By Ben Witherington
Ron Luce is worried. And if Ron Luce is worried, we should be too. Ron runs an organization called Teen Mania which puts on camps, concerts and various and sundry other sorts of events for youth. He claims that in the last fifteen years 2 million youth have attended his events, the usual formula for which includes some prominent popular Evangelical band, speakers, and counselors. There is a figure that was put out there a decade or so ago which said that even Evangelical Churches are retaining only about 4-5% of our youth. A more recent poll by George Barna suggests that only 5% of our country's youth are Bible believing Christians, but perhaps he was defining Christian or Bible-believing too narrowly. I personally don't think this is true, but even if it is in the ball park it means that youth ministry as currently constituted is largely failing. You should read the story for yourself. Here's the link from this morning's N.Y. Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/us/06evangelical.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th
The question to be raised is--- why such a huge attrition rate by anoyone's calculations? Should we blame it on the music? Should we blame it on the approach? Should we blame it on the culture? What the heck is happening out there?
Well perhaps I can point to a few clues. But let me tell you a story first. I count Chris Tomlin as a friend. He was a praise worship neophyte when I first met him over a decade ago in the Woodlands Texas where he was leading music at the Woodlands U. Methodist Church, a Church I know well. I've done various events there over the years, and the pastor is a long time friend. I invited Chris to come to Asbury and help me with a revival I was leading. He came, and it gave him some exposure outside of Texas, exposure to a bunch of future youth ministers, and other clergy types. He came again a couple of years later, and he was a star on the rise. Now of course he headlines Christian concerts all over the place. He headlined Ichthus this past year of course had a positive impact on the 20,000 folks there. But what happened to Chris's meteoric career?
Well, you could be cynical and say the American starmaker machinery called the music industry saw a good thing and got on the Chris Tomlin bandwagon. But that wouldn't entirely be true. Chris is a wonderful, devout, humble Christian man with a deep and abiding faith in the Lord.
You could hypothesize that maybe God just blessed him and he turned around and blessed others by continuing to produce high quality praise music. Well of course there is some truth to that assessment but it isn't the whole story.
Some will ask--- What is the formula for that sort of 'success'? We are always looking for the technique, the formula the gimmick. And yes, there are some tricks to good marketing. I ought to know. I've not only been in the music business when I was much younger working for the Record Bar chain and promoting a Christian concert or two, but I've been in the publishing business for a long time now. And here is one thing I know-- form without substance does not last. Flash without the cash does not last. Image is not everything. It may get your foot in the door, but it will not allow you to live in the house, and this is especially true with the shape-shifting ever moving Christian youth culture.
Two of the reasons Chris's music has been so embraced and well received is it has SUBSTANCE, it is strongly based in God' Word. My friend and colleague J.D. Walt our chaplain here at Asbury has helped Chris with this in regard to the lyrics. And it has paid dividends.
Here's a simple truth--- God's Word does not wear out or fail. It doesn't have built in obsolescence like pop culture. So here's my formula of the day-- the less Biblical substance to a Christian pop event, song, etc. the less likely it will have any staying power. So much of praise music is pablum-- endlessly repeating the same choruses over and over. Repetition is not a bad thing. In fact it helps one to learn the lyrics. But if what you are repeating isn't something strong and substantive that a person can build a Christian life around, then its a willow of the wisp. It will come and go.
And here's another other factor. You need to draw your water from a deep well. By this I mean that a Christian musician, minister etc. needs to have a deep and abiding relationship with the Lord and deep and profound grounding in God's Word and in God's community. If you try to proclaim something that has not first catalyzed your own soul and spiritual life, it will ring hollow, rather than true. And one thing you don't have to worry about with Chris Tomlin-- he is not a superficial or surface Christian. He has authenticity and integrity. I could wish for still a bit more substance to some of the lyrics--- but hey we are getting there. Check out his new CD "See the Morning" and listen to 'Uncreated One'.
But Chris has a third secret. And its hiding in plain sight. He is not just singing, posturing, or performing. He is leading people into worship, into the living presence of God. Worship is a well he drinks from regularly and in the many Passion events he has led it is clear where he is coming from, and where he is bidding us to go. There is a different between a performance, and an act of worship, and Chris is fully comfortable with, indeed excited and joyfully taking us into worship.
