Ministry Classes 10

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43. Most of my practical ministry courses were taken with Ken Foutz. Students used to joke about "Uncle Ken's story hour," but I enjoyed his stories and found them helpful. They were practical examples of ministry that came from experience. One tidbit I remember that I have repeated is a comment he made on change in a leadership class. "If you make more than two major changes in your first year at a church, you'll be the third."

I believe I had Foutz for leadership, preaching, Christian ed, and pastoral counseling. I can't remember if I had a separate worship class, so I probably didn't. I remember we used Clinebell for pastoral counseling, a classic that I know David Vardaman has used at IWU. We had a hard time finding a good pastoral counseling book when we started Wesley Seminary.

When we were starting Wesley Seminary, I dreamed of us producing integrated textbooks that corresponded to the integrated curriculum. They would have embodied the spark that founded the seminary--practically focused, theoretically undergirded, integrated with Bible, theology, and church history on a profound rather than superficial level.

Oh well. It was not to be. I started to sketch out here what such a book might have looked like for pastoral care and counseling, but maybe I'll take some of those projects forward yet some day. :-)

44. I also had Dr. Foutz for Acts. That was the favorite class I had with him. I would also take Acts with David Bauer at Asbury but a great foundation was laid by Dr. Foutz. The outline I still use today for Acts came from that class (Jerusalem, 1-7; Judea and Samaria, 8-12; ends of the earth, 13-28). There are of course other outlines.

I seem to remember us talking about the theory that, after general failure at Athens (Acts 17), Paul purposed not to focus on intellectual arguments any more, but on the foolishness of preaching (1 Cor. 1). I don't know that Foutz espoused this view. I personally reject it soundly. It mixes and matches texts that don't go with each other. [1] I have also heard it elsewhere. [2]

It's quite possible that some of the practical lessons I have passed on from Acts over the years originated in his class.

I remember very much enjoying Marling Elliott for Poetic Books. It was here that I first learned about Hebrew parallelism. I can still hear Dr. Elliott in my head reading the beginning of Psalm 23 in Hebrew.

Perhaps I shouldn't tell an embarrassing side story, but I tried to sit on the front row right in front of Dr. Elliott so I wouldn't fall asleep in class. On one fateful day I must have been very tired because I made a comment and immediately fell asleep. Francis Scott Key (yes, that was his name) didn't hear what I said and asked me to repeat it. They had to wake me up to repeat what I'd said.

45. I also had Elliott for something like an apologetics class. I believe that was when I read C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. I remember struggling to understand what Lewis was saying. Sometimes things would go in. Sometimes I would read the same thing over and over again and it wouldn't go in.

I often felt very stupid in those days, because I couldn't understand any number of authors. I process the situation a little differently these days. For one, there are writers who intentionally write in a difficult way so that only those who are "worthy" can understand them. Think Hegel. Think idiot. As I used to say, they invent their own language and then call you stupid for not understanding them.

Sometimes I didn't have the categories to put them in. I would have to broaden these over time. I often felt like I didn't have a guide to show me the way, that I didn't have a translator who could speak my language.

I would later also remark to my own students, "I used to feel stupid when I read certain authors. Sometimes this was because I was stupid. But sometimes it was because they just didn't make sense."

An example would be Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God. Let me frame it this way:

• The greatest possible Being exists in my mind.
• But this Being wouldn't actually be greatest if this Being didn't exist in the real world as well as in my mind.
• Therefore, God exists.

For several years I beat myself up over this argument. "I just can't understand it." But inevitably I decided that it's the argument that doesn't make sense. I used to expect the thoughts of various philosophers and theologians to make sense. A lot of them just don't.

46. In those days, I did often struggle when reading to stay focused. This was before I drank coffee. Often I would read the same sentence over and over again. Woe is me if I read laying on the bed with the book on the floor. As my metabolism slowed over the years, I was able to read more and more in one sitting. Sometimes I still will read the last pages of a chapter and move back toward the front to hold my attention. With some more technical books I sometimes read a page a day. "A page a day and you'll be through before you know it."

I developed strategies over the years. Read aloud. Read aloud while standing. Read while walking. Read the paragraph. Lost it. Reread the paragraph. Lost it. REREAD THE PARAGRAPH. OK, got it. In high school and college it was often sheer will power that got me through reading.

And books are my closest friends. They are my one materialism. I must have thousands of them, much to my wife's frustration. We bought five large book shelves just in the move to Houghton alone to shelve them. (In Marion I had two offices, a garage, basement, and an attic) But I have hardly ever read a book with ease.

I think the ease with which I get bored has made me an above average teacher and preacher. I teach and preach so as not to bore myself. And let me just say as a side note that the typical church is no friend to the attention deficit. The typical Sunday "lecture" is torture, cruel and unusual punishment. Don't tell me that people should stomach it no matter what because of God. They won't and they aren't. You can beat your head against a wall but it's not going to move.

47. I never became a Lewis groupie, although I respect him greatly. Even though Francis Collins finds it persuasive, I don't think the common existence of human morality is the best argument for the existence of God. [3] Group conventions protect the continued existence of a group. They avoid feuding and inner-group violence. At the same time, such moralities often do not apply to those outside the group. Collins is a great scientist, but he seems to me an amateur when it comes to anthropology.

