Month: February 2017

St. Paul Instructing Timothy

By John G. Panagiotou

The nature of the work of the pastor is not to be defined by the culture, congregation or the pastor himself, but by the Lord.

IIn Marva Dawn and Eugene Peterson’s book The Unnecessary Pastor, we are given an insight into the plight of contemporary pastoral leadership. Originally, the title of this book was taken from a Regent College church leaders’ conference which was led by the authors. The authors provide us with the following stunning thesis: the clergy and churches are in crisis today in large part due to an identity crisis in how the culture, congregations, and the clergy themselves view and regard their respective call, role and function.

In the book, the focus is on the Pastoral Epistles (I & II Timothy, Titus) of what pastoral ministry ought to be through the lens of the larger framework of the Letter to the Ephesians. Petersen recreates for the reader the Greco-Roman world and historical context of Paul, Timothy and Titus in a vivid manner. It is within this context that we see how truly counter-cultural the Gospel (Good News) message was in the first century and is in today’s world. It is a message that proclaims and calls all people to belief in the literal Resurrection of Jesus through a radical life change of repentance and baptism. Thus, this new life in Christ was a challenge and a threat in the Apostolic age to the societal status quo and remains a challenge and a threat to the societal status quo in our modern times. Dawn and Peterson note that, “The Christian community is an alternative society.”¹

With this understanding, Petersen and Dawn assert that what is needed in today’s Church, is to rediscover and reclaim the ancient Apostolic perspective, form and practice of ministry as expressed in the New Testament. Petersen states emphatically that the inner communion of the Three Persons of the Trinity should be the image for the ministry model that the clergy should seek to emulate and not to conform to the standards set by the worldly culture. The end result of the former is for the pastor to become a faithful and effective Christ-centered servant leader. Hence, the pastor becomes “unnecessary’ to the success of the local church. Whereas, the end result of the latter is for the pastor to fall into the secular worldly-based model of ministry by becoming a manager, marketer, entertainer and therapist.² Thus, the pastor becomes “necessary” to the success of the local church by subscribing to a pastor-centric focus. It is this goal of making clergy unnecessary to which the book has as its primary aim. This is a move which necessitates a transition from a form of culturally-determined managerial professionalism to a Biblically-determined pastoral leadership.

This problem is created by three components which when succumbed to derail the primary focus and function of the pastoral ministry. These are: yielding to what the culture defines as important; yielding to what the pastor defines as important; and yielding to what the congregation defines as important.³ When these criteria and their attending mindset are present, a ‘corporate business model” of the Church manifests itself. As the authors note, “with hardly an exception they don’t want pastors at all – they want managers of their religious company.’⁴

This is problematic in many ways, but particularly in light of the fact of the increasing acceptance in the Church of the pastor as a sort of “CEO”. This secular notion diminishes the pastor’s apostolic calling. The ways of the world displace the scriptural worldview. It flies in the face of sound doctrine by making the pastor into a hireling who can be dismissed at will based upon human personal whim and not with an understanding of the pastor as the custodian of the truth of the Gospel. This work provides a clarion call to renew, retrain, and refocus the mindset of pastors to be the counter-cultural servant-leaders of Christ they were intended to be.

Of the several ministry-related issues which are raised in the book, I think that two have particular relevance to me in my ministry experience in light of the Pastoral Epistles and the Letter to the Ephesians.

The first issue that I see as relevant to my ministry is the need for ministry to be rooted on the Apostolic model and to resist the secular mindset which is permeating local churches and denominational jurisdictions. The congregation should not set the tone, scope or nature of the pastor’s ministry. By mere definition, it shouldn’t because it can’t. Ontologically, the pastor’s call is of Apostolic origin. As the authors rightly observe, “Everybody and his dog has a job description for the pastor. Everybody knows what a pastor must do to be a real pastor. That’s a problem, but what complicates and compounds it is that it’s nice to be so needed, nice to have culture and congregation alike interested in defining our work and giving us instructions on how to go about it. It’s nice to be so much in demand.”⁵ As a result, the focus becomes the pastor and his ministry instead of Jesus and His work. The Apostle Paul reminds Timothy, “fan the flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands”.⁶ The nature of the work of the pastor is not to be defined by the culture, congregation or the pastor himself, but by the Lord.

The second issue that I see as relevant to my ministry is the need for the local church to proclaim the divinely revealed message of the Good News in an unashamed, uncompromised way to a world that not only is disinterested in it, but is often hostile to it. When a congregation negates its evangelical mission-minded vocation, it gains a preoccupation with everything else of the world except for the preaching of the Gospel. Hence, by virtue of this situation, the pastor’s ‘job description” changes.

