Rev. Dr. Dana Allin, ECO’s Synod Executive, addresses the 2020 National Gathering, Photo courtsey of Rev. Dr. David Mauldin from Palm City Presbyterian Church.

From Feb. 3 – 6, 2020 over 1350 people met at the Gaylord Convention Center in Dallas, Texas, bringing together our 22 Presbyteries, 393 congregations, 20+ church plants, representing about 127,000 Covenant Partners around the United States.  Global mission partners from places like Egypt, Brazil, and Iran also gathered to show their solidarity and support of ECO’s vision for ministry and mission. 

As many of you know, ECO is not an acronym. The full name ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians reinforces ECO’s passion to strength the ecosystem of local congregations where lay people, deacons, elders, and pastors may all flourish in our life-giving discipleship.

The name speaks to ECO’s core commitments:

• Covenant: to connect leaders in accountable relationships and encourage collaboration.

• Order: to commit to a shared way of life as we unite around a shared theological core.

• Evangelical: to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ and plant new missional communities.

• Presbyterian: to stand within our Reformed heritage and celebrate the life of the mind.

I have consistently been impressed by the high caliber leaders – both elders and pastors – that gather together in our own Presbytery of Florida and at the National Gathering.  ECO is now eight years old, and still retains the feel of a “movement” that longs to ignite church planting, encourage flourishing discipleship, and catalyze church renewal while retaining a robust evangelical heart within a distinctively robust Reformed theological focus. 

Theological Business in 2020:

In 2018, there were various overtures by Presbyteries asking the denomination to take a serious look at our Book of Confessions. Historically, Reformed denominations have been guided by confessional statements which are considered to be a subordinate standard to the Bible but a faithful and historical explanation of scriptural truth.  In 2020, a vote brought this theological study to its conclusion by adopting and re-affirming the following Creeds as our Confessional Standards:

1. The Nicene Creed

2. The Apostle’s Creed

3. The Heidelberg Catechism

4. The Westminster Confession of Faith, The Westminster Shorter Catechism, The Westminster Longer Catechism

5. The Barmen Declaration.

Thus, ECO jettisoned the Second Helvetic Confession, The Confession of 1967, The Brief Statement of Faith, and (somewhat surprisingly given our roots in Scottish Presbyterianism), The Scots Confession. Our Confessional Standards are now far more concise and manageable compared to our former denomination.

The Presbytery of Florida:

The Presbytery of Florida met after lunch the second day of the National Gathering.  Over the next 18 months, about ½ of the senior pastors in the Presbytery are retiring – part of what the denomination is affectionally calling “The Gray Wave”.  Therefore, our Ministry Partnership Team, which works with churches in the call process, was strengthened by adding three new members. I was formally prayed over as I began (really on Jan. 1) my role as the Vice-Moderator of the Presbytery of Florida. In 2020, my role will transition into the Moderator of the Presbytery for a standard two-year term. 

Church Planting:

One of our church plants in our own Presbytery -- Providencia in West Palm Beach -- brought nearly a dozen millennial-aged leaders from their church, including about six who are moving toward ordination. It was helpful to hear from our Synod Executive, Dana Allin, who shared with the gathering that church planting has become more difficult in our postmodern age, with new churches requiring a “longer runway” to get off the ground. Over the next 10 years, ECO’s goal is to create structures with a sufficiently robust leadership pipeline to sustain a flourishing church planting movement to grow the denomination from 400 to 1000 churches over the next decade. What an audacious goal! It will need new finances and new leaders to sustain these new church developments. 

Global Engagement:

As you might imagine, I loved hearing about ECO’s global engagement. Did you know that the largest Protestant denomination in the Middle East is Presbyterian?  The Synod of the Nile – which represents Egypt’s Presbyterian Church – also boasts the largest Protestant church in the region (12,000 members) and impacts the entire middle east through sending missionaries and planting churches. Places like Iraq and Gaza are receiving missionaries from our Egyptian brethren! 

