Pivot, the RPCNA and churches in general

I spent the weekend finishing Pivot by Laura Barringer and Scot McKnight. It is a follow-up to a book they wrote, A Church Called Tov. 

The central theme of the two books is what it means to be a Tov (good) church. Laura was a member of Willow Creek through the abuse scandal and recovery. Scot is a former pastor and seminary professor.

Pivot is an encouragement and manual for the process of changing toxic churches into good churches. I won't go too much into depth on their process, but I will call out some highlights:

1. Changing a toxic church culture is slow and painful

Toxic church cultures were not created in a year, and they will certainly not take a year to fix. I think this is especially pertinent for the RPs out there reading this. Church leadership loves to declare victory. I remember a bitter dispute between two churches. The two churches fired letters back and forth condemning each other and this dispute ended up rising to the presbytery level. The presbytery listened to the dispute and issued a judgment and an edict. The judgment said that one church was right and the other was wrong, but then the edict: reconcile! The presbytery probably clapped its proverbial hands in joy that the matter was dealt with. Yeah, not even close.

We see this with Immanuel and the Great Lakes-Gulf Presbytery. Synod came in, issued decisions and convicted wayward leaders. They even appointed a reconciliation committee! Yet, the toxicity of the GLG is not going to be solved with some wrist-slapping and congregational meetings urging members to, once again, blindly trust their God-ordained ministers and elders.

Instead, Pivot says, pick ONE issue, spend a year to get understanding and seek the root of this issue in prayer and then expect that it will take three years to see any effect of hard, prayerful work, and perhaps seven years to resolve the issue. It took seven years to change a church from a seeker-centered, no commitment gospel to one where people committed to a process of spiritual transformation, and it was not without controversy and pain. Changing a toxic church like the RPCNA would take many seven-years' work, and it doesn't just happen from some Synod edict to reconcile.

2. Change must come from the top

This one stuck out to me. After years thinking that living a life of submission and service would somehow effect change within the church, I was proven wrong over and over again. When I reached the breaking point, I realized I had a choice - stagnate or leave. Staying RP meant that I would have to suppress my gifts because they were not welcome. Only cheerleaders with gifts are welcome in the RPCNA. If your predisposition is to point out some weeds in the theological yard and grab a shovel to rip them out, the RP church will happily emotionally abuse you to the point of exhaustion, and then blame you for pointing out the weeds.

3. If you are stuck in a church and not at the top, create a small tov community

I think this is very pertinent advice to RPs who recognize the abuse, yet for cultural, family or religious convictions can't walk away. Instead of focusing your efforts on trying to change the entire system (hint: you can't), find a group of like-minded friends and create a community within a community. Even if the larger church is spiritually abusive, your community can provide the support and fellowship needed and be a place of spiritual safety.

4. [As an emphasis on 1], don't accept quick fixes to restoration

I found this paragraph to be very powerful in light of scandals today:

We must ask for the gift of courage to face the grace of truth and truth telling

Too often, those with power or those who sinned or those who made a bad judgment immediately appeal to the grace of forgiveness so they can stamp "Paid" on their account. Slow Down! Genuine grace in a church that wants transformation from toxic patterns of the flesh to tov patterns of the Spirit will give people the courage to face the truth of their toxicity. Some stories need to be told, some words need to be admitted, and some decisions need to be undone or rectified. For healing from toxicity to occur, we will have to admit these difficult truths. Truth telling is on the path to tov.

This was so true in the handling of IRPC. The elders who confessed or resigned wanted the matter to be forgiven and reconciled. When they were subject to further scrutiny, there was a groundswell among pastors and enablers calling for reconciliation and not further inquiry. This toxic leadership did not happen overnight. At least in the case of Keith Magill, he was emotionally and spiritually abusive multiple times on record and the presbytery ignored it. So, the idea that the entire presbytery culture is fixed by punishing a pastor and a few elders is silly. Instead, as the authors say, the RPCNA needs to spend the time, more than the tens of thousands of hours it took to pronounce a sentence, to get to the root of the spiritually abusive church culture and work to correct it.

