Amen! This all aligns with my experience as a conservative mainline pastor in my 20s.
When I went to seminary I received financial support from the school and my denomination so I graduated debt free. They even helped with my living expenses. As a seminarian I was asked by the denomination to fill in preaching at churches without pastors and by my second year I was the part-time lead pastor of a small church. During my last year I interviewed with multiple churches for lead pastor roles and landed at a wonderful church in a growing city. I’m grateful to God and to my denomination for all of this.
Life was not so easy for my friends in the PCA/ACNA/etc. who received less financial support and who often settled for pastoral residencies and associate roles after graduation. These denominations are growing, but they seem to be more popular with clergy than laypeople. Meanwhile the doors are wide open in the mainline. For example, I had a friend in seminary attending a very popular local church which was not mainline and which had a dozen other seminarians in the pews. When he met with the lead pastor about serving, he was basically told to wait his turn and spend some time getting to know people first. When he instead went to a mainline church the next town over, he was given an internship and preaching opportunities.
And to your point about boomer leadership, someone like Keller was more of a historical figure than a leader to me. My seminary professors assigned his books, there was a scholarship named after him, he passed away before I graduated, but I didn’t encounter his work organically the way many millennials did.
I hope Redeemed Zoomer will be able to popularize this path for more pastors. I tried to proselytize for the mainline at my seminary and it was hard to make converts. Everything about it was foreign to people who grew up evangelical, but Redeemed Zoomer is fixing that. If anyone out there wants to learn more about becoming a mainline American Baptist pastor, feel free to reach out.
I don't get the Nestorian accusation. I read that linked sermon and he seemed to just hammer on Mariolatry (which needs hammering on; it's crazy that so many who call themselves Christians add worship and prayer to saints and Mary).
Our prayers to the saints are a request that they pray for us. No one posits that saints (or Mary) can do anything supernatural directly. It is their intercession with God we ask-- no different from asking a friend to pray for you.
I suspect R J Rushdoony (who I followed) of being a closet Nestorian. I heard him say once that in the Eucharist one partakes of Christ in His human nature, not His divine nature. Sounds Nestorian to me.
Maybe the problem is that "theotokos" means "bearer of God" and "mother of God" is less precise and more confusing. Mary bore the Son of God in her womb. But he existed eternally, and she is not Mother in a way that is analogous to the Father. I believe the Eastern Orthodox are careful to translate it as Bearer when they are not using Greek.
You're correct on this point about theotokos. There's a separate phrase in Greek for "mother of God." Theotokos most precisely means "God's birth-giver." The ambiguous language here was presumably intentional in claiming no more than needed.
However, here's the quote from that MacArthur piece:
>>>
In fact, Roman Catholics refer to her as Theotokos, God-bearer. They say she gave birth to God and thus is to be elevated and adored. She gave birth to God. That is a terrible misconception. She gave birth to Jesus in his humanity. She did not give birth to God. God was never born.
>>>
I think it's hard to deny that's straight-up Nestorianism.
I guess to me, and probably most Christians, Nestorianism comes across as a relatively minor error. It's not denying Jesus' divinity, or his humanity, but making a general claim about the ultimately inscrutable relationship between the two.
And to a Protestant, Marian veneration comes across as the far greater error. It was for this reason that Calvin, while affirming that Nestorius was in error, also suggested pastors downplay the use of titles like "mother of God," lest it "serve to confirm the ignorant in their superstitions."
I think taken on its own, it's a Nestorian statement. This doesn't mean that, in his heart of hearts, MacArthur has a Nestorian view of Christ. Or maybe in that moment he did, but if pressed, he would almost certainly back down and doesn't intend to teach one.
I suppose I really think that, in the moment, even the most faithful and well-meaning Christians are going to get themselves in trouble if they make too many statements about the Trinity and the hypostatic union. Almost everyone has a lot of nebulous thoughts about how these really operate, and that nebula almost inevitably is going to drift over into minor Christological or Trinitarian heresies from time to time. Which is why I'm not much inclined to dock orthodoxy points here. But teachers in particular ought to correct themselves, as you say.
I think the remark rings very true to me that Project Reconquista and re-urbanization both required a new generational perspective. It's psychologically a lot more difficult for the old to try to reconquer and rehabilitate ground that they have personally seen laid to waste, while to the eyes of the youth that wasteland is terra nullius.
