Tuesday, May 15, 2012

A Polanyian View of Church Order?

A Polanyian View of Church Order?

As most people probably already know, I am a theologian. I am not a theologian by profession except inasmuch as all pastors are implicitly theologians, whether they take that task seriously or not. I am not academically qualified to speak as a theologian in the sense of one with a PhD in theology. And yet, I consider myself a theologian nonetheless. This does not mean, however, that theology is my only interest. It isn't. My secondary interest that has developed is the philosophy of science. Though there are certain aspects of this field that do not interest me (perhaps because I am not convinced they are dealing with the kinds of issues that are primary), I am trying to read as widely as I can since I have found the issues being discussed in it to be remarkably parallel (though not identical) with my primary interests in theology.

One of my favorite philosophers of science is Michael Polanyi, who actually may have had a more profound impact and influence on theologians than on scientists, judging by subsequent literature. Polanyi began his career as a physician, then went back to school to be trained in chemistry. Later, he was pulled into philosophy almost unwillingly because of discussions about the nature of science that were going on between Western scientists and the scientists in the Soviet Union. The question that dominated these discussions was to what extent (if at all) should the state provide guidance for the development of science. Those in the Soviet Union argued that the state, which planned everything else, should plan science. After all, if one of the great purposes of science is to serve the advancement of a state, then the state should be able to say what these scientists should be working on. In the West, this was opposed, though there was a time when this opposition was rather weak which, it would seem, is what pulled Polanyi into the debate in the first place. Western scientists argued that science could only be pure if it was free from political oversight, at least in the sense advocated by the Soviets.

Polanyi had many reasons to advocate for his view. First, because he is convinced that all knowledge, not least scientific knowledge, is the knowledge of persons who are dedicated to the truth of reality. That is, all knowledge is personal knowledge, which does not mean subjective knowledge but the acknowledgement by persons of what is the case independently of that acknowledgement. Because of this, persons engaged in research must be free to follow their personal (and largely tacit) insights and hunches. Often, significant discovery arises, not because a research program has made it clear what one should work on but because a scientist travels down the lonely road where they see a promising result that nobody else could see.

Additionally, Polanyi draws attention to the fact that much of science is only verifiable by a small number of specialists. This deviates from the kind of objectivist notions that have become increasingly popular in our culture today that say that all scientific claims are publicly verifiable, that is, anyone could do the experiment and see that the results are true. This, of course, is not true. In point of fact, only people who have been educated into a scientific culture, who have been trained to operate in ways consistent with contemporary science, who know how to use the laboratory equipment, and who have spent years working on a specialty are actually able to verify every experiment, and indeed many experiments go unverified, not least because of the tremendous cost of time and money it would involve. The point of this for our discussion is that the state is fundamentally unqualified to discern which paths in research are promising and which are not. To trust what has traditionally been done by the dynamic and unformalizable scientific intuition to bureaucrats would be to destroy science in one fell swoop.

What would seem to be a measure introduced in order to improve efficiency would turn out to be grossly inefficient, because it kills the creativity that makes science, which is far less exact and formal that many people often think, work. Rather, Polanyi argues that the most efficient way forward is to allow each scientist the freedom to pursue their own interests, to follow their own clues, and to make their own discoveries. By making the government over what research is done decentralized, it can benefit from the mutual oversight of all scientists instead of one, perhaps scientifically minded but perhaps not, politician or committee. This means decisions can be made quickly by the people who are competent to make them rather than slowly by people who may know nothing about the matter. Also, because of the practice of academic publishing, scientists can know what is going on around the world and adjust their own work to most effectively take advantage of these global insights.

