Earlier this year, I was in a discussion on what role home visitation should play in the ministry of a church. Home visitation basically entails a visit by the pastoral staff or elders of a church to each family or member of the congregation in their respective homes to inquire about their spiritual well-being, and to provide support, encouragement, and instruction. A few days ago I quoted the Puritan minister, Richard Baxter, on this very issue. Baxter understood how crucial it was for the minister (and by extension, the elders or other pastoral staff responsible for spiritual oversight) to engage in this sort of work. It would not be a stretch to say that for Baxter, the very life of the church, or at least its vitality, hinged on faithfully carrying out this practice.

To be honest, I was quite shocked by the response of most of those I was talking with; most felt reticent about their churches engaging in such a practice because it would infringe on the privacy of the members of the church and would implicitly communicate that the leadership of the church was seeking some sort of totalitarian dominance over the lives of its parishioners.

At first I thought maybe they conceived of this as an antiquated practice, done in the days when ministers were not as conscious of being relational or relevant (to borrow a few modern terms) in their ministry. But then it occured to me that perhaps part of the reason some might hesitate to engage in such a practice is simply because they are living in a culture that incessantly bombards them with the message that they are autonomous individuals, subject only to their own authority and responsible only for themselves. The 18th and 19th centuries wove into the fabric of Western – and especially American – culture an aversion toward authority, which has largely defined the Christianity of this culture as well. The emphasis turns on the individual as the primary unit, whether it is an over-emphasis on personal salvation or turning subjective experiences and feelings into objective standards of theology and practice. In turn, this means the individual has full responsibility over their life and spirituality, and the church is there to serve them and meet their felt needs.

But that's not how it is supposed to work in the church.

When you are baptised into the church, either as an infant or later in life upon professing faith, you are brought into a family. You are no longer an autonomous individual, but you have been bound to the community of believers who have a shared identity as those called by God to be his people. Naturally, this does not entail giving up your individuality – indeed, Scripture lauds this as a great gift to the church – but it is a declaration that you now belong to a covenant family, living a shared life together as children of the heavenly Father.

If you have spent any time living with as part of a family, you understand this already. Each member of the family has his or her own life, of course, but the nature of family life, even something as simple as living in the same house, means that these individual lives are going to constantly cross paths. And this crossing of paths is not something that family members try to avoid, but they recognise it as an important part of their life together. A family supports each other, encourages each other, and will call each other to account if need be.

Like a family, this is how it is to be in the church. Your life becomes the life of the others you live together with. While you certainly retain a measure of responsibility for your personal life, this responsibility is also taken up by the other members of the church. Many congregations will make vows to either the parents of a child or to a professing believer on the occasion of their baptism to support them, pray for them, and nurture them in their Christian walk. An extra measure of responsibility for this task is given to the leaders of the church. Paul's letters to Timothy and Titus make the importance of spiritual oversight very clear. Likewise, the author of the letter to the Hebrews, clearly a pastor himself, makes mention at numerous points of looking after the spiritual well-being of those he wrote to.

When I was growing up, my father served as an elder in Christian Reformed congregations in Toronto and Bradford, Ontario, for many years and he will tell you that home visitation was among the most blessed and fruitful time of his ministry as an elder. This was largely because he came to really know the members of the congregation under his oversight, and he then knew how to minister to them more effectively. Now, of course, there are some factors that will determine how successful this practice is, and perhaps key in this regard is ensuring the church has godly elders or pastoral leaders; this was a major concern for Baxter in his discussion of the matter.

I know that there are plenty of pastors and church leaders who understand all this and practice it in one way or another. But I think there is a lot of wisdom and benefit to be gained from practicing it in a systematic way, ensuring that during a period of a year, each member or family of a congregation gets to visit with the church leaders responsible for pastoral oversight. This method has something of a proven historical track record since it has been done for centuries. The simple act itself of stepping into someone's home is an intentional way of deepening the level of intimacy and trust in the relationship of the pastor and parishioner. It is a very concrete way of saying to each member of the church, 'We care deeply for you.' All of this lends itself on the one hand to fostering the spiritual growth of a congregation, and on the other hand to strengthening the bond of fellowship of the church as the members come to understand what it means to be a family.

