Category Archives: Relational

Another View of Women in Ministry

One of the regular contributors of my Facebook page, Linda Hoover, has sometimes taken issue with my position on women’s ordination (that the Bible neither requires nor forbids it). Being more interested in what the Bible actually says than in what I think about it, I have often challenged her to share biblical evidence for her confidence that I was wrong and recently she sent me a piece that is fresh and interesting, so I thought I’d share it with those who might have missed it at the bottom of a discussion on my Facebook page. Linda does not claim to be a biblical scholar, but shows creativity in addressing a subject that has been analyzed to the nth degree. I have edited just a bit for format and clarity but believe her views come through clearly. I share the following from her without comment for your consideration and welcome your feedback:

I formed my position from several SDA sources including WO (women’s ordination) proponents, and some outside sources, including an article from Answers in Genesis ( non-SDA on FB), and maybe the most influential source is the spiritual application of an article shared with me by my daughter. That article presented a detailed account of a large corporation that was sinking rapidly into failure as it was run by the top-down model of management. By suddenly changing the management model to the new team management approach, the corporation was rapidly turned around to give us an amazing success story. Even at the time of reading it I had immediately seen the application to church management, but I had heard nothing of the WO dispute at the time. This article resurfaced in my thinking during this WO discussion, inspiring me to review all of the direct Bible texts on the topic of the position of authority in the church.
I will share a few spiritual concepts I gleaned from the article since I cannot find it at present. This I would rather do before giving you my other sources, for the understanding gleaned from that article helped me hear terms such as headship, authority, rule, equality, submission, and roles with different ears.

I see God as the prime example of the owner of a huge corporation which He runs on the team leadership model. He illustrates perfect team leading in Himself as three in One, so that every team leader under Him will have His example to follow in their position of responsibility. The product of His corporation is love, joy, peace, unity, and redemption for fallen mankind. So when He creates man in His image He wants us to be part of His team in production of the same. Adam was to be the team leader of earth and was given Eve as co-leader. Together they ruled earth as part of God’s huge corporation. The team leader, Adam, was primarily responsible for working in cooperation with his equally essential and perfectly matched assistant. He first provided for her as a spiritual guide and protector, as she then was better able to assist him in bearing and raising children. He was the lawgiver; she was the nurturer. He had extra physical strength and natural leadership drive; she had more emotional, nurturing, and counseling skills. They were each perfectly adapted to their roles as husband/father and wife/mother. And they perfectly complemented one another as they co-ruled their family and the earth.

As team leader Adam is not the owner of the corporation but is responsible for forwarding the goals of the CEO/owner. But this he must fulfill by also developing a successful cooperative team–his family. So he also becomes their servant leader. His goal was to serve their needs and guide them in ways to benefit the company and forward its goals. He has responsibilities both to the company owner and those on his team, for no team is successful without leadership that pulls people together in cooperation, inspiration, and motivation to make the company successful and the owner happy.

The pastor/elder is to be a team leader. He does not own the company. He does not make the policies without approval of the owner/CEO. He is not a boss but a guide to protect, inspire, encourage, and strengthen the abilities of the team members–men, women, and children. For it is they who do the work together in production. He teaches them the principles of the company (kingdom), protects them from error, and empowers them to do the work of pastoring, Bible studies, spiritual visitation, evangelizing, public speaking, health work, and whatever other gifts the members may have. If any devote themselves to full time work in their ministry, they should be paid accordingly. But that does not make them the team leader.

The servant-leader asks for and receives counsel, correction, and recommendations from his team members as needed, for his authority is limited to team leading–he does not make arbitrary decisions on his own, but seeks the mind of the whole team. Besides ongoing teaching/training and guidance, at times he may have to remind the members of company rules set by the owner, but otherwise the collective wisdom and action of the team is what drives the company’s success.

So the team leader pastor/elder is a servant leader. If he is not training those under him toward the kind of leadership that forwards the work of the company, then he has missed his calling. He is not called to do the work by himself, but to develop the team’s ability to do the work. Every team member that has gifts or talents should be encouraged to put them to work for the company. Some of those team members may become leaders over their own assigned area and given as much responsibility as they can to benefit the company. Some may become spokesmen for the organization, advertising agents, support personnel in various ways, etc.
With this model the pastor multiplies his efforts by developing a whole team full of workers and even some “pastors” to the flock. He is a “pastor” trainer. Both men and women can do this work, but as Ellen White stated, women are often more effective in this personal work. They can reach hearts and families in ways that men are not as effective. Can you imagine a church full of “pastors”? Instead of women taking the position of team leader, they should be free to minister where they are most effective.

