Below is a copy of the article I wrote for our monthly newsletter…

Membership, a Horrible Word for an Important Concept

Let me be clear: I do not like the term “membership” when used in reference to churches. Of course, I cannot do anything about it, it is the term the Book of Church Order uses, and it has become such a part of our culture that we’re probably past the point of being able to change it. Regardless, I truly believe it to be an awful word for the concept it’s intended to express.

My dissatisfaction with the use of the word “member” is a response to the fact that it is a term typically used to indicate one’s privileges within an exclusive group like a club, lodge, society, or sorority. As wonderful as these kinds of groups can sometimes be, membership within them is primarily about privilege. Membership gives one the ability to demand something from the group. A member of a yacht club, for example, can expect the privilege of renting a slip or using the clubhouse; a member of a sorority can expect the privilege of attending private functions. While the specific requirements for membership in groups may vary, they are typically intended to draw a clear line between those who are “in” and those who do not belong.

Membership in the church is different. One does not “pledge” into the church nor pay yearly dues to belong. One need not be a member to be considered a “Christian;” on the other hand, neither does membership suggest the ability to expect any kind of eternal perks. Membership in the church is about a relationship with Christ and his people, and a commitment to God’s kingdom.

All of which raises the questions: What is membership? Why bother?

What is Church Membership?
We could say a lot about the theology of membership or the doctrine of ecclesiology, but in the end, it seems the question of what membership is might best be answered by looking at the vows people take when they “join.” Membership in the church demands a fourfold commitment: (1) a rejection of evil, (2) a profession of faith in Jesus, (3) a commitment to worship and service, and (4) an acceptance of the church’s guidance while living out a communal commitment to unity, purity, and peace. (To read the exact wording, see the RCA’s “Order for Profession of Faith.”)

Interestingly, none of these four commitments are merely matters of the past. Each of them are promises that must be renewed on a regular – perhaps daily – basis. In other words, church membership is not something we “did;” it is, rather, something we keep doing. As members of Christ’s church (both locally and globally), we daily recommit ourselves to reject evil. We daily recommit ourselves to Jesus’ lordship; we daily recommit ourselves to worship and service in the church, and we daily recommit ourselves to a life of unity, purity, and peace in loving community with one another.

Why Bother?
There are many reasons I believe church membership is a good thing. First and foremost, I believe it is both important and beneficial that we make these commitments publicly. Private commitments are wonderful, but our public commitments make greater demands on our integrity – when we publicly embrace the fourfold membership commitment, we give ourselves an extra incentive to remain faithful to them.

Secondly, our commitment to Christ and the church is reciprocated by a powerful promise offered in return: The church promises to “love, encourage, and support [us] by teaching the gospel of God’s love, by being an example of Christian faith and character, and by giving the strong support of God’s family in fellowship, prayer, and service.”

In a wonderfully circular way, our commitments become the support and encouragement other people need to be faithful, and their commitments become the support and encouragement we need.

It’s worth noting: we all fail. Each of us grows lax in our own commitments at times, and the church, at times, fails to adequately love, encourage and support us. Alexander Pope’s words are truly appropriate here: to err is human, to forgive is divine. Yes, we all fail, but divine forgiveness is granted freely to each of us (and through each of us to one another) in order that those failures would become increasingly temporary and decreasingly frequent.

If you are already a member of Pultneyville Reformed Church, how faithfully are you living into your membership commitments? If you are not yet a member, please consider joining us – it may be exactly the support you need. In either case, if you have any questions, give me a call, or drop me an e-mail; I’d love to talk with you!

Grace and peace,
`tim

Below is a copy of the article I wrote for our monthly newsletter. Thought I’d pass it on….

Lifestyle or Label?

Dallas Willard, one of the foremost authors on discipleship, opens the first chapter of his book entitled The Great Omission with these words:

The word “disciple” occurs 269 times in the New Testament. “Christian” is found three times and was first introduced to refer precisely to disciples of Jesus – in a situation where it was no longer possible to regard them as a sect of the Jews (Acts 11:26). The New Testament is a book about disciples, by disciples, and for disciples of Jesus Christ…. For at least several decades the churches of the Western world have not made discipleship a condition of being a Christian. One is not required to be, or to intend to be, a disciple in order to become Christian, and one may remain a Christian without any signs of progress toward or in discipleship. Contemporary American churches in particular do not require following Christ in his example, spirit, and teachings as a condition of membership – either of entering into or continuing in fellowship of a denomination or local church. I would be glad to learn of any exception ot this claim, but it would only serve to highlight its general validity and make the general rule more glaring. So far as the visible Christian institutions of our day are concerned, discipleship clearly is optional.

