Money & stewardship

Normally I erase such E-mails, but seeing they continue to be sent out around the world, I've decided to post this one as a warning to those of us who are malcontents and gullible enough to think that the answer to our love of mammon has arrived--from Kuwait, no less!

This is a scam so don't even think about responding. Instead, think about what it is in us that causes us to desire the quick buck.

An essay I was reading this morning by Dr. Wayne Martindale, professor of English at Wheaton College and elder at College Church in Wheaton, might be helpful addressing our sin in this area. Originally published in Touchstone under the title, "Samuel Johnson on the Runaway Imagination," the piece opens up Johnson's wisdom concerning our susceptibility to our imagination "conjuring more pleasure than life can deliver."

Johnson shows the cyclical and addictive nature of bondage to the imagination, writing "(W)e desire, we pursue, we obtain, we are satiated; we desire something else, and begin a new pursuit."

The solution? Near the end of his essay, Dr. Martindale excerpts this section of Johnson's poem "Vanity of Human Wishes:"

Still raise for good the supplicating voice,
But leave to heav'n the measure and the choice,
Safe in his pow'r . . . in his decisions rest,
Secure whate'er he gives, he gives the best. . . .
Pour forth thy fervours for a healthful mind,
Obedient passions, and a will resign'd;
For love, which scarce collective man can fill;
For patience sov'reign o'er transmuted ill;
For faith, that panting for a happier seat,
Counts death kind Nature's signal of retreat;
These goods for man the laws of heav'n ordain,
These goods he grants, who grants the pow'r to gain;
With these celestial wisdom calms the mind,
And makes the happiness she does not find.

If you're interested in reading the full essay, send me a note and I'll pass your request on to Dr. Martindale.

Now for the E-mail itself, reproduced exactly as I received it with only the names of the guilty changed:

How shall we fashion to us friends from mammon, if we love it so much as not to put up with its loss? We shall perish together with the lost mammon. ...To exhibit impatience at all losses is the Gentiles' business, who give money the precedence perhaps over their soul... But (Christians), according to the diversity by which we are distinguished from (Gentiles), it becomes to lay down not our soul for money, but money for our soul, whether spontaneously in bestowing or patiently in losing.

-Early church father, Tertullian

For years, Arthur C. Brooks made his living playing the horn (yes, French). His most prestigious gig was with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra. Now he's a scholar, currently serving as Professor of Public Administration at Syracuse University.

Brooks just released a blockbuster book that torches a liberal conceit that conservatives oppose tax increases and government programs because they're Scrooges. This smear has been around for ages, but it's just that--a smear. The truth is religious conservatives are hugely more generous than non-religious secularists, in every way. They donate more of their time, more of their money, and even more of their blood. Brooks puts it this way...

For we are not like many, peddling the word of God... (2 Corinthians 2:17a)

(Tim, w/thanks to Jeff) You couldn't make this stuff up, could you? One company's peddling an "Illuminated" Bible that "looks more like a gossip rag you'd find in a dentist's office than a Bible... (and) features intense pictures of violence and death around the world along with the people who are working to find solutions for many of today's problems."

Intense pictures of violence and death? Maybe it has color images of aborted children's body parts next to a photo of Judie Brown, Joe Schiedler, or Justices Thomas, Scalia, or Roberts?

Not missing a beat, Zondervan's released a Green Bible that "highlights more than 1,000 verses about the earth in soy-based green ink" and contains "essays by religious leaders and other resources on eco-justice." The Green Bible's editor, Michael Maudlin, reports that environmental concerns are "a big part of the Christian agenda today, especially among the youth."

Also, this: "Matthew Sleeth, a doctor who's been pushing fellow evangelicals to go green in recent years, writes in his introduction to the Green Bible that the biggest problem in the world is that the planet is dying."

Over seventy million babies slaughtered each year by medical ghouls and the mothers and fathers who paid them, but bad doctor Sleeth breathlessly reports the imminent death of the planet itself. Or maybe I should say, "the planet herself."

But when her masters saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the market place before the authorities... (Acts 16:19)

(Tim, w/thanks to Lucas) A Greek Bible web site used by lovers of God's Word around the world has been shut down by the German/United Bible Society. Why?

Because they are intent upon defending the stream of money they've lived off for many years, now, provided by the Greek text of God's Word they've assembled. They claim their text is the closest anyone can possibly get to the original autographs inspired by the Holy Spirit.

