Holding Firm To Your Convictions While Being Welcoming To Others

Many churches and denominations have certain positions that they hold with a great deal of conviction. You don't find a lot of people holding fast to something that they are ambivalent about, which partly explains the mass exodus from more liberal/progressive denominations. While we live in an era of cookie cutter "non-denominational" churches with virtually identical websites and a predictable propaganda offering, there are still a lot of groups that have specific convictions on specific issues. Some of them are a little goofy like exclusive psalmody churches, some are downright ridiculous and counter-productive like the King James Only folks. Others though are simply people who have found in Scripture attitudes, doctrines and practices that they feel are important enough to hold to them firmly. What I have found is that many of these distinctive beliefs and practices are correct and worthwhile. I have also found that too often they serve as a barrier to fellowship with others who are not quite on board.

About the same time that I posted The Anabaptist Option > The Benedict Option, Simon Fry wrote a great piece, When Culture Takes Precedence Over Evangelism. In this essay he examines something that I have observed first hand, namely that it sometimes seems like preserving and protecting conservative Anabaptist culture is more important than fulfilling the Great Commission. In general here I am not talking about the Amish who absolutely have no interest in evangelism outside of their own community. I am speaking here more of Mennonites, Beachy Amish, other conservative groups that are more integrated (at least in their vocational life) with the rest of the church and the community at large and seem eager to try to reach the lost, but often without much success. Simon writes: 

Anabaptists tend to have smaller groups that know each other well and have a close “brotherhood”. This closeness is often noted by outsiders and looked on with envious admiration. But often it is our close brotherhood, much like an exclusive social club, that keeps out the very ones that we should be bringing in. Is it possible to evangelize without losing that closeness and even our culture (the customs of a particular nation, people, or group) that we guard so zealously? And if it is not possible, which is of greater importance –culture and close brotherhood, or reaching the lost?

That is a pretty tough question and there is not an easy answer. Many religious folk in America would say the answer is obvious, of course reaching the lost is more important! The problem with that assumption is that what many religious people are "reaching the lost" with is so watered down that it doesn't even qualify as Christianity.

To compound the difficulty of the question, as someone who irregularly attends a very conservative Mennonite church, is that I think there is much that is praiseworthy in what they practice. In principle I think that they are more right on their ecclesiastical and fellowship practices than not. The problem is that for people new to Christianity as well as to people who have been Christians for a while in a different setting is that for all of the positives of conservative Anabaptism there is also a sense of being "all or nothing". You are either on board with every practice and position or you are relegated to being a perpetual visitor or guest. A classic and rather personally raw issue is the Lord's Supper. The blessing and privilege of the Lord's Table is one that is extended to all Christians and commanded of them. Yet it is often held hostage to manmade rules and culture that lumps believers with different practices in some areas with unbelievers and those caught up in unrepentant sin. I have experienced this first hand and based on Simon's post and his previous posts so have a lot of other people. Near the end of his post he writes a good summary:

Churches that allow differences in personality, temperament, social status, and dress style will have a church with a greater potential of growing. Think about it, if a doctor, a farmer, a trucker, and a redneck all attend church together, (no this is not leading into a redneck joke) that is four different types of people that could be reached by evangelism by these individuals. If we all look alike and only allow certain types of people to be accepted, we are very limited in our evangelism.

When a visitor sees a variety of dress styles, they will be more likely to feel they will fit in somewhere than if there is only one accepted dress style. When only those who feel comfortable in one particular style are accepted, new additions are very limited.

If a the church has both women who wear head coverings and women who don’t, new converts feel welcomed. Don’t chase away the women who God has not yet convicted to wear head coverings. Perhaps He has other things that He deems to be of greater importance that He wishes to work on in their lives first. We cannot put limits on God. Preach the Word faithfully and allow Him to work at His own pace. His timing is always better than ours! Perhaps He waits because there are some others He wishes to bring into the church that would never come if they were the only one who did not wear a head covering. If we truly believe that God can convict someone, than why don’t we act like it? Forcing people to do something by rules enforced by using communion as a hammer never changes anyone’s heart. Only God can change someone’s deepest heart beliefs.

I would never tell conservative Anabaptists that they should jettison their distinctive teaching in order to placate the world. I simply am asking if they have given as much thought as perhaps they should to how they can be more fully accepting into complete fellowship people who might not share every doctrine and practice that conservative Anabaptists hold dear. If congregations would make room for people who are not where everyone else is without holding the Lord's Supper hostage, something intentional rather than merely by default, I think you would see a lot of these conservative Anabaptist churches reaching more of the lost, seeing growth in their ranks from something other than baptizing their kids or poaching from other conservative Anabaptists and perhaps even learning some challenging ideas to shake them up. It can be very easy to get into a routine that never asks the hard questions and it is just as easy for that routine to go from years to decades to whole generations of people who have never been seriously challenged to grow or to reassess their culture and traditions. People are searching for churches that have solid convictions but they aren't looking for a 20 page document telling them what they have to start doing to be actually welcomed in. For example, the Pilgrim Mennonite Conference, a very conservative Anabaptist group that has a lot going for it, has a document that details their beliefs on the web. There are 7 pages of doctrinal statements on the typical subjects one finds in a confession of faith. There are also around 40 pages dealing with how one should live, what to wear, how to call ministers, using tobacco, listening to the radio, driving cars, etc. So you would not be wrong to wonder why core Christian doctrines on matters of grace and salvation and the nature of God get less than 20% of the pages devoted to rules and regulations.

The comment section of Simon's post is over 40 comments and growing. I have a lot of respect for Simon for being as interactive as he is with those who comment. Many of the comments are very good and add a lot to the discussion. If you are interested in these sorts of questions, questions that appear in Reformed churches or any other high commitment denomination or faction, give Simon's post a look.

A future where liberal and conservative mean nothing in the church

An exchange has taken place that I almost missed between the excellent writer and token, sort of conservative, New York Times Ross Douthat and Diana Butler Bass, writing for the consistently liberal but occasionally accurate Huffington Post religion page. Thankfully I saw the links on the First Things blog Evangel. Douthat started by responding in an essay to the all too predictable but still tragic decision by the Episcopal Church to bless sinful behavior and call it marriage, declaring that which God has declared an abomination to be blessed. In his brilliant, if somewhat off the mark essay, Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?, Douthat rightly diagnoses what ills the religious left and then calls for a return to a Biblically based robust liberalism rather than a somewhat religious but mostly secular liberalism...

But if liberals need to come to terms with these failures, religious conservatives should not be smug about them. The defining idea of liberal Christianity — that faith should spur social reform as well as personal conversion — has been an immensely positive force in our national life. No one should wish for its extinction, or for a world where Christianity becomes the exclusive property of the political right. 

What should be wished for, instead, is that liberal Christianity recovers a religious reason for its own existence. As the liberal Protestant scholar Gary Dorrien has pointed out, the Christianity that animated causes such as the Social Gospel and the civil rights movement was much more dogmatic than present-day liberal faith. Its leaders had a “deep grounding in Bible study, family devotions, personal prayer and worship.” They argued for progressive reform in the context of “a personal transcendent God ... the divinity of Christ, the need of personal redemption and the importance of Christian missions.” 

Today, by contrast, the leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism. Which suggests that per haps they should pause, amid their frantic renovations, and consider not just what they would change about historic Christianity, but what they would defend and offer uncompromisingly to the world.

Well said by Mr. Douthat, a rising intellectual star in the religious world. Ms. Bass responds in her essay, Can Christianity Be Saved? A Response to Ross Douthat and seems to get the "big picture" but ultimately returns to form and posits a liberal resurgence that is quietly taking hold, something I have not observed. Here is a passage regarding the missing piece from Douthat's essay....

