Offered to churches, for what it's worth. My council found it useful to get behind the "business" of leadership and be mindful of their own walk with Christ.
I'm not sure what category this falls under. It's sort of admin, but definitely not finance. It's sort of church renewal, but more like a step before renewal. Maybe the church worldwide would benefit from an analytics department. Maybe the Spirit just laughs at that.
Certainly. I'll email it to you directly, since the spreadsheet in in-house to my congregation and I'd feel weird making it fully public. But if anyone wants it, just ask and I'll send it along.
Exactly! The emphasis on penal substitution fits very well in a Western context. We get legalese and external standards of law. But for shame-honor contexts, I think the atonement model that I've seen somewhat developed is more like humilitation-glorification (Phil 2, and such thinking might provide some fresh takes on the Ascension), or possibly alienation-restoration (from a collective culture point of view, this has everything to do with shame-honor). For the latter, Jesus' parables are thick with such themes - Prodigal Son, Wedding Banquet, Waiting Virgins. Christus Victor probably corresponds better to fear-power cultures, and is clearly in operation in various sub-saharan African contexts that are seeing that Jesus defeats demonic powers and witch doctors, for example. That might explain some of the success of Pentecostal churches in those regions. There's a great layout of the key points on pp. 53-54 of the book "The 3-D Gospel." (And we Westerners love organized layouts!) There, it suggests "satisfaction" as the shame-honor atonement theory, and notes that the satisfaction is actually a restoration of God's honor after He endured the shame of having His own creatures reject Him and become sinners.
I love this reflection. I had my eyes opened to this stuff a few years ago and have found it increasingly useful theologically and in pastoral ministry in a multi-cultural context.
Anyone wanting more should check out honorshame.com. Some other resources include books by David DaSilva, Bruce Malina, Curt Thompson (The Soul of Shame), Robin Stockitt (Restoring the Shamed), and Roland Muller (Honor and Shame). Wheaton College held a conference in 2017 on the topics. In addition to guilt-forgiveness and shame-honor, there is also a fear-power ethical orientation out there, often figuring more prominently in animist cultures (See also The 3-D Gospel by Jayson Georges).
One comment on the post. "Someone from a shame-honor culture will be more attuned to shame than to sin," sounded to me not quite precisely right, and might reflect a Western cultural assumption. In parallel, what if we said "someone from a guilt-forgiveness culture will be more attuned to guilt than to sin."? I'd propose understanding guilt, shame, and fear as people's emotional experience of sin rather than alternatives to experiencing sin. What predominates in that experience will be culturally conditioned. In addition, how people come to be aware of sin functions differently. Shame is experienced through relationship (see the "Pepsi" example in the post) and tends to be more in operation in collectivist cultures (if shame gets individualized, it might be more like the fame-shame orientation pondered in Christianity Today some years back). For people of such cultures, they may find it remarkable how dull Westerners are when it comes to group-incurred shame, perhaps, you know, because "they're more attuned to guilt than to sin." Americans revolve ethics around personal responsibility, but we, and in particular whites, resist structural or group responsibility. Westerners also have a tendency to equate right and wrong with law and legality, which can be manipulated to help us hide sin ("I didn't do anything wrong!"). Just as Westerners might complain that those in shame-oriented cultures don't feel bad until they're caught and so they suffer from a lack of "rule of law" (sound familiar in Middle East geo-politics?), those of other cultures may properly critique Westerners for not feeling bad unless there's some rule on paper and so Westerners suffer from a lack of social sensitivity and respect for others. Finally, I am wary of any assumption that a guilt-forgiveness cultural and theological orientation is somehow superior to other approaches, or that Westerners are in a cultural position to understand sin better and thus have to translate it for others. Instead, guilt-forgiveness is one part of the multi-faceted thing we call the gospel, but it needs shame-honor, and fear-power to be a more complete picture, and we will need Christians from around the world to gain that picture.
Posted in: A Spiritual Health Check-up for Leaders
Offered to churches, for what it's worth. My council found it useful to get behind the "business" of leadership and be mindful of their own walk with Christ.