Along with team leader responsibility there will of necessity be the degree of authority necessary to serve in that capacity. This is why we see words like “rule” and “authority” used in Scripture. It is servant leader authority. He is at the “head” of the church family activities, but he is not the owner/CEO. He is an under shepherd responsible for leadership-service to the church members. He stands on equal ground with all the other church members, but has a specific role to fulfill. This role is similar to the one a husband fulfills in the home. That is the reason his success at home is criteria for judging his effectiveness in the church (1 Timothy 3). If his family love and respect his leadership, this indicates he should succeed with a church family also.
As for references I like Clinton and Gina Wahlen, Women’s Ordination – Does It Matter? And “WO Overview,” http://ordinationtruth.com/…/womens-ordination-issues…/. Ingo Sorke has a good compilation of Ellen White statements. https://www.ingosorke.com/…/7118…/Ordination-Trifold.pdf.

Stages of Surrender, Part 14

Do the stages of faith and surrender imply some subtle or sophisticated system of righteousness by works? I have never thought so. In a real sense the stages of surrender are simply learning how to exercise faith, trust in God, at each stage of one’s life experience.

A recent re-reading of the book Steps to Christ, by Ellen G. White, confirmed my impression. Steps to Christ is one of the clearest places in all literature (along with C. S. Lewis, Dante and Milton) where the human struggle to understand God is set in the larger context of a cosmic conflict regarding the character of God (the first two or three chapters in particular). Suffering and misapprehension of God’s character are the result of rebellion against God, not any flaw in God’s character or actions. God graciously limits Himself so His creatures can be free to live and to love. That freedom also opens up the possibility of rebellion with all its consequences. Any solution to the problem of sin must include a change of attitude and an exercise of will within human hearts. This change on our part is not the cause of the atonement, but the outcome of it. We are won back to God on account of the revelation of His character in the person of Jesus Christ.

While there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, we are invited to trust in the gracious, loving God that we have come to know in Christ. That trust is not works-righteousness, it is a whole-bodied response to who God is, including our thoughts, our choices, our will and our actions. We see this delicate balance in Scriptures like James 2:14-26 and Matthew 18:21-35.

So I was delighted to see the stages of surrender reflected in other words in Steps to Christ, pages 95-99. The author writes: “There are certain conditions upon which we may expect that God will hear and answer our prayers.” (SC 95) These conditions are described as: 1) Feeling our need of help from God, 2) Turning away from any known sin, 3) The exercise of faith as trusting that God will fulfill what He has promised, 4) Coming to God helpless and dependent, in humble, trusting faith, rather than paying attention to our doubts and fears or trying to solve our problems apart from faith, 5) Having a spirit of love and forgiveness in our hearts, 6) Persevering in prayer, being found in places where prayer tends to happen, 7) Above all, not neglecting secret prayer, and 8) Taking God’s presence with us throughout the day and the life. These eight “conditions” for answered prayer are all found in pages 95-99 of the book Steps to Christ. So in this book Ellen White does not see human effort as necessarily acting in contradiction to a focus on the gracious character of God as manifested in the context of the cosmic conflict.

Hopefully these thoughts will be helpful to those seeking to apply the stages of faith and surrender to their own walk with God.

Stages of Surrender, Part 13

I have been challenged in regard to stages of faith and surrender, and that challenge is worthy of some attention at the close here. It is suggested that the stages of faith and surrender leave God out of the picture and may even imply some sort of sophisticated system of righteousness by works. That thought never occurred to me as I had always seen these stages as stages in relationship with God. Rather than focusing more and more on ourselves, we come to focus more and more on God and His unique purpose for our lives. As we focus on God we become more and more like Him. But since the stages of surrender can be heard in a legalistic way, I thought it would be helpful to reflect on the relationship between the stages of surrender and both a gracious God and the righteousness which can be obtained only by faith. Are these stages of surrender an alternative to faith or do they simply describe practical ways in which we can exercise our faith (which I define as our trust in God)? Can we truly surrender to God if we do not trust in Him?

Let me begin with the first concern. Do the stages of faith and surrender leave God out of the picture or do they actually tell us some important things about God? I am convinced they have a lot to do with God. First of all, the stages of faith and surrender are grounded in a God who is not static, but relates to us in a developmental way. That is why He created the universe and the human race. He is a relational being and desires relationship with other free beings. That is why the concept of a trinity is important. If God were “one” in the isolated sense, love would not be essential to His character, but something He came to exercise only after creation. But if God is not only one but three, it tells us that love is inherent in God’s nature. From eternity God was love in a relationship of three. Creation then became a way to extend God’s love in ever-expanding circles. Relationships are never static, there is always growth and development. The very possibility of relationship within the godhead, therefore, must arise from a God who is not static. Instead, through creation He desires the further growth in experience that expanded relationships provide.