That was 1972. Forty years later, in 2012, liberal churches are not the only ones declining. It is true that progressive religious bodies started to decline in the 1960s. However, conservative denominations are now experiencing the same. For example, the Southern Baptist Convention, one of America's most conservative churches, has for a dozen years struggled with membership loss and overall erosion in programming, staffing, and budgets. Many smaller conservative denominations, such as the Missouri Synod Lutherans, are under pressure by loss. The Roman Catholic Church, a body that has moved in markedly conservative directions and of which Mr. Douthat is a member, is straining as members leave in droves. By 2008, one in ten Americans considered him- or herself a former Roman Catholic. On the surface, Catholic membership numbers seem steady. But this is a function of Catholic immigration from Latin America. If one factors out immigrants, American Catholicism matches the membership decline of any liberal Protestant denomination. Decline is not exclusive to the Episcopal Church, nor to liberal denominations--it is a reality facing the whole of American Christianity.

Douthat points out that the Episcopal Church has declined 23% in the last decade, identifying the loss as a sign of its theological infidelity. In the last decade, however, as conservative denominations lost members, their leaders have not equated the loss with unfaithfulness. Instead, they refer to declines as demographic "blips," waning evangelism, or the impact of secular culture. Membership decline has no inherent theological meaning for either liberals or conservatives. Decline only means, as Gallup pointed out in a just-released survey, that Americans have lost confidence in all forms of institutional religion. 

The real question is not "Can liberal Christianity be saved?" The real question is: Can Christianity be saved?

Both essays are worth your time to read. Both make good points and do so eloquently but I think both miss the fundamental issues. Here are my thoughts, posted at the Evangel's article Collapse or vitality: liberal versus conservative Christianity. They are nothing new to anyone who has read here but here they are nevertheless...

Both camps are missing the big picture. It is not that liberals are declining or that conservatives are thriving. What is being missed is that the religious culture of the West where we found room for both liberal and conservatives expressions (a church on every corner) is collapsing all around us. The social cost of not "going to church" has evaporated and many people are simply abandoning organized religion and rightly so. So-called conservative churches may be declining more slowly than liberal groups that seem bent on rushing headlong over the cliff to extinction but they are heading the same direction.

Amidst all the doom and gloom, those who follow Christ should see hope. As cultural Christianity with its religious trappings, rituals, liturgies, clericalism and all the rest is in her death throes, the church can finally start to function as a peculiar, distinct, called out people who break free from the largely empty formalism that has been the hallmark of Western civil religion for centuries. We should certainly expect to see persecution as a result, actual persecution and not the silly fights over Ten Commandments monuments on public land, but that is a sign that the church is finally being who she is called to be, just as the lack of persecution we so often give thanks for is a sign of an utter lack of faithfulness. It is in times like these that we would be wise to look to the Anabaptists to see what life is like when being faithful runs counter to the prevailing culture.

The future of Christianity in the West is not going to marked by fights over "liberal" versus "conservative". Those sort of fights are the marks of a religion that has too much power, too much money, too much prestige and is too comfortable with the world it is supposed to reach. Our future is one where preaching the Gospel is going to happen outside of pulpits and have a real cost, a future where picking up our cross daily actually means something. I am afraid that most of the church has its collective heads in the sand, desperately clinging to the crumbling religious foundations and not preparing to minister in a culture where "Christianity" is no longer the religion of choice. Rather than hand-wringing over declining "membership" we should be preparing and equipping the church right now for the very different landscape we face in the very near future. Alas those with a vested interest in the status quo are more concerned with clinging to the past than preparing for the future which is precisely why very few "leaders" in the church are really leading at all.

We need only look to Europe to see our future. While they are way ahead of us in the collapse of cultural Christianity, we are very close behind and the collapse here might be even more precipitous. These fights over "conservative" versus "liberal" are going to mean less than nothing very, very soon. This is a conversation that needs to happen in the church right now. Rather than preparing the church and our young people to fill in the impending vacancies among the clergy, Sunday school teachers and seminary professors, we need to be preparing them to minister in a world that is going to look very different from the one we grew up in and live in today. Whether one is liberal or conservative, this denomination or that, are going to be irrelevant in the Western culture of the next few decades. What will matter is whether one is a follower of Christ or not and whether we will be willing to suffer for the sake of the Gospel or not. The church of today is utterly failing to prepare us for the world of the future and very few of our leaders are leading us toward the path where we are headed and are instead trying desperately to cling to a past that has already started to fade away. Thankfully I know that God is sovereign over even the religious future of America and I already am seeing signs of a new generation of Christian that He is raising up to lead the church in the years to come, leaders that don't care for the religiously proper way of doing things but care only for the mission of the Kingdom.

Let those in the halls of power and influence cling to the past if that is where they find their reward. Let God call out and raise up others who will be up for the challenges of the future.

I think it is time

We have been resistant to going fully into the organic/simple/house church thing. I have been very leery of leaping into something out of concern that I am doing so out of pride. My preference has been to try to work from within existing groups that are more open to asking the hard questions and changing where necessary. That is has unfortunately proven futile again and again, leading to frustration and often contention that is not healthy for anyone. Most local churches, like any entrenched organization, are very change averse and religious traditions have an even deeper hold on people than other groups. After our most recent experience, a pretty bitter disappointment although not a surprising turn of events at all, we find ourselves ready to take the plunge.

If you read here at all you will know that my study of Scripture has clearly left me desiring something very different from what our religious culture has to offer. All of the different denominations and movements offer slightly different versions of the same basic thing. We have tried a number of iterations of more traditional churches but none have really captured the spirit of what we see in the New Testament and further none have really seemed interested in going down that path. In every group we have tried there are barriers, places they would not go, traditions they would not challenge, entrenched interests that would not budge. This far and no farther seems to be the motto.

You might be reading this and thinking that I am just a perpetually discontent person who needs to quit searching and just settle. Actually as I type this I sort of feel the same! Perhaps this is just a personality flaw on my part. Regardless I feel like this is where we have been heading for a long time.

What are we going to do on Sundays? I am not sure. I don’t really have an order of service and that is kind of the point! I would expect that sharing a meal and breaking bread would be the centerpiece of the gathering. Maybe a study and discussion of the church from the New Testament to draw together the pieces. I suppose some singing and definitely prayer. Really wherever God leads. That sounds scary. What happens if no one has anything to say? That might happen but that is also OK. We have this almost pathological need to fill silence with something no matter what that filler is. It seems to me that sometimes silence is OK, the whole be still and know that I am God kind of silence. I wouldn’t even have a problem if the church gathered and nothing super religious went on, just spending time talking and praying together would be fine as long as the end result is that Christians are encouraged, loved, edified and equipped for the work of ministry.

Practically speaking, we have a number of outbuildings on our property including a pretty nice workshop that I think will be perfect for a gathering of the church. It is a decent size with a heater when it gets colder and good lighting. I can easily see 6-7 families able to gather together without much trouble. If God blesses this work and it grows past that, we simply will have meetings in two locations instead of one. I never intend for this to be “The Arthur Show” or for us to meet in the same place or the same way every single Sunday (or even for certain on Sunday at all!)

I really believe that there is a desperate need in our area for a simple church gathering that permits people the room to mature in Christ and that still maintains good relationships and cooperation with other more traditional groups. Our area has a lot of people that are very gun shy about organized religion having come out of the Amish or other heavily authoritarian religious groups, fundamentalist or legalistic or “conservative” backgrounds. We need a gathering where people from different backgrounds can come together without preconceived barriers and grow together in Christ. We have made a lot of contacts with other local churches and feel quite comfortable in reaching out to them as needed. I am not sure how receptive they will be but that really isn’t up to me.

In the final analysis, the main reason for making this move is that I just don’t see an alternative. I don’t believe I can be a part of perpetuating a system that I think is unbiblical and harmful to the Kingdom mandate but I also don’t believe God is calling us to be a force for division and conflict. Our best option in my estimation is to seek to work with other Christians from more traditional contexts in the work of evangelism and mercy ministries here locally wherever and whenever we can while gathering in a simpler context. I have no idea what this is going to look like. We might be sitting around in a couple of weeks by ourselves.