I think key to the flight of leaders out of the GLG is the refusal to 'faith the truth of their toxicity'. On one hand, there are the IRPC leaders who wanted to say a quick apology and move on, and on the other hand, there were the GLG leaders who watched the matter grind through the commissions and courts who realized that their own toxicity might one day come under that sort of scrutiny. The lack of concern and care for the victims was staggering in light of the concern that "good elders" not be disgraced for one small lack of discernment, and that was not just at the presbytery level.

5. Working towards tov is painful, but worth it

I often wonder what people think church leadership is all about. We see Stephen Rhoda thinks it's preaching at an adoring congregation once a week. I hear many elders talk about "moving on" from deep-seated conflicts in the church, as if their most important job isn't guarding, protecting and encouraging the flock, but instead figuring out how to make the most precise grind on the diamond of the church's theology. I've seen multiple papers at presbytery and synod level lament the "countless hours of work" it took to counsel or bring understanding in a matter.

Understanding this was when I realized I didn't have the calling to be an Elder. I was interested in theology and I was interested in bringing truth and justice through spiritually-guided policies and procedures, but I wasn't really interested in wading into the muck of members abusing one another or members dealing with the consequences of their own sin. Maybe someday, but I doubt God will snap his fingers and give me the requisite selflessness and empathy.

One way to look at the books of Moses is that God tried to establish a good culture for the Israelites. He rescued them from Egypt, he gave them just laws and a carefully crafted religious system to remind them of his holiness and graciousness. He led them to the border of the Promised Land, but their culture was too overwhelming. Instead of marching in, knowing that God was just and gracious and would give them victory, they reverted to their culture of fear and distrust. It took 40 years for God to change the culture to one that was able to conquer Israel and even then, it was only a couple generations until they fell back into their old ways. Even with the help of the Holy Spirit, growing a faithful and compassionate church is going to be hard work.

Christianity thrives at the grassroots

 Ever since Constantine was baptized into Christianity, many Christians believe that the best way for Christianity to grow is from the top down. If we could only replace the heads of state with bona-fide Christians, then Christendom would be the default and Christians could live in peace. After all, the Great Commission does say "disciple the nations", doesn't it?

The Middle Ages and the time before the Enlightenment should dissuade us from seeking to grow Christianity through political power and influence, or by the sword. Instead, when political and religious power cohabit, we find a much deeper level of corruption - political leaders who influence through the power of the sword, but also place like-minded puppet priests in positions of religious authority to make submission to tyranny a religious imperative.

The church essentially had the power of the sword to put people to death. The religious leaders would hold a trial and excommunicate someone for heresy, then hand them over to the civil courts. The civil courts would feel obligated to put the heretic to death because somehow "spiritual murder" must be worse than "secular murder".

This didn't get much better in Colonial America. Religious leaders would use their positions of authority to influence civil magistrates. Roger Williams was declared a heretic and banished from Massachusetts because he disagreed with the state church (and the Crown of England) that they should be stealing land from the natives, and he believed that the church should be separate from the state.

When Jesus declared to Pontius Pilate that his kingdom was "not of this world" otherwise his followers would "take up arms" on his behalf. I believe this is precisely what he meant to avoid. Jesus is stating that his mission then, and his mission now are to grow his kingdom like the mustard seed, like the leaven. In other words, we don't serve Jesus by forced conversions at gunpoint, mandatory church taxes, government establishment and legislated Christendom. We grow the kingdom by living pure lives, loving our neighbors and serving others.

Christians can certainly enter the political realm, and Christians should be guided by the Holy Spirit in enacting just laws for all, but those laws shouldn't punish those who don't subscribe to our religion. In enacting the law, God said it was evidence for a just God that there was one law for both Israelite and foreigner. It's hard to discern how those foreigners could remain non-Israelite and not violate some of the laws, but it seems that there was a way.

Christian Nationalists like Doug Wilson, who come from the RJ Rushdoony Theonomy tradition think that God wants the church to grow by mirroring the traditions of Islam. So, yeah, it's okay to be a Jew in Wilson's United States, provided you pay some sort of non-Christian tax and never run for public office. This flavor of Christian Nationalism feels very much like trying to return the clergy to their position of influence. Wilson has been known for using his position of authority to attempt to influence judges in cases involving his congregants.

