3. Small Churches are a luxury good

Although I serve an urban congregation in Denver, about half the congregations in our Regional Church of the Dakotas could reasonably be described as “rural,” located in North and South Dakota towns which range from small to very small. Consequently, these congregations tend to be small as well: none is over a hundred in membership, and there are no realistic prospects for  significant growth in towns which have been steadily depopulating over the last few decades. Nearly every time a pastor moves on, the congregation must soberly assess its future. Can they really afford a pastoral salary? Is it time to think of something drastic, such as sharing a pastor or even merging with another Church?

Thankfully, there is a steady supply of older pastors, near or past retirement age, who are glad to serve where they are needed and don’t have the financial needs of men with young families and mouths to feed. These days, there seems an even greater supply of fresh seminary graduates with few or no children who are equally willing to take a call which will get them established in their pastoral careers: they know they may not be able to stick around

for more than a few years, but at least the pulpits stay filled.

That’s not an ideal situation, but it’s the unfortunate demographic reality of rural Church life. What, then, accounts for the presence of a similar model in urban areas such as Denver? Just to point out the obvious, the difference between a small town and a city is people. Lots and lots of people. Hundreds of thousands of people. With all those people, what accounts for multiple OPC and PCA congregations, some a little under a hundred and some a little over a hundred, in the same metropolitan area, especially when their members drive past other congregations of like faith and practice on the way to services? 

Here’s what accounts for it: a few years ago I was talking to a South Dakota pastor, originally from the Denver area, during our two presbyteries’ joint youth Bible camp. He had been solicited to begin a new Church plant in south Denver, just equidistant between a PCA Church and a URC which both happened to be pastored by friends of mine. Yes, they were friends of mine, which necessarily calls their good taste into question, but they also were ministers in good standing of Churches of like faith and practice not more than a 10-minute drive from the geographical area in question. Why had a “core group” begun talking with this pastor when they could easily join a small (around or under 100 members) Church in their area?

I can claim neither prophetic nor telepathic insight, but I’ll tell you why: they wanted a Church which was to their particular preference. Neither that PCA nor that URC was quite what they wanted, but they had learned from experience that there are plenty of pastors who need a job. All they had to do was demonstrate an ability to provide a nominal salary for a year or two, and they could get a pastor who would provide the kind of preaching and/or pastoral care they liked.

In my more cynical moments, I describe the OPC (and sister denominations) not as “small,” but as a “boutique” Church. Cities have plenty of stores which are small in size because they have to fit into cramped quarters. Cities also have plenty of boutiques which are small not out of  necessity, but by design: they provide luxury goods which are of interest and affordable to only a few, and especially the few who are willing to pay the price.

Many (although by no means all) confessionally reformed Churches have well-educated and relatively affluent members; if these members are willing to tithe or even give beyond their tithes, then a relatively small number of members can pay the relatively small salary asked for by a man who wants nothing more than to preach the Gospel. This concentration of wealth gives them the buying power to acquire a preacher who is not merely faithful to God’s Word, but who also provides the style of preaching which they’d like to hear on a regular basis.

Demographic reality dictates that rural areas will have small Churches. In an urban area, small Churches are a luxury good.

All Ecclesiology Is Local

I just noticed that my 2002 essay, "All Ecclesiology Is Local," appears at the top of the "Archives" list at the June/July 2015 issue of Ordained Servant; it was published in no small part due to the gracious and paternal interest G.I. Williamson took in my younger self. Also because, as is to be expected, it was insightful and stylistically impeccable.

And for those who may be wondering, yes, the title is a tribute to the late House of Representatives Speaker Tip O'Neill, who frequently said "all politics is local." I'm not sure I agree with him on any policy positions, but he was a great politician whose era I still miss.

How do we begin the immigration conversation?

I agree with his perspective, but I'll be the first to admit that this lecture from M. Daniel Carroll of Denver Seminary, delivered at Beeson Divinity School, begins on a somewhat pedantic note. Unless it's a sermon, I consider listening to someone tell me something I already know and agree with a waste of time, and I almost gave up during the first five minutes. But then Carroll gives a reading of the Old Testament as a collection of immigrant narratives, and concludes by making the point that if the Scriptures invite us to identify with and find ourselves in its narratives, then they call us, as Christians, to identify with and find ourselves in immigrant narratives.

Read as the primary humanist text, the Bible enables and equips us to find the human even, and perhaps especially, in those we identify as alien.

The Great Interpreter

In a powerful argument for Abraham Lincoln as a strict constructionist whose interpretation of the Constitution has become the standard one in these United States, Michael Stokes Paulsen and Luke Paulsen advance another provocative thesis: Lincoln's de facto repudiation of the Dred Scott decision, through executive action, demonstrates that other branches of the federal government, equally bound to defend the Constitution, cannot be held to illegitimate interpretations offered by the Supreme Court.

Provocative and, in light of recent history, well worth pondering.