In the last month or so, I have been struck with the significance of this line of thought for the church. I have begun to realize recently that most of the churches I have known have a tendency to decide, in the abstract, what it is that a church should be about, develop ideas of the kinds of ministries that should happen, and then try to recruit leaders to shape it. When this is the approach, I have noticed that several things happen. First, we tend to have some degree of difficulty to find the right people to lead these different ministries. There are some who have the skills necessary but who are already overburdened with volunteering. There are others who have the skills but have no passion for the ministry they are being recruited for. There are still others who have the skills needed but have never been asked and so may not even realize that they have such abilities. There are also times when we have people who are excited and passionate about something but simply do not have the competence to get it done.

Secondly, I find that when the ministries of the church become fundamentally more basic than the people who are leading them, there comes a time when leadership shifts for whatever reason and we often find that the idea that we might allow a ministry to cease too horrifying, so we scramble to find someone, anyone, who is willing to fill the spot. They might not be the kind of person needed for that ministry, they might be being pulled from another area where they are effective, and we must also always entertain the possibility that the church might be being called to allow a particular ministry to come to completion so that resources can be reallocated and new things can get started.

This way of approaching ministry puts the main power in the hands of very few people, who are often all too happy to take it and use it. Masterful "visions" that are generated in the mind of one person are imposed on others and what is and what is not in line with it is decided ahead of time, which carries with it the double-edged sword of the fact that the vision is clear, but it is not necessarily shared by the people. What ministries should and should not be pursued are no longer based on the prayerful answer to the question, "What is God calling us to at this time and place" and instead rooted in the question, "In what way does this further the vision we voted on once upon a time."

The problem with this whole way of approaching ministry is that it sometimes works and it has worked for some time in many churches. Leaders in a more authoritarian past established such rules for church governance and they have remained more or less unchanged. Even those who have come from such rebellious generations, who have been ruthless at changing the outer trappings of so many churches, have left the internal structure largely unchanged. The people are different and the hairstyles and clothing have changed, but the top-down authoritarian structure that the church learned, not from the self-giving Lord, but from the marketplace, has remained.

This is why I have found Polanyi's conception of academic freedom for scientists to be so compelling for the church. This is not simply because I like Polanyi's work (though I do), but because it seems to give some concrete insight into what Paul wrote so often in the New Testament. Paul does not create job descriptions out of abstract speculation and then apply them to every church without adjustment. His vision for the church approaches ministry in such a way that ministry is never a job to do, where qualified people can be swapped in and out with no real change. Ministry is always done by people who are prepared and gifted by God for the task, which means that the gift of God must be understood as more basic than the task that is performed by means of it.

To put this in more concrete terms, when Paul speaks of a five-fold ministry in Ephesians 4:11-13, we must not read it in such a way as to imply that there were clearly defined "job descriptions" for what it was to be an apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher. Rather than saying, "We need these five tasks done, who can we find to do them," it seems more consistent with Paul to say, "God seems to consistently raise up these five kinds of people. It is not for no reason that he does this. Find them and recognize them." Paul often exhorts the leaders to lead, but he never seems to be concerned about where leadership would come from. God would raise it up if we only have eyes to notice.

Who knows what it means to be an evangelist? Those who receive the ministry of the evangelist? Not really. Who can spell out what an apostle is? Someone who has never been called to nor participated in the apostolic calling? In many ways, it is not even entirely possible to have the ministers themselves define what it takes to do their job, since God does not seem to be all that worried about the secular qualifications of those whom he calls. Jesus did not send Peter and the other disciples off to seminary to be trained; he simply called and they followed. Peter never took a preaching class, Paul was never formally trained in pastoral care. The passion and the anointing that comes from the Holy Spirit can do what all the training in the world could never do on its own (it should be noted that I am in no way against formal training. However, we must never imagine that God is waiting for someone to go to school before they can be used by him).

In spite of all the efficiency that seems to be inherent in a rigidly centralized conception of the church, it can be woefully inefficient. So long as the central leader is well aware of the gifts and graces of the people in the church and can entrust leadership into their hands, it is true that such church government can be quite efficient. However, it is often tempting to insist that the pastor is not only an overseer who responds to issues by reallocation of resources but is also the prime minister, who has skills that nobody else can approximate, who fills a professional need, who sees themselves primarily as an employee of a local church and not primarily as a servant called and sent by God. If this happens, ministry quickly becomes made after their image and any gift of a layperson that does not fit into such an image becomes marginalized, regardless of how necessary it may be.