So think about this. The better they do their job, the closer they will be to claiming copyright for the very word of God. In an e-mail, my son-in-law, Lucas, put it this way:

I was trying to figure out what, exactly, the UBS was copyrighting when they produce their version of the Greek New Testament. My only guess is that when they produce a Greek New Testament, they are copyrighting their specific choice of words. In other words, their copyright is not so much on the words themselves, but on the precise sequence of Greek words in their version of the Greek New Testament.

Their ultimate goal, of course, is to produce a Greek New Testament that is *exactly* the same as the original. But here's the crazy part: If they succeed in their goal, they will have succeeded in copyrighting the *actual* text of the Greek New Testament--not a translation, but the real thing.

Is that not crazy? If I'm right, then you can state it another way: the goal of the UBS is to copyright the *original* text of Scripture.

The head spins...

(Tim) In the middle of a list of ten ways to save money during these difficult times, Money magazine recommends, "Turn off the TV." Here's their rationale:

Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus. (Acts 4:13)

(Tim) Ministering in a university community clarifies the real faith of Christians. If the altar we place our money and children on indicates anything, our help is in education, degrees, and the Academy--not the Name of the Lord.

The Holy Spirit says, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be, also."

Before she walks across the platform, we (along with taxpayers and rich donors) will have spent enough on our daughter's college degree to go a long way toward buying her a nice starter home. Unite two of our children in holy matrimony and the total spent on both of them for their undergrad and graduate degrees quite often exceeds $100,000. One couple from our church had a combined total of $450,000 in undergrad and graduate loans (admittedly, the highest I've come across), and another couple my wife and I were talking with this past week had $160,000 (quite normal).

Soon after entering the ministry, I was listening to one of those endless discussions concerning denominational identity we've all sat through, and I remember hearing a mainline PC(USA) leader adamantly state that the reason for the existence of Presbyterianism was...

We bought our chairs from Save Your Church Money, a business started by Pastor George Kreger who serves New Hope Community Church in Bryan, Ohio. George and my brother, David, are longtime friends and David suggested we get in touch with George.

We did.

And now, a couple years later, we are as pleased as we can be with our chairs. They're very comfortable. But as an old church custodian, I'm most impressed by how well they stack and what a small space they fit into...

(Tim, w/thanks to Luther) It's cute, but the thing I noticed was the cost of the facilities the video incidentally documents. So I looked it up and the parents of those Dutch students at the preeminent Reformed college in our nation, Calvin College, will pay $33,395 for tuition, room, and board in 2010/2011--up 21% from Calvin's $27,510 cost during the 2006/2007 academic year.

Reformed men will spare no expense getting the educational credentials for their children that are at the heart of our religious faith. Back in the mainline PC(USA), I once heard a pastor...

(Tim) Over on ClearNote Ladies Blog, our daughter, Michal Louise Crum, did a post titled, Do Women Need Less Education Than Men? If Samuel Johnson was right in his observation that you know you've hit your mark when you get a response, Michal hit the bull's eye.

At the center of her post were three questions she recommended to her readers in connection with the decision whether or not to go to college:

1. What is the purpose? What is this education preparing me for?
2. What are my motives? Am I pursuing education for the sake of education itself, a profession, money, status, the glory of God?
3. How much will it cost? Is it a wise investment of time, money, and energy? If God leads me in a different direction two years down the road, will the debt incurred prevent me from obeying God’s call?

Pretty calm, huh? It's hard to imagine these questions eliciting screeches and howls--from women who claim the Name of Christ no less. But elicit they did. May I say how much I admire the women of our congregation? If you read the comments under Michal's post, you'll better understand why. For one thing, what grace under fire!

So what about ye olde college education?

I've read all the screeches and howls, and this is by far my favorite...

(Tim) In an earlier post on the marketing of the just-issued New International Version 2010, I made a point of specifying the profit Biblica makes off Bible royalties paid by Zondervan each year, and that it's likely Doug Moo and his colleagues on the Committee on Bible Translation are paid for their work from this profit. To which one reader responded: "The problem isn't that Bible translation committees get paid."

To which I respond:

My point wasn't that paying scholars is wrong, but that every product that's a matter of life and death or supported by tithes and offerings or tied to peddling the Word of God should be subject to full disclosure. So, for instance, if Don Carson writes a book speaking ex cathedra...

