John H Armstrong

The Good Old Days That Never Were

It seems like for as long as I can remember I've heard people talk about the "good ole' days" of the past. Whatever is happening now is worse than the past and somewhere else, at some time in the past, days were so much better than right now. Christians are particularly prone to this nonsense. They act as if history did not happen, humans are not mortal and the church never made a mistake, at least a serious one. Protestants romanticize the sixteenth century and Catholics romanticize about the days before Vatican II. Almost everyone acts like the Middle Ages were entirely bereft of anything positive and after 1900 Western civilization began a downward high slide from which it cannot recover. 

All of this kind of nonsense reminds me of a great quote from St. Augustine: "If you believe that former times are better than today, it is because you are not living in those times." Amen. 

Hymns of Thanksgiving: A Special Podcast from Beeson Divinity School

A special  Beeson Divinity School podcast on the great hymns of Thanksgiving will surely prove encouraging and inspiring to many of you. You can find it here. This podcast is a discussion between Timothy George and Paul Richardson (past president of the Hymn Society of the United States and Canada), and includes choral recordings of the hymns that are included in the podcast. Dr. George and all my friends at Beeson who worked on this project envisioned this as something that families could listen to together on their Thanksgiving road trips. It is a way to turn your hearts toward God’s goodness to his beloved people. Among other things you will learn in this podcast is the historical fact that many of our most loved Thanksgiving hymns came out of times of extreme suffering.

Harold Camping and the Rapture

Harold E. Camping, an 89-year old Christian radio broadcaster and the president of Family Radio, a religious broadcasting network based in Oakland, California, is one of the more arrogant and misled teachers on radio. His network now spans more than 150 outlets in the United States. On his network and website Camping says Christ is coming back this Saturday, May 21^st. Here is how USA Today reported the Camping prediction in a recent edition. Watch this video. It might move you to tears if you see how much damage this man has actually done to earnest people who follow him.

If you are not in an area of the country where you’ve heard Camping speak you haven’t missed a great deal. Wikipedia notes that his “trademarks include a deep, sonorous voice coupled with a slow cadence. He has also used mathematical predictions applied to the Bible to predict dates for the end of the world.^” Camping is a very extreme Calvinist who at one time was actually a member of the Christian Reformed Church. (He long ago left his local church and pronounced judgment on this church and ever other church in existence! For some years his message has been centered on telling people to leave their church and support his radio broadcasts since he alone knows the truth.) His current end times prediction is that Christ will come for true believers, of which there are very, very few left it must be noted, this Saturday, May 21, 2011.

I heard Camping recently, for five minutes or so, on my car radio. He was going on and on about the fact that all of the remaining churches are apostate and all those who remain in them will be damned! Camping believes that we are already in the Great Tribulation and that when the few believers that remain are taken away this week then God will begin to completely destroy the Earth and the universe ending five months later on October 21. Nearly seven billion people will be destroyed in a series of “natural” disasters. He bases all of this upon calculations he has made with numbers and dates, ostensibly from the Bible. (It must be remembered that countless teachers have done the same for centuries, opposing the very teaching of Jesus about the end of this age not being known to anyone but the Father alone!) You would think Harold Camping would have learned something from his past mistakes about Christ’s return but such is not the case. He previously predicted that the Rapture would occur in September 1994 but now says he miscalculated the numbers. This time he will be right.

Several questions occur to me?

1. What will happen to Family Radio after May 21? (I hope it shuts down!)

2. What will these people who follow Camping so devotedly do after this Saturday? (I hope they wake up and confess their sinful foolishness, which is morally dangerous, disown the man as a false teacher and get involved in a confessional church.)

3. When will people stop this craziness? (You know the answer to this one already.)

4. How much damage will this teaching do to the missional witness of Christ? (Probably, very little.)

5. Who will be the next Harold Camping? (I have no idea but there will be others.)

6. What should true believers do this week? (Live for the glory of God and be faithful to Christ. Forget this unless you know someone caught in this deception to whom you can show mercy and grace after this Saturday.)

