The Church of God had it Right All Along...

I had a short chat with my senior pastor on Sunday after church that really got me thinking about the future of ecclesiology and the mindsets of Christians within our context and that of my context when I'm his age. We were reflecting on the patterns we've seen in our experiences of the Church and he remarked, "I think the Church in general is moving towards a real Church of God theological perspective, but I don't think the Church of God, or any other denomination, really likes it!"

He really had a pretty good point. As I think about some of the Church of God distinctives, what comes to mind right away are membership, sacraments, ecclesiology and theology.

• Certainly theology sets the Church of God apart. What is strange is that, even though Wesleyan holiness is the main theological vein in the movement, there is a general openness to other theological perspectives that, although limited, is less limited than other traditions. It also leaves room for a theological perspective that is not "sold out" to either one side or the other - neither 100% Calvinistic nor 100% Arminian or another theological perspective. Its rare to find purists like this outside seminaries anymore, and this seems to fit in fine with a Church of God perspective.
  
• Secondly, the Church of God has always seen itself as a movement more than a denomination. Sure, there's denominational tendencies that are inescapable, but the movement has a core value of individual church autonomy and state-by-state autonomy. This is certainly a trend in the Church at large, even in the heavily-centralized traditions such as Methodism or Lutheranism. The focus is less and less on the denomination as a centralized power and more on the denomination as a willing association of churches.
• Thirdly, the overarching feeling in the Church at large on the topic of sacraments seems to be less sacramental than ever in terms of mystery. Certainly, they are still seen as a symbol and as a tangible reflective instrument, but little more.
• Finally, the Church of God's approach to membership at its outset may have been well ahead of its time. Its approach says that all Christians are automatically members of the Church and thus they have no reason for keeping membership data. Free movement between individual churches is not that big of a deal in our movement and all Christians, regardless of where they worship on Sunday morning, are considered full brothers and sisters (communicated most directly through an open table). A recent article in the Grand Rapids Press highlighted the very fact that this is a trend across Christendom and we all have to deal with it. People are no longer swayed by the name on the front of the building.

Now, these are interesting points, but in our estimation, these will be even more interesting in 40 years. For now, there is still a good chunk of the Church that is over 60, many of which who are still loyal to a name on a building or a family's direct history with an individual church. What will all this mean for the Church in 40 years. While some might think this is profoundly scary, I think its profoundly hopeful - pushing the Church to focus on holistic, missional ministry and a community-based approach. Churches who are still relying on their denominational affiliation or a family loyalty will probably close their doors - and that's probably alright. Maybe the Church of God had it right all along...

Labrynthspel - Walking the Line

First of all, my apologies for, once again, taking a month off from blogging. I had a rough end of December/beginning of January that caused me to reflect, but now I'm back on track and no less tantalizing or scintillating than before. Also, as most of my good blogging ideas do, this has come to me paired up with another....so a second blog entry has been written and will be posted shortly.

Now then, when I was younger, we had this game closet which stored all the crappy games my mom had picked up at rummage sales - some busted, others boring, and the occasional cool one. Most confusing to me, however, was one of these monstrosities you'll see on the right, a labrynthspel. "A what?" you might ask. A labrynthspel. Essentially they consist of two floating wooden surfaces controlled by knobs on two connected sides, one to control the north/south movement, if you will, and one to control the east west movement. The idea is to keep the tilt correct enough so that the marble which is sitting on the top of the board doesn't fall in one of the holes, but rather, makes it through the maze to the other corner.

Today, I had a conversation with another student who's having a rough time seeing themselves as Christian Reformed - not because of the theology, but because of the people and because of the practice. I have to admit that this is something I struggle with a lot, even being told point blank, "Mark, you're not CRC!" Maybe I am just embarking on a vocational facade, trying to be a non-CRC pastor in the CRC church. Maybe the only people who "get me" are the fringe home missions-types who challenge the norm. Maybe I should just stick with the Church of God or go non-denom or just find a denomination that isn't so out of character for me.

