Tag: Patton Dodd

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21st Century Evangelicalism

Christianity Today Validates Positive Trends In Church (with a strange negative slant)

Christianity Today

Part #1 of my response to Christianity Today

While reading the December 2013 cover story in Christianity Today (CT), I applauded its advocacy of Evangelicalism trending toward a more thorough embrace of social concern and the centrality of authentic relationships within the local church. Those are trends I have encouraged throughout my lifetime. The disappointment was the simplistic and dishonest contrast of New Life Church between the first 22 years and the years since Brady Boyd has been pastor.

John Bolin, our youth pastor for many years while at New Life, and his wife Sarah, wrote and produced a Passion play titled “The Thorn” for Easter. Over 10% of our county’s population came to see it each year. It was a production that communicated the resurrection of Christ so effectively that since its inception, tens of thousands have come to Christ. We would perform the play for the four weeks leading up to Easter, then, on Easter Sunday morning we would use the resurrection scene to communicate the Easter story. It was dramatic. Pastor Brady used the same production after his arrival. Strangely,  the CT article gives a disparaging and distorted view of that in its opening.

National Association of Evangelicals (NAE)

I became the president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) because I missed an executive committee meeting in Minneapolis, MN. I was asked to speak at a local church’s missions meeting, which I did. When I returned, I discovered I had been elected the new president contingent on later approval of the whole board. That soon happened. I do not believe in self-promotion (thus no radio programs, tv programs, evangelistic ministries or missions ministries named after myself, not even a major donors list, and no capital campaigns). I have a high view of God’s Sovereignity. Thus, when asked by godly people to do something, I typically respond with “yes,” and I try to do the best I can to serve. Consequently, one of my responsibilities as president of the NAE was to explain evangelical positions in sound-bites for media outlets. In my mind, those were opportunities to communicate the Gospel on the other side of the cultural wall–in other words, in secular settings and through secular media to those who wondered why we Christians were doing some of the things we did. The CT article infers that this attempt to be faithful was somehow negative.

During that season, I received requests from media outlets and sometimes federal government officials who were seeking an explanation about Christian stances and activities. I took these as opportunities because they needed to hear from Christians about why we believed, spoke, and acted as we did. George Bush was President at the time, and his evangelical position as a Methodist sometimes needed explanation. For the press, I developed an overly simplistic but useable definition of an evangelical (A person who believes Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that the Bible is the Word of God, and that we must be born-again.) Some in the media did not know the difference between local churches and missional ministries like Focus on the Family, Compassion International, or the Navigators. And when a group of Jewish scholars protested the movie presentation of Christ’s life in theaters, I defended freedom of speech and religion in the public square. I never once called any reporter for coverage, I just said “yes” if their request seemed authentic.

I no longer believe the press is innocent.

I no longer believe the press is innocent. During that season of my life, I sincerely participated in working sessions with Ariel Sharon on Israeli security and Palestinian civil rights concerns, strategy meetings with Tony Blair and his staff on free market approaches to poverty relief in Africa, working sessions with President Bush on how to lower steel tariffs (so the poor worldwide could afford tin sheets for their roofs, and refrigerators and cars at a more reasonable price, without inflaming the steel worker’s unions who had high steel prices propped up by our tariffs to protect their own salaries), ways to provide AIDS relief in Africa, and how to make public school more available to religious groups without violating separation of church and state issues. I did not do photo ops with these guys, nor did I arrive with TV cameras or send out reports in newsletters, but I did tell our church where I had been when their pastor was not available from time to time, because I considered the church my primary focus. I think CT’s negative slant in its portrayal of that time is inaccurate.

Even though the media presented Colorado Springs as having significant influence on the global body of Christ, it was not due to the activities of New Life Church, which operated as a local church serving our city, with no television or radio ministries. This image may have been felt more because of Focus on the Family (#1 radio broadcast in the world at the time), and other global para-church ministries. Some said Colorado Springs had more international evangelical para-church ministries than any other single city in the world. I do not know if that it is true, but the press seemed to think so. And I know that during that era, all of those ministries were growing . . . not necessarily in influence in Colorado Springs, but around the world. Since we were the largest church, we were a picture the press could use that communicated this image. Those pictures were more powerful than endless cubicles of warehouse space at Focus. Thus,  we as a church ended up being the poster image.

