Parents Matter Most: Henry Jansma on Chapter 6 of Almost Christian

St. Mary's in Haddon Heights has spent the past two years in research, preparation and launch of a fresh expression of our ministry in families. We wanted to return formation to the intimacy of parents as their baptismal vows profess. We also wanted to ensure our educational ministry emphasize not simply Bible facts, atomized verses, and moral virtues, but doctrinal knowledge in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord” that would help young minds conceptualize the depths of their sinfulness and the wonders of the Redeemer and His salvation.

The result is Family Inside/Out. Held between our two services, Family Inside/Out joins children and parents in Sunday school for a large group and parent-led small groups breakout. In this safe and structured session both parents and children learn the core teachings together. The result? Two of our families left prior to launch for churches that still continued the failing traditional model. The remaining parents and children have seen a genuine spiritual revival in their families with attendance holding at 90+%.

The fact that families left prior to launch led us to discover that we had failed to distinguish differences in the moralism in our members. We thought we were dealing with only one type of moralism, the one described in Almost Christian (hereafter AC) as “Christian-ish”. What we discovered was that there are actually two strategies of moralism: one that exists outside the church and one that exists within:

• ·      In nonbelievers of the wider culture (irreligious moralist)
• ·      In the nonbelievers within our churches (religious moralist)

These two errors are very powerful because they represent the natural tendency of the human heart and mind. If you fail to recognize these different moralistic strategies, your church simply replaces one expression of moralism with another.

The only way into a ministry that sees people’s lives change, that brings peace and joy and power and electricity without moralism – is the preaching and teaching of the gospel that deconstructs both religion and irreligion’s moralistic strategies equally.

It is not a method, but the content of the teaching of the gospel that deconstructs the moralistic strategies of irreligion and religion. In Chapter Six of AC, Dean points this out as she writes that Martin Luther’s Small Catechism,

located teaching out loud in households, not congregations, which had the effect of locating Christian formation in the intimacy of families, where children drew direct connections between religious instruction at the dinner table and the lives of people that loved them.… [I]t was an educational stroke of genus, since it effectively ensured that parents and children learned the core teachings of the church together. [Italics added]

As we observed a Latter Day Saints seminary teacher in Christian Smith’s DVD Soul Searching, we also took careful note of her emphasis on the precision in the content of the teaching.

What is the core teaching of the church that Scripture, the historic formularies, and our catechism bear witness? It is the truth of the gospel. In his commentary on Galatians (2.14f) Luther writes on this core teaching of the church: “The truth of the Gospel is the principle article of all Christian doctrine… Most necessary is it that we know this article well, teach it to others, and beat it into their heads continually” (Just like Luther to write like this!).

At the heart of the gospel is the propitiation of God’s wrath by the substitutionary life and death of Jesus Christ, so that His children by faith no longer fear the judicial, retributive wrath of God ever again (Romans 8:1). This cuts against not one but the two moralistic strategies in our culture and churches today. This is the heart of the gospel taught in St. Mary’s.

Family Inside/Out is not a stand-alone program. As Dean suggests in Chapter Four, Generative Faith, it is firmly anchored in five factors of revival that preceded it by nearly four years here at St. Mary’s:

The first factor is dependent prayer. Those who realistically face the demanding task of revival and local mission are immediately driven to prayer by the magnitude of the work confronting them.

The second factor is a recovery of the grace-gospel. It was an understanding of salvation by grace rather than moral effort that touched off my own personal renewal and made me an agent of revival as my preaching, my teaching, and my ministry radically changed.

The third factor I would mention is renewed individuals. Often several visible, dramatic life-turnarounds (“surprising conversions”) may cause others to do deep self-examination and create a sense of spiritual longing and expectation in the community.

A fourth factor I will call the use of the gospel on the heart in counseling. The gospel must cut away both the moralism and licentiousness that destroys real spiritual life and power. There must be venues and meetings and settings in which this is done, both in one-on-one accountability and in small groups.

The fifth and final factor is an orientation toward local Mission. We are to develop partnerships with other local churches in a network of common vision and mission.

To deconstruct two moralistic strategies simultaneously is very risky. There have been moments of grief, grief for those that remain, grief for those who have left, grief that I have been such a blunt instrument in His hand. And yet our leaders will testify that Christ has never left nor forsaken us. There have been many moments when we have understood so well what Paul says about dying being gain. All mercy we have in Him, all roads lead to Him. Christ Himself has redeemed His church and is now building His church in the power of His Word and Spirit. It is not a kingdom we are building, but a kingdom we are receiving (Hebrews 12:28).

We must never confuse Christ’s work with our own. There is a lot of loose talk these days about our “living the gospel” as if the church is an extension of Christ’s incarnation and redeeming work, as if Jesus came to provide the moral example or template, and we are called to complete His work. We must remain vigilant for this drift of the grace gospel into the default “gospel-ish” religious/irreligious moralism of the sinful human heart that AC documents so thoroughly.

Henry Jansma

St. Mary’s, Haddon Heights

"We Are Not Here for Ourselves": Emily Griffin on Chapter 5 of Almost Christian

“Translation is how we hand on faith to our children.”

– Kenda Dean, Almost Christian, p. 98

           

As anyone who’s ever used an online translator can tell you (i.e. any teenager with a foreign language requirement), translation is an art – not an exact science. Think about all that is required to translate from one language to another. In both languages we need a mastery of vocabulary, spelling and grammar, not to mention cultural idioms. Even then, it’s often easier to read a new language than to speak it. It’s certainly safer. Books don’t talk back.

