Cooking Up Excuses

30 July 2024

In order to join the church I grew up in, you had to sign off on the statement of faith in its entirety. That statement of faith was pages and pages long, very detailed. It got down to the level of things like the pre-trib rapture. I recall one family who faithfully attended the church–in fact, the wife ran our nursery for two decades or so–but could never officially become members, on account of holding a different view of prophecy. Too often, doctrinally conservative churches wear such nit-picky particularity like a badge of honor, touting how we “care about truth” and “take doctrine seriously.”

That’s a lie. (I say that advisedly, and I mean it.) Allow me to demonstrate: if we cared deeply about the truth, then what about the truth that “by one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body”? How do we present that truth to a watching world? When we allow such nit-picky details to define the boundaries of our membership, cooperation, or fellowship, we are–to borrow Paul’s words from Galatians–“not straightforward about the truth of the gospel.”

What does that mean? In the immediate context, Peter and Barnabas and the rest of the Jews in the Galatian church had been freely mixing with Gentiles until certain folks came down from Jerusalem who wouldn’t approve. Then they all withdrew, and wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles at the church potluck anymore. Paul calls it hypocrisy, and with good reason: if the Gentiles belong to Christ, and Christ has cleansed them, then they are as clean as it gets! There’s no reason to divide the body into slighly-more-clean and slightly-less-clean factions, which is what Peter and Barnabas were doing.

And that’s exactly what we are doing, when we make that degree of doctrinal specification the boundaries of our membership, fellowship, or cooperation. We are dividing the Body into the people who really get it, over here with us, and those people over there. We admit that those people really belong to Jesus, and we know we’ll be sharing heaven with them…but that’s soon enough, eh? Let’s not over-realize our eschatology.

If you can’t smell the reek of brimstone coming off that line of thought, get your sniffer checked.

You should care about the truth, right down into the details. In a teaching ministry (church or otherwise), there’s nothing wrong with clarifying what you’re going to teach. It’s nice to have a label on the package that tells everybody what’s in it, you know? But requiring that level of agreement for membership, fellowship, or cooperation is asinine. You do that, you’re just cooking up excuses to break the unity the Spirit made. Don’t do that.

In the ministries I’m part of, the doctrinal boundaries of our fellowship and cooperation are ordinarily defined by the ancient creeds (Apostles’ Creed, the 325/381 Nicene Creed, the Definition of Chalcedon) and a broadly Protestant grasp of salvation by grace through faith, not of works. That’s about it; we work out everything else as we go.

That makes people panicky. “What if [fill in whatever imagined disaster here]?” Well, first of all, as Mark Twain said, “I’m an old man and have known a great many troubles, most of which never happened.” In four years of church services with an open floor for reflection on the week’s Scripture readings, we’ve only ever had two people bring up a doctrinal error that called for specific correction. It’s not the case that we just never have to solve a problem, but it’s pretty rare. Is it worth foregoing four years of fellowship with our brothers and sisters in order to avoid difficult conversations with two people? Don’t be silly.

So we approach the situation differently: we look at how much we need to have in common for what we’re actually doing. Do we have enough in common to pray, say, the Lord’s Prayer together? Cool–let’s do that. Do we have enough in common to feed the hungry? Cool–let’s do that together. The mayor and the city council are struggling with a difficult situation; do we have enough in common to pray for God’s wisdom for our civil authorities? Cool–let’s do that together. I’m sure there are a dozen solid reasons why the timing of the Rapture is theologically important, but let’s not be using it as an excuse to stop us from what we can and should be doing together.

So many theological conservatives think unity is based on doctrine. If that were true, then certain key misbeliefs follow from it: the more doctrinal uniformity, the greater the unity; doctrinal disagreement means we can’t really be united; cooperating despite doctrinal disagreement means we really don’t care about truth; etc. But none of that is true.

