Tag Archives: Church

Polemics

MUST-READ: Is Wes Widner right to oppose short-term mission trips?

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Here’s a challenging post about short-term missions (1-3 weeks) from Wes Widner. Read and see what you think.

Excerpt:

One of the biggest elephants in the evangelical, missiological, soul-winning room is the lingering question of just how much good short-term mission trips are and whether or not they merely amount to sanctified vacations taken at the expense of others.

Now, to be fair, I’m not claiming that either the missionaries or those who fund them are intentionally nefarious. On the contrary; I believe that for the most part, those who go on short term mission trips and those who support them financially have honest evangelistic intentions. I am simply wondering whether we’ve fostered this “super spiritual” mindset around something we call “the mission field” and, as a result, neglect to ask the burdensome and unpopular questions of stewardship and effectiveness.

He explains how people misunderstand the great commission by thinking that it requires people to go to foreign lands, and then he writes this:

Because of this misunderstanding of the great commission and what it truly means to make disciples of those around us, we tend to overlook questions of stewardship and logistics. In fact, since we think the imperative is to go we tend to start to think that any cost is acceptable and questions of logistics are a mere nuisance.

How much does a round-trip plane ticket usually cost to travel overseas? $1,000, $2,000? More? Once you count the cost of food, lodging, transportation, etc. you can often approach figures well over $3,000 just to send a single person overseas. Is this really the best way to reach the lost?

I agree with him completely that it is not a good use of money to send laypeople as missionaries to foreign countries. However, I do think that it is worth it to send scholars with doctorates to foreign universities and other centers of influence to lecture and debate. So basically we agree on the stewardship question, except if the missionary is a scholar headed to a center of cultural influence. What laypeople can do instead of going themselves is to work hard in school, get good jobs, and to financially support Christian scholars in their studies and public events at home or abroad – e.g. – William Lane Craig debating Muslims in Turkish universities or debating atheists in Chinese universities, etc.

I also agree with Wes that the right way for laypeople to disciple non-Christians is to deal with the people who are around you in your workplace, etc. The thing is, it is much more difficult to build a relationship with non-Christians on the same social rung as you are who you have to work with day in and day out. That’s much harder because you have to live as a public Christian where you are, and let it affect your life more personally. This isn’t flying off somewhere to deal with poor strangers who you will never see again. It’s much easier to fly off somewhere and not to have to deal with people over the long-term. Flyig off to “do good” gives a person the feelings of “being good” and “doing something” but without any of the hard work and persecution of having peers equal to you in social standing seeing you every day bearing with suffering and striving for holiness. Instead of trying to squeeze feelings of goodness out of temporary experiences “helping the poor”, we should be dealing with the smartest and most challenging people in our own lives – family, friends and co-workers. It’s not as emotionally fulfilling and spectacular, but it’s where God has placed us. It’s harder, too.

Secretly sponsoring the PhD studies of an aspiring Christian philosopher, lawyer or scientist would be an excellent use of your money, although it is not as flashy or emotional as helping the poor in Africa. You can’t really tell people back home about your spiritual experiences signing a check to bring in William Lane Craig to debate. You can’t really show impressive pictures of yourself working overtime to keep your job so you have money to support influential Christians like Michele Bachmann or Jennifer Roback Morse. But we have to ask ourselves which is more effective – not which caters to our emotional needs to get attention to force spiritual experiences and to feel good about ourselves.

More Wes:

Why do we go? Why do we really go? If our real aim is to make disciples as we are commanded to, then we will gladly step back and examine the questions raised above (and many will come to the conclusion that short-term, long-distance mission trips are simply not a good idea) but I believe the main reason most Christians go is to satisfy a desire for an emotional experience which they equate with “being close to God”. And therein lies the heart of our dilemma.

In the end, what’s the difference?

When we take vacations, we are expecting experiential reward. We don’t expect to leave a lasting impact on the lands we travel to, and we expect to receive a euphoric high from our experiences. Sadly, most testimonies I hear from short-term missionaries are wholly self-centered (though they are couched in a plethora of “Jesus speak”) with the focus being on the person as opposed to the message and often with little thought as to the lasting impact and cost vs. benefit to the congregation that helped send them.

We have a responsibility to God to think about what we are doing and produce results for him. We need to stop having pictures taken of ourselves hugging children in foreign countries, and to instead think about working hard in school, studying hard things that matter, and saving our money, so we can actually move the ball forward. I know lots of Hollywood celebrities who make a big deal out of supporting animal rights and global warming, but they want nothing to do with chastity, fidelity, marriage, parenting, etc. Christians should not be thinking of Christianity as a fashionable cause that allows them to feel good and be recognized by others. We’re not Hollywood celebrities. We’re supposed to be concerned with truth, not feelings.

News

Muslims attack unarmed Christians in India and Turkey

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Story from the Hindu.

Excerpt:

Two activists of the Popular Front of India (PFI) were arrested on Monday in connection with the attack on a professor at Muvattupuzha in Ernakulam district. Sources said 12 others, most of them with extremist links, were also taken into custody for interrogation.

Ashraf, 37, of Mundeth, Mekalady, and Jaffar, 28, of Eramaloor, Kothamangalam, were remanded to judicial custody by the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court, Muvattupuzha.

