Reflections on a Teaching Trip to the Philippines

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Jeff Arthurs and I just returned from a 10-day trip to Quezon City (part of Greater Manila) in the Philippines. We each taught a course at CBS-Asia (Conservative Baptist Seminary – Asia). Jeff taught Advanced Preaching and I taught Introduction to New Testament Theology. We also gave a day-long seminar on The Pastor as Preacher and Theologian. (Jeff also spoke at the dedication of the seminary’s new facilities and preached twice on Sunday.) It was my first time in the Philippines and I thought I would share some observations about ministry there. I am still processing my cultural observations. Filipinos are very friendly people and extremely service oriented. They seem especially interested in pleasing and serving Americans (perhaps other Western Europeans as well). Jeff and I were greeted with great enthusiasm wherever we went (especially the local McDonalds [where we could find a free WiFi connection], where we were met by a chorus of “Good morning, sir!” from the employees, as well as having the armed security guard opening the door for us and greet us). (Manila seems to have more McDonalds per square mile than any other place I know of.)

We attended (and Jeff preached at) a Baptist church on Sunday that felt just like many Baptist churches in the States. Everything was in impeccable English (the church has separate English and Tagalog services), and the music was familiar to me from contemporary worship experiences in the U.S. The style was mainly contemporary, although perhaps slightly less “seeker-friendly” than many American churches using contemporary worship styles). Visitors were asked to identify themselves by standing up and then the congregation sang a song of welcome to them. (I noticed at least one visitor who indicated they would prefer not to stand and receive the attention.) I felt as though I could have been almost anywhere in the United States (which made me wonder whether and/or how a church might incarnate the gospel in distinctively Filipino manner). I wish I had had the opportunity to attend the Tagalog service to see what that was like.

The music at the dedication of the seminary facilities consisted mainly of hymns (with, as I recall, an older worship chorus or two [from the 60’s or 70’s] mixed in). During our time at the seminary, when we were not teaching the language tended to consist of Tagalog with English phrases (and Spanish loan-words) sprinkled in. I wonder how many churches in the Manila area have services that are more or less completely in American English and how many have worship services in Tagalog (or separate services in each language, as at the church we attended).

The area where we stayed and taught had several huge, modern shopping malls, but was also full of signs of serious poverty. Shanty towns and modern apartment and other housing are found beside each other. Christian cults have very large followings. At least one heterodox church (denying the deity of Christ) broadcasts its message 24-7 on multiple TV channels and has a huge and impressive church building in the city. We were told that since these groups tend to vote as a block their votes are eagerly courted by politicians, giving them greater political influence than their numbers would normally merit.

The students in our courses traveled from significant distances to spend a week in Quezon City, taking eight hours of class each day. I was impressed by their dedication and hard work and the sacrifices they were willing to make for the sake of their theological and pastoral training. Biblical theology was a new discipline for them but they were eager and enthusiastic students. They asked great questions and demonstrated the qualities of passionate and critical Christian minds.

CBS-Asia has a gifted, creative and dedicated leadership team and what seems to be an effective strategy for providing its pastors with a serious theological education. They have a main campus and a series of Regional Training Centers to which its faculty travel to provide pastors and other leaders with more local access to such training.

Pastors and seminaries in the Philippines certainly need tremendous wisdom and integrity to serve as effective and godly leaders (and places of pastoral formation) in a place with as many social, cultural and spiritual challenges as the Philippines. Discerning how to preach and incarnate the gospel message in such a culturally diverse environment marked by such radical socio-economic, linguistic and other differences is a great challenge. Those committed to the advancement of God’s kingdom purposes in such contexts certainly deserve our prayers as well as whatever other support we might offer members of our extended family in Christ. It was a privilege to work with and learn from such godly and committed servants of Christ during our time there. May God continue to use them to advance the cause of Christ in biblical and Spirit-empowered ways that might serve as an example to others around the world as well!

