I was asked to write a post about "getting along with your denomination", and this is what came out. I'm presenting it in three parts, because it's too long for one post. This is part two. Part one can be found here.
A Unique Flavor
The connectedness of a denomination is not just creeds and confessions, but "flavors" of Christianity that are preserved in a unique form. Denominations typically represent more than just a particular theological approach to the Christian faith; they also preserve perspectives on the Christian faith that can inform the church at large.
I had been looking at our denomination in the 21st century and wondering, "where do I fit?" It was easy to pick apart the shortfalls and flaws and the infighting and the confusion and I wondered why God had put me where he had put me. I remembered the moment when my heart began to change.
The book I was reading was Philosophers who Believe. It was a collection of Christian testimonies from leading 20th century philosophers, and I was captivated by a philosopher named Alvin Plantinga. I went on to pick up his book, God and Other Minds, among others, and was mesmerized by his intellect, and his ability to articulate the Christian faith in a way that was clear and rationale and didn't feel the need to resort to simple platitudes of "just have faith's" and "just believe's". It felt like I had found someone who spoke my language.
To my initial dismay but ultimate delight, I realized that he was a member of my denomination, and furthermore, that the history of our denomination had always been to engage the sciences and the intellect through the lens of God's sovereignty and his Scripture. I was dismayed that my denomination wasn't as terrible as I thought it was (pride, remember?) but was delighted when I began to see why God had put me where he did. It wasn't that Plantinga spoke my language; it was that I was learning that there was a whole denomination of people who had preserved a particular flavor of intellectual faith throughout their history, and now I was a part of it.
Honor the Tradition
Denominations are often criticized for being slow-moving, difficult to change, and in many cases, stuck in their traditions. Anyone who has ever been a part of one knows how true that can be! It is an unfortunate reality that many of our sister denominational churches would be the most relevant church on the block...if it was 1960!
Some traditions have to be de-emphasized, if not removed altogether. They are just preferences of a culture that has long since passed; organs, carpet colors, maybe even hymn books. Even so, we need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater! What may be slow-moving, slow-to change elements of tradition might have a historicity to them that would make us blush if we knew what we were rejecting–or what we were doing to the elderly saints who hold them dear.
I was preaching at a denominational church not too long ago. Most of the congregation at the service I typically lead is very elderly. A few of them are first generation immigrants who came to the United States at a young age. I knew that the church was going through some changes, and that the general complaint was that some of the elderly folks were being sticks-in-the-mud and holding up the process. It would have been easy to think to myself–as I had on occasion–that the problem was simply that these elderly people had just never heard the Gospel! Surely, if they had, they'd be willing to change!
My sermon that night mentioned Corrie Ten Boom, and I talked about her family watch shop, and how she brought in refugees from Germany who were trying to escape the concentration camps. Eventually, Corrie was captured by the Gestapo and spent many years in a concentration camp herself, preaching the Gospel and providing hope and comfort to the other women who were there with her.
After the sermon, a man came up to me with tears in his eyes, and he began to tell me his story:
"I remember growing up in Holland when I was just a boy. My family owned a farm, and we were relatively far out in the country. When the war started, and the refugees began coming by, my parents knew that we needed to take them in, like many of the other Christian families were doing. We knew that we needed to have a hiding place for the refugees in the event that the Gestapo came looking.
We originally decided that we'd hide them in the haystacks in the barn, but eventually changed our minds. Since we were out in the country, we knew we'd get a warning if the Gestapo was ever on their way. We decided that a better hiding spot was in the canal. We made long straws for them, and they would hide under the water in the canal and breathe through the tube. The first time that the Gestapo came by, the first thing they did was take pitch forks and jam them into the haystacks.
I remember what my mother used to tell us every time the Gestapo came by. Before they got there, she would sit us down and say, "kids, tonight we might be with Jesus. But if not, then he has more work for us to do."
And then we would pray."
The man's eyes were filling with tears as he reached the end of the story, and the deep love of his heart was being made clear. I don't know if he was one of the ones who was being the proverbial stick-in-the-mud, but who might have blamed him if he was? The tradition of the church wasn't just a preference for him; it was a stabilizing force that withstood the test of dark times. It wasn't a lack of Gospel knowledge–in fact, most 21st century American Christians probably need a reminder of how cushy our lives actually are–it was a deep reminder for him that God was sovereign and that Jesus was in control.
That's not necessarily an excuse to stand in the way of continued reformation and change, but it's a good reminder that some of our brothers and sisters have carried the mantle of the Gospel through times darker than most of us have yet to experience.
Every hoop has a story
When I joined the denomination, I knew I was going to have to jump through a variety of hoops. (It occurs to me that I have no idea where that expression comes from, only what it means!) I knew that there would be red tape. I knew there would be some politics involved. I knew that we wouldn't be able to do things as quickly as we wanted to do them. It's easy to criticize the hoops as unnecessary bureaucracy, and in some cases that's exactly what they are. It's also easy to forget that every hoop has a story.
Every year, our governing body (called "Synod") gets together with representatives from each local church grouping (called a "Classis") and makes decisions for the body as a whole. Some of these decisions end up as addendum or supplements to "Articles" in our Church Order. It's hard enough to keep up with it when it happens year after year, and the latest edition of the Church Oder is published, let alone when you realize that this has been going on for a long, long time.
That's why the restrictions or guidelines or failsafes or checks and balances feel like "hoops". We're so removed from the original institution of them that we forget that there is typically a reason that they were put in place, and it's typically because something happened that the leadership of the church wanted to avoid in the future.
In that sense, the "hoops" are like the legal language that's listed in the small print on the bottom of a child's toy or the upside-down-kid-head-first-in-the-bucket picture that's on every bucket larger than 2 gallons that you've ever purchased. Somewhere along the line a kid decided to dive into a bucket and the company felt like it would be safer moving forward to warn everyone about the dangers of that activity.
Or, in religious terms, it's like the Pharisees who added boundary laws upon boundary laws to make really-super-sure that no one would ever break the actual law of God. We read the Gospels and laugh at them and fail to realize that at some point, these guys were serious about keeping the law of God and doing what was right in the eyes of God. Yes, they became self-righteous. Yes, over time they missed the point. Yes, Jesus needed to call them out and redirect their confidence from their own righteousness towards the righteousness of Jesus. And all of this must often be done in the denominational context, particularly in the 21st century.
But behind every hoop or boundary law that's put in place is a desire to honor the holiness of God and the righteousness of his church. It's a desire to protect ourselves from ourselves. It's a desire to hand down a clear Gospel message to the next generation. Sometimes the denomination gets in it's own way in the long run, but it's a lot easier to redirect when we understand that the goal was always Jesus Christ and the oversight of His Bride, the church.