Thought: It seems to me that the corporate culture of the EFCA is changing. I'm not a life-long EFCA-er, so I say this as a recent (c. 1998) arrival. I gather that the traditional corporate culture of the EFCA was congregationalist (almost ultra), dispensationalist, non-Pentecostal, 3-point Arminian, and Scandanavian. But it doesn't seem to me that the EFCA is quite that anymore. It seems to me that the congregationalist has become modified by the practice of multiple-elder leadership (flowing from influences by Gene Getz, Alexander Strauch, Presbyterian writers, and others). We've become much less dispensationalist and more covenantal (or some jumble of the two systems), with the exception of the Texas district. We're a lot less non-Pentecostal than we used to be, due to a continuationist view of the gifts taught at TEDS over recent years. We're a lot more Calvinist than Arminian -- or at least, a lot more Calvinist than many of our Arminian brethren wish we were! And it seems clear to me that the EFCA isn't culturally Scandanavian. That's one price of success and expansion -- growth brings variety.
Has our EFCA corporate culture settled down for awhile, or are we still changing at a rapid rate?
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Seems pretty accurate to me, although I didn't realize that TEDS was teaching a continuationist view.
ReplyDeleteI also don't think the historic view was Arminian. I've been in the E-Free since 1993, and I have always understood the majority view to be Calvinist. I could be wrong.
The EFCA is supposed to be either/or. Both views to be reperesented at TEDS and neither taking prominence in the SOF revision.
ReplyDeleteIt would be more accurate to say that some professors @ TEDS teach that view -- D.A. Carson, for instance (I'm basing that off Dr. Carson's book on 1 Corinthians 12-14).
ReplyDeleteAre there any cessationist theology profs at TEDS anymore?