Married to the Empire

Together, Emperor Justinian I and Empress Theodora I transformed the Byzantine landscape.
by Gregory and Frederica Mathewes-Green

The ranks of Eastern Orthodox saints are filled with celibates and monastics, but not all Orthodox saints followed such paths. Some saints had families and lived "in the world," and sometimes a husband and wife team were honored together. Such is the case with Justinian and Theodora, who enjoyed a long and intellectually fruitful marriage while holding positions of worldly power as rulers of the Byzantine Empire.

When Justinian and Theodora ascended the throne during the mid-sixth century, the entire western empire was in disarray. Barbarian invasions disrupted lines of communication, making governing almost impossible. Over the 40 years of his rule, Justinian made reunion a central goal: "We hope that God will return us the lands which the ancient Romans ruled as far as two oceans," Justinian wrote, but the center of Roman life had shifted to Byzantium and the old unity would not be seen again.

Justinian was more successful as a builder. The great Monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai was built at his command. He constructed basilicas in Ravenna, Italy, and elsewhere, but the crown of all Byzantine churches is the celebrated Hagia Sophia, in Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey), which he built in 537. The glorious, multi-domed church served Christians for 800 years. After Constantinople fell to Turkish invaders 500 years ago, Hagia Sophia became a Mosque.

While her husband was building churches, formalizing a code of law, and attempting to reunite the empire, Theodora took on the role of moral reformer. Biographers discreetly note that she had led a dissolute youth; perhaps in her name, Theodora or "Gift of God," we can see a glimpse of her repentance. She was a courageous and strong-willed woman, even more steadfast than her husband: when Constantinople was under siege and Justinian wanted to flee, it was Theodora who insisted they stay.

Theodora was intrigued by theology, particularly by the arguments of the "Monophysites." These taught, contrary to the Council of Chalcedon, that Christ did not have both human and divine natures; he had only one nature (monophysis)—divine. Justinian tried, for Theodora's sake, to bring the Monophysites back into the church, though this ultimately required the calling of another ecumenical council. In the end, the attempt restoration fell short.

Perhaps the largest question facing Justinian was the relationship of church and state. As a devout son of the church and simultaneously lord of the state, he was in a unique position to consider it. He developed a strategy he called "symphony." Since the imperial throne served God's will in the world, he reasoned, the church could be safely incorporated into the state and function under its protection. But in practice, this too came too close to simply subsuming the church into the state, relegating it to the role of a supporting structure. The tension between church and state was not to be resolved in Justinian's lifetime, if ever.

Theodora and Justinian attempted much but accomplished less than they would have liked. With clear vision and firm leadership in a tumultuous age, this pair of married saints left a legacy of beautiful buildings and can be said to have transformed the landscape of Byzantine history.

Copyright © 2007 Christian History & Biography, or the author. Click for reprint information.

MR. WILSON'S BOOKSHELF
Land of Lincoln
And more on the gospel in political captivity: avoid stupid arguments.
by John Wilson | posted 07/23/07

The soundtrack this week features "The Story," from Brandi Carlile's album of the same title. Yes, the lyrics are banal, and yes the expert arrangement by the estimable T-Bone Burnett is a bit too pat, but nevertheless I find her voice ravishing, and I like the sentiment.

I shudder to think what Wyndham Lewis would have had to say about Brandi Carlisle. But one of his obiter dicta came to mind while I was reading Andrew Ferguson's delightful book Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe's America. "Wherever there is objective truth," Lewis wrote, "there is satire." He was irritated by dismissive responses to his fiction, but he wasn't making the point simply to defend his own work. Indeed his observation cuts not only against received opinion's condescension to satire (hence Christopher Buckley, for example, is never mentioned in the pompous standard accounts of "literary fiction" today) but also against many self-satisfied satirists and their complacent audiences, who assume that there is something uniquely satirizable about their chosen targets. Seen in a certain light, we are all rather ridiculous.

That truth, in tension with a savage pride, sent Lewis off the rails for quite a long time. All satirists are vulnerable to his fate—not a few suffer bouts of madness, as Swift and Waugh did. Andrew Ferguson seems to have maintained his equanimity. Born and raised in Illinois, he got the Lincoln mystique at the source. But it was only many decades later that he thought to examine it, in a spirit neither debunking nor hagiographic, and free too of the constraints of academic discourse, though he was perfectly willing to take what he could use from the professors. He read. He traveled. He observed:

One Christian publicist after another saw in Lincoln's life eerie resemblances to the life of Christ: both Jesus and Lincoln were born of carpenters and rose from lowly beginnings, both were storytellers, both were killed on Good Friday, both were saviors—of the world, in one case, of the Union, in the other.

Take a second look at that last bit—"of the world, in one case, of the Union, in the other"—and you'll understand, I trust, why I think Andrew Ferguson is one of the best writers we have these days. He conveys the bathos of the parallel with understatement so cool it approaches absolute zero.

Of course he has a whole bag of tricks, some of them enjoyably unsubtle. At a Subway in Richmond he mentions to two women sharing his table that he's in town for a conference on Lincoln and American history.

"History!" one of them said. "Isn't that fascinating!"
Her friend nodded and chewed her slice of pizza thoughtfully. "History can be such a learning experience," she said.

