Jonathan Grant
August 20th, 2010, 04:37 PM
Here's my response to Orville Jenkins, Jr.'s open letter. I wish all the church leaders who agree with Dr. Jenkins would read it, as there is a lot of misunderstanding about what the younger generation believes. Hopefully this letter can help bridge the gap. Feel free to pass this along to anyone you feel led to.
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Dear Dr. Jenkins,
I read your email, and as a somewhat recent SNU graduate I very much echo your concerns. I grew up Nazarene and my parents are from two fairly prominent Nazarene families. I no longer attend a Nazarene church, even though my hometown church in Norman, OK is still much in line with traditional Nazarene theology.
The Problem
The spinelessness of the General Church and the pastors is just sickening. Even worse than their passiveness on the Purpose Driven movement and the Emergent Church is their passiveness in the area of child molestation and sexual abuse from church staff. I simply cannot support a church that routinely hires known sexual offenders, covers for them when they abuse children and women, refuse to report it to the police, refuse to warn other churches about them, and purposely turn a blind eye to their atrocities! I did not realize until the BFC trial just how large this problem is in the church. The information dug up about the general church and so many of the individual churches is absolutely infuriating!
The fact that it took a court order and a horrible law suit to force the General Church to do something about this is shameful and evil! I'm sick of pastors and church leaders wanting to avoid controversy and bad press. There is something very wrong with the Nazarene church! The exposé story on the International Church of the Nazarene (not just the local church) that ran on the evening news in Oklahoma City following the settlement of the above-mentioned lawsuit basically equated the General Church of the Nazarene cover-up with that of the Catholic Church (whether they actually said those words or not—I don’t remember specifically).
As for the emergent church: at SNU we were taught about it in a required course called Contemporary Social Issues. We were required to read the book that is basically the cornerstone of the movement (by Brian McLaren). I was the only one taking issue with it in the class. In fact, I was the only one taking a stand on most troubling issues in the college. I wrote letters to the editor raising my concerns and rebutting all sorts of questionable teachings from chapel, newspaper editorials, stories, teachings and letters from professors, etc. using scriptures and facts with documented resources. I received much hate mail for this and became quite a hated person on campus.
When taught in one class that humans are basically good and born good, I had to stand up and give scripture and a brief history lesson on Marxism to the professor who just happened to be a Nazarene pastor's wife.
While I agree with you on the poison of liberalism in the church, I really wish you had left that part out of your letter because it really hurts your argument about the emergent church. I’m not saying that the political issues shouldn't be addressed, but they should be addressed separately, and preferably by a different party. It's too easy for you to be written off as a political old-fogey and therefore your vital message about the emergent church to be ignored.
I fought a lot against the liberal beliefs and teachings at SNU. The professors are very liberal and it comes through in their teaching. I was there on 9-11 and when we went to war. The religion department was preaching out against the war. And one of the most respected religion profs (who is now the pastor of one of our Nazarene college churches) put an editorial in the paper about how socialism is biblical because of how the early church lived communally! Absurd! How could I respect someone with such a poor understanding of the bible?
The truth is that the young people in the church are overwhelmingly liberal. They have bought into their teachings in college and public schools growing up. They've bought into what they see in the media. “The Daily Show” is the main source of news for most 20-somethings!
I remember during my senior year of college having to stand up in class against my peers who were pro-choice. Most of them were against abortion, but believed women should have the right to choose. How much clearer can it be that it should not be a woman's choice whether a baby lives or not; it is the baby's choice!
The Solution
One of the biggest problems in your argument is that I'm afraid you misunderstand the position of the young liberals in the church. They do not see liberalism as being God-less or void of morality. In fact, they believe that conservatism is counter to the teachings of Jesus. They believe that because they are moral, because they are Christians, that they should be liberal. They believe Jesus would be a liberal. I've heard all these things many, many times! Until you understand them, you cannot make a difference. You'll make it worse. One of the things they object to the most is the church telling them what they have to believe politically. They rebel against that. Equating politics with Christianity will drive them away!