Furthermore, if God is affected by relationship, then the way that human beings respond to God matters to Him. Human beings make a difference, not only in relation to each other, but also in relation to God. The choices we make affect God; our trusting responses please Him, our rebellion brings Him pain. God will never be static in the way He relates to us. Eternity will not be boring. Their will always be new heights to surmount, new challenges to overcome, new delights to sample. A God who relates to His creation in a developmental way is a God we will delight to know and who will find delight in us throughout eternity. So the stages of faith and surrender echo a beautiful picture of God.

A related picture of God that I see in the stages of faith and surrender is of Someone who at the core of His being is self-sacrifice. The stages of faith and surrender take us on a path to becoming more and more like God in our renunciation of pride and our willingness to sacrifice for others. Surrendered husbands will love their wives the way Christ loves the church. The wives of such husbands will glimpse a picture of God in the self-sacrificing love of their husbands. It is the picture of a self-sacrificing God that evokes our trust in Him and motivates us to surrender. It is safe to put God in control of our lives because of who we have come to know Him to be.

Finally, the stages of faith and surrender highlight a God who graciously gives His creatures freedom. We can surrender to God or we can choose not to. While the freedom is a gift from Him, it is very real. In that very gift of freedom we catch a glimpse of a God who loves His creatures so much that He gives up some of His own freedom to act in order that we might be free. While we see the self-sacrificing love of God clearly portrayed in the cross, it was very much there also at creation. Creation itself was an act of self-sacrifice in which God yielded up His own freedom of action so that His creatures could be truly free and free to love.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think the stages of faith and surrender offer up a beautiful picture of God.

Stages of Surrender, Part 12

As we near the end of this series on the eight stages of surrender, let me offer a quick summary of the various stages. Stage One is where we need to surrender our pride, the idea that “I can do it myself.” We may also need to surrender the tendency to hide our unworthiness (by justifying ourselves rather than confessing the truth about ourselves). In Stage Two we need to surrender either feelings of unworthiness or the comfort zone, both of which hold us back from spiritual progress. If you’re going to grow, you’re going to change. If a plant doesn’t change it will die. People often don’t want to change because they are comfortable where they are. But comfort zones are not conducive to spiritual growth.

The third stage confronts us with the need to surrender having to be right all the time, the need to be certain and to be better than others. Stage Four also calls us to give up the need for certainty, the need for applause, and a tendency toward perfectionism that can plague people in the “success stage” of faith. Stage Five, which comes during the dark night of the soul, calls us to surrender a false sense of purpose. Up until that point we had thought our purpose was solely from God, but we come to realize that it has been riddled with pride and a desire to please others. To the degree that we surrender our own sense of purpose, God can fill us with His.

Stage Six is the call to surrender negative thinking and hidden pride, things that can slow us down on our journey toward a true sense of God’s purpose in our lives. In Stage Five we discover we have not fully rid ourselves of the fear related to what other people are thinking about us. And finally, in Stage Six, we may need to surrender the other-centeredness that causes us to neglect ourselves and those we love.

I’m not here to tell you what you need to surrender today. I don’t even need to tell my wife what to surrender today. I know that she wrestles with things I don’t fully understand. But I believe that somewhere in these eight stages of surrender is God’s call to you. I invite the Holy Spirit to touch your heart with just that area of your life that needs to be surrendered today. And I suspect in most cases surrender is not a one-time action, it may need to be repeated over and over again until it sticks.

Surrender may turn out to be the hardest thing that you have ever done. Why? Because surrender feels like you are losing everything. You are giving up you identity, giving up that which gives you joy, giving up everything that you’re comfortable with and used to. It’s the loss of everything. However, the surrender of everything just happens to be the biblical path to your true self, which you will never discover until you surrender. Your true self appears when you let God grow you there. And that comes close to the meaning of this strange text: “For whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospel’s, will save it.” That’s what surrender is all about.

Will continue with my review of Annual Council actions shortly

What About Headship Theology?

As I understand things, traditionally the opposition to women’s ordination within the Seventh-day Adventist Church came on two grounds, using simple terms. 1) The Bible doesn’t mandate the ordination of women. 2) We never did it that way before. These two arguments were sufficient to carry the day during the decades when the issue was not front row and center. But in recent years it became evident that these two arguments were no longer sufficient. Since Adventists have always been leery of “tradition,” an argument from current and historical practice will only take you so far. And the first argument also has its limits. The Bible doesn’t mandate the use of cars, cell phones, computers, Facebook or the internet. Yet people who take the Bible literally do all of the above in today’s world.

