Orthodox men love church, says Frederica Matthewes-Green. A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across an article she had written after dialoguing with one hundred Orthodox men who had converted to Orthodoxy as adults to find out what drew them in.

It's no secret that in most Protestant churches, females make up a larger portion of the congregation, often significantly. This was one of the reasons Matthewes-Green decided to find out why Orthodoxy bucks that trend. What she discovered was very interesting. Look at some of the responses below. It is especially noteworthy, I think, that many of the men commented on the challenge of Orthodoxy:

"It's the only church where you are required to adapt to it, rather than it adapting to you."

"Orthodoxy is serious. It is difficult. It is demanding. It is about mercy, but it's also about overcoming oneself. I am challenged in a deep way, not to 'feel good about myself' but to become holy. It is rigorous, and in that rigour I find liberation."

"Guys either want to be challenged to fight for a glorious and honourable cause, and get filthy dirty in the process, or to loaf in our recliners with plenty of beer, pizza, and football. But most churches want us to behave like orderly gentlemen, keeping our hands and mouths nice and clean."

"Christ in Orthodoxy is a militant, Jesus takes Hell captive. Orthodox Jesus came to cast fire on the earth. In Holy Baptism we pray for the newly-enlisted warriors of Christ, male and female, that they may ‘be kept ever warriors invincible.'"

"...‘the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay’ has almost nothing to do with the Eternal Logos entering inexorably, silently yet heroically, into the fabric of created reality."

"Men get pretty cynical when they sense someone's attempting to manipulate their emotions, especially when it's in the name of religion. They appreciate the objectivity of Orthodox worship. It's not aimed at prompting religious feelings but at performing an objective duty."

A lot of the things these men say they like in Orthodoxy could be true of Protestantism as well. The problem, though, is that many churches have changed and have adapted too much to modern culture. But a Protestant church that is true to its heritage and tradition does require you to adapt to it. I mentioned the Book of Common Prayer the other day; worshipping in a church which uses the BCP presents a challenge that you need to adapt to. Protestant faith is serious and difficult and demanding; Jesus said that if anyone was to follow him they needed to first lay down their life (Matt. 16:24-25). We are called to be holy too, and learning to submit to Christ's Lordship over all of your life is a difficult process. Early Protestants saw Jesus as a strong and powerful King; the tender, soft Swedish Jesus is a modern invention. Protestant worship isn't about feelings and emotions and it does require participation.

But it's not difficult to see that in many churches this is not the case anymore. So, maybe we need to change something. Maybe it's not about coming up with new ways to challenge men, but returning to more classical forms of faith and worship. Maybe instead of dumbing everything down, we make men wrestle again with words and phrases that take some work to understand. Maybe instead of making worship as comfortable as we can, we make them kneel once in a while or stand for prolonged periods of time. Maybe we get them thinking hard about being disciples of Christ, as workers, as husbands and fathers, as citizens, as sports fans. Maybe we don't allow them to be passive and train them to teach or to lead in prayer or to mentor young men.

Christianity should be hard work. It should be challenging. It requires us, after all, to surrender everything to Christ. If men are not learning that in our churches, then something is wrong.

As children innocently prepare their costumes and empty bags or pillowcases for an enjoyable evening of collecting candy, evangelicals will be battling the forces of Satan on two fronts tonight: boycotting Halloween, and gathering together for a few rousing rounds of Rome-bashing.

Now, I don't enjoy Halloween (specifically what American culture has made of it), and have no problem with those who wish to abstain from participating in it; there are many good reasons not to. However, I am sure there are many doing so tonight who have no idea what they are actually boycotting. They prefer to ignore all that history and instead seize on to the opportunity to celebrate another day which nicely coincides with this awful pagan holiday—Reformation Day.

Lest I sound too cynical, let me note that I am, indeed, very thankful the Reformation happened—I am glad that the doctrines of grace were recovered, I am glad that the abuse of power by corrupt church leaders was curtailed, and I am glad that I did not have to pay for St. Peter’s to be built pay for my relatives to be sprung from purgatory. The Reformation is most certainly something to be thankful for. But one question continues to linger in my mind—would we even celebrate Reformation Day if it didn't conveniently fall on the same night as Halloween?

