Tag: Donald McGavran

A History of Lost Peace

The history of the church can be told as a process which starts with nonviolent peace as central and which is then lost. This is the historical reality of the church, not just in its first 400 years, but often repeated wherever the attempt has been made to restore New Testament Christianity. The pattern is one of return to the centrality of peace and nonviolence in the teachings of Jesus, an initial acceptance of this teaching and an attempt to live up to this reality, and then a gradual obfuscation, fudging, and loss of commitment to nonviolence. This can be demonstrated not only with the Restoration Movement (as I showed last week here), but with a host of restorationist movements in which restoration of the original church and the authentic teaching of Jesus entails focus on nonviolent peace, and then a weakening of this commitment. So, if the Constantinian shift and the acceptance of violence is the “fall of the church,” the church can be said to have fallen many times.

Of course, this is a conclusion Christian “realists” of every brand would resist. Violence and war loom too large, in this estimate, to be defeated publicly and corporately by the church and it is doubtful that even the private individual can make much headway in overcoming personal self-directed violence. Masochism, neurosis, sadism, violence, and war are the given reality, and not even the intervention of God in Christ can be expected to defeat this evil, except in some future estate wiped clean of the present reality. The problem is taken to be so intractable that there seems to be a relinquishing of peace as any sort of real possibility, corporately or individually. Realism, history as we know it, the muck and mess that is the human condition, all weigh too much. To call commitment to peace a rediscovery of the gospel (the depiction peace groups attribute to themselves) will, of course, irritate those weighed down by the heavy robes of tradition and institution. Everyone knows peace is there in the Bible, but some are savvy enough, world-wise enough, grounded enough in history and institutions, to have concluded to the inevitable nature of violence.

Which explains when and where there are renewals of commitment to the peace of the gospel. As John Howard Yoder has noted, “Pacifism arises where people are trying to be Christian without too much rootage in history.” The North American frontier provides a sample proof of the case that wherever there is a frontier culture (Yoder provides exhaustive proofs with worldwide peace movements) or wherever there is a fresh reading of scripture, there is a conclusion that pacifism is central to the gospel and then a commitment to live in this peace.[1]

There is no particular hermeneutic that is rediscovered, but simply an opening, a renewal, or what might be disparagingly referred to as naivety or ignorance. Some situations allow for a fresh start or at least a fresh reading. Maybe every child, like I did, encounters the nonviolence of the teachings of Jesus as raw datum. Then, through education, acquaintance with more sophisticated doctrine and history, one learns better. What is clear is that where a fresh reading is a possibility, the presumption is that violence and war are not part of the authentic Christian life.

In North America, this was not simply the conclusion of an anti-intellectualism, as the age of John Locke gave the sophisticated the sense that, being part of the age of reason, they certainly need not return to the dark ages of medieval theology or the encrusted obscurities of tradition. The Bible is clear and people can reason out its meaning without the aid of priest or church.

On the other hand, revivalism, pietism, Pentecostalism, and just the sense of being on the edges of a new frontier would foster the same confident approach to the biblical text. The United States afforded the rediscovery of nonviolence, or what, as part of a newly founded peace society Adin Ballou (1803-90) would call “nonresistance.” As I described it, part of the impetus for peace was combined with the drive to abolish slavery. David Lipscomb and Barton W. Stone, in their advocacy of nonviolence and the abolition of slavery were following the same course as William Lloyd Garrison, who founded both an abolitionist society and a peace society, each with their own journal.

However, as I also noted in regard to the Restoration Movement, this was not an enduring phenomenon. There was a rediscovery of the words of Jesus, but not usually a deep-seated willingness, as with the Anabaptists, to die for this cause. As Yoder notes, “they lacked a deep sense of the problem’s long history. They did not have an awareness of a suffering community through the ages or of a peace church tradition.”[2]

Maybe for that same reason, the fresh non-threatening condition, there was a mass rediscovery of peaceful nonviolence. The new world was so rife with peace movements, peace societies, peace churches, and utopian communities, that Ralph Waldo Emerson could forecast that “War is on its last legs: a universal peace is as sure as is the prevalence of civilization over barbarism, of liberal governments over feudal forms. The question for us is only How soon.”[3]

