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Pulpit Voices:
What Nazarenes Are Preaching

By Howard Plummer

I lost a family the first month I arrived at the church by teaching that Nazarenes are not fundamentalists. Nine years and a lot of pastoral care later, the congregation enjoys the discovery of what we do believe and do not believe. The Articles of Faith form the first piece of a church membership class for us. Preaching through the truths of The Apostles’ Creed helps us to understand our community of faith is orthodox and ancient. This series is in process and slower than I anticipated in unfolding. It does not lack for passion, however. Try saying: “I believe in God the Father Almighty.” Imagine preaching it!

I Believe in God. Hebrews 11:6 informs us that “anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” I addressed New Age openness and the tendency of Americans to believe that God is the little voice inside their head with Oprah as their high priestess. Chuck Colson has a powerful quote: “When the not-so-small voice of the self becomes the highest authority, religious belief undergoes a change so dramatic that it no longer involves a commitment to any authority beyond yourself. The church is no longer regarded as a repository of truth, nor as a source of moral authority, but merely as the place to go for spiritual strokes.”1# Robert Bellah’s Habits of the Heart and his theory of “Sheila-ism” supports just such a predicament has occurred in America.# Using the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4) as the beginning of the Jewish belief system, I explained why the early church needed to define and to preserve beliefs as they educated pagans and heretics and Judaizers.

I Believe in God the Father. I began with Hosea 11:1-4 describing God as the Father who calls His son; teaches him to walk; lifts him to His cheek; bends down to feed him. Jesus continues the thought as He explains His relationship to his heavenly Father, the one to Whom He prays and to Whom he teaches us to pray. Luke 15 allowed us to listen to a story Jesus told about a father and two sons. What a father!

I Believe in God the Father, Almighty. I began with Psalm 91:1-2. When we say that God is Almighty, it means that we have a sense of His abilities. He is able to make the impossible possible. He does whatever He wills. The angel Gabriel told Mary it was so (Luke 1:37). Jesus told his disciples it was so in the exchange of the rich man and the eye of a needle (Matthew 19:26). Jesus prayed it was so in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:36). The Apostle Paul wrote that it was so in Romans 11:33-36. The Almightiness of God is intended to encourage us. I narrated one of the bread stories of Elisha from 2 Kings 6:24 to 7:20 to illustrate how God can make the impossible possible. Ask the king’s officer.

I Believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth. Psalm 33:6, 9 affirms what our brothers and sisters have believed from the earliest of times: God made the heavens and the earth “out of nothing.” God spoke the world into being. He is pre-existent, entire and complete within Himself. He created out of His prerogative and power. The implications of that belief are: 1) God is the Source of all that exists; 2) Nothing is intrinsically evil; 3) Only God is worthy of praise and worship. I illustrated the struggle the early church dealt with in Gnosticism in each of these implications.

The response to this series from the congregation is amazing. Americans love heroes and the lore of the creation of early nationalistic documents. Wait until they hear about the courage of early church fathers to discover and define and to defend the truths the community of faith continues to declare in the twenty-first century.

Luke Timothy Johnson summarizes this portion of the Apostles’ Creed when he writes that any profession of faith entrusts the heart and mind to a truth that cannot be proven but can be lived. “We declare that God exists and distinguish ourselves from agnostics and atheists. We declare that God is Father and thereby articulate our relation to the Son. We say that God is almighty and thereby respond to the mystery of evil and human suffering. We assert that God is maker of heaven and earth and thereby declare what we believe God to be doing here and now.”#

1. Chuck Colson, as quoted by Stuart Briscoe, The Apostles’ Creed: Beliefs That Matter (Wheaton: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1994), p. 2.

2. Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1985).

3. Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why It Matters (New York: Doubleday, 2003), p. 66.

Howard Plummer is senior pastor of the Church of the Nazarene in Hermitage, Tennessee.