Bible School -- an Equip-meet curriculum.

New believers and young Christians need to be properly instructed, trained, about the Bible.

Let's see how we could do that in 10 monthly half day-evening sessions.

Before dinner is the first segment, with the second segment after dinner, and optional conversation following over Port and cigars (only kidding).

February

1. Old Testament overview and textual history

2. Old Testament archeology and historical context (this might include intertestamental period)

March

3. New Testament overview and textual history

4. New Testament archeology and historical context (this might include the early church)

April

5. Pentateuch/Torah

6. Concept of 'God' in the OT

May 

7. Synoptic Gospels

8. John's Gospel 

June

9. The Former Prophets

10. The Latter Prophets

July

11. Acts and Romans

12. 1 and 2 Corinthians

August

13. Pre-exilic Writings

14. Paul's shorter letters

September

15. Post-exilic Writings

16. General Epistles

October

 17. Revelation

18. Who is Christ--who is God? 

November 

19. How does Salvation work?

20. Basic Christian Questions (intro to basic apologetics, but this would be the ground work for a weekend seminar the following February) 

On the following Sundays' gatherings, participants could be invited to, in pairs, give their reflections/thoughts on the material they had on the prior Saturday. 

Who's next?

My local church has run into a problem.

The guy who organizes one of our ministries: teaching English to new migrants who have no English, has become too unwell to continue.

He randomly asked a couple of the more able teachers if they would take over his role jointly. Big surprise (to them and to him): they said no.

The organizer called this 'succession planning'.

I'd call it a panic.

This is how 'succession planing' really works.

Take my business example.

I had 9 direct reports managing a total of about 80 staff in professional services in a multi-billion dollar operation.

The one who was obviously most on-fire: competent, energetic, knowledgeable, insightful I spotted as soon as she started working in the division. I kept her close: asked advice, bounced ideas off her, shared the development of some projects...I even loaded her up a little with some of 'my' work. She thrived.

That was 4 years before I moved on. I moved on. She was able to step into my role (thanks KH). That's succession planning. It started 4 years before I needed to activate it.

There were two other staff who had potential. I started developing them immediately. For one younger woman I made the position of 'team leader' for a small group. She thought it was just 'window dressing'. I didn't push back on that idea with much energy, because it wasn't, and I subtly loaded her with more responsibility and gradually expanded her remit and the pressure she was under. Not heartlessly, but in a manner calculated to see her make decisions.

At one time I gave her an assignment and started to say..."Gisele, if you run into any dead-ends..." she cut me off with "I know, bring you solutions, not problems".

I replied: "Not at all, if there's a dead end, or you find a challenge that you are not sure on, drop in to my office and we can chat about it, then work out what the options might be". Never strand someone: help them grow, not sink.

Another staff member, Simon, was a 'quiet achiever'. Not that quiet, as always ready with a good idea or amusing but positive contribution. There we no slots for quick advancement for him, but I sent him on an Executive MBA program. His next step, in a couple of years,  was 'UP'.

So that's succession planning; it's long term development of people, bringing them into the decision-responsibility circle and supporting their growth.

It is not a 'knee-jerk'.

Knee-jerks never work. 

The atheist who has no belief!

Greg Koukl and Amy Hall have a great podcast on this topic.

The topic was dealing with an atheist who clams to have 'no (particular?) world view' 

 Ask for a response to this statement, there are only three possible answers:

    1. Affirm

    2. Deny (affirms that God does not exist)

    3. Neutral/withhold (God may or may not exist: so how do you test that position?)

The statement is: "God exists!"

They lack a belief in God, because they have a belief about God: that he doesn't exist. Thus they have no belief in his existence/in him.

What does lack of belief in God mean for any objective (or actually, any) morality.

Evolution cannot provide an objective morality, or any real morality of any type as an 'ought' cannot be derived from an 'is'. Hume's guillotine. 

World View:

1. Ask what they think a 'world view' is?

2. Ask what they think reality really is.

There are three obvious options: It is illusory (an exilic religious/world view, such as Hinduism); it is self-sustaining/existent (a mimetic or pagan religious/world view, such as materialism) or that there is an independent God who defines what is really real (a 'covenental' religious/world view, that could extend to include deism, but not theistic evolution, which is more like a mimetic view). 