All in all, outstanding worship, great keynote speakers, and a unified and peaceful business meeting were all highlights of ECO’s 2020 National Gathering.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5)

Evangelicalism is a house divided politically in 2020.  The last few weeks have seen major evangelical volleys back and forth over the political divide.

The brouhaha started with Christianity Today’s editor-in-chief Mark Galli’s editorial “Trump Should be Removed from Office” and continued to gain steam with the follow-up piece from CT’s President/CEO Timothy Dalrymple’s “The Flag in the Whirlwind”. The most recent high-level evangelical rebuttal was penned by evangelical theologian and ethicist Wayne Grudem “Trump Should Not be Removed from Office”. All call themselves evangelicals.  All are highly respected.  CT has been the flagship evangelical periodical since 1956, being founded by Billy Graham, and Grudem is responsible for Systematic Theology, one of the most popular single-volume systematic theology textbooks assigned in seminaries and bible colleges over the last 25 years. There is probably not an evangelical pastor in America who has not read Christianity Today or heard of Wayne Grudem.

I have no reason to exacerbate the divisiveness.  My voice is not a national voice. My concern is pastoral and local: to shepherd the people under my care and make sure our corporate witness to Jesus Christ in our community is stronger in 2020 despite the divisiveness of our political landscape. To that end, let me make a modest proposal and advocate for a seemingly forgotten Christian attribute.

I believe the Christ-centered trait evangelicals most need in the political arena (and on social media) in 2020 is meekness. Let me explain. 

A Helpful 17th Century Definition

In the 17th century, Matthew Henry wrote a little book called A Discourse on Meekness and Quietness of Spirit. The puritan writer argued that the old term meekness (mansuetus in Latin) was often associated with the process of taming wild beasts of burden and curbing the aggressiveness of a wild, bucking stallion. By curbing a naturally aggressive nature, meekness could actually characterize a formerly aggressive horse.

The opposite of meekness is unbridled aggressiveness rooted in an easily bruised ego that lashes out with the tongue. The opposite of meekness is wading into controversy at every opportunity while provoking the other in endless confrontation.  Matthew Henry argued that meekness wisely cools the heat of passion and curbs the often-untamable tongue. Meekness is strength harnessed.   

In short, a meek person gives a wise, poised, and measured reaction – something often foreign to the hyper-aggressive type of engagements that have become (virtually) normalized on social media.

I believe evangelical Christians would be wise to recover the lost trait of meekness during the upcoming political elections. Yes, there is a place for healthy discourse in the public square. Yes, there is a place for healthy dialogue across the political spectrum. Yet the modest question I raise to my fellow evangelicals is this: is social media the place where those ideals organically happen in a manner that adorns the gospel of Jesus Christ above all things in a winsome way to a watching world? 

Meekness Considers Who You Are

In a previous blog post, I alluded to George C. Edwards III, the presidential historian at Texas A&M, who conducted the seminal study on the history of “The Bully Pulpit” in American politics.  The results were counter-intuitive.  During the 20th and 21st centuries, presidents have given fireside chats, appeared on radio and TV, and crisscrossed the nation to stump at rallies for their point of view.  Edwards’ study argues persuasively that all those activities of “The Bully Pulpit” never moved the needle of public opinion in the President’s favor or translated into significant legislative victories for presidential policies in Congress.  

"It is true for all presidents. They virtually never move public opinion in their direction," Edwards tells National Journal…"It happened for Ronald Reagan. It happened for FDR. It happens all the time. You should anticipate failure if you're trying to change people's minds. The data is overwhelming.” [1]

In other words, all the ranting and raving, all the advocating and cajoling by the President of the United States of America – the most influential and powerful person on the planet for much of the 20th and 21st centuries – did not sway public opinion.

To me, that is very interesting.  Applying these ideas to our own divided times potentially speaks volumes about our own use of social media. Consider the following ideas:

1. The most powerful person on the planet cannot move the needle of public opinion.

2. Social media is a significantly weaker instrument in this regard (“I changed my opinion because of a vitriol Facebook post”…SAID NO ONE EVER.)

