Month: May 2021

Bible, Christian living

What about Phoebe? When Scripture “Contradicts” Scripture

Posted on by Jay Givens

Rick Warren has done it now, if you listen to some of the current leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention. While I appreciate much of what current president J.D. Greear has tried to do to guide the SBC through the pandemic and the many politically tumultuous issues that have occurred in the past year, I do not support Greear’s view that Saddleback Church’s ordination of three women pastors is “disappointing,” because Scripture “clearly reserves the office of pastor . . . for qualified men.” Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and candidate for SBC President in 2021, sees this action as going against the “codified . . . convictional issues” of the Baptist Faith and Message of 2000, which he calls a “clear” statement several times in his blog. I do not doubt he considers it clear, since he was its primary architect (according to a 2000 letter I received from Adrian Rogers, the BFM chair, directing me to Mohler when I asked why the criterion of faith statement had been removed). Another presidential candidate, Mike Stone, says SBC churches do not have to adhere to every point of the BFM (2000), but he does support removing the SBC’s second largest congregation from the convention because of this issue. It appears Stone views the ordination of women as a doctrine of the first order, on par with denial of the triunity of God or the deity of Jesus.

Subscribe to receive email notification of new posts.

These men appeal to the Bible for the view that men only may hold the title of pastor, primarily 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 and 1 Timothy 2:11-15. Mohler connects this issue to 1) liberal theology, 2) liberation theology, 3) “second wave” feminism, and 4) LGBTQ issues, assuming that one or more of these underlies the motives of any Baptist who, though holding a high view of Scripture, comes away with a different reading of the text. While Mohler is clearly driven by a cultural war mentality prevalent in many sectors of American Evangelical Christianity, Greear seems more open to engagement with contemporary culture in his blog and position paper. Yet both Mohler and Greear come to similar views, making a distinction between “minister” (which both men and women can hold as a title) and “pastor” (which may only apply to men). They do not mean only the “senior pastor,” as Mohler articulates in his blog (saying that is an unbiblical term). They mean that a woman may be called a “youth minister” but not a “youth pastor.” The latter implies “authority” while the former indicates you are “under” some elder or pastor’s direction. In Greear’s position paper, he creates non-biblical categories of “general teaching” and “special teaching” (which he also calls “elder teaching”). Women can do the first with both men and women present, but they cannot do the latter. For instance, the position paper says women cannot preach the “weekend sermon” because that implies the woman’s speech “functionally acts with the authority of an elder.” (Interestingly, the paper cites Lottie Moon’s work in China to men and women positively but assumes it was not “preaching” or “elder teaching.” This is strange when Kevin Howard on SBC Voices stands against Moon’s teaching men as part of her mission work in China.) Mohler completely dismisses any Christian who wrestles with the whole of Scripture when he thinks his selected proof-texts settle the issue. “Simply put, the only way to affirm women serving in the pastoral role is to reject the authority and sufficiency of biblical texts such as 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2.”

This is disingenuous. Its black and white approach ignores the multicolored world of Baptist life. The Baptist Standard noted that some Southern Baptist churches clearly had a different perspective on women preaching from the pulpit. It noted Anne Graham Lotz spoke at Second Baptist, Houston, the SBC’s largest congregation. (Billy Graham called his daughter “the best preacher I’ve ever heard,” not son Franklin.) Beth Moore and Kay Warren preached at other SBC churches on Mother’s Day.

