Why Are There So Many Different Ministries?

I recently received an email from a student asking me why there were so many different campus ministries at Stanford. I think a lot of students have similar questions, so I’ve decided to tweak my reply and post it here.

Do The Various Campus Ministries Compete?
Only in intramurals.

Seriously though: I sure hope not! Ideally, we should each view ourselves as having a small role in accomplishing what God is doing on campus.

Then Why Don’t They Merge?
There are at least two significant reasons: we believe slightly different things and having different groups maximizes ministry.

Why Should Different Beliefs Lead to Different Ministries If You Agree On the Essentials?
Because beliefs drive behavior, and at some point different beliefs will call for different behavior. Let me give you a concrete example: some groups believe that you must celebrate communion at every weekly meeting and others don’t. In a given group, only one of those practices can prevail. By having two different groups, both sets of believers can flourish.

OK, Maybe. But How Does Having Different Groups Maximize Ministry?
In the same way that having multiple churches maximizes ministry in a town. Suppose there was only one church in a town of 10,000. Even if the church building can accommodate 500 people, it would take 20 services a week to accommodate everyone if they all decided to come!

Suppose, on the other hand, that you have 10 churches each of which can accommodate 250 people. If each church had 4 services a week everyone could attend.

In the same way, there’s limited meeting space on campus (and we’re not allowed to build our own buildings). We need to have different groups scheduling meetings at different times in different places.

Also, since each group develops its own flavor, personal preferences can be accommodated. There are some people who would never consider attending a religious group that worshiped God by means of 45 minutes of continuous light rock. There are others who would never consider attending a group that worshiped God by means of incense and hymns. By having multiple groups, there is a greater likelihood of a person finding a group that they click with.

But Shouldn’t We All Be In Unity?
Absolutely! But that doesn’t imply that the groups should merge into one. Just as you can be in unity with other Christians without becoming the same person as them, groups can remain distinct and exist in unity.

We are in unity in that we proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ and consider one another a part of God’s plan for exposing students to the gospel. We encourage one another on to love and good deeds, and we pray for one another. We rejoice at one another’s successes and commiserate over one another’s failures.

We do not, however, merge. To do so would be a bad strategy for reaching the campus.

Don’t You Ever Do Anything Together?
Yeah. There are some special prayer meetings and worship services–you’ll find out about those as the school year progresses.

There’s Gotta Be A Sermon in Here…

In a bizarre news story, a man fell into his own grave and died.

Here’s the synopsis:

63 year old Giovanni Greco was in the habit of visiting his future mausoleum to make sure it was being built the way he wanted it. One day he was trying to get a view of the roof and when he slipped, hit his head on a marble step, and fell dead into his own tomb.

This just sounds like some sort of parable…

Do Universities Really Need Missionaries?

Missionaries are people who are called to proclaim the gospel where there is no church to proclaim it, and there ain’t no church on campus!

For a while now I’ve been meaning to add this our site, but I’ve been a little too busy. I should have read Jon Walker’s article Did Jesus Rush Through His Week?!

My wife and I are considered missionaries by the Assemblies of God. That catches some people off-guard. After all, aren’t missionaries people who serve exclusively in pagan lands (preferably while wearing a pith helmet in the jungle)?

Not necessarily. A missionary is someone who is called to proclaim the gospel where there is no church to proclaim it.

There are a lot of nuances and qualifications I could add to that definition of a missionary, but I think it will suffice for this discussion. The key phrase is where there is no church to proclaim it.

That describes the college campus. College campuses (excluding commuter schools) are communities unto themselves. Students can attend classes, sleep, eat, watch movies, play games, do laundry, and shop for the necessities without ever leaving their campus. In fact, many campuses don’t even allow freshmen to have vehicles.

What’s the ramification? It doesn’t matter how many churches there are in the surrounding town–the college campus is a different world. Students are in great need of the gospel, yet they are insulated from the churches that proclaim it.

And so when we minister on campus we’re proclaiming the gospel in a place where there is no church to proclaim it. We’re missionaries.

That’s not to say there aren’t any differences between us and other missionaries. For example, the goal of most missionaries is to establish an indigenous church that is self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating. In other words, they’re trying to establish a church that makes the missionary unnecessary!

Our goal is different. We can’t create a church at Stanford that meets all three criteria (being self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating) because of the nature of the campus and the students who inhabit it. The challenges are chiefly in the area of self-governance (the students keep graduating, making totally student-run groups unstable) and self-support (college students have no money to provide for a full-time pastor). Incidentally, that’s why we raise missionary support.

