At home With One Another In The Church

Rev. John Westerdorp. Trowel & Sword, April 1996

Preamble: On reading this article from John Westendorp the thought struck me, have we learned anything in the last thirty years? Worse still, are we going backwards? Have you come across any Reformed recluses lately; or Reformed church surfers, looking for that perfect church just as a surfer might spend a lifetime looking for that perfect wave; or members making judgements base on emotion rather than objective truth? Nearly thirty years ago John issued a challenge to the church and to the people who make up the church. In effect he is saying, unity is life but division leads to destruction.

At Home With One Another In The Church

Lessons From A Talk Show

The orthodontist’s waiting room was empty, the receptionist filling in her time watching a lunch-time talk show from the U.S. of A. In response to my greeting and a comment about the unusual emptiness of the waiting room she reminded me that holidays were over and all the kids back at school. Just then the phone rang. While the young lady dealt with the caller I tried to figure out what issue was being debated on the talk show. It seemed two young women (single mums) had been sharing a flat but had fallen out with one-another. I picked up enough of the story to know that there had been some arguments over a boyfriend and the kids. What struck me was the abuse they were hurtling at one another. Here were two very angry young women. Apparently each had been trying to get the other kicked out of the flat but both regarded it as their home. Despite attempts by others to intervene they were at a stalemate. So here they were venting their spleen on (inter-) national television. When the receptionist got off the phone I asked her, “Are these two for real or is it just an act they’re putting on for the talk-show audience?” With a sigh, she replied, “It’s for real!”

Driving home I reflected on that brief scenario. Of course two Christian people would never get into a situation like that. They would resolve that kind of difficulty in the light of the gospel of Christ. And if they could not work it out then one would be willing to be the least and let the other have her way. Maybe, if the worst came to the worst, the pastor or the Elders might have to do a little mediating but surely the matter would be satisfactorily resolved before too long. One certainly wouldn’t see the anger or hear the vitriolic language that was evident in that lunch-time talk show.

As a pastor I know better than to day-dream like that. Ideally, that is indeed how it ought to be in the community of God’s people. The reality is far different. I think of two brothers who had a run-in over a business venture that went sour some eight years ago. The Session tried to mediate and saw fault on both sides. Today they cannot be together at the same family celebration nor worship in the same church. And because Session did not decide in their favour, their view of the Elders is nothing if not hostile. 

Or I think of the man and the woman who went through a bitter divorce. They both faithfully attend church and claim to believe that Jesus came to make all things new. But they both try, in unsubtle ways, to turn their children against the other parent. The divorce was ten years ago but the anger and hatred come out every time I raise the subject with either of them.

The relationship breakdown on that talk-show is typical of relationships gone sour in a fallen and broken world. And the sad part is that these relationships can break to such a degree that it seems even the gospel of Christ can’t mend them again. That is not a reflection on the powerlessness of the gospel of Jesus but on the hardness of sin. As a pastor it is especially these situations that make me sigh with the receptionist: this is for real! Except that I go one step further and long for the return of Jesus. Today we still live in a world in which all too often we can’t be at home with one another…  only the coming of the Saviour on the clouds will usher in that time when we can live with one another again in peace and harmony.

My reflections on the way home from the orthodontist also took another turn. Here was a parable of what we have seen too often in the Christian church also in recent times. Division occurs within the local church community. Maybe over the person of the pastor, perhaps over worship, or maybe over some decisions made by Session. That division grows to the point where one faction tries to get the other faction out of the church. And like those two young Mums, neither faction wants to go because both regard this church as their home. Others try to mediate but over a period of many months the alienation only grows and increases until the inevitable happens. All this is often accompanied by bitterness and anger that is openly aired before a watching world. In the last twelve months or so several congregations in our denominations on either side of the Tasman have been traumatised because some of us could no longer find ourselves at home with others in the church.

Lessons From A Reformed Hermit

It would be interesting to attempt an analysis as to why such breakdowns have occurred in congregations in New Zealand and Australia. Were there common factors that led up to the breakdown in each instance? What role did the personality and the priorities of the pastor play in the whole affair? I suspect that such an analysis would be frightfully complex and someone highly skilled would be needed to give a full and correct assessment of each situation. I won’t even begin to attempt to do that in these pages of T&S.

What I do want to do is mention one point that has cropped up again and again in several of these churches that have gone through a crisis. There have been some who have said categorically that the issue was one of being faithful to the Reformed faith.

I read a story recently about a man of Reformed convictions. Every Sunday he would call his family together for worship. They would sit together in the family lounge – the father, the mother and the five children. Father would then lead in a family worship – he prayed, selected the psalms that were sung, and read a sermon from an old book of sermons written many years ago when people still knew what it was to be Reformed. The problem was that the man had become critical of the church he had grown up in when there had been a change of ministers. It came to the point where he could no longer consider that church his spiritual home. He took his family off to another Reformed church but there they occasionally allowed females to read the Scriptures. In yet another church he found he couldn’t handle the singing of ‘Scripture songs’. Trying yet a third church he had a run in with the preacher over some finer points of theology. One church where he felt they could fit in belonged to a denomination that was “too liberal’. The upshot was that the family now worshipped at home. He found, however, that as his children grew up they didn’t want to be part of this family ‘church’ and when his wife died he really did become a Reformed recluse. Lonely and isolated… but at least he had kept the faith. Thankfully the story ended on a more positive note as God in grace dealt with this man.

I am most certainly not an advocate for unity at the expense of truth. Genuine unity is always a unity in the truth. Furthermore, I am alarmed that today truth counts for so little. This has been highlighted by several Christian writers recently. Over the holidays I read John MacArthur’s “Ashamed of the Gospel” and David Wells’ “No Place for Truth”. These and other writers are highlighting their concern that the church at large is becoming “theologically illiterate” (Wells). We are more and more in danger of substituting principles from the business world for Biblical directives. Today we too often make our judgments based, not on objective truth but on emotions. It is hardly surprising then, if the standard for feeling at home in the church is not because this is where the truth of God is proclaimed but because this is where we get plenty of nice warm fuzzies. Small wonder too that when the flow of ‘fuzzies’ is then interrupted for one reason or another that we claim we no longer feel at home in the church and look for a new church home elsewhere.

Having said that, it also needs to be added that it is possible to go to the other extreme too where truth gets divorced from relationships. Dry orthodoxy that rides roughshod over people’s feelings is inexcusable. The Reformed hermit reminds me how easy it is to draw the boundaries of the Reformed faith ever tighter. The result will be an ever decreasing number of people with whom we can agree and with whom we feel ourselves to be at home. Smaller and small churches of people who agree on less and less.

Preserving a Balance

In this post modern society where objective truth is sacrificed to pragmatism (does it work?) and emotionalism (does it make me feel good?), it is going to be increasingly difficult for us to hold on to one another in the church.

The challenge for us in the years ahead will be to remain theologically literate, faithful to revealed truth. That becomes increasingly difficult in a world where our feelings about things are too often seen as the decisive factor and where the pragmatism reigns supreme. But that is only the first half of the challenge. The other part is to hold on to one another in love whenever the differences and difficulties surface. This is not a case of ‘either-or’, rather, ‘at homeness’ in the church will be at its healthiest where both these challenges are taken seriously.

Rev. John Westerdorp

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