But my conversation today helped. He was complaining to me that CRC people are just too obsessed with "walking the line" when it comes to our engagement with the culture. You know the line - being in the world, but not of it - engaging and transforming culture rather than sticking our heads in the sand. This is what Dordt College is all about! But his argument went something like this: people in the CRC go too far to the "worldly" side of things - they immerse themselves so much in culture that there is not enough distinguishable difference between Christians and the world. There are just some things that Christians shouldn't do. Porn would be an easy example...but what about television, what about movies (and what kind of movies) - oh, and what about music? You know, even the Christian music market has become dreadfully commercial, so should we boycott that, too? All this is very confusing.

It has been fascinating to work in the Church of God, a holiness denomination, which stresses holy living, perhaps best represented by the commonly heard phrase, "We don't smoke, drink, dance or chew, or hang around with those that do." Many of our older members can quote that off the top of their heads as the common refrain of their parents. My senior pastor recently attended a denominational pastor's retreat where the issue of alcohol use came up among new people applying for ordination, often a common theme in emerging-type churches. While it fascinates me that they can hold to any sort of belief as a non-confessional "movement", it fascinates me even more that they tow the party line on alcohol for no apparent reason. Even my senior pastor, who is a tetoller like myself, admits that there's no real Biblical support for the position, its more of a traditional purist holiness party line. But its a line.

Now, granted, the Church of God or Wesleyans in general might have more lines than the CRC does, but it doesn't line off everything! In fact, it only tends to line things off that are culturally contextual (alcohol is a no-no in the American Church of God, but the German wing drinks). So, in the Church of God, we've got lines, but they're limited in scope and rationality.

What my friend was arguing with me was that, in the CRC, we need more lines. He said that, because we have so much ambiguity and allow for so much Christian freedom in so many areas, fallen people have no real direction to go other than a downward spiral. He argued, like my ethics professor, that Christians can get involved in politics and movies and the like, but the risk of falling into that lifestyle far outweighs the possibility of redeeming it, and especially to what extent it will be redeemed.

This hit me hard as a Dordt College Defender. After all, Luke Schelhaas, writer for "Touched by an Angel" and "Smallville" was touted as the heroic alumni for engaging culture and attempting to redeem it. What about Kuyper describing Christ as shouting over every square inch of creation, "This is mine!"? What about Colson arguing for Christian worldview defining the approach as Christian or secular instead of defining the action as Christian or secular? There might not be Christian art or Christian music, but there sure as heck is a way to do art or music as a Christian in a redemptive way. I actually side with Carl Zylstra on this one....I don't have to go to NC-17 movies to reach my culture for Christ, but I sure as heck better be engaging His good creation.

Still not convinced? How about this. There's really only two extremes here when it comes to "worldly actions" or "worldly amusements" as the CRC has historically called them. On the one hand, you could fully submerge yourself with culture, like a chameleon, unable to tell you apart from your backdrop. The other option is the Amish one - pull yourself completely out of culture and try to be affected by it the least. Anything else is a matter of discernment. Yup, I just said it. Let's take TV as a good example. You've really got three logical options as a Christian. First, you watch whatever you want to, whenever you want to and get sucked in little by little. Second, you don't have a TV at all. Once again, good logical option, especially if you follow my friend's logic. Third, you keep the TV, count technology as a good gift of God's creation and watch TV in a Christian way. That isn't a comment on posture or on which channels or on maximum TV rating - it is an example of starting with a Christian worldview, enjoying God's creation and practicing discernment. What is not logical is dumping cable out of moral precept and keeping the TV for local channels. Half an apple is still apple. So, I would argue that for almost every forseeable action and worldly amusement, there are two Christian approaches: abstain or engage with discernment.

But here's my issue. I don't like drawing lines in the sand where Scripture does not. My Greek professor at Seminary said one thing I actually valued: "Shout what Scripture shouts and whisper what Scripture whispers" - be obnoxious about the obvious things, and tread lightly on things where Scripture goes either way. The CRC is not Mennonite and it is not holiness and its not fundamentalist. What it is is a culturally-engaging denomination. But with privilege comes responsibility. What my friend saw was selling out to culture - a moral decay within the CRC community that was as bad or worse than the one outside it. So we've reached the crux of the matter: if we are going to be a denomination or a Church that walks the line, then we sure as heck better be preaching discernment.