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla) Remembering that our Dad, Joe Bayly, was director of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship's staff on the Eastern seaboard, publisher at Inter-Varsity Press, that both he and my father-in-law, Ken Taylor, served as editor of I-V's national magazine His, and that for decades Dad served on I-V's board, our readers will understand it's sad for us to admit Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and Inter-Varsity Press would both do well to stop collecting money from church's missions budgets and Christian book distributors, and we all would do well to stop giving them money. The attacks upon the Word of God coming from their employees, conferences, and publications far outweigh any good this or that staff worker, speaker, or book may still be doing. Each of them are only the exception that proves the rule.

For instance, here's what IVP says about one of their newest products titled The End of Sexual Identity: Why Sex Is Too Important to Define Who We Are:

Concepts like "gay" or "straight" are relatively recent developments in human history. We let ourselves be defined by socially constructed notions of sexual identity and sexual orientation, even though these are not distinctly biblical or Christian ways of thinking about sex.

Anthropologist Jenell Williams Paris offers a Christian framework for sexuality that accounts for complex postmodern realities...

(Tim) Pastor Doug Wilson wrote comparing the limitations on risk that missionaries are provided through our present missions support system maximizing the number of supporting churches and individuals to that same limitation of risk provided investors through diversified mutual funds. Doug wisely points out that this system leads to diffusion of responsibility, and that's bad for both missions and their sending churches. I'd add it may also be intentional.

Anyhow, I commented under Doug's post and sent the link on to several friends who are missionaries. In response, I received the following comments from a brother who's a thirty-year missionary to an Eastern African country where he's focused on training church officers. My friend's Dad also gave his life to planting churches in that same country, so there's a lot of missions experience behind his response.

My brother, David, and I have often talked about the tragic condition of missions, today. It would take a book, but as one instance, Operation Mobilization has turned its back on the Word of God, intentionally promoting the leadership of women over men. And this promotion of feminism is rife within Evangelical missions agencies. Sadly, the PCA's Mission to the World is moving in this direction, also. It's more obvious in the European fields, but like all viruses, it will spread.

This betrayal of God's Order of Creation by missions is simply one indication of the rejection of Biblical doctrine that is pervasive within the American church, herself, and therefore exported around the world through our American missionaries. We're not talking about nitpickey details, either. It's central doctrines of Scripture like whether churches even matter at all, whether Jesus is the Only Way, whether the Sacraments are too divisive to be administered, and so on. These commitments are being jettisoned after 2,000 years of universal affirmation by the Church.

But getting at these issues is almost impossible given the view held by most believers that missionaries have piety and have made sacrifices that pastors and elders haven't, and therefore are above questions or review, let alone admonition or accountability.

Not only are many, many missionaries bad, doctrinally, but they're also overwhelmingly committed...

(Tim: this is fourth in a series of posts [one, two, three, four, five, six, seven] responding to to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's promotion of sodomy at a Indiana University campus forum they sponsored the evening of Monday, March 28, 2011.)

“The unique Divine inspiration, entire trustworthiness and authority of the Bible.”                         - InterVarsity’s Doctrinal Basis

Sola Scriptura is a cornerstone of Protestantism. From the beginning, Protestants have objected to the idea that we can know God and what He commands from any source other than His divinely revealed Word. As the Westminster Confession puts it: “The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture” I.10

Of the many things that were wrong with the event “Jesus and the end of Homophobia” hosted by Indiana University’s InterVarsity chapter, the most disturbing was the silencing of God’s Word. As a Protestant, Evangelical organization, InterVarsity is supposed to be committed to the Bible. It is supposed to be committed to the Bible because it is in the Bible that God speaks to us most clearly. If we have a question about Who God is and what He requires of us, the Bible is where Protestants turn for the answer.

But that is not what happened at last week’s event. Last week, InterVarsity sponsored an event where the Bible was not allowed into the discussion. God was not allowed to speak through His Word...

(Tim: this is sixth in a series of posts [one, two, three, four, five, six, seven] responding to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's promotion of sodomy at an Indiana University campus forum they sponsored the evening of Monday, March 28, 2011. Pic on right.)

