Sometimes some pretty
uncanny things happen to us that seem to go beyond mere coincidence and so we
start looking for meaning or a message in them.
Here’s one for you. The
government census of 1863 has the very first called minister of my last church Claude
Presbyterian Church, the Reverend David Couts, living in a log cabin on
Heartlake Road with the Smith family. The
farm stayed the Smith Farm until the early 1970’s when John and Helen Mason
bought it. 140 years later in 2003, I
moved to Canada to be the minister of this congregation and oddly enough my
first place of resident was in an extension built onto the house of that very
same farm; hmmm. So, this uncanny
coincidence often made me ponder that if the first minister apparently held
residence on that farm, was the Trinity trying to tell me that I would be the
last minister since I also held residence on same said farm? Time has still yet to tell in that matter,
time and patient endurance.
Since the 1970’s that
congregation, whose building has served as a heritage landmark in Caledon, ON
on Highway 10, has struggled on faithfully.
It was part of a three-point charge that shared a minister. The other two congregations folded and this
congregation has quite faithfully born the torch of keeping a Christian witness
of the Presbyterian persuasion in Western rural Caledon. Part of its struggle has been against a
greater cultural change towards a lack of interest in anything that resembles institutionalized
religion. Though 80% of the North
American population claim they believe in the Christian God, less than 20% of
those actively see the need to be involved in a local church. Also, the demographic immediately surrounding
that church changed from a farming community into a retirement destination for
the very wealthy and a haven for the well-off commuter. In its 168 years, Claude Presbyterian Church has
transitioned from being a, if not the, social hub for local Scottish and some
Irish immigrant farmers into being a small worshipping community of less than
25 people who are mostly not from around there.
Around the year 2000 with
attendance around 50 the congregation decided to call a fulltime minister as
opposed to just surviving on pulpit supply.
The hope was that having a fulltime minister would somehow result in
numerical growth. Conflict arose at the
arrival of the first minister. Many
people left. Change doesn’t come
easy. I came in 2003. We did all kinds of things: youth group,
concerts, art shows, outreach, carolling, praying, Bible Study, and etcetera ad
naseum and we grew. Yet, we suffered
from the gain-some-lose-some-lose-some-gain-some ailment plaguing so many
churches today due to external factors on those who attend church. Then we mostly just lost. These are difficult days for the North
American church, days for perseverance.
Now that I have depressed
you, please allow me to distract you with a philosophy lesson that may in the
end prove helpful. Here’s a quote; extra
credit goes to whoever can guess what it is and who said it first: “Consider
what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we might
conceive the object of our conception to have.
Then, our conception of those effects is the whole of our conception of
the object.” That is the Pragmatic Maxim
coined by either Charles S. Pierce or William Joyce, the founders of the Modern
philosophical movement known as Pragmatism, a movement roughly as old as the building
of my last church. Pragmatism basically
says “if it works, then it is Truth.” But,
according to the maxim you first have to know what “it” is. Then, you have to “conceive” what “it” might
be used for; the more practical, the better.
Then, you have to see if “it” can be used successfully for the purposes you
have conceived; the more practical, the better.
If “it” works then it is Truth.
If you take a hammer and conceive that it’s most practical use is
pounding in and prying up nails and then establish through practise that a
hammer does indeed work very well for that purpose, then that use of a hammer
is Truth. On the other hand, if you
conceived that the hammer could be useful for dipping water, then you’re a
terrible pragmatist for it does not hold water to say that a hammer is good for
dipping water. It is not Truth that a
hammer is good for dipping water.
Now that you have had your
philosophy lesson, let me step out on a limb and say that Pragmatism has become
the bane of the existence of the North American church. Too often we have let that philosophy’s
method supplant prayerful discernment as the means for congregations to make
decisions on what the Trinity is patiently trying to shape us to be and calling
us to do.
Let’s go back to the
Pragmatic Maxim and the saying, “if it works, then it’s Truth”. Let’s let the “it” be a typical congregation. Usually, when we conceive of what a normal
church should do and be we base our conceptions on a business model in which
viability is based on profitability. In
the business world, a business works if it makes money. If it makes money, then its methods are Truth. Profit in the church is not financial
profit. In the church, money is not
really an issue until someone notices that its either running out or there
ain’t any. If we want to see a church
get anxious and opt for pragmatic solutions, let the money get low. In the church, we often deem that profit is people
numbers. So if you’ve got a lot of
people, then what you are doing is Truth because it works. By this maxim, all the attempts we made in my
last church to be and do what we thought a church should be and do was not
Truth.
Here’s where I step back
and say wait a minute. I may be a bit of a theologian, but it seems to me
that Truth in the church should be based not on size in numbers. It should be based on whether or not that
congregation has received the word of God and that Word is at work among the
believers causing them to mature as individuals to become more like Jesus
Christ and among the congregation causing it to be more like the communion of
love that the Trinity is. God is
Trinity, the loving communion of the persons of God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Spirit. These Three
give themselves to one another in sacrificial love so completely that they are
One. Truth in the church is the
Trinity’s working the Word of Jesus Christ in the midst of a congregation of
believers. If the Trinity is at work,
then the congregation has the Truth.
I’ll say more, Jesus said,
“I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me”
(Jn. 14:6). A few verses later he said
that after he is gone to the Father, he will send his disciples a Helper, the
Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit. The
Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth brings us to Jesus who is the Truth and
through him we come to know the Father’s steadfast love and faithfulness just
as he knows it. When the Holy Spirit is
in our midst we find he compels us to be disciples of Jesus Christ who walk in
the Light of his Way not according to the standards of the culture around
us. His way is the way of the Cross; of
self-giving, sacrificial unconditional love.
Likewise, when Jesus is in the midst of a congregation people get set
free of addictions and healed of emotional wounds. We accept others for who they are and we
forgive. Where believers are more and
more evidently walking in the way of the Cross and Jesus’ power to heal and to
set free and his unconditional love abound, there is the Truth. There the steadfast love and faithfulness of
the Father is evident.
There are more years of struggling ahead for that
congregation. I do hope that I will not
be its last minister. Regardless of
size, that congregation certainly grew in the Truth. The Word of God was most definitely at work
among its people. It is to the Truth of
the Trinity’s work among us that we must set our sights and efforts. These days focusing on Pragmatics will only
close our doors. Amen.
