Church Leadership

By Don Clements

I went to the doctor’s office the other day to seek treatment for a sinus infection. I get them every winter and all I needed was a prescription for an antibiotic.

My regular family practice doctor was in Africa on a mission’s trip. So I had to see a fresh-caught Physicians Assistant. She walked into the room, and as far as she was concerned, I was a blank page. She didn’t know me from the man in the moon. After making some small talk, during which she determined I’d been a patient at this particular group practice for over 10 years, she turned on the computer in the examining room. A few clicks and – Voila’! – she had my medical history for the past 10 years. See? There is a lot of value in history – I got my antibiotic!!

The website of Tulane University’s History Department has a very good description of the value of history. You can read the full definition at http://history.tulane.edu/

In our search for meaning, we examine the meanings that others found. In our contemplation of the historical record, we encounter a broader spectrum of human behavior and values than that which we encounter in our own everyday lives. In doing so, we may develop a wiser understanding of who we are, of what potential we have, of what dangers threaten individuals, families, communities, and nations, and finally what we see as the meaning of life.

But our topic is Church history. We can’t just turn on the computer and learn 10 or 100 or 1000 years of church history, can we? Well, yes we can – but I’m not sure how much of it is of great value to us. Certainly ministers of the Word who attend seminary have to take Church history classes. But not everyone needs that much. Besides, who’s got the time?

One facet of Church history that I have found very useful for my needs was that, immediately upon arrival at a new church, I would dig out all the old Session minutes and read them, at least those for the past thirty years. Amazing what you can learn about a church just from reading all those dusty old Session record books.

But there are aspects of Church history that are of value to just about every church member, at least to those in leadership and teaching positions. One of my favorite pastimes over the years has been reading biographies. Lot’s of people like reading biographies and never realize that they are reading history books. Particularly in the past few years when I have not been preaching regularly and had more time for things of interest, I have made it a practice to try to have at least one biography on my reading table at all times.

But what about Church history in general? Does it matter if I know all that stuff about Martin Luther and John Knox? Does it matter if I know what has happened in the PCA for the past 30 plus years? All I really care about is my own local church and my own personal ministry – and I just don’t have time to worry about all that other stuff. Let me suggest that “all that other stuff” is part and parcel of what ultimately produced your local church, and for that matter, most likely your individual ministry.

Suppose you are a Sunday school teacher? Do you even know who invented Sunday school? And what its original purpose was supposed to be? Perhaps you could better evaluate your ministry by studying the history of John and Charles Wesley and the Methodist movement from which our modern Sunday school design has evolved over the years.

Let’s stick with the Sunday school teacher illustration for a while. What about your curriculum? Where did it come from? Why is it set up the way it is? Why does it teach the specific things it teaches? The lessons here could greatly affect your teaching. To learn the early history of GCP materials, if that is what you are using, and to learn the battles that the men and women who originally formed the Orthodox Presbyterian Church had to go through when they left the liberal Northern Presbyterian Church in the 1930’s and their immediate need to find Biblically based Christian Education materials, you would be thrilled.

Or have you ever heard how GCP went through years of financial struggle and was near to closing their doors when they approached the PCA to ask us to join in a cooperative agreement to keep the presses running?

How about your local church? Does it have a history? Does that history have any effect on you and your family? How has your church history shaped the way it deals with members, on what the preaching from the pulpit is like, how the church is organized, and dozens of other things affecting the church in so many ways that many of us never see? Your church did not just appear one day. It became the way it is today because of events that happened in the past. And those events are what we call church history.

Every individual church has a history. Many of them are written down. Check around and see if you can find yours. If not, check with the PCA Historian at http://www.pcahistory.org/.

And every Presbyterian church has a broader history. The PCA is less than 35 years old, so our history is pretty short. But we will be celebrating the Tri-Centennial of the founding of the first Presbytery in the colonies that became the “good ole US of A”. Wow, a lot of history there. And perhaps a lot of it won’t apply to your particular church. But there are certainly parts of all that history that are important. Where did your church come from? Was it from the old Southern Presbyterian Church or the old Northern Presbyterian Church or from some other small group of Presbyterians? In that history you’ll find a lot of answers to that list of questions I just asked a bit ago.

Perhaps you are part of a much younger congregation formed after the PCA was founded. What was the history of its founding? Why did the leadership back then decide to unite with the PCA? That history will also answer a lot of those questions. You see, past decisions and past events in your church have developed into a story all their own, a history of your church. Likewise, past decisions and past events in the PCA have developed a history of the denomination.

