The Reformed Church And The Future

John VanderBom. Trowel & Sword, April 1977

Preamble: In this article John VanderBom looks over a period of fifty years – 25 into the past and 25 into the future. In the process he asks many searching questions about the Reformed church and the people who make up its numbers. It is almost another fifty years since then and still many of those same questions remain. Tellingly he states: “I am writing this article to impress upon all of our readers, our young readers in particular, that the tomorrow of the Reformed Church is largely in your hands,” at the same time acknowledging that ultimately, we are all in God’s hands.

The Reformed Church And The Future

The Reformed Churches of Australia have celebrated their twenty-five years of existence in four Eastern States.

An anecdote: when we were on holidays in New Zealand a young man spoke to me: “Aren’t you going to Sydney next week? And doesn’t the Church in Sydney celebrate its eh- 100th anniversary?”

You can guess my answer: “I am not Moses…….’

No, for all our struggles, we cannot say that we have spent forty years in the wilderness. We haven’t even been involved in an eighty years war for the faith.

For me, the anecdote was another reminder that the history of our Reformed Churches is a very short history. The main reason for our celebrations has been to thank the Lord (while the older generation is still with us) for the miraculous way in which He has blessed us. And it went so fast.

I have written about the enthusiasm, the conviction, the determination and the obedience. We began in the spirit of being “unprofitable servants, who have only done the things which they ought to do”. Yet I wonder if our people with all their affluence would have achieved so much and give themselves so willingly if they were in the same situation again.

Within three years’ time Reformed Churches were an established fact in every State of Australia. When the Rev. Jan Schep opened the Synod of Sydney, he spoke of the tears of the sower (Psalm 126.) In the prayer service before the Synod of Ulverstone, 1954, I took my text from the parable of the Mustard Seed and the tree in which the birds could sit down to rest.

But now it is the time to look at the future.

Is there a future for the Reformed Church?

The future always poses intriguing questions for us. A whole new science, futurology, deals with these interesting possibilities, also concerning the Christian Church.

I remember a Readers Digest article. When RD had the 25th anniversary of its Australian edition, it published two fascinating articles: one on the 25 years that had passed, and that on the 25 years to come.

The second article made it very plain that we, all of us, are the makers of the future. As people of the present generation, we are the planners for tomorrow. Readers Digest mentioned a few practical things, like the planning for roads and traffic, planning for new centres of population, and more and better roads. We all seem to assume that over the next 25 years we will still be going faster and faster, on and on, just like we did in the past. Programs for education of larger numbers of students are planned. Today we are making the world for the next 25 years.

But then? Readers Digest closed with a very down-to-earth remark: What will happen in the year 2000 is very important. And all our calculations could fail because there is the unknown factor of the human nature. RD says: The Wilsons’ wondrous To-morrow is very much in the hands of the Wilsons’ themselves!

I am writing this article to impress upon all of our readers, our young readers in particular, that the tomorrow of the Reformed Church is largely in your hands. What will the Church of the year 2000 be like? It is in your (and my)-praying-hands. God has laid it there!

Now I know that with such a statement I am in for all sorts of reactions. Some people will say: The Church is safe, it is in God’s hands! Many others have told me already that in 2000 the Church shall not be there any more! They say, that the world is in such a rut, in such turmoil… Many Christians will tell you that for our “late great planet earth” there is no hope any longer; or: no other hope than that the Lord Himself may come very quickly.

Yet we know there is the other side. As Reformed Christians we know that the Lord has entrusted us with talents, responsibilities. We are here not only to pray and win souls, but to do something. Until the Lord returns we’ll have to work with our talents and pounds. It is a tremendous challenge, so demanding that it ought to bring us on our knees. Yet, this challenge is a God-given talent.

We can well understand people speaking like this. On seeing so much trouble today, I say this myself: Lord Jesus, come quickly!

This means that as Christians we not only know that there is a crying world with the crying needs of crying people. We also know that there is the Good News. The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the answer. And the Church is here to make that Gospel known.

