An open letter

An open letter to my brothers studying a DMin.

Dear Brothers,

I’m writing to you because I know that you think theological education is very important. You have demonstrated this in the sacrifices (both time and financial) you have made over many years. For many of you, you’ve served a 2 year apprenticeship, studied full time at Moore College for 4 years, have studied part time as an MA student, and are now making the long trek overseas to study your DMin while busily working in your church. I commend your commitment and effort to be well prepared for the ministries that God has prepared for you.

In this context, I’d like to share a challenge with you.

In many parts of the world, Christian leaders have nothing like the opportunities that you and I have to study and prepare themselves for ministry. For many, the opportunity to study theology is an economic and cultural impossibility, and yet they need to lead churches, teach their congregations and deal with the pastoral difficulties of life just like we do. In reality, they are lacking the most basic skills of reading the Bible and being able to share it with others. While there is absolutely no question about their faithfulness and their commitment to serving our Lord, many times their lack of discernment is causing problems for them and the congregations they lead. More and more we are seeing that as “schmick” packages are introduced to these hungry leaders, they are falling victim to false doctrines, such as the prosperity gospel, with disastrous results.

While we need to take a multi-pronged approach to helping equip these pastors and leaders, theological education is a key prong.

As people who have benefited so greatly from the great wealth of theological resources, I would like to challenge and invite you to be involved in the provision of basic theological education for those who have far less opportunities than us. Specifically, I want to challenge you to be significantly involved in paying for those who cannot pay for themselves.

There are many opportunities for doing this. I am sure you know of seminaries overseas that are struggling to offer the scholarships that their students need to study, and in many cases, the value that we get for our money is incredible. In Cuba, $50 provides transport, tutoring, food and lodging for one student to complete 2 ThC subjects as part of a 1 week MOCLAM (Moore College in Latinoamérica) intensive. In 2012 over 1,000 Cubans participated in this program – some of them studying up to 8 subjects in one year! In Paraguay young church planters and leaders can be taught a ThC subject in one week for less than the cost of a meal at LAX. In Chile the Centre for Pastoral Studies (CEP) tries to help students coming from the remote parts of Chile and from other Latin American countries, and then sends them back to minister in all sorts of situations.

Here is my challenge to you.

I know that studying a DMin is an expensive business. Would you please consider matching every dollar that you or your church spends on your DMin studies, with a gift to the scholarship fund of a developing world theological institution?

Please take the time to consider this challenge seriously and prayerfully.

Of course, I would be happy to give any further information, engage with you about this, or provide some direction as to where and how you might be able to direct your money.

Your brother

Peter Sholl

Monterrey, Mexico.

That was a bit different...

Living in another culture certainly presents its fair share of surprises, and happily the vast, vast majority of them are good / happy / great for a laugh.

I guess we'll look back on this one like that, but, at the moment, maybe not so much.

Yesterday, daughter #1 (1st year of High School) came home talking about a movie they had watched at school. She was a bit disturbed by it - nothing major, just a bit bothered. It was on Youtube, so we found it and last night I watched it.

It was a New York Times documentary about a family in Pakistan, and the effect that the Taliban had on their life. I think (although I am not sure) that the daughter in the film was the girl who was shot recently by the Taliban - an event that made world headlines.

Anyway - it was pretty confronting, I guess because a lot of what the Taliban is doing in this area of Pakistan is pretty confronting. We saw decapitated bodies, judicial beatings, and at one point we saw a close up video of someone being executed by being shot in the head with an AK-47!

An interesting choice to show to a bunch of 13 year olds!

It was tricky though, because apart from those scenes, it was a very good illustration of what happens when there is a different rule of law - and I think that is exactly the point the teacher was trying to make. But whoa - maybe there might have been some careful editing, or at least some sort of warning to "look away now if you have a sensitive stomach"

We wrote a letter to the head teacher, but as we were writing I was thinking about the violent society we live in and the gruesome pictures we see on the front page of the paper every day - I wonder if the teacher who reads our letter will think we are just being a bit soft?

But then again, I suspect quite a few parents might be thinking the same thing as us - but it takes more than thinking to try and counteract a cultural trend.

Real hope

In the lead up to Christmas I had the opportunity to preach in our church. They asked me to preach on the theme of hope, and I ended up focussing on 1 Corinthians 15.

It was an interesting week, because while I was preparing, a plane crashed near Monterrey, killing the famous Mexican singer Jenni Rivera and the other passengers on the plane. The crash happened in a remote mountain area so it took the rescue workers a few days to get there, process the site etc. During this time, the family of fans of Jenni were using the language of "hope" - along the lines of "we are hoping that they will find her alive." Of course all the evidence indicated that this wouldn't be the case. The speed of the impact, the fire etc - all pointed to a very sad outcome.

But it indicated very clearly the different ways in which the word "hope" is used. For the fans of Jenni, hope was what they had despite the evidence, despite the facts.

