aside any arguments that do not believe the Scriptures are inspired of God. I know there are many who hold that opinion, but they would not be considered orthodox Christians by any camp. They’re off to the side in this discussion.
Front and center are the views that see the Scriptures as inspired but they vary on what this word inspired means.
To give us a bit of context, I am going to crack open my seminary systematic theology book because I feel that Millard Erickson’s treatment of this question is worth considering. He begins: “Several questions should be on the agenda of anyone attempting to formulate a theory of inspiration.”
- Can we really formulate a theory of inspiration?
- Does the Bible supply us with a basis for formulating an understanding of its inspiration?
- Should we, in formulating our understanding, give primary weight to the Bible’s teaching about itself, or should we primarily emphasize the nature of Scripture, the characteristics it displays?
- Is inspiration uniform throughout the Bible, or are there different degrees or differing levels of inspiration?
- Is inspiration a detectable quality?
- How does inspiration relate to the use of sources?
- If inspiration includes the use of sources, does inspiration guarantee their accuracy?
- Does inspiration relate to the shaping and preparing of the material prior to its actual utilization by the author of Scripture?
- Is inspiration broadly or narrowly related to the Scripture writer?
- Is inspiration a quality permanently attached to the Scripture writer, or to the office of prophet or apostle as it were; or is it a special influences at a particular time?
- Is inspiration properly to be attributed to the Scripture writer or to the Scripture written?
- To how much of the material deal with by the author does inspiration apply?
Of particular interest to us should be numbers 3 through 8 because they are key to understanding how to respond to works like Enns’ book. Inherent in questions 7 and 8 are the answers to Enns’ type of interpretation.
We must define the term accuracy (#7) because that is a matter of perspective. I meant this quite literally. If we view some passages of Scripture as people living in the age of reason, then we would say they are inaccurate. But to read them as contemporaries to the text, we find them to be accurate in deed.
A perfect example of this is Luke 2, where the gospel writer states of the census that drove Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem:
αυτη η απογραφη πρωτη εγενετο ηγεμονευοντος της συριας κυρηνιου
This the census first was governing in Syria Quirinius (was).
Atheists and critics have had a heyday with this passage because secular records show that Quirinius did not become the governor of Syria until 6 CE, far too late for Jesus to have been born during his administration. How these critics that the word governing appears in the participle is beyond me. The text does not say he was governor (legatus in Latin) but that he was in the act of governing. This would seem to indicate a much smaller focus than his appointment. Rather than looking for Quirinius as legatus, we should be looking for a time when he was called into governor without being governor. This indeed may have happened, although we have nothing concrete.
Erickson provides us with five theories as to the nature of revelation:
- The intuition theory: inspiration is the functioning of a high gift, perhaps almost like an artistic ability, but nonetheless a natural endowment, a permanent possession.
- The illumination theory: there is an influence of the Holy Spirit upon the authors of Scripture, but involving only a heightening of their normal powers.
- The dynamic theory: the Spirit of God works by directing the writer to the thoughts or concepts, and allowing the writer’s own distinctive personality to come into play in the choice of words and expressions.
- The verbal theory: the Holy Spirit’s influence extends beyond the direction of thoughts to the selection of words used to convey the message.
- The dictation theory: God actually dictated the Bible to the writers, word for word.
My own view is somewhere between 3 and 4.
But the question at hand for dealing with Enns is not how the Scriptures were written but how they are to be read. As I see it, there are a few theories about this as well:
- Ubiquitous authority: all of the Scriptures are equally inspired and are to be understood by all readers in their own context.
- Cessational authority: some texts no longer apply to “this age” and should be disregarded. Other texts remain true.
- Applicable authority: Scriptures do not address every matter and only have authority to the situation to which they were applied.
- Matrix authority: the texts had authority first to its original audience and continues to have authority to us when read as the audience received it.
There are probably a lot of other ways to view Scriptural authority, but I think these represent the big camps in evangelicalism/fundamentalism. There are some who try to use numbers 1 and 2 whenever someone like Enns shows up, and I think that is a mistake.
Numbers 2 and 3 are also very popular among those who pick and choose what texts apply to them today. So, they can treat 1 Corinthians 16:20 as not normative, but demand that 1 Corinthians 14:34 must be obeyed to the letter. (You’ll have to look them up to get what I mean.)
For my part, I hold to number 4. It is my job, as a student of the Scriptures, to learn as much as I can about the original audiences of the texts and to attempt to read them as they were first received. If a text has been received by Western society one way for the past three hundred years, it is still wrong if that reading does not conform with the original intent.
Sometimes I get labeled as a liberal and sometimes I get labeled as a fundamentalist. I can’t help it. You read Paul different than you read John; and you read both of them different than you read Ezekiel or Deuteronomy. You read Job different than you read Peter, which is different from the way you read Proverbs. It isn’t all painted with a broad brush, but it is all inspired.
Beware, All Ye Who Comment Here!
Posted in General on February 17, 2012
It pains me to have to write a guideline for commenting on my blog, but recently we had a troll jump on and argue incessantly with me about a link I provided.
According to Wikipedia, a troll is defined thus:
So, here’s how this is going to play out.
This is my blog, and you’re welcome to comment and add to the discussion of topics at hand. You are not, however, free to 1) attack me or other commenters, 2) intentionally try to provoke emotional responses by use of language, and 3) what constitutes 1 and 2 is entirely up to me.
My blog; my rules. Your blog; your rules.
If I am so inclined, I may grade your trolling on a scale I will call the Hate Mail Percentage Average (HPA). Score a 4.0 and you might make Dean’s List.
End of discussion.
blogs, comments, trolling
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