So with the traditional arguments against women’s ordination disintegrating, my old friend Sam Bacchiocchi vowed to take six months off and study the issue of ordination in order to write a book showing that the Bible is against it. Now however you may feel about his methodology (knowing before his study began what the outcome would be), Bacchiocchi was a very determined and capable scholar. If there was a biblical argument out there against women’s ordination, he would find it. And he did. It was called “headship theology” and he found it in the “neo-Calvinist” movement, which starting gaining steam among some evangelicals in the 1970s. Some key names promoting this theology were Wayne Grudem and Bill Gothard (I personally heard Gothard on more than one occasion in the 70s).

Headship theology is based essentially on two NT texts, 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5. While these texts had been noticed by Adventists and other Protestants before 1970, they were never used to teach what the neo-Calvinists now use them to teach, namely that there was a hierarchy within the Trinity from eternity (Christ in submission to the Father), that Eve was in submission to Adam before the Fall, that Eve’s sin was trying to escape her role in creation, and that Adam’s sin was not exercising his authority over Eve. Some Neo-Calvinists even think slavery was appropriate in light of such Scriptures. While these ideas were attractive to Bacchiocchi as a way to prevent the ordination of women in the Adventist Church, they were not known in Adventism before Bacchiocchi (1987), so their introduction into Adventism does seem to me like a desperate measure that we may one day regret. Can one pick a single apple from a tree that includes other apples like predestination, everlasting burning hell and Sunday sacredness? For a thorough study of how the new headship theology entered the Adventist Church see http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/433232.

A few years ago, before I ever thought of applying headship theology to the issue of women’s ordination in the Adventist Church, I wrote a paper on the NT language related to leadership and authority. I think it has implications for the theory of headship. One can draw implications from a text or two that are contrary to the whole trend of Scripture. Whatever doctrine we teach needs to be based on the whole Bible, not a couple of convenient texts. Here is what I had to say about the Greek word for headship (kephalē), for example:

“The root meaning of kephalē is with reference to a person’s physical head, the part of the body that contains the brain. By extension it is used metaphorically as a reference to the person of high status or superior rank in a hierarchy. In the Hebrew Old Testament, “head” (rosh) is frequently applied to human leaders, such as the patriarch of a family (Exod 6:14, 25), the leader of a tribe (Num 7:2; 2 Chr 52), or simply leaders in general (Exod 18:25; Num 25:4; Judg 11:11). These “heads” in the Old Testament were parts of a hierarchical leadership system (Exod 18:21) in which each “head” played a specific role under or above other heads.
“In the New Testament, kephalē is also used in the basic sense. But in the epistles of Paul, head and body are usually used as metaphors of Christ and the church and occasionally kephalē is applied to the husband’s role in the home (Eph 5:25-27). The church, however, chose not to apply this word to apostles, overseers, elders or deacons, it was applied solely to Jesus Christ. The church is more than an institution, it is a living organism and living organisms can successfully have only one head. Leadership functions in the church, therefore, are substantively different from other kinds of organizations. Kephalē does not point to a hierarchy, so much as a relationship. As “head” Christ is the one who sustains the body and provides for its growth.”

Notice how the New Testament uses headship language in a completely different way than the Old Testament. In the OT there is the language of hierarchy and status, because that is the way the ancient world was. But in light of the cross, the NT introduces a new form of leadership, leading through service and self-sacrifice. Thus Greek words that imply hierarchy and dominance are never used for offices in the church. Neither is headship language so used. Jesus did not come to be served but to serve (Mark 10:45). And if you have seen Jesus, you have seen what God is like (John 14:9). This is the larger context in which texts like 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5 need to be read.

When you “take the Bible as it reads” without any sense of the ancient setting or the larger biblical context, it is not hard to imagine that 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5 suggest some sort of hierarchy between men and women. And one could even suggest that such hierarchy is taught in the texts and intended to be an absolute principle for all time. But when you pay attention to the meaning of these texts in the larger ancient and biblical setting, you can see that Paul was using the language of the culture, but pointing people to the cross of Christ as the principle that would, in the end, undermine that culture. While the Bible does not mandate the ordination of women, it is not unbiblical to suggest the abolition of human rankings and distinctions in the service of a greater mission.

Can We Fix the Problem?

Can the unity of the Seventh-day Adventist Church be maintained in the face of so much division over women’s ordination? Two possible approaches seem almost guaranteed to destroy unity at this point. One would be mandating that ordination to the positions of both pastor and elder be restricted to males only once again. Since the church first moved away from that position in the 1970s, the western world has shifted enormously in favor of full equality and inclusion for women. To step back at this time would be devastating to the mission of the church in the western world and also the Far East (China in particular). In my travels around the world I find the younger generation in areas opposed to ordaining women much more open to full inclusion as well, although the leaders of the church are still reluctant. Similarly, a position mandating the ordination of women worldwide would be devastating in many cultures where full inclusion of women is not appreciated at this time. The Middle East, Africa and parts of Southern and Central Asia and South America likely fall into this category. It would hurt the mission of the church to force a global vote on women’s ordination either way.