A whole book—or even a whole chapter—in this register would be intolerably smug, as many satiric books are. Not this one. What drives the narrative is not a sense of superiority but rather an alert openness to the Real, which in its manifold wonders includes a gathering of the Association of Lincoln Presenters in Santa Claus, Indiana. Go to the nearest bookstore. Read Ferguson's chapter on this event (Chapter 6, "A Sea of Lincolns"), which is under 15 pages. You can sip a drink while you read. I'll bet you won't be able to put the book back in its stack.

Ferguson's book also turns out to have a bearing on our ongoing conversation sparked by Charles Marsh's new book Wayward Christian Soldiers: Freeing the Gospel from Political Captivity. Thanks to all of you who have continued the exchange—in particular D. W. Congdon on The Fire and the Rose and historian Paul Harvey on the recently founded blog Religion in American History. (By the way, one of the contributing editors to this very promising blog is B&C contributor Randall Stephens, whose book The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South is coming from Harvard Univ. Press in January 2008. Add that title to your wish list.)

In church this past Sunday, our pastor, Rick Allnutt, continued a series on 2 Timothy. One of the verses he touched on was 2 Tim. 2:14, where we find an injunction to "avoid disputing about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers" (NRV). In another version of the passage, from which our pastor read, we are urged to avoid "foolish and stupid arguments."

I took those words seriously. So how do we avoid stupid arguments, disputations "about words"? One way, it seems to me, is to be as clear as we can about the issues at hand. What are we in fact talking about? From my point of view—open to correction—that seems to have become rather blurred as the conversation has proceeded. Charles Marsh contends that the "partisan captivity of the gospel in the United States is the gravest theological crisis of the Christian faith in our time." That's a sweeping judgment, accompanied by similarly sweeping pronouncements in the course of Marsh's book. Is this central contention true? How should such a claim be assessed? What sort of evidence counts? (For instance, would it be relevant to look back at the cover stories from the last 12 issues of Christianity Today magazine? Would that be one small chunk of useful evidence?)

And this is where Andrew Ferguson's book comes in. To answer the questions raised by Marsh's book, we have to pay attention to the America we actually inhabit, as Ferguson magnificently does in Land of Lincoln.

John Wilson is the editor of Books & Culture.

Copyright © 2007 Books & Culture. Click for reprint information.

Leader's Insight: Screams in the Desert
When my ministry adventure faltered, I found spiritual help from unexpected direction.
by James Walters, guest columnist

My grand ministry adventure out west was not turning out the way I'd hoped. My wife and I were so excited. With a sense of God's leading, we packed our stuff and moved 3,000 miles away from our families and friends and everything we knew. But it turned out we'd made some fatal assumptions. We thought we were moving to the progressive, cutting-edge, free-thinking West Coast, but the town we were moving to was in many ways more conservative than the Bible Belt where we grew up. And though we often associated Washington with near-constant rainfall, the area where we landed was a bona fide desert—eight inches of rain a year!

It was a spiritual desert for me as well.

It was then that I found a scrap of paper with a name and phone number. A friend had recommended a spiritual director to my wife. At the time I'd never heard of spiritual direction. It sounded a bit vague to me, might even be New Age for all I knew. But I was starting to get desperate.

After talking on the phone with this woman a few times, I realized that I didn't really feel comfortable with her. I told her so and asked her if she knew of other directors in the area. She graciously recommended a Lutheran pastor the next town over.

The first time I made the 45 minute drive to Paul's office, it just felt right. It felt right to be intentional about doing something proactive to tend my own soul. It felt right to head out of the town where I knew so many people. As I drove, I reflected on how I had succumbed to one of ministry's classic pitfalls: I had gotten so busy doing things for God that I had neglected my vital connection with God.

This is not counseling
I hardly knew what to expect the first time I sat across from Paul. (His clerical collar threw me off a bit.) I'd had some counseling before and halfway expected it to be like that. It was and it wasn't.

It was like counseling in that Paul listened well, something I sorely needed. But Paul talked a lot less than the average counselor, so much less that there were sometimes long silences in our conversation. It took me a while to get used to that. But in hindsight, I was grateful for the silences, because I really wasn't looking for a diagnosis. I just needed a safe place to process the joys and frustrations of life and ministry. I needed someone to do that with who wasn't expecting anything of me, someone outside of my ministry circle. Paul provided that.

Unlike a counselor, Paul let me (the "directee") set the agenda. My desire was for spiritual growth, rather that identifying and overcoming some particular dysfunction, as is the goal in counseling.

As a spiritual director, Paul welcomed God into the process as a fully active third party, and kept the focus on what God was doing in my life, in contrast with counseling, where God may or may not be acknowledged in the process.

Because spiritual direction is rooted in our unique stories, I handed him a detailed spiritual autobiography. It felt vulnerable, but I knew that for Paul to help me, it would be crucial that he understand me, my spiritual journey, and my sojourn in the desert.

If I had to distill to one word what impelled me to make the long drive to see him each month, it would be "presence." Paul was someone who was fully there when I was with him. As Thomas Merton describes it, "Spiritual direction is, in reality, nothing more than a way of leading us to see and obey the real Director, the Holy Spirit hidden in the depths of our soul."

Hard lessons learned
About four months into our time together, my supervising pastor was dismissed for "conduct unbecoming … " Like the rest of our church body, I was stunned. Not to mention saddened, confused, bitter, and angry. We all had broken hearts.