We might ask why we need a special night to celebrate the Reformation. On the one hand, it seems to be the equivalent of using Valentine's Day to tell your wife that you love her. As your love for her should be manifest each day, shouldn't our rejoicing in God's saving grace be something we do each day? This grace should pour forth from the preaching of the Word and we should taste it in partaking of the Lord's Table each Sunday. Do we really need a specific day to commemorate this?

Moreover, Martin Luther's act of nailing the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg was not the monumental act of defiance that many make it out to be. He only intended to raise a discussion about various issues concerning the Catholic Church with his academic peers. Luther's innocent action exploded into the major events that followed only because some random guy grabbed the piece of paper off the door, translated it into German, and sent copies of it all throughout the country. Do we need to a special day to remember that autumn day in 1517 when Luther walked up the stairs to the door of the Wittenberg church and made known his desire to have an academic discussion with his colleagues?

Hardly. So what is it, then, that evangelicals end up celebrating on Reformation Day? To be sure, there are those who will understand and acknowledge the theological implications of the Reformation. But for others, Reformation Day is, for all intents and purposes, a day to celebrate the disunity of the church. That, to me, is certainly not worth celebrating.

For some reason, people seem to forget that while Luther ultimately made the move to break from the Roman Catholic Church, he did not do so immediately. He spent years in agony deciding whether or not to leave the church he knew as mother and to go against Christ's call for unity in the body of believers (John 17:20-26, 1 Corinthians 1:10). People also forget that Luther was not the first Reformer, and that there were many who went before him who also tried earnestly to reform the church from within. Separating from the church was never the intention of these men, yet their valiant efforts to remain united seem to go unheralded. Instead, we prefer to celebrate the Protestant break from Rome, the second-most definitive and drastic split in the history of the church (the first being the Great Schism of 1054).

Am I advocating a return to Rome? No. Do I think the church will ever be one this side of our Lord's return? Of course not. Am I thankful for the work of the Reformers? Absolutely—I count it a great privilege to be rooted in the theological heritage they left us. But we can't forget that the Reformation also produced a lot of collateral damage. When you have to start constructing graphs that look like the one below (and this is just the American Presbyterians!) something is terribly wrong. And it is nothing to celebrate.O Lord, make us one as You are one.

Rob Moll wrote an article for Christianity Today last year called "Scrooge Lives!", a rightly judgmental and provocative piece demonstrating that Christians don't just hold on tight to their purse strings—they lock them away in impenetrable safes. Because of this, the Church's mission is seriously hindered.

That American Christians don't give is nothing new, but some of the statistics he presented were staggering and downright depressing. Be sure to read the article for yourself. Below, I've posted some of the most mind-blowing figures.

• American Christians—[defined as] those who say their faith is very important to them and those who attend church at least twice a month—earn more than $2.5 trillion dollars every year.
• If these Christians gave away 10 percent of their after-tax earnings, they would add another $46 billion to ministry around the world.
• American Christians could realistically increase their giving by $85.5 billion each year.
• The median annual giving for an American Christian is actually $200, just over half a percent of after-tax income.
• In absolute terms, the poorest Christians give away more dollars than all but the wealthiest Christians.
• $10 billion would sponsor 20 million children for a year, and just $330 million would sponsor 150,000 indigenous missionaries in countries closed to religious workers.
• $2.2 billion would triple the current funding of Bible translation, printing, and distribution. $600 million would be enough to start eight Christian colleges in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.

So, dear Christian who just spent $80,000 on a new Cadillac Escalade (justifying your purchase by sticking a Jesus fish to the back door so that you can "witness" as you drive around), did you know that that same $80,000 would put 36 indigenous missionaries in countries closed to religious workers? Should we even mention what could have been done with the money spent on that 5,000 sq. ft. house in the suburbs? Of course, Paul said not to muzzle our individual rights (1 Cor. 9:3-12)...didn't he? And that it doesn't matter what we give so long as our conscience is satisfied (2 Cor. 9:6-15)? What about James, who said we should look after ourselves (James 1:27)? Or Jesus, who said we can carry on as before and follow him (Matt. 16:24-28)?

The Reformer, Martin Luther, said, "There are three conversions necessary—the conversion of the heart, of the mind, and of the purse." It seems that last one might just be the hardest.

Let's take a cue from Tim Keller and be honest here. We're talking about nothing less than idolatry.

