Building multi-generational Reformed churches

I serve in a Presbyterian denomination with congregations generally consisting of first-generation converts to the Reformed faith and their children.  We don’t have swarms of young people, and many of them either leave for ‘greener’ Christian pastures or, sadly, go prodigal.  So retention is a problem, and ‘sustainability’ (to use an overused term) is a regular worry.  Sometimes, it is easy to feel like we’re on the high seas in a leaky rowboat, and the winds are kicking up.

I must confess that I look wistfully at some of those Presbyterian and Reformed congregations that are large, established, and multi-generational.  Without having sold out.  They are not many, of course.  Usually in the present day large equals compromised.  But God has been faithful to some communions.  The ones I know are Dutch Reformed.  They don’t just have Christian but Reformed schools.  That is, teachers have to subscribe to the subordinate standards.  Many of the children usually profess the faith in the congregations where they were baptized.  They then find mates, marry, settle down, bear children and further populate their ranks.  If not in their original congregation, then not far off.  Often in the same denomination.

When I went to seminary, my wife and I attended a Dutch Reformed congregation with 900+ in church attendance.  Both services.  Clockwork regularity.  The back pew, I remember, was more or less dedicated to one particular extended family.  Four generations right there.  And Grandpa usually kept a busy blonde grandchild occupied on his lap.  Or, at least he tried.  Beautiful – but vanishing.

I know, of course, that such congregations have their problems.  There is no ecclesiastical utopia, short of the Church Triumphant.  Also, I know that we must wait on the outpouring of the Spirit.  Only by such heavenly showers will the desert blossom as the rose.  Prayer, therefore, is the order of the day.  But two things right on its heels.  First, shouldn’t we be praying that our churches will stay faithful and become established and multi-generational?  And shouldn’t we wait on the Spirit and use lawful means to reverse the process of desertification?

A few proposals on this last point, in order of importance and clarity.

1. As parents, and especially fathers, we must be intoxicated with God in Christ.  This is a non-negotiable.  If we lose our first love, how shall it become or stay the first love of our children?  If we are Spirit-born and the Spirit blesses our children with the new birth, there will be a principle of spiritual gravitation reinforcing the natural, familial pull.  If God in His providence calls them away from us geographically, parents and children must resign to separate.  At least, then, we are one in the Spirit, and we can do second best with phone and Skype.  But would it not also incline them – all other things being equal – to stay close to home?

2. As parents, and especially fathers, we must win the affections and hearts of our children to us.   So much to say here.  Firm discipline goes without being said.  We will lose their heart if we spare the rod.  But winning them to us and to our God will take much more than enforcing our authority.  If they are going to want to be with family and enjoy it rather than always looking outside the family for their social outlet, then it is going to demand nothing less than a paradigm-shift.  Family time must be carved out and kept sacrosanct.  We must be together.  Dine together.  Read, play, and laugh together.  And of course, worship together.   Parents, and especially fathers, need to create an esprit de corps in their families.  Love, devotion, and the desire to stay together will mean we need to be almost if not altogether clannish.

The strongest families I have ever seen were ones where children really liked being with family.  Not that they didn’t have original sin.  I knew better than that.  But by the grace of God, the parents didn’t make an army, compliant but loveless.  What they made was a team.  A team with a positive brand.  And loyalty sprang from love.

Now please don’t misunderstand.  I am not advocating a kind of family-olatry.  By striving to be tight-knit, I am not calling for families to be islands, cut off from church and society.  Quite the opposite.  The very point of this post is about creating multi-generational churches. I am a churchman and proud of it.  I want my son and daughters to be churchmen.  Card-carrying, catechized, psalm-singing Presbyterians!  I want them to have friends, young and old, outside our family in the family of God.  Further, parental authority should not cancel out ecclesiastical authority.  While my ruling elder is not the natural father of my children, he is still a father to them.  See Larger Catechism 124 and proof texts.  I rest my case.