Baptist scholar E. Earle Ellis, deceased professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and renowned in his day as a premier New Testament scholar, argued 1 Corinthians 14 was not about all women but was narrowly focused on the wife of a husband when both were prophets within the congregation (The Making of the New Testament Documents). Ellis, a complementarian like Mohler and Greear, noted the injunction for women to be silent is in a chapter on the proper use of gifts within orderly worship and immediately follows instructions to prophets to speak one at a time while the other prophets weigh the prophecy being uttered. Ellis said Paul’s emphasis was that the spirits giving rise to prophecy were “under the control” of the prophets (so they could speak or not speak as appropriate to the situation), and this applied to a wife “weighing in” on the prophetic speech of her husband. If the husband stood to prophesy, the wife should not speak in public regarding her husband’s prophecy, whether for or against its authenticity, as part of her official ministry to test the spirits (a role she was expected to play with any other member of the community and which sounds surprisingly like “elder teaching” which Greear says women should not do). In other words, she shouldn’t create a public spectacle by disagreeing (perhaps out of an emotional flareup about a pre-service disagreement on some other matter, according to Ellis’s in-class commentary) nor should she attest to the truth of his prophecy (when it could be planned collusion somewhat akin to the Ananias and Sapphira story, again based on Ellis’s in-class commentary). Ellis viewed 1 Timothy 2 as a pre-formed tradition based on the 1 Corinthians 14 passage and so applying in the same limited scope. (I personally find the 1 Timothy 2 passage the more problematic one, as there doesn’t seem to be a clear context that provides explanation for his injunction.)

Ellis’s reading of the text is but one of several ways to understand the context for 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2 as a temporal prohibition on women’s speech that might not be an eternal mandate or prohibition from the role of pastor. (For example, some see the prohibition as referencing the general lack of educational opportunities for women in the first century. They shouldn’t ask questions during the service but wait and ask in private afterwards. If that were the case, then universal education in twenty-first century America should not create the same barrier for pastoral leadership.)

Now, to the point of this blog’s title. There is the curious status of Phoebe in the letter to the Romans. She is mentioned at the start of the final chapter. Without mentioning her by name, Greear’s position paper takes account of Phoebe’s role as a deacon of Cenchreae in its allowance that women might serve in Summit Church as deacons. But Phoebe is only standing before the Roman church as the letter is first read (and thus in need of introduction to the church within the letter) because she was the letter’s carrier. As Baptist scholar E. Randolph Richards notes in his chapter on Paul’s use of letter carriers (Paul and First-Century Letter Writing), Paul did not consider the role of letter carrier lightly. Whether it was Timothy, Titus, Tychicus–or Phoebe!–the letter carrier was Paul’s envoy to the church. The letter carrier was trained before going in how to perform the letter before the community. (Many scholars prefer the term “perform” to “read” because there would have been rhetorical flourishes intended as one read the text in public.) Once the letter was read, Paul expected the letter carrier to be able to answer any questions about Paul’s meaning within the letter. Do you see the issue that results if Phoebe was the letter carrier? She read the Scripture to the whole congregation–both men and women. She stood in the place of Paul as his representative. She likely did this on the Lord’s Day (during what Greear calls the “weekend sermon” from which women are prohibited in his church). When she answered questions about the letter, she spoke with the authority of Paul himself (using what Greear refers to as “special teaching” or “elder teaching”–speaking with the authority of the elder Paul, one of the four primary leaders of the early Christian movement). She authoritatively taught men and women the truth of the gospel.

So what do you do when one Scripture (Rom 16:1-2) seems to contradict another Scripture (1 Tim 2:12-14)? Many scholars and pastors would say that you have to listen to the arc of the entire biblical narrative. What is the trajectory of the biblical witness? What is the direction toward which it is pointing that would allow continued movement beyond the written text of any specific passage? As Baptist E.Y. Mullins used to say, the Bible didn’t create the community. The Bible came into being within the community (The Christian Religion in Its Doctrinal Expression) and the community continues to grow and develop beyond the writings of the Bible but always under its direction. Phoebe (and Priscilla and others) seem to indicate that, while there certainly is a prohibitive statement about wives being quiet in church, there were exceptions to this rule that were setting us on the trajectory that “you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

It appears Mohler rejects this Biblical trajectory approach to the Bible, that there can be a hermeneutical arc that points in the direction of a specific position that lies beyond what is literally stated in the text. Mohler asserts, “the Holy Scriptures have not changed and cannot change.” Yet this concept is found within the biblical community itself. (For example, the Jerusalem Council tells Gentiles to avoid meat offered to idols yet Paul later gives some caveats to this prohibition when they do not fall within religious contexts.) Without this arc of biblical narrative premise, how could Baptists develop a doctrine of the sanctity of the unborn? There is not a specific text about abortion. Instead, the sanctity of the unborn is argued as the logical conclusion to a biblical arc of passages affirming the sanctity of life of the born and the sacred mystery of God’s work in the womb.

