Michael Horton:Hello and welcome to a special discussion on the Emergent Church movement. In this discussion, we're not analyzing the movement and offering critique and solutions. We're going to be discussing our own churches and some of the challenges that the Emergent folks have offered to us and maybe also some things that are already being done in some of our churches so that some of the issues that have been raised by the Emergent movement can be addressed here, especially by young pastors who are in that Emergent age group or emerging slowly beyond it, and who also minister to a lot of young people as well as older folks and younger children. We hope that this will be informative and useful for those people who are not only pastors and Sunday school teachers, but for people who go to church (who are) hopefully our audience. Todd Rodarmel is pastor of Mountain View Church in Mission Viejo, California, a church in the Evangelical Covenant denomination. Charlie Mallie is the pastor of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Laguna Beach, California, which is in The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Michael Brown is the pastor of the Christ United Reformed Church in Santee, California. It is a privilege to have you guys here today. First and foremost, tell us a little bit of the background of your church, its makeup, and your approach to ministry. Mike, we'll start with you.
Michael Brown: My church is part of the Federated United Reformed Church in North America, which is predominantly of a Dutch (Reformed) flavor or a Dutch background, and grew out of the CRC, as you probably know. However in this classis, and in Southern California in particular, there are a lot of new URC church plants that aren't necessarily Dutch in flavor. They're very diverse. So that's kind of our church. It's made up of people who are pretty new to the Reformed faith. Some have been brought out of broad Evangelicalism; some have come out of broad Evangelicalism and moved into another Reformed denomination and just found their way here.
Horton: Such as yourself, you're an example of this.
Brown: Such as myself. I guess I'll leave my background unnamed, but I came from a Southern California broad evangelical movement. Very popular with young people, I suppose. Then I went into Reformed theology. But as far as my approach to ministry, I suppose I would say that it's very simple. It's the means of grace. It's Word and Sacrament. It's the Lord's Day, gathering together in a covenant renewal ceremony as we would understand it. Called out of the world to worship God, receive his gifts, and living that out through the week. Our piety really flows out of that. And our community flows out of that as well. As people who have been called out of the world and are on a pilgrimage from the time we've been redeemed until the time we go to the promised land. We belong to the age to come. And that's really in a nutshell how I would approach ministry in that context.
Horton: Todd?
Todd Rodarmel: I'm definitely the least Reformed person here (chuckles). I came out of a large megachurch background, and I reacted to that and I entered into the emerging church. But I ended up at this church a couple of years ago after planting a church and then being a part of Westminster Seminary, and then coming to pastor this church that had just been going for about five years. It was part of the Evangelical Covenant church. It was a largely Orange County church, and the people in Orange County that go there are very genuine, honest people who don't have a lot of background. Whether it's Reformed or whatever, they're not really sure what their background is. In fact, a lot of them came to Christ in this church. And so, we don't tend to use as much of the language of talking about some of those things, as much as having the teaching based in the Reformation and in good theology. But we're trying to help people grow in their faith through some smaller discipleship groups. We use the Heidelberg Catechism to train some of our people in leadership. We have done that not in a way that says, "Hey we want to be Reformed," but in a way that says we want to look at the truth as has been passed on throughout history and perhaps from some broader perspectives, but specifically from the Reformed perspective as well.
Horton: Charlie?
Charlie Mallie: St. Paul's is a unique congregation. It is rather small for a congregation in southern Orange County, but being located in Laguna Beach, has had its share of challenges. Especially with regard to evangelizing in that community. We worship with probably fewer than 100 people. And the common thread that unites all of the members is a real need to hear Christ crucified for their sins and that the shed blood of the cross is bigger than whatever mess they've gotten themselves into that prior week. There seems to be a great need to hear that kind of a message in southern Orange County. And a lot of the people that come to visit us and end up staying come out of other churches where either that isn't the predominant message being preached or because of how some bad theology affected their lives (we have several members who had a church fast, which, in one case, lasted thirty years). I would say we would try to stress God's presence among his people through Word and sacrament with an emphasis on their individual forgiveness through those means. And that keeps them coming back.