The apostle Paul declared that the whole creation waits for the revelation of God’s children. It all waits for God’s children to be visible.

Today we must face the question: are the children of God revealed, is the Church a visible Church? 

The Church can be in hiding, invisible. The Church can be dull, asleep, divided. The Church can be like the Church in Russia in the days of the Revolution. The Church had been there for ages, but the children of God were hardly visible.

We also are living in days of revolution.

We are still free to preach the gospel. It is easy to stand on a platform and say or shout: Jesus is the Answer! And then to go home in peace, and say that we are so happy.

Now, I do realise that the preaching of the Word of God is still the Church’s main task. The opening of God’s Word brings light. So many Australians who over the years have joined the Reformed Churches have told me how much they have appreciated the teaching of the Reformed Church. Stuart Fowler has written that one of the contributions which our Churches have made is the preaching of the Kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ. It has led to a growing, strong movement for Christian Schools in many places.

Yet we must aim at greater things. The Reformed Church stands for more than for the pure preaching of the Word. Far too often we have been preaching to ourselves in our isolated corner. We have even left it to the minister. In so many cases, it looks like our congregations stand, or fall, with the good, or less competent minister.

As congregations we must know that together we have received the Word of God. And: we have got it, to get it out! (T.L. Wilkinson) 

Michael Griffiths (Cinderella with Amnesia) reminds us (from Ephesians 4) that the beauty of the Church must become visible, not so much in the person of the preacher, but in the body-life of the Christian community.

For 1977, to obey the Gospel means something very practical. We must learn to be distinct. The crying needs of the world around us call us to become visible in a new and simple Christian life-style. We all know that the present world as it exists cannot continue. The production wheels are moving faster and faster; we are bound to have things bigger and bigger. Who can stop the wheel? A young mother who was concerned about her children said to me: I wish that somebody could stop that big wheel, I wish could get out of this.

No, we cannot go on. We cannot continue to produce more cars, with the consumption of more oil, more food, more entertainment, robbing the other half of mankind.

They who have read bishop John V. Taylor’s Enough is Enough (SCM; recommended in Trowel and Sword, September) know I what mean. And many of our young people know what I mean. Some of our youth have chosen to live a simple life-style, and a few have even built their own community-life. They remember the words of Scripture: By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. And: we know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren.

We must become very serious on the question of how to present our Christian faith on the Monday, in society, in our business, on holiday. We must have the courage to tell our children and ourselves: Enough is enough! We must become visible, and be known in the community as people of tomorrow, who are the first-fruits of God’s new creation.

Do you know that the monastic movement and the religious orders of the Middle Ages had their origin as a protest movement, a cry for a new lifestyle?

We say that our age is getting darker and darker. Are we being absorbed in the darkness, or is our light getting brighter and brighter? Are we a light on the hill, or does the Church only leave a passing shadow?

We have got it to get it out!

When we are filled with the compassion of Christ, then we’ll begin to see the other and to speak of him, not as a far-away object for an evangelisation campaign, but as a neighbour whom we wish to know at the nitty-gritty level of his daily pleasures and worries.

To be filled with the Holy Spirit means to be filled with the compassion of Jesus for the lost. And: “he who is not with Me, is against Me.”

If in the Reformed Church you asked for a show of hands, nobody would be against Jesus. But the Lord had more to say: “He who is not with Me, is against Me; and he who does not scatter with me, scatters”! Jesus’ job was to gather sheep, stubborn and dirty sheep. We are here too to gather them in, and so to be “with Jesus”. If we are not with Him, then we are working against Him. If we do not win, then we are losing and scattering.

Paul said: I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, IF ONLY I may accomplish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord, to testify to the Gospel of the grace of God! And: it is MORE BLESSED TO GIVE than to receive! (Acts 20:24, 28).

Shall we make this our Bible verse for the coming 25 years?

JOHN VANDERBOM

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