The Normal Church - Part One?

Rev. Henry DeKorte

INTRODUCTION

Rev. Henry De Korte is the pastor of the Guelph Reformed Church. He has oft been heard to use the phrase "We need to be a ‘Normal Church for Normal People.’" He has agreed to elaborate with The Pioneer audience in future issues what lies behind such an innocuous phrase.

When church growth is realized not by transfer membership, but by conversions, then we really are light pushing back darkness and being faithful to the Great Commission. However, there is a problem that does real harm to growth, even after the Holy Spirit has led someone to a church service. When normal everyday people, living in a normal everyday world come to church, they want to see a normal reflection of that world. Our churches must be normal.

Normal people have normal expectations of appropriate dress and the responses elicited in others by their appearance. Sometimes though, the unexpected does happen. Joseph’s cool threads aroused passions of hatred in his brothers, which in part, resulted in a traumatic experience in the life of that young man. Bathsheba’s lack of dress aroused a different kind of passion in the king and resulted in the death of her husband and son. The lepers’ bandaged and truncated appendages aroused feelings of disgust rather than compassion in their communities, which created for them the status of lonely outcast. Although these responses were poor and destructive, a stretch of the imagination might generate some empathy for the villains.

But it is ever so irritating and growth hindering when we see inappropriate responses by the children of God to those who come to His house to worship Him. I can remember when a friend of mine visited a church. He was a highly paid intellectual who by Friday night was tired of spending 16 hours a day in a suit. So on Sunday he wore blue jeans and a shirt (clean, neat, wrinkle free, etc., etc.). What a shock when a prominent person of influence in the church commented, "You’re not going to church like that!"

Needless to say, his approach was one of "Nuts to you" and on Sunday mornings he opted for the friendlier environment of home while his wife continued to attend alone. Not that this would thwart the sovereign will of God—if He has chosen to call my friend, then He will use another way to bring him into the community of faith. But oh, the insensitivity! Oh, the unthinking, myopic attitudes of some of our people! Oh, the need for a cry for normalization!

When visitors come to your church, I surely do hope they are made to feel welcome… whether they wear blue jeans, leathers and chains, or wooden shoes. It’s difficult enough stepping inside an unfamiliar church and entering the scary world of religion, but it’s unbearable when you’re treated as though you’re not normal.

May our eyes be on Jesus, who enjoyed hanging around with harlots and winebibbers—not because he approved of their lifestyles, but because He genuinely loved them and because He relished the opportunity to share with them the Good News of the Kingdom.

I’ve always joked that one day we’ll have a sign outside our church…"Guelph Reformed—A Normal Church For Normal People." Think I’ll go buy a hammer.