Wanted: Pastor who looks like me

I recently attended a church that is part of a confessionally reformed denomination (names are withheld to protect the guilty) and is looking for a pastor.  During the service, there was an announcement that there would be a congregational meeting the next week to discuss the “race/ethnicity” of any potential candidates for pastor.  It was explained that some members of the congregations had expressed to the elders that this was an important issue.  They had also inquired if the search committee was taking race/ethnicity into account.  It appeared that about 2/3 of the congregation was a particular ethinicity and I assume that some members were expecting the next pastor to fit into that demographic.

I was completely shocked.  Needless to say, I did not attend the next week to hear the outcome.  When did the ethnicity of a man become one of the qualifications for a pastor?  Is this in the Amplified Bible?   

1 Timothy 3:1-2  - “The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.  Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, [he must be of the same ethnic background as the 2/3 majority of the congregation.  If he has multiple ethnic backgrounds, their countries of origin must be within twenty degrees latitude and thirty degrees longitude of the 2/3 majority.]

 

Now that's a Praise Band!

How does this happen in confessionally reformed churches?  Mainstream Evangelicals have been doing this for a long time.  They plant churches around a particular niche market and seek to grow the church with a pastor who fits those categories.  Let’s start a church for expatriate Australians who have blonde hair, green eyes, 2.5 children, and love ABBA.  

One of the most amazing things about the gospel of Jesus Christ is that all man-made barriers are demolished.  Jesus completely destroyed the most hostile ethnic division of all time, Jew and Gentile.  We are all one in Christ.  Galatians 3:28 – “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  This was completely radical in the first century and it is just as radical now.  The church is the one place on earth where your ethnic, financial, and social standings are irrelevant.  Why do we erect barriers that have been leveled by the cross?

Certainly we must be aware of different cultural sensitivities, but we might as well start practicing for heaven where Christ is praised with one voice: Rev 5:9 – “Worthy are you to take the scroll and open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation…”

If we will all worship together around the throne of the Lord Jesus in the eschaton, why not start now?  I doubt that each tribe and language and people and nation will be segregated into their respective groups before the throne.  We are all part of “one body and one Spirit… one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.” – Eph 4:5.  Let’s start acting like it.

It makes no difference what your pastor looks like.  My pastor is of Irish descent and a rabid fan of Notre Dame.  We hold neither thing in common (especially Notre Dame).  So what?  I could not care less what his ethnicity is.  All that matters is that he faithfully preaches the gospel and properly administers the sacraments, period.  We do not have to look the same, just have faith in the same Savior.

 

Religion as a Vocation

Taken from atop the German Reichstag

I am currently studying theological German in the summer language program at Harvard Divinity School.  The course compresses two semester into eight weeks of study.  Obviously, it moves at a very fast pace.  On day one I knew nothing; now, only five weeks in, I am translating texts by Immanuel Kant and Paul Tillich.  

Being here at HDS is an interesting experience.  By casual observation it appears that the majority of the students are not deeply committed to any particular faith tradition.  I have met students studying Buddhism who are not Buddhists, as well as those studying Catholicism who are not Catholic.  The subject of religion is viewed as an academic category, which I guess is true in any religious studies program.  There are no value judgments placed on the particular religions, rather, they are studied with the ambivalence of a journalist.  Here one studies religion in the same manner that one studies horticulture or anthropology.

This leads me to wonder why anyone would devote his life to the study of a religion which he does not believe to be true.  There is certainly more money to be made in other pursuits.  What makes a person want to be in proximity to a religion without actually adhering to it?  

Closer to the Christian world, I have heard pastors say, that even if Christianity turns out to be false, it has given them good lives and nice families.  Their days on earth have been enriched by being devoted to Christianity and religion as a vocation has delivered to them a moral family with a house in the suburbs.  Therefore, even if it is all a big lie, it is still worth it.

Nothing could be further from the truth!  Paul said that if Christ has not been raised from the dead (thus making Christianity a lie, contrary to what Protestant Liberalism says), we are of all men most to be pitied (1 Cor 15:9).  We are the biggest fools in the world because we have followed a dead Savior.  We are still in our sins and there is no hope for us when we die.  If Christianity is not true, my life has been a waste and an utter failure.  