Above Reproach

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology and
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling at the Charlotte campus

I don’t know about the rest of the country, but here in Charlotte, one cannot turn around without reading or hearing something about the exploits of South Carolina’s governor, Mark Sanford. He got into the news because he disappeared for five days without letting anyone know where he was going. Turned out, he flew to Argentina for a tryst with his mistress. Now, there is an urgent investigation of his performance as governor, calls for his resignation, and speculation about the state and future of his marriage. After several weeks of this, he refuses to resign, and says that his spiritual advisor has helped him see the light, that he has violated God’s law, but intends to reconcile with his wife. And, he will not resign because God works all things together for good.

God works through broken people. Aaron made the golden calf, and later God called him to be Israel’s first high priest. David committed adultery and murder with Bathsheba and God called him friend and made David and Bathsheba ancestors of Jesus. Peter denied Christ three times, and Jesus called him to feed his sheep. Paul persecuted the church, and God made him the apostle to the gentiles and writer of much of the New Testament.

And yet. James warns that leaders of the church, teachers in particular, will be held to a greater judgment, and cautions against too easily taking on these responsibilities. In 1 Timothy and Titus, Paul gives instructions about the leadership of the local churches in Ephesus and Crete. He says leaders of the church are to be above reproach. For example, in Titus Paul writes:

An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. (Titus 1:6-9, TNIV)

How do we understand these disparate lessons from Scripture, and how do we apply this in the life of the church, in the face of struggling and/or fallen leaders? Do we embrace fallen leaders and encourage them to continue their ministries or disqualify them because of their error?

Closer look at the stories of some of these individuals in Scripture might help. The fallen leaders in these stories go through a process of removal from leadership and spiritual restoration. For example, after Paul’s conversion he did not immediately become the apostle to the gentiles. He withdrew to Arabia for 3 years. Peter went through a restoration process with Jesus himself after his resurrection. Aaron went through serious judgment, and it was at least a year between the golden calf incident and his anointing as high priest. Still, one can feel the tension between the highest standards we are called to in 1 Timothy and Titus, and God’s grace and mercy to all sinners, including church leaders. The challenge and the solution, I think, as with many things is to find a way to hold these two things in a dynamic tension that allows God to work in our lives.

This feels like the same tension we encounter in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus’ teaching is directed at his followers, and he calls us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48). It is an incredibly high standard. How can we, in our fallen, imperfect condition be perfect this side of heaven? We strive to be the people God calls us to be, empowered by his Holy Spirit, knowing that only in him can we be what he calls us to be. And when we fall short, we fall on the mercy of God, repent and seek reformation.

For me, when I see a situation where a leader gets into trouble, it has a lot to do with the response of the leader and the process they go through before they continue or resume their leadership. We know the tree by the fruit it bears. Do they truly get it, and repent of their sin? Do they understand the value of and pursue a course of withdrawing for a time to pursue healing? Do they show the fruit of repentance in a changed life? We can identify too many leaders of the church who, like Sanford, refuse to withdraw from leadership to pursue healing and spiritual renewal. We have a responsibility to come along side fallen leaders, to hold them accountable, to protect the people, and to restore them as much as possible. But we also have the responsibility to guard the church leadership by not restoring too quickly one who has fallen. It is in evidence of a changed life, in endurance and persistence that the truth is found.

Tenacious Faith

By Jeff Arthurs
Professor of Preaching & Communication and Dean of the Chapel

I've been a Christian since 1972—37 years! You'd think I would be farther along in the faith, wouldn't you? But as the poet Wordsworth said, "The world is too much with us." Or better, as the Apostle Paul said, "that which I want to do, I don't do; and that which I don't want to do, I find myself doing. . . . Who will deliver me from this body of death?" The answer, of course, is "God, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Here is a prayer to God for deliverance. It is a sonnet. It asks the Lord for something I crave yet experience only sporadically—the happy, free, seemingly effortless faith I see in so many of my friends. Belief for them seems to be as easy as breathing, but for me it always has been a stretch.

Tenacious Faith

Tenacious faith I know and yet begrudge.
I’d like a faith of ecstasy and cheer,
Or even faith of penitence and fear
Of God, the omnipresent Father-Judge.
Easy faith, happy faith—a call,
A gift? Why not mine? My walk is fretful
Fumble-feeling, wander-wondering, wishful
Stumble-striving for that plane where Paul
(And others) seem to live ebulliently.
He (and they) feel sure that neither life,
Nor death, nor angels, no, not this world rife
With powers may undo capriciously.
Increase my faith, my Lord (I do believe).
Send rain to this dry land: revive, relieve!

The Third Little Sister of Public Commitment

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

I can’t recall the moment exactly, except that it seemed more like something that had already been going on for sometime, only it became more vivid now. It was an impression, an inner voice, perhaps, a nagging sensation that rose from somewhere within myself that finally pooled itself into a commitment. Whatever it was, it did not originate with me, that I knew somehow. At that moment, I knew I was only responding—irresistibly--to something or Someone outside myself.

To this day, I wonder how that newly formulated commitment would have grown and flourished if I had not had opportunity to give witness to it in front of that humble rural Midwestern church of mine that crisp autumn evening as a boy of seven years old. There was something about looking into the eyes of my newly formed family of brothers and sisters in Christ that made my newly shaped commitment all the more real. Like sun hitting freshly mixed cement, it fixed my response to that inner voice into something very real. And, it did something else. It seemed to leave quite an impression in the eyes of those who heard me stumble my way through a public acknowledgement of my commitment-in-the-making.

I am not sure I believe in altar calls anymore. I don’t know why, except that I probably find myself reacting to times when I have observed the whole enterprise as contrived and, at times, abused. But, if altar calls are no longer in vogue in our churches, how else do brothers and sisters in Christ have opportunity to regularly express the inner work of God in their lives for their own benefit? And, where else does the Body, in turn, have opportunity to regularly benefit from seeing faith being exercised in others?

If my memory serves me right, altar calls were really more than just expressions of salvation. In my early tradition, the call to salvation was one of a trinity of pubic calls to commitment. The opportunity included not only an invitation to express one’s response to God’s call to salvation, but also to sanctification and service.

This third little sister of the altar call is what I want to focus on for a moment. How do our churches own their own leadership, not only in the present but also for the future? More specifically, to what extent do pastors feel responsible for training the future leadership of the Church? I think it is a lost art for most of us. It is no longer on the radar of many of us as we scan across our sanctuaries every Sunday morning.

By contrast, for several years I served a three hundred year old Congregational church where the two first pastors were so committed to the future of the young colonial Church, they actually built a third floor to their house to house ministers-in-the-making. So committed they were to identifying and nurturing a new generation of ministers, they gave a significant amount of their time and energy every week to teaching their young charges. Imagine the impression that must have been made in these young people when a grown person of significant stature came along side of them and affirmed in them personal and leadership qualities that they didn’t yet recognize in themselves. But, who better is there to identify these traits for ministry than those already in ministry?

I suppose the reason this third little sister of the altar call is on my mind right now is because we are midway through a Lilly-funded program that I direct at the Ockenga Institute called the Compass program. Every year we invite pastors to identify high school students who they feel might have qualities necessary for a life of full time service to the Church. And every year, we invite these young charges—twenty-seven of them--to spend one month with us to explore these potential calls of God in their lives through a rigorous three-fold, one-month experience. We put them in the wilderness (in the Adirondack Mountains), the classroom with our own faculty, and on a mission field to serve (this year in Costa Rica). And then we send them back to their home churches for pastors and lay leaders to further mentor them for the next three years as these students continue to explore God’s call in their lives.

It has been a wonderful program, in part because commitments, I think, left solely to the inner rumination of our subjective lives, often remain dormant and colorless. It is when they see the light of day, fleshed out and affirmed publicly by the Body of Christ, that they become vibrant and full of color. If you have a young person in mind that you sense has this kind of calling, give me a call at the seminary. Perhaps we can partner with you in nurturing these commitments to full life. My goodness, I think I just gave an altar call!