House church simple church northeast Indiana fort wayne Hicksville Ohio Harlan Indiana spencerville st. joe butler auburn Indiana organic church participatory meeting woodburn home church

Repost: Gospel Grocery Stores

I put this up last year and I think it helps to get at the way different "forms" of church function in either helping or hindering the intent of the church gathering....
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An interesting story recounted in Total Church:

The Bible calls the church a family. It describes the church as a community that shares together. The church is a body whose members perfectly fit together. We belong to one another. Our friend's church was neither a family or a community. It had no vision for involvement in its immediate community. The truth is, it was not really a church according to any New Testament definition. It was a preaching center. You drove to their large parking garage for your weekly dose of religion just as you traveled to the out-of-town supermarket for your weekly groceries.

(Total Church, pg. 194)

That definition describes an awful lot of churches, big and small. We have had a similar experience in a large Baptist church in northern Kentucky. We sat in the same place every week, down to sitting in the same pew, and we sort of recognized the people around us. The people on the other side of the "sanctuary"? Not a clue. They were anonymous people in their Sunday best. We kind of knew the people in our segmented (younger married adults w/ kids) Sunday school class but virtually everybody else was just an anonymous guy in a suit or woman in a dress we jostled with in the foyer while collecting our kids from the nursery. We went there because they had a big youth and childrens program and because the preaching was consistently decent (unlike our prior smaller church where the preaching was poor at best, the fellowship was sketchy and the only kids in the church were ours and the pastors).

Why do we go to grocery supermarkets? Why is there a new Super Wal-Mart springing up daily? Because it is easy, quick and convenient. We go to a supermarket instead of raising our own food because it costs us less, it is predictable and it takes less time. Rather than work all week to grow, harvest and prepare our own food, we go to the store and get what we need in one fell swoop. I can walk into a store right now and in half an hour get enough food, in sufficient variety, to feed my entire family of ten for a week. I don’t know the other people shopping and I don’t need to because knowing them is irrelevant to what I am there for.

The church is treated much the same. We can get all of our religion in one stop and it only costs us some time and a check in the offering plate. I can go to one of dozens of local traditional churches on Sunday morning and drop my little ones off in a nursery to have a little activity but more importantly keep them out of my hair so I can “worship”. My middle school kids have classes, my high schoolers get classes with a hip youth pastor. My wife and I can go to a prepared Sunday school class and then sit in a pew for an hour, sing a few songs, listen to a prepared talk and then head out in time to be home for lunch.

Many (most?) institutional churches are grocery stores for religion. Quick, easy, in and out and plenty of different ones to choose from. This one makes you mad? Go shop somewhere else. Your only attachment is selection, price and service or in the case of a local church music style, preacher and denomination. It makes little difference to me if I go to Wal-Mart, Meijer or Krogers for my groceries. It impacts the store but only a little. There are lots of local churches I could go to that would be the same way, ranging from hip churches with cool music to somewhat more traditional, orthodox churches. No one would notice us if we were careful (although with eight kids, when we show up at a church it is like chum in shark waters and it is hard to blend in). We could show up a few Sundays at one church and then go somewhere else for a few weeks. We could maintain a great deal of anonymity beyond a smile and handshake.

The church should be more like a community garden and less like a supermarket. That might mean we need to spend a lot of time together. We might get a bit dirty in the process and there are going to be disappointments. Things might not turn out like we hope. If you have a garden and plant tomatoes, sometimes some of the tomatoes will have bugs in them or turn brown or fall off the vine before they are ripe. Sometimes it rains too much and sometimes it rains too little. If you go to the grocery store, you can pick just the best looking tomatoes and pretty much know what you are getting. It may not taste as good as a home-grown tomato and it might have been soaked in pesticides before it was shipped from California to Michigan but it is predictable. We demand too much predictability in the church, we want to know when to show up, what to expect and in what order. Deviate from the “order of worship” in the bulletin and people will be in mass confusion. Lots of people defend the institutional church by pointing it out that it is full of imperfect people but we try to make the gathering of the church as homogenous and easy as possible.

Gardening is hard work, dirty and unpredictable but the rewards are often wonderfully and immeasurably better than “store bought” produce. The church works in much the same way. Unplanned and unscripted is scary because you don’t know what you might get but I would much rather have somebody stumble over a thought or endure periods of silence than sit through another carefully scripted service designed to deliver the maximum religion for the minimum cost. The church is not something we can cram into a couple of hours a week and the goal of church should not be to get in and get out as quickly and efficiently as possible so we can mark a check box on our religion shopping list. Sermon? Check. Singing at least three songs? Check. Shaking the preachers hand? Check. Out at noon and lunch away from the rest of the church by 12:30? Check.

The church is not a list to be completed, it is a life to be lived with one another.

Straddling The Tiber

Read something by John MacArthur today that made me shake my head. It is similar to hundreds of essay and blog posts I have read before and each time it makes me sad. What I read today is a 2009 post from John, Gimme That Showtime Religion…

Can the church fight apathy and materialism by feeding people's appetite for entertainment? Evidently many in the church believe the answer is yes, as church after church jumps on the show-business bandwagon. It is a troubling trend that is luring many otherwise orthodox churches away from biblical priorities.

Church buildings are being constructed like theatres. Instead of a pulpit, the focus is a stage. Some feature massive platforms that revolve or raise and lower, with colored lights and huge sound boards. Shepherds are giving way to media specialists, programming consultants, stage directors, special effects experts, and choreographers.

The irony here is rich and tragic. Instead of a pulpit, there is a stage? There has always been a stage that the pulpit sits on and whether it is a wooden pulpit, a glass lectern or a stool where the pastor sits, at least for the last 1700 years, the congregation is merely an audience of mute observers. Some people like upbeat contemporary Christian music, others warmly familiar liturgy, still others lengthy exegetical expository sermons. Whatever. It is all religion, repackaged over and over again for centuries but essentially the same. For example, here are three different packages…

The seeker sensitive pastor leads the service. He wears a particular uniform that marks him as a “man of God”: skinny jeans, a graphic t-shirt and horn rimmed glasses. He does almost all of the speaking and officiates over the sacraments like baptism and communion. The rest of the congregation sits quietly and watched him. He has special educational training and is hired by the church to perform clerical tasks.

The conservative Reformed pastor leads the service. He wears a particular uniform that marks him as a “man of God”: a dark suit and conservative tie. He does almost all of the speaking and officiates over the sacraments like baptism and communion. The rest of the congregation sits quietly and watched him. He has special educational training and is hired by the church to perform clerical tasks.

The Roman Catholic priest leads the service. He wears a particular uniform that marks him as a “man of God”: a priestly collar and priestly robes. He does almost all of the speaking and officiates over the sacraments like baptism and communion. The rest of the congregation sits quietly and watched him. He has special educational training and is hired by the church to perform clerical tasks.

The doctrines are different, dramatically so. The meaning of certain aspects of the service is radically different although the rituals are eerily similar. But when you are sitting in the pew, whether at some groovy church or St. Something or other Catholic Church or Grace Community Church in California, if you aren’t a clergyman you are just an observer. You are there for the show.

I had a conversation the other day online that highlighted for me once again the dilemma of the traditional Protestant apologist trying to discuss ecclesiology with a Roman Catholic apologist, namely that when it comes to the church Protestants have not moved terribly far away from Mother Rome. Each Sunday most Protestants find themselves unknowingly straddling the Tiber River, one foot in the Reformation and the other in Rome and neither in the New Testament.

In some ways you can argue that the form doesn’t matter much. There are Christians in church forms of all types and many of them are doing the work of the Kingdom, in megachurches and in tiny congregations, traditional churches and organic churches. So who cares how it looks? Let’s just do our thing in our way and see what happens.

While I get that and can affirm much of it, I am left with the inescapable conclusion that form does matter because form has such an impact on how the church functions or, more to the point, doesn’t function. Church as event, church as entertainment, church as religious inoculation, church as performance. All of these common unspoken but unmistakable forms of “church” inevitably hamper spiritual growth, reinforce the “leave it to the professionals” mentality and turn the vibrant, living Body of Christ into rows of immobile mannequins silently watching an overburdened man pouring out the fruits of his weekly efforts in the form of a 45 minute speech.