3. Our unbelieving neighbors should primarily know Christians for our love of people and our love for the gospel (not our politics). 

If meekness in general is subordinating our passions and rights in order to love another (think: the example of Christ), then I’d argue that meekness on social media during a time of extreme political divisiveness might be subordinating our own political passions and rights (at least on social media) in order to preserve the priority of our witness to Jesus Christ to our unbelieving friends.

If your neighbors and friends primarily see you (in the world of social media or otherwise) through a political lens, you may have un-intentionally lost (or severely diminished) your witness to Christ by engaging in (potentially needless) political debates on social media.

A meek person on social media knows the difference between argumentation and wisdom:  “A smart person knows what to say.  A wise person knows whether or not to say it.” (Anonymous)

A meek person on social media chooses to subordinate a (political) opinion in order to prioritize a (gospel) witness. Whereas older generations (Baby Boomers and Gen Xers) tend to think of their “real” identity as separate and distinct from their “digital identity”, studies show that there is no such compartmentalization for Millennials and Gen Zers.  This means that younger generations tend to see “you” as the sum of your social media (political) posts AND your interpersonal (witnessing) interactions.

Since 1 in 4 young people are reportedly leaving the church for socio-political reasons, the hyper-politicization of the evangelical church seems not to be doing our witness to Christ any favors.  Meekness on social media may help preserve the priority of our own interpersonal witness in an increasingly sensitive (and watching) world. 

A meek person intentionally embraces a holistic sense of Christian vocation (yes, even on social media).  The vocation of the vast majority of pastors that I know causes them to pause before posting about politics. The majority of pastors recognize that their congregations are a “house divided” politically, and many seek to “keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Eph 4:3) by not becoming embroiled in needless political controversy.

In short, many pastors choose to exhibit meekness on social media (by curbing their opinions) though they may hold strong political convictions.  If evangelicals believe in the priesthood of all believers, then lay people may also (wisely) choose to embrace this same ethos: to view your Christian vocation holistically to include your online social media persona. 

A Simple Plea for Meekness

Although I am not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, and I work for a non-profit organization – to steal a favorite saying of former GCTS President Walter C. Kaiser Jr. – I do not foresee meekness as characterizing any of the presidential candidates running for office in 2020. 

Yet, simply because meekness is in short supply from our political leaders does not mean that evangelicals need to mirror the bombastic rhetoric emanating from both sides of the political aisle, either interpersonally or on social media.

In fact, your meekness may speak more loudly than the most earsplitting political post you could share or write on social media during this election year 2020, and Jesus promises you will even inherit the earth.

*****

[1] See George E. Condon Jr. and National Journal, “The Myth of the Bully Pulpit: Presidents can talk all they want (and they do), but it won’t get results,” The Atlantic, April 4, 2013: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/the-myth-of-the-bully-pulpit/443067/

If your primary aim is to gain a sense of community, it will always allude you.

In our consumeristic society, there are many who move from organization to organization, from one friend network to another friend network, and, yes, from one church to another church in pursuit of community. They pursue community directly.  A sense of community is often perceived (in consumeristic terms) as a religious commodity that the church dispenses for all who long for it.  Yet, after a while, people are shocked that their direct pursuit of community often comes up short.

What has gone wrong? They have not understood that some ideas are rightly considered by-products of aiming at something else; some pursuits are by-products of other more central pursuits. Community falls within this dynamic.

Community is the by-product of aiming and pursuing something else. Community is cultivated by loving and serving others.  Think about Mother Teresa.  She created community not by directly pursuing community but rather by loving and serving others. Eventually there arose around Mother Teresa an extraordinary global community. People would flock from all corners of the globe to Calcutta to be part of this incredible community that was cultivated not by pursuing (and wanting and longing for community) but rather was created by love and service. The same holds true in the local church.

I love what Paul Miller in A Loving Life writes: “You don’t find community, you create it through love.”  If you are desperate for community, begin by loving and serving those around you.[1]

The general axiom that applies to forming community in a local church is this: the more you intentionally love and serve others, the more community you will experience.  That is, community is created through intentional expressions of love and purposefully serving alongside others.

