finding-the-keys-march-april-1997

FINDING THE KEYS:

Liberating the Ministry from Trivial Pursuits

A Publication of Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals Editor-in-Chief Dr. Michael S. Horton Managing Editor Benjamin E. Sasse

MARCH/APRIL 1997

FINDING THE KEYS:

LIBERATING THE MINISTRY FROM TRIVIAL PURSUITS

Copy Editors Ann Henderson Hart Deborah Barackman Layout and Design Lori A. Yerger Production Coordinator Irene H. Hetherington Proofreader Alyson S. Platt

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WHAT ABOUT BOB?: THE MEANING OF MINISTRY IN THE REFORMED TRADITION Michael S. Horton

16 RECOVERING THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM IN AN AGE OF EQUIPPED SAINTS D. G. Hart

22 MUSINGS ON THE HISTORY OF THE PROTESTANT MINISTRY Lawrence R. Rast, Jr.

28 EVERY SHEEP A SHEPHERD? Rick Ritchie IN THIS ISSUE NEXT ISSUE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR TO THE POINT WE CONFESS BOOK REVIEW BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS WHITE HORSE STATION LISTINGS

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ACE Council Dr. John H. Armstrong The Rev. Alistair Begg Dr. James M. Boice Dr. W. Robert Godfrey Dr. John D. Hannah Dr. Michael S. Horton Mrs. Rosemary Jensen Dr. J.A.O. Preus Dr. R.C. Sproul Dr. Gene E. Veith, Jr. Dr. David F. Wells Contributing Scholars Dr. S. M. Baugh Dr. D. A. Carson Dr. Timothy George Dr. Sinclair B. Ferguson Dr. D. G. Hart Dr. Carl F. H. Henry Dr. Arthur A. Just Dr. Robert Kolb Dr. Richard A. Muller Mr. Kenneth A. Myers Dr. Tom J. Nettles Dr. Roger Nicole Dr. Leonard R. Payton Dr. Lawrence R. Rast Dr. Kim Riddlebarger Mr. Rick Ritchie Dr. Rod Rosenbladt The Rev. Harold L. Senkbeil Dr. R. C. Sproul Dr. Robert Strimple Illustrations by Chuck Dillon Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals © 1997 All rights reserved.

ACI is a non-profit educational foundation committed to communicating the insights of the 16th century Reformation to the 20th century church. For more information, call or write us at: ALLIANCE OF CONFESSING EVANGELICALS 1716 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 546-3696 Subscribe to: modernREFORMATION US 1 YR $22 2 YR $40 Canada 1 YR $25 2 YR $45 Europe 1 YR $34 2 YR $62

In This Issue…

By Michael S. Horton “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.” his definition of the Office of the Ministry comes to us from no less than the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 4:1). Against those who would make ministers popes and mediators, Paul reminds us that this is an office for those who serve the flock. But against those who would reduce the office to the general tasks that belong to all believers, Paul reminds us that Christ’s ministers hold a special office. As one Reformed confession explains this passage, “Now in many passages, especially in Ephesians Chapter 3, Paul called the mysteries of God the Gospel of Christ. And the sacraments of Christ are also called mysteries by the ancient writers” (Second Helvetic, XVIII).

Those who know me too well will tell you (with great pleasure) that I’m forever losing my keys. “Where did I leave them last?,” is a question I will probably be asking when I’m in a nursing home. But losing these keys simply complicates my life here and now. What happens when the church loses her keys? That’s the question we want to address in this important issue.

Paul was plagued with those he sarcastically termed “super-apostles,” antecedents to those bold souls, the “enthusiasts” (Luther’s term) and “fanatics” (Calvin’s), who tested the patience of the Reformers. Requiring only an appeal to an inner spiritual calling and leaning on their own charisma, eloquence, and claims of immediate revelation, these free spirits in every age attempt to overthrow God’s ordinary ministry.

“I think that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles. I may be untrained in speech, but not in knowledge; certainly in every way and in all things we have made this evident to you” (2 Cor. 11:5). Consider the following admission during an interview by a contemporary search committee at church: “At first impression, I am often viewed as weak and, unfortunately, I am not a great orator.” But oration is precisely what the “super-apostles” excelled at, and for which they criticized the Apostle. “For they say, ‘His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech of no account’” (2 Cor. 10:9-10).

St. Paul had much to say, but his methods were not quite as polished, his delivery not quite as powerful and emotive, as the “super-apostles.” But two distinctives commended him nonetheless. First, Paul’s message is divinely revealed: “We preach not ourselves, but Christ...”

(2 Cor. 4:5). After all, “It is not those who commend themselves that are approved, but those whom the Lord

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commends” (2 Cor. 10:18). Meanwhile, clever and popular methods can easily obscure this divinely revealed hope: “But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by its cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different Spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you submit to it readily enough” (2 Cor. 11:3-4). As long as it “works.” “Am I now seeking human approval?” Paul inquired of the Galatians. “Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ” (Gal. 1:10).

But genuine ministry is distinguished not only by the soundness of the message, however unappealing to “felt needs”; it also rests on the office to which God calls his servants. Paul defends his ministry not on the basis of his personal skills, his effectiveness, his affability, or his accomplishments, but on the divine seal of apostleship.

While the “super-apostles” may have superior worldly commendation, Paul claims an inviolable authority: “For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:11).

From this revelation of the gospel came the apostolic commission, delivered from the lips of the ascended Christ. After three years, he finally went to the fledgling New Covenant church in Jerusalem to be received by the very community that he had persecuted with unremitting zeal. Not only did his former victims eventually accept his commission, he even opposed St. Peter to his face over the addition of Jewish ceremonies to the gospel. If anyone would have challenged Paul as a pretender, it would have been Peter. Instead we find the Lord’s own appointed leader referring to Paul’s epistles as Scripture (2 Pet. 3:16). Furthermore, Peter left no doubt as to his view of Scripture: “First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Pet. 1:20-21).

In our day, however, “ministry” has been so confused and trivialized that successful “super-apostles” who have built their work on their own personalities and abilities MODERN REFORMATION

often raze the genuine apostolic ministry to its very foundations. We have come at last to the day when truth is stranger than its caricatures, with newspaper reports of evangelical entrepreneurs for “entertainment evangelism.” After all, says one such pastor in a Newsweek article, “People don’t want to hear about sin, justification, sanctification, and all those heavy things.” Paul’s infamous “super-apostles” couldn’t have said it better.

Leaving despair and cynicism in their triumphalistic wake, these false apostles “...despise authority.” Being “bold and willful,” they are like “waterless springs and mists driven by a storm” (2 Pet. 2:10, 17). In other words, they are “full of hot air,” blustering on about “things they do not understand” (v. 12).

Now, most enthusiastic brothers and sisters who downplay the official ministry are not malicious or arrogant, but simply misinformed. That’s why we decided to address this issue. It is not enough simply to analyze individual ministers or ministries by their message. Following carefully the Old and New Testament, we must delve more deeply to ask whether our whole contemporary notion of ministry is out of step with Scripture. To be sure, the office of Apostle has disappeared, but does that mean that the ordinary offices outlined in Scripture and the clear biblical definitions of those offices and qualifications no longer apply?

Classical Reformation folk are not only those who

protested against medieval abuses of the biblical Office of the Ministry; they were also catholic in their insistence upon a high view of this holy work. Against the tyranny of Roman prelates on one hand, and the Anabaptist enthusiasts on the other, the Reformers and their successors recovered a robust biblical sense of what it means for us to enjoy an apostolic Ministry of Word and Sacrament in our own time and place.

As the Reformers recovered the New Testament offices, so too must we concentrate on the biblical material with a fresh sense of urgency. So, in this issue, we’ll be asking such questions: “Does the ‘priesthood of every believer’ mean that every believer is a minister?”; “What should we think about organizations, businesses, entertainment media, and other groups that call themselves ‘ministries?’”; “What is the relationship of today’s minister to the prophets and apostles? Isn’t he just an ‘equipper of the saints,’ giving the laity the tools to actually ‘do ministry’?” These are doctrinal, biblical, and historical questions of enormous practical import for our church life today. It is our hope that you will join us in a thoughtful, albeit controversial, reconsideration of our faith and practice in the postmodern world.

NEXT ISSUE: BAPTISM AND THE LORD’S SUPPER mong other things, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are supposed to unite us not only to Christ, but to his body.

In other words, the unity of Christ’s people is at least one key fruit of these marvelous means of grace. And yet, they have become an occasion for some of the widest divisions among professing Christians. The Eastern Orthodox disagree with the Roman Catholics over the mode of Baptism; Rome differs with Protestants over the way grace operates in Baptism and over transubstantiation with regard to the Supper. Lutherans and Calvinists disagree over the mode in which one receives Christ and his saving benefits through the Lord’s Supper (physical or spiritual eating), while both disagree with Baptists over whether infants ought to be baptized. The Church of Christ folks insist that one must be baptized in their church in order to be saved, and in many Southern Baptist churches nonSouthern Baptists must be re-baptized in order to join. At the other end, Episcopalians and many Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, and other bodies will often baptize just about any

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child, even if he or she does not belong to Christian parents.

No wonder many Christians simply shake their heads and conclude that unity is more important than these doctrinal distinctives and suggest a truce. However appealing that may be, it is not the panacea for which one might hope. Whatever the correct views are, it is impossible to read the Bible without realizing that Circumcision and Passover in the Old Testament and Baptism and Communion in the New are regarded with the utmost seriousness. We cannot claim to be “BibleChristians” if we fail to investigate God’s Word on these important subjects, even if that means that we will disagree with our brothers and sisters who have reached different conclusions. Often the richest treasures are buried beneath the most violent seas.

In our next issue, we’ll explore some of these important questions and we hope you will let us hear your comments.

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L ETTERS KUDOS, CRITICISM, AND QUESTIONS REGARDING SANCTIFICATION ISSUE The November/December issue of MR was, as usual, outstanding. It is certainly a temptation to lose sight of God’s enabling, sustaining, and empowering (i.e., his sovereignty), and to start crediting ourselves for any progress made in the area of our sanctification. Your articles were very helpful in getting my eyes back on the living triune God as the source of my complete salvation; not just the justification part of it.

I do however (as you might have guessed) have one criticism. The last few paragraphs of the otherwise excellent article, “Holiness: God’s Work or Ours?,” left me with the impression that the author might be unsure of Sola Gratia and Sola Fide, and might be advocating Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, plus baptism. I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way, but I also sure hope nobody else did either.

God bless you in what you are doing to further his kingdom.

Les Cover Las Cruces, New Mexico Harold Senkbeil’s ar ticle on “Holiness” in the November/December issue both hit and missed the target. The section on “Borrowed Holiness” was a real blessing in recognizing and teaching that the life of sanctification is one of taking the holiness of Christ as one would borrow a coat. It is a covering of that which, this side of glory, is never truly holy: I must take on Christ’s holiness to cover my sins. In this part of his article, Rev. Senkbeil truly ministered the truth.

However, in his section on “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” Rev. Senkbeil appears to be teaching that baptism saves. He said, “Jesus long ago died in our place, and that means that every baptized Christian dies in Jesus.” I hope that Rev. Senkbeil didn’t really mean what he appears to have said; but because his statement is consistent with some Lutheran theology, I suspect that he accurately portrayed his meaning.

Louis Berkhof says in his Systematic Theology, “Some (in the Lutheran Church) teach that baptism, working ex opere operato, is the usual means by which God effects regeneration.” We know, rather, that baptism is a sign of the covenant of grace, of identity and relationship with God; and it is God’s seal on that which it signifies. Just as circumcision under the old covenant was no guarantee of salvation, neither is baptism. To believe otherwise is 4

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to embrace semi-Pelagianism. God does the saving, the changing of hearts. Baptism doesn’t do it. In this respect, Rev. Senkbeil missed the target in an otherwise outstanding article.

Charles Kleeman Chalfont, PA. EDITOR’S RESPONSE While concerned that “the Lutherans did not always steer clear of…ex opere operato” (p. 607), Berkhof certainly did not view this as Semi-Pelagian. In fact, with the Lutherans, he insisted that by virtue of the covenant sealed in baptism God promises salvation (p. 639–640).

A ONE-SIDED REFORMATION? I’m sorry that I cannot be as enthusiastic about your endeavors as some of your other correspondents. A strong emphasis on the Reformation “solas” and on the sole sufficiency and efficacy of divine g race is wonderful—and I applaud that as an evangelical Baptist.

But your particular way of interpreting and expressing “Reformation truth” is one-sided. Authentic evangelical Arminian and even Wesleyan theology seems to be excluded by your propaganda even though they share your enthusiasm for and commitment to the great truths of the Reformation. It seems to me (and most other non-Calvinist evangelicals I know) that you want to divide the evangelical Protestant house and gain a monopoly on the labels “Protestant” and “Evangelical” for one par ty only—your strongly AugustinianCalvinistic theological orientation. Where, then, would you classify John and Charles Wesley in the historical heritage of Evangelicalism? What about their myriad evangelical following? Are all who espouse prevenient grace and free will (NOT Semi-Pelagianism!) rather than deterministic divine sovereignty heretics? Defective evangelicals? What?

I’m afraid that your movement verges on sectarianism—not because it promotes Reformation truth uncompromisingly, but because it narrows that truth down to one party or camp within the Evangelical Protestant heritage and movement. The vast majority of members of denominations and churches affiliated with the National Association of Evangelicals are not Augustinian-Calvinists (with regard to divine sovereignty), yet your program would seem to aim at marginalizing and even demeaning them as somehow MODERN REFORMATION

defective in their evangelicalism. In my opinion, at least some of your writings betray a willful and mean-spirited distortion of other evangelicals’ contributions and beliefs. I call on you to engage in dialogue rather than polemics with your non-Calvinist evangelical brothers and sisters. Or do you consider Nazarenes, Pentecostals, Free Will Baptists, and all others who do not agree with your particular interpretation of Reformation theology as cultists? I hope not. (But I suspect so.)

I take no back seat to you with regard to evangelical theological commitment and fervor. Nor do my numerous non-Calvinistic evangelical colleagues across the broad spectrum of those who are equally committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the authority of Scripture, the necessity of conversion-regenerationjustification by grace through faith alone. It is all too easy for you and some of your correspondents to criticize Arminians and Wesleyans for “legalism”

without noticing or acknowledging that many within classical Calvinist denominations also tend toward legalism. (I know because I have many relatives in classical Reformed Churches and at least some of them seem to believe that the Ten Commandments form the true core of the Christian gospel!) Grace lies also at the heart of evangelical Arminian and Wesleyan theologies.

In salvation’s beginning and continuance and completion it is ALL OF GRACE! But that does not exclude free will and cooperation of the human agent with the initiative and enablement of grace.

My question to you is this: Do you intend to exclude evangelical Arminians and Wesleyans from the Evangelical Tent? I hope not, but I fear that you do.