Horton: One thing you don't know about Charlie but you will now is that he has a doctorate from the Harley-Davidson motorcycle company. Can you tell us about that?
Mallie: (Chuckles.) I'm sure many of your listeners know a lot of the jokes about seminaries and as someone who has gone to a very conservative, traditional, four-year seminary with a one-year internship, I can attest that many of those jokes are true. One of the things that I did to preserve my own sanity was go out and get a full-time job. So I put myself through seminary by working at a Harley-Davidson dealership. They have a study program where you learn to be a Harley mechanic. You go out to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and take some tests. And yes, I do have a plaque and a diploma from Harley-Davidson University, and their mechanics program is called a Ph.D.
Horton: You guys look like Emergent pastors. But Charlie has tattoos. So, sorry, I think Charlie wins this one.
Rodarmel: Well how many tattoos? I might have him beat actually. No, Charlie, you've definitely got me beat. I won't mess with the bikers …
Horton:I am sure you guys are definitely more familiar with the Emergent movement than I am. A lot of the people are expressing dissatisfaction with the church culture that they grew up in. First of all, what do you think they are reacting against? We'll get to what solutions you think they're proposing, but what do you think they're reacting against-the young people you're meeting who seem dissatisfied with their church background?
Brown: I think each one of us will probably have a wide variety of things to offer in terms of the different people we've met and the things that they've been reacting against. One of the things that I come across quite often, especially with people in my age group-you know the young to mid-thirties age group, is we've grown up in churches that were the baby boomer generation churches. I never attended a church with pews, vaulted ceilings, liturgy, Psalms, and hymns. Church as far back as I can remember was always done with a stage, lots of loud instruments, which were really loud, and you were always kind of watching something. And the emphasis was really on your individual piety and your own individual walk with the Lord. These are not all things that are necessarily bad in and of themselves, but I think what happened over time is that people looked at this as something so individualistic and something so compartmentalized, that it naturally grew in to this megachurch, ecclesiastical Wal-Mart, situation that we have now.
Horton: Is the individualism why it's called a "worship experience"?
Brown: It very well could be. Absolutely. But the people I am meeting are just fed up with that. They're tired of that. There is a longing for a sense of community. There is a longing for this sense of being connected to history. Not feeling as though the church just started in the late 1960s. And so, I guess I can identify with some of those concerns because I felt that way myself when I was growing up.
Rodarmel: I think that there is also a bit of a reaction against things being a bit too neatly packaged. Whether it's in three-point alliterated sermons, or whether it's in the way things are presented and polished, I think that younger people have realized that life is messier than that. And their experience of everyday life is messier than that. And I think they want to be honest with that and have something that is honest and not feel like it's coming across as something that is prepackaged and being sold to them.
Horton: "Authentic" is a word that keeps popping up in there.
Mallie: I'm glad you mentioned that. That was one of the points I wanted to stress. Authenticity seems to be a huge value for people in our congregation. I think that a lot of times people are reacting to what you see in a lot of American Evangelicalism with focus groups and identifying their target market demographic. And even some very popular books these days tend to deemphasize any sense of the transcendent or mystical experience of God and focus on the subjective, superficial, emotionality which doesn't really get you anywhere except pointing you to your own sins. One of the things we were fortunate enough to do in our own congregation was take off on Rick Warren's 40 Days of Purpose, and being a historic congregation which has its roots in the Reformation, we celebrate the season of Lent. And so we had forty days of purple where we actually had five wonderful weeks of preaching on the "Purpose-Driven Death," which was a vehicle for talking about Christ's sacrificial atonement for the forgiveness of sins for the whole world.
Horton: That is marvelous (chuckling).
Rodarmel: I think in some ways the Emergent movement is a response to this. It feels inauthentic.
Horton: That's an important point. This, then, seems to be what the Emergent folks are reacting against. This sort of prepackaged Christianity. Is there anything else that you can think of that is motivating this movement? They talk about the authoritarian, managerial model, CEO, top-down, where this one guy is in charge of a whole denomination.
