by Mike Hagan, President

Let me affirm that I believe God still calls people to specific ministries.  This statement requires several points of clarification to put it in today’s ministry context.  Let’s begin with a biblical perspective, then develop a working definition of what the call means.

Every believer is called to minister (Eph 4).  No distinction exists in the Bible between laity and clergy – we are all the people (laos, “people”) of God.  In a sense, we are all “clergy.”  If a person is a believer, he or she is a minister.  Karl Barth, the Swiss theologian, observed that to be a Christian requires a call to salvation, a starting point.  Further he believed that Christians are called to the task of witness and to serving God by serving the world, a belief that he illustrated by Old and New Testament examples (Church Dogmatics IV 3 (2^nd half), 571, 576, 577-92.C).

I think Barth’s theological viewpoint spotlights one of the great failings of the modern church.  We continue a form of a Christian caste system with laity beneath the clergy.  All believers need to view their lives as ministries, whether they volunteer or are paid for service.  The mechanic, the physician, the waitress, the clerk, the CPA, the teacher, the grocery worker, the pilot, the pastor – you name the job – all need to see their life pursuit as a part of their ministry calling where they witness the Good News that their life is different because of relationship with an eternal God.

On the other hand, some Christians claim that they have received a call of God to a specific ministry or form of service, sometimes called a vocation.  C. Peter Wagner, professor emeritus of missions at Fuller Seminary, in a personal conversation observed some years ago that if biblical patterns are able to teach us anything, we should expect ten percent of the church to be in vocational Christian service.  Statistics indicate the number comes closer to one percent.

The belief that people are still called by God to service in specific ministries has been subject to criticism due to the subjectivity of this belief.  In the book, Decision Making and the Will of God, Garry Friesen argues that deciding the will of God requires that a Christian walk in wisdom or, what he terms, a biblical quality of life.  Such a life makes most decisions superfluous, for if we are walking in right relationship with the Lord, our decisions should be correct or “in the will of God.”  His approach to the Christian life provides a healthy corrective to more traditional views that make the believer either in or out of God’s will in any given moment, depending what choices are made from moment to moment.  However, when he applies the “wisdom principle” to the question of ministry, he limits leadership only to qualified men who meet the standards of 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, and 1 Peter 5. (Decision Making and the Will of God (Portland, OR: Multnomah, 1980) 317.)  Friesen sets aside any biblical accounts of God’s call because they are “mystical” and not the norm for today. (Ibid, 317-318.)  Although I am in agreement with the general thesis of his book and even the general tenor of his chapter on ministry, he overcorrects and eliminates the testimony of the Old Testament, New Testament, church history, and testimonies of many people in ministry today.  My personal experience of God’s call sounds similar to Friesen’s.  But I believe that we cannot remove the mystical from our lives with God.  I think we should correct the abuses Friesen notes and also open new avenues of understanding to God’s working then and now.

This perspective leads to another point that demands clarification.  I believe the Bible gives more help in discerning God’s call than interpreters have allowed.  Part of the reason for limiting discussion on the call of God comes from the abuses by some people who use their “so-called call” as a club to justify whatever they do or teach in the name of Christ.  An egotistical, narcissistic person, a Jim Jones or David Koresh-type of person, exacts a heavy toll on Christianity by claiming the call of God to a perverse version of truth where hundreds of followers poison themselves or die needlessly.

More subtle abuse emerges from those who restrict the call of God to one format, such as the voice of God, or to one type of person, say a handsome, athletic type leader, or to a “called only ministerium” without the possibility that God may use people without specific “calls.”  “If you don’t have my experience, you have not been called,” becomes the attitude.

Karl Barth put the question another way when he noted that the biblical patterns were not interchangeable. (IV 3 (2^nd half) 577.)  He observed that every biblical example of God’s call is unique to that person and that situation.  His observation is correct and a helpful reminder, but we still can learn from the experiences of biblical persons.  Although no two biblical examples are the same, similarities do exist and, more important, we find points of transfer in each one.  Their encounters with God and God’s call shed light on our quest to discern our call.

Another point should be made.  I think that many Christians need help in understanding or discerning God’s call or, perhaps better, in affirming what God is doing or has done.  The future of the church requires it.  We live in a time when an unsettled vagueness about ministry exists.  Robert Bellah, a sociologist, and his co-researchers observe in his bestselling book, Habits of the Heart, that we have moved from a culture comfortable with theology and theological language to a culture more comfortable with psychological or therapeutic language.  As a result, people are not open to the ministry as we have known it in the past.  They feel uncomfortable with the idea.  They do not know what the “call of the Lord” might mean.  On the other hand, they do know that they don’t want to get up in front of everyone on Sunday morning and preach or perform funerals for people that aren’t family or a myriad of other duties ministers do.  The church needs to explore this area if we are to face the future.  Already in 1956, H. Richard Niebuhr pointed out the failure of churches and educational institutions to clarify the nature of the call.  (The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry (New York: Harper and Row, 1956) 65.)  Little has changed.

