Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - May/91

Contributor - James Ramsey

Title - Editorial

Topic - Editorial

On Easter weekend the Toronto Star ran two articles about religion which prompted me to write this comment. On the front page, under the headline "Churches Ponder Slump in Attendance" Michael McAteer, the Star's religion editor, wrote that behind the packed churches of Easter there is another story: the latest statistics on church attendance show that all is not well with organized religion in Canada. In the Religion pages, the Star ran an opinion piece by Clifford Elliot, a former minister at Bloor Street United Church who advises that since his retirement he has been in residence in four theological colleges in various parts of Canada. Mr. Elliot comments on changes which are taking place in theological seminaries in Canada. It seems that the candidates are older and therefore have more life experience. More significantly, the training the candidates are receiving is changing. It struck me that while these two pieces ran in the same paper on the same day, nobody noticed the obvious connection between them.

Mr. McAteer's front page article cites the familiar statistics which suggest that in Canada's large mainline churches nobody is going to worship services anymore except at Christmas and Easter. Mr. McAteer suggests that the full churches on holidays imply that there is a spiritual yearning among Canadians which apparently is not being served by organized religion. Speaking for myself, I would be cautious about ascribing spiritual yearning to "Christmas and Easter Christians." There are, after all, cultural and social reasons for, say, dropping into the local Anglican church at Easter. However, Mr McAteer's statistics do suggest that there are people who are ready to be reached by the Gospel: 8 in 10 who responded to a poll say that they believe in God and in the divinity of Jesus. So why don't they go to church? Mr McAteer does not pretend to answer the question, but he closes his article by quoting an academic who says, "Most church services that I go to seem to be performances, as if God were dead and we are performing for each other. The sense of life is missing in the churches."

What would explain such a phenomenon? Let us return to the Elliot article! Mr. Elliot reports that changes in the church with respect to the way God is viewed may "liberate theological colleges from mere academic criteria." He gives the example of a senior class which is intended to integrate various disciplines - theology, church history, biblical studies and so on. It was decided to try another form of integration. Students would try to integrate what they had learned in class with what they experienced in life. Essays were forbidden. The presentations that resulted were "exciting." One student cast the class in a play about the suffering and failure she had experienced as a hospital chaplain. Other students spent a night with homeless people on the streets and returned to share their feelings of loneliness and rejection. Mr. Clifford asks, "What would 'salvation' mean in such a circumstance?" He does not answer the question. The quotation marks around the word "salvation" are his, not mine. He does say that "mere academic excellence" (my quotation marks this time) gave way in this situation to the whole spectrum of life's realities.

I am afraid that I do not understand this. I would have thought that in a theological seminary students are supposed to be studying the Word of God as witnessed in the Scriptures. Therefore, "mere academic excellence" would imply a conscientious effort to acquire knowledge and understanding of that Word. Isn't that necessary for those who have a special calling to teach? After all, what comfort do we give the homeless if we share with them nothing more than their loneliness and rejection? Why not try to give them the only comfort any of us can ever have, the comfort of knowing that we are not our own, that we belong not to ourselves but to our faithful Saviour, Jesus Christ, Who at the cost of His own blood has completely freed us?

I think that this is the connection between the two newspaper articles. Some of the mainline churches are not meeting the spiritual needs of Canadians and are losing worshippers because they are not preaching the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour. A vague sympathy for our fellows, without more, is an empty message. It rings hollow. No wonder church services where that is the only message seem to be mere performances. Why bother going to such performances? (Apparently, nobody does.)

At Faith Reformed Church in Stevensville, we attend weekly worship with a sense of joy. We are thankful for the refuge we have found in a denomination which does not dismiss serious study of Scripture and doctrine as "mere academic criteria." I believe that one of the exciting challenges which the Reformed Church in Canada is facing is the mission of ministering to Canadians who have been let down by some of the larger churches.

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