Andy Rowell | Church Leadership Conversations

Recommended: Jackson Carroll's God's Potters: Pastoral Leadership and the Shaping of Congregations

Here is my Amazon.com review of:

Jackson W. Carroll: God's Potters: Pastoral Leadership and the Shaping of Congregations (Pulpit & Pew) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006).

Wise and fascinating data-driven description of what it is like to be a pastor today, June 2, 2009

By 
Andrew D. Rowell (Durham, NC) - See all my reviews

Cooperating with some of the best academic sociologists of religion in the country, Jackson Carroll orchestrated a comprehensive survey of Christian clergy in the United States in 2001. In God's Potters, he reports his findings with clarity and wisdom. Carroll wants churches and pastors to thrive so he probes the findings for what church leaders can learn and improve. The book is well-written and the findings supported with impeccable data gathering. Throughout the book, Carroll offers his own suggestions for what clergy and denominations might want to do with the findings but his suggestions are clearly separated from conclusions drawn directly from the data. Moreover, happily, his suggestions are balanced and wise. This is the first book I would suggest people read if they want to understand the realities today of pastoring--both positive and negative.
Throughout the book, we learn about how women clergy differ from male clergy; how Catholic, Mainline Protestant, Conservative Protestant, and Historic Black clergy differ; how urban and rural clergy differ; younger and older clergy differ; etc. with regard to: salary, hours worked, job satisfaction, perceived effectiveness, physical health, seminary training, leadership style and conflict management.
God's Potters should be required reading for all faculty members at theological schools. It would do much to bridge the seminary-church gap.
But most importantly this book should be read in seminary "Pastoral Ethics," "Parish / Congregational Ministry and Leadership," and "Supervised Ministry / Field Education / Practicum" courses. The book will probably be neither inspiring nor discouraging for the person considering ordained ministry but it will be enlightening: "Oh, now I now see what a pastor does and the challenges they face!" For young people who are often broadsided by the "reality" of the church, the orientation that God's Potters provides is a very good thing. They will be able to see the possible pitfalls that they face but also encouraged by Carroll that many clergy--especially those who see the pitfalls--thrive.

Your Tags: pastoring, ordained ministry, pastoral leadership, pastoral ministry, clergy, survey data, sociology, study, church leadership

How to Read Hybels: Book Review of Axiom by Bill Hybels

Bill Hybels started Willow Creek Community Church in 1975. It is probably the most influential church in the United States and also one of the largest with a weekly attendance of some 23,500 people. In Axiom: Powerful Leadership Proverbs, Hybels gives 76 leadership tips and briefly describes each in 2-3 pages. Most will find the book inspiring and thought-provoking. But this is a book that will be incomprehensible to others and revolting to a few.

If you sense that churches are too often poorly managed, their programs shoddy, their staff aimless, and their efforts mediocre, you will love this book. Hybels's father expected him to take on the family business but instead Bill decided to plant a church and he has managed it better than most businesses.  Hybels sees no reason why the doing things well is inconsistent with God's work.

But, if you think the pastor's role is to be a nurturing shepherd and that a church should never grow beyond the size where the pastor can know everyone's name, then Hybels's advice will be incomprehensible to you and likely disgust you. The kindly parish priest—who preaches, administers the sacraments, and visits the sick—Hybels is not.

The insights of Hybels—many of which assume a large paid staff—will apply best to the pastor of a church with 500 or more weekly attendance because at this size it is difficult for the pastor to oversee everything and his or her role begins to entail significant staff supervision. According to Duke sociologist Mark Chaves in Congregations in America, in 1998, "71 percent of [U.S. congregations] have fewer than one hundred regularly participating adults" (p.17-18). The size of the church radically changes the way a pastor functions. (See also his post Congregational Size). Roy M. Oswald writes in "How to Minister Effectively in Family, Pastoral, Program, and Corporate Sized Churches" of the smallest size of congregation,

This small church can also be called a Family Church because it functions like a family with appropriate parental figures. It is the patriarchs and matriarchs who control the church's leadership needs. What Family Churches want from clergy is pastoral care, period. For clergy to assume that they are also the chief executive officer and the resident religious authority is to make a serious blunder. The key role of the patriarch or matriarch is to see to it that clergy do not take the congregation off on a new direction of ministry. Clergy are to serve as the chaplain of this small family.

But one need not confront the family of the church antagonistically, one can learn to thrive as a pastor of a smaller congregation by soaking in the rich work of Eugene Peterson, enjoying the delightful little book The Art of Pastoring by David Hansen, and learning from the example of the wise Father Tim in the fictional Mitford series by Jan Karon.

Another complication besides size for some readers will be that many denominations closely define the role of the pastor and the local church with policies and committees. Hybels had the freedom and danger of making these structures up as he went along as the founder of an independent nondenominational church. I would recommend the writings of Will Willimon, Patrick Keifert, Alan Roxburgh, and Mark Lau Branson for advice about navigating leadership and effectiveness issues in an established small denominational church.

Finally, there are those who argue that a church with 500 plus weekly attendance and multiple staff loses much of the intimacy and flexibility of what a church should be. To Alan Hirsch, David Fitch, Neil Cole and Frank Viola, Hybels's tips would probably be evidence of the corporate, cold, impersonal and bureaucratic dark side of the large “attractional model” church. However, even they might find the insights of Hybels valuable in their efforts leading large church planting organizations.

Despite the disclaimer that pastors of small churches, ministers of denominational churches, and critics of large churches may be turned off by this book, let me praise this book for what it is: candid insights by an extremely capable church leader. A sign of Hybels's considerable leadership ability is that he could not help but start a huge consulting arm called the Willow Creek Association and a widely-acclaimed annual leadership conference The Leadership Summit—there was huge demand for his advice.

The 57-year-old's tone is intense. He sounds like a drill-sergeant, a CEO, or a tough football coach. This week Connecticut basketball coach Jim Calhoun was hospitalized for dehydration. A nurse asked him, "Are you type A?" to which he replied, "What's beyond that?" I thought of Hybels. Hybels writes, "Those who know me well know that I'm intense and activistic. For me, the bigger the challenge, the more I like it. I've always pushed myself hard to solve problems, raise the bar, and make as many gains for God as I possibly can" (142). Hybels's personality reminds me of the apostle Paul, the Puritan Richard Baxter, Methodism founder John Wesley and the energetic Dietrich Bonhoeffer—they are all driven and intense. Out of the 76 tips, all but about a handful suggest the need for harder and more strategic work. Still, Hybels tells of a few ways he has learned to soften his approach and slow down his pace. See for example, 9. "The Fair Exchange Value," 58. "Create Your Own Finish Lines" and 75. "Fight for Your Family."

The 2-3 page tips and stories are a great medium for his thoughts. He illustrates and explains his ideas clearly. It is an easy read. If you liked this book, also read the 99 practical hints in Simply Strategic Stuff by Tim Stevens and Tony Morgan.  Both these books give the uninitiated and naive church leader a glimpse of the nuts and bolts of the dreaded "administrative" part of pastoral ministry.

If you are not turned off by Axiom, perhaps you belong serving in a larger church where these leadership and organizational skills are highly valued. Chaves points out that more and more people are attending large churches so it is not correct to see them as an anomaly: "the median person is in a congregation with four hundred regular participants" (p.18). Or you may resonate with Hybels and play the thankless but necessary reforming role in the small church. Or you may take his insights and apply them to the pioneering entrepreneurial work of a new church plant.

I am grateful for the opportunity to hear the candid thoughts as over a lunch conversation from one of the most important American church leaders in the last 25 years.  Hybels may eventually write an autobiography but much of what is fascinating about him he has generously already shared in Axiom.

Book review of Karl Barth biography by Eberhard Busch

The most important book to read about Karl Barth, March 23, 2009

By 
Andrew D. Rowell (Durham, NC) - See all my reviews

Eberhard Busch who became Karl Barth's assistant in 1965 until the day he died in 1968 wrote this authoritative and fascinating biography of Barth's rich life (1886-1968) in 1975. Busch also has a highly acclaimed survey of Barth's theology: The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth's Theology Every reader of Barth should read some work by Barth himself (one can begin anywhere but I would recommend the brief and readable God in Action: Theological Addresses [See my review at Book Review: Karl Barth's God in Action--passionate, short, readable theology] or the early book that made him famous The Epistle to the Romans [See my reflections at Theology of Karl Barth course with Willie Jennings]) and then dive into this biography. There is no better way to understand Barth then to read Busch's masterly crafted account of Barth's life punctuated by Barth's own candid and self-deprecating comments. Of course those already intrigued with Barth will most easily devour the biography but there is also something fascinating about learning how the person who wrote the most pages about God in the 20th century lived his own life. His magnum opus Church Dogmatics (31 vols) is about 8,000 pages. This 500-page biography flies by in comparison to Barth's own deliberate style.
Barth had a rich life--here are just a few tidbits to whet your appetite. He felt compelled to speak out about issues that concerned him--against natural theology, Nazism, the demonizing communism, nuclear weaponry, and infant baptism. But he also depended on friendships and interaction with others to fuel and guide his passion. As a pastor from age 25 to 35, he struggled with preaching--"the depressing ups and downs" (89) and found some relief at being able to talk about it with his lifelong friend and fellow pastor Eduard Thurneysen (73-74). "We tried to learn our theological ABC all over again, beginning by reading and interpreting the writing of the Old and New Testaments, more thoughtfully than before. And lo and behold, they began to speak to us" (97). After Barth was rumored to have spoken up about a political issue "four of the six members of his church committee resigned" (106). Then Barth was denied a pay raise--he had been working at almost the same salary for 7 years (107). Finally, it was increased but "with 99 dissenting votes" (107). He was considered for two other churches but they did not offer him a position (122-123). Eventually, after Barth's Epistle to the Romans was published, he was offered a professor position--but since he had no dissertation, it was an honorary one in Reformed Theology--to which he admitted he knew little about. "I can now admit that at that time I didn't even have a copy of the Reformed confessions, and I certainly hadn't read them" (129). Often he did not get along that well with other faculty at the schools where he taught. Other faculty were hired to "cancel out" his influence and his successors usually had theological views that were polar opposites to him. His completely rewrote his first attempts at the books Epistle to the Romans and Dogmatics because of his unhappiness with them. He had a female theological assistant and close companion Charlotte von Kirschbaum who was by his side for almost his entire career (from 1928 on) yet he remained married and his wife ended up caring for him in his old age (185-186, 472-473). Barth clashed vehemently and publicly (and usually reconciled personally later on) with all of his theological contemporaries. He loved the music of Mozart; was banned from speaking in public in Nazi Germany (259); helped and criticized the Confessing Church; praised and critiqued Roman Catholicism and John Calvin; regularly preached in a prison; saw Martin Luther King, Jr. and Billy Graham preach; corresponded with popes and even had the current pope Joseph Ratzinger sit in and help answer questions in one of his seminars (485); and enjoyed his four children, 15 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren.
If you've heard about Karl Barth, read this book--you will then have a much better idea where he is coming from when you read his work.

