Fellowship (xx)

FPC, Lowville, NY

This is the twentieth posting in this series working on what it means to be a church, based on eight criteria the Mars Hill Church uses to define its branch congregations as churches. The series began (here).  We turn now to the seventh criterion, which reads, "The church is a loving community that devotes itself to fellowship."

Most churches recognize the importance of fellowship although not all of them are very good at it.  For many people, however, the church family is an important part of their personal and social life as well as (often even more than) their spiritual life.  A generally healthy church, in any event, cares for its own flock.

Many years ago, a church history text I was using for a course on early church history at the McGilvary Faculty of Theology, Chiang Mai, Thailand, (where I taught an occasional course) noted a number of factors that led to the rapid growth of the church in the Roman Empire.  Apart from the usual factors of good communications and the zeal of the early Christians, two other factors were central and left a lasting impression on me.  One factor was the person of Christ.  From the beginning he was spiritually attractive especially to the urban underclass but even among the wealthy.  His love, gentleness, and humility stood in stark contrast to the gods and prophets of other religions in the empire.

The other factor was the quality of congregational life in the early house churches, which popped up like mushrooms all over the place.  People became Christian because of Christ and because of the love Christians showed each other.  The earliest church was mostly a movement with little organization, no manuals of operations, and no agencies to carry out the work of the church.  It mostly grew of its own inner power, which centered on Christ and the love his disciples felt for each other.  In spite of the persecution, which could be intense at times, it was better to be part of a church than not.  The church grew in important measure because of its fellowship, which was augmented by evangelism.

It's a lesson we do well to remember even now.  A church can be large, wealthy, and well-known, but it is only as strong as the strength of its fellowship.  Amen.

Suddenly It's a Stable

Last April, I became responsible for developing and managing the website for First Presbyterian Church, Lowville, NY, where I serve as pastor. As we developed the website, I decided that it was time to start blogging and Rom Phra Khun and Rom Phra Khun Reviews are the result. We were fortunate to work with Mr. Brad Zehr, who designed and hosts the FPC website, and I decided that it would be wise to transfer my personal website, herbswanson.com to Brad's care as well. Having done that, I'm now in the process of slowly, slowy reformatting and simplifying the website.  Most recently, I volunteered to develop and manage a website for the Lay Academy of Utica Presbytery, again with Brad Zehr's assistance. So, suddenly, I'm running a stable!

Goals & Realities (xix)

FPC, Lowville, NY

This is the nineteenth posting in a series working on what it means to be a church, based on eight criteria the Mars Hill Church uses to define its branch congregations as churches. The series began (here).  Before we turn to the seventh criterion in the Mars Hill list, I would like to return one more time to a concern I have with the wording of several of the criteria.  As I've noted already a couple of times in this series, the Mars Hill criteria describe the church in its "pure" state.  In fact, most of the eight criteria describe something that does not exist.  Real churches in the real world are not made up only of regenerated believers.  Their leadership is not uniformly competent and qualified.  Real-life congregations are only partially unified under the Spirit, at best.  Sometimes, they can be terribly disunited.  And so forth through the list.

Thus, the seventh criterion reads, "The church is a loving community that devotes itself to fellowship."  In our dreams.  To be fair, there are some impressively loving people in most every church, and experienced church people can think back to times when their church showed real love for someone in need.  We have seen parishioners do things for other members of their congregation have taken our breath away.  That, sadly, is not all we have seen.  I remember an experienced restaurant server once telling me that she tried to avoid working Sunday noons because of the "church crowd."  They are demanding and give lousy tips.  Again, to be fair not all of us are like that—but some of us are.  It's a trivial illustration of a serious point: churches are not perfect embodiments of the Kingdom and sometimes they are far, far from that dream.

Local churches seek to be even struggle to be unified under the Spirit (Criteria #5), holy (#6), loving (#7), and visibly evangelistic (#8).  These are goals, visions, and measures of every church's limitations.  It is vitally important, in sum, that we acknowledge the fact that the church described in these criteria does not exist, otherwise we will become discouraged by and even bitter at the imperfections we find in actual churches.  It is our goal and dream to become something like these criteria.  We believe that God in Christ through the work of the Spirit is gently, persistently pulling us forward toward our goals and dreams.  But, we're a long way for the goal line when in it comes to actually being the church of our prayers and dreams.