Unity is not based on doctrine. “By one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body.” Our unity is a spiritual reality gifted to us by the Holy Spirit. Through the Spirit, we are all united to Christ and therefore to each other. We should live like it.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Hidden Costs of Disobedience

20 February 2024

Well over a decade ago, I was challenged by another pastor to become a psalm-singing Christian. The New Testament said to (Eph. 5:19, Col. 3:16, Jam. 5:13), and I wasn’t one, which seemed like something I should fix. I had no idea where to start, but I dug around and found a few resources. Armed with a few CDs (remember those?) and a psalter/hymnal, I dove in. Not being much of a musician myself, I shared the idea with some friends who were, and the result was a partnership that invested long-term in singing the Psalms, and doing it well. We’re still at it.

Back in those early days, we had no idea what the benefits of psalm-singing would be. We just knew that God said to do it. As we shared the idea with other people–especially worship leaders–a pattern quickly emerged. They could see the obstacles and costs of adding the Psalms to their repertoire, and they could see the benefits of continuing to do what they were already doing. But they had a hard time seeing the benefits of psalm-singing, and an even harder time seeing the costs of their current practice.

Anytime you’re contemplating a change, you are not contemplating it from some blissfully neutral limbo. What you’re doing now has costs. If those costs are so baked into your thinking that you can no longer see them, you won’t be able to make an honest assessment of the proposed change. When that’s the case, it’s time to get fresh eyes on the problem.

But when we’re talking about direct instructions from God, fresh eyes are kind of a moot point. You should be obeying because God told you to. You don’t need to assess whether obedience is worth the costs; by obeying, you’ll be doing better than you could know. But obedience is hard, and there are times when you’ll wonder, “Why am I doing this?” At those times, it can be helpful to look back and ask yourself if you can see the costs of your former disobedience.

In the case of psalm-singing, I can tell you that I’ve come to pray more often and more deeply, I’ve grown more emotionally honest, and I know how to talk to God and other people in ways I couldn’t before. Leithart was right: “Worship is language class.” You learn how to talk.

Sometimes, the Scriptures themselves will peel the scales off your eyes. I had this happen to me a couple decades ago reading Hebrews 3. “Exhort one another daily, while it is called ‘Today,’ lest you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.” The straightforward command is that believers should encourage one another every day. I remember thinking to myself, “I don’t even see another Christian some days.” I realized that in modern life, we are more separated from one another than they were back in the day, and despite all our communication technology, it’s harder to connect.

Well, so much the worse for modern life! Since when do we accept “We don’t really live like that now” as a valid reason to ignore a command from God? If we need to modify our form of life so that we are able to obey, then we should do so, trusting that God will make it worth our while.

I’ve been at it for a couple decades now, and I can tell you: He has. Lack of fellowship was hurting me more than I knew back then. I was lonely, in my own head too much, immature. It was hard to see that at the time, because I was used to it. Two decades later, I’ve been blessed with a place in some of the best communities I’ve ever seen, or even heard about. From my current perch, it’s easy enough to see what I was missing back then.

Far more than these two specific items from Hebrews and the Psalms, though, the point I want to make here is…what else is there? How many direct biblical instructions are out there that we could merely obey, and reap the blessings? Let’s go find them!

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Whose Faith Follow

12 September 2023

Once upon a time, I was a doctrine wonk. I honestly believed that if we just got the doctrine right, we would live well. My community valued correct exegesis and theology, and invested enormous effort in doing them well. As one of their fair-haired sons, and I got paid to research, write, and teach at seminary. It was a geek’s dream job, and I loved it….  

<cue spooky music>

…then the whole community tore itself apart. Some of the best exegetes and theologians I knew went for each other’s throats. I’d love to say that I stayed above the fray, but I didn’t. My personal loyalties were with one side, but I also thought they were exegetically and theologically more correct…at first.

I quickly began to realize that the conflict wasn’t actually about doctrine. That’s a big claim, but it’s true. The doctrinal differences were not entirely insignificant, but there was ample room for everyone involved to continue working together. A number of close observers and secondary participants, myself included, suggested ways to move forward, but there was a problem we couldn’t solve: the principals didn’t want unity. The doctrinal difference was a smokescreen, a way to make the conflict respectable. The real problems were personal and relational: abundance of offense, lack of repentance and forgiveness, and lack of sufficient emotional maturity to address the personal conflicts.