My word today to Youth Ministers is this--- one key to retaining the youth is this--- have they been captivated, caught up in love, wonder and praise of the Lord, or have they merely been entertained? There is a difference. Does the event not merely make them dance but make them kneel and confess their sins and pray? Does the event not merely move their emotions but challenge their thinking? Does it bring them to repentance, or are you offering some kind of forgiveness without repentance, crown without a cross, encounter without commitment? And are you integrating them into a caring Christian community where they will be planted deeply, richly in God's Word? The key to retention is surrounding a new Christian with a caring, supportive and yes challenging Christian environment that involves more than just worship. It also needs to involve some profound Christian education, as our youth will never get that from our culture these days. Youth ministry is often failing because in general the Church's Christian education is failing. Less than a third, on average, of people who go to worship stay for Sunday school or Bible study or its equivalent. We should have noticed this warning sign a long time ago.
So much of youth ministry is 'boiling things down', or as the jargon goes, putting the cookies on the bottom shelf. But you can't boil something down that you haven't first boiled up. By this I mean the youth leaders must be more profoundly grounded in God's Word than they are in pop culture, though they need to keep their finger on the pulse of the culture as well. However, as our culture, even youth culture, moves further and further away from Christianity, it will be hard to find points of contact with that culture that can be jumping off points for a Christian witness. So perhaps we could try something different.
Chris' approach is not to boil the message down, but rather to boil the people up. This I think is the right way to go. Get them excited about the Lord, get them excited about the Word. And instead of turning the message into pablum why not tease the minds of our youth into active thought? Why not honor their keen minds, their curiosity, and even their questions by challenging them with the meat of God's Word? Help them so that their reach will extend further than their current grasp. Give them something solid to hold on to.
Today more than ever with one out of two marriages, even in Evangelical Churches, ending in divorce and more and more family dysfunctionality, we need the church to BE a family, the family of faith, who will take in all comes, every straggler. Maybe our motto could be "give me your tired, your poor, your restless masses yearning to breath free..." Wait a minute isn't that on that statue on Ellis Island? Yes it is, but real freedom only comes from a close encounter of the first kind with the Word of God Incarnate, and the Word of God written, and the Word of God incarnated in his community. And that's the Gospel truth for today.
Ron Luce is worried. And if Ron Luce is worried, we should be too. Ron runs an organization called Teen Mania which puts on camps, concerts and various and sundry other sorts of events for youth. He claims that in the last fifteen years 2 million youth have attended his events, the usual formula for which includes some prominent popular Evangelical band, speakers, and counselors. There is a figure that was put out there a decade or so ago which said that even Evangelical Churches are retaining only about 4-5% of our youth. A more recent poll by George Barna suggests that only 5% of our country's youth are Bible believing Christians, but perhaps he was defining Christian or Bible-believing too narrowly. I personally don't think this is true, but even if it is in the ball park it means that youth ministry as currently constituted is largely failing. You should read the story for yourself. Here's the link from this morning's N.Y. Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/us/06evangelical.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th
The question to be raised is--- why such a huge attrition rate by anoyone's calculations? Should we blame it on the music? Should we blame it on the approach? Should we blame it on the culture? What the heck is happening out there?
Well perhaps I can point to a few clues. But let me tell you a story first. I count Chris Tomlin as a friend. He was a praise worship neophyte when I first met him over a decade ago in the Woodlands Texas where he was leading music at the Woodlands U. Methodist Church, a Church I know well. I've done various events there over the years, and the pastor is a long time friend. I invited Chris to come to Asbury and help me with a revival I was leading. He came, and it gave him some exposure outside of Texas, exposure to a bunch of future youth ministers, and other clergy types. He came again a couple of years later, and he was a star on the rise. Now of course he headlines Christian concerts all over the place. He headlined Ichthus this past year of course had a positive impact on the 20,000 folks there. But what happened to Chris's meteoric career?
Well, you could be cynical and say the American starmaker machinery called the music industry saw a good thing and got on the Chris Tomlin bandwagon. But that wouldn't entirely be true. Chris is a wonderful, devout, humble Christian man with a deep and abiding faith in the Lord.
