Why Plant and Grow PCA Churches?
Tags: missions
A Friendly Open Conversation with Presbyterian Officers and Members
written by Terry L. Johnson and Robert L. Reymond
The Presbyterian Church in America is putting enormous energy and resources into church planting these days. One has only to read the "Report of the Committee on Mission to North America to the 22nd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America" in the Minutes of the Twenty-Second General Assembly (pp. 540-61) to verify this. In light of this fact, we-both of us ordained ministers in the PCA-want you to reflect with us on the simple question, Why? Why should the PCA bother? Why should a local PCA church support these MNA efforts with its "askings" and other benevolences? We can think of several reasons why we should not be doing so. We should not be doing so just to start another church. There are lots of churches out there, one on nearly every corner. We should not even be doing so just to start another evangelical church. There are lots of them out there as well. There is little need in most communities for another evangelical church if it is only going to do what the other churches are already doing. And for us to plant another church simply in order that our brand name "Presbyterian" can "get a cut of the soul-winning action," and not make a distinctive and necessary contribution to the life of the church as a whole, we believe, would be to display the worst kind of party spirit and sectarianism.
Over against some among us who, we fear, might prefer the PCA to be simply "broadly Reformed" (with the emphasis on the adverb rather than the adjective, which, as we perceive the intent, means that our Reformed distinctives might receive little more than lip service in the actual day-to-day operations of the church), we would urge-with we think a majority of teaching and ruling elders in the PCA-that the PCA's only justification for planting new churches in America is that we all see it as vitally important to erect and grow, not "truly," nor "thoroughly," but just simply distinctly Presbyterian and Reformed witnesses to the truth of God. If we don't do this-and we are not suggesting for a moment here that MNA is not trying to do this; indeed, we believe this is MNA's vision-if our interests are just to plant broad, evangelical church witnesses, if our intention is just to duplicate work that others are already doing, our energy and resources would be better spent overseas in lands where there is no Christian witness at all, for we feel that the old question, "Why should one person hear the gospel twice when many have never heard it once?" still has a certain logical power about it. So we say again, only if the PCA intends to make a unique and important contribution to the health and growth of the Kingdom of God here and now in America, should we continue to plant and grow our kind of churches in America at the present rate.
Does the PCA have such a contribution to make? We definitely think it does. The American evangelical church is in a sick and weakened condition, and the signs of its deterioration are everywhere. While it boasts of huge numbers of "born again Christians" (there is, of course, no other kind, is there?), its influence is negligible on national life and morals. But in area after area our Presbyterian and Reformed distinctives provide precisely the curve for what ails American Christianity. The promulgation of these distinctives, warmly and winsomely, is therefore vitally important if the Christian church is to survive the hammer blows it is receiving from our secular, decadent culture. What are some of these areas where our voices need to be raised and raised aloud until we have affected the whole church?
Presbyterian Church Government
Let's begin with an area which many may think, at first blush, is a very mundane and peripheral area. We refer to the issue of church order or church government.
It has become commonplace today to say that Scripture teaches no particular form of church government. Church government, it is said, is to be determined on an ad hoc or pragmatic basis. Whatever works at any given time in any given place is allowable so long as it promotes peace and purity in the church. But this view does not fit the teaching of Scripture or the evidence from early church history. Luke's Acts makes plain that everywhere Paul went planting churches he appointed elders (Acts 14:23). He later instructed Titus to appoint elders "in every city" (Tit 1:5). The early deacons, first chosen to assist the Apostles (Acts 6:1-7), were thereafter appointed to assist these elders (1 Tim 3:8-10). Then with the passing of the Apostles, churches were to be governed by councils of elders who were to be chosen by the people. But even beyond this-and most important it is to note-these New Testament churches were bound together by a common government. The principle of mutual accountability, dependency, and submission among the churches is taught at several places in Scripture. For example, in Acts 8:14 where the Jerusalem church sent Peter and John to investigate Philip's work in Samaria, and in Acts 13:1-3 and 14:27 where missionaries were sent out by the Antioch church and then returned to Antioch and reported on their labors. But the primary text in demonstrating the connectional nature of the early church is Acts 15. Here we are informed of the appeal made by the Antioch church to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem, who met with them in council and then together rendered a decision in the form of a "letter," called in Acts 16:4 "decrees" (ta dogmata - rules, regulations, laws, decrees). This letter was communicated, not just back in Antioch, but to Syria and Cilicia as well, and to the entire church, with every expectation that its instructions were to be heeded and to be viewed as church law by all these churches. Clearly, these congregations were not independent and autonomous. Rather, they were mutually submissive, dependent, and accountable to each other.
