The Silent Holocron

Last fall I began posting about a Great Commission Resurgence with the intention of looking at how such a movement would look in Deaf ministry. Unfortunately, that series also coincided with a cooling trend in the blogosphere — in which many bloggers began to post less, took a hiatus or simply quit altogether — that I was not immune to. I only made one post in the series. However, with the conclusion of the 2009 Southern Baptist Convention, and the passage of the Great Commission Resurgence by 95% of the messengers, the time has come to seriously pursue the writing of this long-delayed series.

Let me begin by reminding you of what I wrote in a previous post about Baptist Battles concerning the Gospel.

The Gospel
This is the next great “Baptist Battle.” We Baptists have lost or obscured the Gospel. We no longer seek to meet the real need of the lost nor of our own people, choosing instead to focus on “felt needs” so that everyone gets their spiritual warm and fuzzies. No wonder our churches struggled with all the previous battles! When the Gospel is lost or obscured, confusion and false teaching have inroads.

That’s why I believe the next great “Baptist Battle” will be for the recovery of the biblical Gospel. Southern Baptists must stop this theological tomfoolery we’ve been engaged in and start making real change in our denomination. And the only way to see real change is through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Only the Gospel can change a person, a church, a denomination. And until we believe that — truly believe that — we will continue to pass ill-considered resolutions, offer really silly and sometimes downright stupid programs and emphases, and generally continue to miss the point.

Towards that end, some in the SBC are taking practical and theological steps to correct our path. There is a call going out — not from Nashville — but from the seminaries and churches who are deeply, deeply concerned about the Gospel penetrating all aspects of the church and the believer. That call is for a Great Commission Resurgence. And the current SBC President, Johnny Hunt, has taken up that call.

We must ask ourselves: “What is the Gospel? How does the Gospel impact me, change me, shape me? How does it impact my life, my family, my friends, my work? How does it change the way I view and relate to the world?”

As I said in the conclusion of that post, over the next several weeks, I’m going to dedicate this blog to answering these questions. And I will be attempting to answer how a Great Commission Resurgence could impact Deaf ministry. Deaf people have not really been involved in many of these “Baptist Battles.” But the battle for the Gospel is one we cannot afford to miss.

Join us tomorrow as I repost my first offering in this series: “Great Commission Resurgence: The Gospel and Deaf Ministry.”

Tim Challies wrote a beautiful reflection on attending this year’s Ligonier Conference and watching the Deaf attendees there, which he titled “The Ears of the Deaf.” You can read it here.

In the meta of that post a hearing pastor made some comments which caused me to feel the need to speak up. After I addressed his comments, the wife of a Deaf man asked me some questions regarding Deaf ministry. I did not want her excellent questions to go unnoticed, especially since they are relevant to one of this blog’s purposes, so I have copied her questions and the answers I gave her below. Please enjoy and feel free to chime in if you think I have missed anything!

[Name],

Thanks for your questions!

1. What if the only deaf preaching available is not biblical or is always shallow?
This is just my fallen view of it: I would suggest that a person in this situation follow Matthew 18 with the pastor, and follow it to its conclusion. If, at the end of the process, the pastor refuses to change and the church supports him, such a person may have no recourse but to leave, because one would only be pierced to the heart by the trampling of the Gospel. [Stephen's Note: for more on this, please read my brief series on FBC Starbucks under the "Classic Holocron" category in the sidebar, especially Part 3a.]

I am not a believer in leaving a church for any reason unless there are serious issues such as this one. One could choose to stay, working and praying for faithfulness to be brought in the church. I like this idea much better than leaving, but if one chooses to leave there is no shame in availing oneself of alternatives, including interpreted ministry.

2. What is more important, that Deaf be taught by Deaf or that Deaf be taught God’s Word?
My answer to your first question points at this. The Gospel is central, no exceptions. How that Gospel is communicated is a different matter. From 13 years of being around Deaf ministries, including 10 years active in Deaf ministry, I’m convinced that Deaf ministers do this better than interpreted ministries. I’m convinced it is the ideal. But I’m like Paul in this — they’re preaching the Gospel, therefore we’re on the same team. In fact, until a couple of years ago one of our church’s closest relationships was with an interpreted ministry across town; they now have a Deaf minister on staff with their own worship and Bible classes. Short answer, I will endorse a faithful, Gospel-centered Deaf-led ministry over and above any interpreted ministry any day of the week. But in connection with your first question, if there’s no acceptable Deaf-led ministries, being personally faithful ought not exclude the alternative.