The issue is how does an atheist explain 1. the evident coherence of the world and our existence in it, with the 2. obvious discontent that existence in the world produces.

A belief: a mental attitude by which one holds that something is so. They can be true or false. So a belief can be false, or true.

Knowledge is a subset of belief; indeed, a true justified belief. This has to be tested.

A collection of beliefs about what is, sums to a 'world-view'. The atheist claim to no particular belief or world view, seems to seek to avoid the burden of proof and dump it on the other side, without having to answer for their beliefs intellectually.

Another tack is to ask if the person believes the underpinning reality is basically material, or basically mind.

If material: how does material produce information: the chemically carried language that governs life. How would this be the basis for any transcendental function? Functions that dominate our mental life, for instance in our constant desire to set, pursue and achieve things of 'value'. Axiology: the final dilemma for the naturalist. 

  

Measuring church performance

I saw a podcast on this topic recently.

I suggest that mere numbers, or changes in numbers of attendees, or the size of the offertory, tells us little of value.

Here's what we might measure instead:

1. The Hebrews 5:11 test: how many of the congregation are able to teach?

2. How many people are the hired help training and coaching to teach?

3. How many people do the 'Talking the Talk' workshops, or whatever you call your workshops on how to deal with the common questions/challenges made to Christians.

 

This tells you about sustainable discipleship actually happening. You want the biggest number in point (3), the smaller number in (2) and the smallest at any time in (1). Long term sustainable spiritual growth.

My church is in real trouble. Here's what happens

1. What Paul calls for in 1 Corinthians 11-14 where we meet to edify each other, and different people contribute, has turned into a sermon show. No one can test their understanding or thoughts by asking questions, and having the answer discussed in the congregation.

2. Prayer is a rote performance, prepared beforehand and given by one person. We don't get to collectively undertake prayer for each other.

3. We think that the songs we should use to teach one another are 'worship'. But no one talks about discipling in true worship (Romans 12:1-2, James 1:27). In fact, there is no discipling, nothing that leads one to spiritual growth in the company and encouragement of older saints...but maybe there are no such 'older saints'. Songs of course have a function that's never mentioned, except by Paul: Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16.

4. There is nothing to teach new Christians. For instance, our Community College runs a class on the Bible (its called 'Ancient Texts in the Modern World) and while a bit liberal, it gives a really good overview of the structure, history and content of the Bible. We don't get that at our church.

5. No one seeks to develop our skills in speaking in public so we become more effective gospel-talkers. Only the paid performer does the speaking. Sure, he's trained, but his job should be to train and coach others.

6. It's all oldies who 'conduct' our gathering, which we call a 'service' as though we are in a pagan temple. No young people are being nurtured into the body life of our gathering.

7. The Lord's Supper has been reduced to a meaningless shot glass of grape juice and a crumb of cracker. I thought 'supper' was a meal. Like in Corinth, although Paul had to correct the selfish ones.

We really need to return to the practices of gatherings enjoined by the NT.

Suffering and evil: anything to do with us?

Answering the "problem of evil/suffering" charge made against the God who is love is often seen by Christians as a great difficulty.

How do we explain how the God who people understand to be 'all-powerful' (omnipotent), "all-loving" (omnibenevolent), and "all-knowing" (omniscient) can also allow we his creatures in his image to experience suffering and to do evil.

For a start, lets get rid of the philosophical terms, and stick with the Bible, the 'all' descriptions seem to place evaluative criteria over God, instead of seeking to understand the God who is: Yahweh. We end up with the 'god of the philosophers' instead of the living God.

So, there's a disjunct between what we would like, or think our experience indicates and the world as we would like it to be, or how we think God has or 'should have' arranged things...mainly for our comfort, it would seem. 

But why?

First, God created us for (a) meaningful fellowship with him, see Genesis 3:8a; and to take charge of the creation (Genesis 1:26ff...and I'm still puzzled about ruling over the fish!!). See also Psalm 115:16,

Then we, in Adam, rejected fellowship with God and sought to live in opposition to him; with that our stewardship crumbled.

Rather than destroy all, because God still had the objective of fellowship with us, he provided the resolution of this adversity in Christ: we can be in Christ renewed and restored to fellowship with God, and adopted into his family! But that's in the future, nevertheless, despite adversity in life, we are now in Christ, and our suffering is in that context.