If you're going to throw rocks at culture, throw rocks at culture. If you're going to abstain from culture, abstain from it. But, by all means, if you are going to engage culture for Christ, then you better be constantly practicing discernment. For pastor and leaders in general, it is our responsibility to remind people where they are walking the line. Teach discernment - teach engagement. But pastors must also be thermometers - able to tell if a group is swinging too far in one direction or the other. When you normalize an audio file, you pitch the extremes - the high sounds and the low sounds. We need to realize in which directions we're overstepping the boundaries and swing the crux of the people back to the middle again. The pastor is like the labrynthspel operator, tilting the table back and forth, trying to keep the balance because discerned balance is a commitment of the church he represents.

Especially as a postmodern, blurry lines with boundaries are good - in fact, they're all over in Christianity. But we need to keep reminding ourselves and others that we're walking the line.

Experiencing God Diffently in Worship

This past weekend was the General Assembly of the Church of God in Michigan, and I served my role as a delegate. This is my second year going, and so I'm more free to notice things rather than try to remember everyone's names and network with lots of new people.

I had a sort of epiphany during our closing worship service. Our worship leader was an African-American woman who I thought looked like Condoleeza Rice and her TV anchorman husband on the bass guitar. She had lots of energy and was a great worship leader....for her context. I was sitting up in the front corner, so I got a chance to observe almost everyone in the place. First of all, I noticed her own son, with his head on the table, probably napping-clearly uninterested sitting at the table next to me. Next I noticed the large contingent of African-American leaders in the group experiencing worship like they had been all weekend - fists pumping, amen-ing, mmhmm-ing, raising hands, etc. Then I noticed a large contingent of middle-aged white people: a little milder than their African-American cohorts, but still with hands raised, swaying, pointing to heaven, etc. I noticed the few people in my age group (20-30), mostly youth pastors, interacting with the music but not selling out. Finally, I noticed my table, good stone-faced Danish people from my church, similar to the Dutch ones I'd grown up with.

All this got me to thinking: how do I experience God, and do I look down on other people if they experience Him differently? I'm met with this constantly in Detroit at Sinai-Grace Hospital. Often times, the God of the African-American Baptist people I talk with seems so much different than my own that I feel like I have more coherence with my Orthodox Rabbi professor. In that case, it may just be that my Rabbi is used to putting his theology into logical categories, like I am. In worship, I'd probably place myself between the arm-folded Danes and the charismatic middle age types.

I think one of the ways that this really rears its head is worship style. The truth of the matter is that those of us who are worship leaders have all drank the "experiential" kool-aid to some extent. We have to because its undeniable. What's interesting for us as is that our jobs, by their very nature, seem to require us to pander to whatever the current generation is because we're at a point in time where the way people experience God has changed drastically and distinctly in the last 50 years. We still have people in our benches that experience God best through straight-up organ hymns. Then, even though the CRC seems to completely have missed this step, there is an entire generation of "big worship" people. This is the classy-suited-big-haired-mega-church style people who sing all songs that were popular from about 1985-1993 (Majesty & Thy Word are classics and, interestingly, not that dissimilar). There's a surprisingly large amount of these people - they're Wimber's folks - raising hands, yelling amens, but still very skeptical of modern worship or emerging church stuff. Finally, there's this whole generation coming up now that identifies with the emerging style of worship or the Chris-Tomlin-modern style of worship. Add into that a fairly consistent worship African-American gospel style, and you've got 4 different kinds of oil being thrown into water.

So, is it okay to say one way is preferable to another, or do we have to acknowledge all as equally good, in true politically-correct style? Now, I regularly get disgusted when I watch Christian cable television, even though I know many churches in the South that eat that stuff up. I find the theology of many of the patients (and the pastors) I meet in Detroit poorly-formed and illogical (not just because I disagree, but I objectively think its illogical). You can really take this argument a long way. If your experience of God is co-equal with everyone else's (as my CPE program tells me it is), then you have zero basis for questioning an experience that is Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, or Hindu. These are just different experiences of God, be they in other faiths, or in other theologies (ways of talking about God).

Ultimately, someone has to make some sort of qualitative statement, so here goes one try: I think that emerging/modern worship is more seeker-friendly than "big worship" or organ-based hymns. Now that might evoke a "duh" out of you because you know there's no churchplant in any denomination that has ported in a pipe organ in the last 10 years, but really, that's a judgmental statement. Do I think there's a place for other experiences of God? Yes. But I think we have to be realists here. Churches that have not gotten modern, emerging or experiential in their worship have shrunk, as a general rule. Now, there are churches that do traditional worship REALLY well that manage to grow, but I would offer that quality tradition is simply a better prescription for delay of the inevitable than others have found.

