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"Moving Into God's Future"
(Text of the message delivered by Dr. Ian McPhee, Moderator of Presbytery, during worship at the opening of the meeting of the Presbytery of Hamilton held on September 11, 2007. It is published on PresbyKirk with the permission of the author.)
This text from 2 Corinthians ( II Corinthians 5:11-21) proclaims a central theological vision for the church of Jesus. As Tom Wright reminds us in his book, Simply Christian, in Christ God's future has broken into our present. This means that each one of us who believe that Jesus is the true Lord has been given the Spirit as a foretaste of that new world. So that, as Paul writes here, anyone in Christ becomes a part of the new creation. Indeed, for the Christian "everything has become new!" As Christians we are now therefore part of that new creation that God is moving the world toward. We cannot rest comfortably in this newness, however. Along with this amazing privilege, this astonishing grace that has translated us from spiritual death to life, comes a serious calling to be advance agents of this good news. Paul tells us that we have been made ambassadors for Christ; therefore, we have been made the conduits of this good news to a broken world.
We have talked together this past year about the Presbytery becoming more missional in focus and intention. In this movement toward mission we believe that we can be a better model for congregations; we hope to be the encouraging pastoral and theological voice that helps enable congregations to be more relevant and engaging so that we better fulfill our calling.
I myself have been researching and writing the history of Erskine over the past year. In the course of that work I have discovered an obvious theme that may be true of many of our churches. In its infancy as a congregation Erskine grew numerically through immigration, but also spiritually through the leadership of its Session and Sunday school. Elders were encouraged by Mr. Shearer in 1893 to visit their families and at least once a year to "have reading and prayer with them." Each elder was also encouraged to conduct cottage prayer meetings within their district. They were also encouraged in 1894 by the Moderator to promote family worship. In 1902 we read in the Session minutes: "That the claims of the Sabbath School and Young People's Societies be given a larger place in the thought, prayers and effort of the members…and that the parents be urged to strive more conscientiously and prayerfully for the conversion of their children."
What we need to remember is that conversion is central to the preaching and teaching of the Reformed Tradition. Calvin's sermons are certainly exegetical, pastoral and instructive. But they also seek to win his people to faith. The hallmark of Reformed preaching and teaching in the 16th century is a passionate appeal for conversion.
Something happened in mainline churches in a post 1925 world. We became powerful institutions within society. Before you know it our theological and biblical vision was translated into a Christianity of respectability, citizenship and the status quo. The language of conversion seems to have disappeared from the Session records, from Sunday school records and perhaps even from sermons.
What I am suggesting today is that to be Reformed in any sense that is faithful to the tradition of Calvin, Bucer, Zwingli, Bullinger, Luther, among a host of others, requires that the theological vision echoed here in Paul's text in 2 Corinthians become central in our preaching and worship. We live in a society that no longer comes to church out of any sense of duty or obligation. People come today for very different reasons: seeking answers to deep questions of life; looking for connection and for community in a sometimes lonely, disconnected world; seeking healing for the scars that life has inflicted on them; looking for a safe place to provide moral and spiritual guidance for themselves and their kids; or even because they are simply curious about a Christianity they know nothing about.
The old style civic faith language that dominated the mainline churches for decades will no longer resonate with the modern seekers. I'm not talking here of worship styles. One can be highly formal in both liturgy and music, or more contemporary and downright casual in music and style. I personally prefer a blended style. But any style will engage as long as our theological and biblical vision is dynamic and translated in relevant and passionate language. These people are seeking spiritual life, not how to be better citizens.
My hunch is that this transition for our Presbytery and our churches will be a painful one. But transition we must. We need to be asking how we as a Presbytery can encourage and support this theological vision without being trapped within the bog of process and procedure. Being Reformed is not merely about having a blue book, and/or a legal degree in process. It's much more about a biblical and theological vision inspired by the Reformers. At the heart of that vision was their desire to transform and convert their congregations who had been raised within a Catholicism that separated them from the bible. Superstition, not unlike we meet today in society, was their congregations' life blood. We live in what I would call a parallel historical period. Only our context is secularism and wholesale moral and spiritual confusion. Like the Reformers we have an opportunity to proclaim in our teaching, our worship, and our outreach, that God is reconciling the world into relationship with himself through faith in Christ's life, death and resurrection. Somehow we have to get back to this centre. That is the challenge.
Amen