I plan to be doing my work all week. I doubt that I will think twice about Camping come Saturday, May 21^st. I hope, honestly, that once and for all he goes away and is totally discredited once and for all.

A dear friend has said to me, “John, the only problem with all these foolish predictions is that someone might accidentally get it right sometime!” That is actually unlikely since “no one knows the day or the hour.” It would take more fools than we actually have in the global church to accidentally hit the right day somehow, someway. “At such a time as you think not” comes to mind.

Transforming Mission

By far the most important book that I have read about mission, and I have been reading and studying mission since I did an M.A. on the subject in 1973, is David J. Bosch’s magisterial book, Transforming Mission. I assign this text to every class that I teach on missional-ecumenism. In the judgment of a large number of missiologists this book is the magnum opus on the subject. The author tragically died in a car accident in South Africa shortly after the book was completed and before it was actually published. I will say more about this great book in the future but I want to encourage serious readers regarding its importance. If you are a pastor you ought to read it. If you are a church planter you must read it. If you are young, emergent, passionate about all things related to postmodernism, interested in framing a new paradigm of mission, then this is the book you should read. Even if you are not formally trained in missiology and theology you should attempt reading it. The sections on the biblical texts on mission alone are worth the book’s price. Bosch studied in Europe under both Barth and Cullman and was a first-rate biblical and theological scholar.

David Bosch (1929-1992) delineates six distinct subsequent models for missions followed by Christendom. He begins with a three-pronged analysis of missions in the ministries of Matthew, Luke and Paul. Following majority strains of missiology, he addresses the Hellenistic patristic period, Catholicism in the middle ages, Othodoxy, the Protestant Reformation, the current model and the burgeoning post-modern version. Chapter Twelve, on the need for a new paradigm, and the ways that Bosch lays out his own paradigm, is the centerpiece of the book. This very long chapter is vital to all contemporary discussion about postmodernism, post-Christendom, etc. When I listen to so many people write and talk about these subjects, on blog after blog, I often think, “They would benefit so much if they would read David Bosch.”

When Bosch was asked to define mission he answered:

Mission is, quite simply, the participation of Christians in the liberating mission of Jesus, wagering on a future that verifiable experience seems to believe. It is the good news of God's love, incarnated in the witness of a community, for the sake of the world  (Transforming Mission, 519).

I believe this is as sound and biblical an answer as I have read. It is also a rightly provocative answer that begs church leaders to pay attention to every word in his answer. Mission is:

1. It is not sending others to do work for us.

2. It is participation in the liberating mission of Jesus to set people free.

3. It wagers, by faith, on a future that seems utterly impossible based on modern human experience.

4. It is “good news” about the love of God in the incarnation and life of Jesus, which of course includes his death and resurrection, etc.

5. It is incarnated in the communal witness of God’s people; e.g. the church.

6. It is always for the sake of the world, not ourselves. We exist for others. Emil Brunner put this well, “The church exists for mission as fire exists for burning.”

Why does your church exist? For what and for whom? You should ask and the answer will tell you whether or not you have understood and engaged in Christ’s mission or not.

A Catholic Insight Into the Reformation’s Central Truth

Today, as some of you know, is not only Halloween, and All-Saints Eve, but it is Reformation Day. There was a time when this event was celebrated in many Protestant churches. I miss those celebrations. I do not miss the triumphal attitudes or the pride that often went with the celebration but I miss the powerful reminders that something very important did happen in the 16th century and it really does still matter.

Some argue that nothing that ever comes from Rome, or from a Roman Catholic writer, can ever understand the central point of the Reformation. (It intrigues me that such people are “sure” they do understand the central point but then their lives often deny it!) I strongly differ with this polemical perspective. In fact, I believe the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification has gone a long way to show us all how close the respective communions of Lutheranism and Catholicism have actually come in nearly 500 years. A myriad of conservative naysayers, found on both sides, are skeptical about all this talk about justification, believing we cannot agree no matter what anyone says, but I encourage you to read the document for yourself.