Starting with the late developing Pentecostals and working our way backward, we find both those groups indigenous to the United States and those groups that started over in the United States initially embrace doctrines of nonviolence. Though Pentecostalism develops in the 20th century it is the culmination of 19th century Wesleyan revivalism, which had shown Pentecostal-like manifestations at the Cane Ridge Revival in the previous century. Where Cane Ridge, hosted by Presbyterian Barton Stone’s church (but including Methodists and Baptists), would feed into the headier movement of Stone and Campbell, 20th century Pentecostalism was free of the rationalizing tendency and was geared toward a literal interpretation and obedience inclusive of the obedience of pacifism. As Yoder describes it, “In the first generation it became rather directly and simply pacifist, for the simple reason that adherents took the whole Bible straight.”[4]

Though there was a strong sense of being against the world, the world was not anything as complicated as American Nationalism. In my experience in the Assemblies of God, I remember a Philippine national describing his encounters with demons among the headhunters. He gave me a name card in which he described his long list of spiritual gifts, including exorcism, discernment, and other means of dealing with the devil. The demons were always hovering nearby, it seemed. The preacher would sometimes preach, not from preparation but through a directly inspired message. It was more intense and entertaining than the worship at my Disciples church, if a bit confusing for a teenage boy. The reigniting of the gift of the Holy Spirit is a rebeginning of the church, so as with their restorationist cohorts, what happened between the first Pentecost and new Pentecost is irrelevant. History, theology, and Church structure are of little importance in light of the movement of the Spirit.

The story of the upward mobility, success with the implementation of Donald McGavran’s Church Growth theory, and a reversal of integration (Pentecostalism started with poor whites and blacks mixing freely), marks the demise of the commitment to peace. The website of the Assemblies of God, though it is not providing a sequence of this demise, captures an intense, initial focus on peace and then it is rendered irrelevant with provisos. Historically, the need for a seminary degree for qualified chaplains leads to greater focus on education and eventually to a quelling of the strong sentiment of peace. Then in 1967 they relinquished their formal opposition to Christian participation in war, and they gave up their status as a peace church. I assume it would be hard to reduplicate my teenage experiences with the Pentecostals. On my last visit to an Assemblies of God Church, they were indiscernible from other evangelicals.

Methodism in the United States follows a similar pattern of initial embrace of a strong pacifist stance and then a relinquishing of this position (as in the statement put out by the United Methodists allowing for participation in war). Methodism is in many ways the predominant cultural influence on the American frontier. The revivalism of Dwight L. Moody, and his pacifism (little talked about now), were typical of the ethos of the times and a by-product of a long history. Moody was fostered by the Chicago department store magnate, John Farwell, one of the wealthiest men in the country. Farwell would organize the largest corporate ranch in the world, the XIT ranch, and it was run along strict Methodist lines. No guns, no swearing, no drinking, and no private horse ownership for the cowboys on the ranch.

American Methodism, true or not to Wesley, came to emphasize a full-sanctification or ability to keep the ethical commands of Jesus, inclusive of nonviolence. The impetus behind temperance, abolition, and women’s rights was connected to an embodied notion of nonviolent peace. Moody’s description of himself would fit early American Methodism: “There has never been a time in my life when I felt that I could take a gun and shoot down a fellow being. In this respect I am a Quaker.” Instead of joining the Union to fight, Moody would spend the war preaching to both Union and Confederate troops.

Contemporary with Moody, Methodist General Ulysses S. Grant represents the versatility of Methodism in regard to violence. Ironically, Wesley’s most famous namesake in the United States is the most prolific killer of the West. The son of a Methodist minister, and himself a Sunday school teacher to his fellow inmates, John Wesley Hardin killed at least 21 men. The pacifism of American Methodism always contained an unstable element.

The restorationism of Churches of God closely resembles that of Christian Churches in their non-denominationalism and camp meetings in place of a denominational headquarters. They began with a strong pacifist stance and statement: “She [the Church] believes that all civil wars are unholy and sinful, and in which the saints of the Most High ought never to participate.” [5] This stance lasts through the Mexican War and the American Civil War but by WWI it had mostly relinquished nonviolence. The one Church of God minister I knew was also one of the most patriotic people I have ever met. During a tennis game, when the local high school played the National Anthem on a field we were well removed from, he halted the game to hold his hand over his heart.

So too Seventh Day Adventists, who maintained their pacifism through the Second World War and Korean War but now hold loosely to this stance. A Seventh Day Adventist minister and friend depicted to me a church in contention with its own history on both pacifism and the role of women.

