Suburban Church Case Study: The Well, Feasterville

In an earlier post, I highlighted Todd Hiestand’s essay about being church in suburbia. I discovered that he indeed was putting these ideas into practice in a church, called The Well, in which he serves as one of the pastors. The Well is situated in the suburbs of Philadelphia (Feasterville).

The Well chose to have a warehouse as their building, as they put it “a new kind of church building that we believe will allow us to best be a blessing to our community”. This is because they see fostering the arts as an integral part of their mission:

More than likely you’ll notice a lot of really diverse and exceptional art on the walls when you come in. We use our space as an art gallery and concert venue for the local and greater Philadelphia artists and bands. This is a way for us to be a blessing to the world around us and allows us to simply try and be representatives of Jesus Christ in our world. While people who do not call The Well their church home do much of the art, we do have a number of gifted artists in our community. Often, you will see some of our artists painting during the service.

It is well worth looking at their flickr stream. Especially considering it is a warehouse, this is a beautiful place!

They also have an emphasis on the service as a time of community. This is something that has been bothering me at my church, where people hold almost all their talking until after the service, which I think negates some of the value of having a service. I very much enjoy their approach to ensuring this doesn’t happen:

People often say that the centerpiece to our Sunday morning is community. Whether it’s the 5-10 minute conversation/greeting time in the middle of the service, worshiping together or even a Q & A time during the message we understand and want to practice the fact that we are in this “faith thing” together.

To ensure they are continuing to examine their role in their context, they hold “midrash mettings” quarterly:

Because we believe that theology is best discussed in the context of a community of faith, we come together four times a year to discuss issues of theology and practice that are important to our community so that we may be more effective in being a part of God’s kingdom becoming a reality on earth as it is in heaven.

This all ties into the church’s suburban location, which Hiestand’s article shows has individualism at its core. Art fosters community by being an accessible expression of someone else’s feelings and thoughts. Including fellowship into the worship service provides an environment for community to grow. And the church values being continually relevant through regular re-examination of its context.

A Second Look at the CRC Form of Subscription Debate

“In a world where celebrity equals talent, and where make-believe is called reality, is is most important to have real love, truth, and stability in your life”
–Bernie Brillstein (on my Starbucks cup)

In my past post examining this issue, I expressed my view that the new Doctrinal Covenant is a positive step for the CRC. I still hold to this position, though I wish to highlight some of the rather well-presented and opposing views I found among the overtures in the Agenda for Synod 2008, which have lead me to see that some changes are necessary.

There were six overtures and one communication concerning the Form of Subscription. However, Overture 19, presented by Classis Northcentral Iowa, I thought presented an insightful view of why the new Covenant needs at least revision.

Their first concern was the replacement of orthodoxy with postmodernism. They had issue (as I did) with the report saying that “A regulatory instrument is needed to keep us orthodox … is increasingly being called into question“. They raise the very valid point that in the relativistic postmodern times, the church needs to be a haven for absolute truth, which means it needs to hold that doctrine is still valid today.

They were also concerned with the divide between “contextual” and “timeless” truth. I enjoy their point that “the ambiguous statement that our historic confessions are merely ‘faithful expressions of the gospel in their time’ leaves open the question of whether the gospel itself changes over the years.” They note that flexibility is antithetical to the point of subscribing to a form/covenant. I think this point is very valid, yet see a danger in declaring the doctrinal standards “timelessly true” – I find this hermeneutically troubling. For example, in Article 36 of the Belgic Confession, the Anabaptists are put grouped with anarchists. This statement was properly footnoted in 1985, as this was not longer applicable at that time. Although parallel examples are not many, we must have the ability to say that certain parts of the confessions are historically conditioned and need interpretation in that context.

