Confessing Churches called to avoid being Pharisees By John H. Adams The Layman Volume 35, Number 2 Posted April 8, 2002 ATLANTA – Along with the expected hurrahs at the National Celebration of Confessing Churches in Atlanta on Feb. 24-26, there were some self-inflicted Biblical barbs intended to keep the movement within its Scriptural boundaries. In that sense, the movement showed signs of being both Reformed and reforming – ad verbum deo, according to the Word of God. That phrase fades out of the theologically liberal mantra that is recast as “change for the sake of cultural change” without Scriptural underpinning. Pointed barbs Dr. Mark Achtemeier, an evangelical professor of theology at Dubuque Theological Seminary in Iowa, delivered the most pointed barbs, but others – including Dr. Roberta Hestenes and fiery Presbyterian preacher Jim Logan – tossed them as well. Achtemeier urged the Confessing Churches not to become modern-day Pharisees. Hestenes warned against confusion about the gospel, complacency toward others and against tearing down the church. Logan called for more than lip-service on the issue of holiness. The criticisms, however sharp, were not intended to deflate the Confessing Church Movement but to help shape it up for a stronger evangelical witness in a shrinking denomination. Other issues ahead Commending the witness of Confessing Churches and their role in affirming the fidelity-chastity ordination standard, Achtemeier said there are other important issues ahead. He said “The devil is never more dangerous than when he shows up at the foot of the altar. “The New Testament has many examples of solid, Bible-believing folk like you and me who have repudiated middle-way compromises and devoted themselves to the higher righteousness. I am referring, of course, to the Pharisees.” “The Pharisees, as much as any Confessing Church member, were striving for a holiness that repudiated easy compromises with a corrupting culture. ... Yet the really unnerving thing is that the New Testament singles out the Pharisees for special attention as people who did not ‘get it’ when it came to Jesus.” Revelation 3 Hestenes and Logan drew their sermons from Revelation 3. Her comments came from the letter to the church at Sardis (“You have a name of being alive, but you are dead. If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief”). Logan drew his remarks from the letter to the church at Laodicea (“Because you are neither hot nor cold, I will spew you out of my mouth”). Hestenes, a former pastor and seminary professor who is currently an international minister for World Vision, called for repentance, which “begins with the household of God,” humility and the righteousness of God, not self-righteousness. “Are we hungry for God, not simply to win this battle, or that battle, but for God and his grace and his mercy?” ‘Repent of our pride’ “It’s not just them over there that need to repent. We need to repent of our pride,” said Logan, pastor of a growing African-American evangelical congregation in Charlotte, N.C. He added, “Because we are Presbyterian, we look down our noses at everybody else in those churches spilling over, Sunday night and Tuesday, and here we have a whole bunch of gray heads and the pews half empty still singing the songs we have always sung.” He added, “We need to repent of our self-sufficiency. I thank God for other true branches of the one true tree. We’ve got to get out of this self-absorption and self-sufficiency.”

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