Reimagining church without worldly hierarchy

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Usually I greatly appreciate what the well known Methodist Bible commentator Ben Witherington III (BW3) writes on his blog – although I don’t always have time to read his longer posts. But I have some serious issues with what he writes in his latest post, the first part of a review of Reimagining Church by Frank Viola.

I haven’t read Viola’s book, and more or less all I know about it comes from BW3’s review. Here BW3 writes quoting a key pasaage:

[Viola] describes very straightforwardly how he reimagines how the church ought to be– “organic in its construction; relational in its functioning; scriptural in its form (aha! it has a form); Christocentric in its operation; Trinitarian in its shape; communitarian in its lifestyle; nonelitist in its attitude; and nonsectarian in its expression.” (p. 26). Now that’s a tall order. Let’s see how he develops these ideas and blueprints for the 21rst century church.

While BW3 appreciates many of Viola’s ideas, he offers sharp criticism of some aspects of them, and especially of Viola’s suggestion that the church should not be hierarchical. BW3 writes:

I also have a problem with those who have a problem inherently with the notion of hierarchial leadership structures, because in fact such structures are Biblical not merely in the OT, but in the NT as well, as documents like the Pastoral Epistles and Acts make clear.

Much later in the review he returns to this issue, and roots it in the doctrine of the Trinity:

the blueprint Godhead provides us with a reason to expect that in the church there will be a hierarchial pattern of ordering things. … it will involve a leader and follower, shepherd and sheep, pastor and congregation, apostle and co-workers hierarchy— something Frank wants to avoid at all costs, seeing it as either inorganic or simply fallen human structures.

But surely BW3 gets this wrong. The Bible, in the Old Testament as well as the New, offers stinging criticism of worldly models of hierarchy. When the Israelites asked for a king, this was God’s response through Samuel:

Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plough his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”

1 Samuel 8:10-18 (TNIV)

But, despite “you yourselves will become his slaves”, the people insisted on having a king, so God granted their request (8:19-22), not because hierarchical leadership was his plan but because he respected his people’s wishes. Even then, God had special requirements for the king of Israel, to keep him humble and not like the kings of the surrounding nations,

so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees 20 and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left.

Deuteronomy 17:19-20 (TNIV)

So it was really nothing new when Jesus gave his own teaching which effectively outlaws hierarchical structures among his disciples:

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Mark 10:42-45 (TNIV)

A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest. 25 Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. 26 But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. 27 For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. …”

Luke 22:24-27 (TNIV)

Indeed Jesus didn’t just teach this, he also modelled it, in his life as well as in his death:

When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. 13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. …”

John 13:12-17 (TNIV)

So, in the light of this fundamental teaching from God spoken out by Moses, Samuel and Jesus, what do we make of the evidence BW3 has in mind, that “hierarchial leadership structures … are Biblical … as documents like the Pastoral Epistles and Acts make clear”?

First, as always we have to be very careful about taking what we read about what happened in the New Testament church as normative. The early believers sometimes got things wrong, and were corrected for it. This means that we should always give priority to specific teaching of Jesus and the apostles over following examples recorded without explicit teaching to commend them.

Nevertheless, we must accept that the apostles did arrange (here I deliberately use a very generic word) that certain people would have leadership positions, such as being elders, in local churches, and Paul explicitly taught Titus to make similar arrangements (Titus 1:5). Since Paul called himself “a slave of Christ Jesus” (Romans 1:1, literally, Greek doulos), it is easy to infer here a hierarchy: Jesus > Paul > Titus > elders > ordinary church members.

But is this what the Bible really teaches? No, because Paul’s instructions must be understood in the light of the teaching of Jesus which I already quoted. And this was Paul’s understanding; in accordance with Jesus’ words “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” Paul called himself a slave of Jesus but a servant (diakonos) of the church (Colossians 1:24-25, compare 1 Corinthians 3:5, also 2 Corinthians 4:5 which uses doulos), and he notes that even Jesus took the very nature of a slave (doulos) (Philippians 2:7). Peter appealed to elders to be “not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:3, TNIV).

