Fellow Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Thank you for taking the time to read my appeal. We share a common bond with each other in that we have been chosen by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to build His kingdom on earth by being His disciples and making disciples along the way. It is because of this bond that I write to you now.
We do not live in the first century. Italy or Israel or Turkey is not our home. The Lord has by divine design placed us in North America in the twenty-first century.
Nor are we out of necessity called by Him in any way to return to the ancient world from which our Bible was crafted. Rather, we are called to press on toward the goal. Whatever that goal is, we should agree that achieving it is done by going forward, not backward.
I find many within our expression of faith frustrated with the direction we are headed. They see the church as having become too worldly. They would say it is too focused on earthly wisdom when it comes to making decisions for how local congregations should conduct themselves. It is true; many Evangelical churches model themselves in the likeness of corporate North America. They encourage pastors to act like CEOs, concerned with developing five-year strategies wrapped in a pseudo-spiritual label called vision casting. They refer to the men and women who lead their churches as boards of elders or directors. They make decisions using voting systems like Robert’s Rules of Order and they appoint chairmen and secretaries and treasurers. As a pastor of a small church, in some ways, I sympathize with their frustration. At our local church, we also have a board, and I confess we also use modern systems to make decisions. As we do, though, I am ever mindful that our Lord Jesus said that we are to be in the world, but not of the world. While I do not see our methods as sinful, I watch our motives with care.
But, as for these frustrated souls, they preach a message of how we might return to a first-century model of Christianity as a way to alleviate their frustration. Where they see a lone pastor with sole authority leading a congregation, they remind us that the first century church employed “a plurality of elders.” Do they not know that the majority of Christian churches in North America are only led by one person with a congregation of less than a hundred? Where they see business-style vision casting, they point us back to a time when the overseer was preoccupied only with shepherding a small body of believers. Do they not also see in Scripture where the business affairs of a church are also the responsibility of an overseer?
Some take it to more extreme measures and suggest we should get our congregations to pool all our resources as the apostles once did to make sure that none in the congregation would ever have need. A few would mandate that the whole church start to observe communion once a week (as the apostles did) or conduct baptism only in an outdoor body of water (as the Acts church did) or that all women should remove their braids and jewelry when coming to church (as the church in Ephesus did). In short, they have erroneously concluded that the way forward is to go backward.
But we are not ancient Jews. We are not first-century Gentiles. We are twenty-first century North Americans. The Lord has transformed our world many times over into what it is today. And while we are not called to be of the world, we are also not called to return to the world of believers now since gone. Not everything written in the Bible is a lifetime mandate to be observed without change or adjustment. Progress has little to do with standing still.
And yet, what the modern church has started doing is what some call cherry-picking. They use human logic to determine which passages of Scripture are no longer relevant for modern living and which ones are universal mandates for all time. The problem is that few of them can find reasonable common ground as to which passages are mandates and which passages are merely historical context. And because they draw deep lines in the sand, they pass judgment on others in the faith who do not interpret the way they do. This is simple wickedness.
That is not to say that there aren’t essentials of the faith we must find common ground on. But since we struggle finding unity just in the essentials, how can we then expect to force unity out of the non-essentials?
The way forward frequently looks like a murky exploration. The Lord our God from the days of the garden saw value in our not knowing things. Did not Adam and Eve not receive a commandment to avoid eating fruit that possessed knowledge? Should we then say that the reason God forbid them from eating fruit was because He was going to directly give them knowledge of good and evil? Isn’t it far clearer that God did not ever intend for them to have knowledge of good and evil? From this, we learn something of God: He finds value in not giving us all the answers. It is in our ignorance on a matter that we find our dependence on One who would rather lead us blind into a situation than give us full disclosure before taking that first step by ourselves.
The appeal I submit to you is this: do not be tempted to misuse Scripture by merely enforcing it as a guidebook for modern living. James tells us that the one “who looks intently into the perfect law of liberty and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard but doing it, he will be blessed in all he does.” That means we sometimes have to read past the plain reading of the text and its ancient mandates given to a people who have moved on and instead, dig in and dwell carefully and humbly on what those words might mean for those of us who live two thousand years after their crafting. “All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, correction, rebuke, and training in righteousness.” But how it applies to us today is seldom how it applied to those from the time of our Lord.
Therefore, we must not rush to interpret that which requires greater and ongoing contemplation. We must not lord it over those who land with a different understanding of the ancient text than we do. We must work diligently to know the difference between a wolf in sheep’s clothing and a brother or sister who doesn’t arrive at the same meaning of Scripture than we do. Being mistaken about the text is not the same thing as intentionally abusing it.
Let me also make a formal statement: All Scripture is authoritative for the Christian both of the past and today. How it is authoritative, mind you, is different. We would do well to remember that the Bible was written for us, but not to us. That means where we land on the meaning of any given chunk of the Bible may not be where the original audience did.
The ancient world has passed. Our limited knowledge of it serves as an old teacher for us in the present. God has seen fit for us to serve His kingdom in the now. As such, old ways do not always apply. One church sees fit to employ a plurality of elders; another sees fit to employ a sole pastor to lead a flock. Some see fit to observe communion once a month; others every week. An earnest desire to observe old ways is not a sin in and of itself. The motive behind a desire is often where sin lurks. And to take one’s desire for observing old ways and force that desire on others who do not share in it is definitely sin.
I conclude my appeal with the words of the Apostle Paul, who saw freedom in Christ as both a privilege and as a potential stumbling block for others. “All things indeed are clean, but they are evil for the person who eats and causes offense. It is good not to eat meat or to drink wine, or to do anything by which your brother or sister stumbles.”
Choose this day, then, my brothers and sisters…
1) Use your freedom with care.
2) Let us not find our progress in walking backward.
3) Be good stewards of the great responsibility God has bestowed on you as leaders in the church.
4) Utilize your liberty in Christ with great humility and compassion on those who strive as you to understand the way forward.
My prayer is that you will receive these words with the same grace and humility used in writing them. I have a deep love for you in that the common bond I spoke of unites us all into one larger body even if we have never met in person. One of the essentials of our faith is family unity. Do not be confused; I speak of the entire family of God. He calls us constantly in His word to be “of one mind, one Spirit, one love, intent on one purpose.” I remain in prayer for you all and know that the same compassion I have received over the years from so many of you is also open to you as the Lord wills it.
Your brother Scott