Ben Byerly’s Blog

When I went to seminary, I was surprised to find myself almost in a minority of students who actually seemed headed towards the pastorate. (My orientation has clearly changed a little bit since then ;-). This post by Sean Michael Lewis (Covenant Theological Seminary) rings a few bells - Ministerial Students, Calling, and PhD Studies. (Thanks: Justin Taylor.)

Many come to seminary with a very romantic view of the ministry . . .

Then:

1. Seminary is difficult - Greek, Hebrew, suffering wife and kids, and God’s work on their hearts.
2. Ministry is difficult - field education, “grace-filled thorns” (2 Cor 12). I like to call it exposure to the “dark underbelly” of church ministry.
3. There are hundreds of MDiv students. “You ain’t so special no more.”
4. Seminary profs. start looking more suave than senior pastors used to look.

. . . you have to recognize that there are a glut of PhDs in the job market; that competition for jobs is ruthless; and that you are probably more likely to find a job at a college or university, which is why you should target your students as widely as possible (instead of OT or NT, go to a university for a PhD program in religious studies; instead of church history or historical theology, go to a university for a PhD program in history; etc.). In addition, I have to tell these people how unlikely it is for them to teach at a seminary that is serious about training pastors if they themselves do not have some pastoral experience (which, for some reason, always seems to surprise them).

. . . Do they really understand how unlikely it is for them to find a job–would they really be willing to go through the pain of PhD studies if they knew they didn’t have a job at the end? Do they really understand how insecure academic life is? Will they listen to me tell them how unsatisfying academic significance turns out to be? These students tend to leave my office discouraged; some still try to do PhD work, but very few complete their programs and/or find teaching posts.

There are a (very) few who want to do a PhD in order to equip them better for pastoral ministry. For these, I simply rejoice and try to encourage them not to allow the apparent blandishments of academic life to sway them from the God-given trajectory they are pursuing. . . PhD studies do provide are critical thinking skills–the ability to discern and divide issues, the larger and more sharply honed knowledge base, and the writing skills which should translate into preaching–all of which strengthen pastoral ministry, all of which strengthen the church of Jesus.

Read the full post:Ministerial Students, Calling, and PhD Studies. (And some of the comments

Cf:Interested in a NT PhD?

Occasionally in the midst of talk on internet connectivity, politics, and traffic congestion, we get reminded that globalization affects even the darkest, most depraved parts of society. Following are excerpts from last week’s Crazy Monday feature of the Standard newspaper - deadly harvest of body parts. African Albinos have special sympathy from me because they are the only people I ever see whiter than me.

. . . The notion that human body parts can be used to heal or bestow special powers has caused panic among the albino community in Tanzania.

The problem has reached such proportions that Tanzania’s President, Jakaya Kikwete, used his monthly television address to announce a crackdown on the traditional healers as well as plans to register albinos to improve their safety. “These killings are shameful and distressing to our society,” said Mr Kikwete in his Wednesday night speech to the nation. “I am told that people kill albinos and chop their body parts, including fingers, believing they can get rich.”

Videos and films from Nigeria that tout the efficacy of witchcraft are widely to blame for the current crisis in Tanzania. . .

. . . It later emerged that the Kenyan men had been sent by a traditional healer to collect body parts of an albino, which he claimed would make them fabulously wealthy.

. . . During the qualifying preliminaries for the 2006 World Cup, it is claimed that hippos, lions, elephants and hyenas were slaughtered to make a potion for the Swaziland soccer team to give its footballers extra strength.

The whole story shows how depraved greed can become.

Last Tuesday, I folded my laptop lid (into standby) with all the e-mails written to send that day and three posts for the blog. Because it was to be a day of meetings, I was rushing to squeeze a few minutes of internet time before the first meeting; my kids did not cooperate. The girls woke up late and were dragging their heels, so Liam (2) decided to take off for school by himself. This meant I had to wait a few extra minutes for him to clear the sidewalk. He goes happily on his own, but if I am too close, he refuses to part. I watched him from the kitchen window, then waited a couple more minutes for him to walk the last few meters up the school driveway - out of window range. A few minutes later, as I rushed to the library, I met him coming back from the school gate. He had fallen and was covered with dirt, so I picked him up, dusted him off, and carried him up to his classroom while he narrated the whole experience to me.