If a central planning agency for science could be trusted to always know which are the promising projects, could be relied upon to always know what is needed and how to maximize resources to that end, it would be amazingly efficient and helpful. If it falls down, even in a minor way, it has the distinct possibility of crippling science and discouraging scientists from making new and hitherto unlooked for discoveries. In a similar way, if a pastor is always able to see clearly what is needed and the best way to go about responding to that need, it could be a wonderful way to run the church. However, if a pastor lacks the knowledge and discernment needed for this task at any point (which inevitably happens as they are human and finite like everyone else), they may find that their greatest strengths can turn out to be their greatest weaknesses in a given context.

Is pastoral ministry important? Absolutely. Is it as important as the ministry of lay people? Of course. But, it must be clearly noted, it is no more important than this. To behave as if this were not so not only skews the whole Polanyian system but is tantamount to an eye saying to a hand, "I have no need of you." It seems to me that a more significantly decentralized approach to ministry is more conducive to allowing the Holy Spirit to govern, not only the individuals who make up the church, but the church as a whole. Those who have gifts in particular areas will be able to provide mutual oversight, freeing up those with different gifts to work elsewhere and elsehow.

The questions that remain are these. How can we move forward? How can we convince the average Christian that God actually wants to use them, has gifted them, not only with skills, but with passions, that he wants to harness for the good, not only of the church, but of the world? Undoubtedly the answer involves prayer and repentance regarding ways we have been discouraging in the past.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

1 Corinthians 15:12-19 (What the Resurrection Tells Us)

04/29/12 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 Grace UMC

When I was a kid, I remember always being confused by the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Christmas, after all, is only one day. It might be the case that we spend a few weeks building up to it, but it is just one day; that's it. Sometimes, we will speak of there being a "Christmas Season" but what do we mean when we say that? We mean the season of Advent. If you were to look at the church calendar, you would find that there actually is a Christmas season, and it is after Advent; in fact, you will find that the twelve days of Christmas are twelve days of celebration starting on Christmas and going until Epiphany. We might not always pay very much attention to it, but there is a whole season dedicated to celebrating Christmas, but what often happens? We tend to talk about Jesus coming into the world during Advent and then stop thinking about it altogether once the presents are opened.

The reason why I bring this up at the end of April is because there is an Easter season, too, and it isn't just the season of Lent. There are six Sundays between Easter and Pentecost, which is just enough time to forget about one and how it connects to the other. Well, I want to do my part to try to make this an Easter season and spend some time talking about the resurrection of Christ, but not so much the Easter story as such but what the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead in glory has to tell us about you and me and this life that we live in this world of ours.

It should come as no surprise that there are a lot of people who are not all that interested in taking the resurrection of Christ seriously. After all, do you know anyone who has been raised from the dead like Jesus was, in glory and never to die again? In the modern era, there has been some concern about whether the church should really be proclaiming such a gospel that includes a physical resurrection since it is so foreign to our experience. In the last few hundred years, there has been a significant reinterpretation of the story of Easter. The whole mainstream of what we call today "modern" theology has tended to say that the story of Easter is far less a story of what actually happened to Jesus in a tomb that morning and far more a story of the experience of the disciples that same day. That is to say, when we say that Christ was raised from the dead, we don't mean, according to this view, that a dead body spontaneously returned to life, got up and walked out of a tomb; we mean that the disciples had a profound encounter with the spirit of Jesus that was so strong that it was as if he was raised from the dead.

