EDITOR’S NOTE: Although the initial stories made reference to Holtz being fired or removed from his pulpit, that was not the case. The headline of this post repeats that error. (3/27/2011)
United Methodist blogger and former pastor Chad Holtz was removed from his appointment this week. The news stories make it all about Rob Bell, but at least some of the coverage suggests deeper issues.
Chad, for his part, wrote his advice to pastors who want to keep their jobs.
1. Don’t blog or Facebook.
2. If you ignore #1, at least do so anonymously.
3. If you ignore #1 and #2, be sure your stuff is fluff. Write about daisies, the weather, your kids t-ball game, vacation plans, car repairs, and dinner recipes.
4. If you ignore #1, 2, and 3 and choose instead to write about matters of faith, be sure your ideas, thoughts, opinions and questions match the ideas, thoughts, opinions and questions of your congregation.
5. If you ignore #1, 2, 3, and 4 you can join me in a job hunt. And, if you are not completely disillusioned, help me plant a church where advice like this will not only be unnecessary, but absurd.
His list screams of hurt and damage. I hope he finds healing. As I read through is recent blog posts, I do see where some members of his congregation who hold traditional beliefs about hell would react poorly.
Holtz writes more about the causes of his removal on Rachel Held Evan’s blog here.
His story and his posts open up interesting questions about how pastors should blog.
And we wonder why preachers are afraid to preach tough sermons.
Without wanting to give too many details, I know another pastor who was asked to leave on account of preaching “God did not send this week’s horrific natural disaster in order to punish those non-Christian heathen over there in that foreign country”. That pastor was also UMC.
Is this just a problem in the UMC or is it particularly American? British Methodism and the Church of England will stand by their pastors who preach good theology and tell the congregations to get a grip. It seems the opposite over here.
I actually dealt with one of my congregations being scandalized that I wasn’t willing to categorically say that I know every non-Christian individual is going to be judged for hell by God. It was uncomfortable for awhile. We had to talk things out and, in some instances, agree to disagree. But I think they came away understanding that it is actually theologically possible to say both “I don’t know that Gandhi is in hell” and “I believe that Jesus is Savior, Lord, Messiah and the way, truth and life”. If I’d got kicked out of the church, they wouldn’t have even had time to hear my perspective.
The name “Rob Bell” came up in a group I was at. I just listened because I had never read any of his stuff. The obvious conclusion was that he was a part of the heretical arm of the Emergent Church movement. If he was standing in a pulpit of a UMC church and declaring that the unsaved don’t necessarily go to hell he was rejecting established doctrine and his removal was justified. This is not a little issue like disagreeing on the color of the carpet. Calling a man who thinks Gandhi might be in heaven an evangelical leader is the same as calling Barak Obama post partisan. Gandhi may have been a great Indian leader but he clearly rejected the death and resurrection of Jesus.
I am glad to know there are still places in the UMC where the Bible is taken seriously. Rob Bell will land on his feet so it is a win-win. He gets a bigger church and the church he was trying to deceive gets an orthodox pastor.
Grace and peace.
If he was standing in a pulpit of a UMC church and declaring that the unsaved don’t necessarily go to hell he was rejecting established doctrine and his removal was justified.
“the unsaved are going to hell” is, of course, a tautology and therefore I’m going to assume that you mean that we are able to judge who is in heaven and who is not.
The fact of the matter is that we are not able to judge this. It is NOT correct Christian theology to believe that we can identify which individuals are destined for hell, nor is it biblical (there is even a parable about how many who believe that they will enter the kingdom won’t and how many who don’t believe they’ll enter the Kingdom will). It is certainly not British Methodist theology and, on account of all three of these things I don’t believe that it’s UMC theology either (although I’m really beginning to wonder about the UMC these days).
This is a situation where popular Christian teaching is wrong, where the laity are wrong and where the hierarchy should be standing behind its clergy rather than kow-towing to lay ignorance.
This is a perfect example of why the church needs good theology.
Only reading the printed article on this I have come up with a major question, “How in UMC polity can this pastor lose his job or be fired?” Was he brought up on charges and if so which ones. I have always bragged on the UMC for the freedom a minister has to ask tough questions from the pulpit (or FB for that matter) knowing there is some sort of job security. The ‘board’ will not met after your sermon and then you have to be out of the parsonage on Monday. The news article does say “Gray Southern, United Methodist district superintendent for the part of North Carolina that includes Henderson, declined to discuss Holtz’s departure in detail, but said there was more to it than the online post about Rob Bell’s book.” There has to be more to the story that the news doesn’t find as interesting.
With that said my heart goes out to another brother who has been deeply hurt and in major pain.
Ah once again a victim of the unbiblical clergy/laity system that causes pastors to be CEO’s and always hanging by a thread instead of being biblical.
Sorry that is my vent!
More of Holtz’s thoughts.
http://rachelheldevans.com/chad-holtz-pastor-fired-hell
I got in trouble over a blog once. I took out frustrations thinking nobody would read it. Those looking for dirt…I basically handed it to them on a silver platter. Nevermind that everything I said was true. The truth I spoke was done so in a demeaning way.
Since then, I have committed myself to the pastoral needs of the congregations. As a result, there are people with whom I have considerable theological disagreements…yet we love one another.
I wonder if Rev. Holtz error was not blogging or truth-telling but a lack of tactfulness.
Oh..did get back to blogging: http://www.amongthehills.com/blog
PamPG,
Might I point out that I did not say “those whom I think are unsaved,” I said “the unsaved.” If you are a universalist then all that is required is simple honesty. If a pastor denies the basic beliefs and teachings of a denomination, it would seem to me that integrity would demand a change to a group that accepts what he believes. It is comforting to have baby bear theology: The papa bear hierarchy are too traditional, the mama bear laity are too ignorant. I of course am just right.
Since I am not a part of the UMC my opinions are nothing to get excited about though.
Grace and peace.
Apparently, Rev. Holtz told his congregation that he was going to refrain from controversial blogging. Obviously, he shouldn’t have made that agreement if he was unwilling to live up to it. As a local pastor, he does not have the protections that ordained elders currently enjoy. Apparently, he agreed to resign.
One of the most difficult things for younger people to learn (Rev. Holtz is a student at Duke), is that they don’t have all the answers and that everything that happened before them is not automatically wrong.
From reading this and other blog site comments it appears as if Chad is confused about a few things. One is the first amendment. This protects us from our government but it is not a shield that keeps us from being held accountable for our words wrt our friends, co-workers and employers. Words have power and we need to be careful what we say. James 1:19 tells us to be slow to speak. Good advice that holds true today. It is real difficult to “unsay” that which has been said. Chad seems to think that a blog site is like an academic seminar where you can think out loud “if this then that” kind of thing. Fine as long as it stays in the seminar room. But once posted on a blog it is a different story. Having read some of his words it looks like he is straying from established doctrine. Is he arrogant enough to believe that he has arrived at some Truth that has escaped all the great theologians of the past two thousand years? I hope not. He should be well aware of what Methodist doctrine entails and needs to support not undermine it. If he cannot do that then he should find a denomination that more closely reflects what his views are. It speaks to integrity. He should not have waited for this to blow up in his face and be shown the door.