Rodarmel: Or just the hierarchy of the church, where the people at the top of the church are right and they tell things to everyone else, and you have to get in line. Or where one guy speaks in front and tells it how it is. Or just the fact of saying, "We're right." The reality of a lot of the denominations we've been a part of, and the Reformed camp has been guilty of this as well, is that we've been very dogmatic at times. This is also being reacted against by the Emergent folks. We hear, "You guys are so sure that you're right, but all you've been doing is dividing the church." Even among Reformed folks or Reformation-minded folks or whatever that there may be some core agreement about some things, but there are also a lot of areas of disagreement. And I think there is this reaction to the dogmatism, that we've got to fight about everything that people just kind of want to say, "Let's not fight about that, and let's not be so sure of ourselves, and maybe be open to discussion more." And so I think that's a part of the reaction.
Horton: That leads into what I wanted to ask next. It's easy for us to say, "Okay here's what they're reacting against, the megachurch." And we've been reacting against that for a long time. I'm Reformed because I reacted against that. As those of us sitting around the table have said that is our background, too. But as you suggest, they're also reacting against some other things that make us squirm, or at least make me squirm in my seat-the thinking that says, "We know it all, we have all the answers." And I think I can safely say that in our own circles, you know with this treasure that has been handed down, also sometimes comes with a lot of cobwebs. And people thinking they know the faith they're handing down when they don't really know it. And in place of real conviction where they can explain it to a non-Christian, there is sheer force of power and will. Is that something that they're reacting against?
Mallie: We see that an awful lot in the Lutheran Church. In the Missouri Synod where a lot of pastors who have fought the fight for years and years degrade into a traditionalism. Rather than holding onto the tradition and being able to catechismally teach the whys and the wherefores. This is what we do, and this is why we do it. These are the passages on which these things are based. It sort of degrades over time into a traditionalism, where "this is what we do, because this is what we do. It's all we've ever done and that's why we do it." And there is a huge reaction, at least from my age group, which is about mid-thirties, to answers given from that sort of authoritarian position that lack any sort of substance, let alone any degree of sympathy or empathy.
Brown: I think that in my tradition, or my branch of the Reformation world that I come from, we don't see that so much. We maybe see some of that from the folks that grew up Reformed from infancy, but the vast majority of people, a reaction that I am hearing in particular with my age group, are people who say, "We appreciate this church because you confess certain things, but you prioritize those important things. You're not bringing your agendas or your hobby horses." It's true that doctrine divides. It's true when we take a stand, we are drawing a line in the sand. But what is important to do, is to lay out what are those things that are nonnegotiable. And then make sure we are catechizing our young people and passing the baton on to the next generation so that things don't get lost.
Horton: Let's come to that point and work our way up through the age groups. Catechism or teaching the young the Christian faith. Here's what I've seen, and you tell me if this is what you all see as well. I think in a lot of our circles, people who grow up, especially in ethnically Reformed circles, but not exclusively, there is this sort of herd mentality. "This is what we do at this time in our life: This is profession of faith time or this is confirmation time. This is what we do, we go through this hoop. This is our bar mitzvah. It's what we do to make everyone happy." Now that's not the way I think it is for most, but it is certainly for many, I think, one of those rites of passage in the culture. It can also be that way even outside of ethnic Reformed and Presbyterian enclaves. But one thing I wonder is: Can we teach the catechism to kids, or the basic doctrines of the faith to kids, and teach biblical passages to kids so they can lock it in there? And then, when they get to a certain age, say teenagers, start teaching them to question it? That is what I don't see. I don't see a culture of encouraging real questioning of the faith in the church to help them when they go off to college and start questioning it, and they don't have a church around.
Mallie: Absolutely.
Horton: So what are we doing about it? Tell us stories about your own churches.