They believe in helping the less fortunate, they believe in helping minorities and those who are not given equality, they believe in helping the poor, they believe greed is bad, they believe becoming rich is evil, they believe corporations are evil, they believe in tolerance of people who are different than us, they believe in science and technology, protecting the environment, and they believe judging is wrong, war is wrong, etc.
Most of those beliefs are actually good. The problem is that they also believe that liberalism is about helping the less fortunate, minorities, those who are not given equality, and giving to the poor...and conservatives are old fogeys who oppose government programs and legislation that seems to be about helping all those people--therefore conservatives must not care about them, and thus are against Jesus' teachings. The idea that there are other options other than the federal government solving the problem is not widely understood. The idea that the state and local governments can do a much better job at fixing much of these problems, is much more efficient, more tailor-made for the specific situation in the state, more able to be changed by citizens of the state, can be scrapped much more easily if it fails, people can leave the state if they don't like it, etc. isn't even discussed!
They believe that because greed is bad and the love of money is bad, that capitalism, corporations, and being rich must be wrong. They believe in tolerance and that judging is wrong, therefore liberals who say you can be who you want and there's no right or wrong must be good and conservatives who oppose gay marriage, and certain types of lifestyles must be bad. They believe murder is wrong, so anti-war liberals must be good and pro-war conservatives must be bad.
They believe in science and technology, and because older people struggle to keep up with the speed of the advancement in today's culture and stay relevant, they must have outdated ideas and are not as enlightened as the media and professors. The truth is, scientists know much more about the world now than they did 20 or 30 years ago. We now know how wrong so many long-held beliefs are, and how older people stubbornly stick to old-wives tales, outdated science, cultural norms, etc. despite the undeniable evidence against it. This has led the young people to believe that the older people have no credibility.
Think about it, if you grew up hearing certain things from your parents and were taught them as fact...but then went to school and learned that science has proven many of those things false, or that new discoveries have lead to new theories, it would very much shape the way you felt about the rest of your parents’ teachings. It makes sense that when told how outdated the social, political, and religious beliefs of your parents are, and are given all sorts of "facts" and "logic" that seem to prove the opposite...you'd probably believe them!
We hear that people used to believe slavery was good, that black people were inferior...then later generations realized the fallacy of that. The older people think homosexuals are evil and inferior, so maybe they are wrong and we, the new generation, see the "fallacy" of that, and in the future people will look at this issue just like slavery and racism. Throughout history we see a pattern of "new" liberal beliefs being laughed at, challenged, and punished...but history ultimately proves those new liberal beliefs correct. People used to think the world was flat, then they thought the sun revolved around the earth, then they believed...well, you get the idea. Very often it was the powerful church that opposed these radical new ideas like "the earth is round" or "the sun revolved around the earth" or "slavery is wrong, blacks are equal" and often put them into prison. After hearing these kinds of stories over and over growing up, what side are you going to take when the old powerful church is opposed to new science and social ideas (that aren't really new, but seem new to young people)? There are so many parallels between the current situations and the ones learned about in history classes!
It doesn't help that the church is so ignorant of science. The church opposed and ridiculed the "big bang theory" but it was eventually proven correct. The church opposed evolution, and the old age of the earth, but all branches of science prove it over and over again. Ironically, the big bang theory was originally laughed at and ridiculed by scientists because they thought it sounded "too religious".
The more the church stays ignorant of advances in science, culture, and technology the less and less relevant they will be. It's no wonder the younger generation is trying to transform the church. The problem is that they are wrong, they are manipulated, and they don't realize what they are doing. It is up to the 30-50 year olds to bridge the gap and teach the truth while showing that they are in step with the cultural advances. Teach the truth that Jesus taught with the correct context. Simplify it down to the important concepts and not the "cultural" rules, terms, and phrases that the church has preached as if they are permanently intertwined with the gospel. We have to treat the new generation like a mission field in a completely different country. We must separate Jesus' teaching and the Bible from the less important theological and cultural bickerings. Then see how the basic concepts of Jesus' teachings apply to their situation and culture. It will look VERY different than the traditional church...just like the traditional church looks almost nothing like the early church in the New Testament. Trying to fit others into OUR culture won't work. It will backfire. There is something wrong with the church today and they know it, they want to change it...but they don't know what's wrong, what's right, or what to change it to. What they are doing is making it even worse!