Mohler labels any attempt to interpret statements like 1 Cor 14 or 1 Tim 2 on the basis of textual or historical contexts “revisionist arguments” and “biblical subversion.” Certainly such condemnations were made of Martin Luther when he re-read the doctrine of justification in a new way and launched the Reformation movement. He also appeals to the long history within the Christian tradition as evidence that ordination of women as pastors is wrong. The same thing was said about the Anabaptists and Baptists when they rejected infant baptism after a millennium of such practice. Baptist and Protestant theology is based on the belief that we are unable to read the text from an omniscient or untainted vantage point, knowing we cannot read without error. This is why the churches of the Reformation are the churches which are always reforming, though our basis of faith must always be the God-breathed Scriptures as we read within the Body of Christ through the empowering work of the Sprit.

To look at the issue from another perspective, why do Greear and Mohler take Paul literally to say that women can never at any time teach or have authority over a man yet they do not take the next injunction literally, that women are only and ever saved through childbearing? Certainly they do not assert such a position (as it would mean single and barren women could not be saved). The point is that we all pick and choose what is “literal” and what is to be interpreted, what to foreground and what to recede into the background. In reality, all Scripture must be interpreted.

It is certainly understandable for Greear, Mohler, and Stone to come to a position that the biblical witness is against women holding the role of pastor. There is a case to be made from the Scripture for that view and history backs it up. It is not acceptable, however, for Mohler or Stone to assert that those who come to a different position automatically do so because they are not committed to the authority of the Bible. This is a complicated issue without as clear a statement within the Bible as some might wish to claim. One thing the New Testament is not ambiguous about, however, is the importance of seeking unity within the Body of Christ. Therefore, we should all be very careful about a desire to incite division between two groups that both seek to honor Christ and to be led by his Spirit simply because each arrives at a different understanding of the same Scripture they both affirm as divinely inspired.

0
Bible, Jesus, sermon

Beloved Daughter

Posted on by Jay Givens

Happiness comes and goes. Sorrow and suffering can be with us for years or can come upon us suddenly. Yet we can find hope in the midst of sorrow. We can trust in the Trustworthy One in the depths of our despair. Mark 5:21-43 tells the story of a man and a woman from two very different lives, though both know sorrow and suffering. The story tells us of a father who fears losing his daughter and a woman who long ago lost the hope of being called daughter. Throughout the story, we see Jesus acting intentionally to take on our uncleanness in order to make us clean, to make us whole, and to give us hope.

Subscribe to receive email notification of new posts.

An Outcast Woman; a Beloved Daughter

We first meet a man who seems to have it all. He has a family. As a synagogue ruler, he has prestige in his community. Most likely, he is middle to upper income to have the time to serve as ruler. Yet at the moment we meet him, none of this matters to him. He is losing his daughter. He is desperate to save her.

The woman we meet partway through the story has likely lost everything. We are told she has an issue of blood that has not ceased for twelve years. That is, something about her body does not allow her menstrual cycle to ever fully stop. According to Jewish Law, women were ritually unclean during the days of their period. She has been unclean for twelve years. Like a leper, she would have to call out to those who came near her, “unclean!” to warn them not to come into contact with her. If they did, Jewish Law said they also became unclean until they performed a ritual cleansing. So this woman has probably has lost her family during the years. At the least, she has become a source of public shame for them because everyone in the town knows she is theirs. She is isolated from her community and the touch of others. All dignity is gone. She is an object of scorn to be avoided. She has been stripped of her personhood.

