Practicing theologians sept by New Life

AUGUST 2013

Practicing Theologians

FROM THE DESK OF

Bishop Andy C. Lewter, D. Min. presenting

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Contents PRESIDENT Pastor Ronald Grant PUBLISHER Bishop Andy C. Lewter, D. Min.

From the Desk of the Publisher Bishop Andy C. Lewter, D. Min. ��04

A Landmark Film By Pastor Robert Houston ��05

The Real “Butler” in the White House

EDITOR Elder Deidrea Sealy

By Ardelle M. Banks ��08

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Bishop Andy C. Lewter, D. Min Pastor James D. Williams Pastor Norman Scott Rev. Patricia Rickenbacker, Dean Rev. Lisa D. Jenkins

By Jared Compton �� 11

DESIGN AND LAYOUT Sunny Goel and Surendra Gupta

Why the Quest for the Historical Jesus Matters Unmarried Christians Having Sex By Channel Graham �� 14

Blended Worship; Good or Bad? By Ken Berding �� 18

Ulrich Zwingli: Pioneer of the Baptist Movement By Andy Johnston ��21

STAFF Phyllis Curry Minister Michael Poindexter Minister Jahmel Robinson Minister Shanelle Turpin The Journal is a quarterly Publication by the Empire Baptist Missionary Convention. We welcome all submissions which become the property of the publication and is subject to editorial revisions. For more information please contact Empire Journal, 2 Monroe Street, Amityville, NY 11701. 631-842-7091 or by E-mail: bishopacl@mindspring.com A PUBLICATION OF THE EMPIRE BAPTIST MISSIONARY CONVENTION Commission on Media and Technology

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From the Desk of the Publisher Bishop Andy C. Lewter, D. Min. Welcome to our theological journal “Practicing Theologians” which is a bi-monthly publication dedicated to having a serious conversation with Christian scholars, academicians and intellectuals. In this issue we tackle a number of different topics, beginning with the recent movie starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey, The Butler. It seems that every generation produces a film that has an enormous impact and becomes the symbol of the African American community telling its own story. In the past, movies like Sounder and Malcolm X served in that capacity. For this generation of “millennials”, The Butler will no doubt have the same kind of impact. Beyond Hollywood, we in this issue examine questions like the importance and interest there continues to be in the “Quest for the Historical Jesus”. We also find ourselves in this issue looking at changing behavioral patterns that suggests that single Christians are finding themselves more and more in sexual relationships, without the benefit of marriage. Finally, I ask that you consider taking the time to read our article on the life of Huldrich Zwingli, who had an enormous impact upon the Baptist Movement years before it ever came to America. Because we are a journal that seeks to be both practical as much as we are theoretical, we invite you to read our article on the tension many congregations are feeling as they attempt to merge blended worship styles into a single worship expressions. By the time you read this we are hoping to have completed all of the paperwork necessary to install this publication in the newsstand area of apple’s ipad, iphones and computers. We are hopeful that our entry into the publishing mainstream of digital publishing will help us to increase our influence and impact upon the body of Christ. We know that this is a bold new move and we are anxious to hear what you think about it.

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A Landmark Film By Pastor Robert Houston

Easily one of the best movies this year and should be a shoo-in for nominations in next year's Oscars is Lee Daniels' The Butler. The movie follows the life and times of Cecil Gaines, who began life as a son of a sharecropper (David Banner) and his abused wife (at the hands of plantation owners) played by Mariah Carey. After witnessing two brutal acts against his parents, he is brought into the owners' home by the matriarch of the family to be taught how to be "a house nigger." Cecil adapts to his assignment from childhood to his teenage years, when he leaves the harsh realities of the south and moves to Washington, DC, where he works at a hotel

and is selected to a White House assignment.

