Missions, part 1

I hope to have a lot more discussion on missions in the future. But this is something from what we covered in Sunday school.

1. Leaving the field because of danger

Question: Is there ever a time when the missionary should leave the field because of physical danger?

- According to one person who is given a great amount of weight in some missions circles, it is cowardice to ever leave the field because of physical danger.

Answer: let’s look at Paul’s travels.
9:23-25 – A plan was made to kill Paul, but it became known to him, and his disciples helped him escape over the wall.
- It was the disciples who helped him escape.
9:29-30 – In Jerusalem, the Hellenistic Jews were going to kill Paul, but the brethren brought him down to Caesarea and sent him away.
- Again, it was the brethren who helped him escape, not Paul just sneaking off in the night. 13:50 – In Pisidian Antioch, the Jews stirred up the powerful people of the city to instigate a persecution against Paul and Barnabas.
- In this case, it was the ungodly people who drove Paul out of the city; we don’t know what the persecution was; it was the people, not Paul, who decided when he would leave.
14:5 – In Iconium, the people were going to “mistreat and stone” Paul and Barnabas, but they left quickly before it could happen.
- Interestingly, this time, Paul and Barnabas left completely of their own accord without anyone helping or ordering them to.
14:9 – In Lystra, Paul was stoned because of the instigation by the Jews from elsewhere.
- In this case, Paul went back into the city after being stoned, and then went to the next city. Granted, maybe he just needed to rest, but it also could show that he was not worried.
14:21-22 – As a side note, Paul went back to the cities where he had been attacked in order to strengthen the brethren.
16:22-24 – In Philippi, Paul and Silas were beaten and thrown into prison.
- The interesting thing about this situation is that Paul didn’t mention their citizenship until after the beating and jail time (v. 37).
17:10 – In Thessalonica, a mob was after Paul and Silas, but the believers sent them away at night.
17:14 – In Berea, the brethren conducted Paul out of the city and brought him to the next place of ministry.
19:30-31 – In Ephesus, some of Paul’s companions were seized by a mob, but the believers kept him from entering to try to help them.
20:3 – As Paul was planning to leave Greece for Syria, he changed his planned trip and went overland instead of by sea.
20:22-24 – As a side note, Paul was obviously not afraid of trials because he went to Jerusalem knowing that trials awaited him.
- In this case, he said that he was “bound in spirit,” perhaps meaning that he knew somehow that it was God’s will and so was willing to go through with it (much like Christ in the Garden).
22:24-25 – In Jerusalem, Paul was about to be scourged, but before it could be done, he invoked his right as a Roman citizen.
- This scourging was not really because of the Gospel, but rather a means to try to get the “truth” out of Paul. It would not really have benefited the Gospel message.
23:16 ff – A plot was hatched to kill Paul, but when he was told of it, he sought and received protection from the Romans.

2. Knowing the will of God

Question: What about open doors?

Answer 1: Acts 16:6-7

Answer 2: Other uses of “open door” in the NT

- Acts 14:27

- I Cor. 16:9

Question: What about peace?

Answer 1: First, we must realize that peace is an emotion, and therefore can only be used when it is grounded on truth; when emotion supersedes truth, error and sin are the result.

Answer 2: II Cor. 2:12 – Because Paul had no rest in his spirit, he left an open door to go find Titus and see what he had to report about the Corinthian church.

3. Financial Support for the missionary

Question: Supporting nationals over Americans

Chapell, Bryan. 1&2 Timothy and Titus. p. 313. Refers to a “missionary motive” that is described as “the expectation that others need to do us favors and serve us because we are ‘sacrificing our lives’ for Jesus.”

- It seems to be increasingly popular here in the States to support foreign nationals rather than American missionaries. The reasons given are usually one or more of the following: 1) the national can start work immediately (not needing time to learn the language, culture, etc.), 2) the national only needs part of the support an American does (e.g. $3000 p/year as opposed to $40,000 p/year), and 3) the national can go places where an American can’t.

Answer:

- In answer to each of those: 1) True, the national does not need the extra time to get set up; Is this a valid excuse though, since we’re talking about one year? 2) True, the national only needs a fraction of the support an American does; but the American missionary has to fly back to see his churches as well as build the building [though some missionaries are blessed with having their outfit-and-passage as well as building funds completely paid for]; 3) False, there have been times where being an American has actually opened doors for us; not always, but sometimes.

- I have seen two groups of people on the mission field. My parents have sacrificed a great deal for the ministry, but I have also seen a great amount of waste and laziness on the part of missionaries.

