I’m sure many of you have been thinking about the financial and leadership issues we discussed in our Congregational Meeting on Sunday. These are weighty matters, and they caught all of us by surprise. As was discussed in the meeting, if certain things had been done differently, many (or all) of these issues might have been avoided or discovered much earlier than they were. The Session was working with the information we had at the time, seeking greater transparency and accountability, and then taking responsibility for the errors and their resolution once the situation was known. None of us can promise that we will not make mistakes, but we can (and do) promise to try to learn from them and do better in the future. The challenges and trials our congregation has gone through over the last 8 years have given us the opportunity to learn many lessons, and I am deeply thankful to God for the careful, sober, and sincere way in which our ruling elders have responded to this most recent challenge. One of the things it has taught us is that when we know a situation needs to change and structures for transparency and accountability are lacking, that must be remedied more quickly and decisively, even at the risk of hurting feelings. It is better to implement structures before serious errors are committed, even if sometimes it is error that helps us understand what kinds of structure we need.
It may be discouraging to those who have been here a few years to once again hear a difficult announcement by the Session. We’ve had a few since 2017, and none of them have been easy. We have shed many tears and lost sleep, but the Lord has used these hard providences to drive us to more earnest and diligent prayer and, I trust, has made us better shepherds as we worked through them. I don’t know exactly how things work in your family. Maybe every day and week and month and year is exactly the same and the routines are so well designed that nothing ever happens that is unexpected or unpleasant. But that isn’t how it is in most families, and that is what the church is: the family of God, and the visible family which is still on earth and gathered in local congregations is a bit of a mess. We are still being sanctified. God hasn’t finished all he intends to do in making us like Christ. It can be a painful process. Some of you came to faith as adults, after you were married, after you had children, sometimes after you had older children who had grown up in a very different type of household. What was that transition like?
Most of you were not here 8 years ago when my family moved to Arizona. Let me tell you a story. This congregation, then known as Community Christian Church, was the largest church in Apache Junction. That may not be saying much, but at the time documents in the office counted around 950 members. We had two services in the winter with ~150 in the early service and ~500-650 in the second service. Worship then was very different than what we have today. There were certainly believers in the church then, several of whom are still with us, but there had not been a clear and consistent articulation of the gospel from the pulpit in a long time, if ever. Most people didn’t even bring a Bible to church on Sundays. They didn’t need one. When I accepted the church’s (third) call and moved to Arizona, I already self-identified as Reformed, but I was still figuring out what that meant. I was not yet covenantal. I did not understand how Reformed theology needed to inform our understanding of the church and the sacraments. I was learning and growing, and as I learned and grew, so did the church.
The first three years of growth involved a lot of division. When I started preaching through Romans, dozens of people began leaving the church every week. Others were showing up at the same time, enthused about the new commitment to gospel proclamation, expository preaching, and the authority of Scripture in the life of the church and every believer. Jacob and I did not understand at the time the hostility and anger those sermons from Romans were creating. We would go back and listen to them again. Were we being legalistic? Were we beating people over the head with the Law without bringing Christ and the Gospel to them as well? Were we, what we deliberately and explicitly tried not to be, a couple of young, arrogant Calvinists coming in to change the church with baseball bats and hand grenades? I’m sure that is what many of the people who left still think, and I am sure we made many mistakes. There are things we might have done differently if we had it to do over again, but we also saw the Lord use hard providence and unforeseen circumstances to force changes that we were not seeking to make at that time. In fact, he took us all on a journey none of us anticipated. When I moved to Arizona, I had no idea I would become an OPC minister a little over three years later. I could not have predicted it, but that is what the Lord did.
The first new elders God raised up to shepherd our church did not come from Reformed backgrounds. One had been a member in the PCA after coming to faith in middle-age. The rest of us had belonged to non-denominational or Baptist churches before coming to CCC. We were learning on the job what it meant to be a well-ordered church, and we leaned on the wisdom and resources other brothers and the historical tradition had to share. There were a lot of growing pains, but God did not give up on us. He continued to teach us. We faced financial disaster when we discovered a handful of prior elders had made decisions several years before that were never disclosed to the elder board. We had to make changes in the Lord’s Day worship much earlier than we planned due to unrest regarding the choir and divisiveness by one of its leaders. We faced the pain of unrepentant sin: lying, slander, sexual immorality, and false teaching that undermined the church’s leadership and witness. We did the hard work of introducing the practice of church discipline which had been largely (if not entirely) unknown and neglected in the church up until that time. We even had to discipline elders and stand against those who were greatly loved and had contributed much to the church’s reformation yet were found to be unrepentant in serious sin. Looking back, I don’t know how to explain this church’s survival and transformation except by two words: But God. It was his work and grace, not our wisdom, good deeds, or skillfulness. At times this journey has felt more like holding on desperately as we careen down a mountain road without brakes than like the well-planned, well-executed program we expected it to be when I arrived in 2013. I had a one-year, two-year, five-year, and ten-year plan for this congregation. The OPC wasn’t on any of them, and none of those plans were based on what we actually discovered when we got on the ground. God decisively changed those plans in the first six months of our ministry together.
