Keep: Deep Tradition

January 2, 2025 ~ Vincent

This is my final entry on my series on the things I inherited from Eastern Orthodoxy and my re-evaluation of them in light of my awakening to classical Protestantism.

The time has come to bring this to a close. I could go on at length about the influences I want to keep and the sources I want to let go of from the Eastern Orthodox world. I could talk about the beauty of Anthony of Egypt’s biography! I could opine about the liturgy of John Chrysostom. I could grumble about their failure to stand firm against encroachment by corrupt state officials. I could critique their decentralized role of Scripture. I could do all of that and more. But at some point, you have to move on. As I said previously, I’m skeptical of Eastern Orthodox reads on Church History, I’m lovingly mixed on the impact of the Desert Fathers, and I’ve dropped Bulgakov completely. Time to write about something I definitely want to keep: the emphasis on traditional sources.

The Eastern Orthodox world is so good at treasuring their spiritual heritage. When they have a resource or a writer or a saint that’s especially worthy of remembering, they remember them! Their sermons reference John Chrysostom! Their books reference Gregory of Nazianzus! Their devotionals are often written by figures like John of Damascus! They stand on the shoulders of giants! Now, is every Eastern Orthodox Church like this? I couldn’t tell. you. I can only see the little enclaves they have in the West. But what I see here is amazing. What a precious, delightful gift to see people being nourished by the historic heroes of their faith..

Nikodemos of Athos is one Eastern Orthodox figure in this pattern who particularly stands out to me. He was this Greek monk in the 19th century that was renowned for his writing. And what did he write? He translated and compiled old Orthodox writings so that Greeks could see the beauty of their spiritual heritage. And it was timely to do so! As Greece became more secular and modern, people started lionizing old pagan philosophers as “the real Greek heroes.” Nikodemos was pointing back to the saints of the Byzantine era and telling people, “Don’t forget who you really are! This is your real heritage!”

We Protestants would benefit so much from this. In too many of our churches, there’s almost no substantive reference to any timeframe except the pastor’s personal life and the Bible. Two-thousand years of studying, praying, living, and dying are just cast aside. And what do we lose in that? We lose voices that could help guide us and teach us. We lose access to wisened saints who can tell us, “Hey, I’ve been there, and here’s what you can do.” We lose access to the record of questions that have been asked time and time again, reminding us that we’re not the only ones to ponder things. We lose so, so much.

Why don’t we engage with our spiritual heritage? There are probably a lot of things that could rightly be pointed to. We could look at the role of emotionality in Western Protestant churches after the Enlightenment. There was a cultural movement that come along and told the Church, “Science is the realm of facts and logic, religion is for feelings and stuff. Stay in your bubble and we’ll stay in ours.” Too many churches took them up on that deal. Heck, there are whole traditions where the Holy Spirit is more or less equated with strong emotionality! And those traditions cross-pollinate with other Christian groups and cause all sorts of headaches. If we divide our lives into facts and feelings, we can’t be surprised when our church gets “sorted”fixed” to fit cleanly into our boxes. And if we’re happy enough for church to just fill our hearts, other things will come along and fill our heads.

A second challenge that I think is uniquely worth mentioning for American Protestantism is our denominational history. Some of our biggest denominations (Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal) were able to spread across the frontier areas of the United States so quickly and gain such a strong foothold partially because they had really low educational requirements. For some of those denominations, that’s a source of pride; God can use anybody that he calls if they’re sincere and want to serve him! Which is partially true, but also implies that Christianity is really pretty easy when it comes down to it. All you need to do is pray and read your Bible and you’re good to go, which is a bafflingly low bar. Nobody wants to hire a lawyer whose only qualifications are feeling God’s call on their life and reading a few pages from the constitution every morning. Nobody wants to receive surgery from a doctor who didn’t go to medical school but has a nice smile and feels convicted that the Holy Spirit moves his hands during surgery. “But Vincent, those aren’t the same things!” You’re right! They’re not. Neither of these can affect our eternity quite as much as a pastor can. Why should the people who do work on eternal souls be held to a lower standard than the people who handle any other serious task in our lives?

