This is a paper I wrote for my Vocation of Ministry class.

I grew up as both a pastor’s kid and as a missionary kid. My parents have been pastoring a church in Cap-Haitien, the second-largest city in Haiti, since 1990. I was raised Pentecostal, which meant that experiences like speaking in tongues, four-hour services, and extended sessions of praise and worship were not infrequent occurrences for me growing up. My experience of the Holy Spirit in worship meant that I did not grow up thinking of the Holy Spirit as an abstraction, but as a person whose presence could be felt. As a result, I came to love God deeply. I can recall moments of pure abandon in worship as a child, my arms stretched toward heaven as love for Jesus just poured out of me. This simple relationship with God is probably the defining characteristic of my spiritual life. When all else fails, I know that God exists and that He loves me. The rest of it is details waiting to be worked out. Even this—perhaps especially this—was a gift in formation inherited from my parents.

In retrospect, the values I simply intuited from my parents were too numerous to count. Among many other things, I learned to love the Word of God, to be devoted to the local church (we went four times a week, rarely missing a service), to passionately pursue the presence of the Holy Spirit, to live boldly by faith (my parents have many stories to tell of how low their bank accounts got before God came through), to treasure a clean conscience (I hated the idea of taking Communion with unconfessed sin in my life), to break the yoke of materialism by tithing (with the assurance that God would give back to you), to put family before work (we never did school on Mondays since that was “family day”), to pursue the will of God in all things (my parents believe that God’s mind can be known on any decision by simply praying and seeking His will), to love books like a bridegroom loves a bride, to glorify God through learning, and to accept whomever the Lord might bring to your doorstep.

While I am a minister’s son and it was the constant expectation of people in my church that I would step into his shoes, I really didn’t have any desire to go into ministry myself until recently. As a child, I had wanted to be an airplane pilot (which really had more to do with wanting to leave Haiti than anything else). In high school, I toyed with the idea of being a musician—I learned how to play guitar, started singing, and wrote a small catalog of terrible, Nirvana-inspired songs. It made me a decent worship leader, but I wasn’t talented enough to make it as a real musician. I also thought about going into diplomacy (because I love to travel), journalism (because I love to write), and politics (because I love to argue).

Toward the end of high school, however, I discovered the world of blogging—a new phenomenon at the time—and had my eyes opened to a new universe of political and theological discourse taking place on the Web. I dove in headfirst, starting my own blog to participate in the discussion, and quickly discovered how little I really knew. For the first time in my life, I was discussing issues of great import with people from radically different perspectives from mine. It was overwhelming and deeply challenging to my faith. Amidst all that reading and conversation, I was becoming aware of how little I really knew. I preached a sermon in youth group “on trusting the Lord and leaning not on your own understanding” out of Proverbs 3:4-5 and soon realized that I needed to make the Bible the foundation of my life and get Biblically trained. Without any thought of ending up in the ministry, I applied to Portland Bible College, a tiny school out in Oregon, for what I thought would be a short stint. I didn’t realize that the Lord had begun to draw me into my calling.

PBC challenged me in a number of important ways:

• First, being in a Christian environment challenged me to deal with a number of sin issues in my life. I was challenged by the Word of God to set sin aside and press on toward holiness.
• Second, I was well trained Biblically and introduced firsthand to what a thriving, healthy church congregation should look and feel like.
• Third, I experienced the charismatic gift of prophecy for the first time, and as a result of a few well-timed prophetic words spoken over my life at crucial intervals, began to develop a new sense of personal destiny and calling that I had previously lacked. (There is a scene in the movie Big Fish where Billy Crudup’s father gets a glimpse of how he will die by peering into a witch’s eye—he is fearless for the rest of the movie since he already knows how the story ends. In a similar way, my experience with the prophetic realm of the Spirit has given me the confidence to “read life backwards”—while I don’t have exhaustive knowledge of the future, I know where the major signposts are, and thus by living what has been revealed I can fight the good fight (1 Tim 1:18).)
• Fourth, and finally, living in Portland opened my eyes to what a post-Christian culture—one in which people have been inoculated against the Gospel, knowing just enough about it to think they understand it and want to reject it—looks like. Somewhere along the way, I began sensing the call of God to minister in such a context. During my junior year, I was reading an article in Christianity Today called “The French Reconnection” about the quiet revival taking place among the youth in France. As I read, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and told me that that was where I would be going. So my sense of calling includes the fact that I will be bound for France whenever my time of being trained is through. I hope to pastor and teach in a church, ministering both to post-Christian French and to non-Christian immigrants.