As Paul helped me unpack the effects of my boss's sin, I found that when he did talk, he usually had amazing things to say. As I would vent my anger and struggles to forgive this man, Paul would remind me of Jesus' example—that the only way to truly forgive another is to bear the weight of his sin and to grapple with its ugly consequences. Most of the time, we dodge this unpleasant process, Paul said. It's just so much easier to rent a movie, check the to-do list, or inhale another cookie. But if we choose to bypass this hard work, we risk inflicting our repressed anger on innocent others. "All violence is unsuffered suffering," was how he put it.

Ironically, it was this advice, in part, that led me to resign my position several months later. I realized that for me to accept the consequences of my boss's sin meant admitting that my family and I were emotionally exhausted. It also meant, in spite of some recent "successes," admitting that I didn't have the mental and spiritual reserves to pull off another busy ministry season. It meant that we needed to move back to the East Coast, take a break from vocational ministry, and regroup with the help of our family and friends.

I wish I could take credit for having the wisdom to seek out a spiritual director or for selecting one as skilled as Paul. But the whole thing was a gift I merely stumbled into.

I am grateful to Paul for his investment in me, for being a lifeline in the desert. I'll train to be a spiritual director next year.

James Walters lives and ministers in North Carolina.

To respond to this newsletter, write to Newsletter@LeadershipJournal.net.

Copyright © 2007 by the author or Christianity Today International/Leadership Journal.
Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
July 30, 2007

Sorrow But No Regrets

My life in the troubled, redemptive church.

Christine A. Scheller | posted 7/25/2007 08:55AM

I'm not sure what to think about church anymore.

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My home church, which just celebrated its 30th anniversary, is on its sixth pastor, and he is a gem. But the path to him was rocky. We gathered, just 25 of us, in the community room above a firehouse when I was 12 years old. My young father had died suddenly, and my mother had taken it as a sign to get right with the Lord. Running up the stairs every week past shiny red trucks and perfectly aligned yellow coats felt like home.

The founding pastor was a gentle shepherd who communicated peace and safety to this fearful girl. Then a few troublesome congregants ran him off and replaced him with a star who had served with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. What had been a casual, hippy-era church was then infiltrated by old-school Baptists. Tension between traditionalists and innovators gnawed at the ministry.

One day, when I was an 18-year-old new convert and the pastor at the time was 60-something, he took me out evangelizing with him. Afterward, we went back to his house for ice cream. I dished it out, and he suggested I come snuggle with him on the couch. Having seen the unholy mingle with the holy in each of my first two pastors, I should have expected to see it again. Instead, my naiveté continued.

Our fourth pastor split the church and started anew in one of our former locations. He resigned from the pulpit on a Sunday morning instead of preaching a sermon, and allowed his supporters to fight for him while he played the invisible man. He acted with such cowardice that when I would see him at the occasional wedding or funeral, the only thing I could think to say was, You're like a seductress who stole someone else's family. But I said nothing. He later had an affair with a congregant and was fired.

Our denomination's regional director mediated the conflict that ensued. This voice of authority told us what we wanted to hear: The church split had been primarily the other side's fault. So, of course, we made this arbitrator our pastor. When his office-time pornography addiction was uncovered, he took his computer and fled. We should have known there was a problem. He had come to the Halloween alternative party dressed as Fabio, the romance novel cover model.

With an understandable distrust of strangers, the congregation finally voted in a longtime member as pastor. The dwindling remnant merged with another congregation, and for the past six years, there has been no significant division or growth. Is church death inevitable, or is growth overrated?

From the Inside

My next church was a racially diverse congregation that had been founded by two former leaders of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I fell in love with the Holy Spirit in this community. Then consecutive youth leaders divorced (a stumbling block to my children) and tension surfaced in the leadership. The church was located in Middletown, New Jersey, the town reported by The New York Times to have had the highest casualty count in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Amid the stress, strained relationships broke, and the church split in May 2002.

Despite the turmoil and our dysfunctional church experiences, my family moved to California so that my husband, Jeff, could study for the pastorate. The goings-on at the megachurch where he was a student and then an assistant pastor made everything that came before seem like Sunday school games. During Jeff's tenure on staff, both we and others were victimized by abuse of power. We also witnessed sexual misconduct and abuse, dishonesty, cruelty and cowardice, and a contentious church culture that fed on gossip. I have never seen anything like it, inside or outside the church.

This experience cured me of both naiveté and certain kinds of ambition. It also exhausted our resources. We are just now beginning to recover, 18 months later.

Christians Anonymous

An early step in our path toward wholeness was one-on-one ministry to Orange County, California's homeless population. Jeff and I took jobs at a homeless ministry in the high desert. Our directors had been missionaries in Asia during the ten years that we were traversing the landscape of American evangelicalism. The differences between them and us were startling. Jeff and I were not jaded, but we were marked by grief. We limped—in part because our children were jaded. And we saw disaster lurking behind every craggy rock. Our coworkers walked with a skip in their step, and danger didn't concern them much. This was both liberating and disconcerting.

Every morning, we had chapel in the barn loft, with the sound of cackling chickens filtering through the cracks in the walls and a view of dusty blue hills in the distance. But our sanatorium experience was not to last. We realized that our family needed a respite from vocational ministry, and we headed back home after a few months.

Nevertheless, the ranch was like a dream that refreshed my heart, and God allowed that dream to breathe life into two wounded disciples.

We settled in with a group of Anglican reformers. We were blessed by the freshness of the ancient rhythm of the liturgy, the warmth and joyfulness of the community, the ministry of healing prayer, and the stunningly beautiful Communion rite in which congregants remained connected hand-to-shoulder as they received the body and blood of our Lord. Here, too, our sex-saturated culture intruded, though, and the rector faltered and resigned six months after we arrived. Now we offer ourselves in service to those in the first throes of grief.