3. Who should the leaders of deaf ministries be accountable to?
That depends on the structure of the ministry. There are two common ways this is set up: as a Deaf church and as a ministry under a hearing church. I’ve been in both environments in my brief time in ministry.

If it is a Deaf church, obviously the leaders are accountable first to God and His Word and second to the congregation. That’s what makes Matthew 18 so very important. Without that, we as members would have no recourse. As an associate pastor, I strive for faithfulness to Scripture above all. Next I am accountable to our senior pastor, since I serve under his leadership. Last I am accountable to our congregation through our church council specifically and individual members generally.

If it is a ministry under a hearing church, it is similar to my role as an associate pastor. Again the leaders are first accountable to God and His Word. Next they are accountable to the church through those staff members responsible for them. Last they are accountable to their people.

Please understand, what I have spoken of is a trend becoming more and more widespread that expects Deaf ministries in hearing churches to follow the lead of the hearing congregations. When they resist, they are in many cases forced to comply, which results in the Deaf and/or their ministry leaving. Having the Deaf join hearing worship is usually the first step towards such practice. It waves a red flag in my mind and in that of other Deaf ministers.

I would encourage [hearing pastor] (and again, this is just my perspective) to have as a goal the raising up of a man within his Deaf people to take responsibility for them and their discipleship. Take up his training and disciple him towards ministry. I see interpreted ministry as a stepping stone towards Deaf-led ministry. It should not be the end result, but a rung on the ladder. That’s how our church came to be and from what I have learned it is how many Deaf-led churches began as well.

Deaf-led ministry does not necessarily mean independent Deaf-led churches such as ours, but can and will mean ministry as part of a larger church. In fact, I am coming to suspect that independent Deaf-led churches may soon disappear entirely. Deaf-led ministries under the umbrella of hearing churches may out of necessity become the future of Deaf ministry. That makes it important that hearing churches understand the boundaries between ministries and respect them.

I am convinced we need men with a vision for what can be called “A Great Commission Resurgence.”

With these words, Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, fired the first shot of what I believe to be the next and greatest of all “Baptist Battles.” Indeed, after the Conservative Resurgence which rescued the Southern Baptist Convention from liberalism, this battle may be the most important of all. Having won what has been called by some “the Battle for the Bible,” what do we do with that victory? Akin makes no bones about it: we must dedicate ourselves to the task the Great Commission.

What is a “Great Commission Resurgence?”
In his address Answering the Call to A Great Commission Resurgence, delivered at the Building Bridges conference last November, Akin lays the foundational principles for a Great Commission Resurgence, stating that “the time has come for us to focus on the great task the Lord Jesus left us as He ascended back into heaven.” For too long we have neglected this task. It is time for this task to “resurge” in our churches.

For something to surge it must have a strong, wavelike, forward movement. The very first “surge” of the Great Commission began, quite clearly, in Acts chapter 2 when the disciples, in obedience to Jesus’ command, waited in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit’s empowerment. Receiving this empowerment, they immediately went out and proclaimed the Gospel. The result was that very day 3000 people were saved. Since Apostolic times this surge has noticeably lessened. However, church history shows clearly that at certain points there has been a resurgence, a rising again or revival, of the Great Commission. In our history we can clearly point to the Protestant Reformation and the Great Awakening as examples of such a resurgence of the Gospel. As Baptists we can point to William Carey and the founding of the Southern Baptist Convention (which was formed on missions as its primary purpose) as prime examples of Baptist participation in Gospel resurgences. I am hard-pressed to name examples prior to the Conservative Resurgence beginning in 1979; perhaps those more knowledgeable than I can provide these examples.

In Deaf ministry, the founding of the Southern Baptist Conference of the Deaf in 1948, also centered around missions, is a prime example of Deaf participation in these resurgences. In fact, the mission statement of the SBCD is “to reach Deaf persons for Jesus Christ by serving as a cooperative network for Southern Baptist churches and agencies to fulfill the Great Commission by providing training, advocacy, worship, fellowship, missions awareness and mission involvement.” Other Deaf Christian conferences/conventions have a similar mission statement. We can see, therefore, the foundation for Deaf involvement in a Great Commission Resurgence has already been laid.