This form of church government, one that is both conciliar and connectional, prevailed until the end of the third century when, under Cyprian's influence (A.D. 195-258), episcopal forms began to emerge.1 But the biblical and earliest form of church government was Presbyterian. If then one is looking for a church which is apostolic in church government, a Presbyterian church is it.
Why is this important? Because the Presbyterian form of church government is not only the most biblically sound form, but it also provides the structure for the most trustworthy, just, and peaceful way for the church to determine its direction, its principles, its practices, and its priorities, and to resolve its differences. Lose balance in church government in one direction and one ends up with tyranny. Lose balance in the other direction and one has anarchy, followed by tyranny. Of course, the Spirit of God must always animate the form, but the form itself is God-given and important. It is no exaggeration to say that the Christian religion in our day is about to self-destruct because of its abandonment of biblical church government. How so? Because there are too many ministers and too many churches that are accountable to no one. This is why we have our Jonestowns and Wacos. This is why we have our Jim Bakkers and Jimmy Swaggaarts. Large areas of American Christianity are in a state of anarchy because churches and pastors are a law unto themselves, answering to no one. Our hero-worshiping churches, influenced as they have been by our hero-worshiping culture, have elevated talented men to such celebrity status that moral flesh cannot bear the heights. One should not be surprised then when sexual indiscretions, a divorce rate among ministers as high as the national average, and financial mismanagement follow. Power still corrupts, you see, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The pastor (or church) who answers to no one inevitably experiences the warping of priorities under the influence of his (or its) privately-held biases. Understandably, unanswerable deeds ensue. The collective impact of these almost daily church scandals is all but ruining the Christian witness in our generation. Does the populace really respect the American church? A small percentage does, perhaps, but while what Ralph Nader says matters and what E.F. Hutton says matters, what the church thinks about a thing doesn't really matter to most people. And ministers-how do they fare in the public's opinion?
In a recent study measuring social prestige, on a scale of one to one hundred, ministers ranked fifty-second, cheek by jowl with factory foremen and the operators of power stations, far below the medical doctors and lawyers with whom they would like to be confused. In another national poll, only 16 percent of the public expressed confidence in their leadership. (David Wells, No Place for Truth, p. 113; emphasis supplied).
It is not vital, then, that the principle of rule by a plurality of elders, who are in turn accountable to other elders, rather than rule by autocratic "loose cannons," be restored in the life of our churches?
The apostolic form of church government will also deliver the church from the hierarchical tyranny experienced in many quarters of Christendom, for it is nothing short of tyranny when ecclesiastical bureaucrats lord it over lowly congregations and force unwanted ministers on them or refuse them the ministers they request. (Such practices are being regularly done today.) Again, is not the republicanism of biblical and early church government the answer to ecclesiastical oppression?
What we are trying to say is that church polity is not an irrelevancy. Church ministry and church government, we have attempted to show, cannot be separated. One road to church renewal and growth, therefore, is the restoration of the biblical form of church government in the American church (cf. Acts 6:1-7), for representative and connectional church government provides the essential "checks and balances" necessary to keep the church on track and to protect it from anarchy on the one side and tyranny on the other.