My conclusion in this brief informal survey, is that no peace church with its roots in the United States has maintained its peace stance. I would be happy to hear that I am wrong and to hear of the exception. The closest exception, which my daughter pointed out, is the Catholic Worker. It is indigenous to this country and has maintained a strong pacifist ethic. Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin may have generated suffering and persecution enough to mold their own unique culture, which survives in the Catholic Worker Movement. Peter, in his Easy Essays sounds very much like a restorationist, but of course they had the sense of simply being true to Catholic social teaching and never considered themselves a church.

Traditional Anabaptist groups and various groups of Brethren, perhaps due to their long history and persecution have been more faithful to pacifism. Their rootedness in history, the example held up of pacifist martyrs, their often distinctive culture, and their sense of long suffering, has surely played a role. Those Mennonite churches I have visited and the short time I spent at one of their seminaries confronted me with a distinctive sense of culture and mission. Though, even among these groups the North American experience has created a rift. The problem for Mennonites, for example, is no longer persecution but acceptance into mainstream culture, which has proven more corrosive than persecution. As long as the world demonstrably hated them there was no problem remaining separate from the world. Subsequent to WWII the peace stance has become not only accepted but admired, so that some Mennonites would now attempt to influence government and there has been a shift in the understanding of the church/world relationship. Meanwhile, some Mennonite churches have been lured by Church Growth Theory and evangelical like success.[6]

By the original standard of these groups, that violence is sin, peace groups indigenous to this country now meet their own criterion for fallenness. If violence is indeed sin, if it is the sin that that Christ came to defeat, then they demonstrate a Constantinian-like failure. The inaccessible nature of this reality, its implausibility, may be an effect of the temptation to violence. We could extrapolate from the notion that “the first casualty of war is truth” to conclusions about the inherent falsehood human violence entails. “Violence is our surest means of securing ourselves. Subduing, suppressing, oppressing, the other is the way in which we obtain safety.” The commitment to making things right through violence and war is already deceived. As in war, truth is already a casualty in commitment to violence. Those who turn to violence have come upon the scene too late, as the course is already determined and the path of violence is already set. Too much water under the bridge or roots already set have predetermined how things must be settled. This is a historical reality but also a psychological reality, which if drawn together can provide explanation as to why peace is a frontier condition – a place of supposed naiveté or a place outside the city gates – continually threatened with realism and settlement.

[1] John Howard Yoder, Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution (p. 269). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[2] Yoder, 254-255.

[3] “War” by Ralph Waldo Emerson; quoted in Yoder, 275-276.

[4] Yoder, 262.

[5] Churches of God in North America [Winebrenner] From The Faith and Practice of the Church of God, 1829. http://www.pentecostalpacifism.com/home/services/holiness-pacifist-groups/church-of-god-gc/

[6] See the Mennonite publication Direction and the long lack of unity as regards nonresistance. https://directionjournal.org/47/2/complicated-history-of-anabaptist.html.

From the Vaunted Leadership of Bill Hybels, Mark Driscoll, and James MacDonald to the Deprecated Leadership of Paul

My previous claims that no authority relieves us of the responsibility of thought and agency (here) and that this is an ongoing personal realization (here), rest upon rightly recognizing the role of authority (ecclesiastical, apostolic, biblical, and divine). Authority is a necessary factor in shaping our lives, and where this authority is misused, misdirected, or misunderstood (the universal predicament), then it warps us accordingly. We are ushered into this world under failed regimes of social power (the “principalities and powers”) and this is the point of being adopted into a new family and becoming citizens of a new kingdom.  We are to be nurtured, discipled, and guided into being image bearers which requires real world models – and here is the rub. The abuse of authority and power in the church seems to have reached epidemic proportions. The endless scandals (most recently the resignation of Bill Hybels and the entire board of elders from Willow Creek Community Church following a sex scandal) along with the rise of the #ChurchToo movement for victims of evangelical church abuse indicates the pervasive nature of the problem. However, it is not simply clergy sex scandals, or what Episcopalians have dubbed “impaired communion” (the inability to line up doctrine and authority), but even the ideal notions of authority which are problematic.

