Currently Reading: Apologetics Beyond Reason

James W. Sire is the author of the landmark apologetics book The Universe Next Door (1976) and the more recent A Little Primer on Humble Apologetics (2006) and has been an editor at InterVarsity Press (IVP) for several decades. In the first chapter of Apologetics Beyond Reason: Why Seeing Really is Believing he explains that it might be time to chart a different direction.

For those in our culture who put their trust in human reason, these apologetic approaches have worked well. Many Christians today read and benefit from them. Without the, thoughtful Christians would have too few resources to analyze the clever arguments and glossy lifestyles presented by our culture’s media, its pundits, its fraudulent experts and its passionate prophets of health and wealth.

But many in our postmodern world have come willy-nilly to distrust reason, and the arguments of the modern Christian rationalists now seem irrelevant, doubtful, lifeless. The approaches of C. S. Lewis and G. K Chesteron avoided this fate by clever and imaginative grasps of the paradoxes of the human condition. The value of human reason for them was to permit a conclusion to be wrested from within a framework of paradoxes. It took account of the human desire for simplicity, tied the reader in knots and then showed how Christian faith both accounted for the knots and then untangled them. Their work has attracted readers from across the intellectual spectrum from the simple to the sophisticated.

But highly sophisticated rational apologetics itself is limited to those who can understand it…

…There is another limitation in many arguments Christians use to prove the rationality of belief in God. The God who is “proved” is only a transcendent, impersonal God, maybe a Creator, but not necessarily personal. Only a God whose existence is important to human understanding or human flourishing is worth troubling about. The arguments may support deism as a worldview but be silent about the existence of a fully Biblical God. Of course, such arguments can be stepping stones to a fuller argument for the God of the Bible. And that’s no small matter…

Apologetics Beyond Reason pp. 16-17

He then continues along this line mixing the writings of classical literature and philosophy with his own story.  I’m only part of the way in, but it’s a type of subjective apologetics, or intellectual testimony. My words, not his; or at least not so far.

Wednesday Link List

Welcome to another installment of random links from Thinking Out Loud.  If you’ve been on summer holidays, the list has become the victim of a corporate takeover. We’re now at Out of Ur on Wednesdays, the blog of Leadership Journal, a division of Christianity Today. We’ve asked our Chicago-based new bosses to aim for 8:00 AM EDT !!

Check the list also for an explanation as to the above Church photo, aka “Fruitcake as building material.” 

• A subject I’ll click on every time: Greg Laurie on why is the United States seemingly absent in Biblical prophecy.
• So what about that verse about those with unruly children being unfit for leadership? Douglas Wilson kicks off a series wondering what happened to that qualification.
• Is there a hierarchy within the Trinity? Michael Patton suggests there is an order similar to the order in which we usually recite the parts of the Godhead.
• The Archbishop of Canterbury: Speaking in tongues? Yes. A personal conversion experience is necessary? No. Following Christ? It’s like getting measles. (Links like this? Priceless.)
• A CNN Religion writer suggests that as with everything else, there are six denominations of atheists.
• Coming in October to a theater near (some of) you: Watch the trailer for I’m In Love With a Church Girl.
• Readers at Real Clear Religion sent in another crop of 33 pictures of ugly churches. (We like #5 subtitled ‘Fruitcake as building material.’)
• Clergy lag behind military, teachers, and doctors in Pew survey list of most-respected professions; and this was a survey of churchgoers!
• Prime Minister David Cameron wants the default on UK home internet connections to block pornography unless the customer requests it.
• Women’s Department: A youthful group of women get together in Talking Taboo, a frank discussion about faith featuring a huge list of contributors.
• Bigger, better, louder, faster… in ministry we often want more when the model of scripture suggests maybe we need less of more.
• A song by J.J. Heller is featured in a 30-second tourism commercial for Queensland, Australia.
• Following a great family tragedy, pastor Rick Warren returns to the pulpit of Saddleback Church this weekend for the first time since March.
• Have you heard of churches wherein when the senior pastor resigns, every staff member tenders their resignation? One writer doesn’t like this idea.
• Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart is due to make a rare crusade appearance August 9th in Buffalo, New York.
• Sometimes those eBooks you get for a $1 (or less) are books that were never edited for grammar or spelling.
• The podcast On Pop Theology looks at modesty culture, purity culture, and why Christian dating advice isn’t so good. (Coarse language.)
• Somewhat related: Catholic bulletin announcement — “Dignity & Decorum: Please try not to wear beach shorts, tank tops, and flip-flops to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Thank you.” But the temp is in the 80s at the 7:30 service.
• While missing the stats, here’s another article about college students exiting non-denominational Evangelicalism for ‘high’ liturgical churches.
• Ancient Art Department: You can blame the Egyptian god Bes for how the Devil got his looks.
• Also at the BBC Culture page: They’re building an ark in Long Island, though this one won’t touch water.
• I thought it would be cool to include a Spanish link. Too bad I don’t speak Spanish. Still it’s nice to know these blogs are there, like this one dealing with apologetics, worldviews, moral relativism and ministry to postmoderns. (Maybe I understand the language more than I realize.)
• American Interest Department: What US cities are ‘saintly’ and which ones are ‘sinful?’ You might be surprised.
• A blogger thinks we spent too much time in church facing the front of the room, and not enough time facing one another.