But in 1 Corinthians 15, hope is what we can have because of the evidence, because of the facts.

In verses 1-11 Paul presents the facts of the gospel. The facts of the live, death and resurrection of Christ - pretty much without interpretation or explanation. This passage reads like a kids holiday diary "this happened, then this happened then this...."

And it this factual presentation that then forms the basis of his argument, because the controversy of the day (and clearly there is nothing new under the sun) is that the resurrection didn't happen. OK - well, if that is the case, then there can't be any exceptions, and therefore Jesus did not rise from the dead either. And what is the result of that? v19 "If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."

That is, if all the facts don't allow for the resurrection, then we can't have hope.

But in verse 20 we get one of those key Biblical words. "But"

But the facts are there. The resurrection did happen - and therefore we can have hope, a fact based hope.

And what really caught my eye was the thing that we can have hope in. We can have a sure, certain, "Biblical" hope in our resurrection. Because our resurrection follows on from the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus is the firstfruits, the first one in a long line of those who will follow after him. And therefore, the question we can ask is not "If we will be resurrected" but "When we will be resurrected."

The hope we have of our new life is founded on the facts, not something we desire despite the facts.

So what difference does that make?

Well I was thinking about Jenni Rivera's family - waiting for news, for confirmation. How would they be feeling? Nervous. Fearful. Worried. Tense. Stressed.

Why? Because their hope is not based on the facts.

But Christian hope, a hope based on the facts means we can wait without fear or nervousness or worry or tension. Because we know our hope is certain.

Sure, there may be other factors that cause us to be fearful or tense or stressed, but they will pass. Our hope of the resurrection, based on the facts of the resurrection of Jesus should not be swayed.

A little (non-profund) insight from Jeremiah

I'm reading through Jeremiah at the moment. It's a great read. Tough, but lots of gems along the way.

Here's something (not really a gem, but a useful insight) that I came across today.

Have you ever wondered about that slightly unusual ceremony in Genesis 15? You know the one where God has just promised to Abram that he will make his offspring like the stars in the sky - despite the current situation of Abram being childless and the biological clock for he as his wife Sarah seeming to have ticked it's last tock.

Having made that promise, God then tells Abram to cut up various animals in half and lay them out. Abram does so and as night falls, he goes to sleep.

He then has a dream in which God visits him and makes more promises - again, about his offspring. But also, in the draw, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch pass between the pieces of the animals and we are told that on that day God made a covenant with Abram.

We don't really understand the details of how this covenant ceremony works and they are not explained for us, which perhaps means that the original readers understood exactly what was going on and so didn't need an explanation.

But here is what I found in Jeremiah today. In Jeremiah 34 God commands Jeremiah to go and speak to the Zedekiah, King of Judah, and the message is not great. Basically, because the people of Israel have been systematically and habitually ignoring the law of God, they are going to suffer under his judgement. This is expressed in various ways throughout the chapter, but verses 18 and 19 say this.

"And the men who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant that they made before me, I will make them like the calf that they cut in two and passed between its parts - the officials of Judah, the officials of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the parts of the calf."

In other words, they have broken the covenant and as a result, they are going to become like those animals that were used in the covenant ceremony.

I don't know about you, but that helps me understand what is happening in Genesis 15. The symbolism of the halved animals is a promise of what happens if the covenant is broken. Therefore, the promise is a very serious one and needs to be considered with great caution and respect!

(Told you it was little and non-profound, but useful all the same.)

Church discipline : the first step

I recently had the privilege to attend a conference run by 9Marks, a group led by Mark Dever from Capital Hill Baptist Church in Washington. Mark is an incredibly well thought our and humble teacher and is leading a great movement to encourage Biblical churches in the USA and beyond. I was there because for the first time ever, a simultaneous conference for Spanish speakers was held, which meant I had a great opportunity to network and learn.

Mark's sessions and generous conversation at dinner made me think about lots of things. Not surprisingly, I didn't agree with everything he said (but then if you are going to conferences where you agree with everything that is said, maybe you need to push your thinking a bit harder) but I was really challenged by one point that he made.

Throughout the weekend there was quite a bit of talk about church membership and church discipline. Membership being the formal process that people are asked to step through to declare their commitment to their local church, and the process of the church accepting and including them. And discipline being the process of confronting those members who move away from the things they committed to in the membership process, with the aim of restoration (guided by passages such as Matt 18).

We had a really helpful discussion on the process and purpose of discipline and, how people within the church are involved, how discipline can be exercised without encouraging "the church police". But the thing that really stuck out for me was this comment. "The first step of church discipline is church membership."

When he said "the first step of church discipline is...." I immediately started thinking about who raises the question, who does the visit, how hard do you go it - all that sort of stuff. But no, for Mark, the first step was membership. Because in his mind, without a clear membership process and commitment, the exercise of discipline becomes much more difficult. Why? Because the expectations and boundaries haven't been clearly defined. And without those in place, it is much harder to say - hey, you are not keeping up your end of the agreement. Perhaps without some sort of membership system, the response might come back... "What agreement?"