I notice a lot of the Zoomer men at my church listen to RZ. I don't know how much they care about Christological hair-splitting though. I'm inclined to think that's one of RZ's personal quirks. But it's true that MacArthur doesn't mean much to them.
Yet overall I don't think that faithful Zoomers are really that different from faithful Millennials in terms of how we think about theology. I see Millennials as the apologetics generation, in terms of devouring apologetics content like never before, even if it was produced by Boomers and Gen X in our youth. The early Internet was dominated by Christian vs. atheist debates, and Internet apologetics arose at a time with a new thirst for information and a needed response to the New Atheists when we were in high school and college.
We also have dealt with total alienation from secular peers over homosexuality -- either having to keep our mouths shut or end friendships. Maybe Gen X dealt with this as well, but I don't see this as much among Boomers.
On both of these, I don't see Gen Z as being in all that different of a place; they have much more in common with us than we do with the older generations. They too devour apologetics, and homosexuality remains a point of irreconcilable difference with secular peers.
One other thing I notice though -- especially poignant with Charlie Kirk's death -- is that college seems to have been an even more hostile environment for them than for us, which leaves those that rejected woke culture a lot more hostile and bitter towards it than we are. To a lot of Millennials around me, living here in a conservative area, woke has always seemed very far away.
I think you have something deep there about the experience Millennials have with watching their churches demolished over the last few decades. We were just old enough to remember Mainline orthodoxy, the normalcy of the late 80's and early 90's, before it became all rainbow flags, female priests, and political activism. The Zoomers don't get what it's like to be run out of your ancestors' church. I'm lucky, ironically, to be a child of divorce and have a second church in which to turn. I know a ton of guys who walked out and never intend to darken the threshold of a church again.
I'm curious how you think that generational change impacts the world of cities/urbanism, etc.
It's interesting to me b/c while Boomers were the major force behind suburbanization, it was also all Boomers that started New Urbanism. The latter group had a heavy influence on Millennials and some of us Xers. But that whole world is changing rapidly & aging out, and I'm fascinating to see Gen Z's take on cities, urbanism, etc. I talk with some super-impressive Gen Z people in that world, but I also wonder if the cultural vibe shift will push that generation largely out of cities and end the urban revival of the last 2 decades.
The urban revival started with mostly younger Boomers in the 1970s and 80s with Gen X joining in after that. But it really took off with the Millennials.
It will be interesting to watch urban centers. Millennials are starting to get married and have kids. And the Gen Z cohorts are just much smaller.
Sure, and in reality it started before them with the policies and changes in the teens and twenties. But as a cultural force, the Boomers embraced suburbia completely as soon as they became adults. And have never looked back, despite some of the “boomers will downsize and move to cities” PR
Well, a great many boomers grew up in suburbia and that was what they were accustomed to. Moreover jobs were increasingly being located in edge cities and beltway office parks, and even factories were often sited where land was cheap (e.g., the Willow Run complex, famous for making bombers in WWII just outside my Michigan hometown) For many people there was little reason to go into the cities.
Re: Thinking about the songs from my youth in the 1980s, it’s amazing how many of my favorites were literally about the Boomers
I'm an older Xer and while I do have some 70s and 60s tunes on my extensive Amazon playlists (which are composed of music from across my whole life), most of my music is from the 80s on-- the Golden Age of MTV most notably. I have just one Beatles song, just one Stones song, some stuff from the Who (mostly from "Tommy") and three Cher songs. By contrast I have five Madonna songs, six Lady Gaga songs, five U2 songs, and five Nirvana songs
Re: I could easily have a conversation with people my Boomer parents’ age
Yes, and no. I think the older folks misunderstood just how difficult getting started in life had become even for us. I graduated college in 1992-- right into the teeth of the first jobless recovery. And the old fogey gripe "Why can't kids work their way through college like I did" was absurd even back then. All in all I feel more connected with my own generation, and with the Millennials-- though yes, Zers are terra incognita to me.
Re: there was always a disconnect when talking to those from my grandparents’ Greatest Generation.
That was my parents' generation (I was late born to them). WWII was more real and present to me than Vietnam was.
I’d never go to a PCUSA myself, but if this Cook can get in there and not get kicked out for his theological or sexual beliefs, more power to him.
Amen! This all aligns with my experience as a conservative mainline pastor in my 20s.
When I went to seminary I received financial support from the school and my denomination so I graduated debt free. They even helped with my living expenses. As a seminarian I was asked by the denomination to fill in preaching at churches without pastors and by my second year I was the part-time lead pastor of a small church. During my last year I interviewed with multiple churches for lead pastor roles and landed at a wonderful church in a growing city. I’m grateful to God and to my denomination for all of this.