Roger E. Olson, Ph.D. Professor of Theology Bethel College and Seminary

EDITOR’S RESPONSE First off, this is the sort of lively yet thoughtful letter we invite. Professor Olson has raised some important questions that demand an extended response. Let me say at the outset that in our day, convictions that would simply have been regarded as broadly “evangelical” are now frequently relegated to the back seat called “Calvinism.” However, as regular readers of this magazine know, we have been engaged in a collaborative effort for some years now with non-Calvinists. This magazine and the organization producing it include Lutherans, Episcopalians, Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterian, and Reformed writers. We have even engaged in appreciative public conversations with Thomas Oden (United Methodist) and, before Professor Olson’s letter arrived, had included a positive review of another United Methodist’s book in this very issue.

Our track record clearly proves that we are not trying to hijack the evangelical label for sectarian use.

Rather, we are attempting to restore some substance to the term in an effort, more importantly, to help the whole church recover the heart and soul of the Christian message. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what “evangelical” means as much as the meaning of the evangel itself. Professor Olson seems too concerned with the highly charged political rhetoric of parties, camps, the National Association of Evangelicals, and “marginalization,” accusing us of a desire to “divide the evangelical Protestant house and gain a monopoly on the labels ‘Protestant’ and ‘Evangelical’ for one party.” One thing none of us at modernReformation cares much about is maneuvering, posturing, or gaining control of

the evangelical movement (or, more accurately, movements). Our loyalties are to our various churches, not to movements. Our concern is neither to unite nor to divide the evangelical movement, but to bring these issues to the front burner again so that people can hear the clear note of Christ alone and grace alone in our churches once more. This is a challenge that we are offering not only to Ar minians, but to our own communions that are increasingly abandoning this certain sound. And clarity has a habit of bringing differences to the surface, since, as Bacon put it, “All colors look alike in the dark.”

Professor Olson has correctly noted that we do make a “cut” in this periodical along Augustinian lines.

Of course, everybody makes a cut somewhere, and we are convinced that Dr. Clark Pinnock is correct when he observes (though he also, unfortunately, lauds) the demise of Augustinian theology in evangelicalism.

Pinnock and Olson have collaborated together in the interest of furthering this trend, and I cannot see how our opposition to their project can be regarded as any more narrow-minded than their own opposition to classical Augustinian teaching. Between defending Augustinianism and its rivals, there should be no doubt as to which has a sectarian pedigree. Since the sixth century Council of Orange, catholic Christianity has affirmed the position we defend, a position abandoned

by Rome at Trent and by Arminius and his followers.

We are not challenging an Arminian’s use of the label, “Christian,” but question how, if historical usage defines terms at all, the Arminian system can be regarded as genuinely “evangelical.”

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In my estimation, Professor Olson reflects a symptom of the problem that evangelicalism now faces as a movement or swirling eddy of movements. He appreciates our emphasis on the “sole sufficiency and efficacy of divine grace” and “the great truths of the Refor mation,” but is frustrated that we exclude Wesleyan-Arminian interpretations from our editorial scope. Surely he is aware that the classic WesleyanArminian teaching summarized in the standard systems of Pope, Watson, Wiley, and Miley not only confuses justification with sanctification but prefers moral influence and governmental theories of the atonement to the substitutionary view. I am certain that Professor Olson knows that Wesleyan-Ar minian doctrine repudiates monergism (i.e., the view that God is the sole efficient cause of our salvation), in favor of a position that makes God’s electing grace dependent on human action, new life dependent on free will, final justification dependent on obedience, and insists that truly committed Christians can live above all known sin.

Confessional Reformed folk are not the only ones who have a problem with this system; it is also repudiated by Lutherans as a challenge to the heart of Luther’s message.

If Professor Olson has now conceived of a case that can be made that might reconcile Arminian principles with classical evangelical theology, we are eager to hear it. Otherwise, it is simply a matter of historical theology that Arminianism was repudiated by every group with roots in the magisterial Reformation: Lutheran, Refor med, Presbyterian, Anglican, Congregationalist, and the early Baptists. Isn’t it simply a case of bigotry on our part if we remain separated from Rome over these issues and yet regard these views as sufficiently evangelical when articulated within our own circles? In the case of some within this tradition, not even original sin is left standing. When that occurs, there is no question that this is a full-blown Pelagianism that is not only condemned by Protestants but by Rome.

For my own part, I cannot see how Arminianism can evade the charge of Semi-Pelagianism, whether it goes by the label “evangelical” or not. I do not doubt the honesty of Arminians who claim to believe in grace as much as a Reformed or Lutheran person. After all, lex orandi, lex credendi, the way a person prays is the way a person believes, and no doubt some Arminians sound more like the publican (as opposed to the Pharisee) in their prayers than some of the most thorough-going Augustinians. Sound theory does not guarantee sound practice ex opere operato.

But do Arminians embrace the “solas” (only’s) of the Reformation? How do we square the evangelical notion of sola Scriptura with Wesley’s Quadrangle of Tradition, Reason, Scripture, and Experience, which a respected Methodist theologian has himself recently 6

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cited as a culprit in the liberalism of the United Methodist Church? Or sola gratia, when, at the end of the day, one’s salvation is conditioned on the extent of one’s cooperation with grace? Is sola fide really affirmed when Arminian evangelicals, from John Wesley to Fuller Seminary’s Russell Spittler warn, in the words of the latter, “Simultaneously justified and sinful? I wish it were so. I simply fear it’s not”? Or when 86% of America’s professing evangelicals say that in salvation “God helps those who help themselves”? And can we really affirm soli Deo gloria (to God alone be glory) when we place the efficient cause of salvation in the hands of free will rather than in God’s gracious work?

I wonder if Professor Olson regards J. I. Packer as sectarian or wanting to monopolize the label “evangelical” for one party (perhaps the Anglican wing) in his following remark distinguishing Reformed from Arminian theology: The difference between them is not primarily one of emphasis, but of content. One proclaims a God who saves; the other speaks of a God who enables man to save himself…. The two theologies thus conceive the plan of salvation in quite different terms. One makes salvation depend on the work of God, the other on a work of man (“Introductory Essay” in John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ).

Reformed and Lutheran folks, of course, have heated debates over universal grace, but they agree on the central evangelical principle that Arminianism denies: God alone saves. Arminians can affirm this in their private prayers, personal testimonies, and public worship, but it is clearly denied in their doctrinal system. Either God alone saves or salvation depends also on human willing and running. I am willing to stand corrected if Professor Olson should find a single Ar minian systematic theology that denies the latter. And if he reminds us that Arminian theology affirms the necessity for grace before we can do anything, my response is that this is not new news. This was Rome’s position from the Reformation to the present and this is why both Rome and Arminianism have to be regarded as SemiPelagian rather than Pelagian.

If the evangelical view is identified with the Reformation’s view, the Arminian conception is not adequately evangelical. This hardly means that we do not consider Arminians brothers and sisters and we have never written or published the implied or explicit view that Wesleyan Arminians are “cultic,” an unreasonable suggestion, to say the least.

Our course can only be regarded as sectarian if the term “evangelical” no longer applies to those who MODERN REFORMATION

embrace the distinctives of Reformation theology. If “evangelical Catholic” is now a legitimate phrase, surely “evangelical Arminian” should be as well. Nevertheless, we are calling our evangelical brothers and sisters to recover the older identification of the term. Read Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon’s criticisms of Arminianism, Lutheran dogmatician Francis Pieper’s, or Anglican Bishop J. C. Ryle’s. Were they sectarians for defending the Reformation’s understanding of grace as the evangelical position, against Rome and Arminius?

This is a long-standing debate and I suggest that we wade into it with the issues and not with over wrought rhetoric about who will be in charge or who is “sectarian.” A movement whose identity is shaped by famous personalities, trendy worship for ms and theologies, and loosely affiliated parachurch ministries is not in a good position to argue that point with churches bound to the catholic creeds and historic confessions.

One final note: Professor Olson is sadly correct about legalistic Calvinists. If we’re going to be truly motivated by a passion for evangelical essentials instead of party bigotries, we have to accept our lumps. Too often, the grace of the gospel, which Calvinists cherish with other brothers and sisters, is held in theory but denied in practice. How much more reprehensible it is to hold such a high view of God’s grace in theory, only to suppress it in preaching, worship, evangelism, and our daily living. Reformed theology, as illustrated in the writings of Calvin and his successors and as taught in its confessions and catechisms, is clearly antithetical to

legalism. There is nothing in its theory that would countenance the slightest form of this pernicious heresy.

But, alas, theory and practice are often divorced and sometimes a legitimate point in the system is unhinged from the whole and given a priority that mis-shapes its message. Calvinism has been vilified as antinomianism by the likes of Wesley and Finney, and as legalism by many contemporary fundamentalists who, ironically, do not believe that the moral law is applicable to Christians, while substituting their own prohibitions. But within these extremes, there are those of us who do fit the description supplied by Professor Olson.

In some cases, those who hold Arminian principles have ended up defending in practice that which is demanded in our own theology. Legalism is not only apparent in Arminian circles, where human willing and running are given an efficacy that we do not accept, but is seen in some forms of pietism and hyper-puritanism within our Reformation communities. It shows us just how correct Spurgeon was in saying that we are all born Pelagians and something of it remains in us until we die.

We do not live up to our confession. We have much more to confess, such as the tendency to take credit for believing in the “solas,” including (ironically), “to God alone be glory” and lording it over others instead of showing the same patience that God shows us.

For Arminians, we only ask that they read on with a willingness to consider our arguments. For ourselves, we do hear the objection and beg God to always give us the grace to put our theology to better use.

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What About Bob?

THE MEANING OF MINISTRY INTHE REFORMEDTRADITION MICHAEL S. HORTON

Although he “went forward” to receive Christ only a month ago, Bob, who recently ended his NFL career, has just informed his discipleship group that he is called to the ministry. In fact, next week he will be teaming up with a businessman who has also decided that he is called to the ministry. Together, they will form a sports evangelism team.

A familiar story for those of us raised in evangelical circles, this fictional account illustrates the practical importance of the question, “What is ministry?”

The verb “to call” (kalein) and the noun “calling” (klesis) are rich and somewhat varied in their New Testament use. To be “called” is to be warmly invited by Christ to come and receive eternal life. But not all who hear this universal invitation respond; the Holy Spirit must draw the elect to Christ by actually awakening them from spiritual death. Lazarus could never have come forth simply by the invitation of Christ, apart from the mighty action of God inwardly restoring life.

Likewise, “no one can come to me,” said Jesus, “unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:44). Not only does our Savior call sinners to repentance (Matt. 9:13), he called the Twelve to be his disciples (Matt. 4:21). He not only called and justified those who were predestined (Rom. 8:30), but called some of his people to be his representatives and overseers of his church.

But What About the Priesthood of All Believers?

One of the Reformation’s key themes, of course, was the glad New Testament announcement that, in Luther’s words, “the name and office of priest are common to all Christians.” In Eden, Adam is God’s minister, but he fails to preserve God’s temple from the lies of the evil one. In the wilderness, God separated out of Israel priests who would serve him and represent him to the people. God tells Moses, “Gather to me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring 8

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them to the tabernacle of meeting, that they may standthere with you. Then I will come down and talk with you there. I will take of the Spirit that is upon you and will put the same upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, that you may not bear it yourself alone” (Num. 11:1617). And yet, there is the longing for something greater: “Oh, that allthe LORD’S people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit upon them!” (v. 29).

Early in the story we see the future destiny of Israel as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:6).

Much later, through the prophets God pulls the curtain back still further: “And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.

And also on my servants, male and female, I will pour out my Spirit in those days” (Joel 2:28). Fulfilled at MODERN REFORMATION

Pentecost, as Peter proclaimed in his sermon (Acts 2:17), this prophecy points to the day when the whole church will be filled with the Spirit, with each believer a priest so that the world will know that Jesus is the Christ. Thus, the promises made to Israel are not voided but are indeed fulfilled in the New Testament church: “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy” (1 Pet. 2:9-10).

Therefore, the Old Testament priesthood is abolished, as the shadow is replaced with the solid reality, Christ being the only mediator between God and humans (1 Tim. 2:5). In union with Christ, the final Prophet, Priest, and King, all believers share the Savior’s priesthood inasmuch as they proclaim God’s Lamb and forgiveness to each other. Thus, believers are commanded, “Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (Jam. 5:16). All believers are “called” and “priests” as the Temple’s curtain has been torn from top to bottom and now every believer stands in the Holy Place. Because he or she is dressed in Christ’s righteousness, the believer now stands where before only the High Priest could stand. As the Holy Spirit was upon Moses, and then upon the seventy elders and the prophets through whom he gave the revelation of God in Christ, so now the Spirit is upon and indeed within each one of us. God’s true Israel has become Christ’s witness “in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

When the Refor mers attacked the Roman priesthood as a return to Old Testament shadows (infancy), understanding that the reality had come in Christ (adulthood), they were in essence restating the Book of Hebrews. Luther thundered, “Every true Christian really should know that there are no external, visible priests except those whom the devil has raised up and exalted through the lies of men.”

But while this liberating doctrine was used to subvert Roman sacerdotalism (or “priestcraft” as the Reformers termed it), it has been distorted to twist the biblical concept of the ministry. We often forget that the Reformation was a conflict with two theaters: Rome and Anabaptism or “sectarianism.” While criticizing notions of a priestly caste with inherently exalted status and powers by virtue of their ordination, the Reformers were just as severe in their criticism of a “free-for-all” in which, as Calvin put it, “everything is in confusion.”

Self-appointed circuit-riders and their enthusiasts were “dashing about aimlessly without an assignment, rashly

gathering together in one place, and forsaking their churches at pleasure.” Of such “fanatics” Calvin charged, “In their pride, therefore, they despise the ministry of men and even Scripture itself, in order to attain the Spirit. They then proudly try to peddle all the delusions that Satan suggests to them as secret revelations of the Spirit. Such are the Libertines and frenzied individuals like them. The more ignorant a man is, the greater the pride with which he is bloated and puffed up.” Thus, “[people] with absolutely no qualifications, who force themselves upon the Church, are fanatics, driven by an evil spirit. There are many, for instance, who boast that they are moved to action by the Spirit, and pride themselves in a secret call of God, when all the time they are unlearned and totally ignorant.”

We have confused priesthood with ministry, as if the priesthood of all believers means that all believers are ministers.

Thus, in addition to Roman priestcraft, sectarian fanaticism was also to be avoided at all costs. But if all Christians are priests, doesn’t that mean that there is no difference between an ordained minister and a layperson?

To this question, the Reformers would answer, “yes and no.” Yes, there is no difference in terms of person. A minister and a layperson are equally justified and called to eternal life, co-heirs with Christ in equal measure.

Rendered effectual by the ministry of Christ rather than by any essential virtue in ordination, the prayers of a minister are no more powerful than those of a layperson.

God does not pay special attention to ministers. They have no red phone on their desk, no special direct line to God that the rest of Christ’s flock do not enjoy.

Nevertheless, there is a difference in office or vocation. Just as a doctor is not a lawyer, a layperson is not a minister.

This is where, in my estimation, we have gone off the rails in this matter. We have confused priesthood with ministry, as if the priesthood of all believers means that all believers are ministers. Certainly this is not Luther’s or Calvin’s understanding of the priesthood of all believers. Again, Luther:

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For although we are all priests, this does not mean that all of us can preach, teach, and rule.

Certain ones of the multitude must be selected for such an office. And he who has such an office is not a priest because of his office, but a servant of all the others, who are priests. When he is no longer able to preach and serve, or if he no longer wants to do so, he once more becomes part of the common multitude of Christians.