So what are the models of leadership which are commended in the Bible? As we have seen, clearly not the hierarchical model as understood by “the kings of the Gentiles”, in which each person is in effect the slave of the one in authority over them. I find the following models (I don’t claim that this list is exhaustive):

  • Leader as steward or manager (oikonomos): This important model is obscured in many modern Bible translations, but the idea goes right back to the creation (Genesis 2:15) and is found in Jesus’ parables (Luke 12:42-46, 16:1-8) and in Paul’s instructions for overseers (Titus 1:7; also 1 Corinthians 4:1-2, 9:17, Ephesians 3:2,9, Colossians 1:25, 1 Timothy 1:4, 1 Peter 4:10). The point here is that leaders are commissioned by God to do his will, and have no independent authority to impose on the people entrusted to their care.
  • Leader as shepherd or pastor: This image also goes back to the Old Testament, with God as the shepherd of his people (Psalm 23:1) and human leaders also as shepherds who are held accountable by God (Ezekiel 34). In the New Testament Jesus is the chief shepherd (1 Peter 5:4, John 10:14) and elders in the church are shepherds (or “pastors”, the same word in Greek) of the flock that has been entrusted to them (1 Peter 5:2-3). This model is similar to that of the steward.
  • Leader as father or mother: This is a significant biblical model of leadership, and one which goes back to all eternity in that it is a Father and Son relationship, not one of master and slave, which is found in the Trinity. (This is the answer to BW3’s attempt to root hierarchical subordination in the Trinity; a son is not just in submission but he is also the heir to his father and so is or should be treated with respect and love by the father.) In the Old Testament authority was primarily through extended families known literally as “fathers’ houses” (Exodus 6:14, Numbers 1:2 etc, see KJV). The judge Deborah was called “a mother in Israel” (Judges 5:7). Paul made use of both of these metaphors: “Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared for you … For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children …” (1 Thessalonians 2:7-8,11), and he called Timothy and Titus not his servants but “my true son” (1 Timothy 1:2, Titus 1:4). Paul also saw the church as a family (patria) under one Father (pater), God (Ephesians 3:14-15) Nevertheless Jesus cautioned against human use of the title “Father”, along with “Rabbi” and “Teacher”, because of the way such titles are abused by “those who exalt themselves” (Matthew 23:8-12).
  • Leader as servant or slave: We have already looked at this one, so I will reiterate it simply by quoting Paul’s instructions for relationships between Christians which must include those between leaders and those they lead:

In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a human being,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

Philippians 2:5-8 (TNIV)

Banning the Bible in modern Hebrew

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Iyov reproduces an article from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz which reports that Israel’s Education Ministry has decided to ban versions of the Bible (presumably meaning only what we Christians call the Old Testament) in modern Hebrew. A government official has said:

The idea of translating the Bible into simple contemporary language is ‘scandalous’.

I’m not quite sure what the scope of the ban is to be, perhaps only on the use of these versions in state school classrooms – which needs to be put in the perspective that use of any kind of Bible in US state school classrooms is effectively banned.

Here I could get into questions of inappropriate intrusion of the state into religious matters, but then I realise that Israel is something of a special case in such matters. Instead I would like to look at the implications for translation.

John Hobbins has brought out these implications in his wonderful spoof on the article, in which he transculturares it to America. Of course this spoof doesn’t quite fit the American scene. But it does remind us of the real issue, that whereas for decades there have been good translations of the whole Bible into modern English, there are still national languages into which there is no easily understood translation, and that modern Hebrew is one of them.

Hebrew as spoken in Israel today is not the same language as the Hebrew of the Bible. There is probably at least as much difference between biblical and modern Hebrew as between the English of Shakespeare and that of today. (Iyov and John Hobbins, would you agree?) There are many obscurities in the text which even scholars don’t understand with any certainty, which means that ordinary Israelis don’t have a chance. And even when they think they understand the original text, they can completely misunderstand it if they read it as if it was in their contemporary language.

For example, a few years ago I got into discussion on an Internet forum with a scholarly modern Hebrew reader who insisted that God’s words in Exodus 3:14 mean “I will be what I will be”. And indeed that is what ‘ehyeh ‘asher ‘ehyeh means in modern Hebrew, in which the verb ‘ehyeh is in the future tense. But God was not speaking modern Hebrew, he was speaking (or at least his words were recorded in) an ancient form in which this verb form is timeless and continuous, best translated “I am” on the understanding that that also means “I always have been and always will be”. The educated person I was discussing this with thought she understood the Hebrew Bible, but she didn’t.

