It's About Time: Christian-Themed Lingerie

From the company Victorious Secret, founded by a Candler School of Theology graduate, no less.

I guess that Asbury just doesn't produce ministers as forward-thinking as that. My blog sometimes gets pinged with the search terms "theresa coleman playboy", and I've never understood why, but now it makes a lot more sense.

UMC School Gets Top Ranking in List of Party Schools

Congratulations to Randolph-Macon College, a United Methodist-affiliated who claimed the #6 position in the Princeton Review's list of top party schools in the country.

Really, the University Senate should evaluate and rank UMC seminaries based on party-ness.

Now, your homework assignment, dear readers: devise a drinking game appropriate for United Methodists.

The (Un)Holiness of Asbury Theological Seminary

Jim Morrow, blogger and Asbury student, has responded to Jeremy Smith's quantitative study revealing that Asbury is the least holy UMC seminary. Unfortunately, Jim has responded by rigging a formula of questionable validity in order to prove that Asbury is the most holy seminary. It is largely derived from the consumption of coffee and the specific density of textbooks (the former of which would make me angelic, and the latter I think would hand the contest to Duke Divinity School). What what would I know, as Jim refers to me as "snarky and childish"?

Asbury Theological Seminary is the Least Holy UMC Seminary

Okay, strictly speaking, Asbury is not a UMC institution, even though it produces more UMC pastors than any other seminary.

Still, Jeremy Smith runs the numbers through a formula and reaches an inevitable conclusion. Go ahead, check his figures. The math all checks out. Garrett-Evangelical is at the top of the holiness index and Asbury at the bottom.

I ran across Smith's blog only a few days ago, but I'm really impressed with his work. Keep an eye out on this blogger. He's going places.

HT: John Meunier

Evangelism vs. Mission as the Primary Purpose of the Church

In our recent discussion about how to improve seminary training, regular commentor Earl responded:

Students would be required to examine the efforts and results of churches within their area as well as high profile churches that are recognized leaders in evangelism. Students would be required to interview area pastors who have demonstrated personal effectiveness in winning adults to Christ. Subsequent to these examinations and interviews students would be required to evaluate and then develop and present in a peer setting their personal understanding of evangelism not simply as a concept but as a central objective for ministry and their proposed plan for implementing an effective plan of evangelism in their local church setting.

Students would be required to demonstrate personal experience in winning adults to faith in Christ. Not a punch list of book read or sitting in classes or taking test but actual personal experience. Not working at a shelter or going on a mission trip but personal involvement in presenting the Gospel to adults in such a way that decisions are made for Christ. Evaluation would be based on the number of times a genuine attempt was made to present the Gospel as well as the number of times such a presentation was successful. Regardless of result, in each case the student would be required to do what would constitute a "after action report," in which he/she would evaluate the actual/possible factors that lead to success or failure in presenting the Gospel. This would be reviewed by fellow students in a small group setting. Regardless of any other accomplishments, success in this regard would be absolutely prerequisite to graduation.

Why this emphasis on evangelism? Because there are few if any task that a minister can do that can not be done with equal quality and integrity by a worker in a social service agency. But there is no social service agency charged with the responsibility of reaching people for Christ. Jesus did not found the Church as a social service agency. He fundamentally tasked the Church to reach, teach, win and develop men and women for Christ. Everything else is entirely related to that central imperative.

Will of Ramblings from a Red Rose has an excellent critique of this view. I enthusiastically agree with all five of Will's points.

I hope that he will correct me if I am wrong, but I suspect that Earl and I have very different presuppositions about evangelism and possibly even salvation. He appears to be advocating "propositional evangelism", where a Christian verbally confronts a non-Christian with the basic outline of Christian theology and awaits a verbal decision to accept or reject these theological propositions as true or false. Those who accept the propositions as true are now classed as "saved" and those who reject them retain the classification of "unsaved".

The problem for the Church in the West is not that people have not heard the Christian message; it is that the Church lacks credibility. As the Apostle James said:

What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and be filled," and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. But someone may well say, "You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works." You believe that God is one You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?

Simply 'presenting' the Gospel message is not enough if it amounts to nothing more than empty words, as The Onion deliciously lampooned a while back.

And for this same reason, I reject Earl's distinction between evangelism and 'social service' work. What is more persuasive, a Christian who gives a starving man a tract, or a Christian who gives a starving man a meal? The latter shows out of his/her loving actions that the transformation of God's grace is more than just a switching of invisible soteriological categories; s/he shows his/her love by how s/he lives.