I have also enjoyed biographies of other figures:

Biographies of theologians

• 

  G.K. Chesterton: Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox

• 

  Geoffrey Wainwright: Lesslie Newbigin: A Theological Life

• 

  Eberhard Busch: Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts

• 

  George M. Marsden: Jonathan Edwards: A Life

• 

  Timothy Dudley-Smith: John Stott: The Making of a Leader: A Biography: The Early Years, Vol. 1

• 

  Timothy Dudley-Smith: John Stott: A Global Ministry: A Biography of the Later Years, Vol. 2

• 

  George Sayer: Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis

• 

  Alister E. McGrath: J.I. Packer: A Biography

• 

  Eberhard Bethge: Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography

• 

  Jürgen Moltmann: A Broad Place: An Autobiography

Review of John Burke's book No Perfect People Allowed

I reviewed and would recommend

John Burke: No Perfect People Allowed: Creating a Come-as-You-Are Culture in the Church

An outstanding description of what the church should be today, February 25, 2009

By 
Andrew D. Rowell (Durham, NC) - See all my reviews

John Burke tells many stories about the way Gateway Community Church in Austin, Texas has touched people who were skeptical about Christianity. In the process, we learn much about the way Burke approaches ministry at both the personal counseling and leadership structure levels. This might be the best book for describing what people who are not Christians want from a church--compassion, practical help, meaning and God. I would expect church leaders to read this and say, "No wonder we do not have many people becoming Christians at our church--our church is nothing like Gateway." I would expect people who are skeptical about the church to say, "Church wouldn't actually be that bad if it looked like what Burke here describes in this book." There are few easy answers here--Burke expects leaders to be thoughtful, compassionate, personable, theologically astute, courageous and strategic. Burke is a free church or "nondenominational" evangelical who used to work at Willow Creek Community Church so his approach will seem quite casual, flexible, and non-liturgical to people from Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Methodist backgrounds but even they will appreciate his sensitivity and thoughtfulness toward outsiders. As a doctor of theology student, I occasionally wondered about the coherence of his approach to apologetics and how he reconciles encouraging affinity groups along with "a culture of acceptance" but my pastoral experience and my interest in missiology make me sympathetic to the need to be flexible in some of these respects--the Apostle Paul could be accused of these same "inconsistencies." All in all, this is a fine book. If I were to teach a course on Christian ministry or evangelism or the church, I would require it. No Perfect People Allowed provides hope about what the church can be and this is what many people need.

See also

• John Burke's Emerging Leadership Initiative church planting organization
• His appearance on the Catalyst Podcast on 2/27/2008:  John Burke: Episode 44
• His book Soul Revolution and the Soul Revolution website and blog.

Book Review: Karl Barth's God in Action--passionate, short, readable theology

I highly recommend Karl Barth’s slim volume God in Action as a great introduction to his work.  Here is a review I wrote for Willie Jennings's Theology of Karl Barth course.

Karl Barth: God in Action: Theological Addresses

Yesterday I asked a pastor whether he liked Karl Barth.  “Yes, with caveats.  The problems in our denomination are partly from the way some people read the early Barth. He needs to be read in light of his social context.”

The slim volume God in Action[1] contains five addresses Barth gave between April 10 and September 12, 1934. The pressure of the Nazi government on the churches in Germany during this period was fierce. The Barmen Declaration—written mostly by Barth—was adopted during May of 1934.[2] Repeatedly in God in Action Barth refers to the “remarkable apostasy of the Church to nationalism.”[3] Each of the five lectures attempt to pry off Nazi fingers from the Church: (1) Revelation, (2) the Church, (3) Theology, (4) the Ministry and (5) Witness are only rightly conceived as primarily what God has done and does. Barth urges the Church to take its orders from God rather than human authorities. The title of the work comes from his statement, “What is done to us, God in action for us, is a divine miracle.”[4]

The question for readers of Barth is how to understand his most extreme statements about the dangers of human effort in our cultural contexts which are seemingly not as seriously compromised as his.

Rowan Williams notes that most Christians do not find themselves in imminent danger of martyrdom—they live in “a post-martyrdom period.”[5] He argues that Nazi Germany was a special case.

And in the last century or so, it is significant that believers have from time to time had to confront just such pressure when the alliance of political power and a kind of religious mythology recreates something of the atmosphere of the Roman empire. Thus when in 1936 the Confessing Church in Germany, the network of those who resisted the anti-Semitic legislation of the Third Reich, bound itself to the ‘Barmen Declaration,’ affirming the sovereignty of God in Christ over all other claims to authority, the primitive shape of Christian self-definition became visible once more.[6]

He argues that the Nazi situation constituted “apostasy” whereas in South Africa when apartheid reigned, the church was infected with “heresy.” Williams writes, “The DRC’s acceptance of apartheid was seen as heresy rather than an apostasy; the German Church struggle was more serious, affecting the Church’s liberty to define itself.”[7] Williams is not here referring to Barth. Williams argues that martyrdom is the best way to test the church’s faithfulness. He is simply making the point that martyrdom will look different in different contexts.

However, Barth is quite adamant that the lessons of Nazi Germany do apply to other settings.

My dear friends from England and America, I am from Germany. There we have reached the end of the road at whose beginning you are standing. If you begin to take the pious man serious [sic], if you do not care to be one-sided, you will reach the same end before which the official German Church stands today.[8]

Because of the horrific results of Nazi Germany, no one should dismiss Barth’s comments lightly. But one can also argue that the colossus of Nazi Germany was not solely the result of an emphasis on Pietism or “the Christian life.”[9] Too great a suspicion of Christian human response to the grace of God could encourage a certain Quietism, Gnosticism, Deism, Docetism, or Fatalism that is suspicious of evangelism.

But those who read Barth this way—even the early Barth such as God in Action and The Epistle to the Romans—read him selectively and wrongly. Take for example, a typical statement by Barth: “A witness does not come with the claim, I have something to say. Surely he has something to say. But what he says can only be a reminder of what God has said and wants to have said.”[10] Does Barth then mean that “one need only read the Bible aloud and people will be converted—the word of God does not come back void” as a professor once told me Barth was saying? I would retort, “Is that what Barth does? No!” Barth tries to compellingly do what he says the preacher should do, “the preacher dares, today, to think the thoughts of the biblical witnesses after them, and, in the name of the present-day Church, to speak them as out of his own knowledge.”[11] If one tries to gather quotes from Barth that seem to imply Quietism—a lack of human action—in each case one can read further and see that Barth affirms appropriate human response to the grace of God—while he is indeed adamant to retain the proper ordering. “Have you been told something before you go and say something to others?”[12]

Barth’s God in Action then is a beautiful piece of work which introduces English readers to the tension-filled environment of 1934 Germany under the Nazi Reich and to a theology strong enough to resist it. This neglected little volume deserves to be set alongside and distributed with Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship—as faithful 20^th century Christian responses to the subtle evils of political rhetoric masked in Christian guise. Those who would take it and use it to promote declining attendance, stifling bureaucracy and criticism of evangelism, misunderstand 1934 Nazi Germany and grossly distort Barth’s own message by pulling quotations out of larger nuanced sections. This is a stirring book which urges the church to be the church, to be attentive to the Scriptures, and to hold to them courageously. I will end this review the way Barth ends the book, “it is necessary that a sanctuary be built in the midst of our world. And this sanctuary must not be a hybrid of Church and world, it must be truly Church, a Church which will remind men of the eternal kingdom of God.”[13]

---

[1] Karl Barth, God in Action (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1936).

[2] “The Confessional Synod of the German Evangelical Church met in Barmen, May 29-31, 1934.” Karl Barth, “Theological Declaration of Barmen” in The Church's Confession Under Hitler (ed. Arthur C. Cochrane; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), 237-242. Online: http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/barmen.htm

[3] Barth, God in Action, 137.

[4] Barth, God in Action, 122.

[5] Rowan Williams, Why Study the Past? The Quest for the Historical Church (London: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, 2005), 53.

[6] Williams, Why, 54. Italics mine.

[7] Williams, Why, 85.

[8] Barth, God in Action, 137.

[9] Barth, God in Action, 136-139.

[10] Barth, God in Action, 107.

[11] Barth, God in Action, 53.

[12] Barth, God in Action, 105.

[13] Barth, God in Action, 143.

Here is my post about the Karl Barth course I am taking.  

Books for Theology of Karl Barth course with Willie Jennings

I also wrote an Amazon.com review of one of Barth’s other slim volumes.

Karl Barth: The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life: The Theological Basis of Ethics

Read a "book" by Karl Barth in a couple hours, January 31, 2009

By 
Andrew D. Rowell (Durham, NC) - See all my reviews

This is a short book by Karl Barth. Actually it is a lecture from October 9, 1929. There are some great moments and gives you a look at his theology. It is 70 pages but almost half of that is endnotes which you can skip. I read it for Willie Jennings's Duke Divinity School course on Theology of Karl Barth (Spring 2009). If you want to read a book by Barth is a couple of hours, this might be the one. I would probably recommend God in Action: Theological Addresses as a slightly more accessible but larger slim volume by Barth.
In the first section, he makes the points: the Holy Spirit is not synonymous with the human spirit (3) and we need to be very cautious before saying "Thus saith the Lord" (10). In the second section, he argues against a view that good works are synonymous with God's grace--only God judges what can be called "Christian" (37). The third section deals with the importance of the eschatological.
On a theological level, Barth takes on Augustine and a Roman Catholic understanding of works in this book so if that is of interest, this would be a good thing to read.