Now for different churches and denominations the process of membership will look different. Whether there are covenants to be signed or courses to be completed or pledges to be made - who knows. The point is, if we want to be caring for the people in our churches, then perhaps there needs to be something.

Maybe the 21st century response to this idea might be - wait a minute, I don't commit to anything beyond a 3 month gym membership, and so requiring a commitment to church might be seen as being a bit over the top. Maybe so - but then again, maybe we need to be counter-cultural, and say - people matter to us. They matter so much that we care about them and their walk with the Lord, and to care for them as best we can, this is something we ask.

Why exegetical preaching is good for you.

Last week I was one of the presenters at a pastor's conference on an isolated Caribbean nation. (Yes, one of those ones that got smashed by Hurricane Sandy - which made for an interesting couple of days.)

I was speaking about the importance of Biblical Theology and how we as pastors can teach it to our congregations. But I was also invited to be part of a panel which discussed various issues and took questions from the floor for an hour each day. During one of these panels I was reminded that exegetical preaching is good for you.

It came up because we were talking about the different of roles of men and women in ministry, and someone asked about 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 - the famous "head covering" passage. 

We talked about the different issues involved in the passage, cultural things, creation order, expressions of authority and submission to authority etc. It is a difficult passage, requires hard work to understand it, and even harder work to teach it. And then it came to me - that is exactly why a steady diet of systematic, exegetical preaching is good for us. Because it makes us think and work hard.

You see, if each week you preach on what has come to you during the week, or what is the "live issue of the day"or what doctrinal or theological topic you think needs to be addressed in any particular moment, I'm guessing you'll probably never preach on 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. Because it is unlikely to come up on your radar as a "hot topic"while you are considering what to preach about this Sunday.

But if we are committed to work through a book, chapter by chapter, then we commit ourselves to the hard yards or having to deal with these sorts of passages. And that is a good thing, because I think if we preach week in and week out on what we think the congregation needs to hear, then I suspect we tend to preach on what we think we already understand, and therefore our preparation and thinking gets sloppy. We spend more time trying to work out how to communicate what it is we already think we know, rather than being challenged by something new and then working out how to communicate that.

But if each week as we open to the next chapter in our program, we are presented with the agenda from the Bible, sometimes - in fact hopefully, many times - our thinking is going to be challenged, our eyes are going to be opened to new truths and insights, and we are going to need to read and prepare carefully to answer the surprises and challenges that the text throws at us. Yes, that will require careful thought, hard work, and longer preparation, but that is a good thing, because it will make us students and servants of the text, rather than authorities over it.

So, get that diet of regular, systematic, expository preaching going - and look out for the challenges it will bring your way!

(The picture is of sunrise over our city this morning, snapped by our most excellent language tutor Lillian.)

A little reminder of why we are here

I had a conversation last week which was a good reminder of why we need to be here, and what we can and can't take for granted.

I was chatting with someone I have got to know over the last year or so. He's a christian and a great guy, very keen to be doing what he can to encourage others, but hasn't really been settled in a church for a while. He has recently started studying a couple of the courses I am running, and we are also both part of a mid-week Bible study group.

We were talking about what he'd been learning as he studied his first Old Testament subject. The conversation went something like this. He is 'F' (for friend), I am 'M' (for me).

'F' : Do people really study the Bible?
'M': Do you mean, do people really study the Bible - in terms of where it came from, how we got it etc, or, do you mean, Do people study it in terms of what it says?
'F': No - do people study it deeply or just skim over it? I mean, I have learnt so much from studying this course and I wonder if others do it or they would benefit from it?
'M': Yes - people do study it in depth. There are some places, like in Sydney where I come from, where it is totally normal for people who are members of a church to also be involved in a Bible study group each week where they read the Bible carefully and try to apply it to their lives and encourage the other members of the group to do the same. Each week in the sermon the preacher also tries to carefully teach the passage for the day and apply it to our everyday life.
'F': Really ?! Wow, that would be really good if we could get people doing that sort of thing here.
'M': Well, I'm running a group on Sundays at our church in which we are reading through Ephesians. Looking at 10 or so verses each week, thinking about the details and how those details speak to us.
'F': That's fantastic - that is exactly the sort of thing people here need, because they just spend a lot of time skimming on the surface.
'M': Yes.

For readers in good churches where this sort of detailed study is par for the course, can I make two requests.

1. Don't take it for granted. Keep pushing your leaders to do a good job of careful teaching from the scriptures.
2. Don't forget that there are whole lot of places in the world where things are very different. So please keep on remembering those places in your prayers and in your giving.

(Photo: Holy Cross Anglican Church, Tarija, Bolivia)