Thesis 10- We must rethink how “programs” drive our churches.
It has been said of the Calvinist, that having fallen down a flight of stairs, he could only respond, “I’m glad that’s over with.” I would suggest as well that in the wake of the Reformation, the Serpent wisely affirmed, “I’m glad that’s over with.” That is, while the Reformation did great things, and recovered vital biblical truths, the Serpent knew that it would succumb to the same foolishness that it responded to. Having had the Reformation, the Protestant church has moved forward, quite wrongly confident that it has mastered the sola’s that sparked it.
Our perennial temptation to believe that we must contribute something to our own justification, the denial of sola fide, we will cover in another chapter. Perhaps more glaring is our failure to live up the principle of sola Scriptura. The Reformation may have been sparked by a debate over indulgences, but it quickly became an issue of authority. Rome affirmed a two-pronged authority structure, suggesting that both Scripture and the tradition of the church were binding on the conscience. Luther affirmed that his conscience was held captive by the Word of God alone.
The Protestant church does not affirm a great deal of extraneous and dubious doctrines about the Virgin Mary. We do not add to the Scripture the doctrine of purgatory. Our traditions tend to fall more into the realm of practice than doctrine. This came to me as I was preparing to plant a church. I had never served as a pastor before, and was thinking through my future obligations. One woman wisely warned me that there was rather more to pastoring than giving a sermon. I asked her what other duties should I get prepared for. “Well,” she said, “you’re going to have to have a youth group.”
Youth group, Sunday School, nursery programs, choirs, ladies circles, kids clubs, these are to us similar to what the treasury of merits, holy orders and burying statues of dead saints are to Roman Catholics. They are not only not found in the Bible, they are not only wrongly treated as biblical necessities, but they also can do a fair amount of harm to the body of Christ. Just as the sundry accretions that have plagued Rome can usually be traced to syncretistic tendencies, so it is with our own accretions. We have age segregated “ministries” not because we found them in the Bible, but because we found them in the world. The same industrial mindset that plagues the schools now plagues our churches. Here people are products, and education is the process by which people are shaped into better products. We move people along an assembly line, and crank out, we pray, godly widgets. What we are finding, however, that what we do is work against the very design of God.
When the Bible speaks of demographic groups, it brings them together, rather than tearing them apart. Fathers are encouraged to train up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6: 1-4) Older women are called to disciple younger women, teaching them to love their husbands and their children (Titus 2:4). God’s design is a body, not a factory. When fathers train their children, then both grow in grace. When older women instruct younger, both are kept from the dangers that too often plague the fairer sex. When we substitute programs, first we encourage failure. Husbands fall down on the job, trusting Sunday School teachers and youth workers to do what must be done. Older women gather together with each other, and grow bitter for being set aside. And pastors, rather than laboring in Word and prayer, encouraging the flock in their respective callings, rather than tending the flock, look to the flock to man the programs and spend their time tending the machines.
Of course God has been pleased to do good things through programs. No doubt many people have been saved by well meaning youth pastors. No doubt many have learned wonderful things from godly Sunday School teachers. No one would dispute that. But who would argue that these innovations are wiser and more potent than God’s design? If we stop being program driven, perhaps we will get with the program, and start doing things as the Bible teaches.