The abortion debate seems to be a very interesting case study. While Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, the abortion rate had been steadily dropping. I think this was partly due to Christians seeking to deal with the causes of abortion at a grassroots level. In all of this, there are mixes of good and bad, so understand that I'm looking from certain perspectives, but Christian-influenced abstinence-based sex education pushed away from the mechanics-based sex ed I was taught and focused on how does sex fit in with what I want as a person? What are the characteristics of a partner I would want to enjoy it with? Is my value as a human being tied to sex and how do I communicate my personal boundaries? The abortion rate dropped as people said, I'm going to choose when to have sex and with whom, because my value isn't tied to my sexual conquests. This is an inherently Christian perspective - that our value is in just being human and not in how others see us.

I'm familiar with a local pregnancy center. Under Roe v. Wade, they flourished, saved many babies, and converted many women and couples. Their approach? Support. Instead of shame-based language, they provided medical care, parenting classes and many of the child's needs for the first three years. They provided counseling services for pregnant women and couples. It pains me that the same people who call themselves "Pro-Life" are the same who are trying to end any sort of societal safety net for children once their born? WIC, food stamps, Medicaid and pre-school are all programs that provide enormous support for poor families, but they are the programs seemingly most hated by cost-conscious budget hawks. Of course, it's okay to spend $2B to upgrade some Navy ships and then decide to retire them because that is the cost of protecting freedom, but $6B to ensure that newborns have enough food to survive is a waste of precious money. This flows from the same mindset that it's okay for the United States to force other sovereign nations to do things that are in the United States' best interests. It's okay to threaten Ukraine that we will withdraw protection unless they send us tribute, but I guess it was wrong and evil to send US equipment to Ukraine to protect innocent people from an invasion.

The new regime has made me wonder - how can we be a light in the midst of darkness? People who are harmed by the new regime will, almost certainly, associate this with Evangelicals and Christian Nationalists, even though the primary actors don't seem to be Evangelical at all? I volunteer at a church that did everything they could to support a refugee family escaping Crimea. Ultimately, the husband was jailed and is now going to be deported because he was held up satisfying Russian requirements while his family flew across and that created a discrepancy on his entry papers that said he would "come with his family". I hope that this man's view of Christianity is not the supposedly Christian regime that sent him back to maybe be drafted and die in an unjust war, but the church that came alongside his wife and children and did everything they could to support him fleeing oppression.

I hope that is the testimony of Christians in the United States. Will people look at us as the people who put a tyrant in power, or will people look at us as those who roll up our sleeves to help when people's government lifelines are cut?

Stephen Rhoda resigns Terre Haute: What? They wanted a pastor?

Terre Haute and the GLG Ad Interim Commission accepted the resignation of Stephen Rhoda. I believe this is another case of the RPCNA applying excessive grace to their ordained leadership. This is a case of resign and we'll do our best to suppress your faults.

The resignation letter is a work of art in damage control, minimization and blame shifting. Basically, he absolves himself of nearly all responsibility due to the unyielding demands of his family and church.

But, the sentence that got me was this one: 

I don’t mean to make excuses for my failures, but I never thought that a majority of the congregation would need special ministry beyond sitting under the preaching of the Word.

Take a few minutes for that to sink in. Terre Haute called a pastor, not a motivational speaker. Rhoda seems upset that he was asked to "minister" to the congregation as a minister of the Word. Reminds me of a Reformed author (maybe Paul Tripp?) who taught a class in seminary on pastoral ministry because so many students assumed that ministry was just coming up with a sermon every week for doting congregants. His analogy was someone becoming a doctor in a hospital, finally throwing up his hands in frustration, saying "Sick People!! Why am I surrounded by sick people all the time?!"

A note to Mary Rhoda. Whether your marriage can be saved is probably not in your hands. I would reject the GLG's encouragement for "counseling". Counseling is important, but calling ACBC or CCEF practitioners "counselors" is a disservice to those who have gone through the training and licensure, and especially, have agreed to have their licenses revoked for ethical violations.

The number of times I've heard of ACBC counselors gossiping about what should be confidential and legally protected information makes me think that many people attracted to this counseling just want to hear everyone's "dirt" for their own self-gratification.