Now, what is the problem with that? If you look at it from a particular point of view, it doesn't seem all that bad. After all, if we imagine that Jesus' ministry was primarily, if not exclusively, about telling us how to be good and how to live in harmony with everyone else, what difference does it make whether he was physically raised or not? Not a whole lot. What it means to be a so-called "good person" doesn't fundamentally change if a particular person is alive or dead. In fact, given that we can all agree that we ought to love one another, like Jesus said, and resurrections are hard to believe, maybe we should spend our time talking about the former and kind of ignore the latter, perhaps hoping that it will go away and we won't have to deal with it.

As it turns out, the question as to whether Jesus was literally, physically raised from the dead is extremely important. According to Paul, it is something upon which the whole gospel stands or falls, which is not something he says about just anything. In his first letter to the Corinthians, which we just heard, he lays out an argument that goes something like this. "Now guys, I hear that some of you are saying that there is no such thing as people being raised from the dead, that dead is dead and that is the end of it. Now, if there is no such thing as resurrection, then nobody is raised from the dead, which means even Christ has not been raised from the dead since he is a somebody. Here's the problem, though. We have been proclaiming, and you all believed, that Jesus has been raised from the dead and that it is through this death and resurrection of Christ that God has worked out our salvation and we have been reconciled to God. So, if it is true that there are no such things as resurrections, then Christ has not been raised, which means that the gospel that is built on his death and resurrection is useless, which means your faith is useless, and we have all been deceived. If we trust in a Christ who has died and will live no more, we are the most pitiful people in all the world."

Now, I pointed out earlier, that if Jesus' main point was simply to teach us a good way to live and that we should be generally nice to each other, then it doesn't matter whether he was raised from the dead or not, but Paul seems to think that it makes a huge difference whether Christ is really raised or not. What then are we to conclude from this? If nothing else, it is that Jesus came to do far more than simply turn us into "nice" people. What is it that we learn from the resurrection of Christ from the dead?

We learn that our bodies really matter to God. I remember that I used to imagine that, once Jesus ascended to heaven forty days after he was raised, it was the end of his humanity, that Jesus shed his humanity like a snake sheds his skin. I don't know for sure why I thought that, since the Bible doesn't say that anywhere. I imagine that I thought that, since it was such a tremendous sacrifice for God to become a human being, when the time for being physically present with his people was done, he wouldn't need his body anymore. After all, what purpose would it serve? And yet, what we actually read in the Bible is that God becomes a human being, dies as a human being, is raised from the dead as a human being, ascends to heaven as a human being and will one day come again in final victory as a human being. That means that Jesus is a human being right now and will be forever.

This is really astonishing news. It means that, not only did God enter into our world of space and time in Christ but it means that God has taken our world of space and time back into God's own life in Christ. It means that the God who is so self-sufficient that he never needed to create anything has so loved humanity, has so loved you and me, that he has taken humanity back up into his own life, that human beings are so loved by God that he would join himself to our humanity forever. If nothing else, this means that salvation was never meant to be merely a gift of spiritual joy where we get to go to heaven, as amazing as heaven is. Rather, salvation is something that impacts every area of our lives, both our souls and our bodies.

The resurrection of Christ from the dead means that God knows what it is like to be a human being and to endure all of the trials of life, including that final trial of death. It means that when Jesus sends his disciples out, giving them a Great Commission to go and fulfill, he is not simply doing so as the God of the Universe who has the authority to command and expect it to be done; he does so as our elder brother, as the one who knows our suffering, our hurts, our limitations, our fears as well as our hopes, and entrusts his plan into our hands (which we might sometimes wonder whether it is a good idea to do so). When Jesus says that he will be with his disciples until the end of the age, it is not just that he is going to disperse like a gas cloud to the farthest reaches of the earth but that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ the God-Man will be by their side, in the nitty-gritty of life and the hard work we find ourselves engaged in.

I don't know about you, but I am quite glad to know that I have a God who knows what it is like to live in this world because, in spite of all the differences between first century Israel and twenty-first century Iowa, people are people. We all still have problems with money, with other people, we still have days where we don't like the weather, we have accidents, we make mistakes, and we live with broken relationships that seem like they never heal, regardless of what we do. God doesn't just know about all of that because he is God and knows everything, but because he has actually stepped into the middle of this broken world and experienced it for himself in an incredibly intimate and personal way.