3. As those in church leadership, we must cultivate 1 & 2 in every household.  Family religion has always been paramount within Reformed Christianity.  If minister and elders invest in family religion, they invest in the church.  And the more families are established, the more the church is established.  And under the blessing of God, the future generations join those before them in the praise of God (Psa. 78, 102).   More specifically, we must father our fathers and husband our husbands.  As the father goes, as a rule, so goes the family.  He is the linchpin.  As Baxter once put it, get the father, and half if not most of your pastoral work is done.  So we absolutely have to stress family religion from the pulpit, and regular household visitation cannot be optional.  Really, this one should go at the top.

4. Let us all be devout churchmen and make church-matters paramount.  We must be in the house of God every Lord’s Day, at each service.  As long as we are not laid up with some illness or away on necessary business.  We have to nip flimsy excuses in the bud and fall into ranks.  And we must love it there.  “One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple” (Psa. 27:4).  If it is not so with us, it certainly will not be with our children.

Also, we must make decisions of residence conditional on whether we will be near a good church.  In our affluent and extremely mobile society, it is very easy to hearken to the call of opportunity.  And a bigger income.  This has been going on for a long time.  Recently, we have been reading the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls-Wilder.  It is rather quaint and heart-warming.  But Pa Ingalls made his decisions to move his family apparently without the slightest thought of church.  Not good, Pa!  If we love our families, we will put church first.  We cannot sacrifice the bread of life for a bigger slice of the bread that perishes.  If this kind of churchmanship isn’t in our hearts, it won’t be in our children’s hearts.  If we are loosely attached to our churches, they will also.  They will move somewhere, and will settle for something spiritually sub-par.  Or worse, without mom and dad to wake them up and get them moving, they’ll sleep the Sabbath away.

5. Let us invest locally and bloom where we are planted.  This is a far-reaching concept, but I’ll just focus on its particular application to the issue.  Jeremiah called the exiles to unpack their bags and settle down in Babylon.  “Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them; take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished.  And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace” (Jer. 29:5-7).  Now, as confessional – and not ‘New’ – Calvinists, we don’t believe in the ongoing gift of prophecy.  So I can’t say we must chain ourselves for ever to where we presently live until a further word is received.  But I do think that there is a timeless principle here.  That is, we must recognize that God calls us to be faithful where He plants us, and we ought to be slow to leave our assigned plot until the orders are clear.  And the more skillful we are in the Word of God, the better we’ll be able to read providence and be sensitive to His real and not imagined guidance.  Time to unpack, folks.

If this is the case, then why not involve our children in the reverse-desertification right where we are?   Why not help them marry, plant gardens, and build houses nearby?   In the same state, city, or even neighborhood?  There is strength in numbers.  Of course, God may veto all of this.  He may call one of our children to be a missionary and live half-way around the world from us.  But shouldn’t this be an exception and not the rule?  What law of the Medes and Persians makes us expect that our kids and grandkids must live ten states away?  I wonder how much of this comes from assumptions we have just taken over uncritically.

6. Let us rethink, then, the law of sending off to college.  It has become more or less a rite of passage in modern America that a child will automatically leave home at 18 to go to a college far, far away from one’s parents and home church.  Now, I am not saying that it is necessarily wrong.  I am just saying that we should at least rethink it.  Must they?  Are there educational and vocational opportunities closer to home?  And nowadays, options online are expanding exponentially.  More often than not, there is gold in these hills.

Here in Rhode Island, there is still a sizeable Roman Catholic population.  While what is good in this culture is certainly eroding, immediate and extended family is still at a higher premium than elsewhere in the U.S.  At least, from my armchair.  As an indicator, many people go to college in state (the smallest in the union), marry in state, and settle in state.  Why do they do this?  Well, why not?  And why can’t we seek to restore it – at least a Protestant version?

Further, while I would suggest we rethink the law of sendingour children off to college, let me make a further distinction.  Sons are one thing, daughters are another.  We really need to protect our daughters, especially as the modern college scene is often at its best unwholesome, and at its worst a den of wolves.  Not in every case, I admit.  But in most.

If, however, we’ve already puffed the dandelion and the seeds have drifted far and wide, is there anything we can do to incentivize them to come back?  I’ve heard some states and countries hemorrhaging their young because they don’t see a future back home.  Other countries suffer from ‘brain drain,’ which makes their economic prospects bleak.  So what do they do?  They talk policy.  Provided that we adhere to biblical principle, isn’t there room for shrewd policy?  Let us be harmless as doves, yes.  But also wise as serpents!