At the same time I am not prepared to say that everything has been resolved or that we are in complete agreement. We are not and saying so is still truthful and important. We do not reach unity by acting as if disagreements do not exist. We reach unity by the way of love and love compels us to be honest but relational.

A Catholic reader of this blog urged me in an email a few days ago to read Peter Kreeft’s wonderful book, The God Who Loves You (Ignatius, 2004). I began reading the book this last week. It is magnificent. I urge everyone to read it. Kreeft’s whole point is that God loved the universe into existence and God so loved the world that he sent his Son to redeem it. This, he argues very cogently, is the central truth about God’s nature that is revealed to us in Scripture, not in nature.

In the opening chapter of Kreeft’s book he writes about the twelve most profound ideas he has ever had. They all came to him as “aha” moments, with the force of what could be called revelatory experience. His shows how every single one of these ideas concerns the love of God. Several of his big ideas he learned while still a Protestant, even as a young child. Others he learned after becoming a Roman Catholic but with appreciation for writers on both sides of our divide. But this is his central point---all of them took him back to the central idea of God’s love.

His seventh big idea brought Dr. Kreeft back to the Protestant Reformation and made him think about its core message. On this day I find his insight powerful and unifying. His seventh “eureka” moment led him to write: “The gift of God’s love is ours for the taking.” He writes:

I am a Roman Catholic. But the most liberating idea I have ever learned I heard first from Martin Luther. Pope John Paul II told the German Lutheran bishops that Luther was profoundly right about this idea. He said that Catholic teaching affirms it just as strongly and that there is no contradiction between Protestant and Catholic theology on this terribly important point, which was the central issue of the Protestant Reformation. I speak, of course, about “justification by faith” and its consequence, which Luther called “Christian liberty” or “the liberty of a Christian” in his little gem of fan essay by that name (The God Who Loves You, 23).

Kreeft goes on to say that the problem with this important point is that we approach it from the wrong direction. “Let’s begin with a solid certainty: God is love. God is a lover, not a manager, businessman, accountant, owner, or puppet-master. What he wants from us first of all is not a technically correct performance but our heart” (The God Who Loves, 23). The very symbol of John Calvin, as Reformed folks know, is human hands offering the heart to a God of love.

Kreeft (photo at left) says he first discovered this truth from C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. The truth liberated him just as it had the Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, almost 5oo years before. Lewis wrote: “We may think God wants actions of a certain kind, but God wants people of a certain sort” (cited by Kreeft, 23). The point, Kreeft reasons, is rather simple: heaven is free because God’s love is free! Salvation is a gift to be taken by faith and not by human performance in any sense.

Kreeft also gets it right when he adds, “The primacy of faith does not discount or denigrate works but liberates them. Our good works can now also be free---free from the worry and slavery and performance anxiety of having to buy Heaven with them. Our good works can now flow from genuine love of neighbor, nor fear of Hell” (Kreeft, 24). He concludes: “The whole point of justification by faith is God’s scandalous, crazy, and wonderful gift of love” (Kreeft, 25). Amen!

Happy Reformation Day. Celebrate the joys of how this truth was recovered, via the insights of St. Augustine and St. Paul, and pray that we will all learn to drop the polemics that have dominated our separation for nearly five centuries. There is room for more love on both sides of our present painful division. There is also much work to be done to help people, on both sides, to understand that the “whole point of justification by faith is God’s scandalous, crazy, and wonderful gift of love.” I treasure that sentence today more than ever!

Worldly Lifestyles or Christian Freedom?