I would recommend you find a licensed, legally ethically bound counselor to do your own healing first and understanding what you need in a relationship before trying to repair the broken marriage. Based on Stephen's own words, couples counseling will just be a way for him to continue to blame shift and justify his own actions, and you'll be at the mercy of whatever counselor you both agree to as to whether you will be heard or dismissed. If it's an ACBC or CCEF counselor, the leaver (i.e. the person being truthful that the marriage is broken) will be gaslit back into the falsehood of a broken marriage.

Clipped wings, cages and the zoo of Christendom

E.B. White's Trumpet of the Swan tells the story from the perspective of a mute swan, Louis, who is given and learns to play a trumpet as a replacement for his voice. His goal is to play a beautiful song for his chosen soul-mate, Serena, and woo her. In a freak occurrence, Serena is caught in a storm and lands in the zoo where Louis conducts public concerts. The director of the zoo sends the zookeepers out to clip Serena's wings and Louis realizes if Serena's wings are clipped then his dreams are foiled. After a long discussion about the purpose of zoos and the fact that they can't just allow a swan to land at a zoo without taking advantage of the situation, Louis proposes to buy her freedom.

I think the conversation between Louis and the zoo director is fascinating. Zoos have this dual purpose of preserving animals in a way that is humane, yet, they support themselves by putting these animals on display for humans to observe, which means keeping them in cages, or other means, such as clipping their wings, so they cannot escape. There is a benefit to wildlife to have zoos, as zoos encourage amazement and wonder and that can inspire people towards conservation efforts so that their native habitat is preserved.

But these are wild animals, not humans. I think churches have taken the "zoo" approach to their members. Instead of being a safe haven for humans in the wild to receive healing and encouragement, churches cage or clip the wings of Evangelicals everywhere for the purpose of maintaining a zoo-like display to the world.

The pastor as zoo director, leaders as zookeepers

Instead of each Christian being encouraged to find their own Spirit-led path and expression, churches limit their members based on what the pastor and church leaders impose. If the pastor wants to run a soup kitchen, then members wanting to serve will be caged into soup kitchen ministry. If someone wants to minister in a way that the church isn't interested in, then the pastor and the elders will seek to clip the wings of the members to maintain the zoo as intended. For example, I was in a church that had a bad experience with small groups being led astray. The leaders decided that they could not maintain control of the teaching in small groups unless they were personally teaching the small groups, and since they didn't feel they had the bandwidth to teach, they issued an edict that there could be no teaching in small groups. Wings were clipped successfully and then, not surprisingly, they struggled to get congregational members interested in attending small groups. So, then there were occasional sermons on the importance of filling seats in the small groups.

Our pediatrician loved to see cuts and scrapes on our kids. That meant that they were active and exploring the world. Imagine a world where parents protect their kids by closing them more and more off to the world. The kid touches a hot burner, so we cage off the kitchen. The kid climbs out of his playpen and hurts himself, so we put him in a cage we can lock. The kid chokes on a peanut, so we grind all of the food into paste. Are we equipping children to interact with the world or are we creating bubble children that get blinded by the sun when we open their dungeon door?

The church disbelieves the work of the Holy Spirit and only believes in their ability to cage and clip their children's wings to keep them in the fold. If we don't teach our children about sex, then they will be safe from all sexual sin! If we don't teach our children about science, they will never doubt our assertions about how the world works! We teach them a warped version of Total Depravity so that they don't ask why they're in cages while the zookeepers roam free and tell everyone what to do. If we don't keep any non-Reformed, non-Christian sources of information away from our kids, they will grow up with a Reformed perspective! Of course, when these bubble children enter the world and inevitably stray from the faith, it's not because the bubble is a sham, but because the parents had some hole in their bubble somewhere... maybe the kids went to public school, or public university, or they joined the Boy Scouts or a secular sports team. We never look at the spiritual system and its assumptions for why people run away when they are no longer ecclesiastically chained to their beds.

The church as zoo

In one aspect of the zoo, the cages are there to protect the animals and provide a habitat for them to live and grow. If the goal is to release animals back into the wild, they are treated much differently - maybe not even put in cages in the first place, and their wings would certainly not be clipped. So, perhaps what drives the cages and clipping we see in churches can be compared with a different aspect of the zoo, and perhaps for the same reasons - public display and excitement.

