A New Exodus

Is Babylon in our future asks Cory Harrison

In my community, we believe that we are on a journey. An exodus, if you will.  We call this trip the New Exodus, a concept that we picked up from Mars Hill Bible Church.  The New Exodus is simply a phrase used to describe one of the greatest redemption stories in history.  It takes us through four main locations in the Hebrew Scriptures.

You see, in the beginning, God created all things good, but humans didn’t live according to how God meant them to live. They rebelled against God, and we call this rebellion “sin.” When sin entered the world, it began to grow, fracturing our relationships and communities, eventually building an empire of itself. But God did not abandon his creation to destruction and decay, and promised to restore this broken world. As part of this promise, God chose a people, Abraham and his descendants, to represent him in the world. He blessed them and instructed them to use that blessing to bless others. It is Abraham’s descendants who we find enslaved in Egypt.

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Pastor, abbot, corps officer?

Larry Ashcraft asks if we need more abbots

I have been on vacation and have been reading a great deal. My ideal vacation — burning up on a beach and devouring books. I have read two so far that have stirred the blog juices. I feel it is time to cross into a subject that is near to my heart and probably a bit risky to discuss while being part of a quasi-military movement.

Generation Me by Jean Twenge is a must-read for those working with young adults. It is a candid look at generational differences and, in particular, a view of the generation my two sons belong to. I have also read Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches, which is edited by Robert Webber.

Twenge confirms with hard data much of what I have experienced with the 20-something generation. This is a generation that really tends to be stressed and paradoxical — dreamers who love to question EVERYTHING. I think I may have been born several years too early.

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Officership: One Size Fits All?

Is it possible: choice & mission integrity?

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e spent some time with a man in our community who is retiring from the city school system after thirty years.  I’ve got to tell you, I was envious.  As he sat with us and articulated his convictions about how he needs to live as he goes forward through the next leg of his journey, I was overwhelmed by his passion and his honesty.  He outlined five vital areas where he has the opportunity to make changes and spoke specifically about how he plans to make those happen - including where he lives, how he will spend his time, and the amount and type of work he is going to do.

Envy aside, I’m fully aware that at least some of the changes that I would like to make in my life are in my control.  I can decide how much time to spend writing, and how much time to spend talking to Jesus.  I can decide to put the work aside and go for a walk, but there are other areas where I cannot decide, because certain options are forbidden to officers, (such as getting a part-time job to help my son with college), or are prescribed in a way to eliminate choice (where I am appointed, the requirement to live in the quarters).

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Arsenokoites

Old word - new meaning?

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n continuing my studies concerning the Bible and homosexuality, I have come across another interesting, controversial, and “possibly” misinterpreted text.

The many Bible teachers, including educated scholars and backyard theologians (a.k.a. uneducated, honorary doctors of Bible study leadership) who teach that homosexuality is overtly mentioned as a sinful behavior in the Bible, often quote from a few passages that often include 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10. There are other passages which are quoted, but we will stick with those two for the time being.

When reading the New International Version of the Bible, one will come across the phrase, “homosexual offenders,” in 1 Corinthians 6:9, and the word, “perverts,” in 1 Timothy 1:10. Both “homosexual offenders” and “perverts” are a translation of the Greek word, arsenokoites, which is literally translated “male bed partners.” Why is the word translated as such? It is assumed that the two words which make up arsenokoites, arsen (male) and koites (bed) make the one word phrase “male bed partners,” thereby referring to men who are “going to bed together.”

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Lublink on leadership

… a responsibility for the entire church

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hristian leadership is always something of a hot-button topic.  It has become almost expected, for example, that every successful leader publish a book on leadership - as though he or she had single-handedly stumbled across the secret formula for success.  From church planters to mega-church leadership gurus to Christian social justice advocates, everyone has to list the five simple keys to success.  Buy the book, take the course and you’ll see your ministry as a leader blossom.  Right?  Unfortunately, life is never that easy.  Nor is any one leadership methodology so universal that it can function precisely the same way in every situation, regardless of context.

Biblically speaking, as well as experientially, it should be said that leadership is not about some secret codex of principles to be keenly followed in order for success to be achieved.  Nor is it about select individuals in the church using a series of secret scripted words, as though leading others were about casting a spell, getting all the secret steps just right.

