JWJeffery.com

Hello all:

While reading the memoirs of Abner Jones, I came across this nice little tidbit, which reminded me of various incidents (sometimes ongoing) in different congregations I’ve been a member of over the years. I couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of how many things stay the same, even after 200 years. I like Jones’ remedy for how to solve the problem, as well as his remedy for determining who should preach before the church.

Josh

After speaking of the declension of the church in Boston, and some of the causes of it, he attributes it mainly, after all, to a want of thorough organization. And this was the case, he says, in most of the churches. The brethren mistook their liberty for license, and things were not conducted in that order which the New Testament enjoins, and which is essential to success. He then goes on to say.

“The great Head of the church has ordained that there shall be Elders in every church; neither can any church prosper long at a time, without a Pastor, or Elder. For lack of this our early churches suffered much, nor was it possible for us to take proper care of our churches. This caused many to go over to the Baptists, and Methodists, that they might thereby enjoy the blessing of a constant ministry. Many wandered from the fold into the world for the want of being well taken care of; so upon the whole, on this ground we have been very great losers. It was a favorite doctrine in all our early churches that there were gifts in the church, such as prayer and exhortation, which ought to be improved in public meetings, as well as those or preaching. This doctrine I now firmly believe. But in those early clays, I am constrained to say that in the injudicious use of this privilege great evil was done. For it is certain that many who had not gifts to speak either to the edification of saints, or the conviction of sinners, were the most forward to occupy the time, and such become a great burden to the church, and gave the enemy great occasion to blaspheme. If any attempt was made to correct such an evil, the cry was immediately made, ‘You want to take away our liberties, you want to bring us into bondage, you want to be popular, you want to be a Lord over God’s heritage,’ &c. &c. The question will now arise, how shall this evil be remedied in such a manner as not to stop the exercise of these valuable gifts? Answer. ‘Let the church judge of these gifts as they do of preaching gifts, and also approve the same. If a brother says, ‘God has called me to preach, the church does not approve or hear such a brother, unless they can I discover preaching gifts in him. In the same manner let the church judge impartially of all gifts.. I do not believe that every man, women, and child who are converted, have gifts to speak in public meetings. Circumstances have often occurred like the following. The sermon has been delivered in a most solemn, spiritual and judicious manner. Saints have been made happy, and sinners have been solemnly impressed. But a weak brother or sister arises, merely because they feel happy and want to express it. Yet they can say nothing to edification, and the good impressions are often injured. But it is said such an one has as good right as any other, and he ought to speak to clear his own mind. But let us remember that the true object of speaking is not to edify ourselves, but to edify others.

I have never questioned the piety, and good intentions of such brethren; but to me there is a deep importance to be attached to the charge, that every thing should be done decently and in order. Saint Paul says, that though many things are perfectly lawful, they are not expedient.

–Memoir of Elder Abner Jones, by Abner Dumont Jones. pp. 76 - 78.

Hello Everyone:

In the past two months or so, I’ve read a decent amount of pages regarding Barton W. Stone. I started with his latest biography, Barton Stone: A Spiritual Biography, by D. Newell Williams. Williams answered small, nagging questions I’ve had since reading many of the general histories of the movement and the Churches of Christ. However, like any good book, he left more questions that I need answers for. It also convinced me of the fact that our general histories don’t provide nearly as much coverage of Stone as they ought to. After finishing Williams account, I moved on to a PhD dissertation by James Cook, who I believe provides some insight into why this is.

Cook argues that the Stone-Campbell Movement is a myth, mostly because Stone failed to have a key leadership role in the movement once the Christians and the Reformed Baptists united in 1832. Cook failed to convince me of the “Stone-Campbell myth,” however I think he makes a decent case that Campbell’s ideas crowded out the ideas belonging to Stone, so that Stone-ite ideas became a minority view in the movement. I think its obvious to anyone who has done any reading in our history that Stone disappears quickly in the story, and Campbell becomes a main focus until his death. I think that is because Campbell’s views and influence had such a dominating effect that historians don’t feel like there is much profit in spending a lot of time with Stone.

While reading Cook’s dissertation, I read a chapter on Restorationists from Paul Conkin’s book American Originals: Homemade Varieties of Christianity. Conkin, who spent some time as a Disciple, has some interesting insights into the Stone-Campbell Movement. Conkin spent a good amount of time covering the Christian Connexion, the more or less loose movement of “Christian Churches” that Stone’s movement was a part of before his merger with Campbell’s churches in the 1830’s. Cook and Williams also spend time on the Connexion, but it was Conkin’s book, reading in conjunction with Cook, that really made me interested in this section of the movement. Conkin makes the argument in his chapter on restorationists that the legitimate heir of the Christian Connexion, because of their interest in Christian liberty and unity, is none other than the United Church of Christ. In many ways, I think he is correct, especially since the Connexion eventually merged and merged and merged into the UCC.