Posted in: Assessing Congregational Volunteer Capacity: A Few factors and Limits
I'm not sure what category this falls under. It's sort of admin, but definitely not finance. It's sort of church renewal, but more like a step before renewal. Maybe the church worldwide would benefit from an analytics department. Maybe the Spirit just laughs at that.
Posted in: Assessing Congregational Volunteer Capacity: A Few factors and Limits
Certainly. I'll email it to you directly, since the spreadsheet in in-house to my congregation and I'd feel weird making it fully public. But if anyone wants it, just ask and I'll send it along.
Posted in: Shame and Honor, Guilt and Righteousness
Exactly! The emphasis on penal substitution fits very well in a Western context. We get legalese and external standards of law. But for shame-honor contexts, I think the atonement model that I've seen somewhat developed is more like humilitation-glorification (Phil 2, and such thinking might provide some fresh takes on the Ascension), or possibly alienation-restoration (from a collective culture point of view, this has everything to do with shame-honor). For the latter, Jesus' parables are thick with such themes - Prodigal Son, Wedding Banquet, Waiting Virgins. Christus Victor probably corresponds better to fear-power cultures, and is clearly in operation in various sub-saharan African contexts that are seeing that Jesus defeats demonic powers and witch doctors, for example. That might explain some of the success of Pentecostal churches in those regions. There's a great layout of the key points on pp. 53-54 of the book "The 3-D Gospel." (And we Westerners love organized layouts!) There, it suggests "satisfaction" as the shame-honor atonement theory, and notes that the satisfaction is actually a restoration of God's honor after He endured the shame of having His own creatures reject Him and become sinners.
Posted in: Shame and Honor, Guilt and Righteousness
I love this reflection. I had my eyes opened to this stuff a few years ago and have found it increasingly useful theologically and in pastoral ministry in a multi-cultural context.
Anyone wanting more should check out honorshame.com. Some other resources include books by David DaSilva, Bruce Malina, Curt Thompson (The Soul of Shame), Robin Stockitt (Restoring the Shamed), and Roland Muller (Honor and Shame). Wheaton College held a conference in 2017 on the topics. In addition to guilt-forgiveness and shame-honor, there is also a fear-power ethical orientation out there, often figuring more prominently in animist cultures (See also The 3-D Gospel by Jayson Georges).
One comment on the post. "Someone from a shame-honor culture will be more attuned to shame than to sin," sounded to me not quite precisely right, and might reflect a Western cultural assumption. In parallel, what if we said "someone from a guilt-forgiveness culture will be more attuned to guilt than to sin."? I'd propose understanding guilt, shame, and fear as people's emotional experience of sin rather than alternatives to experiencing sin. What predominates in that experience will be culturally conditioned. In addition, how people come to be aware of sin functions differently. Shame is experienced through relationship (see the "Pepsi" example in the post) and tends to be more in operation in collectivist cultures (if shame gets individualized, it might be more like the fame-shame orientation pondered in Christianity Today some years back). For people of such cultures, they may find it remarkable how dull Westerners are when it comes to group-incurred shame, perhaps, you know, because "they're more attuned to guilt than to sin." Americans revolve ethics around personal responsibility, but we, and in particular whites, resist structural or group responsibility. Westerners also have a tendency to equate right and wrong with law and legality, which can be manipulated to help us hide sin ("I didn't do anything wrong!"). Just as Westerners might complain that those in shame-oriented cultures don't feel bad until they're caught and so they suffer from a lack of "rule of law" (sound familiar in Middle East geo-politics?), those of other cultures may properly critique Westerners for not feeling bad unless there's some rule on paper and so Westerners suffer from a lack of social sensitivity and respect for others. Finally, I am wary of any assumption that a guilt-forgiveness cultural and theological orientation is somehow superior to other approaches, or that Westerners are in a cultural position to understand sin better and thus have to translate it for others. Instead, guilt-forgiveness is one part of the multi-faceted thing we call the gospel, but it needs shame-honor, and fear-power to be a more complete picture, and we will need Christians from around the world to gain that picture.