The pastor is not really viewed as and expected to be a proclaimer of the Truth, but rather a socio-religious community caretaker and organizer. Paul would go on to advise Timothy to, “Preach the Word; be ready in season and of season. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching”.⁷ The Church and its leadership today have willingly become subordinated to the influence and narrative of the secular culture. In Ephesians, it is precisely this mindset that the Apostle Paul rails against. He writes, ‘Look carefully then how you walk not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil.’⁸

Both of the above mentioned aspects involve being Biblically-rooted in sound doctrine. Paul writes to Titus, “teach what accords with sound doctrine.’⁹ This is the overarching theme and emphasis that we find in the Pastoral Epistles. Without sound doctrine, one falls into heresy and/or apostasy. Thus, in the Pauline view of things, one’s ministry is compromised and mutedly ineffectual. Dawn and Peterson explain this in the following way, “the early Christians did not try to translate their faith into something that was accessible to the world’s darkened understanding. What they did instead was to engage in a way of life that was so different from the world that their neighbors wanted to be part of it.”¹⁰ It is this missiological expression of Christian witness which typifies the Biblical New Testament model of the local church and its outreach to the world.

I see this time and time again in church communities within my own Greek Orthodox faith tradition; yet, these problems are not relegated to one group but rather are inter-denominational. In a recent article in a Greek-American publication, I read the following where the writer accurately describes the lamentable state of today’s Greek Orthodox clergy, “A priest is considered successful only when he manages to collect more and more money. Unfortunately, our priests today have become some kind of religious tax-collectors.”¹¹

The above situation is appalling, disturbing and scandalous on a variety of levels. Now contrast this with what Dawn and Peterson say about their ministry model, “We have to scrap most of what we are told today about leadership. Forget about charisma, go for character¹²…Whenever money pulls churches away from their God-given purposes, then it is functioning as Mammon.”¹³

Very often, if one were to walk in off the street into a church social gathering, he would see no different behavior amongst it members than say a meeting of the Rotary, Lions Club, Elks or any other civic organization. The point is that the church is not living up to its true calling and potential when it seeks to fit in with the world instead of seeking to please God. This is in direct opposition to what the scriptural record of how the early ancient New Testament Church operated.

In his Letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul teaches that God has given His people salvation through the gift of faith in His Son Jesus. He speaks of how he experienced this by referring to “how the mystery was made known to me by revelation”.¹⁴ Paul believes and unequivocally states that his ministry is supernatural. It is not of earthly intent, essence, or means. This supernatural nature of his ministry is from where he attributes his authority as an apostle.

Consequently, he exhorts that we as God’s people are called to express this new life we have in Christ by holy living and self-sacrificial love.¹⁵ It is precisely this diakonia (service) of love to one another rooted in worship that should exude from the pores of the community in its church life.

Paul teaches that his ministry is of apostolic origin which is rooted in a mystery of revelation when he writes, “of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace which was given me by the working of his power.”¹⁶ This is a clear directive for us to scrap the corporate model of the Church to which we have erroneous been beholden. A new direction needs to be charted by pastors and congregations whereby the Biblical imperative is heeded and the Biblical standard is established and maintained. The Church needs to stop allowing itself to be molded by the culture and start challenging and influencing the culture. It needs to stop being about us and our needs and start being about discerning the Will of God in our personal, familial, and ecclesiastical lives. In The Unnecessary Pastor, we read that “the Gospel that Jesus brought and the Paul preached is not first of all about us; it is about God…None of this involves fulfilling our needs as we define them.”¹⁷

The problems that the Church faces today are seemingly self-imposed. Often times, the Church has allowed its narrative to be controlled by the prevailing culture which represents direct opposition to the Gospel message; this has effected how the institutional Church regards and treats Her clergy. Individuals who do not have a Christ-centered mindset populate our congregations and their leadership; this has affected how the local church regards and treats its clergy. Worst of all, the clergy themselves have allowed their own understanding of pastoral ministry be shaped by the false understanding culture and the congregations. In spite of the fact that the Pauline model of church life teaches something entirely different than what is being practiced today in contemporary Christianity. All of this takes us down the spiritually destructive path of pride, arrogance, vanity, and hubris.

