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
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