What Is The Gospel?
Before we can ask what such a resurgence would look like, we must first remind ourselves of the main idea of such a resurgence. We must first seek to answer the question, “what is the Gospel?”

A basic description of the Gospel appears in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 -

Now, brothers and sisters, I want you to remember the Good News I brought to you. You received this Good News and continue strong in it. And you are being saved by it if you continue believing what I told you. If you do not, then you believed for nothing.

I passed on to you what I received, of which this was most important: that Christ died for our sins, as the Scriptures say; that he was buried and was raised to life on the third day as the Scriptures say; and that he was seen by Peter and then by the twelve apostles. After that, Jesus was seen by more than five hundred of the believers at the same time. Most of them are still living today, but some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. Last of all he was seen by me—as by a person not born at the normal time. (NCV)

To this we would add the commands of the Gospel; namely the command to repent of our sins (Acts 17:20) and to receive Christ and live for him and by him from now on (Colossians 2:6-7). As Baptists we would also add the command to be baptized once these things have been done (Acts 2:38) as a sign of what has taken place and of one’s commitment to live for and by Christ.

So we understand that the Gospel is the message of Christ’s saving work and the command to repent of our sins, believe in Christ, be baptized as a sign of our repentance and faith, and to commit one’s life to living in Christ.

We must believe that the message of Christ is more important than anything else, even our very lives. It must be more important than our jobs, friends, homes, families. It must be the one thing that makes our lives worth living. We must believe the commands of the Gospel must be lived out in every aspect of our lives. We must live our lives continually repenting of sins we find in ourselves, trusting in Christ to overcome those sins we find, and committing ourselves to Christlikeness in those areas of our lives from then on.

Before a Great Commission Resurgence can take place in Deaf ministry, we must first recover this clear, solid, and biblical understanding of the Gospel in our Deaf churches.

The Gospel and Deaf Ministry
I have become increasingly convinced the Gospel has been lost, not only in the hearing churches, but in Deaf churches as well. That is going to upset many Deaf readers of this blog. If the Gospel is truly our foundation, my only response must be this: I don’t care if it upsets you. Instead, I am going to praise God you are upset!

You see, in many Deaf churches we do not preach Jesus anymore. Instead we preach self-help and how you can feel better about your life problems. For example, I’ve heard (and have preached myself) way too many sermons on gossip and negativity in the Deaf community from Deaf preachers. I’m sick of it. My pastor must be as well, because this Sunday he asked our congregation which was more important to us: the Gospel or gossip. What a challenge! Instead of focusing on the unimportant and pitiful little problems we have in this life, our churches need to get back to the main thing: Jesus and his Gospel.

In many Deaf churches we don’t preach the Bible anymore. Instead we find a “Christian” book that is easy to understand and relates well with Deaf people and preach through that. We don’t stop to ask if the book is biblical, or if the Bible already teaches the principles in the book. Or we preach on topics, pulling different verses from around the Bible that may not really have anything to do with each other or the topic we choose. We don’t stop to wonder if a book of the Bible or a chapter of a Bible book would be deeper and more clear than 10 verses from 10 different places in the Bible. As a result, many Deaf people are being led astray by people such as Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen, TD Jakes, and others. Even worse, many Deaf people are ignorant of what the Bible teaches because they have not been taught to go through their Bible verse by verse! And it is mainly the fault of Deaf pastors who will not open up their Bibles and teach from the Bible alone on Sundays. If we pastors do not make what the Bible has to say number one in our preaching, it will be no surprise if our people do not read their Bibles. We must get back to the main way we learn about Jesus and his Gospel: the Bible alone.

Deaf ministry needs a Great Commission Resurgence. When less than 2% of all Deaf people have even heard the Gospel, something is horribly wrong. But unless our Deaf churches make the Gospel the center of their lives, that percent will get smaller and smaller, until 0% of all Deaf people have heard the Gospel.

If the idea that your church has lost the Gospel really bothers you, I praise God for that! Getting mad sometimes is the only way to get a problem fixed. I invite you to pay careful attention to this series and to join the discussion. Leave comments on the posts. Talk with your pastor friends about the Gospel. Preach the Gospel to your people. Above all, make the Gospel and its commands the center of your ministry!