Reformed Church Growth
The second area we want you to consider with us is church growth. We want to begin here by saying that, while it may never have occurred to most Christians, our Reformed doctrinal distinctives are absolutely essential for true church growth. This may indeed sound strange since in our time Reformed churches are known more for their emphasis on doctrine than for their evangelism. Nevertheless, we would urge that Reformed theology is absolutely necessary for true evangelism. And history itself reminds us that the vast majority of the great missionaries and evangelists of the past have been Calvinists, such as John Bunyan, Richard Baxter and all the Puritans, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and nearly all the leaders of the Great Awakening (the Wesleys are the exception here, being tagged by J. I. Packer for their efforts as "confused Calvinists"), Charles Spurgeon, all the leaders of the modern missionary movement from William Carey and the Baptists in England, Henry Venn and the Church of England, Adoniram Judson and the Americans, and, of course, the Church of Scotland. In our own century, D. James Kennedy, founder of Evangelism Explosion, is a Calvinist. We have a God-honored legacy here and much, therefore, to say to our generation.
The problem in our day, you see, is two-fold: On the one hand, we are seeing a waning confidence in the message of the gospel. The evangelical church shows signs of losing confidence in the convincing and converting power of the gospel message. That's why increasing numbers of churches prefer sermons on family life and psychological health. We're being overtaken by what Os Guinness calls the managerial and therapeutic revolutions. The winning message, it seems, is the one which helps people to solve their temporal problems and makes them feel good about themselves. Just watch Robert Schuller's Hour of Power one time and you'll see what we mean. In such a cultural climate, preaching on the law, sin and repentance, and the cross has all but disappeared, even in evangelical churches. The old gospel is not popular. So the church has become "user friendly," "consumer oriented," and the gospel is watered down to appeal to the consumers. As a result we are being inundated with the plague of "cheap grace" (Bonhoeffer). Today's "gospel" is all too often a gospel without cost, without repentance, without commitment, without discipleship, and thus "another gospel" and accordingly no gospel at all, all traceable to the fact that this is how too many people today have come to believe that the church must be grown.
We would suggest as "must" reading for teaching and ruling elders who want to escape the onslaught of our culture's influence on the American Church: David F. Well's two books, No Place for Truth or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology, and its sequel God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams; Os Guinness' two books, No God but God: Breaking With the Idols of Our Age (co-authored with John Seel), and Dining with the Devil: The Megachurch Movement Flirts with Modernity; Mark A. Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind; and (for those who simply do not have the time, at least at first, to read entire books) David W. Hall's article, "On Not Having a Strategy for the New Decade: A Slightly Contrarian Plea," in which Hall urges the contemporary church to re-adopt as its own the strategy of the greatest futurist of them all, the Apostle Paul, who laid out his "futurist strategy" in his charge to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:1-5.
On the other hand, we are seeing a waning confidence within Evangelicalism in preaching as the means by which the gospel is to be spread. As a result, preaching is giving way to multi-media presentations, drama and dance, "sharing times," sermonettes and "how to" devotionals. Preaching is increasingly being viewed as outdated and ineffective. So churches have borrowed techniques from Madison Avenue to grow themselves. Telemarketing is now the darling of the church growth movement. Churches so infected, as a substitute, look to the multiplication of programs to affect their growth; they sponsor conferences and seminars on every conceivable topic under the sun; they subdivide their congregations down into marrieds/singles/single-parent/divorced/thirty-something/twenty-something/teens/unemployed/child-abused/drug-addicted, etc., attempting to arrange programs for them all. (While there is nothing unseemly, of course, in these attempts to meet the needs of these groups as long as these efforts do not diminish the primacy of biblical preaching in the life of the church, one might still justifiably wonder if the perception that this is what one must do in order to minister effectively in the ‘90's and beyond is not in itself a manifestation of waning confidence in the universal appeal and power of the gospel.) And once a person joins such a church, conventional wisdom has it, the church and the minister must met his every felt need. Accordingly, ministers have become managers, facilitators, motivators, and "rush chairmen," promising the newcomer that all his needs will be met-everything but heralds of the whole counsel of God who march to the beat of the transcendent Drummer, and this all because we are losing confidence in preaching God's Word as the primary means for the growth of the church and the individual Christian.