His office is conveyed to someone else, and he becomes a Christian like any other. This is the way to distinguish between the office of preaching, or the ministry, and the general priesthood of all baptized Christians.

The distinction rests not because of the minister’s person, but because of his service of Word and Sacrament. Calvin says, “Christ acts by ministers in such a manner that he wishes their mouth to be reckoned as his mouth, and their lips as his lips.” As the Reformed confessions remind us, the ministry does not depend on the integrity of the minister. Even if it is eventually discovered that he was an unbeliever, he was used by Christ as an agent of redemption for his people.

Indeed, even Judas exercised an effectual ministry as a disciple of our Lord. It is the Holy Spirit working through Word and Sacrament, not the minister in his own person, who is responsible for the success of the ministry. Thus, against the “sects” that followed in the steps of the ancient Donatists opposed by Augustine, the Second Helvetic Confession declares: “Even evil ministers are to be heard. Moreover, we strongly detest the error of the Donatists who esteem the doctrine and administration of the sacraments to be either effectual or not effectual according to the good or evil life of the ministers” (XVIII).

So Are We Back to “Sacred” and “Secular” Callings?

Evangelical pietism has created an environment not all that different from medieval parallels, as Christians are separated into “secular work” and “full-time Christian service.” Guess which one is more important! Like the vast network of monastic communities in the Middle Ages, evangelical identity these days seems determined by the web of parachurch ministries and a host of charismatic personalities who are often granted almost unlimited and unchallenged power as long as they are successful. As medieval monasticism was frequently in conflict with the church and institutional authority (only to become institutionalized itself) contemporary evangelicalism seems likewise to bear an unchurchly hue.

Bor n as alleged “moves of the Spirit,” against “churchianity,” sects and parachurch ministries also end up becoming institutions themselves. And, again like 10

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medieval monasticism, truly meaningful vocations are regarded as those connected to religious concerns.

It was from this sort of dualism that so many of us have been liberated in recent decades. “All of life is sacred,” we heard. “Every Christian is a minister.”

Adopting Reformed theology as a way out of the assumptions of the evangelical subculture about the superiority of “full-time Christian service,” many are beginning to make careful distinctions not only between priesthood and ministry, but also between the secular and the sacred. To say that cleaning a house or defending a court case is not a ministry and is therefore secular rather than sacred activity makes such worldly work inferior or unspiritual only if we accept the dualism that underlies medieval and contemporary evangelical versions of spirituality. What the Reformation recovered was the biblical appreciation for the common as well as the holy, the secular as well as the sacred, not a conflation of the two. Calvin urged artists to find their subjects in nature instead of trying to imagine the unseen world, and the contribution of the movement to the arts and sciences is widely acknowledged. It is good to be a homemaker, a painter, a doctor, or a janitor. These are divine callings, so how can we call them inferior?

The kingdom of culture flourishes when men and women are faithful in their secular callings, while the kingdom of Christ thrives when its ministers are faithfully preaching the Word, administering the Sacraments, and leading the flock in the paths of righteousness.

Where pietistic dualism, like its medieval antecedent, makes “secular” and “sacred” into categories of “inferior” and “superior,” and popular contemporary criticisms of this dualism deny the distinction altogether, the Reformation regarded the two as different in their means, not their ends. Digging a ditch MODERN REFORMATION

or preaching a sermon, if done well, glorify God, but the former is done well because God has given the worker ordinary, common gifts that he has also given to unbelievers. The first belongs to the sphere of creation, common grace, and the kingdom of culture. The latter is done well not only because of common gifts of eloquence and intellect, but because of the Spirit’s special illumination. This is in the sphere of redemption, saving grace, and the kingdom of Christ.

Until the kingdoms of this world are transformed immediately into the kingdom of our God and of his Christ at our Lord’s return, these two spheres are distinct. The kingdom of culture flourishes when men and women are faithful in their secular callings, while the kingdom of Christ thrives when its ministers are faithfully preaching the Word, administering the Sacraments, and leading the flock in the paths of righteousness. Both tasks take place in this world, are honoring to God, and lead to good ends, but they are different in several respects.

The church consists not only of its officers, but of the totality of its members. It is this group of believers, priests in baptism and yet working in secular vocations, who call ministers to serve them. So ministers are treated with dignity because of their sacred task, not because of their person. “Christ appoints pastors to his Church,” said Calvin, “not to rule but to serve.” Because we are so slow to believe and our reason, conscience, and will offer no glimmer of hope, we need an external Word preached to us.

As noted earlier, Calvin and the other Reformers believed that Christ himself spoke through the preached Word and the Sacraments. This is what is meant by our Lord’s wonderful promise: “And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock [Peter’s confession of Christ as God’s Son] I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16:17-19). “Ministers of the Gospel,” Calvin wrote, “are porters of the kingdom of heaven, because they carry its keys…. The key is placed in the hands of the ministers of the word.” Calvin even recommends private confession of sin to ministers, not because of superstition concerning his person, but because this is part of the ministry of the Word. Any believer can hear his or her fellow-believer’s confession and announce divine forgiveness in Christ’s name, but the minister is especially singled out by God and his church for this task. While the legalism of auricular confession (the practice of confessing sins privately to a priest as a necessary condition of being absolved) was rejected by Calvin, the custom itself was encouraged as a ministry of

the Word in private by which God’s grace and gospel would be “confirmed and sealed” (see Institutes 3.4.1-23).

According to historian John T. McNeill, “Calvin interprets Matthew 16:19 and John 20:23 as authorizing ministers ‘to remit sins and absolve souls.’

The penitent should take advantage of this.” This absolution was normally declared in the public service of worship after the public confession, but it could also be done in private with the minister if that could help bring consolation. In public and in private, the ministers carry the keys of the kingdom and by faithfully executing their office they open prison doors.

All of the Reformed confessional documents, like the Lutheran ones, ag ree on this point. The Westminster Confession declares, “To these officers the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven are committed, by virtue whereof they have power respectively to retain and remit sins…” (Chap. XXXII). They do not have this power in their person, but in their office as they proclaim the Gospel and administer the Sacraments. A further aspect of this ministry, in the Reformed view, is church discipline. Even censure, the practice of privately instructing, admonishing, and warning the baptized impenitent and unbeliever, is designed not to condemn, but to open the doors of the Kingdom of Heaven.

When ministers ignore the spiritual condition of their members, they are not “leaving it to the Lord,” but are failing to exercise the Lord’s ministry. At the same time, instead of “lording it over their people,” they must serve “without oppression and strife,” as the Second Helvetic

THE WINDOWS George Herbert Lord, How can man preach thy eternal word?

He is a brittle, crazy glass; Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford This glorious and transcendent place, To be a window, through thy grace.

But when thou dost anneal in glass they story, Making they life to shine within The holy Preacher’s, then the light and glory More rev’rend grows, and more doth win; Which else shows waterish, bleak, and thin.

Doctrine and life; colours and light, in one When they combine and mingle, bring A strong regard and awe; but speech alone Doth vanish like a flaring thing, And in the ear, not conscience, ring.

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Confession puts it. “For the apostle testifies that authority in the Church was given to him by the Lord for building up and not for destroying (2 Cor. 10:8).

And the Lord himself forbade the weeds to be plucked up in the Lord’s field, because there would be danger lest the wheat also be plucked up with it (Matt. 13:29)” (Chap. XVIII).

This does not mean, of course, that only ministers can warn and evangelize unbelievers and their fellow priests. Indeed, the good news of Pentecost is that the Spirit has made us all witnesses of Christ, a nation of evangelists. And yet, Paul specifically encourages Timothy, “Endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (2 Tim. 4:5). The formal ministry of the Word is entrusted to those who are called exclusively to this task, but we are all equally called to be Christians and inherent in our union with Christ, the “Light of the world,” is our missionary identity. We are equipped by the ministers to be responsible Christian agents in the world, prepared to give an answer for our hope to everyone. This, however, does not mean that we are to set aside our secular callings and found evangelistic ministries, for the latter is the work of the church and its appointed officers.

Perhaps the most frequently cited defense of the “every-believer-a-minister” position is Ephesians 4:11-16: And [Christ] himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into him who is the head—Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love (NKJV).

As Reformed pastor and professor T. David Gordon clearly demonstrates, this passage has been much abused in contemporary approaches to ministry.1 This is due in par t to an unfor tunate translation of the New International Version (NIV), the New King James Version (NKJV), and other recent translations or 12

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paraphrases. While the older translations, especially the Authorized Version (KJV), render verse 11, “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;” the more recent renderings are hardly without their presuppositions about the nature of “ministry.”

Professor Gordon carefully shows the superiority of the older translation. Given the implied subject of all three clauses (“gifted ones”), the use of katartismon (“gathering or ordering into visible communion,” not “equipping”), and the use of ergon diakonias (“the work of ministry”), there is no basis for the notion that Paul sees the ministry’s importance in terms of preparing the laity for the “real work” of ministry. Furthermore, this flies in the face of the many passages that clearly distinguish the calling of a minister from the general Christian calling that belongs to all believers. Rather, ministers are given

by Christ so that they can build up the flock by exercising their office faithfully.

Professor Gordon is, I think, quite justified in his alarm concerning the practical effects of American egalitarianism here. “Those preparing for ministry (and the institutions that prepare them),” he writes, “are turning their energies away from those skills associated with the distinctive ministry of the Word (originallanguage exegesis) and toward organizational, managerial, motivational (coercive?) skills.”

The German Reformed theologian John Williamson Nevin (1803-86) complained that in revivalism, the transformation of the pulpit and table into a stage is a theological shift.

The result of contemporary evangelical views of ministry is that, ironically, they come full circle to investing the power in the minister instead of the ministry. Like the Roman Catholic priest, the contemporary evangelical minister is often regarded as the effective instrument of redemption. The liturgical functions may differ vastly, replacing the “altar call” of MODERN REFORMATION

the Roman Mass with that of the evangelical substitutes, but in both cases the professional is made a personal means of grace (or, at least, a means of entertainment, information, or exhortation). As B. B. Warfield suggested concerning preachers who followed Charles Finney’s pragmatic evangelism, “The evangelist becomes the Sacrament.” The German Reformed theologian John Williamson Nevin (1803-86) complained that in revivalism, the transformation of the pulpit and table into a stage is a theological shift. “The preacher feels himself,” Nevin wrote, “and is bent on making himself felt also by the congregation; but God is not felt in the same proportion.” So much for the suggestion that we can have genuinely Reformation-oriented theology while adopting evangelical style! If your church has a stage instead of a chancel, and the pulpit and table are overwhelmed by overhead projectors, screens, and a drum set, it is already a declaration of one’s theology of ministry—even before the service starts!

“Where the action is” cannot be divorced from its theological basis. At least Rome connects its sacerdotalism (“priestcraft”) somehow to the sacramental ministry, but unchurchly for ms of evangelicalism regard the “ministry” of the beauty queen, ex-quarterback, faded celebrity, and entertainer as an effective means of grace because of the power of the “minister.” Instead of the ordained minister being treated as a go-between, as in Rome, every believer becomes a “minister” and is allowed to exercise his or her ministry based on worldly criteria (charisma, musical talent, familiarity with the latest in pop culture) rather than a sound knowledge of God’s Word. It is no small wonder that what results is a worldly church.

Very often, the power has very little to do with the message and everything to do with charisma, fame, personality, or other purely human characteristics. “He’s a powerful speaker,” we hear. “Wow, what a powerful testimony!” “She sang a powerful song!” Would it have been as powerful if the speaker were the Apostle Paul, who acknowledged that he was not as effective at public speaking as the “super-apostles”? Would the testimony have been as effective if the ex-quarterback would have said, with that same Apostle, “I find still in my Christian life that very often the very thing I hate, I keep doing? Oh, wretched man that I am!”? And would the song have been as “anointed” if it had been sung by one of those well-meaning but singularly ungifted folks in the small country church instead of the recording artist who visited the big church in town last week?

The power resides, many really believe these days, in the so-called “minister,” not in the ministry of Word and Sacrament. A “music ministry team” comes to sing at our church while on tour and suddenly the service was “moving” and “the Spirit was really at work,” the service

was “alive.” The Glory of Easter pageant was “where the action was.” But when the pastor got up the next Sunday and simply preached and served Communion, along with the public reading of Scripture, congregational singing, public confession of sin, a declaration of pardon, the Creed, and prayers, it was business as usual. Superlatives absent, the unspoken assumption is that God was really here last week when the real ministry took place. We encourage this as ministers when we adopt “testimonies” and “special music” in our worship services, taking the focus off of the ordinary means of grace. Ultimately, this separates the Spirit from the Word, regardless of the soundness of one’s confession.

One need only read the “want ads” for pastors in Christian periodicals or the pastoral search committee ranking of qualifications. He (or she) must be friendly, out-going, brimming with “people skills.” He must be motivational, a “team leader” and “equipper” (which really means a manager and programmer), and have a wife who can fill the role of “first lady.” So much the better if she plays the organ.

Meanwhile, what about his theological depth and confessional subscription? Does he do original exegetical work on his sermons, or does he rely on the notes and references of others? Does he spend plenty of time in his study and on his knees? Will he be likely to care for the specific spiritual needs of his members? At the end of the day, we want a celebrity, coach, quarterback, entertainer, motivational speaker, therapist, and CEO all wrapped up in one person. No wonder the rate of job burn-out among pastors is so out of control!

In other words, we really believe, regardless of what we profess, that it is the Ministry of Pastor Bob rather than the Ministry of Christ through Word and Sacrament.

The efficacy is now in the minister, measured in worldly terms, rather than in the ministry. Though more insidious, this is every bit as dangerous a form of sacerdotalism as anything Rome offered. By emptying the Ministry of Word and Sacrament of its importance, we have not saved the priesthood of all believers; we have simply substituted one form of priestcraft for another.

What Does It Mean Then to Be “Called” to the Ministry?

In the Reformed tradition, as in the Lutheran, one is not called to the ministry solely on the basis of an internal calling by the Spirit. Against Anabaptist “enthusiasm,” which not only attacked Roman sacerdotalism but tended to deny physical, earthly means altogether in favor of direct Spirit-led intuitions, the Reformers insisted that God spoke in this instance as in all others through such means. While sectarian religion MARCH/APRIL 1997

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sets the individual against the church as categories of “spirit” and “flesh” respectively, historic evangelical faith rejects this anarchy and insists on relating the individual to the corporate (and not just invisible, but visible) body of Christ. In this view, one is not truly called to the ministry until there is a satisfaction of the church’s qualifications, explicitly commanded in Scripture. For the church is “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15), and ministers have the sacred charge of being the chaperone for Christ’s bride through her earthly sojourn. “Till I come,” Paul instructs young Timothy, give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the eldership.

Meditate on these things; give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all. Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine.

Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you.

(1 Tim. 4:13-16) This is as true for deacons and elders as for ministers. Elders must be beyond reproach and temperate, “holding fast to the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those who contradict” (Tit. 1:5-9).