 The public failures, that is, are indicative that the ideals of leadership are themselves flawed. The mega-church CEO model of authority continues to produce abusive authoritarians (e.g.  Mark Driscoll and most recently James MacDonald of Harvest Bible Chapel in Chicago, in MacDonald’s case threats of physical violence, excommunication of elders who complained, financial corruption, etc. etc.). These “successful pastors” fall under scrutiny only when they take the notions of leadership which gained them numbers and prominence to extremes. They are, however, simply following the blueprint for marketing of the Church as outlined by Donald McGavran and Peter Wagner which focuses on centralized leadership (of the CEO sort). This marketing and management plan though, seems to have not simply displaced the priority of theology but has smuggled in its own unbiblical theology. As one well known proponent of the method puts it, “I don’t deal with theology. I’m simply a methodologist.” Whatever the theological emphasis employed, as Os Guinness has noted, methodology and technique are at the center and in control and so constitute the theology or bend it accordingly.[1] The technique works to gain numbers and this valuation or “sign of success,” often directly equated with divine approval, is itself a sign of theological failure.  

The church-growth movement, arising from McGavran’s missionary experience in India, flows out of another missionary presumption called “contextualization.” There is the obvious need in Bible translation to adjust biblical idioms and language to fit the linguistic context but this idea can be and sometimes is, I believe, erroneously extended to the overall presentation of the Gospel. The danger in contextualization is to presume that the culture is a stable factor determinative of meaning rather than a flawed and fallen system. Likewise, the horizon of the Gospel can become isolated from the culture so that the two horizons are only related by force. If culture is the ultimate determiner of meaning and value then there is the danger the Gospel is simply made to comply to cultural norms (Don Richardson’s Peace Child, is a popular example which, however legitimate, points to the potential danger). This may result in a static notion of both Gospel and culture as one’s reading of Scripture is not impacted by the culture and one’s reading of the culture is not through the interpretive lens of Scripture.

An example from Japan is the concept of amae or dependence (the full explanation is beyond the scope of my point but is explained here), which is certainly key to understanding Japan but the question is whether the Gospel should be shaped to the concept (e.g. the novels of Shūsaku Endō in which God is our divine Mother upon whom we are childishly dependent gets at the problem) or whether the concept is one that the Gospel exposes and defeats. One of my finest students in Japan, an American missionary of Japanese descent, discovered the universal application of the concept and had a much deeper understanding than I did of its resonance throughout the culture. The problem was, perhaps due to his training as a missionary, that he presumed amae was an unchangeable cultural trait of Japanese to which the Gospel should be made to fit. My own understanding is that amae, while it is a pervasive characteristic of Japanese, entails a profound misconception of what it means to be human. Amae is a prime example of how death is taken up through culture into identity and entails precisely what it is in culture that needs overturning. I would not have developed this understanding apart from a dynamic reading of the culture through a scriptural lens and a renewed (revised) understanding of Scripture through this same interpretive process. 

The problem with contextualization, especially as applied in church-growth thought, is it privileges cultural notions of leadership that consistently subvert the Gospel.  This can be demonstrated through, what may be the prime proof text of the church growth movement and contextualization, I Co 9:22: “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.” Church-growth advocates presume that this text means we must adjust to the times, be innovative, do what is effective to bring people in (e.g. “niche marketing,” the need for “audience-driven,” “seeker-friendly,” services under a forceful leader). The context of this passage does indeed pertain directly to authority and leadership but Paul is not arguing that the Corinthians should utilize their cultural norms to maximize their leadership potential. He is arguing that they need to give up on their notions of “effective styles of leadership.”

Chapter 9 is not a departure from Paul’s point in chapter 8 that the strong need to forego their rights or sacrifice their power so as to build up the weak. He first establishes the fact that as an Apostle he has the right to receive support from the Corinthians and then he explains that he has sacrificed this right. He is using himself and his apostolic authority as a case in point of how the strong should act in regard to the weak. At the same time, we are given a picture of how authority in the church is to be and not to be constituted.

Rollo May in his book, Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence, could be summing up both what the Corinthians admire and what church-growth methodology might sometimes seem to require in a leader.[2] May lists five ways a leader might employ power: 1. “Exploitative power” employs force or the threat of violence so that it leaves the other with no choice but to comply. 2. “Manipulative power” uses the covert methods of the con man. 3. “Competitive power” employs an I win/you lose strategy. 4. “Nutrient power” is likened to a parent’s care for a child in that it is exercised on behalf of another’s welfare. It can create dependency and become smothering by seeking to do the other good according to “our way” (as in strategies which would accommodate amae).