Brown: Something we're trying to do is, to really implement the priority for the parents to catechize at home and to teach that it is really their responsibility to disciple their kids. Very often they'll say, "Well, when are we going to get a discipleship group together? Who is going to disciple my boys?" Well, you're responsible to disciple your boys. And ministers have historically done that. They've come alongside parents and equipped them. But it seems like there are certain stages with the children that we want to hit. The first stage is where they're just bouncing back catechism questions and answers from memory. Where they might not be able to put two and two together at all. And they hit a new stage where they're starting to think about those things. And by the time they're about ready to make a profession of faith, it's at that point where we should be able to rigorously be able to bounce these things off them so that they're challenged. And what I try to do is help parents to see that they need to be ready and equipped to present the faith to people. Maybe to people who don't know the faith, or people who are going to ask them questions about their faith. They should be able to connect the dots without having to ask, "What does question 60 say again?" And that is one of these spiritual disciplines that people are looking for in our day and age because we never had it. Because we did have the herd mentality. And this is something that is not only biblical, but also historical as well.
Mallie: One of the things we do in our congregation is to have three years of catechesis from fourth grade to sixth grade. During the three years they learn the six chief parts of Luther's catechism. They memorize that their first year, they get an explanation to that their second year, and in their third year, we take it apart both constructively and destructively.
Horton: In the curriculum, or is this something that you're doing at St. Paul's?
Mallie: It's in the curriculum. Believe it or not, the six chief parts of the catechism only comprise twenty pages of the catechism. And I think the catechism goes for 197 pages. We have section two which is composed of Christian questions with their answers. And you wouldn't believe the honesty and relevance of those questions in today's culture. The catechism walks the kids through their question to their answer from the Scriptures. Now to that we supplement some "on-the-fly" or "on-the-street" evangelism and actually a little bit of training in apologetics, especially in a community like Laguna Beach. There is a converted Buddhist in our congregation who walked away from Buddhism after thirty-five years. I mean I can't tell you the impact something like that has on kids where they see the relevance of people who have actually worshipped idols coming to the Lord's table. There's a great connection to what they're reading in their catechism, it doesn't just remain this academic discipline, it's like math for them. They need to memorize their multiplication tables before they get a job at Taco Bell, so they can actually make change.
Horton: And disciple people. We have all these discipleship programs today, but a disciple was a student of a rabbi, who walked around and listened to everything the rabbi said and jotted it down, or at least they didn't have to jot down, they could remember things in those days. And that was catechism. That was catechesis. That is what being a disciple is. Not following the eighteen steps to whatever. Do you think Emergent folks today will look at something like that and say, "Now that is authentic. That is not a prepackaged, eight-steps to this or that in an attempt to make Christianity relevant"?
Brown: I think so. I think that they might be thrown off a little bit by the dogmatic claims of the gospel that something like the Heidelberg Catechism makes. But I do think that for one, they would be drawn to the fact that this is something that we didn't invent, and it isn't the new fad, the new Prayer of Jabez, or Forty Days of Purpose. Rather this is something we recovered from the past, which, during the Reformation, they had recovered from the early church fathers. And so catechesis is something that would be very attractive to many of those people.
Rodarmel: There's certainly an appreciation for things old rather than things that are just novel or new. Like you were saying the Gothic Gregorian chants. Anything that's old seems to have more substance from somewhere. People are looking for that. We've found that as we've introduced some of the catechisms for parents to use in the home for training with their own children. And people have responded to it just because of its simplicity. I remember when we first brought the Heidelberg Catechism to a leadership meeting at our church and people started reading through it; people started crying. They were saying, "Oh my gosh, this is so great, where did you find this stuff?" I said, well it has been around for a long time. They thought it was the coolest new thing they had found, because they just haven't seen those things.
Mallie: We often have very young people who are mystified by this book that is not the Bible. It's called a hymnal. It has something in it called a liturgy. And to the left and right of the margins are these things called the Scripture references. And they tend to be mystified by them. We have hymns in our hymnal written by Athanasius. I mean, you want to talk about a connection to the past.
Horton: Who wasn't a Northern European.
Rodarmel: I heard he wasn't a Lutheran either (laughter).