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Thus he begins to work under American Presidents from Eisenhower to Reagan. Each actor portraying the various presidents are spot on, especially Ronald Reagan (Alan Rickman) and Lyndon Johnson (Live Shreiber), who provided some of the biggest laughs in the theatre. Forest Whitaker takes over the role of Cecil from early adulthood and is very solid throughout the movie - but in my eye, another actor should have played him in his early years. The wig was a distraction in his "20s and 30s" - but he sparkles in his old age as he not only combats in quiet conďŹ dence racism, but an alcoholic wife (played brilliantly by Oprah Winfrey), two quite different sons - Louis (David Oyelowo) and Charlie (Elijah Kelley) - who have a

conversation about this country that shows the tension in the AfricanAmerican community in the 60s with a great gravitas. He has the line of the movie in the conclusion and when I left the theatre, people were repeating it as they left the theatre. Cecil's neighbors and co-workers are a delight, but I'm wondering why does Terrance Howard always have to play the philanderer? Cuba Gooding, Lenny Kravitz, and the other White House staffers, underpaid compared to their (unseen) white counterparts show how disciplined they could be publicly and switch mercilessly to real people in the kitchen. The latter portions of the movie remind you of Forrest Gump as Cecil's lifepaths directly dissect with major historical events - Ko-

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rea, Vietnam, Kennedy Assassination, Nixon Impeachment, Little Rock Nine, Nashville Woolworth Sit-Ins, and even the Black Panthers. The brutality of the Freedom Riders of which Louis is a part, is worth the price of admissions for young people who have only heard of it and never seen images like this. It's not disturbing for those of us who lived in or immediately after the period of the 60s, but it will make you think twice about race relations and wonder how come we are not farther along in 2013 than we should have been. It also reminds us that even in the 50s and 60s that the Black Community was divided in its approach to civil rights. There were those who protested, those who fought, those who sued, those who stood in pulpits, those who organized boycotts, there were those who chose not to be involved, and there were those who went to the streets in violent protests while others took to the street in peaceful protest. Oprah Winfrey plays Gloria Gaines like a ﬁnely tuned instrument. She displays a wide range of emotions from contented housewife to

alcoholic to compassionate mother to combative defender of her husband. As she says, Cecil's being a butler has brought financial sustainability to the family - even though he quietly fought for a raise, won at the hands of Ronald Reagan. Oprah even makes you remember that even in the bad times, humor and love often times keep a family relationship together when it doesn't seem possible on paper. There is no doubt that Oscar should consider Daniels, Danny Strong (for his screenplay), Whitaker, Winfrey, Oyelowo, Schreiber and Rickman for possible nods in respective categories. If this movie is not on the list for Best Picture then it goes to show that good filmmaking by black folk is still in the pullman car and not on the showcase floor. Robert Earl Houston, 53, is the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church located in Frankfort, Kentucky – about half-way between the cities of Louisville and Lexington. He is married to the former Jessica Georgette (Anderson) Houston of Sacramento, California, the love of his life.

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The Real “Butler” in the White House By Ardelle M. Banks

WASHINGTON (RNS) Eugene Allen served eight presidents as a White House butler, and his legendary career is the inspiration for “Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” a ﬁlm starring Oprah Winfrey, Jane Fonda and a host of A-list Hollywood talent. But members of The Greater First Baptist Church knew the man who died in 2010 by other titles: usher, trustee, and a humble man of quiet faith. “The attributes that made him a great butler made him a great usher,” said Denise Johnson, an usher at the predominantly black D.C. church where Allen was

a member for six decades. Those qualities were both external — black suits and white gloves — and internal — a digniﬁed, soft-spoken manner. On a recent Sunday, parishioners recalled Allen as a peacemaker, someone who never raised his voice. His devotion to service extended far beyond the public and private rooms of the White House to the doorways and kitchen of his church. In AfricanAmerican churches, the usher is a special role bestowed on highly regarded members.

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Allen joined others to open doors to visitors and pass out fans and offering plates. He also would roll up his sleeves and help prepare ﬁsh and chicken at church fundraising dinners. “He was not only a servant there,” the Rev. Robert Hood, an associate minister, said of Allen’s White House work. “But he was also a servant doing the work of the Lord.” The movie hits theaters on Friday (Aug. 16) with Allen portrayed as the ﬁctional Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker), married to Gloria (Winfrey). The movie spans his personal journey

from segregation to integration, during which he tended to keep his mouth shut about the goings-on inside the White House as well as the civil rights struggles roiling the nation. Church members recalled that Allen, like the ﬁctional Cecil Gaines, was fairly reticent. “He loved that job, was committed to it,” said fellow trustee Dolores Causer of his White House job serving eight presidents. “But he never really would discuss anything other than to say he loved his work and he enjoyed each and every one of them.” The writer of the four-page obituary in Allen’s funeral program, however, gained some insights into his thoughts about working with U.S. presidents: Harry S. Truman was “hands down, the best dressed President.”

