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  • August 18, 2009

    White Paper Bible

    I am always looking for creative ways to engage in the truth of Scripture. God has given his Word to us for nourishment for living in his kingdom. We do not use the Scriptures as much as we eat them. They feed our hearts with the life of God in order to live for God as human beings who are fully alive. The challenge with regularly eating God’s book is an over-familiarity with the Scripture. I love spaghetti. We eat a lot of spaghetti in my home, for obvious reasons: it is quick, easy, and everyone in the house eats it without (much) complaint. I love spaghetti, but I don’t want to eat it every day. I need a little bit of variety. Most followers of Christ like sitting down, opening up the Scriptures and reading from a leather-bound copy of the Bible, but if we are honest, it can become such a routine that we become bored. I know I do.

    A friend of mine has just launched a new user-driven website designed to give us a creative way of entering into the Scripture— www.whitepaperbible.org.

    Here is how it works: Users register and log in and create a “page” that is added to the White Paper Bible (WPB). A page is a list of verses around a certain theme. Users give each page a title, description, and the list of verses. All verses are from the ESV. When creating a page you only need to list the Scripture verse reference. Once the page is created, the site populates the entire verse with each reference.

    You do not have to be a registered user to use the site. You can search by topic or keyword and go to a page where you can quickly find the verse that speak to the specific subject you are interested in. This is an incredible quick way to begin to meditate on the verse you need. I am looking forward to the iPhone app, which is under development. (I will download it to my iPod touch. I still do not have a iPhone, because they have not opened it up to the Verizon network. I am patiently waiting for Verzion to pick up the iPhone, but I digress…)

    WPB is a great entry point into the Scripture, a great way to enter into the text and allow it to enter into your heart, put I would offer a word of caution. There is a subtle danger in collecting together a list of Scriptures. The danger is two-fold.

    First, it is easy to misinterpret a single verse once you remove it from its context. It is possible to pull a verse of Scriptures together and make the Bible say just about anything you want. So as you are compiling a list of verses for a new page, make sure you have read each verse in context so that you are linking together verses that are speaking about the same concept. Make sure you understand the meaning of a single verse in the context of the verses around it.

    Second, when you compile a certain list of verses on a subject you are deciding NOT to list other verses. There are editorial reasons why we do that, but those editorial reasons can be caused by theological biases. We all have biases, but we should not let those biases keep us from hearing the Scripture speak to speak to us in its fullness. We all have a favorite verses of Scripture. The ones we copy and hang on our refrigerator or we highlight in our Bibles. We need to be careful not to ignore the verses that are not underlined in our Bibles. For example, if you are creating a new page on the love of God, it is easy to list the verses that speak of God’s love for us. The temptation is to ignore the verses that define God’s love as following his commands, you know, the verses that demand something from us.

    These are not arguments for why we shouldn’t compile together verses, but a friendly reminder that as we use the WPB to increase or meditation on God’s word that we allow Scripture to speak for itself. We should pursue to know God through the Scripture as he has revealed himself to be by reading Scripture verses in his context.

    Great web tools like www.whitepaperbible.org are great ways to enter into the Scripture, God’s story and so we should use them as just that, entry points into God’s great big, over-arching story, of which we play minor characters. As soon as we begin to view the Scripture as God’s catalogue of promises we miss the point. The Scripture is not a shoppers catalogue as much as it is a pilgrim’s daily bread.

    3 Comments / Life, Ministry, Uncategorized /

  • July 16, 2008

    Writing a Book

    “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” – Paul Valery

    I am writing a book. I stopped all outside reading (except for sermon preparation) and I am not going to do much blogging until the book is done. I signed a publishing contract with Word and Spirit Press, to self-publish the book. I am also shopping around a book proposal to various publishers to see if I can get picked up by a standard publisher.

    The book is a popular version of my Trinitarian vision of spiritual transformation, i.e. the work of the Holy Spirit to transform us into the image of Jesus for God the Holy Spirit. It includes themes I worked on in my doctor of ministry dissertation and themes I have preached on in the last few years.

