Ministry

Timothy Gombis, Power in Weakness: Paul’s Transformed Vision for Ministry

Gombis, Timothy G. Power in Weakness: Paul’s Transformed Vision for Ministry. Foreword by Michael J. Gorman. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2021. 168 pp. Pb; $25.   Link to Eerdmans  

Although Tim Gombis is professor of New Testament at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary and has published several academic monographs on Paul, including Paul: A Guide for the Perplexed (T&T Clark, 2010) and The Drama of Ephesians: Participating in the Triumph of God (IVP Academic, 2010). But Gombis has been involved in ministry in local churches for many years. As Gombis says in his preface, the book is “an extended meditation on the dynamics of power and weakness in pastoral ministry.” The goal of the book is to present a clear biblical description of the role of the pastor as found in the Pauline letters. He frequently illustrates this Pauline pastoral leadership model through his own experience in local churches, both positive and negative.

Gombis, Power in WeaknessA driving force for this book is Gombis’s concern that “contemporary leadership language fosters a distinction, or separation, between pastors who lead and ordinary people in the church 1 Corinthians 3:5-9 should be the antidote two leadership problems!” Pastors now pursue D.Min degrees in leadership rather than ministry. The role of a pastor is increasingly less a humble shepherd caring for the flock than a corporate CEO and “vision-caster.” What used to be called a “senior pastor” is now a “lead pastor.” Pastors measure success by the size of one’s church. Unfortunately, pastors of large churches encourage this trend toward corporate leadership in the local church by publishing books on what “worked” in their own successful ministries (usually branding and image is a prominent theme in these books). The agenda is more important than the people because the church is no longer a family but a corporation (32).

The first three chapters of Power in Weakness surveys Paul’s “unconverted ministry” and track how his ministry imagination changed because of his encounter with the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Gombis argues Paul’s pre-Christian ministry was characterized by coercive power and a relentless pursuit of personal identity of power (which he later recognizes as worthless and an obstacle to genuine identity in Christ). Paul was seeking to bring about God’s purposes, but he did so through verbal and physical violence, and by transforming sinners into true Torah observant Jews. Focusing attention on Philippians 2:5-11, he observes Jesus acted in a radically counter-intuitive manner. Jesus did not exploit privilege or seek to gain any advantage of his rank or privilege. The resurrection completely transformed Paul’s way of thinking. The resurrection radically reorients Paul’s imagination towards living a life shaped by the cross (following Michael Gorman, Gombis calls this a “cruciform life”). After encountering Jesus, Paul no longer tries to impress people. He is a sinner (not a former sinner) who displays the victory of God in Christ through his weakness and shame (2 Cor 4:7-12).

Chapter 4 describes ministry from a cosmic perspective. Building on his Drama of Ephesians, Gombis argues cosmic enslavement to sin manifests itself as destructive patterns in Christian communities. For example, some churches struggle with divisive community dynamics and divisions along racial, ethnic, and social economic lines. Pastors are given to outbursts of anger, denunciation, and condemnation. Some community members are made to feel like second-class citizens within the church. The Corinthian church illustrates many of these destructive patterns, but it is easy enough to see the application to real church situations where pastors become the CEO of the church and the people are “giving units.”

The next four chapters apply the idea of cruciformity to aspects of ministry. In chapter 5 Gombis describes the church’s fixation on the pastor as an impressive public figure (and the pastor’s own pursuit of their own public image). Yet in 2 Corinthians 11:31-33, Paul says he could boast about his accomplishments and impress the Corinthian church. Rather than boast in his accomplishments, Paul shares his experiences which align him with the cross: his weakness and suffering. Instead of an impressive public figure, Gombis says, “ministers who have a legitimate claim to be faithful servants of Christ are those who most closely resemble a corpse on the cross” (91).