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He considered Dwight Eisenhower’s decision to send troops to enforce school desegregation in Little Rock, Ark., “an especially admirable act.” He said Lyndon Johnson’s action on civil rights “would be the jewel in his crown.” “He was much grieved by (Richard) Nixon’s demise and ultimate resignation.” He “failed to see the pratfall … humor in the Saturday Night Live impersonations of (Gerald) Ford, calling him the best athlete in the White House in his time.” “In the last year of his life, Eugene admitted that another young couple (the Obamas) had indeed entered the White House who possessed the Kennedy magic.” Allen acknowledged that he was especially fond of the Reagans, who invited him — in real life and in the movie — to a state dinner before he retired in 1986. “He often talked about how nice they were to him,” recalled church member Marion Washington, who knew Allen when he was promoted to maitre d’ In the movie, Cecil and Gloria Gaines are

portrayed as a Christian couple, with a crucifix over their bed and a devotion to the Bible. Director Lee Daniels, a Philadelphia native who grew up in the oldest black Episcopal church in the country, said it was important for the movie to include religious elements. He fought to include a scene depicting a church fund-raiser for the Freedom Riders in which a choir sings “Woke Up This Morning With My Mind Stayed On Freedom.” “You can’t tell a story about the civil rights movement without the gospel and gospel music,” he said. “You just simply can’t. It’s impossible.” Wil Haygood, who wrote the 2008 Washington Post story that first brought Allen’s story to light, said it was more than chance that allowed him to bring public attention to Allen’s otherwise private career. “There was a higher force that led me to Mr. Allen’s front door,” said Haygood, who made dozens of calls before tracking down Allen. “He had a landline. If he would have had a cell phone I would have never found him.” Now, he said, after Allen worked quietly behind the scenes while presidents from Truman to Reagan were in the limelight, the roles are reversed. “To me, in a way, it’s almost biblical: The last shall be first,” said Haygood. “He’s not working in the White House theater, serving popcorn. He’s the star on the big screen.”

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Why the Quest for the Historical Jesus Matters By Jared Compton

Since history matters, then the quest for the historical Jesus matters. Here let me suggest two specific reasons why. First, if you plan to have a conversation with your neighbor about Jesus, the conversation will undoubtedly be influenced by the quest for the historical Jesus. Perhaps you’ve had the experience—I have—of sharing this or that piece of the Christian worldview with an unbelieving friend only to have her say, “Well, that’s just what the Bible says; how do you know that’s what Jesus really taught?” The question may not have appeared quite so often in your parents’ or grandparents’ visitation reports, but it will in yours, especially if your evangelis-

tic work takes place in the shadow of a university or, for that matter, a mosque. This is the conversation people are having. (Did anyone miss “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife”?) Thus, as James Dunn reminds us, if we want to continue to make any kind of truth claims of relevance beyond the confines of [our] churches, then [we’ve got] to make them within [this] public forum. The alternative is to settle back into an internal ecclesiastical discourse which cannot be understood or effectively communicated outside the ekklesia (Jesus Remembered). Second, not only is this the conversation your neighbor is having, but it’s also the one he’s

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hiding behind. He’s adopted one or another of the quest’s Jesuses and assumes he’s put the lie to orthodox Christianity. Your neighbor, in other words, is making a historical claim, whether he recognizes it or not. He’s appealing to history

and to history you must go. How else do you plan to confront these alternative pictures of Jesus—these alternative faiths— produced by the quest and its popularizers. How, e.g., can Dan Brown’s Jesus be put to rest if not by a thorough account of who Jesus actually was. One simply cannot say to Brown or his disciples—“You’re wrong and I’m right, though I refuse to argue the relative merits of our historical claims.” Not only would the assertion to “believe the Gospels”—to accept my faith—fail apologetically but it would unwittingly give the impression that Christianity can stand loose from history, that its merits can rise or fall irrespective of what really happened. When Paul turns to talk about the resurrection

