Shaping Our Vision For Renewal

On August 31,1989 I concluded a two and one-half year term as the Executive Director of the Renewal Fellowship Within The Presbyterian Church in Canada. During my tenure, more than anything else, I have taken it as my task to articulate what we mean by renewal, trying to shape a vision of renewal for our ministry and for our denomination. The task has not been an easy one. There are competing agendas and visions among us, within the Renewal Fellowship, as how best to advance the cause of renewal within the Presbyterian Church. And others within our denomination are still suspicious about us – our motives, our agenda, our vision, what do we really mean by renewal?

For this reason I should like to conclude my official responsibilities with the Renewal Fellowship by setting forth the characteristics of the renewal we need and long for within our church. This is the vision that I intend to carry forward in my own ministry of teaching, preaching, and writing, and it is the vision of renewal which I pray will inform the future direction of the Renewal Fellowship’s ministries.

Dynamics of Renewal

Our vision must be informed by a comprehensive biblical understanding of renewal as it pertains to the church of Jesus Christ. Richard Lovelace in his book Dynamics of Spiritual Life reminds us that “the great prophets and pioneers of evangelical renewal … constantly stressed that this goal could only be attained through a strategy of spiritual revitalization combined with doctrinal and structural reformation” (p.16).¹ This threefold definition of renewal – spiritual revitalization, theological renewal, and structural reformation provides the biblical and comprehensive strategy for our work and witness.

Some evangelicals within our denomination argue that renewal is fundamentally theological – a return to an orthodox confessional position on the part of the Presbyterian Church. Anything less than this is a betrayal of the faith. As one committed to the confessional standards of our denomination and one who teaches theology I too am committed to such a vision of renewal – but not without spiritual revitalization and structural reformation! Theological renewal is crucial, but unless it is accompanied by a spiritual vitality and an openness to new structural wineskins it is a truncated vision of renewal which can only lead to a dead orthodoxy.

At the same time other evangelicals believe that renewal is primarily a spiritual revitalization of the church granted by the Sovereign Lord of heaven and earth alone. Consequently, our task is simply to pray for such a renewal. You can’t organize renewal, it is argued, and therefore having a group such as the Renewal Fellowship is self-defeating. But surely this ignores the reality that God calls us to work and witness and pray together for the renewal of the church of Jesus Christ. Admittedly, we do not wish to engineer spiritual vitality, but at the same time we believe it is essential that we work together for theological and structural reformation within our Church, praying that these efforts will be blessed by a spiritual revitalization poured upon us by God’s Holy Spirit.

Some among us major on structural reformation. The future of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, they suggest, depends upon new emphases on how we go about our business. Renewal involves a liberation of the laity, recovering the missing worship jewel of the church, developing small groups, relational evangelism, etc. These are all characteristics of renewal which we have emphasized within the Renewal Fellowship. They are the new wineskins. But the wineskins must also be filled with new wine! Structural reformation without spiritual  revitalization  and theological renewal will be empty and hollow. Quite frankly, this is what concerns me about the Strategic Planning Process undertaken within our denomination. When I see the results, where the laity and clergy of our church believe we ought to be headed, I am excited. But I am also dismayed as I wonder whether we are really prepared to pay the price of such renewal and reorganization. And I ask whether this vision is really grounded in a desire for the powerful presence of God among us and a biblical confession of the Christian faith.

We need a vision of renewal which genuinely embraces these three aspects of renewal: spiritual revitalization, theological renewal, and structural reformation. Any one without the others is a distortion of God’s intention for the church. We must pray that as God’s people we will be awakened by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit to fresh obedience to the Word of God. We must pray for revival at the personal, congregational, and denominational levels. We must long for an outpouring of the Spirit of God even greater than those of past generations. But we must also commit ourselves to the difficult task of theological renewal and reformation. We must be prepared to stand for the Biblical, Evangelical, and Reformed faith in our Church no matter what the cost. And we must continue our efforts for structural reformation. We must be open to what God is teaching the church today about the shape of our ministry and witness in the world.

On Being Presbyterian and Reformed

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to the ministry of the Renewal Fellowship is the perception within our denomination that it is our intention to move the church in a direction away from the Reformed tradition. What you propose, it is suggested, is not really Reformed. You really don’t represent, it is argued, the Presbyterian tradition. You want to make our denomination something it is not.

For this reason we must be clear that we stand for a vision of renewal which is not only comprehensive and biblical, but a vision that is at the same time genuinely Presbyterian and Reformed. But what does it mean to be Reformed and Presbyterian today? What are the hallmarks of the Reformed tradition in Canada?

Over fifty years ago Walter Bryden defended the existence of the then Continuing Presbyterian Church in Canada by arguing it must recover its roots in Calvin and the Reformation period, rather than tracing its history only to the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.² I believe he was right but I also believe it is a lesson we have never really learned. Our understanding of the Reformed tradition is shaped far more by a Scottish cultural presbyterianism transplanted to Canada than by the faith espoused by the Reformers. A vision of renewal which is truly Reformed and Presbyterian will embrace a call to recover, defend, and declare the Reformed faith in our day.