- Having more than the nationals does not necessarily embitter them to you. We would invite them over to our house and let them use our tools and other things. Rather than making them bitter, it showed that we loved them.
- From personal experience, when a national receives support from America, he is seen as a sell-out and is actually more despised than anything.
- In the end, we are doing what was done in the Crusades; rather than going ourselves, we are paying others to do the work for us. Why should I go into missions when the churches could take that money and support ten nationals? Why should I go into missions when I could stay here and live a fairly comfortable life and give enough to support one, or maybe even two, nationals?

Question: Using American funds to build the churches

- It was once said to me, by someone who had taken a missions class, that the nationals should be solely responsible for building their own buildings, without aid from the US.

Answer:

- Here in the US, we are the “have’s” of the Christian world; we have resources and money that other countries only dream about; in the NT times, we would be the wealthy believers who sent to help the poor of Jerusalem (Acts and throughout the Pauline Epistles speak of this [esp. II Cor. 8-9]).
- What does a congregation do when they can’t go out into the jungle and just get grass and logs to build a building? What do they do when inflation is so bad that they would loose 90% of their savings in the course of a year due to inflation? What do the nationals do when they are just barely able to feed themselves and give a little bit in the offering?
- In the churches my family has started, we used American funds, whether ours or from donations, to buy the land and the construction materials; the labor was done almost exclusively by us and the people of the church. That alone saved us almost 50% of the cost of construction.

Woship, part 1

This is another one of my Sunday school topics. Again, these are just my notes, so they're very rough. A more refined version will hopefully come out this summer.

From the beginning of the Bible, man has tried to decide how he would worship God.
- Illustrated by Cain and his offering. We don’t know how God had communicated it to them, but even by that time, they knew what God desired.
- The importance of the study of worship then comes from the fact that we want to make sure that our concept of worship matches with what God has said in His Word.

Look at the meanings of the words used for worship, worshipper, etc. (taken from Strong’s [KJV]).
- proskuneo: most common word translated as "worship"; used 60 times in the NT; used when someone comes to ask something of Christ (“fell down and worshipped Him”); used of worship in Heaven

Look at the OT: the worship of God has always been that of the heart (Mic. 6:8) but the Israelites still had to give the offerings because they were commanded by God.

The main problem with worship in the church today is that we have divorced what is done at church from what is done the rest of the week.
- This doesn’t mean that we act the same way during a sermon as during a football game, or that we are always supposed to say “Amen” when we agree with something someone says; some discretion is in order. But we have our “service for God time” and our “worship time” and see the rest of it as being our own.

Worship is not a time where we give something to God in hopes of getting something in return. The very concept of worship is that of giving someone glory for who they are, totally devoid of what you want.
- If we allow an “I’ll serve God, so He’ll answer my prayers” attitude to come up, we have, in reality, ceased to worship God and have begun to attempt to put Him in some sort of position where we can demand from Him what we want.
- How many times have we heard some type of story about this: something good like “I gave $100 and the next day someone gave me $120!” or something bad like “I felt God prompting me to give $100, but I didn’t, and then the next day, I had an accident and had to pay $200. If only I had given the $100 to God I probably wouldn’t have had the accident.”?
- There are rewards in the Bible, but remember, those rewards are in Heaven, where titles and amount of crowns won’t matter for prestige or anything else. More crowns just means more that we will have to cast at Christ’s feet.
- Our worship for God is because He is worthy of that worship, not because we want something. This is not a restaurant we come to, giving one thing and expecting another in return.

In the NT, it’s kind of interesting that no order of service or even comprehensive list of what is to take place at public worship is even mentioned. We have the qualifications for speaking in tongues and prophesying found in I Cor., and we have the passages on the Lord’s Supper, etc. But we really have no idea what constituted a regular church service in the early church.
- But even with the little bit that we do have, the emphasis was on the edifying of the believers and the testimony of the gospel, more than the actual practice itself.
- I Cor. 13, set right in the middle of exercising spiritual gifts, shows what the true worship is supposed to be.
- Christ said that those who worship God are supposed to worship Him “in Spirit and in truth.”
- Christ said, “if you love me, keep my commandments” which are “love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, and might” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” That is true worship. These are the goals; the very description of how we are to love God should show that it encompasses every aspect of life.
- In every aspect of life, we can worship God, in the sense that we have laid out here.
- Examples: football, writing an English paper
- In no way does this minimize the importance of assembling as a local body of believers. We come together in order to be edified and encouraged (I Cor. 14:12, 26; Rom. 14:17-15:13).

Edited: As I looked at the paper on worship, I realized that I can't really post it here because of the footnotes and format of the paper. If for some reason you might want it -- except to turn in for a class, of course :-) -- e-mail me.

