Does Your Church Rate?
One of the difficult things about going to a new town is deciding which church to visit. How can you tell, simply by a church’s name, whether or not it will fit your style or meet your expectations?
Ever the obliging servants of the public good, a few newspapers have sensed the need. They have church reviewers, right along with their stables of movie, music, and restaurant critics. Some of these reviewers have adopted the “star” rating systems, judging churches on their preaching, friendliness, and music.
But why stop there? Wouldn’t it be great to have a rating system for each portion of the church’s programs? Children’s sermons, of course, would be rated G. Most portions of the youth program, such as hayrides and pizza parties, could be rated PG (although retreats or overnights might be PG-13).
Sermons and assorted lectures would probably benefit from Parental Guidance (PG), excepting G sermons on Christmas and Easter, and an infrequent R rating for marriage seminars or book studies on the Song of Solomon. Using the X rating is unlikely. But there are a few occasions prone to violence, such as church business meetings or softball games.
Of course, it does seem tacky to use “stars” or movie ratings to pick apart a church and its pastor. Then again, critiquing is nothing new. We’ve been doing it for years—usually over Sunday dinner.
EUTYCHUS
Genetic Engineering: No Babel To Researchers
I was deeply distressed by your February 7 cover, which showed men constructing a double helix into the sky and titled, “Genetic Engineering: A Modern Tower of Babel?” That hurts. Think of us, the many dedicated researchers who work very hard to advance medical research. That cover was a slap in the face.
MICHAEL WEST
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, Tex.
Your readers might be interested in a book, Come, Let Us Play God, by Leroy Augenstein (Harpers Bros., 1969). In the foreword, Dr. Augenstein makes this observation: “We have 10 to 25 years—at most 50—to set up new decision-making apparatus and answer some profound questions which previously we have left to God.”
A good portion of those years have come and gone. The time is upon us.
REV. JAMES M. LOGAN
Tucson, Ariz.
Evangelicals And The Ncc
I was pleased with your interview of Arie Brouwer [“Can Conservatives Find a Home in the National Council of Churches?” News, Feb. 7]. I pray that his call to evangelicals for involvement with NCC may be heeded. I was initially thrown off by the inquisitorial tone of your questions on “Personal Theology.” I admire the way they were answered and the patience with which they appear to have been received. How many people could stand up to such an interrogation?
REV. PIETER BYHOUWER
Hopewell Friends Church
Dana, Ind.
Thank you for your incisive questioning. Although Brouwer slipped and slid around any firm answers regarding world evangelism, the NCC’s propensity for selective justice, and the issues of homosexuality and abortion; and although he was able somehow to blame evangelicals for not spotting the theological changes for the better in the NCC in recent years (I still haven’t spotted them); he did reveal, at least to me, very clearly where he stands. Frankly, I have lots more respect for the old up-front liberalism than the politicized evangelicalism I see here.
Perhaps we were better off when evangelicalism was not so much in vogue.
REV. PAUL B. NULL
Bethel Baptist Church
Aumsville, Oreg.
Brouwer is mistaken when he says the old liberal tradition of the Federal Council of Churches is gone. By his denial of biblical inerrancy and his many other errors, I would say that the old liberalism/modernism our spiritual forefathers fought is alive and well in the person of Mr. Brouwer.
THOMAS M. CHMELOVSKI
Lincoln, Neb.
Evidently when Arie Brouwer states that evangelicals “deal too much with yesterday’s theological issues” he is referring to the day before he was interviewed. Or perhaps he hasn’t read the NCC textbook The New Testament: An Introduction, authored by Perrin and Duling. This text, which is still being used, was revised in 1982. In it the virgin birth, bodily resurrection, and ascension of Jesus are all denied as historical realities. These events are said to be examples of the “needs of myth overcoming history.” I can think of many names for persons who, as professing Christians, deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ—but Trinitarian is not one of them. When the NCC stops printing “yesterday’s” theology, perhaps then evangelicals can stop dealing with “yesterday’s” theological issues.
CRAIG A. WOOD
Indianapolis, Ind.
CT says some evangelicals question the theology of Arie Brouwer because of his social stands, and gives as an example his arrest while protesting apartheid. Does this mean that when the South African majority is finally accorded their rights by the minority that evangelicals will have to admit that they were neutral, if not opposed?
In the recent Martin Luther King celebrations it was abundantly clear that King received very little moral or spiritual support from the evangelical segment of American churches. Who doesn’t acknowledge that fact with remorse and shame?
TED M. BENSON
Colorado Springs, Colo.
I was most struck by Brouwer’s contention that the account of the tower of Babel is a “theological statement” concerning apartheid, implying that it is of little or no historical value.
