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Vocation and Life Purpose Discovery

Monday, July 9th, 2012 by Diane Chandler

This past May, 2012, another group of divinity graduates received their diplomas from Regent University. Some currently hold fulfilling jobs, while others who are employed dream of moving into more satisfying employment.  Others are in transition or may be unemployed.  Times of transition are often wrought with anxiety which raises several questions:

-what is my life calling?

-what are my unique gifts and talents, and how can I steward them for God’s glory?

-how can I serve God in what I’d like to do, yet still make a living?

-what job would be most fulfilling to me?

-is what I am doing significant, and even more probing, am I significant?

These questions take time, experience, discernment, reflection, prayer, and input from others to address. No matter what our life season, we occasionally circle back to these basic questions.  However, we must remember that vocation is not to be equated with a job. Vocation first begins as a general call to follow Christ, followed by a specific call that is unique to each individual in contributing to Christ’s mission in the world, followed by an immediate call involving the duties at hand, such as family responsibilities. All three coalesce into our discipleship journey and reflect loving and serving God and others. God promises to guide us and does so each step along our journey. How God guided Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), German Lutheran theologian, musician, and medical doctor, offers some key principles!

In his riveting autobiography, Schweitzer wrote about a developing sense of call in the chapter entitled “I Resolve to Become a Jungle Doctor.”[1]

He chronicled how his sense of calling morphed from theology and music to include becoming a medical doctor. Although few will be called by God to serve as a medical doctor in Africa, the path that Schweitzer followed is equally as compelling today as it was during his lifetime. Notice the progression that carried him along in life purpose discovery and subsequent decision making.

While focused in academic studies and music, Schweitzer developed a growing empathy for others “struggling with sorrow and suffering.”[2]

Identification of one’s calling often begins with a burden of compassion to assist others. Then at age 21, Schweitzer realized that he could not accept his good fortune relative to university study, scholarship, and organ proficiency as “a matter of course” but determined to “give something in return.”[3]

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Spirit-Empowered Christianity

Monday, June 25th, 2012 by Walter Gessner

Spirit-Empowered Christianity in the 21st Century: Insights, Analysis, & Future Trends. Edited by Vinson Synan. Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2011. ix + 595 pp

Vinson Synan compiles a series of scholarly essays designed to consider the future direction of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement and to offer to the future generations an “important marker . . . at the beginning of the twenty-first century and a visionary guide to the future” (3). Arranging the essays under three sections, Twenty-First Century Renewal, Protecting Our Charismatic Distinctives, and Charismatic Adaptations for Reaching this Present Age, Synan allows for each of the contributors to examine and critique the current state of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement, while offering through interdisciplinary constructs the desired visionary guide to the future.

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The Cross

Wednesday, March 21st, 2012 by Diane Chandler

On January 3, 2007, a 50-year old construction worker from Harlem was waiting to catch the NYC subway.  As Wesley Autry waited on the subway platform with his two daughters, ages four and six, he noticed a young man beginning to go into convulsions from an apparent seizure.  Along with two other women, Autry attended to him.  After the 20-year old film student, Cameron Hollopeter, stood up, he wobbled dangerously close to the platform drop-off and then tumbled onto the subway tracks below.

Wesley Autrey

With the subway fast approaching, Autry left his two daughters on the platform and jumped onto the tracks, hoping to pull Hollopeter to safety. With the subway mere seconds away, Autry threw his body over Hollopeter’s frame, as it nested in the 12-inch depression between the tracks, in order to shield him from moving until the subway passed.

Although the subway conductor tried to stop the subway, he could not do so prior to passing over the two-tiered bodies.  In fact, five subway cars passed over them. Through bystanders’ frantic screams and screeching brakes, the subway finally came to a halt. Amazingly, both Autry and Hollopeter emerged from the tracks unscathed. The distance between the top of Autry’s cap and the subway above was less than the length of a subway ticket.

Calvary's Cross

Why would a complete stranger do something for someone else at such great risk to his own life?  Answer:  In that split second decision, Autry valued this young man’s life above his own.  As we think about Calvary’s cross, why would God send His only Son to die for us?  The Bible tells us that, “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).  Paul wrote to the Roman church: “At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). Paul declared to the Galatian church: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law”  (Galatians 3:13). The reason God sent His Son to die for us is that in eternity past, God knew that all humanity would need to be restored into right relationship with God through forgiveness of their sins.  Jesus came to take upon Himself the sins of the entire world.  The One who knew no sin became sin for us (2 Cor 5:21). Although many were involved in Christ’s death (i.e., the betrayer Judas Iscariot, complicit Jewish leaders, the Roman soldiers, and Pilate), the Scriptures makes clear that Jesus voluntarily gave Himself to fulfill the Father’s will “so that by the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19b).

In his book The Cross of Christ, John Stott puts it simply (pp. 63-66). First, Christ died for us as the Good Shepherd laying down His life for the sheep. Second, Christ died for us that He might bring us to God through salvation, as we believe in Him. Third, Christ died for our sins (1 Cor 15:3), taking upon Himself the punishment for our sins.  And fourth, Christ died our death.  The Bible makes clear that the penalty of sin is death (Romans 6:23). The sinless Son of God died the death that we deserved.

Like Cameron Hollopeter, I was laying helpless on the subway tracks with the subway fast approaching.  Jesus sacrificially jumped on the tracks of my life (leaving the 99 sheep to reach the one, who had gone astray), just as Autry left his two daughters on the subway platform to save Hollopeter.  Jesus shielded me from certain death. 