In 2020, tweak the famous words of John F. Kennedy into a theological mantra: “Ask not what your church can do for you, ask what you can do for your church.”  If you do, you might just find what you are looking for – a true community of faith. 

**********

[1] Paul Miller, A Loving Life, p. 100.

Miller also writes, “Instinctively, we hunt for a church or community that makes us feel good.  It is good to be in a place where you are welcome, but making that quest central is idolatry. And like all idolatry, it ultimately disappoints. But if we pursue hesed love, then, wherever we go, we create community. Here are two different formulas for community formation:

Search for community where I am loved….become disappointed with community

Show hesed love [a sacrificial, covenantal love]....create community.”

Do you know how long it takes the average person to read the Bible in a year? Surprisingly, only about 70 hours.

That’s less time than the average American spends in front of the television every month. In other words, if most people would exchange their TV time for Scripture reading, they’d finish reading the entire Bible in four weeks or less. If that sounds unworkable, consider this: In no more than fifteen minutes a day you can read through the Bible in less than a year’s time. (Don Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines, 29)

There are lots of Bible reading plans that are profitable for the Christian. Let me mention six good options:

1. The Kingdom Bible Reading Plan. This plan involves reading the entire Bible in a year but only 25 days every month. You will read through every book of the Bible once and the Psalms twice.

2. The Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan. This plan involves reading the entire Bible in a year but only 25 days every month: two NT readings, 1 reading from Wisdom Literature, and 1 reading from the rest of the OT.

3. Bible Reading Program for Shirkers and Slackers. If you’ve tried reading the Bible before…and, well, come up a little short or given up entirely, this plan might be for you. Different genres are assigned on different days on the week.

4. The 5x5x5 New Testament Reading Plan. Read through the entire New Testament in 5 days a week, 5 minutes a day.

5. F-260: A Bible reading Plan for Busy Believers. F-260 is a two-hundred and sixy day reading plan that highlights foundational passages of Scripture by reading 1 or 2 chapters a day for five days/week.

6. 5 Day Bible Reading Program. Covers the whole Bible in chronological fashion. Read the whole Bible in 5 days/week.

Having a specific plan & a specific place to read your Bible is so critical for getting into God’s Word.

The same goes for reading the Bible with your kids. Family Devotional Readings give you a few ideas for reading passages with your kids.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. . . .a time to keep silence, and a time to speak. (Ecclesiastes 3:1,7)

A pastoral colleague recently bemoaned, “It feels like I get hammered if I do, and hammered if I don’t.”  He was referring to the constant pull of our culture these days to “make a statement” about the current “hot topic” trending on the 24-hour news cycle or on social media.  The pull to “use your platform” from the pulpit to the blogosphere is an interesting dance for the contemporary pastor because there exists some inherent tensions in pastoral ministry in shepherding the flock, teaching the gospel of grace and truth, and modeling winsome cultural engagement in an increasingly fragmented world.

On the Value of Statements 

I was initially ordained in a mainline church which, for several decades, felt comfortable occupying space near the center of American culture.[1]  For most of my lifetime, the chaplain of the U.S. Senate has been a Presbyterian (from 1969 to 2003).  The ethos of Presbyterian cultural engagement for several decades seemed to carry an attitude best portrayed by the famous TV commercials in the 1970s and 1980s with the line:  “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.”  In the commercials, the entire room would stop – in silence – and lean in closely to hear whatever E.F. Hutton had to say.  The luxury of Christian cultural engagement 40-50 years ago was that people listened to the church.

That time has passed.  Case in point:

• Only a few years ago, my former denomination, the PC(USA), spent time and energy outlining a peace resolution for Israel—Palestine.  Oh the hubris of it all!  Was the world (or even the Middle East) really listening and paying attention to a bunch of (predominately white) American Presbyterians thousands of miles away?  What was the value of all that time and energy spent on statements about Israel-Palestine by a bunch of American Presbyterians? 