It is imperative that we reflect on how God calls his servants to specific ministries.  My purpose in this book is to affirm the inclusive call to all believers and to give direction to the church and to individuals to determine objective criteria from biblical precedence, to mark off subjective safeguards, and to provide a guide to transferable principles from biblical models.  Difficult problems will remain, but such problems should not stop us from exploring how we can know what God may be saying to us.

Mark Ashton, lead pastor at Christ Community Church in Omaha, preached on the rapture on Sunday, October 23.  We were in one of the services for worship because our board of trustee meetings were in Omaha from Thursday to Saturday.  It was refreshing to hear someone embrace a difficult topic, a subject I have not heard a sermon on for forty years.

Why don’t we hear more sermons on difficult topics or doctrines?  A lot of times difficult topics are controversial; you can’t win because someone will be mad at you.  Many times difficult teachings of doctrine prove hard because such a paucity of biblical references exists.  For example, the doctrine of the Trinity lacks any one verse or teaching to rest a major doctrine on.  We have to mass together the references to two or three persons of the Triune God to uncover the biblical teachings.  Fortunately, there are lots of them.

In the case of the rapture the teaching revolves around three passages – Matthew 24:15-35, 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.  Interpreters agree on only one thing in these passages – the return of Jesus at his second coming is involved.  Of course, there are many verses in the OT and NT that describe the second coming, the judgment, and the eternal state.  The case is made more difficult because the word “rapture” does not occur except in the Latin translation of Thessalonians.  Extremes of interpretation abound from “you’ve got to be kidding, of course there is no such thing,” to detailed ascription of day, time, and hour to this event in God’s eschatological plan, something Jesus didn’t know.

Even interpreters who believe the Bible teaches a “snatching up” of believers who are alive when Christ returns differ on the specifics, whether it is at the beginning of the tribulation or the mid-point or at the end, with some believing that when a person believes during the tribulation they will be taken to the Lord (kind of a partial rapture dependent on a person’s time of belief).  It gets quite wearisome and may be the reason some just throw their arms up and focus on the return of Christ.  Sad how it divides good Christians.

With a limit on specific verses available for a definitive interpretation I do believe we need to move forward with humbleness and care.  After all, only God knows the time and specifics.

However, one thing jumps off the biblical page in each passage above that allows me to get stronger and jump up and down in clear rhetorical verbiage.  Preach it, brother.  Every one of the passages ends with application.

We abandon these passages at our own risk because they were meant to drive us to “be ready” for the Lord’s return, to live “pure” lives in light of the coming, and to “encourage each other with these words.”  Despite the difficulties of interpretation we are instructed to apply these passages to our lives as community.  The biblical truth is that the Lord has the beginning and the end in control.  In light of this truth, we are to live right and ready.

When the world around us looks uglier and uglier, we rest in the biblical perspective that our God is in control.  It may be fun (for some) or wearying (for others) to debate the interpretations, but we better not forget the reason they are in the Bible.  They are meant to impact our daily life in relationship with God and the world.

You may ask, “Okay, Mike, how do you interpret these passages?  You really haven’t said.”  Good question.  Can I win if I answer?  Well, I don’t think it is a contest and I hope you don’t either.  Here is my interpretation.

[Sorry.  Mike is gone.  We couldn’t find him so we published this hoping he wanted it to go out on his blog. Editor]

Just kidding.  I remain a premillennialist (with real questions about the literal numbers in the Bible – is it a thousand years or is it a really long time of peace after Christ’s return) and a pretribulationist (with wonderings about the numbers again, but with the belief that the tribulation is a time of wrath and believers will not need to suffer the wrath of judgment).  And in the same breath I remind myself to be ready, live pure, and encourage each other with the promise of Christ’s return.

Thank you, Mark, for preaching on the subject.

Where does the future lie in theological education?

In a recent blog Seth Godin proposes the future lies in niches rather than the masses. His new book, We Are All Weird, observes that anything that goes against the norm is weird. At one point in time, however, everything we do or know was weird, deemed against the norm, out of step with whatever everyone at the time thought or did.

Every one of us today has the ability through social media to contribute.  We can all be the writer, the inventor, the change agent.  But we will connect with our own niche, the people who agree with our ideas or want to react to our thoughts or inventions or proposals.

