Making the ‘great leap’ to the reformed faith has been great for our family. But it hasn’t made things easy. In fact things are more complicated. In our search for the perfect church we’re bewildered with the numerous distinctives that flavor the reformed expression of the faith. (R. Scott Clark’s RRC is highly recommended by this blog for dealing with all that). But in this post we take a look at a small step back. This week we joined some friends at a community oriented non-denominational mega church. While it’s tempting to write this as a comedy piece – from the jaded perspective of two pastor’s kids – all we offer is the record of a single isolated experience.
My friend “Chuck” sat on the end row arms crossed in a defensive posture. The music minister invited the 1000 member congregation to raise their hearts to worship from Psalm 136 (vss 1-9) standing behind a humongous keyboard. “Chuck” is a Free Presbyterian pastor with a PhD in early English Reformed history. All the worse for “Chuck” it was his in-laws that nudged me and pointed out his sulking demeanor. The worship team opened with 3 soft rock renditions of actual Psalms. I passed a note to “Chuck” that read: see, they’re exclusive psalmists. He grimaced.
Stepping back into a contemporary worship service after months of hymns can be explained several ways, like the shock of a small towner going to the big city or going from mono to surround sound. The difficulty for us was the call to prayer and scripture reading with the constant music accompaniment. Neither of us could actually concentrate on prayer, leaving us with a vague feeling of manipulation. The sermon, however, was very good.
The message was on the problem of resisting temptation from 1 Cor. 10:13. Given the first half, or 2/3rds of the service, “Chuck” was surprised to hear an expository sermon with a pertinent exhortation to trust scripture in a very thoughtful conclusion. I was picky. I told “Chuck” it felt that ‘God’ was appealed to so frequently that the word was practically a term in the neuter. “Chuck” shrugged. Yeah, “Chuck,” but the general sway of the message for avoiding temptation became a message of personal strength and perseverance to make it through the day to day; the drama of sanctification is significantly weakened because ‘God’s’ grace and faithfulness are confined to providence. There’s no mention of the Holy Spirit’s work of inward renewal. All is not lost. “Chuck” reminded me that you can’t put everything into one sermon and that the pastor did defend all his major points with key New Testament passages rather than resort to headlines and bubble gum.
All to say that after having attended the reformed church, going back to a non-denominational was not a lapse in sanctification or a lost weekend. The reformed expression of faith is in many respects more rigorous, demanding, and sometimes loses its ‘umph’ when explaining details. But so far we’ve found that there is something more satisfying in staying with it. We’ll explain how in our next post.
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