In other words, the college campus is a perpetual mission field. We simply can’t build a church that will make our ministry unnecessary or redundant.

And that’s why universities need missionaries–they are self-sufficient communities that are isolated from any nearby churches. Since the students won’t come to church, the church must go to them.

And that’s missions.

Oh–I shouldn’t finish this without mentioning two more details:

1) There are roughly 14,000,000 college students in America: almost half the nations in the world have lower populations!

2) The world comes to America for education: of those 14,000,000 students over 500,000 are from other nations (over half of those are from Asia and another 7% are from the Middle East). Walking across virtually any college campus you can find students from countries that don’t allow missionaries entry. They’ve come here and they can be reached here. That’s one of the reasons Chi Alpha emphasizes International Student Friendship Ministries so strongly.

Unless One Is Born of Water and Spirit

In which I attempt to clarify what I mean by being “born from above”

Wow–Jack, author of Intregrity blog made several comments back-to-back in response to my earlier posting about baptism.

I’ll have to wait to address his lengthier comment, but I’ll tackle his shorter question right now: To make my question more explicit: what I don’t understand is how you reconcile this “physical birth” interpretation in the context of Jesus stating the conditions of entry into the Kingdom. Are you suggesting that it read as, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is physically born and spiritually born, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Doesn’t seem odd to cite physical birth — something we all have experienced by the virtue of our existence — as a condition to entry into Heaven? Doesn’t that interpretation render the “of water” part of the phrase a moot point? After all, who hasn’t been physically born?

Thanks–I was worried that I wasn’t clear enough in my previous posting. I now know that I was positively muddy!

Here’s the flow of conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in the NET Bible translation of John 3.5–7:

Jesus replied, I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born from above [anothen], he cannot see the kingdom of God.

In this snippet of dialog, Jesus explains the whole shebang: you must be born from above. The word anothen is ambigious in Greek. In this context, it might either mean “from above” or “again”. Recent scholarly translations come down on the side of “from above,” which makes the most sense of the conversation (NET and NRSV are two of the translations: check them out).

Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mothers womb and be born a second time, can he?

Nicodemus doesn’t understand what Jesus is saying. Being born from above doesn’t make any sense to him, but neither does being born again. Evidently, he thinks being born again is the more likely meaning, so he asks Jesus the above question based on that mistaken understanding.

Why would Nicodemus assume that Jesus was talking about physical birth? Because Nicodemus thought his own physical birth was salvific. Nicodemus was trusting in his status as a biological member of God’s chosen peole to assure him of citizenship in God’s Kingdom.

Jesus answered, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must all be born from above.’ ” (John 3.3–7, NET Bible)

Jesus is now trying to help Nicodemus understand his real point–that everyone must be born from above. To that end, he draws a contrast between the physical birth that Nicodemus thinks Jesus is talking about and the spiritual birth that Jesus is driving at.

What evidence is there for this point of view?

1) It makes sense of the flow of conversation. Jesus talks about spiritual birth, Nicodemus thinks he’s talking about physical birth, so Jesus bridges from physical birth back to spiritual birth.

2) “Born of water” is clearly a metaphor for something. Physical birth is the topic being discussed when the metaphor is used, and the metaphor fits.

3) The parallelism in the text itself. The unclear term “born of water” is in parallel construction with “born of flesh”. Using the clear to interpret the unclear, we see that “born of water” means the same thing as “born of flesh.” In other words, being born.

4) It does justice to Nicodemus’ likely frame of mind. Nicodemus thought he was guaranteed access to the Kingdom of God based purely on the accident of his birth as a Jewish person.

I hope that helps.

There are other interpretations out there: just do a search on Google for “born from above.”

A Visit From Paula’s Parents

A brief summary of a visit from Paula’s parents.

paula_parents.jpgWe just dropped Paula’s parents off at the airport. I hope they have a good, safe trip back. I also hope nothing gets confiscated–Paula’s mom had some cuticle scissors taken on the way in!

In case you’re wondering, it was a pleasant visit. We went to San Jose, San Francisco, Big Basin (where we saw some truly impressive redwoods), and Santa Cruz. Woohoo!

Mentioning San Jose reminds me: I recently discovered that San Jose is actually larger than San Francisco (both in terms of land mass and population). It’s the third largest city in the state–following Los Angeles and San Diego–and the eleventh largest in America.

That really threw me for a loop. My whole life I’ve thought there were two big cities in California: Los Angeles and San Francisco. Once again, my Gen X geographic illiteracy races to the fore!

Thoughts on Baptism and Following Jesus

In which I discourse on why we need to be “born from above” instead of “born again.”

