 Presbyterian Leaders’ Forum  Monday, September 14, 1998
A Message from the Moderator One of John Calvin’s favorite metaphors for the church is that the church is the “mother of believers.” Evidently, he borrowed it from two earlier theologians, Cyprian and Augustine. I find it a very helpful metaphor in two regards.First, I believe it is a much-needed corrective to those who claim to be “Christian” but have no association with the church. Calvin affirmed that “there is no other way to enter the life (that is, the life of faith) unless (this mother) conceives us in her womb and gives us birth, unless she nourishes us at her breast and … keeps us under her care and guidance… Our weakness does not allow us to be dismissed from her school until we have been pupils all our lives.” (Institutes 4.1.4) The testimony of countless Christians affirms that the church gave “birth” to their faith and has continued to nourish it through worship, study, fellowship and service. My faith was born in the Dutch Reformed Church of Muskegon, Michigan. I remember as a child strongly resisting going to church. The sermons were long and boring, the minister was stiff and formal, the music was slow and maudlin, the Sunday School classes were dry and dull, and the Wednesday night pea-soup suppers were just awful! I hated pea soup! But that church is the “mother” of this believer! It was there that the seeds of my faith were planted which have blossomed into the most important thing in my life. I did not know it at the time, but God’s Spirit was using that church – as bad as I felt it was – to give birth to my faith. I took great comfort in remembering how God used that church in my own life whenever I felt as a pastor that nothing was happening in the lives of people through my preaching and teaching and when my own children resisted going to church. Just as God used the fumbling efforts of that pastor to give birth to my faith, so God uses our fumbling and faltering efforts to plant and nurture the seeds of faith. Thanks be to God! The second reason I find the metaphor “mother of believers” to be helpful is because it tempers my criticism of the church. We are critical of the church, for we are never living up to our high calling. Indeed, criticism is important, for it often serves as a much-needed corrective. But if the church is the “mother” of our faith, we should criticize her as we would the mother that gave us physical birth. In other words, we should criticize the church in love by softening our strident rhetoric and engaging in a “lover’s quarrel.” We should practice that spirit of humility and forbearance Paul speaks of in his letter to the Ephesians. We should “speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), ... saying only those things that build up (4:29), ... being kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven (us) (4:32).” Douglas Oldenburg |
||
| The Presbyterian Layman, current issue | ||
|
Home,
· Archives,
·News
Updates |
||