So, if the pastor and leaders cage and clip just right, they can put their churches on public display and hopefully generate excitement for their vision of Christianity. They certainly don't want any public scandals and if they build the cages just right, maybe, just maybe, their church will look perfect from the outside. If something really bad happens within the church, the fear that the church will somehow be exposed to public disdain can overwhelm any desire to seek justice. So, maybe a few animals have to be put down to cover up the truth. Maybe the leadership decides to ignore the sins of a leader because it would look bad that their policies and procedures were woefully inadequate. Maybe a member must be shamed into silence because the truth would jeopardize the future of the zoo.

But, as surveys and studies show, people understand that people do bad things in churches. They want to see justice and not a fake, shiny veneer over a cesspool of shame and silencing. Why does church after church think that Jesus is somehow more glorified in coverup and ignorance than in shedding the light on internal sin and pursuing justice. Or maybe it's not really about Jesus in the first place, but about the celebrity pastor and churches that think, like the bubble parents, that shielding their members within their narrow worldview somehow generates perfect righteousness and are ashamed when the formula doesn't work.

Lay members as animals

That brings us to the experience of lay members. If we were born into captivity in this sense, perhaps we never realized what it meant to spread our spiritual wings. They were clipped with teaching about our depraved state and the need for spiritually-gifted leaders to discern truth on our behalf and show us the right cages we were expected to fit into. For those who were injured in the wild and found the church. Maybe it was a safe place at first. The zookeepers worked to mend to bones and heal the bleeding, but then something happened. Instead of being encouraged to return to life with spiritual healing, we were locked in the cage of legalistic rules and teachings.

I think we can get comfortable in our cages with the food the zookeepers provide and the fellowship we experience with the other caged animals, but for many of us, something will happen that breaks our sense of safety and comfort in the cage.

Ideally, we sense the urging of the Holy Spirit to free ourselves of our legalistic cages, our insular community and our spiritual scraps and realize that there's a whole world outside that we should be free to explore, but there are other ways of being lulled out of our sense of comfort.

Maybe one of the other animals in our cage attacks us. Because it doesn't look good for the zoo to have bloody animals walking around, we get quietly ushered to an even smaller cage and hidden from public view. It doesn't feel safe and it doesn't feel comfortable, and maybe the zookeepers think that caging us with the animal that attacked us will force us into a positive relationship (although it generally ends up with us getting eaten).

Maybe one of the zookeepers decides to use us for their own advantage or pleasure. Since they're the zookeepers, we assume they know best, but eventually something doesn't feel right when we are whipped or beaten or worse. Again, we get put in the small cage. It wouldn't look good for the zoo if anyone found out one of the carefully screened zookeepers was abusing the animals.

So, we make our escape. At that point all of the zoo's resources are refocused on getting the wayward animal back in the cage. If that proves unfruitful, then the zoo's reputation must be preserved at all costs. The cages get another few bars, but nothing else really changes.

Churches as recovery centers, not zoos

I think we need to recover the idea that a church is there to be a place of safety and healing, not cages and public display. If one animal is dangerous towards another, the aggressor needs to be dealt with and the victim needs to be strengthened and healed. A rescuer who abuses animals shouldn't be rescuing animals, and shouldn't just move to the next recovery center to abuse the animals there. But, the central point is cages are temporary and for the safety of the animals, not a new habitat. We need to be strengthened to thrive in the spiritual wilds, not hidden in a protective bubble.

Recovering from the caged life

Just like animals raised in captivity can rarely be released into the wild, I think recovering from legalistic and abusive spiritual systems is uniquely difficult. Instead of being fed the views of the leaders, we need to be trained to discern truth from scripture and seek the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. We need to learn how to find spiritual friends within and outside the church to help us have a good perspective. Because the zoos are so pretty and appealing, we need to find the animal recovery centers when we need safety and healing. It is so hard to discern the difference between veterinarian and zookeeper, but it is crucial in finding healing vs just getting stuck in a cage of a different zookeeper's imaginations. I can definitely understand when someone doesn't want anything to do with a person wearing a white lab coat. I'm thankful that I (think) found a recovery center and not a zoo. Maybe I'm not going to ever put on the lab coat, but I can maybe be a warm and encouraging presence to those around me as I seek to find my way back into the wild.