This post is part of an ongoing dialog I’m having with Sean Gallagher at his Bene Diction blog. Right now we’re discussing what it means to follow Jesus, and the current subtopic is how baptism relates to that. This post will be concise because of the blog medium, so please let me know if anything is unclear.

Sean believes that one becomes a Christian upon being baptized. In his own words,

As a Catholic, I believe that a follower of Jesus is one who is born of water and Spirit (Jn 3:5), that is, one who has been baptized… Once a person has been baptized, at any age, this ability is never taken away… even if a person totally refuses to work with that grace [of baptism], that person is still a follower of Jesus.

Wow. It took us exactly one round of replies to get to core Catholic/Protestant differences.

One of the crucial texts here is John 3.3–7:

Jesus replied, I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mothers womb and be born a second time, can he? Jesus answered, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must all be born from above.’ ” (John 3.3–7, NET Bible)

In this passage, Jesus tells Nicodemus that everyone must be born anothen. The word anothen is ambigious in Greek. It can either mean “again” or “from above.”

Nicodemus thinks Jesus is saying “you must be born again” (hence his question, “How can a man be reborn? He can’t enter his mother’s womb again, can he?”) Nicodemus has misunderstood Jesus, and that is the context for what follows!

Jesus answers, “No, I’m not telling you to be born twice in a physical sense. You have to be both physically born [born of water] and spiritually born [born from above]. What is produced by flesh is flesh, but what is produced by Spirit is spirit.” (please note the use of parallelism here–it’s essential for interpreting the passage properly: ‘flesh’ parallels ‘water’ and ‘from above’ parallels ‘spirit’.)

In other words, neither person is discussing baptism. Jesus says that we are given physical life in our first birth (a birth of water), and that now we must have spiritual life planted in us (a birth of spirit). He goes on to explain exactly what that means later in the same conversation:

“For this is the way God loved the world: he gave his one and only Son that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him. The one who believes in him is not condemned. The one who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.” (John 3.16–18, NET Bible)

In other words, we are made alive spiritually by placing our faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

I’m sure there are other references that Sean takes to support salvific baptism, and I’m eager to dialog about them. I’m also curious to see what people think about the “born again/born from above” interpretative issue. I find that the wording is one of those sacred cows in the evangelical world even though it’s an untenable translation.

P.S. The NET Bible is one of my favorite translations, but I can’t find a way to directly link to a reference them. Hence my links are to the NIV at http://bible.gospelcom.net even though I quote from the NET Bible! If you know how to link directly to a NET Bible reference (a specific chapter and verse), please let me know!

70% Of College Homework Excuses Are Lies

NEWS FLASH: Studens lie to get out of homework.

A recent news item highlights the need for spiritual renewal at America’s colleges and universities. Students lie.

More to the point, Dr. Joseph Ferrari (who teaches psychology at DePaul University in Chicago) has discovered that they lie to avoid the consequences of not doing their assignments on time. 70% of the time an assignment is late, the accompanying excuse is a lie designed to get them off the hook.

Ladies and gentleman, I give you the next generation of Enron executives…

This Sounds Suspiciously Like a Video Game Concept

Hermann Burchard, mathematics professor at Oklahoma State, has suggested that we invent a cosmic-sized airbag to bounce incoming metors away from earth.

Hmmm.…

That reminds me of what a friend of mine thinks might be the (unintentional) funniest line in a movie. In Armageddon, all the science gurus at NASA are trying to figure out how to avert the annihilation of all life on earth, when someone says (roughly), “What we need here is the world’s best deep-core oil driller.”

A Pentecostal and a Catholic Discuss the Essence of Christianity

In which I talk with a Catholic about the nature of Christianity.

I’ve been meaning to mention for a while now that I’ve started a blog conversation with Sean Gallagher (a Catholic who runs a blog title Note Bene) about the reason Petencostal missionaries seem to target Catholics.

Here’s the rundown so far: it all began when I read Sean’s August 24th post about Pentecostal proselytism. I made a comment on that posting explaining my point of view.

As a Pentecostal missionary (albeit to Stanford and not Latin America), I’d like to comment.

Some people who attend Catholic churches are followers of Jesus, and some are not. My strong impression is that here in the Americas the majority are not.

By way of disclaimer, I would like to add my belief that the same problem exists in most denominations (including mine): too many people are involved because of momentum and not because of faith. I do think the problem is particularly acute in the RCC.

That being said, I never deliberately seek to proselytize people who are faithful adherents of another Christian tradition. In general, if a student tells me they are a Christian I believe them, and I try to help them grow in their faith. If I am of significant help to them, they often wind up switching their adherence.