Chapter six contrasts cruciformity with the accumulation of credentials. Before encountering Christ, Paul built up an impressive ministry resume, but after Christ, none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered to Paul was his status as “in Christ.” He was a slave, even though he was an apostle. Christ appointed Paul as an apostle, but Paul is clear he did nothing to deserve his appointment. This leads Gombis to question the value of a seminary education. Does a seminary education really foster a faithful cruciform ministry vision characterized by joyful service and the cultivation of the dynamics of service and hospitality towards the hurting and the marginalized? If so, then the education is a positive experience. Don’t seek a degree just because it is an impressive credential, warns Gombis.

Chapter 7 discusses taking an initiative in a cruciform ministry. Gombis certainly has a number of negative things to say about leaders who lead aggressively, but he does not want to imply that a cruciform ministering means the pastor is a doormat. How does the pastor take initiative and lead his congregation? The primary way is through the sermon, but the pastor also must deal with church discipline and dealing with sin. This leads to cruciformity and ministry postures (Chapter 8). In one of the more shocking lines in the book: Gombis suggests Paul did not seek to impact his churches, because Paul knew he was not the active agent. God alone it determines what Paul is going to do in any congregation. This seems to be the opposite of most leadership talk in the contemporary evangelical church. Leaders intentionally (aggressively?) seek to impact their congregations and to guide them towards the goals set by the corporate mission statement.

Conclusion. Power in Weakness is a challenge to anyone doing ministry in the twenty-first century. Drawing on Paul’s ministry as described in his letters, Gombis sounds a clear warning against a secular view of leadership as not only antithetical to the New Testament vision of pastoral ministry, but also a dangerous view of leadership. Leading churches like a corporate CEO may poison one’s ministry and make it ineffective.

My copy of this book is well-marked and underlined, and I look forward to returning to it in the future as I reflect upon my ministry in academia and the local church.

Extras: Eerdworld sat down with Tim Gombis and asked him nine questions about Power in Weakness. Here is a summary of David Turner’s Conversation with Tim Gombis about Paul’s Vision for Ministry, watch the full 35 minute interview on YouTube.

NB: Thanks to Eerdmans for kindly providing me with a review copy of this book. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.

Book Review: Gary M. Burge, A Week in the Life of a Roman Centurion

Burge, Gary M. A Week in the Life of a Roman Centurion. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2015. 189 pp. Pb; $16.  Link to IVP, includes a short book trailer featuring Burge.

Burge says the modern reader is like “a foreigner in their world and culture,” this book attempts to immerse us in the world of the first century.  In the same vein as Ben Witherington’s A Day in the Life of Corinth or Bruce Longenecker’s The Lost Letters of Pergamum, Burge has created a short story about a centurion named Appius and his scribe and slave Tullus. While stationed in Dura-Europos, Appius is injured in a battle with the Parthians and eventually is in a gladiator arena at Caesarea Maritima. Eventually Appius and Tertullus end up in the small village of Capernaum on the shores of Galilee where the meet Jesus of Nazareth.

BurgeI will not spoil the novel with any more plot summary. The value of this book for Bible students is found in the numerous side-bars with detailed cultural information on such diverse cultural issues such as honor and shame, familia, or cosmetics. Burge describes the various locations mentioned in the book in the sidebars as well. There are small black and white illustrations scattered through the book. These are all informative, but could have been enhanced by added a “for further study” to each topic with reference to a more detailed source. Assuming use in a classroom, students could be encouraged to pick a topic and research it in more detail.

A Week in the Life of a Roman Centurion is a great way to get into the world of the New Testament and would be used in a New Testament introduction or a Gospels class, in the same way A Day in the Life of Corinth is appropriate for a book on the Pauline letters. I am occasionally asked for resources on the “background” of the New Testament, this short novel will serve the average Bible reader well by illustrating the Roman world and enriching one’s reading of the Gospels.

NB: Thanks to Intervarsity Press for kindly providing me with a review copy of this book. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.

Book Review: Randal E. Pelton, Preaching with Accuracy

PeltonPelton, Randal E. Preaching with Accuracy. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Ministry, 2015. 170 pp. Pb; $16.   Link to Kregel, read a 25 page excerpt from the book.