After graduating from PBC, I was initially resistant to the idea of going to graduate school. I spent a year living in Portland and didn’t see the point of getting more theological education. After that year, however, “I felt a longing for…fundamental change groaning within [me]” (Barton, 22) and I knew it was time to leave Portland. Through a series of events, I ended up at Asbury Theological Seminary, a place I had not originally intended on attending.

Nevertheless, since coming here, the Lord has been confirming to me that I am in the right place. I believe that He has placed an intellectual call upon my life that relates to the mission field where I will be working, and has led me here to be trained for that. France is a difficult mission field and Europe in general is a very intellectually arrogant place. To minister adequately there, I know that I must have an understanding commensurate to the task. I want to have a “Daniel ministry” of being the best mind I can be in a pagan context.

Along with the mental faculty, however, I feel the Lord has been working on my heart. (After all, if I am to have a teaching ministry, I must have “the tongue of a disciple” (Isa. 50:4), which means being involved in practical discipleship before one can teach.) In God’s kindness, I have gotten a job working as a caregiver for an elderly man who has suffered a brain injury. This job is working into me the truth that as Stephen Seamands writes, “self-giving is at the heart of God and creaturely being…[and] also at the heart of Christian ministry” (Seamands, 82). Seamands goes on to connect ministry to the waiting of tables, which was the first ministry that men “full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom” were ordained to do (Acts 6:3). A minister has no higher calling than humbling himself to serve people who have nothing to offer in response.

While reflecting on my spiritual journey for this paper, I was pierced to the heart by a Biblical quote cited in Os Guinness’ The Call. It is a rhetorical question asked by the Apostle Paul, and it has been ringing in my head like a gong since I first read it: “What do you have that you did not receive?” (Guinness, 197)  The answer of course is, “Nothing.” It is all a gift. It is all of grace.

In my best moments, I know this. On the night the Holy Spirit called me to France, all I could do for a while was weep and repeat over and over the words, “Grace! Grace! Such immense grace!” I fully understood that I did not deserve the call. The truth is, however, that no one does. The only possible response to such lavish mercy is to become, as Augustine once wrote, an “alleluia from head to foot” (Guinness, 199), or as an Indian brother who did not sign his name to his prayer once put it, “O Lord, let me rest the ladder of gratitude against thy cross and, mounting, kiss thy feet” (Noll, 315).

By Poh Lian Lim

I am hollow for loving
without return.
I am chambered, echoing
only your name.

falling from wretched fingers,
a handful of shriveled grass
died this long hot shimmering summer,
in the little well-loved garden;
to the eyes worn with wearied hope
the rains never came
(and tears cannot sustain life).

a whole year the wound waited,
willful with venom, throbbing with desire;
alternately a fever and a shaking chill,
bone-deep, world-vast, consuming as a fire.

rising on a morning sweet with spring
the light spills warm onto the windowsill
the violets purr, delighting in the sun.
all the world is radiant blue and gold;

and far beneath, the distant traffic hum
beside the gray-blue Hudson
murmurs ten o’clock silences
and a leisurely cup of coffee.

and wondering if I’m missing much
of that lecture when it’s really
so much nicer sitting here,
listening to the gurgle of pipes;

till, piercing deep and twisting
some thought of you comes, swifter than desire
(vivid sunlit flickers of the now-closed past)
pain catches on my breath; I recognize
familiar as only an adversary is,
in one vast inchoate cry
blotting out all affections and appetites merely human,
my old and hopeless yearning.

I wrestle, reaching wildly for a grip
on this pain that lives by the pulsing of my heart;
and in the darkness of my unknowing,
bitter with tears,
flung out like rope into the abyss
paying out endlessly
prayer yet brings easing
for this one night.

I am come into a Presence.
passionate with patience
familiar as sorrow,
stern as a rock that questions dash against
and die like waves away

into a stillness
worn and dear as a mother’s hands,
a space of mercy, a space of quiet
a dear and gracious place.

and shall I truly know
some day
that high, glad, lifting joy
that lilting happiness?

