I’ve been thinking about that company of people, in heaven and now on earth, who reflect the glory and the holiness of God. The words “holiness” and “saintliness,” “holy” and “saint,” mean the same thing. A saint is a person who reflects the holiness of God. The saints are the living testimony, the living evidence on earth, that the way of evil does not prevail. But where do saints come from?

Don’t believe all the hype you hear. You might not guess this from looking at the pictures with the harps and the halos—those were sent out by the Saint Marketing Department—but the truth is that saints are bad people and they often have bad breath and bad teeth to boot. Bad people! See, here’s how a saint prays about sexual temptation:

Da mihi castitatem et continentiam sed noli modo (St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions 8:7; in A. Solignac, ed., Les Confessions, 14:44).

My translation: “Give me chastity and self control, but, er, not right now.”

Give Augustine credit for honesty. Some of the saints were as bad as Augustine, and I don’t just mean that they started out as bad people and then ended up as goody-goody nice people. What I mean is that God made them saints in spite of their massive and persistent human flaws. God made them saints in spite of themselves. It’s a very reassuring thought. So are you bad enough to be a saint? God doesn’t make saints from anything but sinners.

Acts 2:14b-36, 441 words
Acts 3:12b-26, 297 words
Acts 10:34b-43, 181 words
Acts 17:22b-31, 193 words

You can see that the longest of these apostolic sermons, the sermon that St. Peter delivered on the day of Pentecost, consists of 441 words total. An equivalent English text (in this case the NRSV) has 508 words. In case you’re wondering how this works out in minutes and seconds, you’ll be very pleased to know that I have accurately and scientifically timed the Greek text of Acts 2:14b-36, reading at a moderate pace and utilizing a Timex Ironman Triathlon sports watch, and the total duration of the sermon given by the holy Apostle Peter on the day of Pentecost—the longest recorded in the New Testament—comes out to six minutes and fifteen seconds.

This raises a basic question. Why would modern preachers depart so flagrantly from the apostolic pattern of preaching given in the holy scriptures of the New Testament? Do they somehow imagine that they have more wisdom to impart than the apostles of Jesus Christ? Do they imagine that their modern hearers are more apt to tolerate a longer sermon than people in the first Christian century? Surely the wickedest excuse for longer sermons is the rationale that says that the sermons recorded in the New Testament were only summaries of the early Christians’ preaching, some like a Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of the apostolic preaching. But there’s nothing in the New Testament texts or in the ancient contexts to suggest that. I think it’s more likely a case where our contemporary practice of preaching and hearing 15-20 minute (or longer) sermons is such an established fact that we suppose that the New Testament must be corrected. Our practice becomes the norm by which the holy scriptures are judged.

One of the problems is that, despite the apostolic examples, our congregations are so accustomed to hearing non-apostolic (15-20 minute) sermons that they would probably take it as a violation of contract for a preacher to preach sermons of the apostolic length. I can imagine the chair of a Pulpit Committee or Pastor-Parish Relations Committee delivering the bad news to such a hapless preacher: “We’re sorry to inform you, but there is simply a degree of pain that we expect our preachers to inflict upon us, and you have failed to deliver this. We cannot tolerate this behavior and consequently we have no choice but to look for another preacher in your place.” Or, ask the Bishop for another preacher in your place.

dierkhomenos gar kay anatheohrohn
ta sevasmata heemohn evron kay bohmon hen
hoh epegegrapto agnohstoh theoh

for going about and looking at the objects
of your worship i also found one altar inscribed
TO AN UNKNOWN GOD
(Acts 17:23)

Here’s what the Apostle Paul should have done. He should have walked through Athens screaming bloody murder and denouncing all the religious shrines he found as sinister objects of evil deities. He should have stood on Mars Hill and delivered a speech like this:

Evil and sinful Athenians: I think I’m going to puke. You are all caught up in the worship of false gods, and as the one true God is my witness, I am here today to condemn your ungodly idolatry and to tell you why you are so wrong and I am so right. Every single one of these altars is an affront to the one true God. Repent, you nasty, ignorant jackasses! Repent of your false worship, and worship the one true God!

