tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post6047049892615117795..comments2023-12-08T04:43:40.135-06:00Comments on The Fire and the Rose: Envision 08: Summary and Review (Part 1 of 3)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-42795754362898718182008-06-16T05:55:00.000-05:002008-06-16T05:55:00.000-05:00thanks for the write up. very interesting.thanks for the write up. very interesting.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-46882680142315212142008-06-12T07:40:00.000-05:002008-06-12T07:40:00.000-05:00Thanks, Chris! Jeanette's talk has come back to m...Thanks, Chris! Jeanette's talk has come back to me. Her discussion of the InterVarsity situation was very helpful and complemented the conference's multiracial emphasis.<BR/><BR/>The idea that the office of deacon might be a sin is interesting. Personally, I've always had a hard time reading the passage from Acts 6 because it does seem like the apostles view the feeding of the poor as beneath them. I would personally want to take Paul's more nuanced approach in 1 Cor. 12, where he speaks about different gifts using the metaphor of a body with many parts. We certainly want to affirm that preaching does not concern some purely "spiritual" dimension whereas feeding the poor is purely "physical." But I don't think we need to read the text in that way -- a very modern interpretation, in fact. I would rather say that the apostles recognized the need to delegate. The work of the church is too multifaceted and needs to be shared by people with different gifts. But that doesn't mean that the apostles' work of preaching was not holistic in nature, encompassing the spiritual and the material. They still healed people, remember. And the deacons' work of feeding the poor is also holistic in nature.<BR/><BR/>That's how I would respond to the suggestion that the creation of the office of deacon was a sin. I would say that interpretation is far too modern and far too cynical. The creation of the office was, I would say, a pragmatic necessity rooted in the recognition of differing gifts within the community. It is most definitely not a separation between the vertical and the horizontal.David W. Congdonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03009330707703611224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11393723.post-66488959857531655972008-06-12T06:35:00.000-05:002008-06-12T06:35:00.000-05:00Thanks for offering your thoughts on the conferenc...Thanks for offering your thoughts on the conference, David. Jeanette Yep's talk focused mostly on her personal experience as an Asian American who saw serious ostracizing of women and minorities in the leadership of InterVarsity. In the end, IV repented and has now become one of the most diverse large evangelical organizations today. This is about all I can remember, plus her exegesis of Acts 6 to describe the work of deacons. Someone at the conference suggested to me that the church committed a sin when it decided to create a separate office for deacons to deal with the poor. This makes sense on a cursory reading of the text, where the apostles play of teaching against "waiting on tables," as if it were below them to do so. Envision seemed to be still caught up in the dichotomy between the preaching of the word and service to the neighbor, and then confused this even more with the coupling of our relationship w/ God ("the vertical") with the relationship w/ our neighbors ("the horizontal").Chris TerryNelsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03160910808665941467noreply@blogger.com