7. Last, let us seek ‘rest’ for our children.  A lot of good things are being said today about how bad casual dating can be.  I couldn’t agree more.  And many are saying good things about how parents and especially fathers should be significantly involved in the courtship process.  But when I read the very, very long lists of extremely detailed questions some fathers have for prospective suitors, I sometimes get worried.   I understand 100% that we have to be guardians.  Even bulldogs at times.  But if we are only guardians and are not actively involved in building healthy family relationships within and without our congregations, we will have no pool of possibilities for our children.  And then they’ll have to go out and shift for themselves.  If we are not actively looking out for our Isaacs and our Ruths, then we will shoot ourselves and them in the foot.  And maybe even the heart.

If we’re doing this, though, and take the fatherly initiative, why not stock the pool strategically?  Why not include location to the wish-list?  No, location cannot trump piety or confessionality.  I’m not marrying my child off to an Arminian because he or she lives on the next street.  But can’t I put location somewhere on the list?  And within the location category, different ratings?  Best location, second best, third, and so on?   With three of my four children daughters, I may need to be prepared to kiss some of them goodbye.  But if I’ve done my work well, I hope to send them to second best location and not twenty-third.  And even then, only after I’ve made my best appeal to hubby to ‘come and stay for awhile.’

But while we think, plan, and busy ourselves in Kingdom building, we must do it always on our knees.  Only by the Spirit will the Church be built up.  And only by the Spirit will our seed be blessed in her walls.  “Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children. And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it” (Psa. 90:15-17).

Natural fountains for the relief of poverty

Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) was an early voice opposing the compulsory, state-managed poor relief, what would later evolve into the present monster of the welfare state.  He argued that a compulsory, bureaucratized system tended to stop up four natural fountains of charity within society, fountains that had long adequately refreshed the poor in rural Scottish society for ages.  In order, these fountains were (1) personal industry, (2) the kindness of personal relatives, (3) the sympathy of the wealthy, and (4) the sympathy of the poor for each other.  Unstop these by eliminating the compulsory system, and in general, poverty is naturally relieved.  A few words from Chalmers himself on each, from his Collected Works, Vol. 14:

(1) Natural fountain # 1: personal industry.

“We know not a more urgent principle of our constitution than self-preservation; and it is a principle which not only shrinks from present suffering, but which looks onward to futurity, and holds up a defence against the apprehended wants and difficulties of the years that are to come.  Were the great reservoir of public charity, for the town at large, to be shut, there would soon be struck out many family reservoirs, fed by the thrift and sobriety, whichnecessity would then stimulate, but which now the system of pauperism so long has superseded;—and from these there would emanate a more copious supply than is at present ministered out of poor rates, to aliment the evening of plebeian life, and to equalise all the vicissitudes of its history” (402).

(2) Natural fountain # 2: the kindness of personal relatives.

“One of the most palpable, and at the same time most grievous effects of this artificial system, is the dissolution which it has made of the ties and feelings of relationship. It is this which gives rise to the melancholy list of runaway parents, wherewith whole columns of the provincial newspapers of England are oftentimes filled. And then, as if in retaliation, there is the cruel abandonment of parents, by their own offspring, to the cold and reluctant hand of public charity. In some cases, there may not be the requisite ability; but the actual expense on the part of labourers, for luxuries that might be dispensed with, demonstrates that, in most cases, there is that ability. But it is altogether the effeet of pauperism to deaden the inclination. It has poisoned the strongest affections of nature; and turned inwardly, towards the indulgences of an absorhent selfishness, that stream which else would have flowed out on the needy of our own blood and our own kindred. It has shut those many avenues of domestic kindliness by which, but for its deadening and disturbing influence, a far better and more copious circulation of needful supplies would have been kept up throughout the mass of society” (402-403).

(3) Natural fountain # 3: the sympathy of the wealthy.