You could hypothesize that maybe God just blessed him and he turned around and blessed others by continuing to produce high quality praise music. Well of course there is some truth to that assessment but it isn't the whole story.
Some will ask--- What is the formula for that sort of 'success'? We are always looking for the technique, the formula the gimmick. And yes, there are some tricks to good marketing. I ought to know. I've not only been in the music business when I was much younger working for the Record Bar chain and promoting a Christian concert or two, but I've been in the publishing business for a long time now. And here is one thing I know-- form without substance does not last. Flash without the cash does not last. Image is not everything. It may get your foot in the door, but it will not allow you to live in the house, and this is especially true with the shape-shifting ever moving Christian youth culture.
Two of the reasons Chris's music has been so embraced and well received is it has SUBSTANCE, it is strongly based in God' Word. My friend and colleague J.D. Walt our chaplain here at Asbury has helped Chris with this in regard to the lyrics. And it has paid dividends.
Here's a simple truth--- God's Word does not wear out or fail. It doesn't have built in obsolescence like pop culture. So here's my formula of the day-- the less Biblical substance to a Christian pop event, song, etc. the less likely it will have any staying power. So much of praise music is pablum-- endlessly repeating the same choruses over and over. Repetition is not a bad thing. In fact it helps one to learn the lyrics. But if what you are repeating isn't something strong and substantive that a person can build a Christian life around, then its a willow of the wisp. It will come and go.
And here's another other factor. You need to draw your water from a deep well. By this I mean that a Christian musician, minister etc. needs to have a deep and abiding relationship with the Lord and deep and profound grounding in God's Word and in God's community. If you try to proclaim something that has not first catalyzed your own soul and spiritual life, it will ring hollow, rather than true. And one thing you don't have to worry about with Chris Tomlin-- he is not a superficial or surface Christian. He has authenticity and integrity. I could wish for still a bit more substance to some of the lyrics--- but hey we are getting there. Check out his new CD "See the Morning" and listen to 'Uncreated One'.
But Chris has a third secret. And its hiding in plain sight. He is not just singing, posturing, or performing. He is leading people into worship, into the living presence of God. Worship is a well he drinks from regularly and in the many Passion events he has led it is clear where he is coming from, and where he is bidding us to go. There is a different between a performance, and an act of worship, and Chris is fully comfortable with, indeed excited and joyfully taking us into worship.
My word today to Youth Ministers is this--- one key to retaining the youth is this--- have they been captivated, caught up in love, wonder and praise of the Lord, or have they merely been entertained? There is a difference. Does the event not merely make them dance but make them kneel and confess their sins and pray? Does the event not merely move their emotions but challenge their thinking? Does it bring them to repentance, or are you offering some kind of forgiveness without repentance, crown without a cross, encounter without commitment? And are you integrating them into a caring Christian community where they will be planted deeply, richly in God's Word? The key to retention is surrounding a new Christian with a caring, supportive and yes challenging Christian environment that involves more than just worship. It also needs to involve some profound Christian education, as our youth will never get that from our culture these days. Youth ministry is often failing because in general the Church's Christian education is failing. Less than a third, on average, of people who go to worship stay for Sunday school or Bible study or its equivalent. We should have noticed this warning sign a long time ago.
So much of youth ministry is 'boiling things down', or as the jargon goes, putting the cookies on the bottom shelf. But you can't boil something down that you haven't first boiled up. By this I mean the youth leaders must be more profoundly grounded in God's Word than they are in pop culture, though they need to keep their finger on the pulse of the culture as well. However, as our culture, even youth culture, moves further and further away from Christianity, it will be hard to find points of contact with that culture that can be jumping off points for a Christian witness. So perhaps we could try something different.
Chris' approach is not to boil the message down, but rather to boil the people up. This I think is the right way to go. Get them excited about the Lord, get them excited about the Word. And instead of turning the message into pablum why not tease the minds of our youth into active thought? Why not honor their keen minds, their curiosity, and even their questions by challenging them with the meat of God's Word? Help them so that their reach will extend further than their current grasp. Give them something solid to hold on to.