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in one of his letters to the Corinthians, he doesn’t simply say, “I said it”—which today would be like saying “It’s in Scripture”—“therefore believe it.” Rather, he starts talking aboutwitnesses, 500 of them, many of whom were probably still living at the time Paul wrote and thus able to receive skeptical visitors. In short, we must wrestle with the quest and its answers if we want to put ourselves in a position to urge others—those outside the charmed circle of our churches—to consider what the real Jesus might mean for them. Or to put it another way around. If Jesus did say what the Gospels record, if he was killed for the reasons the Gospels give, if he was raised as the Gospels claim, then it matters what your neighbor does with this Jesus. His,

he can take or, more likely, leave. If the Gospels are fundamentally accurate, then, e.g., the eternallypopular idea that Jesus was a good teacher and example is a closed door, a non-option. If the Gospels are fundamentally accurate, one is not allowed to say that Jesus was simply a good teacher, full stop, or that he was simply a good example, full stop. The Gospels won’t allow this sort of nonsense. It’s a violent domestication of their message. Historical work—the kind that shows the world the kind of literature the Gospels really are—forces critics of Christianity to do away with silly—sentimental—notions about Jesus and to meet him full on. And the quest, at its best, gives us the resources to do just this sort of thing.

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Unmarried Christians Having Sex By Channel Graham

Remember the days when Christians used to blush over conversations about sex? Sermons on the Song of Solomon left us avoiding eye contact with our pastors and safe sex talks in public school meant guaranteed giggling after class. I guess we’re all grown up now. The generation of kids who once kissed dating goodbye and held fast to the promise that True Love Waits is no longer hanging its moral hat on the hook of sexual purity. According to the National Association of Evangelicals, 80 percent of unmarried evangelical Christians between ages 18-29 admit to having had premarital sex, a shocking

ﬁgure when measured against the number of pledges made in youth ministries and wristbands worn endorsing abstinence around the country throughout the late ’80s and early ’90s. For a generation fed a steady diet of “just wait until you’re married for sex,” why are so many of us losing our virginity before we say “I do”? What is causing the growing chasm between our Christian belief and sexual purity? I suspect much of our early understanding of sexuality is at fault, being reduced to just saying no instead of developing a holistic view of human sexuality through a person’s entire lifespan, fully integrating it with God’s plan. Compartmentalizing Sexual-

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ity When I moved to New York City in the years following college, I was devastated to learn how many of my Christian friends were regularly hooking up at bars and sleeping with boyfriends and girlfriends with no plans for marriage. And more than that, they didn’t seem to feel bad about it. The subcultural sentiment was that abstinence is worth preaching through the college years as parental inﬂuence wanes and students bumble through the early years of adulthood. But for twenty and thirtysomething Christians, for mature adults who had yet to ﬁnd the one and had been battling hormones for a decade-plus, waiting was child’s play. Celibacy amongst my Christian peer group was viewed as cute and commendable, but certainly not crucial. Despite the disappointment I felt over my friends’ behavior, there wasn’t much room for judgment. At

the core they were simply living out the compartmentalization of sexuality that was also present in my heart. From the day I received my True Love Waits Bible in junior high school, I locked up my sexual desire to be opened only in case of marriage. Like Prisca Bird wrote for the Good Women Project, I wore my virginity as a badge of honor, latching onto “the image of myself as the radical abstinence practitioner” and one who would remain chaste to “fight the good fight.” I was unable to view human sexuality as a gift, holy and blessed by God. By failing to embrace my sexual identity in the midst of tempering my desire, I inadvertently called evil what God had deemed good. You see, promiscuity and abstinence can be two sides of the same coin. Both can hint at an insufficient understanding of God’s intention

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for sex, his blessing of it in the context of marriage, and his creation of his people as sexual beings. So preaching only abstinence is not the answer. Harder Than the Olympics We need a new conversation around sexuality in the church — one that doesn’t insist on the wait without the while. We need a conversation that acknowledges our sexuality along a continuum and prepares men and women of Christ to engage in their own sexual development,

desire, and growth while they move throughout the seasons of life and relationship. It can’t be left at telling 15-year-olds to “just say no.” We need an open discussion around what it looks like to abstain at 33 when marriage is nowhere on the horizon or at 27 when engaged and just days from saying I do. That’s why it’s helpful to have a new wave of Christians coming forward to reengage the public on the topics of sexuality and faith. This past May, when 29-year-old Olym-