If you know me personally, you might have sensed the urgency in the last post. For those of you who don't, and who did not pick up on it previously, I should note that I wrestle with how to think through and work toward the unity of the Church so much that I almost feel the effects of the struggle physically. It wears me out mentally, and I feel the tension in the pit of my stomach.

But then again, the pain I feel on account of the brokenness of the Church far outweighs the tension I feel, making it seem relatively tame and bearable.

And so I'll continue to struggle with it.

It is not uncommon in the circles I travel in to see very rigid boundaries marked out as to what constitutes orthodoxy, those outside of the walls being excluded from fellowship with those inside. This sort of exclusivity that forces everyone else to think within your predetermined categories is not only absurd, it is sinful. Bavinck, from the fourth volume of his Reformed Dogmatics:

It [cannot] be denied that the endless divisions of the confessors of Christ offer the world an occasion for pleasure and scorn and give it reason for its nonbelief in the One sent by the Father, inasmuch as it does not see the unity of believers (John 17:21). As Christians we cannot humble ourselves deeply enough over the schisms and discord that have existed all through the centuries in the church of Christ. It is a sin against God, in conflict with Christ's [high-priestly] prayer [for unity], and caused by the darkness of our minds and the lovelessness of our hearts.

Given this, he writes, it is understandable that many Christians would make fervent attempts to unite the Church. However, this is then usually accomplished through violent means, or by some sort of syncretism and fusion. Ultimately, the power to bring the Church together as one does not reside with us.

The failure of all those attempts has something to teach us. History, like nature, is a work of God; it does not take shape apart from his providence. Christ, by his resurrection and ascension, became king at the right hand of God and will remain king until he has put all his enemies under his feet [1 Cor. 15:25]. He reigns also over the divisions and schisms of his church on earth. And his prayer for unity was not born of unfamiliarity with its history nor from his inability to govern it. In and through the discord and dissension, that prayer is daily heard and is led to its complete fulfillment. The profound spiritual sense in which the unity of his disciples was understood by Jesus necessarily excludes all violent and artificial attempts to introduce it. Christ, who prayed for it, is also the One—and he alone—who can bring it about. His prayer is the guarantee that it already exists in him and that in due time, accomplished by him, it will also be manifest in believers.

But while we know this to be true, it certainly does not give us an excuse to neglect seeking unity now. Our task is not to erect barriers, but to tear them down. Faithfulness to Christ requires it.

As many children innocently prepare their costumes and empty bags or pillowcases for an enjoyable evening of collecting candy, Protestants will be battling the forces of Satan on two fronts tonight: boycotting Halloween, and gathering together for a few rousing rounds of Rome-bashing.*

Now, I don't enjoy Halloween (specifically what American culture has made of it) and have no problem with those who wish to abstain from participating in it; there are many good reasons not to. However, I am sure there are many doing so tonight who have no idea what they are actually boycotting.

More importantly, I am very thankful the Reformation happened—I am glad that the doctrines of grace were recovered, I am glad that the abuse of power by Church leaders was curtailed, and I am glad that I did not have to pay for St. Peter’s to be built pay for my relatives to be sprung from purgatory. In the Reformation, there is indeed something to be thankful for. However, I think Rae Whitlock has it right—would we even celebrate Reformation Day if it didn't conveniently fall on the same night as Halloween?

For me, the question is why we need a special night to celebrate the Reformation. It seems to be the equivalent of using Valentine's Day to tell your wife that you love her. As your love for her should be manifest each day, shouldn't our rejoicing in God's grace be something we do each day? This grace should pour forth from the preaching of the Word and we should taste it in partaking of the Lord's Table each Sunday. Do we really need a specific day to commemorate this?

No. And that is why the celebration of Reformation Day is not a day to celebrate some theological truths. It is, in effect, a day to celebrate the disunity of the Church. That, to me, is certainly not worth celebrating.

For some reason, Protestants seem to forget that while Martin Luther ultimately made the move and broke from the Roman Catholic Church, he did not do so immediately. He spent years in agony deciding whether or not to leave the Church he knew as mother and to go against Christ's call for unity in the body of believers (John 17:20-26, 1 Corinthians 1:10). Some of the earlier Reformers who went before Luther also tried earnestly to reform the Church from within. Separating from the Church was never the intention of these men, yet their valiant efforts to remain united seem to go unheralded.