But somehow the holy apostle got weak knees when he stood up on Mars Hill and so he blabbered out this sweet-as-molasses thing about how the Athenians really were worshipping the one true God, they just didn’t quite have all the correct data about the one true God, which Paul was happy to deliver to them. Ho hum. I would have preferred a fight. To be fair to the apostle, though, Christians have been pretty consistent in claiming that the God Christians worship is same the God that other people have worshipped as the supreme God under whatever names people may have used.

1. Infant baptism isn’t the swooftest idea anyone ever came up with. Methodists have so vehemently defended infant baptism that you would think our Article of Religion would say something like this:

Those damnable heretics who do confound the catholicity of the holy Church of God and contradict the inclusiveness of the community by denying unto young children their rightful place in the Kingdom of God which our Saviour hath promised unto them through the holy sacrament of baptism are to be decried in all places and in all times as enemies of the common grace which God hath ordained unto all of God’s people and as disgusting pisser-offers of the saints.

But that’s not what our Article says. What our Article actually says is the following truly lukewarm nod in the direction of infant baptism:

The baptism of young children is to be retained in the Church.

Ho hum. So let’s face it: the New Testament doesn’t mention infant baptism. It doesn’t explicitly deny it, and it does mention family baptisms (“When she and her household were baptized…” Acts 16:15; and cf. Acts 16:33) without any explicit cut-off age (so it doesn’t add, “excluding of course those kids who were below the Age of Accountability”). Moreover, the United Methodist Church and many other churches that baptize infants have “received” an important ecumenical document, the WCC Faith and Order text on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (1984), which states that, “baptism upon personal profession of faith is the most clearly attested pattern in the New Testament documents” (BEM, section on baptism, p. 4). That’s correct. In fact, the Catholic Church and some other churches have begun to emphasize that adult baptism should be seen as the theologically normative form of baptism, since it involves all elements of Christian formation together, even though infant baptism continues to be practiced. So in the 1988 United Methodist Hymnal, for the first time the service of adult baptism with profession of faith comes first and the ritual for infant baptism and baptism for others unable to answer for themselves comes second.

Those of us who practice infant baptism – and the baptism of other people who are unable to answer for themselves – do so because we believe that baptism is the means by which we incorporate people into the Christian community, whether they are below the “age of accountability” or not and whether they’ve professed a conversion experience or not. I’m not opposed to infant baptism, but infant baptism leads terribly easily to the idea that incorporation into a Christian community can somehow substitute for personal commitment. It can’t. See number three below. But meanwhile…

2. Immersion should be the preferred mode of Christian baptism. It really should be. Among the guild of historians, there’s little doubt that immersion was the normative mode of baptism in the earliest Christian communities. The word baptizein itself means “to dip.” So “John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim because water was abundant there” (John 3:23). Get it? Get over it, Methodists.

Catholics have all-but ruled out sprinkling these days because of the altogether casual connotations sprinkling has had in Christian history, like when medieval priests threw water in the direction of Saxony in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost and proclaimed the Saxons then to be Christians. Sprinkling carries the connotation of easy religion, casual religion. It’s just as cute as it can be.

Methodists have prided themselves in the past on the supposed freedom they have to sprinkle, pour, or immerse candidates for baptism. But having no (deep) baptisteries in our churches, sprinkling has been the dominant mode by far. It’s cute and casual, and you can do it with a rose to make it even cuter and more casual. It’s a “sacrament lite,” dudes, like using grape juice instead of what Jesus said… Don’t get me started down that path.

It’s not that I think early Christians were terribly worried about the quantity of water. The second-century Didache document has a passage stating that Christians should be immersed three times in running water (like a running stream), but if you don’t have running water, then three times in still water will suffice, and if you don’t have enough of that, then you can pour water three times. No biggie, but no doubt immersion was the preferred mode. Get over it; get over it; get over it. Reach out in faith and build baptisteries. Big ones.

3. Christian faith demands a heart-felt decision on the part of a believer. Wait – that sounds like a Methodist thing… Well it did. It’s tragic that we would have to say this but sure enough, look what happened. The language of “confirmation,” deleted by John Wesley from his edition of the Book of Common Prayer, crept into our churches without official sanction and so then we sanctioned it and guess what we do now? Just like our pals in Established and Imperial Churches we ask all the kids in the sixth grade or the seventh grade to go through confirmation class all at the same time so it’s a social ritual, a social promotion. More cuteness. Wear a nice dress. Welcome to Christ’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. We’ll send you the pledge card next week. True fact: we probably have more church members because we more or less pressure all the kids in one grade to join. Truer fact: we don’t expect a very high level of commitment to Jesus Christ, do we?

