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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The doctrine of sola Scriptura has long been contentious, for any number of reasons. In the early American period, with a Christianity greatly influenced by populism and democratic ideals, it served as a license for people to interpret the Bible free of any traditional authorities such as ordained clergy and confessional standards. To put it bluntly, it gave them a license to do whatever they wanted. Nathan O. Hatch, in The Democratization of American Christianity, observes this:

Any number of denominations, sects, movements, and individuals between 1780 and 1830 claimed to be restoring a pristine biblical Christianity free from all human devices. 'In religious faith we have but one Father and one Master,' noted the Universalist spokesman A. B. Grosh, 'and the Bible, the Bible, is our only acknowledged creed-book.' 'I have endeavored to read the scriptures as though no one had read them before me,' claimed Alexander Campbell, 'and I am as much on my guard against reading them to-day, through the medium of my own views yesterrday, or a week ago, as I am against being influenced by any foreign name, authority, or system whatever.'

Protestants from Luther to Wesley had been forced to define carefully what they meant by sola Scriptura. They found it an effective banner to unfurl when attacking Catholics but always a bit troublesome when common people began to take the teaching seriously. For the Reformers, popular translations of the Bible did not imply that people were to understand the Scriptures apart from ministerial guidance. Thus when dealing with a scholar such as Erasmus, Luther could champion boldly the perspicuity of Scripture, its clarity for all: 'Who will maintain that the public fountain does not stand in the light, because some people in a back alley cannot see it, when everybody in the market place can see it quite plainly?' Yet when confronted with headstrong sectarians, he withdrew such democratic interpretations and admitted the danger of proving anything by Scripture: 'Now I learn that it suffices to throw many passages together helterskelter whether they fit or not. If this is the way to do it, I certainly shall prove with Scripture that Rastrum beer is better than Malmsey wine' (179-180).

Abraham Kuyper once wrote, in his Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology, that it would be foolish for someone to attempt to hike through the mountains of Switzerland without the help of a guide or a map. That is analogous, of course, to saying neither is it wise for someone to take up the Bible and attempt to interpret it apart from the wisdom of the Church throughout the ages. "In its rich and many-sided life, extending across so many ages," Kuyper wrote,

the Church tells you at once what fallible interpretations you need no longer try, and what interpretation on the other hand offers you the best chances for success. On this ground the claim must be put, that the investigator of the Holy Scriptures shall take account of what history and the life of the Church teaches concerning the general points of view, from which to start his investigation, and which paths it is useless to further reconnoitre.

Kuyper's sentiments are entirely antithetical to most of American Christianity, both past and present. As much as democratic ideals have done good things for America as a political entity, insofar as people have allowed those ideals to shape the Church in America, they have done a great disservice. Like I said in my last post, God grants authority to the Church, not the individual. He gives Scripture to His covenant people that it may reveal their Lord and shape and govern their life according to His will. To be sure, the individual must appropriate Scripture for himself (Deut. 6:4-9; Psalm 119; 2 Tim. 3:16-17, etc.), but never in a vacuum.

Our identity as Christians is not primarily that we are individuals saved by Christ. This is true, but it is not primary. What is first is that God has called a people to Himself, has redeemed them and brought them into a covenant relationship with them. Individual believers consitute that people, but not atomistically; their corporate identity as the body of Christ is at the fore. It follows here, then, that our reading of Scripture is to be done in this covenant community and not apart from it. This is not to say individuals should not read their Bibles on their own, of course, but that when they do so they should read it through what Kuyper calls the "consciousness of the Church." The Bible is, after all, God's covenant document with the Church.

When I was in college, Albert Wolters once said something like, "Don't worry, you can't come up with any new heresies. They've all been tried already." I'm not sure if that was intended to comfort us, but the point was that if we set ourselves some theological boundaries and recognize that the Church throughout history has already tried a myriad of interpretations, approving some and disapproving others, we have ourselves a pretty reliable guide as we travel today.

History matters, tradition matters, and the Church matters. They are gifts. Lean on them.