So try this on for size: I felt uncomfortable in our GA's worship service today because of all the amen-ing, hand-raising, fist-pumping, liturgical-dancing, and old-people-that-can't-clap-on-the-beat. And, for a while, I felt guilty for being uncomfortable. After all, I'm a worship pastor, I should be able to "get into" all sorts of worship, and usually I can. But I couldn't help thinking to myself: if I took a non-Christian in here right now, they would be scared shitless and think we are crazy. Now, some might say its because the Spirit was moving. But last I checked, the Spirit also empowered mission and God is not in conflict with Himself. I don't have a good answer for this question, but I do know that I can be most faithful to my calling by playing coffee-house-style-white-20-something worship music in my context and its growing the Kingdom. By their fruits shall you know them. Can we be evaluative of people's ways of experiencing God, or is that just politically incorrect?

Professional Jesus People

Somewhere down the road (although it scares me), I may wind up as a senior pastor or even a solo pastor at a church. At some points, this is really exciting....something I really look forward to. At other times, I think I'd like to keep the job I have forever.....hanging out with teenagers and playing my guitar for a living.

What perhaps frustrates me most about being a pastor are some of my future colleagues. To be sure, this is no slam against my senior pastor, who is one of the most laid back and socially adequate pastors I've ever met. What drives me crazy, however, is the constant flow of pastors who come back to my seminary classes and try to impress the professor or us as seminarians with their large storehouse of knowledge. A couple semesters ago, we had this guy in one of our classes who we called "Professor Student". He was obsessed with sharing every bit of knowledge he had ever acquired and pumping up his own abilities in Greek and constantly reminding us how we were still in seminary and "not there yet". Yesterday, one of these guys just reeled off four sentences in Hebrew while he talked about how he uses it so effectively in his ministry.

I know the church he comes from...its floundering. Maybe try some English.

There's a catch 22 here. Having feet in two denominations has opened my eyes about the necessity of seminary education. Its obvious that certain pastors and leaders in my current denomination would have benefited (some just a little, but some huge amounts) from a mandatory seminary education. Firstly, the Biblical knowledge and theological perspective would help. However, exposure to ministry in different settings and the cross-fertilization of ideas would benefit them greatly. On the other side, ministry in the CRC seems to be defined by intellectuality, and it drives me crazy! When churches want to call you as a pastor, they want to hear your sermon tapes, as if sermons are the only thing you do. In order to get my license to preach in CRC churches, I have to promise to preach Christian Education and Heidelberg Catechism. Never mind relevance. I've taken multiple "exegesis" classes, learning how to interpret the scriptures for preaching and teaching. What did we do? Memorize the original languages. Argh. Today we discussed how we would teach about the Hebrew language and applications of the Jewish mishnah in adult bible study classes by lecturing. Wow.

One of the things that really cracks me up is the pride that pastors take in programmatic development and how closely its success is related to themselves. I addressed this in my most recent sermon. We always view ourselves so highly, as if our churches would become a hole in the ground if we would leave or somehow the passing down of the gospel will cease if I am not the facilitator. Shame on us.

My greatest concern when I go to fill pulpit supply now is not how prepared my sermon is, or how well I can announce songs (because everyone knows hymns are the only music we use), but whether or not I'll get a swift kick for not wearing a suit. If being a preacher means wearing a suit on Sundays, dressing up like a bank owner during the week, trying to dispense knowledge at every turn, and enjoying the sound of my own voice, then I'll stick with plucking my guitar.

Letters from Arminia

Once upon a time, there was me. Me, being a good little Reformed boy knew the Heidelberg Catechism like the back of my hand. For fun, I used to page through the tune name index of the gray hymnal and looking for congruences between the Canons of Dort and the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Now I find myself in a place where none of that really matters, where we daily walk the line between the Church falling apart and staying together, and where I learn lessons everyday about how the majority of Christendom operates. This is Arminia.

Not very many towns in America are absent of some sort of Presbyterian Church. The ones that are usually have some sort of UCC or Reformed presence somewhere in their midst. Rarely, especially in Michigan, do you find a town where there is not a Reformed soul to be found. A town where the Lutherans are almost ready to close the last of their 3 churches, the baptists welcome people to town with condemning phrases from the KJV, and the Christian minority is almost entirely Catholic, Congregationalist or Wesleyan. Welcome to Greenville.

I wouldn't be surprised if I was the first Calvin Seminary student/graduate every to work in this town, of if I was the first commuter to the Calvin campus in the city's long history. Reformed thought is irrelevant here, it would seem.

Ironically, however, I would like to dissuade people from believing that Arminians are inevitably bent on their own personal choice to the exclusion of all else, that they baptize every congregant every Sunday, and that a Reformed person can get chewed up and spit out within a few Wesleyan sermons. I believe that this is untrue just as much as I believe its untrue that election is a core belief in many of our Reformed communities in this country. The Church is a melting pot, just like the US, and that might just be okay.

People often ask me how I can exist at an Arminian church. How can you reconcile your beliefs with theirs? How can you sit through a worship service, a sermon, an altar call? How do you deal with perfectionism and the like?

Many people describe my senior pastor and I as people who have "agreed to disagree" on some theological topics, and since we get along well, you might think that. However, I think the greater truth is that we both acknowledge what I wrote about in my previous blog. Calvinism and Arminianism, while both eloquent and well defended against one another, are simply a peephole into the grandness and wondrousness that is the actual theology of God, or that which God knows about himself. How we speak about God, our theology, is but a speck of dust compared to God's theology, or how he speaks about himself. If any theologian would deny that to me, I think I might have to pop him in the face.

My senior pastor, Dave, is not an hard-core Arminian. He does not believe that people can achieve perfection this side of glory, as Wesley hinted at in his later years. He's offended by determinism and fatalism, the flaws that he sees in Reformed thought, especially hyper-Calvinism. But then again, so am I. I shudder at the thought that we're just stagnated linemen on some cosmic foosball table, and I don't think its Biblical either. I like theologians, like Aquinas, who give me a way out here. They identify God as the primary actor, but do not push the ideas of election/predestination/etc. While I might confess those if you held a sword to my neck, its not necessary for my daily ministry that I push those on my laity. In fact, I think Dave and I would both say quite openly that while we're comfortable in our own theological recliners, neither of us would be surprised if, at the end of time, Jesus lays out a far different theology than anything Calvin, Wesley, Aquinas, Augustine, Luther, Chrysostom, or anyone else has laid out. Why? They're not God.

While we've come a long way from the way Calvin treated Servetus and how the Reformers treated the Anabaptists, its sad that we really still just don't get it. In communities around the world, ecumenism is broken down by theological cockiness. There are a lot of pastors and churches that just plain weird me out. Some of them are Arminian, some of them are Reformed, and some of them are so "out there" that I can't identify them. Recognize the affinity that you have with people across denominational lines because they, like you, hold up the primacy of Scripture, which is so trampled in today's world and because learn from the things they do better than you. Our church's worship library is now a fully-integrated Reformed/Wesleyan resource, and I hope the same would be true if I find myself in a Reformed congregation someday.

Few Reformed people get the opportunity that I get to see the inner workings of a solid, comparable, Arminian denomination from as up close and personal as you can get. I continue to urge as many people from both sides of the table to sit down and talk....sit down and cooperate. Often times, you will have far more in common than you think. And remember, no matter how big your allegiance to Calvin, Luther, Aquinas, or Wesley is, your greater allegiance is to the Lamb of God, who is not a follower of any of those four. Let God's theology of Himself and His Church increase as your theology of God and His Church decreases. And let all churches, Calvinistic and Arminian alike, ascent "soli deo gloria."

Points of Contact

I've had an increasing number of conversations in the past couple weeks about the fact that there is a difficult balance in churches between creating a community within a congregation (or tradition) and making that a gated community. There's two particular situations which have come to my attention because of my current position, which has both led me to see things in the denomination I currently serve and, for the first time, being an outsider of my other denomination within an observable distance. Its also come from conversations with pastors, parishoners, class discussions, and other observations. What I don't mean to do is call anyone out or be abrasive, for all of the communities I will talk about are communities which I have grown to love.