Recommended Reading

Churches are in decline all across our nation, and a report just released by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research entitled, "A Decade of Change in American Congregations 2000 – 2010," indicates that the decline is accelerating.  CNN provides an overview of the report in a news posting entitled, "A rough decade for American congregations." Both the news article and the larger report are worth reading.  The executive summary of the report describes its contents in this way:

Conducted in 2000, 2005, 2008 and 2010, the FACT series shows that the decade brought: A continued increase in innovative, adaptive worship; A surprisingly rapid adoption of electronic technologies; A dramatic increase in racial/ethnic congregations, many for immigrant groups; A general increase in the breadth of both member-oriented and mission-oriented programs.

It also gave witness to: An increase in connection across faith traditions; A twist in the historical pattern of religious involvement in support of the electoral process.
But the decade also saw: A steep drop in financial health; Continuing high levels of conflict;
Aging memberships.
The net, overall result: Fewer persons in the pews; Decreasing spiritual vitality.

One "interesting" fact contained in the Hartford report is that among the major Christian groups in the U.S. today, Presbyterian churches show the highest average age of congregations.  Fully 62% of Presbyterians are 65 years old or older.  In contrast, only 4% of Mormons are 65 or older.

We Helped You Get Rich

"I hear all this, 'well, this is class warfare, this is whatever'. No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear:


"You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did."

Elizabeth Warren
Candidate for the U.S. Senate, Massachusetts

Reconciliation (xviii)

FPC, Lowville, NY

This is the eightteenth posting in a series working on what it means to be a church, based on eight criteria the Mars Hill Church uses to define its branch congregations as churches. The series began (here).  We are still on the sixth criterion in the Mars Hill list of criteria for being a church, which is, "The church is a holy people. When they sin, they repent of their sin. If [a professing Christian] should fail to repent, the church and its leaders lovingly enact biblical church discipline in hopes of bringing the sinner to repentance and to a reconciled relationship with God and his people."

The goal of repentance and of church discipline, according to the Mars Hills criteria, is reconciliation. In the 1960s, the then United Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (UPCUSA) wrote a new confession of faith, The Confession of 1967, which restated the Christian faith for a turbulent era in American history.  The theme of the confession is reconciliation, which it describes as both the work of Christ and the particular need of humanity in the 1960s.  The confession goes on to state:

"In Jesus Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself. Jesus Christ is God with humankind. He is the eternal Son of the Father, who became human and lived among us to fulfill the work of reconciliation. He is present in the church by the power of the Holy Spirit to continue and complete his mission. This work of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the foundation of all confessional statements about God, humanity and the world. Therefore, the church calls all people to be reconciled to God and to one another." (Confession of 1967, 9.07)

While the confession doesn't define reconciliation as such, in a section entitled "Reconciliation in Society," it describes reconciliation as meaning in the 1960s the overcoming of racism and discrimination, the expansion of international understanding and cooperation, the end of poverty, the end of sexual exploitation, and the renewal of family life.  Reconciliation brings down barriers.  It fosters justice.  It builds a new order, which fulfills God's creative intentions for humanity.  And, as the Mars Hill criteria suggest, it is the experience of individual Christians and congregations in their walk of faith.  It is an important part of what we are all about.  Amen.

Repentance, Discipline, and the Church (xvii)

FPC, Lowville, NY

This is the seventeenth posting in a series working on what it means to be a church, based on eight criteria the Mars Hill Church uses to define its branch congregations as churches. The series began (here). We are still on the sixth criterion, which is, "The church is a holy people. When they sin, they repent of their sin. If [a professing Christian] should fail to repent, the church and its leaders lovingly enact biblical church discipline in hopes of bringing the sinner to repentance and to a reconciled relationship with God and his people."

A couple of observations: first, a holy people evidently can still sin. Their holiness is preserved or marked by the fact that when they do so they repent. Thus, repentance is an important characteristic of the church; local churches can't preserve their identity as churches without it. Although the so-called mainline or ecumenical churches don't normally emphasize the importance of repentance to this extent, it is also true in their congregations that the ability to give and accept forgiveness is extremely important. People, including church leaders including (especially) pastors, make mistakes and need to be able to ask for forgiveness when they do; equally important that have to be able to give forgiveness as well. (I should note that I've actually expanded on the idea of repentance, which in and of itself is only a feeling of remorse over having done something wrong. Having felt repentant, we need to act on our feeling, which leads us to seeking forgiveness).