Clearly the flexibility of options two and three that TOSC has put forward offer some encouragement that unity could be preserved. In option two (see summary and links in previous blog) the church would affirm that ordaining women is the right application of Scripture for today, but it should not be forced on entities of the church that are not ready. Option three affirms the biblical pattern of male headship, but allows for new forms to leadership in places where that pattern no longer makes sense. In both options the biblical understanding is not taken as absolute and unbending for all cultures and places. It is the biblical summary that makes up the primary difference between the two options. My guess is that neither would garner a majority of votes in any meeting of top church leadership. Many would be uncomfortable with the assertion that the Bible affirms the ordination of women and many others would be equally uncomfortable with the assertion that the Bible affirms male leadership as the norm. Is there some other way that might point us forward?

The problem with all three options is that they presume the Bible is reasonably clear, one way or the other. Option One is so clear that it not only takes the field but pillages the opposition’s kingdom. Not a formula for unity. Option Two presumes that the Bible, rightly understood, teaches women’s ordination but that those who disagree can get permission to continue their traditional practices. Option Three presumes that the Bible teaches male “leadership,” but those who want to ordain women can apply for permission to do so. But all these positions presume that the Bible speaks to the issue with reasonable clarity.

When you have dueling positions on a topic (in this case women’s ordination), both claiming to be from the Bible, there are only two options that I can see. Either one side is perverse (deliberately twisting Scripture to get their way) or the Bible is, in fact, unclear on the subject. I have good friends on both sides of the women’s ordination debate. I cannot look either side in the eye and say, “You are perverse, you are deliberately manipulating the Bible to get your way.” To do so would be to pass a terrible judgment on people I have enjoyed as colleagues for many years. And it is a judgment that puts me in great peril (Matt 7:1-2; Rom 2:1-3). But if the Bible is, in fact, unclear, then that should be the foundation of the church’s position, rather than according victory to one side or the other.

That leaves two options for attaining unity. One is being proposed by David Newman. If ordination itself as generally practiced is a tradition inherited from the Middle Ages (the word “ordination” is Latin term, not found in the NT), then let’s not ordain anyone and solve the problem in that way. I could live with such a position, but since the Adventist pioneers adopted ordination as a practical necessity (rather than a biblical mandate), something like “ordination” is probably needed. I suggest, therefore, one other option. The simplest approach to honor the Bible and yet preserve unity is to affirm that the Bible does not directly address the question of women’s ordination and that, therefore, it does not mandate either the ordination of women to the gospel ministry nor the denial of the same. Neither party would have to give approval to a theology they disagree with. Let’s just agree that the Bible doesn’t directly address the question and that, therefore, differences of opinion on how to apply the Bible to ordination today are to be expected. When differences are the norm, unity requires that ordination be driven by the mission of the church rather than the direct teachings of Scripture. Divisions and unions should be allowed to ordain women or not ordain them, based on the leading of the Spirit and the demands of mission in those territories.

Won’t that in itself destroy the unity of the church? What will happen if an ordained woman is called to a union that doesn’t ordain women? The same thing that happens now with female church elders. If an ordained female elder moves to a church that doesn’t ordain females as elders, she should not expect to be an elder in that church (for better or for worse). If an ordained female pastor receives an invitation to pastor in a union or division that doesn’t ordain women, she should understand that her ordination will not be recognized there, and respond to the invitation with that in mind. If an unordained female pastor is invited to a region that ordains women, she should not be compelled to accept ordination. While there will be relational challenges in the process, the overall unity of the church need not be destroyed on the basis of such an arrangement. It has certainly not happened over the last forty years since women have been ordained as elders in parts of the world. Practical arrangements in one local church need not affect arrangements in another.

A possible wording for the above “unity option” could be as follows: “We acknowledge that the Bible does not mandate the ordination of women to the gospel ministry. Therefore, any union or division that considers ordination of women to be a detriment to the mission of the church in that region will not be considered out of harmony with Scripture. Likewise, we acknowledge that the Bible does not forbid the ordination of women to the gospel ministry. Therefore, any union or division that considers ordination of women to be useful to the mission of the church in that region will not be considered out of harmony with Scripture. To maintain the unity of the church, we continue the practice of the Adventist pioneers, who adopted ordination, not primarily on biblical grounds, but as a practical necessity to enhance the mission of the church.” I’m not thrilled with that specific wording, but hopefully it helps point the way forward.

What About the Ordination of Women?

I have shared in the past about the two-year Theology of Ordination Study Committee (TOSC) efforts to understand what ordination is and whether or not it is appropriate to ordain women to the gospel ministry in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Unfortunately, when the blog site was suddenly shut down a few months ago we lost several years of archives and I’m not sure we can recover the series on ordination (written in 2012) without re-posting the whole series, which I may choose to do.