The Christian life was never meant to be lived alone. Don't think of spiritual oversight as an intrusion into your private life, but welcome it as a blessing. God intends for the leaders he appoints to the church to shepherd his flock because, in Isaiah's words, we all like sheep will go astray and turn to our own ways. The church was designed from the beginning to be a family, and her members are intended to live their life together. Our journey through life is enriched and deepened when we travel with others and help each other stay on the path.

So make a cup of tea, invite the leaders of your church into the living room, and share your lives with each other. Because in the end, it's all about the family.

(Below I've attached a PDF file of a chapter on home visitation from a book my father was given when he first became an elder, called The Elder's Handbook. I believe the authors come out of the Christian Reformed Church. It contains a bit of rationale for the practice, as well as some practical tips for how to do it. I think there are some really helpful suggestions here.)

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Peter Leithart posted the following entry on the CREDENDAagenda website the other day, and I wanted to post it here because it is probably the best reflection on the Holy Week that I've read. I know I could have just linked to the post, but it really is so good that I wanted to have it here as well. Happy Easter. He is Risen!

It really happened.

Some 2000 years ago, Jesus of Nazareth died on a Roman cross outside Jerusalem and was placed in a nearby tomb.  On the third day after His death, women came to the tomb to dress the body and found the tomb empty, heard from angels that Jesus had risen from the dead, and shortly after encountered Jesus Himself.  Then Jesus appeared to His disciples, and to many others.

It really happened.

Romans and Jews conspired to give alternative explanations of the empty tomb from the first, and alternative explanations keep coming.  None of the alternative explanations works.  None of them can explain the rise of early Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus, the persistence of belief in Jesus in the face of massive murderous threats, the dramatic change in the disciples that took place after Easter and Pentecost.

The only plausible explanation is that Jesus rose from the dead.  The only explanation that fits the evidence is that it really happened.

And if it really happened, then the world is a very different place than we might have thought.

If it really happened, then the world is the kind of place where there is not only life after death, a disembodied existence in heaven, but what N.T. Wright calls “life after life after death,” embodied life in a new heavens and new earth.

If it really happened, then the post-Enlightenment effort to explain the world by scientific naturalism will never be successful.  Things have happened that our science cannot explain, and there is more in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in philosophy.

If it really happened, then the power of tyrants is shattered.  The worst the tyrant can do is kill.  The power of tyranny is the power of death. But if death is reversible, if dead people do come back to life after life after death, then the tyrant’s sword is finally useless and certainly not fearsome.

If it really happened, then Jesus is who He always said He was, the Son of God, the King who would sit on the throne of David.

If it really happened, Jesus is sitting on that throne right now, ruling all things.  He is the new kurios, the new world ruler, the new emperor, to whom all principalities and powers are called to submit.

If it really happened, then the universe is being governed by Jesus, and there is no corner of the globe, no edge of the universe, where He is not king.  Nothing is outside His rule, and we have nothing to fear.

If it really happened, we have been given a preview of the end of the age.  Jews believed that resurrection was an event of the end, which it is.  But the end has already begun.  Jesus has been raised, the firstfruits of the resurrection, and that means that the end has come.  The end will be resurrection, restoration, a new creation.  The end will not be disembodied spirits in a disembodied world.  The end will be this world transfigured into the new creation, into a new heavens and new earth.

If it really happened, then no situation and no person are hopeless.  No marriage is beyond repair, no child beyond recovery, no pagan beyond the reach of the gospel, no sin beyond forgiveness, no womb permanently sealed, no one and nothing beyond restoration.

If it really happened, giving up is simply not an option, because if bodily death is reversible, so are all the other little deaths that we suffer in life.  If it really happened, hope is not a delusion, but the driving power of abundant life.

If it really happened, then we've got a load of work, because not everyone has heard the news that God has conquered death.  Jesus is King and Lord, and He sends us out to announce that He rule.  He establishes the church to be the first form and bearer of His kingdom.  He intends to overcome all evil and sin, all injustice and wickedness, and calls us in the power of His resurrection to share in His war against all that damages His good creation.