Life was not so easy for my friends in the PCA/ACNA/etc. who received less financial support and who often settled for pastoral residencies and associate roles after graduation. These denominations are growing, but they seem to be more popular with clergy than laypeople. Meanwhile the doors are wide open in the mainline. For example, I had a friend in seminary attending a very popular local church which was not mainline and which had a dozen other seminarians in the pews. When he met with the lead pastor about serving, he was basically told to wait his turn and spend some time getting to know people first. When he instead went to a mainline church the next town over, he was given an internship and preaching opportunities.
And to your point about boomer leadership, someone like Keller was more of a historical figure than a leader to me. My seminary professors assigned his books, there was a scholarship named after him, he passed away before I graduated, but I didn’t encounter his work organically the way many millennials did.
I hope Redeemed Zoomer will be able to popularize this path for more pastors. I tried to proselytize for the mainline at my seminary and it was hard to make converts. Everything about it was foreign to people who grew up evangelical, but Redeemed Zoomer is fixing that. If anyone out there wants to learn more about becoming a mainline American Baptist pastor, feel free to reach out.
Thanks - great perspective. I may put this in the digest on Friday.
I don't get the Nestorian accusation. I read that linked sermon and he seemed to just hammer on Mariolatry (which needs hammering on; it's crazy that so many who call themselves Christians add worship and prayer to saints and Mary).
Our prayers to the saints are a request that they pray for us. No one posits that saints (or Mary) can do anything supernatural directly. It is their intercession with God we ask-- no different from asking a friend to pray for you.
He explicitly rejects the notion of "theotokos" (mother of God), which is actually in the core ecumenical creeds of Christianity.
I suspect R J Rushdoony (who I followed) of being a closet Nestorian. I heard him say once that in the Eucharist one partakes of Christ in His human nature, not His divine nature. Sounds Nestorian to me.
Maybe the problem is that "theotokos" means "bearer of God" and "mother of God" is less precise and more confusing. Mary bore the Son of God in her womb. But he existed eternally, and she is not Mother in a way that is analogous to the Father. I believe the Eastern Orthodox are careful to translate it as Bearer when they are not using Greek.
"Birthgiver" is a common English translation. In Slavic it's Bogu Roditsa; the second word is from the verb that means "to give birth".
You're correct on this point about theotokos. There's a separate phrase in Greek for "mother of God." Theotokos most precisely means "God's birth-giver." The ambiguous language here was presumably intentional in claiming no more than needed.
However, here's the quote from that MacArthur piece:
>>>
In fact, Roman Catholics refer to her as Theotokos, God-bearer. They say she gave birth to God and thus is to be elevated and adored. She gave birth to God. That is a terrible misconception. She gave birth to Jesus in his humanity. She did not give birth to God. God was never born.
>>>
I think it's hard to deny that's straight-up Nestorianism.
I guess to me, and probably most Christians, Nestorianism comes across as a relatively minor error. It's not denying Jesus' divinity, or his humanity, but making a general claim about the ultimately inscrutable relationship between the two.
And to a Protestant, Marian veneration comes across as the far greater error. It was for this reason that Calvin, while affirming that Nestorius was in error, also suggested pastors downplay the use of titles like "mother of God," lest it "serve to confirm the ignorant in their superstitions."
Rather than being straight-up Nestorianism, it seems to me to be imprecise language that MacArthur should have explained in more detail.
I think taken on its own, it's a Nestorian statement. This doesn't mean that, in his heart of hearts, MacArthur has a Nestorian view of Christ. Or maybe in that moment he did, but if pressed, he would almost certainly back down and doesn't intend to teach one.
I suppose I really think that, in the moment, even the most faithful and well-meaning Christians are going to get themselves in trouble if they make too many statements about the Trinity and the hypostatic union. Almost everyone has a lot of nebulous thoughts about how these really operate, and that nebula almost inevitably is going to drift over into minor Christological or Trinitarian heresies from time to time. Which is why I'm not much inclined to dock orthodoxy points here. But teachers in particular ought to correct themselves, as you say.
OK, I see the issue. Thanks.
Enjoyed the thoughts.
I think the remark rings very true to me that Project Reconquista and re-urbanization both required a new generational perspective. It's psychologically a lot more difficult for the old to try to reconquer and rehabilitate ground that they have personally seen laid to waste, while to the eyes of the youth that wasteland is terra nullius.