Their last concern was that the Doctrinal Covenant does not call for officebearers to actually believe the confessions personally. Thus, they explain, it falls short of being effective at being an instrument of orthodoxy. This, I believe, is a point that requires consideration by Synod. I never saw this before, but this is extremely critical for the Doctrinal Covenant to include. However, it is again quite difficult to include this without saying something like the old FoS: “we sincerely believe [the doctrinal standards] … fully agree with the Word of God“, which is again a bit hermeneutically troubling to me, but so is the language in the Doctrinal Covenant, saying officebearers need “to be shaped and governed by them“.

Therefore, I would propose the following to revision to the third paragraph in the Doctrinal Covenant:

With thankfulness for these expressions of faith we promise, in being shaped and governed by them, to wholeheartedly act in accordance with them and to promote them in our various callings: preaching, teaching, writing, and serving; making grateful use of the church’s testimony of faith for our time, Our World Belongs to God: A Contemporary Testimony.

I think this would resolve most of this last problem. By not trying to regulate belief, interpretations are allowed to vary somewhat. However, this would keep belief within the bounds of what one could call orthodoxy, saying the expression of those beliefs needs to accord with the confessions. This keeps the unity of action that the CRC values as a confessional church, while allowing for diversity in interpretation.

Church as Liberation

Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

I was reading the Boff brothers’ excellent book about Liberation Theology this past week. I highly recommend this book, even though liberation theology seems to have already had its heyday. The common perception of Liberation Theology constrains it to the Latin American situation, but the Boffs show that it goes far beyond that.

Liberation theology sought to liberate the oppressed, especially the poor. But the Boffs how that there are two types of poverty. Those who make less than a living, the socio-economic poor, first come to mind. The process of liberation here brings these people out of their poverty.

However, there are also those that Jesus described as poor in spirit, the Boffs’ evangelically poor. Unlike socio-economically, those who are not poor in spirit are the oppressed; people are liberated into this poverty.

After looking at this exposition, I saw that both types of liberation are brought about by the same thing: generosity.

To solve the extreme problem of socio-economic poverty, we need to be generous with our resources. We are to give things as money, grain (especially with its recent surge in cost), and prayer. We must also speak out against the injustices that our capitalistic system brings about in some parts of the world. However, I wish to remind all that it is a fallacy to say that this is the complete solution to poverty; personal involvement of many is very necessary as well. If anyone is looking for a very worthy cause in this area, have a look at Emmanuel’s Wish, a small charity which supports African orphanages; also don’t forget your local homeless!

But to be poor in spirit, we must go beyond just our resources, instead giving away our very selves. To be poor in spirit is to counter our natural tendency to hoard ourselves, instead by being devoted completely to God (as Paul put it, a “living sacrifice”), and following his command to love our neighbour. And liberated from the oppression of individualism, Christians can form a community of the truly free.

This is where the second part of the Beatitude comes into play. The poor in spirit have the Kingdom of Heaven, for they make it up, and set free from self-interest, are ready to create it anew together.

And the first part of this is casting off oppressive ideologies. Both the physical and spiritual elements of life can be appreciated, throwing away both the Platonism in some Christianity and the denial of the spiritual in humanism. Each individual can be appreciated in their own peculiar way, as preference and prejudice can be disposed of. This creates the opportunity for vibrant and rich community.

Basically, the church becomes a community in itself, but inside the communities of the temporal world. But, because the church is the medium in which the Kingdom is developed, it shows to the temporal community what it ought to be like, and in its life, persuade the temporal community and its members that the Christian way is better. Francis Shaeffer put it this way:

“…We must exhibit that, on the basis of the work of Christ, the Chruch can acheive partially, but substantially, what the secular world wants and cannot get. The Church ought to be a “pilot plant,” where men can see in our congregations and missions a substantial healing of all the divisions, the alienations, man’s rebellion has produced.” (Pollution and the Death of Man, 81-82)

This is the dream of the missional church. For the world is starving spiritually in a way as severe as the hungry. The compassion demanded by our love in Christ ought to extend to all the oppressed: both the economically poor and the spiritually rich. And in generosity, we have the tools to live this compassion out.