I am open to the earth and sky
washed by rain and dried by sun,
the scarecrow stands in empty fields
as happy and as free.
And wheeling seasons circle like the birds
in my embrace
transparent now of any fear

and love has made me hollow
and love has made me whole.

De noche iremos, de noche—By night we shall go, by night
que para encontrar la fuente—seeking to find the source
solo la sed nos alumbra—thirst alone our light
solo la sed nos alumbra—thirst alone our light

“Sola Scriptura” (Scripture alone) and “semper reformanda” (always reforming) were the twin mottoes of the Reformation. In his book, The Problem with Evangelical Theology: Testing the Exegetical Foundations of Calvinism, Dispensationalism, and Wesleyanism, Dr. Ben Witherington claims that while the three main families of Evangelicals (Calvinists, Dispensationalists, and Wesleyans) are faithful to the Bible on the essentials, the things that distinguish them as theological systems are based on exegetically weak interpretations of key Biblical passages. As such, Witherington declares a pox on all houses, calling them all back to their Reformation heritage and evaluating their systems in light of what the Scripture says.

Witherington’s aim is not to write a comprehensive review of all three systems, but rather to deconstruct “the big ideas that serve as building blocks for looking at the biblical text in a certain kind of way…” (4) Naturally, then, the bulk of the book is devoted to exegesis, exemplifying an approach to Scripture that interprets the text from its original languages, appreciates socio-rhetorical context, and interacts with leading commentators.

The Problem with Calvinism

Reformed theology, in Witherington’s reading, is flawed in four ways.

First, it filters its reading of Romans through Augustine, who in reaction to Pelagius over-emphasized the helplessness of humanity “in Adam” has to please God, while downplaying humanity’s ability to freely receive the gift of salvation “in Christ.” In contrast, Witherington argues that a proper exegesis of Romans 5:12-21 will reveal that Paul is not arguing for imputation to humans of Adam’s sin or to Christians of Christ’s righteousness, but rather has a concept of “incorporative personality” (11) that does not take away either from humans’ responsibility for their own sins while “in Adam,” or for their responsibility to receive the gift of salvation and be forgiven in Christ.

Second, Witherington states that the Reformed misreading of Romans 7 has resulted in a flawed theology of sanctification, in which victory over sin is never fully possible. He argues that Romans 7 is not about believers at all, but is rather an example of an ancient rhetorical technique called “impersonation,” in which an author assumes the voice of a historical character in order to make a point. The character being assumed in Romans 7 is alternately Adam or those “in Adam,” who are both coming to realize the bondage they have to sin since they are outside of Christ. Christians, on the other hand, have victory over sin available to them through the Spirit, who offers sufficient grace capable of overcoming every sin.

Third, Witherington believes that Luther’s misreading of Galatians has caused a vacillation in the Reformed tradition between an antinomian misreading on the one hand (Luther), and the mistaken view that the new covenant is really the old covenant under a different administration (Calvin). By way of contrast, the Scripture teaches that while the Law is over and done with, Christians are not without Law. They are subject to a higher law—the standard of perfect love found in Christ. In contrast to the Mosaic Law, which the people could not keep since it aroused rebellion without providing power to be righteous, the New Covenant provides a higher Law with perfect power (through the Holy Spirit) to live it out in the real world.

Finally, Witherington believes that Calvinists have badly misunderstood Biblical passages about the doctrine of election when they assume that God elects people individually and unconditionally to salvation. He argues instead from Ephesians 1 that election is “in Christ”—Christ is the Elect One, the “place of grace,” so to speak, into whom all who will be saved must come. A parallel exists here between God’s election of Israel in the OT and God’s choosing of Christ in the NT. In both cases, those who were “in” at one time could fall away and others can be grafted in. This view neatly sidesteps the pitfalls of both the typical Arminian and the Reformed understandings of election.