The power of prayer, worship, and the Word

I did and I do believe in the power of prayer, worship, and the Word. Back then the book, The Prayer of Jabez by Bruce Wilkinson, President of Walk Thru The Bible Ministries, was popular. Dick Eastman from Every Home for Christ was promoting the ideas in this book, and other prayer books heavily. New Life also cooperated with Peter Wagner, who had recently resigned from Fuller Seminary and was was leading a massive global prayer effort through Luis Bush’s World Prayer Track. We also built the World Prayer Center as a place for worship and prayer for the nations and ethno-linguistic people groups world-wide. There we served communion 24 hours a day, and promoted prayer and fasting at the World Prayer Center and Praise Mountain, a prayer and fasting center in the mountains. Since Patton Dodd, the author of this article, was a young man at the time, maybe the Prayer of Jabez seemed self-centered and ungodly in his eyes. That is the impression CT gives.

Were there internal and external conflicts during this time? Yes indeed. I think it’s inherant in the fact that God works through people like all of us who are fallen. By placing His divinity within our humanity, and then leaving us on the Earth to try to do what he is doing and say what he is saying, a monumental task develops . . . especially if increased numbers of people keep showing up in our churches.

I think I’ve said enough today to communicate that I respect Patton Dodd and Christianity Today in their attempt to encourage the core imperatives of our faith. I regret that they created an artifical contrast between my values and the wonderful improvements Brady Boyd and his team have made at New Life. Frankly, I think it’s unfair, but it does reveal a core problem in our evangelical culture. Why did Christianity Today present this the way they did? And to use it as their cover story in December, the month we all celebrate God coming to us in human form, seems to communicate an odd priority at CT. Though misrepresented, I know how Christ works through me and others by his grace, and I am confident that in the end, Christ will be glorified, the Bible will be read by an increasing number of people, and as they read, they will respond to His wonderful offer of sins forgiven and eternal life.

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21st Century Evangelicalism

Smith Wigglesworth: Disqualified?

God confirmed Smith Wigglesworth’s ministry through powerful signs and wonders, including the creative formation of missing limbs and the disappearance of cancerous growths. His words continue to provide spiritual, financial, emotional, and physical healing as they inspire and build faith.

Graham Jeffs, a solicitor from England who is now an elder at St. James Church in Colorado Springs, attended church less than a half-mile from where Wigglesworth lived and preached. He recently gave me copies of the hand written correspondence between Smith Wigglesworth and the leaders of the Pentecostal Missionary Union (PMU) written after Wigglesworth had been accused of misconduct by two separate women at the peak of his ministry career.

After the situation became known to the leaders of the PMU, they demanded his resignation from the denomination, from ministry, and from public life. In a letter dated October 18, 1920, Wigglesworth repented, asked for mercy, and claimed that God had forgiven him. He also expresses dismay that the leaders failed to stand with him by saying of Cecil Polhill, the leader of the PMU, “I am afraid he is not the strong character I have believed him to be.” What was Polhill’s weak character to which Wigglesworth referred? Perhaps Polhill assumed a position of moral superiority and used his chain-of-command position to supersede a godly response and the respect due Wigglesworth as a fellow brother in Christ.

Two days later on October 20, 1920, Polhill responded to Wigglesworth’s “repentance”. Polhill wrote on behalf of the PMU leadership, “We do not think your statement (of repentance) I received this morning adequate” (underlined by Polhill). He continued, “In a few days I hope to send your draft of one we propose to ask you to sign. . . in any case you ought to send in your resignation to the P.M.U.” He continued, “In the event of your sending in your resignation to P.M.U., we should do our best to avoid any, in our judgment, unnecessary publicity.” Then, he used traditional church methods rather than biblical mandate by writing, “We think also that you should abstain for a prolonged season from participation in the Lord’s public work; and seek to retrieve your position before God and man, by a fairly long period of godly quiet living, so showing works meet for repentance” (underlined by Polhill).

Some speculate that we received the benefit of Smith Wigglesworth’s ministry only because the PMU did not have the ability to command attention in the press or publish their views on the internet to discredit Wigglesworth’s ministry. They certainly did what they could within their own spheres of influence, but Wigglesworth believed in the priesthood of the believer and concluded it unwise to submit to them. This serves as a warning to all of us: God chooses whom He uses, and our self-righteous judgments are typically wrong. Maybe humility, kindness, and helpfulness would be a better approach than the one Polhill took with Wigglesworth. That way, we are advocates for resurrection in the lives of others. It’s the scandal that often makes the man the person he’s always prayed to be. A church scandal seldom excludes the central figure of the scandal from the Kingdom of God. It often strengthens them in their faith walk. Just read the stories of the Bible greats.

Every time someone else sins, our response positions us in their story. We either contribute to their suffering and work with others to hurt them, or courageously stand outside the crowd and help them with their resurrection. I believe there is a time for discipline and justice, but in general, our role as Christians is to lift their burden and help them.