Baptists and other Evangelicals can pressure kids (and grownups) into making commitments to Jesus. Yes, I know how to do the “Now as every head is bowed and every eye is closed, I want to see the hands of those who are going to give their hearts to Jesus tonight. Praise God! Hands are going up all over the auditorium…” routine. I was always looking. Bad boy. Can’t we figure out a way to call for genuine heartfelt commitment to Jesus Christ without either running a class through the vat of confirmation all at one time, or without the hokey high-pressure conversions?

4. There are some really good things about congregational autonomy. Methodists are terribly proud of our “connectionalism” but if you ask a lot of folks they’ll say their congregation is just fine, thank you very much, it’s the denomination that’s so screwed up. And let’s face it, a lot of United Methodists are United Methodists because of our brilliant trust clauses. That means that if you stop being a United Methodist, you have to give up that church building that grandpa built. Can you think of a worse way to enforce denominational loyalty? Oh yeah – I forgot: confirmation classes when we pressure everybody in a single grade to say they’re committing their lives to Jesus and our church. So there you have it: the trust clause is only the second worst way to call for loyalty to one’s denomination. But it’s pretty bad. Ooh am I saying we could give up all that property and still “make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” Well yeah, the thought actually crossed my mind.

But I’m supposed to be talking about Baptists. Yeah, some of those old Babdists in Texas get really carried away with the congregational autonomy thing and say that every time you join a congregation you need to be baptized because as far as they’re concerned the other supposed congregations don’t exist and the same of course goes for the Lord’s Supper so if your old Momma is dying and she’s a member of the Salem Landmark Baptist Church (SBC) and you’re a member of the Antioch Baptist Church (SBC) then no you can’t share the Lord’s Supper with her. But I’ll tell you something: I can find you Methodist congregations just as weird as those Landmark Baptists. (I think…)

The truth is that denominations are complex franchising organizations in which we enfranchise some groups to do carry out certain functions (like ordaining clergy) and we enfranchise other groups to carry out other functions (like publishing Sunday School literature or sending out missionaries). Our franchises shift with the passing decades. Is it a matter of fundamental Christian principles that only the bishop and the elders of the conference should ordain clergy, or should lay folk have a voice and vote in that process? Should only the Baptist Missionary Board send out missionaries, or might a congregation do that on their own? I say we can figure out stuff like that, but some level of congregational autonomy is a good thing. (I’m still trying to think of Methodist congregations as weird as Landmark Baptists…)

5. I think I like those Baptist Deacons. I do not of course mean those “Demon Deacons.” I like the idea that some people in a congregation are permanently recognized as leaders of the congregation and are expected to know the denomination’s (and the congregation’s) history and polity and means of worship. Presbyterians have ordained elders in local congregations who function in this way. Wouldn’t that be a cool idea for Methodists? Here’s a really weird thought: we could call them “Stewards.” Nah, that’s too far fetched.

Who are the most famous Baptists in America today? Let’s see… Billy Graham, Jesse Jackson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton. Dang, since Jerry Falwell died, I guess they’re all Democrats. Go figure. Maybe that man from Arkansas… no, not Clinton, the other one…

Hang in there, Baptists. We need you badly. We need you to be Baptists. It would be groovy if some day you could recognize that we’re baptized, but don’t be distracted. Keep calling us to real commitment to Jesus and some day we’ll feast in the Kingdom together.

The stunning news that the UMC has been declared as having a monopoly for religious purposes and the subsequent court-ordered breakup of the denomination has church officials reeling, but in the meantime it’s spawning some creative proposals for new sub-denominations created from the hulk of the old church.

One group based in Berkeley, California, has proposed a new sub-denomination to be called the Oldtimeyreligion Methodist Church (OMC). The proposed group will take the Cokesbury Worship Hymnal (1938) as the denomination’s sole book of polity, liturgy, and hymnody. “We’re just following John Wesley and Jesus,” said Marjorie Pinkston, a spokesperson for the group, “You know how John Wesley wrote all those songs to sing to those bar-room tunes and all, so that’s really the essence of what it means to be Methodist.”