Join me next time as I look at how the Gospel impacts us individually and as a church.

As things have quite calmed down in the blogosphere over the last year, I reflected on some of the major “Baptist Battles” that have taken place in my 17 years as a believer. Below is a roughly chronological overview of those battles.

Inerrancy
This seemed to drag on and on since the beginning of the Conservative Resurgence in 1979 (that’s two years after I was born, by the way). When God saved me in Christ at the beginning of the 90s, this was what I heard about: “Do you really believe the Bible is God’s word?” This battle has largely ceased as inerrancy has been less and less seriously challenged.

Homosexuality
Another battle that, while still on-going, has also largely ceased. When science failed to find any such thing as a genetic basis for homosexuality, and then a majority of states passed amendments to their constitutions banning homosexual marriage, this issue ceased to become “hot button.” This battle is still being fought, and will never go away, but I’m convinced no serious Christian would knowingly compromise on this issue.

Open Theism
This issue dominated the 90s and the first couple of years of the 21st century. I was exposed to this errant theology in college. One of my seminary profs wrote three books that effectively buried the open-theist worldview. This battle may not go away until its originators do, but also no serious Christian really believes God doesn’t know everything, nor that God is not in control of everything.

The Emerging Church
Another “battle” that currently is sounding its death knell. With some of the major personalities in this movement wanting to do away with the terms “emerging/Emergent,” and its originator Mark Driscoll calling the movement nothing more than “toilet water” (appropriate since it seems they took his ideas and ran amuck with them), the days of this “church” are numbered. Many have finally, to paraphrase my preaching professor, “emerged and are called the church.” Many who initially resisted this movement are embracing the streams of the emerging church (not the Emergent movement/organization) that are consistent with biblical faith and reforming their own faith and practice as a result. Even though this battle began in the mid-90s, it has not really seriously challenged orthodoxy. What’s left of this movement is (spoken tongue firmly in cheek) for girlie men.

Calvinism
This is the most foolish of all the “battles.” It’s also the most short-lived. Spanning about the last 3 to 5 years in intensity and degree of publicity (whereas the others took at least a decade or more), this battle has been an exercise in stupidity, rudeness, and ignorance by a lot of people, usually anti-Calvinists (and I’m not going to name names). And those anti-Calvinists are a total embarrassment to non-Calvinists such as myself (I’m a 4-point Calvinist). As I’ve observed the issue, studied the theologies, and engaged the personalities, I’ve found myself losing a lot of respect for people I esteemed, and in some cases I have even written these individuals off completely. I’ve found myself gaining respect for some I never thought I would even like, even gaining what I believe will be lifelong friendships. My conclusion: this battle is effectively over, and the anti-Calvinists have been soundly defeated. The next battle will illustrate why.

The Gospel
This is the next great “Baptist Battle.” We Baptists have lost or obscured the Gospel. We no longer seek to meet the real need of the lost nor of our own people, choosing instead to focus on “felt needs” so that everyone gets their spiritual warm and fuzzies. No wonder our churches struggled with all the previous battles! When the Gospel is lost or obscured, confusion and false teaching have inroads.

That’s why I believe the next great “Baptist Battle” will be for the recovery of the biblical Gospel. Southern Baptists must stop this theological tomfoolery we’ve been engaged in and start making real change in our denomination. And the only way to see real change is through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Only the Gospel can change a person, a church, a denomination. And until we believe that — truly believe that — we will continue to pass ill-considered resolutions, offer really silly and sometimes downright stupid programs and emphases, and generally continue to miss the point.

Towards that end, some in the SBC are taking practical and theological steps to correct our path. There is a call going out — not from Nashville — but from the seminaries and churches who are deeply, deeply concerned about the Gospel penetrating all aspects of the church and the believer. That call is for a Great Commission Resurgence. And the current SBC President, Johnny Hunt, has taken up that call.

We must ask ourselves: “What is the Gospel? How does the Gospel impact me, change me, shape me? How does it impact my life, my family, my friends, my work? How does it change the way I view and relate to the world?”

Over the next several weeks, I’m going to dedicate this blog to answering these questions. And I will be attempting to answer how a Great Commission Resurgence could impact Deaf ministry. Deaf people have not really been involved in many of these “Baptist Battles.” But the battle for the Gospel is one we cannot afford to miss. Join us Monday for the first post, “Great Commission Resurgence: The Gospel and Deaf Ministry.”