The Problem with Dispensationalism

The first problem Witherington sees with the Dispensational approach to Scripture is a highly literalistic interpretation of apocalyptic prophecy. Arguing that “to take apocalyptic prophecy literally is to violate the character of such prophecy,” (109) he says that “what the text meant then is still what the text means today, and what it could not possibly have meant in the first century A.D. or before, it does not mean now.” (102)

A second problem lies in the distinctive doctrine of the secret Rapture. None of the passages marshaled in support of the Rapture actually say anything about that subject. “Unless by rapture one merely means being taken up into the air to welcome Christ and return with him to earth,” Witherington writes, “there is no theology of the rapture to be found in the New Testament anywhere, never mind the term itself.” (130) Furthermore, the NT is clear in several places that believers will not be raptured away from tribulation, but are preserved by God and called to endure it.

The final (and most serious) problem with Dispensationalism is that it teaches that there are two separate peoples of God—Israel and the church—and that a two-stage rapture involves Christ rescuing the church secretly before making his public return to rule a literally restored Kingdom of Israel after the Tribulation. However, this “two-track system of Dispensationalism,” writes Witherington, “with some promises being fulfilled in Israel and some in the church, simply will not work in the Pauline scheme of things, when one examines the details of Romans 9—11.” (165) Neither the OT nor the NT will support a two-peoples theology. Furthermore, this theology has negative consequences, since it promotes escapism, strips the church of motivation for social action, and promotes a profound pessimism with regard to future world events.

The Problem with Wesleyanism

In the last major section of his book, Witherington turns his sights on his own theological tradition—the Wesleyan tradition—to critique and analyze it in light of what the Scripture says. He begins by examining the Biblical theology of the kingdom of God (which he re-terms the “dominion of God,” [174] due to the fact that he believes it to be a better translation of the underlying Greek concept) before moving on to a survey of John Wesley’s theology of the dominion and a survey of the dominion in the Wesleyan tradition in general. Witherington notes Wesley’s emphasis shifted from an early focus on the interiority of the dominion to a “later focus on the future eschatology of the NT, and his continual stress…that working out one’s salvation and the reign of God in one’s life involved deeds of piety and charity.” (189) Thus, Wesley maintained the proper balance between the already and the not-yet aspects of the dominion, a balance his successors did not always preserve.

The next chapter examines Wesley’s theology of conversion, concluding that despite Wesley’s appropriate (revivalistic) emphasis on conversion as a major theme of Johannine and Pauline literature, he occasionally misinterpreted the major texts he used to preach the message of conversion. As an example, he interpreted the “water” that Jesus says a man must be born of in John 3:5 to mean the waters of baptism—a misinterpretation owing to his desire not to break with his Anglican heritage—although to his credit he recognized that “the real thrust of the material has to do with spiritual experience.” (205)

Finally, Witherington devotes a chapter to Wesley’s concepts of prevenient grace and entire sanctification. While admitting that prevenient grace is a doctrine “weakly grounded” (207) in the Bible, he contends that it “comports well with the character of a gracious God.” (209) Nevertheless, he would limit his doctrine to the statement that “sinners are enabled by grace, in the moment of crisis and crying out, to respond to the Gospel.” (209)

Concerning entire sanctification, Witherington admits that Wesley “sometimes…defined the scope of sin too narrowly, as simply a willful violation of a known law, and thus saw perfection as the avoidance of that coupled with the experience and expression of holy love.” (215) Nevertheless, Witherington defends Wesleyan perfection if it means “experienc[ing] the perfect love of God here and now, and so no longer liv[ing] in fear, and indeed [being] cleansed of all unrighteousness” (215), while dismissing later Wesleyan discussion of holiness as missing “the main [NT] focus of holy love” (216).

The last section of the final chapter is devoted to an offshoot of Wesleyan theology, the Pentecostal movement. Since this is the tradition in which I was raised, this section was of particular interest to me. While Witherington dismisses any notion of subsequence in the reception of the Holy Spirit as lacking exegetical grounding, he nonetheless defends the importance of charismatic gifts in the church, asserting that “evangelical theology needs to include a robust dose of pneumatology” (222). To that, I heartily reply, “Amen, brother,” although I question whether that statement goes quite far enough.

Evaluation

I agreed wholeheartedly with Witherington’s evaluations of Dispensationalism and Wesleyanism and have nothing further to add to either one.