For as long as I can recall I have listened to Christians debate the concept of worldliness and worldly lifestyle. A recent flier that invited me to a Christian conference, with a host of speakers and topics, put this point clearly when it said:

A cultural divide is certainly entrenched among evangelical churches today, many adopting charismatic, worldly-entertainment style music, while others stand firmly with traditional, reverent worship. And what is true of worship culture has extended to the everyday activities of individual Christians, those in contemporary churches tending to embrace much more worldly lifestyles and aspirations. There is a great need for clear definitions and explanations of the biblical doctrine of separation from the world as universally held and practiced by Bible believers for centuries, until recent decades.

Some of the offerings at this large conference include the following:

We are commanded in our evangelism to call souls out of the world and then to keep them unspotted from it, but the new trend is to preach salvation without calling people from worldliness . . . [This speaker] will critique the new-style “comprehensive Calvinism,” and its dangers, including reference to widely applauded and imitated exponents.

Evangelicals are increasingly lurching away from time-honored detachment from worldly activities, and into friendship with the world . . . [This presentation] will seek to dismantle some of the confused reasoning of our day, and present biblical reasons for categorizing various activities as either acceptable to believers or “worldly.”

I could give more but reading this gives me the feeling that “worldliness” and “separation” will be the big themes in this major conference. What do I make of this?

1. There can be little doubt that modern evangelicals have become way too cozy with moral compromise at some critical points.

2. Worldliness is not defined in these statements but an assumed definition is quite clear throughout. (More in a moment.)

3. Certain evangelical leaders will very likely be named and exposed as dangerous exponents. And who are these “new style comprehensive Calvinist[s]” that are to be referenced? I can guess since I know some of them personally. I really have no idea, of course, but given the track record of this event, and I have listened to tapes of previous conferences, this would be an educated guess.

The fundamental problem here is in the use of the term “worldliness.” The word “world” has two meanings in Scripture. We can rule out the physical planet, the created order, in this case. So the only thing this word world can refer to here is the “spirit of this present world.” The problem is that these speakers assume worldliness is embracing the cultural forms and styles of the present age. But when the Bible refers to worldliness it is to best be understood as any thought or idea that stands in contrast with, or in opposition to, the kingdom of God, or the reign of Christ. Worldliness, understood biblically, refers to assumptions about the self, about God and about what is evil. Racism is worldly. Idolatry, in every form it takes, and it may take many forms including the love of one’s own definitions, is worldly. Based on reading this material I seriously doubt this is what these sponsors have in mind at all.

Why do I conclude this? Read the first paragraph that I quoted above. Here is what is said: “charismatic, worldly-entertainment style music, while others stand firmly with traditional, reverent worship . . . .” It is quite clear here that exuberant, charismatic forms of worship are considered worldly. This would include a whole lot more than a few compromised Calvinists I assure you! An increasingly large segment of the whole church, at least outside the West, would fall under this condemnatory statement.

As much as I love classical music and traditional hymns this kind of blanket criticism just will not work. It has nothing to do with “worldliness” biblically defined. It also has nothing to do with where the worldliness the Bible does speak about is to be truly found, namely in the unseen inner being of a Christian who seeks to follow Christ and the ways of the world that stand in stark opposition to Christ.

The second obvious feature of this event is the emphasis on separation. This emphasis allows the event to divide Christian from Christian. In this case they are not just dividing any Christian from any other Christian but specifically one Calvinist from another. (You could fill in the blank here with any other group and find the same thing!)

While I have no doubt that there are reasons for separation, such as other gospels (like that preached by the Mormon Church as one example), I find this form of second- and third-degree separation from fellow Christians to be a complete denial of the biblical teaching on love and grace. Yes, I know this response will bring howls of mocking protest. But when I read a sentence like this one I am still amazed: [the biblical doctrine of separation] “universally held and practiced by Bible believers for centuries, until recent decades." A little bit of church history would disabuse such a claim but serious, academically credible church history is not a strength in these contexts.

Sadly, events like this will draw crowds of people. And people will go away fully armed to “expose” other Christians as “worldly." Paul said to the Philippians that some “proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel; the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely in intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment. What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true; and in that I rejoice” (Phil. 1:15-18a).