How far this is from the frequent practice of electing elders for worldly reasons. Calvin was also troubled by this threat in his day: “It clearly contradicts the order and basic rules of Christianity to believe that the wealthy, and those who are noteworthy for their position and name, should be chosen for church offices.” Too often, churches elect officers because of their experience in running businesses or their expertise in marketing, brochure design, finance, and so on. Then they wonder why their church becomes a corporation and the pastor’s study becomes the pastor’s office. If we would follow Paul’s instructions in selecting our officers, our churches would thrive under the ministry of the Word.

But not only has God called elders as lay ministers to guard the spiritual condition of the church; he has appointed deacons to be lay ministers to look out for the physical needs of the congregation. Deacons were first appointed so the apostles could be freed from the burden of finances and administrative tasks. The Twelve Apostles knew their calling when they said, “It is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables. Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business; but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:1-4). As the 14

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apostles were relieved of this burden, “the word of God spread, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith” (v. 7).

Every Christian, if genuinely called to belong to Christ, longs to see the lost reconciled to God. These are hardly distinct qualifications for ministers; they’re the characteristics of being a Christian!

Ministers, therefore, are called to be entirely devoted to the ministry of Word and Sacrament. This is why they labor to learn the original languages of Scripture and to understand its essential message with the aid of their learned mentors, ancient and contemporary.

Elders and even deacons must also be trained, but they are laypeople with ordinary vocations in the world. But all officers are only genuinely “called” to the ministry when the Shepherd’s voice is heard through the mouthpiece of his church. That is, when a candidate who has prepared for such service receives a “call” from a par ticular cong regation and the regional presbytery/classis, he is finally called to the ministry by God. Sectarians may regard this as quenching the Spirit, but it is God’s appointed design, clearly described in Scripture. Far from inhibiting liberty, this pattern actually guards against the tyranny of charismatic preachers who claim apostolic authority or an “anointing” separate from the oversight of the church.

What About Bob? At last, we return to our opening scene, with Bob announcing that he is called to the ministry. I often find myself put to shame by the zeal of new converts who have their feet prepared with readiness to preach the good news. But as the claim to knowledge should not MODERN REFORMATION

be a cover for a lack of zeal, so too zeal should never be a cloak for ignorance. Bob’s desire to share the gospel is encouraging, but has he been misled by an er roneous view of ministry?

Recently, a friend of mine told me how many cases he has of his parishioners wanting advice on whether they should go into the ministry. “I want to really serve the Lord and reach the lost,” they say. “I don’t simply want to sit on the sidelines, I want to be a tr uly committed disciple.”

My friend replies, “Congratulations, you’re a Christian!” Often, our sense of a “call” to the ministry is no more than a sense of our high calling to belong to Christ. In other words, it’s a calling to faith not to a particular vocation. All of us are called to constant sanctification and growth in Christ. We are all commanded to learn more about God and his saving work in Christ, g rowing in our knowledge. No believer is exempt from the Spirit’s work of putting to death the old identity and raising the self to new life. And every Christian, if genuinely called to belong to Christ, longs to see the lost reconciled to God. These are hardly distinct qualifications for ministers; they’re the characteristics of being a Christian!

Ministers are not paid to be Christ’s disciples for us, but to lead us in truth and righteousness.

It is still possible that Bob is called to the ministry of Word and Sacrament, but that means he cannot yet be certain. First, he must consult his pastor and go under the care of the presbytery/classis (or in a congregational polity, simply the elders, or in an episcopal polity, the bishop). Under care of the church, he will be guided through the years of theological training required for a responsible exercise of this calling and upon successful completion, he will be tested. Paul requires this even of deacons; how much more is it required of pastors! After passing the examination, he will then be available for a call from a church. Once he receives this call, the initial sense he had of the Spirit’s calling is confirmed by the church and he is, in truth, called to the ministry.

But this procedure is quite different from the scenario outlined in the opening paragraph. There, Bob was convinced that his calling to the ministry meant that he and another layman, a businessman, would start an evangelistic ministry. But, as we have seen, this is nowhere provided for in Scripture. Every believer is called to evangelize, so Bob and his friend do not need to leave their vocations in order to take up evangelism.

Furthermore, the church is God’s ordained institution

for evangelism. Notice the distinction here between individuals and institutions: every individual believer evangelizes, but not every institution is evangelistic. Christ has many brothers and sisters, but only one church.

Individual Christians working on an assembly line may win their co-workers to Christ over time, but the factory does not become an evangelistic institution.

Similarly, Bob’s evangelistic activities do not warrant the creation of an institution that is not the church. He and his friend are free to either pursue their secular vocations and expand the kingdom through evangelism as other Christians, or to leave their secular vocations and begin the process of being called to the ministry of Word and Sacrament.

Though this understanding of ministry seems more complicated, it ends up greatly simplifying our practical questions. It not only frees many who thought that their Christian zeal had to be expressed in ministry to pursue secular vocations, it also encourages us to see our ministers as Christ’s very representatives, kept from waiting tables so that they can devote themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word.

1 T. David Gordon, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 37/1 (March 1994), 69-78.

Dr. Michael Horton is the president of Christians United for Reformation and a research fellow at Yale Divinity School. He is a graduate of Biola University, Westminster Theological Seminary in California, and Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. In addition to the recently released In the Face of God: The Dangers and Delights of Spiritual Intimacy (Word), Dr. Horton is the author or editor of many books. For further consideration of topics related to those of this article, see his Made in America: The Shaping of Modern American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991).

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Recovering the Keys of the Kingdom in an Age of Equipped Saints D. G. HART How would you rate the work of your church? A ministry scorecard might include the following categories: if your church has a children’s ministry give it 2 points; a welcome team ministry, 1 point; a tapeministry, 1 point (but if a tape and book ministry, 2 points). A couples’ ministry should be worth 2 points as should an international student ministry, a mothers’ ministry, and a newlywed ministry; but subtract a point if it is a newlywed mothers’ ministry. Women’s ministry should also receive 2 points and—in the spirit of equity—a men’s ministry should receive the same, but if your men’s group is an adjunct of Promise Keepers don’t give any points—you have to start it on your own.

AIDS ministries, homeless ministries, and low-income housing ministries all receive 3 points, a score befitting a big church with many resources and talented members. Throw in 1 point each for a weekly Bible study, foreign missions, and the Sacraments (2 points for the latter if your church allows the laity to set up the Lord’s Supper). Finally, add 1 point for a Sunday mor ning service, 2 points if you have both a contemporary and a traditional service.

Now tally up your score. How did your church do?

Be careful, though. Before you delight in a double-digit number you should know that this game is like golf—the higher the score, the worse the performance. The reason, of course, for this inverse method of scoring comes from our Lord himself. When he sent his disciples out into the world he prescribed the means that they would use to disciple the nations. In the Great Commission Christ tells the apostles to teach and baptize. In other words, he defined the ministry of the church as encompassing two tasks only—Word and Sacrament.

Such a narrow view of the ministry means that par for the church is 4: 1 point for preaching, 2 points for the Sacraments, and 1 for prayer. Any activity beyond these results in a bogey church.

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How Did Churches Become Ministry Samplers?

The contemporary proliferation of ministries has many sources, but three factors are especially important.

The first is the demise of the doctrine of providence, the second concerns the neglect of traditional means, and the third relates to the highly touted Reformed “world-and-life” view.

Providence If one doctrine defines contemporary evangelicalism more than any other it is a belief in miracles or the idea that God can and still does intervene directly and immediately in human affairs, thus, manifesting his supernatural power. Among Pentecostals and some MODERN REFORMATION

charismatics, speaking in tongues, healing, and direct revelations from God constitute evidence of God’s miraculous activities. But for evangelicals who like their God a little more subdued, the new birth or conversion experience suffices. Being born again is the best indication for many that God is still alive, active, and saving his people. This may explain why evangelicalism has been so identified with the new birth and why the media refers to evangelicals as “born-again” Christians.

The name reinforces the miraculous and is, therefore, proof that God still exists.

Modern-day evangelicals inherited this heightened supernaturalism from their fundamentalist grandparents.

That older generation of conservative Protestants who battled liberal theology in the 1920s and 1930s did so in part because modernists abandoned supernaturalism.

In liberal Protestant hands the virgin birth of Christ became a mythological account of the advent of someone the early church revered as God, and the resurrection became simply an expression of the first Christians’ wishful thinking. Liberal Protestantism made these theological moves in par t to defend Christianity from the findings of modern science which denied the possibility of miracles. Such science limited truth to that which could be verified by the human senses. But while conceding large chunks of Christian teaching to science, modernists were unwilling to abandon Christian convictions altogether. So they clung to belief in God but reduced the divine, even redemptive activities, to natural processes. God was immanent, modernists argued, and was at work in the evolutionary forces of natural development and human progress.

Thus, while Darwinism proved to skeptics that God did not exist, liberal Protestants saw it as God’s way of fashioning higher forms of life and nobler civilizations.

Fundamentalists, however, opposed liberalism as a betrayal of the gospel. Conservatives were especially keen to assert the transcendence of God (as opposed to his immanence) and to defend the miraculous character of salvation. Hence the fundamentalist habit of placing the virgin birth, the resurrection, the deity of Christ, and divine character of Scripture foremost on various lists of essential doctrines. Creation was especially important to fundamentalists partly to counteract the evolutionary scheme of moder nist theolog y.

Fundamentalists described the creation of man in immediate supernatural terms, thereby denying the liberal notions of mediation and development. Thus, what was true for conversion also became true for the creation of man: just as God miraculously and instantly regenerated the heart of the believer, so God also supernaturally created man’s physical form in one immediate act.

This otherwise commendable defense of God’s

transcendence and sovereignty in salvation unfortunately ignored the doctrine of providence. According to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, for instance, providence is “God’s most holy, wise and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions.” What lies behind this understanding is the belief that God works his purposes through secondary means, not simply through his direct and miraculous deeds.

Whatever appears to be the cause of natural effects, as believers we know also that God is using those secondary causes for the effects he desires. To say that the sun burned off the morning fog does not deny God’s hand in nature; we are merely describing the means he used to clear the sky. Likewise, in Reformation studies, to claim that the buffer role Prince Frederick III played in the life of Martin Luther doesn’t negate God’s role. Frederick was the secondary cause God used to protect Luther from the higher powers of the papacy and the emperor (something that the martyrs John Wycliffe and John Huss lacked).

The same point can be made about conversion or salvation. Ordinarily God does not dramatically claim us as he did the Apostle Paul. God does not appear in person and blind the new believer. Rather, he uses a variety of means in the course of a believer’s life to carry out his saving purpose. One example of this kind of providence is the influence of family and friends.

Statistics reveal overwhelmingly that those who come to make a profession of faith do so in part because of the influence of a believing family member or friend.

Another example is preaching. God does not wallop sinners over the head but uses the proclamation of the Word as a means toward faith and repentance. The same is true of sanctification. Paul exhorts us to work out our faith in fear and trembling. This means that we must, in the words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, make “diligent use” of the means of grace: the Word and the Sacraments. But we know that ultimately it is God who is at work in us (Phil. 2:10-11).

These secondary means alone do not guarantee God’s saving grace. His Spirit has to be at work for any of these means to be effective; thus, the need for super natural and miraculous activity as the fundamentalists insisted. But Scripture clearly teaches that God uses secondary means to car ry out his purposes both in restraining evil and in redeeming his people. In other words, God saves both though providence and miracles. What is more, the secondary causes are as much the work of God as are miracles. If we fail to see this we run the risk of espousing a deistic view of salvation, one where God winds up the clock of the soul in the act of conversion and then lets it run its own course by its own powers. Contrary to deism, the Bible teaches that God is always involved and ever active MARCH/APRIL 1997

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in sustaining and upholding his creation. The same is no less tr ue of redemption. Whether it occurs providentially or supernaturally, nothing happens without God’s purpose.

Foolish Means Of course, recovering a full view of God’s redemptive acts, one in which we take greater notice of secondary means, does not settle the issue of ministry.

Couldn’t it be the case that God has ordained ice hockey ministries to bring some of his people to himself ? Or what about evangelistic crusades? Isn’t the proof in the pudding? As long as some are coming to Christ aren’t these unusual ministries ordained by God? To answer these questions we need to remember the means that God has promised to bless. The Apostle Paul, both in Romans 10 and Ephesians 4, places great stress upon the ordained ministry and the public proclamation of the Word, even asking in the former how the elect will come to Christ without preaching.

This underscores the importance of means. Ordinarily, God uses means and so these means are not something that we may disregard. We may even say that they are necessary.

We should also observe that these means are ordinary, to use the language of the Shorter Catechism again, not simply in the sense that this is the normal way that God works, but also in the sense that from the world’s perspective they aren’t very noble or glamorous.

This is the reason Paul describes preaching as foolishness. Not only is the cross itself foolish to the unregenerate mind (I Cor. 1:23), it also views the great and mighty redemptive power of God as packaged or conveyed in a flimsy and unconvincing form. As Paul writes to the Corinthians, it is the preaching of Christ and him crucified that is a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles (I Cor. 1:24). The church as defined by the ministry of Word and Sacrament is in the business of being ordinary!

Most Christians, however, don’t want to admit that the church is ordinary. On the one hand they want to show off the greatness of God and so devise different strategies (i.e., “ministries”) that will demonstrate just how great, mighty, and merciful God is. On the other hand, the “outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption” aren’t very attractive or fun to so-called seekers. Preaching and the Sacraments will hardly allow a small church to compete with the megachurch that produces (at a rate of $5,000 per video) a weekly dramatic video for its youth group meeting. Nor, do they think, will Word and Sacrament alone be very effective in reaching unchurched Harry and his wife, Harriet.

But isn’t this precisely the point of the Apostle Paul’s 18

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teaching in the first chapter of I Corinthians as well as the Bible more generally? If we look at all of the great redemptive acts in the history of redemption we cannot help but be struck by the ordinary quality of these miracles. The Exodus is probably the most spectacular event, but it relies simply upon a wind (a strong one to be sure) but not a tornado. We also have the example of Joshua and the Israelites walking and blowing trumpets to bring down the walls of Jericho. David’s encounter with Goliath also speaks volumes about God’s understated ways of protecting his people and slaying his foes. Of course, the greatest example is our Lord himself. He came to earth as the Messiah and Lord of glory to vanquish sin and death, not with fanfare but in the contemptible surroundings of a barnyard. All of these examples underline the Apostle Paul’s instruction in II Corinthians 4:7 that God uses “earthen vessels” to show that “this unsurpassing power” is from him, not from human hands or wisdom. The same is no less true of the way that God now works in his church. God uses the plain and simple means of Word and Sacrament to keep us humble and to ensure that he receives all the honor and glory.

Calvin and Ursinus would have had no trouble rating an “effective” church. For them preaching, the Sacraments, and discipline were the means that Christ had ordained.

The point here is not simply that God ordinarily works through foolish means and therefore the church must do likewise. This is true. But we also need to see that the church has been commissioned to disciple the nations and God has promised to bless the church’s work.

The only means that God has promised to bless are Word and Sacrament. To establish other ministries that appear to be more attractive and effective not only detracts from God’s ordained means but also implies that we are wiser than God and that we do not trust his gracious provision.

If the church is to be faithful she must also be content MODERN REFORMATION

with the means God has given to his church. And unless he sends a word of knowledge promising to bless the youth group, then we need to continue on with the ordinary means of Word and Sacrament.