Steve Dye writes his second post about methodology in Deaf ministry. Entitled Deaf Ministry 201: Why Deaf Worship Has to be Different, Steve gives a personal testimony on how methodology has helped him as a Deaf individual to worship the Lord and talks a bit about a Scriptural principle that should inform our methodology, especially where the Regulative Principle is concerned. An excerpt:

A pastor in Maryland that I recently spoke with said something that pretty much knocked some of my brain cells out and got me collecting them back up to rethink my strategy…in 1 Corinthians 10:23 it states “Everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial” now I know that verse was talking along the lines of other things…but what this pastor was trying to indicate was that…visual aids are permitted only if we feel if it is beneficial to our worship experience.

In our preaching…it is beneficial. In our worship music…it is beneficial. In our sunday school classes…it is beneficial. In all that we do…any type of visual is beneficial…WHY? because most percentage of Deaf in today’s churches rely heavily on visuals.

As always, read the whole thing.

Darth Sinus has laid me low, so I won’t be doing any more posting til Monday, when I’ll finish talking about Deaf preaching.

I said last time I would talk about the methodology of Deaf preaching. Let’s take a look.

I must begin by first settling on the foundation for all preaching: the Bible. The Deaf minister must be committed to the Word of God as God’s revelation to humanity and the only authority for our behavior, beliefs, and practice (see Statement of Faith). Without this foundation, there can be no Deaf preaching. Instead, the minister is left to practice Joel Osteen-type ministry — that of a “life-coach” who never preaches the Gospel but instead teaches self-help with Bible verses thrown in to make it look good.

Further, we must be committed to the Scriptural ideal that no Deaf person will be saved unless someone preaches the Word to them (Romans 10:13-17). The Deaf must “hear” the Word through the minister, and as such the minister must know with certainty the terrible duty he is taking in bringing the message of salvation to the Deaf. Failure to preach the Gospel, he must believe, means dooming Deaf people he loves to eternal punishment.

Flowing out from this commitment is the understanding that because it is the Gospel alone that saves, the salvation of Deaf people is not up to us. It is the Word that saves us by telling us what God has done in Christ and calling us to repentance. It is God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, who takes this Gospel and convicts those who hear to repent. There is nothing the minister can do to bring a person to salvation. His responsibility is simply to faithfully proclaim God’s Word and leave the results up to the Lord.

For many of us who read that statement, you may think this is all we really need to worry about. We don’t need to worry about the method the Word is delivered; we only need proclaim it rightly. In Deaf ministry, this is a dangerous assumption.

First, the minister must evaluate his listeners. What kind of Deaf people are in my audience? Do I have ASL speakers, PSE speakers, Signed English, Oral? Are my people institutional (Deaf schools) or mainstreamed? Do I have high-function or low-function Deaf? Do I have a mixture of these?

Generally, most Deaf ministries I have encountered contain a mixture of these. My own church is a buffet table of these different kinds of Deaf. We are primarily a mainstreamed church, with many of those very much leaning towards “cultural” Deafness. As such, we must begin by understanding that the language we use must be that which communicates to them most clearly. In my church, that means a strong mixture of ASL and PSE, so much so that conceivably one or the other could be used interchangeably.

Further, the Deaf minister must preach from a Bible translation that facilitates clear communication in the language. I’ve said in the past that I can’t use the ESV with my congregation for two reasons. One, the reading level is too high for many of them; two, I cannot preach the ESV clearly. it is difficult to sign words like justification off the top of my head, but when a Bible instead spells out the term by saying made right with God, I can easily sign that without having to mentally translate the text into sign language as I go. For that reason I tend to use translations such as the NCV or the CEV, or a blend of those plus the ESV. If I’ve been working on my Greek, this process gets even easier because I can then directly translate into sign language what I am preaching from. Find a translation (preferably one with a good level of accuracy) you can comfortably sign from and use it in your preaching. Even better, shepherd your church towards using that translation, if they are willing to do so.