I can look at this journey and see a trail of folly. Or I can look back with tenderness and see churches and pastors that taught me all I know about loving Jesus and being loved by him. I choose tenderness because Jesus Christ exists on earth within his sin-damaged band of followers. This is the realization that breaks us—there is no better church.

"Sometimes we endure the judgment of God because we happen to belong to a people or a group that, as a whole, deserves the judgment," CT managing editor Mark Galli wrote recently in a blog post. "Some therefore suffer for their sins, while others suffer for the sins of others. The former is the suffering of cleansing; the latter is substitutionary suffering. Both are redemptive, and thus both can be accepted with grace."

In one of my favorite books, Into the Depths of God, Calvin Miller writes, "The trials that keep us kneeling before our lifelong assignments are never haphazard. All the sufferings that are thrust upon us can serve to bring us to maturity." Then he makes this terrible statement: "Hurt is the essential ingredient of ultimate Christ-likeness."

I remember sitting at lunch one day with the wife of a famous evangelist. As she talked about the church that she and her husband had grown steadily for many years, envy pierced my heart. I wondered why I had known so much sorrow in church. I did not and do not understand it. But I sense a calling not of my own choosing.

And so, with Francis de Sales, I proclaim, "If he is with me, I care not where I go."

Christine A. Scheller is a writer living in Southern California.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Grace—That's So Sick

The church seems to be an embarrassment to everyone except its Lord.

Mark Galli | posted 7/26/2007 08:27AM

One afternoon during my undergraduate years, I was sitting by the college library reading when two students walked by talking about the crucifixion of Christ. Naturally, my ears perked up. They were deeply critical of the whole idea. One of them summed up the nature of their complaint by exclaiming: "Dying on a cross for the sins of the world—that is so sick!"

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This was one of many moments at the University of California at Santa Cruz when the "scandal of the Cross" was evident. In the 1970s, "the establishment" was under fierce attack at all American universities, and Christianity, an upstanding member of that establishment, took its share of lumps. This was especially true at UC Santa Cruz, which had been founded only a few years earlier as a radical experiment in undergraduate education.

We Christians on campus spent a fair bit of time and energy trying to show our fellow students that Christians were not as stupid, moribund, irrelevant, and hypercritical as everyone had been led to believe. I've discovered all that damage control was for naught: After living another 35 years as a Christian, I've come to see that like my fellow believers, I really am stupid, moribund, irrelevant, and hypercritical, and that Jesus' death on a cross for sin is just one of many "sick" things I believe.

Both a recent conversation and a book resurrected those college memories. The conversation was with a 20-something Christian who told me a few anecdotes about other 20-something Christians who refuse to identify themselves with the word Christian. They feel it comes with too much baggage and only makes their non-Christian friends think of stuffy churches, televangelists, the Crusades, and witch trials.

The book was Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity (Baker, October 2007) by David Kinnaman. The book's opening line is "Christianity has an image problem," and it proceeds to describe the many problems secular "busters and mosaics" (also known as generations X and Y) have with the faith. Though the book is grounded on statistical research, the list of complaints will not surprise anyone who reads the newspaper or has attended church recently: The church is proselytistic, anti-homosexual, sheltered, politicized, and judgmental.

Unchristian's motive is praiseworthy—the author implores us to take these generations' critiques seriously as we try to call them to follow Jesus. And the book's central assumption seems reasonable enough: If we could just get Christians to act like Christians, more people would be attracted to Jesus.

But the problem with the book, and with those who eschew the Christian label, is that they fail to take the sinfulness of the church seriously enough. They also fail to recognize how far the scandal of the Cross reaches. Simply put, Jesus not only died for but also chooses to associate with sheltered, judgmental, proselytizing hypocrites who have put their faith in him. In fact, he's willing to let them muck up his "brand," willing to let each collection of potential televangelists and crusaders be known as a "church of Jesus Christ."

Part of the scandal of the Cross is the scandal of grace. And part of the scandal of grace is that I am part and parcel of the company of the graced.

My being a Christian means I am a member of a brotherhood of sinners, some of the most embarrassing sort. Even worse, to be a Christian is to acknowledge that I have been, at heart, a televangelist, a crusader, a sheltered, judgmental, proselytizing hypocrite.

I do not mean to suggest that we should be indifferent to such sins. If books and conversations like the ones I've experienced prod Christians to change their ways, it will be all to the good. But the church is always in need of reform, and its behavior will always be a scandal to anyone with moral sensibilities.

When we invite people to follow Jesus, we're inviting them into the desperately sinful church that Jesus, for some odd reason, loves. To be a Christian—or whatever term you'd prefer—is to identify not just with Jesus or with the healthy church of our imagination, but also with the tragically dysfunctional church, which is mercifully embraced, if not by us, then certainly by the One who was a scandal in his own day.