By citing these words of Paul I am not making the point that my motives are pure and those of my brothers at this conference are wrong. I am rather judging myself by reminding my own soul that the motives of these men (and they are of course all males it must be noted) may be good, and mine may be wrong, but the real issue here is that Christ is proclaimed. These men do proclaim Christ, some of them do this very well. And some do very good pastoral work and this work is being used by God to win people to the faith. For this I rejoice. I just wish they would not assume with such fervency that their definition of what is “worldly” is the whole truth about their brothers (and sisters). There really are some questions that can’t be answered as easily as these men think. That’s my view anyway.

More on the Jonathan Edwards Renaissance

Yesterday, I mentioned the ongoing international renaissance in the study of Jonathan Edwards that has been going on for sixty years. This work has literally reached around the world as scholars and authors now study Edwards with increasing care and fresh insight, believing him to be: “America’s Greatest Theologian.” I mentioned two excellent popular treatments of Edwards yesterday, first the collection by McDermott and then the biography by Marsden. One of the very best academic treatments is by Michael J. McClymond, the scholar I also mentioned yesterday. His book, Encounters with God: An Approach to the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Oxford) is very expensive but an important contribution if you want to do more series research and gain a richer insight into Edwards.

One of the very best resources, available to scholars and interested people of all backgrounds, is the work of the Jonathan Edwards Society. The society has a 2010 conference to be held at historic Northampton (MA) on Oct. 1-2, 2010. The theme for this special event is: "Jonathan Edwards for the New Millennium.” Featured speakers will include my good friends Gerald McDermott and Michael McClymond. You would enjoy hearing them and meeting them. Rarely will you meet  two scholars who are more humble and approachable. You will be able to hear them, talk to them and enjoy them, not as “big” stars on a platform but as wonderful Christian men who love God and people.

Gerry McDermott (photo at left) and Mike McClymond will be presenting a back-to-back discussion of their current work, a 46 chapter comprehensive study of Jonathan Edwards's theology soon to be published by Oxford University Press. Avihu Zakai will also be presenting a lecture on Jonathan Edwards's philosophy of nature which coincides with his latest book, Jonathan Edward’s Philosophy of History: The Reenchantment of the World in the Age of Enlightenment (Princeton University Press, 2009). The Jonathan Edwards Society event is one that I hope to attend if possible. It would be great to see some of you there. I rarely get to attend such events these days but this may well be an exception if I can arrange it. Check out this conference and considering attending if you are able.

 

Recovering the Real Jonathan Edwards

One of the more important developments in the study of American evangelicalism is a growing interest in America’s greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards. I have been reading Jonathan Edwards since I became deeply interested in revival studies at age 21. The more I read the more interested I became. Edwards does grow on you once you get beyond the stereotypes, which abound.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) is generally believed to be America's greatest religious mind. He was a genius. Since the late Perry Miller published an intellectual biography of Edwards in 1949 a flood of dissertations, articles and books have appeared resulting in a modern explosion of studies on the man and his theology.

For many years I thought that I understood Edwards well enough, having listened to second-hand opinions from various preachers who quoted his work. I had read some of his sermons and several of his more well-known works, as well as in sundry material by readers of Edwards. (I also took a class on Edwards from the late John Gerstner at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in the late 1970s.) As time went by I re-read Edwards and began to pay attention to other voices in the field with growing interest and appreciation. One of the things that prompted this interest was a surprising conversation about Edwards that I had with a Reformed historian who did not like him at all and told me why. His opposition to Edwards actually made me realize that he was right about what he said and that his questions should be discussed more openly. It was then that I realized Jonathan Edwards was far more interesting, and far less like the person I had been introduced to by popular readers and preachers, than I had imagined.

Eventually a new interest in Edwards was stirred directly by the work of several scholars who happen to also be my friends: Dr. Gerald McDermott and Dr. Michael McClymond. McDermott teaches religion at Roanoke College (VA) and McClymond teaches theology at St. Louis University (MO). These two men have done more to re-calibrate my view of Edwards, in a very positive way, than any other writers and thinkers. I think they grasp the nuance, originality and brilliance of the man and his thought. I commend their work to all.