Yes, theology is hard. No, not everyone in a church needs a comprehensive knowledge of patristics to know Jesus. But do they need a total lack of theological knowledge? Do we need to avoid talking about who Augustine and Luther and Gregory the Great to make sure nobody feels too challenged? How many folksy analogies should a Protestant congregant have to wade through to hear something about one of the giants of the faith? Because the Eastern Orthodox Church is going wild passing on historic treasures to its congregations. It isn’t trying to be cool; it’s busy being important. It’s not trying to be accessible; it’s teaching people what they need to learn. It’s not trying to be relevant to pop culture; it’s busy trying to be relevant to God. And maybe some of that praise is a little over the top, but I see that they have something that we desperately need. They have a sense that the contributions of their saints are actual, life-changing teachings, not just strange burdens that clergy in training are obligated to stumble through before they can get ordained.

That’s one thing I don’t think I’ll ever lose. I’m really thankful that my time with Eastern Orthodoxy taught me that tradition is a blessing, not a burden. The saints that went before you WANT to help you understand the Bible! They WANT you to grow spiritually! They WANT to be a blessing! And they were to generations of people. Jesus Christ is the foundation, but these are the spiritual bricks that are in the wall beneath us. We need to know the saints from our tradition. We need to share the treasures of Spurgeon, Chrysostom, Machen, and so many others. We have a history. If we want to look forward, we need to be empowered by our past, not free of it.

Still Orthodox, but Less Eastern

November 11, 2024 ~ Vincent

Every worker needs good tools to do good work. A carpenter needs a quality hammer. A janitor needs a durable mop. A politician needs a tailored suit. Regardless of the specific profession, everyone needs good tools. Theologians are no different. We need good tools. We need finely-tuned doctrines, illustrative metaphors, and relatable stories to communicate the faith. And just as in other fields, the name attached to these tools matters. A carpenter might prefer Craftsman tools and a janitor might prefer Clorox disinfectant. Why? Because those are reliable names in their field. The name shows that the tool is trustworthy. We should also prefer tools associated with trustworthy names. A metaphor that we find on some random website might seem clever, but will it sound half as good when you say it out loud? Who knows? It might end up confusing someone more than it helps them understand. But if you’re working with time-tested materials from trusted names, such as John Calvin or Augustine of Hippo, you know any given metaphor has been used time and time and time again. Someone didn’t come up with it over their lunch break! It’s good stuff.

I say all of this because I’m doing a little cleansing of my theological toolkit right now. When I was in seminary at Duke Divinity School, Eastern Orthodoxy was a huge influence on me. And why? Well, I was an evangelical Christian at a mainline seminary. While I was still a long way from being “fully cooked,” there were certain doctrines common among my classmates that I couldn’t accept. For example, a fair few thought that Scripture often reflected the biases of the author, including ignorance, sexism, and racism, rejecting the doctrine of plenary inspiration of Scripture. Others were excited by “new” and “innovative” ways of thinking about faith, rejecting historic orthodoxy. Still others would begin their theologizing by talking about a specific solution to a modern issue facing the world and then ask how that solution could be found in Scripture, which it struck me as a very backwards sort of process. And far be it from me to suggest that every professor or every student that thought that way, but it was enough that the “norm” was definitively uncomfortable for me. Edward Rommen, an adjunct professor and Eastern Orthodox priest, was someone that felt the weight of tradition and orthodoxy in a way that was very different than the norm. I considered him my mentor and snapped up independent studies and classes with him as often as I could.

There are many things I’m grateful I learned from him. I learned to love tradition. I learned to listen to the voices of the saints before me by diving into classical Christian resources (which led to the creation of this little blog). I learned to see Church history as a way to reveal the faith we practice, rather than as a burden to be shoved under the rug. All good stuff. I did, however, pick up some tools that haven’t served me as well as I’d hoped. Father Rommen was DEEPLY Eastern Orthodox, and while it seemed cool at the time, I wasn’t as critical of some of it as I’ve come to be. For example, both he and most of his Eastern Orthodox contemporaries were very enthusiastic about the “seven ecumenical councils.” They were said to be binding for Christians everywhere and things that were agreed upon by the whole church before the Great Schism between Eastern and Western Christianity. That sounded impressive to me. Who was I to question it? It wasn’t until I dug into the historical record that I saw that these seven councils weren’t as representative of all Christians as I had thought. The seventh council was literally about why icons were great and should be used in worship. And do you see any icons in Western Churches? No! So why would one of these seven all-inclusive, inarguable councils approve something that nearly all Western Christians don’t like? Because that particular council was attended by and disproportionately controlled by Eastern Christians. Western ones were mostly peeved at the council’s decision and saw it as a document full of “the errors of the Greeks” (see Libri Carolini by Theodulf of Orléans for a response from a prominent Western Christian to the seventh ecumenical council). So these seven authoritative ecumenical councils weren’t particularly ecumenical in all cases and weren’t as authoritative as it seemed at the time.