That is why so many of us spend so much time exploring, studying and discussing ecclesiology. It matters! It matters how we gather, why we gather and what we take from our gathering. It is so important that we cannot assume anything, we cannot just accept a tradition because it is 50 or 100 or 500 years old.

Form is not everything but form certainly is something.

The church puzzle

It seems sometimes that the study of the church is like a giant jigsaw puzzle. There are so many pieces, all that fit together to form a picture of the Bride of Christ. A few pieces for elders, a few for fellowship, some for community, others for prayer. You put them in place and seem to have a complete picture.

Then, once it seems like you have all of the pieces in place and have it figured out you realize that what you thought were the borders are actually places where more pieces fit in. The puzzle keeps getting bigger and more complex and the more you think you have figured out, the more you realize just how much you have left to learn.

Here is an example from my life.

I came into the church after a lifetime of atheism and five years of mormonism so my knowledge of the Bible and what it says was pretty limited. Our first experience with an evangelical church was First Baptist Church in Walton, Kentucky. I quickly embraced most aspects of Southern Baptist doctrine and polity. This is how a church should look, like a Baptist church! I had it figured out! Ta-da! Puzzle complete!

Well before long I ran into some Southern Baptist material put out by Founders Ministries. It was my first introduction to Reformed theology and while skeptical at first because it didn't match what I was hearing from the pulpit, I gradually through study began to recognize in Scripture what Reformed theology was talking about and started to embrace it, within the context of a Baptist church congregation of course. I had it figured out!

A few moves and a variety of experiences later, I was firmly entrenched in a traditional church setting with a Reformed and Baptist doctrinal stance. As I continued to study Scripture and look at books and writers outside of the Reformed camp, I started to question the traditional church model and found pretty quickly that asking those questions was not popular. What I saw each Sunday (and the fact that I looked almost exclusively at Sunday in the first place) seemed to not mesh with what Scripture says. That was pretty jarring and the more I studied, the more of what I thought I understood about the church started to unravel. I used to think that expository sermons were a crucial mark of a “real” church. As I studied Scripture, I found that there was no example of what we would call an expository sermon to be found. I used to think the local church was functionally “pastor-centric”, while Scripture is more “servant-centric”. Church in the Bible seemed to be far more than the Sunday morning meeting. As I continued to study, I started reading guys like Alan Knox and Dave Black and lights started coming on. A simple church gathering with a focus on participation and edification was the way to go. I had it figured out!

As I explored options in simpler, more participatory meetings I found more and more people who had come to similar convictions, many out of backgrounds that we awfully similar to where I was coming from. That was an enormous blessing and support to me, and reinforced what I was coming to understand. I also started looking around and realizing that there were many, many Christians who were (not in a rapture kind of way) left behind in the institutional church. These poor folks needed to be rescued from religion! I was just the guy to do it! So not only was I going to move out of the institutional church and into a simpler church gathering, I was going to lead the rest of my wayward brethren out as well! I had it figured out!

Huh. A lot of those people didn’t want to move. They liked where they were and they were still my brothers and sisters in Christ. What should we do about them? Tough luck Chuck, you can come to our proper, Biblical simple meeting if you want on Sunday morning instead of warming a pew! That doesn’t seem in keeping with the spirit of community and unity among believers and counting others as more valuable than myself. So what to do with all of my fellow believers who are not convinced by the arguments against institutionalized Christianity? Is insisting on my way or the highway (even when “my way” is actually right) better than organized religion in the Body of Christ? That is where I find myself today and it turns out, I don’t have it figured out. I am seeing my church puzzle as more complicated than I ever imagined back in the days when the “complete” puzzle was a nice Baptist church with a steeple on top and plenty of parking.

Here is the thing. That doesn’t mean that each successive new piece removed an existing piece. I don’t think we should baptize infants even though I don’t attend a Baptist church. I don’t think that the doctrines of grace are wrong just because I am not part of a confessionally reformed congregation. I don’t think the church should meet in a traditional setting because a simple/house church model is incomplete. The pieces are being added, not replaced. Now some of the pieces that represent the traditions of man turned out to not have fit after all, I had just crammed them into place and now I cheerfully feel free to pluck those out and discard them. I have also noticed others removing pieces that do fit and replacing them with ill-fitting pieces. By and large though, I am seeing the puzzle expand and as it expands it should be doing more to foster community among believers

I think I may be at a point where I am finding some additional pieces that should reconnect me to the rest of the church that I and many others have “left behind”. More about that in the next post.

Fighting trendiness with tradition

Carl Trueman has been taking on the ills of trendiness especially among the younger, newer converts to Reformed theology. In his most recent essay on the topic, The Problem with Trendiness (Part Two), Carl argues that we embrace trendiness at our peril and the reason it is so popular is because we have lost our sesne of churchly piety and misunderstand the church in general...

In subsequent columns I will flesh the concept out, but here I lay down the basic foundation: churchly piety is rooted in the church. That would seem to be an obvious point, but it is surprising how many people miss it. The mistake derives from a failure to understand what the church is.

First, I am not even sure that “churchly” is a real word although my spell check says it is. I would certainly agree that there is a problem of understanding what the church is (and what it is not) Needless to say, I disagree quite strongly with Carl’s definition because of where the focus is. Here is where the core of the problem starts:

Most Christians would certainly agree that the church is made up of all believers, and that is a fine definition. However, it is also more than that.

The preceding sentence is the point where alarm bells should start ringing. There certainly is a corporate aspect to the church but to then say…

The church is also an institution with office-bearers (elders and deacons) who have been ordained to specific tasks. These men hold ministerial authority and have responsibility to take care of the well being of the people of God, both spiritually and physically.

Well that is fine and dandy except…it is by and large not true. When you define the church by our institutional traditions and further restrict the church to require a traditional understanding of church “office-bearers”, you have gone waaaaaay beyond what Scripture teaches.

The idea that elders and deacons have been assigned specific and exclusive tasks is not found anywhere in Scripture. Deacons especially since there is nothing in the Word about what a deacon is called to do. The qualities to be desired absolutely but specific “this is deacons work” list of tasks are absent. Even though elders are called to certain “tasks” those tasks are not specific or exclusive to "office holders". Teaching is something an elder should be apt to do but not only elders are to teach. Preaching the Gospel is something all Christians are called to. Baptism and administering the supper are nowhere restricted to the supervision of elders.

Many brothers in the old school Reformed traditions are quite leery, to the point of being dismissive or outright hostile, to anything that seems new or different. Some of that is understandable in a day and age when a segment of the church is hell-bent on chucking anything that might offend or alienate the unregenerate, even to the point of altering the Gospel itself. But to respond to that by clinging ever more tightly to the traditional model of the church that is so strongly dependent on the oldest men in the darkest suits ruling and directing the church while the young whippersnappers sit in their pews and wait their turn to be heard is horribly misguided. We so need wisdom in the church and one of the best places to tap that is in the older, more mature men in the church. Some of those men have a title like “elder” associated with their name, many of them lack a title or office but function in that respect all the same.

When we let our practices define the church rather than letting the definition of the church drive our practices, we are on treacherous ground indeed. In other words, what defines ”the church” is our traditional understanding of the church based in large part on our historic practices supported by pretty shaky interpretation and application of Scripture. I am always amazed by the hold our traditions have on the church, on people who should know better. We cling to these man-made traditions with all of the pious stubbornness of a first century Jewish religious leader.

I agree with Carl that we should not be obsessed with pursuing what is hip or new or appeals to the young but likewise we shouldn’t cling stubbornly to our beloved traditions no matter how much they foster a sense of “churchly piety”. I am afraid our ideas of what church piety should look like don’t have a lot to do with Scripture. The world of weekly Sunday morning liturgical services, endless meetings where only a select few make decisions, starched shirts and hourlong sermons, self-sustaining institutions and harrumphing at the younger generations may appeal to our desire for churchly piety but it is not Scriptural and in many ways it actually hampers what the church is supposed to look and function like.

