Titus
1:4-9
September 7, 2014
To Titus, my loyal child in the faith
we share: Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.
I left you behind in Crete for this
reason, so that you should put in order what remained to be done, and should
appoint elders in every town, as I directed you:
Someone who is blameless, married only
once, whose children are believers, not accused of debauchery and not
rebellious. For a bishop, as God’s steward, must be blameless; he must not be
arrogant or quick-tempered or addicted to wine or violent or greedy for gain;
but he must be hospitable, a lover of goodness, prudent, upright, devout, and
self-controlled. He must have a firm grasp of the word that is trustworthy in
accordance with the teaching, so that he may be able both to preach with sound
doctrine and to refute those who contradict it.
I had a conversation with a neighbor recently. She lives
about a mile up the road, but I often see her as I walk my dog, and on this day
she decided to walk with me. During our conversation she asked some questions
about Calvin Church.
She told me that she went periodically to a large,
nondenominational church in the area, but that she had mixed feelings about it.
She then asked me if Presbyterian meant being part of a denomination. I told
her it did, and she replied, “No offense, but what I like about going to a
nondenominational church is that they aren’t part of a big institution that
tells people what to think. She then asked me if I liked being a pastor in a
denomination that had a lot of beliefs. Much of what I’ll tell you in this
sermon is stuff that I told her, and that she responded in the end, “Wow, I
didn’t know.”
I do I get a tad frustrated whenever I hear people say that
they don’t like denominational churches because they want to be part of a
church that doesn’t tell them what to think. I get frustrated because in truth
the exact opposite of what they believe is true. Most non-denominational churches do tell you what to think. Most
denominational churches do not tell
you what to think.
In reality, Presbyterian churches don’t tell you what you
have to think because the whole Presbyterian tradition is based on respecting
the conscience of the individual to hear for himself or herself what God is
teaching him or her. Meanwhile, because almost all non-denominational churches
come from an evangelical tradition that has a particularly strong, common point
of view about salvation, the nature of God and humanity, and political
perspectives, they often do tell you what to think.
It’s actually because of these and other misperceptions,
and because more than half of our members were originally in another tradition (or
none at all), I thought it might be good to take some time to talk about what
it means to be Presbyterian. The answers will surprise many of you because what
you think about Presbyterians may not be true, and what you don’t think about
them may be true. So over the next seven weeks we’ll be exploring important
ideas about the Presbyterian tradition.
I do understand both the appeal and allure of most of
these non-denominational churches. I also understand why people think that they
are more freethinking than they really are, and why we are much more
freethinking than people think we are. The truth is that most of these
non-denominational churches are VERY creative in worship and structure, and
their size means that they can offer many great programs. And all of them do a
tremendous amount of good. They are very good at helping people whose lives are
a mess put their lives back together. They also do a good job of making the
Bible and religious thought more accessible. I admire what they do and
accomplish, but I also recognize that people judge books by their covers, not
their content. And what people see on the outside of these churches does not
always reflect the beliefs and theology they have on the inside.
From the outside looking in these churches look like they
are open to different perspectives, when generally they’re not. And they look
at denominational churches as being rigid and closed, and they’re not. So why
do we make those judgments? A lot of it has to do with false American beliefs
about the evils of institutions. We are in a period where people distrust
institutions, believing anything that isn’t institutional is good, and anything
that is institutional is inherently bad. And since denominational churches like
the Presbyterian Church (USA) are considered to be institutions, many people
outside of us consider us to be bad,… without ever learning much about us.
I can offer lots of explanations for the misconceptions,
but instead let me share the experience of one of our former members. A number
of years ago, she moved away from here, and now lives in another part of
Pittsburgh. She became very involved in a nondenominational church and loved
it. She loved the music, the energy, the size, and all the opportunities it
offered. So she decided to join the church. It was during the membership
classes that she began to see another side of the church.