My senior pastor does this remarkably well. I have observed that he prepares his messages from the NASB, but preaches in the NCV. As a result, he knows the Scripture for that message well from his preparation, and that only makes using the “easier” translation in preaching result in a better flow of thought. He does not have to pause, translate the Scripture into sign language mentally, and then sign it. He can continue right on with his train of thought and keep the listeners with him. In other words, it allows the Gospel to be the only stumbling block between him and his listeners.

Next, the Deaf minister must realize that Deaf preaching is a visual medium. Sign language is not an auditory language, it is a visual one. That means the majority of Deaf people, if not all of them, are visual learners. Deaf people, generally speaking, must be shown something in order to understand it. The use of visuals to explain the Word is a necessary part of Deaf preaching.

This means the use of illustrations, both verbal and physical. That’s right, I said pictures. Often, you must explain a concept, and then give an example that can be seen. I currently have a new hire at UPS who is Deaf. I cannot just explain the job methods to the new hire and expect the new hire to understand, I must demonstrate the methods if I expect the new hire to be able to apply them. I can do this personally or show a picture or video, and the new hire will grasp the explanation at that point. The same must be done when explaining the Word to a Deaf audience. Freely use pictures in your preaching. Sometimes a picture can explain the concept you are preaching about more clearly than merely explaining in sign language. Jesus did this often, using parables to reach his own audience; as did Paul with his skillful use of athletic language to describe the Christian life (the “run the race” verses). Throughout the Word, pictures are used to describe God’s revelation in a way people could grasp.

I will stop here for the evening; I have written 1000 words. Tomorrow I will go further into Deaf preaching.

Some of you looked at the title and thought, “What? Race and Deafness?” Bear with me through this one and all will be revealed.

Thabiti Anyabwile delivered perhaps the most provocative, thought-provoking, challenging, and convicting message of the conference. Thabiti, pastor of First Baptist Church – Grand Cayman, began his message by joking that his name means “Sure, invite the black guy to talk about race.” I’m sure the irony was lost on no one, and many of the blogs out there that are not as friendly to Christian conservatism and Reformed beliefs have taken it upon themselves to hammer away at this point.

Thabiti was actually mentored by Mark Dever at Capitol Hill Baptist Church for several years before becoming pastor at FBC Grand Cayman and they consider each other to be great friends and brothers. It was made known during the panel session that followed that C. J. Mahaney also developed a deep and abiding friendship with Thabiti during his years at CHBC. For these reasons alone I would like to invite my readers to throw out this silly and quite frankly stupid prejudice, especially in light of the message Thabiti gave us.

Thabiti began with an assertion that at first left many of us slightly confused. We must, he said, throw out our concept of race. Race is not a “black/white” type of issue. Instead, we must have a biblical view of race if we are to address this issue correctly.

Race, he continued, is a biological term. It talks about our inherited genetics from the human family that passed these genetic traits down to us. In contrast, we have many ethnicities – many cultural divisions among humanity. We are familiar with many of these: black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, etc. However, the world’s view of race is to conflate biology with ethnicity. Thus we have many “races” that follow these ethnic lines.

The biblical view of race is that there is one race, descended from Noah, who in turn is descended from Adam. The biology of every human being is derived directly from Adam through Noah. Every “race” is descended from one man, and as such it is wrong, biblically, to think that there are “many races.” This would mean that there is another person out there, not descended from Adam, who created a certain “race.” As such skin color, the world’s criteria for “race,” cannot be the correct criteria in determining “race.” Instead, it is biblically correct to think of one race but many ethnicities as humanity spread throughout the earth in obedience to God’s command to be fruitful and multiply, as well as a result of the Tower of Babel.

Thabiti then gave six reasons why our modern concept of “race” is wrong:

1. It causes abuse of people and Scripture
2. It makes racism possible
3. Cooperation and fellowship becomes impossible, because “race” causes separation.
4. It removes the authority of the Bible, since the world’s concept of “race” denies that we are one in Adam, as the Bible says.
5. It causes us to resist the Holy Spirit – instead of being united, we are divided by “race.”
6. It destroys the Gospel.

This last point is likely the most serious, though it is the result of the five that precede it. The world’s concept of “race” destroys the Gospel because it makes Jesus’ death contentious. It forces us to look at Jesus’ death as not for all people, but only for the Adamic race. Because of this, we will spend the rest of existence arguing about which “race” is truly “in Adam.” Is it the blacks? The whites? The Asians? The Native Americans?