What is the answer? A restored confidence in the Reformed doctrine of the sovereignty of God in salvation! When polished, self-confident, showboat-type preachers, for example, draw attention to themselves by using music, story-telling, hysteria and hype, and appeal to their viewers' "sense of self-worth" in order to produce "decisions," it is evident that they don't understand the depravity of man, either their own or their audience's, or they wouldn't act this way. Why do we say this? Because a biblical, experiential understanding of the depravity of man and the necessity of God's sovereign initiation in salvation produces humility and the very antithesis of human self-confidence, namely, confidence in God alone.
Read 1 Corinthians 1:26-31, and let Paul instruct us all anew that the truth of God's election destroys human pride and removes all boast before God. Learn anew that only God can convert a sinner, that only God can grow a saint, that no one can boast in this matter of salvation because God does it all (cf. 1 Cor 3:5-7). Neither the preacher nor the convert can take any credit. Salvation is all God's doing. "It is because of Him that we are in Christ Jesus" (1 Cor 1:30). Accordingly, be reassured that you can preach the simple, unadorned, unglamorized, unglittered gospel message of the cross, knowing that God will use it to save souls and build the church.
Then continue to read, and read 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 and let Paul instruct us all anew that preaching does not need to be spruced up by the use of the finest Greek oratorical skills or modern communication methodologies. Neither does the gospel message need Plato or Freud. And here we are bold to say that it is the Reformed theology alone which supplies the necessary theological underpinning which makes true dependence upon God in gospel proclamation possible. When will revival come? We say with confidence that it will only come when through all our failures we ministers stop resorting to and relying upon mere oratorical skills and clever organizational techniques to force church growth, and preach with power the simple pristine Word to us from another world, and rely upon God to do His work.
None of this that we are saying here, of course, is intended to suggest even for a moment that Reformed preachers are or should be anti-intellectual. If one were to draw such a conclusion from what we have said, it would indicate that he knows little or nothing about the content and substance of the Reformed faith, for anyone who knows anything at all about the Reformed faith will know that it is anything but anti-intellectual. But what we do intend to say is that the Reformed understanding of the gospel, with its biblical implications of human depravity, unconditional election, particular atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance in holiness, must not be watered down or ignored in the interest of church growth, and that it will only be when we unceasingly and uncompromisingly proclaim the message of "Christ and Him crucified," and the whole counsel of God, that true revival will come.
You see, all true revival comes from Christ alone. True revival is not worked up by human effort. The last church in the world to be visited by spiritual renewal will be the church which thinks it can produce it. In one sense, revival is not even prayed down, though much effectual prayer has always been behind the great periods of spiritual awakening which the church has periodically known. No, the source of true revival is none other than Christ, the Baptizer of His people. It is He and He alone who can revive His church. And all effectual prayer on the part of God's people before His outpourings of blessing is only the response of a particular heart attitude, which He graciously infuses within them. And what attitude is that? A lowly spirit, a broken and contrite heart! The church of Jesus Christ needs the gale of the reviving Spirt of Christ sweeping through it today, calling it back to forsaken revealed truths, strengthening its limbs, infusing it with boldness and courage, and empowering it to great deeds. And if that gale is not presently ours, it is doubtless because we are not sufficiently low in the dust before Him, asking His forgiveness for forsaking the pristine proclamation of the Cross with power.
Let us all be reminded that our God looks not primarily at the outward-at Christians' fine dress and Amy Vanderbilt manners. He looks primarily at hearts. And what does He see when He looks beyond our fine attire and our best social decorum? Does He see ministerial hearts in the PCA, to employ here an old Dutch Reformed phrase, that have "spent time at Sinai" as well as at Calvary, that have been made conscious that apart from being bathed in His grace the human heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked? Does He see ministerial hearts in the PCA beating in true humility before Him? Does He see ministerial hearts in the PCA that understand that without Him they can do nothing good? Or have we forgotten our own Reformed theology? Is it possible that He sees some proud and haughty spirits, insisting on doing things their way? Does he see some hearts that have not yet come to the end of themselves? Does He see some hearts that are willing to try one more "how to build the church" manual before they will sink in humble desperation before Him?