And far be it from me to bash away at Eastern Orthodoxy for having their own perspective. That’s what it really boils down to, I think. If you like icons and think they’re great, OF COURSE you’re going to be excited about that one council that happened while you were still in communion with the Western Church where the result was favorable to you. Fair enough. I’m not mad. But I have to ask myself, was the result of that council really inarguable? Certainly not. They argued about it while it was happening! And is the practice of prayer to icons clearly represented in Scripture? Certainly not. It seems laughable to imagine Mary, Joseph, or Jesus, first century Jews that weren’t even comfortable having people’s faces on coins because of graven image laws, busting out an icon of Elijah during prayer time. The historical record just doesn’t line up for that practice unless you’re only looking at very specific, secondary Eastern Orthodox sources. And if I disagree on the legitimacy of these councils, which carry so much weight in the Eastern Orthodox world, what else needs thought through? Are some of my tools stamped with a name that I may not trust as much as I used to? Because while throwing everything out isn’t the answer, keeping tools that I’m not comfortable using benefits no one.

This is not some great, emotionally-laden process, by the way. All of this discovery has happened a good deal back for me. Which is for the best! Trying to throw out tools that you were just using the other day would be a perilous prospect indeed! But I know there are little arguments that I have sitting around in my head that don’t hold anymore. There are stories that I enjoy that I’m no longer committed to. There are people that I’d gladly cite for one purpose that I don’t actually agree with on a fair amount of other things. And there are resources that better reflect where I’m at spiritually that I could be using now. I’m thankful for some of the tools in my theological toolkit because of Eastern Orthodoxy, but I’m also curious about which ones are no longer as effective as I once perceived them to be.

West Ohio UMC Disaffiliation Materials

June 23, 2023June 23, 2023 ~ Vincent

Since the announcement that I’m leaving the UMC to join the Global Methodist Church, I’ve had a ton of people come to me asking for more information on the split. A lot of people that are asking are from UMC churches with pastors that have no interest in disaffiliation and aren’t really telling their congregations much about it, but others are just people from other denominations that are curious about what’s going on. Several area churches have started using this material to consider disaffiliation, so I figured it was time to make it more widely available.

Here are the handouts for the classes that I held to lead my congregation through a disaffiliation discernment process. I wanted to make sure that there was no cause to end our process on a technicality, so I made sure to bounce the elements off of my local District Superintendent before presenting it. The material was made in the West Ohio Conference of the UMC, so the statistics reflect our conference as of January in 2023. Certain conferences require you to use more rigorous processes that favor the UMC pretty heavily, so this may not meet the requirements of non-West Ohio conferences, but I think it’s a great starting point for educating yourself and others regardless of your location. And if you’re not United Methodist, the sheer amount of history makes it worth reading, in my humble opinion. I know I learned a lot while creating it.

I did genuinely try to make something that’s balanced. There’s no point in destroying a straw-man of your opponent in the age of the internet. People can all get online and double check anything you say, so I really worked to cite everything and represent people’s opinions in their own words. Every person I cited in these materials is either a bishop, a bestselling pastor/author, or a seminary professor. Not every person I quoted is from the UMC or the GMC. The authors especially represent a broader picture of evangelical Christians and progressive Christians. That said, most of the authors representing positions that are consistent with the UMC’s perspective are from denominations that the UMC is in full communion with, and most of the perspectives representing the GMC are from evangelicals that pastors consistently look to across denominational lines. These are the figures that publish the studies that Methodists on both sides read in Sunday School. They create the YouTube videos and podcasts that inform our thoughts. They all deserve your attention.

Again, I like to imagine the material is fair for both sides. I believe that’s why it’s started to gain some momentum. I’ve worked in progressive churches and I’ve worked in traditionalist churches, and I tried to imagine, “How can I do right by the people in both places?” If you’re more traditionalist, you’ll notice that I didn’t bring up most of the more egregious violations of the discipline by the UMC. Yes, some really high up people are doing bad things and it does need addressing, but I didn’t think it was representative of the average UMC believer. If you’re more progressive, you’ll probably be frustrated that I represented the UMC as a more progressive church, rather than a “big tent for all people.” When half of the people in the big tent are leaving because they don’t feel represented, you’re no longer a big tent. When all of the people leaving are of a particular theological standpoint (traditionalists), you ought to realize that you’ve become the other half of the argument (progressive).