The world’s concept of “race” further destroys the Gospel because it gives us no motivation for missions. We are already experiencing this today – we don’t do missions because other “races” are not like us. We want to do missions in a comfortable setting. We don’t want to go out of our comfort zone. That’s why we send missionaries – “You do it for me. I’m not comfortable doing it myself!”

Thabiti then called us to think and act biblically on the issue of race. We must see each other as “in Adam.” In John 17:20-21 Jesus prayed that we who believe would be one just as he and the Father are one, and by doing so the world would believe in him. Again, in 2 Corinthians 5:14-18 exhorts us to have a spiritual perspective on this issue, not a fleshly view, a worldly view. We are to regard no one according to the flesh, and in terms of race, not by the color of their skin. Christ has died for all – biblically all “in Adam.” If we allow the world’s view of race to dictate our view, rather than being led by a spiritual view, we have capitulated to the flesh.

As such, when we look at a person, we cannot look at their skin. Instead we must think, “He is created in the image of God, just like me. He is descended from Adam, he is ‘in Adam,’ just like me. He is a sinner, just like me. Therefore I can fellowship with him as a brother in Adam.” With believers, we are to take that one step further: “He is a sinner saved by grace, just like me. Therefore I can fellowship with him as a brother in Christ!”

This is why unity in Christ is far more important than “race.” Ethnicity – which is what the world is really talking about when it talks about “race” – is not permanent. Rather, our identity in Christ is permanent. Therefore, our churches must be a reflection of this reality until we get to heaven.

This was a jaw-dropping, deeply applicational message for me. I and many of the Deaf pastors there constantly looked at each other knowingly all throughout this message. We were furiously nodding our heads and “amen”-ing many of the things Thabiti imparted to us.

You see, our Deaf community is fractured along the same worldly “lines” as race. There are great divisions in Deaf culture that have caused much friction. Deaf people divide along lines of deafness (deaf/hard-of-hearing), language (ASL vs. Signed English or PSE), culture (culturally Deaf vs. mainstreamed/Oral), and psychological makeup (high function vs. low function), just to name a few. The ouster of Jane Fernandes from the presidency of Gallaudet University is a glaring example of this.

Yet we Deaf people, of every stripe, are all “in Adam.” We are all created in the image of God. We are all sinners under the wrath of a holy God in need of a Savior. As such, the Deaf community, in order to survive, must throw out its concept of “Deaf.” We cannot afford to accept the world’s concept of “Deaf.” We cannot afford to accept the division we have created through accepting the world’s concept of “race.” We must accept a biblical view of “Deaf” if our community is to thrive in the 21st century and beyond. And ultimately, Deaf believers must strive to bring these fellow sinners into Christ, just like us.

This message was the capstone of a major shift in my thinking on Deaf issues that has slowly been taking place. I had begun to move away from the rigid categories many Deaf had created for the different types of Deaf people, in order to emphasize that we are one Deaf community, not many. With this message, all the pieces came together with a resounding click and thud that can be both heard and felt. It is my prayer this click and thud reverberates through the hearing and Deaf world for ages to come.

Steve Dye, my partner in Deaf ministry crime, has put up his first contribution to a blog series we’ve been discussing for some time. Entitled Deaf Ministry 101: Music and Visual Aids, Steve tackles part of the methodology of modern Deaf ministry. Many of you who are hearing might find this intriguing, so I encourage you to read it. Steve provides a glimpse into why such tools as Powerpoint are a help, rather than a hindrance, to worship. Having interacted in the past with some who were utterly unable to understand this (due to what I think is a faulty understanding of the regulative principle as well as a little theological hubris on their part), and as such rejected the use of Powerpoint in Deaf worship; Steve’s post is a breath of encouragement. An excerpt:

Now the question is…after hearing about all the options that Deaf churches can us for music and visual aids…the question that may pop up frequently is “Why do Deaf NEED this?”

The answer is really quite simple…Deaf depends on visual because they can’t HEAR. Now some of us like myself and Stephen can hear a little bit but still the visual impact of a song makes the experience much more inspiring to worship. I cannot explain in words how much more my worship has been heightened through the use of visual aids. But then the next question pops up would be, “Isn’t using technology in churches the same as worshipping technology?” No, not really. We appreciate techonology because it helps the worship alot more for Deaf.