It did puzzle me, however, that in his section on Reformed theology, he does not make explicit whether he believes in the imputation of Adam’s sin to all human beings. I suppose that he does not, since toward the end of Chapter 2, he makes it clear that he does not believe in the doctrine of imputed righteousness: “The righteousness of Jesus is not simply transferred to believers. They are in fact enabled and expected to behave in a holy manner, being empowered by the Holy Spirit.” (37) This line of argument sounds curiously similar to the Catholic doctrine of infused righteousness, in which it is the believer’s responsibility after initial justification to cooperate with grace in order to maintain salvation. In fact, this is exactly what Witherington goes on to say: “Christians are set right with God at the point of conversion, but they are also given the resources to live righteously thereafter, and they are expected to do so” (37).

While I agree that believers are expected and empowered to live righteously after conversion, can’t righteousness be both imputed and imparted? If Christ’s righteousness is not imputed to the believer, then it would seem to leave believers open to what has often been the dark side of Wesleyan/Arminian theology (and even Wesley himself)—the lack of assurance of salvation. If we do not have the assurance of a perfect righteousness beyond our own works—even if they are Spirit-empowered—then that would seem to open us up to despair. Furthermore, it would seem to contradict clear statements in Scripture that Christ has in fact become righteousness to us (1 Cor 1:30) and became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God (1 Cor 5:21).

However, the primary difference I had with Witherington was in the section on Pentecostalism. While I agreed with his argument that John 20 cannot be used as an example of the first reception of the Holy Spirit, leading to a second work in Acts 2, his work raised a few questions, especially when he writes that “it makes no sense to talk about getting the Spirit in doses or stages…it happens at conversion” (220). However, some of the accounts in Acts will not fit together that neatly. For instance, Luke writes of Samaritan believers who received the Word of God before receiving the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:14-15), of Paul who was filled with the Spirit through the laying on of hands after having received a heavenly vision and having prayed for a few days in Damascus (Acts 9:17), and of Ephesian believers who received the Holy Spirit through the laying on of Paul’s hands in an experience clearly distinguishable from their conversion (if by conversion we mean “initial response of faith”—Acts 19:6). While conversion and “receiving the Holy Spirit” (in the Lukan sense, with accompanying manifestations) are closely related, I do not believe that they can be said to be identical. So far as I can see, there is no reason to identify conversion so closely with reception of the Spirit.

Nevertheless, I agree wholeheartedly with Witherington’s call to subject all of our theology to rigorous Scriptural exegesis. Would that more Christians (including, and perhaps especially Pentecostals) would embrace Paul’s call to “know nothing but Christ and Him crucified.” Would that all Evangelicals would purify their problematic theologies through the filter of the Word of God.

I was walking out of the campus Post Office a few weeks ago when an orange flyer tacked to the bulletin board caught my eye. It was a handwritten note advertising a caregiver position at a local family’s home, assisting an elderly man who had suffered a brain injury during a fall. I nearly passed it by, but on second thought I punched the number into my cell phone and scheduled an interview with Rachel, sister-in-law to Will, the man with the injury.

She met me at the library and asked if I had ever held a caregiver position before, to which I replied that I hadn’t. The interview might well have ended there had I not happened to mention that I grew up in Haiti. As it turns out, Rachel’s family were missionaries to India, Kenya and Honduras, and her daughter is currently teaching at a Christian school in Port-au-Prince. I was hired on the spot.

One of the perks of the job is that I make more money than I would have at any of the campus jobs to which I kept unsuccessfully applying for over a month after I returned from North Carolina. Furthermore, I get to walk to work (the house is only 2 blocks from campus), and when I get there, I thoroughly enjoy what I do since it consists of little more than being a pastor, interacting with, loving and taking care of a man who can no longer take care of himself. I only work 13 hours a week, which fits in nicely with school, and the people I work for are becoming more and more like family to me the longer I work there. All this from a flyer that I nearly passed by without thinking.

Isn’t God’s grace amazing? The Bible promises that if you “trust in the Lord with all your heart, leaning not on your understanding,” but “in all of your ways acknowledging Him,” he will “make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6). God has been teaching me more and more about simple trust in Him. The God who clothes the lilies will put clothes on my back as well. The One who works all things after the counsel of His will (Ephesians 1:11) finds no difficulty in working “John’s tuition” into the equation of “all things.”

The really exciting thing about living by faith is seeing how God works this process out in real time. I am coming to find out that He delights in “chance” happenings and strings of unlikely events. Put your trust wholly in Him, and who knows where the next orange flyer might lead? It could very well be the first link in a long chain of serendipitous events.