So what is the niche for Sioux Falls Seminary?

First, it is becoming clearer that it is the upper Midwest region.  We get students from all over North America and a small percentage from overseas, but 85% come from South Dakota or a state that touches on South Dakota.

Second, and a contributor to this statistic, we understand the “town-and-country” environment that makes up the upper Midwest, the environment our students understand.  What is meant by town-and-country surfaces in a strong work ethic, a connection to the farm even if a person has never lived on the farm, a conservative theological bent that blears denominational boundaries, and a drive to minister in this region.

Third, we seem to keep finding underserved populations as part of our niche.  Our whole region is a flyover zone, an underserved region.  In the middle of Sioux Falls, a struggling low income population in need of listening ears with a growing number of students who sense a call to minister to this group.  We have committed ourselves to finding a way to serve the large areas of native reservation in South Dakota, especially the Rosebud.  Even our expansion into Omaha comes because it has no seminary presence at all.  Many serve churches and ministries there with no preparation.  They have great desire and passion, but little equipping for maximum effectiveness.

Fourth, and perhaps less defined, we have found a niche where our openness to listen before prescribing or even determining what is needed keeps opening doors to people who find our attitude refreshing.  I hear people saying things like, “I don’t know where this is leading, but I feel like I am supposed to . . .  Can you help me?”  Or, “Your curriculum and degrees don’t say what I want, but would it prepare me for . . .”  By listening and finding ways to address their specific direction and goals we seem to have a growing number of students who don’t fit into nice, neat places of ministry.

What about technology, you might ask?  Everyone has the possibility of buying and using the technology available.  Our niche seems to be to keep it in its place as a tool while finding a way to meet the goals of our students.

What about the needs of the Church?  All seminaries should attempt to meet the needs of the Church.  The question before seminaries today that we need to focus on is what the church local will look like twenty years from now.  What will be the best ways to structure worship, grow disciples, transform communities?  The Church will persist, but what will the local church look like?

If niches will grow in importance, we will need to define our niches and forge ahead into effective service.

by Mike Hagan, President

If you look up tattooing in an anthropology text book, you will find it covered under the area of “scarification.”  Scarification has been practiced throughout history by different peoples and cultures, going back to the neolithic.  In recent years it has taken on a new life of popularity among the younger set, perhaps stemming from Janis Joplin’s use of tattoos on her wrist and left breast, though you find older people getting tattoos, too.

In the Old Testament the Israelite was forbidden “cutting” their body in a ritualistic way (Lev 19:28).  Judaism forbids the practice of tattoo due to this prohibition.  Some Christians would follow suit.  I remember a friend who told his children they could pay for their own education if they got a tattoo.  He used the Leviticus reference.  Since the Leviticus use refers to cutting for the dead (perhaps a Canaanite pagan practice), an association with a polytheistic rite (see Lev 21:5), perhaps the correlation is too distant to be valid in today’s culture.  Of course, anything that points to anti-God connotations should be viewed carefully by a Christian today.

Some modern usage may reflect evil, but most often it is just the “in” thing to do.  Military service people often got tattoos to associate with their unit or a battle or that period in their lives.  One of my brothers served in the Navy and later in the merchant marine and most of his body is tattooed.  He regrets most of it now, but it is too late.  It did open doors for the gospel when he ministered in the women’s prison in Nevada.

The modern word “tattoo” comes from a Tahitian word, tatu.  Slang often refers to them as “tats.”  Used in various cultures, including the Polynesian, as a rite of passage or a tribal marker, it continues to do so in a way in our culture.  Body piercing of various sorts is usually associated with it.  Most cultures recognize it as personal art.

The “mark” of a Christian in the teaching of Jesus was “love.”  Love cannot simply be a tattoo on the physical body.  It goes much deeper and its impact proves more profound.  I think of receiving a tattoo as a painful process, pricking the skin to put dye beneath the first layer of skin.  But “love” as a mark of a Christian may also be painful, perhaps exceeding the physical pain of scarification.  We are to bear the marks of Jesus, to suffer as he suffered (1 Peter).  As we love others we risk failure, disappointment, abuse, misunderstanding, at times even physical suffering, all without any external mark, usually.  However, this love marks us as his followers.

I don’t have a strong word for or against tattoos.  I know I am not going to get one myself (at least intentionally).  On the other hand, I continue to labor to demonstrate love to my friends, my acquaintances, my contacts, to any and all people I meet in my wanderings among the world’s population.  I hope they see my “mark” because it points to Jesus, my savior, who loves them far more than I will ever.

by Mike Hagan, President

Renovation of the Church by Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken (Downers Grove: IVP, 2011).