Today more than ever with one out of two marriages, even in Evangelical Churches, ending in divorce and more and more family dysfunctionality, we need the church to BE a family, the family of faith, who will take in all comes, every straggler. Maybe our motto could be "give me your tired, your poor, your restless masses yearning to breath free..." Wait a minute isn't that on that statue on Ellis Island? Yes it is, but real freedom only comes from a close encounter of the first kind with the Word of God Incarnate, and the Word of God written, and the Word of God incarnated in his community. And that's the Gospel truth for today.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Thoroughly Post-Modern Biblical Interpretation
Post-Modernism is an odd movement of our time. As it affects theological reflection it has both its good and bad aspects. The good news is it takes less atomistic approaches to the Bible. For example, it is concerned with canonical theology as a whole, Biblical theology as whole. These are not bad things in themselves. But there is an under current to much of the post-modern stuff that I read from A.K.A. Adam and others that is disturbing at several levels.
Here is a link so you can read some things about post-modern criticism and philosophy as it applies to the Bible---
http://churchandpomo.typepad.com/conversation/2006/10/a_postmodern_bi.html
Let's take the issue of epistemology first. Post-modernism in so far as it has helped caused a shift in epistemology is deeply indebted to people like Stanley Fish formerly of Duke but now at the law school at Florida International, believe it or not. Fish is a thorough-going reader response kind of guy. He is the type of person who is likely to smile when you say "meaning is just in the eye of the beholder". He does not really believe texts have meanings. He believes that active readers give texts their meaning.
I was always taught to call this eisegesis-- the inappropriate reading into the text of something that is not there. He is not at all interested in arguments about "the intention of the author". He thinks those intentions, whatever they were can't be known and don't matter. Meaning happens-- its not encoded in texts, and the issue of authorial intent is a moot point. The funny thing about this is that when some people have misread his own work on John Milton, and totally misrepresented what he said--- he objects "but that is not what I said or meant." But he doesn't have a leg to stand on. He gave up claims about objective meanings in texts and authorial intent. As for me, I would much rather listen to Kevin Van Hoozer on these subjects (see his "Is There a Meaning in This Text?") or more remotely E.D. Hirsch's classic study "Validity in Interpretation".
Why is this important when it comes to the study of the Bible? There is a simple answer--- THIS IS GOD'S WORD. I do not get to decide for myself what God's Word says or means. It would be arrogant for me to think so. It is for me to discover the meaning of the text encoded in the sentences and paragraphs, for it had an objective meaning long before I ever looked at the text or studied the text. God through the vehicle of various inspired human beings put that meaning there. Post-modernism has problems with objective truth claims, especially texts that make claims on us before we can even begin to make claims about them. It likes to use the pejorative term 'foundationalism' when people start talking about objective truth claims. Frankly, this seems to me to be yet one more human ploy to hold the truth claims of the Bible on us all at bay. Put simply most post-modern theory involves an epistemology that violates the whole Biblical theory and reality of 'revelation'-- a truth conveyed by God through human vehicles to us in perspicuous words that involve truths that not merely relative but absolute and makes an absolute claim on us all.
The second problem with thoroughly post-modern Biblical interpretation is it tends to be docetic. What do I mean by this? It wants to suggest or imply that historical issues are not really all that important to theology with rare exceptions. It doesn't really much matter whether there was a historical Moses or not, we have these books that appeal to the name of Moses called the Pentateuch and since they are part of our canon they have authority for us, whatever degree of historical substance there may or may not be to the historical claims in the text.
Some would suggest that we treat the Bible as pure story, pure narrative, indeed there is a whole school of approach which wants to treat the Gospels as ancient works of 'true fiction', with the term 'true' defined in almost purely theological terms. What is wrong with theologizing, or doing canonical theology in this way? What is wrong with treating the NT in a 'history of ideas' kind of way-- as if the resurrection was just an interesting idea played with in different ways by different NT authors? The answer is simple. Christian faith is a faith founded on a certain irreducible number of historical events. Like Judaism it is an historical religion, such that without the history, there would be, or at least should be, no religion.