Part of an occasional series featuring my favorite poems.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

–William Shakespeare, “Sonnets”

The thought occurred to me that some of you might be interested in what texts I’m reading for classes at Asbury this semester. Browsing through this list, you might find a new book to deepen your own reading, a new text from which to teach a Bible study, or perhaps a taste of what seminary life is like. Comments/questions are more than welcome, and since I actually have to read all these books over the next three months, your prayers would be much appreciated!

Elementary Greek I

1. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Danker et al.
2. Interlinear for the Rest of Us: The Reverse Interlinear for New Testament Word Studies, William Mounce.
3. Novum Testamentum Graece, 27th ed., Nestle-Aland.
4. The Basics of New Testament Syntax: An Intermediate Greek Grammar, Daniel Wallace.

Method & Praxis in Theology

1. Caught Between Truths: The Central Paradoxes of Christian Faith, Barry L. Callen.
2. God and History: The Dialetical Tension of Faith & History in Modern Thought, Laurence W. Wood.
3. Theology as History and Hermeneutics: A Post-Critical Conversation with Contemporary Theology, L. Wood.
4. The Wesleyan Quadrilateral: Scripture, Tradition, Reason & Experience as a Model of Evangelical Theology, Donald Thorsen.
5. Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church, James K. A. Smith

Theology of the New Testament

1. The Living Word of God: Rethinking the Theology of the Bible, Ben Witherington.
2. The Shadow of the Almighty: Father, Son, and Spirit in Biblical Perspective, Witherington/Ice.
3. The Many Faces of the Christ: The Christologies of the New Testament and Beyond, Witherington.
4. Jesus, Paul, and the End of the World: A Comparative Study in New Testament Eschatology, Witherington.
5. Paul’s Narrative Thought World: The Tapestry of Tragedy and Triumph, Witherington.
6. The Problem with Evangelical Theology: Testing the Exegetical Foundations of Calvinism, Dispensationalism, and Wesleyanism, Witherington.

Vocation of Ministry

1. Finding God at Harvard: Spiritual Journeys of Thinking Christians, Kelly Monroe, ed.
2. Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation, Ruth Haley Barton.
3. Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service, Stephen Seamands.
4. The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, Os Guinness.
5. Betrayal of Trust: Confronting and Preventing Clergy Sexual Misconduct, Stanley Grenz/Roy D. Bell.
6. Ordaining Women: Biblical and Historical Insights, B.T. Roberts.

President Obama defended his healthcare plan to the American public on “60 Minutes” tonight, confidently stating that despite a month of acrimonious debate in Congress, rancorous town hall meetings, and yesterday’s march on Washington to protest federal spending, he still believes he has enough votes “to pass not just any healthcare bill, but a good healthcare bill that helps the American people, reduces costs, [and] actually over the long-term controls our deficit.”

While the president was as likable, thoughtful, and well-spoken as always, I must confess skepticism as to that last point. I am not clear on how a program with a price tag pushing $1 trillion will “control the federal deficit,” particularly when similar programs have not proven to do anything of the sort in other countries where they have been implemented, such as the United Kingdom. The president’s argument that the healthcare solution he proposes will help cut costs in the long run by eliminating “the biggest problem we have in our budget, the biggest long-term problem we have…Medicare and Medicaid” is tortured logic at best, since the program with which he proposes we replace those failing programs is simply a larger, more expensive, more comprehensive version of the same.

For evangelical Christians, however, the primary point of concern with the bill continues to be the fact that it contains no specific prohibition of the use of federal funds to insure practices such as abortion and euthanasia. While some leaders of the “Evangelical Left”–particularly Jim Wallis–have given lip service to making sure abortion services do not become a federally funded part of the public option, the fact that Wallis and co. have already pledged support to Obama’s plan through last month’s “40 Days for Health Reform” campaign essentially means that Democrats can count on their support whether they change the bill or not. Without a “line in the sand” approach, the strength of the pro-choice lobby within the Democratic Party will ensure that the bill does not change, but remains the same.