When I was a student at Covenant Seminary, Dr. Will Barker became our Dean of faculty and Professor of Church History. I was in his classroom on his first day of teaching. As he went around the room that first day, he asked each of us to introduce ourselves briefly, especially telling a bit about our background and studies in the field of history.

When it came to my turn, I said something like this: “I have had 3 hours of Western Civ and 3 hours of History of the Old South and they were probably the two most useless classes I ever had as an undergrad!” With that pleasant, comforting smile that is invariably on Will’s face, he said something like, “Well, Mr. Clements, I’ll consider that a challenge to make this one of the most important classes you will have!”

And, wouldn’t you know it, I can honestly say it may have been exactly that – the most important class of my seminary education. It certainly was one of the prime factors that led me to understand the Reformed Faith. You see, learning a little Church history, gives you perspective, from which you can even better understand your church’s doctrine and beliefs.

I recently had a conversation with a young professor of church history at one of our seminaries. We were discussing the importance for all Christians, not just seminary students, to study church history. Many people wonder why they can’t just study the Bible without being concerned with something so seemingly dull and dry as church history.

In the book reviews, we have reviewed a book entitled Pocket History of Theology by Roger Olson and Adam C. English. As I read that book, anticipating writing this column, I was reminded afresh about the importance of knowing our history and tradition. I was also reminded of the time when I did not see the ongoing importance of history or tradition, other than to acknowledge their existence. I remembered how as a seminary student my church history professor, Dr. William Childs Robinson helped me understand differently. However, I must admit that I still had negative leanings regarding tradition because what I had known as tradition was that it referred to something antithetical to Scripture. I had also heard that tradition was often placed on the level of or even above Scripture, especially by the Roman church and that was part of the reason for the Protestant Reformation.

I am so grateful that God later led me to see that while Scripture is our only rule of faith and practice, we do not study the Bible in a vacuum. We need to know about the development of those great creeds, confessions, and doctrines. Men actually gave their lives to formulate some of those doctrines contained in our church creeds and documents we profess to believe. Pocket History of Theology opens up some of those early church people and events that formulated our Christian faith, and some of which was done prior to the accessibility to the written Word. The teaching and tradition of the Apostles, and later church fathers, were essential transmitters of the Christian faith.

In his new book,Evangelicals and Tradition: The Formative Influence of the Early Church, D. H. Williams, professor of religion in patristics and historical theology at Baylor University, explains that both Scripture and tradition are necessary for the process of orthodox teaching, and there is a reciprocal relationship between theology and the life of the church.

“Evangelicals and Tradition: The Formative Influence of the Early Church” gives a thorough introduction into the development of theology in the early church. It does so in a way that highlights the fallacy of those who would say the Bible, and nothing else, is the only necessity for a Christian life. While many of the contemporary churches have failed to use things such as the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed, and others fail to see the importance of the confessions of faith developed over the years, those who do include them in their church’s life and ministry often fail to appreciate the ingredients that went into their development and take the time to explain the process of development to the people.

We have heard the claim that Protestant Christians, in contrast to Roman and Greek Orthodox Christians, are not interested in history and tradition. However, as Williams states, “to be deep in history for evangelical Protestantism need not be and should not be oxymoronic.”

Because discipleship, passing on the faith to the next generations, and teaching the Bible and its doctrines in a life-oriented way are Christian Education and Publications’ missions in the PCA, this book is especially important to us because it explores how the early church catechized Christians and those interested in becoming Christians. Williams observes that while many churches carry on their worship empty of content and without historical significance, those who do incorporate content with historical significance find their worship deepened and enriched by understanding the Scriptures in their historical setting and how that touches our lives.

One segment of the book explains the importance the early church placed on catechizing and discipling. Williams writes:

Evangelicals can learn much from the ancient church’s focus on catechesis, that is, on carefully instructing converts or those preparing to join the church in the biblical and doctrinal fundamentals of the Christian faith. In the preface to his manual of Christian instruction, Gregory of Nyssa declared:

Religious catechism is an essential duty of the leaders ‘of the mystery of our religion’ (I Tim.3:16). By it the Church is enlarged through the addition of those who are saved, while ‘the sure word which accords with the teaching’ (Titus 1:9) comes within the hearing of unbelievers.

