Month: March 2023

Episode 299-Rethinking the Quiet Time

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Disciple Up # 299
Rethinking the Quiet Time
By Louie Marsh, 3-22-2023

Intro. Sorry for mix up and briefly posting Sunday’s sermon on this feed! State of the podcast, what about next week? We’re hitting number 300! That’s quite a run. What would you like to hear on that one?

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2023/april/quit-quiet-time-devotions-bible-literacy-reading-scripture.html

Is It Time to Quit ‘Quiet Time’?

Effective biblical engagement must be about more than one’s personal experience with Scripture.

DRU JOHNSON AND CELINA DURGIN

MARCH 13, 2023

I began to realize that their poor grasp of Scripture wasn’t necessarily due to a lack of reading, although that’s also a large problem in the US. From 2021 to 2022, Bible engagement—scored on frequency of use, spiritual impact, and moral importance in day-to-day life—fell 21 percent among American adult Bible users. It was the American Bible Society’s largest recorded one-year drop in its annual State of the Bible study. And almost 1 in 5 churchgoers said they never read the Bible.

But for my students, many of whom read the Bible daily and have chosen to attend a Christian college, their poor grasp on and application of Scripture seems to be due to the way they engage with it. It is a way many American Christians have been reading the Bible for decades: through “daily devotions” or “quiet time.”

The way daily quiet time is typically practiced today is unlikely to yield the fluency required to understand and apply biblical teaching. Only when devotional time is situated within a matrix of Scripture study habits can it regain its power to transform our thinking and our communities.

How could my students be reading the Bible so much yet have so little understanding of the Torah, pay almost no attention to its focus on the new heavens and new earth, and be confused over concepts like salvation and evil? CT previously discussed the Lifeway Research statistics that reveal this trend of Bible illiteracy among the wider population. Their daily devotion to Scripture seemed to distance them from understanding key parts of it.

My students were not Bible literate. They didn’t really know the stories, characters, ideas, and themes in the Bible, much less how the literature itself fits together and argues for a particular view of the world. And as Christians, we must aim beyond basic literacy. We hope to know and practice the thinking and instruction of Scripture fluently, extending its wisdom into all the areas of life that it doesn’t directly address.

Johnson traces the modern practice of quiet time to the 1870s, when American evangelicals merged two previously separate Puritan devotional practices: private prayer and private Bible study. This fusion of prayer and Bible study morphed into “morning watch,” which emphasized intercessory prayer. From there it became “quiet time,” which deemphasized intercessory prayer in favor of quiet listening or meditation. This new emphasis on individuals receiving daily insights from God transformed the nature of the Bible engagement taught to generations of American Christians.

Daily devotions have been characteristically solitary and have not usually involved rigorous study of Scripture. Instead, readers often focus on one chapter or even a few verses per session, from which they may expect to receive God’s guidance for their personal life in that moment. Daily devotions typically include a period of prayerful “listening” for God’s voice, which is believed to manifest either in the verses read that session or via direct communication to the mind of the listener.

Though this listening may be expectant, it is essentially passive. It’s often guided by a tacit belief that God’s Word speaks and transforms through sudden insights directed at individual readers, rather than through sustained study and active questioning in community.

In contrast to sermons and group Bible study, daily devotions became exercises in inward, individual formation, sharing tendencies with the secular modernism of the era. Quiet-time advocates began identifying the main benefit of daily devotions as “a transformed self rather than a transformed world,” Johnson writes in his dissertation.

While personal character formation is essential, in isolation it aligns better with modernist tendencies than with the biblical focus on character formation through habits, rituals, and guidance from the community. This inward focus can also cast the formation of justice in communities and systems—a primary concern of the biblical authors—as adhering to individualistic ethical principles.

Today, daily quiet time often doesn’t involve Scripture at all. As CT has noted elsewhere, 2023 Lifeway Research revealed that although 65 percent of Protestant churchgoers spend time alone with God daily, only 39 percent read the Bible during that time. If this statistic means that Christians are trading hurried and fragmented devotional reading for holistic group Bible study, then perhaps so much the better. But the drop in overall Bible engagement in the ABS study suggests that more Christians simply aren’t reading it.

The danger is clear: Listening for God’s insights from Scripture and in prayer without communal accountability can produce a tenuous understanding of Christianity.