That's the difference between historical religions and pure philosophies of life. A good example of a religious philosophy of life, not grounded in historical events, would be Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science, which in its original essence was a mind over matter philosophy of life. Her theory, even though she herself was often a physically very sick person, is that physical illness is an illusion of the mind, and if one knows how to practice mind over matter, then one can be well. You don't need medicine. Sometime you should read Mark Twain's famous and detailed critique of this religion-- it is simply called "Christian Science" and it is published by Prometheus Books. It is quite the expose. Why do I bring up this example? Because it shows where docetic use of the Bible and docetic approaches to theology can lead. Denude the Bible of its historical substance, boil it down to just stories or just a pile of philosophical principles or just a collection of theological and ethical ideas and what have you got?? You've got something that bears no resemblance to the presuppositions and actual theologizing that is being done in the NT or OT.
Listen for a minute to Paul. He puts it this way to his Corinthians who had docetic tendencies--- " If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile: you are still in your sins. The those who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitable people on earth." (1 Cor. 15.17-19). He goes on to add 'If the dead are not raised, then 'let us eat and drink for tomorrow we will die'" (vs. 32). Did you catch what he just did? He just suggested that both Christian theology and Christian ethics are founded in and grounded in an historical event-- the resurrection of Jesus. If that did not happen then far from Christianity being a spiritually beneficial thing, or a comfort it is to be seen as a delusion, and its practitioners pitiable. If Christ isn't raised then the basis for good conduct between now and death is undercut. We should instead embrace hedonism. Oliver O' Donovan's wonderful work on 1 Cor.15 has shown just how much Paul's theology and his ethics are grounded in the Christ event.
"My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness..." Indeed, and this means we dare not do theology as if we were just tossing about a bunch of interesting ideas and seeing what permutations and combinations we can come up with. The meaning of these texts matter theologically and ethically because the history which they enshrine actually happened. Revelation came in the form of events and words and deeds in real time in real space involving real persons. This ought to be obvious to Christians for whom salvation is not a Gnostic self-help program by which if we just gain the right insider knowledge and are enlightened we can save ourselves. No, salvation is something that took place outside of our own cerberal cortex through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. If those things did not happen, there is no salvation-- period. Not for anyone.
Those who suggest "its true because it is in the canon" and then say "lets do canonical theology" have got the matter completely backwards. It's in the canon because its true-- some of it is historically true, some of it is ethicaly true, some of it is true in other senses, including theological ones. But it isn't true just because its in the canon. Its true because a truthful God inspired various writers to write these books especially to tell the truth about Jesus Christ and other important historical figures in the Jewish and Christian story of salvation history. Thus, color me post- post-modern. I hope you are as well.
Here is a link so you can read some things about post-modern criticism and philosophy as it applies to the Bible---
http://churchandpomo.typepad.com/conversation/2006/10/a_postmodern_bi.html
Let's take the issue of epistemology first. Post-modernism in so far as it has helped caused a shift in epistemology is deeply indebted to people like Stanley Fish formerly of Duke but now at the law school at Florida International, believe it or not. Fish is a thorough-going reader response kind of guy. He is the type of person who is likely to smile when you say "meaning is just in the eye of the beholder". He does not really believe texts have meanings. He believes that active readers give texts their meaning.
I was always taught to call this eisegesis-- the inappropriate reading into the text of something that is not there. He is not at all interested in arguments about "the intention of the author". He thinks those intentions, whatever they were can't be known and don't matter. Meaning happens-- its not encoded in texts, and the issue of authorial intent is a moot point. The funny thing about this is that when some people have misread his own work on John Milton, and totally misrepresented what he said--- he objects "but that is not what I said or meant." But he doesn't have a leg to stand on. He gave up claims about objective meanings in texts and authorial intent. As for me, I would much rather listen to Kevin Van Hoozer on these subjects (see his "Is There a Meaning in This Text?") or more remotely E.D. Hirsch's classic study "Validity in Interpretation".