….This need for equipping cannot be displaced in favor of simply giving one’s own testimony anymore than a personal experience of faith can be substituted for a reasonable grasp of that faith. If the church, as the apostle phrased it, is ‘the ground and foundation of the truth’ (I Tim 3:15), then, the church’s leadership must not shirk from the critical and time-consuming job of imparting Christian truth or catechizing those who profess to be Christian (154-55).

While reading Williams’ book, along with Pocket History of Theology, I was impressed again and again with the importance that was placed on understanding both the content and practice of the Christian faith for those in the early church. While many of the early believers did not have the Bible and were taught by the catechism method of passing on the tradition of the Apostles orally, this was done with much care and fervor because those Christians were living in a pagan environment where Christians were blamed for all kinds of wrong. As I read, I was reminded that we are living in a non-Christian culture, though there are remnants here and there. If this is true, how much more we need to prepare and equip our covenant people to believe and understand the doctrines of the Christian faith and how to live in a non-Christian environment where there is little to encourage us “to think God’s thoughts after him.”

As you read, you will find obvious comparisons to the early church and our contemporary church. You will also observe the different results in the different methods used, plus you will be reminded that principles such as: “sola Scriptura,” “sola fide” or “priesthood of all believers” are not understood in a vacuum.

God has given us his Word as his revealed will, but has also given us hundreds of years of church history to help us better understand and apply his Word to our life and world. The Apostles passed on that tradition to the early church and through the church to us today. We do not worship in a time warp. We are not existentialists only focusing on the present moment. As evangelical and reformed Christians, we realize that we worship with saints of all the ages and we stand on the shoulders of giants of the faith who have preceded us. Even as we continue to do our theology today, we do so being able to reflect on what has been done in the life of the church and kingdom. And, if we are to pass on the faith to the next generations, we need to have some understanding of how it was passed on to us.

I conclude with a repeat comment from our “Welcome” article in this issue because of its importance today. Recently, I read a comment by Collin Hansen from the Christianity Today Library online that hit me squarely between the eyes. He said, “Evangelicals sometimes don’t know what to do with history…We use history as a euphemism for churches that let allegiance to the past snuff out the Spirit’s work today.” That reminded me of a question in the book One Faith, the Evangelical Consensus, by J. I. Packer and Thomas Oden: “Are evangelicals fragmenting into ever smaller divisions, as some fear?” I quickly researched some of my major works on “evangelicalism.” It dawned on me, while there are general topics dealt with on God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, salvation, etc. in those outstanding books, the topic of the church (ecclesiology) is strikingly absent. Is it any wonder that there are so many para-church organizations, denominations, and a lack of understanding of the church? Could that be contributing to a lack of appreciation, love, and importance of the church for Christians today?

In a recent weekend seminar focusing on making Kingdom disciples, I encountered several questions regarding how the church is to be in the world but not of it. In Making Kingdom Disciples, A New Framework, I give a framework for being in the world but not of the world. The framework requires knowing the Word, knowing what we believe and why, and knowing the transforming effect truth is to have upon our lives. Included in the framework is the need to understand the world–not only to keep ourselves unspotted from the world, but also to know how to better communicate God’s truth in this world. Still, through my study, experience, and analysis I have a number of concerns about the church’s current involvement in our world.

First, as a church, do we completely understand our present situation? Much is going on in our world that is chaotic, fragmented and disconnected, causing us to trivialize the situation and see it has a passing fad. Yet, this very chaos is shaping our lives and culture. Second, if we do understand that what is happening in our world is shaping our culture and lives, do we know what to do about it? Are we prepared to give an explanation for what we believe and why, as the Apostle Peter instructed I Peter 3:15? Third, the church is battling two extremes. One is an indifference to the world around us, demonstrated by caving in to today’s irrational ideas of tolerance and political correctness. The other is capitulating to the world’s culture, busily embracing postmodernism’s pop cultural, market-driven focus where there is more form than substance. This has required a rewrite of Jesus’ Great Commission to read, “as you are going into the world, hold on to your faith but do not challenge others with that truth because after all, who’s to say you are right? Practice your religion in your private world, but do not bring it into the market place lest you be viewed as arrogant, dogmatic, and condescending to those who do not share your beliefs.