What has conversion, ongoing repentance, new commitment to discipleship, and sanctification looked like in your household? Do you see any parallels? Maybe you had it all figured out from the start. Our family certainly didn’t. All five of our children were born in churches that rejected instrumental music, Reformed theology, original sin, justification by faith alone, the celebration of Christmas, the brotherhood of believers in other churches, and affirmed many unbiblical doctrines that ranged from unhelpful and idiosyncratic to dangerous and anti-gospel. Our daughters remember a time when their parents did not understand the gospel and also later when Dad and Mom began sharing what they were learning about grace and the changes it would make in our family. I wish I could have raised my children in a consistently Reformed home from day one. I wish Community Christian Church had been a Reformed congregation before I arrived, even though it would mean they never would have called me. I wish many things in the last 8 years had gone differently than they have, that we had better foreseen errors, better understood issues, and been able to make more efficient and effective decisions in navigating those unseen challenges. But do you understand the implications of wishing it had been otherwise? Who decided things would unfold in this way? Who was and is in control?
We must balance two ideas: a strong and sincere regret for our sins coupled with a desire that it had been otherwise, and a calm and contented resting in the sovereign providence of God knowing that if we could change our past it would only be for the worse. That may be hard to believe, but God works all things together for the good of those who love him (Rom. 8:28), he works all things according to the counsel of his will (Eph. 1:11), and he wrote every day of our lives in a book before we were born (Psa. 139:16). That does not mean I should not mourn and regret my many sins. I should; I must. But it does mean that my life is traveling along the path God designed for me, and if he allowed me to design it, I could not do it as well; I could only make it worse. The last 8 years are not how I envisioned the ministry here would develop, but I take comfort in the fact it is evidently how the Lord decided it would go. The fact it has been hard does not mean it is intended for our harm. On the contrary, his hard providence works for our good. In fact, it is the lessons taught by hard providence we tend to learn best.
I am humbled by, grateful for, and truly rejoice in the work of reformation God has done in this congregation in less than 8 years. The transformation is remarkable, and if we could have foreseen or tried to plan such a transition, we never could have pulled it off as quickly or as well as the Lord did. This has been his work, and he should receive all the glory for it, while all of the mistakes and shame are ours. But look at what the Lord has done. Look at how our congregation is now connected to the work of our Presbytery and how this story has been shared in many other places, even beyond our own denomination. Look at the people that have come to saving faith. Look at the children that have been baptized and are now being discipled as members of the church. Look at the individuals and families who have come to and are now growing in a fuller understanding of the doctrine of grace than they ever knew before. Look at the Lord’s service of worship which we receive and from which we benefit every Lord’s Day. Look at the relationships we have with faithful brothers and sisters around the world and at the blessing of that fellowship even in the kind of guest preaching we enjoyed this past week. Look what God hath wrought!
“God brings them out of Egypt; He has strength like a wild ox.
For there is no sorcery against Jacob, nor any divination against Israel.
It now must be said of Jacob and of Israel, ‘Oh, what God has done!’
Look, a people rises like a lioness, and lifts itself up like a lion;
It shall not lie down until it devours the prey, and drinks the blood of the slain.”
(Num. 23:22-24)
Come and hear, all you who fear God,
And I will declare what He has done for my soul. (Psalm 66:16)
Now the man from whom the demons had departed begged Him that he might be with Him. But Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your own house, and tell what great things God has done for you.” And he went his way and proclaimed throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him. (Luke 8:38-39)
With the election of three new deacons on Sunday evening, six of our nine officers came to this congregation from established NAPARC backgrounds. We are stronger, healthier, and more well-ordered than ever before, notwithstanding the financial issues recently discovered. We are imperfect, as is every congregation and individual in the visible Church, but we are reformed and reforming, learning and growing, dying more and more unto sin and foolishness, living more and more unto Christ and in his wisdom. I have never been happier to be a pastor, and I have no desire to ever be more than Kirstie’s husband, my children’s father, my grandchildren’s grandfather, and your pastor until the day I die or God removes me. If the last 8 years has taught us anything, it is that he is in control, and we are not. We must submit to his plan, not insist on acting according to our own. I will not make foolish promises about the future that I cannot control. I am the Lord’s servant: to live, do, serve, suffer, and die at his pleasure. I pray that he will use me up. I am eager to spend and be spent for the sake of your souls and hope to leave all that I have on the field of battle. But regardless of my role or yours, this church belongs to the Lord. He will do with us as he pleases. And that is a good thing, even if it must sometimes be a bumpy and difficult ride.
Lord, do with us as You will. Let Your will be done in each of our lives, our families, and in this congregation, even as it is done in heaven. Do what is necessary to teach us, shape us, and renew us in the likeness of Your Son. Use us in Your service and for Your glory, and save us in the end. Amen.
--JME