Do we in the PCA want genuine renewal in our midst and in the American church at large? Surely we do! Then we must continually cry out to Him, publicly from our pulpits and privately from our closets, for that brokenness of spirit before Him that alone He honors with His animating presence. Let us importune heaven for new depths of humility before Him that He might regale us with His power from on high! And let us be true to the Reformed faith, which we all have taken vows to uphold, in our church planting and church growth methods! Not to do so will incur the divine displeasure for hypocrisy.
Reformed Worship
The third and final area we want you to consider with us is the matter of worship. Every theology produces a particular kind of worship and a particular kind of piety behind that worship. How one thinks about God, you see, will affect how one worships and how one walks before Him. Our Reformed worship tradition has a number of things to say to our generation of Christians about this matter.
Our worship tradition must first remind our generation of Christians that the worship of God is the most important of all the Christian's tasks. That's the primary reason why one should go to church: to worship God. In today's church climate this is a radical idea, we know. Nevertheless, we should go to church, not to evangelize, not to provide a comfortable "consumer-friendly" setting for the unchurched, not even primarily for the benefit which fellowship with other Christians surely brings, and definitely not just for lectures and devotionals, but in order to worship God. We should also understand that the missionary task is not the most important task the church has either. Missionary effort exists among the nations, as John Piper reminds us in his Let the Nations be Glad, only because worship of the true God doesn't!
Second, we must convince our generation of Christians that the Reformed tradition's "regulative principle" regarding worship should be the governing principle of all Christian worship, that is to say, that Christians must do in worship only those things which God commands, clearing perceiving that "what is not commanded is forbidden" and just as self-consciously rejecting the dictum that "what is not expressly forbidden is permissible" (cf. Gen 4:4-5; Lev 10:1-2; Num 16-17; 2 Chron 26:16-19; Jer 19:5; Matt 15:9; Mark 7:6-13; John 4:22-24, 14:6; Col 2:20-23; Westminster Confession of Faith, I, 6; XX, 1-8). (In this connection we in the PCA must be careful not to elevate some cherished cultural tradition to the level of a worship principle to which all other Christians must adhere.) This approach to worship will produce a worship that is biblical, spiritual, simple, weighty, and reverent. It will produce a worship centered upon God, substantial and life-transforming. It will prohibit a worship that is superficial in character, complicated by ritual, stimulated by props and flippant in tone.
Anyone who will take the time to study the matter will have to conclude that worship in evangelical churches today is, speaking generally, approaching bankruptcy. There is neither rhyme nor reason, much less biblical warrant, for the order of and much that goes on in many evangelical church services today. The fact of the matter is, much evangelical "worship" is simply not true worship at all. For decades now evangelical churches have been conducting their services for the sake of unbelievers. Both the revivalistic service of a previous generation and the "seeker service" of today are shaped by the same concern-appeal to the unchurched. Not surprisingly, in neither case does much that might be called worship by Christians occur. As a result, many evangelicals who have been sitting for years in such worship services are finding their souls drying up, and they have begun to cry for something else. Accordingly, they have become vulnerable to the appeal of the mysterium of hierarchical liturgical services. This is why some today are "on the Canterbury trail" or defecting to Greek Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism. Others who have simply been spectators for years in their worship services are getting caught up in the, albeit shallow, people-involving worship of charismatic services.
The answer to these problems in contemporary worship will not be found by adopting the style of an ecclesiastical tradition foreign to our own. Some, we fear, have seen the above defections as a call to imitate these "successful rivals." So they have adopted the "winning formulae" of these attracting churches. Consequently, today one can walk into virtually any PCA church in the country on the Lord's Day and not know for sure whether one will worship in a traditional or contemporary, liturgical or non-liturgical, formal or revivalistic fashion. This is regrettable, we believe, and in the long run damaging to the promulgation of the Reformed faith. After all, we cannot expect to carry Presbyterian and Reformed "water" in Episcopal, Charismatic, or Baptist "buckets." The real cure to the problems in contemporary worship will be found in the simple, spiritual, substantial, and serious worship of the Reformed faith and liturgy. In Christ the worshiper enjoys fellowship with the one living and true God who, even for believers, according to the writer of Hebrews, is a "consuming fire." Consequently, while Christian worship should certainly be joyous and filled with gladness (Ps 149:2), the writer of Hebrews urges that it must also be conducted "with reverence and awe" (Heb 12:28-29). The triune God of the Reformed faith is an awe-inspiring, absolutely sovereign, infinitely just and infinitely gracious, incomprehensible Deity. He will not long be known as such or served as such by a people fed rote ritual or revivalistic preaching or emotional choruses and gospel songs. Our God must be worshiped with the mind as well as the heart. Faith in Him requires understanding. And the understanding of our congregations grows primarily as it is nourished by the singing of hymns and psalms, and by the prayers and preaching of our public worship services. Therefore, we cannot adopt forms of worship that are either simply "liturgical" or theologically shallow and expect to remain for long biblically sound, Reformed, and Presbyterian. Our theology, like all systems of theology, must have a form of worship through which it is expressed and communicated. Neglect that form of worship and our theology will cease to be meaningful to us. What then should our worship be like? What should it include?