The next day, October 21, 1920, Wigglesworth wrote to Polhill, “The Good Hand of God is upon me & I will live it all down. . . I shall go forward deer [sic] Brother and I ask you be carfull [sic] that the Gospel is not hinderd [sic] thrue [sic] you . . . Do not truble [sic] to send any thing to sign. I signed my letter to you that [is] all” (underlined by Wigglesworth). The documents prepared by the PMU and the character Polhill displayed by his response to the scandal prompted Wigglesworth to send a hand written note dated October 21st to a recipient unknown to us saying, “He (Polhill) rules PMU and everyone else. I think he will have truble [sic] later.”

The PMU demands gave Wigglesworth opportunity to demonstrate his tenacity under fire and his faithfulness to God’s call on his life. Smith Wigglesworth resigned from the PMU, had the strength to keep Polhill from hindering his ministry by disregarding the church’s attempt to discipline and/or restore him, went to the train station to go to his next meeting, and continued doing what God asked him to do. From that time to this day, he is lauded as a pillar of godly strength.

Spoiled goods? Many today would have considered the Wigglesworth scandal, which would not have been kept quiet like it was in the 1920s, disqualifying. And his strong responses to his spiritual authorities would be interpreted as proof of his guilt and lack of repentance in the minds of many leaders in our modern church movement.

The dilemma our religious leaders face in trying to determine who should be used by God and who should not is that God uses problem people. Adam and Eve launched the human race, obeyed the devil and raised a murderer. Noah, the guy who saved all living creatures from wrath, was alone, drunk, and naked in his tent. What in the world was going on in there?!  Moses worshipped foreign gods and was a murderer. Abraham often lied, Isaac did too, and Jacob was a deceitful thief. David misused his official position, committed adultery and murder, and raised insubordinate sons. Many of the prophets whose books we read today were hated and rejected by their contemporaries, for good reasons.

To keep from belaboring a well understood point, I’ll just highlight the Apostle Paul for New Testament purposes because he wrote two-thirds of it . . . he was a religious leader who murdered people of faith with whom he disagreed, for the glory of God of course. Long after Paul’s conversion experience and great success in ministry, he had a messenger of Satan tormenting him, frustrating him so greatly that he maintained that sin had an independent life in him that was not reflective of his new life in Christ. We would not accept that explanation from anyone else, but for Paul, we rationalize it. Most evangelical Bible scholars teach that he found relief before he was martyred, but that’s a theological construction, not a sure fact. We all hope it’s true, but it might not be. Regardless, we all accept that a perfect God uses imperfect people. I don’t say this to excuse any of our own sin, but it might explain how we should respond to fellow believers, even fellow leaders, who find themselves trapped in sin. No doubt, we all need to grow in personal holiness, and we will, in fact, be completely perfected when we see Jesus face-to-face. But until then, might our current Christian culture be missing the point? And, is it possible we have apathy about our most deadly sins?

1 John 5:16-17 says, “If you see a Christian brother or sister sinning in a way that does not lead to death, you should pray, and God will give that person life. But there is a sin that leads to death, and I am not saying you should pray for those who commit it. All wicked actions are sin, but not every sin leads to death.”

What is the sin that leads to death? Any sin from which we do not repent. What sin’s might those be? Sins we do not think serious.

Based on the volume of warnings Jesus had for religious leaders, it might be that religious leadership has the most significant potential for undetected sinfulness than any other group. In 2007, I had a global Christian leader visit me. He told me how blessed I was that I had dealt with the type of sin from which people repent. Then he wistfully said that his sins were the type people did not repent of, because they actually strengthened his ministry, increased his income, and increased the respect of others for his ministry. He explained that the more judgmental, loveless, critical, and dogmatic he was, the more Christian people complimented and supported him. He explained how simplistic judgments drew applause, where nuanced explanations cost him support. He said it would be the end of his ministry if he repented of his sins.

The basis of our salvation is that Christ alone is our righteousness. But since sin and self are so deceitful, how can we tell if we are self-righteous? I suggest that it is our response to another’s sin. I’ve learned that to the degree we are impressed with ourselves, we respond to another’s sin punitively. And to the degree that we are dependent upon Christ alone, we respond to another’s sin redemptively. Our responses to another’s sin reveals whether we trust in our righteousness or the righteousness of Christ. God revealed his heart in his response to our sin. We reveal our hearts every time we respond to another’s sin.

Smith Wigglesworth’s life embodies both of these ideas: the way God uses dependent but flawed people, and the way we religious leaders often miss our opportunity to model the Gospel by our response to another’s sin, thinking we are being godly. When we Christian leaders respond to another’s sin, we must choose whether to crucify the sinner or to facilitate their resurrection. It’s our response in this matter that reveals whether or not we are Christlike in our leadership.