Author Archives: reveds

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About reveds

Occupation: Pastor, Ebenezer Presbyterian Church, Lennox, SD Education: BS - Christian Education, Sterling College; MDiv. - Princeton Theological Seminary Family: Married, with Four children. Hobbies: Running (will someday run a marathon), Sci-Fi (especially Doctor Who and Sherlock), Theater, and anything else my kids will let me do.

Hopes for General Assembly

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Two weeks from now I will be in the steamy south of Mobile, AL attending my first ever General Assembly of the PCA. I’ve never been to Alabaman before, so I’m looking forward to the visit, and a little nervous about exploring new places.  In addition to the fact that I will be away from the family for a week,  rebounding from this trip to a week at Church Camp, I have some trepidation about going to GA.  Let me try to explain.

My experience with General Assembly meetings in the PCUSA have not gone well in the past.  I first attended General Assembly back in 1994 when it was in Wichita, KS.  I was working that summer at a church camp in S.E. Kansas, and because GA was in Wichita, the High School camp ended early, and we bussed the kids to GA for the opening worship service and an overnight lock-in with other PCUSA students from around the nation.  The lock-in was frustrating: there was no Biblical teaching, just a long night of dodge-ball, movies, and food. Everything a kid would want, but nothing that they needed. I saw it as a wasted opportunity to equip the students, who one elder said were “the future of the church” to grow in their understanding and love of God in Jesus Christ and to become engaged in the evangelism and outreach of the church.

Fast forward almost 18 years. I was serving as a PCUSA pastor in NE Iowa, and the denomination was again contemplating changing its ordination standards to allow for the ordination of practicing, unrepentant, homosexuals as Teaching and Ruling Elders and Deacons.  My session had approved a motion requesting a moratorium on the ordination issue, calling for a time of prayer and discernment.  The motion was approved by the presbytery, and I was asked to present the motion to the General Assembly.

stoles

Hmm, how do you think I’m going to vote?

This was my Daniel in the Lion’s Den moment.  I walked into the conference center, and was immediately greeted by other commissioners bedecked with Rainbow Stoles, making clear where they stood on the matter of ordination.  Any hope for an open-minded reception was gone.  The opening worship service for the Assembly included 12 foot puppets, dancing through the congregation during the “blessing of the four directions.” The motion I presented was laughed at in the committee hearing (by the open-minded-stole-wearing-delegates), and the motion to change the standards of ordination were passed by the GA and eventually by a majority of presbyteries.

 

So I head to the PCA General Assembly wary of the political nature of such gatherings, but also optimistically hopeful about what may come.  Next week, I will share some of the business that we will be discussing at General Assembly, but today, I simply offer my prayers for what I will experience.

My prayers for General Assembly:

  1. Fewer Shenanigans.  I don’t want to see puppets, milk and honey ceremonies, Rainbow Stoles or Naked Cowboys in worship. That should go without saying.  Still, there are temptations for large scale gatherings to push boundaries and make waves, for no other reason than to push boundaries and make waves.  I guess what I’m hoping for here is just that we can be a gathering of the Church, where we come together to hear God’s word, to pray with and for one another, and to work for the peace and purity of the body of Christ.
  2. Biblical Teaching and Worship.  We have some fantastic Biblical scholars in the PCA, and at one time, the name Presbyterian was synonymous with solid, reformed Biblical teaching. I would hope that we could use our national gathering to lift up Biblical teaching and the application of Scripture to our current context in an increasingly “post-Christian” America.
    How we proclaim the Good News, and how we Worship according to the authority of God’s Word, can have a transforming effect on our world today.  I pray that this is happening in my own congregation, and would love to see it at our General Assembly as well.
  3. Prayerful and Biblical Discussion on Important Matters.  There are a lot of important and very difficult issues that the church faces today, and we need to have profound and meaningful conversations and debates on these matters.  Yet I pray that we can learn how to have these conversations, how to disagree with one another, and still love one another and strive to maintain the bond of peace and unity in Christ.
  4. Genuine Fellowship as the Body of Christ. Ultimately, I guess what I’m hoping for as I prepare for General Assembly is that I will be going to Church, called by Christ to be with my Fathers and Brothers who have also been called by Christ, to be a Church that lives for the glory of God.

Be praying for me, for the Presbyterian Church in America, as we come together for our General Assembly (June 20-24, 2016).  I’ll be trying to post updates while at GA, so keep checking in here at the blog.

