White Presumptive

    Dear friends, just a few thoughts for you this weekend, especially on the topic of the unity of races as a witness to the truth of the Gospel.  My least favorite sentence in the T4G Affirmations and Denials document comes in Article XVII.  It’s the 3rd sentence, and it reads:

"We further affirm that evangelical Christianity in America bears a unique responsibility to demonstrate this reconciliation with our African-American brothers and sisters."

    I think this statement is true.  I am sorry that it seems to assume that evangelical Christianity is made up only of those who are other than African American brothers and sisters.  This is of course not the case, and it is not what we meant, but I think the statement does seem to imply that.  Thanks to those many of you who have both noticed this, and over-looked it in light of affirming our intention.

    Our inability at this point to express ourselves well, our speaking fundamentally as 4 friends, explains some of the "white presumptive" language of the sentence, but so many others are desiring to appropriate the document that I wish we had found a more accurate way of stating our concern here.

    Edward Gilbreath has done us a favor by publishing a good and thought-provoking first-hand account of the challenges before us.  His IVP 2006 book is called Reconciliation Blues and I would encourage all of you to read it.  Mr. Gilbreath is a good writer, a lover of the Gospel, and a brother who transparently shares his longing for a God-glorifying unity in the churches.  Mr. Gilbreath, if you should read these words, thank you for sharing yourself with us through this project.  Friends, read this book.

    You might also benefit from listening to Thabiti Anyabwile share his own story in our most recent 9marks interview.  It’s an interview with Thabiti on his life and ministry.  His discussion of his own childhood, of what it meant to be basically growing up father-less are perhaps the most moving moments of my several years of interviewing folks.  Listening to this interview, looking at the world through the eyes of an African-American teenager could well be used of God to help you better understand the challenges we face.

    One of the things I hope will happen through Crossway publishing Thabiti’s new book, The Faithful Preacher, is that those of us who are evangelicals but who are not African-American will begin to learn that part of our history that we have so largely ignored.  Why would Thabiti’s lovely daughters when they were in Sunday School at Capitol Hill Baptist Church only hear stories of white missionaries and white heroes of the faith?  Praise God, they didn’t only hear those stories.  But they mainly did.  And it’s because of our ignorance.  In his new book, Thabiti helps to share parts of family history too often overlooked.

    African-American Christian history is more fundamentally Christian than it is African-American.  I realize that may be a controversial statement, but inside the body of Christ, we must realize that our racial identities (while seeming in Revelation to last into eternity) are not as fundamental as our Christian identity.  In Gen. 12:3 God promised to bless all nations through Abraham; in Matt. 28 Christ commanded it; in Acts we see it beginning to happen; and in Rev. 12:9 we see that it has happened.  Why deprive ourselves through ignorance of some of the most amazing things God has done?  We should proactively investigate getting to know the Christian history of various ethnic groups, because contained in them are, no doubt, amazing stories of God’s action for the building up of His united people.  Forgive me, for ways my language has been wrongly "white presumptive" and revel in the richness of God’s grace as you explore histories newly discovered to you.

Two Painfully Learned and Immensely Important Lessons

A recent conversation with a good friend reminded me of two of the most painfully learned lessons of my life.  I thought I would briefly share them with you.

There was a minister I dearly loved (and still do) who proved unfaithful in his ministry.  Paul says in I Cor. 4:2 that "it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful."  None of us do it perfectly.  This one friend proved spectacularly unfaithful, that is, the unfaithfulness was of a serious and on-going nature, and it was revealed suddenly.

For three to four months it was like I had a second job taking phone calls from around the world counselling with friends–especially young ministers–who were deeply shaken.  It was a terrible time, and one in which God’s gospel stood as clear and bright as ever, and the hope of heaven became even sweeter. 

As I reflected on the time, two lessons especially stood out to me.  The first is for all Christians, the second especially for pastors. 

The first lesson was provoked when one dear brother reproached himself for not reaching out more to this mutual friend, not asking more questions about how our mutual friend was doing.  I told him that I had met with this friend weekly and often asked him many questions.  I didn’t think he (my self-reproachful friend) was so much in the wrong as our mutual friend was wrong for not being honest.  Lesson number one:  no accountability relationships will work if there is not a commitment to honesty on the part of the person in question.  The problem wasn’t a lack of initiative toward him; the problem was his hiding the truth from us.  If I am committed to my sin above a humble, self-revealing honesty, then I can’t rely on any accountability structure or loving friendships to expose my sin and protect my soul.  I must remember that if I am to war against sin, I must labor to be embarassingly transparent.