I notice a lot of the Zoomer men at my church listen to RZ. I don't know how much they care about Christological hair-splitting though. I'm inclined to think that's one of RZ's personal quirks. But it's true that MacArthur doesn't mean much to them.
Yet overall I don't think that faithful Zoomers are really that different from faithful Millennials in terms of how we think about theology. I see Millennials as the apologetics generation, in terms of devouring apologetics content like never before, even if it was produced by Boomers and Gen X in our youth. The early Internet was dominated by Christian vs. atheist debates, and Internet apologetics arose at a time with a new thirst for information and a needed response to the New Atheists when we were in high school and college.
We also have dealt with total alienation from secular peers over homosexuality -- either having to keep our mouths shut or end friendships. Maybe Gen X dealt with this as well, but I don't see this as much among Boomers.
On both of these, I don't see Gen Z as being in all that different of a place; they have much more in common with us than we do with the older generations. They too devour apologetics, and homosexuality remains a point of irreconcilable difference with secular peers.
One other thing I notice though -- especially poignant with Charlie Kirk's death -- is that college seems to have been an even more hostile environment for them than for us, which leaves those that rejected woke culture a lot more hostile and bitter towards it than we are. To a lot of Millennials around me, living here in a conservative area, woke has always seemed very far away.
What is (an) RZ?
I think you have something deep there about the experience Millennials have with watching their churches demolished over the last few decades. We were just old enough to remember Mainline orthodoxy, the normalcy of the late 80's and early 90's, before it became all rainbow flags, female priests, and political activism. The Zoomers don't get what it's like to be run out of your ancestors' church. I'm lucky, ironically, to be a child of divorce and have a second church in which to turn. I know a ton of guys who walked out and never intend to darken the threshold of a church again.
I'm curious how you think that generational change impacts the world of cities/urbanism, etc.
It's interesting to me b/c while Boomers were the major force behind suburbanization, it was also all Boomers that started New Urbanism. The latter group had a heavy influence on Millennials and some of us Xers. But that whole world is changing rapidly & aging out, and I'm fascinating to see Gen Z's take on cities, urbanism, etc. I talk with some super-impressive Gen Z people in that world, but I also wonder if the cultural vibe shift will push that generation largely out of cities and end the urban revival of the last 2 decades.
The urban revival started with mostly younger Boomers in the 1970s and 80s with Gen X joining in after that. But it really took off with the Millennials.
It will be interesting to watch urban centers. Millennials are starting to get married and have kids. And the Gen Z cohorts are just much smaller.
In our culture it’s Sex and the City, Actual Fertility and the Suburbs.
Re: Boomers were the major force behind suburbanization
Really, that would be the Boomers' parents as the move to the suburbs began shortly after WWII.
Sure, and in reality it started before them with the policies and changes in the teens and twenties. But as a cultural force, the Boomers embraced suburbia completely as soon as they became adults. And have never looked back, despite some of the “boomers will downsize and move to cities” PR
Well, a great many boomers grew up in suburbia and that was what they were accustomed to. Moreover jobs were increasingly being located in edge cities and beltway office parks, and even factories were often sited where land was cheap (e.g., the Willow Run complex, famous for making bombers in WWII just outside my Michigan hometown) For many people there was little reason to go into the cities.
Re: Thinking about the songs from my youth in the 1980s, it’s amazing how many of my favorites were literally about the Boomers
I'm an older Xer and while I do have some 70s and 60s tunes on my extensive Amazon playlists (which are composed of music from across my whole life), most of my music is from the 80s on-- the Golden Age of MTV most notably. I have just one Beatles song, just one Stones song, some stuff from the Who (mostly from "Tommy") and three Cher songs. By contrast I have five Madonna songs, six Lady Gaga songs, five U2 songs, and five Nirvana songs
Re: I could easily have a conversation with people my Boomer parents’ age
Yes, and no. I think the older folks misunderstood just how difficult getting started in life had become even for us. I graduated college in 1992-- right into the teeth of the first jobless recovery. And the old fogey gripe "Why can't kids work their way through college like I did" was absurd even back then. All in all I feel more connected with my own generation, and with the Millennials-- though yes, Zers are terra incognita to me.
Re: there was always a disconnect when talking to those from my grandparents’ Greatest Generation.
That was my parents' generation (I was late born to them). WWII was more real and present to me than Vietnam was.