After finishing these texts, I was fortunate enough to find a copy of Barton Stone’s memoirs. I’m about half way through reading these. Stone’s autobiography, which is a part of his memoirs, was an easy read, and now I am wading through the apology of the Springfield Presbytery, which provides an in-depth view of Stone’s views on faith and atonement. That has been a harder read, but I’m not sure I’ve actually come across a more detailed depiction of the difference between “our” view of faith and the Calvinist view of faith, or at least, what was the Calvinist view of faith.

When I finish reading Stone’s memoirs, I have copies of two works by B.F. Burnett, of the Christian Connexion. One is a 40 page booklet on Stone, and another is a booklet which asks if Barton Stone joined the Disciples of Christ. I still need to find a way to read Stone’s Christian Messenger.

After all that, will I find the real Barton Stone? I don’t know. But I’ll keep looking.

Josh

Hello all:

I have been very sick for the last several days, which has kept me home from work, and allowed me catch up on reading…and in fact, has enabled one of my bad habits, that of reading more than one book at a time. Right now, I am actually reading three books: “What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848″ by Daniel Walker Howe, which is part of the Oxford History of the United States series; “The Churches of Christ in the 20th Century: Homer Hailey’s Personal Journey of Faith” by David Edwin Harrell Jr., and “Renewing God’s People: A Concise History of the Churches of Christ” by Doug Foster and Gary Holloway.

“What Hath God Wrought” is general history of the United States from 1815 to 1848, however, Howe spends a decent amount of time covering the religious history of the era, which is one of the reasons I bought the book. I’ve wanted to learn more about American culture during the time of Alexander Campbell, and this book has been quite helpful to that end.

“Renewing God’s People” as the rest of the title says, is a short, concise history of the Churches of Christ. I’m reading it mostly to cross it off of my list, since the book doesn’t go to in-depth. However, it is a good starter volume for introducing the history of the Churches of Christ.

The book that I’ve been enjoying the most has been David Harrell’s history of the church/biography of Homer Hailey. Having grown up on both sides of the institutional split in the Churches of Christ, I’ve been quite interested in the history of the split between the mainline and the “anti’s” as they hate to be called. While I love Richard Hughes book, he didn’t spend nearly enough time on the split to satisfy my curiosity, so I’m glad that Harrell has.

Reading Harrell’s history has made me reflect a bit on my own religious experience and history. I was adopted by my parents through Colorado Christian Services, CCS is, according to their website, “A Ministry of the Church of Christ.” My first several years were spent in a mainline church-plant that my parents helped to found…and which they left when things went “liberal.” I spent the next several years at a non-institutional congregation in the small town of Forest Grove, Oregon. There were two congregations in that town, our non-institutional church, and a one-cup congregation a couple of miles away. We stayed at Forest Grove until things settled down at the small church-plant we had fled several years earlier.

We returned to the Tualatin Valley Church of Christ, until financial pressure and low attendance forced us to merge with the church that had originally planted us, the Westside Church of Christ. We stayed at Westside for several years, until my family left, along with many others, because of what we saw as “liberalism.” We attended Southwest Church of Christ, which today is the largest COC congregation in the state. It is ironic to look at Southwest now and see the innovations we fled from at Westside in full use at Southwest.

We stayed at Southwest for a couple of years, but the long drive to Southwest brought us back to the non-institutional church in Forest Grove. I stayed at Forest Grove until I graduated from High School and went to Cascade College. I believe I had written before, and I am still amused at the fact that in the congregation only myself and the minister were aware that the college existed. While I don’t think he really approved of the school, our minister didn’t discourage me from attending there, which I think is ironic.

Upon leaving Forest Grove, I really didn’t go to church much, even while at Cascade. I kind of fell through the cracks. At the time, I hated going to Cascade, and felt that many of the people there were fake and stuck-up. I didn’t manage to make many friends there, and felt pretty alone and alienated there. I left Cascade at the end of the school year and went to Central Oregon, where my parents lived. There, I attended the Prineville Church of Christ, a small, conservative, but mainline congregation, and probably the healthiest congregation in Central Oregon, though there are several in the tri-country area. Prineville was a good congregation to be at at the time, though I don’t know that I would want to be a member there now. Interestingly, Stuart and D’Esta Love now spend their summers in Prineville and attend the church there with my parents.

Once I moved back to Portland, I again strayed from church. Looking back, I didn’t too much time thinking about religion during this time period, but I considered myself a Christian, even though I didn’t attend church. I lived in downtown Portland, and had no car. I was interested in attending a church, but none were within my immediate reach. I contemplated visiting the Disciples of Christ congregation in downtown, but never did. My mind was elsewhere.

When I met the woman who is now my wife, I found that her father had been a preacher and had been very religious. Sara grew up as a holy-roller, attending Pentecostal churches, mostly the Assemblies of God. When her family split apart, her church attending days were over. However, both of us had a positive attitude towards Christianity, and both of us felt fairly secure in our salvation. I decided to take her to church one Sunday, but, I had to decide where to take her since I was not a member of any church. Now that I look back I’m not sure why, but I took Sara to the Beaverton Church of Christ, a very conservative non-institutional congregation. The preacher was one of my old preaches from the church in Forest Grove. We went to church there and sat through a sermon on “the Social Gospel.” Mark Dunagan preached on the evil of kitchens and recreational facilities in the church building. My girlfriend was quite amused, but did find herself agreeing on several points in the sermon, mostly centering on the fact that the church is a spiritual place, not a social club.

