Church History I

It is finished.

I have successfully completed my first class at college.

It won't be a great tale of success, I expect, thanks in no small part to the world's most unhelpful grader, but I made it through nonetheless. And given that I started two weeks late, finished one week early and went away for a month in the middle I will be satisfied just to have passed.

Along the way I had to watch 39 lectures, read two books, complete six assignments (each of which included reading a 15,000-30,000 word paper), sit three tests and take one final exam.

And although a lot of the content of the class was interesting and useful, it was also pretty dry and for the most part the questions I had to answer bore little relevance to practical ministry and mission. 

So in order to give the experience as much value as possible — bearing in mind that it cost me almost $1,000 for one solitary online class — I chose to draw my own set of conclusions throughout based upon the material presented. Here is a small sample of the things that stood out to me.

• Internal issues, such as heresy and division, weaken the church; external issues, such as persecution, strengthen the church. Thus, we should prefer the latter to the former.
• Almost all major heresies throughout the history of the church relate to the person and work of Jesus Christ, or the nature of the Trinity.
• The most persuasive and popular heresies are usually hard to distinguish from orthodoxy.
• The celebrity pastor is not a modern phenomenon.
• Faith and politics do not go together.
• The church has always disagreed — sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad reasons — so we should not be surprised that it continues to disagree.
• The church has made a lot of mistakes throughout history and will continue to do so.

Might I also mention that the education system is fundamentally flawed? Honestly. But that's a matter for another day.

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Image by johan.pipet.

Comments

[Steve_B]

• Internal fighting bad, external attacks good, interesting.
• So, uneducated people destroy churches ?
• Would you suggest then, that the church has no allegiance with political parties / issues ?
• I guess with internal church disagreements that it comes back to open and closed hand discussions, which also comes back to having an educated and researched theology.
• Also with church mistakes, a lot of the time the image and perception of the church is tainted but only viewing the negative aspects that it itself has produced.

Glad to hear its over dude.

[Johan Pipet, Slovakia]

Hey,
I see my photo of a church in Slovakia here.
It could be OK, but you have to refer me (by link to flickr)!
what about correctness and copyright?

[Lachlan Payne]

Hi Johan,
If you look at the bottom of the post you will see the image is very clearly attributed to you – with a link to Flickr. This is my normal practice (see previous posts) and I would never use an image from Flickr without correct attribution. If you would rather I use another image let me know. Otherwise, be flattered that someone would use one of your images. Thanks for stopping by.