While racial discrimination in any setting is worthy of censure, a contextual examination of Genesis 9–11 will reveal that this is actually an episode in which a majority segment of the “human community” had chosen to remove itself from under the authority of the Creator. In calling for “true unity,” they named their society the “gate to God” and attempted to establish a one-world government and a wholly unified religious structure—most probably in hopes of self-sufficiently escaping God’s curse on Canaan and subjugating their more “conservative” Shemite counterparts. For this reason God sovereignly and spontaneously confused their one language into many and dispersed them into numerous less-harmful entities.
KEN DURHAM
Dallas, Tex.
The Art Of Self-Beeping
Perhaps a transmitter that would set off the preacher’s beeper is the better solution to the boring sermon (Eutychus, Feb. 7).
LAURIE K. MCBURNEY
Zionsville, Ind.
God The Father And Discipline
William Eisenhower, in “Fearing God” (Feb. 7), portrays God as Creator, Lord, Savior, King—but not once as Father. As one who was raised by a loving and disciplining human father, I do not find myself “wondering: How can I love what I fear?” Hebrews 12 focuses sharply on what the New Testament reaffirms repeatedly: God is our Father, and he disciplines us as sons. What son should not live in healthy fear of his dad’s disciplinary resolve and power, when faced with disobedience?
REV. GREG COLLORD
Richland, Wash.
Try Prayer And Friendship
I’m glad I’m not a member of the “historic” Moody Church, else I’d be afraid to breathe at the wrong time [“Chicago Church Acts Against a Former Member Who Performs Abortions,” Feb. 7].
Demonstrations and ostracizing Dr. Bickham from the church by its members—really! Wouldn’t prayer and friendship, with an extra measure of godly love, do more for him? The church members’ behavior will probably do more to turn Dr. Bickham from God and his people than turn him back to God again.
KAREN POTTERS
Bartlesville, Okla.
Regarding Moody Church picketing an ex-member’s abortion clinic and distributing leaflets protesting his activity in his home neighborhood—why stop there?
Picket the adulterers’ offices and homes too, and be sure to include in the “picketing and distributing” the liars, gluttons, cheats, and deceivers. Maybe a few groups could boycott the gossipers and “empty talkers” (Titus 1). Better yet, picket the whole Moody Church and flood the surrounding neighborhood with leaflets stating that the members are indeed guilty of sins.
ELIZABETH CROZIER
Indianapolis, Ind.
I am disappointed in coverage of the alleged abortionist controversy at Moody Church, as well as the way in which the zealous church members have completely disregarded the reconciliation process outlined in Matthew 18:15–17. Jesus’ purpose was to posit a process of healing in relationships, not a church-wide (or individual, for that matter) lynching party. The church can hardly glorify Christ by public exhibition of a sin of one of the brethren; Jesus commanded reconciliation before any other spiritual business (Matt. 5:23–25).
I can hardly believe that what Moody Church is doing could possibly reconcile their wayward brother back into the fellowship of the brethren. Rather, I fear that Brother Bickham may be gone for good.
REV. WM. DREW MOUNTCASTLE
Portsmouth, Va.
Let God Be The Judge
Nothing in J. I. Packer’s comprehensive “Good Pagans and God’s Kingdom” [Jan. 17] is more profound than the concluding paragraph. We need to be reminded that our job is to witness; God’s job is to determine everyone’s future—believer and nonbeliever alike.
I would like to add one scriptural reference. The only place in the Gospels where Jesus clearly states who will enter the kingdom and who will enter hell (Matt. 25:31–46) is disturbingly clear. Judgment rests on what people did—fed the hungry, visited the sick, and so on. When Jesus says, “You did it unto me,” neither the sheep nor the goats claimed such awareness or intention.
This seems to say that consciously proclaimed faith and obedience to the God of Jesus Christ is not the test; that one can be “in Christ” without knowing it intellectually. This is not universal salvation. The goats went to hell. But the judgment of God is shown to rest on what is in the heart and not the head. We on earth must stay with what we can do: witness. We are totally incapable of judging others. Judgment belongs to God who knows the heart.
D. T. SAMUEL
St. Cloud, Minn.
Why do the proponents of the either/eternal-blessedness/or eternal-conscious-suffering view of the future state assume that the only alternative is universalism? A third view is that of conditional (i.e., noninherent) immortality.
Packer, and all scholarly evangelicals, know this doctrine, its antiquity, and its exponents. Why do they never cite it, even for the purposes of refutation? Can there be a conspiracy of silence where the glory of God, the integrity of Scripture, the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ, are concerned?
GRACE IRWIN
Toronto, Ont., Canada
“What is the point of asking anyone to change religions, if all religions are Christianity in disguise?” The point is that we do not know and cannot know, and it is sheer arrogance to take a definitive position one way or the other. But what we surely do know is that it is a terrible sin to withhold the “Good News” from our fellow men.