If you’re Methodist considering disaffiliation, remember, the cutoff for the current protocol is the end of 2023! I hope this helps Methodist congregations have honest conversations about what they believe and helps inform non-Methodists about what’s going on in our world.

PS: Do the homework if you can. Those readings are fantastic.

the-big-split-session-1 Download

the-big-split-session-2 Download

the-big-split-session-3 Download

Easter Sermons, Augustine of Canterbury, and the Procession to the King of Kent

April 21, 2022 ~ Vincent

I preached my first Easter sermon this past Sunday, which was delightful. I hadn’t had the privilege of preaching on a holiday before (at least, not one of the big ones). Now that it’s over, I’m reflecting on the occasion. There are so many guests at churches on Easter. A lot of them have pretty minimal relationships with the Church. What do we show them to impress the importance of God on their hearts? How do we evangelize on big occasions like Easter?

Luckily for me, I stumbled across this reading from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England while auditing one of Matthew Hoskin’s classes at Davenant Institute (his blog is here and is brilliant, by the way).

Augustine of Canterbury (who is not the same person as Augustine of Hippo) was sent by Pope Gregory the Great to share the Gospel with the people in Kent (modern England). They set up a meeting with the king in the hopes of getting permission to evangelize throughout his territory. I can only imagine a meeting like that would be infinitely more stressful than giving an Easter sermon to a visitor-heavy crowd today. He needed translators! He needed to adhere to local sensibilities and codes of respect! If things went wrong, the King might not only decide to kick them out; he might decide to kill these obnoxious missionaries that were meddling where they ought not meddle. So what did he bring? What did he show the king of Kent to impress upon him the seriousness of this Christian faith?

They came… bearing a silver cross for their banner, and the image of our Lord and Savior painted on a board; and chanting litanies, they offered up their prayers to the Lord for the eternal salvation both of themselves and of those to whom and for whom they had come. When they had sat down, in obedience to the king’s commands, [they] preached to him, and his attendants there present the Word of life.
The Venerable Bede, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England, Ch. XXV

Can you imagine the spectacle of that procession? An envoy from Rome arrives complete with silver cross and marching chanters and all the (figurative) bells and whistles. It’d have been a breathtaking sight! More than that, Augustine is unapologetically offering up things that are otherworldly. He isn’t offering trade deals. There’s no promise of improved relationships with other kingdoms. He isn’t even explaining how fun the children’s ministry will be for the kingdom’s kids! All of the pageantry and splendor serve to create this little window into a world beyond our own. And it works! The king gives his approval for their activity in his realm.

I’m well aware that some of that procession is normative for the time and culture. I’m also sure that the average Easter visitor won’t have the same response to a crowd of monks chanting for their salvation that King Ethelbert did. As I continue to unpack my first Easter at the helm, I have to keep asking, how do we create a window into Heaven? How can we evangelize like Augustine of Canterbury and present the truth in a way that makes people stop and marvel?

Church Growth with Charles Finney

January 4, 2021 ~ Vincent

Today’s entry is about a 19^th century revivalist’s impact on the church. Admittedly, the 19^th century is a little recent for my tastes, but I’ve been mulling over what the Church is, what its primary tasks are, and what it’s corporate existence ought to look like, and Finney seemed like someone worth engaging with.

Finney was trained as a lawyer, and after a conversion experience, decided to become a pastor. Legend has it that he showed up at a meeting with his legal client the next morning and told them, “I have a retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ to plead his cause and cannot plead yours.” (131 Christians Everyone Should Know, 67) He’s certainly got some good quotes! He lived during the Second Great Awakening and worked in the “burned-over district” in New York, which was the cradle for all kinds of unorthodox and distinctly American religious traditions like Mormonism, spiritualism, and the Shaker community. In all of this excitement, Finney rose up as an incredibly popular revivalist preacher, partially because of his emphasis on choice. Americans were settling in to their new democracy and the power of personal choice was increasingly apparent. Finney acknowledged that power and urged them to make the choice to accept Jesus as their savior. Huge masses of people did just that at his urging.

One piece of his that has made its way through history are his “Lectures on the Revival of Religion.” It’s a series to to help other preachers adopt his revival techniques. A lot of it reads like any book on church growth today might, but what seems normal today was a landmark in it’s own time. Books about how to preach, set up churches, and perform worship in a way that will numerically grow your church weren’t common until around this time. This series represents a cultural watershed for the belief that pastors and churches ought to hold themselves accountable for proven practices that produce higher number of converts in their pews.