Ouch!

Willard’s argument is, at its most basic level, that the contemporary American church has abandoned the lifestyle of being a “follower of Christ” and settled for the label “Christian.” Willard isn’t the only person to recognize this, of course. As a matter of fact, I’d be surprised if most of us, in our most honest moments, didn’t admit to similar thoughts.

My best guess is that it goes back to the early American revivals. Somewhere amidst the several Great Awakenings, American Christians began believing that Christianity was predominantly about a “decision” or a “conversion.” We started to understand the faith as a religion based on “getting saved” or “going to heaven.” During this period, traveling preachers famously held revival meetings where dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people were led through a conversion (or REconversion) process. Whether they admitted it or not, numbers were the goal. The success of such meetings was (and continues to be) the quantity of people who claim they’ve made “a decision for Christ.”

The problem was, the local religious infrastructure to deal with all of these new converts was often either failing or nonexistent. Ministers (if there were any) weren’t prepared to deal with such an influx of so many people who knew so little about the faith, and congregations weren’t prepared to welcome these (often disturbingly familiar) people into their midst merely because they claimed to have had an experience of God’s grace.

Institutional failures were not the only problem or even, perhaps, the biggest problem. Even more destructive was the fact that people actually believed the preaching they heard at these revival meetings. Preachers told them they were saved; they were going to heaven; they didn’t have to worry about hell; God loved them. (All of which was true, of course!) However, these same preachers seldom bothered to teach their audiences that, in thankful response for their salvation, God expected discipleship.

Before long, Christianity became a religion primarily about conversion to a heavenly eternity rather than to an ongoing discipleship within God’s kingdom.

To be fair, even though we perfected “conversion-only” Christianity, we cannot claim to have invented it. It has been a problem since biblical times. The scandalously extreme nature of God’s grace has always been followed with the intense temptation to ignore the only appropriate human response to that free grace: faithfulness. Yet, the church has continued to fight that temptation diligently – or have we?

It is an important question. If Christianity is merely a religion of conversion – why bother with worship? Why have churches? Why bother raising our children in the faith? If Christianity is merely a religion intent on getting the hoards “saved,” why waste time and resources on those who have already converted or those who never will? The answer, of course, is that Christianity is not merely a conversion religion; it is a discipleship religion. To be “Christian” is to be a student (discipulus) of Christ’s teachings – one who increasingly learns how to live as Jesus lived and according to the priorities Jesus taught.

This is where the proverbial rubber hits the road. Discipleship is not accidental; it takes intent and conviction; it takes time and attention. That is what I’d like to leave you thinking about this month: Are you being intentional about discipleship?

I know time is limited and life is busy. You’ll notice I’m not suggesting you spend two hours in prayer and three hours reading the Bible each day or that we start a daily worship service at church (although, neither is historically unheard of!)

The question is far more basic than that: Are you intentional about learning how to live as Jesus lived? Are you a disciple?

If you’d like to talk about discipleship, or if you need help finding resources let me know! That’s what I’m here for!

Grace and Peace,
`tim

Synod is now in to full swing and I had a few moments so I thought I’d touch bases and give a quick update.

The seminarian seminar (which I facilitate) started a day and a half before synod, during which we studied through the entire workbook, looked at every substantive recommendation, and welcomed a few guests who could give the seminarians a clearer glimpse into the business of the denomination. Our guests, thus far, were Kirsty Depree (who works with Discipleship), Rodger Price (who works with Revitalization) and Wes Granberg-Michaelson (the denomination’s General Secretary). Our guests, this year, were a bit more focused on the “revitalization” section of the denomination’s ministry (compared to last year, when I had more guests from the “multiplication” subgroup.)

The Belhar was declared and is now OFFICIALLY the RCA’s fourth standard! My only regret (and it’s not really a regret) is that, as a non-delegate, I didn’t get to personally vote on it.