The book’s authors give the reader the following warnings about what can happen to pastors when this perfect storm strikes, “The constant danger for those of us who enter the ranks of the ordained is that we take on a role, a professional religious role, that gradually obliterates the life of the soul.¹⁸…Humility recedes as leadership advances…Instead of continuing as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, we become bosses on behalf of the Lord Jesus Christ.”¹⁹

I think that in the final analysis, the question is begged. Why do we keep doing these wrong things by maintaining these false paradigms? This is especially pointed when we read the writings of the Apostle Paul who admonishes us to do otherwise. We need to start listening to Paul again. It has been much too long that we have been doing our own thing. We need individual and communal repentance on this matter. We need to become a truly believing and praying Church. For many in the Church, this will be revolutionary and radical change. Well, they are right. Yet, this is our true paradosis (Tradition = deposit of faith) which has been handed down. Only then will we see the change that we so desparately need and yearn for whether we realize it or not.

My hope is that the Church gets it act together and follows a Pauline model once again. I would greatly like to see pastors become the teachers and examples that they were meant to be and not the wishy-washy, superficial and vapid community organizers and fundraisers that they have become. In many cases, they don’t even do those things well. As The Unnecessary Pastor reminds us, “teaching is at the center of leadership work in the Christian community. Every piece of the gospel is to be lived, so we must keep on teaching…teaching people how to live, not teaching people how to pass exams.”²⁰

In conclusion, I would highly recommend this book to all pastors, denominational leaders, and to local church members. It gives a Biblically-based New Testament perspective of Christian ministry. It clearly defines the problems in the modern Church for the last several decades. It gives practical solutions to the previously mentioned problems.

FOOTNOTES

¹ Marva J. Dawn and Eugene H. Petersen, The Unnecessary Pastor: Rediscovering the Call (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 215.
² Dawn and Petersen, 61.
³ Dawn and Petersen, 4.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Dawn and Peterson, 184.
⁶ II Timothy 1:6
⁷ II Timothy 4:2
⁸ Ephesians 5:15
⁹ Titus 2:1
¹⁰ Dawn and Peterson, 160.
¹¹ Theodore Kalmoukos, “Parish Council Elections and Indifference,” The National Herald (December 13, 2016).
¹² Dawn and Peterson, 20.
¹³ Dawn and Peterson, 110-11.
¹⁴ Ephesians 3:3
¹⁵ Ephesians 5:1-30
¹⁶ Ephesians 3:7
¹⁷ Dawn and Peterson, 127.
¹⁸ Dawn and Peterson, 14.
¹⁹ Dawn and Peterson, 15.
²⁰ Dawn and Peterson, 134.

John GPanagiotou is a Greek Orthodox theologian, scholar and writer He is a graduate of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary and Wheeling Jesuit University Panagiotou is Lecturer in New Testament Greek at Cummins Theological Seminary.

It comes from the depths of hell to destroy their characters before they can grow into a healthy sense of who they are.

Source: Minneapolis Star and Tribune February 12, 2017.

By Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse

I am old enough to remember the sexual revolution and its dubious promises that once moral restraints on sexual behavior were removed, a new golden era would dawn in which everyone would live happily, carefree and satisfied.

It didn’t turn out that way. Today I deal with the destruction that revolution caused and try to bring healing to men damaged by it.

I mentor young men, and I see how the mainstreaming of pornography has hijacked their journey from adolescence to adulthood.

Growing up is a difficult process, fraught with all sorts of emotional turmoil that tempt young men to look toward pornography for relief. Once the seeking of relief becomes habitual — and this can happen quickly — the necessary experiences that boys require to become men are often thwarted. Tension is resolved not by learning how to master the problems of life, but by ever deeper retreat into sexual fantasies.

Today this affects more of our young men than we can count. In my experience, the consumption of pornography is nearly universal among young men, and the effects are never neutral. Researchers indicate that only 3 percent of boys and 17 percent of girls have never seen pornography. The internet now makes it available anytime and anywhere. First exposure most often occurs during adolescence, when the brain is still forming and very impressionable by graphic images.

It’s difficult to calculate in hard numbers how profitable the porn industry is. Before the internet, access to pornography was controlled, by locating distribution in seedy neighborhoods; under those limitations the price could be kept high, leading to substantial profits. Since expansion into the internet, access to porn is as close as the click of a mouse, and content is increasingly free. In the last 30 years, American porn studios have declined from 200 to 20, and direct worldwide revenue has dropped from between an estimated $40 billion and $50 billion to about three quarters of that.

Free access also means that porn has gone mainstream and become a commodity. The only accurate measurement we have of porn consumption is internet click rates or Google searches. Profits are decreasing while porn is proliferating. Mindgeek, one of the world’s biggest online purveyors of pornography, reports that it serves more than 100 million visitors a day, who consume 1.5 terabytes of pornography per second — enough to download 150 feature films.