Mallie: Well he is; they're all Lutheran in heaven (laughter). One point that you brought up: the Emergent movement has discovered something I think that the prior generation has forgotten. There needs to be a connection between doctrine and practice. And so often the way in which something is presented conveys a part of the meaning. It would be sort of inappropriate to convey the glories of the resurrection of that Sunday after Good Friday with sort of a commercial jingle. I think there is something missing there. And I think that the Emergent movement does well to say, "Yes, something is missing there, and we need to go search."
Horton: Is the problem there, though, that a lot of times the answer is, "We just want to go back to the mystical, mysterious, and transcendent and the old"? And not say that, "Well, the problem was that doctrine and practice weren't linked." So if we're going to do this practice, let's ask where it comes from doctrinally. Is this consistent with the teaching of Scripture? Is that where it gets a little fuzzy?
Rodarmel: I think that's where you have a problem because I don't think everyone is asking that question. I think it's the attention span issue. I mean my attention span isn't that long. And I don't think a lot of people's attention spans are that long.
Horton: We're used to channel-surfing.
Rodarmel: Yes, I can change the channel or flip to the next song on my iPod or whatever. And I don't think there's the attention to that kind of detail. It's kind of like, "Hey, this is a great resource, I think this is nice," and I don't think we often ask those questions.
Horton: A big issue is transcendence. We've touched on it tangentially, but it's at the heart of one of the characteristics of the Emergent Church movement. They're looking for transcendence. Something that isn't just like every other day and every other place. They want to meet with God. One thing I come across in their literature again and again is, "We have a passion to meet with God." And they don't think they got that in churches growing up very often. How do you think our worship is failing or fulfilling that concern to actually meet with God? Specifically in terms of our own particular churches.
Brown: I think that something we try to do is have Sunday school or catechisis on what worship is. The whole worship service we have at Christ URC really flows around a dialog between God and us. So God gets the first and final word. There's a call to worship, and we respond with an invocation. Then God greets us and we sing to him in response. And then God speaks to us in law, and we confess our sins to him. And then God speaks to us in the gospel and the declaration of pardon, and then there's this constant dialog until we have the preaching of the Word and the Lord's Supper. And I think that when people start to catch that, they see something that they've never had. In any kind of broad evangelical church they had more of the 30/30/15 liturgy, where it's 15 minutes of prayer and announcements, 30 minutes of music to get you hot and sweaty, and then finally 30 minutes of a talk. Then off you go to get coffee at the church caf.
Horton: No wonder the sermon was seen as sort of intellectual, when, in fact, it was just dry.
Mallie: We use a similar kind of liturgy, but it is much looser. And less formal and traditional. But we actually print in our bulletin who the person leading is and what his part is, and then what the people's part is. It lists the people's part and what they're supposed to do during that part. It lists when you're to listen or respond or pray. It helps walk them through understanding more than presenting an order of what's going to happen next. It's something that they're participating in. This is a meeting or Covenant renewal.
Horton: A vertical conversation.
Mallie: Yes. Both ways. I think this emphasis for a desire to meet with God is one of the great strengths of Lutheranism. Our whole theology of worship is what we call a divine service. We actually very rarely use the term "worship". One of the huge emphases of Christianity is God's descent to earth in the flesh of Christ. And so our whole theology of worship follows that motif. Again of God descending to be present amongst his people through Word and sacrament. Again for the sole purpose of listening to their confessions, concerns, prayers, forgiving them their sins. And a Lutheran theology of a divine service culminating in a Lord's Supper. Where Christ himself bids you to come, take, eat, take, drink, and Lutherans hold what is called the Real Presence. That Christ is actually present. He is the one serving you; he is the meal.
Brown: Calvinists believe that too, Charlie (laughter).
Mallie: For Lutherans, that is the center of our piety. You don't get closer to God this side of heaven than when you take him into your mouth for your forgiveness. That is one aspect of our service for people. If they haven't had that experience of being in the presence of the divine, they can get that at any Lutheran service. And any pastor who is worth his salt is doing that very well underscoring what Christ told his own disciples. "He who hears you, hears me." And the emphasis of what Christ is doing in a church is that it is Christ who baptizes, Christ who feeds, and Christ who forgives.