Eight important theological books for me

I decided to list in the right column of my blog eight important theological books that have been influential on me.  They have in common a high view of Scripture and the church.  I had Gordon Fee, Richard Hays, and Eugene Peterson as professors.  I read Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lesslie Newbigin, Miroslav Volf, N.T. Wright, and John Howard Yoder at both Regent College and Duke Divinity School. Five of the eight authors are listed among the top 100 books of 20th century by Christianity Today (Bonhoeffer, Hays, Newbigin, Volf, and Yoder).  Hays, Volf and Wright were featured in a February 8, 1999 (almost exactly 10 years ago) Christianity Today article: New Theologians: These top scholars are believers who want to speak to the church by Tim Stafford, which was very inspiring for me.   

Important theological books to me

• 

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Life Together

• 

  Eugene H. Peterson: Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity

• 

  Gordon Fee: The First Epistle to the Corinthians (The New International Commentary on the New Testament)

• 

  John Howard Yoder: The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiastical and Ecumenical

• 

  Lesslie Newbigin: The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

• 

  Miroslav Volf: After Our Likeness: The Church As the Image of the Trinity

• 

  N. T. Wright: The New Testament and the People of God

• 

  Richard B. Hays: The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation, A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics

Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer course with Stanley Hauerwas

I am taking a directed study course entitled “Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer” this semester with Stanley Hauerwas.  Here are the books I am reading: 

Bonhoeffer Books

• 

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 5)

• 

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Ethics (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 6)

• 

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Letters and Papers from Prison (This has not appeared yet in the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works series.  It will be volume 8.) Note from Fortress Press: Letters and Papers from Prison is the equivalent of vol. 8 in our DBW series; it won’t be published until 2010, so Mr. Rowell should use the translation widely available.  Context and background for that whole period and documents are in our DBW 16, Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 1940-1945. http://www.augsburgfortress.org/store/item.jsp?clsid=178012&productgroupid=0&isbn=0800683161

• 

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Christ the Center Note from Fortress Press: Christ the Center is the translation of Bonhoeffer’s 1933 lectures on Christology.  Here, too, the DBW translation is not yet available until this fall, in Berlin: 1932-1933 (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 12) (available now for pre-order)
  

• 

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 1)

• 

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Discipleship (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 4)

• 

  Eberhard Bethge: Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography

• 

  Stanley Hauerwas: Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence

Other courses I am taking

I have noted in other posts the other courses I am taking:

Books for Theology of Karl Barth course with Willie Jennings

What does Hauerwas's course have to do with church leadership?

and the course I am precepting for:
Ken Carder's course The Local Church in Mission to God's World books

Theology of Karl Barth course with Willie Jennings

I am taking Theology of Karl Barth with Willie Jennings at Duke Divinity School.  Here are our required texts.   

Primary sources:

Karl Barth: The Epistle to the Romans

Karl Barth: God in Action: Theological Addresses

Karl Barth: The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life: The Theological Basis of Ethics

See my review of the two books above at Book Review: Karl Barth's God in Action--passionate, short, readable theology

Karl Barth: Evangelical Theology: An Introduction

Karl Barth: The Church and the War

Karl Barth: Homiletics

Karl Barth: Church Dogmatics (31 vols)

We have access to the online digital edition of the new edition of the Church Dogmatics on the The Digital Karl Barth Library through Duke.

Link for Duke students who have NetID and Password.


Secondary sources:

Claudia Koonz: The Nazi Conscience

Eberhard Busch: The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth's Theology

John Webster (editor): The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth

• 

  Eberhard Busch: Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts

See my review at Book review of Karl Barth biography by Eberhard Busch

I have posted below my weekly reflections on Barth's Epistle to the Romans.  I will probably post all of them here. 

Download Barth--Epistle to the Romans Ch 1-2.doc

Download Barth--Epistle to the Romans Ch 3.doc

Download Barth--Epistle to the Romans Ch 4-5.doc

Download Barth--Epistle to the Romans Ch 6.doc

Download Barth--Epistle to the Romans Ch 7.doc

Download Barth--Epistle to the Romans Ch 8-9.doc

Download Barth--Epistle to the Romans Ch 10-11.doc

I am happy to send you the syllabus if you email me.  I have pasted the schedule below in case you want to read along. 

January 12: The Formation of a Modern Theologian

Journal Reading: Barth, Romans, Chapter 1

Busch, The Great Passion, 3-38

Barth, “The Great But,” and “Jesus and Judas” from Come Holy Spirit. (Article on Blackboard).

Koonz, The Nazi Conscience, 1-45.

January 19: No Class

Journal: Barth, Romans, Chapter 2

Barth, “Church and Culture” from Theology and Church. (Article on Blackboard).

Knooz, The Nazi Conscience, 46-68

January 26: Facing a Crisis

Journal: Barth, Romans, Chapter 3

Barth, God in Action

Barth, “Fate and Idea in Theology,” from The Way of Theology in Karl Barth, ed. by H. Martin Rumscheidt. (Article on Blackboard).

Knooz, The Nazi Conscience, 69-102

February 2: The Forming of a Theological Vision [Essay for God in Action Due]

Busch, The Great Passion, 39-54.

Barth, The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life

Knooz, The Nazi Conscience, 103-130

Schwobel, “Theology” from Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth

The World According to Barth

February 9: Locating Theology I

Journal: Barth, Romans, Chapter 5

Busch, The Great Passion, 57-81

Barth, “The First Commandment as an Axiom of Theology” from The Way of Theology in Karl Barth, ed. by H. Martin Rumscheidt. (Article on Blackboard).

Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1: §5; §8

February 16: Locating Theology II

Journal: Barth, Romans, Chapter 6

Busch, The Great Passion, 128-151

Barth, The Church and the War

Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/2, §13; §16; §17

“The Barmen Declaration,” from Creeds of the Churches, ed. by John Leith.(Article on Blackboard).

February 23: The Triune Identity I

Journal: Barth, Romans, Chapter 7

Busch, The Great Passion, 82-105

Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/1§25; §28*

Torrance, “The Trinity” from Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth

March 2: The Triune Identity II [Essay for The Church and War due]

Busch, The Great Passion, 106-127

Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/2, §33; §34*

McCormack, “Grace and being: the role of God’s gracious election in Karl Barth’s theological ontology” from Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth

March 9: Spring Reading Period

Journal Reading: Barth, Romans, Chapter 9

Knooz, The Nazi Conscience, 131-274

Barth, “The Jewish Problem and the Christian Answer,” from Against the Stream: Shorter Post-War Writings, 1946-52 (Article on Blackboard).

Werpehowski, “Karl Barth and Politics,” from Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth

March 16: Creation and Nation I [Essay for “The Jewish Problem and the Christian Answer” due]

Busch, The Great Passion, 176-198

Barth, “The Church between East and West,” from Against the Stream: Shorter Post-War Writings, 1946-52 (Article on Blackboard).

Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1, §41*

Tanner, “Creation and Providence” from Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth

March 23: Creation and Nation II

Journal Reading: Barth, Romans, Chapter 11

Busch, The Great Passion, 152-175

Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/2, §45, III/3, §49.2

Krotke, “The humanity of the human person in Karl Barth’s Anthropology,” from Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth

March 30: The Reconciling God

Journal Reading: Barth, Romans, Chapters 12-15

Busch, The Great Passion, 199-218

Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/1, §59

Hunsinger, “Karl Barth’s Christology: its basic Chalcedonian character,” from Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth

April 6: The Holy Spirit and the Church

Journal Reading: Barth, Romans, Chapters 15-16

Busch, The Great Passion, 219-241

Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/1, §62

____, Church Dogmatics, IV/2, §67.1/2

Hunsinger, “The Mediator of Communion: Karl Barth’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit” from Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth

April 13: The Holy Spirit and the Church

Busch, The Great Passion, 242-264

Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/3, §72

James Buckley, “Christian Community, baptism, and Lord’s Supper” from Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth

_______________________________

Monday, April 20

Barth, Homiletics (or) Barth, Evangelical Theology

Ken Carder's course The Local Church in Mission to God's World books

I am the preceptor (teaching assistant) for retired United Methodist Church Bishop Ken Carder’s course “The Local Church in Mission in God’s World” this semester at Duke Divinity School.  Here are the books on the reading list and his syllabus. 

Required Texts:

• 

  David J. Bosch: Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission

• 

  John Paul Lederach: The Journey Toward Reconciliation

• 

  Leander E. Keck: The Church Confident

• 

  Tex Sample: Blue Collar Resistance and the Politics of Jesus: Doing Ministry With Working Class Whites

• 

  Walter Wink: The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium

Other resources:

See the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence website for more Duke Divinity School resources on pastoring.

Posts on Ken Carder's other course Introduction to Christian Ministry (Fall 2008):

Ken Carder: Introduction to Christian Ministry books (Fall 2008)

Education in the Local Church: Taylor, Willimon, Storey, Niebuhr, and Groome

Review of Pastor: Theology and Practice by Will Willimon

Review of With God in the Crucible by Peter Storey

What does Hauerwas's course have to do with church leadership?

I am taking Stanley's Hauerwas's course "Happiness, the Life of Virtue, and Happiness" this semester.  If you are curious why I would take a course like this when the name of my blog is "Church Leadership Conversations," I can sketch some of the points of connection that I see already. 

