If You Really Knew Me (Anyone Who Believes Book 1) by Jones Jeffrey McClain

Author:Jones, Jeffrey McClain [Jones, Jeffrey McClain]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: John 14:12 Publications
Published: 2015-03-12T04:00:00+00:00

Practical Theology

In seminary, Dixon took a course entitled, “Practical Theology.” The joke among the students, of course, was that the rest of the theology was entirely impractical. Privately, Dixon liked that title, and took it as a sort of endorsement of his fondness for keeping church practical and manageable. Because he believed that he was embarking on carrying responsibility for the spiritual growth of a whole congregation, he insisted, at least internally, that this task be manageable, that it come with easy-grip handles and a clear instruction manual, written only in plain English.

When he met a young man in that seminary who admitted to coming from a church where people listened for the voice of God and genuinely believed that they heard that voice, he felt a tight discomfort, like the way his pants felt after Thanksgiving dinner. Instead of loosening his belt, however, he found relief by staying clear of that young mystic and any who sounded like him.

Spiritual experiences such as surrounded all the major historical revivals—weeping, falling on the ground, laughing, and even speaking in tongues—fell short of Dixon’s requirements for orderly church governance. He didn’t want to be stuck with responsibility for something so out of control. That was the sort of trap he felt clamping down on him when he worked for Tom Schaefer, a young entrepreneur who bought, rehabbed and sold houses when Dixon was a teenager. He once instructed Dixon to break up some furniture and drop it out the window onto the lawn, but was upset later when he found dust and slivers scattered across the hardwood floors, as well as the lawn. Throughout his life, Dixon had arched up against such unfair job descriptions, and he wasn’t about to follow a lifelong career in a direction that included such impossibly contradictory obligations.

If he was going to be charged with the spiritual welfare of hundreds of people, he couldn’t have them surrendering to powerful unseen forces all the time, even if they believed those forces to be of divine origin. As far as Dixon was concerned, the very disorderliness of what he called “holy roller” churches proved that those powerful forces were not from God. Certainly, God would not be like his summer camp supervisor, who insisted that Dixon control the behavior of fifteen ten-year-olds, without so much as a saber-rattling threat of violence.

Deeper than his disdain for disorderly behavior, and for emotionalism in faith and worship, was Dixon’s suspicion that those emotionally expressive churches didn’t believe in Christian obedience, at least not the way he did. In the early 1990s, when he was just finishing his seminary training in the upper Midwest, he suffered through half of a sermon/lecture/rant from a fellow seminarian who claimed a spiritual awakening, discovered at a famously enflamed church that was attracting curious and parched believers from around the world. As the emotionally unstable student gushed his new revelation for the gathered audience in the seminary commons, Dixon detected an irresponsible attitude toward both order and obedience.

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