    I hope to have the book in print by the end of September. I am working to get the rough draft finished by next week, so it can go through the editing and refining process. Writing is hard work. And writing is almost never finished. A good poem is never finished. It is only abandoned. You can say the same thing about any kind of writing. Good writing is never finished. I could keep writing and rewriting and editing and rewriting and it would never end! So I have a due date and I am working hard to get the draft done.

    A friend emailed me this, while I have been furiously writing:

    “How to Write With Style”
    by Kurt Vonnegut

    1) Find a subject you care about
    2) Do not ramble, though
    3) Keep it simple
    4) Have guts to cut
    5) Sound like yourself
    6) Say what you mean
    7) Pity the readers

    Good thoughts. Especially “have guts to cut.” That is not as easy as it sounds. Also “sound like yourself”…very important.

    So with the writing deadline and my preaching schedule, I may not have enough time to blog. I am preaching twice this week. On Wednesday night I will be preaching on “Is Jesus the Only Way” as a part of our Wrestling with Doubt series and on Sunday, I will be preaching from Philippians chapter 3.

    I really want to read The Shack and blog on it. Maybe after the book is sent off to the publisher. I will try to update the blog with updates on the writing process. Until then pray for me!

    I have been listening to Dylan Blonde on Blonde looking for inspiration for a poetic title for the book. Nothing yet! But this song is sheer poetry

    Visions of Johanna
    Bob Dylan (1966)

    Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet?
    We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it
    And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it
    Lights flicker from the opposite loft
    In this room the heat pipes just cough
    The country music station plays soft
    But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off
    Just Louise and her lover so entwined
    And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind

    In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman’s bluff with the key chain
    And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the “D” train
    We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
    Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s really insane
    Louise, she’s all right, she’s just near
    She’s delicate and seems like the mirror
    But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
    That Johanna’s not here
    The ghost of ‘lectricity howls in the bones of her face
    Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place

    Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
    He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
    And when bringing her name up
    He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
    He’s sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
    Muttering small talk at the wall while I’m in the hall
    How can I explain?
    Oh, it’s so hard to get on
    And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn

    Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
    Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
    But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
    You can tell by the way she smiles
    See the primitive wallflower freeze
    When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
    Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeeze
    I can’t find my knees”
    Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
    But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel

    The peddler now speaks to the countess who’s pretending to care for him
    Sayin’, “Name me someone that’s not a parasite and I’ll go out and say a prayer for him”
    But like Louise always says
    “Ya can’t look at much, can ya man?”
    As she, herself, prepares for him
    And Madonna, she still has not showed
    We see this empty cage now corrode
    Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
    The fiddler, he now steps to the road
    He writes ev’rything’s been returned which was owed
    On the back of the fish truck that loads
    While my conscience explodes
    The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
    And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain

    2 Comments / Uncategorized /

  • June 30, 2008

    Creeds

    I’m walking through the summer nights…jukebox playing low…yesterday everything was going too fast…today, it’s moving too slow.

    Bob Dylan
    “Standing in the Doorway”
    Time Out of Mind (1997)

    I finally feel like I have a moment to post something meaningful. The last few yesterdays have been going too fast. The family and I spent the week at the beach, lots of fun and lots of sun. Well, not so much sun for me. I have learned to spend most of my time at the beach under the shade of an umbrella. Spent the week reading through, Tim Keller’s The Reason for God. I like Keller a whole lot. He is one of the growing number of “Reformed charismatics.” He esteems the values of the Reformed tradition and the charismatic renewal (in its most biblical expressions).

    Wednesday while at the beach, I got a call informing me that Jeffery Cox, one of the teenagers in our youth group, had been killed in a car accident. The family asked our church to host the funeral service. Under other circumstances, I may have needed to cut my vacation short and come on home, but because of the wonderful servant-minded people we have in our church—the church was able to put together the funeral service and care for the family until I returned home on Friday.