I slowly began to realize that even if the problem were primarily doctrinal, we were handling it poorly. As I dug into Scripture looking for instructions and patterns for handling this kind of conflict, I kept coming back to Acts 15. This chapter is the first big doctrinal conflict in the Church, and the pattern that it sets upholds the unity of the Body of Christ as a cardinal doctrine and practice for Christians. I’ve written on this at great length elsewhere, so I’m not going to belabor the point here. Outward unity that is visible to observing unbelievers is Jesus’ prayer to the Father for us, it is the manner in which we win the world, and without unity right down to the practical level of seating arrangements at supper, we are not being straightforward about the gospel. It’s a big deal. 

Once I had gotten this far, God moved me to Englewood, Colorado, to see unity in practice. 

In Englewood, I met a group of pastors who got along. They prayed with and for each other. They blessed each other’s ministries. Every once in a while, they preached in each other’s churches. They gathered their churches once a year for a joint worship service. Were they all the same denomination? Not even close. We had Messianic Jews, Southern Baptists, Assemblies of God, Dutch Reformed, Anglican, Bible church guys, nondenominational, Missouri Synod Lutheran, and more. With far less common doctrinal basis than my seminary faculty had, the Englewood pastors created a far greater obedience than we had ever dreamed of. What was I to make of that?

“Remember those who rule over you, who have spoken the word of God to you, whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their conduct.” The author of Hebrews 13:7 is talking specifically about our relationship to our local church leaders, but the principle applies. Pay attention to the outcome of your leaders’ conduct. Follow the faith of those whose fruit is good; do not follow the faith of those whose fruit is bad. 

So what did the Englewood pastors have that my seminary faculty did not? There actually are some relevant doctrinal pieces here, but that’s another post. The first and most important common element wasn’t doctrinal at all. It was obedience, straight up the middle. Jesus wanted us to be one, and they set out to find a way. They knew they weren’t going to be able to iron out every little doctrinal difference, and they were looking for ways to obey anyhow. Turns out, when we start looking for ways to obey instead of reasons not to, a lot of things are possible.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Niceness: A Unity-Breaking Disease

11 July 2023

I hang out in theology discussion groups some. In a particular (very doctrinally narrow) group, someone recently asked a question about non-theological issues in the group. “What things other than doctrine divide the group?” he wanted to know. As I mulled it over, it occurred to me that one of the biggest divides is our accepted modes of speech. Some of us seem to think that the speech norms of the faculty lounge should govern all Christians all the time; others of us don’t buy that. Now if you’re reading here, you probably already know that I am in the latter group. As far as I’m concerned, kindness is a virtue, but niceness is a disease. We should be willing to speak like Jesus did, and He didn’t say nice things and make everything smooth. He was willing to make things awkward and difficult for the sake of a jagged truth. Among brothers, of course, we have no business slinging a ‘truth bomb’ and then running away; Jesus never did that. We hang around for the whole conversation, and then move forward and work together regardless, because action for Jesus’ sake matters more than agreement on every little thing.

I’d made my defense for a more biblical mode of speech in that very group multiple times already (and mostly been rebuffed), so this particular question would hardly have been worth commenting on by itself. But it sparked another thought: many of the members of the group are also very, very specific about who they’ll fellowship with or collaborate with. “Is there a [___insert affiliation here___] church near my town?” is a frequent question in the group. The responses will always include tales of people who drive 60 miles to get to a church they can stomach, others who are listening to an internet broadcast from another state, and still others who’ve simply given up for lack of a local fellowship they can be satisfied with. Still others, having found a local church that meets their exacting specifications, are busy pretending that all the other local churches don’t exist.

The same people who upbraid me for being coarse and disagreeable — people vastly nicer than I am, who want me to be nicer too — are unable to get along with the majority of their fellow Christians. You’d think that the niceness would make it easier, but it doesn’t seem to. Meanwhile, as rough as I sometimes am with people, I’m deeply embedded in two local churches, we routinely join up with other groups for prayer and sometimes for shared worship services, and our working partnerships span Anglican, Messianic, Charismatic, Baptist, Reformed, and more.