So, despite Keith’s comment, there is no fundamental distinction between the situation in Hebrew and in English. Just as today’s English readers don’t understand the King James Version and so there is a need for the good translations which exist into modern English (I don’t want to get sidetracked here into which of them is best), in the same way modern Hebrew readers don’t understand the original Hebrew Bible and so there is a need for a good translation into modern Hebrew. I don’t know if the versions which are now being banned are in fact good translations, but I hope that they are and that the current controversy serves to increase rather than reduce their circulation.

In the late 19th and early 20th century there was a similar controversy over translation of the New Testament into modern Greek. (Sadly the only reference to this which I can find with Google is from a Jehovah’s Witnesses site.) In 1901 there was rioting in Athens about this, but by 1924 the need for a modern translation was recognised even by the religious authorities. I hope that similarly over time the people, government and religious leaders of Israel will come to recognise the need for a modern Hebrew Bible, and that as a result the word of God will be much more widely read in the land where it was written down.

There really are people who don't allow women in secular authority

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In the discussion on my first post on Sarah Palin, some scepticism was expressed, especially by Jeremy Pierce, about whether John Piper actually holds the position that women should not be in authority over men in the secular sphere. I must admit that he is not completely explicit about this in the extract I quoted. But he certainly seems to be leaning strongly that way when it comes to matters of major authority such as a President would have.

After a couple of days when I had little time for blogging (and confused by Commentful’s failures to pick up comments on Complegalitarian, a problem with Blogger) I came back to the first post I made on this subject on Complegalitarian. This has now attracted 87 comments, most of which I have just read or skimmed. Among them the best answers to my original question have come from Molly Aley, formerly herself a rather extreme complementarian and now egalitarian – and also an Alaskan mother of five who has written Sarah Palin Rocks!

This comment by Molly links to a 2004 article from the influential Christian patriarchalist group Vision Forum which explicitly states, in a section heading, “The Biblical Doctrine of the Headship of Man Disqualifies a Woman for Civil Office”. Here is an extract:

Could it be that the man has headship only in the family and the church but not in the state? No, this could not be, lest you make God the author of confusion, and have Him violate in the state the very order He established at creation and has revealed in Holy Scripture! If one is going to argue for the acceptability of women bearing rule in the civil sphere, then to be consistent, he or she also needs to argue for the acceptability of women bearing rule in the family and the church.

Molly adds, and I agree:

I guess the one thing I do appreciate is that at least the patriarchy folks are consistant. If it’s not okay for women to rule in the home or in the church, why is it okay for them to rule in the government?

I think it’s a really fair question. I, for one, don’t understand how it is wrong for females to lead in the home or in the church, but okay in the civil sphere. I disagree (hotly) with Piper’s take, and with Vision Forum’s take, and yet I do appreciate the consistancy in the argument.

In another comment Molly quotes Voddie Baucham, who, according to Molly, is “featured on Focus on the Family and other fairly mainline ministries and a much lauded pastor/speaker in the SBC (and also works with Vision Forum)”. Lin also links to the same post. Baucham writes:

I believe Paul’s admonition should lead us to reject any notion of a wife and mother taking on the level of responsibility that Mrs. Palin is seeking. …

Mrs. Palin is not even supposed to be the head of her own household (Eph. 5:22ff; Col. 3:18; Titus 2:5; 1 Peter 3:1-7), let alone the State of Alaska, or the United States Senate (The VP oversees the Senate). …

In an effort to win the pro-family political argument, we are sacrificing the pro-family biblical argument. In essence, the message being sent to women by conservative Christians backing McCain/Palin is, “It’s ok to sacrifice your family on the altar of your career; just don’t have an abortion.” How pro-family is that?

Another quote taken by Molly from The Backwater Report:

Sarah Palin seemingly has many of the right convictions but according to God’s word she is not the man for the job of Vice President and Christians who take Scripture seriously would be hard pressed to justify a vote for her.

First, Scripture teaches that God’s created order disallows a woman as civil magistrate. …

Second, Scripture explicitly teaches that one qualification for civil magistrate is maleness. …

So even if Piper is not quite explicit on this issue, some significant Christians are explicit, and consistent, in their “complementarianism”, which, as ASBO Jesus suggests, is sometimes a nice way of saying misogyny.