By the state-managed system, the result is that the wealthy and the poor “stand to each other in a grim array of hostility—the one thankless and dissatisfied, and stoutly challenging as its due, what the other reluctantly yields, and that as sparingly as possible. . . Were this economy simply broken up, and the fountain of human sympathy again left free to be operated upon by its wonted excitements, and to send out its wonted streams throughout those manifold subordinations by which the various classes of society and bound and amalgamated together – we doubt not that from this alone a more abundant, or, at least, a far more efficient and better-spread tide of charity would be diffused throughout the habitations of indigence” (404-405)

(4) Natural fountain # 4: the sympathy of the poor for each other.

“In the veriest depths of unmixed and extended plebeianism, and where, for many streets together, not one house is to be seen which indicates more than the rank of a common labourer, are there feelings of mutual kindness, and capabilities of mutual aid, that greatly outstrip the conceptions of a hurried and superficial observer: And, but for pauperism, which has released immediate neighbours from the feeling they would otherwise have had, that in truth the most important benefactors of the poor are the poor themselves— there has been a busy internal operation of charity in these crowded lanes, and densely peopled recesses, that would have proved a more effectual guarantee against the starvation of any individual, than ever can be reared by any of the artifices of human policy” (405).

Church governors & personal religion

“And because we are all too fond of ourselves, we are not able to recognize or judge our own deeds properly. Therefore, if we do not have a good and high opinion of those whom the Lord has placed over us, and who are to instruct, exhort, admonish and correct us on his behalf, and do not immediately receive their words and teaching with all fear and trembling as the Lord’s own words and teaching, then we will get nowhere and will not progress in the pursuit of godliness, as is our current and daily practice.”

Martin Bucer (1491-1551)

The Church, built upon the Rock

“Though the foundations of the world should be ripped up, and the heavens clatter together, and the whole fabric of them be unpinned and fall to pieces, the firmest parte of it dissolved; yet the church [shall] continue in its stability, because it stands not upon the changeableness of creatures, but is built upon the immutable rock of the truth of God, which is as little subject to change, as his essence.”

-Stephen Charnock (1628-1680)

Vain religion & idolatry

“And therefore I feared not to affirm, that of necessity it is, that such as hope for life everlasting avoid all superstition, vain religion, and idolatry. Vain religion and idolatry I call whatsoever is done in God’s service or honour, without the express commandment of his own Word.”

- John Knox (c. 1514-1572)

 

The notae ecclesiae & the face of Christ

In the following quote from the great Scottish Reformer, John Knox, we see how vitally important the maintenance of the three marks of the Church are to its role, and for that matter to the witness of Christ in the world. The three marks constitute the ‘face’ of the Visible Church. That face of the Church, which identifies and distinguishes it among others, is the very face of Christ among men. So to the degree that the marks are compromised, the face of the Church and so of Christ are compromised. And where the marks are absent, the Visible Church is absent – and Christ walks not among such snuffed-out candlesticks.

* * * *

“The notes of the true Kirk are three: Word, sacraments and discipline: first, the true preaching of the Word of God in which God has revealed himself unto us; second, the right administration of the sacraments of Christ Jesus, which are annexed to the Word and promise of God to seal and confirm them in our hearts; last ecclesiastical discipline uprightly administered, as God’s Word prescribes, whereby vice is repressed and virtue nourished. In the observation of these notes the true face of Jesus Christ appears. We cannot make the face of Jesus Christ appear. Nevertheless, Jesus Christ himself, made known through Word and sacraments, is the true ordinance governing the life, form, and activity of the Church. We believe in Christ in the midst of those who meet in his name and by faith hear the voice of his Spirit speaking in and through the Scriptures and obey him. We see him in the Sacraments, and walk in holiness according to the leading of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. There the true Church manifests itself in the power of the presence of Christ the sole Head and Lord of the Church – there it steps forth before us, and distinguishes itself from any Church that usurps his authority.”

The paternal pastor

The labor of the man of God, in the congregation or the community, ought to be paternal through and through. “For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel” (1 Cor. 4:15; cf. Larger Catechism 124). He must be strong and steady, a visionary, yet eminently practical. He must patient, but ever pushing and pulling. He must be sensitive to the true needs and worthy feelings of the people, yet not obsequiously over-indulgent to their every whim.