1. How do Christians converse with outsiders?  It may be helpful to explain the goodness of the Christian life (think Mother Teresa) and then move from there to showing how the Christian faith best explains the virtuous life.  Perhaps pastors are smart to do evangelism by explaining 3 ways to have a better marriage or  three ways to manage your money better.  I think of The Marriage Course which is offered by the Alpha course founders at Holy Trinity Brompton in London, UK or Willow Creek's Good $ense course.
2. The question Aristotle is asking has to do with how people are formed.  Pastors ask the same thing: how do we make better disciples of Jesus?  I think of USC philosopher and evangelical Dallas Willard's three book series on spiritual formation: Spirit of the Disciplines, Divine Conspiracy and Renovation of the Heart and Willard's partnership with Richard Foster and his Celebration of Discipline book and Renovare movement.  (For more about Willard, see the bottom of this post).  Another way of saying it is this: Aristotle is concerned with polis (city-state) and Christians are concerned with building a strong healthy church.  But this raises, "what role does human effort play in developing spiritual maturity vs. what God does?"  This is the question that Christians ask when trying to use Aristotle's insights: see Hauerwas and Pinches, Herdt, Wells, Aquinas and Augustine below. It is around these questions where "political theology" and "ecclesiology" and "church leadership" and "spiritual formation" and "discipleship" and "preaching" and "Christian education" and "pastoring" intersect. 

This is not surprising but I will say it anyway.  I am convinced that a community of Christians trying to orient their lives by the Scriptures is absolutely central.  Though there is a lot of complex discussion in these books, none of it will reverse that and that is what most of my readers are already dedicating their lives to.  In a way, this philosophy, history, and theology merely help us to ask better questions about how this is done.  

About the course:
We had our first class yesterday.   There are 60 in the course.  Hauerwas lectures for 1 to 1 1/2 hours and then we go to discussion groups ("precepts" in Duke Divinity School jargon) led by teaching assistants ("preceptors") who are Ph.D / Th.D. students not taking the course.  The thirteen Ph.D. and Th.D. students in the course meet with Hauerwas himself.  Of that group, 7 are Th.D. students from Duke Divinity School including me, two political science and one philosophy Ph.D students from Duke Graduate School, one theology Ph.D. from Sweden, one theology Ph.D. student from University of Leuven in the Netherlands, and one theology student from Duke University's Department of Religion.  The required books are below.

Books for Stanley Hauerwas Course: Happiness, the Life of Virtue, and Friendship

• 

  Alasdair MacIntyre: After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition

This is probably the most talked about book at Duke Divinity School.  We are supposed to read it for the first class.  I already read this for the Th.D. seminar during the Fall of 2007.  If you are confused why this would be an important book to read at seminary, you might be helped by this comment by Hauerwas, "In a way, MacIntyre is engaged in something we might in other contexts call Christian apologetics" (Christians Among the Virtues, 40). 

• 

  Aristotle: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (Translator: Joe Sachs)
  

There are a number of different translations but this one looks the best to me.  The Irwin translation is the one Hauerwas uses and is in the bookstore but it is a 1999 translation and I read better things about the 2002 Sachs translation.  A book like this shares many of the difficulties of translating the New Testament--textual criticism, consistency, word choice, readability vs. "accuracy", etc.

Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle (Translator: Terence Irwin)

• 

  Herbert McCabe: On Aquinas

This one only the doctoral students are supposed to read. 

• 

  Jennifer A. Herdt: Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices

This is the "textbook" for the course.  It is a new book and tries to reflect Christianly on the use of the virtues. 

• 

  Saint Augustine: The Augustine Catechism: The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Charity

• 

  Samuel Wells: Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics

Wells is the Dean of Duke Chapel and wrote his dissertation on Hauerwas.  Wells is a great preacher. 

• 

  St. Thomas Aquinas: Treatise On the Virtues

• 

  Stanley Hauerwas and Charles Pinches: Christians Among the Virtues: Theological Conversations With Ancient and Modern Ethics

• 

  Nathan R. Kerr: Christ, History, And Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission

This book by blogger Nate Kerr is available at Wipf and Stock at a 40% discount if you enter the coupon code:  “KERR40”.  That puts the book at about $16.80, which is a significantly lower price.
Great theology blogger Ben Myers calls it the best theology book of 2008 though he is biased as Kerr is his friend.  Hauerwas recommended it to me yesterday for my interests in ecclesiology and mission.  Hauerwas's blurb reads,

A rare gift—a critic from whom you learn. Though I do not agree with all of his criticisms of my work, Kerr--drawing imaginatively and creatively on the work of Troeltsch and Barth-- has rightly framed the questions central to my and Yoder’s project. We are in his dept for having done so. In this book, Kerr not only establishes himself as one of the most able readers of my and Yoder’s work, but he is clearly a theologian in his own right. We will have much to learn from him in the future.
Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics, Duke Divinity School, Durham, NC

See also the "Symposium" on the book at the the church and postmodern culture: conversation
blog.

Note:
I have put a number of links to audio teaching by Stanley Hauerwas at my blog post here.

More about Dallas Willard:
Do Stanley Hauerwas and Dallas Willard ever cite one another?  Not that I can find so far.  I have looked through Willard's books except Renovation of the Heart. Here is Dallas Willard's faculty page at USC's School of Philosophy. Hauerwas and Willard are on the same page to a great degree.  It is too bad that there is not more cross-polination.

Dallas Willard Trilogy

• 

  Dallas Willard: The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives

• 

  Dallas Willard: The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God

• 

  Dallas Willard: Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ

See also the book by Jim Spiegel, my former professor and colleague at Taylor University on the virtues.  Spiegel also has a website and blog.

How to Be Good in a World Gone Bad by James S. Spiegel (Paperback - Feb 25, 2005)

Ken Carder: Introduction to Christian Ministry books (Fall 2008)

I was the preceptor (teaching assistant) for Bishop Ken Carder's course last semester at Duke Divinity School.

"The course provides an introduction to the theology and practice of Christian ministry with particular focus on ordained pastoral vocation."

Books for Ken Carder's Intro to Christian Ministry

• 

  Barbara Brown Taylor: The Preaching Life

• 

  Will D. Campbell: Brother to a Dragonfly

• 

  Richard Lischer: Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery

• 

  Reinhold Niebuhr: Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic

• 

  Henri J. Nouwen: In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership

• 

  Peter Storey: With God in the Crucible: Preaching Costly Discipleship

• 

  William H. Willimon: Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry

• 

  William H. Willimon: Pastor: A Reader for Ordained Ministry

Guder, Hays and Barth on the missionary nature of the local church

"The reason Christians are formed into communities is because of God's work to make a people to serve him as Christ's witnesses.  The congregation is either a missional community--as Newbigin defines it, 'the hermeneutic of the gospel' (The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 222ff.)--or it is ultimately a caricature of the people of God that it is called to be."
Darrell L. Guder, The Continuing Conversion of the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 136.

"If we ask, 'What is God doing in the world in the interval between resurrection and parousia?' the answer must be given, for Paul, primarily in ecclesial terms: God is at work through the Spirit to create communities that prefigure and embody the reconciliation and healing of the world."
Richard B. Hays, "Ecclesiology and Ethics in 1 Corinthians,"  Ex Auditu 10 (1994): 32.  Cf. 31-43.

"As an apostolic Church the Church can never in any respect be an end in itself, but, following the existence of the apostles, it exists only as it exercises the ministry of a herald."
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics  4/1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), 724.  

Working bibliography of recent church and missiology books:

• 

  Alan Hirsch: The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church

• 

  Alan Roxburgh, Fred Romanuk, and Eddie Gibbs : The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World (J-B Leadership Network Series)

• 

  Craig Van Gelder: The Ministry of the Missional Church: A Community Led by the Spirit

• Craig Van Gelder, ed.: The Missional Church in Context: Helping Congregations Develop Contextual Ministry (Missional Church Series)

• 

  Darrell Guder, ed.: Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (The Gospel and Our Culture Series)

• 

  David E. Fitch: The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from Big Business, Parachurch Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism, and Other Modern Maladies

• 

  Ed Stetzer: Breaking the Missional Code: Your Church Can Become a Missionary in Your Community

• 

  Ed Stetzer: Planting Missional Churches

• 

  Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger: Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures

• 

  Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch: The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church

• 

  Neil Cole: Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens

• 

  Patrick Keifert: We Are Here Now: A New Missional Era

• 

  Paul Wesley Chilcote and Laceye C. Warner: The Study of Evangelism: Exploring a Missional Practice of the Church

• 

  Rick Rouse and Craig Van Gelder: A Field Guide for the Missional Congregation: Embarking on a Journey of Transformation

• 

  Thom S. Rainer: Simple Church: Returning to God's Process for Making Disciples

Working bibliography of classic church and missiology books:

• 

  Andrew F. Walls: The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in Transmission of Faith

• 

  David Jacobus Bosch: Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (American Society of Missiology Series, No. 16)

• 

  John Howard Yoder: For the Nations: Essays Evangelical and Public

• 

  John Howard Yoder: The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical

• 

  Lamin Sanneh: Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture (American Society of Missiology)

• 

  Lesslie Newbigin: The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

• 

  Lesslie Newbigin: The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission

• 

  Lesslie Newbigin: Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture

I have closed comments because this post is getting lots of spam for some reason.  Feel free to leave your comment on a nearby post and I will add it to this one.

Working bibliography of biblical studies books on ecclesiology

I have prepared a working bibliography of biblical studies books on ecclesiology.  Below I have also reviewed Longenecker's compiliation which is quite good.  Elsewhere, I have reviewed Barrett's book. 

Update: See also the input from different people on Chris Tilling's post asking for suggestions on this topic. 

Working bibliography of biblical studies books on ecclesiology

• 

  Andrew D. Clarke: A Pauline Theology of Church Leadership (The Library of New Testament Studies)

• 

  Andrew D. Clarke: Serve the Community of the Church: Christians as Leaders and Ministers (First-Century Christians in the Graeco-Roman World)

• 

  Arthur G. Patzia: The Emergence of the Church: Context, Growth, Leadership & Worship

• 

  C. K. Barrett: Church, Ministry, & Sacraments in the New Testament

• Ernst Käsemann: New Testament Questions of Today
  “Unity and Multiplicity in the New Testament Doctrine of the Church,” 252-259.
• Ernst Käsemann: Essays on New Testament Themes
  “Ministry and Community in the New Testament,” 63-94.
• Ernst Käsemann: Perspectives on Paul
  “The Cry for Liberty in the Worship of the Church,” 122-137.