Whatever the final form of the bill, I believe President Obama when he says he has the support to get it through. When  it does pass, its success will not owe primarily to President Obama’s charisma or the Democratic majority in Congress, but rather to the Republican Party, who have never demonstrated significant interest in this issue when they have held the majority and who seem to lack imagination now more than ever in proposing an alternative. Whatever your view on healthcare reform, the fact remains that America is the world’s only developed nation to have upwards of 30 million uninsured citizens, a statistic by which many political conservatives seem non-plussed.

More frustrating is the attitude prevailing among many American evangelical Christians, whose views on this issue are often more reflective of the individualism that undergirds much conservative ideology than a worldview shaped by the Scriptures. The Bible contains a strong thread of social responsibility, embodied in codes such as the “gleaning laws” of the OT, which reserved a portion of every wealthy man’s field for harvest by the poor. This thread continues on through the prophets–who repeatedly cry out on behalf of the fatherless, the widow, and the alien, and decry those who would make themselves rich at those groups’ expense–into the NT, where we find the early church pooling its resources in order to provide for the defenseless and down-and-out. This ethic of “every man not only for himself, but for himself and as many as he can help” is a far cry from the rhetoric of modern conservatives like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity.

When Republicans and conservative Christians get serious about the fact that America is the only first-world nation where a medical crisis can bankrupt a middle-class citizen (and demonstrate that seriousness in crafting thoughtful legislation), I believe that the nation will listen. Until that day, it is embarrassing that the people most determined to address the issue are those with whom we, as Christians, must disagree on so many other things.

For millions of people, September 11, 2001 is a date that represents a watershed moment in American history, as well as the history of the world. For Americans, the effect of the attacks, designed as they were to strike at symbols of American financial dominance and military prowess, has been to elevate to the national consciousness an awareness of an international, militant, and rival ideology of a kind that the nation had not known since the fall of the Berlin Wall. There had been tremors during the relatively blithe Clinton era of the 1990’s (the bombings, for instance, of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996 and the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998), but 9/11 was the earthquake which definitively brought the volcano of militant Islamic fundamentalism into view. It was the first al-Qaeda attack to command the full attention of the American people, occurring as it did upon American soil.

The resulting era has been one of costly (in terms of both money and human life, both American and foreign) and controversial military campaigns. Dictatorships have been dismantled in Iraq and Afghanistan and free elections held in both of those nations for the first time in years, though it is unclear at this point whether their democratically elected replacements will be able to survive the tensions of militarism, ethnic conflict, and new social issues such as the emancipation of women and the attempted evangelization of local populations by Christian missionaries. Even if they do, the problem stretches beyond the borders of these two nations into other rogue states more difficult to dismantle, such as Iran and Pakistan, a nation in which huge swaths of its own territory have been effectively deemed ungovernable by its own government.

America also faces problems at home, however, as the era of economic decline that began with the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000 and continued quietly through the Bush years suddenly became a major issue during last year’s election campaign in September. The nation now faces record federal deficits (projected to exceed $9 trillion–or 3/4 of the U.S. economy–in 10 years) in an era of world history in which Chinese military and financial strength is ascendant. (Incidentally, the Chinese own nearly a quarter of the U.S. national debt.) More worrying than these statistics, however, is a political climate in which the nation’s leaders increasingly govern with no sense of accountability to their Creator, the Constitution, or their constituents, no compunction to restrain the wasteful spending in which the government indulges (money which the national debt would indicate the nation does not actually have), and no personal integrity, a truth witnessed to by the fact that congressional sex scandals have nearly become a regular staple of the evening news.

My point in writing this is not to indulge in pessimism regarding the state of the United States (though I believe pessimism regarding the future of anything not connected to the Kingdom of God is always warranted), but rather to reflect on what the coming decades might mean for the proclamation of the Christian Gospel. A future in which the United States is no longer the dominant player on the world stage would have radical implications for the way the American church sees itself with relation to the developing world.

The truth of the matter is that, as Asbury Seminary president Tim Tennent said in a sermon on Thursday, the average face of Christianity is no longer a British man in his 40’s (as it would have been 100 years ago) but a 24-year-old Nigerian woman. The church of the Global South (Africa, Southern Asia and China, and Latin America) has become, in sheer numbers if not yet in influence and resources, the bulk of the Body of Christ worldwide. Consider this statistic: there are more Anglican Christians in Nigeria alone than in the United States, Canada, and the nations of Western Europe combined. (The fact that African Anglicans are now sending missionaries to the U.S. indicates that they now see the West as the real mission field, an irony not missed by Philip Jenkins in The Next Christendom.)