To this end I encourage you to become more aware of this renaissance of Edwards studies. Ordinary people now have great tools which they can use to get to know the real Jonathan Edwards. One of best such "tools"  is McDermott's  carefully edited Understanding Jonathan Edwards: An Introduction to America’s Theologian. Of this book the highly respected historian Mark A. Noll says: "This unusually helpful book is distinctive for how clearly its scholarly authors explain the wide-ranging significance of Jonathan Edwards for readers who are not themselves scholars. The inclusion of European commentators also demonstrates how wide contemporary interest has grown in Edwards as America's greatest theological voice. The book is, in equal measure, authoritative, accessible, and illuminating."

McDermott’s brilliant collection offers an introduction to both Edwards's life and thought and is written at the level of the educated general reader. Each chapter serves as a kind of general introduction to one of Edwards's major topics, including revival, the Bible, beauty, literature, philosophy, typology, and even world religions (a special interest of McDermott). Leading experts contribute to this edited volume thus making it a compendium of immense value.

The second indispensable Edwards book is George A. Marsden’s shorter biography: A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards. (For those who want their Edwards fully caffeinated get the much larger Marsden biography: Jonathan Edwards: A Life.) If you read this biography, and the McDermott collection, you will then be on your way to reading Edwards for yourself with a fresh and renewed appreciation of the real man.

John Calvin at 500 Years Plus

Some of you are aware that John Calvin was born 500 years ago last year. Around the world various groups celebrated Calvin’s life and contribution to the church at the 500th anniversary of his birth. One major project, to give you just a worthwhile example, can be seen here. The always useful Meeter Center at Calvin College, also did a big celebration in relationship to the Calvin anniversary and there is a load of great information is here. And news information on Calvin from the World Alliance of Reformed Church can be found here, the site of the World Council of Churches.

As many of you know I am a minister of Word and Sacrament in the Reformed Church in America (RCA) I am quite directly and personally an heir of John Calvin’s 16th century legacy. The RCA still uses the three-forms of unity; e.g. The Heidelberg Catechism, the Canons of the Synod of Dordt and the Belgic Confession, which I was examined by in my transfer of ordination process when I entered into the RCA four years ago.

Mind you I am not a Calvin scholar. In fact, I do not think of myself as a scholar at all. I am a minister who loves theology and the church and a servant of people who wants to do the kind of theology that will renew the church in our own century.

One of my dear friends is Dr. I. John Hesselink, a true Calvin scholar of international reputation, who did his doctoral work back in the 1950s on John Calvin for the famous Karl Barth. His dissertation, which I value highly, is on Calvin and the Law. If I have a Calvin question I just call John and he points me to the work, the source, or the quote that I need. I feel pretty safe about my general knowledge of Calvin’s thought in given John’s help. I say all of this knowing that there are some who will think less of me for identifying with the Genevan Reformer at all, believing the worst about him. Others, who seem to slavishly attempt to follow Calvin. I have discovered, after years of reading in this area, that many who call themselves Calvinists really follow post-Calvin scholastic theology more than Calvin himself, at least in some instances. Such neo-Calvinists, most of whom are not in the major Reformed denominations in America, insist that writers like me badly misunderstand Calvin. In the end I could case less what people say since it doesn’t matter. Everyone is better served to read Calvin for themselves rather than take him second-hand. If you read his Institutes of the Christian Religion I assure you that you will be shocked by the devotional and spiritual power of his writing.

So I have a deep appreciation for John Calvin but I simply do not agree with everything he taught. To simply agree with John Calvin, or Martin Luther, or Thomas Aquinas, or Jonathan Edwards, or any other theologian for that matter, is neither good nor truly helpful. Each of us needs to do theology personally. This charge extends to the untaught and the well-taught. All of us are to be disciples in the school of Christ and thus become continual learners in our shared journey toward home. One of the puzzling things about men like Calvin is that he clearly never intended to make people into “Calvinists.” The term didn’t even exist until long after his death. The real Calvin is much more interesting, and far more complex, than every stereotype I have ever encountered about him.