The hope in 2012 was that TOSC would first of all come to a consensus on the meaning of ordination and then on the question of ordination of women. Failing to attain consensus on the latter question, the request was that the committee bring suggested solutions to preserve the unity of the church when it is divided over the interpretation of the Scriptures.

By a vote of 86-8 TOSC voted (on July 23, 2013) a theology of ordination statement that affirmed that ordination is the public recognition of those the Lord has called to local and global church ministry. Ordination confers “representative authority” rather than “special qualities” or a role in a “kingly heirarchy.” The official report can be found at http://news.adventist.org/en/all-news/news/go/2013-07-23/study-committee-votes-consensus-statement-on-theology-of-ordination/. The statement itself can be found at http://www.adventistarchives.org/consensus-statement-on-a-seventh-day-adventist-theology-of-ordination.pdf. Based on these points, the question before TOSC became whether or not “the Lord has called” women in the Adventist Church to local and global church ministry and whether women can represent the church in such roles.

When it comes to women’s ordination, the bottom line is that the Bible NEVER addresses the question. No Bible writer ever raises the question. That means that arguing the case for or against women’s ordination is always an extrapolation based on Scriptures addressing other issues. As a result, it is rare for anyone to change their mind on the subject based on Bible study alone. If the Bible does not truly address the subject, then the conclusion will be driven more by culture and providence (the sense of God’s working in a particular context) than by Scripture. An example of such an occurrence in the Bible is Acts 8-15. Before Acts 8 Christians assumed that the church was a subset of Judaism and would include only Jews. But then Philip met the Ethiopean, Peter met Cornelius, and Peter had a dream. By Acts 15 it became apparent to the majority in the church that the Spirit was working with Gentiles and bringing them into the church. The church then took a fresh look at Scripture and saw possibilities there that they had missed before (see Acts 15:13-19). The mission of the church demanded the inclusion of the Gentiles and the church learned to read the Bible differently as a result.

As TOSC continued, the North American Division of the Adventist Church produced an amazing and persuasive document in favor of ordaining women: http://static.squarespace.com/static/50d0ebebe4b0ceb6af5fdd33/t/5282a08be4b0b6e93a788acc/1384292491583/nad-ordination-2013.pdf. By way of contrast, divisions of the church opposed to women’s ordination seem to have done little fresh study. The one exception to this was the minority report of the North American Division (pages 193-208 of the NAD document linked above), which broke some new ground, suggesting that male “headship” was a core element of biblical theology that limited ordination only to men. This was a new theological approach that had never been seen in Adventism before the mid-1980s (Sam Bacchiocchi) or even in Christianity generally before the 1970s. That doesn’t make it wrong, but it does raise questions as to whether such a reading of the Bible is compatible with historic Adventist theology, for example (headship arguments were used against Ellen White in the 19th Century, for example). The faculty of the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary has concluded that headship theology takes a dangerous turn away from Scriptural principles and I agree with them. You can see the Seminary statement at https://www.andrews.edu/sem/unique_headship_of_christ_final.pdf.

Instead of one “solution” to the division in the church, TOSC came up with three. A summary of each can be found at https://www.scribd.com/doc/228366133/TOSC-Final-Papers. In short, the first proposal denies ordination of women to the gospel ministry and rescinds the ordination of women to positions of local elder. If accepted this proposal would return the church to the position it was in before 1970. The second proposal was to affirm that the Bible supports ordination of women to the gospel ministry, but that it should not be imposed on church bodies that would find ordaining women detrimental to mission in their fields. The third proposal affirms the Bible exhibits a pattern of male leadership, but that such biblical patterns are often adapted to changing circumstance, so entities of the church that feel mission requires the ordination of women could apply to do so.

What to do? What to do? In the next blog I humbly offer my solution to the potential division in the church.

Stages of Surrender, Part 11

Surrender is not a work, in the negative way that Paul uses that terms. We get both the will and the strength to surrender as a gift from God. But sometimes we need a little encouragement to align our wills with God’s will. In stage five we sometimes return to the one thing we least wanted or even expected. I sometimes call it The Dark Night of the Soul II: The Sequel. You see, one would think that the closer you come to God, the more you would be appreciated by other people of faith. But it doesn’t work that way. People at earlier stages are often perplexed or even enraged by the things God does in us at the later stages. The deeper one goes into the stages of faith the more isolated one may feel in the church. So it is natural at later stages to worry about what other people think. It is a sign that pride is not totally eradicated. Hence another experience of the Dark Night.

