Could angels be created in God’s image?

May 2, 2011June 12, 2012 / Nate Edmondson / Leave a comment

²⁶Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Genesis 1:26a ESV

⁸And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah 6:8a ESV

For my Hermeneutics class I was doing a project about the “divine plural”. Why does the bible say, “us” instead of “me”?

There are several different views, the two main ones being that it refers to the Trinity, or that it refers to the Heavenly Court. After studying it I personally think it refers to the Heavenly Court for a few reasons. If you want to talk about that just comment or email me.

The purpose of this post, however, is a question that I thought of while I was doing this research: Could angels be created in God’s image?

The only distinction that the Genesis 1 passage makes is between animals and humans. Humans are in God’s image, animals are not. But there isn’t a distinction made about angels. Most of the distinctions between angels and humans in the Bible deal with saving faith and positional stance with God.

It doesn’t really matter if they are or aren’t, but I thought it was interesting. What do you think? What passages shed light on the issue?

3 questions about seminary

April 28, 2011April 28, 2011 / Nate Edmondson / 7 Comments

For those who don’t like watching videos, here’s what I want to know:

Is seminary beneficial? Is the education helpful? Will it be something I’m glad I did when I look back?
Is seminary a necessary requirement for you to hire someone? If you’re looking to hire a student pastor, worship leader, or small groups guy, does the fact that they’ve been to seminary help in their interviewing process?
What seminaries would you recommend? Which ones are people talking about? Do any seminaries raise a red flag?

Your comments, insights, and suggestions are all very appreciated!

When ‘amazing’ becomes mediocrity

April 27, 2011June 19, 2012 / Nate Edmondson / 7 Comments

A long time ago my dad posted on his blog about the importance of critical thinking in an organization. His point was simple: don’t confuse critical thinking with negativity. You can read his post here: http://tinyurl.com/6d9al2d . We were having a conversation about this recently, and after I explained my opinions on the issue he said, “there’s a blog post”. So bouncing off of his post, I’ll give you the rest of our conversation about this.

I follow a lot of pastors and ministry leaders on Twitter, and throughout the week it’s common to see lots of tweets like, “getting ready for (insert name of ministry) on Sunday, it’s going to be amazing, you don’t wanna miss it! (insert link of church website).” Then on Sunday afternoon tweets like this start flowing in: “Incredible day at (insert name of ministry) today! We have the BEST volunteers in the world!”

Now, on the surface, that’s probably a really good thing. They’re building momentum for Sunday, which is very good, and then they’re celebrating afterward because what’s celebrated is repeated. Here’s what sometimes irritates me, though: If you say that every single week is “amazing”… then you belittle the standard for “amazing”. The reality of life is that some days are better than others. Church services are no exception. If after every single camp, student retreat, worship service, small group sign-up, service project… etc. the church staff is saying it was “amazing”, then pretty soon “amazing” is normal, which isn’t amazing.

In order to accurately evaluate and critique, an organization has to be open to the fact that some things aren’t amazing. In church world, that means that some services aren’t amazing. It takes some boring strikeouts and singles to make triples and home runs so exciting. If the same person posts on Facebook about how great church was every single week, I don’t believe them anymore. If Christmas was everyday it wouldn’t be a big deal.

Claiming something to be amazing as a routine is the same thing as mediocrity. Application: Commit to being amazing, but admit when something’s not amazing, in order to add credibility to what is amazing.

How do you manage this tension?

Justification by ‘fruit’ alone?

April 25, 2011June 12, 2012 / Nate Edmondson / 2 Comments

In Bible school, it’s easy to start feeling like a better person than any of us really are. This leads to many interesting conversations about church, theology, and culture. One of those conversations recently was about salvation. The comment was made, “Realistically, only about 1/10 people who say they’re Christians are really saved.”

This actually kind of makes sense. When you look at the standards set in the Bible as often as Bible students do, it’s pretty obvious that there aren’t many who are living up to the standard. I’ve definitely looked out at a congregation before and thought, “These people don’t even get it. This is just a social experience… not a spiritual experience.”

But here’s what’s interesting. The people who make these comments, myself included, assume they’re in. They only question everybody else. The other interesting thing is all the people making these comments hold to salvation “by grace through faith”. Their argument is that if someone believes then you’ll see fruit. But at what point does fruit replace law?

If a person is saved, then yes, there will be fruit. But the reality is that fruit can also be evident in the life of non-believers. Whenever we elevate the “evidence of fruit” above God’s grace, we essentially go back to justification by the law. No one will ever be producing only fruit and no sin, just like no one can ever uphold all the commandments. If there is any standard at all by which to judge salvation besides grace alone, we’re all doomed. Thankfully, our access into grace is faith.

Have you seen this tension between fruit and law before? How do we handle the process of sanctification? Are justification and sanctification supposed to separate at all?

Small groups- what’s next?

April 21, 2011April 21, 2011 / Nate Edmondson / 5 Comments

Like most people my age and older, I grew up going to Sunday school. It was all I knew. Then when I got to middle school and my dad began talking to me about starting a church, I started hearing about these things called “small groups”. Once we launched the church, my experience with Sunday school ended, and I haven’t been to a Sunday school class since.

I hear from all kinds of adults that small groups are a much better model for life-change. “Life-change happens in the context of community” everybody says. Churches with small groups are generally much cooler than churches with Sunday school. If I heard that a church had Sunday school, I would probably assume that their music wasn’t very good either.

But if I’m honest, my experience with small groups hasn’t been any better than my experience in Sunday school. I’m not discounting what you’ve seen God do in your life or in the lives of others because of small groups, I’m just saying I’ve never had that experience.

What’s worked for me is having older, wiser people speak into my life. My dad, Michael Bayne, Ben Reed. I’ve also experienced growth from being on a floor full of godly guys as we all mature together. I think that’s the goal of small groups, but the small group environment just never did that for me.

Here’s my hunch: there’s something coming that will replace small groups. It will be more intentional and relational. It will have more rigorous study of Scripture. It will be more effective. I don’t know what it is yet, but I think it’s coming. In the meantime, I think we need to accept the fact that not everybody benefits from small groups, or even likes them. This is not meant to be a slap in the face to small groups or small group pastors/leaders, it’s just my opinion.

For a cool article about a church experimenting with this, here’s a link: http://tinyurl.com/3rbnfs7

Thoughts? What has your experience with small groups been?