In the two letters to Corinth, it is clear that Paul’s rivals (the super-apostles) have been exploitative, manipulative, and competitive in their use of power. They enslave, devour, seek to gain control, put on airs, and strike the Corinthians in the face, or publicly insult them (11:20). The Corinthians not only have submitted themselves to this authoritarian domination but they figure Paul does not live up to the standard of an Apostle.[3] He is not what they would consider an effective leader. Paul, however, is attempting to develop a very different set of values in regard to leadership. Paul’s goal fits with May’s fifth notion of a leader’s exercise of power: 5. “Integrative power” works with others (instead of on them) to enable them to grow both mentally and spiritually and to abet their power. Paul is employing and developing this integrative notion of power: “we work with you for your joy” (1:24; see 13:10), and his concentrated explanation is in I Co 9. Paul is attempting to model an alternative mode of power and leadership but common readings of chapter 9, due, perhaps, to cultural presumptions about power, miss the point.

Christ did not create a monarchy, a hierarchy, a dictatorship, or a fellowship on the basis of a regime of power. He takes up the cross, washes the disciples’ feet, and is the servant of all, and this is the model of leadership and mode of power Paul is calling the Corinthians to imitate: the power to serve, the power to identify directly with the disempowered and the weak, the power to forego one’s rights. Paul is modelling what Christ modeled. Money is a direct correlate of power and though Paul says he has a right to this power or money, as a means of displaying the paradigm of leadership (apostolic leadership) he is doing manual labor (shameful, no doubt, to the super-apostles and the Corinthian elites).

In the opening rhetoric of the chapter (“Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus or Lord?”) Paul is not appealing to his authority so as to Lord it over them or even that they might simply do what he tells them. He seems to be imitating their own claim to act on the basis of “rights,” “freedom,” and “knowledge” (8:1,2,4,7,9,10.11). Paul establishes these rights, makes claims of freedom, indicates his own knowledge, only to renounce these as the basis for exercising power and leadership. He is modelling what he wants them to do, and in this he is simply modeling what Christ did. Christian leadership and Apostleship thus point away from the self to Christ. It is not a relinquishing of agency but becoming a transparent bearer of the agency of Christ, that for which we were intended as image bearers.

The signs of the apostle (sharing in the suffering and death of Christ, enduring weakness as a point of strength, living out a cruciform agency) are peculiarly unpleasing to the Corinthians. One could take all of their critiques of Paul (he is weak and cowardly (10:1,10; 11:7; 13:3-4), he lacks apostolic power (12:12), he continues to work at a trade and so, in the Corinthians view he denigrates his apostleship and brings shame on them (11:7-9; 12:13-18; see 1 Cor. 9:3-18)) as clear evidence that his is not a CEO- power ministry or a ministry of miracles. He is modeling humility, self-abasement, relinquishing of rights, as the Christian mode of authority. “I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling” (2:3); “We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored!” (4:10); “To the weak I became weak” (9:22). In comparison to the super-apostles Paul appears too weak to be effective. They would have Paul be a mega-church super-apostle but he eschews this “glory” for a cruciform leadership. In other words, the farthest thing from Paul’s notion of a leader would be ornamental robes, signet rings, crowns, royal colors, or the presentation of power as we normally think of it. He is not a rhetorician, a flamboyant preacher, or an arrogant CEO bishop. Paul asserts his authority for building up the Christian community, not himself (12:19; 13:9-10), which is the only way that authority should be employed in the church.  

One wonders if Paul’s critique of the Corinthians might be directly leveled at some contemporary notions of successful church leadership. They are guilty of disobedience (10:6); comparing and commending themselves unduly (10:12); being ignorant of the true source of authority, the Lord (10:12b, 17-18); seducing Christians as Satan did Eve (11:2-3); preaching another Jesus, spirit, and gospel (11:4); and boasting unduly (10:15; 11:12; see 5:12). Could it be that in privileging our cultures notion of successful leaders we also have to do with false apostles, deceitful workers, and emissaries of Satan who have only disguised themselves as apostles of Christ (11:13,15)?  To become a leader in the mold of Paul will probably not result in the approbation our culture gives to notable preachers and leaders but this very lack of recognition – the failure to live up to the values of the culture – may be step one in pursuit of authentic Christian leadership.  

[1] Os Guinness, “Sounding Out the Idols of Church Growth,” http://icpnetwork.nl/members-files/fase5/evaluation-megachurches.pdf

[2] R. May, Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), 105-113. Quoted from David £ Garland, “Paul’s Apostolic Authority,” Review and Expositor, 86 (1989) http://www.compasschurch.org/women/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/03/L16-Pauls-apostolic-authority-the-power-of-Christ-sustaining-weakness-2-

[3]See Garland Ibid.