Clarifying Sarah Palin's church affiliation

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There continues to be confusion and misinformation about vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s church affiliation. I stand by what I wrote in my previous post about Palin, and I now have additional information to confirm it. In a comment on his own post Brian Fulthorp questioned what I wrote; the following is adapted and expanded from my reply to Brian.

Brian is wrong to suggest that Wasilla Bible Church is part of the Assemblies of God. That would have been surprising since there was already Wasilla Assembly of God in a city of less than 5,000 in the 1970s. The Assemblies of God Directory confirms what I thought by listing only Wasilla Assembly of God within a five mile radius of zip code 99654 – and also confirms that Juneau Christian Centre is Assemblies of God.

Wikipedia currently says the following, but it keeps changing:

Palin was originally baptized as a Roman Catholic, but her parents switched to the Wasilla Assembly of God, a Pentecostal church, where she was rebaptized at age 12 or 13.[123] When she is in the capital, she attends Juneau Christian Center,[124] another Assemblies of God church. Her current home church in Wasilla is The Church on the Rock,[125] an independent congregation.[126] Although initial reports described her as the first Pentecostal ever named to a major party’s presidential ticket, Palin describes herself as a non-denominational Christian.[127] The National Catholic Reporter described her as a “post-denominational” Christian.[128]

But in fact this statement from The Church on the Rock shows that Wikipedia is wrong about her current home church, and I was right:

In regards to Governor Palin being a member or attending Church on the Rock, this is a statement about her church involvement. Before running for Governor of Alaska she frequently attended Church on the Rock for approximately one year. Since that time she has visited on occasion and now attends Wasilla Bible Church with her family. Wasilla Bible Church is a life giving church that has blessed our community. Governor Palin is a wonderful Christian woman with outstanding leadership qualities. Our prayers are with the Governor and her family.

In Christ,

Pastor David Pepper

Wasilla Assembly of God has also made a statement about Palin, of which the following is an extract:

Governor Sarah Palin did attend Wasilla Assembly of God since the time she was a teen ager. She and her family were a part of the church up until 2002. Since that time she has maintained a friendship with Wasilla Assembly of God and has attended various conferences and special meetings here. This June, the Governor spoke at the graduation service of our School of Ministry, Master’s Commission Wasilla Alaska.

I can’t find any statement about Palin from Wasilla Bible Church. But I did find the following from the Boston Herald, which also confirms that stray moose are a problem in the town:

“I’m elated,” said Larry Kroon, pastor of Wasilla Bible Church, where the Palins worship. “Her heart for her friends and her heart for God is powerful.”

Meanwhile Time Magazine confirms my information and puts an interesting perspective on the church scene in Wasilla:

“We like to call this the Bible Belt of Alaska,” says Cheryl Metiva, head of the local chamber of commerce. Churches proliferate in Wasilla today, and among the largest and most influential is the Wasilla Bible Church, where the Palins worship.

Would John Piper endorse anti-abortion Osama bin Laden?

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In my post about Sarah Palin I suggested that it would be hypocritical for John Piper to endorse Sarah Palin as candidate for Vice-President, given his clearly expressed views that women should not be in secular authority over men.

I can still find no comment from Piper about Palin. But I can see the direction in which his thinking may be going from the latest post at the Desiring God blog, from Joe Rigney who is one of Piper’s staff members. The post title is “Abortion Is About God”. There is no specific mention of Palin, but there is the following quote which immediately follows an extract from a 1998 sermon by Piper:

During this election season, as politicians court the evangelical vote, it is vital that Christians remind themselves why abortion is the transcendent moral issue of our time.

So, it seems, to Piper and friends abortion transcends all other matters of morality, and should be the deciding issue as Christians decide how to vote. Presumably it would be OK to elect a woman President to be in authority over men, even a militant feminist, as long as she is anti-abortion and a Feminist for Life.

But how far would Piper go with this one? If Rigney’s statement is taken literally, a right stand on abortion must be taken as transcending even matters of basic morality, and not just when it comes to elections. Is it OK to be an adulterer if one is pro-life? How about a murderer or a paedophile? Probably Osama bin Laden, as a fundamentalist Muslim, is strongly opposed to abortion. So, if this were the contest, would Piper endorse Osama rather than Obama?

