Basically, I think the pastoral concern is not to put people in a position where they feel hated or rejected by God.
Ok. Thank you for explaining that. I can understand the concern, and I am sure that as a clergy person you have experienced and talked with others who may have felt that way.
As a layperson, I personally do not feel hated or rejected by God due to penal substitution. I have never heard of anyone feeling that way due to penal substitution, but then I talk to far fewer people than you would about their feelings towards God.
I view it as very important, so I really struggle if a pastor does not talk about it as part of the gospel.
I really appreciate that you shared your position here though because it does help me see how some pastors might approach the situation, and provides a reason for avoiding penal substitution.
Ah, yes, if you hadn't realised this then it would be confusing. I know that I have gone out of my way, when preaching, to dispel the "Father makes Son suffer = justice" kind of approach.
Depending on what you say, or how you were saying this, I likely would be too conservative for your church.
I do appreciate that you are making it clear for your church where you stand, rather than just avoiding the issue. I would much rather a pastor make their position clear than to make me guess. This helps a person know whether or not they would fit in with a particular church.
Possibly part of the difficulty - and I am speculating here, not being familiar with your church or context - is that when preaching, presenting anything in a rich and deep context is difficult. Especially if you are concerned for the first-time visitor who has never heard any of this before, and might be trying to make sense of the good news for the first time, you might try to leave some of the more complicated things for another context (like small group studies).
Thank you for explaining this as well. I can see that a pastor has a lot to think about, and he or she might approach topics differently from a layperson.
The problem I see with leaving things to a small group study is that a lot of people will not go to one (at least in the church I attend). If they never go to a small group, they would never hear the more complicated things that you are reserving for small groups.
I guess I am anti seeker friendly churches—not that I don’t want people who have never heard the gospel to come (I definitely do want them too). I just feel that if a church gears itself towards seeker friendly, and those seekers never go to a small group, how will they learn these things?
I look for a church that gives everything on Sundays, including these more complicated things because that is what I see as the truth. It’s a different perspective, and not everyone approaches the church in the same way. I know what feeds me and what doesn’t. What feeds me might be an obstacle to someone else, so it’s good that there are different churches out there.
I know that I sometimes adjust the way I say things, or what I include, not because I'm trying to avoid particular things but just because I'm not confident that I can do them justice on that particular occasion.
Thank you. That at least gives me some understanding.
That tells me that someone doesn’t necessarily not believe in something, but I still struggle with them not mentioning it.
That's interesting, about the difficulty with updating the hymnal etc. Anglicans don't generally have a problem with the language of blood - after all, our communion practice has us receiving Jesus' blood in a quite concrete sense - but while I wouldn't avoid hymns that mention Jesus' blood, I might think carefully about how I talk about it in (for example) a sermon. Basically, context is everything!
Our communion practice also involves us receiving Jesus’ blood. (If I remember correctly, the previous pastor who was highly sacramental, said that the UMC borrowed a lot from the Anglicans, since the Wesleys were Anglicans).
I don’t understand why some in the UMC want to avoid blood language for hymns.
But anyway, I do really appreciate your responses, as they have helped me understand what my pastor might be thinking when avoiding talking about the atonement. He might just not feel comfortable about it. That doesn’t erase my struggle with him not mentioning it, but it gives me a perspective I hadn’t had before.