The DaVinci Code

I know that a lot of debate and talk is going on about The DaVinci Code, both the book and the movie. I don't claim to be an expert at all, just a fellow student trying to understand the issue and respond correctly to it. This post will be followed later by a more refined term-paper-like edition, but the current post is just some preliminary stuff that I wrote down for my Sunday school class. Have fun studying it out, and let me know if it helps. Also, if you know of any good resources, blogs, etc. dealing with it, add it to the list. Oh, yeah, as the library always says: "just because we have it doesn't mean we agree with all of it;" the same applies for the sources I have.
First, some books:

The DaVinci Code
Dan Brown
Publisher: Doubleday, January 2003
ISBN: 0385504209

Breaking the Da Vinci Code: Answers to the questions everybody’s asking
Darrell L. Bock
Publisher: Thomas Nelson, 2004
ISBN: 0785260463

The Da Vinci Deception: credible answers to the questions millions are asking about Jesus, the Bible, and the Da Vinci Code
Erwin W. Lutzer
Tyndale House
ISBN: 0842384308

Just a couple of web sites:
http://arthistory.about.com/cs/last_suppe1/f/readthecode.htm
Says it should be taken as a work of fiction; some problems with facts.
http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/mysteryreviews/fr/daVinciCode.htm
Jonathan Lesser – a work of fiction, not meant for religion
http://www.catholic.com/library/cracking_da_vinci_code.asp
List of the problems the Catholic Church has
http://movies.yahoo.com/shop;_ylt=ApABeT6S_ac0QjlhjNz_NhpfVXcA?d=hv&cf=parentsguide&id=1808625216
(following from links in this site)
http://www.danbrown.com/novels/davinci_code/faqs.html
(Dan Brown’s response to some questions)
http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/newsletter/2003/nov7.html
http://debrahaffner.blogspot.com/2006/05/skip-movie-davinci-code-part-3.html

Notes from New Testament Introduction class:

Tests of Canonicity:
Apostolicity – written by an Apostle or the close associate of one.
Antiquity – had to be from the first century or close to it (closely related to Apostolicity).
Orthodoxy – agree with the rest of Scripture, not contradict any of it.
Catholicity – recognized and used by the Church at large, not just an isolated group.
Inspiration – does it show marks of inspiration?

Church Fathers and Councils:
Origen (185-250) – homolegomena (four Gospels, the 13 Pauline letters, Acts, I Jn., I Pt.; antilegomena (Hebrews, James, II Pt., II & III Jn., Jude, Rev.); spurious (Gospels of the Egyptians, of Thomas, of Matthias)
Eusibius of Caesarea (260-340) – homolegomena (four Gospels, 14 Pauline letters [includes Heb.], Acts, I Jn., I Pt., Rev.); antilegomena (James, II & III Jn. II Pt., Jude); spurious (Shepherd of Hermes, Epistle of Barnabas, Didache, Apocalypse of Peter, Gospel of the Hebrews, Pseudopigraphal works)
Marcion’s Mutilated Canon (140) – Luke, 10 of Paul’s epistles (not the pastorals)
Moretorian Fragment (170) – Matt. and Mk. are missing but Luke referred to as 3^rd Gospel and John as fourth; Acts, I II & III Jn., Jude, Rev.
Chetterhan Manuscript (360) – All except II Pt., James, Jude
Athanasias’ Easter Letter (367) – All 27 books we now have
Council of Laodicea – 59^th and 60^th canons discussed here
59^th – only authoritative books can be read and discussed in the churches
60^th – lists all 27 books in current NT as authoritative
Council of Carthage (397) – Lists all 27 books as authoritative; Canon seen as closed after this.
- With the church history, homolegomena were the books accepted as inspired, antilegomena were books that were not accepted as inspired (by that person/group) but which were fine to read, and spurious were books that were definitely not inspired and not suitable to read. I'll have to look up my notes for a more precise definition and put it in a later post.

Update for May

Well, I guess I should put another post on here since I haven't done one since December.
I've finished my Grad. degree except for one class that I have to take next week. It's rather odd to think that I won't be back up here next year. I mean, after six years, this place is almost like home - now that's a scary thought. Anyhow... I will have 39 Grad. credits, so I'm almost half-way to an M.Div. But I don't know that I want to get another degree right now. I think that I'd rather get out into church planting and then take course in block format.
Which reminds me, the whole thing about Iqaluit in the last post might be changing. I'm still praying about where I'm supposed to go as a missionary. There are so many places that need churches still. But I'm only one person, so I can only go to one. I guess I'm just going to have to decide on one and go. But more on that topic at a later date.
And speaking of date/dating... nothing new in that category. Yep, I'm still single. Last semester, I made a lot of amigas (Portuguese for "girl who is a friend") but no namorada (Port. for "girlfriend"). It just never seemed to work out. Oh well, God is in control of that, too. The part I find the hardest is knowing the balance between my responsibility to act and just leaving the whole matter in God's hands. I tend to try to do it a lot on my own.
I think this is about all the news I have for now besides the fact that I'm working for Northland Camp this summer as a Security guard.