If Bible literacy is declining, even for those who read devotionally every day, then what is the way forward? Most of the parachurch ministries we talked to reported that they have been considering methods that provide a wider perspective of Scripture. These include ancient Scripture reading rituals that many evangelical churches have rarely practiced (such as lectio divina, the Daily Office from The Book of Common Prayer, and so on). But the practice most mentioned by ministry leaders was the public, or communal, reading of Scripture.

In some ways, this form of Bible engagement is the opposite of quiet time. Rather than reading, communities listen to long stretches of Scripture together—sometimes 30 minutes to an hour long—either using audio Bibles or having people read aloud. Bible professors have long noted that the natural habitat of Scripture is in the ears of gathered Christians, not the eyes of individuals. The effects of long-form Scripture engagement on Bible literacy are all anecdotal at this point.

From Moses to Josiah to Nehemiah, communal Bible reading was normal at key points of Israel’s history. Public reading of Scripture occurs at Sinai (Ex. 19:7), during Josiah’s reforms (2 Kings 23:1–2), and for all the returnees to Judah in Ezra’s day (Neh. 8), among other instances. And the synagogue practice of reading the Torah and Prophets every Sabbath (Luke 4:16–17; Acts 13:14–15) emerged around the third century prior to Jesus.

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Episode 298-Christian Publishers are LYING to You

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Disciple Up # 298
Dishonest Christian Publishers
By Louie Marsh

Links used during this Podcast

https://estephenburnett.lorehaven.com/pssst-christian-endorsers-of-bad-books-may-not-have-even-read-them/

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2023/march-web-only/christian-publishers-book-endorsements-authors-tgc-butler.html

https://archive.thinkprogress.org/meet-donald-trumps-new-evangelical-advisory-board-6a5bfc5460d7/

Excerpts from CT article:

The Problem with Christian Book Endorsements

Publishers and authors have played along by pushing celebrity blurbs—but it’s time to rewrite the rules of promotion.

KATELYN BEAT

As an editor at a Christian publisher, I review multiple book proposals each week. Authors pitching a new project will share a table of contents, a sample of their writing, their bio, statistics about their platform, and—always—a list of confirmed or potential endorsers.

It’s a strange detail, since most trade nonfiction books aren’t already written when the author goes under contract with a publisher. This means that endorsers have agreed to endorse something that doesn’t exist.

Authors and agents are simply playing the rules that publishers set, and in Christian publishing—as with all book publishing—it’s about who you know.

Many authors hate seeking endorsements; it feels self-promotional and vulnerable. But endorsements are simply part of the deal, going back to at least 1856, when Walt Whitman had Ralph Waldo Emerson’s letter praising Leaves of Grass published in the New-York Tribune prior to the book’s second edition.

It’s a risky thing to do—especially when an endorser hasn’t read the book.

Last week, The Gospel Coalition published, then unpublished, an excerpt from the forthcoming book Beautiful Union: How God’s Vision for Sex Points Us to the Good, Unlocks the True, and (Sort of) Explains Everything. Readers criticized the author, Joshua Ryan Butler, saying he misconstrued the marriage metaphor in Ephesians 5, making it pornographic, male-centric, and ripe for abuse.

As criticisms mounted, ministry leader Dennae Pierre and pastor Rich Villodas publicly retracted their book endorsements. Pierre said she had written hers “based on training Josh had done for local pastors” and had done a “quick skim” of the book. Villodas said a mutual friend had invited him to endorse the book: “I agreed to the favor, but in poor judgment, read only 25-30% of it.”

It was good for Pierre and Villodas to admit they hadn’t fully read a book that will feature their names, at least on the first printing. Their retractions are a wake-up call for book buyers: Endorsements aren’t always about quality of writing or theological soundness. In practice, they aren’t even always an honest assessment of someone else’s work.

Rather, in an age fixated on platform, endorsements are about establishing the market appeal of an author based on their connections to famous people. As such, endorsements are usually driven by celebrity, mutual back-scratching, and power consolidated through loose social, professional, and ministry networks. There’s a reason that endorsements come through the marketing team (not editorial): Endorsements are marketing tools, not editorial reviews.