    We rolled into town Friday night. I quickly changed clothes at made my way to the visitation. I talked with family and friends and listen to stories about Jeffery. There were a lot of tears and hugs that night. I hammered out some notes for the funeral Friday night when I finally got back home. Saturday morning I was back to the church preparing for the funeral and spending time with the family. After the funeral, I headed home to finish my sermon for Sunday morning.

    This morning I preached on humility & Jesus from Philippians 2:1-11. This passage includes one of the more important passages on Jesus in the writings of Paul. Some commentators consider verses 6-11 to be an early church hymn, although Gordon Fee says it is doubtful. (IMHO, Fee is the authority on the writings of Paul.) Here are the verses:

    [6] Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, [7] but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. [8] And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! [9] Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, [10] that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, [11] and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

    These verses made me think about the importance of the ancient creeds.

    The Apostle’s Creed is the oldest and perhaps the most often cited creed, but I find the Nicene Creed to be the most helpful in thinking about the person and work of Jesus. The Nicene Creed, originally established at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD and then expanded at the Council of Constantinople in 381, served to establish the truth of who Jesus was/is in the context of Trinitarian faith.

    In churches like mine–young, hip, contemporary, and charismatic churches—creeds are normally ignored. We eagerly and somewhat arrogantly proclaim, “We have no creed but the Bible!” However, we are grossly mistaken if we try to interpret the Bible without the help of the creeds. Furthermore, it is naive to think we were the first generation of believers to know, worship, and preach Jesus.

    John Wesley rightly pointed out that our work of theology is built on four pillars—Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience. (This is called Wesley’s Quadrilateral.) Scripture by far is the source of truth, but tradition, reason, and experience provide lenses in which to interpret Scripture. The creeds were called the “rule of faith” in the early church. They served as boundaries for righty believing (orthodoxy) about God, Jesus, faith, etc. in contrast to false doctrine (heresy).

    The creeds deserve a sacred part of our devotion and discipleship. Whether they are a necessary part of Christian worship or not is a matter of tradition. Nevertheless, all Christian tradition need the creeds to help shape how we think about truth and reality. Consider the following:

    I think that the Christian creed enunciates a powerful and provocative understanding of the world, one that ought to scandalize a world that runs on the accepted truths of Modernity. There is something in the creed to offend virtually every contemporary sensibility. At the same time, it communicates a compelling vision of the world’s destiny and humanity’s role that challenges the accustomed idolatries and the weary platitudes of current worldly wisdom. Christians who say these words should know what they are doing when they say them and what they are saying when they mean them. This is the precondition to their celebrating a specifically Christian conception of reality, and the presupposition for their challenging the dominant conceptions of the world.

    Luke Timothy Johnson
    The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Is Important

    In a time when evil is alive and well and truth is being challenged on many fronts. We need to allow our reading of Scripture to be guided by the creeds.

    Nicene Creed
    381 AD

    We believe in one God,
    the Father, the Almighty,
    maker of heaven and earth,
    of all that is, seen and unseen.

    We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
    the only Son of God,
    eternally begotten of the Father,
    God from God, Light from Light,
    true God from true God,
    begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.

    Through him all things were made.
    For us and for our salvation
    he came down from heaven:
    by the power of the Holy Spirit
    he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
    and was made man.
    For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
    he suffered death and was buried.

    On the third day he rose again
    in accordance with the Scriptures;
    he ascended into heaven
    and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
    He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
    and his kingdom will have no end.

    We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
    who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
    With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
    He has spoken through the Prophets.

    We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
    We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
    We look for the resurrection of the dead,
    and the life of the world to come.

    Amen.

    6 Comments / Uncategorized /

  • April 21, 2008

    The Catholic Church becomes media savvy

    Pope Benedict XVI is on his US tour.