Horton: You know what this all brings up is the crisis of mediation. A crisis of God's presence being mediated to his people through the means of grace. And it seems to me that one of the places where the worship wars has completely gone in circles is over the whole issue of worship as something that we do for God exclusively. For instance, you often hear both representatives of the megachurch and critics of the megachurch say, "Worship is not about what we get out of it, but we give to it; therefore, it has to be participatory, it has to be this, it has to be that, it is all directed from us to God." And what I don't see changing with the Emergent stuff that I've seen is that there is still this emphasis on us coming and bringing our art, our icons, our incense, our journaling, alongside the Word and sacrament. Isn't this part of the point? One of the reasons why we do limit worship to the means of grace, to that which God has commanded, is precisely because this business is not about our bringing, as Cain did, whatever he wanted from the field. This is about the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is about God coming to us and not about us bringing Christmas to God.
Brown: I would totally agree with everything Charlie said about the worship service. That is precisely right. We look forward to the Lord's Day because something actually happens there. It's not just us bringing our own little trifolds or whatever we want or our own little expressions of how much we love God. We are there to receive from him who descends to us. Who does forgive us. Who does speak law and gospel to us. Who does feed us with his table and his Word. We look forward to that and so we long for that all weeklong. I really believe that is the transcendent experience so many believers are longing for. And we just don't have it in Southern California.
Mallie: It's the one thing that most churches in Southern California lack, and it's the only job that church is called to do. A dispensary of forgiveness. And if Christians understood that, they would find these theologically sound citadels around the world, and they'd be beating down the doors like heroin addicts at a methadone clinic.
Brown: Absolutely right. I find this all the time. In the declaration of pardon and the absolution. People say, "We were first a little shaken up when you raised your hand and said, "I declare to you in the name of Christ and by the authority of his Word that your sins are forgiven and you are not under the condemnation of God.'" People love that.
Horton: They are petrified the first few times when they come out of churches where that isn't practiced. Then they say, "If you ever don't do that, I'll notice."
Brown: Exactly. It adds to such a part of our experience.
Horton: Can we also say as a warning that if we look for transcendence, that we might find the devil? Because the devil is transcendent, too. He transcends the terra firma. We struggle with powers and principalities in heavenly places. And not all that is transcendent is good. Nahab and Abihu wanted to bring their gifts to the altar and that didn't turn out so well. Don't we have to come to God through his means, through which he has come to us? Otherwise we meet not God at all, but our own worship experience which is dangerous.
Mallie: I think we do, and this is one of those areas where there seems to be a bit of confusion out there in the culture. Everybody understands that "God is everywhere." And while it is true that God is everywhere, he is not everywhere to save. And he is present to save only where he has revealed himself to be present to save. And at least scripturally, those places are very narrow. In his Word, in the waters of baptism, and in the Supper. I think when we go on a journey we are seeking God, we might want to realize that perhaps he saved us a lot of the work. And he's given us a road map to say, "Here I am."
Brown: And we want to make clear that we're not into transcendence for the sake of transcendence. We're not trying to do transcendence as the next gimmick.
Horton: If you look at Romans 10, Paul says you don't have to go up to bring him down. That the search for transcendence ends at the Incarnation. God has come down, and that ends the search.
Mallie: That's right.
Horton: There is a lot of talk in the Emergent movement about recovering spiritual disciplines. When we in the Reformed tradition hear talk about spiritual disciplines we squirm in our seats. Todd, you're in the Evangelical Covenant Church. Spirit disciplines are probably part and parcel of the Evangelical Covenant tradition, so that probably is not as stark. First, what do you think they are reacting against? And what do you think they are trying to put in its place?
Rodarmel: I think they're reacting against just knowing stuff in your head when it does not make a difference in your life. And I think people want, and this is a big part of the Emergent thing, to say, "We want to become like Jesus. We believe that he saved us from our sins, but we also want to be his followers and learn to live like him. To obey." The last part of the great commission says, "Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." So we want to get about obeying it and get better at that. I think there is a desire to do any practice that helps us to learn to be like Jesus or more like Jesus. And so spiritual disciplines have the place of helping us learn how to do that.
