Last week I finished my reminiscences on my student years at Asbury Seminary.
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1. Asbury had a sweet set up where each year they would choose a graduating senior to be a Teaching Fellow for two years. The task was primarily to teach Greek, but I was privileged to get to teach Hebrew as well.
I applied that final year and waited to see what door might or might not open. I put out a sort of fleece. If I was chosen as the Teaching Fellow for that year, I would teach my two years and go on to do PhD work in New Testament. I would minister primarily as a teacher of ministers. If I was not chosen, I would take a church in Florida and perhaps go on to do graduate study at some point in the future.
Perhaps this is a good place to say that, when I first felt a call to ministry at Central, my first thought was to focus on theology. This reflected my philosophical bent. Besides, I thought, the meaning of the Bible is pretty obvious. But I thought there would be all sorts of puzzles to solve in theology.
This was the naivete of my unreflective youth and pre-modern background. As it turned out, there were countless puzzles to solve in biblical studies. Meanwhile, the basic beliefs of Christendom had been established for over 1500 years. When Thomas Oden set out to write his three volume systematic theology, his goal was to have no new idea.
Of course, I would eventually become sympathetic to constructive theology, a theology that engages with the contexts of those who reflect on it. There's a lot of synthesis to do there. But that's not important right now.
The bottom line is that my attention shifted to biblical studies when I realized how many challenges there were there. And, I think somewhere deep down, I realized the power and authority that an expert on the Bible had in my circles. Subconscious, not noble, but alas.
Of Old and New Testament, as I've said, I was far more attracted to the New Testament. The New Testament is more directly theological; the Old more poetic and ancient. Mind you, I love the Old Testament world.
There seemed far more landmines in Old Testament studies than in New Testament studies. I taught Old Testament Survey my first semester at IWU. What should I mention? What not? I also remember a girl coming up after I made a joke about the King James being good enough for Peter and Paul. She sincerely asked after class, "Peter and Paul didn't use the King James?"
Finally, the New Testament is determinative of Christian faith. The Old Testament certainly provides critical background. But, in some ways, even then it was the Old Testament as interpreted in the Intertestamental Period that provided the framework from which first century Judaism emerged.
I realize there is much to debate in that paragraph, but I'll let it fly. Perhaps to be continued.
So, I put out the fleece. A fork in the road. Biblical studies or the pastorate.
2. I had done supply pastoring for a few months over two summers at Zephyrhills Wesleyan. I believe the summer after graduating from Asbury was when I was the youth pastor for my home church in Fort Lauderdale -- now New River Church. My sister Sharon was pastor at that time.
I should point out that my sister is ultraconservative by any reckoning. She hasn't cut her hair since she was a teenager, only wears skirts or dresses, has no jewelry, doesn't buy on Sunday. AND, she is an ordained minister.
It is a reminder that women in ministry is not a liberal or secular feminist thing for the Wesleyan tradition. We were ordaining women in the 1800s before it was cool. The United Methodists didn't start ordaining women till the 1950s. It goes back to the fact that we were a "Pentecostal" tradition before tongues got involved.
3. My sister had been Assistant Pastor for a while under Dr. Everett Putney. He had been so kind and gracious. He's the one I had asked about Hosea 11:1 after my first year at seminary. He was also a middle school principal, I believe in one of the public school systems in the western part of Broward County. At that time, it was up against the Everglades, but I imagine "civilization" has pushed much farther inland since then.
An interesting window into my holiness background was the question of whether we should eat in the fellowship hall where we had children's church. By the time my family arrived in Fort Lauderdale in 1970, they had expanded the original building so that, across a cemented hallway outside the original back of the church, there was a series of Sunday School classrooms, a pastor's study, and a larger room for children's church. That room was used as a fellowship hall when we would have a church pitch in dinner.
However, at some point, because it was now under the same roof as the sanctuary, there was a question whether it was appropriate to eat there. I can't remember the reason. As far as I know, no one had ever asked that question in the early days of the church. It was an extension of not eating in the sanctuary. I'm sure there was a prooftext. Maybe it was 1 Corinthians 11:22, where Paul asks if the Corinthians don't have homes to eat and drink in?
But there was also a tendency to see the church as a kind of version of the temple. It was holy ground and so you shouldn't run or eat in it. You should dress up in honor of God. My father always wore a suit and tie to church--to the day before he died.
4. I haven't fully studied this tendency, but I think it finds its origins in Scotland. Remember Chariots of Fire when he won't run on Sunday, which he understands to be the Sabbath (which it never was). The holiness movement was "sabbatarian," if that is an appropriate word for it. We ate pork chops, but there was a strong tendency to consider Old Testament law as still binding on Christians.
We find this tendency in many circles today despite what seems to me to be the clear teaching of Paul in relation to Gentile believers. Paul does not bind the Sabbath on Gentiles. Mark 7 does not bind the food laws on Gentile believers (perhaps any believers, despite a valiant attempt at reinterpretation by Logan Williams). Hebrews does not bind the sacrificial system on anyone anymore. The New Testament does not really talk about a tithe as the basis for giving in the church.
It is a misinterpretation of Matthew 5:17-19 to say that all the OT laws are still binding, despite the interpretation of my mother and many others. The rest of chapter 5 makes it clear what fulfilled law looks like and it changes some things (e.g., an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth). The final paragraph of 5:43-48 makes it clear that the fulfillment of the Law is love, which 7:12 and 22:40 confirm.