    He met with the President. Apparent President Bush said, “Thank you, Your Holiness. Awesome Speech.” [Video] He said this after a papal address at the Whitehouse. I love the W. The Pope held an open air mass with 45,000 in attendance at the Nationals Baseball stadium in Washington D.C. He has visited with victims of clergy abuse and offered prayer and encouragement. He even visited a Jewish synagogue. He is now in New York. He addressed the UN and will pray at Ground Zero. The Pope’s visit to the US has come at a good time for Catholics in the US. The clergy abuse scandals over the last years have stirred resentment towards the Catholic Church. The scandals continue to fuel Protestant distained for the Catholics in general and the Catholic Church in particular.

    The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is hoping the Pope’s visit will help in priest recruitment. The number of young men entering the priesthood is down in the US. For example, St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers outside of New York used to have hundreds of young men in preparation for the priesthood. Today there are only sixty in the seminary and only six will be ordained into the priesthood this year.

    To bolster recruitment, the Catholic Church in New York has launched a website www.NYpriest.com . The Website includes video clips, moving pictures, and the slogan “The World Needs Heroes.” It looks like the uber-traditional Catholic Church is using the strategies of ultra-contemporary churches by partnering the Pope’s visit with cleaver marketing and high-quality media. When are they going to start a podcast? I wonder if the Pope has a facebook account???

    Source: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/19/wpope119.xml

    No Comments / Uncategorized /

  • July 16, 2007

    Heroes

    I missed the NBC series Heroes. We are waiting for it to come out on DVD. I have been thinking about heroes a bit today. We had our first every English/Spanish service this morning and it went well….really good actually. We had a packed house…ran out of bulletins and sermon notes…it was great. We had three songs in English…three songs in Spanish. I preached with an interpreter. All was good, except when I messed up the Good Samaritan story. I had the Samaritan on the road to Jericho….I had to rewind the story and get it right! It was funny, but all worked out.

    In the beginning of the sermon, I said that I wanted to talk about my hero. I talked about how some people have heroes who play sports or star in movies or TV, but my hero lived 2,000 years ago. My hero is Jesus.

    All of the “hero talk” came from Bob Dylan. In 1987, Dylan began his concert tour in Boston I think. One of the songs he did was “In the Garden.” His 1980 gospel song about Jesus. The lyrics are here: http://www.bobdylan.com/moderntimes/songs/garden.html

    Before he started the song, he said:

    I’m gonna sing a song about my hero. Everybody’s got their own hero. I don’t know who your hero is, maybe Mel Gibson . . . maybe for some people it’s Michael Jackson . . . or Bruce Springsteen . . . Anyway I don’t care nothing about none of those people. I have my own hero. I’m gonna sing about my hero now.

    Who ever said that Bob abandoned his Christian faith?
    Here is the video from that 1987 concert. The audio is a bit rough, but it is good. Check it out.

    No Comments / Uncategorized /

  • April 24, 2007

    www.derekvreeland.com & dissertation update

    My blogspot has now been pointed to my domain.

    This means that my blog which is hosted by www.blogger.com can be accessed at www.derekvreeland.com. So if you have www.derekvreeland.blogspot.com bookmarked as my blog, you can change that to www.derekvreeland.com. You will still be able to access the blog from the blogspot.com page, but it looks much cooler when my blog is on my domain!

    I am waiting for my dissertation to come back from the editor. When I get it back, I will edit it for the LAST TIME and then will have a .pdf copy online if you would like to read.

    I am also sending out article proposals to a few magazines and journals to publish my findings. Pray for God to open doors!

    Derek

    No Comments / Uncategorized /

  • March 16, 2007

    India Trip Delayed A Few Days

    Due to wintery weather in Newark, our flights have been delayed. After about two hours of working with Delta and Continental this morning, we have rescheduled our flights for Monday, March 19th. Delays are certainly par for the course for mission trips. I learned the missionary proverb from Roland Ashby years ago: BLESSED ARE THE FLEXIBLE, FOR THEY SHALL NOT BREAK.

    So we will be in Americus this weekend and at church on Sunday. And then (hopefully) off to India.

    No Comments / Life, Ministry, Uncategorized /

  • December 13, 2006

    Dylan is still asking: “When You Gonna Wake Up?”