A Tale of Two Islands
The town which I live in has various ministry opportunities and challenges which I've addressed previously, but our community is one that encompasses a large portion of rural community surrounding it because we're the last outpost with retail/restaurants before the dead expanse which is central Michigan. For this reason, our church draws from not just one community, but rather four or five within 20 miles of the city. Throughout my travels and interactions thus far, I have been able to profile other churches in our community, for good or for ill. We have two faith communities in our larger geographic area which stand out to me as similar: the Amish community to the north, and the Christian Reformed community to the south. At first glance, my CRC readers will wonder at this comparison, but that's intended. The similarity? Both communities have few points of contact with the community at large. In my interactions with community church groups, shopping, eating out, etc., I've never once run into a CRC person, although I often meet Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, and Congregationalists. Of course, the Amish shoot for this "set-apart"-ness, but what causes CRC folk to be like that? The first and most obvious thing to me is Christian school/public school dynamic. I attend public school events weekly (sometimes more often) such as sporting events, concerts, etc. There I meet members of other churches and non-believers. People care passionately about their local school system, often even more than their own church. I would suspect that if one of my parishoners were to try and establish a friendship with a family who sent their kids to the Christian school (which is sequestered out in the country, just like the Amish school), their conversations would not go all that far because the experience is not common enough. For the Amish and the CRC, both churches lie about five miles out of town, and this symbolic non-presence in the community is not overcome easily because its practical effects are far-reaching. The second is a class issue. The local CRC's in our area are suspected by people of being upper middle class. Once again, having expendable income for Christian education is not something most of our parishoners can understand. Upper middle class people often have a much higher liturgical preference, as well. We've discussed this with other churches in our town, which is progressively becoming lower class. People don't want academically-driven preaching and high liturgy. That was hard for me to swallow as a worship planner/preacher, but its true. This was reinforced by a CRC pastor I met with who ministers in inner city Grand Rapids. Even though his people live in close proximity to the church (which is rare for the inner part of GR), they can't make inroads into the community for the same two reasons: kids are in different schools and class issues. Schools are the centers of community life, often, and if those communities are different than the larger community, points of contact are diminished greatly. Five years ago, I might have resonated with this concept, but I see it now much more clearly: I want you to join my church, but I won't invest my time or children into your schools, and you should worship on my terms. Don't take me as nay-saying Christian education or the CRC, or even our local one (they do a great community pre-school). Plus, Christian schools paid the bill for our house for the first 18 years of my life. However, if we are going to willingly forfeit huge quantities of points of contact with our communities, then it would be an offense to the Great Commission if we don't put programs and attitudes in place to counteract these effects. The

Plank in Our Own Eye
I would be remiss to cast stones at the Amish and CRC here if I'm not willing to look at the denomination I currently serve as well. If we're talking about created communities without gating them, its important to identify where our possible gates might go up. For the last two examples, its physical distance from the community, schooling choices, liturgical preference, class limitations, etc. For the Church of God, at least one of these is denominational association. I have had multiple people come talk to me about how greatful they are that I've come in from another tradition because I don't speak Church of God-ese. This denomination has such great ministries, a great intellectual tradition, great inter-connections. All these things are great, and we gain great benefit from them. However, when an outsider who comes in, its often difficult to learn that denominational language. What's Anderson? Why are adults going to camp? Who is considered Youth? What is State? I thought St. Louis was in Missouri. What are heritage songs? What's a Jesus Birthday Offering? What's the difference between SYC, IYC, ISL, ATL and YISL? Good questions! I've finally figured some of them out, but these types of things are big hinderances to someone coming in from the outside. My wife and I were talking the other day about how learning this Church of God language helps us reflect upon similar community gating in our denomination of origin. Most notable among these is Christian education, but liturgical inaccessibility and theological snobbery/preoccupation are other major concerns as we observe the CRC from the outside.

Ungating the Community
If there's any sort of conclusion to be made, I think that all churches and denominations face these kinds of issues, but it is the responsibility of the particular group to counteract the effects of their potential community gating. Christian education and denominational community are both good things, but can become pitfalls if they become the major concern of the given body. Counteracting these will hopefully give us the points of contact with our communities that lend themselves to reaching out to others in the name of Jesus.

A Foot-Washing Hierarchy

I haven't been on the job very long at my new Church of God family in Greenville, but the entirety of my two months in this denomination has taught me vast things about differences and similarities between it and my previous two denominational experiences (Christian Reformed and PCUSA).