During one membership class, the participants were given
church literature that listed all the board members of the church. She asked
the teacher why the leaders were all men with no women? The teacher tried to
answer, saying something about how women weren’t qualified to be leaders over
men, but that just irritated her more (she had grown up in a Presbyterian
tradition where men and women were seen as equals). As she asked more questions,
she was told she had to talk to the pastor.
So she made an appointment to speak with him, and he
answered her questions by pointing out passages in the Bible saying that women
shouldn’t speak in church, that women should not be in leadership positions
over men, and that women should be subservient to their husbands, which then
extends to women being subservient to men in churches. She asked him what women
were qualified to do. He told her that they were qualified to teach (as long as
they were supervised by men), cook, serve, and other duties like that. Also,
women could teach women.
This put our former member in a quandary. She was in a
church that, on the outside, looked very open, creative, and progressive, but
turned out to be more rigid than she had thought. She struggled. Does this mean
that God was calling her to join the local Presbyterian Church, or to just keep
her mouth shut and join this nondenominational church?
One day, while walking through the town, she was
struggling and praying about it: “God, if you want me to join the Presbyterian
Church and not this one, you have to make it clear and let me know.” As she was
praying she saw a friend of hers up ahead talking to a man she didn’t know. She
walked up to her friend and said “hi.” Her friend then said, “Let me introduce
you to Steve. He’s the pastor of the Presbyterian Church up the street.” Our
former member ended up joining the Presbyterian Church. I had a conversation
with Steve a year ago. He said that she had become a leader in the church, and
was a great addition. What you see on the surface may not necessarily reflect
what you discover beneath the surface.
One of the things most of us don’t realize, which is a
significant difference between most nondenominational churches and Presbyterian
churches, is that many of their pastors have been trained in marketing and
publicity. We Presbyterian pastors get no training in that, but we do get
significantly more training in Bible, theology, and history. That may be why how
we look like from the outside obscures what we are on the inside, but also why
many nondenominational churches look like one thing on the outside, and are
another on the inside.
The fact that we are in an institutional church makes it
look like we are all the same, when in fact most Presbyterian churches are very
different. Meanwhile, the fact that nondenominational churches aren’t part of
institutions would give the impression that they are very different, but most
of them are extremely similar because they follow the same models, whether they
are the Willow Creek or Saddleback models (those are two huge churches that
have written the book on creating a megachurch).
If you went to Orchard Hill, Northway, Grace (in
Cranberry), or Victory churches, you would find churches that are really
similar in worship and belief. Their styles are extremely similar because they
are all following similar models. Meanwhile, if you went down the street to
Park Presbyterian Church, which is part of our denomination, you would find a
very different church, with very different worship and beliefs, from us. They
are good church filled with good people, led by a very good pastor, Paul
Merrill. Their worship and perspectives are different from us, being much more
conservative, yet they are part of the same denomination. How can that be?
In fact, if you were to take a tour of Presbyterian
churches in the region, you would find a tremendous amount of diversity of
theology and worship. Go to Cranberry to Fountain Park Church, one of our churches,
and you will find a church whose worship looks much like a coffee house. Go
further down route 19 to Wexford Community Presbyterian Church, you will find a
church that is much more contemporary like the nondenominational churches. Go
further into Pittsburgh to Shadyside Presbyterian Church and you will find a
huge, traditional, slightly conservative church filled with marble and columns,
and with a massive organ that plays mostly classical music. Then, go about ½
mile away to East Liberty Presbyterian Church, where you’ll find a massive
cathedral that holds very progressive beliefs, and that plays both classical
and world-style music.
Despite our differences we are all part of the same
denomination. How can that be? Should we all believe the same things and be the
same way, especially if we are all part of a supposedly evil institution that
binds our thinking?
What is it that really makes us Presbyterian if we are
all so different? At its most basic level, it’s all in our name: “Presbyterian.”