Of course, many endorsers offer blurbs for good reasons. They want to support friends and acquaintances. In a market where sales often boil down to platform, many famous people want to share the spotlight, or shine it on emerging voices. Plus, a Christian culture of niceness—and the blurring of lines between friendship and commerce—make it hard to say no to endorsement requests. (Note that Villodas said he agreed to a “favor.”) After all, whoever blurbs sparingly will also be blurbed sparingly, for God loves a cheerful blurber.

I consider it a red flag that some faith-based publishers will write an endorsement for a celebrity who doesn’t have time to write it themselves. Let me repeat that: A publishing team member, coveting a celebrity’s name on a forthcoming title, will contact them or their team and say, “We know you’re very busy because you’re very important and clearly called to do big things for God, so you probably won’t have time to read this book. But we would be so honored to have your support. Might you say something like this? [fill in endorsement].” Then the celebrity or their assistant signs off on the wording or tweaks it before it appears on the book.

Imagine if the blurb appeared as it was written:

Timely and compelling message! —Famous Pastor —Marketing Intern

It doesn’t have the same ring, but at least it’s honest.

Likewise, it’s mostly up to blurbers to be honest about their blurbs. Personally, I would love to see more blurbs that include praise and critique; one needn’t agree with every detail in a book to commend it as worth reading.

It would be unorthodox, from an industry view, for faith-based publishers to drop endorsements on principle of resisting celebrity. But it could also honor the central task to which Christian publishers are called: to edify Christian readers and deepen the faith of everyday believers, not to serve as an avenue for aspiring leaders to boost each other’s careers.

Christian publishers have been implicated in scandals around ghostwriting, plagiarism, and extending the platforms of unhealthy and abusive leaders. If they are also asking endorsers to essentially lie to book buyers, we have deep problems to attend to.

Katelyn Beaty is editorial director of Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group. She is the author of Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church.

ANOTHER ARTICLE:

 At The Gospel Coalition, Joe Carter summarized who said what:

On Tuesday, several evangelical leaders drew criticism for promoting the newest book of Paula White, a prosperity gospel preacher who has repeatedly been accused of teaching heretical doctrines. Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, said “you might want to check it out.” Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas, said to “give it to anyone looking for hope!” Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, declared, “It is powerful. I highly recommend it!” And Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, added, “Paula’s life is an encouragement to so many and I’m sure this book will encourage you.” (It’s unclear whether these men have actually read the book or if they support White’s teachings.)

Since then, several of those endorsers have removed their original tweets, such as Franklin Graham’s.

But here’s one annoying secret about book endorsements: Sometimes the endorser has not even read the book being endorsed.

This apparently open “secret” leaked some time ago, thanks in part to author Randy Alcorn. In this article, he wrote:

I’m often asked to endorse an entire book based on one chapter, and several times I’ve been sent an-already written endorsement and asked if I would agree to have my name attached to it! Personally, I don’t think this is ethical. I’ve also been told by several Christian leaders they would be glad to endorse my book, and they were having a staff person read it and give me the endorsement under the leader’s name. I’ve had to explain I don’t believe in ghost-written endorsements, so no need to send me one because I couldn’t use it. That’s an awkward situation for everybody.

This is one of several objections Alcorn shared about “acceptable” practices in Christian publishing. He also critiques ghostwriting and other practices, such as paid celebrity endorsements for nonprofit groups. Alcorn calls these “the scandal of evangelical dishonesty.”1

Earlier this week, I shared some of this info (along with a little speculation about one old, and since removed, celebrity endorsement of another book). Since then, blogger Julie Roys confirmed that, indeed, one endorser had not actually read Paula White-Cain’s book:

. . . When pressed about whether he’s certain that there’s nothing in White’s book that supports prosperity gospel, Jeffress said: “My schedule is so busy, I can’t read every book word for word. But what I did see was really her autobiographical account of her past and how God redeemed her life.”

. . . Yet when I asked Jeffress if he’s sure that White’s theology is orthodox, and that she is not a proponent of the prosperity gospel, Jeffress said, “All I can say is she claims not to be.” I asked Jeffress whether he’s investigated what White teaches for himself and he answered, “No, no . . . I’m too busy in my own ministry to launch an investigation.”

Sure, perhaps Christian leaders really are very busy. Perhaps they haven’t time to investigate another Christian leader, who has been reputably charged with promoting heresy. But in that case, perhaps you should—at minimum!—avoid endorsing the person’s book? Especially if you haven’t even read it? And even if you and the professing-Christian author share the same political fandoms?