When I finally got to the library and propped open my laptop lid; the screen went bright red. The hard drive has never been heard from since. It is dead dead - verified from several other devices. Back in January, the motherboard on my IBM Thinkpad – on loan from the school – had died. (Fortunately (more…)

Brad Wright has started what looks to be an interesting series on different types of Christians. He begins . . .

Several recent studies of Christians have taken the approach of using data to create “types” of Christians, and this seems like a good issue to go into depth with, so I’ll post a several part series on it. Basically: Is it worthwhile for empirical studies of Christians to differentiate between different types of Christians.

Today I would like to review several studies that have done so.

1) The Reveal Study identifies six segments of growing in Christ, and these segments are discussed as types of people.

Exploring Christianity - “I believe in God but I’m not sure about Christ”
Growing in Christ - “I am working on getting to know Jesus”
Close to Christ - “I feel really close to Christ and depend on him daily”
Christ-Centered - “Everything that I do is a reflect of Christ”
Stalled - “I believe in Christ but I haven’t grown much lately”
Dissatisfied - “My faith is central to me, but my church is letting me down”

2) Christianity Today, via Leadership Journal, produced a study creating a five-part typology Christians. . . .

Click here to read the rest of his opening post.

Jesus Creed Post - and the nearly 250 comments about Calvinists .

McCall - Two Cheers for Resurgence of Calvinism (and some cautions) - 148 Comments (many of which prove McCall’s cautions) and 34 links (make that 35 now.)

Emergent’s New Christians and the Young and Restless Reformed Christianity Today

Colin Hansen:

Emergents embrace paradox, especially those that are core components of the Christian story.” The Bible affirms both divine sovereignty and human responsibility. But who knows how these twin truths always correspond? I love what J. I. Packer writes in Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God: “The desire to oversimplify the Bible by cutting out the mysteries is natural to our perverse minds, and it is not surprising that even good men should fall victim to it.”

Day 2

Hansen: Can you help me understand how Emergent Christians tend to view the atoning work of Jesus? . . . How do you evade foundationalism and still affirm the inspiration and authority of Scripture?

Jones: There have been five or six major theological theories to explain the atoning work of Jesus on the cross over the last two millennia. Each of them, you might say, shines a spotlight on the cross from a different angle. Emergents want all those spotlights, figuring that the more light we can shed on the cross, the better we can understand it. One spotlight is fine. Six is better.

Day 3

Hansen:

When you have two groups that care so much about theology, you’ll always have something to talk about. E-mail conversations like this are helpful; sharing a meal together is even better. There is a tendency for all of us to write things for the Web that we would not say across a table. Nothing can substitute for the immediate give-and-take of face-to-face dialogue. I hope these interactions will continue and forestall the rush toward entrenchment in polemical blogs and books. . .

Jones:

. . . . I get the sense from the young, Reformed guys I know that they share some of the epistemic humility that we have in Emergent. They don’t speak with quite the certain tones of the older Reformed crowd. I think this humility about knowledge actually jibes perfectly with the Reformed doctrine of Total Depravity (i.e., if our intellects are depraved, how can we be so sure that we’re right about, say, depravity?). Has this humility rubbed off on the older Reformed generation at all?

[Stay tuned for the response. IMHO ;-), tone can be as critical as content; tone says something about you and what you think of people. Note, this does not mean giving up convictions.]

This is what I was doing between books today. A young man was trying to teach his friend how to drive his mother’s car on campus today (without permission) and flipped this car all the way over on its top. Both “boys” were unhurt, but greatly embarrassed; it could have been much worse. This all happened about 30 yards/meters from my library desk and our apartment front door. We had to flip the car back over to get it out of the way. This is the half-way mark. (I couldn’t bring myself to leave the action to get my camera, so I’m happy Samy got these with his cell phone.)