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Robert E. Webber, in the first chapter of his book, Who Gets to Narrate the World?, discusses how the North American Church has lost its grip on the fullness of the biblical story and instead has only concentrated on various small pieces. It cannot see the whole picture, the all-encompassing narrative. He points out the following:

God's story suffers from reductionism and privatism. The failure to put the whole biblical picture together is a result of the [Church's] cultural accomodationism. Specifically, it is the problem of reductionism. The Christian faith has been reduced to a few doctrines of self-interest. In my own background, my dad and his pastor friends concentrated almost exclusively on five doctrines: sin, sacrificial atonement, conversion, sanctification and premillennialism. What was missing was a thoroughgoing connection between creation, incarnation and the re-creative acts of God (such as the resurrection and restoration of creation). My dad, though a devoted Christian and a passionate preacher, lost the fullness of the Christian story because he created a story around five pieces of the puzzle instead of the whole picture. The Christian faith was reduced to the problem of my sin, the work of Christ for me, the necessity of my conversion and the expectation of my faithfulness to live like a Christian. I was made the center of the story. I needed to invite Jesus into my life and my journey so he would walk with me and bless my life and my ministry.

God calls us to His story. By contrast, the original story, the one delivered by the apostles to their successors in the early Church, was not nearly so much my narrative as it was God's. And God speaks His narrative through the Bible. God's story is about the whole world from its very beginning to the very end. It includes all the nations and governments of the world; it includes the earth, sun and sky; it includes the entire universe. This story even includes you. God, the divine narrator, is saying: I have a purpose for humanity and a purpose for creation and history. I am not asking for permission to join your narrative (although I do); I am asking you to join My narrative of the world, of human existence, and of all history (25).

Webber then proceeds to sketch the story of redemptive history using the categories of creation, fall, incarnation (or redemption), and re-creation (or consummation). He makes the point that recovering this narrative is the most significant and crucial challenge for the Church in our time, and successfully carrying out the mission of God we are entrusted with depends on it.

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Sometimes when I am teaching or speaking about something, I just assume that people are going to understand what I am talking about. But, as was the case Sunday morning in our adult Sunday School class, that does not always happen. To be fair, part of it was probably owing to a lack of clarity on my part, but based on the feedback I was receiving in the discussion it was evident that popular misconceptions were at work as well.

Essentially, what I was attempting to teach on was the Reformed tradition expressed in our confessional documents, and specifically what authority we give that tradition. However, when people hear the word “tradition” their immediate thought is to use it as an adverb—traditional worship, high church liturgy, ritual and symbolism, and so on. Most of the people who attend Sunday School do not come from Reformed, and especially confessional, backgrounds, and thus it took a bit of work to define tradition in the sense I was using it. But once they started to understand, we had a more fruitful discussion.

In the last few weeks we had been talking about worship, and while we consistently went back to Scripture to form our understanding, we also kept looking at portions of the Westminster Standards in particular. By doing so, I was implying that the Standards carried some authority. Realizing two things—first, that as modern evangelicals, most of them were going to be of the mindset that “me and my Bible” was a sufficient authority for determining faith and practice; and second, that they might think I am putting the Standards on the same level as Scripture—I wanted to spend some time discussing the place of our confessional documents in the life of the church.

Anyway, enough about context; here are some of the points I made:

1. We don’t live in an historical vacuum. I’ve made this point recently, and so won’t spend a great deal of time on it again. It is just important to note that we don’t live in a vertical “here-and-now” but that we are part of something much bigger than ourselves; we are part of a story that begins with creation and will climax at the consummation. As such, the Church of today does not stand alone, separated from the historical Church. What has come before us has shaped us in every way, and we ought to recognize all the implications that go along with that, including theological ones.
2. Our tradition carries authority by virtue of the fact that our theology and doctrine were cultivated in community. When a body of believers sets themselves to the task of pursuing biblical truth, they are guided by the Spirit in their work. As I mentioned above, the “me and my Bible” mentality so prevalent in the church today is insufficient. While we certainly confess the ability of the individual to understand Scripture, the individual also becomes part of a community of faith when he becomes a believer. It is to that community, the Church, that the deposit of truth is entrusted. I used the example of Martin Luther to illustrate this point. When he first discovered the hallmark doctrine of justification by faith, he spent a great deal of time in anguish wondering, "Could I really be right about this?" He was convinced of the authority of the Church, and struggled immensely with standing in opposition to her teaching.
3. Abraham Kuyper once wrote that in doing theology, we should begin with the assumption that the Church is right, and largely for the reasons I just mentioned. The Church, though certainly not standing in a realm of total objectivity and greatly influenced by a host of different factors, nonetheless holds an authority of a much more objective nature than we as individuals do. God has entrusted His truth to a people, a community, and we should be wary of assuming that we can discover the fullness of that truth outside of the body.
4. Finally, I wanted to emphasize to the class that our confessions form the grammar for how we speak in Reformed and Presbyterian churches. One who is familiar with confessional documents such as the Westminster Standards would begin to understand the depths of the Reformed tradition a great deal more than if he merely attended worship services on a Sunday morning. I encouraged the class to spend some time reading and studying them because the confessions help form a theological basis that would otherwise be very difficult for an individual to formulate on their own. They give orientation and direction, and a solid foundation to stand on.

In no way do I want to take away from the primacy of the authority of Scripture or the need and importance of studying the Word of God. Absolutely not! What I wanted to demonstrate was simply that it is impossible for us not to approach Scripture from an angle; and because of that, it is helpful to begin with a frame of reference which has been cultivated among a body of godly and devoted believers wholeheartedly committed to the Gospel, to the authority of Scripture, and to the pursuit of truth and the furtherance of Christ's Kingdom.

As is likely evident here, I told the class that I myself was working through some of the things I was trying to get them talking about. At this point it is hard to say what they took away from it, but my hope and intention was to give them a new understanding and appreciation for the idea of tradition, and specifically our Reformed heritage (although that probably deserves another lesson—or two, or three—on its own).

At any rate, I post this here because I want to engage you as well, readers. Any thoughts about all of this?

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This post continues a series that will address many of the points on the list compiled by John Muether entitled, "Resisting Modernity: a How-to Guide." You can find the list in full here, and all the posts in this series here.

7. If you cannot [stop watching television], then refuse to use the remote control. Remove its batteries. Remember John's warning against the "lust of the eyes"—he's not referring to pornography.
8. For the same reasons described in #7, do not subscribe to cable television.

Perhaps by now you've noticed a couple of significant themes running through this list that characterize modernity: consumerism and the autonomy of the individual. These two points again directly attack those cultural values. Throughout most of its existence, the television has served as a means to satisfy the "I want it now" mentality of our society. The addition of the remote control, as well as later developments like cable TV, satellite, and TiVo, have only served to bolster this sentiment so well expressed in the lyrics of Nirvana's 1991 smash hit, "Smells Like Teen Spirit"—here we are now, entertain us!

Readers will know from the last post that I am not anti-television. But there are boundaries we need to draw, and I think Muether gives us some good suggestions to get started. He references 1 John 2:16, in which John speaks of the lusts or desires of our eyes. The context of that verse is verses 15-17, which read:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

Television, in perhaps the most pointed way of all forms of media, makes plain the things of this world. Every time we watch television we are bombarded with the values, ideals, and underlying religious convictions that shape this culture. When we are subjected to that hour upon hour, it in turn begins to shape and mold us. The things of the world become the things we desire. One of the simplest ways to stand against that influence is to restrict the amount of time the television is on, and to limit the ease of access you have to it.

As I have mentioned before, there are good things about television. All I am saying is that we need to be careful how we use it. Instead of simply turning on the television to pass a bit of time (which I am frequently guilty of), pick up a book and read a few chapters. Go for a walk with your spouse and talk with each other. Sit on your front porch and spend some time praying and meditating. Again, when we intentionally limit our access to something like television, we are less wont to use it to fill our time.

In the end, we can look at John's teaching in the passage above in this way: does our use of the television reflect our love for the things of this world, or does it reflect our desire to grow in the wisdom and knowledge of God, to do His will and to seek His glory?

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