If the Church wishes to spread the Gospel, then it must be credible to a justifiably skeptical world. And if it wishes to be credible, then it must, as the Body of Christ, bring peace where there is conflict, healing where there are wounds, and abundance where there is poverty.*

I also disagree with Earl's position that evangelism is the primary task of the minister, and is not the primary task of other Christians:

Why this emphasis on evangelism? Because there are few if any task that a minister can do that can not be done with equal quality and integrity by a worker in a social service agency. But there is no social service agency charged with the responsibility of reaching people for Christ. Jesus did not found the Church as a social service agency. He fundamentally tasked the Church to reach, teach, win and develop men and women for Christ. Everything else is entirely related to that central imperative.

In his critique, Will notes the common complaint of pastors, "As a minister, I live in the church ghetto. I don’t come across many non-Christians." Ain't it the truth! I have to be very intentional about meeting non-Christians. If it weren't for my gym membership and the blogosphere, on most days, I'd never meet a non-Christian. That's because my workplace is the Church.

Most lay Christians can't claim that. Most are far more enmeshed in the non-Christian world than clergy, and are therefore best able to be a Christian witness to non-Christians.

At any rate, the Great Commission wasn't given to ordained clergy. It was given to the disciples. Evangelism is the job of every believer, not just clergy. But I am interested in understanding how Earl concludes otherwise.

*I would further note that we, the Church, should not do 'social service' work merely as an opening for propositional evangelism. We should not help people who are hurting just because we want them to experience a formal conversion. The Church should alleviate pain and suffering wherever they are found just because it's the right thing to do.

Question of the Day

If you could change anything about the UMC seminary education system, what would it be?

Asbury Students and Alumni

...go here.

Re-Envisioning Seminary

Brian Russell asks:

If we were to start a new seminary from scratch, what would it look like?

Hat tip to John Carney at the Methoblog.

Locusts & Honey Investigative Reports: Asbury Theological Seminary Completely Unprepared for Full-Scale Zombie Attack

It gives me no pleasure to release this Special Report of the Locusts & Honey Network, but the public has a right to know: the Florida Campus of Asbury Theological Seminary is hopelessly unprepared to resist an onslaught of the flesh-eating undead.

Despite the warnings of citizen action groups, students, and alumni, Asbury has made no efforts to improve the defensive posture of the Florida Campus. Now Locusts & Honey Investigative Reports takes you inside the wide-open Florida Campus.

How is the main entrance to the building defended? With steel bars? Metal shutters? Even wood? No -- only an automatic glass door which slides open for the convenience of even the laziest zombie.

Just inside: the welcome desk. What do we find inside? A security guard armed with a repeating shotgun? No -- only a "student assistant" carrying not so much as a slingshot. This is the first, and sadly, last line of active defense in the seminary.

Huge, floor-to-ceiling windows span the length of the first floor. Against a zombie siege, or even a few determined zombies, these would come down within minutes. Yet the administration has done nothing to protect students, faculty, and staff from this obvious weakpoint.

This is the tiny pantry in the kitchen. Its present stocks are capable of providing perhaps 50 meals at most. Also: it is in an exposed area on the first floor, so that if you have to fall back upstairs, you've lost your food supply. Not a smart design to say the least. It is almost as though the architects deliberately ignored all of the conventions of anti-zombie defensive design.

The campus does not have to be the deathtrap that it currently is. The campus could be, theoretically, a veritable fortress against the armies of the undead. It is, unlike most seminaries, a single building. The second floor in particular is very defensible if the administration makes changes now. The rear stairwell, for example, can be readily barricaded from inside, preventing zombie access to the upper floor.

The front stairwell is another matter: it requires substantial modifications before it is defensible. I would suggest a portcullis with a crank on the wall so that any passing student could immediately seal off the top floor in the event of a zombie attack.

Two sets of heavy interior doors on the second floor could provide a further fall-back position, should the staircase be overrun, as well as provide opportunities to attack zombies from two directions in a pincer movement.



So what does Asbury Theological Seminary need to do to secure the Florida Campus from zombie attacks? Here are a few items:

• Brick up all glass on the first floor and replace the front door with steel.


• Stock up with food, medicine, and ammo necessary to maintain 200 people (local students, faculty, and staff) for two months.


• Make structural changes necessary to secure the second floor in case the first falls to the undead.
  

Will these modifications be expensive? Of course. But I think that most students would be more than willing to pay the extra tuition necessary to zombie-proof the campus so that in the worst-case scenario, we could survive.

Do you want to contribute to the cause? Call or e-mail ATS administrators and faculty, demanding the immediate implementation of my proposals. Tell them to take the zombie menace seriously.

What is Candler Like?

I go to Asbury, so I don't know what Candler is like. But Dale Tedder starts out his post on Paul Tillich like this:

When I attended seminary at Candler School of Feminist Anthropology