    Here is the final video from Dylan’s 1979 SNL appearance. And how timely is this song! Say what you want about Dylan’s voice, the genius in his music is its lasting quality, it’s prophetic edge, it’s ability to speak for a generation and for future generations. Do you think anybody will be singing or thinking about Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable,” which is #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 list today.
    Give me a break.

    Why is Dylan prophetic?
    Two more Colorado churches have experience moral failures after news of Ted Haggard’s sins became front page news over a month ago. A youth pastorin Greenwood Village was arrested after it was discovered that he “sexually involved” with a 16 year old girl.

    And more recently, Paul Barnes, senior pastor at Grace Chapel in Englewood resigned from his position after 28 years admitting that he has had sexual relationships with men and that “I have struggled with homosexuality since I was a 5-year-old boy….I can’t tell you the number of nights I have cried myself to sleep, begging God to take this away.”

    oh boy….God help us…

    When I was talking with a friend about the Ted Haggard situation, he reminded me that Jesus came with both grace and truth (John 1:8). My response to moral failure continues to be grace and truth. On the side of grace, I have stones to throw. My heart does break for the men, their families and the churches when these thing happen. I was tempted to email one of the churches, just to send them a word of encouragement, like Paul did any many of his epistles. It seems that what is trying to tear the church a part is not persecution and false doctrine that attacked to apostolic church, but sin within church leadership.

    I can hear Dylan ringing in from 1979’s Slow Train Coming. Look at how prophetic these words are. Will we ever wake up???

    When You Gonna Wake Up?
    Bob Dylan

    …Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools,
    You got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules.

    When you gonna wake up, when you gonna wake up
    When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?

    Spiritual advisors and gurus to guide your every move,
    Instant inner peace and every step you take has got to be approved.

    When you gonna wake up, when you gonna wake up
    When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?

    Do you ever wonder just what God requires?
    You think He’s just an errand boy to satisfy your wandering desires.

    When you gonna wake up, when you gonna wake up
    When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?

    There’s a Man up on a cross and He’s been crucified.
    Do you have any idea why or for who He died?

    When you gonna wake up, when you gonna wake up
    When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?

    Dylan is a bard in the truest sense. [Bard: noun: poet-prophet, declaimer of epic or heroic verse] He is able to go deep and “rip off the lid before its time.” It would seem to me that Dylan’s question is still being asked: When are we gonna wake up and see that God is not there just to satisfy our desires? When are we gonna wake up and see that the way to freedom is through the cross?

    2 Comments / Uncategorized /

  • December 13, 2006

    Bob Dylan “Gonna Serve Somebody” – video

    This video is the second installment of Bob Dylan’s October 1979 appearance on Saturday Night Live. “Gonna Serve Somebody” earned Dylan a Grammy Award in 1980 for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. This song appears on four later Dylan albums, including Dylan & the Dead (1988), recorded with the Grateful Dead.

    This song also seemed to rub John Lennon the wrong way. Lennon wrote “Serve Yourself,” in obvious mockery of Dylan’s “Gonna Serve Somebody.” Lennon recorded “Serve Yourself” as a demo on November 14, 1980, before his death on December 8th that year. Lennon’s song (which is filled with profanity) was released in 1998 on Lennon Anthology. The song begins: “You say you found Jesus Christ…he’s the only one…you say you found Buddah sittin’ in the sun, you say you found Mohammed facin’ to the east…you say you found Krishna dancin’ in the street. Well, there’s somethin’ missin’ in this god almighty stew and it’s your mother, your mother, don’t forget your mother, lad. You gotta serve yourself… nobody gonna do it for you…you gotta serve yourself nobody gonna do it for you…” Lennon’s song is a pitful rant, but it does underscore the power of poetry that remains in Dylan’s songs. Good poetry evokes emotion. Here are the lyrics if you want to follow along. Enjoy!