The Lord's Supper as a meal

Alan Knox had an important repost Saturday last looking at the Biblical evidence that the Lord's Supper was an actual meal as opposed to a nibble of bread or a small cracker and a thimblefull of wine or grape juice. From The Lord’s Supper as a Meal:

So, what can we learn from this? Does Scripture command us to take the Lord’s Supper as a full meal? No. Is there something special about the bread and cup? There seems to be in the Gospel accounts and in 1 Cor. 10-11. But we should also remember that at times Scripture uses “bread” to represent more than just bread; so even there the elements of bread and cup could indicate a full meal. Did the Christians in the New Testament take the Lord’s Supper as a meal? It seems that they did. Could we be missing something if we limit the Lord’s Supper to only the bread and the cup? I guess we’ll all have to answer that one for ourselves. What do you think?

What do I think? I think Alan is right and that he is on to something that we are missing out by reducing the Lord's Supper to a ritual instead of a community meal. There is something intimate and familial in a meal that cannot be experienced by a ritual. I think that there is something else to consider here. In most churches, if the pastor said that instead of passing the expensive platter and cup holder the church was going to move to the fellowship hall and celebrate the Supper by sharing a meal, I think many people would be quite uncomfortable. It would seem odd and somehow discomforting. Even if you can demonstrate from Scripture, which Alan did, that the Supper was a meal, I think a lot of Christians would prefer to stick with the tradition.

When tradition trumps the text, we have a problem.

Make that six things

So R.C. Sproul Jr. wrote an article for the Ligonier Ministries blog titled 5 Things I’m Surprised I Can’t Find in the Bible. In it he looks at a few things that are important but that God has intentionally left vague in Scripture.

Some of what he wrote makes sense. The Bible does speak a lot about marriage but not very much about how to go about getting married. There is very little about the specifics of the church meeting. So the article is not without value. However there was one thing that jumped out at me because I have heard it stated before and it is such an unwarranted leap in a publication that gets a huge audience because of R.C. Sproul Jr.’s famous father that it bears being exposed.

I found it ironic that in a post about five things you can’t find in the Bible, we get the following dogmatic assertion that is likewise not in the Bible and then a huge leap from this non-existent principle to an even more onerous one:

The Bible is crystal clear that women are not to rule in the church, and that we are to submit to the elders over us. See Hebrews 13 for the latter. Thus the Reformers were correct to list discipline as a mark of the true church. If you are not under the authority of name-able specific elders, you are not part of the visible church and thus do not have a credible profession of faith. You should get under authority.

I am down with the women not leading in the church part because that actually does appear in the Bible. On the other hand…does Hebrews 13 tell us that a) church discipline is something carried out by elders, b) that the writer of Hebrews is even referencing elders at all, c) we are supposed to be under the authority of “name-able” elders and d) that if we aren’t, we aren’t part of the visible church and therefore our profession of faith is suspect?

Well, no it doesn’t. One must assume that he is referring to Hebrews 13:17 or one of the top posts in “most abused passages in the Bible”. Here it is:

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (Hebrews 13:17 ESV)

The traditional reading is that Hebrews 13:17 tells us we are to be subject to the pastor of the local church we are members of because of his ecclesiastical office. The problem is that this doesn’t actually appear in the text nor is it implied. I have gone over this before but who are the “leaders” we read of in Hebrews 13:17? Luckily we don’t have to guess or let other people define it for us. Ten verses earlier we read:

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. (Hebrews 13:7 ESV)

Ah. So from this reading we see that the leaders are those who spoke (past tense) to the readers the word of God. Perhaps missionaries or evangelists of some sort, the initial preachers of the Gospel through whom God converted the readers of this letter? We don’t really know because we don’t know who the author is or who the audience is other than through conjecture or educated guesses. One thing is certain, it would take an enormous leap to presume that the “leaders” being spoken of who spoke the Word are the pastors of local churches. It doesn’t rule them out but neither does it affirm that contention. Also note that we are to consider their way of life along with obeying and submitting to them. Now we are hardly called to submit just to Pastor Smith at our local church that we selected because of a variety of criteria. In fact, we see lots of submission and subjection going on. Some has to do with elders but others do not. Look for example at 1 Corinthians 16:15-16….

Now I urge you, brothers—you know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia, and that they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints— be subject to such as these, and to every fellow worker and laborer. (1 Corinthians 16:15-16)

So here Paul tells us to the readers (and by proxy us) to be subject to every fellow worker and laborer. Now if the point of being subject is to defer to their authority in a hierarchical fashion, we kind of have a problem because now everyone has to submit to one another which is inherently non-hierarchical. What seems to be the consistent theme from Hebrews 13:7, 1 Corinthians 16: 15-16 as well as other places like 1 and 2 Timothy’s depictions of elders is that we should seek to be subject to those who serve and live out lives worthy of emulation, not that we should submit to leaders because they were selected to be a leader in a given local church or even that we should be subject only to those who are “members” of the same local church we belong to.

Hebrews 13 says a lot about a lot of things and it has a few things to say about the idea of authority but not what R.C. Sproul Jr. claims it does. It always bothers me and should always cause you to pay close attention when someone airily claims that a whole chapter of Scripture supports the point they are making without attempting to engage in the text at all and you should especially be on guard when they make statements with enormous implications to your very salvation based on these sweeping generalities. The idea that if you are not a member of a “proper” local church with name-able elders who carry out church discipline that you don’t have a credible profession of faith is a dangerous and Scripturally untenable statement. It sounds sweet to the ears of those who embrace certain church traditions but to question the salvation of someone because they don’t cling to your ecclesiastical traditions is arrogant and prideful.

The lesson here is that just because someone refers to a passage of Scripture and is published by a famous ministry doesn’t mean you should just take them at their word, especially not when they are questioning the salvation of other Christians.

Church Planting, Missions and House Churches

Collin Hansen, writing for the Gospel Coalition blog, takes a look at (and a few less than subtle shots at) the house church movement: At Home in a House Church. I will say Collin is more even-handed than many people in the conservative camp when it comes to house/simple/organic church groups. It is a tough topic to write about because people in non-traditional settings are found in an enormously broad spectrum, ranging from Brethren style chapels to strict house church groups.

The tone was pretty typical. Sure, the house church looks and acts a lot more like the first century church than the traditional church but what about the downside?

Sometimes, though, spiritual democracy can veer into anti-intellectualism. If God speaks directly to all of us, then maybe we don’t need any teachers at all. We don’t need to depend on anyone else, so we don’t need to study, either. Further education, such as seminary, supposedly becomes more of a hindrance than a help. Unfortunately, some house churches appeal to Christians who hold these views, too.

We’re all familiar with the dangers of education that privileges scholarly approval over the Word’s clear teaching. But we must also beware the sort of rebellion against authority that forsakes the teaching office altogether. This privilege and responsibility finds its warrant in the Scriptures themselves. The apostle Paul wrote about elders, “He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it,” (Tit. 1:9). Again in Titus 2:1 he writes, “But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine.” And in Titus 2:15: “Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you.”

At their best, house churches recall the dynamic fellowship of the early church, exemplified in Acts 2:42-27. Let us not forget, then, that Luke’s beautiful description begins with believers devoting themselves to the apostles’ authoritative teaching.

As if traditional churches are bastions of orthodoxy and community and servant-leaders. It is a common charge, and a false one by and large, that people who eschew the traditional, institutional church are: anti-intellectual, anti-authority, anti-church. Perhaps the real issue is that we are: anti-prideful intellectualism, anti-hierarchy and anti-religiosity.

This comment from one reader really struck me:

America is actually behind the curve on this issue, since Africa, Asia, China and Eastern Europe are seeing an explosion in house churches. As I read just yesterday from a missionary in Ukraine — “In this part of the world, many Christian leaders are realizing that their countries will never be reached if starting churches requires buildings, professionally run programs, and full-time pastors.”

Are we able to see missions work outside of the idea of creating church institutions? I often hear prayers offered that building and zoning commissions will permit the construction of a church building in some far away land. Is that what we should be praying for? At the risk of being inflammatory, are we more concerned with replicating American church culture than we are with spreading the Gospel? Is that perhaps because we don’t see the difference between the America church culture and the Gospel?