Rosaria Butterfield and the Sin of Empathy

Image source: https://x.com/nakedpastor/status/1883862633704571106

I was trying to decide between two topics to write on and this one won. Rosaria Butterfield has written the foreward to The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and its Counterfeits a book by Joe Rigney. It's published by Canon Press, Doug Wilson's publishing house.

I haven't really wanted to spend a lot of time researching the arguments, but I found some interesting articles and summaries that have started showing me a systemic issue. I do love to weigh in on those systemic issues!

If I understand the argument correctly, empathy is differentiated from sympathy by where the emotions are anchored. Sympathy is anchored in our own experiences while empathy is us trying to understand someone's emotions from their own perspective. Rigney's original flashpoint article is here: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-enticing-sin-of-empathy, and I really valued this article in trying to understand some of the nuance: https://www.lambsreign.com/blog/the-dangerous-fad-of-calling-empathy-a-sin

Rigney claims that empathy is sinful because it somehow detaches us from truth and our own lived experience. This is similar to the "can I attend the wedding of my gay friend" argument. That is attendance at a wedding is tacit approval. Since we cannot approve of a gay wedding, we cannot attend such a wedding. In the same way, if we, say, empathize with a drug dealer, we are somehow detaching our emotions from the truth that dealing drugs is wrong and re-attaching them to the false worldview of the drug dealer. Rigney then uses this premise to rail against empathy for any LGTBQ+ person because, in his thought process, one cannot empathize with that person without somehow attaching to their sinful worldview. This is most likely why Rosaria Butterfield was asked to write the foreward.

I think Rosaria is in a uniquely hard position and, while I disagree strongly with her stance, I can see things that led her in that direction. Ken and Floy were truly wonderful people, but I think that the RPCNA she joined because of them 'gloried in her flesh' by parading her around and, certainly Kent's heavy patriarchal and authoritarian beliefs have not helped. When she came to speak at my church, she did not want any public advertisement because she drew crowds of protesters and threats of violence. I can't really imagine the effect living with hate mail, death threats and protests would have on me, but I doubt I would have handled it with the grace she did for as long as she did. However, it seems that all of this has taken its toll on her, as https://reformationproject.org/rosaria-butterfield-shift/ has described, she's become increasingly vindictive in her rhetoric against that community.

The idea that empathy is a sin reminds me of the RPCNA response to transgender issues. Essentially it starts with a scientific and empathetic view of transgender people and the struggles they have, even showing evidence for intersex people in the Bible. Then some sort of snap happens and the discussion seems to re-anchor in a black and white absolutism of scripture with the idea that God made "male and female" and thus, we must overcome our empathy to make sure people are forced into their proper bucket and gender roles.

My initial thought was that Jesus's interaction with Mary and Martha was totally empathy and not sympathy. Jesus weeps. It doesn't appear that Jesus being overcome with emotion is anchored in his own experience and truth. He already knew and he already told Martha that he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead, but when (I think) he saw the situation from their perspective, he was overcome by the sadness and hopelessness of it and he wept.

The lambsreign article also also had a helpful example. Christians can be involved in prison ministry, and we can empathize with people in prison without abandoning our desire for justice. We can be sad with them that they are locked up even if they are locked up because they killed someone. Someone told me about a book that said, two things can be true at the same time. This person can be a criminal and this person can be justifiably sad about their current state. I could counsel a prisoner as a human without having to keep their "criminal" label front and center.

I appreciated that advice. What was demonstrated to me in parenting was that it was somehow wrong to comfort someone who caused their own grief. So, if my kid burns himself on the hot stove after I told him not to touch it... well, I can treat the medical issue, of course, but the idea of entering into the shock and pain and sadness was somehow justifying the disobedience. Two things can be true - my child burned himself, and my child is sad and in pain and needs comfort.

Apparently there was a Facebook discussion based on a similar article by Joe Rigney. I suppose that if empathy is a sin, then abuse and vitriol must be righteous.