SDG

 

The Suicide of Slothfulness

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“Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.”
Romans 12:11

As the parent of four children, I believe I have discovered what is commonly referred to in the Science Fiction world as a “Time Warp.”  I have witnessed the phenomena myself, routinely; but, as yet, have found no way to consistently control it.

Let me explain.

Take a perfectly healthy, active, and able 13 year old (that’s usually about the age when the “event horizon” occurs). By all outward appearances they seem normal, operating within the same constraints of time/space as the rest of the universe.  Ask that 13 year old any one of the following – pick up your room, do your homework, empty the dishwasher, etc… – and something truly amazing happens.

While you continue to move forward in time at a consistent pace, for the 13 year old, time has come to a crashing halt.  Their motion is imperceptible, slower than a three-toed tree sloth, perfect suspended animation.

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Then, just to mess with them, you mention that you are heading to the store for a soda, or going to the movies, and before you can grab your keys, they are showered, dressed, and buckled in the car and ready to go, as if their temporary pause in motion allowed them to propel themselves forward in time.

While I think I could get a grant to research this phenomena, I’m sure it’s something we’ve all experienced.  It’s nothing other than laziness, or what the Bible calls “slothfulness.”  The apostle Paul, as he describes the Christian life in Romans 12, speak directly to our attitude toward work, saying, “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.”

“Do No Be Slothful in Zeal”
We don’t talk much about “Zeal” these days, so what exactly is Paul saying?  The word “zeal” here means “eagerness,” or “diligence.” Martin Luther translated this passage, saying, “Be not lazy as to what you ought to do.”

The Christian is never called to idleness and inactivity but to work and diligence.  We are laborers in the field (Matt. 9:37-38), set apart for good works (Eph 2:8-10), and called to “abound in the work of the Lord” (1 Cor 15:58).

Yet so often we set ourselves on cruise control, coasting through the Christian life.  We let the Sunday School teacher or Pastor do the hard work of study in the word of God, and we sit back and take it all in.  We trust that the worship leaders will generate the right “experience” in worship to carry us through to next week so that we don’t have to put in the time ourselves from day to day.  There are others who will evangelize, others who will give, others who will pray.

Spiritual laziness is spiritual suicide.  We spend more time each day exercising our bodies and tending to our outward appearance than we do exercising our faith in prayer and study, and our witness to the world reflects this reality.  Our churches have fewer numbers every Sunday morning. Our witness to the world is a watered down, compromised, “God wants you to be happy and healthy” message with no power to save.  We are merely playing at Christianity and it shows.  This is why God’s word says, “Do not be slothful in zeal.”

“Be Fervent in Spirit”
The opposite of laziness is fervency.  The word “fervent” comes from the Latin “fervens” which means “boiling.” Rather than a lukewarm, stagnant pool of laziness, our spirit is to be roiling and warm in the power of God’s Holy Spirit.

Donald Barnhouse once wrote, “This [fervency] of the Spirit is the warmth of the soul touched by the love of Christ.  It cannot exist apart from the knowledge that we have been loved, that Christ gave himself for our sins, that we have been redeemed, and that the Holy Spirit has come to dwell in our hearts. Such a knowledge causes us to yield in full surrender to Him as Lord of all.”

Filled with the Holy Spirit, alive in the knowledge of this love and mercy in Christ Jesus, how can we help but be living and active for Him? When we consider the reality of His love and sacrifice for our salvation, when we remember our citizenship is in heaven, secured as an eternal inheritance, will we not seek to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12)?

“Serve the Lord”
The cure to slothfulness and the key to fervency is remembering that our service in all things is to the Lord. Filled with His love, living by His grace, we do all things for His glory (Col 3:17; 1 Cor 10:31).

Again Barnhouse writes, “The student studies as unto the Lord. In athletics he runs or plays the game as unto the Lord, and he can ask the Lord to enable him to hit the ball, get to first base, and around to home plate. The true Christian can ask the Lord to help him play to the utmost in order that his body may be fully rested in its ‘re-creation.’ We read as unto the Lord, we listen to the radio as unto the Lord, we look at television as unto the Lord.”  Everything we do is unto the Lord.

Let us rise from our slothfulness, as the Spirit fills us and moves us, that we may engage in the work the Lord has set before us, serving the Lord will joy and passion!

SDG