Nevertheless, God in Christ meets us in that suffering: he meets us where we are and calls us to him. Our only sensible response is to believe him and turn to him in repentance. 

The basic answer to the 'problem' is Luke 13: repent! Sounds glib, but the reason for suffering is like the reason for a fire alarm in a high-rise: get out while you can. Without suffering the consequence of a world disconnected from its creator we would not know our plight.

Furthermore, one of the 'functions' of suffering (and evil) may be to tell us/show us who we actually are, inescapably! Someone said, it may have been Frankel, that the Nazi guards at death camps were ordinary people, just like us! (Or it might have been Solzhenitsyn, and different guards.) We should all remember, 'but for the grace of God go I' To put another complexion on that saying.

We are people full of pride, selfishness, greed...(Sermon on the Mount makes this clear, I think) who can't even manage their home: natural 'disasters' and are in the grip of death.

When we complain about suffering and evil, we seem to think it's nothing to do with us...but it is!

 

God has dealt with it...we just don't like the result and prefer to wonder why we have to experience the result of our meaningful choices when they are choices in repudiation of who God is. To live as though we are with God, while we are agin him, would deceive us that there are no cosmic effect of our choices; but our choices are truly meaningful, cosmically. 

Dust or Delight?

When we meet an atheist, or an aggressive agnostic (someone who doesn't claim that there is no god, but who claims they merely don't believe in god, seeking thereby to escape the obligation to defend their claim), it is easy to default to their world-view, which they insist is the true default. We are then left to defend when it is really their obligation.

There is no 'default' world-view.

They might claim that we 'worship' a 'sky-daddy'.

What has rarely occurred to them is that they worship a 'cosmic dust-bunny'. They, if materialist/naturalists, which most Western moderns are, hold that dust particles is the final reality. If they are more sophisticated they might say that either space or energy is the final reality, but similar questions apply. 

The trouble with this position, is that it brings nothing with it. As J. P. Moreland has put it:

Intellectually responsible naturalists cannot merely deny God’s existence. Additionally, they must provide an account of what ideas naturalists ought to hold regarding epistemological commitments, a broad creation story (the Grand Story) about how all entities have come-to-be, and a resulting ontology such that all entities can be located in the Grand Story as certified by naturalist epistemological commitments. 

Moreland, J. P.. 2023. A Critical Assessment of Shafer-Landau’s Ethical Non-Naturalism.

Religions 14: 546.

https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14040546

What does a 'minister' do?

A congregation  decides to employ a paid staff person. Let's call him or her 'the minister', even though we all always 'minister'.

Unfortunately in most congregations this role is regarded as a 'leadership' role, and not a service one.  

In a fully functional congregation however,  it is a service role to assist the elders as a sort of coach and skills builder for them and with them for the congregation at large.

Most are not, so we get a Hebrews 5:12 situation in too many congregations.

The minister is like the 'head' coach of a team. Not a player, but the one who equips, encourages, coaches and, of course, trains.

The main role would be the monthly equipping seminar/gathering. The "Equip-meet".

One way this could work, is every month, except perhaps December and January, and moved to avoid a clash with Easter an Equip-meet is held.

This might be a Saturday afternoon and evening, with a simple meal.

It could cover Bible topics, a book study overview, apologetics, church history, or other special themes, or specific skills like explaining your faith to typical questions, and so on. It would be programmed to allow people to come and go: perhaps there would be three separable sessions: early afternoon, after coffee, then after dinner...with discussion trailing off into the later evening perhaps.

Its format would be content segments (talks based on or springing from an article or book chapter that had been read beforehand), table-group or open discussion, or Q and A, and opportunities for participants to talk about what they have learnt. When people can put their lesson into their own language, they truly learn.

At other times this minister might help with teaching segments in youth ministry, coach and guide the people who do youth and children's ministry or are learning to do the 'teaching' segments. Hesh (he/she) might also help equip those with pastoral gifts to support newly weds, those with young children, those is difficult circumstances, and those who are becoming frail and dependent, etc.

He or she might also help coach those up and coming teachers/prophets to contribute in the gatherings and work with the elders to conduct coaching sessions with that group, also with supportive discussions so the elders can minister to the 'minister' and discuss the general health and organization of the congregation.

Next time your church wants to hire a minister...discuss this with them.