Am I advocating a return to Rome? No. Do I think the Church will ever be one this side of our Lord's return? Of course not. But when you have to start constructing graphs that look like this (and this is just the American Presbyterians!) something is terribly wrong. And it is nothing to celebrate.

Our church met for a service on Maundy Thursday last week. It was essentially a Good Friday service, given the absence of the observance of Good Friday itself in the United States. In addition to the usual elements of worship, they incorporated a variation of the “Stations of the Cross” at the end of the service. It is on that part of worship that I had a few thoughts in reflection.

The Stations of the Cross was something new to me. I’d only heard of it before, but had never experienced or taken part in it. I knew that it had its origins in the Roman Catholic tradition and had been appropriated to a degree by more liturgical bodies like the Anglican and Lutheran traditions as well. When I arrived at the church and looked at the setup they had in the sanctuary, I could immediately tell, without prior knowledge of the practice, that this was a thoroughly de-Catholicized version of the Stations of the Cross. Beyond the name, it would likely not have been recognizable to a Roman Catholic. It tended toward the individualizing view of salvation characteristic of evangelicalism and placed more emphasis on the benefits procured by us in Christ's death, than on Christ and His passion itself.

I am not altogether opposed to the church doing that sort of thing, as I believe there is room for some diversity in how we express our worship to God. However, I do wonder why we appropriate a mish-mash of liturgical practices without appropriating the tradition those practices properly belong to. Evangelicalism’s non-committal nature has tended towards this sort of thing. Churches pick and choose the elements they like from various traditions, but do so without aligning themselves with that tradition. A prime example of this was the Emergent movement, which wanted to recover some of the flavor of the ancient Church, but in some cases rejected or shied away from the orthodox theology that belonged to the ancient tradition.

Perhaps this is even more of a problem in a Presbyterian church, such as I belong to. This church already belongs to a specific, historical tradition. Are we questioning the value of our Presbyterianism by adopting these different practices, and in doing so implying that our tradition is not quite good enough and needs to be supplemented with these other elements? R. Scott Clark, in his recent book, Recovering the Reformed Confession, argues that the Reformed tradition not only has its own doctrine and piety, but a specific practice as well. There are points at which I disagree with him on the details, but his overall point stands. Being a part of such a tradition, can we properly adopt a variety of practices from differing traditions without compromising our own? My gut reaction is to say we can’t.

Additionally, it seems to me that we adopt a posture of arrogance when we do this. In the case of the Stations of the Cross, we have taken a Roman Catholic tradition, removed many of the Roman Catholic distinctives, and infused it with characteristics that would cater more to our evangelical sensibilities while attempting to retain the mystic nature of the practice. In effect, we are saying that we can appreciate a centuries-old Roman Catholic tradition so long as we alter it to fit into our own mold. Granted, there are not many Roman Catholic practices that would fit in a Presbyterian church given the discrepancy in the theology and practice of these two traditions. But does that make our adoption and remodeling of it right? Again, my gut reaction is to say it isn’t.

These are just musings. My biggest concern is with the way we are so quick to jump at the chance to use certain elements of worship without fully understanding them or where they come from. In effect, we treat them as a sort of novelty. Whether our appropriation of these various elements without their accompanying traditions is done of out an innocent sort of ignorance, or worse, a brazen rejection of the original intention of the practice, on either level we demonstrate a great deal of disrespect to that tradition.

Perhaps more significant, though, is that we then devalue our own tradition. In modern evangelical churches, especially those linked to a specific denomination and tradition, I think it is fair to say that most of the members of such churches do not have a healthy awareness and appreciation of their tradition. In this case, I would tend to think that appropriating different aspects of other traditions has the potential to be injurious to cultivating a posture of respect for one's own historical tradition.

All that being said, I'm not really sure what to think about it. I would appreciate any thoughts you might have on this.

Slightly in relation to the last post, I want to talk a bit about the notion of the local church. What brings me to mention this is the most recent post from Orthodox priest, Stephen Freeman. I've mentioned him a number of times here on this blog, and that is because I find his thoughts provoking and challenging. And although he focuses primarily on Orthodoxy, I find a lot of what he says to be equally applicable to Christianity as a whole, and especially how it is to function within American and Western culture.