Second, this sixth criterion points to the idea of church discipline and its role in preserving the holiness (purity) of the church. From the Reformation until the early 20th century, church discipline was a dominant mark of local churches. The sessions of Presbyterian churches, thus, regularly examined errant members and handed down punishments up to and including excommunication. Such things still happen, but they are rare, and the whole notion in the Presbyterian Church (USA) of our sessions, presbyteries, synods, and the general assembly functioning as "judicatories" has fallen into disfavor. The new PC(USA) Form of Government now refers to these bodies as "councils" rather than judicatories.

The need for churches to exercise disciple, however, continues to be significant.  Pastors and lay leaders from time to time continue to behave in ways that are hurtful to the "peace, unity, and purity" of the church.  While we no longer haul members before the session for personal moral lapses, it is important for the health of a church that it maintain a disciplined congregational life—i.e. that conflict is resolved in a Christ-like manner, that no one person or group dominates the church, and that hurtful behaviors are addressed rather than overlooked.  The goal of church discipline today is not the preservation of orderliness or conformity so much as the establishment of peace, a very different thing and much harder to attain or even, often enough, to gauge.

The True State of Women's Sports

Regular readers of Rom Phra Khun will have figured out by now that I am still a fan of Minnesota sports even though I haven't lived in Minnesota for nearly 50 years.  It is really, really hard to kick some habits!  In any event, being a Minnesota fan there's something I don't quite understand.  This weekend (Sept. 24-25) the Minnesota Gophers football team (men's football) was beaten by North Dakota State in convincing fashion—North Dakota State!  The Vikings (men's football) led the Detroit Lions 20 to zip at half-time and managed to lose in overtime 26-23.  The Minnesota Twins (men's baseball) managed to win their third game in their last 21 tries (that's embarrassing!).

Meanwhile the Minnesota Lynx (women's basketball) pounded Phoenix, 103-86, to advance to the WNBA championship. They never did that before. And 103 points in a game isn't all that usual in the WNBA.


Now, here's the thing I don't get (or, maybe I do).  The Minneapolis Star Tribune website buried the Lynx story at the bottom of its main sports page (here)—below the Gophers, the Vikings, and can you believe it even below the hapless, pathetic Twins.  You would think that the Lynx victory today would be emblazoned in 50 point headlines at the top of the page.  But, nope.  It's at the bottom.  Minnesota sports fans are starved for athletic success at the state level—and here's a pro basketball team going to the finals!  -- Oh, I forgot, it's just women's basketball.

Go Lynx!

Preserving Holiness (xvi)

FPC, Lowville, NY

This is the sixteenth posting in a series working on what it means to be a church, based on eight criteria the Mars Hill Church uses to define its branch congregations as churches. The series began (here).

We move on to consider the sixth criterion in the Mars Hill list of criteria for being a church, which is, "The church is a holy people. When they sin, they repent of their sin. If [a professing Christian] should fail to repent, the church and its leaders lovingly enact biblical church discipline in hopes of bringing the sinner to repentance and to a reconciled relationship with God and his people."

A good deal depends here on what is meant by "holiness," but this sixth criterion poses the same problem that I raised concerning the first criterion (here), which reads, ""The church is made up of regenerated believers in Jesus." By saying that the church is a body of "regenerated believers" and is "a holy people." we state something that is simply not true and can lead to serious misunderstandings regarding the brokenness of every church that ever there was or that exists today. Holiness generally means in biblical terms to be set apart from the world at large, which unfortunately is only partially true in even the best of cases. Our constant struggle in every church is that for all of our good intentions and spiritual experiences we still act too much like everybody else. We are sadly incomplete and not very faithful versions of God's ongoing creation of humanity. We should be set apart, but we aren't. This is not to say that churches don't do a lot of good and sometimes show themselves to be loving, concerned, and faithful. The thing we know that at best we are only partially these things.

Now, it is true that some classes of churches do pretty much separate themselves from the rest of society to one degree or another.  Their members mostly listen to "Christian music," read "Christian books," visit "Christian websites," send their kids to "Christian schools," and mostly socialize with other members of their churches.  Their members live in a Christian ghetto of sorts.  That, however, is not what the Bible has in mind when it calls on Jesus' followers to be separate from the world.  Biblical "holiness," or separateness, is a quality of life that reflects Christ and gives worship to the one true God.  It is open to the promptings of the Spirit.  Indeed, one could argue that for most practicing Christians God's call is to live in the world and not in a religious ghetto—excepting only those who live in monastic communities.