Go to the darkest shanty town of the darkest city on the darkest continent, and there too the Risen Jesus is king.  Wade into the waste of the most ruined life, and there too Jesus is the Living Lord.  Sort through the wreckage your own sin has caused in your own life, face it in faith and hope, and you will see resurrection life at work through the Spirit, and the liberating power of God's forgiveness.

Because it happened.  It really happened.

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A couple of years ago, I wrote a number of posts trying to work through how to understand and practice the Sabbath. Too often, I think, we look at the Sabbath through one of two lenses: the first has us thinking about what we are not supposed to do on the Sabbath, and the second has us saying that as long as we go to church, the rest of the day is free for us to do whatever we want.

My point is simply that in thinking about the Sabbath this way, we are making it about us actively doing something, and so we have missed the point of the Sabbath altogether. Yesterday morning I was reading Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, and came to a part where Eugene Peterson talks about the need for a Sabbath:

If there is no Sabbath—no regular and commanded not-working, not-talking—we soon become totally absorbed in what we are doing and saying, and God's work is either forgotten or marginalized. When we work we are most god-like, which means that it is in our work that it is easiest to develop god-pretensions. Un-sabbathed, our work becomes the entire context in which we define our lives.We lose God-consciousness, God-awareness, sightings of resurrection. We lose the capacity to sing 'This is my Father's world' and end up chirping little self-centered ditties about what we are doing and feeling.

This is a most difficult command to keep, a most difficult practice to cultivate. It is one of the most abused and distorted practices of the Christian life. Many through the centuries have suffered much under oppressive Sabbath regimens. And more than a few of us have been among the oppressors. It is difficult to assemble a congregation of Christians today that does not number in its company both oppressed and oppressors. John gives us accounts of two of Jesus' Sabbath healings (chapters 5 and 9) that serve as serious warnings against glib or legalistic or oppressive Sabbath practices. Jesus spent a good deal of his time at odds with people who had wrong ideas about keeping Sabbath. (See also Mark 3:1-6; 3:23-30; Luke 14:1-6). And one contributing cause of their wrong ideas was that they had severed the connection between Sabbath and work.

But I don't see any way out of it: if we are going to live appropriately in the creation we must keep the Sabbath. We must stop running around long enough to see what he has done and is doing. We must shut up long enough to hear what he has said and is saying. All our ancestors agree that without silence and stillness there is no spirituality, no God-attentive, God-responsive life.

For Peterson, then, the Sabbath is not about keeping a set of rules, but resting in order to take the focus off of ourselves and look to God. We rest from our toils in order both to imitate God's rest from his creative work, and as a means of remembering the rest we find in redemption.

More to come on this. Maybe.

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As I mentioned in the previous post, Eugene Peterson is coming to speak at RTS this week. A good friend of mine is picking him up from the airport tomorrow morning, and Peterson will be delivering two lectures tomorrow and then another two on Thursday. It promises to be very good. The overarching theme for his lectures is that prayer must be at the very root of the Church's life, and he will be taking us through Ephesians to explore that.

Peterson has a five-book series on what he calls spiritual theology, and when I came across the term the other day I was not quite sure what he meant by it. But it did not take long to find a definition—within the first few pages of the introduction to the first book in the series, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, Peterson writes this:

Spiritual theology is the attention we give to lived theology—prayed and lived, for if it is not prayed sooner or later it will not be lived from the inside out and in continuity with the Lord of life. Spiritual theology is the attention that we give to living what we know and believe about God. It is the thoughtful and obedient cultivation of life as worship on our knees before God the Father, of life as sacrifice on our feet following God the Son, and of life as love embracing and being embraced by the community of God the Spirit.

Spiritual theology is not one more area of theology that takes its place on the shelf alongside the academic disciplines of systematic, biblical, practical, and historical theology; rather, it represents the conviction that all theology, no exceptions, has to do with the living God who creates us as living creatures to live to his glory. It is the development of awareness and discernments that are as alert and responsive in the workplace as in the sanctuary, as active while changing diapers in a nursery as while meditating in a grove of aspens, as necessary when reading a newspaper editorial as when exegeting a sentence written in Hebrew.