• A short time ago, a prominent blogger was calling for Christians to “walk out of their churches” en masse if the priest or pastor didn’t speak out against the separation of children from their families at the US-Mexico border.  I personally wonder whether such vitriol reflects an ache and a longing to restore the primacy of Christendom’s authority.  Surely the culture is listening to the church….right? 

Yet, as the church has been pushed from the center to the periphery of American culture, its cultural engagement radically (and necessarily) changes in tenor and tone.  Recognizing the massive shift from a Christendom mentality to a post-Christian era mindset is indispensable for guiding pastoral discernment for wading into cultural engagement in the contemporary world. 

Ever since Theodore Roosevelt coined the term, US Presidents have been known to use their “bully pulpit” to trump up favorable public opinion for high-profile initiatives.  A hot-button topic will arise in the country, and the president will inevitably begin communicating far-and-wide about the issue in hopes of swaying public opinion. 

Yet George C. Edwards III, the presidential historian at Texas A & M, after conducting a massive study on the “bully pulpit” over the last six decades of American history suggests that the steady stream of statements from US Presidents have almost always failed to move the needle of public opinion or translate into significant legislative victories for presidential policies in Congress. 

"It is true for all presidents. They virtually never move public opinion in their direction," Edwards tells National Journal. "It happened for Ronald Reagan. It happened for FDR. It happens all the time. You should anticipate failure if you're trying to change people's minds. The data is overwhelming.”[2]

A Biblical Tension Built into Pastoral Ministry

It was the Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper who famously declared, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”  The Kingdom has already come in Christ.  As a Reformed pastor, this knowledge leads me to believe that Jesus cares deeply about the racism of our society, the treatment of immigrant families, the character of our political discourse, and the integrity of those who govern.  This is not how it’s supposed to be.  Christ wants to cry “mine” over the injustices of our day, just as he prophetically decried the injustice of his day.    

Yet Herman Ridderbos (another Dutch Reformed theologian) reminded us of “the coming of the kingdom”.  The kingdom is not yet.  There is an eschatological tension inherent in the proclamation of Christ’s kingdom.  One day there will be a reckoning.  Martin Luther once said there are only two days: “today” and “that day”.  The Kingdom of Christ also cries “wait” – because on that day “there will be no more mourning or crying or pain” (Rev. 21:4). 

So how does a contemporary pastor shepherd the flock within this tension? 

A Few Guiding Thoughts

1.     Nobody is listening in today’s world.  So maybe the most radical prophetic posture for a pastor to take is to…listen.  Listen to the congregation: for their hurts, for their scars, for their aspirations. Is there a kind of prophetic listening that contemporary pastors can develop which actually precedes speaking?  Might prophetic listening actually be more effective than prophetic speaking in many cases in our divided and broken world?  I believe that deep listening begets strong wisdom.  We need contemporary pastors to listen to the myriad of ways congregations have been spiritually de-formed over the years in order to shepherd effectively in today’s divided world.

2.     I’m convinced that people who chide pastoral leadership for “not weighing in” are typically asking for a “bully pulpit” rather than a “prophetic witness”.  A bully pulpit is typically aimed “at the other guy” who sits “across the aisle”. Most of what passes for prophetic statements today are really just regurgitated “hot takes” from political pundits. A true prophetic witness is likely to have all of us on our knees asking for repentance.

3.     Prophetic statements without prophetic action can be meaningless.  Not always.  And not in every case.  But our human condition is all-too-easily deceived into smug self-righteousness just because we share a carefully worded statement decrying the latest injustice in our world.  Be careful: one’s righteousness does not depend on what you are against (or whether you use your “platform” – which everyone erroneously thinks they have in today’s social medial world – to weigh in on current events).

4.     The way of wisdom may be silence.  I know very few people whose expertise or vocation qualifies them to speak with proper nuance on every contemporary issue of the day.  Pastors, like most people, only have a limited amount of time to get properly informed; by the time one has researched the issue carefully, the current “crisis” has probably moved onto something else.  Humility and wisdom are often displayed in not weighing in on every controversial issue.  