Maybe I can go back down South now

I am a Union man. The Kingsburys (at least our branch of the Kingsburys) were for the Union, and I am no different. Nonetheless, depending on how you reckon your geography, I have spent about half my life in the deep South (Houston occupying that liminal space which is both entirely the South and entirely the West), and have the very firm opinions about grits to prove it.

I love the South, and I love the Presbyterian Church in America, in which I was ordained a deacon and had the privilege to be licensed to preach the Gospel. But I am a Union man, and I am not naive about the South or the PCA. Racism, albeit of the soft sort, still exists in the deep South and in the PCA (especially amongst her revered old men), and I have a black daughter. It's hard enough to be black in the American West. It occurred to me a while back that I couldn't in good conscience make it any harder by placing her in a white Church, in the deep South, that merely winked at the racism held to and practiced by her revered fathers. I decided that, come what may, I wouldn't be taking my family back to Virginia, much less any place any further south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Then I read this post on a protest at the 43rd General Assembly of the PCA. God bless Ligon Duncan and Sean Lucas. Finally, Southern Presbyterianism is waking up to the original sin at the heart of the American experiment in representative democracy.

Let's be clear: no one has asked me to go back down south, and I don't expect any ever to do so (other than a brief visit to Virginia in the autumn of this year). But maybe now there is a place for a Union man and his black daughter.

And maybe I can find someone with whom to have a reasonable conversation about grits.

Fall Singles Retreat

I am to speak on "The Cruciform Life" at the OPC Singles Retreat, October 2-4, 2015, at the Machen Retreat and Conference Center, located at the northern end of Virginia's lovely Shenandoah Valley and scheduled during the peak of its spectacular fall colors. The fee is quite reasonable ($60), given the speaker's insight and erudition, and any excuse to visit the Shenandoah Valley and its surrounding mountains is a good excuse.

With apologies to the married folk amongst my vast international readership.

2: Death does not sanctify our works

In the hallway outside my study door hang the original architectural drawings for our Church building, discovered a few years ago by a particularly determined member who decided to go spelunking in a storage closet which turned out to be far larger than anyone currently in our congregation knew. The drawings show a sanctuary with a seating capacity of around 160, in contrast to our actual sanctuary, which can seat maybe half that number. I don't know the reasons behind our smaller building, but I can guess limited finances were the major constraint. Today, our congregation's building and land are owned free and clear, but we have neither the room to grow our membership nor (and largely because of our relatively small membership) the money to expand our building.

In the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, this situation is hardly unusual. In the aftermath of the Great Depresssion and the Second World War, the founding generation of our denomination was rich in spiritual commitment and vigor, but not so much in cash on hand. Heroically, they did the best they could, and their best established an OPC culture of relatively small congregations (on average, under 100 in membership, including children) and buildings. Those who have lived in the OPC for any amount of time know the advantages and blessings of this culture, but we all should recognize that this aspect of our Church culture derives from historical accident, not Biblical principle.

Death does not sanctify our works, nor does it those of our spiritual fathers and mothers in the OPC. If small congregations and buildings hinder the Church's work in our day, we should be prepared to leave them behind.

1: The fathers were heroes

The first generation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church was genuinely heroic. When they left the old Presbyterian Church in the USA, they embraced a radical change (something always difficult for presbyterians) in order to hold on to the Gospel. Moreover, they embraced radical sacrifice, sacrifice too radical for many sympathetic brethren to endure. Congregations lost buildings and endowments: inheritances left to them by faithful forebears which they had to leave in the hands of faithless and vindictive liberal presbyteries. Pastors lost homes, salaries, pensions, and what little financial security they had. Seminarians lost secure careers. Almost no one in 1936 who joined what would become the OPC suffered no loss.

Left with nothing, they built from the ground up. In a country still wracked by the Great Depression, they sacrificed still more to erect Church buildings and manses. Pastors worked a secular job (or two or three) in order to shepherd small congregations. Those congregations gave and gave in order to fund Christian education curricula and foreign missionaries and new Church plants close to home. The first generation of the OPC built the OPC: without their heroic sacrifices, we would have no Church today.

The fathers were heroes.

A text without a context

For Pentecost this last Lord's Day, I preached from John 15 and 16, in the course of which it occurred to me that many Christians might like to hear their long-winded pastors echo Jesus' words in John 16:12: "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now."

As "a former Lutheran pastor transitioning to the Roman Catholic Church," Russell Saltzman doesn't have to worry about how stepping on toes might threaten his livelihood anymore, as is displayed by his "Advice to Inactive Christians." He says what every pastor would like to say to the person who hasn't attended services in years and suggests that he might start again if only the pastor and Church would accomodate some personal preference. I'm tempted to quote the whole thing, but as that would be pointless, let this give you reason to go read it yourself:

There is a singularly arrogant message in these sorts of gesturing declarations. The inactive member is saying he or she sets the terms of his or her return and it all depends on likability. [Raul] Castro framed it well: “If the pope continues this way.” Inactive members expect, as G.K. Chesterton remarked, that “Christians must embrace every creed except their own.”