However, when I meet someone without a vibrant faith (such as the infamous Easter and Christmas only crowd), I try to help them either reawaken a faith grown cold or discover true faith for the first time. Whenever that happens, they almost always switch their adherence. This is what I believe is happening in South America.

The switch has two roots, I think: one is an emotional intuition that what’s working for us might work for them since we were so helpful to them, the other is that we express significantly different doctrinal positions from the RCC that if believed make a switch virtually inevitable.

He thought that what I said was pretty interesting, and brought it to the attention of his readers. Shortly thereafter, he posted a series of questions for me answer

.

I answered his questions via email, but for your convenience, here they are:

I’ll answer your questions as best I can, just remember that I’m not a spokesperson for my denomination (much less for all of Pentecostalism)… I come from the strand of Pentecostalism that values other traditions without compromising the integrity of my own (much like the founders of the Society for Pentecostal Studies).

First, what is a follower of Jesus? I should state for the record that I am using this term synonymously with Christian. The authors of the New Testament seem to have been incapable of conceiving of a Christian who was not actively seeking to emulate Jesus. Jesus’ call was (and is) to “come, follow me.” In fact the very label Christian refers to the concept of ‘little Christs.’ Having said that, I would define a follower of Jesus as someone who has embraced the teachings and example of Jesus as the foundation of their lives and has brought their lives under the influence of the God (become citizens of the Kingdom). The classic word for this action is repent: to turn from a self-directed life to a God-directed life.

Second, defining a faithful adherent is always tricky. I mean both faithful (consistent participant in a local community of Christian faith) and faith-full (conforms to the definition above). Allow me to demonstrate by way of counterexample what I’m getting at:

* Suppose that I’m in conversation with a student and they discover that I’m an ambassador for Christ. They make some sort of comment along the following lines, “Yeah, I was raised in church, but I just don’t find it meaningful. I stopped going when I was a teenager.” In my mind, they flunk both tests–they need to be introduced to the King and enrolled in a local community of like-minded believers.

* Suppose that I meet a student who says, “Yeah, I love going to church–that’s where all the cute girls go!” (and upon investigation I discover that they really are that shallow). They pass the consistency test but fail the follower of Jesus test.

* Suppose that I meet a student who says, “Yeah–I really admire Jesus. But I hate the church–they’ve really let me down. I’ll never set foot in a church again!” Perhaps they pass test #2 (further investigation is needed), but they fail test #1.

I would consider all these people in desperate need of God’s grace expressed through human love in the context of a community earnestly following Jesus. Please note that I never mentioned a specific denominational background for any of them–it’s irrelevant to these examples.

Third, how would I as a Pentecostal help a Catholic grow in their faith? That’s an excellent question! Basically I do it the same way I help anyone to grow in their faith: love them unconditionally, pray for them consistently, encourage them in righteousness, and rebuke them in sin. Teach them the lessons of Scripture (I should note that my interpretation of Scripture differs from the Catholic understanding at points. I obviously teach what I believe to be true). Give reasonable answers to honest questions. In addition, here are a few other actions I’d take with someone from a churched background:

* I’ve noticed that many college-aged people engage in liturgy by rote and fail to understand its significance (confirmation notwithstanding). I’d try to help them see it with fresh eyes: as a heartfelt expression of worship and devotion to God. I’d probably also give them a copy of something like Peter Kreeft’s One Catholic to Another.

* I’ve also noticed that many students raised in church (of whatever tradition) have a very juvenile understanding of faith–their religious education stalled at a junior high level and they’ve never probed their faith at an age-appropriate level. Incidentally, I think that’s one of the reasons so many college students bail on the church. They’re trying to incorporate irreconcilable worldviews in their minds: one a 7th-grade understanding of the good news and the other a college-level understanding of secular philosophy. Guess which one wins? To that end, I’d try to help students reframe their questions and seek answers in a more sophisticated manner.

* Another high priority on my list is to help students experience the immediate supernatural power of the Holy Spirit (including the charismata). The Bible portrays charismatic Christianity as the normative model for followers of Jesus. We are to exhibit not only the fruit of the Spirit but also the gifts of the Spirit.

Fourth, I think I’ve addressed this question in my response to questions one and two. A vibrant faith is a combination of belief and trust that makes a difference in one’s day-to-day opinions, feelings, and behavior.

I hope I’ve answered your questions meaningfully. I’m sure you’ll have some comments in response.

So far he’s posted his reponse to my answer to his first question: What Defines a Follower of Jesus? I’ll try to respond as soon as I can (although my in-laws are visiting and that will make computer time harder to come by).