After we were married and our son was born, we decided that we needed to return to the church so that our son would be raised with the same values that we held, as well as the fact that both of us felt that we should probably be going to church. We visited a couple of churches, and ended up at the Eastside Church of Christ in Portland. We went there for a year or so, but didn’t really feel like we fit in there. We decided to look for another congregation, and ended up at the Linwood Church of Christ (which would later become Southeast Church of Christ) down the street from our home. We stayed there and worked hard for several years until the situation there got really bad, much of the congregation had left, and even though I was in a leadership position there, one of the members was particularly abusive and was able to exert considerable influence on the church. We left, and decided that we would spend a good while looking before choosing a congregation to settle down with.

We visited one of the most progressive Churches of Christ in the area the first Sunday that we left Southeast, but it just didn’t feel right, even though I knew a decent amount of people there. The next three churches we attended were Independent Christian Churches. We visited one, Harvest Christian, for about a month, and decided that it just wasn’t quite the right fit, even though we both enjoyed the people there. Next, we attended Abundant Life Church, a true mega-church. We had visited Abundant Life quite a bit while we were at Southeast, and enjoyed the music and the preaching. We even knew a couple of members. We visited one more church, Corbett Community Church, which was a Christian Church, but decided quickly that that wasn’t the church for us, even though we were quite amused with the slideshow before the sermon showing the youth group’s visit to Great Wolf Lodge, bikinis and all.

For a while, I thought Abundant Life was where we were supposed to be, however, one morning Sara and I got coffee at this coffee shop down the street from Sara’s school. I was reading “New Covenant Theology” when the guy behind the counter asked me if the book was good. That ended up being the first conversation of many with Robbie Foster, who pastors Estacada Community Fellowship. Robbie had attended Abundant Life after a messy split at Estacada Christian Church, so we had some things in common to talk about. After we got our coffee, we heard Bobby talking to some other people in the coffee shop about the church, and we really liked what we heard. It seemed right, so Sara and I decided to visit his congregation, which is more or less a non-affiliated independent Christian Church. We went there and haven’t even thought about looking at another congregation since. The people are friendly, and its a church that is actually trying to be the church. My parents finally decided to come to town on a Sunday and worship with us, but they made the mistake of bringing Grandma, who got quite upset about the instrumental music, especially the guitar and drums, though that didn’t surprise me. While I think Command/Example Necessary Inference is somewhat useful in a limited way, I don’t find it to be the be all end all of my theological thinking.

So, after meandering down the long path of my history, whats the point? I’m not even sure if I know. I’ve been a member of mainline Churches of Christ, a non-institutional Church of Christ, and now a very independent Christian Church. As one observer has noted, in many ways I’ve ended up at a church more conservative than I am (seeing as I’m not a fundamentalist, especially in the religious-nationalist sense of the term). However, after being a member at all three, I feel no big difference. Sure, there are some differences in practice, and a little more in theology. In some ways, the biggest difference is attitude, but even then I don’t know if I can point to the type of church versus the individual congregations and Christians in those churches. In a weird way, I still feel like I’m a member of the Churches of Christ…though I am reminded that I’m technically not when I look at job openings at our Christian Colleges that exclude me from applying because I’m not a member of the right type of congregation.

So, I guess part of the point is, is that after all these different experiences, I feel like I’m in the same church I’ve always been in…and I think that is because I really am. The physical, visible unity might not be there, but the spiritual unity is, even if we don’t acknowledge it. The sign might say “Church of Christ” or “church of Christ” or “Christian Church” or even “Community Fellowship,” but below the surface, the DNA is the same.

Josh

Hello everyone:

I recently wrote about some of my reading about the covenants. In that post, I stated my understand that New Covenant Theology was the theology behind preterism in Churches of Christ.

After reading through a significant portion of New Covenant Theology, and finding nothing that pointed towards a Preterist theology, I went and did some research at Eschatology.org, which is a preterist website sponsored by a preterist Church of Christ congregation.

After doing some checking, I found that I’ve mixed some things up in my head and was mistaken. New Covenant Theology has nothing to do with preterism, but is instead a way to view Christ as the lense with which to view everything in the old covenant, including the law. Preterism uses the term “Covenant Theology” to describe itself, and hinges itself on the transition from old covenant to new covenant.

Josh

Greetings and Merry Christmas Everyone!

I got some great Christmas presents this year. I received:

Barton Stone, A Spiritual Biography by Newell Williams

Disciple of Peace: Alexander Campbell on Pacifism, Violence and the State by Craig M. Watts

The Romance of Tristan and Iseult by J. Bedier (Adapter), Hilaire Belloc (Translator).

Tristan and Isolde (The Movie).

The Nativity Story.

I’m looking forward to reading and watching and sharing my thoughts with you.

Josh