“We’re prudent people. We don’t make decisions easily, carelessly. We delay the process, postpone the sederunt. We’re practical.”
That comment on the ethos of Canadian Presbyterianism comes from the sermon at General Assembly’s opening worship this year by Rev. Cheol Soon Park, moderator of the 134th assembly.
Mr. Park had set himself a challenge: “I knew I would be speaking to many ruling elders and many teaching elders,” he said. “I wondered, how can I move their hearts?”
How can I move their hearts? What a profound question to set as a task before the church’s annual governance meeting, full, as always, with details of money, proper consultation and following of rules.
“I’m impressed and blessed by the structure, system and protection we have,” he said. “We’re not used to making mistakes, especially from unpreparedness. We don’t like the unexpected—something surprising.”
But then he paused. “Zacchaeus,” he said, “was not a Presbyterian.”
Mr. Park was referring to the evening’s scripture reading from Luke’s gospel about the despised tax official of Jericho who is deeply moved by Jesus unexpectedly inviting himself to dinner at the official’s home.
After years of observing the church, including the last one from the position of moderator, Mr. Park was suggesting that simply being a well-oiled machine is not all that God requires.
“Maybe we’re being caught up by our almost perfect system,” said Mr. Park. “Our own tradition. Our norms and standards and ways of doing things.
“We’re highly trained polity people. We try to be practical, and most of all biblical. But Zacchaeus tells us one thing as a Christian who experienced vast love and acceptance—we should be willing to try something unthinkable. Something impractical, unacceptable. Something past where we drew the limit of where we were willing to go. Something we’ve delayed many times.”
Mr. Park’s challenge is something the church as a whole, not just the General Assembly, needs to consider deeply. Because even the best skeletal structure becomes nothing more than brittle bone if it is not nourished by the flesh it is designed to support.
Good bones are only good so long as they fulfill their purpose of carrying the rest of the body. Which is what makes the story on pg. 12 of a failed amalgamation in Stratford, Ont., so discouraging.
According to the reports, after three year’s work had been done to bring two congregations to worship and work together, one backed out because too many people could not abandon their building. That might have only been deeply unfortunate were it not the case that the building needs costly repairs and the congregation is also hugely in debt.
Not a congregation of Zacchaeuses apparently.
In our cover story on pg. 18 this month, Rev. David Webber argues that this is more than the story of isolated congregations here and there. An invitation to David from the church in New Zealand to tell them about the innovative work of his ministry team in Cariboo, B.C., led to as much learning for David as the Kiwis.
His conclusion is that Presbyterians in New Zealand show flexibility where he finds rigidity in the Canadian church. We certainly hope there will be discussions on this analysis in forthcoming issues of the Record and we encourage your thoughtful reflection.
But here’s the crunch, if you’ll pardon the expression. Bones need to be flexible. When they lose that, they break. There are obviously problems: crumbling, indebted, nearly empty churches offer no glory to God, only to our vanity.
The church desperately needs to find a way to move forward. It needs to build new churches where there is a good prospect of successful ministry and close places where there is not and realize the value of the assets for redeployment.
Fortunately, as Andrew Faiz points out in his Pop Christianity column, Zacchaeus’s spiritual descendants are at work in the church in other ways.
As Mr. Park said: “When we’re willing to lose something in God’s name, a miracle occurs. Even in our age. Even in the Presbyterian church.
“Start something unthinkable in God’s name.”