I think of Abraham’s sacrifice on Mount Moriah. That was his second dark night of the soul, the sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham seems to have had many dark nights, but the first major one would have occurred in the context of leaving his comfortable situation in Mesopotamia to strike out toward a strange land that God would show Him. Job’s afflictions began in the context of his family, and then in conversation with his friends and in the end he experienced the direct presence of God, and that was a pretty tough experience too. Job had multiple dark nights of the soul. Jesus in Gethsemane experienced his second dark night of the soul. God often allows us to re-enter the path of suffering, so that we may lay aside everything that is in the way of our relationship with Him.

Those who endure the second dark night have the opportunity to enter Stage Six, which is the stage of unconditional love. And one would think that the person who loves unconditionally would be the most popular person in the church. Who wouldn’t love to be around someone who loves everybody? But that is not the case. The reason is that the person who loves everyone unconditionally also loves my enemy. And the one thing I will not allow you to do is to love my enemy. You might say that real Christians don’t have enemies. In one sense we don’t, and in another we do. When somebody shows love and kindness to a person who has abused us, or has made life difficult for us, that can be a very big challenge.

Ruled by unconditional love, people are compassionate, even under extreme hardship. God’s love flows through them to others, and the channel is clear: it is a life of forgiveness. My wife and I have learned in our marriage that it’s not enough to forgive now and then. In any  marriage you need to forgive every day, probably every hour, because we’re human beings and we rub each other the wrong way from time to time. But to make forgiveness a habit is just a wonderful way to live.

People at this stage also need less material things, so people may say things like, “Why aren’t they doing anything to the car, or to the house?” People who live a life of love don’t pay attention to things anymore. And there is considerable benefit in that style of life. There is a freedom from anxiety and inner peace. These cannot happen when we spend our lives in fear of what other people think. When we surrender that fear to God we experience true freedom, true peace.

Are there any challenges to the life of love? Above all people, those at Stage Six seem out of touch with reality. They act as if there are no enemies in this world. But you can’t love Osama Bin Laden, you just can’t! You can’t love Adolf Hitler, you can’t! Some people would even say you can’t love Obama or John Boehner. You can’t love such people and be my friend. So, the person who loves everyone seems completely out of touch with reality. The biggest issue, perhaps, is a tendency to neglect their own physical needs, and those of the people closest to them, in service of a wider mission of love to the world. So I will suggest a rather strange surrender point for people in Stage Six. They at times need to surrender their other-centeredness. Their tendency to put everyone else’s needs ahead of their own and the spiritual needs of others ahead of the physical needs of the family.

Have you ever met someone who was so concerned for others that they didn’t take care of themselves? Not many people reach this stage in life, but should you ever be there, remember that there comes a time where God asks you to surrender your other-centeredness, and go out and take a vacation. Or repair that dripping sink. Or make sure that your spouse has something decent to wear at the church potluck. You may need to surrender your other-centeredness at times to actually take care of your health and your family. I suspect that as long as life lasts in this world, there will be something to surrender.

Stages of Surrender, Part 10

I call Stage Five the journey outward. It is a renewed engagement with the world grounded in a renewed sense of purpose. If you’ve gone through the dark night of the soul and have been transformed with a new sense of purpose, you can go back and do the things that you were successful at before, but now with a new sense of purpose, a venture outside of self and its ambitious plans. Instead of ministering for God with the subtle goal of making yourself look good, there is now a focus for others, ministering for God without a conscious or unconscious eye toward a reward. The motivations, the passions, are more authentic. There’s a focus on people and their needs, not just on numbers and adding to the community. AT this stage we’re willing to go smaller, humbler, riskier, newer. One of the startling things I have noticed over the last ten years is a trend for significant leaders of the General Conference to simply quit and say, “I want to move to a small church in the middle of the country. That’s where God is calling me. It is OK to go smaller, humbler, riskier, and newer because it doesn’t matter how big your mission is, or how big your job is, what matters is where God wants you to be. There is nothing like being where God wants you to be and doing what God wants you to do.

There are challenges to this stage as well. You would think that a person who was emptied of self, someone who is loving and self-sacrificing, would be the most popular person in the church. Nope! Most people won’t recognize what God is doing in your life. Instead they feel as if you have gotten out of touch with reality. “He used to be really something for the Lord, but now he’s kind of weird. Whatever he had he seems to have lost it. He’s become kind of odd.” But sometimes people seem odd because they are following God to places others have never gone. And they seem odd because God is working with them in a way that hasn’t happened in others’ lives yet. And as people mature in their walk with God they may feel more and more alone, even in the church, because God has led them to a place that others don’t understand because they haven’t been there yet. In the eyes of others, people at stage five may even appear careless about the faith; they don’t seem to take it as seriously, they don’t dress right anymore, they don’t do the devotional exercises that they used to do (because their relationship with God can no longer be confined to set times). What’s wrong with them? Maybe it’s because they are tuned into God, that they are walking with Him in a different way than you could possibly walk with Him.