The implications for the way in the American church conceives of mission are enormous. American culture is one in which people increasingly consider the most basic concepts of the Christian gospel to be alien. Clearly the church must re-imagine its work as cross-cultural, missionary activity. It is no longer sufficient to revamp tried and true evangelistic methods such as “The Four Spiritual Laws” and “Evangelism Explosion” for new audiences. Nor is it sufficient merely to create “seeker sensitive” programs that minimize discipleship in an effort to lure non-religious people to Christian services. The American church must commit itself to the task of cross-cultural bridge-building, translating the truth of the Gospel in a way that connects with a culture that does not understand its most fundamental presuppositions.

The global shift occurring in Christianity necessitates another paradigm shift, however. The bulk of the world’s Christians currently live in developing countries. The bulk of the world’s seminary education, however, occurs in the U.S., a fact attested to at Asbury by the large number of Global Southerners in attendance. I believe that this can (and must) change in the coming years. The future must be one of increased planting of solid churches that can support training institutions in the Global South. No longer can the Third World be conceived of solely as a mission field. Instead, it must be seen as the new seat of missionary influence and Christian activity in the world.

Nations like Nigeria, India, and China are the future of global Christianity, but already the growing Christian movement in those nations is being compromised by the Prosperity Gospel and heretical influences that may cut short the growth of the church before its time. This may have an effect on how strong the nascent church becomes in these nations and the influence it attains in them. A strong church in the developing world, however, would be of benefit not only to those nations, however, but potentially to the West, as missionaries from those nations have already begun reinvigorating the churches of old Christendom and plowing new missionary fields in post-Christian societies. A strong Global South church might also be of great benefit in evangelizing the part of the world where militant Islamic fundamentalism holds sway, as believers from those countries can gain access more easily to the Muslim world and frequently have more experience in interacting with majority-Muslim cultures.

American believers eager to participate in the work that God is doing in a post-9/11 world should seriously consider investing their lives (if they sense the calling of the Lord to do so) into partnership with Global South churches in developing theological depth, planting new churches, and training missionaries to send from those nations. The success of the church in the coming years–in the West, the Global South, and the Islamic world–may well depend upon it.

Listen to Tim Tennent’s convocation sermon, “The Translatability of the Gospel.”

Last week, I volunteered as a small group leader and shouldered the task of leading about 10 new students through the process of NSO (New Student Orientation).

We were taught during training that our primary goal is simply to be there for students and to minimize the awkwardness and insecurity that come with a transitional phase in a person’s life. (Human beings–particularly Westerners–like to think they’re like folding chairs, for whom changing location is as easy as setting up and tearing down. In reality, we’re more like plants or animals, for whom transplantation takes time and can be somewhat traumatic.)

Along with my co-leader, April, I got to meet several new students, lead them on a campus tour, answer their questions, and sit through a lot of really boring seminars on things like how to pay your bill and how to seek financial aid.

The actual process of orientation wore me out. It was way more extroversion and scheduled activity than I’m used to, but it was good to get pushed a little further out of my box and have to think about other people first for a change.

The real blessing of the whole experience came at the end of the second day at opening chapel. Asbury’s new president, Tim Tennent, shared his vision of creating “Scholars on Fire” (intellectuals whose hearts are fully engaged in the process), which really resonated with me. We had a beautiful time of worship in Estes Chapel, culminating in a Communion service.

After chapel, each group went to a professor’s home for a dessert and fellowship time. Each member of our group took turns sharing how they became aware of their calling and the steps that led them to Asbury. At the end, I got to share about not getting into Asbury and wandering around Europe last fall and running down the beach in St. Andrews and winding up in Wilmore right after one of the biggest ice storms in Kentucky history.

“I am so excited for all of you,” I told the new students. “Leading this group has made me realize how much healing and growth has happened in me since the last time I went through NSO. I know that the Lord has great things in store for all of you, and this is a very good place to be. Brighter days lie ahead.”

Life usually happens in the moments you don’t notice. Every once in a while, it’s necessary to “raise an Ebenezer,” a remembrance stone to testify to how far the Lord has brought you. NSO was one of those moments for me this year.

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