Another group calling itself the Orthodox Methodist Church (OMC) is taking a slightly different approach, and is currently preparing an Orthodox Methodist Hymnal that combines some Charles Wesley hymn texts with the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. “John Wesley was basically Eastern Orthodox,” said spokesperson Theophilus Flick in the sub-denomination’s Dothan, Alabama, offices, “so we’re really just making that explicit in the structure and liturgy of our sacred church. We think it’s the trajectory Methodists have been following for the last two hundred years.”

That’s probably not going to go down well with the leaders of the Open Methodist Church (OMC), based in Lexington, Kentucky. “We need to remember that it was John Wesley who said ‘Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors,’” said Jerry Pinsdale, who holds the position of “First Speaker Among Equals” in the sub-group’s unique structure and prefers to be called a “spokesperoffspring.” The group, he explained, had tried to agree on a small hymnal and some elements of common liturgy, but eventually decided that agreement in doctrine or liturgy was itself a bar to the openness that the group will seek.

Yet another group is still struggling to find a name and provisionally calls itself the Ornery Methodist Church (OMC), based in Dallas, Texas. The group will seek principally to minister to ADHD people and will feature very brief (8-10 minute) worship services or “worshbites” as they say. “Everyone will be ushers,” said spokesperson Ted A. Campbell, “or choir members or maybe clergy, but nobody wants to just sit there in those, what do you call those long wooden seaty things?”

If you’re still reading, God bless you sweet peeps, and have a nice April Fools Day.

This impression was solidified when in my senior year in high school I responded enthusiastically to an advertisement in a used-book shop in Beaumont promising free Greek lessons. I was taken to a small Church of Christ in Bridge City, Texas, where I got about forty-five minutes of instruction in the Greek alphabet and then I was treated to an hour and a half of heated discussion sparked by a question posed by a younger and obviously inexperienced minister, “If I go to a Baptist revival and I just sit on the back row and don’t sing the hymns or anything, does that constitute having ‘fellowship with unfruitful works of darkness’” (Ephesians 5:11)? The answer, I quickly learned, was yes, it does. And from the conversation in the car on the way to Bridge City and back I figured out that this was a group of Church of Christ folk who regarded a lot of other Churches of Christ folk as mere pretenders to the name. They were, I think, what my Campbell relatives called “hard-shell” Churches of Christ folk.

So I did not have a very positive impression of the Churches of Christ, but I’m beginning to change my mind, and now I’m thinking they may be right on some of those most interesting points that have distinguished them. I attended the Preston Road Church of Christ on Sunday March 6, 2011, deeply enjoyed the service, the singing, and the sermon by Rev. Scott Sager. I also was offered and received the Lord’s Supper there, so my great grandma Campbell can perhaps take solace in the fact that I am now in communion with at least one Churches of Christ congregation however soft-shelled they may be and however unwittingly this happened on the part of the congregation.

Here are five reasons why the Churches of Christ may be right after all.

First, they have a profound insight into Christian music and its place in worship. I’m not sure I buy the rationale that says that because the New Testament doesn’t mention musical instruments, congregations should not be forced to sing with them. The Churches of Christ seem to use plenty of stuff – like collapsible music stands – that are not to my recollection mentioned in the Holy Scriptures. But they sure do sing well and, speaking as a man on this point, I really appreciate a church that does not expect me to sing soprano, even transposed an octave lower. There’s something utterly wonderful about the sound of human voices blending together in harmony. I wonder if we have gone too far with our instrumental fetish in worship. First the instrumentalists just accompanied us, then they wanted to improvise on the last verse, forcing us all to sing soprano, and now they just seem to launch off into improvisation whenever they feel like it with no warning. Maybe we need to send out a message on our projection screens or with a flashing neon lights, “Everybody Sing Soprano Now” or “Altos, Tenors and Basses: Drop Off.” I’m tired of it; I think I like the Church of Christ.

Second, they’ve sure got the right name. If you think about, I mean, think about it from the perspective of a friendly outsider, “Methodist” and “Presbyterian” and “Baptist” are not really ace names for Christian groups. Even “Catholic” sounds a little pretentious and “Orthodox” a little snitty. “Church of Christ” sounds pretty straightforward by contrast. And you don’t find local Churches of Christ congregations named “Wellspring Cornerstone Kewl Informal Non-Stuffy Community,” just “Preston Road Church of Christ” or “Highway 59 Church of Christ.” Like the New Testament, they just name their congregations for the places where they meet, kind of like the hobbits who built a new row of houses and then after a long discussion decided to name it “New Row.” Perfectly straightforward. What’s not to like about that?