This to say, adherence to faculty-lounge norms of smooth speech does not seem to be the difference that makes a difference. There’s a divide between people who value honest community and people who value niceness, and it shows up in the way we’re able to minister. In my experience, honesty makes you able to minister in ways niceness can’t touch, and gives you partnerships you couldn’t get by being nice. So don’t be nice; be like Jesus. The more you’re like Him, the more you’ll be able to share life with others who are like Him, despite your disagreements. Truth is, talking and being like Jesus is your best shot at getting the disagreements resolved anyway.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

(Not) Fencing the Table

27 June 2023

“How do you fence the Table?” my friend asked me.

We were talking about the church service I host for homeless folks every Saturday night. For those of you not familiar with the terminology, he was asking how I regulate who is allowed to partake in the communion service.

I had a simple answer: “I don’t.”

I’m very much in the minority here. Across the history of the Church, the vast majority of churches have felt that since the Lord’s Table is a sacred thing, the church leadership should carefully regulate who is allowed to participate, and under what terms. I used to think the same way, but I noticed a few things that changed my perspective.

First, the Bible never tasks church leadership with fencing the table. It never tasks anybody with fencing the Table. The one place it talks about examining someone with reference to coming to the Table, it says “let a man so examine himself.” If I were going to fence the Table, I would need authority to do so–after all, it’s not my table, it’s the Lord’s Table. He has not delegated that authority to me as a church leader; therefore I may not do it.

Second, I noticed that the historical pattern is out of step with Jesus’ own way of being in the world. We fence the Table lest someone profane the body and blood of the Lord by partaking unworthily. Jesus gave Himself recklessly to a world that constantly received Him in an unworthy manner, and in the end gave His very body and blood to His enemies. Is it blasphemous? Of course! But it’s not my blasphemy; Jesus did it Himself. If I’m following Him, then why would I be paranoid about some pagan getting away with a wafer?

Third, I noticed that we haven’t empowered people to examine themselves well. We’ve taken self-examination to mean that you need to descend into morbid introspection and confess all your sins before you partake, lest God strike you down. That’s just not what the passage is talking about: you will ransack that whole chapter in vain looking for a mention of confessing your sins before the Table.

Rather, the passage talks about correctly discerning the Lord’s Body, and that’s what we need to present so people can self-examine and decide whether to partake. We need to say what Scripture says about the Table: “This is the body of Christ,” “This is the blood of Christ.” We need to say what Scripture says about the Body that celebrates at the Table: “You are the Body of Christ.” And we need to let people decide on that basis whether this is something they want to be part of. If they do, then we should do what Jesus did, and give them His body and blood.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Making Room

6 June 2023

In 1 Samuel 20, Jonathan confronts a dilemma. David, his best friend, comes to him and wants to know, “Why is your dad trying to kill me?” Consider the awkward position this puts Jonathan in. He either has to believe that his dad is plotting his best friend’s murder, or he has to believe that his best friend is paranoid (or lying outright). He protests that surely his dad wouldn’t do any such thing without telling him, but David insists.

Now, this is the kind of thing that breaks up a friendship, or at least becomes a topic we never speak about, a “dead spot” in the friendship where we can’t share what we’re thinking…but not for these guys. They don’t stop talking to each other, and they don’t just “agree to disagree” and never speak of it again, either. I’ll let you read it for yourself, but here’s what I want you to notice: David does not indignantly demand that Jonathan just take his word for it. Jonathan does not minimize David’s assessment and insist that he come to the feast anyway.

They’re both men of conviction; neither one backs down, and neither one tries to bully the other into backing down. Instead, they take each other seriously, make room for each other, and pursue the truth together. They agree on a valid way to test the claim, and God gives them an unambiguous result.

If we’re going to walk closely with one another as family—the “these are My mother and My brothers” sort of family—then we have to find ways to do this. Relationships predicated on agreeing all the time last about 15 minutes on a good day. But if we can make room for each other, hold the space for disagreement while we seek the truth together, then we can walk a long, long way together.