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pic hurdler Lolo Jones talked about the difficulty of being a virgin into her late twenties, saying it was the hardest thing she’s ever done in her life — “harder than training for the Olympics” — we could almost hear the shouts of “could the Church get an Amen!” Jones’ acknowledgment of the tension of feeling sexual desire while also affirming a commitment to abstinence revealed an important dynamic in the vow of purity: it’s not easy. There will be temptation and desire while waiting. But as believers, we endure the struggle because we know that the testing of our faith always produces perseverance leading to godly character and a hope for the future (James 1:3, Romans 5:4). Good Enough to Wait For On the flipside, there can be joyful anticipation while waiting. One of the best examples in recent years of this is bombshell actress Meagan Good, who has long since been a movie vixen playing sexy roles in Jumping the Broom and most recently Think Like A Man. This spring Good, a Christian, publicly shared her commitment to abstain from sex until she wed her Seventh Day Adventist pastor and film executive husband DeVon Franklin. Despite her commitment, for the past year she has been able to exude sex appeal onscreen. Chastity doesn’t have to

mean wearing a habit and ignoring our sexual identity. Though we exercise self-control, as responsible adults we are free to tap into our sexuality, own our appeal, and recognize our desire. Good’s story shows us that true love doesn’t wait; it develops. Christian adults must carry on the conversation of abstinence to the next phase. It’s not just a youth issue. If we could more openly discuss the tingling we feel, the occasional knockout attraction we have to the opposite sex or the times where our sex drives lull, I believe we might find that we’re able to maintain purity much later into adulthood. Because when wedon’t talk about it, we allow the normal ebb and flow of sexual desire to become associated with shame and guilt over what we’re experiencing. And since the desire won’t go away, we’re forced to relieve the shame by separating our morality from our behavior. We’ve got to get talking and see ourselves afresh as sexual beings, moving gradually and prayerfully through stages of sexual expression until marriage where it’s fulfilled. Because “not yet” is much easier to digest than “no.” Our sexuality, today, is an integral part of who God has created us to be, and like all things must be celebrated while also put in submission to Christ.

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Blended Worship; Good or Bad? By Ken Berding

Is it possible to successfully “blend” the hymns of the past with modern hymns and worship music in a single service? Many churches are trying—some successfully, some with less success. There are a number of reasons church leaders desire to blend older songs with contemporary worship music, including:

• the desire to allow various segments and age groups in the congregation to meaningfully worship God when they meet together. • the desire to create an environment in which visitors can encounter the living Lord without feeling like they have entered a foreign country.

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• the desire that our children grow up exposed to the older hymns of the faith. • the recognition that quality worship music exists both among the music of the pastand among songs more recently composed. • the desire to avoid two separate services in a single church, that is, a “traditional” service and a “contemporary” service. But is it possible to reverently and powerfully bring together the past with the present in a single service……..really? Here are a few suggestions on how to make blended services work in your church. • Slow down. It is common in a blended service for musicians to hurry through the songs, thinking the speed itself will create a contemporary sound. The truth is that many in the younger generation prefer songs and hymns of worship in which there is some extra musical “space.” • Use some sort of “strings” or “chorus” sound on an electronic piano rather than a more traditional organ sound when singing older hymns. • If you’re using drums for contemporary songs, continue doing so when you come to older songs. Drums will ﬁt in ﬁne with many older hymns and will create continuity between older and newer

songs. At the same time, resist (and encourage your drummer to resist) any urge to “fix” older songs by employing an edgy beat. In most cases these songs don’t need to be fixed (that’s why we’re still singing them)! In many —though certainly not all—cases this may mean, for example, employing a 2/4 beat (which allows more musical “space”) in place of a tendency to move toward a 4/4 (that is, rock) beat.” • Don’t necessarily change the rhythm of what the congregation is singing when incorporating older hymns. A hymn can still be sung in more-or-less the same way it has normally been sung. But the background music can be very gently contemporized to help older songs fit in with newer songs that are being employed. The goal is to create continuity between older and newer songs so they sound like they belong together. • Avoid excessive repetition. Whereas longer periods of meditation on fewer words are standard fare in contemporary worship services, blended services are often better received when there is less repetition, particularly at the end of songs. • Probably the most important issue is song selection. Believe it or not, there are songs of wor-