Some may want to simplify things by keeping the spiritual and throwing out the theology. Others will be content to continue with the theology as usual and forget the spiritual. But the fact is that we live only because God lives and that we live well only in continuity with the way God makes, saves, and blesses us. Spirituality begins in theology (the revelation and understanding of God) and is guided by it. And theology is never truly itself apart from being expressed in the bodies of men and women to whom God gives life and whom God then intends to live a full salvation life (spirituality).

The former president of RTS Orlando, Frank James, once said to our church history class, "Doctrine means nothing if it is not followed by doxology." The point, of course, is that there cannot be a disconnect between what we believe and how we live, something Peterson would wholeheartedly affirm. In the end, then, we are talking about nothing less than recognizing the Lordship of Christ over all of life. Our beliefs and convictions, insofar as they are faithful to God's revelation, are to bring about holistic transformation of our hearts and minds such that we begin to live in a manner that reflects a complete devotion and allegiance to our sovereign God.

If that is what spiritual theology is all about, count me in.

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Eugene Peterson will be here at RTS next week for the annual Kistemaker Lectures. I don't know too much about Peterson, aside from having read an article or two by him in the past, but I'm looking forward to hearing him. He has a reputation for possessing a great deal of wisdom in regards to pastoral concerns and various issues that arise in ministry.

Part of the reason I'm looking forward to the lectures is because of Peterson's commitment to Christian formation and discipleship (his title while at Regent was Professor of Spiritual Theology), and his recognition that the church is to be intimately involved in the lives of believers. The American church, both historically and presently, has demonstrated a great interest in saving souls and seeing people converted, but has not often invested in their lives as they subsequently learn what it looks like to have a life transformed by the gospel. Peterson addresses this in the introduction (and presumably the rest of the chapters) of his latest book, Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing up in Christ:

We cannot overemphasize bringing men and women to new birth in Christ. Evangelism is essential, critically essential. But is it not obvious that growth in Christ is equally essential? Yet the American church has not treated it with an equivalent urgency. The American church runs on the euphoria and adrenaline of new birth—getting people into the church, into the kingdom, into causes, into crusades, into programs. We turn matters of growing up over to Sunday school teachers, specialists in Christian education, committees to revise curricula, retreat centers, and deeper life conferences, farming it out to parachurch groups for remedial assistance. I don't find pastors and professors, for the most part, very interested in matters of formation and holiness. The have higher profile things to tend to.

Americans in general have little tolerance for a centering way of life that is submissive to the conditions in which growth takes place, quiet, obscure, patient, not subject to human control and management. The American church is uneasy in these conditions. Typically, in the name of 'relevance,' it adapts itself to the prevailing American culture and is soon indistinguishable from that culture; talkative, noisy, busy, controlling, image-conscious.

Meanwhile, what has in previous centuries and other cultures been a major preoccupation of the Christian community, becoming men and women who live to 'the praise of God's glory,' has become a mere footnote within a church that has taken on the agenda of the secular society—its educational goals, its activity goals, its psychological goals. By delegating character formation, the life of prayer, the beauty of holiness—growing up in Christ—to specialized ministries or groups, we remove it from the center of the church's life. We disconnect growth from birth, and, in effect, place it on a bench at the margins of the church's life. Wendell Berry, one of our most perceptive prophets of contemporary culture and spirituality, wrote, 'We think it ordinary to spend twelve or sixteen or twenty years of a person's life and many thousands of public dollars on "education"—and not one dime or a thought on character.'

It takes a serious amount of effort to invest that much in someone's life, but Peterson obviously stands as an advocate for the essentiality of this fully-involved discipleship. And the Bible, of course, is replete with examples of this—one only need look to the three years Jesus spent in forming his disciples.

If we truly believe that all of life is to be lived under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, we as the Church need to ensure that we become fully invested in each other's lives as we learn together what that looks like.

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