I first encountered the "Lord, Liar, Lunatic" argument through Josh McDowell's Evidence That Demands a Verdict. The way he and Lewis present it seems to have a serious blind spot that neither of them seems to engage. Lewis assumes that Jesus claimed to be God, but this is actually a matter of significant debate in biblical studies circles. In the early 1900s, William Wrede didn't think Jesus even claimed to be the Messiah, let alone God. Neither Lewis nor McDowell seem to realize that they need to establish that Jesus actually claimed to be God in the first place. This potentially pulls the rug out from under their arguments.

Lewis' arguments in relation to the problem of evil have grown on me. He largely speaks of suffering and evil as contexts of growth for us, the "chisel" by which God develops us. Shadowlands would later mark a significant moment in my own spiritual pilgrimage. More to come.

48. I believe that I had Dr. James Bross for systematic theology. I believe we used the one volume Wiley but I also remember using the two volume Contemporary Wesleyan Theology edited by Charles Carter. Wiley spoke my language, the Wesleyan language I had grown up with. I found Carter's work more difficult. I just didn't have a framework with which to process contemporary theological debates, even in broader Wesleyan circles.

I remember trying to understand the nuances of Bultmann. I seem to remember looking up some of his work in the library. But I just didn't have the categories yet to process him and others. I could only see the world through the paradigms I'd grown up with. I couldn't yet process the debates of the day. This has been a long journey, and it isn't over yet.

I would later take a course on Karl Barth with Steve Seamands at Asbury. I remember one class where I was trying to see if I understood him. "So he's saying we all have a God-shaped vacuum inside of us," I offered, a thought that is rather more Augustine. "No," Seamands replied, "he's actually saying something almost the opposite." :-) Oh well. More on Barth later.

49. At Central I had adjuncts for missions and evangelism. Jim Wiggins taught a course on the history of missions. Bill Phillippe taught evangelism. I attended Phillippe's funeral last year at College Wesleyan in Marion. John Maxwell preached it. Phillippe was an intriguing man, a businessman with a passion for evangelism, a philanthropist. There were only four or so of us in the class, going through his own materials. He tried to plant a church while I was a student.

I've already mentioned that Jim Wiggins was my pastoral mentor throughout college. I apprenticed with him in the old fashioned way. He took me under his wings and I went around with him, doing visitation mostly. We were of a similar theological stripe and background. He would go on to be district superintendent of Georgia.

There is nothing wrong with exercising the gifts God has given you to the fullest. Wiggins had gifts of leadership and it seemed obvious to me that he would enjoy using them. However, the holiness tradition did not allow a person to promote him or herself. It creates a bit of a conundrum. You have gifts to lead. You want to lead. But you have to be raised up to leadership by others. A fun dance to watch holiness people do!

50. My favorite professor at Central was Bob Black, who arrived my final year. It was a great win for Central. I was able to have him for a full year for church history. (Russ Gunsalus had him the previous year at Bartlesville.) Later, Brian Matherlee would tell me about his Romans course and I was jealous I was not able to take it.

I remember that it was a fun two classes. Amy Smith left gummy worms on his desk the day after we talked about the "Diet of Worms." There is a playful creativity in a lot of bright young minds that is why I love teaching and being involved with education. I remarked to some of my smart colleagues here at Houghton last semester how much I like being around smart people. Black's class was full of that playful creativity of bright young minds.

I wrote a paper at one point in his class suggesting that modern versions of the Bible could be corrupt because they were largely based on Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. I hypothesized that these two codices were two of the fifty commissioned by Constantine and carried out by Eusebius. Eusebius and Constantine, I noted, did not favor the orthodox position that Jesus was homoousios (of one substance) with the Father but offered the compromise that Jesus was homoiousios (of similar substance) with the Father. Therefore, heretical man commissions heretical manuscripts on which versions like the NIV are based and, voila, we should be using the King James.

"Ingenious," right? Ridiculous, actually. Dr. Black gently noted on my paper that the vast majority of differences between the text of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus had nothing to do with theology (no matter how Bart Ehrman sells his books today). Details, details. I would return to these questions in seminary.

[1] In other words, it is an unreflective, "pre-modern" argument that does not realize that Acts is not simply a tape recording but an account with a perspective. Luke is positive toward the sermon at Athens. I would say that, for Luke, Paul's sermon at Athens demonstrated that he was an intellectual on par with pagan intellectuals. Similarly, 1 Corinthians says nothing about a change of strategy when he got to Corinth. The glue of this theory is outside the dots and, moreover, is rooted in the anti-intellectualism of American fundamentalism.

[2] I seem to remember that a pastor of Stonewall Wesleyan in Lexington, Kentucky (before Larry Freels came) may have preached negatively toward Asbury Seminary using this passage. What an idiot! The result was that he pretty much lost all the seminary professors who attended Stonewall (and thus a lot of tithers) and, when I came to town, hardly any Wesleyan seminary students attended the church. He was embodying some foolish preaching all right.

[3] The Language of God. Lewis' arguments were instrumental in Collins becoming a believer. I celebrate that.