In the matter of consenting to the death of Servetus, to cite but one oft-cited example, Calvin was simply wrong. But this only shows that he, like you and me, was the product of his own time and thought-system. I do not follow a system or this man, but Christ. Calvin, I think, would be pleased! I certainly do not use Calvin in a way that continually asks the question: “What Would Calvin Do” (WWCD)?

There has been a treasure of material published this year about John Calvin. Anniversary celebrations have produced conferences, books, papers and blogs. There is so much good material that I can only encourage you, if you are interested, to Google Calvin for yourself. I read a blog by Paul E. Capetz, a liberal theologian in the Reformed tradition, a few weeks ago that I found particularly insightful. I do not always agree with Capetz for sure but this appreciation of Calvin is helpful to modern readers. One thing is for sure, you will get many diverse opinions if you begin to read Calvin material. Again, you would be better served to read The Institutes of the Christian Religion for yourself. You might actually find out that Calvinism is often always faithful to Calvin. That alone would be worth the reading but there is so much more. I give thanks this year for the life of one of the greatest Christian thinkers in the first 2,000 years of Christian history.

The Story of Amazing Grace That You May Never Have Heard

Well-known singer Wintley Phipps, born in Trinidad and Tabago in 1955, moved to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, at a very early age where he later attended Kingsway College, a Seventh-day Adventist Christian Academy. Before he became a world-renowned singer he also attended Oakwood University in Huntsville, Alabama, where he received a Bachelors of Arts degree in Theology. I have a particular interest in Oakwood University since the campus borders the property where my mother lay in a rehab center before she passed into the presence of Christ less than three years ago in Huntsville. I wrote about Oakwood at that time commenting on my visit to the slave cemetery next door on the grounds at Oakwood. The school was begun by faithful Adventists who cared for slaves before the Civil War and for the poor former-slaves who struggled to recover after the war. Phipps later earned a Masters of Divinity degree from the best-known Adventist school, Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan. I have personally visited Andrews University several times over the past thirty or so years.

Wintley Phipps is best known for his music but he is a first and foremost a pastor in the Seventh Day Adventist Church. He has served as the senior pastor to several churches in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, including the Capitol Hill and Seabrook Seventh-Day Adventist Churches. He currently serves as Pastor of the Palm Bay Seventh-day Adventist Church in Palm Bay, Florida.

Phipps has performed for a number of American Presidents including Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama at several National Prayer Breakfast events and other important celebrations. He also performed for the 1984 and 1988 National Democratic Conventions, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and President Nelson Mandela. He has appeared on various programs such as the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. television special, Dr. Robert Schuller's Hour of Power Telecast, the Billy Graham Crusades, for the Pope at the Vatican, and was the guest soloist at Diana Ross' wedding ceremony in Switzerland. He has also performed on Saturday Night Live, Soul Train and the Oprah Winfrey Show. He has conducted lectures in Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa and North and South America. Wintley Phipps is married to Linda Diane Galloway Phipps and they have three sons: Wintley Augustus, II, Winston Adriel, and Wade Alexander.

Most of you have heard Wintley Phipps sing, whether you remember his name or not. Wintley Phipps did a performance at Carnegie Hall in 2007 in which he explained the likely origins of the most famous hymn in all the world, Amazing Grace. His presentation of this hymn, and the use of “The Black Notes Only,” will not only teach you about music (if you are not a trained musician) but it will stir your soul so deeply that I believe you will be moved beyond words. I have watched this presentation several times and have wept more than once. Believe me this is worth your time. I now watch this several times a week. If your soul gets down watch it. Honestly I am weeping right now as I finish this blog listening once again to Wintley’s melodious voice sing my favorite hymn once again.