All the way to the New Jerusalem, in fact.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Drane, Rao, and Mabry

13 December 2022

My latest piece, “The End of Premium Mediocre Church,” is up over at Theopolis. Enjoy!

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Without the Glue

8 November 2022

Back in college, I was part of a “cell church.” The idea was that the actual church meeting was the small-group meeting that happened during the week, where we shared a meal and spent time discussing how to apply the Bible to our lives. The Sunday morning gathering, where all the cells came together (in our case, in a rented synagogue), was not the church meeting proper, but a time of celebration and teaching. The goal was to get a little closer to the kind of church life we see in Acts 2, and it worked…we got a little closer.

Over the next couple decades, I had a variety of formative influences, and I grew as a Christian, but I never really learned how to disciple effectively. I learned how to teach effectively. Every attempt to make disciples devolved into teaching, and while teaching is part of the task — a necessary part — it’s not the whole job. I knew I was missing something, and didn’t know what, or how to get it.

Moving to Englewood, Colorado, changed that. Here, the local pastors gather monthly and pray for one another and the One Church in Englewood (which happens to meet in separate buildings). One of the older men in the group, a Dutch Reformed pastor named Dave, took several of us under his wing. Over the next couple years, Dave taught us to disciple effectively, and also pitched the concept of missional community: a spiritual extended family on mission together, as it were.

Now, most of the writing around missional communities at that time wanted to market it as some exciting new move of God, which didn’t make any sense. To the extent that there was a solid New Testament case for something like it–and there clearly was, in the first-century oikos–the missional community obviously couldn’t be new. Certainly there was a New Testament case for making disciples; that was hardly some exotic new move of God; it was Christianity 101.

And yet, the North American church, desperate for effective interventions in the culture, was doing everything but that. If we total up all the time, talent, energy, money, etc. that the churches were expending — a sort of ecclesiastical equivalent to the GNP — we’ll find that the vast majority of the Gross Church Product goes into things that really have nothing to do with making disciples. That being the case, the great need was and is simple repentance: We have occupied ourselves with secondary things at the expense of our primary mission. Time to get back to it.

No shortage of ink has been spilled on that particular subject, so I won’t belabor it here, except to say this: in the intervening decade or so, nearly every “missional community” I’ve seen, heard about, or been part of, has fizzled out, stagnated, or fallen back into being a standard-issue church small group (not necessarily a bad thing to be, but hardly the heady vision were were sold, is it?). Not coincidentally, there’s a significant difference between the first-century Christian oikos and the twenty-first century missional community that is supposedly emulating it. Joining a twenty-first century missional community was a boutique lifestyle choice. The members’ survival needs were attended to elsewhere; missional community was a leisure-time activity.

The preindustrial oikos was not a choice; it was a survival strategy. In the preindustrial oikos, members spent their days working shoulder to shoulder to care for one another and serve their larger community in ways that generated income for the oikos — whether they were making purple dye like Lydia’s household in Philippi or bringing fish to market like Simon Peter’s in Capernaum. An oikos like Lydia’s and Peter’s got transformed into an engine for mission when its members came to Jesus, of course, but that was never its only purpose. The preindustrial oikos was how people survived. Your oikos was not just a social club; it was your job, your living arrangements, your educational system, your medical care, and your retirement plan, all rolled into one. You couldn’t opt out of your oikos without cutting your own lifeline.

When we tried to replace the preindustrial oikos with a social club devoted to serving a particular group of people–however noble the cause–it overwhelmingly failed. Of course it did! We were trying to have an oikos without the glue that holds an oikos together.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Longest Sentence

30 August 2022

Ephesians 1:3-14 is one long sentence in Greek — the longest sentence in the Greek New Testament. In it, Paul uses the pronouns “we” and “you” in a surprising way — to refer to Jewish believers and Gentile believers, respectively. That fact comes as a bit of a surprise to a modern reader, and you’re not alone — it was a surprise to the original readers too! But if you accept that “we” and “you” are exclusive of one another in vv. 12-13 – which you have to – then you’re stuck with it throughout. There’s no natural breaking point within the sentence. But the original readers aren’t going to know that ‘we’ just refers to Jewish believers until they hear vv. 12-13, so there’s a penny-drop moment there where they have to re-evaluate what they’ve heard, thus:

Paul blesses God for blessing Jewish believers with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, even as He chose them in Christ to be holy and blameless before Him by predestining them to sonship adoption through Christ, in keeping with God’s purposes, so that His glorious grace might be praised. In keeping with His grace, He fully accepted the Jewish believers by accepting Christ, in whom the Jewish believers have redemption (forgiveness of sins), in keeping with God’s abundant grace which He wisely abounded toward them by revealing the mystery (His household-management plan to bring all things together in Christ).