• 

  Gerhard Lohfink: Jesus and Community

• 

  Gordon D. Fee: Listening to the Spirit in the Text

• 

  Guy Laurie: Introducing Early Christianity: A Topical Survey of Its Life, Beliefs and Practices

• 

  James D. G. Dunn: Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into the Character of Earliest Christianity

• John Howard Yoder: The Fullness of Christ: Paul's Revolutionary Vision of Universal Ministry
• Markus Bockmuehl and Michael B. Thompson: A Vision for the Church: Studies in Early Christian Ecclesiology in Honour of J. P. M. Sweet

• 

  Miroslav Volf: After Our Likeness: The Church As the Image of the Trinity

• 

  Paul S. Minear: Images of the Church in the New Testament

• 

  Raymond E. Brown: The Churches The Apostles Left Behind

• 

  Richard N. Longenecker: New Wine into Fresh Wineskins: Contextualizing the Early Christian Confessions

• 

  Richard N. Longenecker, ed.: Community Formation: In the Early Church and in the Church Today

• 

  Richard S. Ascough: What Are They Saying About the Formation of Pauline Churches?

• 

  Ritva H. Williams: Stewards, Prophets, Keepers of the Word: Leadership in the Early Church

• 

  Robert J. Banks: Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Cultural Setting, Revised Edition

• 

  Robert J. Banks: Going to Church in the First Century

• 

  Steven Croft, ed.: Mission-Shaped Church: Church Planting and Fresh Expressions of Church in a Changing Context

• 

  T. F. Torrance: Royal Priesthood: A Theology of Ordained Ministry

• 

  Wayne A. Meeks: The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul

Book review: Community Formation: In the Early Church and in the Church Today edited by Richard Longenecker

Richard N. Longenecker, ed. Community Formation: In the Early Church and in the Church Today (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002). 

 

Outstanding book on biblical and historical backgrounds of church leadership structures, November 22, 2008

By
Andrew D. Rowell (Durham, NC) - See all my reviews

The subject of this book is church leadership structures. It addresses the question: "What are bishops, elders and deacons?"
There are 11 chapters plus a fantastic introduction to the history of the debate by editor Richard Longenecker. "Most of the chapters in this volume were originally presented at the Bingham Colloquium, held June 26-27, 2000, at McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada" (xvii). I will highlight the chapters I happened to find particularly helpful. I found the first two chapters by Richard Ascough on Greco-Roman associations, and Alan Segal on the Jewish institutions, to be excellent concise descriptions of the context from which the church emerged. Then there are chapters by well known New Testament scholars Craig A. Evans, Richard Longenecker, and I. Howard Marshall on the church in the Gospels, Paul, and the Pastoral Epistles respectively. Frances Young traces the development of the forms of church leadership in the whole New Testament and into the Greek fathers--arguing that probably elders meant "senior citizens" and not a church office. Finally, there is a brilliant essay by theologian John Webster on how church leadership should be considered; an interesting essay by David Hester about the development of Presbyterian polity and whether it is still valuable today; and then finally a summary by Miroslav Volf of his book After Our Likeness. If I were teaching ecclesiology in a seminary, I would require all of these essays. They are concise and well-written by outstanding scholars.
Because of my own interests, I did not delve into the chapters by Peter Richardson, Scott Bartchy, and Alan Hayes.

Review of Pastor: Theology and Practice by Will Willimon

Here is my Amazon.com review of:

• 

  William H. Willimon: Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry (Nashville: Abingdon: 2002).
  

Willimon is a hero to me.  I would love to do the writing, teaching and leading that he has done in his life.  I appreciated his wise reflections in this book. 

Comprehensive, insightful but verbose, November 13, 2008

By
Andrew D. Rowell (Durham, NC) - See all my reviews

Reading this book is like having a very long conversation with one of the premier pastor of pastors in the United States. Will Willimon has a Ph.D. in theology, was the Dean of the Chapel at Duke University for many years, and is now a Bishop in the United Methodist Church. He has written many books and has written regularly for both Christian Century and Christianity Today's Leadership Journal. He is worth listening to.

Seminary students might want to read the book cover to cover to get 336 pages of reflection and insight into pastoral ministry. They will invariably gain a greater grasp of the types of dilemmas pastors face and some ways of reflecting on those issues. Others will want to have this book on their shelf--to consult when the issue of ordination, pastoral care, and preaching comes up; they can then turn to the relevant chapter and enrich the discussion. While reflecting on contemporary issues in the church, Willimon does significant exegetical work in the New Testament as well as drawing upon Augustine, Luther, Calvin and Wesley.

As both Christopher S. Royer and S. A. Garno note in their reviews: the book is comprehensive in its reflections but is a bit difficult to read because it is so verbose and convoluted. Still, there are insights on every page--each person who reads it will grow in their understanding of pastoring.

Your Tags: pastoring, pastoral theology, ordained ministry, clergy, pastor, church leadership

Related resources: 

Will Willimon's Blog: A Peculiar Prophet--A Dialogue with Bishop Will Willimon of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church

Bishop Willimon's Podcast iTunes link--will only work if you have iTunes (which is free program that works on PC's and Macs) installed on your computer

Review of With God in the Crucible by Peter Storey

Here is my Amazon.com review of

Peter Storey, With God in the Crucible: Preaching Costly Discipleship (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005). 

Powerful sermons that concisely tell the story of the fall of apartheid in South Africa, November 13, 2008

By
Andrew D. Rowell (Durham, NC) - See all my reviews

I was moved to tears and deeply challenged by this tale of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa--illustrated by the concise sermons of Peter Storey. In 1990, apartheid began being dismantled. In 1994, the first democratic elections were held. Storey was involved before, during and after these events. Storey was the pastor of Central Methodist Mission Methodist in Johannesburg from 1976 to 1989; Methodist Bishop of the Johannesburg/Soweto area from 1984 to 1997; and Professor of the Practice of Christian ministry at Duke Divinity School from 1999 to 2006. Storey himself is a white South African but served alongside black leaders like Desmond Tutu who wrote the foreword.

It took me about 4 hours to read the 175 pages. There are 23 sermons here which may sound like a lot but they are only 2-5 pages each. Each sermon is prefaced by a description of the dramatic events that occasioned the sermon. The sermons launch from a relevant Scriptural text and are illustrated with poignant stories and powerful quotations.

Retired United Methodist Bishop Ken Carder required this book for first year MDiv students in his Introduction to Christian Ministry course at Duke Divinity School and they thoroughly enjoyed it.

Note:

I do not think of Amazon.com reviews as significant academic reviews of the book.  People who view this review at Amazon.com will already be browsing the book.  My review is intended to give the person a better idea of what is in the book, thus helping them decide if they want to buy it.  No one had reviewed Storey's book so I thought I would give people a better idea of what it was all about. 

Related resources:

See my other post about Storey at:
Education in the Local Church: Taylor, Willimon, Storey, Niebuhr, and Groome

An online article by him is:
Peter Storey, Rules of Engagement: Faithful Congregations in a Dangerous World. Inaugural Lecture for Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams, Jr. Chair of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke University Divinity School, 1999.  Storey taught at Duke Divinity School from 1999 to 2006.

See the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence website for more Duke Divinity School resources on pastoring. 

We read the following books in Bishop Ken Carder's Introduction to Christian Ministry course at Duke Divinity School, where I am the preceptor (teaching assistant). 

Books for Ken Carder's Intro to Christian Ministry

• 

  Barbara Brown Taylor: The Preaching Life

• 

  Will D. Campbell: Brother to a Dragonfly

• 

  Richard Lischer: Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery

• 

  Reinhold Niebuhr: Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic

• 

  Henri J. Nouwen: In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership

• 

  Peter Storey: With God in the Crucible: Preaching Costly Discipleship

• 

  William H. Willimon: Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry

• 

  William H. Willimon: Pastor: A Reader for Ordained Ministry

 

Review of Coffeehouse Theology by Ed Cyzewski

Ed Cyzewski, Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life.  Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2008.  233 pp. $10.19 (paper), ISBN: 978-1600062773. 

29-year old Ed Cyzewski explains how his theological perspective has deepened and strengthened in the process of his theological education.  Cyzewski is a teacher--wanting to put his discoveries in language college students or other people beginning to be interested in theology can understand.  He earnestly shares personal stories and contemporary examples to illustrate the theological concepts he is trying to explain.  In his famous/infamous book A New Kind of Christian, Brian McLaren provocatively presents conversations between fictional characters on a number of controversial theological topics.  Cyzewski addresses many of these questions but shows how he has resolved them in his own mind.  If you were confused by McLaren's questions, Cyzewski helps sketch how an evangelical Christian might move toward resolution.  Maybe McLaren's A New Kind of Christian and Cyzewski's Coffeehouse Theology should be given to all Christian college students--the former to get them intrigued about theology and the latter to nudge them toward further constructive reflection.  Cyzewski's book is ambitious--tackling a number of issues related to systematic theology.  Perhaps one might want to read a more distinguished theologian who addresses these issues--perhaps Lesslie Newbigin or Stan Grenz; but academic theologians rarely address so many contemporary questions in such a concise way and in language as accessible as Cyzewski's.  One of the great parts of Coffeehouse Theology is that Cyzewski recommends many other books as he moves through the book--purposefully trying to intrigue the reader to explore further. 