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ship that are almost universally appreciated in our churches— both by older and younger worshipers. Every worship leader leading a blended worship service should be scouring the worship literature to ﬁnd these songs. These songs usually fall into one of two categories. They are either older songs which lead the worshiper into an experience of worship (like “How Great Thou Art,” “Be Thou My Vision,” or “Take My Life and Let it Be”) or more recently composed songs that are at the same time worshipful and yet communicate solid content (like “How Great is our God,” or “In Christ Alone”).

Then there are songs like “Before the Throne of God Above” where the words come from the 19th century but the music is of a somewhat recent composition. Such “bridge songs” should be used extensively if you want to lead a successful blended worship service. In all cases, the worship leader should exude humility and grace, and the members of the congregation should respond accordingly. Worship is not about us; it is all about God. We should seek with all our hearts to please Him when we worship. And we should seek to include as many people in this experience of worship as we possibly can. God, after all, is truly worthy of our praise.

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Ulrich Zwingli:

Pioneer of the Baptist Movement By Andy Johnston

If you visit Zurich today, the German-speaking Swiss city where Zwingli ministered ﬁrst as a Catholic priest and then as a Protestant clergyman, you can still see a statue of him. He carries a sword in one hand and a Bible in the other hand. This tells us a great deal about Zwingli’s thinking and also about why he is so little known in the twenty ﬁrst cen-

tury. For Zwingli there was no such thing as a division between Church and State; they were one under the sovereign rule of God. Such thinking is very sixteenth and very non-twenty first century. His whole philosophy of ministry flowed from this union and it is this concept that is so vital in order for us to understand Zwingli’s contribution to the Protestant Reformation. Zwingli died on the battlefield on 11 October 1531 fighting the armies of the Catholic Swiss Cantons like some Old Testament judge. But before we confine him as an obscure footnote to the dustbin of history I would like to spend a little time at least looking at his contribution to the Protestant cause. It is deeper and more farreaching than many of us imagine. In late 1518 Zwingli, who until this point in his career had been a parish priest and an army chaplain, was given preaching responsibilities at the great Zurich minster. Zwingli was already well known as a member of the Swiss circle of Christian humanists. He had first met Erasmus, the great Dutch humanist, in 1516 and this had created a huge impression on him. Towards the end of his life

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Zwingli claimed that he began to preach the Gospel in 1519. He did not mean that by this date he was a fully formed Protestant, but rather that it was at this point that he turned to the Scriptures. He had been a big fan of Erasmus’ Greek New Testament, ﬁrst printed in 1516 and had committed large sections of it to memory. When Zwingli began his new ministry on 1 January 1519 he did so by announcing that he would preach systematically from the New Testament, beginning from St Matthew’s gospel. A whole new way of preaching had been born. Calvin’s systematic preaching was a phenomenon. He preached, for example no less than 353 sermons expounding Isaiah from start to ﬁnish and 186 working through 1 Corinthians. When he was expelled from Geneva in 1538 he spent the next three years of his life in exile in Strasbourg. When he was invited back in 1541 it would come as no surprise to us that his next sermon followed on from the verse that he had been preaching three years earlier! But Calvin was not original in this approach to preaching. He drew on the model that Zwingli had created back in 1519. The model Zwingli created, that Calvin developed, was then used by the Puritans in the seventeenth century, by Martyn Lloyd-Jones in the 1950s and 60s, by Terry Virgo

and others inspired by Lloyd-Jones in the 80s and 90s and is used by thousands of Reformed preachers around the world today, young and old, the Driscoll generation as well as their Piper-esque forefathers. I would not go as far as saying that this is the only model for preaching that we should use. However, I would contend that it is the best model available. Used properly, it ensures that it is God’s word and not simply what’s in the news this week that is paramount in our preaching. It means that I am consciously and repeatedly driven to the text in my preaching and I do not end up resorting to my favourite ‘hobby horses’. It also forces us to address difﬁcult topics that, if we were honest, we would rather avoid. I think Zwingli was on to something in discovering and advocating systematic expository preaching. Any thoughts?

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