Pastor, You Have One Job

Ministry is, first and foremost, about being a caretaker of a message.

Designer Frank Chimero has a recommendation for artists: Create “text playlists,” akin to Spotify song lineups but for favorite snippets of writing—poems you want to revisit, bits of advice or wisdom you need to be regularly reminded of, stories you know will kickstart your creativity on days when you need inspiration, and so on. “It’s almost a pep talk in text form,” Chimero explains. “I visit it when I’m down, when I’m lazy, when I’m feeling the inertia take over.” This idea isn’t original to Chimero—older generations would have called their text playlists “commonplace books”—but that makes it all the more worth embracing. Revisiting memorable texts is a way of ensuring they’ll be formative in our lives. It’s a practice that allows them to do their work of shaping our patterns of thought and action.

Recently I’ve begun compiling a text playlist for pastoral ministry. I was ordained last September, and now, in addition to teaching at a theological seminary, I work part-time at my local parish church. As I prepare sermons, visit parishioners in the hospital, lead Bible studies, and administer Communion, I find myself returning to some basic questions: What is the main thing I’m called to do? What is pastoral care, really? What does it mean to be a minister of the Good News?

In the months leading up to my ordination, as I prayed and pondered what I was about to embark on, I started collecting quotations that seemed to articulate with unique and striking clarity the answer to these questions.

News Agents for God

Consider this one, from the late Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson. When Jenson wrote these words ...

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Jesus Was the God-Man, Not the God-Superman

His moments of doubt and temptation attest that we can follow him through our own.

In many children’s Bibles, the Son of God swoops in like Superman to save the day. In these clearly mythological depictions of Christ, Jesus never fails to say and do the right thing. He handily vanquishes his enemies, while essentially sidestepping the realities of real, enfleshed humanity.

But does this miss something?

As fun as these edited stories may be for bedtime snuggles, they simply don’t reflect the whole story the Gospels attempt to tell. Jesus didn’t come merely to die for our sins. Nor did he come to show off his miraculous superpowers and celestial wisdom. In the history of Christianity, the incarnation of God teaches us that Jesus was born into the fullness of humanity. He was born, in other words, into the complete mortal experience, warts and all.

And yes, Jesus may have had warts. He breastfed as an infant. He learned to walk. And the Messiah—in those awkward teenage years—went through puberty. Why did Jesus have to experience all of that? He did this to free us from the grip of sin and death by entering humanity. As the second-century theologian Irenaeus famously put it, “He became what we are so that we could become what he is.” What Jesus brought with him into our world was his godness, which included a deep trust and faith in his Father; part of what he received from us in his humanness was our ability to doubt—and doubt he did.

Doubt is a real part of human experience. And Jesus was so committed to entering humanity that he dared to enter human doubt as well.

Resilience and determination

The New Testament gives us some insights into this. In the Gospels, Jesus goes into the desert, where he is tempted by the Devil. There, he has to wrestle with the Devil’s ...

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Jesus Was the God-Man, Not the God-Superman

His moments of doubt and temptation attest that we can follow him through our own.

In many children’s Bibles, the Son of God swoops in like Superman to save the day. In these clearly mythological depictions of Christ, Jesus never fails to say and do the right thing. He handily vanquishes his enemies, while essentially sidestepping the realities of real, enfleshed humanity.

But does this miss something?

As fun as these edited stories may be for bedtime snuggles, they simply don’t reflect the whole story the Gospels attempt to tell. Jesus didn’t come merely to die for our sins. Nor did he come to show off his miraculous superpowers and celestial wisdom. In the history of Christianity, the incarnation of God teaches us that Jesus was born into the fullness of humanity. He was born, in other words, into the complete mortal experience, warts and all.

And yes, Jesus may have had warts. He breastfed as an infant. He learned to walk. And the Messiah—in those awkward teenage years—went through puberty. Why did Jesus have to experience all of that? He did this to free us from the grip of sin and death by entering humanity. As the second-century theologian Irenaeus famously put it, “He became what we are so that we could become what he is.” What Jesus brought with him into our world was his godness, which included a deep trust and faith in his Father; part of what he received from us in his humanness was our ability to doubt—and doubt he did.

Doubt is a real part of human experience. And Jesus was so committed to entering humanity that he dared to enter human doubt as well.

Resilience and determination

The New Testament gives us some insights into this. In the Gospels, Jesus goes into the desert, where he is tempted by the Devil. There, he has to wrestle with the Devil’s ...

Continue reading...

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Christians Need Win-Wins with Muslim Society More Than Wins in Court

What Malaysia’s High Court decision on Christian use of the word “Allah” means for the church.

Christians are pleased with this month’s ruling by a Malaysian court that a government prohibition on non-Muslims using the word Allah is illegal and irrational. However, the ruling has expectedly stirred much emotion within the Southeast Asian nation’s Muslim community, which has always held the word to be exclusive to Islam and for use by Muslims only.

I will leave comments on the extensive grounds of the High Court’s recently released 96-page judgement, released March 17, to the legal community. My more modest purpose here is to address the social-religious implications of the case for the church at large.