For twelve years, the woman had been unclean, suffering from humiliation and struggling with pain. We’re told she spent all she had on doctors but her condition only got worse. The man’s daughter was twelve years old. What a different life she had lived. Twelve years of love, joy, the benefits of wealth, and the loving touch of family. Twelve years ago, her mother had life come from her womb. But for the past twelve years, the woman had only death coming from her own womb.

Years of Grueling Anguish; Days of Sudden Sorrow

The woman for twelve years suffered physically and psychologically. She also lost all of her money, unlike the ruler who probably was middle to upper income. Yet in the story, she appears to still have hope for recovery. She is willing to try to touch Jesus’ garment to see if he might have healing power to help end her suffering. Despite her loss of family, community, and money, she still had hope. Where she had been suffering for years, the man had only suffered a few days (maybe a few weeks). His daughter was ill. He was in despair. His hope, his faith, was in tatters. His money, his power, his family and community connections–none of it could solve the problem he faced of his daughter’s grave illness. While Mark uses describes the girl as his “little daughter,” Luke tells us she was his monogenes, his “one and only” daughter. She was his life and her life was ebbing away.

We have no idea how the woman handled her illness when it first appeared, but we do know how she handled it now, twelve years later. Although she suffered greatly and had lost everything, we never hear her complain or cry out. Later, when Jesus gets to the man’s home, the family and friends of the girl are wailing and causing a commotion. Yes, the girl was dead, and likely some who were there were professional mourners. But the sudden illness and loss of this young life created sharp emotions and led many to cry out loudly in their grief.

Public Restoration

The man clearly was seeking to find Jesus in his despair. We are told that “when he saw” Jesus, he fell at Jesus’ feet. Though he had prestige in his community, he humiliated himself in public with this act. He knew the crowds could see him and hear his pleas that Jesus would heal his daughter. He literally says, “My little daughter is at the end.” This is a final act of desperation. She is about to die. He went to seek the healer. Perhaps, like his colleagues, he had mocked Jesus before. Now, however, he was pleading for Jesus to help him. He wanted Jesus to save his daughter from death and give her life. The word sozein can mean healing, but it can also mean salvation. Jesus intentionally acts in the moment. He departs to go with the man.

We then encounter the woman in the story. She doesn’t seek out Jesus as the man had. We are told that she “hears about” Jesus. We’re told crowds are around Jesus and Jairus as they travel. No doubt some were talking about the healer and how he was on the move to do it again! The woman also wanted to be saved from her infirmity. She wanted to be healed. Unlike the man’s public actions, however, she hoped to be healed privately without anyone knowing. She thought she could just sneak up behind Jesus and touch his robe. That would be enough to heal her. She didn’t want to be a bother to anyone. She didn’t want to cause a fuss.

Immediately, she knew she was healed. Mark says she could feel the “fountain” of flowing blood “dry up.” She was freed from the affliction. Literally, it says she was freed from the whip, the common belief of people that God was actively punishing those who suffer for something they must have done wrong. At the same time, Jesus immediately knew power had gone out from him. We then see his second intentional act. He does a 180 to look behind him. He asks who touched him and looks from person to person in the crowd. The disciples are incredulous. “Jesus,” they reply, “how can you ask that! This crowd is constantly pushing up against you.” But Jesus looked into the eyes of each person until eventually the woman couldn’t stand it.

Jesus forced this private act to become public. Unlike the bold though desperate synagogue ruler, the woman fell to Jesus feet trembling in fear. She told him the whole story. She had hoped for a private healing to avoid what was now occurring. Jesus would know that this unclean woman had touched him. She had made him ritually unclean. Would he be upset with her? He had been on important business and she now had interrupted him. What’s more, if the disciples are telling us the truth, she must have bumped into many others in her attempt to touch Jesus. How many did she make unclean just now? How would they respond, since she didn’t cry out “unclean” to warn them? Would they be angry and stone her for her transgression of the Law? For twelve years, she had been alone and unnoticed. She was nothing to these people except as an object to be feared and avoided. Why, she wondered, did Jesus make her visible?