Sarah Palin, my kind of Republican

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I don’t often comment on American politics. I suppose I tend to leave that to Americans, but that doesn’t stop Canadians like Kevin Sam giving their opinions. But I have made some exceptions for Obama, here and here, so partly for the sake of balance I will give some initial reactions to the surprise nomination of Sarah Palin as Republican candidate for Vice-President. In fact it was such a surprise that it seems Jim West confused her with Michael Palin!

From what I have read, including this BBC report and some others and this Wikipedia profile, Sarah Palin sounds like the kind of person I could support, if I could stomach Republican policies in general, especially on social issues like health care and on Iraq.

One piece of information which may be new: in 2002 Palin was defeated in the race for Lieutenant Governor of Alaska by Loren Leman who is the brother of Better Bibles blogger Wayne Leman.

It seems that Palin is a good Christian. At least this is how she is portrayed by the conservative World Magazine. This article says that she attends Wasilla Bible Church, which is non-denominational and evangelical. David Ker among others suggests that her denomination is Assemblies of God, but the evidence for this in fact suggests only that when she was a junior high student (so perhaps before the Bible Church opened in 1977 when she was 13) she attended Wasilla Assembly of God, and that when in the state capital Juneau she attends Juneau Christian Center which appears to be Assemblies of God. This all seems consistent with what was written at the Christianity Today politics blog. So, while she has not rejected her Pentecostal upbringing, her current preference is slightly different.

Palin is not at all the stereotypical conservative Christian woman. She has not stayed at home to manage her home and home school her five children (well spaced over 19 years), but has built her own career. Yet she chose to give birth to her Down’s Syndrome son earlier this year, rather than have an abortion because of his condition. She likes hunting and fishing, not typical feminine pursuits. Given her background in small town Alaska, where guns may be necessary protection from marauding moose and polar bears, I can almost forgive her membership of the National Rifle Association; but she will need to realise that policies which work in Wasilla (population under 6,000 when she was mayor, homicide rate zero in 2005) are not necessarily appropriate in Washington DC (population 588,000, homicide rate 169 in 2006 even after dropping by half since the early 1990s).

The interesting issue is why 72-year-old John McCain picked 44-year-old Palin as his running mate. The consensus seems to be that this was political expediency, picking a young and unusual outsider to balance an old Washington insider, to mirror the Obama-Biden ticket. That certainly makes a lot of sense for McCain, and explains his surprising choice. However, I think it is a good choice – or perhaps not, because it increases the chance of a Republican victory which could have all sorts of other serious repercussions for world peace, and for the health and welfare of poor Americans.

But anyone who votes for the McCain-Palin ticket has to reckon with the real chance that Palin will become President and Commander-in-Chief of US forces, a chance that is enhanced by McCain’s age. So they should not vote this way unless they think that Palin could be an appropriate President.

So this brings me back to the question which I first raised in comments on John Hobbins’ blog (note that there is already more than one page of comments on this post including at least three by me) and then again at Complegalitarian: is a woman Vice-President acceptable to conservative Christians, who are mostly at least in theory complementarian? If not, McCain might find himself losing a substantial number of votes just because he has a woman on his ticket.

Now some complementarians limit women to submissive roles only in the church and in the family. But others teach that women should never be in positions of authority over men even in the secular realm, and so would certainly not accept a woman as President or Commander-in-Chief. Among these is the well-known Bible teacher John Piper, who, in the book Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood which he co-authored with Wayne Grudem, on pp.17-19 of this PDF file, wrote:

Mature femininity does not express itself in the same way toward every man. A mature woman who is married, for example, does not welcome the same kind of strength and leadership from other men that she welcomes from her husband. But she will affirm and receive and nurture the strength and leadership of men in some form in all her relationships with men. This is true even though she may find herself in roles that put some men in a subordinate role to her. Without passing any judgment on the appropriateness of any of these roles one thinks of the following possible instances:

  • Prime Minister and her counsellors and advisors.
  • Principal and the teachers in her school.
  • College teacher and her students.
  • Bus driver and her passengers.
  • Bookstore manager and her clerks and stock help.
  • Staff doctor and her interns.
  • Lawyer and her aides.
  • Judge and the court personnel.
  • Police officer and citizens in her precinct.
  • Legislator and her assistants.
  • T.V. newscaster and her editors.
  • Counsellor and her clients.