The right palm of T.J. Joseph, 53, professor of Malayalam in the Newman College, Thodupuzha, was chopped off by the assailants on Sunday. He, along with his mother and sister, was returning home from church when a gang of six waylaid his car and attacked him with an axe.

PFI is a Muslim organization. Kerala is not reputed to be a particularly extremist state. I heard that TN and AP are the two best ones. Maybe Shalini can correct me.

And I think the general trend in India is in favor of more religious liberty for Christians. But not so in Turkey.

National Review reports on more violence in Turkey.

Excerpt:

For all the attention Turkey has gotten lately, very few Americans are aware that the Roman Catholic bishop serving as apostolic vicar of Anatolia was stabbed to death and decapitated last month by an assailant shouting, “Allahu Akbar! I have killed the great Satan!”

There are fewer than 60 Catholic priests in all of Turkey, and yet Bishop Luigi Padovese was the fifth of them to be shot or stabbed in the last four years, starting with the murder of Fr. Andrea Santoro in 2006, also by an assailant shouting, “Allahu Akbar!” (An Armenian journalist and three Protestants working at a Christian publishing house — one of them German, the other two Turkish converts — were also killed during this period.)

What’s going on? Why has traditionally secularist Turkey, with its minuscule Christian community (less than 0.2 percent of the population), lately become nearly as dangerous for Christians as neighboring Iraq? And why has this disturbing pattern of events so far escaped notice in the West?

In a nutshell, all these violent acts reflect a popular culture increasingly shaped by Turkish media accounts deliberately promoting hatred of Christians and Jews.

As it happens, Bishop Padovese was murdered on the same day (June 3) that the Wall Street Journal published an eye-opening report on how Turkey’s press and film industry have increasingly blurred the distinction between fact and fantasy, especially since the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) took power in 2002.

“To follow Turkish discourse in recent years has been to follow a national decline into madness.” That’s how Robert L. Pollock, editorial-features editor of the Journal, summed up the trajectory of the daily fare that shapes Turks’ attitudes toward the outside world — and toward non-Muslims in their midst. Indeed, much of what passes for fact in Turkish public discourse would be comical if not for the deadly consequences.

Turkey is really starting to scare me. They’re going the wrong way.

Commentary

Mark Driscoll discusses Jesus’ forgiveness of a sinful woman

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Mark Driscoll discusses Luke 7:36-8:3. (This is the full sermon – it contains that clip that we had discussed in a previous post in which he read a letter by a woman who got herself into trouble but mostly blamed everyone but herself).

The MP3 is here.

Stream or download the video here.

Summary:

A notoriously sinful woman does the unthinkable: she goes, uninvited, to Simon the Pharisee’s home, where Jesus is eating with “holy” religious men. There, broken and sobbing, she lavishly worships Jesus: falling at his feet, cleaning them, anointing them with her best perfume, and kissing them. Her actions are passionate, but not erotic. She publicly and humbly acknowledges her sin before the most judgmental, condemning, and self-righteous men. Religious people see others’ sins, not their own. Yet “holy” Simon did none of what this woman did (worship, serve, repent of sin, or give generously). She responds so passionately and generously because Jesus loved her much, and she loved Jesus much. When you know how much Jesus loves you, and you love him back, it’s the beginning of your passionate, worshipful, generous relationship, and everything changes. Jesus also deals with her sin. He doesn’t excuse her many sins; he forgives her. What Jesus did for that woman he did for other women who followed him, and he continues to do for even more women today.

During his preaching, Driscoll clearly understands what the Bible teaches:

Whatever sin was committed to her, and in her line of work you can assume there were many, Jesus also deals with her sin. He doesn’t excuse her sin, or neglect her sin, or shift the blame for her sin. He says, “Her sins, which are many.” He doesn’t say, “She’s had a hard life. Who are we to judge? This is an alternative lifestyle.” What he says is, “She’s got a lot of sin. I’m not arguing with that. The question is: what are we gonna do about it?”

This is a lot better than the previous clip we discussed that got over a hundred comments, where I chastised Driscoll for being soft on sinful women. But when he discusses the actual passage from Luke, he acknowledges that there is no blaming of men, and no discussion of mitigating factors that might excuse this woman’s sin.  That is irrelevant to the story. This sinful woman knows what she’s done, she is sorry for what she’s done, she really wants to change, and she wants a new life. She has no time for listing mitigating factors, and no time for blaming others. She blames herself. That’s why she is forgiven by Jesus.

Later on at the end of the sermon, I believe Driscoll messes up by choosing to read that letter from the woman from the last post who is clearly NOT repentant and is clearly blaming others, unlike the woman in the Bible story. She blames her parents, her church and the man she chose to pursue a relationship with. Her letter is the polar opposite to the story of the woman in Luke, who wanted nothing to do with rationalizations or blaming others. Driscoll fails to understand the differences between the two women. Blaming men is very popular nowadays – so I’m not surprised. It’s the spirit of the age.

So Driscoll makes mistakes – he isn’t perfect. Sometimes he is right, and sometimes he is wrong. His explanation of grace and works in the sermon is spot on, though. The grace is free to anyone who wants to be forgiven, and the works afterward are just the natural outworking of repentance. What God wants is genuine repentance and service. Good deeds performed after being forgiven by Jesus don’t reduce person’s guiltiness, they are just outward signs that the repentance was genuine. But you may have better or worse rewards in the after-life because of your actions after being saved.