In Christ the Jewish believers have obtained the inheritance to which God predestined them (in keeping with the public presentation [Gk. prothesis] of His plans [throughout the OT]) in order that they – the first to hope in Christ – would bring praise to His glory. The Gentiles also believed, once they heard the gospel, and were sealed by the same Holy Spirit who guarantees the Jewish believers’ inheritance.

It’s not a surprise that Jewish believers would end up as Paul describes — God publicly announced His plan to do exactly that in the new covenant prophecies centuries before Christ. But Gentiles?

As Paul develops his argument in Ephesians, it turns out that the mystery to which he alludes in v. 9 is that the Gentile believers would be made one body with the Jewish believers – all who are united to Christ are united to each other in one new man, the Church. There are no longer two groups, but one, and the blessings apply equally to the whole group. That unity of the Body — with one another and pre-eminently with Christ — is the main point of the book, and it’s powerful. Paul spends the latter three chapters unpacking the practical implications.

Why does Paul begin this way? Because he is making his case to a mixed Jew-Gentile church that they need to become one in practice to reflect the oneness God has already given them in spiritual reality. He wants his Gentile readers to be grateful for the Jews who faithfully spread the message of Christ to the Gentiles. And likewise, he wants his Jewish readers to see that although the Gentiles came later, they have been fully integrated into all the blessings of Christ — nothing has been held back.

Here’s a challenge for you: knowing this is how Paul is using “we” and “you” early in Ephesians, read 2:1-10, and see what he’s doing there. Have fun!

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Sinning in All Directions

14 September 2021

In conversations about the church’s characteristic sins, I’ve noticed something really interesting. When I talk about the church’s characteristic sins against men, I inevitably get an earful of “Are you kidding? Have you seen what the church does to women?” — the vibe being that the sins against men aren’t really even worth talking about compared to what the church routinely does to women. I’ve also noticed that when I talk about the church’s characteristic sins against women, a smaller but very vocal number of people — mostly single or divorced men — respond in the same fashion: “Are you kidding? Have you seen what the church does to men?”

For some reason we seem to have bought into the idea that the church has to be sinning against men OR women; it couldn’t possibly be doing both. What are we thinking?

What drives this dynamic is the neomarxist class warfare paradigm, which is so deeply entrenched in our culture that even Christians have trouble shaking it — even though, on paper at least, we definitely know better. The neomarxist paradigm provides a handy template for any situation where there’s oppression. If there is oppression against one class (in this case, one sex), then the other class is the “oppressor” class. One has to be on the bottom, and the other on the top; one good guy, one bad guy. It’s a very simplistic way to view the world, a template suited to old Lone Ranger serials for kids. Even in our fiction (say, Avengers: Civil War) we know better than that — to say nothing of the complexities of real life.

In the real world, any single human being is more than capable of sinning in all directions at once. The Church is made up of many, many such humans, and say what you will about her, she’s an able multitasker. She is certainly capable of sinning in all directions at once, and of sinning against multiple different classes in different ways that are specifically injurious to that group.

That has certainly happened, has it not? The Church has treated women, as women, infamously in certain readily identifiable ways. The Church has also treated men, as men, infamously in other readily identifiable ways. We need to repent for ALL of it, and we won’t grow, any of us, by trying to out-victim each other, by minimizing the sins against another group in order to get some attention for our own group.

And lest we forget…WE ARE THE CHURCH. There’s nowhere else to point the finger — it’s us, it’s our people. We are the household of God, and we need to get things in order. So let’s own our failures, repent, and find a better way together.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

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