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Episode 297-The Gospel Coalitions Sex Article

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Disciple Up #297
The Gospel Coalition’s Sex Article
By Louie Marsh, 3-8-2023

An article was published on the Gospel Coalition’s website last week. It immediately drew criticism, even from people who don’t engage in online criticism like Rick Warren. In response, TGC published a PDF of the intro and first chapter of the as yet unpublished book to help “give context.”

That only drew even more criticism and so as of March 6th, 2023 the link to that PDF became a link to an Open Letter.

I’ll be reading the letter and then reading some excerpts from the PDF which I downloaded and is no longer available. In the show notes you’ll find a few excerpts from the article but not the PDF since I don’t own it and don’t want to break the law. The link to the letter of apology is below.

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/sex-wont-save-you/

Dear Readers,

Thank you for your feedback on the Keller Center’s book excerpt from Joshua Butler posted on March 1, 2023. And thank you for your patience while we took the time to listen to our critics and the serious objections from concerned fellows, as well as discuss this matter with our Board of Directors and care for our friend Josh.

Earlier this week, we accepted Josh’s resignation as a Keller Center fellow. He will no longer lead an online cohort with the center nor speak at TGC23. While he will no longer participate in these events, Josh remains a beloved brother and friend whom we respect and care deeply about.

To our fellows and our readers, please forgive us. The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics is a new effort by TGC, and we are still learning how to work with our directors and our fellows to produce content that will serve our readers in a way that is trusted and wise. To ensure greater accountability with our fellows, we will develop better review systems for our work together. We will also review our publication processes more broadly at TGC and develop plans to ensure greater accountability to you, our readers.

Again, thank you for your patience with us. At TGC, we want to provide a venue for healthy dialogue and robust debate on important matters that affect us all. We want to model grace-filled conversations, and we want to learn from one another. In this case, we failed you and hurt many friends. Thank you in advance for your continued prayers.

For Christ and his gospel,

Julius Kim

President

The Gospel Coalition

 Excerpts from the article that started it all

Sex Won’t Save You (But It Points to the One Who Will)

MARCH 1, 2023

JOSH BUTLER

I used to look to sex for salvation. I wanted it to liberate me from loneliness; I wanted to find freedom in the arms of another. But the search failed.

Sex wasn’t designed to be your salvation but to point you to the One who is.

Union with Christ

Sex is an icon of Christ and the church. In Ephesians 5:31–32, a “hall of fame” marriage passage, the apostle Paul proclaims, “‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church” (NIV; I’ve translated proskollao as “cleave”).

Paul says both are about Christ and the church.

This should be shocking! It’s not only the giving of your vows at the altar but what happens in the honeymoon suite afterward that speaks to the life you were made for with God. A husband and wife’s life of faithful love is designed to point to greater things, but so is their sexual union! This is a gospel bombshell: sex is an icon of salvation.

How? I’d suggest the language of generosity and hospitality can help us out.

At a deeper level, generosity is giving not just your resources but your very self. And what deeper form of self-giving is there than sexual union where the husband pours out his very presence not only upon but within his wife?

Here again, what deeper form of hospitality is there than sexual union where the wife welcomes her husband into the sanctuary of her very self?

Giving and receiving are at the heart of sex.

The Bible makes this distinction explicit. The most frequent Hebrew phrase for sex is, literally, “he went into her” (wayyabo eleha). Translations often soften this for modern ears, saying he “made love to her” or they “slept together.” But the Bible is less prudish than we are, using more graphic language to describe what happens in the honeymoon tent.

Sexual Union Pictures the Gospel

This is a picture of the gospel. Christ arrives in salvation to be not only with his church but within his church. Christ gives himself to his beloved with extravagant generosity, showering his love upon us and imparting his very presence within us. Christ penetrates his church with the generative seed of his Word and the life-giving presence of his Spirit, which takes root within her and grows to bring new life into the world.

 

Inversely, back in the wedding suite, the bride embraces her most intimate guest on the threshold of her dwelling place and welcomes him into the sanctuary of her very self. She gladly receives the warmth of his presence and accepts the sacrificial offering he bestows upon the altar within her Most Holy Place.