Horton: Following, not just learning.
Rodarmel: Following, not just learning for more knowledge. But practicing.
Brown: When we talk about spiritual disciplines it might be helpful to identify a few. I know in the Reformed tradition I'm thinking of attending the means of grace for individual and family catechesis. Other things as well, such as vocation, we would see as a spiritual discipline. Putting in a good day's work is a good work. It is a spiritual work toward God.
Horton: And serving our neighbor.
Brown: And serving our neighbor. These kinds of things. And also within the context of ministry. A pastor going and visiting people in the congregation and their knowing that they are under the authority of the office bearers and in covenant with the local congregation really plays into their spiritual disciplines as well.
Horton: Do you think, too, that one of the reason maybe we squirm is that it's certainly true, at least of me, that I don't pray enough, I don't read my Bible enough? And the private disciplines of an individual Christian are important. But when I hear those obligations, I am reminded again of how far I fall short. But also, perhaps one reason why we squirm is because we do put so much emphasis, as Lutherans do as well, on the corporate means of grace and what is done in the home and then what is done for the neighbor. There is this long polemic since the Reformation against the monks. Where Luther and Calvin and everyone else say that "You guys don't care one bit about your neighbor who is hurting or needs your help or needs a meal or needs a job. All you're doing every day is focusing on yourself and your own salvation. And Calvin, to Cardinal Sadileto, says, "It's so liberating when you know you're already saved. And now you can actually help your neighbor without doing it because of what it might do for you." I imagine a lot of Christians think, "Well, if I help my neighbor, then he might become a Christian," or "If I help, my neighbor might become holier. I might fulfill my spiritual discipline." Instead of deciding to help my neighbor because my neighbor needs help.
Rodarmel: I think that's a lot of the same thing that the Emergent people are saying. "Why can't we help our neighbor without trying to convert them?" or arm wrestle them into the church or trick them into thinking that Christians are nice or whatever. And that's a good criticism. But it's a criticism that the Reformed and Lutheran have shared for a long time. Typically, when people are thinking of spiritual disciplines, they're thinking about silence, solitude, prayer, and fasting. Things like that. Those can become, like you're saying, self-focused things. And there is a danger in them, that the Reformation quite reacted to, and that is a legitimate danger.
Horton: Getting our eyes off of ourselves and focusing them on Christ, and then sending us out into the world to be bearers of not only Good News, but as good friends and neighbors to non-Christians. Let's end with this. One criticism that I hear the Emergent folks mentioning that I have a lot of time for is that a lot of the preaching they're reacting against contains these timeless propositions of either eternal doctrinal truths or eternal moral truths. They miss the story. And they're saying, "Tell me a story." I've heard eighteen stories this week about how reality is. I've seen four movies and I have listened to eight thousand songs. All of them tell me a different story about how everything ends up. Tell me the one story that might actually grab my heart. How do we respond to that?
Brown: Well, we would just take them to the unfolding drama of Scripture and redemptive history. That it's really only about one thing. God redeeming a people for himself for the Lord Jesus Christ and all of it fits in that way. And that's another thing that I guess my brothers would concur with. Seeing people come to our church, they're so appreciative of that redemptive historical emphasis, whereas before, it was really just a handbook full of propositions or moral stuff or tips for living.
Horton: Believe this or do that.
Rodarmel: You put the story in its context from Genesis to Revelation and help people see that and how Christ forms the center of it. People love that. And they do want to hear that story, and they need to hear that story again and again. About how Christ has forgiven their sin and every week when they come to church they need to hear that. And so I think that's the part where the Reformed and Lutheran and Reformation-minded churches can focus on, and not go to preaching their systematic theology through whatever passage they're at. But preach it in the context of the story. I think people will resonate with that.
Mallie: Preach the Word. And this is where the pastor really has to spend his time preparing his sermon. As we began a part of our conversation with there's so much stuff that's canned in the world. I've certainly seen it come across my desk with sermon helps and canned sermons and three points to save you fifteen minutes so you can go play golf or something.