Opening worship went well. It turned out longer than expected… a bit too long. The delegates didn’t really read the bulletin very well so the movement to communion was incredibly disorganized and I thought we were going to run out of bread (they ended up bringing more in!) but I’m pleased with how it went.

Both opportunities for new business went by without anything.

The General Secretary’s report included a few proposals. Huge proposals…. I’m a bit concerned about them – will try to write more later.

The President’s Report had 6 proposals…. Wow!

More later…

Grace and Peace,
`tim

Yesterday was my last Sunday at Dunningville.

Wow, it seems like such a short sentence marking the end of 10 years of ministry here. It has been an interesting month, as I’ve worked on wrapping up my time at Dunningville Reformed and looking toward a new beginning in Pultneyville.

It seems natural, as something comes to an end, to look back and do some reflection, and I imagine there will be much of that in the coming months, but over the past weeks, my thoughts have focused on what I felt I wanted/needed to say before leaving. In seminary I was taught (and actually learned this particular lesson!) that one shouldn’t introduce something new in the final moments of a sermon. That advice seemed appropriate in the final weeks of ministry as well. If I haven’t said it in 10 year, it must not have been that important to me, right?! So, I’ve spent the last two weeks reviewing seven major themes that have underpinned my teaching and preaching over the past ten years. 10 years of teaching and preaching in 2 sermons!

Notably, I didn’t spend a lot of time talking about any of them; these are things I’ve taught and preached regularly – even more, they’ve been the explicit assumptions behind much of my teaching and preaching. The past two Sundays were only review.

These themes are, in many ways, my definition of “church” and my understanding of “Christian.” Too many people believe that a “church” is a merely a group of semi-like-minded individuals who happen to meet at the same place at the same time to reinforce their same-ness. That leads to the lived belief that “Christians” are simply those individuals who make up the in-group. While those definitions may make for a “nice” group of people who gather around preference, a church is something else.

Several online friends have asked about these past two sermons, so I thought I’d post my points here (sorry, no manuscript for these two Sundays). If you’d like to download the handout I gave everyone, you can do it here(.pdf).

Faithfulness:

Elders and Deacons:

Justice:

Integration:

The Word of God in Proclamation and Sacrament:

Mystical Union:

The Body of Christ:

The final note, of course, is that…

Grace and Peace,
`tim

Early this morning, official news came from the RCA and those “in the know” that 32 of the RCA’s 46 Classes have affirmatively voted to confirm the General Synod’s 2009 decision to make the Belhar Confession the RCA’s 4th theological standard.

Never, in the history of the Reformed Church, has the denomination added a theological standard (the other three predated the establishment of the RCA). It is a journey we have been walking since 1985 – three short years after the confession was written in South Africa (as, among other things, a theological condemnation of apartheid).

Those who know me know this is a decision I have hoped and prayed for since my days in seminary, however many of my friends and colleagues come from non-confessional traditions and don’t “get” why I would be so excited about the addition of a new “standard.”

Today, I write to you.

Let me admit a little secret that most confessional Christians either don’t know are don’t admit: When push comes to shove, we do not hold entirely to the reformation concept of sola scriptura. To be honest no one does. Everyone uses their own culture, education, experience, and established beliefs to help them understand the scriptures (sometimes faithfully, sometimes not).

The difference between confessional churches and non-confessional ones is that we admit our theological biases, and we have taken the time and energy to create (and/or adopt) denominational standards that help us define what aspects of our culture, education, etc. are appropriate for use in biblical interpretation and what their limits are.

In other words, everyone reads the scriptures through a specific set of lenses (sometimes this is done intentionally, other times accidentally). As a minister in the RCA, the most powerful of those lenses are the standards I affirmed as “faithful” upon my ordination (and will re-affirm every time I transfer to a new Classis).

The addition of the Belhar Confession to our list of standards in the RCA adds a new set of lenses to help us more faithfully embrace the fullness of the scriptures.

I can already hear the question: Why not just read the Bible?

That, unfortunately, is a question with a simple answer: the Bible is all-too often misused and abused.

Confessional standards set up theological fences (tested by time and careful discernment) to help ensure orthodoxy. Standards help clarify that some interpretations are misinterpretations – they help prevent the scriptures being misused (usually by the powerful and wealthy) to abuse (usually the weak and poor).