One minor critique of Cyzewski's book is his regular use of the term "contextual theology" to describe his approach.  He writes, "So we need to challenge ourselves to learn about God with an awareness of context--what we can call 'contextual theology'--while at the same time making sure we value different insights from different cultures where Christians are learning about God in their own particular situations.  In brief, that's where we are headed together in this book.  Coffeehouse Theology will help us understand who we are and by including perspectives outsider of our own in the midst of our study of Scripture" (20).  What Cyzewski actually means by the term "contexual theology" is "good theology" or just plain "theology."  Cyzewski does not intend to align himself with the "contextual theologies" that typically fall under that heading.  For example, Lesslie Newbigin characterizes "contexual theology" in a negative way as "a theology that gives primary attention to the issues that people are facing at that time and place and insists that the gospel cannot be communicated except in terms of these issues" (Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, rev. ed; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995, 133-134).  Andrew Walls calls “contextualized” “appalling jargon” (Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996, 7, 84).  David Bosch writes, "It goes without saying that not every manifestation of contextual theology is guilty of any or all of the overreactions discussed above.  Still, they all remain a constant danger to every (legitimate!) attempt at allowing the context to determine the nature and content of theology for that context" (David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1991), 432, Cf. 420-432.   Darrell Guder's Missional Church uses the term "contexualization" but not "contextual theology." "The church relates constantly and dynamically both to the gospel and to its contextual reality.  It is important, then for the church to study its context carefully and to understand it.  The technical term for this continuing discipline is contextualization" (Darrell Guder, ed. The Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, 18).  Again, I do not think Cyzewski's approach has the weaknesses of the group of theologies under the heading "contextual theologies" but I do think it is unfortunate he repeatedly uses that term to describe his own approach.    

All in all, Cyzewski's Coffeehouse Theology is a fine introduction to a number of contemporary issues in theology in language college students or other beginning theological students will understand.  I hope it will serve as the on-ramp for many into rigorous theological reflection.   

Resources:

Sample Chapter

Post on Emergent Village blog: Why I wrote yet another book on contextual theology ...

Ed Cyzewski's Blog: In a Mirror Dimly.

Ed Cyzewski's Website.

Note:

Ed Cyzewski is a Taylor University grad like I am. 

See my post:

Everything I needed to know about the church I learned at Taylor University.

On the use of surveys by church leaders

I am currently in a course with Duke sociologist Mark Chaves called "The Social Organization of American Religion" and will eventually write more about the issue of engaging with statistics and survey data surrounding congregations.  But in the meantime, I have pasted my brief comments in response to the Reveal conference going on this week at Willow Creek.  I made this comment at the Leadership Journal Out of Ur blog.  Below that I have also pasted a brief list of recent books on congregations. 

See
Out of Ur: Live from REVEAL: Getting the Weekend Right: What does truly transformational worship look like?

and

Out of Ur: Live from REVEAL: Bill Hybels on Self-Centered Christians: Jumping the chasm between self-centered and Christ-centered faith.

My take:
I would just encourage congregations to take conclusions and implications drawn from the REVEAL data with a grain of salt. I think it is appropriate for church leaders to look at how their congregations answered the questions and then reflect: "Hmm . . . I wonder why __% of our congregation said ____" but they need to be careful about drawing prescriptions too quickly or naively trusting "key findings." Remember that correlation does not mean causation. Surveys like this do descriptive work--much of it will be things observant pastors already sensed--but the prescriptive work is another story.

Bradley Wright's substantial critiques of the conclusions being drawn from the Reveal data still stand. 

There is a rich literature on sociological study of congregations (Mark Chaves, Nancy Ammerman, Stephen Warner, Scott Thumma, Rodney Stark) available but "secrets" and "solutions" are rarely found there--generally their conclusions explode easy answers. There is no substitute for a wise leadership team who continues to experiment and pray and consult with the congregation on how to see the formation of better and more disciples.

Recent books by academic sociologists of religion about congregations:

Nancy Tatom Ammerman, Pillars of Faith: American Congregations and Their Partners (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).

See review at  Ram A. Cnaan, Review of "Pillars of Faith: American Congregations and their Partners" Sociology of Religion, Spring, 2007. Available online.

Tobin Belzer, Richard W. Flory, Nadia Roumani, and Brie Loskota, "Congregations That Get It: Understanding Religious Identities in the Next Generation," 103-123 in James L. Heft, ed. Passing on the Faith: Transforming Traditions for the Next Generation of Jews, Christians, and Muslims (Abrahamic Dialogues) (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2006). 

Jackson W. Carroll, God's Potters: Pastoral Leadership and the Shaping of Congregations (Pulpit & Pew) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005).  Pulpit & Pew at Duke now Sustaining Pastoral Excellence.

Mark Chaves, Congregations in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).  National Congregations Study.

David A. Roozen and James R. Nieman, eds. Church, Identity, And Change: Theology And Denominational Structures In Unsettled Times (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005).

Rodney Stark, What Americans Really Believe (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2008). Results from recent Baylor survey. In one chapter, he argues megachurches are as effective as small churches. Institute for Study of Religion at Baylor University.  

Scott Thumma and Dave Travis, Beyond Megachurch Myths: What We Can Learn from America's Largest Churches (J-B Leadership Network Series) (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007). Hartford Institute of Religious Research and Leadership Network

Scott Thumma and Warren Bird, “Changes In American Megachurches: Tracing Eight Years Of Growth And Innovation in the Nation's Largest-Attendance Congregations” in Hartford Institute for Religion Research Website  (Sept 12, 2008). Available online.

R. Stephen Warner, A Church Of Our Own: Disestablishment And Diversity In American Religion (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005). A collection of essays.

Robert Wuthnow, After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University.  

Analyses of congregations by church leaders:

Greg Hawkins and Cally Parkinson, Follow Me (REVEAL) (South Barrington, Ill.: Willow Creek Resources, 2008). Reveal (Willow Creek Association).

Greg Hawkins and Cally Parkinson, Reveal: Where Are You? (REVEAL) (South Barrington, Ill.: Willow Creek Resources, 2007). Reveal (Willow Creek Association).

David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007). Barna Group.

David T. Olson, The American Church in Crisis: Groundbreaking Research Based on a National Database of over 200,000 Churches (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008). The American Church Research Project.

Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too (Nashville: B&H Books, 2007). LifeWay Research.

Cynthia Woolever and Deborah Bruce, Beyond the Ordinary: Ten Strengths of U.S. Congregations (Louisville: John Knox Press, 2004). The U.S. Congregational Life Study.

Outstanding book about college students; Book Review: I Once Was Lost by Everts and Schaupp

Don Everts and Doug Schaupp have written a new book based on their experiences doing campus ministry with college students in Colorado and California for the last twenty years.  They describe the spiritual journeys of these students and how they have tried to help.  Anyone who works with college students or wants to understand them better, will find this book illuminating and encouraging.  See my full review below. 

I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus by Don Everts and Doug Schaupp (Paperback - May 30, 2008)

Must reading for those involved in Christian campus ministries, September 19, 2008

By
Andrew D. Rowell (Durham, NC) - See all my reviews

Don Everts and Doug Schaupp help the reader become sensitive to the typical stages college students move through when they become Christians.

This book would be particularly helpful for those who work with college students or want to better understand college students--as it describes the pressures, thought processes, and friendship dynamics of this age group.

It would also be helpful for those who ask the question, "Does anyone today convert to Christianity as a thinking adult?" Indeed they do. Everts and Schaupp try to find patterns in the journeys of the people they have observed moving through this process.

They identify Trusting a Christian, Becoming Curious, Opening Up to Change, Seeking After God, Entering the Kingdom and Living in the Kingdom as key "thresholds" that people move through.

The book is nice and concise (134 pages) and reads quickly. Everts and Schaupp are not trying to make an argument that these are the thresholds all Christians need to work through. Rather it is sociological or anthropological work--similar to the famous Kubler-Ross stages of loss (denial, anger, acceptance, etc.) or Christian Smith finding the phenomenon of "moralistic therapeutic deism" in teens.

Everts and Schaupp essentially share their experiences and then ask if this resonates with others. This is not to denigrate their experiences--they have done a significant amount of interviews and they are in as good a position as anyone with their experience in college ministry with InterVarsity to make these kind of observations. Does their model have explanatory power? I think it does.

If they are right that college students (and perhaps teenagers and adults as well--who knows?) that become Christians, move through these thresholds well, what are the implications for how college ministry and church ministry should change if they want to see more people become Christians? The unmissable point is that these students who have moved through these thresholds certainly did not do so because of one event or program. Someone needed to listen to them, give them advice, challenge them and encourage them. Though Everts and Schaupp sketch a process, they explode the idea that some specially designed program would be able to mass-produce followers of Jesus. This book is much more about how to do spiritual direction than how to do evangelistic programming.

The book does not contain much formal theological language. In my quick reading, I do not remember a reference for example to the Holy Spirit or to baptism. Their goal is not to reflect theologically on conversion. Similarly they do not engage developmental psychology or other sociological research and draw parallels between that research and their conclusions. An academic researcher would want to do interviews with a representative sample of people who became Christians in college to test Everts and Schaupp's tentative conclusions.  [See update below].

One final note, the book has in its subtitle the controversial word "postmodern"--What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus. I would simply say that this word plays almost no role in the book. It is not a book that views postmodernity positively nor one that views postmodernity negatively. The book describes students at colleges in California and Colorado in the last twenty years--that is all the authors mean by "postmodern."

In conclusion, I would highly recommend the book as insightful, brief, hopeful and stimulating. College students will be loved better by people who read this book.

Update:

As far as other books that talk about conversion, see chapter five of the December 2008 release: Douglas Campbell, Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).  See especially pages 200-211 for numerous bibliographic references and a good summary of recent sociological discussion of conversion.  Much of the discussion by Campbell revolves around the insights of John Lofland and Rodney Stark.  The discussion begins with these citations. 

John Lofland and Rodney Stark, "Becoming a World-Saver: A Theory of Conversion from a Deviant Perspective," American Sociological Review 30 (1965): 862-75; and Lofland, "Becoming a World-Saver Revisited," American Behavioral Scientist 20 (1977): 805-18 and Lorne L. Dawson, "Who Joins New Religious Movements and Why: Twenty Years of Research and What Have We Learned?" in  Cults and New Religious Movements: A Reader (Blackwell Readings in Religion) ed. Lorne L. Dawson (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 116-30.