Jesus doesn’t reply with anger or rebuke. Instead, he called her “daughter” and told her that it was “her faith” that healed her. Jesus made this public so she could be welcomed back into community, into his kingdom. More than that, we welcomed this woman who had probably not had family connections for twelve years into his own family. Moreover, he honored her by saying it was her faith, not his power, that had healed her. Jesus made himself a servant to her needs and showed his love through inviting her into relationship and restoring her to community. She wanted healing, but he told her to go with “peace” for she was no longer unclean but cleansed (the Greek word hygiēs from which we get “hygiene”) from the whip.

Private Reunion

Part of the reason Jesus honored the woman was to welcome her back to her community. Another reason was for Jairus. He probably saw this woman as a distraction who was wasting precious minutes that his little girl couldn’t afford to lose. Indeed, while Jesus was speaking the good news to the woman, members of Jairus’ community came with the worst news imaginable. His daughter was dead. “Why bother the teacher any longer?” they asked. If they shared the skepticism of many Jewish leaders, this might have been said sarcastically. Why bother with “the teacher” any longer?” Not the healer, notice. The woman had feared public exposure and was forced to face it. Now, the man faced something even worse: the fear that all hope is lost. His little girl was dead.

For the third time, Jesus does something very intentional. He first went with the man. He then looked and found the woman. Now, he intentionally ignores the words of these messengers. He tells the father, “Don’t fear. Just trust!” Perhaps Jesus pointed toward the woman nearby who, despite her fears, showed great faith and now stood there healed. Again, Jesus seems to honor the woman as he encourages the man.

Jesus and the father go with three of Jesus’ disciples to the man’s house. We are not told that they stopped at a mikvah for a ritual cleansing to purify themselves from the woman’s unclean touch. So Jesus apparently entered Jairus’ home unclean. This made Jairus’ home unclean and all within it–including Jairus himself–unclean. What we see is that Jairus cared less about rituals than about relationship. He was willing that he and his whole family become unclean like this man if Jesus could give him back his daughter. In this way, he also identified himself with the woman and her faith.

Jesus was possibly mocked by his disciples (or the crowds) when he asked who touched him. He may have been mocked by the messengers who said the girl was dead. Certainly, he is laughed at and ridiculed for saying the girl wasn’t dead but just asleep. Jesus then ran everyone except the parents and his disciples out of the house. Doing this forced Jairus, a man who had been in the public eye as a leading member of the community, to learn the importance of privacy and intimacy.

Then, for the second time that day, Jesus was made unclean. The first time, it happened to him when the woman touched him. This time, he intentionally took the hand of the dead girl. Then, where power unconsciously went out from Jesus to the woman, Jesus consciously touched the girl and gave a verbal command to rise up. He calls her “little girl,” not “daughter” because the girl already had a family. She had a father who loved her and believed she would live again. Immediately, she stood up and walked around. Maybe she was walking to each of her parents to hug them. As the woman was freed from her affliction, the girl was freed from the power of death.

Not only was this a private healing and reunion for the family, but Jesus made sure the privacy continued for several minutes. He told the parents not to share what had happened, that is, don’t shout out to the crowd outside. He then told them to get the girl something to eat. As the family shared table fellowship, Jesus and the disciples exited the house. Not only did Jesus still bear the “uncleanness” of the woman and the girl, but he had to endure the mocking of the crowd as he passed them by. No doubt they continued to laugh at his ignorance, not knowing the difference between death and sleep! How could he be a great teacher if he was so unaware? But Jesus bore the mocking to allow community and restored relationship to thrive inside the home.

Final Thoughts

What do we learn from this story? First, we see that Jesus doesn’t truly become “unclean” from his contact with the women. Instead, his life-giving power flowed out to these women and made them whole, healing and restoring life to them. He also restored the woman to community and the girl to her family. Believers in Jesus are called to the same engagement with others. We are to enter into the messiness of life and seek to heal and restore community. We even have to bear mocking or misunderstanding to do the work of the kingdom.