This past Monday, April 4, 2011, Jacob Mentzel and Lucas Weeks met with Mark Abdon, InterVarsity's staff worker for their undergraduate chapter here at Indiana University, to state their concern over InterVarsity's promotion of homosexuality at an InterVarsity forum the previous week, and to ask Mr. Abdon and InterVarsity to issue a public correction. As a courtesy to InterVarsity and its staff, prior to this meeting with Mr. Abdon InterVarsity's office of the president had been called and informed this meeting was going to occur later that day.

The following account was written the same day as the meeting and edited for accuracy yesterday (4/5) and today (4/6). It's posted here as one more part of the historical record. 

An Account of Our Meeting With Mark Abdon

by Jacob Mentzel and Lucas Weeks

On Monday, April 4th, we met with Mark Abdon, the undergraduate staff worker for InterVarsity at Indiana University, to discuss IV's recent forum on homosexuality. Mark had an undergraduate woman present with him who plans to go on staff with IV this coming year. It was obvious Mark knew what we wanted to talk about, so we asked him about how the decision was made to have former IV staffer, William Campbell, speak.

Mark told us the majority of the planning for the week's forums belonged to one of his undergraduate students and that the planning began in May of 2010. He made it clear IV's goal from the beginning was to live at peace with the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered Queer (LGBTQ) community in Bloomington. InterVarsity partnered with Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Equality (SAGE), a LGBTQ student advocacy group on campus, to sponsor the event. Mark did not mention the involvement of any other student groups. He noted InterVarsity campus groups were being expelled from universities around the country over the issue of homosexuality, and he was very concerned that the Bloomington chapter not face the same fate.

Because of these concerns, InterVarsity had adopted a policy that the event would be viewpoint neutral. It was decided there would be no "theological content" in the forum...

(Tim: this is eighth in a series of posts [one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight] responding to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's promotion of sodomy at an Indiana University campus forum they sponsored the evening of Monday, March 28, 2011. This post was written by Pastors Tim Bayly, Jacob Mentzel, and Lucas Weeks.)

"The decision to pay Campbell to speak at the event was made by a number of upper-level InterVarsity staff and, following the event, InterVarsity's staff workers who were present had no problem with what Campbell had said."

This Wednesday, April 6, 2011, InterVarsity e-mailed a statement to some of the individuals who had expressed concern over their recent presentation, "Jesus and the End of Homophobia," here at Indiana University. The statement was not published on any public forum.

According to InterVarsity Headquarters, the primary failure of their "Jesus and the End of Homophobia" event is that "some who trust InterVarsity" were led into "confusion" about InterVarsity's "position on the compatibility of ministry leadership and homosexual practice."

So what is InterVarsity's official position on homosexuality?

Who knows? Go to their web site and try to find it. With many others, we've searched and we couldn't find it anywhere. As we said to an InterVarsity vice president this past week, IV has carefully hidden its position behind its firewalls. This is the fear of the world's disapproval and shame of Jesus Christ that led IV into this predicament in the first place...

Please VOTE!!

(Tim: this is ninth in a series of posts [one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine] responding to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's promotion of sodomy at an Indiana University campus forum they sponsored the evening of Monday, March 28, 2011.)

One man wrote a week ago to thank us for our series on InterVarsity's promotion of sodomy in the Name of Jesus Christ, saying he wished he'd known about the commitments of the individuals mentioned some time back when he made a decision to financially support one of the InterVarsity staffers. There are many good things that happen when evil is rebuked, publicly. Sadly, the church is no more tolerant of it today than it ever has been. For instance...

An interesting sidenote to the articles is the refusal of the editor in chief of one of the major Evangelical magazines to publish any news about InterVarsity's failure here at Indiana University. This same publication did stories on the faithfulness of InterVarsity at Tufts University over a decade ago, but now chose not to say a word about IV's betrayal of the Word of God here at Indiana University.

This is a common failure of Evangelicals. Through the years I've noticed this magazine (like many others) saves its prophetic word for unbelievers, the business world, Hollywood, and government, while running puff pieces about Christian organizations. With them, judgment may only begin outside the household of God.

It's similar with preachers...

No doubt readers have noticed I've been trying to take Doug's advice and "stop throwing rocks at the moon." He's so wise.

But occasionally I howl, and tonight you may hear me after some idiot sent me to JT's blog and I saw this ad. Twenty percent off? How can a man resist? Talk about preaching to my heart! And you pomos aren't scandalized!