Such worship will include theologically sound congregational singing. For this we recommend the new Trinity Hymnal. It will also include the much neglected singing of the Psalms which express the full range of human emotions in worship. The biblical Psalms are realistic in a way which many hymns are not, and which choruses can hardly ever be. They also contrast the righteous and the wicked and highlight the conflict between them, and thereby encourage a bold, militant spirituality such as our Huguenot and Puritan forefathers knew and lived by. For this we recommend, particularly for churches for whom regular Psalm-singing would be a new thing, the Trinity Psalter.
Such worship will emphasize and feature biblically-based, hermeneutically sound expository preaching of the Holy Scripture, the only infallible rule of faith and practice, as interpreted by the Westminster Confession of Faith and the two Westminster Catechisms.
Such worship will also include contemplation of God's holy law in keeping with the law-gospel paradigm in order to aid the worshiper in his understanding of his vileness before God, and to promote its use as a guide for Christian conduct. Our carnal and antinomian age is in desperate need of a health dose of the Law of God. Evangelical Christians have become morally lazy, excuse-ridden, and relativistic. It is the Reformed tradition, above all others, which has given prominence to reading and meditating on the law of God. Cf. the Confession of Faith, XVI/i-ii and XIX/v-vi, and the Larger (Questions 97-148) and Shorter Catechisms (Questions 41-81). Regular contemplation of God's holy law in worship would do much to cure our age of its "carnal Christianity" and to restore true personal piety, parental and children's responsibilities, and the Protestant work ethic in and the spiritual reclamation of our land.
Such worship will also stress Sabbath observance. Again, it is our Reformed tradition which replaced the church calendar (except for what is called there the five evangelical feast days) with weekly Sabbath observance. Hughes O. Old, writing in the June 20, 1994 issue of Christianity Today, states: "Any attempt at recovering a Reformed spirituality would do well to carefully study the best of the Puritan literature on the observance of the Lord's Day." Observance of the Lord's Day not only provides unhurried time for prayer, reading of Scripture and meditation all day long, but also becomes the day around which all the rest of the week is organized. You see, if one knows he is going to devote a day to spiritual concerns and eliminate all secular distractions, he will also know that he must organize the remaining six days in such a way that his other obligations will be met.
In conclusion, our Presbyterian and Reformed tradition has exactly the medicine that will heal what ails the Christian church in America today. Our Presbyterian church order can bring an end to the organizational chaos evident in the rampant "celebrity-ism" and bureaucratic machinations that exists in American churches. Our Reformed confidence in the gospel as the power of God unto salvation can put an end to the foolish manipulative techniques employed in all too many church planting and church growth efforts today by those who call themselves evangelicals. And our Reformed regulative principle of worship will restore God-centered worship and piety, and overthrow the mysticism and superficiality of what passes for worship in many liturgical and charismatic quarters today.
How important, then, is it to plant and grow Presbyterian and Reformed witnesses today? We believe it is absolutely and vitally important. There is no greater work in which one could be involved. So let's not hide our light, graciously given to us, under a bushel. Let's be encouraged to give everything we have in the establishing of a Christian witness that will endure for all generations. No less than the survival of biblical Christianity in America is at stake.