Second, we see that it is not physical contact with Jesus that saves or makes one whole. It was the woman’s faith. It was the father’s faith. Trusting in Jesus to save and heal is something we can do the same as the woman. Though Jesus is no longer on earth, he now sits at his Father’s right hand and can bear our uncleanness and make us how.

Third, both women teach us about the Kingdom of God. The woman gives us hope that in the kingdom, whatever troubles we encounter in this life, they are not the end of the story. We will be freed and healed to experience peace and wholeness. The girl helps us see that our greatest need is to be raised to new life in Christ. This life is not something we can bring about apart from Jesus any more than the dead girl could raise herself. There is also the hope of reunion with those we love in the kingdom. Also, the verbs used of the girl, “rising up” and “standing up” are both used of the resurrection in other parts of the New Testament. Her rising to new life came after only a short period of death. Though we die, it is but a twinkling of an eye and then we will be raised to new life in the new heavens and new earth.

Today, your life might be full of struggles or it may be filled with joy. You may be in the midst of years of suffering a debilitating disease or enduring a long, lingering death. You may be experiencing a rapid loss of a loved one or a sudden change in fortune. In all situations, we are called to trust in Jesus. He is the source of our healing, life, and wholeness. He welcomes us all into community as he saves and heals us. He calls you beloved son. He calls you beloved daughter.

Beloved Daughter (Mark 5:21-43)

3
Bible, sermon, Stories That Shape Our Life

Crossing the Jordan

Posted on by Jay Givens

(Taken from a sermon at the end of an interim pastorate a few weeks before the new pastor would arrive on the field.) These are some of the memes the week after the winter 2021 storms that wreaked havoc on Texas:

  • 2021? Feels more like 2020 and a half
  • 2020: the year from hell / 2021: the year hell froze over
  • 2020: learn to stay home / 2021: same, but now let’s test your survival skills
  • Shame on all of you who made fun of Bernie Sanders. Now look at you sitting on your couch in the same outfit!

Like many of you, my wife and I conserved electricity and wore extra layers of clothes to help keep the power grid up in our area. I think Lucy stayed in the living room by the fire most of the week! Friends and family went without power or had water damage from frozen pipes or leaking roofs. And many had to conserve or boil water as a by-product.

It may have felt like a winter wilderness, but it only lasted for a week. The Israelites wandered in the wilderness for forty years. Their daily lives were a marginal existence for an entire generation. Finally, however, it was time for them to cross over into the land promised by God to their ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That is the focus of the biblical passage in Deuteronomy 31:1-8. The story of the Israelites crossing the Jordan is one of the stories that shapes our lives.

Subscribe to receive email notification of new posts.

It Is Time to Leave the Wilderness

The interim period between pastors is like a wilderness experience. It is a time when you have left the familiarity of the old pastorate and you walk by faith with the interim minister in anticipation of the new minister who will soon come to the field. Many times at the beginning or in the middle of the interim, you are not sure what lies in the future. Frequently, it is a marginal existence, like the wilderness, with the interim minister only on the field on weekends or certain ministries suspended for a season. Even churches not in an interim situation felt this margin living In 2020, as the pandemic forced worship online or delayed or canceled a number of “normal” ministry opportunities.

But as an interim ends (or for us in 2021, as we may be nearing a turning point with the pandemic in the U.S.), a new day dawns. Like Moses, the interim minister cannot follow the congregation into the new pastorate but he can provide some words of wisdom. With the end of the interim, the journey ends for the minister but it is just the start for the congregation. It is for this reason that Moses says repeatedly in this passage, “Be strong and courageous” and “do not fear.“

As rough as the wilderness was, some had become comfortable in it. For some, it was all they had ever known. Often, Christians are comfortable with the way church has been done (sometimes for decades). Some might become familiar with the leadership or worship style of the interim pastor or liked the reduced meeting times of the interim period or pandemic restrictions. In the wilderness, there were times the people wanted to return to Egypt. So as they crossed into the new land promised by God, some would continue to look backward toward the wilderness or beyond.