Finally, since Out of Ur is borrowing from us today, we thought we’d return the favor with a link to this post:

Twentyonehundred Productions is the InterVarsity multi-media team. They post an infographic like this each week on their Facebook page.  Normally, that would be the end of things here, but since historically, the Wednesday Link List began or ended with a cartoon, I couldn’t resist stealing borrowing one more graphic from them…

Wednesday Link List

We read blogs so you don’t have to!  Or something.

• Brent Mosley is president of Bluefish TV, the company that makes — among other things — those little two-minute video clips that start your weekly worship service.  He blogs, too.  Check out Is The Church Telling The Complete Story?
  
• Speaking of video, it’s been three years since it was filmed and two years since it was released on DVD, but now you can watch Joe Manafo’s detailed 42-minute documentary study of alternative churches in Canada in its entirety at the website for One Size Fits All.
  
• A list with ten things is actually easier to produce than when you decide to narrow it down to five.  And these five are well-chosen.  Trevin Wax posts Five Trends to Watch for in Evangelical Christianity.
  
• And speaking of Trevin, here’s a video of a church promotion that he (and Zach at Vitamin Z) think is one of the best church advertisements ever.  “Before we tell you who we are, we want to tell you who we were.”
  
• Contemporary Christian book author Skye Jethani tells why he doesn’t read many books by contemporary Christian book authors, in a piece at Out of Ur provocatively titled, I Read Dead People.
• Dan Horwedel whisks you on a link-list journey of his own in a fascinating examination of the Christian worship song, God of This City.  Both the major-key version and the minor-key version.
  
• I don’t read — let alone link — to Ann Welch’s blog very often because it’s more of a women’s blog and a parenting blog, but she’s been in the link-list here since day one because she is a blogger who has my utmost respect. Here’s a shorter piece even the guys can take a minute to read at her blog Resolved 2 Worship, titled Dart Throwing.  (Turn your speakers up, too; she’s got a great blog playlist.)
  
• Chuck Colson believes that while most Christian children’s books contain a Bible narrative followed by “the moral of the story,” we need to teach kids to recognize the worldview being promoted in everything they read.  And he’s introducing a product that will help them do just that.
  
• Pete Wilson raises the oft-discussed issue of swearing, or things that some people consider swearing.   200 comments so far about words like darn, dang, heck, geez, and shoot.  (And then, Daniel Jepson raises the same topic, too.)
  
• A woman in a senior’s home invites John Shore into her room, and then dies holding on to John’s hand.  Yikes!  Obviously, readers are wondering why the story is just surfacing now.
  
• Albert Mohler thinks that Piers Morgan’s interview with Joel Osteen identifies one topic where we either stand for Biblical truth or we try to dance around its politically incorrect implications.  Mohler says that sooner or later we’ll have to deal with our own Osteen Moment.
  
• A Tennessee pastor refused to baptize a couple’s baby because the couple wasn’t married. He wants to make a statement about teen pregnancy.
  
• Time for a quick hymn sing.  Here’s a couple of versions of a classic hymn that is well-known in England but not at all in North America.  One version is more modern, the other is most formal, but both of them work.  Check out Tell Out My Soul.
  
• This week we should pay Trevin a commission.  If you’ve read the bestselling book Radical by David Platt (Waterbrook), you know all about “Secret Church.”  Well, this year, the event is available as a simulcast for any church that wants in. (Posted even though the event is a Lifeway thing. Look guys; no hard feelings!)
  
• Here’s a return of a Link List favorite; Mike Morgan’s weekly comic, For Heaven’s Sake.