 

Their union brings forth new creation.

Editors’ note:

Josh Butler—a fellow at the newly launched Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics—will be leading a seven-week online cohort this spring on “The Beauty of the Christian Sexual Ethic,” based on his forthcoming book Beautiful Union (Multnomah, 2023). The cohort—limited to 200 participants—will meet weekly from May 11 to June 22, 2023. Learn more and register. This article was adapted from Beautiful Union: How God’s Vision for Sex Points Us to the Good, Unlocks the True, and (Sort of) Explains Everything (Multnomah, April 2023) by Joshua Ryan Butler. Copyright © 2023 by Joshua Ryan Butler. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Josh Butler serves as a lead pastor of Redemption Tempe in Arizona, is the author of the critically acclaimed books Beautiful Union, The Skeletons in God’s Closet and The Pursuing God, and is a fellow with The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He lives in the American Southwest with his wife, Holly, daughter Aiden, and sons James and Jacob.

 

 

Episode 296 – Is It Right to Accuse an Elder-Pastor?

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Disciple Up # 296
Is It Right to Accuse an Elder (Pastor)?
By Louie Marsh, 2-27-2023

 

Link to podcast on YouTube.

 Youtube.com/@discipleuppodcast9019

Response to last week – name redacted.

  • “Oh Lucifer, the great accuser and slanderer. Praise Jesus Christ the living Son of the living God. I’ll stay focused on the cross and Christ’s redeeming blood, I suggest anyone…
  • “Oh lofty one, you’re not an elder in this church, merely a Karen seeking for yourself your own vanity.”
  • “Your post is in direct rebellion against the will of God, Mr. Pastor”
  • “Forgive me, I’m arrogant. But nonetheless, this doesn’t belong on public platforms for all to see.”

What the Bible Says:

“19Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses.” (1 Timothy 5:19, ESV)

Against an elder (κατα πρεσβυτερου [kata presbuterou]). In the official sense of verses 17f. Receive not (μη παραδεχου [mē paradechou]). Present middle imperative with μη [mē] (prohibition) of παραδεχομαι [paradechomai], to receive, to entertain. Old verb. See Acts 22:18. Accusation (κατηγοριαν [katēgorian]). Old word (from κατηγορος [katēgoros]). In N. T. only here, Titus 1:6; John 18:29 in critical text. Except (ἐκτος εἰ μη [ektos ei mē]). For this double construction see 1 Cor. 14:5; 15:2. At the mouth of (ἐπι [epi]). Idiomatic use of ἐπι [epi] (upon the basis of) as in 2 Cor. 13:1.

– A.T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1933), 1 Ti 5:19.

A Red Herring:

“15saying, “Touch not my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm!”” (Psalm 105:15, ESV)

In the verses leading up to God’s command “Do not touch my anointed ones,” we read this:

“19When you were few in number, of little account, and sojourners in it, 20wandering from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another people, 21he allowed no one to oppress them; he rebuked kings on their account, 22saying, “Touch not my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm!”” (1 Chronicles 16:19–22, ESV)

This passage refers to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When “they” (the patriarchs) were few in number, they lived as wandering strangers in a strange land (see Hebrews 11:9). Through all their travels and travails, God protected them, increased their number, and prevented the powerful rulers of the lands where they stayed from harming them.

David applied it to himself:

1 Samuel 26:9–11 (ESV): 9 But David said to Abishai, “Do not destroy him, for who can put out his hand against the LORD’s anointed and be guiltless?” 10 And David said, “As the LORD lives, the LORD will strike him, or his day will come to die, or he will go down into battle and perish. 11 The LORD forbid that I should put out my hand against the LORD’s anointed. But take now the spear that is at his head and the jar of water, and let us go.”

Remember: There’s a big difference between questioning what someone says, and questioning their character.

“16Rejoice always, 17pray without ceasing, 18give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 19Do not quench the Spirit. 20Do not despise prophecies, 21but test everything; hold fast what is good. 22Abstain from every form of evil.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16–22, ESV)

What should our attitude be towards our leaders?

1) Respect them – or if you can’t respect them you respect the position they hold

2) Approach them in love and with witnesses.

3) Have the goal of finding the truth and restoration foremost in your mind

 Please Get In Touch!

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