In many countries, the church simply never will look like the church in America and that is not only OK, I think it is a good thing. In many ways I firmly believe that the American church culture has been a great hindrance to the Gospel witness instead of a major force for spreading the Word.

House churches scare the heck out of defenders of traditional Christianity and frankly they should. By and large, the people I know who are “house church” or simple church or organic church, whatever name you use, types tend to be far more engaged and committed than the rank-and-file weekly attenders at traditional churches. That doesn’t mean there are not highly committed Christians in traditional churches, there certainly are lots of them. It does seem though that a marginal believer (i.e. an unbelieving cultural Christian) is far more likely to show up at an anonymous church service than they are to meet in a group of 10-15 where you can’t hide for an hour and then feel good about yourself the rest of the week. With numbers approaching 10% of Christians meeting in house/simple church groups and shrinking numbers of people attending traditional services, I think you are starting to see people getting panicky about the future.

As fewer and fewer people attend traditional churches and more committed believers gather in simpler gatherings, the need for the infrastructure of traditional churches with all of the attendant expenses goes away. The need for seminaries (and seminary professors!), church buildings, church pension boards, professional ministers, etc. starts to fade and that means that some people are going to be left holding the bag.

Like it or not, the simple/house church “movement” is not going away and is likely to be a far more common expression in the future than it is today. Clucking about anti-intellectualism and anti-authoritarianism is not going to stop the tide. It would be nice if the intellectual heavyweights of the church would engage this growing movement instead of scrambling to hang on to the status quo.

Gospel grocery stores

An interesting story recounted in Total Church:

The Bible calls the church a family. It describes the church as a community that shares together. The church is a body whose members perfectly fit together. We belong to one another. Our friend's church was neither a family or a community. It had no vision for involvement in its immediate community. The truth is, it was not really a church according to any New Testament definition. It was a preaching center. You drove to their large parking garage for your weekly dose of religion just as you traveled to the out-of-town supermarket for your weekly groceries.

(Total Church, pg. 194)

That definition describes an awful lot of churches, big and small. We have had a similar experience in a large Baptist church in northern Kentucky. We sat in the same place every week, down to sitting in the same pew, and we sort of recognized the people around us. The people on the other side of the "sanctuary"? Not a clue. They were anonymous people in their Sunday best. We kind of knew the people in our segmented (younger married adults w/ kids) Sunday school class but virtually everybody else was just an anonymous guy in a suit or woman in a dress we jostled with in the foyer while collecting our kids from the nursery. We went there because they had a big youth and childrens program and because the preaching was consistently decent (unlike our prior smaller church where the preaching was poor at best, the fellowship was sketchy and the only kids in the church were ours and the pastors).

Why do we go to grocery supermarkets? Why is there a new Super Wal-Mart springing up daily? Because it is easy, quick and convenient. We go to a supermarket instead of raising our own food because it costs us less, it is predictable and it takes less time. Rather than work all week to grow, harvest and prepare our own food, we go to the store and get what we need in one fell swoop. I can walk into a store right now and in half an hour get enough food, in sufficient variety, to feed my entire family of ten for a week. I don’t know the other people shopping and I don’t need to because knowing them is irrelevant to what I am there for.

The church is treated much the same. We can get all of our religion in one stop and it only costs us some time and a check in the offering plate. I can go to one of dozens of local traditional churches on Sunday morning and drop my little ones off in a nursery to have a little activity but more importantly keep them out of my hair so I can “worship”. My middle school kids have classes, my high schoolers get classes with a hip youth pastor. My wife and I can go to a prepared Sunday school class and then sit in a pew for an hour, sing a few songs, listen to a prepared talk and then head out in time to be home for lunch.

Many (most?) institutional churches are grocery stores for religion. Quick, easy, in and out and plenty of different ones to choose from. This one makes you mad? Go shop somewhere else. Your only attachment is selection, price and service or in the case of a local church music style, preacher and denomination. It makes little difference to me if I go to Wal-Mart, Meijer or Krogers for my groceries. It impacts the store but only a little. There are lots of local churches I could go to that would be the same way, ranging from hip churches with cool music to somewhat more traditional, orthodox churches. No one would notice us if we were careful (although with eight kids, when we show up at a church it is like chum in shark waters and it is hard to blend in). We could show up a few Sundays at one church and then go somewhere else for a few weeks. We could maintain a great deal of anonymity beyond a smile and handshake.

The church should be more like a community garden and less like a supermarket. That might mean we need to spend a lot of time together. We might get a bit dirty in the process and there are going to be disappointments. Things might not turn out like we hope. If you have a garden and plant tomatoes, sometimes some of the tomatoes will have bugs in them or turn brown or fall off the vine before they are ripe. Sometimes it rains too much and sometimes it rains too little. If you go to the grocery store, you can pick just the best looking tomatoes and pretty much know what you are getting. It may not taste as good as a home-grown tomato and it might have been soaked in pesticides before it was shipped from California to Michigan but it is predictable. We demand too much predictability in the church, we want to know when to show up, what to expect and in what order. Deviate from the “order of worship” in the bulletin and people will be in mass confusion. Lots of people defend the institutional church by pointing it out that it is full of imperfect people but we try to make the gathering of the church as homogenous and easy as possible.

Gardening is hard work, dirty and unpredictable but the rewards are often wonderfully and immeasurably better than “store bought” produce. The church works in much the same way. Unplanned and unscripted is scary because you don’t know what you might get but I would much rather have somebody stumble over a thought or endure periods of silence than sit through another carefully scripted service designed to deliver the maximum religion for the minimum cost. The church is not something we can cram into a couple of hours a week and the goal of church should not be to get in and get out as quickly and efficiently as possible so we can mark a check box on our religion shopping list. Sermon? Check. Singing at least three songs? Check. Shaking the preachers hand? Check. Out at noon and lunch away from the rest of the church by 12:30? Check.

The church is not a list to be completed, it is a life to be lived with one another.

What binds us and what divides us?

Traditions in the church are deeply ingrained and hard to shake loose. Because they are so tightly interwoven with the life of the church they become a part of the church and take on an importance and meaning far above what is proper. This can, and often does, lead to dogmatic positions that are unsupportable from Scripture and can change the way we interpret Scripture itself. I offer as exhibit A and exhibit B two examples from sources that are normally solid interpreters of Scripture and theologically orthodox. Please note I am not out hunting for blog posts to disagree with. These are blogs that I link to and read for edification often.

My first example is from The Reformed Baptist Fellowship. In an otherwise interesting post, Seminary and the Local Church, we come across this little comment:

Timothy was a pastor at the church in Ephesus, and it was in that context, while being a pastor, that Timothy was told to train and equip men for the ministry.

See how easy that is? Timothy was a pastor of the church in Ephesus (First Baptist Church of Ephesus no doubt) and likely had a parking spot out front with a wooden sign in Greek “Reserved for Senior Pastor”. Now the Scriptural account of Timothy indicates to me that he traveled all over the place and was not a "pastor" in any sense of the word as we use it today.

This is what is so dangerous about the way we read Scripture in light of our traditions. We assume something without a shred of evidence and then make proclamations based on that assumption. In doing so we create whole systems of theology that are based only loosely on Scripture but that simultaneously become dividers in the Body of Christ. Dangerous, dangerous stuff and so seductively easy to do.

So from that one traditional assumption (Timothy was a pastor in Ephesus) we see support for a whole system of professional pastors including an enormously expensive seminary system and hundreds of thousands of men employed by local churches. The enormity of this traditional assumption cannot be overstated because it is at the root of centuries of church practice that is taken for granted and vociferously defended.

The second comes from 9 Marks Ministries and is part of a lengthy series on the role and function of deacons. It is interesting that they have such a comprehensive series on the role of deacons when Scripture doesn’t say anything about the role of deacons (at least in the sense of specific spheres of responsibility) and in fact says very little about deacons at all. By my count there are five times in the ESV where the English word “deacon” is used, four of those in 1 Tim 3: 8-13. Taken together with the generic reference in Philippians 1:1, that makes seven verses where deacons are mentioned or referenced and in none of those seven verses do we see a “job description”. 9 Marks turns that into seven essays and two book reviews. One that I found especially troubling was How to Separate Deacon Work from Elder Work, not least because it assumes that there are types of ministry that are "Deacon Work" and types of ministry that are "Elders Work". From the essay in question:

Fights occur over issues that don’t clearly fall to either elders or deacons. If it’s clear to all parties who’s responsible for something, there’s no cause for dispute. But trouble occurs when it’s less clear: Is this deacon work? Is it elder work? How much should the elders comment on the deacons’ work? Can the deacons weigh in on the elders’ conclusions?