But, you may ask, aren’t some of these other ministries effective? Don’t people come to know Christ through various ministries? These are good questions but they beg themselves. How do we know if ministries other than Word and Sacrament are effective? Is it simply because a certain parachurch ministry announces in its newsletter that so many came to Christ (and oh, by the way, please send a monetary gift to continue this crucial ministry)? Or do we look at statistics from weekly men’s group meetings? Ultimately, any so-called ministry depends upon the Word and Sacrament to determine its effectiveness or, in other words, to tell whether the profession of those who came to Christ is credible. If a 12-year-old boy comes home from summer camp professing to be a Christian or if a soccer mom goes to a mid-week women’s Bible study, are we going to say that these professions are credible if these individuals don’t gather with other believers each Sunday to hear the Word and receive the Sacrament? What if they fail to do so for the rest of their lives? If professing Christians do not participate in the means of grace and neglect assembling with God’s people, just how credible are their professions? Of course, some might still defend the credibility of professions that do not draw upon the riches of Word and Sacrament. They will, however, have a hard time doing this from Scripture. The Bible does not say that either weekend retreats or low-income housing (even though they may be beneficial) are the means God uses to save and build his church.

Kingdom Work Still, evangelicals are not solely to blame for the proliferation of ministries these days. The Reformed also need to shoulder some of the responsibility. Here the widespread idea of kingdom work or a Reformed world-and-life view, requires closer scrutiny.

The notion of kingdom work stems from good intentions. Abraham Kuyper was probably its best exponent when he said, “there is not an inch in the entire area of our human life which Christ, who is sovereign of all, does not call ‘Mine!’” The Reformed worldview aims to do justice to the cultural mandate of Scripture which calls us to worship God not just on the Lord’s Day but also during the week in our vocations. Kuyper, in fact, refined and developed the notion of sphere sovereignty to include not just the idea that Christ is Lord of the church, family, and state (the traditional Reformed spheres) but also extends to the whole range of human endeavors, from the natural sciences to the arts. This idea has appealed greatly to evangelicals and former

fundamentalists who desire some religious rationale for not being a missionary or evangelist (“full-time Christian service”). Among believers who associate secular occupations with worldliness, the Reformed world-andlife view provides relief by recognizing the religious dimension of all legal vocations.

One sees the downside of the contemporary “worldview” operations, however, when they lead to the idea of cultural transformation, as they usually do. Here “kingdom work” takes on the progressive notion of Christians going into every field of human endeavor, serving God in all occupations, and eventually redeeming the culture to Christ. According to this logic, any legal form of employment is as worthwhile as the ministry of Word and Sacrament. After all, Christians in all sorts of callings, so the argument runs, are transforming the culture just as much as pastors; sometimes, if the occupation is on a large enough scale, such as in the media or entertainment industry, it can be even more effective than the work of the church. It is as if writing the script of a successful sitcom is more important than the proclamation of the Word.

As it turns out, this understanding of Christian cultural engagement never really escapes the otherworldliness of fundamentalism. In order to legitimize all non-religious vocations this view of cultural transformation gives them a quasi-religious purpose by saying that they are redemptive or extend Christ’s lordship. Older Protestant understandings of vocation, however, recognized secular occupations as good, not because they were evangelistic or redemptive, but because God had ordained them. Worldly occupations, according to this view, were still worldly, but worldliness in this sense was good because God created a good world. But the Protestant understanding of vocation still recognized the sacred and unique function of the ministry. While baking and preaching were both legitimate callings (a person was not a better Christian because ordained), the Reformers understood that preaching (even if conducted by the unregenerate), not baking, was the means God used to extend his kingdom. Thus, the popular idea of “kingdom work” misunderstands the nature of both secular and sacred occupations. It carries with it a fundamental misunderstanding of the kingdom of Christ and how it is realized.

The Keys of the Kingdom Despite obvious problems with the kingdom work model of cultural transformation, it does highlight the idea of kingdom in a helpful way. Here it might be useful to consider the nature of Christ’s kingdom and what are the means by which he establishes it. Christ is indeed Lord of all things, but his rule will certainly look different in different places. Christ is Lord of the MARCH/APRIL 1997

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United States whether the Constitution recognizes it or not, because God has ordained the powers that be. In the same way, Christ is Lord of both Christian and nonChristian families because he has ordained this institution as a way to restrain evil and maintain social order. But this is a different kind of rule than what we see in the church. There Christ’s kingdom requires bowed knees and tongues confessing Jesus Christ as Lord.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism renders Christ’s kingdom as a place where he subdues us to himself, rules and defends us, and restrains his and our enemies (Q&A 26). The point is that Christ’s kingdom is a spiritual, not a physical place. As a spiritual place, then it is one where his role as Savior, not as Creator, is primary. This means that the kingdom of God exists only where the benefits of Christ’s redemption have been applied, namely among the elect, not within something as abstract as culture, society, or even the media. John Calvin, for instance, limits the idea of the kingdom in just this way when he writes of Christ’s kingly office that we can perceive the force and usefulness of Christ’s kingship only when we recognize it to be spiritual. This is clear enough from the fact that, while we must fight throughout life under the cross, our condition is harsh and wretched. What then, would it profit us to be gathered under the reign of the Heavenly King, unless beyond this earthly life we were certain of enjoying its benefits? For this reason we ought to know that the happiness promised us in Christ does not consist in outward advantages—such as leading a joyous and peaceful life, having rich possessions, being safe from all harm, and abounding with delights such as the flesh commonly longs after. No, our happiness belongs in the heavenly life! (The Institutes, II.xv.4) Calvin goes on to infer from Luke 17:21 and from Romans 14:17, where God’s kingdom is described as being among his people and as “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,” that Christ’s kingdom “is not earthly or carnal and hence subject to corruption, but spiritual” and, thus, “lifts us up even to eternal life.”

The idea of kingdom work is also helpful for pinpointing the means whereby Christ establishes his kingdom. Here the very words of our Lord in Matthew 16:19-20; 18:18; and John 20:22-23 are revealing. In these passages, Christ tells his disciples that he has given them the keys to his kingdom. Because Roman Catholics have used these passages to defend the primacy of the papacy, Protestants have been reluctant to make them carry too much weight. But the Reformers were not so 20

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squeamish. Zacharias Ursinus, co-author of the Heidelberg Catechism, wrote that the keys of the kingdom consist in preaching and discipline, “by which the kingdom of heaven is opened to believers, and shut against unbelievers.” Through these spiritual means the church testifies the grace of God to those who live in true faith and repentance. Simultaneously these means declare the wrath of God to the wicked and their exclusion from the kingdom. Ursinus explains that the metaphor of keys borrows from the image of house stewards. “The church is the house of the living God,” he writes, and “the ministers of the church are the stewards of God.” In declaring the will of God for salvation, ministers have the keys to open and shut God’s house.

Calvin and Ursinus would have had no trouble rating an “effective” church. For them preaching, the Sacraments, and discipline were the means that Christ had ordained for extending his kingdom. Anything else, they would say, was sheer gimmickry, efforts that might spring from good intentions but which ultimately detract from the means of grace and breed distrust of God’s promises to bless the means of grace. The kingdom of God is not a moral American society, wholesome television programming, or more Christians in the arts.

As Jesus himself said, “my kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). The means by which Christ establishes his kingdom are not banners in the sanctuary, drama and dance in worship, or even a full slate of Sunday School classes. No, the keys of the kingdom, the instruments that lock and unlock it, are the sober responsibilities which our Lord gives to ministers. When churches reduce the clutter of their programs and when God’s people recognize the ministry of Word and Sacrament for what it is, namely, the means whereby Christ communicates the benefits of redemption, then and only then will we have churches score well.

Librarian and Assistant Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia), D. G. Hart is a member of Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Glenside, PA. In addition to other works, he is co-editor (with Bruce Kuklick) of the recently released Religious Advocacy and American History (Eerdmans, 1996) and co-author (with Albert Mohler) of the recently released Theological Education in the Evangelical Tradition (Baker, 1997).

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TO THE POINT “The church’s attempt to shape public life has failed. Instead of the church creating a more just world, the world has created a less religious and far less meaningful church” —Glenn T. Miller, academic dean at Bangor Theological Seminary “God has entrusted to us, His Church, with the best story in the world. With great ingenuity we have managed, with the aid of much theory, to make that story boring as hell. Theories about meaning are what you get when you forget that the Church and Christians are embattled by subtle enemies who win easily by denying that any war exists. God knows what He is doing in this strange time between ‘worlds,’ but hopefully He is inviting us again to engage the enemy through the godly weapons of preaching and sacrament.”

— Stanley Hauwerwas, United Methodist theologian, Duke University “Young man, if you ever would do good, you must preach the gospel of the free grace of God in Christ Jesus.”

— Seventeenth-century Puritan divine Richard Sibbes to the young Puritan pastor and Oxford don Thomas Goodwin “When I first arrived at Yale, even those who came from nonreligious backgrounds knew the Bible better than most of those now who come from churchgoing families…. The culture of Christians as well as of nonChristians has been de-Christianized, and the language of public discourse has become dangerously feeble….

Of only one thing are Christians assured. God has promised to be with his people as judge and savior both in the catacombs and on the throne, and for either of these destinies believers need a mastery of their native tongue which is at the moment fast disappearing.

Relearning the language of Zion is imperative whatever the cultural future of the church.”

— George Lindbeck, a Lutheran, is Pitkin Professor of Theology, Yale University “The essence of apostasy is always the same: seeking salvation, not in the grace of Christ ‘heard with faith,’ but rather in what Paul calls ‘the works of the law.’ The specific contents of apostasy, the details of ‘worksrighteousness,’ vary from age to age...The ultimate question is the question of salvation…. There is a crisis of ultimate seriousness—it is the crisis brought on by the Gospel being proclaimed, or not proclaimed, in any

moment of history—yet it is a crisis that has been with the Church from its beginning…. Strong eruptions of religious faith have always been marked by the appearance of people with firm, unapologetic, often uncompromising convictions—that is, by types that are the very opposite from those presently engaged in the various ‘relevance’ operations …. Put simply: Ages of faith are not marked by ‘dialogue’ but by proclamation.”

— Peter Berger, Professor of Sociology, Boston University and Lutheran layperson “Divine grace in Christ, the remission of sins and the conquest of evil powers for the sick soul, tired of living and scared of dying, seeking for an assurance of immortality and for security and freedom in a world where the individual could rarely do other than submit to his fate.”

— Henry Chadwick, Oxford historian and Church of England layperson, on why Christianity spread so rapidly in the ancient world “Preaching is...a means of grace, but not any kind of preaching; the vehicle of God’s Spirit is the preaching of the law and gospel—biblical, kerygmatic preaching.”

— Donald Bloesch, Reformed theologian and retired professor of theology at the University of Dubuque “Many sermons are moral exhortations, which can be heard delivered with greater skill at the Rotary or Kiwanis Club…. Many ser mons offer personal therapies, which can be better provided by well-trained psychiatrists. The only skill the preacher has—or the church, for that matter—which is not found with greater excellence somewhere else, is theology, in particular the skill to interpret and apply the Word of God in sermon, teaching, and pastoral care. This is the great service which the minister and the church can render the world. Why should anyone come to church for what can be better found somewhere else?”

— John Leith, Presbyterian professor emeritus, Union Theological Seminary (Virginia)

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Musings on the History of the Protestant Ministry LAWRENCE R. RAST, JR.

Fifteen years ago the sign in the front of the Oneida Baptist Church caught my attention. It read: “Pastor, Fred Russell; Ministers, The Entire Congregation.”1 “Aren’t pastors ministers?” I mused.

“Wait—if everyone is a minister, then, in effect, no one is a Minister,” I concluded.

My thoughts haven’t changed. In the years since that experience I’ve seen the gimmicky slogans of a local congregation evolve into a full-fledged theology. Let me make myself clear: I’m not singling out the Baptists here. I’ve seen identical signs in front of the church buildings and in the bulletins in my own denomination, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. However, I firmly believe that those who advance such a saying have staked out a theological position of which, perhaps, they do not entirely understand the ramifications. To adopt the idea that “everyone is a minister” compromises the Reformation understanding of the doctrine of the ministry.2 When one mentions “the ministry” among evangelicals, one is speaking of those persons in the church who undertake some form of official activity on behalf of and for the church. The key is the little word “the,” which points to the Office of the Holy Ministry, established by Christ himself for the good of his church.

Ministry without the definite article, on the other hand, has come to mean just about any kind of church activity loosely related to the proclamation of the gospel.

Unfortunately, these kinds of so-called “ministry” often take some very ridiculous forms (for example, the “clown ministry” explored in Rick Ritchie’s article in this issue). “Ministry” has become so confused a word as to become almost meaningless.

But what about “The Ministry”? In our time we cannot simply assume that most who hear this phrase will automatically think of the pastoral ministry. I submit that this situation is unacceptable for the heirs of 22

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the Reformation. Further, I believe that it is time for the churches of the evangelical tradition to reclaim this word, and not allow its misuse to relegate it to obscurity. The means by which we will achieve this are two. First of all, rigorous theological instruction—something that no Protestant should find distasteful. Second, and here lies the burden of this article, we need to be historically aware of the idea of the ministry, and why and how it is that we have arrived at the point of linking the Office that preaches Christ crucified and risen again for the sins of the world with such silliness as clown ministry. We can only move into the future faithfully if we are fully informed both doctrinally and historically. To that end, let us look at the basic history of the Protestant conception of the ministry.

Priests and Pastors According to Martin Luther The use of the word minister to indicate a person who functions in a particular role as proclaimer of the gospel and administrator of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper can be traced primarily back to the Reformation period. Roman Catholicism preferred the use of the term “priest” for its clergy, underscoring that tradition’s doctrine of the ministry. A “priest” is MODERN REFORMATION

one who sacrifices on behalf of another. The reformers favored minister because it means “one who serves.”

To understand Mar tin Luther (1483-1546) correctly, one must be familiar with his disagreement with Rome over the nature of the Christian priesthood.

Luther rejected what he believed was Rome’s mistaken understanding of the relationship of the believer to God. Rome, said Luther, had placed the Pope and his bishops and priests in the place of Christ. They had become the mediators of divine grace in place of the Lord. As successors of Peter, they were the ones who reenacted the sacrifice of Christ for the church. In contrast, Luther argued that Christ had been sacrificed only once and for all—Christ alone was the priest and the sacrifice. By virtue of their baptism all believers are “priests,” and as such had the privilege of administering the Sacraments and preaching. However, for the sake of good order, Christ himself had established the Office of the Ministry. The community of the faithful was required by Christ to appoint a man to fill the office as Christ required.

At the heart of Luther’s reform of the doctrine of the ministry is his rejection of the Roman notion of the Mass as a sacrifice. First developed in his Address to the German Nobility (1520), Luther rejected the notion that it was the priest’s primary duty to offer up the sacrifice of the Mass on behalf of the parish community. He repudiated the notion that the priest had the gift, conferred in ordination, to transform the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Christ in the Mass.

Luther countered that the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar did not depend upon priestly character or authority, but upon the Word of God. Thus, the ordained Lutheran clergyman’s primary responsibility was not to resacrifice Christ, but to preach the Word and to administer the Sacraments: the Lord’s Supper, baptism, and absolution. As preacher, teacher, and administrator, the Lutheran clergyman came to be called “pastor,” one who shepherds Christ’s flock through Word and Sacrament.

For Luther, there is no essential difference between the layperson and the pastor—there is no special class of order in society known as “the priesthood.” Rather, all Christians stand before God under the Word with Christ as their only mediator. The difference between pastor and people is not one of standing, but rather that one has received a charge, or call, from God, to hold the Office of the Ministry on behalf of the rest of the believing community. Ordination for Luther meant a public recognition of the call that a group of Christians had extended to a particular Christian person.

Thus, Luther tried to hold two extremes together without allowing either to dominate the other—the divine institution and necessity of the Office of the

Ministry and the “Priesthood of all Believers.”

Misunderstandings of Luther’s doctrine have occurred when one of these is stressed at the expense of the other.

Also, we must remember that Luther articulated his doctrine in the midst of controversy, and his thought at any given time reflects those matters that were most pressing on him. For example, early in his reforming career Luther advocated more strongly the priesthood of all believers. In the face of Rome’s insistence that ordination conferred a special gift to the priest that empowered him alone to forgive and retain sins, Luther stressed that every Christian by virtue of his or her baptism was given this power. Later, however, some of the more radical Reformers took the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers to an extrabiblical extreme, essentially arguing that no ministry at all was established in the New Testament. Luther reacted strongly against the disorder inherent in the egalitarian stance of this faction and stressed the divine institution and necessity of the Office of the Ministry, as well as its independence from the control of the calling community.

The Reformed Ministry The Reformed tradition owed much to the thought of Martin Luther and the Lutherans, though its leaders departed from them in significant ways. Like Luther, the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531), who was also a Roman Catholic priest, sought to restore a biblical pattern to the ministry of the church. More important for our purposes, however, is the work of John Calvin (1509-1564). Calvin systematized Reformed thought on the doctrine of the ministry. Like Luther, Calvin accepted the authority of Scripture and saw justification by grace through faith as the article on which the church stands and falls. There is no salvation outside the church, because the church is the only place in which the pure Word is proclaimed.3 One can identify the church by its marks. Recalling the language of the Augsburg Confession, Calvin writes: “Wherever we see the word of God sincerely preached and heard, wherever we see the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, there we cannot have any doubt that the Church of God has some existence.” 4 The ascended Christ, as prophet, priest, and king, continues to rule his church. But because he is at the right hand of God, he has established the office of the ministry as the special medium through which he continues to speak to the church. “He declares his condescension towards us, employing men to perfor m the function of his ambassadors in the world, to be the interpreters of his secret will; in short, to represent his own person.”5 In his Ecclesiastical Ordinances of 1541, Calvin argued that Scripture teaches (Eph. 4:11, Rom. 2:7, and 1 Cor. 12:28) that there are four orders of the Office of the MARCH/APRIL 1997

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Ministry: pastors, doctors, elders, and deacons. Pastors are to preach and administer the Sacraments. Doctors teach the church’s doctrine, while the elders’ primary task is to administer church discipline, as part of a consistory that includes the pastor. Thus that disciplinary power will not fall into the hands of one person or party. Finally, deacons are to care for the sick and the poor.

Calvin’s four orders of ministry found expression in the churches of the Reformed tradition in Scotland and in America. Both the Presbyterians and the Puritans, with their Congregationalist heirs, looked to Calvin as their mentor in these matters. His influence is also evident in the traditions that arose out of English Separatism, for example, the Baptists and the Disciples of Christ, to name only two.

Anglicanism, though dependent on Calvinism for its doctrinal expressions, developed a doctrine of the ministry that differed significantly from its Reformed roots. Henry VIII’s (1491-1547) Assertio Septem Sacramentorum of 1521 censured Luther’s sacramental, and thus also, his ministerial reforms. Henry aimed to establish the Church of England as a distinct church from Rome without changing its substance or form, and in 1534 the Act of Supremacy declared the monarch “the only supreme head in earth of the Church in England.” Henry’s daughter Elizabeth I (1533-1603) fixed the episcopal ministry as the basic form of the ministry. It has remained so for the worldwide Anglican communion ever since. However, within that tradition there are radically differing opinions as to the nature of the ministry. The high church or Anglo-Catholic group stresses the necessity of apostolic succession and defines the institution of clergy on the basis of transmission of priestly power in the Sacrament of ordination. The broad church or Latitudinarian tradition holds that ordination is beneficial for the church without saying that holy orders necessarily offer a special gift or power.

Finally, the low church or evangelical party holds that the episcopacy, though not absolutely necessary to the church, assures that the church enjoys the fullness of the gifts that Christ has for it when it establishes the ministry in its midst.

Methodism had its roots in the Anglican tradition, and its founder, John Wesley (1703-1791), refused throughout his life to separate himself from the Church of England. Toward the end of his life Wesley came to the conclusion that New Testament terms for bishops and priests were synonymous, and that, therefore, he could rightfully ordain ministers for his “church within the church.”

The Ministry in America It was in America, with its Methodist circuit riders and egalitarian principles, where some of the most 24

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important changes to the historic Protestant doctrine of the ministry have occurred. We have seen that the Puritans inherited their doctrine of the ministry from the theology of John Calvin and orthodox Calvinism.

Their application of that doctrine underscores its fundamental orthodoxy. E. Brooks Holifield has shown that the colonial clergy of the seventeenth century saw their task as the “cure of souls.”6 They were responsible for the spiritual care of the sheep entrusted to their care, and this accountability extended to all fields of their activities as ministers of Word and Sacraments, e.g., preaching, teaching, governing the congregation, and the general nurture of a truly pious life. However, the eighteenth century’s First Great Awakening helped force a shift in ministerial activity. The new minister emphasized the spiritual awakening of the individual.

Called “preacher” with greater and greater frequency, the minister’s principal task was to exhort and awaken sinful individuals to move toward a decision for Christ. The style of preaching changed as sermons became more familiar in their address (using the second person singular and plural “you”) and purposeful in their manipulation of the emotions. Those pastors who retained the older model of preaching and cure of souls were frequently rebuked as being “unconverted” and even “dead.” The classic expression of this is Gilbert Tennent’s The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry (1740), where he castigates the preaching of the orthodox as being so “cold and sapless” as to “freeze between their lips.” 7 Paralleling this new stress on ver nacular preaching (likely driving it) was a theological shift from Calvinism, as expressed in the likes of the Westminster Confession, to an Arminianism that denied original sin and stressed the freedom of the human will to choose whether it would or would not serve God. The practical results of this theological change were enormous. No longer would preachers see awakenings as being totally dependent upon the will and grace of God. Nor did they see pastoral care in terms of the care of souls. The new preachers believed their methods could bring about spiritual conversion through the application of the right methods. These budding revivalists strove to drive people to the point of spiritual distress and to place the resolution of the matter in the arena of the hearer’s free will. Revivals, whose success did not absolutely depend on God’s activity, took the place of the divine service of the Reformation liturgies.

“A revival is not a miracle,” wrote Charles Finney, “nor dependent on a miracle in any sense. It is a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means….”8 To put it crassly, in American revivalism, emotional manipulation replaced the care of souls.

Not surprisingly, a new doctrine of the ministry developed. The most influential ministers in the new MODERN REFORMATION

system were not the settled ministers who simply shepherded their flocks. The traveling revivalist, who fanned the revival fires and then moved on, could shape and sway vastly more people to his theology and ideas.

The biblical notion of “evangelist” (one who proclaims the good news) took on a new meaning—an itinerant minister whose chief activity is conducting revivals.

Thus, a new office of ministry was introduced to the church. Stressing the human side of the conversion equation and, ultimately, putting salvation in the hands of his (and increasingly, her) hearers, the revivalist appealed to the egalitarian democracy that had overcome the republicanism of the early national period.9 Not only did it mirror the politics of the Age of Jackson, it fit hand in glove with the burgeoning market capitalism.

The Evangelical Ministry: Quo Vadis?

In 1956, Sydney Mead argued that this conception of the Protestant ministry had become part and parcel of American evangelicalism.10 What remains for us to look at is the manner in which this ministry has played out in the American religious scene.

It is more than obvious that this Arminian, revivalistic conception of the ministry still holds g reat sway for evangelicals in the present age. One can see a clear line of evangelical revivalists running from Charles Finney on down to the latest TV evangelist who tops the ratings.

Theologically, they are very similar.

Though they might differ at points (for example, Finney was a postmillennialist, most current revivalists are dispensational premillennialists), they all share a commitment to Ar minianism, and a rejection of the theological anthropology embodied in the great confessions of the Refor mation (e.g., the Augsburg and Westminster Confessions). The great pressures facing Protestant ministers today are to fall in line with this theological pedigree. As always, the temptation is great, for Finney’s new measures (be they the “anxious bench” or Willow Creek), promise—no, guarantee—numerical success and a great harvest of souls. Scripture speaks clearly to this point, and the theological positions of Luther and the other Reformers, biblical as they are, still apply to America in the 1990s. The question confronting evangelicals is what will drive pastoral care in our churches: a theology that guarantees numerical success or one that is faithful to the Scriptures? To put it another way, are the models for ministry that we adopt dependent on the or thodox, biblically centered confessions of the Reformation, or do they simply echo

theologically the ideas of secular culture?

Perhaps one example will suffice. Willow Creek Church in Barrington, Illinois, has been all the rage for the last several years. Its “Seeker Services,” with their low-profile approach to the gospel and movie theater atmosphere, have gathered great attention. However, one of the principles underlying the life of Willow Creek is its new doctrine of the ministry. Willow Creek is held up as one of the finest examples of ministry in action by Carl F. George in his book Preparing Your Church for the Future, where the author outlines a new doctrine of the church and ministry that he calls “Meta-Church.”11 George’s basic complaint is that “present models for doing ministry are ineffective and inadequate.” Why? Because older, traditional churches have limited “pastoral care” to the activity of the ordained clergy.

Rather, every individual Christian is responsible for pastoral care. This is one of the primary secrets to Willow Creek’s success. For George, everyone is more than a minister, now everyone is a pastor! What then becomes of “the” pastor? He is relegated to status as a CEO—his task is to “manage” his cell group. The effective result of George’s plan is that the pastor does less and less “pastoral care,” while the lay pastor of the ten or less member cell-group takes center stage. “The pivotal roles in the church will be those of the cell-group leader (X) and the apprentice leader (Xa).”12 Not surprisingly, the Meta-Church congregation lacks a firm doctrinal foundation. It is more structurally oriented than belief oriented. In fact, George himself says: “These churches of the future realize that God measures His people more by their obedience than by their knowledge of Bible facts.

Therefore, they’ve shifted their priorities from teaching to caring, from understanding to application.”13 Perhaps I’ve been too quick to call this a “new” doctrine. MetaChurch doctrine and practice parallels, in striking ways, some of the more shoddy positions of medieval Roman Catholicism. The people were prodded to obedience to the church, but were left ignorant of doctrine. Lacking a foundation in biblical theology, they subjected themselves to the doctrinal developments that the Refor mation strove so hard to overcome. More seriously, George’s subordination of doctrine to experience leaves the very heart of the gospel at risk, and threatens to turn Christianity into a religion of the Law. After all, if God truly does measure people more by their obedience than by what the Savior has done for them (all of which is revealed in what George dismisses MARCH/APRIL 1997

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as “Bible facts”), then we have returned to the days of salvation by works, and the grace of God is at the very least obscured, if not utterly destroyed!

One might argue, however, that this critique of George is simply the frustrated howling of a threatened seminary professor. I disagree. George’s work is a development of a new doctrine of church and ministry.

He himself admits that his work is a “prophetic call” and should elicit from its readers a “compulsion from God” to put it into action. The god of this volume, however, is the god of marketing and management. My response is equally prophetic. Unlike George, though, I am calling the church back to the prophetic voice of Scripture and the confessions of the church catholic.

I believe that George, the Arminian revivalists, and, yes, all orthodox Protestants would do well to recall the words of Mar tin Luther in the last ser mon he preached.14 Commenting on Matthew 11:25-30, he writes: For they are always exerting themselves; they want to do things in the Christian church the way they want to themselves. Everything that God does they must improve so that there is no poorer, more insignificant and despised disciple on earth than God; he must be everybody’s pupil, everyone wants to be his teacher....They are not satisfied with what God has done and instituted, they cannot let things be as they were ordained to be. They think they have to do something too, in order that they may be a bit better than other people able to boast: This is what I have done. What God has done is too poor and insignificant, even childish and foolish; I must add something to it....These are the real wiseacres, of whom Christ is speaking here, who put the cart before the horse and will not stay on the road which God himself has shown us, but always have to have and do something special in order that people may say: “Ah, our pastor or preacher is nothing; there’s the real man! He’ll get things done!”

How long this latest church growth fad will last is anyone’s guess. My own church has found itself enamored of the approach, but only time will tell whether it’s simply another flash-in-the-pan. It is always easy to do theology on the world’s terms—sinful human nature will always reward such endeavors. To be faithful to the Scripture’s narrow way is more difficult, strewn as it is with the world’s enmity and rejection. Be that as it may, that doesn’t change the church’s task. Nor does it compromise the theme of this article—that biblical doctrine and its historical expression must provide the 26

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cues for the church as it moves forward into the twentyfirst century. Only as we are firmly grounded in the Scriptures and confessions will we be able faithfully to address the challenges to the church in the new millennium. To lose sight of where we’ve been doctrinally and to forget our history invites disaster. As Madeline Sadler Waggoner has so aptly put it: “It is well for us to remember. For a faith or a nation that forgets its roots in history loses its vision. And so must perish.”15

1 The name of the pastor is fictitious.

2 That is not to attack the motives of those who do so—as I implied, they likely do so out of a well-meaning ignorance.

3 Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, n.d.), 4.1.4 4 Institutes, 4.1.9.

5 Institutes, 4.3.1, emphasis added.

6 See E. Brooks Holifield, A History of Pastoral Care in America: From Salvation to Self-Realization (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1983).

7 In The Great Awakening: Documents on the Revival of Religion, 1740-1745, ed. Richard L. Bushman (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 90.

8 Charles G. Finney, Revival Lectures (reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell, n.d.), 5.

9 See Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

10 Sydney Mead, “The Rise of the Evangelical Conception of the Ministry in America: 1607-1850,“ in The Ministry in Historical Perspectives, eds. H. Richard Niebuhr and Daniel D. Williams (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956), 207-249.

11 (Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell, 1992).

12 Ibid., 148. The “X” and “Xa” refer to people in George’s cellgrouping scheme. For a pictorial representation of these roles, see p.

149.

13 Ibid., 154-155.

14 The sermon may be found in Luther’s Works, vol. 51, ed. and trans.

John W. Dobberstein (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 383-392.

15 The Long Haul West: The Great Canal Era, 1817-1850 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1958), 301.

Lawrence Rast is the newest addition to the Department of Historical Theology at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, joining the faculty in the Fall of 1996. Prof. Rast received his B.A. from Concordia College, River Forest, Illinois (1986), and his M.Div. (1990) and S.T.M. (1995) from Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne.

Currently writing his Ph.D. dissertation at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, he specializes in the history of Christianity in America, with emphasis on nineteenth-century American Lutheranism. He also serves as Assistant Editor of Concordia Theological Quarterly.

MODERN REFORMATION

WE CONFESS “Judging simply according to the Word of the Lord, we say that all properly called ministers possess and exercise the keys or the use of them when they proclaim the Gospel…. Ministers remit sins. Thus they open the Kingdom of Heaven, and bring believers into it: very different from those of whom the Lord said in the Gospel, ‘Woe to you lawyers! for you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.’ Ministers, therefore, rightly and effectually absolve when they preach the Gospel of Christ and thereby the remission of sins, which is promised to each one who believes, just as each one is baptized, and when they testify that it pertains to each one particularly…. Therefore, ministers are to be regarded, not as ministers by themselves alone, but as the ministers of God, inasmuch as God effects the salvation of men through them. Hence we warn men to beware lest we attribute what has to do with our conversion and instruction to the secret power of the Holy Spirit in such a way that we make void the ecclesiastical ministry…. Therefore, the priesthood and the ministry are very different from one another. For the priesthood, as we have just said, is common to all Christians; not so is the ministry. Nor have we abolished the ministry of the Church because we have repudiated the papal priesthood from the Church of Christ….

The duties of ministers are various; yet for the most part they are restricted to two, in which all the rest are comprehended: to the teaching of the Gospel of Christ, and to the proper administration of the sacraments.”

— The Second Helvetic Confession (Reformed), Chaps. XIV and XVIII “To these officers the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven are committed, by virtue whereof they have power respectively to retain and remit sins, to shut the kingdom against the impenitent, both by the word and censures; and to open it unto penitent sinners, by the ministry of the gospel, and by absolution from censures, as occasion shall require.”

— The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chap. XXXII “Q. What is the Office of the Keys? A. It is the peculiar church power which Christ has given to His Church on earth to forgive the sins of penitent sinners, but to retain the sins of the impenitent as long as they do not repent.”

— Luther’s Small Catechism, “The Office of the Keys and Confession” “Q. 84. How is the kingdom of heaven opened and shut by the preaching of the holy gospel? A. In this way: The kingdom of heaven is opened when it is proclaimed and openly testified to believers, one and all, according to the command of Christ, that as often as they accept the promise of the gospel with true faith all their sins are truly forgiven them by God for the sake of Christ’s gracious work.”

— The Heidelberg Catechism “To obtain such faith God instituted the office of the ministry, that is, provided the gospel and the sacraments.

Through these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit, who works faith, when and where he pleases, in those who hear the gospel. And the gospel teaches that we have a gracious God, not by our own merits but by the merit of Christ, when we believe this. Condemned are the Anabaptists and others who teach that the Holy Spirit comes to us through our own preparations, thoughts, and works without the external word of the gospel.”

— The Augsburg Confession, Art. V

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Every Sheep a Shepherd?

When I was in high school, I took a vocational survey designed to match a person’s interests with possible occupations. This particular survey was designed by a more imaginative committee than most.

Unlike other surveys which listed only conventional occupations, this one included exotic occupations in each field. Also, unlike most surveys, this one gave religious occupations their due attention. Not only were religious occupations listed, but unusual options in religious work appeared as well. Under conventional choices were listed the expected positions: minister, priest, rabbi. Under exotic occupations were listed witch doctor and guru.

Even at the time, the list suggested an odd way of viewing religious occupations. It implied that the same thought processes were involved in choosing among religious occupations as among secular. Even the conventional list caused me to picture an individual deciding to enter the field of religious work before knowing which world religion he or she wanted to serve.

But the exotic list offered my imagination an even more intriguing possibility. What if some free spirit ignored the entire interest survey, scanned the exotic options category under each field, and then chose to become a witch doctor?

The impression that this was how religious occupations are chosen was most likely unintentional.

The survey creators devised the only way they knew to include religion on equal terms with other occupations.

But the picture has remained with me.

As I have grown older, I have discovered that the church is not immune to such eccentric ways of viewing the ministry. These views stem from the same source. Odd views of the ministry arise whenever we draw an analogy between the church and something it does not truly resemble. Odd language also results when we speak of things that are not the church as if they were the church.

New Testament Temple Priests One common error regarding the ministry involves 28

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drawing too tight of an analogy between the New Testament ministry and the Old Testament priesthood.

There are points of true

analogy, but these callings must be understood to be fundamentally different. The problem is not that the New Testament ministry lacks priestly functions, but that these specific functions are common to all Christians. When we over-identify the ministry with the priesthood, ministers do not gain, but the laity loses.

The Roman error concerning the ministry consists in denying to common believers their priestly prerogatives. Scripture tells us that as believers we are a “royal priesthood” and a “holy nation” (1 Pet. 2:9). In the Roman church, the royal priesthood was gradually swallowed up by the Holy Ministry.

MODERN REFORMATION

To some extent, this is understandable. After all, God did have a class of professional religious people in the Old Testament who were priests. In the New Testament, he also created a professional class. There are clearly parallels between the professional religious ministries in the Old and New Testaments. The early church saw this parallel and tried to derive all that it could from the analogy. The Nicene canons (the fourth century church rules which were codified at the Nicene council) contain laws governing the clergy straight out of the book of Leviticus. Levitical law forbade a priest to be blemished or have crushed testicles, and the Nicene canons applied the same prohibition to its priests. Now I would imagine that this probably kept few candidates off of the clergy rosters (and I would wonder about the ones who failed the test!), but most of us can see how such rules are the result of a failure to distinguish Old and New Testament religion, between shadow and substance.

Much of the need for church regulation also arose out of the danger posed by heresy. The more you study early church history, the more surprised you are that the church survived. Not just persecution, but bad doctrine threatened its very life. Orthodox congregations believed that one of the best ways to maintain right teaching was by observing strict regulations concerning who could teach Christian doctrine. If the church as a whole could maintain orthodox bishops and place the ordination of priests into their hands, who in turn would be the only ones authorized to teach laymen, then the threat of heresy could be contained.

As literate Americans, it is difficult for most of us to imagine how any good could come from employing such a procedure. We imagine that a hierarchical structure must be evil by its very nature. We picture blockhead priests forbidding the lay study of the Bible because of envy and the desire to maintain their own status. But while this undoubtedly describes some situations, it fails to do justice to others. The early church had desperate need of doctrinal discipline and created structures to maintain it. Those structures became overbearing at the time when literacy made it possible for lay people to instruct themselves to a degree that had not been possible earlier.

Roman Catholics often try to understate or explain away the problems of the medieval church, while fundamentalists tend to demonize it. A more balanced approach recognizes that the Roman priesthood was the development of many centuries—which did not all manifest the same level of health or disease. Partly in response to true crisis, and partly for the sake of prestige, the Roman clergy gradually took over more of the laity’s functions. The royal Priesthood of All Believers was forgotten, to be rediscovered during the

Reformation. The Reformers insisted on recognizing the distinction between priesthood and ministry.

The Ministry of Nobody If we believe that in contemporary evangelicalism we see the New Testament concept of the priesthood purged of Romish abuses and functioning according to God’s word, we are mistaken. It is true that the Roman error is rarely found and that some vital privileges have been returned to their rightful recipients, but all is not well. We have the name of the Reformation doctrine without the substance. Many evangelical congregations are aware enough of the doctrinal term “Priesthood of All Believers” to take pride in claiming that it is practiced in their congregations. Some have gone even further. They have tried to encapsulate Luther’s doctrine in the newer slogan “Every Christian a Minister,” which becomes a ruling principle in their congregations.

When the Priesthood of All Believers and the Office of the Holy Ministry are collapsed into each other, one of them is bound to be lost.

This is commendable in its attempts at consistency, but it misses some important distinctions. When in 1520 Luther wrote in the Babylonian Captivity of the Church1 that every Christian was a priest, this was not synonymous with saying that every Christian was a minister. This distinction may not be readily apparent since former priests were renamed ministers, but their writings make it clear. The early Lutherans were clear about promoting the Priesthood of All Believers without abolishing a class of ministers. As the great dogmatician Martin Chemnitz wrote: All Christians are indeed priests (1 Pet. 2:9; Rev. 1:6), because they offer spiritual sacrifices to God. Everyone also can and should teach the Word of God in his own house (Deut. 6:7; 1 Cor. 14:35). Nevertheless, not everyone ought to take and arrogate to himself the public MARCH/APRIL 1997

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ministry of Word and sacrament. For not all are apostles; not all are teachers (1 Cor. 12:29), but those who have been set apart for this ministry by God through a particular and legitimate call (Acts 12:2, Heb. 13:21; Rom. 10:15).2 The term “priest” was dropped as a clerical title because it now applied to every Christian. If all Christians are priests, then it does not make sense to use that term specifically of the clergy. The early Lutherans believed that the term “minister” was the Scriptural term that best conveyed the specific duties of the clergy. All Christians have priestly rights, privileges, and responsibilities. But all are not ministers.

When Luther promoted the doctrine of the Priesthood of All Believers, he was attempting both to restore the Scriptural use of language, and to point out that many of the functions of the laity had been usurped by the clergy (e.g., hearing the confession of Christian brethren and overseeing the Christian education of one’s family). He did not, however, intend to overthrow every distinction between clergy and laity.

Scripture itself spoke of them differently.

The evangelical error of calling every Christian a minister appeals to our modern sense of democracy. We don’t want anyone above us in rank. Luther managed to raise the status of the laity without pulling the clergy down to lay level. In fact, if truth is the criterion, then he raised the status of both clergy and laity simultaneously.

The evangelicals who claim to be his heirs have not outdone Luther. In leveling clergy and laity, they have fallen below his level. When every Christian is a minister, there is nothing special about being a minister aside from a paycheck. Occasionally there is an attempt to remedy this problem by allowing that hired ministers are there to “equip the saints” for ministry.

When the Priesthood of All Believers and the Office of the Holy Ministry are collapsed into each other, one of them is bound to be lost. In Romanism, it was the priesthood (the laity) that suffered. In evangelicalism, it is the ministry that suffers. Some fear that a return to a distinction between clergy and laity will mean that the laity lose something. If we declare that the laity are not ministers, won’t they stop exhorting each other, teaching each other, and praying for each other? No. Not if they are taught that this is their priestly privilege and duty.

This is scripturally sound, and I believe it conveys the historic development of the ministry better than most evangelicals understand it. I am aware that good doctrine can be misused by faulty men. It is possible that some who fight for the position of minister do have an agenda of power. Yet the first thing which must be 30

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determined is what is the true doctrine of the ministry and its right relation to the Priesthood of All Believers.

After this, we can proceed to admonish the minister to fulfill his office without lording it over the flock.

“Church” and “ministry” are God’s words. They have a history in Scripture.

We cannot apply them whenever we feel it would be convenient to our interests.

Good and Bad Shepherds The New Testament picture of Christ as the good shepherd (John 10:11), the minister as an undershepherd (Acts 20:28, 1 Pet. 5:1-4), and the church as the flock of God (Acts 20:28) illustrates the proper function of roles in the church. It also offers hints as to how an emergency might be handled. If we translate contemporary doctrine into shepherd-andsheep language, it is clear that evangelicals are teaching that “every sheep is a shepherd.” This is obviously wrong-headed. It is equivalent to sheep without a shepherd, by all Biblical accounts a tragedy (e.g., 2 Chr. 18:16, Eze. 34:18, Mark 6:34). But to speak as if this is the only possible error leads to Romanism, for surely there are bad shepherds (see Jer. 50:6). But God’s flock is not so stupid as to be unteachable: Christ’s sheep know his voice. When a bad shepherd tries to lead them away from Christ, the sheep are not to follow. But Roman teaching denies the possibility of bad shepherds altogether. We must, thus, avoid both Roman and evangelical folly. Emergency conditions will sometimes arise, but we must not on that basis abandon shepherds.

In an emergency, smart sheep will find a new shepherd.

Note the importance of the shepherd’s voice. If a pastor is a shepherd like Christ, his congregation will know him by his voice. It is with his voice that he fulfills his duty: in correcting, teaching, and preaching. Other qualities are of lesser importance; what matters is that the pastor speak rightly on behalf of God. It is with the Savior’s voice that the pastor proclaims the forgiveness of MODERN REFORMATION

sins. The misuse of God’s voice, the preaching of false doctrine, or silence concerning the gospel, are the most horrible calamities a pastor can inflict on his congregation, and the reasons for finding a new shepherd.

clown minister? Can you imagine Jesus castigating a clown minister using the language he used on the Pharisees? Just picture it! Bozo goes to hell! No? Well is he a minister or not? Not really? You get the point.

He Gave Some to Be Clowns?

“Every Christian a Minister” is a slogan whose divergence from “Priesthood of All Believers” may not be apparent to the untrained. Give a congregation time with this slogan, and it will likely take a path far from anything seen in the Reformation. The beginning of the revolution it causes may be the same: the true priestly functions of the laity are recognized. Eventually, however, real ministerial prerogatives are also doled out to members of the congregation. What begins as an undercurrent of excitement over the “restoration of ancient church practice” crashes in a tidal wave of silliness.

There are churches where it is not only said that every Christian is a minister (something which might have to do with their function in an actual congregation), but also that every Christian has a ministry—something that can easily be disconnected from any congregation at all. Now both church and ministry have become unglued from any biblical context.

Occasionally Luther’s doctrine of vocation comes to the rescue so that what is called a ministry merely involves a Christian doing his daily work—perhaps with a commitment to be ethical and to evangelize. Here we just have a misnomer (though a dangerous one at that), but everyone is still doing what he or she is called to do.

This is a best case scenario. What happens more often, however, is that strange methods of doing priestly tasks are invented and dubbed ministries.

Just what is a puppet ministry or a clown ministry?

Scripture says that God gave some to be ministers.

Where does Scripture say anything about clowns? My question does not even touch whether we must adapt our methods to our culture and how far we may go in doing this. The term “clown ministry” does not suggest merely that another medium has been adapted to an existing office. It suggests that the medium itself is the ministry, that “clowning” is itself a means of grace.

Now perhaps nobody would argue this, but I want to know why people use such a confusing term. At best people who use this language believe that they are ministers who have chosen an unusual medium through which to convey the gospel. But do these people ever call themselves just “ministers”? This term suggests that a minister might use one method at one time and another later. But biblically, they do not. There is a confusion of language here, and I suspect it exists so that people do not have to bear the full weight of the title minister. “Clown minister” is much more comfortable, for who could apply a warning passage to a

Whose Coin Is This?

Other odd situations crop up when everything is viewed as a ministry. I remember a related incident when I worked in a book store. A women’s group left a book display at the store for many weeks without checking on it. When all of the books had been sold from the display, nobody knew how to contact the women’s group to come and retrieve their empty display.

The display went the way of all book displays and was thrown away. Some time later a woman from the group came in and asked what had happened to it. Our explanation was met with the response that the display had been bought with ten dollars of “ministry money,” a term the woman repeated often. After much heated discussion, the woman was given ten dollars and told never to do business with the store again.

Now aside from any question of how such an issue ought to have been handled, the talk of “ministry money” clouded the discussion. Business ethics are indeed worth discussing, for it is important that people treat each other fairly. But what happens when “ministry money” becomes a factor in the discussion? Suddenly you aren’t transacting business on level ground. Visions of Ananias and Sapphira from the book of Acts or Achan from the Old Testament come to mind. Now we are dealing with “the Lord’s money.” Common sense is lost, and we are faced with the choice between a scrupulosity where we cannot run normal business, or a hardened attitude where we no longer make any distinction between the things of God and the things of the world.

The term “ministry money” is a bad enough term by itself. I can imagine our Lord hearing such a term and asking, as he did of the Pharisees, “whose coin is this?” Money is a matter of this world. God has shown a severe attitude towards those who rob him, but when the church functions in the economy, it enters a system which it does not gover n. It can expect ethical treatment, but not special treatment. If it hires a window-washer, it can expect the same quality another business would expect for the same money. It would be wrong for a pastor to expect an inhuman perfection from a window-washer, and when the worker showed himself to be just one cut above average, to turn on him with the words “Are you going to leave spots on the Lord’s windows?” (If the church feels so strongly about a perfect job, they must hire the window-washer of Buckingham Palace at the going rate for that level of service.) My point is that if the church itself should not be expecting special treatment in the economy, then MARCH/APRIL 1997

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it is even worse for self-proclaimed ministries to be manipulating people with such talk. Those who do this on purpose are guilty of serious sin. But even those who do not do so confuse matters with the word “ministry.”

“Church” and “ministry” are God’s words. They have a history in Scripture. We cannot apply them whenever we feel it would be convenient to our interests.

When we do this, even when it is for a good cause, we create trouble. Before we apply these words to ourselves, we had better know their history and meaning. God has threatened those who destroy the church (1 Cor. 3:17), but these threats do not apply to our business competitors. The use of the term “ministry” for a business might begin with the intention of making Christians aware of special responsibilities.

Unfortunately, it conveys the idea of special privileges that God has not granted to human businesses.

My pastor is not trying to blend into the congregation and prove that he is just like the rest of us. In his person he is, but in the church we do not see him wearing his own clothes, but the clothes of his office, which exists to serve the congregation.

Too Busy with the Ninety-nine While writing this article, I had a chance to observe both evangelical and Reformation ministry styles in action in a crisis situation. They showed me how wrong it is to judge these things by externals. A friend’s father died after a long battle with cancer. The pastor of his evangelical megachurch did not visit him once while he was ill. The church did not conduct regular visitation, probably in part because they did not keep any membership records. (They might have argued that this was an institutional practice not needed by a warm vibrant fellowship.) Unfortunately, this means that many do not receive a pastoral visit when they need it the most. The 32

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man’s wife had not tried to contact the pastor because “he is such a busy man.” Apparently this shepherd gave the impression that he was too busy with the ninety-nine sheep to worry about the one who needed him.

While my friend’s dad’s own pastor did not visit him, my friend’s Lutheran pastor did visit him several times. Under the old Protestant understanding of the ministry, visitation is a key responsibility. Visitation is not an interruption in the pastor’s job. It is his job.

When could salvation be a more vital issue than when someone is on his or her deathbed? And even where the matter of salvation is settled, people need comfort.

Make no mistake here. This is not primarily a question of a large church versus a small church. I grew up in a church of thousands where it was difficult to get an appointment with the main pastor. But the sick were always visited. It is a matter of priorities. The important thing is that we know how a ministry is functioning before these needs arise.

Most fundamentalists judge denominational churches as “dead,” a term which in Scripture means spiritual death. And many denominational churches are spiritually dead, so the charge often fits. But sometimes “dead” is just a spit word applied to churches which do not show their fervency in the fundamentalists’ narrowly defined ways. If someone says that a certain Episcopal congregation is dead because the pastor is a druid and nobody in the congregation knows anything about Scripture, I will grant the point. But if they claim that the church is dead because the people do not clap in worship, I will tell the person claiming this that he is superstitious. Something other than externals must govern our judgment.

The same holds true of the ministry. The fundamentalist church I spoke of had such a strong antipathy to Roman Catholicism that it sought every difference in practice that it could between itself and Rome. If Catholic priests wore vestments, not only did they not wear Roman vestments, but they refused even to wear robes. Their pastors wore suits. Suits were to emphasize the lack of distinction between clergy and laity.

Now what I find so ironic is how their view of clergy really works. They are not distinguished from the laity by dress, but by unavailability. What really establishes distance? The fact that someone dresses differently from me, or that they cannot bother with me in a crisis? This point was graphically illustrated at my friend’s father’s memorial service where the pastor who preached the sermon in a suit slipped quickly away, while several pastors who attended the service wearing clerical collars stayed around with the family.

Don’t assume that because you have been told there is a wall between the clergy and the laity in the more formal churches that it is true. External factors like clerical dress MODERN REFORMATION

do have a meaning, but it is not a meaning that you want to find from a church’s competitors. They will always put the worst construction on things. You need to find the reasons a church gives for their practices from official documents, or from someone in the church. With few exceptions, this is the best way to get information about any church, or even any alternative religion.

Clerical dress in Reformation churches does not exist to place clergy on a pedestal, but rather to denote office. It also makes the different men who fill that office look less individual. Other pastors from my denomination dress like my pastor. I don’t waste time evaluating a visiting clergyman’s suit, wondering whether he fits in my neighborhood. But more importantly, it tells me that my pastor is not trying to blend into the congregation and prove that he is just like the rest of us.

In his person he is, but in the church we do not see him wearing his own clothes, but the clothes of his office, which exists to serve the congregation. When I see a clergyman in a clerical collar, I see someone doing a job for my sake. It is like seeing a fireman in uniform. I don’t say to myself, “He must think he’s something special, all right.” I say, “I’m glad people are out there serving like that.”

Portrait of a Reformation Pastor It is often charged that the Reformation was incomplete. Critics charge that the Reformers purged a few of Catholicism’s chief abuses, and then left everything else intact instead of taking the opportunity to start with a clean slate. This opinion may be logically consistent, but it lacks a grounding in historical fact.

The first fact to be understood is that the Reformers were quite aware of their philosophies of reformation. The Body Life movement of the nineteen seventies was not the first time someone suggested a more radical form of church reformation. Neither was the Puritan revolution of the seventeenth century. Even before Luther there were mystics who rejected all church structure. Luther himself faced radical reformers like Thomas Muntzer and his former colleague, Andreas Karlstadt, who wanted to start from scratch. Luther, however, was very focused on one objective: the recovery of the gospel. Old practices which got in the way were reformed or abolished. Old practices which could promote the gospel were retained. To reject a practice merely because the Catholic church used it was superstitious. Christian liberty does not require a doyour-own-thing approach. We are free to make wise use of the past.

In reforming the ministry, Luther was not defining it by the Bible in the absence of a Christian past. He was trying to bring an already existing institution into line with biblical teaching. I find his vision of a pastor

compelling. It would be wrong to say this whole vision can be derived out of Scripture. Of the possibilities that Scripture offers, Luther chose those which the past had proven helpful to the gospel.

A Lutheran pastor is a man who is responsible primarily to his office of Word and Sacrament. That is, he must preach the Bible to the congregation in light of the gospel, baptize, hear confession, pronounce absolution, and administer the Lord’s Supper. He must also see to it that other matters which promote and maintain these functions are taken care of. This involves teaching on the Sacraments so that people make proper use of them. It means knowing what kind of music best carries the word. It means visiting the sick and dying who need pastors the most.

In the Lutheran church, the Holy Ministry exists alongside of the Priesthood of All Believers. We do not pit these doctrines against each other. It is a wonderful thing to enter a church where my rights and privileges as a royal priest are recognized, but I also have a true pastor. I hope that readers who have heard of the Priesthood of All Believers might study it for themselves and discover what it does and does not mean. The evangelical world needs to recover something it has lost.

The doctrine of the Holy Ministry is as sorely needed in the evangelical church as the Priesthood of All Believers was needed by the medieval church. May God raise up for us true shepherds. And may God raise up smart sheep who will go out and find them.

1 E. G. Schwiebert, Luther and his Times, p. 619 cites W.A. VI, 40708.

2 Martin Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent, Part II, trans.

by Fred Kramer (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1978), 678.

Rick Ritchie, CURE staff writer and a contributing author to Christ the Lord: The Reformation and Lordship Salvation, is a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

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R EVIEW Peculiar Speech by William Willimon REVIEWED BY MICHAEL HORTON “Lacking confidence in the power of our story to effect that of which it speaks, to evoke a new people out of nothing, our communication loses its nerve. Nothing is said that could not be heard elsewhere, nobody need die and be raised to assimilate the speech of the Empire or its universities.”

Just to show you that a Calvinist can quote a Methodist with profit, I’m going one step further by recommending this excellent, eminently readable little book. Duke professor William Willimon wonders why we are so obsessed with “translating” the Christian message as if it were not capable of doing its job in its own right. While his own background is liberal Methodism, Willimon is convinced that evangelicals have “out-liberaled the liberals,” substituting the language of politics, therapy, and other cultural dialects for Word and Sacrament ministry.

“Most people are under the impression that we preach what’s on our mind,” he writes. They say, ‘Well, he’s often a bag of hot air, but he visited Mama this week in the hospital, so we allow him thirty minutes to vent his political opinions each week in exchange for his being so nice.’” Hardly limited to liberal preaching, Willimon complains, “Most of the preaching I hear and too much that I do attempts to build upon ‘common human experience.’ ‘Are you depressed? Everyone is depressed at one time or another. Down in the dumps. There is a story of someone who was down in the dumps, in the pit, so to speak. His name was Joseph. He was thrown into a pit.

What did he do? That is the theme of my sermon.’”

But far from satisfying himself with critique, Willimon provides a clear alternative, suggesting that preaching is “baptismal speech” and “baptismal repentance.” It is not primarily geared to the world, 34

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whether in terms of reaching “seekers” or “translating” the Bible into something that will actually be practical and helpful for the daily lives of believers. This is to subvert the text by demanding that our own experience judge Scripture rather than vice versa. If we really want to have a religious experience that will shake us up (and who really does?), we must recover our recognition that preaching Scripture is nothing less than God’s radical confrontation with his baptized community, killing and making alive. Nothing in the Gospel comes to us naturally, Willimon insists. On the contrary, we naturally think the very opposite, of both ourselves and God, not to mention the world.

Unbelievers who hear this kind of preaching have more of a chance of actually becoming Christians than in services that seek to “translate” the Bible for them in ways that evade the subversive nature of divine speech.

It is political preaching in the sense that through it God is creating his polis, his new society in Christ, not merely nodding to secular ideology, using God for essentially worldly aims.

Willimon’s suggestions grew out of sermons that grew out of lectures. It can be read easily in a single sitting, but its simple wisdom is profound and practical in the best sense of the word. For those looking for a brief summons with practical suggestions in this matter, Peculiar Speech will be quite helpful. As Willimon says it, “Biblical language has shown, time and time again, that it has power, like the sacrament of baptism itself, to evoke that of which it speaks. The Bible is able to create, re-create the people it desires. The sacraments have ‘the same office as the Word of God,’ says Calvin, ‘to offer and set forth Christ to us, and in him the treasures of heavenly grace.’”

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BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS Ministry, Word and Sacrament: An Enchiridion* Martin Chemnitz (1522-1586) (trans. and ed. by Luther Poellot, St. Louis: Concordia, 1981) Chemnitz, a second generation Lutheran Refor mer and a contemporary of Calvin, was one of the formative Lutheran scholastics.

The author of The Antidote to the Council of Trent, The Two Natures of Chrust, and The Lord’s (translated by J.A.O. Preus), Schemnitz here explores the Ministry of the Word and the Sacraments The New Testament: An Introduction to its Literature and History* J. Gresham Machen (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1976) Generally, Machen here attempts to introduce the scholarly study of the New Testament without somehow having the message of that testament relegated to a position of secondary importance. One of the six main sections of this extensive work, “The Apostolic Church and the Church Today” (chapters 4052), is particularly relevant to the question, “What is Ministry?”

An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility (1520) Martin Luther (In Three Treatises, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1960) In An Open Letter (1520), Luther writes: “There is really no difference between laymen and priests, princes and bishops, ‘spirituals’ and ‘temporals,’ as they [mistakenly] call them [with ‘a fine bit of lying and hypocrisy’], except that of office and work, but not of ‘estate’; for they are all of the same estate—true priests…—though they are not all engaged in the same work….[Those] who are now called ‘spiritual’—priests, bishops, and popes—are neither different from other Christians nor superior to them, except that they are charged with the administration of the Word of God and the sacraments, which is their work and office….” out of print

Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down: A Theology of Worship for the Turn-of-the-Century Culture* Marva Dawn (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1995) A student of cultre in the line of Jacques Ellul, Dawn offers an antidote to the current fad of the church following popular culture in its rejection of the transcendent.

A Reformation Debate: Sadoleto’s Letter to the Genevans and Calvin’s Reply John Calvin and Jacopo Sadoleto (ed. by John C. Olin, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1966) In 1539, Cardinal Sadoleto, Bishop of Carpentras, France, sent a letter to the magistrates and citizens of Geneva, asking them to return to Rome. A few months later, Calvin replied to Sadoleto, defending the Protestant reforms. In these two letters, both men explore the meaning of doctrines like ministry and priesthood, offering both theological and personal arguments for their respective sides in this great theological controversy. out of print The Life and Letters of David Brainerd David Brainerd (Chicago: Moody, 1949) Brainerd (1718-1747), a missionary to the Indians in the Delaware region, lived less than thirty years.

Nonetheless, his letters and the account of his life have served as an inspiration to many to think seriously about the work of missions. This classic Moody account is a good place to begin exploring Brainerd’s thoughts on the ministry of the Word. out of print

Books recommended by MR that are marked with an asterik are available through ACE at (800) 956-2644.

Phones are answered from 8:30am through 4:30pm Eastern Time, Monday through Friday.

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WHITE HORSE INN SERIES SCHEDULE FEATURING HOSTS MICHAEL HORTON, KIM RIDDLEBARGER, & ROD ROSENBLADT Feb. 16–April 6 Here We Stand (8 shows) A series based on the book of the same title by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, focusing on the solas of the Reformation.

Includes interviews with Robert Godfrey, James Boice, Sinclair Ferguson, Gene Veith, & others.

April 13–20 Christianity & Popular Culture (2 shows) Does popular culture affect Christianity?

How do the two relate, and what are the dangers? Includes an interview with Ken Myers.

April 27–May 11 What Is Ministry?

(3 shows) Does the “priesthood of all believers” teach that we are all “ministers? How should we view “parachurch” organizations?

Includes a Round Table discussion with ACE council members.

May 18–June 1 Word & Sacrament (3 shows) Focusing on the Word of God, Baptism, & the Lord’s Supper as means of grace.

Includes a Round Table discussion with Ace council members.

June 8–29 The Cross of Christ (4 shows) Featuring discussions on the meaning and necessity of Christ’s atoning sacrifice.

Includes a Round Table discussion with Ace council members.

Tapes of these White Horse Inn shows will be available to order only after broadcast date.

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No local station? Tune in via the internet at: www.kkla.com 36

JANUARY FEBRUARY 1997

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