In preparing for Easter during this Lenten season, how do you respond when you think about Christ’s forgiveness of sin and His sacrifice on the cross for you personally?

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Come, Creator Spirit

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 by Diane Chandler

In the ninth century, the well-known hymn Veni Creator Spiritus was penned in Latin and later set to music.  Since then, this beautiful hymn is sung around the world, most often on Pentecost and at ordinations, signifying the invocation of the Spirit to bless the people of God. Celebrated fifty days after Easter, Pentecost commemorates the coming of the promised Holy Spirit, as recorded in Acts 2:1-13. This week provides a fresh opportunity to call upon the Holy Spirit to outpour anew in our lives in order to bless the nations.  Later in this blog, you’ll have an opportunity to learn more about the Global Day of Prayer that will take place this Sunday, May 12, 2011.

The author of the Veni Creator hymn is believed to have been Rhabanus Maurus, an Abbot and later Archbishop of Mainz in Germany. In light of this coming Sunday, June 12, 2011 being Pentecost Sunday, Christians (including evangelical and Pentecostal believers who may be unfamiliar with the hymn) might appreciate the richness of the words that breathe out a lyrical prayer to the Holy Spirit to come, anoint, rekindle, strengthen, protect, and draw us into a deeper relationship with Father, Son, and Spirit. You can view and listen to one rendition of the Veni Creator Spiritus hymn in Latin, followed by an English adaptation, by clicking here.

Centuries later, composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) used the hymn as the first choral of his eighth symphony, known as Symphony of a Thousand. And the Spirit-filled Preacher to the Papal Household, Raniero Cantalamessa, utilized the hymn as his roadmap to write the book, Come, Creator Spirit: Meditations on the Veni Creator on the dynamism, creativity, love of the Holy Spirit. A Roman Catholic brother, Cantalamessa has the privilege of preaching and ministering to the Pope and others at the Vatican.

The Veni Creator lyrics are sublime in their simplicity (translated into English below and taken from Cantalamessa’s book, p. 5):

“Come, Creator Spirit, visit the minds of those who are yours; Fill with heavenly grace, the hearts that you have made. You who are named the Paraclete, gift of God most high, living fountain, fire, love and anointing for the soul. You are sevenfold in your gifts, you are finger of God’s right hand; You, the Father’s solemn promise, putting words upon our lips. The enemy drive from us away, peace then give without delay; with you as guide to lead the way, we avoid all cause of harm. Grant we may know the Father through you, and come to know the Son as well, and may we always cling in faith to you, the Spirit of them both.”

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Further Reflections on “Approaching” Hell

Monday, June 6th, 2011 by Dale M. Coulter

The Great River of Christian Tradition

Last week I wrote against what I identified as the Ida Syndrome (the Ice Dancing Approach to scripture). With its attempt to glide across the expanse of scriptural texts, I described this approach as a more sophisticated version of proof-texting. Its basic components are as follows: 1) mistakenly equating depth as a well-choreographed assembling of scriptural texts or isolating a particular trajectory within scripture; 2) selective reading of parts of Christian tradition as somehow supporting the whole; 3) a failure to understand the underlying ideas and structural relations between various doctrines within Christian tradition; 4) a fracturing of the narrative whole of scripture in favor of supporting a particular position.

These components continue to work into the interpretive project within evangelicalism as the continuing debate about hell reveals. And let me be a little bold here: Sometimes, and I did say sometimes, an embrace of the Ida Syndrome really amounts to a lack of theological imagination, by which I mean a failure to allow the great river of Christian tradition to fill the mind with images and ideas that provide the foundation for interpreting scripture. I have found that some theologians or thinkers who claim, “it’s not a logical or rational position,” simply lack the imagination to see (in Johannine terms) how something could be the case. They fall back onto “logic,” but what counts as logical is not what follows the rules of logic, but what they imaginatively conceive as possible. This is one reason why Christian writers like Dante or even C. S. Lewis reverted to mythical and poetical accounts in order to place Christian ideas into a new imaginative framework so as to reveal what is indeed possible.

With this in mind, let me further identify some of the doctrines that are related to the doctrine of hell and the questions it poses.

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Hell and the Ida Syndrome

Monday, May 30th, 2011 by Dale M. Coulter

In the past few weeks, there has been another splash on the internet with respect to the doctrine of hell. Yes. . .again. It was created by the popular Christian speaker and author Francis Chan’s video about his forthcoming book, Erasing Hell. You can view the video at his website. I find it somewhat ironic that there is a rush on the part of some detractors to critique a video, not unlike the rush to criticize Rob Bell. But then, this is the brave new world of the internet.

Without commenting on Chan, mainly because I weary of dissecting comments on a video that are explicitly designed to market a book and thus must be provocative, it seems to me at this point that both the defenders and growing detractors of the doctrine of hell get it wrong, especially in the evangelical world where this debate is primarily being waged. I’ll try to spell out several areas that both sides need to deal with before they arrive at any conclusions about hell, but the debate reveals how persons can be “biblical” without being biblical. This current debate in and around the edges of the evangelical world has confirmed my own growing sense that one cannot be authentically biblical without immersing oneself thoroughly into the great river of Christian tradition. I say thoroughly because folks like Bell will stand on the banks of the great river and cherry pick select authors in the same way that many individuals employ selective scriptures as proof texts.

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