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In defense of preaching

by Grant Sandercock-Brown

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n recent times the cyber pages of theRubicon have seen a number of people express their ambivalence towards preaching, in fact some have questioned whether we should even continue the practice.  It is a little ironic to me that one should have to defend preaching in a movement founded by two famous preachers, William and Catherine, but defend it I must.

You see the problem is if we say that preaching doesn’t matter much and isn’t much use, then what is the centrepiece of our worship? Of course for many churches it is actually communion rather than preaching but that is not so for us. So what is our centrepiece? The singing? Hardly. The offering? I don’t think so. Our prayers? Perhaps, theoretically but rarely in practice. Well what then? If we are not careful, ultimately we can arrive at a place where communal worship doesn’t matter much at all because “what really matters is what I do on the streets, or in the community or my work with the poor. That’s much more important”.

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Two tussle with ministry

Capt. Juan Burry & Capt. Rick Zelinsky
discuss the split between
social ministry and spiritual ministry
in the Army

Juan Burry…

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t our Community & Family Services centre, we spend our days providing our people with food, clothing, help with paying their rent, life skills and employment skills so they can find work, and professional counseling to overcome some of the barriers that are preventing them from having healthy relationships. All the while, we do this in the Spirit of Christ. So I am amazed when I am visited by a headquarters officer or during program reviews and asked: “But what about your spiritual activities?”

Huh? Is there not spiritual value in these activities? Apparently, when Jesus told us to give the cup of cold water, he assumed that it would be accompanied by the “ABC’s of Salvation” tract. That must be why he forgot to mention it — he knew Christians would just do it automatically.

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Is there room for diversity?

Can we withstand genuine theological debate?

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have a friend that is convinced that fundamentalism is the greatest threat to The Salvation Army at the moment.  Personally, I’m more concerned about a general sense of resignation to problems like homelessness in our wider society — but I have noticed a recent swell in internal theological debates.

Actually, “debate” is a generous word for what tends to occur — it’s usually more like a tirade of accusations thrown across the trenches of the playground.  The various opponents typically characterise each other as “fundamentalists” and “liberals,” though this is an oversimplification of the situation.

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Two fingers or three?

Geoff Ryan asks: What does the Doctrine Council do?

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n 1887, the Russian artist Vasily Surikov completed a canvas entitled “Boyarynya Morozova”. In the centre of the painting, amid a crowd of common folk, is a woman chained to a sled and being pulled away by a team of horses. The woman is well dressed, has a stern face, a piercing gaze and is holding her right hand aloft. The first two fingers of the hand are erect and they cross each other. The scene depicts the arrest of the Boyaryna Morozova in 1671 (Boyarynya denoted a person of the highest nobility in old Russia.). At that time, the Russian Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich Romanov, had initiated a series of reforms, some of which were aimed at subordinating the Russian Orthodox Church to the State. As a result, the Church split into two opposing camps: the “Nikonians” who followed the Patriarch Nikon and who were open to change and to doing things a bit differently (as per the wishes of the Tsar); and the “Old Believers” headed by the priest Avvakum, who violently resisted all change and felt it imperative to cling to the old ways and thereby resist the dictates of the state.

Under the Tsar’s reforms, holy books and icons were revised and changes were introduced into the Divine service. Another change was to institute the practice of crossing oneself with three fingers instead of two, a theological statement which dates back to the filioque controversy, one of the precipitating forces in the great schism of 1054 which produced the western, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox branches of Christianity, and in which the argument was not over two fingers or three, but in the insertion or omission of four words in the Nicene Creed.

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What I am in the church?

Vadim Hurin looks at how we do church

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hen was the last time you were in church?  Perhaps it was just recently, or maybe a lot of time has passed.  For some, attending church meetings is a valued tradition; yet for others, it is mere formality. Different people have various reasons for coming to church.  In principle, it is not so difficult to answer the question: “Why am I coming to the church?”

But another question is not that simple; it makes us look beyond standard answers and accepted clichés.  And this question is, “What am I for in the church?”  Me personally, and not anybody else?  Not my neighbor on the right, not a friend from small group or choir, but me.  Me as a father, me as a son or a friend.  Worker or unemployed, nervous or aloof.  We are all used as church members, brothers and sisters, deacons and priests, singers in the choir and Sunday school teachers.  All these services and roles are good.  But we are more than our social names and designations.  We are different, and each one has individual gifts, skills, character, strengths and weaknesses, sins.  That is all we are.

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