The Place for Christian Critique

If anything characterized the Christian publishing market during the first decade of this new century, it was the glut of books falling under the general category of ecclesiology.     Once the domain of pastors and seminary students, suddenly every Tom, Dick and Harriet was interested in church growth strategy, church planting, home church, organic church, postmodern ministry, et al.

And many of these books were very critical of church as we know it.   Some writers believed it was better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, but others, spared nothing to launch their complaint against the irrelevance of church in the previous century including even tearing down more recent models which were attempting to remedy that very situation.

Can you imagine an author walking into a publishers agent’s office today with a manuscript about church life?   It would be a hard sell with the titles already available.

So what of this particular genre?

I chose the word critique over the word criticism, because most writers self-justified their efforts that they weren’t trying to be “critical,” but were attempting to simply put the church under the microscope in light of contemporary culture and statistical surveys.    But some of the books left you more pessimistic than encouraged.

I also chose this topic in light of the discussion that began Saturday here (two posts back) on the place for Christian humor.   Humor is, in many ways, a form of critique, and the humorists and the critics have a lot in common.   It’s my opinion that we need both, and that overall, the discussions in various books published from 2000 – 2009 have been helpful for refocusing and re-visioning the role of the local church moving forward.

But I learned on the weekend that not everyone is going to agree.

I guess a fuller title for this would be, “The Place for Critique in Christian Writing;” since it’s not Christianity — the doctrine and theology — that’s being reconsidered.   Hopefully.   Although it’s often the doctrine and theology as we came to understand it, or as it was taught to us, or as it was impressed on us that can be the issue.

So here’s what I want you do:   Check out both Saturday’s post and the comments; and then answer the following question which is similar, but different.

What’s your take on books or online media — such as blogs — that are highly critical of traditional church?

And let’s add a question about the issue that was raised on the weekend.

What controls should exist regarding the possibility of new believers or even seekers stumbling over material that was meant for church veterans?

The difference is that here we’re looking at writers who aren’t trying to be funny, though maybe humor might have softened their blows!

Bible College and Seminary Grads Want Paying Jobs

I have been part of this discussion before; the issue being that after emerging from seminary or Bible college,  many students expect to find an entry level position at a multi-staff church that offers a regular salary, book allowance, conference allowance, paid vacations and health benefits.    Despite this, many also expect to find employment in a setting that is postmodern, or missional or Emergent; so that they can live out many of their ministry dreams and ideals.

At his website, Andrew Jones, a.k.a. the Tall Skinny Kiwi raises this issue on a post from last week:

I have seen a number of Seminary graduates come overseas to hang with us and to potentially find work in the “emerging church”. After a short time, they have gone back to USA disappointed that there are no paid positions. Huge and wonderful opportunities . . . puny financial benefit…

I found this discussion through Jordan Cooper’s website, where he offers some kind of explanation:

I think Andrew has some good things to say here but he is missing the point that a privately funded (this means paid for by massive tuition bills and student loans) theological education creates a system where all by the wealthiest have to find full time ministry jobs just to service the student loan debt.  Right from the time we start to seriously educate church leaders, we ask them to embrace a worldview of debt…

Okay, I agree with that as a kind of background to the issue.   But obviously the system is flawed somewhere.    While I don’t usually cross-post my comments at other blogs, here’s what I responded at the time:

Expanding the concept of seminary is a start, but what if we’ve already got alternative vehicles for ministry education, but we just aren’t recognizing them as such? For example, I’m not a YWAM-er, but if I were on the personnel committee for my church and someone applied who had done a YWAM DTS and maybe one or two of their other schools, and all the appropriate field-trip components that go with it, I would weight that equally with the applicant with the BTh from a Bible College. And that’s just one example.

Another lifetime ago, as a student at U. of T., I served on a Communications committee that was screening applicants for a paid job in campus media. They asked one guy what formal training he had and without blinking he said, “No formal training, but lots of doing training, which some say is better.”

But that doesn’t mean the end of Bible Colleges and Seminaries. Generations ago, the University of Waterloo advanced the concept of co-op education at the post-secondary level. Many students leave their programs with their education fully paid for; some actually leave with money in the bank. This does however mean the end of field-placements and internships as Seminaries and Bible Colleges have traditionally understood them …it goes a long way to meeting the debt-servicing issue you’ve correctly raised.

But here’s another point that I wished I had added:

Churches can go a long way toward easing the situation for seminary students by budgeting something each year to go towards both students from their own congregation and direct gifts to the institutions concerned — designated for tuition aid and scholarships, not the maintenance of the infrastructure or staff salaries.   This should be part of the missions budget of every church.

What do you think?