As always, read the whole thing.

In my upcoming post on the subject of methodology, I will tackle Deaf preaching methodology.

Phil Johnson over at Team Pyro has written a post on youth ministry that hits the nail squarely on the head. It’s too good to simply say “follow the link,” so here’s what he has to say:

At last June’s Founder’s Conference, Roy Hargrave delivered a powerful message that got me thinking about why so many churches lose their young people. (That wasn’t the theme of Dr. Hargrave’s message, but he brought up the subject in one of the points he made.)

Here’s a really brief summary of some of my thoughts on the matter:

The very strategies many churches adopt to try to keep their young people involved in the church are the main reasons they lose so many of them. The dominant philosophies of youth ministry today are spiritually lame or worse—and almost completely counterproductive.

Specifically, it’s time we faced the fact that systematically dumbing down the teaching ministry and ramping up the party atmosphere while isolating our young people from the rest of the body is not a very good strategy for increasing the rate of retention among our youth.

Think about it: Youth ministries (not all of them, of course, but the vast majority of squidgy evangelical ones) deliberately shield their young people from the hard truths and strong demands of Jesus. They tailor their worship so worldly youth can feel as comfortable in the church environment as possible. They squander the best opportunities of those formative student years by minimizing spiritual instruction while emphasizing fun and games. They let their teens live with the false notions that believing in Christ is easy, sanctification is optional, and religion is supposed to be fun and always suited to our liking. They fail to equip their high school students for the rigorous defense of the faith they will need in college. They neglect to integrate them as young adults into the adult community of the church.

And then they wonder why so many young people abandon the church about the same time they leave home.

How hard can it really be to understand why the “Youth Specialties” approach to student ministry has been such an enormous failure?

Given that I spent my first few years of ministry in youth ministry primarily (both hearing and Deaf), I can only say that Phil is absolutely correct. In 14 years of involvement with youth ministry, I have seen no examples contrary to what Phil describes above. Challenging your teens with the Gospel is implicitly forbidden. Why? Because the leadership of many youth ministries are convinced that they will lose young people if they do not distract them with “fun and games.”

One incident that I experienced reflects this sad trend. I gave a message at one of our Deaf teen events using the wedding festival of Matthew 22:1-14, focusing on verses 1-10. I changed the “characters” in the story to reflect our ministry; the “host” was the leader of the ministry, the “servants” were those leaders who directly worked with the teens, and of course the teens were the “invited guests.” Acting this story out in front of our teens, I used many of the excuses the teens themselves had given us for not going to church or attending our events in place of the wedding guests’ excuses. Then I reached the crucial point. When the “king” in the story sent servants out to bring the “uninvited” guests, the people on the street; I referred to those people as hearing teenagers!

Very predictably, when the teens realized what I had just said, they were upset! Then I delivered the punch line: “Is that how you treat Jesus? Is that how you treat church? Is that how you treat this ministry? Other things are ‘more important’ than Jesus? You have been invited to the greatest thing you could ever experience, a ministry just for you. You have been invited to receive the greatest thing you could ever have, Jesus as your savior and lord. But if you continue to ignore Jesus, he will find someone else who wants him. If you continue to ignore this ministry, you will go on to college and get nothing out of this, and those who come after you will get the benefit, not you. Don’t ignore the blessings you have here!”

Several of the teens present that night immediately got my point, and for the next few months I had many conversations with them about our ministry and spiritual things. I do not yet know what has resulted from that, but I pray that seeds were planted and watered, and that God harvested them.

In stark contrast, the leadership of the ministry was outraged that I would think to challenge the teens like that. I was bluntly told that I “can’t do that,” as I would apparently “scare the teens away.” I was told that kind of teaching “did not connect” with teenagers, and that what we did was “develop an opportunity to present the gospel through one on one relationships.” We were to “attract” the teens with our events in order to “provide openings to share the gospel in that context.” I was also told that any future messages I gave were to be reviewed by the leadership for approval.

That was the moment I realized that particular ministry was a failure, and that my time there was limited. When you cannot challenge young people with the Gospel, something is dreadfully wrong. Our (and by “our” I mean Christianity in general) entire philosophy of youth ministry is wrong. There is nothing wrong with being relational, but to be relational at the expense of the Gospel is a great and evil sin, and directly contradictory to the Great Commission.