First and foremost, my experience thus far has further engrained in me the utter silliness of denominational differences. Some people find me to be wacky, unorthodox or impractical when I make statements like that, but its the truth. Greenville is very similar to Salem, NY, the city I served in a couple years ago, and similar to many cities in this nation right now, from many accounts. The fact of the matter is that the Church is in the dying minority in so many cities across our nation, whether we will admit it or not. Some of these cities, like Salem and Greenville, have this to a more advanced extent than others. Its hard to believe that a city 30 minutes from Grand Rapids could have such a small population of Christians, but my initial estimates put this city at about 1 in 15 weekly attending Christians.

1 in 15.

What that means, in conjunction with the massive poverty and job loss in our community, is that we have no choice but to bond together. Unfortunately, it is often the tough times that cause our bonding, but it is bonding nonetheless. I meet monthly with a group of youth pastors who span Lutheran, Catholic, Congregational, Orthodox Presbyterian, Non-Denominational, and myself from the Church of God. Our pastor is involved in similar groups which do similar sorts of ecumenical ministry. We need eachother and the rest of the denominational world will figure that out at some point, I know. One more point for comparison. Having been intimately involved with my past 3 congregations, West Hebron, Calvary, and Greenville First, I am willing to make the bold statement that, minus infant baptism & Catechism references, the worship, the confession, the committee structures, and even the sermons would be interchangeable at face value. That's quite a statement in and of itself - and its not one I made, rather it is one they are each making to the world, implictly ecumenical if not explicity.

Enough of a prologue. The real point of this blog is to affirm something in the Church of God that I am both fascinated with and covet for my own faith tradition in the Reformed faith: hierarchy. If you are a good modern Calvinist, you'll regard what I just said as a cuss word. After all, that's what we split from! We hated the corruption that Catholic hierarchy brought. We were even disdained at Luther's holdover, and more recently, the Anglicans/Episcopalians. However, what we gained by eliminating that hierarchy is burning out pastors today at an alarming rate not only in the CRC, but in others like her who leave pastors of churches as lone rangers.

A contrast is helpful. Church groups in the Church of God in the US are done by state. It helps to have a large enough denomination to do this, but its the geographical thought that counts. So far, there's an analogy in the classical system of the CRC. As opposed to the typical classis, however, whose meetings last for a morning on a Saturday, State General Assembly meetings are a two-day event with live worship, fellowship and pastoral education. The state affiliation goes far beyond this two-day event, however. The state hires its own staff. We have a state pastor, a state youth pastor, and numerous other employees that facilitate the work of the individual congregations. Underneath the state pastor are several regional pastors who look after and mind pastors at churches as well as serving their own.

One of the key benefits of this system is that pastors are not left out to dry. Most pastors start as associate pastors with a bachelor's degree working under an experienced pastor. Some go to seminary, but some move straight on to ordination. Whoa! People need seminary! Really? How much do you know about St. Augustine or others in the middle ages who became pastors by mentorship or apprenticing. Just a conspiracy theory to try on for size: Could it be that non-hierarchical traditions need seminaries as a buffer because toughness is essential since once these students achieve ordination they are on their own? A seminary student is now judged ready for ministry by a psychologist's recommendations, rather than an apprenticeship. Calvin Seminary recently abandoned its traditional 2 concurrent years and 1 year internship field education requirements for a Lilly-dictated 15 weeks of real pastoral experience before ordination. 15 weeks before we set pastors loose in the church!

15 weeks.

This is not to say the CRC isn't making moves in this direction. It has to. In my estimation, that need will grow if we refuse to apprentice our young pastors with different levels of readiness. The CRC has created a Pastor-Church Relations office and an initiative called Sustaining Pastoral Excellence which provides opportunities for mentorship, peer learning, and continuing education. Unfortunately, these are still very optional. My home classis recently hired a part-time classical youth coordinator, which is an inspired move for a classis of small churches. We must acknowledge the benefits of regionalization and localization of ministries within the denomination. We're beginning to see it, but I want to point out the beauty of the Church of God's structure. No pastor is a lone ranger: they cannot be. I am thankful to be a part of both traditions during formative years as a young pastor. May our future pastors be open to this kind of molding.