One or more of these roles might stretch appropriate expressions of femininity beyond the breaking point. …

But as I said earlier, there are roles that strain the personhood of man and woman too far to be appropriate, productive and healthy for the overall structure of home and society. Some roles would involve kinds of leadership and expectations of authority and forms of strength as to make it unfitting for a woman to fill the role. …

The God-given sense of responsibility for leadership in a mature man will not generally allow him to flourish long under personal, directive leadership of a female superior. J. I. Packer suggested that “a situation in which a female boss has a male secretary” puts strain on the humanity of both (see note 18). I think this would be true in other situations as well. Some of the more obvious ones would be in military combat settings if women were positioned so as to deploy and command men; or in professional baseball if a woman is made the umpire to call balls and strikes and frequently to settle heated disputes among men. And I would stress that this is not necessarily owing to male egotism, but to a natural and good penchant given by God.

It will be fascinating to see what John Piper and other complementarian leaders have to say about Palin as a candidate Vice-President. Interestingly Al Mohler, who doesn’t allow women to teach in his seminary, predicted Palin’s nomination back in May in an article about her Down’s Syndrome baby, but with no comment on whether she would be suitable. The only specific clearly negative comment I have seen is from Carmon Friedrich, called a “mover-and-shaker in patriarchy” by Molly Aley who quoted him:

Does God not ordain the means as well as the end? Why does she get a pass on the leadership issue and career mother problem just because she has the right views on abortion and helps make McCain more electable? If Christian complementarians/patriarchalists get behind this choice, then they undermine all their arguments for the creation order as the reason for opposing women in other areas of ministry. The Word of God calls the civil magistrate a “minister of God.”

Well, now we can look forward to more mothers telling their daughters, “You can be anything you want to be…even vice president!” How is this woman able to be her husband’s helpmeet and be a proper mother to her little ones with such huge responsibilities in her job?

On the other hand, the World Magazine article I mentioned earlier, despite the magazine’s generally complementarian position, comes close to endorsing Palin. And James Dobson is reportedly elated at the news. So how can these complementarians have this attitude? Perhaps it is that these people have a one track mind about politics: the only thing they care about is a candidate’s position on abortion. But then McCain who is not pro-life will not force through anti-abortion legislation for the sake of his VP, so anyone who votes for these two because she is pro-life is voting irresponsibly. Or perhaps John Hobbins is right on the facts, although wrong on the morality of them, when he writes the following astonishing endorsement of hypocrisy:

Consistency is the hobglobin of small minds. Ordinary people tend to get this instinctively. Eggheads like Piper and Grudem, maybe not.

It’s obvious that many people read P & G’s books without coming to agree with the notion that a woman by definition is unfit to be President of the United States, or drive bus, for goodness’ sake.

Well, let’s wait and see. If leaders like Piper come out against Palin, at least they are being consistent, and they may convince enough of their supporters to make a significant dent in McCain’s vote. If they don’t, they will be shown up as hypocrites. It will be interesting to watch!

Godblogs event in London

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Tim Thomas of the evangelical alliance has been posting comments on this blog and at least one other about a get-together for bloggers. He doesn’t give the date, which is in fact 23rd September. This is what he does write:

Great blog! We would like to bring to your attention an event we are hosting….

The Evangelical Alliance, specifically Krish Kandiah, is hosting an informal lunch event for Christian bloggers to network with one another and think through a Christ-like approach to blogging. Please find an invitation attached.

The event will begin at 11am and run through until 2.30pm. There will be a £5 charge for the event, which will cover lunch and resources.

We would be extremely grateful if you could let us know whether you are available to attend by Tuesday 16 September.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards
Alexandra Lilley

Churches In Mission Project Co-ordinator
Email: a.lilley@eauk.org
Tel (direct line): 0207 207 2109

Evangelical Alliance
Whitefield House
186 Kennington Park Road
London SE11 4BT

Also he didn’t include the attachment, which would have been difficult in a comment. But I had already received this notice and the attachment by e-mail.