Mark Galli is senior managing editor of Christianity Today. He is author ofJesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God (Baker). You are invited to comment below or on his blog.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The Company of Sinners
A divinely inspired institution, the church is full of ordinary people who sometimes say and do cruel, stupid things.
By Kathleen Norris

April 3, 2000

Church is other people, a worshiping community. The worship, or praise of God, does not take place only when people gather on Sunday morning, but when they gather to paint the house of an elderly shut-in, when they visit someone in the hospital or console the bereaved, when the Sunday-school kids sing Christmas carols at the nursing home. If a church has life, its "programs" are not just activity, but worship. And this is helpful, because if the Sunday-morning service falls flat, it is the other forms of worship that sustain this life. When formal worship seems less than worshipful—and it often does—if I am bored by the sheer weight of verbiage in Presbyterian worship—and I often am—I have only to look around at the other people in the pews to remind myself that we are engaged in something important, something that transcends our feeble attempts at worship, let alone my crankiness.

During the six years I lived in Manhattan following college, I was surrounded by churches but rarely went into one. But after I moved to my grandparents' small town, I began attending my grandmother's church in much the same way that I had begun inhabiting her kitchen. At first, it was an exercise in nostalgia; the place itself seemed only partly mine. And when I finally joined the church, I could pretend that I wasn't doing it for me so much as for the pastors, a clergy couple who had become good friends.

Like so many clergy in the western Plains during the mid-1980s, they had been blindsided by the onset of an extreme economic downturn. Small-town people don't like to face trouble head-on; we tend to shove unpleasantness under the rug. While this seems to make it easier for us to get along, it does not work well as a form of conflict management, ...

Missing the Rupture
How two groups address the real issues behind church splits
Christine Scheller

May 1, 2003

At church one sunday morning in British Columbia, a young mother approached evangelist Ron Susek. Her family wanted to begin attending the church, she said, but would he mind if they didn't join it?

"We've been through a church split, and we don't want any obligation or responsibility," she told him. "We want the freedom to walk away."

Susek could empathize with the wounded parishioner: he had reluctantly served as interim pastor after the split of a large church. He was so troubled by that experience that he collected his insights into what would become an influential church-split treatise: Firestorm (Baker, 1999).

The book serves as a resource for two organizations devoted to assisting churches on the verge of rupture: Firestorm Intervention and Restoration Ministry (FIRM—a division of Susek Evangelistic Association), and Peacemaker Ministries. Especially for churches not backed by denominational structures, such organizations can be lifesavers.

Sin at the Root

Susek identifies various factors contributing to church quarrels in Firestorm: destructive family backgrounds, resistance to authority, rapid church growth, and the "condition of the human heart," among others.

That last factor is the one Peacemaker Ministries emphasizes. Dave Edling, director of church relations for Peacemaker Ministries, says his organization tells troubled churches, "Your problem is not psychological. Your problem is sin."

"Disagreements begin," Edling says, "when the desires that battle within us, as described in James 4:1, lead to expectations of others—maybe an over-elevation of who we think we are, and what our rights are, and what we deserve to have."

Peacemaker Ministries uses Firestorm with the

Editorial: Don't Give Up on the Church
Though often embattled and dysfunctional, the church is still where God chooses to meet us.
by Richard A. Kauffman

October 6, 1997

Sometimes you have to suffer as much from the church as you do for it, said Flannery O'Connor. Some of my friends share her sentiment. Caught in the crossfire of church conflict, they considered giving up on the church entirely. Bruised and abused, they wondered, Is it worth all the hassle? And they asked me, "Church—who needs it?"

"I gave up my faith in the church a long time ago, even though I still believe in it." I told them that my faith isn't ultimately in the church. "That is misplaced faith, idolatry. My faith is in God. But I still believe in the church because it is central to what God is doing in the world—forming a reconciled and reconciling people who are a light to the nations."

One of the besetting sins of American Christianity is its failure to take the church seriously, to see its essential role in the mission of God. There is in the United States a growing phenomenon of Christians unconnected to any church, a gap between what George Gallup calls "believers and belongers." A simple comparison of the number of people who say they believe Jesus Christ is God or Son of God (84 percent) with the number who attend church regularly (43 percent) illustrates this gap. And, church-growth specialists tell us, younger believers have little sense of belonging to any church tradition. The "Jesus and me" spirituality of parachurch Christianity has triumphed over the corporate consciousness of the historic churches. Is this not a contradiction of terms: a churchless Christian? A freelance disciple? To become a Christian disciple means not just deciding to follow Jesus, but also joining with a community of disciples bound together by their common commitment to their Lord.

Sometimes we get things turned around: ...

The Desert Experience

When we follow Jesus into the desert, we are likely to experience what could be called ego desperation. Basically this means acknowledging that our life is not nor ever will be completely under our control. In the desert, the pillars of human power, pleasure, and possession are smashed. One feels powerless, miles away from sources of immediate gratification, the owner of little or nothing of material value. One cannot barter one's way out of loneliness and silence. One can only wait until it passes on the wings of faith and hope.

—Susan Muto in Pathways of Spiritual Living. Christianity Today, Vol. 32, no. 14.

Married to the Empire
Together, Emperor Justinian I and Empress Theodora I transformed the Byzantine landscape.
by Gregory and Frederica Mathewes-Green

The ranks of Eastern Orthodox saints are filled with celibates and monastics, but not all Orthodox saints followed such paths. Some saints had families and lived "in the world," and sometimes a husband and wife team were honored together. Such is the case with Justinian and Theodora, who enjoyed a long and intellectually fruitful marriage while holding positions of worldly power as rulers of the Byzantine Empire.

When Justinian and Theodora ascended the throne during the mid-sixth century, the entire western empire was in disarray. Barbarian invasions disrupted lines of communication, making governing almost impossible. Over the 40 years of his rule, Justinian made reunion a central goal: "We hope that God will return us the lands which the ancient Romans ruled as far as two oceans," Justinian wrote, but the center of Roman life had shifted to Byzantium and the old unity would not be seen again.