Fr. Freeman describes Orthodoxy in America as a stranger in a strange land. Indeed it is--rooted in Byzantine and Eastern European culture, it seems markedly strange and different to Westerners. He makes the point that Orthodoxy seems to be designed to work best in a small village setting, and that the commuting aspect of American culture has made things difficult. Some of his parishioners travel 75 miles to come to the church. This is problematic for Orthodox believers as the gathering together of that community occurs more frequently than a Protestant church. However, Fr. Freeman is discontent with this commuter mentality, and though within the realm of evangelicalism in America it has come to widely accepted, he issues a warning:

We must, however, recognize the nature of our situation and not suggest that since the Church lives in Babylon it must do as the Babylonians do. I would gladly argue that this would be our worst mistake. Orthodoxy has a life that bears a shape, formed in a crucible, that we should not lightly change in the culture we now find ourselves in...We are strangers in a strange land, and we must assemble ourselves together as Church often. There we are fed by grace and manifest who and what we are to an even greater extent by the goodness of God.

American culture is saturated with the idea of choice. A professor of mine pulled up the statistic that in the average franchise grocery store in the United States, there will be upwards of 50,000 items available to the consumer. Half-mile stretches of road are devoted strictly to restaurants. An advertising campaign for the best selling pickup truck in North America, the Ford F-series, states that it comes in over three million different configurations.

But this aspect of choice has filtered over to the Church as well. The schismatic nature of the American Church is deeply disturbing. The over 30,000 known denominations are evidence of this. There is a proliferation of churches on every corner (especially in the South) and this has done injury to the idea of community and commitment. We choose churches based on our needs and wants instead of being a part of the church in our community so that we can meet the needs of others and contribute with our gifts in our local setting. Some people see no issue in driving thirty miles to attend a church they like, though choosing to go that distance means they will participate far less, often only attending the weekly service. One particular church in my area has members that will commute from southern Georgia weekly to attend services--a three-hour car ride.

This is a difficult question, I realize, especially for those who tend to lay emphasis on the necessity of theological agreement between the individuals in the community, and the individual and the broader community (denomination). How much priority should be placed on aligning ourselves with like-minded believers? Many would argue that for the sake of the gospel and our witness in our communities and the world at large, these distinctions should be played down so as to present a unified front. To be sure, this is a commendable notion. American Presbyterian theologian, J. Gresham Machen, once addressed the question of when one should leave a church by stating that the point at which to withdraw from a church and go elsewhere is when being a part of that community causes you to sin. That, of course, leaves room for interpretation and the judgment of conscience, but I think it also provides something for our current, divisive Protestant landscape to think about.

But this question is not one that the Church in other places has to deal with. Those who have served on the mission field can well attest to that. Small localities in nations where the gospel does not have a significant presence are often blessed to have one church in their area. I think it goes without saying that believers in those settings are more than willing to lay aside their theological disagreements and worship together as a unified community. There are lessons to be learned from this. It involves us stepping outside the boundaries of our culture and seeing things in a different light.

The point is that I think we need to work on reviving the notion of community in our local churches. As strangers in a strange land, we need to be bound together with the unity that comes in being children of God. And that is what I think Fr. Freeman is also getting at. Community is best lived out in a geographically-local setting, whether it is an urban neighborhood or a small town somewhere in the middle of a rural area. A close community will provide the sustenance needed to live as strangers in a foreign land.

Our definition of "church" is important here. We must definitely not use it as a verb, as something we do, but should instead work towards understanding it as a proper noun, a name or title given to a body of people--indeed, an anointed title. Church encompasses so much more than a building or something that happens on Sunday. It is a way of life, a calling. Fr. Freeman makes that clear about Orthodoxy in his post, and I want to stress that point here too. If we understand our calling to be representatives of the Kingdom of God, and the Church to be at the heart and center of that calling, then the importance of the local church and community becomes more evident.

In a way then, what I have said here should precede the discussion I have had with a number of people in the last post (especially in the comments). Once we recognize the importance that the Church should play in the community, then we can begin to talk about how that should be done.

The Church is such an integral part of life in Orthodoxy, and as Fr. Freeman points out, American culture makes it difficult to maintain that understanding. Such is the case for Christianity as a whole. In an earlier post I stated that humans are meant to live in community and our churches should be reflective of that. If the Church (and by extension the Kingdom under the rule of God) is not at the heart of that community, something else will be. And for anything else to be the center of a community is nothing less than idolatry.