On the Bible and Business

I've been accused of being in the "church business" before. Of course, this was from someone who thought that we were simply using Christianity to take money from the susceptible. As if pastors and church leaders were simply exploiting the underlying fears people have concerning death and final judgment so as to acquire donations from them. From this perspective, the church is nothing but a business with a specific business model. We, of course, do not want this stigma. We try to avoid looking like we are merely in the church business for the profit. From the Christian perspective, there is a necessary suspicion about using business language or principles with anything connected to the church. Business is after all inherently corrupt and unethical. The way God calls Christians to live together in faith is antithetical to the way business must necessarily operate. But for a business that is connected to the church, there remain these questions: Is there a way for church-...

In today's Bible class, we covered the end of Romans chapter four and the beginning of chapter five. In chapter four, Paul comes to the point and then in chapter five he goes beyond it. His point is that anyone who believes in Jesus will be counted as righteous before God. What goes beyond this are the implications for our lives if we believe this. Being a Christian is easy. God does all the work. But it does have an effect on life. Jesus tells a parable about counting the cost of being his disciple. A man does not being building a tower before he is convinced that he has enough resources to complete the project. Likewise, those who would follow Jesus need to count the cost. Paul identifies this cost, or at least part of it, in chapter five. Romans chapters one through four is perhaps the longest instance of Paul's description of the difference between an approach to God based on works verse faith. In these chapters, Paul argues that no one can be saved according to works. Th...

Yesterday Tim Swenson and I went to a Town Hall meeting hosted by the Association for Biblical Higher Education ( ABHE ) president to discuss possible changes in ABHE. Being fairly new members of the association, this is the first of these that staff from ILT has had the opportunity to attend. It was a fascinating experience for the two of us. This meeting was in response to ABHE's own strategic planning and focused on addressing some threats and opportunities they face. The big question of the day was about how to be prepared for the changes coming in the future of higher education in North America. One of the challenges addressed was the continuing debate between the value of career-focused education and a liberal arts education. There has been a dramatic shift in what potential students believe an education should accomplish. This is a shift from the student wanting to receive a well-rounded broad-based education to an education that will ensure job placeme...

One of the many things the accreditation process has brought to ILT is the requirement of a Strategic Plan. This is a five-year plan addressing our strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). This allows the administration, faculty, and staff to dream a little. We all agree that ILT does not look like it should yet. It is far from being finished. The Strategic Plan and the process we use to create it gives us the opportunity to think about how we can take ILT from where we are to where we need to be. Based upon the SWOT analysis, the administration has identified seven goals we will be working on in the next five years. These are our goals: Equip more people more effectively for ordained and non-ordained ministry in the church. Enhance ILT's contribution to the theological task. Strive toward consistent and stable operations. Increase financial stability. Increase quality of services to students. Successfully interpret the institution to various constituen...

In the Book of Romans, Paul identifies two different struggles each Christian must face. In Bible class today, we faced one of those struggles; and boy did we struggle. Today, we studied the first half of Romans chapter four. Our struggle focused on how salvation is a free gift of God's grace. You would not think that it would be a struggle to receive a free gift, but for many people it is. Normal people are skeptical of something that is free. We want to know what the catch is. But when it comes to our relationship with God and with our eternal life, it is even more important. We want to have a part in it. We want to know what we can do. This is the struggle between works righteousness and faith. Paul is very clear that if we earn something by works of the law, then it cannot be a gift. It is an obligation. If we believe in works righteousness, the doctrine that we must earn our place before God, then we do not receive eternal life as a gift from God, but as an obligation. We ea...

People generally hate meetings. They will say one of two things about them. Either they will say, "What a waste of time, we did not get anything done there." Or they will say, "What a waste of time, I have so many better things to be doing with my time than sitting in meetings. I have stuff to get done." I love meetings. This is the time of year that there are more meetings for us. One reason for this is because we are between semesters, so there is more time to focus on things that get laid aside during the semester. The other reason is that there are many things scheduled to be completed during this time of year. I like meetings because of how important they are for the collaboration between different people and offices within the institution. I will admit they can sometimes be painful. We have to listen to people say things we have already heard, or we already know. We have to listen to people lay out a full argument for something we cannot do, or worse, for so...

In Bible class this morning, there was an attitude of thankfulness that we were finally going to talk about the forgiveness of sins instead of the demands of the law and God's wrath. For the last four weeks, we have been studying Paul's words concerning Gods wrath and judgment against sinners. Today, we made the transition to Paul's words concerning the salvation we have received by faith in Jesus which he writes at the end of Romans chapter 3. Today's challenges in Bible class were not about facing the law of God, but in understanding what Paul says about our salvation. Paul begins by saying that there is no righteousness before God through the law, but only through faith in the gift of God's grace; the blood of Jesus that makes atonement for our sins. There are a lot of things happening in that statement. To start with, Paul makes a distinction between being justified before God by our works and being justified by the gift of God. He says that being justified be...

One of the unique things about an online school is that it exists wherever there is a reliable internet connection. This means there are many places ILT students can live. On a traditional campus, the students move to the state in which the school exists. This school only needs to have official permission from that one state to operate. The school is bound by the rules and regulations established in that one state. It is not so with a school that exists in every state. Distance learning schools have to receive permission to operate in every state in which its students live. The reason for this is because it is the responsibility of the state to protect its citizens from fraudulent schools and schools that do not effectively educate people. In an attempt to fulfill this responsibility, each state must decide what agency will monitor the schools and what qualifies a school to be able to operate in its jurisdiction. It has been interesting for me, as I continue to w...