We must start over and reach out to the hurting, the drug dealers, the prisoners, because they are the ones who will listen. They are the desperate ones. They make us uncomfortable, they won't fit in, and because of that churches have turned them away and forced them to become outsiders. I'm just now meeting many of these on-fire Christians who were rescued from the absolute worst situations and they are the real deal. They are exactly what Christ followers should be! Unfortunately, their stories are all the same. Church after church after church ignored them, turned their noses up at them, and kept them at a large distance. They didn't fit in with those churches. Nazarene churches are better than most when it comes to this, but it is still a problem.
We've lost the battle with the youth. We've lost the battle with the Nazarene church. It has become a large entity that has separated from what Jesus taught. The doctrine is good, but often misunderstood and few people in the church even know it! We don't reach out to the widows and orphans, the sinners, the lowest of society, the prisoners, etc. like we should. They are the reachable ones. They are the ones desperate for the gospel. The "friends" like us that we bring to church hoping the sermon will convert them are extremely tough to reach. How many people in the Nazarene church weren't raised as a Christian? How many came to Christ later in life? A small percentage. We've become a club. A club with rules...cultural rules.
We should be taught the disciplines, taught how to seek God ourselves! We should be told to find someone to disciple us and to disciple others. We should teach how to first of all seek God and love Him with all our heart soul and mind! Most church attenders won't listen. But, the drug-dealers will. The prisoners will. The lowest of society will. Reach out to them. Create relationships with them. Disciple them. When those people start filling the pews, the pretenders in the congregation will leave. Those left will see the love, devotion, and desperation for God that they have and will be inspired. Either they will join in or be left out.
We can try and fight a church full of "comfortable" people and lose. Or, we can reach out to the lowest of the low and start a revival. Eventually the revival will show the "comfortable" people what they are missing. That's how to change a church. The emergent movement will become irrelevant when believers are seeking God as fervently as possible because they love Him so much and can never get enough! It's only when we become comfortable that we start trying to split hairs theologically to try and come up with the least we can do and still get into heaven.
So reach out to the most uncomfortable in society! Everything else will fix itself.
- Jonathan Grant
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Dear Dr. Jenkins,
I read your email, and as a somewhat recent SNU graduate I very much echo your concerns. I grew up Nazarene and my parents are from two fairly prominent Nazarene families. I no longer attend a Nazarene church, even though my hometown church in Norman, OK is still much in line with traditional Nazarene theology.
The Problem
The spinelessness of the General Church and the pastors is just sickening. Even worse than their passiveness on the Purpose Driven movement and the Emergent Church is their passiveness in the area of child molestation and sexual abuse from church staff. I simply cannot support a church that routinely hires known sexual offenders, covers for them when they abuse children and women, refuse to report it to the police, refuse to warn other churches about them, and purposely turn a blind eye to their atrocities! I did not realize until the BFC trial just how large this problem is in the church. The information dug up about the general church and so many of the individual churches is absolutely infuriating!
The fact that it took a court order and a horrible law suit to force the General Church to do something about this is shameful and evil! I'm sick of pastors and church leaders wanting to avoid controversy and bad press. There is something very wrong with the Nazarene church! The exposé story on the International Church of the Nazarene (not just the local church) that ran on the evening news in Oklahoma City following the settlement of the above-mentioned lawsuit basically equated the General Church of the Nazarene cover-up with that of the Catholic Church (whether they actually said those words or not—I don’t remember specifically).
As for the emergent church: at SNU we were taught about it in a required course called Contemporary Social Issues. We were required to read the book that is basically the cornerstone of the movement (by Brian McLaren). I was the only one taking issue with it in the class. In fact, I was the only one taking a stand on most troubling issues in the college. I wrote letters to the editor raising my concerns and rebutting all sorts of questionable teachings from chapel, newspaper editorials, stories, teachings and letters from professors, etc. using scriptures and facts with documented resources. I received much hate mail for this and became quite a hated person on campus.