Tragically, too much of modern ministry fails to live up to this ideal. While the clergy have in the past sometimes been too harsh and overbearing, the pendulum has swung quite the opposite direction. The modern pastor-coach is in the worst case an effeminate nothing. He cannot command true respect. Only fleeting popularity from the herd.

The following passage from Thomas Chalmers reveals just how timeless the unfatherly pastor is – and how dignified the ideal. O Lord, make us those men.  Our Father, make us fathers!

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“And here one reason at least becomes manifest, why, on the part of clergymen, the mere whimsies of popular feeling ought not to be complied with; and that between favourite preachers and their doting admirers such a spectacle should never be held out, as that of servile indulgence upon the one side, and weak, trifling, senseless conceits of taste and partiality, on the other.  It is this which, more perhaps than any other cause, has degraded the popular opinion into a thing of no estimation; and has thrown circumstances of ridicule around it, which have given, an edge to satire, and furnished a plea of extenuation for the policy that holds it at nought. If it be grievous to observe the demand of the people about frivolities of no moment, it is still more grievous to behold the deference which is rendered thereto by the fearful worshippers at the shrine of popularity. It is a fund of infinite amusement to lookers on, when they see, in this interchange of little minds, how small matters can become great, and each caprice of the popular fancy can be raised into a topic of gravest deliberation. It were surely better that Christian people reserved their zeal for essentials; and that Christian teachers, instead of pampering the popular taste into utter childishness, disciplined it, by a little wholesome resistance, into an appetite, at once manly, and rational, and commanding. Everything that can disarm the popular voice of its energy will be lamented by those who think as we do, that it is a voice which, in the matters of Christianity, is mainly directed to what is practically and substantially good; and that it is just the despite which has been done to it that has so paralyzed the ministrations of our Establishment. And, therefore, do we hold it so desirable that the popular taste were chastened out of all those vagaries which have just had the effect of chasing away the homage that else would have been rendered to it. We know that it has its occasional weaknesses and extravagances; but we believe that these are in no way essential to it; and that, by the control of the ministers of religion, acting wisely, and honestly, and independently, they could all be done away. Though these were lopped off from the affection, it would still subsist with undiminished vigour, and it would then be seen what it nakedly and characteristically is—not that mere fantastic relish which it is often conceived to be, but the deep and strong aspiration of conscious humanity, feeling, and most intelligently feeling, what the truths, and who the teachers are, that are most fitted to exalt and to moralize her.

“In proof of this we may, with all safety, allege that let there be a teacher of religion, with a conscience alive to duty, and an understanding soundly and strongly convinced of the truths of the gospel; let him, with these as his only recommendations, go forth among a people, alive at every pore to offence from the paltry conceits and crotchets in which they have drivelled and been indulged for several generations; let them be prepared with all the senseless exactions which a dark and narrow bigotry would often bring upon a minister; and let him, disdainful of absurdity in all its forms, whilst zealous and determined in acquitting himself of every cardinal obligation, only labour amongst them in the spirit of devotedness: and it will soon be seen that the general good-will of a neighbourhood is far more deeply and solidly founded, than on the basis of such petty compliances as have made popularity ridiculous in the eye of many a superficial observer. The truth is, that there is not one irrational prejudice among his hearers, which such a teacher would not be at liberty to thwart and to traverse, till he had dislodged it altogether. Grant him the pure doctrine of the Bible for his pulpit, with an overflowing charity in his heart for household ministrations— and the simple exhibition of such worth and such affection on the week, from one who preaches the truths of Scripture on the Sabbath, will, without one ingredient of folly, gain, for him, from the bosoms of all, just such a popularity as is ever awarded to moral worth and to moral wisdom. This, indeed, we believe to be the main staple of that popularity which is so much derided by the careless, and often so unfeelingly trampled upon by the holders of patronage. And thus it is fearful to think that, in the systematic opposition which has been raised upon this subject against the vox populi, Government may, unknowing of the mischief, have been checking, all the while, the best aspiration that am arise from the bosom of a country—may have been combating, in its first elements, the growth of virtue in our land —and, in wanton variance with its own subjects about the principle of religion, may have been withering up all those graces of religion, which would else have blessed and beautified our population” (Works 14:192-195).