Horton: And it all sounds the same.
Mallie: It is all the same. It's garbage. I think that pastors need to start their week by praying and translating the Scriptures from the original languages and trying to, as I had a wonderful professor who once said, "Think yourself empty and read yourself full." I know none of us can really do that-start with a blank slate. But the point is to let the Scriptures come to you in such a way where the power of God's Word is speaking and not being forced through some mold and some dogmatic understanding.
Horton: One of our Reformed confessions says that the preached Word is the Word of God and that it is made effectual by anything in the minister himself. In fact it says that though he be an infidel or immoral, it makes no difference in the effect of the Word. That the Word is that objective. Can't that really heal a lot of people who have grown up in cultish personality churches? Where really it's the charisma of the preacher or the force of his preaching or the style of his preaching, rather than being overwhelmed by the fact that Jesus Christ just showed up in front of you and clothed you with him. That he just did this to you while you were sitting there.
Mallie: If we could just get people into a place where they could hear the Word of God rightly preached. And law and gospel. And get them to think, what if this were true? I mean wouldn't that change everything? And to be able to help them get past the aesthetics. Or the music or the organist who misplayed a couple of notes, or Grandma and Grandpa Schmidt who have been there for fifty years with their arms folded, or the guy who is looking at his watch as you've gone over the magic hour, or anything like that. But get them to a place where they're actually, and maybe for some of them for the first time in their lives, confronted with the raw Word of God being preached to them. I think both of our traditions think that God is living and active in the preached Word. Not just historical redemptive but a creative redemptive Word of God that goes through the ear and down into the heart. One of the things I try to emphasize is that the organ of faith is the ear, not the eye.
Horton: Where does true faith come from? The Heidelberg Catechism says, "The Holy Spirit creates it in our hearts by the preaching of the Holy Gospel and confirms it by the Holy Sacraments." That's where true faith comes from. And people are looking for true faith. That's exactly the answer to the question people are looking for.
Brown: Something along those lines that just came to mind is that I've had so many people come back and say that this is something that's been very helpful to them, that they haven't ever had before. Not to overemphasize "eye-gate" over "ear-gate," but on our Wednesday-night Bible studies, we use a big dry erase board, and probably not a Wednesday goes by when I don't draw a timeline on the board and show from creation to consummation in Christ, Covenants, things that have happened, Israel, and garden. Just as it comes out in the teaching, they're able to find where they fit into this story. And that they are a part of a people who are traveling toward a goal. I'm not interested in being a pilgrim just for the sake of being a pilgrim. You know I want to go somewhere. Otherwise it's just like going to Egypt.Take me back to England, take me back to Egypt, I want a telos, but I think that's been something that through the timeline, as it's flushed out in the preaching and teaching of the Word, they're able to see that the Bible fits together.
Horton: Instead of how do I make this Bible story relevant to my life, it's how does my life fit into this story?
Brown: I remember a young person once making a profession of faith at another church, who said, "Well, I read my Bible. I really like the New Testament. The Old Testament, it's okay-other than the Ten Commandments there's nothing that really applies to me. "And this was a young man who had grown up in a Reformed Church who had not heard the redemptive history unfold.
Mallie: Is he not a child of Abraham?
Horton: So the law is what was familiar. We don't need to go to have that be familiar to us. The gospel, the gospel, the gospel. A lot of the stuff that we've been talking about here as a way of summarizing has been a challenge not only to megachurch folks and Emergent church folks, but this is a conversation where we all and our churches have to take their place as well. We have to realize that everything we're saying here is not happening, even in our churches oftentimes. We have to constantly be reforming according to the Word of God. And not standing over at this place where we're Reformed and looking at everyone else who isn't.
Rodarmel: I think that's the problem with the name "Reformed." It sounds like you're finished (laughs).
Mallie: Maybe Lutheranism should dump the word "Luther" in this day and age and go back to what Luther had wanted to call us: "followers of the way of St. Paul." Maybe that's something that the Emergent movement would pick up on and say, "Oh, okay, that's pretty postmodern."
Horton: Thanks a lot for being with us.