When taught in one class that humans are basically good and born good, I had to stand up and give scripture and a brief history lesson on Marxism to the professor who just happened to be a Nazarene pastor's wife.
While I agree with you on the poison of liberalism in the church, I really wish you had left that part out of your letter because it really hurts your argument about the emergent church. I’m not saying that the political issues shouldn't be addressed, but they should be addressed separately, and preferably by a different party. It's too easy for you to be written off as a political old-fogey and therefore your vital message about the emergent church to be ignored.
I fought a lot against the liberal beliefs and teachings at SNU. The professors are very liberal and it comes through in their teaching. I was there on 9-11 and when we went to war. The religion department was preaching out against the war. And one of the most respected religion profs (who is now the pastor of one of our Nazarene college churches) put an editorial in the paper about how socialism is biblical because of how the early church lived communally! Absurd! How could I respect someone with such a poor understanding of the bible?
The truth is that the young people in the church are overwhelmingly liberal. They have bought into their teachings in college and public schools growing up. They've bought into what they see in the media. “The Daily Show” is the main source of news for most 20-somethings!
I remember during my senior year of college having to stand up in class against my peers who were pro-choice. Most of them were against abortion, but believed women should have the right to choose. How much clearer can it be that it should not be a woman's choice whether a baby lives or not; it is the baby's choice!
The Solution
One of the biggest problems in your argument is that I'm afraid you misunderstand the position of the young liberals in the church. They do not see liberalism as being God-less or void of morality. In fact, they believe that conservatism is counter to the teachings of Jesus. They believe that because they are moral, because they are Christians, that they should be liberal. They believe Jesus would be a liberal. I've heard all these things many, many times! Until you understand them, you cannot make a difference. You'll make it worse. One of the things they object to the most is the church telling them what they have to believe politically. They rebel against that. Equating politics with Christianity will drive them away!
They believe in helping the less fortunate, they believe in helping minorities and those who are not given equality, they believe in helping the poor, they believe greed is bad, they believe becoming rich is evil, they believe corporations are evil, they believe in tolerance of people who are different than us, they believe in science and technology, protecting the environment, and they believe judging is wrong, war is wrong, etc.
Most of those beliefs are actually good. The problem is that they also believe that liberalism is about helping the less fortunate, minorities, those who are not given equality, and giving to the poor...and conservatives are old fogeys who oppose government programs and legislation that seems to be about helping all those people--therefore conservatives must not care about them, and thus are against Jesus' teachings. The idea that there are other options other than the federal government solving the problem is not widely understood. The idea that the state and local governments can do a much better job at fixing much of these problems, is much more efficient, more tailor-made for the specific situation in the state, more able to be changed by citizens of the state, can be scrapped much more easily if it fails, people can leave the state if they don't like it, etc. isn't even discussed!
They believe that because greed is bad and the love of money is bad, that capitalism, corporations, and being rich must be wrong. They believe in tolerance and that judging is wrong, therefore liberals who say you can be who you want and there's no right or wrong must be good and conservatives who oppose gay marriage, and certain types of lifestyles must be bad. They believe murder is wrong, so anti-war liberals must be good and pro-war conservatives must be bad.
They believe in science and technology, and because older people struggle to keep up with the speed of the advancement in today's culture and stay relevant, they must have outdated ideas and are not as enlightened as the media and professors. The truth is, scientists know much more about the world now than they did 20 or 30 years ago. We now know how wrong so many long-held beliefs are, and how older people stubbornly stick to old-wives tales, outdated science, cultural norms, etc. despite the undeniable evidence against it. This has led the young people to believe that the older people have no credibility.
Think about it, if you grew up hearing certain things from your parents and were taught them as fact...but then went to school and learned that science has proven many of those things false, or that new discoveries have lead to new theories, it would very much shape the way you felt about the rest of your parents’ teachings. It makes sense that when told how outdated the social, political, and religious beliefs of your parents are, and are given all sorts of "facts" and "logic" that seem to prove the opposite...you'd probably believe them!