Just your average day at the library. So what have you been up to?

In a tribute to Philip Yancey (The Healing Pen - CT), Tim Stafford writes:

The strength of fundamentalism is its forcefulness and purity. Fundamentalists know what they think, and they are fierce in promoting it. They can usually tell you what you think, too; they are often better at defining and critiquing others’ positions than they are at listening to how others understand themselves.

What seems to stick with ex-fundamentalists is a sense of principle, a willingness to fight for the truth, yet also a strong reaction to the rigid all-knowingness of the fundamentalist mindset. At least that is what I see in Philip: a powerful sense of honesty and idealism, and a great wariness about making judgments. At Wheaton, Philip worked to reconstruct his world, trying to strip it clean of fundamentalist accretions while preserving (and discovering) genuine, honest faith.

I can relate.

From the most recent issue of Leadership, Ministry Team Diagnostics: How to avoid the 5 most common dysfunctions of a ministry team (by Nancy Ortberg). [I've seen these almost everywhere I've been, and thought this is a healthy reminder for all of us.]

1. Distrust

Trust forms the foundation for everything else that happens on a team. Interestingly, though, I think ministry teams assume trust rather than work on building trust. Stop for a minute and think: can you name five things you have intentionally done in the last month to build trust on your team? . . .

2. Fear of Conflict

Of all the organizations we work with, churches tend to be the worst at engaging in conflict in an open and honest way.  Somehow we’ve gotten the idea that Jesus was a Mr. Rogers character who just walked around with beautifully permed hair, blessing everyone. One look at the Gospels will tell you that Jesus was a walking defining moment. His call for transformation was often imbedded in rather terse and direct language. . .

. . . Avoiding conflict almost guarantees that we will fail to build relationally deep teams, and that we will be unable to make the best decisions for the organization. When teams don’t engage in healthy, passionate, unfiltered debate around the most important issues, they inject more politics into the organization and make mediocre decisions that will deliver mediocre results. . .

. . .conflict is basically energy, and when it is not dealt with directly, it goes somewhere else. Unaired conflict goes into the parking lot or behind closed doors. It becomes “malicious compliance” and results in artificial harmony, not deep community. Conflict isn’t pleasant, but it’s your necessary friend. Do not avoid it; insist on it.

[The key here is healthy conflict built on trust.]

3. Inability to Make a Commitment

Ever left a meeting wondering what, if anything, was actually decided? Ever lead one of those meetings? Healthy teams know when it is time to make a commitment, and they do it. There are no perfect decisions, but there are good and great ones. At the end of an appropriate amount of debate, there comes a time to decide and to plant the flag. . .

4. Avoidance of Accountability

5. Inattention to results

As leaders in the church, we understand that results are not completely in our hands. We are not ultimately responsible for everything. However that is very different from saying that it is okay to rationalize the fact that the ministry is not moving forward because of our poor or misguided efforts.

Great leaders perform autopsies on poor results. They are constant learners and listen to God, as best they can, and relentlessly pursue doing things better and more effectively. They are passionate about results, because results affect people. Sometimes results are people.

. . . What could we have done differently? What did we learn from this, for future decisions? Has this ministry been allowed to go past its prime, and is there, perhaps, a new and better way? These are the questions of a team that build great ministries that deeply impact people for Christ.

Read the whole article here.

The “Millennials” (actually from last Nov – CBS – but I just saw it [Thanks: Michael Kruse]

80 million of them, born between 1980 and 1995 . . . raised by doting parents who told them they are special, played in little leagues with no winners or losers, or all winners. They are laden with trophies just for participating and they think your business-as-usual ethic is for the birds.

. . . how to deal with this generation that only takes “yes” for an answer.

It’s Mr. Rogers fault – Many more funny excerpts below: (more…)

In Todays Washington Post - naptime:

Some new studies make dramatic claims for it. Taken in the workplace, naps can increase productivity and reduce “general crabbiness,” according to a just-concluded 25-year survey of the practice in industrial countries. A study conducted by researchers at the University of Haifa in Israel showed daytime nappers doing better at retaining a newly mastered skill — bringing a thumb and forefinger together in a certain sequence — than a control group whose members slept only at night.