Here’s an excerpt that particularly interested me:

Without new measures it is impossible that the Church should succeed in gaining the attention of the world to religion. There are so many exciting subjects constantly brought before the public mind, such a running to and fro, so many that cry “Lo here!” and “Lo there!” that the Church cannot maintain her ground without sufficient novelty in measures, to get the public ear. (Measures to Promote Revivals, 2.5)

He’s all for change! Innovate as necessary to reach more people with the Gospel. “Novelty” is your most valuable tool. So much of the modern church growth movement seems to take this kind of stance. The form of worship isn’t relevant. Adopt whatever form increases your numbers! The desirable end result is that people walk away claiming to have a relationship with God, not having followed some formula of when to sit, stand, and say the right thing. Why not have church in a pub, a coffee shop, a hiking trail, or wherever else people might show up? But I’m more than a little skeptical of Finney and his spiritual successors. Is this really the end game of the Church? And where is the fine line between reaching someone through familiar means and pandering to people?

At it’s worst, the logic reminds me a little of Odysseus and the Cyclops. You remember that story from grade school! When Odysseus and his crew were imprisoned in a cave by a Cyclops that planned on eating them, how did they escape? By blinding the Cyclops in the night, then tying themselves under his sheep. When the Cyclops let out his sheep to graze, he felt each sheep to make sure that no men were sneaking out. Sly ol’ Odysseus and his men escaped because they was hiding under the fuzz of the sheep! Are we Christians doing the same thing? Hiding Jesus under the comfortable wool of pop-culture, hoping that the general public is blind enough that they’ll let him sneak into the gates of their hearts?

When did Jesus ever try to be cool? I suppose this is where there’s some room for interpretation. You could argue that Jesus wasn’t trying to be “cool,” but he was never restricted to the traditional worship settings of his day. He reached out to people in new ways. For every Bible story set in a temple, there’s several set out in the world with random people. This approach is what the pub churches, hiking churches, and other innovators are trying to emulate. They want to reach out in new ways, just like Jesus did. I think they’ve got a point. If Jesus was following the strict religious orthodoxy of his day and emphasizing it above all else, one might expect more stories set in formal settings and more detail about official religious practice in the gospels.

Even so, I find that the Scriptures have a shocking amount laid out for what worship ought to look like, and that’s not even touching on the massive amount of stuff passed down through Church history. If we pay it any heed, it really hinders our attempts to make church cooler. For example, I’m not really one for singing. I don’t enjoy it all that much, I’m not very good at it, and a lot of times I think that the words are pretty lame. There was a period in my life where my ideal church didn’t have any singing at all because the REAL point of worship (in my mind) was being taught about the faith and responding with holy lives. Singing was just a goofy removable element.

And I was wrong. 2 Chronicles 29 shows a temple service in which song is a distinct, ordered part of worship. The psalms are a whole collection of worship songs, many of which repeatedly urge people to make music because God likes it. Colossians and Ephesians both urge people in churches to sing spiritual songs and psalms. You get the picture. Each of these instances are not only represented in Scripture; they were taken on by the people after them

Not to suggest that Finney hadn’t read all the same stuff. Heck, he probably knew it better than I do. And I’m well aware that every piece of tradition starts somewhere, and not all of it sticks around forever. Thank goodness, right? We’ve all suffered through some clumsy attempt of a pastor to make a new, awesome thing that just didn’t work, and we all rejoiced quietly when it died. Not everything is timeless tradition, that’s for sure. I guess it comes down to that question I’ve been mulling over, “what is Church?” If church is primarily about passing on and popularizing certain ideas or spiritual beliefs, there can be little doubt that Finney had it right. Cut out the older parts that don’t work anymore and add some new pieces that produce the desired results. I think I’m too much of a traditionalist for all that. Church isn’t just about making a decision for Christ; it’s transforming the self in light of a tradition that stretches back thousands of years. We are the end-result of God working through centuries of people. Worship forms us as much as we form it. How could we just ditch certain elements and feel like we’ve not lost something?

That being said, I’m well aware that Finney has a point. Sometimes we’re so addicted to the form of a thing, that we don’t honor the spirit of it. He’s not wrong about novelty either! When you mix things up, people pay attention! In a religious landscape with Christianity distinctly on the wane, something that gets new eyes sounds great! But how do we mix things up, rather than water them down? How do we innovate traditionally? How to we reform with the spirit of Christians in every era, rather than pander to our personal preferences?

If you want to give Finney a read, head on over to his lectures on the revival of religion on ccel.org (Christian Classic Ethereal Library) where they have all kinds of good stuff.