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How the Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans Helped Me Discuss the Trinity

5/20/2019

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​Our men's group is currently working through the very difficult topic of the trinity. It's a good mental exercise in preparation for the next chapter - predestination. The trinity is a difficult concept to address for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that you're always trying to avoid some form of heresy. Just about any analogy you can come up with for the trinity embraces some false teaching. The trinity is like the forms of water (solid, liquid, gas)? That's modalistic, as we see that this is merely the same substance changing forms. The trinity is like the sun, which produces heat and light? That's arianism (or perhaps hierarchicalism) to claim that the father produces (or supersedes) the other members of the trinity. 

While I certainly don't claim to have a great grasp of the trinity, I have found that there is some wonderful wisdom I gleaned when stepping outside of my personal experience of Western Protestant thought. Not only has this been helpful for my understanding of the trinity, but as we work with those from an Eastern background, it helps to connect with them as well. So let me share with you three big insights which have helped me embrace the teaching of the trinity.

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Ministry, the Spirit, and the Church

3/1/2018

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"Ministry, the Spirit, and the Church" addresses our family's call to ministry. I discuss what God has been teaching us about how to pursue and build his church. While there is a bit of anecdote in the first and last sections, most of the post follows Roland Allen's "Spontaneous Expansion of the Church" as he breaks down some of the pitfalls of Western Christianity and our love for pragmatism. 

Allen's main thesis is that we in the West have chosen to pursue means of church expansion that lend themselves towards quelling the Spirit. They are means that embrace a love for certainty, objectivity, structure, and control. While these items Allen identifies aren't inherently bad, they are items that can't be at the forefront of our work in the church because both the Gospel and the body of Christ center around relationship with free creatures, not with scientific laws and inanimate objects. God desires us to trust in his foolish means, his power over our weakness, and his Spirit's leading as it wills over our desire for certainty and self-direction. When we break from this trust in God and embrace our own "control," the church stagnates and dies. It becomes an inanimate system rather than a living relationship.
1. Losing Control: A look at how God calls humanity to relinquish control, and a little about how God has done that in my family's life

2. Overbearing Doctrine: I consider how emphasizing Christianity primarily as doctrine can sabotage the church by creating stagnation, deemphasizing relationship, and quelling the "unqualified" vessels whom God may desire to use and or grow.

3. Overbearing Methodology: I consider how our love for systems and certainty drive us away from a trust in God's means, and stymies a Spirit lead movement in the church. 

​4. Overbearing Morality: I consider how our focus on moral qualification is often shaped more by our culture than by the Bible, and how we often lack the grace towards others to meet them where they're at rather than expect perfection before we accept - the opposite of what God does for us.This overbearing morality severely harms the church.
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5. The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church in Romania: I take what I've gleaned from Allen and my own experience and delve into some of the big specific questions we face as we pursue ministry in Romania. 
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Ministry, the Spirit, and the Church (5): The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church in Romania

12/29/2017

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​Allen’s thoughts align very well with what God has been teaching Catalina and me. While we are organized, goal driven, intellectual, philosophical, theological people – God has put those things asunder time and time again. Those things we love, which can be great goods if we make them a means, are terrible ends. But all too often, we end up placing the aforementioned things before God and believe that we are implementing them and using them for him. In reality, we end up subverting God’s means and ends so that we can maintain our methods and our control.

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Ministry, the Spirit, and the Church (1): Losing Control

12/29/2017

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​The phrase “losing control” tends to have negative connotations. We often use such a phrase when describing someone under the influence of anger, drugs, alcohol, or stress. When we are no longer in control, we tend to gravitate towards disorder or destruction – of ourselves or of others. It is only our maintenance of control that guides our steps along an appropriate, productive path. I would like to suggest, however, that “losing control” gets a bad rap. In our self-focused humanity and our independence-focused culture, I think losing control is actually of the utmost importance.

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Ministry, the Spirit, and the Church (4): Overbearing Morality

12/29/2017

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The first two problems we’ve already addressed are pretty big hang-ups for we Westerners. But I have to say, I think this final problem- the problem of imposing our morality - is probably the most difficult for us to overcome. I believe this is because we tend to find our biggest sense of validation in our perceived morality as it compares to others. God is holy and it is my sin that separates me from God, therefore if I am holier (which is equated with being more moral), then God must love me more and I must be a better Christian. An imposition of our moral standards is done in large part for our own validation. But it is also done because it provides us with a sense of direction and control as we guide new believers and churches.

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Ministry, the Spirit, and the Church (2): Overbearing Doctrine

12/29/2017

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Rewind missions several hundred years and you’re likely to picture conquistador style missions. When the political arm of the state would go to take territory for the kingdom, they’d send along spiritual representatives to take souls for the Kingdom. Hindsight makes it very clear that all those missionaries did was impose their political philosophy over top of their Kingdom philosophy. In reality, all that they did in the name of the Kingdom was done not for God, but for nation. They conflated the Kingdom with the kingdom. Fortunately today we have learned our lesson and never superimpose our political means, goals, and ideals over God’s…

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Ministry, the Spirit, and the Church (3): Overbearing Methodology

12/29/2017

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Cleanliness is next to godliness, as the saying goes. Though most Christians I know could identify that quotation as a falseism and not a quotation from the Bible, I truly think most of us in our inmost being believe such a statement. Now, we may not believe it in its proper form. We may socially judge someone with a dirty car or a dirty house, but we likely wouldn’t consider them less godly on this account. But if we expand the strict definition of cleanliness to a broader definition of order and organization, it would be hard for many Christians I know to deny their belief in the above quotation. God is a God of order. The stipulation of an elder requires that they have order within their family. Order is opposed to entropy and chaos, two antitheses of God. These notions extend themselves and in our culture come up most notably in regard to finances. In the conservative circles I used to and still do run in, financial struggle is often thought of as financial disorder, and is very often subconsciously linked to ungodliness. Conversely, the leaders of the churches I’ve observed tend to all be intellectually and financially ordered very well. We value order – particularly order of the financial and intellectual kind.

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    *The views and ideas on this site are in no way affiliated with any organization, business, or individuals we are a part of or work with. They're also not theological certainties. They're simply thinking out loud, on issues and difficulties as I process things.

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