Defining this Reformed tradition today is not easy. A number of years ago the philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff offered a typology of the Reformed tradition in North America which is still quite useful.³ He suggested that the Reformed heritage may be defined from three different perspectives. There are the “doctrinalists” who see doctrine as the essence of the Reformed faith. The “culturalists” define the Reformed tradition from the perspective of the relationship between Christianity and culture and argue that Christ is the Lord of all life. Yet another perspective is represented by the “pietists” who maintain that in Reformed faith and life we find the most biblical and healthiest expression of the piety from the Evangelical Awakenings of the 17th and 18th centuries. To these three I would add a fourth perspective: the “ecclesiasticalists.” Those who define the Reformed heritage in terms of church polity and government are encompassed by this perspective.

While each of these perspectives may be found in varying degrees within the Presbyterian Church in Canada, the dominant perspective is the fourth, the ecclesiastical. More often than not we define ourselves in terms of an understanding of the church. The highest compliment given in the Presbyterian Church in Canada is to be called a “churchman” (churchperson?). A vision of renewal which is genuinely Reformed and Presbyterian in our context must therefore embrace a high view of the church. But that view of the church must be grounded in the vision of the Reformers who sought to recover the biblical understanding of the church, and not grounded in a sentimentality for Scottish Presbyterianism or a desire to transform the Reformed church into a pre-Reformation sacerdotal institution. To appeal to the teachings of Calvin, Zwingli, Bucer and others, as well as the creeds and confessions of the Reformation and post-Reformation era, is to appeal to a vision of the church in historic continuity with the holy catholic church. And a vision of renewal with such an ecclesiastical perspective must always be set within the context of the broader understanding of the Reformed tradition with its emphases on doctrine, culture, and piety.

This is our challenge. The Renewal Fellowship must set forth a high view of the church which is genuinely Reformed. For too long too many of us have been complacent in our Congregationalism. As evangelicals we must repent of our low view of the church. In so doing we do not accept a high church sacerdotalism, but rather we are prepared to articulate a vision of the church which genuinely reflects the best of the Reformation tradition. Through responsible participation in the courts, boards, and committees of the church a witness for this vision of the Reformed and Presbyterian church must be given.

But the Reformed faith includes far more than a doctrine of the church. The Reformers stood for the doctrine of justification by faith (the grace of God alone), the primacy and power of the Word of God in Holy Scripture (sola scriptura), the centrality of the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ (Christ alone), and they fought for the glory of God alone. Those committed to renewal within the Reformed tradition must be prepared to defend and declare these doctrines in the face of many challenges today. Universalism and religious pluralism militate against the Lordship of Christ and the uniqueness of his saving grace. Relativism in hermeneutics undermines the power of the Word of God in the life of the church. And an anthropocentricism (human-centred focus) in theology denies the glory of the Sovereign Triune God. It will not do, however, simply to repeat the slogans of the Reformation in the face of such challenges. Theological renewal in the Reformed tradition presupposes a careful and thoughtful response to the challenges before us. It is based on the premise that we are prepared to enter into the substantive discussions of the day, something we as evangelicals have not always been willing to accept. But a genuine defense and declaration of the Reformed faith demand this of us.

Finally, renewal in the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition will mean acknowledging that ours is a “church reformed and always reforming.” Unfortunately, in our context today this phrase is used to justify every and any change. In its original usage in the Reformed tradition it meant that the Reformed church is reformed and reforming according to the Word of God. Holy Scripture was the standard against which all life and doctrine were to be judged. The dynamic movement of a reforming church in the power of the Holy Spirit is a movement towards conformity with God’s will revealed in Holy Scripture – not to shape the church’s faith according to what may seem expedient for the times. At the same time, as a confessional church, we are called to confess our faith in contemporary Canadian society. Commitment to the faith once delivered to the saints is the presupposition of a confession today. And a vision of renewal is a vision of a church reformed and reforming according to the Word of God.

In sum, my plea is for a biblical, classical, and evangelical vision of renewal within the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition; my prayer is that the Renewal Fellowship will increasingly provide the forum for this vision to be realized; and my hope is that this witness can be made in unity with integrity. Nec tamen consumebatur… “And behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.”

Endnotes

1. Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1979.
2. Walter Bryden, Why I Am A Presbyterian. Toronto: Presbyterian Publications, 1934.
3. Nicholas Wolterstorff, “The AACS in the CRC,” The Reformed Journal, December 1974. See also George M. Marsden, “Reformed and American,” Reformed Theology in America. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985; I. John Hesselink, On Being Reformed. Ann Arbor: Servant Books, 1985; and M. Eugene Osterhaven, The Spirit of the Reformed Tradition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971.