New Harding President

Rich Little (Harding SA president my freshman year) has been posting many thoughts from Harding alumni responding to the recent selection of a new president. The are all well written and kind in their disagreement. If you are interested they are all worth reading but I thought this one was the best so far http://richlittle.org/2012/11/08/mary-beth-picker-a-personal-harding-story/.

To balance the discussion, here is an equally well written piece by friend and classmate Frank McCown
http://frankmccown.blogspot.com/2012/11/hardings-president-mclarty.html.

There are changes in the world to which the Churches of Christ must respond. The are happening and we can fight them and become even more isolated, or we can learn to navigate them and sometimes embrace them and engage in a broader vision in God's world. Many feel that Harding's new choice is a vote for the status quo and a signal of a decline. I pray that this is not the case and that Harding can be a positive force in the kingdom for many years to come.

I am not close enough to the internals of Harding structure or any of the people involved to have much comment of my own. I do share a lot of the concerns about the church in general that were expressed in these writings and I have written about those things at various times. But I remain hopeful and prayerful that Harding will be a force to engage the culture for Christ. I will be visiting Harding next week recruiting for my company and I always enjoy the chance to visit with the professors. I wonder if the students will look older this year. In March, they all seemed like they should be in Jr. High.

Patternism

If the pattern for the church and for the Christian is so plainly laid out in the New Testament such that there can be no dispute (as some would say that 2 Timothy 1:13 states "Follow the pattern of the sound [or healthy] words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.") then why did such a perfect Pattern lead to the Catholic church of the middle ages, and all the many thousands of splits and sects that we find today. If the pattern were perfect, the church would be perfect right? Is the pattern really there at all?  Timothy was with Paul for years and the two small letters we have are not the complete story. So when Paul tells Timothy to follow the pattern it's not something that is wholly available to us. Think about how an architect would build a house out of the "pattern" or "blueprint". It's just not all there. We don't have everything, but we have "everything we need" (2 Peter 1:3).

If the goal of the restoration movement is to get back to that pattern, then why do we think that the results will be any different this time around. If all were restored to the way it was in the first century, then just a few hundred years from now things would be heading back to the schisms and sectarianism we find today. Do we think we can do better than those who were so close in time to the events of the gospels? And if the pattern is so clearly laid out, why do we need the Holy Spirit? I guess this is why Patternists often equate the Spirit with the Bible and deny the active indwelling in our lives today.

If we treat the restoration movement as a destination rather than a journey, the situation today is where we end up. If instead, the purpose of the journey is following Christ, then we are on the right path and though each of us starts from a different location and each has different experiences along the way, we will all end up in the same place eventually, in the arms of Jesus.