Add the human dimensions of accents and dialects, and the complications rise exponentially. Translation requires a quality of listening we’re not accustomed to anymore and a slower pace to conversation than anyone in New Jersey is willing to tolerate. When trying out a new language, we tend to think more before we speak. We ask the other person to slow down so we can make sure we understand their perspective before risking a potentially foolish or even offensive response. Risks are unavoidable, and mistakes are inevitable. Many times, rather than risk dying of embarrassment, we try to avoid speaking at all.

It’s not surprising that so many of us end up resorting to pantomime instead (behaviors I’ve noted in my own parish’s mission trips, incidentally. Mission may not be a trip, but mission trips do offer ample opportunity to practice the translation skills we need just as desperately back home.) When words fail us, we use our hands. We communicate with our eyes. We try to make our intentions and actions as clear as possible. No wonder Kenda Dean in Chapter 5 of Almost Christian names translation as a skill for transmitting faith – not only across cultures but across generations as well. The good news is that what we do out of necessity may actually be more effective in sharing the Gospel of Jesus’ unconditional, self-giving love than even our most careful words.

It certainly helps to explain the sense of inadequacy many adults feel when it comes to sharing their faith with adolescents in particular. Those who feel ill-equipped to speak the language of the Christian faith themselves – either from lack of familiarity or lack of practice – may also feel ill-equipped to speak the language of today’s teenagers. Intimidation at the technology our teens have mastered, lack of interest in the cast of characters inhabiting the pop culture landscape, as well as the comfort level we enjoy with our own use of adult jargon may leave us stymied when it comes to sharing what is closest to our hearts with our young people.

Perhaps if we allowed ourselves the grace we allow ourselves when speaking a new language, we might find our role of witness a little easier to bear. Witness, after all, does not begin with speaking. It starts with what we notice, what we hear. We might begin our “missionary work” by honing our ability to listen rather than by filling up the anxious silences with more words. (For as Dean rightly notes, “God does not send out a few teenagers in a church van to represent Christ in the world on behalf of the church; God sends the whole church.”) We might then focus on our non-verbal behavior – what our actions and reactions say even louder than our words.

Eventually, of course, we are called to speak. It may help to remember that risks are unavoidable, and mistakes are inevitable. But is love – even divine love - communicated any other way? Love, by definition, involves vulnerability and risk. In sharing the love of the One who risked everything for us, perhaps the medium is inseparable from the message. We are a resurrection people. That means there’s life even after dying of embarrassment. Thanks be to God.

The Reverend Emily Griffin

Associate Rector, St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church - Pennington

"True Love": Debbie Cook on Chapter 4 of Almost Christian

One of our favorite family movies is The Princess Bride, a clever Rob Reiner movie (based on a book of the same name by William Goldman) about the love story of the handsome and faithful Westley and the beautiful Buttercup.  We have watched it so many times we can quote almost all the lines.  The scene of their reunion after many years of Westley’s absence (and his being presumed dead) is one of my favorites:

Westley:              “I told you I would always come for you.  What didn’t you wait for me?”

Buttercup:              “Well, you were dead.”

Westley:             “Death cannot stop true love.  All it can do it is delay it for a little while.”

Buttercup:            “I will never doubt again.”

Westley:            “There will never be a need.”

Ah, true love.  The stuff that causes the hero or heroine to go to the ends of the earth (or beyond) for their beloved, that causes us to sometimes do irrational things.  Songs have been sung, poems composed, quests undertaken, all in the name of true love.  We’ll know it when we find it, we say. And when we do find it, it can fill us to overflowing, and we often feel the need to share our good news with the world. 

Unless, it seems, our true love is with Jesus.  Then so many Christians suddenly get very quiet.

As Christians, we are called to share the good news of God’s true love for us, for all of creation, with others, by word, by example--even to the ends the earth.  In Chapter 4 of Almost Christian, Dean writes about the gospel’s missionary impulse, rooted in the reality of a God as “both sender and as the one who is sent.”  A God who reaches out, crosses boundaries, seeking us with all the passion and true love of a lover seeking their beloved, even to the point of death and back.  We too are sent; called to live lives of sacrificial love, to share our love story, THE love story with others so that they may be part of it too.

A generative faith, a faith that bears fruit, is one that is rooted in true love.  Not the romantic love of the movies, but love that is true, honest, unconditional, powerful—the kind of love that changes us in ways we would never expect or even dare to ask for.  Love that asks for all of us, and gives all back and then some.  Love that is so life giving that it can lead us to bear those fruits of faith as naturally as an apple tree bears apples. A love like that can only come from God.

There are many wonderful ways to open the door, to let us know about that love, about God: catechesis, scripture, worship, living and working together in Christian community.  But our formation, our journey, cannot end there.  For knowing about Jesus is not the same as knowing Jesus—that takes time and trust and commitment.  And we cannot get there on our own: we need others to show us the way by sharing their own love story; we need the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us.  Our children, our youth, long to know why God matters to you, to the world.  They already know true love matters—they just need someone to help them make that connection.

Help to make that connection: share the great true love story of God’s salvation as experienced in your life.   Tell the story of God’s unfathomable love, a love so powerful that even death cannot delay it—so that we will never need to doubt again.

Become sent.

The Reverend Debbie Cook is chair of the Committee on Lifelong Christian Formation [click here to learn more about this ministry]