The Allah Debate

The debate over Christians referring to God as Allah has a longstanding history. Beginning with concerns about the proselytization of Muslims in the 1980s, the federal government issued an executive directive in 1986 banning the use of four words by non-Muslims in order to allay Muslim fears. One of the four words was Allah. It’s important to note when this was issued, there was a context. The directive was not a total or complete ban, as the government was well aware that Christians—in particular those in East Malaysia—and indigenous peoples were using the Malay language and the word Allah in their religious worship, rites, and spiritual activities.

As time went by, Bibles and other Christian publications in the Malay language were either impounded or confiscated. In 2008, Jill Ireland, a Melanau Christian from Sarawak who was flying home had eight educational CDs (containing worship songs) seized by customs at the Kuala Lumpur international airport. The Home Affairs Ministry informed her the CDs were withheld due to their prohibited use of the word Allah. Being dissatisfied ...

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Convictions in Case of Christian Journalist Murdered in Turkey Fail to Satisfy

Family of Hrant Dink, proponent of reconciliation between Turks and Armenians who riled government officials through his genocide advocacy, say justice has not gone deep enough.

Fourteen years later, there is some resolution for the family of the assassinated Turkish-Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink.

But not enough.

“The judgment given today is quite far from the truth,” said the family in its official statement on March 26.

“Not the evil itself but its leakage was punished.”

In 2007, Dink was shot four times in front of the Istanbul office of his bilingual newspaper, Agos. A proponent of reconciliation between Turks and Armenians, he aroused official opposition through his passionate focus on the 1915 genocide. Two years earlier he had been arrested and convicted of “insulting Turkishness.”

The killer, a 17-year-old unemployed youth, was given a 23-year sentence in 2011.

But one week before his death, Dink had written an article stating he felt “like a pigeon,” targeted by the deep state “to make me know my place.“

Around 100,000 people attended his funeral, chanting, “We are all Armenians.”

Last week, the Turkish judiciary put 76 people on trial, convicting 26 and handing out 4 sentences of life imprisonment. Two were given to the former director of police intelligence and his deputy, for murder and the subsequent cover-up.

The family is not convinced this includes the entire “mechanism.”

“Some officials are still at large,” said Erol Önderoglu, the representative of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in Turkey.

“This partial justice … leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.”

RSF ranks Turkey No. 154 out of 180 nations in its 2020 index on respect for press freedom.

Soner Tufan, spokesman for the Association of Protestant Churches in Turkey, said the verdict was “not surprising.” It fits ...

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Wall Street Crisis Could Cost Evangelical Orgs

The CEO of Archegos Capital, now making financial headlines for risky trading, is also known for his generous commitment to Christian ministries.

It’s not often that a Wall Street Journal article on the latest stock market shakeup includes a line describing a Greek reference to Jesus from the New Testament.

The hedge fund at the center of massive selloffs in the market last week was the Christian-owned Archegos Capital Management—named for ἀρχηγός, the Greek word used to describe Christ as the “author” of our salvation (Heb. 2:10) and the “prince” of life (Acts 3:15).

Archegos has dominated the financial headlines over the past few days. The fund placed outsized bets on media stocks using money borrowed from banks, and when the lenders put a check on its high-risk trading, it had to sell off huge blocks of shares, sending the market into a frenzy.

Major corporations and banks lost billions, enough to “impact everyday Americans’ retirement accounts,” CNN Business reported. While investors and shareholders are bracing for the damage, the move could potentially impact evangelical ministries as well.

Archegos CEO Bill Hwang is also the co-founder of the Grace and Mercy Foundation, which shares an office with his New York-based firm and distributes millions in grants to Christian nonprofits every year. So far, it’s unclear how much the financial situation will affect the foundation and its beneficiaries.

Grace and Mercy’s 2018 tax filing (the most recent year available) listed $5.5 million to the Fuller Foundation, $2 million to Fuller Theological Seminary, where Hwang is a trustee, and $1.2 million to the Museum of the Bible, in addition to six-figure donations to A Rocha, International Justice Mission, Luis Palau Association, Prison Fellowship, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, ...

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Healing Is a Foretaste of Resurrection

Vaccines feel like a miracle. How much more the real miracle of eternal life?

The news has been relentlessly grim since last Easter. Any glimmers of light were quickly vanquished amid rising pandemic deaths, the social depression of distancing, racial violence, political discord, and even polar vortexes. With all we’ve suffered, who dares risk delight?

In a New York Times interview, noted sociologist and columnist Zeynep Tufekci attributed our current collective pessimism in part to the media’s and public health officials’ failure to sound the pandemic alarm early on. Ambiguous news from Wuhan, reiterated by the World Health Organization, intimated no human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus, despite evidence to the contrary. The inclination was to avoid overreacting so as not to incite panic. The lingering sting of that failure has fueled continued gloom and a more recent downplay of positive findings, whether in the decline of infection rates or the marvel of vaccine development.

Early predictions had any vaccine taking at least 12 to 18 months to emerge, with a modest goal of 50 percent efficacy against infection. Here at Lent’s end, we’ve achieved not one but as many as four vaccines, pushing 95 percent efficacy, an undertaking unprecedented in the history of medicine. This Easter dawns bearing much brighter light. Most churches won’t yet fully gather to worship, but the assuredness of vaccinations and eventual herd immunity mean coming back together is now an imaginable reality.

Rather than celebrating humanity’s remarkable accomplishment, however, Tufekci noted that the media and public health officials were wary of misinforming again. So they focused their reporting on the threat of variants, the need for continued mask wearing, and concerns about ...

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