Considering Organic Outreach Part 4

Kevin Harney concludes his book, Organic Outreach for Churches, with discussing the Mouth of the Church. He previously addressed our heart (love for God, the world & our congregation), our mind (strategy for outreach), our hands (serving others), and now evangelism proper.

“The heart of your church is beating for Jesus and ready to reach out with love to the people of your community. The mind of your church is thinking strategically and planning to reach out with the good news of God’s salvation. The hands of your church are working, serving and showing the world that Jesus is alive. Now the fun starts. It’s time to open your mouth!”

It is one chapter. One. Short. Chapter.

As we grow in our faith, it should be easier to share the simple story of the gospel. We are more mature, trusting God more deeply. Unfortunately, we frequently have fewer opportunities because many of us have fewer relationships with non-Christians.

Faith comes from hearing, and that means someone has to actually speak. Harney wisely notes that no one size fits all. We each will gravitate to a different style of evangelism. He unwisely connects a more confrontational style to extroverted people. Extroverts aren’t necessarily confrontation. Prophetic personalities, however, are.

He recommends a book I used in FL to train in evangelism, Becoming a Contagious Christian by Hybels and Mittelburg. Yes, there may be some personal issues with Bill Hybels. There are some theological issues too. But I don’t recall the latter affecting the book at all. The former doesn’t. You aren’t recommending the book based on his character, but it’s ability to prepare people to evangelize. It does that well, offering 6 different styles of evangelism.

Harney also distinguishes 4 outreach intensity levels for events. Low intensity events focus on meeting basic needs, displaying the love of Christ in tangible ways. The highest intensity events clearly articulate the gospel AND calling people to commit (perhaps having an altar call). This means we should be thoughtful about our events. Low intensity, medium or going for broke? Similarly, some sermons are low intensity in terms of their gospel-focus, while others are very intense in calling people to faith and repentance.

This means training is necessary. He cycled back to this. Too often we fail to train people in evangelism.

In our congregation, I’ve been preaching to stir up people’s hearts. We’ve been trying to strategize, particularly with a new community being built next door. We also plan on doing some evangelism training. It will not focus on just one style. I also hope we will do some work with relational wisdom, which should help us build healthier relationships and understand the people we share our faith with better.

We haven’t applied everything but we are moving in the right direction. There are aspects we won’t due to differences in our theological underpinnings from his. This book had some bones, but also some meat. Most congregations can benefit from talking through this material. They do have to be discerning as they do.

[An enlarged, 2nd edition, is due for release in late May, 2018.]

 

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Considering the Role of Women in the Church

Someone recently sent me a link to R.C. Sproul’s lesson on The Role of Women in the Church. She had only a little info about the PCA study committee and was concerned. I allayed some fears, but since this is probably one of the few older Sproul lessons I haven’t heard I decided to listen to it with the officers of our congregation at a combined meeting.

This is so old that Bill Hybels made a guest appearance. I believe the context is that R.C. was asked to talk to a group of people at Willow Creek. In the intervening years, it would be safe to say that they have probably changed their position on this subject.

Here is something of a summary from the notes that I took.

Protest movements have real pain behind them at their roots despite their sometimes illegitimate actions. The Feminist movement is no different. It is a response to patronizing attitudes and exploitation. Women have not been treated well by men in society, and in the church.

On the other hand, the church has not missed the truth about women and ministry for 2,000 years. The question of who may be ordained is either determined by God, or my subjective evaluation of who is gifted to serve. The qualifications, particularly with regard to character, either matter or they don’t.

R.C. alluded to when he was in the United Presbyterian Church. The largely egalitarian denomination permitted men to hold the complementarian position. This changed after an ecclesiastical court case and officers like R.C. were told to change their views, leave for another denomination or face disciplinary action.

R.C. noted that he wrote a minority report for the PCA favoring the ordination of women deacons. This requires some explanation, obviously. He has no prejudice against women. He wants to be as liberal on this question as the Scriptures allow him to be. In this context he mentioned a debate at Gordon-Conwell (or perhaps he said Gordon College where he taught for a time) years earlier when he was the only faculty member willing to take up the complementarian position. For him, the question always traces back to 1 Timothy 2.

¹¹ Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. ¹² I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. ¹³ For Adam was formed first, then Eve; ¹⁴ and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

This passage, he believes and I concur, does not allow women in positions of authority in the church. Some kind of teaching and some kind of authority are prohibited. He noted there were different kinds of “authority”. There can the authority of expertise or influence. The type in question is judicial or governing authority.

Judicial authority is the right to command and demand the actions of others. Paul restricts judicial authority over men in the church. The context is ecclesiastical, so this is limited by that context. Women may have authority in the workplace or school and other contexts. He rejects patriarchy.

There is also the general vs. technical sense of teaching. He believes this refers to teaching with ecclesiastical authority.

The general term for office is diaconos- service. Church office is an office of service. We do not lord it over others like the Gentiles do.

Women are not allowed to sit in judicial power- to be on the session or an elder.

The PCA ties government to ministry in way he thinks is an unbiblical way. This is why he generally supports women deacons, but doesn’t in the PCA. The BCO indicates that though an office of service, it has power or authority (though not a court so it is fairly confusing and one of those things I’d love to see clarified in the BCO). Sproul thinks that preaching does not necessarily have governmental authority because the court is not in session during preaching. At this point R.C. and Bill discussed Elizabeth Elliot who refused to preach at Willow Creek on a Sunday morning. Bill invited her to come during the week. R.C. had her “speak” a few times at Ligonier c0nferences (that is not a local church and does not have an ecclesiastical governing body).

Our officers commented that perhaps this means a woman could be an assistant pastor since they don’t serve on the Session (this was largely sarcastic since we don’t like the assistant pastor position). But they do serve in the courts of presbytery and General Assembly so don’t take the joke seriously.

R.C. noted that he sometimes worries that his position is too liberal (and some PCA pastors would agree). But he needs to be faithful to the text, which his opponent in the aforementioned debate agreed supports the complementarian position. P.K. Jewett agreed that the complementarian interpretation of the text was correct. As a result, Jewett denied the authority of the text in his defense of women’s ordination.

Different denominations have different working definitions of ordination. All it means is to be consecrated to an purpose or office. Scripture nowhere explicitly says women are not to be ordained. We have to talk about the particular office in question, and build an implicit argument regarding ordination in general.

He main principle was that the parameter are to be those set forth in Scripture, not culture or the “light of nature.”

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