My answer is a rock solid, “It depends.”

No deacon should object to the elders’ ability to pick Sunday School teachers. No elder should argue with the deacons about the furniture polish used on the communion table. If you have this level of disputes in your church, you need to do some basic teaching about what an elder is, and what a deacon is. Your elders should know they are responsible for the spiritual oversight of the church, and your deacons should know they are responsible for the physical and material needs of the church. If both parties don’t know that, start there.

On the other hand, the tough cases are tough because the issue falls on the boundary line between the spiritual oversight of the church and its physical and material care, or the issue involves both domains.

How do we get here? Here is how the thought process works:

- Tradition teaches that Stephen was a deacon although he is never identified as such in Scripture

- Stephen was involved in making sure that the widows received the daily distribution

- Therefore deacons should take care of the buildings

- Huh?

How much time and effort is wasted in fighting over something that is entirely traditional?

Why is it that when it comes to the gathering of the church we abandon Sola Scriptura in favor of a Roman view that seems to place equal weight on Scripture, tradition and the teachings of our favorite theologians? I can’t think of another topic among the most orthodox among us where bold statements are made without even a whiff of Scriptural evidence.

We all have our traditions. Mainline Protestants have their traditions. Evangelicals have their traditions. The Reformed have their traditions. The Anabaptists have their traditions. House church people have their traditions. Many of these traditions are harmless but some are potentially dangerous. The key is to try to recognize where our traditions are and make sure that those traditions don’t override Scripture or serve as a barrier to unity in the Body. When we elevate our traditions to the level of Scripture, all manner of mischief results and I believe that these traditions are the catalyst for much the splintering in the Body of Christ. We all too often let the minors divide us instead of letting the covenant community of our common salvation unite us.

It is far easier to see and critique the traditions held by others than it is to see the ones we hold most dear. I know that is true with me and I have seen it in effect with many others. The only way to get a clearer view is to submit to Scripture and hold everything up to the pages of Holy Writ. There is no tradition that we should hold as sacrosanct to the point that it trumps Scripture. There are no traditions that fail the test of Scripture that can be used as dividers among the Body. When we draw lines in the sand that are without Biblical warrant, we sin against our brothers and sisters. That is harsh but I wholeheartedly believe it is true.

Community in the traditional church

Is it possible?

I spend a lot of time banging the drum for community. I also spend a lot of time critiquing (or bashing depending on your point of view) the traditional church.

I am a big boy and it doesn't take a seer to realize that the percentage of Christians in traditional churches is overwhelming. Is it 100%? Of course not but is it 95%? 90%? Quite possibly (note, I am not saying that 95% of people in traditional churches are Christians but that perhaps 95% of all Christians, at least in America, gather in traditional churches)

So how can believers who gather in traditional churches experience real community?

While recognizing that the traditional model of the gathering of the church is far and away the most common, I also recognize that this very common cultural icon makes it difficult to enjoy real, intimate, dare I say Biblical community. I count where we gather as a family in this camp even though we don’t have some of the traditional barriers to community. Creating community is more than eliminating some of the trappings of traditional Christianity but instead involves a conscious and intentional decision to cultivate the reality of what God has created among us.

First and foremost I understand that we cannot create community. The community of God’s people as an adoptive surrogate family, what Joseph Hellerman calls familification, is created by God and cannot be forced. I do believe that there are ways we can help foster community so that our relational reality matches our positional reality. In other words, while God creates the surrogate family through regeneration, there are certainly ways we can hamper community and conversely ways we can encourage community. I am not going to rehash the ways we diminish community, although that is an important topic because if we are aware of ways we hamper community and try to avoid them, community will more naturally occur. I am also operating under a precarious assumption of orthodoxy. I say precarious because it is certainly the case that there are lots of people who talk about community and fellowship while holding heterodox beliefs. Any community that does not have at the center a right understanding of who Jesus Christ is and what His work accomplished is many things but Christian community is not one of them.

Creating real community in a traditional church setting is something that has to go beyond Sunday morning “worship services” and organizing a couple of small group Bible studies. That might be a result of community but it will not foster community. It is a “chicken and egg” question that requires an understanding that we are brothers and sisters in Christ, not unified nor divided by doctrinal statements but unified with one another in Christ.

Here are some ideas I have come up with

a) Unity in Christ precedes community and supersedes doctrinal distinctives. Instead of starting with the things that divide us and working our way down until we get to common ground, our unity in Christ must be our starting point. We cannot have Biblical community if we demand doctrinal homogeneity as the entry fee. I am not suggesting that we expand the circle to include people who are rank heretics or who are in unrepentant sin but disagreements over most of what we quibble about, while interesting and important, ought not be dividers that curtail unity. How much community have we lost over the years, how many wonderful relationships have we missed out on because someone had a different view of the end-times?

b) Rethinking the purpose of the gathering. Rather than a primarily evangelistic effort where people thought to be unbelievers are invited to hear a sermon, the primary purpose of the gathering of the church is…the gathering of the church. That doesn’t mean that we bar unbelievers but it does mean that we shouldn’t lose sight that the focus of the church gathering is God’s people gathered together in community. The witness of Christian community can and should be a springboard to proclaiming the Gospel.

c) This will require Christians who are equipped and excited to share their faith with others. That is a dramatic change in mindset, from “evangelizing by inviting” to sharing your faith with someone directly. Too many Christians are unwilling to share their faith because they have not been equipped to do so even after a lifetime in the church and because they don’t see it as something they can or should do.

d) Community in a traditional church setting means spending time together outside of Sunday morning and Wednesday evening (and budget meetings don’t count!). We have trained Christians to not expect or seek fellowship outside of the scheduled meeting times and given the nature of those meetings it is nearly impossible to see community form within the restrictive boundaries of traditional church life. There is simply no substitute for time and if someone thinks that spending even more time with the church is inconvenient, they need to check their priorities because something is out of whack.

e) Spend time in edification that explores the Biblical meaning of the church as family and community. I am talking about in-depth studies of the language Luke uses in Acts, that Paul uses in his epistles and most of all the way Christ speaks about His people. Teaching that reinforces the traditional view of the church as hierarchical, church officer driven and focused on finances, programs and secondary doctrines is not going to help people see the need for and the potential of Christian community.

These are some ideas I had and it is a pretty limited list. For those who read this and are in a more traditional church setting, what (if anything) are you doing as the church or do you think you should be doing as the church to remove impediments to community and help create an environment where community can flourish? Or do you think there is not a problem, that the traditional model of the church provides a Biblical expression of community? I am interested in hearing your ideas.

An obstacle to the Gospel

For it is written in the Law of Moses, "You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain." Is it for oxen that God is concerned? (1Co 9:9)

So I am back on this topic again. My wife and I were talking about this topic this weekend based on a conversation she had and an email I received. I think it is a testament to the power of tradition that this topic, i.e. paying clergy, seems so hard for people to think about objectively. So let me walk through it again. I am simply rehashing my earlier positions, so there is nothing new here. I also know that this topic gets people riled up like almost no others. It seems sometimes that if I came out in favor of a semi-Pelagian view of soteriology I would get less grief. Nonetheless, here we go, once more into the breach as it were.

When it comes to this topic, there are two places where people who are advocates of the traditional view of paying pastors instinctively turn. One is 1 Timothy 5:17-18 and the other is found in 1 Corinthians 9. I want to look at 1 Timothy 5 first.

Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.” (1 Timothy 5:17-18)

Of course there are several major problems as it pertains to applying these passages to paying vocational pastors. The first of course is that it doesn’t actually say anything about paying pastors. That is a pretty big problem. I found that the study notes on this passage in the ESV Study Bible interesting. The notes for this section read:

The role of elder (pastor) involves authority, particularly in preaching and teaching. Labor (Gk. kopiaō), translated “toil” in 4:10, implies hard work that makes a person tired. Such exertion in “preaching and teaching” calls for double honor, which could include financial remuneration.

Notice that the comment is that it “could” include financial remuneration, which is a pretty weak statement and is not at all clear from the verse. But then it makes this bold claim:

“Double” could imply ample provision, or financial provision in addition to proper respect. worthy. Paul does not actually require that pastors be paid a double amount, but Paul clearly indicates that pastors should receive generous remuneration

Clearly? Really? So it “could” include financial remuneration in addition to respect but then the comment assumes that it does and demands a generous remuneration (what does “generous” mean?). I also found it interesting that the ESV Study Bible uses the word “remuneration” which is a perfectly good word but one that many people have never seen or used, and certainly is not a word that people outside of human resources or the legal profession would use commonly. I wonder why they chose remuneration instead of commonly used and understood words like “pay”, “salary” or perhaps the most applicable word: “compensation”?

Then there is the problem of paying some elders and not others. Those who “rule well” are to get double honor, especially those who preach and teach. I would say that in most plural elder churches, not all of the elders are paid a salary. If elders who preach well are due double-honor and we assume that honor=salary, doesn’t that imply that those who are mediocre teachers deserve at least single-honor? I don’t know of a plural elder led church where every elder is paid. So at best we are traditionally pretty selective in how we apply this passage.

Another problem is this idea of “honor” because earlier in the same chapter we are told to honor widows who are truly widows (1 Tim 5:3). Should widows get a salary? We know that widows got a daily distribution (Acts 6:1). Should we provide for elders, honor them in other words, in the same way as widows? Conversely, shouldn’t the church honor widows the same way it traditionally does pastors, i.e. by paying them regularly?

I just don’t see the natural reading of 1 Tim 5: 17-18 leading us to a permanent, regular salary and benefits for one or a couple of men in a local gathering of the church. The only way to get there it seems is to assume that honor=salary and that Paul has in mind here men who have a vocation of exclusively serving in the local church. I don’t think the text here supports that.

The next place people turn is 1 Corinthians 9. Let me clarify that, 1 Corinthians 9 selectively read. 1 Cor 9 seems to be read by skipping from one verse to another while ignoring the verses in between. How we traditionally read 1 Corinthians 9 is to read verses 1-halfway through 12 and then skip to verses 13-14 and finally on to verse 16. Verse 14 is the biggie.

In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel. (1Co 9:14)

Well that seems pretty clear and straightforward, right? Sure, prooftexting always does. When we ask the question, what is the bigger argument, what is Paul saying from beginning to end, we get a far different answer.

Twice we see Paul making a clarifying comment regarding his financial support.

If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. (1Co 9:12)

But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing these things to secure any such provision. For I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of my ground for boasting. (1Co 9:15)

Paul would rather endure anything, even death, rather than give up his boasting in the Gospel and his boasting was not his sweet compensation package. It is odd that people skip verses 12 and 15 in order to race to verse 14 especially because verses 12 and 15 are pivotal to the argument Paul is making. Why did Paul refuse to make use of his right to get paid? Was he independently wealthy and didn't need the money? Not hardly. Paul made himself an enemy of the culture and the state by being a vocal evangelist for Jesus Christ. His job prospects were dramatically hampered by his public stand for Christ. As a spokesperson and a frequent target and also as an apostle, Paul had more right than anyone to demand remuneration for preaching but he didn’t.

Why?

Paul refused to take pay to preach the Gospel and instead worked and supported himself by the work of his hands because he contends that being paid to preach the Gospel is an obstacle to the very Gospel we are called to preach. Did you catch that? Exercising the right to get paid is an obstacle to the preaching of the Gospel. If someone claims to be in the “Gospel ministry”, shouldn’t that be a sobering statement?

For Paul, the reward of preaching is not getting paid a salary or even intermittent financial support. It is the pure joy of the Gospel and indeed he found his reward in preaching the Gospel free of charge which he summarizes in verse 18:

What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel. (1 Cor 9:18)

That is the capstone to Paul’s entire argument in 1 Corinthians 9. Paul is echoing something in this topic that we see elsewhere in the New Testament, that for the sake of the Gospel our rights are set aside. The right to get paid. The right to defend self and property against evildoers and lawsuits. These rights and others are placed aside because compared to the Gospel they are counted as nothing. For the pastor who says “I have the right to get paid!”, my reply would be that perhaps you do but does that mean you should exercise it, especially if Paul is correct and that being paid to preach is an obstacle to the Gospel? I can understand why this is problematic. After living the dream of going to seminary, spending a bunch of time and money to get a M.Div. and then going to work as a pastor in a church, the prospect of abandoning that to work a secular job while still serving the church can be daunting. Being a pastor doesn’t translate to the secular job market very smoothly.

Conversely, the example of Paul working for a living elsewhere in Scripture provides a more explicit example of what Paul is advocating. I think it is instructive to turn to the example of the man who wrote the very verses used to support the paying of pastors. Besides 1 Cor 9 where Paul is boldly stating that he makes no use of the right to be compensated (keeping in mind that Paul was not a pastor of a local church but was instead an apostle, a traveling evangelist/missionary, an itinerant preacher), Paul also is recorded in Acts 20 as working a "secular" job for a living...

I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ (Acts 20: 33-35)

Paul is preparing to leave and he calls the elders of Ephesus to him in Miletus, conscious that he is never going to see them again. What does he spend his time, after summoning the elders of Ephesus to come see him, talking with them about? He warns them about wolves coming into the flock with false teaching. Then he boldly declares that he took money from no one, preferring instead to work with his own hands to provide for his necessities and also to help the weak. If this issue was so crucial to Paul that he took the time amidst the tearful farewell to bring it up, it apparently was very important to him. This concept is reinforced in Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians.

Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. (2 Thessalonians 3:6-12)

What is Paul saying here? Those who can work, should work and not be a burden on the church. If a church is facing financial hardship, lots of line items in the budget will be on the chopping block but likely not the pastors salary. Pastors are indispensable because if you don’t have a pastor, the church can’t function or at least that is the logic we employ. It is hard to see pastors as a burden on the church but when the pastor and his family depend on the giving of the church to survive, their financial well-being takes on a whole new meaning. (Dave Black has an excellent treatment of this passage that does it far more justice).

Nowhere do we see Paul advocating paying elders/pastors a permanent salary, nor does Paul himself accept compensation from the church. Quite the contrary, Paul works for a living and commends that lifestyle to others. If that was true in the 1st century amidst an incredibly hostile world, is that not equally true in America where the clergy is generally well-respected? I can’t think of a workplace where being an elder of a church would hurt your job prospects.

The Biblical pattern that emerges from Acts and from Paul’s letters is that Paul and his companions traveled about the world preaching the Gospel, often staying in one place for a while and working a “job” while there, establishing churches and then moving on after appointing elders. We don’t see anyone ordaining clergy, sending men to seminary or hiring believers to be pastors. That may be the pattern that developed early on after the time of the apostles but that doesn’t make it Biblical.

Is it sinful to pay pastors? I wouldn’t go that far. Is it unhealthy for the church and is it unhealthy to put a disproportionate amount of the burden of a local gathering on one man because he is getting paid? Without question. My intent here is not to wag my finger at those who are pastors and get paid for their efforts. I have a number of friends who are paid clergy and I don’t hold that against them. With this topic like so many others, my intent is to raise the hard questions and to challenge prevailing traditions. For me, the topic of paying pastors is one of those loose threads in the fabric of the traditional church model. When I yanked on it a little, it started to unravel the whole thing. Far from a bad thing, it has been a positive move. It is far easier and more profitable to study the church when you are able to set aside the traditions that infuse the topic. I am not so naïve as to assume that I am above traditions or presuppositions but I am confident that I am seeing more clearly what Scripture has to say about the church than I have been in the past.