All of that is to say that, by the summer I was youth pastor, all fellowshiping was done in a duplex behind the church that they had bought for such purposes--ultimately so we didn't eat under the same roof as the sanctuary.
5. This seems as good a place as any to note that I was ordained the following summer of 1991 in the Florida District. With an MDIV, you only needed one year of further ministry service. Without, you needed two. Between my summers of supply and youth pastoring and my year under appointment as an educator at Asbury, they considered me cooked enough to ordain.
I had gone back to Central for two weeks to do my remaining ministerial courses. I believe it was my first summer after graduation from Central. I believe it was Wesleyan Church History and Discipline that I needed. Perhaps I also took the Theology of Holiness at that time with Herb Dongell. Those are the two that usually slip through the cracks.
Those were the days when the process wasn't nearly as rigorous as it can be sometimes today. I met one time with the whole District Board of Ministerial Standing (as it was called back then). My father was on it, and my brother-in-law Dennis Waymire head it up as Assistant District Superintendent.
I had all sorts of things bouncing around in my head. I was frankly worried where my head would end up going, but I felt like I was able to affirm all the requirements. Rev. C. G. Taylor asked the most discerning question. "Kenny, we've known you since you were a boy. But sometimes people change their minds as they grow up. Have you changed your mind on any of your beliefs?"
It was a great question. I said that, while I had made many of the beliefs my own, I still affirmed the teachings of the Wesleyan Discipline.
6. I never expected to end up teaching at Indiana Wesleyan University. Young and immature, we had laughed when it changed its name from Marion College. "You can't make yourself sophisticated just by calling yourself a university," we said. I don't remember who the "we" were. I would later admire President Barnes for his business savvy.
Tom Sloan had tried to recruit me to Marion out of high school, I think I said. The Bostics were good friends of Marion College and they spent the winters in Fort Lauderdale. Big donors to IWU--Terry Munday mentioned them to me just last week. As a reflection of his virtue, he took care of them till Mrs. Bostic eventually passed at Colonial Oaks. They were close friends of my parents, and they often had breakfast together at their favorite diner. They would have been delighted for me to go to Marion.
To go even further down the rabbit hole, I don't think I've mentioned what a "Wesleyan Methodist royalty" my home church had attracted in my childhood. Clayton Luce, an old time Methodist and beneficiary of the Blue Bird Bus company attended our church with his wife and her nurse. I was able to take a ride on his yacht once.
Rev. and Mrs. C. Wesley Bradley also attended. He had been a Wesleyan Methodist District Superintendent in Jersey. My father was executor of his will and we ended up with much of his Wesleyana collection.
There was another Wesleyan Methodist general official of old that attended our church when I was a boy. (These were the days when my brother-in-law Dennis was pastor.) I remember he would pray up a storm when called on. I'll insert his name when I remember it.
7. So many diversions. Making Wesleyan theology my own.
I bring up teaching at Indiana Wesleyan because returning to a Wesleyan context after my doctoral work pushed me to refine my Schenckification of Wesleyan doctrines. But I had worked out the seeds in time to be able to make the appropriate affirmations for ordination.
I think I have already mentioned my journey with entire sanctification. Having detached the doctrine from Acts, I reformulated it in a more "Wesley"-an way. At some point I had read Wesley's sermon on the new birth, where he talks about not always being able to discern the moment of death, but you know that there is a point when you know someone is alive and you know when someone is dead.
Wesley was not specifically talking about entire sanctification there, but I thought it might apply as well to sanctification. I reimagined entire sanctification logically, the transition from not surrendering everything to God and surrendering everything to God. Bounds of course helped perfect my understanding later. Sanctification is God's work, not a work of our will, although full surrender is a prerequisite.
In any case, you can read how it all ended up here.
On inerrancy, I found Asbury's statement, "inerrant in all it affirms" to be helpful. That raises the question, "What does the Bible affirm?" In other words, it allows not only for interpretation but for theological integration. It thus can be taken in terms of the whole counsel of God as the final answer more than atomized pieces. Indeed, we can even go further to think about a Christian reading of Scripture.
Here is an early attempt to capture some of these thoughts in 2005.
I was asked what version of the Bible I would like to be given at the ordination service. I chose the NASB because I thought it would be more intelligible to the Florida District than the RSV they used at Asbury, which might be thought liberal. I had moved beyond the KJV of course. I didn't respect the NIV at that time and wouldn't be very comfortable with it until the revision in 2011. I used to make fun of its random insertions of words that weren't there so it could smooth out evangelical theology (like "now" in 1 Peter 4:6).
I used the NIV at IWU because Lennox had used the NIV Study Bible as his textbook for Old Testament and New Testament Survey. With each passing year, I was becoming more and more of a pragmatist, having started out as an idealist.
But I didn't really like the NASB, to be honest. I found it's translation too stilted. But it was considered respectable and conservative enough in my circles. Also, to be honest, I didn't like the formatting of the RSV. Too much block text. It worked for inductive Bible study. Not so much for good reading, IMO.
8. I was grateful to be chosen to be a Teaching Fellow in 1990. That was a fork in the road. The rest of my life followed.
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