At one point in my pastoral term I started wearing a robe to lead services. Not an alb—this was some time before I started moving toward the Catholic Church—but a Geneva Robe, which had been given to me by good friends. My decision to do this was influenced by the great Welsh Presbyterian preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and I explained to the congregation that the point of this was to emphasize that I am not there to represent myself as a professional but as someone set apart in the name of Jesus. The robe was a way of deemphasizing my personal identity as an individual.
I received some very positive feedback about this from members of the congregation, but not everyone was positive. One person in particular commented, “I don’t want to be part of a church where the pastor wears a robe.” From this perspective, which is very common in America today, one chooses a church based on one’s preferences and expectations; the marketplace of churches exists to provide a variety of styles to meet the needs of churchgoers. In the late 1990’s Michael Horton wrote a very interesting article on the commercial captivity of the Evangelical movement and observed “Like popular music, which depends on the favor of a mass audience, contemporary Christianity is institutionally incapable of disappointing the crowds. Its entire network of churches, ministries and institutions requires it to be answerable to a wide audience of consumers. To refuse to be answerable to the world of public taste, the evangelical movement would risk its very existence” (“Time for a Commercialism Break” in Modern Reformation).
When I was in college, the church on campus was led by Dr. Robert Ives, who was a very good preacher. His preaching was solid and biblical, and there were many young people like myself who were drawn into membership through him. But that raised a problem for some of the lifelong members, because they felt like they were losing control of something that belonged to them. They even voiced that concern in a congregational meeting, saying that all the new people coming into the church were turning it into a place where they would no longer feel at home.
I remember hearing, around that time, about a leader in the denomination whose major concern was defining what it means to be part of that church. Who are the Brethren in Christ? What is their identity and what is it that sets them apart from other groups of Christians? This was his main concern, almost the thing that came to define him. There were new people coming into the denomination, which threatened the identity of the group, which would undermine the historic culture of the denomination. This was not about theological orthodoxy but about what sets “our” group apart from other groups of theologically orthodox Christians.
To my mind this raises the question of whether we have the right to say what we want the church culture to be like. The church doesn’t belong to us, after all. The church is more, and other, than a voluntary society where people get together because they share a common interest. And I find it hard to not think that this project was theologically problematic in a really fundamental way. He was trying to preserve something that he really had no right to try and preserve. He had the right to emphasize things, parts of the gospel message, that were an important part of the history of the denomination. But not to try and prevent new members from changing the composition of the group identity. He was trying to hang onto something that was not in any way under his jurisdiction (nor that of any member of the church leadership for that matter).
Which leads to the question, who is in charge of the Church? Recently a friend of mine posted a quote by Cardinal Robert Sarah, saying “I’m afraid we are tempted to build a human Church, according to the times and according to our ideas. But the Church is not ours.” The Church is not ours. In Matthew 16, Jesus says to Simon Peter, “you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church….” (16:18). Jesus is the one who is building the Church, His Church, and it does not belong to any of us.
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