We hear that people used to believe slavery was good, that black people were inferior...then later generations realized the fallacy of that. The older people think homosexuals are evil and inferior, so maybe they are wrong and we, the new generation, see the "fallacy" of that, and in the future people will look at this issue just like slavery and racism. Throughout history we see a pattern of "new" liberal beliefs being laughed at, challenged, and punished...but history ultimately proves those new liberal beliefs correct. People used to think the world was flat, then they thought the sun revolved around the earth, then they believed...well, you get the idea. Very often it was the powerful church that opposed these radical new ideas like "the earth is round" or "the sun revolved around the earth" or "slavery is wrong, blacks are equal" and often put them into prison. After hearing these kinds of stories over and over growing up, what side are you going to take when the old powerful church is opposed to new science and social ideas (that aren't really new, but seem new to young people)? There are so many parallels between the current situations and the ones learned about in history classes!
It doesn't help that the church is so ignorant of science. The church opposed and ridiculed the "big bang theory" but it was eventually proven correct. The church opposed evolution, and the old age of the earth, but all branches of science prove it over and over again. Ironically, the big bang theory was originally laughed at and ridiculed by scientists because they thought it sounded "too religious".
The more the church stays ignorant of advances in science, culture, and technology the less and less relevant they will be. It's no wonder the younger generation is trying to transform the church. The problem is that they are wrong, they are manipulated, and they don't realize what they are doing. It is up to the 30-50 year olds to bridge the gap and teach the truth while showing that they are in step with the cultural advances. Teach the truth that Jesus taught with the correct context. Simplify it down to the important concepts and not the "cultural" rules, terms, and phrases that the church has preached as if they are permanently intertwined with the gospel. We have to treat the new generation like a mission field in a completely different country. We must separate Jesus' teaching and the Bible from the less important theological and cultural bickerings. Then see how the basic concepts of Jesus' teachings apply to their situation and culture. It will look VERY different than the traditional church...just like the traditional church looks almost nothing like the early church in the New Testament. Trying to fit others into OUR culture won't work. It will backfire. There is something wrong with the church today and they know it, they want to change it...but they don't know what's wrong, what's right, or what to change it to. What they are doing is making it even worse!
We must start over and reach out to the hurting, the drug dealers, the prisoners, because they are the ones who will listen. They are the desperate ones. They make us uncomfortable, they won't fit in, and because of that churches have turned them away and forced them to become outsiders. I'm just now meeting many of these on-fire Christians who were rescued from the absolute worst situations and they are the real deal. They are exactly what Christ followers should be! Unfortunately, their stories are all the same. Church after church after church ignored them, turned their noses up at them, and kept them at a large distance. They didn't fit in with those churches. Nazarene churches are better than most when it comes to this, but it is still a problem.
We've lost the battle with the youth. We've lost the battle with the Nazarene church. It has become a large entity that has separated from what Jesus taught. The doctrine is good, but often misunderstood and few people in the church even know it! We don't reach out to the widows and orphans, the sinners, the lowest of society, the prisoners, etc. like we should. They are the reachable ones. They are the ones desperate for the gospel. The "friends" like us that we bring to church hoping the sermon will convert them are extremely tough to reach. How many people in the Nazarene church weren't raised as a Christian? How many came to Christ later in life? A small percentage. We've become a club. A club with rules...cultural rules.
We should be taught the disciplines, taught how to seek God ourselves! We should be told to find someone to disciple us and to disciple others. We should teach how to first of all seek God and love Him with all our heart soul and mind! Most church attenders won't listen. But, the drug-dealers will. The prisoners will. The lowest of society will. Reach out to them. Create relationships with them. Disciple them. When those people start filling the pews, the pretenders in the congregation will leave. Those left will see the love, devotion, and desperation for God that they have and will be inspired. Either they will join in or be left out.
We can try and fight a church full of "comfortable" people and lose. Or, we can reach out to the lowest of the low and start a revival. Eventually the revival will show the "comfortable" people what they are missing. That's how to change a church. The emergent movement will become irrelevant when believers are seeking God as fervently as possible because they love Him so much and can never get enough! It's only when we become comfortable that we start trying to split hairs theologically to try and come up with the least we can do and still get into heaven.
So reach out to the most uncomfortable in society! Everything else will fix itself.
- Jonathan Grant