The second lesson was more particularly for those engaged in public ministry.  Many Christians will make pious statements about God refusing to bless a ministry because of sin in the minister’s life, or holiness being the essential ingredient in a pastor’s ministry.  Many other statements like that are in the literature.  And certainly holiness is a necessarily present mark of any true ministry–or true Christian life, for that matter.  BUT, and here’s lesson number two:  the public success of your ministry is no indication of the true state of your relationship with God. Yes, preachers should meet the qualifications Paul lays out in I Tim. 3 & Titus 1, but God is not limited to using people who do.  In Scripture we see God using beasts (Balaam’s donkey), inanimate objects (the burning bush) even Satan himself to do His bidding.  We shouldn’t be surprised that God can sovereignly have His truth preached through the mouths of hypocrites.  My brother minister, are you in a time of public blessing?  Don’t assume that necessarily has anything to do with how your own relationhip with the Lord is.

Those are the two lessons, shared briefly with you.  Behind them are months of painful experience, tears, prayers, and countless conversations.  I hope they may be useful to you now.  That would be a good use of the sorrows of many brothers and sisters.

One more thing.  CJ is wonderfully loving the ministers he is committed to caring for.  Lig is building his congregation and blogging over at Ref21.  Al is educating us on all manner of things in the public press today, and also blogging at AlbertMohler.com.  We’re going to keep blogging here, and we’re discussing how we might do that more helpfully.  In the meantime, look for a new 9marks blog soon, over at 9marks.org.  There I and some others will be taking on issues a bit more narrowly that have to do with components of a healthy church.  Remember the CT cover story last year on young, restless and reformed?  To get us kicked off over at the 9marks blog, I’m going to begin with a 10-part series on where I think all these folks came from!  So it should be a fun discussion.  Check us out over there.  And don’t forget to stop by here.

Don Carson vs. Egregious Reductionisms Again

If you are the kind of person who feels that it’s not a good idea, not prudent, and perhaps wrongly human-glorifying to say something good about someone, you should stop reading here.  For the rest of you, keep reading.

Don Carson has for years put his God-given gift of brilliance and hard academic labor to use for the church.  I from time to time have had the privilege to share a platform with him at ministers conferences and other events.  I have seen him far away from the Ivy-covered halls of academia, laboring long and hard not simply over language theories or a fine hermenuetical point (good things to do) but with a pastor (whether from South Africa or England or Illinois) helping him think through a Biblical or pastoral issue.

Don has shown this in his career as a teacher and a writer as well.  He has a passion for God, and a passion for God’s truth, and a passion for God’s church.  First-class Biblical scholars who are not hostile to systematic theology, are themselves orthodox and pious, and have a love for the church which shows itself in doing helpful pastor- and popular-level writing for decades have marked too few people in the history of the church.  John Calvin.  B. B. Warfield.  (OK, even Don Carson will stop reading at this point!) 

Anyway, from How Long O Lord to Showing the Spirit to The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God to Worship by the Book to The Cross and Christian Ministry–I could go on and on–Don has been a blessing to me and to countless other pastors, rather than putting all his time into forwarding his academic career (though he’s done just fine in that area) Don has put his time into helping us.

Stop and thank God for the gift that Don is.

Well, now to the point of the blog.  He’s done it again.  Don has a book coming out later this year with Eerdmans called Christ and Culture Revisited.  He’s obviously playing off H. Richard Niebuhr’s famous title.  And he spends one chapter analyzing Niebuhr’s 5-fold typology for how Christ and culture relate.  He turns the manuscript in this week, and the book should pop out sometime later this year.

In this book, Don interacts with everyone from Thomas Jefferson to Stanley Hauerwas.  He has a great section on the central story-line of the Bible.  As he says at one point in the manuscript:  "much of the rest of this book can be read as a meditation on how a robust biblical theology tends to safeguard Christians against the most egregious reductionisms." Don has read not only widely, but carefully and with understanding.  He expresses himself carefully, in a nuanced fashion, and yet clearly.  Unlike some other academic popularizers today, Don shares his rich bibliography in a way that enables the reader to do further research if he or she wants to.

My own understanding has been sharpened.  I’ve been introduced to some helpful ways to think.  I’ve even found some good things for our church newsletter in this book!!  Don Carson’s new book promises to be helpful in a number of different ways.

Don himself travels more widely, in more different cultures, than any other Chrisitan preacher that I know.  He is well suited by birth and upbringing, by education and life-experience, by reflectiveness and ability to write such a volume.

Maybe this is the kind of book that only a pastor on Capitol Hill gets excited about!  But I don’t think so.

Buy it.  Read it.  Pass it along to folks in your congregation.