In earlier generations, viewing pornography was seen as shameful. That’s why porn shops were located in the unsavory parts of town. Pornographers were met with scorn. Today, all that might seem quaint, even ignorant — but it concealed a wisdom that we are only now beginning to rediscover. One reason for those earlier restrictions was the fear that porn would “corrupt youth.” This was laughed off as archaic, rigid, even unhealthy. We are finding out the hard way that our elders were right.

Young men ask me what I think of porn, and I mince no words. Porn comes from the depths of hell, and is calculated to destroy the characters of young men before they even have a chance to grow into a healthy sense of who they are and what they can become. Once your mind becomes pornified, I tell them, two things gradually happen: You lose any higher sense of self, and your relationships become distorted.

The vast majority of pornography users are men, but women are also injured by the epidemic. Wives report feeling betrayed when their husbands use porn — much like actual adultery. Women enter marriage seeking respect, companionship, partnership, honesty and romantic love. The world of pornography consists of exploitation, voyeurism, objectification and detachment. Counselors report that porn use increasingly contributes to divorce.

A coarsening of the heart fosters a coarsening of the culture. When more and more young men are conditioned to approach sex as casually as drinking a glass of water, young women are pressured to join in and many do. Porn is a driver of this shift. Where it will lead as the “hookup” generation gets older is anyone’s guess. But the collapse of sexual mores doesn’t bode well for the stability of society in the long run.

We don’t need a library of psychological studies to confirm these kinds of elementary truths. Generations before us intuitively understood them. That’s why they restricted pornography to places where only the chronically addicted would seek it out. Today we blindly lead our children to a pit of destruction, believing our ignorance of the wisdom practiced in earlier generations is somehow virtuous.

How does pornography harm our young people? (Warning: frank language ahead.) The road from adolescence to adulthood is an arduous one filled with many kinds of emotional upsets. A young man can find relief in masturbation, but most soon learn that such comfort is fleeting and does not resolve the problems that need attention — or at least that is the way it used to be.

Porn has become so pervasive that it is now increasingly difficult to escape the escapist pattern of behavior. Pornography is a sexual stimulant used to compel masturbation. Initially, young men use it to flee what appear to be insurmountable emotional pressures. As the behavior continues, it becomes a compulsive habit that retards maturation.

It works a lot like drug use. Give me a young man who has a problem with drugs and wants to get clean, and the first question I ask is when he began using drugs. That tells me when maturation stopped and where to locate the problems that led to the drug use. Only when those problems are dealt with can the flourishing begin that young men yearn for.

These days, I ask: When did you first start using porn?

How does healing occur? The truth is that young men long to become stable and mature. Once they begin grappling with the hold pornography and its attendant behaviors have over their lives, something remarkable occurs. They start to experience what a healthier interior life (heart, soul and mind) feels like, and they want more of that feeling.

I tell young men that the journey of self-discovery is the most exhilarating adventure a man can undertake. This journey never ends. I also tell them to resist all false promises that can imprison the soul. The lies are like a cupful of sand given to a thirsty man. Choose the water.

We begin this journey together, but eager young men learn fast. All most need is a road map, encouragement and accountability.

Sexuality is closely tied to creativity. Flourishing first occurs when the young man morally reorients himself so that his creativity can be expressed in ways that conform to his native gifts and talents. This requires a counselor or spiritual director like me who can discern what the gifts are and guide the young man toward them.

Often the young man lacks confidence because the porn habit prevented him from experiencing the testings that otherwise would have forged it. Nevertheless, once the creativity that was previously dissipated in porn connects with success, the logic of moral self-control becomes self-evident.

Not all young men succeed. Once I was contacted by a young man who longed to serve in the Coast Guard. He needed to finish college first. He could have succeeded, but in the end he was unwilling to undergo the struggle to overcome the habituation that was holding him back.

Had he been born a generation earlier, he might have avoided the conflict altogether.

Pornography is a problem few people want to face, mainly because we don’t know how to deal with it. The Republican Party correctly called it a “public health crisis” in its 2016 platform. Defenders of porn cite First Amendment protections to fight off restrictions on porn distribution.

But porn is much more than speech. And it is not the kind of “idea” the First Amendment was established to protect. We don’t give cigarettes and alcohol to minors. Why do we stand idly by while the merchants of porn ply them with their toxins?

Young men grow up. But if the porn cycle is not broken — and in many cases it isn’t — they grow up to be man-boys. Then the pathology infects families and children.

This poisoned fruit of the sexual revolution may be with us for generations.

The Rev. Hans Jacobse is an Orthodox priest in Naples, Fla. He grew up in Minnesota and began his ministry in Minneapolis.