Experiments conducted by Matthew A. Tucker of Harvard Medical School suggest that a 45-minute nap can enhance the ability to perform tasks relying upon memory. And Dimitrios Trichopoulos, also at Harvard, has found that among a sample of 23,000 adult Greeks, habitual nappers were 30 percent less likely to die of heart disease.

There is even anecdotal evidence that napping can enhance creativity, including a charming confession made by Salvador Dali. To prime the pump for his surrealist paintings (the melting watch, the human leg with a built-in chest of drawers, etc.), the Catalan-born artist used to take — and abort — a nap after lunch. He would sit down with his arms extending beyond the chair’s arms. In one hand he would grasp a key between thumb and forefinger. After he fell asleep, his fingers would relax, the key would fall to the floor, the clatter would wake him up, and he would harvest the wild associations common to the first few minutes of sleep.

I’m a believer. A ten minute power nap can put me into a refreshing “time warp.”

As I related in my previous post (postures and orientations of the WTS debate), I’ve had trouble getting away from the recently released Westminster documents.

For those of you who are having trouble following the essay in which Peter Lillback’s attacks Peter Enns, Hermeneutical Crisis and the Westminster Standards, I thought I could provide a brief outline that follows the headings in the articles and the essay’s “line of argument.”

[N.B. Reference to “God Bless America” and “apple pie” under point V and the "stake" in the conclusion are fictitious.]

OUTLINE (sort of)

I. (pages 2-9/104-111) Harvie Conn would have supported Enns. Wait . . . the entire faculty of Westminster wrote a whole book on Inerrancy in 1988 and only cited the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) eight times – only the first chapter and never I.9 (p. 6n29 [108]); Bultmann gets eight citations too.

II. Enns might be okay as far as WCF is concerned, but if we consider the catechisms and the Westminster/OPC/PCA statements of subscription, then we’ve got him (p. 10 [112]).

II.B Given criticisms of primacy afforded to Westminster Standards (including by Conn n.45), the real question is what do the Standards say (p. 11 [113])

III. A string of enough quotes from [the new divines? "magisterium"] (more…)

As much as I tried, I could not get away from reading and thinking about the documents that Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS) posted on it’s website at the end of last week.

• Westminster Discussion Documents: downloadable PDF here (146 pages); see my previous overview and reflections by Joel Garver and Ben Myers. Conn-versation promises a healthy interaction as well.
  
• Brandon Withrow provides a one-stop-shop for almost all the links, reviews and documents related to the controversy around Inspiration & Incarnation - here.
  

Here is my attempt to organize some of the fundamental raisons d’être and orientations that lie behind those disagreements.

As I see it, the disagreements at Westminster Seminary reflect a fundamental difference in way of being – an overall life orientation. At the core, one side fundamentally focuses on, “How did God speak through the Bible in its original contexts?” The other’s first question is, “Does what you say agree with the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) as interpreted by a select group of reformed interpreters?” These two foundational differences play out in their stances to Scripture, tradition, and discussion.

General Orientation and Focus (time, attention, energy, etc.):

1. the Scripture in its original languages and cultural environment
2. the Westminster Confession of Faith and historical interpretations of it

- Both sides say they are committed to and respect both Scripture and the confession, but . . . the priorities and emphases (time, attention, energy, etc.) put them in radically different environements.

Orientation towards doctrines of the Bible

1. Our ways of thinking about the Bible should arise out of the phenomena of how God revealed himself in the Scriptures.
2. Our doctrines of the Bible should keep very closely to the wording of the Westminster Confession of Faith and select traditional interpretations of this.