Justinian was more successful as a builder. The great Monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai was built at his command. He constructed basilicas in Ravenna, Italy, and elsewhere, but the crown of all Byzantine churches is the celebrated Hagia Sophia, in Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey), which he built in 537. The glorious, multi-domed church served Christians for 800 years. After Constantinople fell to Turkish invaders 500 years ago, Hagia Sophia became a Mosque.

While her husband was building churches, formalizing a code of law, and attempting to reunite the empire, Theodora took on the role of moral reformer. Biographers discreetly note that she had led a dissolute youth; perhaps in her name, Theodora or "Gift of God," we can see a glimpse of her repentance. She was a courageous and strong-willed woman, even more steadfast than her husband: when Constantinople was under siege and Justinian wanted to flee, it was Theodora who insisted they stay.

Theodora was intrigued by theology, particularly by the arguments of the "Monophysites." These taught, contrary to the Council of Chalcedon, that Christ did not have both human and divine natures; he had only one nature (monophysis)—divine. Justinian tried, for Theodora's sake, to bring the Monophysites back into the church, though this ultimately required the calling of another ecumenical council. In the end, the attempt restoration fell short.

Perhaps the largest question facing Justinian was the relationship of church and state. As a devout son of the church and simultaneously lord of the state, he was in a unique position to consider it. He developed a strategy he called "symphony." Since the imperial throne served God's will in the world, he reasoned, the church could be safely incorporated into the state and function under its protection. But in practice, this too came too close to simply subsuming the church into the state, relegating it to the role of a supporting structure. The tension between church and state was not to be resolved in Justinian's lifetime, if ever.

Theodora and Justinian attempted much but accomplished less than they would have liked. With clear vision and firm leadership in a tumultuous age, this pair of married saints left a legacy of beautiful buildings and can be said to have transformed the landscape of Byzantine history.

Copyright © 2007 Christian History & Biography, or the author. Click for reprint information.

Thumbnail on The House Church

While 20-somethings pull out of traditional churches, more people are leaving organized churches altogether, according to revolutionary pollster George Barna. Your new competitor is not the church down the street, but the house next door. Here is how Barna sizes up the House Church experience:

Average size of gathering: 20 people (including 7 children in gatherings with kids)

Gatherings including kids: 64%
Of those, kids meeting with adults for whole session: 41%

House churches meeting weekly: 80%

Average length of service: 2 hours

Include formal teaching: 76%

Eat as well as meet: 85%

Satisfaction with spiritual depth of the experience: 59%

Satisfaction with personal connectedness: 66%

Attenders who have met with their house church one year or less: 75%

—with info from Barna.org

Copyright © 2007 by the author or Christianity Today International/Leadership Journal.
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Spring 2007, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2, Page 12

Nearer, My God, to Three
This pastor's ambitious goal—three hours in prayer daily—is inspiring and a little irritating.
By Dee Duke

April 1, 2004

Never would I have thought a life-changing purchase would only cost a quarter. I'm always looking for bargain books, but I didn't think the one that would change my life would be hidden at a garage sale.

It was the biography of George Müeller, and it wasn't so much the man's story that changed my life as it was the legacy of those who had formerly owned the book.

Click to see a related article.

God put the book into my hands two days before I attended a prayer summit. I was desperate. I was just burned out and frustrated as I could be. Our church wasn't growing, I couldn't seem to manage all of our ministry activities, and I could just feel that something was missing.

I didn't read much of the book prior to the summit, but I did notice that someone had put a 5x7 card in the back with three columns. Each column had four names, names like missionaries David Brainerd and Rees Howells and great preachers such as Finney and Spurgeon. There were 12 names in all, and behind every one was the inscription "three hours."

On the bus ride home from the prayer summit, I pulled the book out and contemplated the inscription behind each of those names.

I knew I didn't want to go back to my church and have everything stay the same. So I wrote out seven goals and taped them in my Bible, promising myself to read them every day. The very first one I wrote down was that I was going to pray three hours a day. I'd been praying five minutes a day up until that point, so this was a radical shift for me.

But I did it. In the ten years since I made that commitment, my life has been changed. My church has been changed. And now pastors across the country are asking me to share how it happened.

Simply put, we made the commitment to pray.

"But," I can hear you say, "it's not that simple."

Motivated, but not by guilt

As a pastor I knew how important prayer was, but I didn't commit to it like I should have. I didn't even realize how much prayer I was missing until I bought that 25-cent book.

The Devil knows prayer is the only thing he has no defense against. I think he works overtime in trying to get us not to pray. He creates excuses for us, and they're always the same three:

"I'm too busy."

"I can do it tomorrow."

"I really don't need to pray for an hour (much less three)."

I hear the same reasons given wherever I go. I don't think there's anything that the Devil's going to resist and fight against as much as prayer.

What do we do? It is a major battle to get people to give much time to prayer. The answer can be found in 2 Corinthians 9:6: "Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously."

Prayer is the same. You sow little and reap little. Sow much, you reap much. And the missing ingredient in most churches and most Christian's lives is the volume of prayer.

The more I study prayer, the more obvious it becomes that volume is something God expects. Jesus prayed all night. The leaders of the early church prayed 10 days straight before the church began. The admonition is clearly to be devoted to prayer.