In this book Kent and Mike, co-pastors, have embraced the task of telling their story, the story of Oak Hills Church in Folsom, California.  They are coming up to 25 years as a church.  But during that time they have changed their focus of ministry at least three times and are still in the process of discovering what God is doing with them.  Their story needs to be told.  More than that, it needs to be heard.  Whether a small rural traditional church, a seeker-focused megachurch, a struggling in-between church with a confusing mission or lack of mission, listen to what they have to say.

They have uncovered their journey with honesty and clarity, unveiling themselves and putting themselves at risk for the rest of us to assess and evaluate.  I applaud how their story spoke to me.  The chapter on “ambition” is worth the price of the book alone, but you also get an honest critique of consumerism in the church and some well thought out explanations of Kingdom of God, spiritual formation as a church, the mission of the body of Christ, and confessions about what to say and do and what not to say or do as you work through change, especially one as dramatic as moving from a seeker church to a spiritual formation church.  Sounds like I’m selling Ginza knives, doesn’t it?  But it is a refreshing book.

Kent and Mike became experts in “church shrink” (104).  They had moved their focus to a seeker-oriented, attractional model with Sunday morning service as focal point.  A Thursday night service aimed at the committed believers.  The first three chapters describe their history and how they got to a day where God met them.  The more they did, the more people responded.  They were running attendance at 2000.  On the other hand, they as persons ran on empty a lot of the time.  And by their admittance, they were good at it.  But they always felt like they were feeding the “monster.”

An elder retreat in the Donner Pass area led to unexpected transformation of their whole direction.  Services began to change; mission took on a different emphasis.  They changed.  Dallas Willard and Eugene Peterson were instrumental in prompting the shift.  Then they tried to move the church in their new direction.  It broke the unwritten covenant with the congregation that they had set up.  Their conviction said they needed to obey Jesus rather than where the people felt comfortable so they pressed ahead.  Ten years later we see what they have found.  We can learn from them no matter where our ministries sit today.

This is a good read.  It reminded me of the importance of relationship with God over job description.  Kent and Mike highlight some of the most crucial questions we face in the church today, questions about worship, outreach, ministry professionals, the church, community and communities.  Their answers (and answers that are still resolving) will help our quest to seek first the reign of God.

by President Mike Hagan

In Trust NOW email has an article this week on the future of seminaries.  It starts out with a pretty pessimistic and cynical viewpoint; it ends with a more hopeful voice.

People don’t tend to ask me as a seminary president why we exist.  They may ask whether we have a future, if they are courageous, know me well, or are ornery persons wanting to bait a sensitive person.  The answers to both questions may be the same if looked at correctly.

Seminaries have not always existed.  But the biblical examples of people in ministry point to some kind of preparation.  It may have come through mentoring, like Elijah with Elisha or Moses with Joshua or Jesus with his disciples.  It could be time in the desert, like Paul for three years with a ten year initial ministry in Antioch afterwards before the missionary journeys and all the writing that forms the backbone of our New Testament.

Church history also reveals preparation through various means – mentoring, desert solitude, monastic life, church “schools,” Bible institutes and colleges, seminaries.  The common denominator appears to be the idea of “preparation.”  The methods or modes of learning have differed over time.  In a sense, every method has always existed with one mode taking a predominant position at any given time.

So yes, I think preparation of people for ministry will persist until the Lord returns.  The how may change over time.  For that reason I have been a voice saying we need to find a way to make sure we are helping prepare people for what God is doing.  If we do not meet the needs of the church, God will find another method to do so.  The church will look somewhere else, too.

Another way to answer derives from the biblical discipline called “study.”  We are to study “to show ourselves approved.”  The Lord tells Joshua to “meditate” on the instructions of the Lord.  The psalmist opens up the Psalter with the same focus.  As Dan Aleshire says, “The Church will always need to lift up the ‘study’ discipline.  She will be healthy because of it.”

To study.  To prepare.  If we are responsible for these two elements, we are necessary and will continue to meet the will of the Lord and the needs to the church.  Thus we will exist into the future.

by Mike Hagan, President
I began reading James Davison Hunter’s book, To Change the World, during the summer.  In my early reading, I believed it was an important book so recommended it in my Blog with a promise to come back to it when I completed it.  Subsequent to that entry I asked three friends to read it with me and interact with it and each other.

The book did not disappoint me.  It is a careful study of ways culture has been changed over history, including our most recent attempts to do so as the Church.  The chapters on “The Christian Right,” “The Christian Left,” and the neo-Anabaptists are worth the price of the book.  But it delivers much more.