If I did not believe in historic christianity, I would certainly not be studying it as an academic pursuit.  Religion as a vocation is foreign to me.  If Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead, I would never come near religion, because, if Christianity is not grounded in this historical fact, then Karl Marx is right, it is the opiate of the masses.    

Every aspect of this world is dependent upon the truths of Christianity.  Nothing can be ultimately explained without this first principle.  Christianity is not to be pursued as a vocation, but as revelation.

What’s in a name?

 

Lake Geneva from atop Calvin's Cathedral

You might be wondering why the name of this blog is Geneva Redux.  Let me explain.  It is named after Geneva because this is the city where John Calvin pastored St. Peter’s Cathedral in the 16th Century.  It was the centerpiece of the reformed world.  Not only did it contain Calvin’s Cathedral, as it has come to be known, it was also the home of the academy led by Theodore Beza, Calvin’s close colleague.  This institution was founded in 1559 and later became the University of Geneva.  Calvin founded the school to train pastors to preach the gospel and spread reformation theology to the ends of the earth.  John Knox, the Scottish preacher who fled to Geneva to escape persecution, called the academy, “The most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the Apostles.”  

 

St. Peter's

Redux as defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary means, “brought back; revived.”  That is the intention of this blog: to revive Genevan theology.  The goal is not to reproduce Geneva in every aspect.  I do not believe in theocracies nor do I speak French.  While the Geneva of the 16th Century is very misunderstood and caricatured by many anti-calvinists, it was admittedly not a perfect place.  Rather, the goal here is to revive the theology of Geneva as expressed in the reformed confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries (most notably the Belgic Confession, Heidelberg Catechism, Canons of the Synod of Dort, and the Westminster Standards).  

While I do not want to see any anti-trinitarians burned at the stake, I do want to promote and defend the teachings of Scripture in the manner and spirit of those who lived in this capital of the reformed world.

Does the world need another blog?

John Calvin

There seem to be more blogs than there are people, so why add to this chaos? I have avoided entering the blogosphere for some time now, mainly because I did not think that I had anything to say.  I probably still don’t.  

That being the case, until reformed theology takes its rightful place in the world we reformed Christians need to continue to shout it from the rooftops (and cyberspace)!  This blog is dedicated to a recovery of confessional reformed theology.  I was not truly exposed to historic Christianity for the first 28 years of my life.  I suffered many years in Arminian/Fundamentalist/Baptistic/Neo-Evangelical/Emerging/Mega-Church/Dispensational/Evangelical churches.  I have been told that God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life, that I must come to the altar in order to be born-again, that I make God a liar if I believe that ALL God’s promises from the Old Testament are fulfilled in Christ, and that I was truly a Calvinist and embraced reformed theology just by believing in the 5-points.  

But there is a better way.  Since coming to a more robust understanding of reformed theology and becoming a member of a true reformed church, I have come to see the wonder of the glory of God as revealed in His Word.  No other understanding of Scripture is as God-centered, God-glorifying, or Christ-focused.  

 

The Lion of Princeton - B.B. Warfield

At John Calvin’s 400th birthday celebration, Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield explained, “Calvinism is not a specific variety of theistic thought, religious experience, [or] evangelical faith; but just the perfect manifestation of these things. The difference between it and other forms of theism, religion, [and] evangelicalism is difference not of kind but of degree … it does not take its position then by the side of other types of things; it takes its place over all else that claims to be these things, as embodying all that they ought to be.”

I want to help others who are stuck in the mire of American Evangelicalism to see the light as revealed in the calvinistic understanding of Scripture.  There is nothing more freeing, more exciting, and more God-exalting than to truly understand the sovereignty of God and the finished work of Christ.  

The goal of this blog is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ by presenting, explaining, and interacting with the historic Christian faith as it has come to be expressed in reformed theology and by demonstrating how this plays out in everyday life.

Soli Deo Gloria!