The Belhar, with it’s deep commitment to unity, justice and reconciliation, sets forth a lens that reflects Jesus’ ministry and teaching more clearly than our other three standards. It draws us out of an over-emphasis on Paul’s writings by calling us to recognize the Kingdom of God (that Jesus so frequently preached) and embrace it’s priorities.

None of this suggests that the other three standards are somehow “lacking” in what they intend to teach us. They simply arose out of different contexts and speak to different issues. As powerful and Spirit-informed as they are, they could not say what the Belhar says because they were not written when the Belhar was written by the people who wrote the Belhar.

By recognizing the Belhar as a confessional standard, the RCA is saying that after an extensive amount of time, thought, discernment and prayer, we believe that the the Belhar’s message speaks to the larger church, not merely to the post-apartheid church in South Africa. These are universal lenses that reflect the priorities Jesus expressed throughout his earthly ministry – and thus, they are lenses that we can – and should – use to faithfully interpret the scriptures.

I don’t expect that I’ll “convert” any of my non-confessional friends and colleagues into confessional Christians, but I hope this helps you understand a bit more why I’m so excited about this historic decision. Maybe you can even celebrate along with me (us)!

Grace and Peace,
`tim

We have been at Dunningville for almost a decade and, although it has been a good place to live and minister, we have increasingly come to believe that it was time to move. After months of discussion, thought, prayer, and discernment, we are pleased to announce that I have been offered and accepted the Call to become the next minister of Pultneyville Reformed Church.

Pultneyville is on the shore of Lake Ontario, north of Rochester – less than two hours from Niagara Falls in one direction and the Finger Lakes in the other. It sits nestled in the middle of hundreds of acres of fruit orchards (many of which are apples).

Thus far, we have found the people to be open and friendly – even the interviews were fair (and, for those of you who don’t know, church interviews can be a real beast!)

It is, of course, a bittersweet move – we have poured our lives into the people of Dunningville, however we are excited about the change and looking forward to a new context and a new congregation to live and minister with.

Unfortunately, we didn’t take any pictures of the people during our candidating weekend, but we did take some of the facility….

Stay tuned, I’m sure I’ll be posting more about the transition in the coming weeks and months!

Grace and Peace,
`tim

I have, for almost a year, been the Vice-President/Acting-President of Zeeland Classis (the regional denominational assembly that Dunningville belongs to).  One of the privileges of that position is the opportunity to address the Classis at the March meeting with a “State of Religion” report.  That meeting was Tuesday Evening.  I didn’t ask for the Classis to take any official actions (although there is precedent for that), but did ask for some sincere thought on how we do what we do and who we are…

Zeeland Classis

Rev. Tim TenClay, D.Min. – Acting President

March 16, 2010

If you would have told me a year ago that I’d be standing here this evening in this capacity, I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t have believed you. While I knew the day would come when I’d take on the presidency, at least in theory, I certainly never imagined it would happen so quickly. Our bylaws, after all, allot for a full year as vice president to ensure adequate time to learn how the system works and gain, at least a basic, understanding of what’s going on in the Classis.

Even now, after almost a year of attending Executive Committee meetings, all-the-while asking questions, and trying to wrap my brain around who’s serving where and what’s going on in at least some of your congregations, I still have to admit an immense ignorance of the state of religion in our Classis.

Having said that, there can be no question that some wonderful things are going on in some of our sister congregations. The past few years have seen a growth in ministries that seek to follow Jesus’ command that we “feed the hungry” and “clothe the naked.” Similarly, while Michigan’s ongoing economic crisis looms large in almost all of our congregations, many of your Annual Consistorial Reports indicated a deep desire to ensure that the people around you are well cared for by helping provide resources, referrals, financial counseling, education, and of course encouragement.

Unfortunately, while Michigan’s economy may have provided ample opportunities for us to reach out to our communities in very tangible ways, it has also burdened our congregations in ways that have often been nearly insurmountable. Some of you have eliminated staff members; others have had to put growth and building projects on hold. Most of us have had to tighten our budget-belts; many of us have seen more red numbers on our accounting sheets than black ones, and a few of us have been forced to adopt an uncomfortable amount of debt in order to simply keep our doors open.