Orientation towards Bible study:

1. Study of the Bible deepens, (more…)

Most of you probably know by now that Westminster has released documents related to the Peter Enns’s book Inspiration & Incarnation (I&I, only $12). The official parsing of the book is now 3/4 as long as the book itself. Add to that all the articles, blogs and comments that have been written about it . . . all 146 pages of the Westminster documents are available in PDF here (Thanks: Conn-versation; Between Two Worlds; Art Boulet, where comments are growing.) Evangelical Textual Criticism weighs in too, and Joel Garver and Ben Myers have the most pointed reflections I’ve seen yet.

• Statement from the Chairman of the Board
• Preface to the Historical and Theological Field Committee (HTFC)
• Historical and Theological Field Committee Report (HTFC)
• Preface to the Hermeneutics Field Committee’s (HFC) Reply
• Hermeneutics Field Committee’s Reply to the HTFC (HFC)
• Edgar-Kelly Motion
• Minority Report
• “‘The Infallible Rule of Interpretation of Scripture’: The Hermeneutical Crisis and the Westminster Standards” (Lillback article 26 Feb 2008 ; the last 43 pages of the PDF document.)

Although these documents are fascinating reading for Westminster alumni like myself, I recognize that most of this is insider stuff (comparing I&I to the Westminster Standards and parsing various reformed theologians) and may not be of interest to the general public.

Still, I can’t resist making a couple of comments. These documents give you a front-row seat on some important debates. It will come as no surprise that I am biased. ;-). I loved Groves, Green, Enns, and Kelly. I’m a biblical studies guy, and I believe in respecting Scripture enough to let it speak for itself in its original context (see page 29 in Westminster PDF document).

This is a classic study in some of the tensions between systematic (esp. confessional) theology and biblical theology.

[Note: All page # references in this post refer to the pages of the entire PDF document, not individual sections]

The five main concerns from Westminster’s historians and systematic theologians about Incarnation and Inspiration (I&I) in their order of importance (p. 4):

1) a doctrine of Scripture that diverges from the classic Reformation doctrine, in particular (more…)

Conquest’s three laws of politics:

1. Everyone is conservative about what he or she knows best. (Hence the parish priest who said, ‘I’m against all change, especially change for the better.’)
2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left wing. (Conquest gives as examples Amnesty International and the Church of England.)
3. The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

The political scientist and historian Robert Conquest (quoted by John McDade, “Christians and Jews: Competitive Siblings or the Israel of God?” The New Blackfriars 89 (2008), p. 267-268.

With regard to point #1, McDade goes on to say,

we should have a spontaneous sympathy with moderately troubled, moderately conservative thinkers in whatever religious tradition they, or we, are. They usually see things more clearly than anyone else. We do not need to be reminded that it is only conservatives who can be radical because only conservatives have roots.

I’m going away with my family for a week and will be completely internet free. Yes, I will take books. I know what some of you are thinking, but I spend 4-5 hours with my kids every day at home, and I enjoy the balance regardless of the setting.

May God’s peace be with you all in this week.

Sunrise

This week, Chris Brady (Part 1 and Part 2) and Jim West have been having an interesting discussion on why we blog and how we write when we blog. See other responses here [Chris Heard and Drew – do we blog for fame?]. (Warning: This post breaks both the brevity and succinctness rule.) It’s something I’ve thought about for a long time, and it probably kept me from starting a blog for well over a year. On the whole, I agree with Brady when he writes, “there are different contexts and communities and not only do we behave differently in each context but we ought to do so.”

My problem is that some of my radically different contexts can all read me on the same blog. I can no longer contextualize and nuance myself for them. (At least I don’t have to worry about my other friends who have never touched a computer.)

I’ve actually been a little surprised about how open I’ve been here in light of my chameleon predispositions. Still, there are a few instances when I will “whiff” on total openness: 1.) Someone I love would get upset, and it would damage the relationship unnecessarily (keep them off the blog). 2.) I don’t feel like fighting someone with whom I have very little in common (ignore). 3.) I don’t want to unnecessarily risk future opportunities. (Yes, the very reason you’ve all mentioned; bury a controversial post or hope they get to know you first.) Let me take them in reverse order.