What makes us Presbyterian? It’s the fact that we are led by presbyters. You have to dig into our
name to understand what I mean, although you already sort of understand it. For
example, do you need reading glasses to read this sermon? If so, then you have presbyopia, which means “old eyes.” To
be a Presbyterian doesn’t mean we are old, but it does mean that we are led by elders. The name, “Presbyterian,” refers
simply to how we structure ourselves. We do not have bishops (those are
“episcopal” churches, from the Greek word episkopos,
or “bishop”). And we are not congregational. To be Presbyterian simply means
that we raise up people of wisdom, whom we call “elders,” to lead us in seeking
and doing God’s will. We aren’t necessarily bound by a rigid set of beliefs. We
are bound by how we structure our churches. We raise up elders to lead us, and
the word “elder” simply refers to people of wisdom.
We are rooted in our passage, as Paul tells Titus to
raise up elders to lead the churches in Crete. The Presbyterian movement was an
attempt, as part of the larger Reformed movement, to get the 16th
Century church back to the structure of the early church. It was an attempt to
move away from the Roman Catholic structure that lifted up priests, bishops,
cardinals, and popes as the main leaders, and to get back to a structure where
you had lay elders leading the church. Our tradition is one that does not
invest all power in the pastor (or what we call “teaching elders”), but seeks a
balance of pastors and elders (what we call “ruling elders”) so that together
we can discern God’s will. The idea was to create a church that balances
leadership between laity and clergy, between young and old, and now between
male and female. It is a system both of checks and balances, of shared
leadership, grounded in the wise attempt to seek what God is calling us to be
and do.
This is different from how many of the nondenominational
churches are structured. Let me give you an example of what I mean. We had a
discussion on our session several weeks ago, and in the discussion one of our
elders brought up a conversation she had had with a friend of hers. The friend
was part of a smaller, non-denominational church that wanted to grow more
quickly. They had engaged with Victory Family Church, a large,
non-denominational church that is part of the semi-denominational Victory
Association. Victory, according to this friend, has a mission where they will
help four churches a year grow more numerically. But there are a number of
stipulations. One of the main stipulations is that the church has to agree to
dissolve it’s board immediately and change it’s structure to a more corporate
one, with the senior pastor as equivalent to the CEO, and other staff as the
equivalent to the presidents and vice-presidents.
The truth is that creates a much more efficient
structure. If Calvin Presbyterian Church had that structure, we might even be much
larger while I ruled by like the CEO of Calvin, Inc. The model for this
structure is not the Bible, but American business. This model arises out the
marketing and business fields. I don’t share this with you to criticize
Victory. They do a lot of great things, and do a great job of reaching out to
people whose lives are a mess. They help many people and families rebuild their
lives. At the same time, we Presbyterians believe in shared lay/clergy
leadership, where clergy are accountable to other elders, and elders are
accountable to clergy. It is a biblical model.
I get the appeal of a business model for church. I had an
opportunity to create a church much more like Victory before I came to Calvin
Church. I worked for a while on creating a new church development in the North
Hills, and walked away from it when too many Presbyterian pastors became worried
that the new church would siphon members from their church. Before I walked
away from it, I had a number of people suggest to me that I just walk away from
the Presbyterian Church and start my own non-denominational church. It certainly
would have made church easier, and I could have grown it much faster. But it
would also be MY church, not Christ’s church. It would have been about
numerical growth, not spiritual growth. And it would have been a temple for me,
not God. I believe in elder leadership. I believe in the communal pursuit of
God’s will with others of wisdom. I don’t believe in just creating a monument
to me.
So,… ultimately to be a Presbyterian means simply to be
part of a tradition that raises up people of wisdom (elders), who seek God’s
will together and lead others to follow in that direction. We may not always do
it well, or efficiently, but it is what binds us. It’s not about believing the
right things, acting the right way, and worshiping the right way. It’s simply about
seeking the wise way TOGETHER
Amen.