According to Campbell,

Lofland and Stark hypothesized that converts possessed three “predisposing conditions”: acutely felt tension or deprivation, a religious problem-solving perspective, and an overall self-definition as a religious seeker. Four further conditions—“situational contingencies”—depended upon a concrete encounter with a cult: a self-perceived “turning point” (near the time of the encounter), a strong affective bond with one or more cult members, reduced or eliminated extra-cult attachments, and further intensive interaction with other cult members. An individual who met these four further conditions experienced full-fledged conversion and became a “deployable agent” of the new cult (Douglas Campbell, Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 200-201. 

I cite Campbell's work to (1) highlight his book and (2) to note that Everts and Schaupp are not alone in their interest in conversion; there are theologians like Campbell and sociologists like Lofland and Stark exploring similar questions. 

Campbell notes that young and educated people are particularly likely to convert and that rational as well as situational factors are involved--consistent in some respects with the observations of Everts and Schaupp.

See also 

Christian Smith, Getting a Life: The challenge of emerging adulthood in Books & Culture, November/December 2007.  (Available online). 

Notre Dame sociologist Smith (and attender of Blacknall Memorial Presbyterian Church where he along with Campbell and I attend) overviews recent sociological, anthropological, and psychological studies of young adults. 

Best book on ecclesiology I read this year: Body Politics by John Howard Yoder

I am doing my doctoral work here at Duke Divinity School on "The Practice of Leading Christian Communities and Institutions" with my secondary concentration in "New Testament."  This spring each of my courses (Scripture and Ethics with Allen Verhey and Richard Hays, Church and Ministry in the New Testament with Richard Hays, and Theology of Mission with Laceye Warner) required me to read John Howard Yoder.  Yoder's 80 page, (that's right, very short), Body Politics is the book I find myself recommending almost daily. 

Here is my Amazon.com review of John Howard Yoder's Body Politics, which I just wrote tonight.  

• 

  John Howard Yoder: Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World

 

Outstanding brief book of provocative ecclesiology, July 8, 2008

By	Andrew D. Rowell (Durham, NC) - See all my reviews

John Howard Yoder (1927-1997), who was a professor of theology at Notre Dame and a Mennonite, outlines in 80 pages five practices that should be central to every church's life together. He argues that congregations need to recover these practices that are described in the New Testament and have since become distorted. This book grew out of a 1986 lecture at Duke Divinity School entitled "Sacrament as Social Process: Christ the Transformer of Culture," later published in his book The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical. In Body Politics, Yoder describes the five practices this way:
(1) Binding and Loosing
(2) Disciples Break Bread Together / Eucharist
(3) Baptism and the New Humanity / Baptism
(4) The Fullness of Christ / Multiplicity of gifts
(5) The Rule of Paul / Open meeting

In each case, Yoder argues that the original New Testament practice has been today almost entirely lost in most churches. (1) Binding and loosing - moral discernment through dialogue and forgiveness as described in Matthew 18 - is rarely practiced. (2) The sense of the Eucharist as a meal (1 Corinthians 11) where people share their food with one another is rarely practiced. (3) Baptism (Galatians 3:27-28) rarely communicates the profound transcending of social and cultural barriers - between Jew and Gentile, slave and free there is one baptism. (4) In almost every church there a few so-called "gifted" people who dominate the church while most congregation members are spectators. (5) And it is the rare congregation that truly opens the floor for all congregation members to participate (1 Corinthians 14).

What is compelling about Yoder's writing is his skill as a reader of biblical texts, his weaving of historical context (his dissertation work was on the Radical Reformation), and his ability to talk to theologians of many denominations (he did his doctoral work with the reformed theologian Karl Barth, taught at a Roman Catholic school, and strongly influenced the United Methodist theologian Stanley Hauerwas).

Yoder is also amazingly concise for a theologian. In my first year as a Th.D. (Doctor of Theology) student at Duke Divinity School, this is the one book I read this year that I find myself recommending to friends and family.

So, who will like this book? Yoder writes sympathetically denominational groups that have less formal hierarchy: Mennonites, Quakers, Methodists, Plymouth Brethren, evangelicals, Baptists, Pentecostals, Puritans, and house churches. If you are a part of any of these denominations, you will probably cheer all the way through this book and say "Aha!"

On the other hand, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Presbyterians will surely find Yoder's ideas radical, wild, far out, untenable, foreign and unrealistic. For example, a Roman Catholic might initially think about the five practices: (1) the priest facilitates confession, (2) the priest facilitates the mass / Eucharist, (3) infants are baptized, (4) the priests have a special religious ritual calling, and (5) the congregation is silent as the priests recite mass. Yoder argues from the New Testament that all of these developments are unfortunate! Thus, if you are coming from that perspective, it will probably be tough to swallow Yoder's ideas and he may not convince you to be a radical protestant in 80 pages! However, if you have a niggle of doubt about any of these things, Yoder is sure to fan it! It is also worth noting that many Roman Catholics want to recover the biblical meaning of these practices. For example, I read this year at Duke a number of books that get at this by Roman Catholic authors: Raymond Brown's The Churches The Apostles Left Behind, Michael Warren's At This Time, in This Place: The Spirit Embodied in the Local Assembly, and Vincent Miller's Consuming Religion: Christian Faith And Practice in a Consumer Culture.

Yoder, is most known for his book The Politics of Jesus and for his defense of pacifism but this little book is a gem. I would highly recommend this book for anyone thinking about church leadership or planting a church. I would also highly recommend it as a textbook for Systematic Theology III courses which cover ecclesiology. If you liked this book, read Yoder's For the Nations: Essays Evangelical and Public next.

Update: Other related posts that I wrote after this one:

Based on Yoder's five practices: Everything I needed to know about the church I learned at Taylor University.

The Ecclesiology of John Howard Yoder paper

A number of other books that I read in the past prepared me for thinking as Yoder does about ecclesiology: 

• 

  R. Paul Stevens: The Equipping Pastor: A Systems Approach to Congregational Leadership

In all of his work, retired Regent College faculty member Paul Stevens argues for the empowering of the laity, for every-member-ministry, for a lessening of the clergy-lay divide. 

• 

  Ken Sande: The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict

Sande in all of his work argues for the practical benefits of biblical conflict resolution, particularly Matthew 18. 

• 

  Doug Pagitt: Preaching Re-Imagined: The Role of the Sermon in Communities of Faith

Pagitt describes the way that he encourages interaction at his emerging church - soliciting feedback during the preparation, inviting oral questions and comments after the sermon, and encourages dialogue about the sermon online afterward. 

• 

  Brian D. McLaren: The Church on the Other Side

This is one of McLaren's earliest books (now revised) where he stresses some basic ways most churches can improve.  It is the least provocative of any of his books.  It is basically how he would talk if he was gently encouraging pastors to consider change.  With his book  A New Kind of Christian, he decided to be more provocative and controversial. 

• 
  

  Gordon D. Fee: Listening to the Spirit in the Text

Retired Regent College New Testament professor Fee describes the lack of formal leadership structures in the New Testament. 

Hays (one of my doctoral work advisors) and Fee (a previous mentor) both describe the participative and fluid nature of the early Christian communities.  Barrett, Banks and  Käsemann, who Hays had me read this semester, all do the same. 

• 

  Richard B. Hays: First Corinthians (Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching)  

• 

  Gordon Fee: The First Epistle to the Corinthians (The New International Commentary on the New Testament)

• 

  Robert J. Banks: Going to Church in the First Century

Banks's book is 48 pages and much faster to read than Yoder's 80 pages!  You can read for one afternoon and claim to have read two books!

• Ernst Käsemann: "Ministry and Community in the New Testament" in Essays on New Testament Themes
• 

  C. K. Barrett: Church, Ministry, & Sacraments in the New Testament

 
I also reviewed Barrett's book on Amazon.com since there were no reviews!
 

Excellent reflection on ecclesiology by a great New Testament scholar, July 8, 2008

By	Andrew D. Rowell (Durham, NC) - See all my reviews

C.K. "Kingsley" Barrett preached at 90 years old in November 2007. He taught New Testament at the University of Durham from 1945 until 1982, writing commentaries on John, Romans, the Pastoral Epistles, Acts, and 1 and 2 Corinthians. This book "Church, Ministry & Sacraments in the New Testament" incorporates Barrett's love for the church and his New Testament scholarship.

Below are my summary notes from reading Church, Ministry & Sacraments:

Barrett begins the book by acknowledging that though he is a Methodist he has been highly influenced by Anglo-Catholics and has worked with many Anglicans at the University of Durham. In chapter one, Barrett explains that his thesis is a paradox: "that the church is both central and peripheral in the New Testament." On the one hand, calling disciples was central to the mission of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, Barrett argues, the formation of an organization was surprising necessity when the consummation of the age did not follow the resurrection.
In chapter two, entitled "Ministry," Barrett reflects on the leadership of the church as described in the New Testament - beginning with the Pauline literature. Every member was to be a minister. Functions are emphasized over offices. There was no leader who gathered money, administered the sacraments, oversaw worship or led church discipline. He points out that Paul was the authority in his churches while he lived and Spirit-gifting was emphasized. Churches also met in the households of rich people who probably exercised some leadership. Barrett emphasizes the importance of talented people and people who specialize in their ministries but also warns of the dangers of people flaunting their gifts, being enriched by them, and creating an aura of superiority.
Barrett then looks at the issue of presbyters and episkopos in 1 Peter. He wonders if presbyters may have been primarily older people rather than an office. The advice of 1 Peter is to lead with humility. In the Johannine literature, Barrett sees evidence of apostles, prophets, a leading elder, traveling preachers and witnesses. The criteria for evaluating these leaders is their teaching that Jesus Christ came in the flesh and in their love. In the book of Acts, Barrett again emphasizes the informal nature of leadership: evangelists, prophets, teachers, elders, apostles - not ordained but chosen by people and the Spirit. They are unpaid and part-time.
Barrett points out the diversity in the practice of the sacraments in the New Testament in the third chapter. He argues that the writer of the book of Acts is likely trying to point out that baptism is not magic because the Spirit and water are usually but not always together. Barrett argues that Paul too mitigates the importance of baptism in his comments in 1 Cor 1. Barrett theorizes that Paul may have infused the two basic practices (baptism of initiation and regular resurrection meals) with greater cruciform emphases because they were causing division in his communities. Thus, he argues, the sacraments like the church should be seen as both peripheral and central.
In chapter four, Barrett reflects on the development of the church into a more formal, priest-dominated institution. Barrett concludes that the church is at its best, is central, when it sees itself as peripheral.