Three essays, each with multiple chapters, make up the presentation.  Essay 1 demonstrates how Christians have attempted to change culture.  He argues that every change in history revolves around a network of elite leaders.  Among leaders in the church today we lack a Christian community that is strong enough to change culture significantly.  There is a will to see change, but the community is weak in areas such as art, literature, politics, sciences, where culture might be impacted.  Identifiable Christian leaders reside on the periphery of the rest of culture.

Essay 2 argues that change requires power and the exercise of power tends to follow, even among Christian communities, a course of conquest and domination.  Political power is embraced by the Christian right and left, and the language of politics is adopted by the neo-Anabaptist movements epitomized by John Howard Yoder and Stan Hauerwas.  Power exudes all kinds of problems in itself.

Essay 3 examines Hunter’s proposal for a way forward for cultural engagement that is not “defensive against,” nor “relevant to,” nor “pure from” engagement.  How should Christians engage the world?  He calls for “faithful presence.”  Jeremiah 29:4-7 and 1 Peter provide models for what he means by faithful presence.  Faithful presence enacts the shalom of God in whatever circumstances or culture one finds.  The end result will be the commitment by people of faith to live with the highest ideals and practices that attempts to bring the whole world into wholeness or shalom.

With this agenda every aspect and role of human life would come into play.  Tensions will need addressing with faithful presence, tensions within the Christian community itself and tensions with the world.  One of the memorable statements Hunter makes addresses the tensions: “ . . . accommodation must always be critical and resistance must always be humble” (283-284).

I found myself agreeing with Hunter’s argument, made much better in his own words than my remarks here.

If we give ourselves to faithful presence with our creator, God himself, we will worship and honor him and God will bring the end result he desires.

by Mike Hagan, President

Since I started making blog entries, seldom have I recommended a book before I am done with it. I am making an exception with this one, but in the process I am really recommending one chapter particularly. Perhaps I will come back to address the whole book when I am done digesting it with three friends.

This book provides a possible mind-changing discussion on cultural change in our modern world.  It is not an easy book to read with some serious philosophical and historical analyses as well as careful discussion on social theory.  It is not for everyone.

With that said, chapter six, “The Cultural Economy of American Christianity (79-92),” is one of the clearest, honest assessments of the impact on our world by American Christianity that I have ever read.  His assessment is that we are marginalized and weak at best.

It is a profound reading of our times without blinders on as others seem to do.  The chapter is excellent reading for anyone who is thinking and wants to understand what possible impact we are having or not having on our world.  I’ll get back to you about the whole book.

by Mike Hagan, President

In Fred Buechner’s third volume of autobiography, Telling Secrets (1991), in a poignant and moving conclusion to his first chapter, he admonishes ministers to allow the love of God extended to them personally to penetrate into their messages and ministries more than they do. He notes that the very people who ask their congregations to listen to God speaking from the scriptures, who exhort them to speak intimately and personally with him through prayer, who teach congregants to share the profound difference it makes having a relationship with this God with those who do not know, and yet these same ministers allow so little of that intimacy to permeate their preaching. And, in fact, maybe they have not permitted this God to actually touch their deepest places and thus cannot share the intimacy they ask others to seek and find.

Guilty, I confess. Especially looking back at some of my early days as a church planter in a small congregation in Colorado, I think now how I understood at an intellectual level and expounded at an intellectual level, but still safeguarded “me.” Yes, I cried at times (and that is me), but I did not or could not at that time open up the drapes to the window to my intimate places even though the crying suggested there was a window there.

The other day a co-worker shared with me a conversation he had with a person about me and how hard the last nine months had been on me, how I had suffered for those who we laid off due to economic hardships. Was it that apparent to him how I felt inside, I wondered? I am reading Buechner’s autobiographies again this summer and, of course, the next day I ran across this passage I mentioned above. As I reflect on its message now, I find myself still guilty.

I believe I have made large strides forward. But I do not think others really see into the inward areas with clarity. Maybe the drapes are still mostly pulled tight or slightly parted or they have parted but I have tinted the windows, becoming craftier in my veiling approaches.

I do say more often something about the grace of God in my life. God’s grace always surprises me when I know good-and-well how much of a skunk I can be or how nasty my thoughts or twisted my motives. Intellectually I know it is who God is. But it often surprises me, like a toddler who time after time jumps when dad plays peek-a-boo with her.

I like to characterize myself as straightforward, honest, and yet gracious person, and in actuality I sometimes am. But I still have very few people with whom I share my intimates. I know I could do better with leaking more into conversations, classes, and even preaching messages. Then perhaps our students would learn a little better how to open up to share their journey with its joys, sorrows, struggles, and intimacies in their ministries.

Maybe we all could.