These aren’t merely questions of finance, of course. These are questions of ministry and mission. It isn’t as easy for us to take risks as it was a few years ago – even important ones. Where we were once able to rely on the generosity of our congregations to pull through when worthy opportunities appeared, we’re now faced with the reality that even the deepest pockets in our communities are often empty. It is true congregationally. It is true Classically, and while our regional Synod hasn’t met yet this year and I haven’t seen the General Synod numbers, I imagine it is as true for the upper two assemblies as it is for us.

There is no question that Christ’s church has weathered bigger storms than this – sometimes faithfully other times less so. The difference between the two, as I see it, depends on whether we respond to these hardships by hunkering down inwardly or by opening up outwardly. The temptation, of course, is the former – to turn all of our resources inward on ourselves, to increasingly isolate ourselves as individuals and congregations. Sure, we may be willing to allow others to partner with us when it’s convenient, but only when it’s convenient. It is the temptation to say that the “other” doesn’t matter until we’ve ensured our own comfort and survival.

The other option is the exact opposite – to take our own hardships seriously, but rather than self-isolating, to recognize that God made us a social creatures. Sure, some of us – both as individuals and as congregations – are more introverted than others, and yet the fact remains, God didn’t create us to be entirely isolated as individuals and I believe the same is true for us as congregations. Thus we have Classes.

Just as we are called to live in relationship as brothers and sisters united, by the Holy Spirit, with Christ and with one another in Christ, so too I believe it is our calling as congregations to do the same.

Paul’s “body” theology is as applicable to our assemblies as it is to our people. Each of our congregations are differently gifted and differently skilled. Each of us has different responsibilities and abilities within the larger body. None of us can fully live into God’s calling on our communities alone.

We may, at times, act Congregational. There are even those among us who believe it to be a better system, but as Reformed Churches, we are not. We are congregations within a larger body. We are parts of a bigger whole. Our polity, and our theology, both speak clearly to that simple truth. The only question is whether or not our behavior reflects it.

Few, if any of us, truly imagine the Christian faith to be most faithfully lived out in seclusion from other believers. The same is true for congregations. If each of us hopes to live and minister faithfully into the calling God is placing on our congregations, I can only imagine it will be done in partnership with one another.

We need each other – especially when we find ourselves faced with the kinds of difficulties we’re almost-universally experiencing right now.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that we will always agree with one another. Nor does it mean that we will even always like one another. All of that is irrelevant. At weddings, it is often noted that “what God has joined together” no one has the right to separate. How can that be any less true of us as sister congregations?!

In many ways, the recent past has been one filled with great pain in our Classis. We have laid congregations to rest and seen others barely survive. We have watched relationships between ministers and congregations dissolve with a virulence that rivals Hollywood break-ups – sometimes without doing anything to mitigate the pain and poison experienced by both sides.

I am not prophet-enough to suggest what lies ahead for us in the year to come, but I have no doubt, whatsoever, that it will be best-weathered if we do it together.

• What do you imagine would happen if all the congregations in Zeeland Classis prayed for each other… not just in theory, but from the pulpit… regularly?
• What would it look like if we viewed assessments as a commitment to our common ministry together rather than taxes to pay or withhold depending on whether we like or don’t like what the Classis is doing or whether it’s convenient at the time?
• What if Zeeland Classis, taking a page from the Heidelberg Catechism’s playbook, sought to foster a togetherness among those from different backgrounds and divergent perspectives?
• What if this Classis sought “the things that make for unity.. and peace” as much as the things we believe make for “purity?”¹
• What if we truly lived out the promise we’ve made to “walk in the Spirit of Christ, in love and fellowship” with one another?²

To be honest, I don’t know. I don’t know what that would happen if we were that kind of a Classis, but I do believe it would be something amazing, and I do believe it would make God happy… happier, indeed, than the alternatives, and that is always a good thing.

A few years ago I wrote a short little essay on dirt and several people have asked me about it recently.  So, since I haven’t posted it here before, I thought I’d do so (minimally edited from the 2003 version).   Enjoy!

A Thought on Dirt

Until recently, I had never really taken the time to think about how amazing dirt really is. In the last couple of weeks however, as my church (and place of employment) broke ground and started construction on the second half of our facility, I’ve begun to see the beauty of this, the most basic, and yet infinitely complex of elements.