We are, in sum, to be in but not of the world, as the saying goes.  It is a hard line to walk.  It is our burden that we don't walk it better.  It is our hope that God is a God of mercy quietly, persistently recreating us as a new people.  Amen.

Unnecessary Assumptions

Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. opened a recent editorial (here) on The Christian Post website with the following statement,

The affirmation of biblical inerrancy is nothing more, and nothing less, than the affirmation of the Bible’s total truthfulness and trustworthiness. The assertion of the Bible’s inerrancy - that the Bible is “free from all falsehood or mistake” - is an essential safeguard for the Bible’s authority as the very Word of God in written form. The reason for this should be clear: To affirm anything short of inerrancy is to allow that the Bible does contain falsehoods or mistakes.

His goes on in the editorial to quote the "Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy," which states that,

The authority of Scripture is a key issue for the Christian Church in this and every age. Those who profess faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are called to show the reality of their discipleship by humbly and faithfully obeying God’s written Word. To stray from Scripture in faith or conduct is disloyalty to our Master. Recognition of the total truth and trustworthiness of Holy Scripture is essential to a full grasp and adequate confession of its authority.

The underlying assumption is that in order for the Bible to be authoritative it must be absolutely true, absolutely without blemish, and absolutely without error.  It cannot contain even one single falsehood or mistake because, if it does, then its authority is undermined.  Ostensibly, this assumption is based on the nature of God.  God is perfect.  The Bible is God's Word.  Therefore, the Bible must be perfect.  But, here again there is an underlying assumption: since God is God, God must be perfect, that is all-knowing (omniscient), all-powerful (omnipotent), and all-containing (omnipresent).

As someone who tries to be faithful to Christ, I simply don't buy the assumption.  It's a human, philosophical assumption that one can accept or reject as a philosophy.  I don't accept it because, first, it tends to replace Christ, the Word (John 1) with the Bible, which is a form of idolatry.  Second, those who profess biblical inerrancy have a history of using the Bible as a tool for oppression.  Before the Civil War, southern clergy used the Bible to "prove" the inferiority of black slaves and that slavery itself was part of God's plan.  More recently, biblical literalists have used it to imprison women in second-class citizenship in the church.  Today, they use inerrant scripture to prove that homosexuality is a sin.  These are not Christ-like views.  And in each case, those holding them have to cherry-pick a few biblical passages and then interpret them in ways that generally are out of context.

Third, the assumption itself is simply not necessary.  One can humbly submit oneself to the core teachings of the Bible without believing that it is all perfect.  We can seek to live our lives as Christ taught us in scripture to live them without thinking that the Bible is inerrant.  The thing is, in the Christian tradition, we are firmly convinced that the Holy Spirit works through imperfect humans calling us to faith.  The Spirit was alive in the early church although it was far from perfect.  The Spirit spoke through Peter, Paul, and the other apostles even though none of them were even remotely perfect.  Indeed, Christ himself was a real, physical person with a human body that was decaying day by day, as all of our bodies do.  He was an imperfect human—and the Son of God.  By the same token, we call the church "the body of Christ," and no one ever accused it of perfection.  Still, the Spirit is alive in churches.  As best as I can understand it,  God works with and through the imperfect, calling us forward.

The authority of scripture need not lie, then, in a philosophical perfection that it does not have.  It is a very human document, filled with the stories and the faith of real people who were clearly far from perfection.  It's authority, rather, lies in its witness to the way in which God is actively Present in human history calling us forward to Something New.  Thus, the story of the Exodus is an amazingly inspiring story, which remains powerful in our day—a vision of justice and freedom.  The occupation of Palestine by the Hebrews, well not so much.  It's a story of genocide and race war that we need to see  as being something that ancient folks might have found inspiring, but in the light of Christ we don't.

In the end, it is simply a fact that is clear from the writings of the biblical literalists themselves.  Biblical literalism is all too often used as a cover for personal opinions and prejudices, which undermine the otherwise good intentions of faithful Christians who believe in a perfect Bible.  You see, even if the Bible were perfect, we humans always find ways to taint and tarnish anything, including the Bible.  Even if the Bible were perfect, we simply cannot read it or live it perfectly.  The problem is not, ultimately, the Bible.  It is us.