Baptizing Young Children: A Via Media between Infant Baptism and Believer's Baptism?

Baptizing Young Children: A Via Media between Infant Baptism and Believer's Baptism?

My own tradition, Pentecostalism, has typically emphasized the baptism of believers only. However, there are some exceptions. For instance, from the beginning, the Pentecostal-Holiness Church (IPHC) allowed parents to decide whether to baptize their infant children or wait to baptize them as “believers”. The 1911 “Constitution and General Rules of the Pentecostal Holiness Church” stated:

All candidates for baptism shall have the right of choice between the various modes as practiced by the various evangelical denominations. Christian parents and guardians shall have liberty of conscience in the baptism of their children.

Takeaways from the CPT Conference on Confronting Racial Injustice

Takeaways from the CPT Conference on Confronting Racial Injustice

The following represents my interpretative summary of a handful of major points within the presentations of some of the speakers at the CPT Conference on Confronting Racial Injustice, October 18-20, 2021. Each one of these points merits much more discussion, some of which can be found or linked to in the authors’ various works and social media pages listed below. The interpretive summaries reflect my own recollections and are not the views of the Center for Pastor Theologians.

The Greatest Care Is Needed: Augustine on Moral Discernment and Church Leadership

The Greatest Care Is Needed: Augustine on Moral Discernment and Church Leadership

Augustine of Hippo was one of the first and greatest catechists of the church. He was a pastor in a time of great conflict and schism, a time when the church was beset by external challenges and internal turmoil. And one his most important pastoral responses to the crises he faced was the work of catechesis - the instruction and formation of men and women in the truths and implications of the Christian faith. A fruit of that ministry was a catechetical handbook he wrote for his fellow pastors, On Instructing Beginners in the Faith. It’s a remarkable combination of theological conviction and practical counsel, and from that little volume I’d like to draw two implications for pastors today in our own time of turmoil - specifically the turmoil caused by abuse within the local church.

When Pastors Are the Victims of Abuses of Power

When Pastors Are the Victims of Abuses of Power

Cain lured his brother out to the field where he “attacked his brother Abel and killed him” (Gen. 4:8). We could describe this first, primal sin after humanity rebelled against God in any number of ways, including the misuse and abuse of power. Cain had the strength—the power—of mind and stature to destroy a life. From marriages to the military, the typology of this tragic tale has replayed itself across the rough cut scenes of history. People with power—strengths of mind, body, authority, resources, and more—all too often neglect the proper use of power and instead mis-use and ab-use it. The last half-decade has displayed such ugly scenes, as #MeToo has trended on our screens and #ChurchToo has reminded us that the bride of Christ is not immune. Stories of powerful pastors and Christian leaders like Bill Hybels, Ravi Zacharias, and Mark Driscoll demonstrate the ways that power can accrue to a person and that person can grossly abuse people with that power. This is a problem, clearly.

How Proverbs Can Help Us Wield Power Selflessly

How Proverbs Can Help Us Wield Power Selflessly

The fallenness of our leaders is one of the most potent arguments against Christianity. Barna’s 2017 study, The State of Pastors, produced in partnership with Pepperdine University, spoke of “the credibility crisis of today’s pastors.” At the time, only one-quarter of all U.S. adults held a very positive opinion of pastors in general. The number of high-profile defections and instances of immorality since 2017 certainly hasn’t improved the pastor’s reputation. No need to cite specific examples: Google preserves all the gory details.

Christ and (Celebrity) Culture: A Niebuhrian Review of Media and the Church

Christ and (Celebrity) Culture: A Niebuhrian Review of Media and the Church

Today the church can be more connected to culture than ever, in part because of emergent technologies. Services are streamed on social media. Sermon series are tied to the latest trend in TV and film. YouTube has become a trusted source for information and entertainment. You have a reaction to this. You may love it. You may hate it. You may be somewhere in between.

Editorial – Not So With You

Editorial – Not So With You

This familiar passage has been proclaimed in just about every leadership course in every seminary in the United States. It is a foundational text in the field of “servant leadership.” Pastors across the world know this verse and know how different our calling is to lead than the calling of the gentiles. So many of us desire to live out the “not so with you” by which Jesus shapes his followers’ vision of what it means for us to be pastors in His Church. Any yet, so often, it is so with us. Christian leadership is like the Gentiles, becoming a lording-over leadership that leaves a trail of pain and trauma in its wake.

What Makes a False Teacher False?

What Makes a False Teacher False?

It’s time for evangelicals to update the way we talk about false teaching and false teachers. Specifically, we need to reevaluate our criteria for labeling false teachers as such.

The recent podcast series The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill has evangelicals revisiting the drama (and trauma) of pastor Mark Driscoll’s ministry in Seattle. As a former Driscoll fanboy, this series has given me a lot to process. For instance, I’ve been wondering why some are quick to identify someone like Joel Osteen as a false teacher but hesitant to do so with Mark Driscoll. Some evangelicals are, it seems to me, fairly quick to assign the label “false teacher” to those with whom we disagree. Recently I’ve seen this label casually re-applied to Rachel Held Evans (God rest her), and this in juxtaposition to Mark Driscoll. This grieved me, and not because I feel personally aligned with Evans. In many ways I don’t. But this also made me ask: What are our criteria for assigning the label “false teacher”? Are these criteria biblical? Are we applying them consistently?

Character, Charisma, Hope, and Healing: Reflections on The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill

Character, Charisma, Hope, and Healing: Reflections on The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill

As I finished listening to “Who Killed Mars Hill?” the first episode of the podcast series The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill produced by Christianity Today and hosted by Mike Cosper, I sat in stunned silence trying to process and metabolize all the lessons and questions raised by the episode. I, like many, am familiar with the Mars Hill story—its impressive rise to a church of more than 15,000 in the notoriously secular city of Seattle under Mark Driscoll and its meteoric fall in 2014. I lived in Seattle during the church’s heyday. I was also a college student when the evangelical ecclesial landscape in the United States was shaped by complex movements like the emergent church and the young, restless, and Reformed. I remember the way Mars Hill was held up as an exemplar of a kind of church and brand of ‘conservative’ Christianity that could succeed and reach America’s cities. I also remember how many (not all) detractors and critics displayed a certain amount of schadenfreude (pleasure or self-satisfaction from the troubles or misfortunes of another) when Mars Hill collapsed as if the demise of the church represented a definitive verdict on Driscoll’s brand of Christianity.