UPDATE: I have now been sent some new artwork from the Evangelical Alliance to replace the not very wonderful version I put together out of the original attachment which was a Word document.

In case the text above is not visible, here it is in black on white:

Time <11am-2.30pm>
Location <Whitefield House, Kennington, London>
Cost <£5 including lunch and resources>
To register <Email a.lilley@eauk.org by 16 Sept>

This meeting is apparently open to all Christian bloggers. I am not sure yet whether I will be able to attend. If others I know of are attending it might encourage me to do so.

Peter and Doris Wagner on Todd Bentley

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Please forgive yet another post about Todd Bentley. In this one I attempt to sort out some possible confusion about what Peter and Doris Wagner, of Global Harvest Ministries, have written about Todd Bentley. There has been some uncertainty about this because they have sent out various statements by e-mail to their mailing list but have not put them on their website. Others have posted them on blogs and other sites, but with no link to the source and no assurance that they are genuine and unedited. At least one of these sites has indeed made some minor edits to the text.

Therefore, as I mentioned in this comment and this one, I wrote this morning to Global Harvest Ministries asking for confirmation that these statements are genuine. In reply I was sent copies of the three recent statements, which I have myself compared (using Microsoft Word’s Compare Documents facility) with various versions found on the Internet.

The earliest of the three statements which I received, entitled “The Lakeland Apostolic Findings”, was written by Peter Wagner and dated 11th August. This statement was published in full a few days later by Pastor Burt, the most reliable source I have found on the Internet for these statements. This statement precedes the revelations about the breakup of Todd’s marriage. It is a preliminary report of an investigation by a team of ten “apostles” into the alleged problems of the Lakeland Outpouring. The largest part of this statement is an account of how Peter got involved with Todd, and how Todd came under the apostolic oversight of Che Ahn, Bill Johnson and John Arnott – but not of Peter, Rick Joyner or the other apostolic leaders present, who did not lay hands on Todd.

The second statement was from Doris Wagner, but included shorter letters from Chuck Pierce and Peter Wagner. This was also published in full in the same post by Pastor Burt; Dan Curant posted the part of this by Doris herself, from which I quoted in a previous post. This statement was an initial response from Doris, in Peter’s absence on an international trip, to the news about Todd’s marriage breakup and taking a break from ministry.

The third statement is a new one yesterday from Peter Wagner. Again Pastor Burt, in a new post, is the best Internet source I have found for this. I read it originally in a version set in a hostile context from Antagoniz, and I was initially sceptical about the genuineness of this. Indeed this version has been edited, but only by the possibly accidental omission of a couple of sentences of little significance, and by the addition of a lot of tendentious underlining with no note that this was not original.

In this new statement Peter revisits a lot of what he wrote in the first one about how he came to be involved with Todd. The reason I was doubtful about the authenticity of the statement was these words, especially in the context given to them by Antagoniz:

Speaking of the public figure going down the tubes, Todd Bentley now carries the label of a liar and a deceiver. I’m sorry to mention it, but I felt personally deceived in the same way when Ted Haggard’s sin was exposed and he was immediately removed from ministry.

But to be fair to Peter, here he is giving his initial reaction, perhaps to inaccurate accounts, and not his considered opinion; and the label “a liar and a deceiver” was not given by Peter but by a hostile public.

Concerning the present situation, this is the main part of what Peter writes:

Since this is an update, I will share some of what I know about what is happening with Bentley, but not all because some things need more verification and it is up to discernment of Revival Alliance what and when this will be revealed. Suffice it to say that there is more than I am going to mention. First of all, Todd has been removed from public ministry until further notice. He has resigned from the ministry he founded, Fresh Fire, so he is no longer a part of that board. It has become clear that he indulged in periodic drunkenness. He has no intention at the moment of reconciling with Shonna, nor does she with him. Their marriage has been torn for years by his emotional attachment with at least one other female whose physical contact went beyond hugging and kissing and holding hands. Enough said-maybe more details will be revealed later-but it was clearly immoral. All of this was skillfully concealed by lying and by swearing close associates who had observed his behavior to secrecy. Stephen Strader, for example, knew nothing of this before June 23. Apparently some of his board members did, but they did not have the ability to deal with it.