Surrender at this stage is one of the most difficult to deal with, the fear of what other people think. Let me illustrate. I have a minor malady which is a stress related thing. Everytime I feel an extremely high degree of stress I feel something like a golf ball in my lower intestine. Maybe nobody else feels anything like that, but the moment I feel that “golf ball” I know I’m under stress. Here’s what God revealed to me recently. I was wondering why I was under so much stress. My administrative job has been high stress for over seven years, yet I had rarely felt the golf ball until a few months ago. It dawned on me that the real problem wasn’t the specific issue or issues on the job, the real problem was that I was worried about what other people would think about my actions. I had thought that I was over that, but God helped me realize that I was still plagued with that tendency. And that can be one of the biggest means by which the power of God can be blocked from our lives.

Sometimes we are afraid to move on with God because we are afraid of what other people might think of us. Particularly in stage five, God calls us to surrender that fear to Him, it is safe with Him, because if you are right with God it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. If God approves of you, then it doesn’t matter if anyone else does or doesn’t. When did God approve of you? Already at stage one. So, if you are in stage 2, 3, 4, 5, or wherever you might be (and you can be in more than one stage at a time), God approves of you. And if God approves of you, it doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks.

Stages of Surrender, Part 9

Those who absorb the dark night of the soul and move forward with God enter the fourth stage of faith, the journey inward, as I call it. The goal of the journey inward is to discover God’s unique purpose for our lives, His personal direction. The concept of purpose is no longer centered primarily in the broader mission of the church or a specific profession, but in a very specific mission gifted by God. To live according to God’s purpose is to be unique, to do a work for God that maybe nobody else can do. The dark night of the soul calls us to surrender our illusions of purpose and yield ourselves to God’s ultimate purpose for our lives. That purpose will be uniquely individualized to us. If we don’t pursue it, no one else will do it for us. God’s unique purpose for us is not our profession. If being a doctor or dentist is the purpose for your life, you will be out of a job in eternity! But if your unique purpose is exercised through those professions, that purpose will continue by other means in eternity.

The life of faith is about increasingly turning away from pride and becoming more and more like Jesus. Jesus is the opposite of pride, the opposite of self-centeredness. In the dark night of the soul God is saying, “Can you let it go, your plans, your ambitions, your own sense of purpose? If you find my unique purpose for your life, it will be the greatest thing that ever happened to you.” To know that you are where God wants you to be and that you are doing what God wants you to do, is the greatest experience ever. Yet God’s unique purpose for you may be totally different than the life you would have chosen.

I remember thinking when I turned 40, “Man, I’m more than halfway there. And the best half is already behind me. It will probably be all downhill from here! I’m just about ready to totter into the grave.” Nearly 25 years later I realize God has done lots of things in my life recently that I never would have dreamed of then. When looking at the first 40-50 years of my life, I now see that all of that was preparation for the things God wanted me to do in my 50s and 60s. Plants, when they’re healthy, keep growing. When you’re 60 it doesn’t mean you have to stop growing. It may in fact be the beginning of the greatest work in your life. To be 75 doesn’t mean you stop growing either. If you free up the channel and let Him, He can do the miracle. And His miracle will usually be a surprise, even to you and me.

Stage Four is a wonderful stage in which we learn how to move from the head to the heart. This means a deepening of old relationships and the discovery of exciting new ones. As we find our purpose we become attractive to others who are finding theirs. This stage is usually accompanied by the healing of unresolved issues that have blocked our way in the past. There is a great deal of personal growth as we gain greater self-understanding and greater empathy with others who are struggling.

There are challenges at this stage as well, because people in stage four sometimes get consumed with self-assessment and negative thinking. They’re always trying to figure out who they are and where they are. “Am I doing this right? Why aren’t things going better?” Sometimes, you just have to surrender that kind of stuff. Negative thinking blocks the channel and doesn’t allow the miracle to occur. Actually, it’s a secret form of pride. The person who says, “Woe is me! I could have been great but they blocked my way. I could have really done something, but this person abused me or this person made fun of me, etc.” You visit in your mind the places where you were disadvantaged, where bad things happened to you, and waster a great deal of time moaning about it. That’s a form of pride because your attention is focused on “me, me, and me.”

If you have ever visited a mental institution you will probably have noticed the one word that appears in virtually every sentence there. That word is I, I, I. Negative thinking is just another form of pride, it’s a hidden pride, an unexpected pride. And pride blocks the channel like nothing else. God calls us at this stage to surrender that pride by his grace. Try as you will you cannot get rid of pride by your own effort. Humility would not be an option for us if it were not for God’s miracle. Whenever you meet a person who is truly humble, you know that you are witnessing a miracle of God. And that miracle is available to all who surrender.