Prayer is the well from which other things emerge. The effect of prayer is a force that makes a difference environmentally in our country, in our society, and in the presence of God. It's not a "Please, pass the potatoes" kind of thing, but rather an ongoing discipline that makes a difference in the environment. Prayer changes attitudes. The very presence of God through prayer in a person's life changes their responsiveness to the gospel.

Prayer even changes the level of crime in a community. All of these things are going to be influenced by the volume of prayer.

When I returned home from that prayer summit and stepped off the bus, I knew it was time to make a change, time to drastically change my prayer life.

The next Sunday I stood before the congregation and confessed my prayerlessness. I said, "I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm going to be at the church to pray every morning at six and every evening at nine." All I wanted was just one other person to pray with me. Our corporate commitment to prayer started with two meetings a day, and it's just grown from there.

And the effects of prayer are evident: Unity, for instance, has grown substantially in our church as prayer has increased. The quality of love in our church has increased. So has the interest in evangelism, and boldness in our witnessing. None of these are things we specifically pray about all the time, but they are results of the increased prayer life of our church. And any one of those is worth the time we give in prayer.

It's been interesting to see God work these past 10 years. The church has grown from 200 members to 1,800, and I know it's because of the increased emphasis on prayer.

Steadily increased heat

Maintaining the prayer mission of our church is like boiling water. You have to keep the heat on all the time. Once you take the heat off, it stops. A lot of persuading has to take place. And the leadership must be committed in building a church of prayer.

I've found the best way to develop a good prayer life is through progression. Start out with one 15-minute block of time once a week. Get that down so you're faithful to it, then add a 15 minute-block on another day, and another until you get it down. Once each day of your week has a 15-minute block, add five minutes on one of those days, then another. It may take six months or a year to build up to an hour a day, but that's all right.

What's important is progression toward the goal. When a person begins to pray for one hour in a setting, they begin to sense God's presence in ways they've never experienced before.

At least two of the hours I spend in prayer each day are with groups at church. Our corporate prayer has become dynamic and powerful. But my personal prayer time has grown also. I often pray aloud while walking. This helps me keep focused, as does an extensive stack of cards I use to prompt prayers for church members, missionaries, and nations.

Pressure off

What you sow is what you reap, and that's certainly true in prayer. It may cost some time, but what we get back in blessing, energy, vision, and insight more than makes up for the sacrifice of time. Anything you give away in prayer, I've found, you get back in greater blessings.

Praying now three hours a day, I feel considerably less time pressure than I used to when I prayed five minutes a day. I don't feel so weighed down in ministry, and that's probably the greatest blessing.

Most pastors say they are tired. God tells how to avoid being weary in Philippians 4:6, which says, "Be anxious for nothing but in everything with prayer and thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God which passes all comprehension will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."

And all because of a book I bought for a quarter. A book that had a card, and a card that noted "three hours, three hours, three hours."

It worked for those guys, and it's working for me.

Dee Duke is pastor of Jefferson Baptist Church in Jefferson, Oregon.

Copyright © 2004 by the author or Christianity Today International/Leadership Journal.
Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.

Three-a-day Pray-ers
These Christian leaders were committed to prayer. With others on the list of 12 who inspired Dee Duke, each prayed three hours or more every day. We asked Duke, "What's so important about three hours a day?"

"I don't know," he answered honestly, "but they prayed and God responded."

David Brainerd
1718-1747
Pioneering missionary to Native Americans
His journals detail reliance on prayerfor protection and direction in the wilderness: "This morning I spent about two hours in secret duties and was enabled more than ordinarily to agonize for immortal souls. Though it was early in the morning and the sun scarcely shined at all, yet my body was quite wet with sweat."

George Mueller
1805-1898
English pastor and child evangelist
Through prayer alone, he relied on God to provide for his ministry to tens of thousands of orphans, and saw more than $7 million come—big money in his day.

R.A. Torrey wrote: "When it was laid upon George Mueller's heart to pray for anything, he would search the Scriptures to find if there was some promise that covered the case. Sometimes he would search the Scriptures for days before he presented his petition to God. And then when he found the promise, with his open Bible before him, and his finger upon that promise, he would plead that promise, and so he received what he asked. He always prayed with an open Bible before him."

E.M. Bounds
1835-1915
Pastor, revivalist, Civil War chaplain
He relied on prayer to sustain him on the battlefields and to bring revival to churches ravaged by war. W.H. Hodge, later Bounds's assistant, saw his prayer life up close when he gave Bounds lodging during a revival: "I was surprised early next morning to see a man bathing himself before day and then see him get down and begin to pray. I said to myself, 'He will not disturb us, but will soon finish.' He kept on softly for hours, interceding and weeping softly, for me and my indifference, and for all the ministers of God. … Next morning he was up praying again, and for ten days he was up early praying for hours. I became intensely interested and thanked God for sending him. 'At last,' I said, 'I have found a man that really prays.'"

Rees Howells
1879-1950
Welsh miner turned missionary and revivalist
Howells founded a Bible college with 15 cents in his pocket and Mueller's "pray and the money will come" principle. Later he led an intercessory prayer movement to counter Nazi advances in World War II. Howells taught his team that intercession is completely voluntary—we are never forced into prayer—but when God gives us a prayer we are responsible to pray it through to completion.

July 26, 2007

A Former Pastor Goes Church Shopping

And he wrestles with the advantages and disadvantages of mainline and nondenominational churches.