    Gonna Serve Somebody
    Bob Dylan

    You may be an ambassador to England or France,
    You may like to gamble, you might like to dance,
    You may be the heavyweight champion of the world,
    You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

    But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
    You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
    Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
    But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

    You might be a rock ‘n’ roll addict prancing on the stage,
    You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage,
    You may be a business man or some high degree thief,
    They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief

    But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
    You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
    Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
    But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

    You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk,
    You may be the head of some big TV network,
    You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame,
    You may be living in another country under another name

    But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
    You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
    Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
    But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

    You may be a construction worker working on a home,
    You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome,
    You might own guns and you might even own tanks,
    You might be somebody’s landlord, you might even own banks

    But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
    You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
    Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
    But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

    You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride,
    You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side,
    You may be workin’ in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair,
    You may be somebody’s mistress, may be somebody’s heir

    But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
    You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
    Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
    But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

    Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk,
    Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk,
    You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread,
    You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed

    But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
    You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
    Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
    But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

    You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy,
    You may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy,
    You may call me R.J., you may call me Ray,
    You may call me anything but no matter what you say

    You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
    You’re gonna have to serve somebody.
    Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
    But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

    Copyright © 1979 Special Rider Music

    No Comments / Life, Uncategorized /

  • September 6, 2006

    SBC leaders clash over speaking in tongues

    The following is a news report about a Southern Baptist pastor who shared stories during a seminary chapel about praying in tongues. My comments are at the end…

    Raging Tongues at SBC Seminary
    Southwestern Seminary President Paige Patterson has issued an extraordinary rebuke to the Rev. Dwight McKissic, a seminary trustee and prominent Arlington pastor, for acknowledging during a chapel service that he sometimes speaks in tongues when he prays.

    After Tuesday’s chapel service, Patterson issued a statement that the video of McKissic’s sermon will not be posted online nor saved in seminary archives, as are the sermons of all other chapel speakers. Patterson withheld McKissic’s chapel message from the school’s Web site, the statement said, “lest uninformed people believe that Pastor McKissic’s view on the gift of tongues and ‘ecstatic utterance’ is the view of the majority of the people at Southwestern.”

    The rest of the story is at www.mondaymorninginsight.com. Southwestern Seminary went on to release a statement saying, “But “we reserve the right not to disseminate openly views which we fear may be harmful to the churches.”

    Here is the comment that I posted on the mondaymorninginsight.com webpage…

    I thougth the war between the charismatics and the evangelicals was over? I guess the SBC didn’t get the memo that we aren’t fighting over the issue of tongues anymore. I understand McKissic’s frustration and criticism with the IMB exclusion of missionaries who pray in tongues.

    What concerns me is the seminary’s statement: But “we reserve the right not to disseminate openly views which we fear may be harmful to the churches.” First, what are they so afraid of? And second, do they believe that a theology and practice of the gift of tongues as a private prayer language of the Spirit is harmful? I can see the harmful nature of a strict Pentecostal doctrine of initial evidence, but what is the harm in tongues as a part of a Christian’s prayer life?

    I have no problems with the SBC’s theological critique of the prayer language of the Spirit. Too often their prohibition of tongue-speaking is not theological, but cultural. Too often they are allowing a modern, rationally-driven mode of thinking cause them to “fear” tongues because it is non-rational. From my experience, members of the SBC have put their theological heads in the sand and ignore the tongues, instead of dealing with the biblcial material concerning the proper use of tongues.

    What I mean by that is that in my experience Baptist have an underdeveloped theology of spiritual gifts, specifically related to speaking in tongues. They ignore it or they say that it passed away, but they typically do not engage the biblcial texts the talk about speaking in tongues. Furthermore, their theological distance from the issue causes a lack of experience of tongues in their churches. And when a Baptist person speaks in tongues the Baptist leaders do not know how to deal with is. When a Baptist tells me that they disagree with tongues as a prayer language, because 1 Corinthians 14 says that it must be followed with an interpretation, I ask, “Is that the way it happens in your church?”

    I really do think the war between the charismatics and the evangelicals is over. The SBC just needs to get with the program. Shan-da-la-ka!

    1 Comment / Uncategorized /
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