Moses tells the people not to be terrified because of “them.” Whether with the start of a new pastorate or the end of a pandemic, there are new problems coming and new issues to address. Perhaps new ministries need to be started. Other ministries need to be revived or restarted. This can be just as scary as conquering a land. Don’t be terrified by the unknown or the new, for God will be with you.

God Crosses the Jordan Ahead of You

The blessed news is that we are not alone. We do not have to go it alone. God is with us. He says in the passage that he will never leave us nor forsake us. This is a blessed hope and comfort. What is more, God crosses before us and enters the new land, the new phase of ministry, the new situation we cannot fully understand, ahead of us. He will fight the battles for us, if we will only trust in him. We are called to be obedient, but he himself is our strength and our shield.

Whether in the interim period or through the pandemic, we have seen God at work even in the wilderness. He helps those who trust in him to grow closer to one another as they grow closer to him. He uses the wilderness time to resolve and heal various issues lingering since we have left Egypt as he prepares us to enter the new land of Canaan. He has helped us learn to adapt to new situations and to seek his guidance when times seem dark. As we have trusted him through the wilderness, we find over and again that he proves himself faithful. God knows the future to which he is calling us. We can trust him and rest in him.

Follow Your Leader Into the Promised Land

Before Moses died in the wilderness, God called Joshua to be the new leader. This leader would go with them into the promised land. Like God, Moses says Joshua will go ahead of the people into the new land and will lead the people. Yet he was just as scared and unaware of the future as the Israelites. Moses gives Joshua the same words of comfort to be strong and courageous and not to be afraid. For churches beginning a new pastorate, the new pastor enters into the unknown with the congregation. He will lead and the congregation will follow, but he and the congregation both truly follow God who promises to go before them. On the other side of the Jordan is the promised land. It is a land of new opportunities and new ministries. It is the place of hope and new life.

For all the hope that lies beyond, however, the promised land is scary. Change is scary! For the Israelites, they were moving from the barren wilderness to beautiful farmland. They knew how to be nomads. That was comfortable. What did they know about farming? What did they know about living in settled villages and permanent homes? So church life now or even in the past may not be what it will be in the future. We always need to be ready for change, but especially in times of transition.

An interesting feature of the wilderness story is Joshua himself. He was one of the twelve spies originally sent into the land for forty days just a few months after the people left Mount Sinai. Ten spies returned saying there was no way they could enter the land. Joshua and Caleb said, there is a way–with God! The Israelites listened to the ten, however, and so they were condemned to wander in the wilderness for forty years because they refused to face change. They refused to trust God for fear of the unknown. Yet during those forty years in the wilderness, as the current generation gave way to a new generation, the legend of Joshua–the man who trusted God–grew. Joshua trusted God so we can trust him to guide us.

During the interim period, the congregation has prayed for a new leader and prepared themselves for the next phase of life together. They have trusted God that he would guide them to the right person to take them into the next years of ministry. When that man is called, you must trust God and trust him.

Notice one key difference in Moses’ encouragement to Joshua than to the Israelites. Moses adds to his admonition to Joshua, “do not be discouraged.” For forty years, Moses bore the brunt of complaints about the wilderness and the struggles and needs ever wore down on him. Moses understood that ministry could have periods of discouragement. The new pastor will make mistakes. Joshua made mistakes. The role of the congregation is to encourage the minister, pray for him, trust him to lead, and forgive the mistakes that are made. Certainly, this doesn’t mean to forgive moral lapses or ignore ungodly actions, but we are called to trust in the leader as he trusts in God. He will lead the congregation into the promised land.

Soon after this, God let Moses ascend to Mount Nebo. Moses was able to look over and see the promised land even though he wasn’t able to enter in with the people. And then Moses died. In some ways, the role of the interim minister is similar. He has the opportunity to see the potential within the congregation as he helps the congregation believe in that possibility as well. So be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Trust God who is going on before you. Trust your new leader and give him grace to fail. Help him conquer giants as you enter into the land of promise.

Crossing the Jordan (Deut 31:1-8)

1