Preaching has become a commodity and we consume it as if it were yogurt or socks.

Money, it's a hit...

(TB)

Here's an excellent article by Brian Carpenter that's filled with wisdom for all of us, but particularly those of us learning how to raise our children in the Lord. Read it. Then ask your wife and children to read it and discuss it around your dinner table.

(TB: w/thanks to David W.)

ClearNote Church has gotten by without a sign ever since we moved into our new church-house. Why?

Don't ask. But if we were ever to get a sign, I'd like to copy this one. It's about as comissional as can be.

And here at ClearNote Church of Bloomington, it has the added benefit of accurately describing the origin of many cars in our parking lot...

The American Spectator's "Another Perspective" just ran an excellent piece titled, "What Would Reagan Cut?" The author is Bob Patterson, a close friend who served as the stated clerk of Northern Illinois Presbytery (PCA) back in 1991 when I transferred with my congregation from the mainline PC(USA) into the PCA. Since then, Bob has moved into writing on public policy matters and currently serves as editor of the Rockford Center's very helpful quarterly, The Family in America.

Two reasons to read this piece: first, everyone thinks cutting Social Security benefits is the only realistic way to address the deficit, but did you know that the payments you and I make into Social Security have long served as one of Washington D.C.'s principal cash cows? Bob reports that Social Security has long been producing a surplus...

Is Holiness Possible Today (With a Warning from Esau)

Along with a number of other dear brothers (Ron Scates, Gary LeTourneau, Jim DeCamp, Terry Schlossberg, Ben and John Sheldon), my friend Rev. Marty Radcliffe continues to languish in the heretical PC(USA). Pray for him. Marty was a godly encouragment to me in the work of the ministry back in the early eighties when we both were ordained and served within the PC(USA)'s John Knox Presbytery up in Wisconsin.

Marty just commented under the post, "Death of an eighteen-year-old brother...," that he'd recently listened again to my Dad's final sermon given from the pulpit of College Church in Wheaton a few weeks before he died. After Dad's death, I had three-hundred cassettes of this sermon duplicated and sent them out to many friends.

This is the sort of preaching almost completely absent from the PCA and other conservative Reformed circles today. And it's tragic. Out of fear of being labelled a "pietist" by godless hypocrites who persecute those pursuing the sanctification without which no man will see God...

Here are a couple responses to questions asked under the post of the ESV committee's video. First the question, then my response. (TB)

Is every use of the word "slave" now going to be changed to "servant"? 

No, they are doing this gradually. Words indicating the ownership of men will be removed from Scripture at about the same rate as words indicating the federal headship of Adam  (male inclusives such as 'adam' and 'adelphoi'). As mentioned above, footnotes often show...

I don't write much about Indiana politics and government but it's caused me no small sadness to contemplate the term-limit-departure of our fiscally excellent governor a little over a year from now. Gov. Mitch Daniels will have completed his second term and will have to leave office.

If I am comforted in our loss of Mitch's magnificent fiscal leadership, my comfort comes from this: that his likely successor is a man, Representaive Mike Pence, who promises to govern with the same fiscal commitments while adding a theological framework to those commitments that promises to extend far beyond fiscal discipline, on to principles concerning many other areas of governance including the battlefields on which the destroyers of our nation and its states are focussing their revolution: sexuality, the Image of God in man, the origin and nature of sexuality and marriage decreed by our Creator in His Order of Creation, and so forth.

As you read through Daniels' penultimate State of the State Address delivered yesterday evening, you will gain a hint of why I respect him. He has been unflinching in disciplining the educationists of our state by a host of private initiatives that have finally brought competition into public education. True, he brags about over half of our state budget going to edcuation, and he seems to see higher education as an unqualified good. I disagree with both things as I disagreed with President Bush on similar matters. Mitch Daniels is not a wild-eyed enthusiast. He's a realist who really changed our state. Definitively. And reading, you'll see what difference it makes to each citizen of the state.

But there's something else I want to say, here.

Some thirty years ago, I was at the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly to oppose their denominational abortion policy. My dear Mary Lee was pregnant and, since we were in the habit of having home births, I'd called the midwest representative of the PC(USA)'s self-funded independent medical insurance plan to ask if they'd cover the cost of our midwife? It was awkward. He hemmed and hawed and said he didn't know and would have to get back to me on it...