Third, the Churches of Christ celebrate the Lord’s Supper every Sunday. Churches of Christ folk haven’t fallen for Protestants’ quirky idea that words can suffice in place of bread and wine. The service at Preston Road was very simple, with an elder of the congregation offering a simple prayer of thanksgiving for the bread (which seemed to be matzot, the kind of unleavened bread that Jews eat during Passover) and a prayer of thanksgiving for the wine (which tasted a lot like grape juice), then the elements were distributed to the congregation in the pews. It reminded me a lot of the simple prayers over the bread and wine in the second-century Didache document; I wondered if the distinguished second-century scholar Everett Ferguson of Abilene Christian University had somehow influenced this congregation or its leaders.

Fourth, there really is only one Church of Christ. That’s one of the cardinal claims of the ecumenical movement of the twentieth century, and the Churches of Christ were way out front in making us aware of that claim. You don’t have to buy the “hard-shell” version of the Church of Christ teaching to own that basic truth.

Fifth, and perhaps most importantly, the simplicity of the Churches of Christ allows them to focus on what is most important, namely, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There was no congregational creed beyond the songs we sang, of course, but a member of the congregation got up before the offering and exhorted us to consider the sacrifice of Christ as we give ourselves. He also mentioned that it was the 175th anniversary of the fall of the Alamo, which is pretty sacred for Texas folks and was aimed at driving home the importance of personal sacrifice though I worried that it came a little close to identifying Texan and Christian. But still, this man knew the faith and he presented the Gospel in a simple and straightforward manner. The pastor’s sermon on the salt and light passage in the Sermon on the Mount (St. Matthew 5:13-16) drove home the message that Christians need to be giving themselves for the world. The salt, he said, needs to get out of the salt shaker.

I came away with the sense that Churches of Christ folk really are the hobbits of the Christian world: not a lot of technological razzmatazz, not a lot of heavy emotion, not an elaborate or sophisticated liturgy, they just get the job done. There is a primitive simplicity to their communities that really stands out among other church bodies trying to be the church of Christ. We’d do well to learn from them and thank God for their witness.

Ted Campbell
7 March 2011

What I have always liked about Mere Christianity is its account of common Christian beliefs and practices. That’s what he meant by “mere Christianity”: “the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times.”

Lewis wrote Mere Christianity at the zenith of twentieth-century optimism about Christian unity. He arrived at his conclusions about common Christian beliefs and practices partly by intuition, partly by his immense knowledge of medieval European culture, and partly by running his stuff about common beliefs by Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist clergymen. Originally given as a series of radio talks that aired during the Second World War, the book was published in 1952, four years after the organizational meeting of the World Council of Churches. But Lewis was not directly in touch with ecumenical leaders. He just imbibed the ecumenical spirit of the age, thought he could just write something up, run it by four clergymen, and poof! You had the essence of common Christian faith. In my estimation he did a remarkably good job of that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1XuPXpeJ34

Blessings,

/ted

http://deeplycommitted.com/

Great stuff on Wesleyan renewal today, including a review of Wesleyan Beliefs (thank you very much). Kevin felt he needed to reveal that he is my graduate student, but I don’t feel the need to make any such reciprocal announcement. I did think about an alternative web site name: Committed To An Institution, but I’m already committed to heartcoreMethodist, so I’ll stick with that for now. Blessings! Stay committed — deeply committed, /ted

What does it mean when a candidate for the order of elder in The United Methodist Church stands in the presence of witnesses and makes a solemn promise in response to this question in our ordinal: “Will you be loyal to The United Methodist Church, accepting its order, liturgy, doctrine, and discipline, defending it against all doctrines contrary to God’s Holy Word, and committing yourself to be accountable with those serving with you, and to the bishop and those who are appointed to supervise your ministry?”

Can an elder design or lead services, that are completely ex tempore, i.e., completely using the words that she or he makes up, and claim to be accepting the liturgy of our Church? Can an elder make up new words and place them on the lips of an unsuspecting congregation and claim to be accepting the liturgy of our Church? Can an elder use the liturgy of another church or denomination and claim to be accepting (and defending) the liturgy of our Church?

/ted