VINCENT G. SPRAGUE
Downey, Calif.
God’S Tools
C. Stephen Evans in “The Blessings of Mental Anguish” [Jan. 17] captured the dilemma of my own ministry. Once, I sought the rod of Moses to change the world around me and eliminate the problems for my congregation. I could not answer their questions of “Why?” when we faced the agony of helplessness in a hopeless world. But then, I sought comfort in God in the midst of agony.
God did not give Moses a rod to change the world. He simply asked Moses, “What is in your hand?” It was the rod God used in the hands of Moses. Today God asks me as he asks all of us, “What is in your hand?” God will use the rod of worship, the rod of fellowship, and the rod of service to the world for Christ’s sake to bring us to the Father.
REV. H. C. REYNOLDS
Star Valley Southern Baptist Church
Payson, Ariz.
For every Charles Haddon Spurgeon and Søren Kirkegaard who have turned depression into sermons and philosophical treatises, there are many, many more Christians whose lives have been destroyed by emotional and psychological turmoil. They can, and should, be cared for whenever possible by competent, loving psychologists. Praise God that they are around and practicing their profession!
I don’t doubt for a minute that God’s strength is made perfect in weakness. Even emotional and psychological weaknesses can be turned over to God. But psychological problems have behavioral manifestations that can badly hurt a ministry, testimony, and credibility among non-Christians. My depression and fears almost destroyed my ministry. I thank God for the firm, loving psychotherapist I am now seeing. I’m not ashamed to say I have been feeling much better—and incidentally, feeling good is not hazardous to my testimony.
NAME WITHHELD
San Juan, Tex.
It is my impression that many Christians are at least implicitly uncomfortable with the psychotherapeutic discipline because it deals primarily with liberating people from troubling authority. Very frequently authority from which the person is liberated is the values of his or her religious upbringing. But isn’t that what is needed some of the time? Where would the Christian church be without the witness of Paul, which followed the experience of liberation he had on the road to Damascus?
It seems care should be taken to direct criticism toward the rampant narcissism of the “therapeutic society” rather than toward its failure to get permission from the church to do the church’s work of healing.
REV. JOHN HARKEY GIBBS
Austin, Tex.
I question whether we need to conclude that Christians should be grateful because some saints suffered their emotional ills prior to the treatment of the “therapeutic age.” Criticizing modern therapy because it lessens our potential for suffering seems akin to lamenting that Salk’s vaccine has reduced our chance to experience physical impairment.
RHONDA H. JACOBSEN
Grantham, Pa.
Militant Perfectionism
In regard to R. C. Sproul’s “Heresies of Holiness” [Jan. 17], Scripture tells us in 1 John 2:1 not to sin, and 1 Peter 4:1–2 plainly says that since Christ suffered in his body, we are to arm ourselves with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. Let us all at least consider we can be militant perfectionists rather than add any further to heresies of holiness.
REV. ROBERT L. HENEGHAN
Church of the Nazarene
Redmond, Oreg.
The Ct Institute On Trends
The Christianity Today Institute articles, “Into the Next Century: Trends Facing the Church” [Jan. 17], were excellent. However, I take exception to Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen’s interpretation of working women. In dividing women into “wage-earning” and “full-time homemakers,” she immediately denigrates the work of stay-at-home women. To further add insult, she blithely assumes that the women who offer day care in their homes are not really working since she lumps them into the “full-time homemaker” category. If those women do not earn a wage also, I’ll eat a week’s supply of Bandaids and baby wipes!
SARAH BRECHNER
Winchester, Ky.
Van Leeuwen’s point of view is a thinly veiled feminism, which is a cause of great inner decay within the church, resulting in the external proofs of abortion, broken families, the alienation and institutionalization of our children. I suggest she read the pastoral epistles of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus. Here she will find clearly that the traditional family lifestyle is the biblical one. In addition, men and women have equally important but different callings to leadership within the church.
STEPHEN J. MUNIER
Duluth, Ga.
How timely can you get—the “Trend” series especially! How scary things are, humanly speaking, but how heartening to know that all things are working after the counsel of his will. And one of these days, the One who shall come will come!
REV. ROBERT W. TEAGUE
York, Pa.
In the CT Institute overview “Shifting Denominational Power,” by Norman Shawchuck and Richard Olson, the authors write: “Historically developing denominations have drawn upon the surrounding culture in determining their own ecclesiastical structure.” Also they point out that “Congregational-polity churches are growing” while churches with other forms of government are not. As generalizations go there is a fair amount of truth in these statements, but I find it disconcerting that the matter is left there.
Have we forgotten that the church is not a democracy in the New Testament? Paul’s epistles prescribe a church polity (by elders) that is held to be normative.
DICK FULLER
Sparks, Nev.