Also, as you are going into the world, be careful the topics you talk about lest you offend your neighbor and erect a barrier between you.” Growing out of that discussion and the subsequent questions, I coined a word for that context with which I tried to demonstrate how not to be offensive with our words. The word I flashed on the screen was “indolecism.” I did not want to offend anyone with the word lazy or slothful, but I suggested that I believe one of the reasons the church is ineffective is because Christians are lazy. They are not willing to expend the energy and time to study the situation, which at best produces a Christianity that is focused on me and mine rather than God. We have not understood what has gone before us in history and especially church history; therefore, we continue to fall into the same traps where our very survival is at stake. We would rather embrace the ways of the world to do our thing, even in the name of Jesus, than we would to think with a transformed mind about the world. I say, shame on us; God deserves better than that. Church history is strewn with wreckage of so many attempts of the church to buy into the world’s mold and ideologies, only to run aground and break apart. If we do try to pay attention to history, our tendency, because of the world’s influence, is to see it as simply one event after another with no connecting thread to help us make sense of those incidentals. Hence, we conclude history is relative and what is happening now is about the best I can try to understand, which of course you cannot do in a vacuum. In our seminar on modernity and its impact on our North American situation, I developed a one page schematic beginning with 1600 AD on to 2000 AD. One of the question posed was how North America moved from such a high standard of ethics and morality, which reflected a Christian consensus, to today’s street corner ethics and marketplace morality that has little or no semblance of Christian truth. Again, I concluded with the above group that I did not mean to be simplistic with the charge of indolecism, but we need to commit ourselves to being kingdom disciples who understand the Word and the world, to be thinking with a transformed mind in order to know what God would have us to do.

Those comments led me into a new book by David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs, Christ in a Postmodern World. Wells has already instructed us in the past with other books. This fourth and final volume concludes the series. As I read Above All Earthly Pow’rs, I was encouraged that I was not alone in my concerns as to what is happening in evangelicalism in general and within the evangelical churches in particular. I was reminded of Os Guinness’s challenge in a book we reviewed this year, Prophetic Untimeliness. In our attempt to be up-to-date and make the Gospel relevant, we are actually becoming more and more irrelevant. The church has lost is salt and light on the world today, as a result. We cannot be like that which we challenge and make an impact. David Wells understands today’s world and how we have reached our present circumstance. He demonstrates over and over how we have negotiated, trivialized, or rewritten, by careful editing, the truth of the Gospel all in our attempt to be relevant. What this has done, according to Wells, is to challenge the church’s integrity with its message, therefore asking, does the church have a missional future? Wells clearly demonstrates how the church is not being the church today because it is buying into a spirituality that makes truth peripheral at best. The church, in its paranoia about being relevant has taken on “postmodern habits of thought and even unbelief.” Wells points out that we have jettisoned our Christian orthodoxy by tailoring our message for the new consumer audience.

The problem today is that “truth” appears to have no market value to the non-churched audience and even to some within the church. One example says Wells is how sin is preached, if in fact it is preached. Sin is presented not as an affront to a holy God but that which “harms the individual.” And in some churches, he says all we need to complete the picture of our worship, cast in light entertainment, is “popcorn.” Wells uses statistics to show that America’s belief in God is slipping because we are not giving people something solid to hold to. All is relative or pragmatic and not only is that what the pop culture around us is saying, but that message is reinforced within the evangelical community. He points out that the emergence of postmodernism and growing interest in religion and spirituality define the American culture and neither in themselves should encourage us. The way we are being taught to engage culture is by being like it. He further points out that our task “is not only to understand the nature of biblical truth but also to ask how that truth addresses the issues of the day.” Churches have a God-given assignment to help the people see truth in its preaching and teaching but also to help Christians understand how to engage the world around us. Being a kingdom disciple requires our thinking about God, the Word, the world and especially, as Wells says, the things that the world imposes on us-the workplace, appointments made, people we will meet, and jobs that must be done.

As I read Above All Earthly Pow’rs, I was reminded of a quotation that I have frequently used, “it is not what we think we are–what we think, we are.” Wells says that we do not think enough about the world and why it is as it is, and he is right. For example, I have heard some leading evangelical preachers talk about the revival of spirituality today uncritically, instead of first explaining how today’s interest in spirituality is so different from how the Church has understood spirituality in the past. Wells addresses that very cogently throughout this book. Preachers, teachers, parents, Christians, this is the kind of book we should be reading in our effort to think and live like kingdom disciples. We cannot go with the flow and embrace a form of Christianity without the substance and make a difference. The great commission in Matthew 28 calls us to make a difference, to make kingdom disciples. What we may be hearing in some circles of evangelical may sound relevant, exciting, new, and we are tempted to applaud, but the real question is, does the truth have a life-transforming influence on us and are we making any difference in our world, as a result?

In summary: