ed·i·fi·ca·tion
May 16, 2007
I don’t think we’ll have time to cover everything, but… Here’s the text for Sunday: 1 cor 14 (ESV) The purpose of the gifts (v. 12) is for the “edification of the church“. I think we fall into a trap here thinking we do what we do for the improvement of the physical space we occupy on Sunday morning. The story of FRWY is a great example of “Intellectual, moral and spiritual improvements” made to the church. FRWY (short for Freeway) is a Salvation Army church plant in one of the poorer cities in Canada. Their purpose is to be neighbors in the community.
May 16, 2007 at 10:46 am
Although we are not a Southern Baptist church, that is my spiritual heritage and the SBC (IMB in particular) will always be special to me. Unfortunately they are taking some unfortunate, I think, positions on speaking in tongues. A couple of articles: from imb.org (http://www.imb.org/core/story.asp?StoryID=5581&LanguageID=1709) and from Baptist Press (includes text of the guidelines): http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=25616
May 17, 2007 at 11:38 pm
I don’t know if this will make sense but I’ll throw it out there:
1.] There is a difference between the bible prohibiting a practice and the bible not promoting a practice.
2.] One does not need chapter and verse for each nuance of the personalization of their faith.
If I am granted those two premises, what I believe follows is that a “personal prayer language” is not, in my opinion, prohibited by the bible but neither do I think the bible promotes/describes/defines the phenomena and furthermore, the bible does not need to promote the practice to make it a legitimate facet of someone’s personalization of their faith. I know that is a mouthful and perhaps a hornet’s nest. What I am getting at is this- I think it is a mistake of those that have that experience in their prayer life to try to find proof texts to justify it.
The experience itself is by definition subjective. By claiming that this verse and this verse and this verse allows for this experience one opens up for scrutiny a hermeneutic and a line of reasoning. What the SBC seems to be saying is that they don’t find the passages and the arguments and the connected dots convincing and frankly, I’m not sure that I do either. But what if a SBC missionary said, “When I pray kneeling before an open window as the sun rises, I feel/believe I am communing more intimately with God.” What could be said of this? I have no grounds to discount someone’s perceived benefits of praying in that fashion, even though I don’t share in that as part of my own prayer life. If that same person said, “I pray that way because Psalm 42b says. . .” now we are moving into different territory and I might be moved to say, “I don’t think Psalm 42b is really teaching that. . .” which I think is what the SBC is in effect saying. They are not convinced by the arguments from Scripture relating to a personal prayer language. Maybe they shouldn’t be and that’s a-okay.
I don’t think that all of the ways we personally seek to communicate with God need to be “proof-texted” and this might be a case where attempting to do so was a mistake. And for the record, I hope I am not perceived here as denigrating the practice of praying in a personal prayer language. I have not experienced that but I have other ways that I meaningful interact with God that are between me and God alone. I don’t think they are forbidden by Scripture but I am not going to seek to justify them from Scripture either.