I must say I wonder how Peter knows this, considering that he has apparently only met Todd on the one occasion. This seems to conflict with what Rick Joyner has written. The most serious charge relates to Todd regularly lying – although given the massive publicity at Lakeland it would be reasonable for him to ask his staff not to reveal his whereabouts during his time off. There is at least the possibility here that Peter has given too much credence to some of the hostile accounts which have been circulating. Indeed this information needs to be verified.

Peter finishes as follows:

Two separate things are going on. (1) The Revival Alliance is dealing with Todd Bentley and the fallout from his sin that has been and continues to be exposed. (2) I have told you previously about a group of 11 apostles that I have formed into the Lakeland Outpouring Apostolic Team. We no longer need to deal with Lakeland I and Bentley as such. However, we have a list of 24 serious issues that have emerged from that unpleasant experience which need to be thoroughly discussed with the conclusions circulated in the body of Christ. …

It will take time, but our Apostolic Team will get to work on the 24 issues after some of this present dust settles, and we will be back to you!

I look forward to their further report.

Todd Bentley asks for prayer and patience

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Todd Bentley has broken his silence about his personal situation with a statement which he has asked Rick Joyner to release. Rick has included this in a longer article which is a follow-up to the one which I posted extracts from last Friday.

Thanks to Dan Curant for the link.

Here is what Todd asked Rick to publish:

Todd Bentley asked me to convey his appreciation for all the prayers, expressions of love, and concern while he tries to navigate through this present situation. He is grieved by the trouble and confusion this has caused, especially to his friends, coworkers, and all who have trusted him. He wants to make a clear statement about it, acknowledging his responsibility in this and the mistakes he made, but he feels that he should first meet with Pastor Bill Johnson, who is out of the country and will not be available for a couple more weeks. He asks that you would continue to pray for him, and he thanks those who are willing to be patient. He wants to do this right and not hastily or superficially.

Rick adds, as part of a longer article:

I would like to accept personal responsibility for counseling Todd to wait until he has talked with Bill before trying to make the “full disclosure” of his mistakes. This needs to be done right and in a way that does not unnecessarily hurt even more people. In just a couple of weeks, things should have calmed down enough for a statement to be made. Impatience is not a fruit of the Spirit, and I have personally never seen anything done under the kind of duress and pressure that some are trying to exert at this time that ended up not being a mistake.

The only thing that I have received from the Lord about this matter directly is that “those who rush to judgment will be exposed.” This entire matter, including the Lakeland Outpouring, is a test. To me, the miracles, healings, salvations, and profoundly changed lives that resulted in people, some that I personally know, make all that is happening now still worth it, many times over.

Reflecting on the sometimes rash statements which others have made. Rick makes an interesting suggestion:

I think we should … maybe have a moratorium to allow everyone a chance to retract what they have written for the last couple of weeks.

This paragraph reveals a bit more about what is happening now:

I recommended to Todd to allow a panel of those who are considered true elders in the body of Christ, who could be impartial, to judge this situation, and he readily agreed. He did not make any demands or suggestions about who should be on the panel. He only said that he felt he should not cross the line and say anything negative about his wife, and that he intends to continue to love her and his children, and take care of them.

I will take Blue, with a hint of amber’s advice and refrain from further comment.

The latest on the former SPCK bookshops

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Over a month ago I wrote about the former SPCK bookshops and blogger Dave Walker’s response to a Cease and Desist letter. Since then there has been silence on this matter from Dave Walker, perhaps for legal reasons and perhaps because he was just too busy with the Lambeth Conference and then a holiday to give more time to this.

But there has been plenty of activity from others around the blogosphere, not just from the normal small circle of Christian blogs but from heavyweights like Matt Wardman who are concerned with the implications of what has happened for freedom of speech. Phil Groom’s SPCK/SSG blog has remained the best place to keep up with this matter, and has lots of links to what other people have been writing. Most of the actiivity was in late July, but there has been a steady trickle of new information through August. I salute Phil and also Essex vicar Sam Norton for refusing to comply with the Cease and Desist letters they received – letters which were no more legally enforceable than the paper they weren’t written on, because they were only sent by e-mail.

Phil has recently launched an online petition to save Durham Cathedral Bookshop, once the jewel in the SPCK bookshop chain, from the clutches of SSG. The petition currently has 143 signatures, and could do with more. Please support this petition if you can.