never been commented upon by saints from previous ages whose wisdom might be garnered and made fruitful for today and from whose acquaintance contemporary worshippers might benefit.
There is much that is tired and cliche-like in the term, “the Reformed tradition,” and it is true that worshipping at the idol of such a formative way of being Christian is still worshipping an idol. But again, as Alston notes, the point of mastering or better being mastered by a particular tradition is to be able to bear witness to the essential unity of the church. Our little traditions serve no other purpose than to provide us an entry into the church’s long and broad conversation with scripture’s witness.
So what? Well, so this: there are a number of groups, including various constituencies within our own church and seminary that are trying in earnest to discern God’s plan for the future for both. That future is hard to see for a variety of reasons, not least the various vested interests we might want to preserve. But one thing seems clear to me: trying to discern the future of the church without paying attention to the tradition that has passed the gospel on to us is worse than foolish, and will produce only a stunted and silly, and finally boring something, a something that, unlike the church of Jesus Christ, will be deeply captive to its own trivialities. Traditionalism is not the answer. But the tradition to which we belong is not our enemy. Rather, it is a gift that can liberate us to see beyond it.
February 6, 2013
Yesterday I received an email from a friend with whom I studied in seminary. What occasioned his note to me was the struggle he and his wife were having in their attempts to help the church where they worship. They were in anguish because their pastor wanted to take the congregation out of the denomination, and they, and others, wanted to try to stay. There was a lot of hurt and anger in this note. But in truth, the anguish my friend was feeling about this congregational split is only part of the hurt. Like any divorce there are at least two sides (if not more) and plenty of presenting issues and underlying causes. What my friend was feeling, however, was not just anguish over the split (and anger at his pastor), but a deeper loneliness, a feeling that the church had forgotten how to be a “life together.” Instead, what many seemed to want was a purity of some kind, a righteousness that would be self-evident. They seemed to want their youth back, the time when the congregation was young and vigorous and important. They wanted to be young again, and were suspicious of the old, who were such obvious failures.
One can make too much of the church. Our Reformed forebears sacrificed a lot in protest against the church making an idol out of itself or thinking that it was as important as the One to whom it was called to witness. But I sometimes think that the struggles we are going through to be the church are deeper and more important than mere ecclesiastical squabbles. We are adding to the loneliness of American life with our splits.
Here at the seminary, we say we want to “form leaders and transform the church,” but I wonder if we know how to be the church that we want to transform. Well, maybe we shouldn’t worry about all of this. As a friend reminds me, the church will last exactly as long as God has need of it. According to the Revelation of St. John the Divine, there will be no temple in the heavenly city (“for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb.” Rev 21:22). And in truth, our denomination, our seminary even, has no special claim on God’s will and God is certainly under no obligation to make life safe and secure for us.
Still, I think God does will us to live a “life together” in Jesus Christ. Which means that the church has no more important task today than to gather, worship, serve, and share in whatever life together the Holy Spirit grants to our congregations. Being the church today seems to me to be the most counter-cultural act we could undertake, countering our loneliness and isolation and anger and despair, with the gospel of him who “welcomes sinners and eats with them.”(Luke 15:2)
February 20, 2013
I sometimes wonder if affluence and Christianity can really get along very well. God, Philip Jenkins has said, seems to do much better south of the equator.
Recently I interviewed a potential student, a recent immigrant, who, with his wife and children, had to flee their native Burma and go first to Malaysia, and then to America. He was a pastor in Burma, among the Chin people. When he fled the country, he worked with the UN High Commission on Refugees, helping to care for the 50,000 or so Burmese in the camps in Malaysia. I asked him about that work. He replied: “I woke up in the morning and visited those in prison first at 6 a.m. Then I went to the detention centers to welcome new refugees. Then I went to the camps to visit various folk, and finally to the hospitals to care for the sick and dying.” At one point he was hired by an NGO, eventually being recognized by the UN for his pastoral care for those in need.
“What is your ministry goal?” I asked him. “I want to plant new churches,” he replied. He is currently pastoring a flock of 140 Burmese here in Charlotte. He has applied for U.S. citizenship, but he eventually wants to return to Burma to help start new congregations.
The man is poor; he is living in his third or fourth country after fleeing his own. English must be his fifth or sixth language. And he wants to start new churches . . . .
I have been reading Anne Applebaum’s new book, Iron Curtain: the Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945–1956 (Anchor, 2013). She is an excellent reporter whose account of those years makes for unbearably sad reading. She focuses on three countries: Poland, E. Germany, and Hungary. When you read what these people endured during World War II, first from the Nazis and then from the Soviets, you wonder that any of them are able to hope or plan or envision any kind of positive future.
Among the most crushed were explicitly Christian groups, especially youth groups but also seminaries and pastors. When I read what they went through, and what various minorities went through, I am ashamed of ever complaining about the plight of the American church or the miseries of our own denomination. We haven’t got troubles. Yes, there are splits and disappointments and anger, but most of these wounds are self-inflicted and mimic an affluent culture rather than contradicting it.
I remember once hearing Tom Gillespie speak when he was president of Princeton Theological Seminary. He and his wife, who was of German extraction, were visiting her family’s home town in what was then E. Germany. On Sunday, they went to church, where there might have been 10 people in worship. Gillespie, like a typical American, asked the pastor how many members there were that worshipped in that congregation. “On a good day, like Easter,” the pastor replied, “we might have 18.” 18. Gillespie wondered to himself if he would have the courage to pastor for 20 years, as this pastor had, a flock which, on a good day, might number 18 souls.
So what? Well, so this: maybe we should quit worrying about demographics, strategies for resuming our place of prominence in the culture, the resentments we must struggle against. Maybe we should simply pray to God for courage to bear witness in our day. That is hard enough.
May 22, 2013
Earlier this month I led a travel seminar to various sites in Europe associated with the Reformed witness. One of the places we visited was a little town in southeastern France called Le Chambon sur Ligne. This is a small town, I would guess of no more than 2,000 souls today. It has a city hall and a defunct railroad station and a small city park near the center of town. But it also has a French Reformed Church (a “temple” as it is called), whose pastor, André Trocmé, and congregation, saved the lives of over 3500 Jewish children during World War II.
Near the church, on a stone wall opposite the sanctuary, the state of Israel has placed a commemorative plaque honoring these “righteous Gentiles.” The church itself is simple and quite unadorned. The current pastor, a German native, met us and allowed us to sit in the sanctuary, to see the pulpit, and to hear him tell something of his work in this little, ordinary, small town congregation. To hear him speak, to sit in that sanctuary, to walk down the street to the gate of the church