Of course, the modern world doesn’t consider dirt to actually be an element. We reserve that title for substances that are impossible to discern with the naked eye. Fortunately however, our propensity for making everything more complicated than it really should be didn’t stop the ancient world from recognizing the immense value of this unique substance.

As a boy in northwest Iowa, I was raised knowing the worth of good dirt. And even though I now live in Michigan, where the dirt will require another million years or so to reach the moist warmth of the black gold my homeland produced, I have yet to forget the lessons of my childhood.

We had a pile of dirt in our front lawn. Actually, it was my Dad’s pile of dirt, not mine, but in line with the traditions of most children, I quickly took ownership of it. I don’t know where it came from, but eventually that pile of dirt was to end up insulating one of the three walls of the house we built. (Of course, my Dad actually built it, but as with the dirt, that didn’t stop me from thinking it was mine either.) One day, as I bathed myself in the elemental beauty of that black playground, my hand broke through into a nest of baby gardners. It was amazing. Hundreds of green and yellow snakelets hissing and squirming burst out onto my lap like a clown’s peanut can at a birthday party. With the swiftness of animal instinct, I hurled myself away from the roiling mass, but not without learning a very important lesson: Dirt is the root of all life.

God knew that. The book of Genesis tells the story of God creating dirt, and then, as if he had created it just for that purpose, on the sixth day, he played in it. You don’t believe me? Check it out. Genesis chapter 2, verse 7. Just a couple of pages into the sacred scriptures, God is playing in the dirt. Imagine the tiny divine sand castles God might have built on the shores of Lake Michigan or the gourmet mud pies carefully crafted from the best the world has to offer. Then, as if growing bored with inanimate objects, God built an adult. Knees, feet, fingernails, earlobes, nose hairs, lungs, appendix – everything but a bellybutton (if childhood jokes are to be trusted) and liking it, God took a deep breath and blew into it. The dirt became a man, and humanity was created.

Jesus liked dirt too. One apocryphal story from his childhood tells of him making small birds in the soil of his childhood homeland, and upon being chastised for playing during the Sabbath, he breathed into them and they flew away. Later, in the course of his public ministry, he healed a blind man with dirt and a little spit. Not to mention, the famous incident where he stooped to the ground and wrote the mysterious words that would set an adulterous woman free and silence her accusers.

Unfortunately, as humanity has “progressed,” dirt lost its position of favor among those of us who were created from it. Now, as if denying our own history, we participate in innumerable personal and familial rituals to rid ourselves of this primal element. Although perhaps providing a certain degree of freedom from disease, the side-effects of a germ-free society are devastating. Why? Well, it can all be sifted down to one very simple equation: E=D.

Enjoyment = Dirt.

The level of enjoyment one has in his or her life is relative to the amount of dirt one encounters. In other words, the more we play in dirt, the happier we are. The opposite seems to be true as well: the less we play in dirt, the less we enjoy life. As a matter of proof, let me direct your attention to two groups of people: Lawyers and 3-year olds. Lawyers encounter a minute amount of dirt in their daily lives, while 3-year olds practically sweat the substance. Let me ask you, who seems to enjoy life more? Is it the executive lawyer with a multimillion dollar office and a cleaning staff to protect her from dirt, or, is it the 3-year old who pulls of his shirt in the summer heat and paints “war-strips” on his chest after tracking down a “hippopotamus” in the grove?

The answer is simple: the child.

Jesus told us to be like little children, which according to pastors and scholars, was in the context of teaching about faith. Could it be possible, though, that faith is only part of what Jesus was talking about. I think so.

I think Jesus was talking about dirt too. Of course, I probably won’t mention that on Sunday morning. After all, if everyone ran outside to play in the dirt during worship, my Consistory might not be very happy – let alone the people who are signed up to clean the church next week. But maybe – just maybe, it’ll happen some other time. Hours after everyone has gone home from worship, and hours before anyone might call for a visit or a counseling session. In those quiet moments just before the moon rises or shortly before the sun peeks its face over the eastern horizon. Maybe, I’ll throw on some old blue jeans, a T-shirt and some sandals and carefully sneak out to the pile behind the church to explore what’s hidden depths of one of God’s most popular playgrounds.