Theological Reviews of The Shack by William P. Young

Here are a number of excerpts from reviews of the The Shack by William P. Young by reputable Christian leaders. 

Regent College theology professor John Stackhouse's

The Shack 1: In Defense of Ideological Fiction

I’m happy to say that I did not find it propagandistic, but compellingly plausible.

The Shack 2: Some Theological Concerns (Part 1)

As I say, these are important theological matters in themselves, but not crucial to The Shack. I would like to see them either corrected or dropped from later editions of the book. But even if they aren’t, I don’t see them as fatal to the book’s main purpose and helpfulness.

The Shack 3: Theological Concerns (Part 2)

These are my main theological concerns with The Shack. I maintain that they could all be fixed to my full satisfaction and nothing crucial to the architecture, argument, or artistry of The Shack would be lost.

The Shack 4: Some Celebrations

No, let’s take the experience of reading The Shack the way the book’s protagonist took the experience of visiting it: as a necessarily limited accommodation to his capacities and needs, the thing he needed to receive right then.

If a book can be that, it’s a good book indeed . . .

. . . as I think The Shack truly is.

I would particularly recommend the comments by Dr. Stackhouse who is an outstanding evangelical theologian, with a Ph.D. in historical theology from the University of Chicago, and interacted charitably with Paul Young, the author of The Shack in person.

Ben Witherington - Professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary, Shacking Up With God—William P. Young’s ‘The Shack’- Jul 23, 2008

I want to say from the outset that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel, as it involves a lot of interesting theologizing about God and the divine-human encounter, and it clearly has struck a nerve with many people who are longing to have a close encounter with God of the first sort. I am happy this novel can provoke thought and stir up people to reconsider the God of the Bible and what having a relationship with God might mean and be like. And because it is a work of fiction, no one should evaluate this work as if it were an exercise in systematic theology as if it were Barth’s Dogmatics for the Emerging Church, as its aims are much more modest . . .  What I would suggest is that it needs considerable further theological refinement.

Eugene Peterson, Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology, Regent College, Vancouver, B.C.- from the book jacket:

When the imagination of a writer and the passion of a theologian cross-fertilize the result is a novel on the order of "The Shack." This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" did for his. It's that good!

Derek R. Keefe - Christianity Today Magazine - Jul 11, 2008 Reading in Good Faith: The Shack is a tale of tragedy redeemed, not a theological treatise.

Reading between the lines, I see a formerly troubled soul who's made peace with God about his past, but is still not at peace with the church. I'd love to see the book become an occasion for open conversation with "spiritual but not religious" folks burned by church experience. Here's an opportunity to show good faith—to Christ, his church, and her teachings; to authors and their work; and to readers who rejoice in learning they are not alone.

Derek Keefe - "The Shack" Built on Shifting Sands? William Young's surprise bestseller sparks heated response and prompts important questions at Christianity Today's LiveBlog

Several conservative Protestant heavyweights--Al Mohler, Chuck Colson, Mark Driscoll, and influential blogger Tim Challies--have sounded off on the dangers of The Shack's vision of God, salvation, and the Church, creating a quartet of caution for the casual Christian reader. These strong cautions are all the more notable in light of the over-the-top endorsement from one of evangelicalism's most respected spiritual sages, Eugene Peterson, which is featured on the book's back cover.

Tim Challies, conservative Reformed theology blogger quoted at Justin Taylor's post The Shack Reviewed, which  links to a 17 page review by Challies.

Despite the book’s popularity among Christians, believers are divided on whether this book is biblically sound. Where Eugene Peterson, Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, says it “has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim Progress did for his,” Dr. Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says, “This book includes undiluted heresy.” While singer and songwriter Michael W. Smith says “The Shack will leave you craving for the presence of God,” Mark Driscoll, Pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, says, “Regarding the Trinity, it’s actually heretical.”

Brandon O'Brien, assistant editor of Leadership Journal at the Out of Ur blog, June 16, 2008 Taking The Shack to the Shed Is the hottest new Christian novel an exercise in heresy?

Young does two things I wouldn’t advise fiction writers to do: 1) depict the Trinity in bodily form and 2) put words in the Trinity’s mouth. My fear would be that such attempts would result in hokey prose—and, to be honest, that happens from time to time in The Shack. But several notable Christian thinkers have more serious charges for Young.

Andrew Jones - Tall Skinny Kiwi - (UK emerging church / missional blogger) - from his blog post The Shack:

It's a good book. . . The Shack reads a little like a Frank Perretti classic but its not as complex or gripping and neither does it produce paranoia in the weak minded . . . Unfortunately, The Shack is also cheapened by well-used Christian cliches and drags horribly in the middle where the story gets stuck in a theological conversation about the Trinity - which i did not struggle with theologically, despite the accusations of modalism from the fundie [fundamentalist] bloggers.

Greg Boyd, Minnesota pastor and author, Sunday, June 22, 2008 The Shack: A Review

Warning: Do not read this novel on a plane or any other public place where you're trapped around people -- unless you're totally okay with becoming emotionally undone in front of perfect strangers. There are points where this book rips your heart out. At least it did me. The body building dude sitting next to me on the plane must have thought I was a first rate wimp, weeping over a novel. Anyway, to my surprise, I loved this book!

Collin Hansen, Christianity Today online The Trinity: So What? The Shack allegorizes a tricky but foundational doctrine.

Given the doctrine's complexity, it's no surprise that we turn to analogies for help. But every analogy breaks down. "Most analogies drawn from the physical realm tend to be either tritheistic or modalistic in their implications," Millard Erickson writes in Christian Theology. Following Augustine's lead, Erickson therefore opts for analogies drawn from human relationships, though he admits that they, too, fail to convey the deep beauty of this central Christian confession.

Greg Surratt - Multi-site church pioneer - Jul 22, 2008 The shack

Theologically, I didn't see anything dramatically problematic...the author doesn't have a very high view of church...I think Jesus likes the church a little more than he would have you to believe.

I liked it...but who really cares?  If the book began the process of opening up a spiritual seeker, who would probably never hear a sermon from that pastor that she unknowingly shared a plane ride with, to the idea that God loves her and wants to have a relationship with her forever, what difference does it make whether I liked it or not?

Cindy Crosby -book reviewer at Christianity Today Magazine - Jul 11, 2008 - Fiction for the Faith-Starved: The Shack tells a compelling, if imperfect, story.

Reviewers have criticized the book for hinting at universalism, as well as for feminism and a lack of hierarchy in the Trinity. Rather than slicing and dicing the novel, looking for proof of theological missteps, a better approach might be to look at significant passages as springboards for deeper discussion.

Mark Batterson - Pastor of National Community Church in Washington DC - from his blog post What I'm Reading

Love it for lots of reasons. First of all, I love books that touch the emotions and inspire the imagination. This book does that. But it also has an amazing storyline that is really gripping.

Perry Noble, NewSpring Church South Carolina megachurch pastor, What I’ve Been Reading

In my opinion this book is an excellent piece of fiction writing that is loaded with some tricky theological issues. I’ve seen both positive and negative reviews on it…but I can say that, for the most part, I enjoyed it. It made me think…and I love books that make me do that. It will definitely cause you to look and God in an entirely different way.

D.J. Chuang at Leadership Network, The Shack touted as Pilgrim's Progress

While William Young does intend to challenge our preconceptions of God, the story risks confusing some readers with theological misunderstandings. Is this a risk worth taking? I personally think so, but I know not all would agree.

Brad Lomenick - Director of Catalyst Conference from his blog post - Have you read The Shack?

Alright, I have to admit- I am usually a major critic of Christian fiction books. They just usually don’t deliver on expectations. But I recently came across a gem- The Shack by William Paul Young. You have to check it out. Buy it immediately. And then buy it for your family, friends, and co-workers. It will change your perspective and spiritual paradigm, especially as it relates to the Trinity and God’s desire for relationship with us humans.

Cathy Lynn Grossman, 'Shack' opens doors, but critics call book 'scripturally incorrect'  The USA Today

The Shack's success has changed Young's life — a little.

He no longer works three jobs running a manufacturer's sales office and working on websites. Kim still works at Gresham High School as a baker, but she's driving a new Honda. They've moved from the tiny rental house, where he wrote The Shack in the windowless basement near the washing machine, to a bigger rental nearby.

Holding hands and beaming at one of their grandchildren, the Youngs say they'd be fine if the money vanished tomorrow.

"Mack is me, a guy who has made a mess of everything," Young says. "The book takes him outside everything familiar, back to the worst experience of his life and lets him recognize God is so much greater."

. . . Mohler, Driscoll and other evangelicals pick The Shack apart plank by plank.

No, God can't be a presented as a woman. No, the three parts of the Trinity did not all become fully human. Yes, there is a hierarchy in the Holy Trinity with God the Father in command. Yes, God will punish sin.

Bob Smietana, journalist, The Tennessean - Novel about God hits a chord in Nashville area: Self-publishing turns rejected manuscript into a big seller.  April 3, 2008.

[Young] self-published The Shack after no publisher would touch it, and it held Amazon.com's No. 1 spot in fiction for weeks. The book he wrote for his children has now sold close to 400,000 copies . . .

"I'm being asked to speak to thousands of people, and I am as dumb as I was last year," said the 53-year old Young, who until recent weeks had a job as an office manager that also included cleaning toilets at a small sales company in Oregon . . .

Just before Young started on The Shack, they lost their home to foreclosure, and spent several years living with four of their six children in a 900-square-foot rental. "It's nice to know that we can pay the bills," Kim Young said.