5.     Dialogue or Statements?  Furthermore, nagging contemporary issues are often addressed in the church most effectively through conversational dialogue rather than pulpit pronouncements.  Again, not always.  And not in every case.  Yet, often these issues are best tackled through the slow discipleship of individuals within the flock.    

6.     Pastoral ministry is guided by the Word of God.  There is a temptation to let the 24-hour news cycle set the agenda for pastoral ministry.  Yes, there is a place for winsome cultural engagement. Yes, the church should not be afraid to address “what people are talking about” in our culture.  Yet the culture doesn’t set the agenda for pastoral ministry.  In fact, I firmly believe that many souls are being distracted spiritually (or even lost entirely) by an inordinate amount of attention paid to the 24-hour news cycle.  We’ve reached a tipping point in American evangelicalism wherein even we in the church are more fascinated with the Mueller Report than we are with the reports of Matthew and Mark.

Pastoral ministry, in this sense, is counter-cultural and prophetic in its insistence that people encounter the Word of God.  As people are “rooted and built up” in Christ and “strengthened in the faith” (Col. 2:7), pastoral ministry unleashes an equipped body of believers to be salt and light and carry a biblical worldview out into the world to make more of a difference than any “bully pulpit” could ever hope to achieve. 

—————

[1] Perhaps it was the case that the mainline church was always just a mirror that reflected the moral “center” of the nation.

[2] See George E. Condon Jr. and National Journal, “The Myth of the Bully Pulpit: Presidents can talk all they want (and they do), but it won’t get results”, The Atlantic, April 4, 2013: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/the-myth-of-the-bully-pulpit/443067/.

I still remember the conversation.

Walking along a gravel path in the woods of eastern Kansas over 20 years ago, I first heard a truth that makes more sense the older I get:

“Busyness is a serious obstacle, if not one of the main obstacles, to Christian growth and spiritual maturity.”

To be honest, I was surprised to hear it at the time. Surely, I thought, there were more temptations to the Christian life than…busyness.

It’s interesting that if the church still talks about sin at any great length, it usually harps on the social sins – those outward behaviors which can easily distinguish those who belong (us) from those who don’t belong (them), the righteous (us) from the unrighteous (them), the saints (us) from the sinners (them).

Yet if the DNA of sin could be seen under a microscope, I wonder if we’d see two dominant threads of genes, especially as it characterizes the western church – selfishness and busyness.

If sin, by its very nature, is anti-social, then it stands to reason that selfishness (the very epitome of being anti-social) makes up quite a large portion of sin’s DNA. (Conversely, it’s not by chance that the essence of Christianity is relational — love God and love others.) Selfishness is as ancient as Genesis, so it really comes as no surprise that sin and selfishness are such good buddies.

What is more surprising – and more recent — is the Western church’s capitulation to modern culture’s hectic pace. Busyness is laying waste to the church both corporately and individually. All of us are being swept down the fast-moving current of busyness and we usually never recognize how far down the river we are until it is too late. And, by “far down the river”, I mean how disconnected we are relationally — both from God and others. If the church is serious about relational Christianity and spiritual growth, we need to address both of these dominant strands of sin’s DNA, one ancient and one more recent.

Personally, I need to look selfishness in the face and own up to it. (The ancients used to call it repentance.) Likewise, I need to have a healthy relationship with my calendar which means it takes orders from me -- not the other way around. A healthy relationship with my calendar means, quite simply, that I am the boss.

Slow is good for the soul. Slow is good for relationships. There is a basic contemplative “posture” to the Christian life that I am increasingly being led to believe is simply part and parcel of spiritual growth which is only nurtured by slowness (rather than through a hectic pace) and by embracing (rather than denying) one’s limits.

I have come to the realization that “slow is necessary” for the spiritual life. It didn’t come without a fight. “Fast-ness” still rears its ugly head. If I never recognize the battle, I lose every time. But, the good news is that the more I recognize the battle (and the importance of the battle), the more likely I am to gain the upper hand.

Slow is necessary. Soul-food is difficult to swallow at the drive-thru.

See also:  "Slow is Beautiful".