Why is this important when it comes to the study of the Bible? There is a simple answer--- THIS IS GOD'S WORD. I do not get to decide for myself what God's Word says or means. It would be arrogant for me to think so. It is for me to discover the meaning of the text encoded in the sentences and paragraphs, for it had an objective meaning long before I ever looked at the text or studied the text. God through the vehicle of various inspired human beings put that meaning there. Post-modernism has problems with objective truth claims, especially texts that make claims on us before we can even begin to make claims about them. It likes to use the pejorative term 'foundationalism' when people start talking about objective truth claims. Frankly, this seems to me to be yet one more human ploy to hold the truth claims of the Bible on us all at bay. Put simply most post-modern theory involves an epistemology that violates the whole Biblical theory and reality of 'revelation'-- a truth conveyed by God through human vehicles to us in perspicuous words that involve truths that not merely relative but absolute and makes an absolute claim on us all.
The second problem with thoroughly post-modern Biblical interpretation is it tends to be docetic. What do I mean by this? It wants to suggest or imply that historical issues are not really all that important to theology with rare exceptions. It doesn't really much matter whether there was a historical Moses or not, we have these books that appeal to the name of Moses called the Pentateuch and since they are part of our canon they have authority for us, whatever degree of historical substance there may or may not be to the historical claims in the text.
Some would suggest that we treat the Bible as pure story, pure narrative, indeed there is a whole school of approach which wants to treat the Gospels as ancient works of 'true fiction', with the term 'true' defined in almost purely theological terms. What is wrong with theologizing, or doing canonical theology in this way? What is wrong with treating the NT in a 'history of ideas' kind of way-- as if the resurrection was just an interesting idea played with in different ways by different NT authors? The answer is simple. Christian faith is a faith founded on a certain irreducible number of historical events. Like Judaism it is an historical religion, such that without the history, there would be, or at least should be, no religion.
That's the difference between historical religions and pure philosophies of life. A good example of a religious philosophy of life, not grounded in historical events, would be Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science, which in its original essence was a mind over matter philosophy of life. Her theory, even though she herself was often a physically very sick person, is that physical illness is an illusion of the mind, and if one knows how to practice mind over matter, then one can be well. You don't need medicine. Sometime you should read Mark Twain's famous and detailed critique of this religion-- it is simply called "Christian Science" and it is published by Prometheus Books. It is quite the expose. Why do I bring up this example? Because it shows where docetic use of the Bible and docetic approaches to theology can lead. Denude the Bible of its historical substance, boil it down to just stories or just a pile of philosophical principles or just a collection of theological and ethical ideas and what have you got?? You've got something that bears no resemblance to the presuppositions and actual theologizing that is being done in the NT or OT.
Listen for a minute to Paul. He puts it this way to his Corinthians who had docetic tendencies--- " If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile: you are still in your sins. The those who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitable people on earth." (1 Cor. 15.17-19). He goes on to add 'If the dead are not raised, then 'let us eat and drink for tomorrow we will die'" (vs. 32). Did you catch what he just did? He just suggested that both Christian theology and Christian ethics are founded in and grounded in an historical event-- the resurrection of Jesus. If that did not happen then far from Christianity being a spiritually beneficial thing, or a comfort it is to be seen as a delusion, and its practitioners pitiable. If Christ isn't raised then the basis for good conduct between now and death is undercut. We should instead embrace hedonism. Oliver O' Donovan's wonderful work on 1 Cor.15 has shown just how much Paul's theology and his ethics are grounded in the Christ event.
"My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness..." Indeed, and this means we dare not do theology as if we were just tossing about a bunch of interesting ideas and seeing what permutations and combinations we can come up with. The meaning of these texts matter theologically and ethically because the history which they enshrine actually happened. Revelation came in the form of events and words and deeds in real time in real space involving real persons. This ought to be obvious to Christians for whom salvation is not a Gnostic self-help program by which if we just gain the right insider knowledge and are enlightened we can save ourselves. No, salvation is something that took place outside of our own cerberal cortex through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. If those things did not happen, there is no salvation-- period. Not for anyone.
Those who suggest "its true because it is in the canon" and then say "lets do canonical theology" have got the matter completely backwards. It's in the canon because its true-- some of it is historically true, some of it is ethicaly true, some of it is true in other senses, including theological ones. But it isn't true just because its in the canon. Its true because a truthful God inspired various writers to write these books especially to tell the truth about Jesus Christ and other important historical figures in the Jewish and Christian story of salvation history. Thus, color me post- post-modern. I hope you are as well.
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