The Long Dark Coffee-Time of the Soul

It has been an exceedingly busy week for me. My school is putting on a play, of which I am a part. This requires staying after school until after 10:00 each night. On top of this, I am taking the ACT on Saturday, which I need to do well on to get scholarships.

“Welcome to the world,” some would say. And how I have found the world to be so! Yet this overactivity wearies me.

It is better, for me, to be balanced than productive, to have stillness than progress. This, to me, brings out a glimpse of the peace in the world, a sense of order and beauty that is easily overlooked when moving too fast or making too much noise. And it is indeed hard to find a place that man has not lit up or paved or left any sort of this peace in.

Yet there is still a bit of it left in myself. And although the busyness of life treads upon it, I am able, at least there, to push it back.

Thus inside my local Starbucks, I caught this glimpse of shalom.

CRC Synod 2008: Agenda Part 1

This post is part of a summary of the Agenda. If you want to see what I have written about what has actually happened at Synod this week, please see the front page of this blog. I will keep these summaries updated throughout the week. The official CRCNA Synod page is here.

I think I might be the only person to ever get excited about this, but the Christian Reformed Church’s Agenda For Synod 2008 was released very recently. There seems to be an extreme lack of commentary about most synodical issues, even in the blogosphere, and the agendas themselves are often very dense to the point of being next to unreadable. Thus, behold my summary of those issues I found interesting therein.

I have put page numbers in square brackets [ ] if you want to see where something is.

The Board of Trustees (the BOT!) takes care of denominational matters during the 51/52s of the year that Synod isn’t in session. They prepare each year a large report of what they do, usually a bit dull…

The BOT is putting forth a proposal to no longer have woman advisors, as woman delegates to Synod have surpassed the number of advisors allocated. [24] The BOT is also proposing single nominations for denominational board positions (instead of the current two) [28], and discontinuing the alternate positions on those boards. [29]

A revision of Article 23-d of the Church Order to allow solo pastors of congregations affiliating with the CRC to not require time at Calvin Seminary is brought up again for approval, as it need confirmation after passing at Synod 2007. [31]

There are a few miscellaneous things that don’t fit nicely into a paragraph: The past list of classis that have declared the word male inoperative has been replaced by a list of classis that have decided that women may not be delegated to classis (there are 6). [23] The BOT endorsed the participation of the CRC in Project Ploughshares to participate in the issue of War and Peace. [31] Among the many summaries of various ministries, I found an “Office of Ministry Planning”, [36] which has an interesting mandate. All Nations Heritage Week is recommended for celebration in the churches. [42]

The BOT’s Bible Translation Commitee found the New Living Translation acceptable for use in the churches, with reservations; [29] appendix A is the report of this committee. [43] The report lays out both how the  strong dynamic-equivalence translation approach of the NLT can be useful for comprehension, but this same technique can distance the translation from the original texts. [45-48] In light of this, the committee suggests guidelines on its use, namely that another translation be used alongside the NLT. [48] Therefore, the recommendation includes “with reservations” to ensure this is clear. However, I feel unsure that this will peculate to the churches wanting to use the NLT.

The report mentions that Synod 2006 directed the BOT to appoint a standing Translation Committee, but the BOT decided to establish ad hoc (case-by-case) committees insteads, such as the one studying the NLT. Why didn’t they follow the direction of Synod?

The Interchurch Relations Committee discussed the relationship between the CRC and the PCN (Protestant Church in the Netherlands). [182-185] In the past, the CRC imposed a restricted relationship with the GKN (the Reformed church of the Netherlands) for various reasons. Recently, the GKN merged with some other churches to form the PCN, and the IRC argues the restrictions do not transfer, and maintaining an ecumenical relationship with the Dutch Reformed churches is important.

There were a few study committees, as always. The most significant and controversial is the one studying the Form of Subscription, about which I have already written about here and re-examined in light of some overtures.

Continued: CRC Synod 2008: Agenda Part 2