One of the most welcome things that the resurrection of Christ from the dead means is that the way things are is not the way they will always be. It is easy to get into the mindset that, when we see Jesus raised from the dead, its just something for him and has nothing to do with us, other than the guarantee that our sins have been forgiven. And yet there are places in the New Testament where we read things like this, in the letter to the Romans: "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you." Paul wants to make it as clear as possible that the resurrection of Christ from the dead is not just a nice thing to believe and a thing to sing about on Easter Sunday, but something that impacts your life and your future. The good news is not simply that Christ is raised, but that, because Christ is raised, you too shall be raised.

At the end of the day, that is what Paul is saying in the text from First Corinthians. He starts out by responding to the claim that the dead are not raised, which is in many ways a reasonable claim as I pointed out earlier, by pointing out how disastrous such a claim is to the belief that Christ was raised from the dead. But we need to remember that Paul has no interest in doing what many Christians, especially Christians who are interested in theological issues enjoy doing, and I realize that I myself fall into that category; he has no interest in simply arguing a point that has no real impact on our world. At first glance, if we looked at it the right way, we could say that Paul is simply combatting with others over the issue of whether they have the "right" doctrines or not. We could interpret it as a preeminent example of a theological bully, marginalizing the beliefs of others in order to assert his own. But that would be terribly misleading.

After all, Paul is not interested in reinforcing a "party line," a narrow orthodoxy that is more interested in drawing lines to keep people out than sharing good news with them. According to Paul, the reason that we need to take the resurrection seriously is not because we need to pass some doctrinal examination, but because our future is bound up with it. "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."

In the resurrection we see our future. It is a future of glory, of life, of healing. We see that, as final as death may seem to us, and we have all seen what power death seems to have, for it has touched each of us in one way or another, it is not the last word for us. Our God is a God who conquers the grave, and who not only conquers it for himself, but makes us share in that same victory. There can be no wonder why those first Christians remained bold in the face of persecution. They knew the truth of what Jesus told his disciples, "I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more." The worst the enemies of the gospel could do is kill Christians but they had no power beyond that, and in Christ, we can see that a power that can kill the body but nothing more isn't all that powerful compared to God.

We as Christians are called to be bold, to live strong in our faith in the good news of Jesus Christ. But what is the source of our boldness? It certainly isn't because we are better than non-Christians because it doesn't take much to look around and realize that Christians are sometimes some of they very worst behaved people around. It isn't because we have all our answers right in our heads because most of us give very little careful thought as to what we believe; speaking for myself, I am reminded daily about how much of God I do not know. Rather it is because we follow a God who has overcome the grave and has done so from within our own humanity. We are people who have been liberated from the need to fear death. In the light of the good news, we can say along with Paul, "Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

The good news of Jesus Christ is not that things will never go wrong. They will. Often. The good news of Jesus Christ is that the things that go wrong are never so wrong as to be the final word. Something I have found myself saying to many people is that, when we as Christians say "It will be alright," we don't mean it in any kind of wishy-washy way. Rather, what we mean is, "It will be alright, even if it kills me." That is why we are called to be bold because, in a very real sense, we simply cannot be stopped. There is persecution of Christians in various parts of the world, where people have to quite literally choose which is more dear to them, their faith or their life; and yet, they are not stopped. How much more so should we here, in the relatively safe and persecution-free community of Spencer, live with boldness knowing that, as John says, "greater is the one who is in [us] than the one who is in the world."

I would like to share words from Paul's letter to the Romans that are quite familiar, but I hope that, as we dwell on the incredible implications of the gospel, they might have greater weight than they might at other times. "What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, 'For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.' No, in all these things we are more than conquerers through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Let us pray.

AMEN