How does a former pastor choose a church? That is the question Andy Rowell and his wife are facing after their relocation to a new community. The process has opened their eyes to the differences and blessings of denominational and nondenominational churches. Although they’ve still not made a decision, Andy shares his reflections on the process so far.

“Occupational hazard,” that is what my wife and I call it. We cannot help but thoroughly analyze churches we visit. My wife and I both have M.Div. degrees and have served as pastors. So when we need to pick a new church, overanalyzing churches is almost inevitable—an occupational hazard.

A month ago we moved to Durham, North Carolina so I could begin the 4-5 year Doctor of Theology (Th.D.) program at Duke Divinity School. We have visited seven churches in the last six weeks here and have not yet made a decision on where we will attend.

Our backgrounds are mostly in churches and institutions that were nondenominational or interdenominational—where denominational affiliation was played down. But around Durham, many of the churches that have been recommended to us are mainline churches. They are led by pastors that are theologically orthodox, yet the style of these mainline churches is different from what we are accustomed to.

In our vigorous Sunday lunch discussions, my wife and I have been impressed by aspects of the mainline churches we have visited. On the other hand, there are things we miss about nondenominational churches.
It seems to me nondenominational folks and mainliners can learn from each other. In that spirit, I offer a few summary points of our Sunday lunch discussions.

The Top Nine Things I Appreciate about Mainline Churches:

1. The leadership of mainline churches does not center so much on one person – the pastor. When a senior leader leaves, there are mechanisms for finding a new pastor including trained interim pastors.

2. Mainline churches have a greater appreciation for Christian history. The liturgies of the mainline churches reflect the thought and deliberation of several centuries of Christians. Many evangelical worship leaders say whatever springs to mind.

3. The worship services at mainline churches have intellectual substance. The liturgies at mainline churches are usually very rich theologically. Someone has taken the time to craft the words of the liturgy carefully.

4. Mainline churches care for the poor and are more aware regarding social issues. Though evangelical churches are coming around, they have been slower than the mainline regarding racism, care for the poor, empowering women, and care for the environment.

5. Mainline denominations take intellectual excellence seriously. They want their pastors educated and their scholars properly trained. I know an evangelical megachurch (which I like) with 100 staff members and only the senior pastor has a Master of Divinity.

6. The ordination process in mainline denominations usually screens out the mentally ill. The ordination process of the denominations takes a few years, includes a battery of psychological tests, and is done in consultation with lots of people who know you. Many pastors of evangelical churches simply decided to plant a church. Whether they have any education or preparation is irrelevant.

7. Mainline denominations care for their pastors more thoughtfully and equally. Mainline pastors are usually paid fairly and their benefits are good and fair.

8. Mainline denominations honor the arts including classical music. Mainline people seem to be the people supporting museums, visual art, architecture and NPR.

9. Mainline churches have better accountability structures. There are structures for dealing with crises and for preventing crises from happening in the first place.

The Top Seven Things I Appreciate about Nondenominational Churches:

1. Nondenominational evangelical churches structure their worship gatherings so newcomers know what is going on and want to come back. They have an elaborate plan for welcoming people so that even irreligious people will want to come back. This includes signs, greeters and the overall style of the environment.

2. Nondenominational evangelical churches acknowledge that churches are organizations that need competent leadership. They tend to value pastors who organize and inspire the church toward more effective mission.

3. Nondenominational evangelical websites are usually better. Websites should be designed for someone who is totally unfamiliar with the church but might want to go there.

4. The music at nondenominational evangelical churches is more like the music people listen to on the radio. This is a preference thing I know but it just seems to me that churches can be faithful while still evolving to connect with people today.

5. Nondenominational evangelical churches question traditions that no longer connect with most people. When only 1% of the people really want the ministry, it should not get time on the podium and space in the bulletin.

6. Nondenominational evangelical churches are more eager to experiment with new technologies.

7. Nondenominational evangelical churches highly value Scripture. This covers a multitude of other shortcomings.

Andy Rowell has been a pastor and professor of Christian ministry at Taylor University. He is currently in the Doctor of Theology program at Duke Divinity School.

The Desert Experience

When we follow Jesus into the desert, we are likely to experience what could be called ego desperation. Basically this means acknowledging that our life is not nor ever will be completely under our control. In the desert, the pillars of human power, pleasure, and possession are smashed. One feels powerless, miles away from sources of immediate gratification, the owner of little or nothing of material value. One cannot barter one's way out of loneliness and silence. One can only wait until it passes on the wings of faith and hope.

—Susan Muto in Pathways of Spiritual Living. Christianity Today, Vol. 32, no. 14.

James Walters describes his recent ministry adventure as a spiritual desert. It was dry and long and lonely. At the time James most needed direction, he didn't know where to find it. But help came from an unexpected source, someone completely outside his ministry circles. His Insight is just below.

Leader's Insight: Screams in the Desert
When my ministry adventure faltered, I found spiritual help from unexpected direction.
by James Walters, guest columnist

My grand ministry adventure out West was not turning out the way I'd hoped. My wife and I were so excited. With a sense of God's leading, we packed our stuff and moved 3,000 miles away from our families and friends and everything we knew. But it turned out we'd made some fatal assumptions. We thought we were moving to the progressive, cutting-edge, free-thinking West coast, but the town we were moving to was in many ways more conservative than the Bible Belt where we grew up. And though we often associated Washington with near-constant rainfall, the area where we landed was a bona fide desert-eight inches of rain a year!