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Initial KEZ Meeting May 5 2011

News from City Church San Francisco

Last week Thursday the news about the decision by the Elder Board at City Church San Francisco began to break. I use my blog to track links on stories I want to follow so I’m doing the same with this one.

Relationships Between City Church, the CRC Sacramento Cluster and the Kingdom Enterprise Zone Project

City Church has been an important church in my circles here in Northern California. They were “inspired” by Tim Keller and Redeemer Pres. in NYC. Scot Sherman who now leads the Newbigin House of Studies was an early NYC church planter in Tim Keller’s church planting network was on staff at City Church when we all first got to know each other. City Church has been an important hub of church planting “mojo” in the Bay Area for Reformed church planting. Church planting residents in our Sacramento cluster found their way to City Church to learn from the staff and be mentored by them. City Church could provide to our young leaders the kind of mentoring for church planting in the new City Center ethos that we could not.

City Church San Francisco left the Presbyterian Church of America in 2006 over the PCA’s prohibition from women serving in church offices. They joined the Reformed Church in America  and immediately became an important player in the church planting community of that denomination. They were key in founding the RCA’s first non-geographical classis named City Classis. For those of you who like me go way back to the East Coast “Urban Ministry” days the Harvie Conn quote on the front page of the City Classis website does some echo-location on the Presbyterian- Westminster East community and epoch where the likes of Conn, Tim Keller and Roger Greenway laid down a vision for what conservative Reformed could do in the city.

When the Kingdom Enterprise Zone project was established I had the privilege of working with Scot, Chuck De Groat and Mike Hayes as anchor members of our team.

I’m not embarrassed to say that I was envious when they joined the RCA. I would have LOVED to have had them join the CRC. I think highly of these guys and what they’ve accomplished. I say all of this with a smile because I was also happy they joined our RCA cousins and working with them has been a privilege and a growing experience.

When the news broke for me and my circles, it was significant. While I’m working on this today City Classis RCA will be meeting. I’ll be praying for their meetings. Whether or not anything about this will be on their agenda, it will be the elephant in the room and the subject of many meetings that go one in the hallways around the main meeting.

When Pastors Shut Up

When the news broke many people assumed their normal seats in our cyber gallery. The culture warriors have lined up. The affirming team has cheered this new affirmation of “history’s inevitable march” while the conservatives have lamented the apostasy of yet another group and took it as an opportunity to cut and paste their well rehearsed arguments.

The group that probably most needs to talk are the folks in the middle who feel the weight of both sides. This becomes an opportunity to do more processing. This is the work of the church and of its leaders.

At moments like this many pastors, who are usually all too willing to vomit words on their congregational victims, swallow their tongues. They know that what they say in moments like these can be relationally and vocationally consequential. They start keeping their cards close to the vest, measuring their words, reading whatever room they are in to figure out what’s safe to say. They try to figure out how to converse without straining the bonds between them, without threatening the unity of the church, without violating their convictions, their subscriptions, or their consciences. Often for pastors uniquely, these conversations may steer their futures and those of their families. They are wise to be cautious.

But Talk We Must

It is in these moments that all the work we do in creating safe spaces in church is most important. All of our relational skills, all of the things we say to our people about integrity, honesty, and our convictions need to come into play. All of the layers that make up the church are now important and need to be affirmed and engaged. We need each other now and we must leverage the relational and ecclesiastical capital that we have been amassing in the mundane, dull, perfunctory and impromptu fellowshipping we have done before.

The Work of the Church

When a friend first sent me the link of the open letter from the CCSF Elder Board I groaned. In the early 20th century my grandmother’s family was ruptured over the PRC/common grace split. My parents and my father’s church was active in the CRC fight over Women in Church Office (WICO). When this news broke it was as if you can now hear with your ears the first explosions of the coming battles. Sure, I know plenty of soldiers and refugees in the ongoing war but when you realize that fighting will come to your home the emotions are different.

If I pull my old, dry Williston Walker Church History text from my seminary days off my shelf I should be reminded that this is part of the work of the church. Walker’s approach to church history invites us to imagine that our history often looks like one battle after another. It of course started very early with Judaisers vs the new Gentile church over circumcision, dietary regulations, participation in pagan temples, etc. It soon moved on to Arianism, Gnosticism, Manichaiesm , the Donatist controversy, and so forth, through the Protestant Reformation and beyond.

While I think Walker’s view of church history is a bit skewed, he does have a point. The church is defined by moving forward through conflict. We too often find orthodoxy and orthopraxy by living in its opposite as Alister McGrath nicely illustrates in his little book entitled Heresy. We each experiment with this individually in our own heads and our sinful lives but we also get a chance to play a part in this through the church. More often than not the church finds the path by whole groups of us running off of it. Many of us fervently pray “Lord, lead me in right paths and make my way straight” but in the moment when we look around we see a lot of trees and hear voices squabbling and arguing, many of us all too ready to call others to follow down the path we are sure of.

The LORD Of History

When I get into the woods and darkness starts to fall I often find myself bottom lining. There are plenty of other voices that will say “you silly Christians with your churches, your Bibles, your theological books and conversations, can’t you see how history is heading?!”

I say “no, and I’m not really convinced you know either.”

I have learned that at some point when you’re in for a penny you’re in for a pound. Is my Jesus sitting at the right hand of the Father? Has he at outrageous cost and anguish redeemed our race and founded his church? Is he not only the LORD of history but also the church, though she be rent asunder and too often look like a band of misfits looking for the right path through the woods? Yes. I will keep seeking him even as I trip over roots and wonder about where my friends are going.

So we must do our work. We must talk. We must speak our minds and listen carefully to one another. We must keep doing the hard work of praying and reading the scriptures, debating the points and listening to present and past theologians. We must do our social work and our pastoral care. We must do our scientific work and engage our culture. We must go to Classis and Synod and talk to our Roman Catholic and Orthodox friends as well as our liberal and pagan ones. We must do the same work as Paul of Tarsus as he tried to lead infant Christian churches through the morass of Greco-Roman culture and the Diaspora synagogue experience.

I’ll probably write more about my thoughts on this subject specifically. I don’t want to be a mute weenie pastor whose priority is finding the safe group to be in for my career or imagined reputation. I do want this, however, to be my first word and perhaps the most important. My thoughts will be, as all of my thoughts are, representative of me today, subject possibly to change for the better or the worse. We do need each other and it is for times when we might feel lost in the woods or perhaps certain of the path while other doubt, that we need each other most.

I will pray for my friends at City Church, Newbigin House, and many other warriors, refugees and on-lookers as we travel this path together.