3.) In one of the comments on Jim’s post, Drew writes: “The way I look at it, if some employer in the future decides not to hire me because of something I have written in any medium, I would not have very much enjoyed working there anyway.”

I’m not sure that’s necessarily true, Drew, and here’s why. (more…)

ABC University in Liberia, West Africa is an ideal location for those who want the cross-cultural experience of teaching in the African context. ABC faculty ad

Del Chinchen, president of ABC Liberia and one of my most respected mentors wrote me this in an e-mail yesterday:

–
Becky and I are busily restoring the ABC University campus in Yekepa. With the help of Samaritans Purse we will have 10 buildings completed by the time we are ready to reopen Sept. 1.

Restoring buildings on the campus is one need. Another need — and that is why I am writing you — is faculty. We will be offering B.A. degrees in Biblical Studies, Communications and Education and will need qualified faculty in those areas beginning in September. Soon we hope to launch into a Masters degree program which will require additional faculty with Doctorate degrees. Could you please post the attached advertisement on NEGST’s E-Board and circulate it in other ways with the prayer that God would send faculty to ABC University who would be interested in serving for a summer, a sabbatical, a year or even join the faculty full time?

Thank you for any assistance you can provide in this faculty search.

For further information e-mail
or see the website: www.abcliberia.org

[Full e-mail]

. . . ABC University is strategically located in Liberia to (more…)

(No not Mugabe/Tsvangirai or Kibaki/Odinga or even Bush/Gore)

As I’ve mentioned before, Christi cannot read a good book in moderation; it’s pretty much an all or nothing affair. Since she still likes to read before bed but doesn’t want to get caught up in a page turner, she’s started reading Whitney’s The American Presidents before bed. (She skipped US history in high school.) Each president gets a fifteen-page chapter, which tries to be fairly objective. A couple of her thoughts:

• Too bad some of African national fathers didn’t feel the same way as the American founding fathers. “Two terms is plenty. Time for me to move on.” They could have been remembered as heroes rather than dictators.
• Some real strange men were elected US president. Frequently their most outstanding (popular) characteristic was how many Indians they killed (e.g. Andrew Jackson) or how likely they were to preserve slavery or the systems that oppressed blacks.

She just read about old “Rutherfraud” - Rutherford B. Hayes and his election, which appears to fit the latter category. (Read here – the stolen election – for details of good ole American corruption.)I think “proud” Americans (those who tend to look down their noses at other countries) need to remind themselves that this happened after 100 years of democratic “maturation.” We have a pretty mixed history and need to be balanced and honest about BOTH the good AND the bad. That applies to the present too.

Why does our rhetoric always tend towards the extremes of demonization or over glorification? Why can’t we be satisfied with the raw, messy truth?

During our service at church this Sunday, we took time out to pray for Zimbabwe. “. . . that Kenya would be the last country in Africa to have this kind of post-election violence.” With each day delaying the result announcement, my stomach knots up more and more for them. The closest I’ve ever been to Zimbabwe is Malawi, and I don’t actually know (well) anyone from Zimbabwe, but this situation feels very close to home. Opposition leading early results, delayed results . . . Even when the “big man” himself is willing to step down, sometimes those around them can’t fathom giving up power. I suppose one advantage they seem have over Kenya is that their politics aren’t as tied up with ethnicity as they were here (at least with what little I know). Still, a lot of lives are at stake.

Let’s keep praying for Zimbabwe.

The anxious wait
Zimbabwe bloggers react

Want to change deeply entrenched cultural behaviors in a hurry? Try a powerful rumor. (On Fear and Flies)

Families are no longer waiting for the age of near-puberty . . They are cutting boys as young as 1 year, who will never remember the cultural significance. Why? The power of rumor. Everyone believes there is a new fly that has invaded the district and bites uncircumcised males in a very sensitive place, causing irreparable damage.

Despite what your English translations tell you, there is no Satan in the book of Job; the original Hebrew only refers to an accuser. (HT: Lingamish)

Good C.S. Lewis sites

A biographical sketch of D.A. Carson - 10 page pdf (HT: Justin Taylor via Michael Bird.)