Of course, you’re welcome to join me. I’ve gotten over my childhood need to pretend everything is mine. But please don’t tell the Consistory or the people signed up to clean next week. It’s a lot easier to explain if they think the kids did it.

(c) 2003, 2010 Tim TenClay

Grace and Peace,

`tim

My dear wife gave me a Nook for Christmas.  (No… that isn’t something dirty.  See this link if you don’t know what a Nook is!  Don’t worry, the link is family appropriate!)

Anyhow, the poor little guy has spent the last month clothes-less.  Nook cases are expensive and my first attempt at creating a felted one failed miserably.  (Actually, it turned out great, it just didn’t felt down small enough to use for the Nookster.)

Attempt number two, however, turned out exactly how I wanted it to.

For those who care about these things, here are the details:

• Needles: US6 DPNs
• 50 stitches cast on in the round, bottom was whip stitched rather than kitchenered
• The cables are 3-stitch cables  (1 cable row followed by 3 knit rows, repeated)
• The flap is seed stitch
• Yarn: Filatura Di Crosa Fancy by Aliseo (75% Wool, 15% Alpaca, 10% Acrylic)
• Color: 11
• Buttons: Bella Buttons by Dritz (Item #BB402)

Grace and Peace,

`tim

The Reformed Church in America traces its history in North America back 1628. We are the oldest continuous denomination on the continent, and yet in that time we have never adopted a new confession.

It is no small thing, then, that for the first time ever, we are going through the process of potentially adopting a new confession – the Belhar Confession. You see, the RCA is a confessional denomination. We currently have three standards of unity (the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Canons of the Synod of Dort). We also confess three creeds (the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed).

That sad reality is that, despite our confessional identity, there seems to be very little understanding of what it means to be such a body. Many believe the RCA is, like most pentecostal or baptist churches, a “no creed but Christ” denomination or a merely sola scriptura entity. We are not. Every minister in the RCA, alongside affirming the “Word of God as the only rule for faith and life,” also confirms that they hold our confessional documents to be “historic and faithful witnesses to the Word of God” (Declaration for Ministers of Word and Sacrament).

As far as I know, there is no “industry standard” as to how these statements are to be interpreted. In other words, there is no universal understanding of what it means to be confessional Christians. Some of my colleagues read the Declaration with a heavy emphasis on “historic and faithful witnesses….” Others clearly confess that the standards are “historic and faithful witnesses….” I tend toward the latter… many of my friends toward the former.

So, what does it mean to be confessional Christians? What are “confessions?” What is their authority? How are they related to the scriptures?

Here’s what I think:

I believe the confessions are documents from specific historic times and places. They were originally written to specific people in specific contexts. Unlike many theological documents, however, the creeds and confessions speak outside of their original context. While their authority is not equal to that of the scriptures, as with scriptures, a solid understanding of their original context(s) enables us to appropriately embrace them into our own time and place.

The confessions, while always subservient to the Bible, provide accurate and faithful distillations of the gospel. They offer us with the essential touch points of the Christian faith. These documents help us understand what is most important and give us a solid paradigm within which to interpret the parts of the Bible that are unclear or difficult to understand.

All of this helps explain why I believe the RCA should adopt the Belhar Confession.

Unlike some of my colleagues, I do believe the Belhar’s affirmation of God’s preferential option for the poor. I do believe that a faith which proclaims unity, justice and reconciliation but fails to live them, is no faith at all. If God stands with the “least of these” and all who suffer (and I believe God does!) then God’s people must as well. Failure to do so reveals us as Christian-like, rather than truly Christian.

In many ways, our current confessions handle Paul’s writings well, but they fail to adequately express the life and ministry that Jesus lived and taught. The Belhar helps rectify that.

The next two and a half months will show whether or not the RCA is ready to embrace the aspects of the scriptures that the Belhar lifts up as essential. I couldn’t be more pleased that Zeeland Classis and the other 5 who have currently voted on the issue have followed General Synod’s example and voted to embrace the Belhar.

I hope and dream for a world where Christians confess and live into the realities of unity, reconciliation and justice. This is, I believe, a small – but very important – step in that direction!

Grace and Peace,

`tim