This short book of preaching is in many ways a combination of Haddon Robinson’s classic Biblical Preaching and Bryan Chappell’s Christ-Centered Preaching. Pelton recognizes his debt to both books in his introduction. He believes the preacher needs to develop the ability to identify the dominant idea of a preaching portion, but also to allow the language and concepts of the portion to shape the sermon.

The first chapter of the book is a defense of expository preaching. For many preachers, exposition of a text in a sermon is not popular with audiences. Expository sermons will not “grow a church.” It is unfortunately true many congregations lack the biblical background to appreciate an expositional sermon and fewer pastors are attempting to “preach through a book.” I have found that even when a pastor preaches a series on a biblical book, the sermons will still be topical and only vaguely related to the selected text. This book by Pelton will help pastors to pay attention to the main idea of a text a selected text and conform their presentations to the Word of God rather than using scripture as a pretext for the hot topic of the week.

Pelton’s model for preaching begins with selecting an appropriate text to preach. He calls this “cutting the text,” although he is simply demonstrated for the reader how to identify a proper unit of scripture for preaching. Topical preaching tends to err by using a single verse (sometimes out of context) or by jumping to as many verses as possible. Expositional preaching can be ruined by trying to reach too large of a section, forcing the pastor to rush the details or bore the listeners with story-retelling. By paying attention to the genre-based clues in the text itself a pastor ought to be able to limit their expository sermon to an ideal number of verses.

By “cutting the text” properly, the expositor will then be able to identify the “textual big idea” in the portion. Pelton’s fourth chapter demonstrates how to select the broad subject, to narrow the subject to the preaching portion and finally to develop the “big idea” which will govern the content of the sermon. He gives several examples and has a number of “workbook” like exercises to allow the reader to develop their own “big idea” and compare it to his own work.

Randal PeltonOnce a “big idea” for the sermon has been crafted, Pelton describes a method for grounding the “big idea” in the context of Scripture. Obviously the “hero” of every text is God and the main character of every text is Jesus, but creating a Christ-centered sermon will vary from genre to genre. Pelton therefore gives several examples, including a few from the Old Testament, to demonstrate how to ground the “big idea” in the immediate context of the portion of Scripture selected. This contextual approach allows a preacher to select only a short section for the expositional sermon. For example, a preacher can cover the whole of Gen 39, for example, while focusing on only a few verses which demonstrate the “big idea.”

In his final major chapter, Pelton describes what he calls “canonical preaching.” By this he more or less means preaching Christ in every text. This many take the form of what Christians ought to be or do, or how Christ is revealed in a particular text. He is careful to avoid the allegorical “fuller meaning” of medieval preaching which found Jesus in every word of the Old Testament. Pelton firmly believes every text ought to point to Jesus and apply to the Christian and a sermon should be a kind of “theological exegesis” pointing the way to the Cross. This is not unlike Bryan Chapell’s “grace-centered preaching” or Sidney Greidanus’s method for preaching Christ from the Old Testament. While Pelton makes some distinctions between his approach and these other two popular homiletical texts, all three are working similar methods with the goal of preaching every text in the larger context of the whole canon.

If I have any critique of Pelton’s approach, it is this canonical method. On page 118 he has a chart comparing his method to a target, with the textual big idea on the outside, the contextual in the second ring and the canonical interpretation in the center of the bull’s-eye. Until I saw this chart, I would have place the textual big idea in the center and the canonical interpretation on the outside. For me, the idea in the text I have selected is the driving force in my sermon and (perhaps to my shame) I often do not consciously attempt to draw the text to the larger canonical context. Pelton’s book is an encouragement to re-think what is important in a sermon and to center my presentation on the Cross.

NB: Randal Pelton blogs on Preaching at Pelton on Preaching. Thanks to Kregel Books for kindly providing me with a review copy of this book. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.