After dinner last night, which was good, primarily because someone slse made it with craft Son and I walked around Napier. In 1931 Napier was flattened by an earthquake and was then rebuilt in the fashion of the day: there has been some redevelopment at the edges but the bulk of the central city is Art Deco. Including the (ugly) cathedral, but not the (ugly) Presbyterian Kirk, or the (extremely, blatantly ugly, brutalist) Catholic one.
After last week, we will worship not with the Pentecostals, but with the Evangelicals, Baptist type. I checked out the bulletins of the nearest Presbyterian Kirk. Female minister. Last bulletin in the mid year. Discussion of enjoying Muslim spirituality while in Brunei. No. Not the Kirk I love, merely the form without life.
However, I remain a member of a Presbyterian Kirk (PCANZ): a combination of evangelicals and some emerging church type gloss. We love the people, and they have not yet fallen into error. The church, as the Orthodox Presbyterians note, is at times more visible than others, and at present the PCANZ remains supportive of the confessing believer. However, that could change.
“When must we leave a church?” The word “must” is key here. You are not asking when it might be okay to leave a church, but when does the Lord require us to do so? Maybe your choice of words was fortuitous and not intended, but if intended, I applaud the high view of the church which they imply. It is a curse of our times that American Christians flit from church to church to “ministry” to “fellowship” for the flimsiest reasons (e.g., where to put the wood stove, or the minister’s personality, or the music program, etc.). This is no way for God’s children to treat the Bride of Christ.
The Westminster Confession of Faith correctly observes that “This catholic [invisible] church hath been sometimes more, sometimes less visible. And particular churches, which are members thereof, are more or less pure, according as the doctrine of the gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more or less purely in them.” (25.4) And, “The purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error and some have so degenerated as to become no churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan …” (25.5).
True churches of Christ may vary in their purity of teaching, worship, and administration of the sacraments, and no true church on earth is free from error. On the other hand, some churches have declined to such at an extent that they are not true churches at all. Your question seems to be: where on this continuum of purity / impurity does it become the right thing to leave a church? Or: at what point has a church fallen off the continuum of true churches into being no church of Christ?
I don’t think that any individual (or couple) is competent to declare a professing historic Christian church to be “no longer a part of the invisible church.” Over the years some Orthodox Presbyterian authors in various articles have referred to the apostasy of the PCUSA, but it is significant that no assembly of the OPC has (to my knowledge) ever officially declared that the PCUSA is an apostate denomination.
Apostasy in the PCUSA was the issue struggled over, and its toleration (and the triumph of toleration-as-a-policy) was the cause of the forming of the OPC. But I do not think that as a church we justify our coming into existence (against the charge of schism) by saying that the PCUSA had ceased to be a church of Christ.
Those pastors, elders, and congregations who first left the PCUSA in 1936 to form the OPC had, before leaving, struggled for decades against the toleration of unbelief and the growing power of anti-Christian modernist heresy in the “broadening church” (to borrow the language used by a highly regarded PCUSA historian). They considered that their commitment to the church (an expression of their commitment to Christ) required them to labor for her reformation.
But when, in 1935 and 1936, the modernists and broad-church proponents succeeded in defrocking from the ministry the very men who had labored to call the church back to fidelity to her Confession and to the Christ of the Bible, it was clear that the time had come to leave. As a denomination the PCUSA not only refused to be disciplined on the basis of the Word of God, but rather imposed discipline on those who had sought scriptural reformation. (Echoes of the Papal Bull excommunicating Martin Luther for standing on the Word of God for the purity of the Gospel of Christ!)
That is a very long preface to the scripture, driven by a sense that our churches have taken Christ out of the picture and replaced him with a forgery: the forgery has over times been a fascist (Spain, Italy, Germany) or a Social Justice person (Argentina, The Vatican, the PCUSA). Christ was none of these, nor any other fashion of the day: a rationalist, an environmentalist etc.
Christ was God incarnate. He taught he was God incarnate. He promises that we can do great things in his name, but it must be Christ’s name, not our fashions, nor our wishes.
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
(John 14:6-14 ESV)
One of the reasons I link to and pray for (not as constantly as I should) Roman Catholics, Orthodox, members of “Bapticostal” (their term) churches, Anglicans, and members of historically Black churches is that each one of these bloggers is attempting to be faithful to Christ. They love their church, but they are clear-eyed. It is not perfect.
None of us are. Our models of Christ do not have the power of Christ.
And compared with the trees, the world-renowned architecture of Napier has limited beauty.
Yet we should belong to a Kirk: we should support it: we should use it to provide charity to the poor and help to the suffering. In times of great need it is safer and wiser to have a storehouse that is guarded by the men of the kirk. And in times of great pressure, when the leadership of our churches tend to forget Christ and listen to the latest meme, or delusion, promoted by the media, it is time for us all to pray for our Churches. That they will remain faithful to Christ.
For on the last day, we will be united in Christ. Let us support each other, now.
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Update One.
I could not belong to the PCUSA. They have lost authority by not standing on many issues, and the fact that they do not require their ordained members to confess faith and agreement to the confessions leaves them tolerating gross error.
There are many Presbyterian pastors, churches, and laity who are now wondering what they should do. The confessing church, made up of the conservative and biblically faithful believers, has been filled with grief, disbelief, and dismay. They finally lost the majority vote over acceptance and ordination of homosexuals, bisexuals, trans-genders, adulterers and fornicators into offices of ministry in the denomination. The truth is they lost this argument years ago by accepting principles of authority that predetermined this outcome. By staying and fighting they will accomplish nothing. They have been outwitted and out-maneuvered and have lost ground they will never regain. They can never win or reform the institution, and I will explain why it is better to leave than to try.
It is worth noting the divorced are not on that list: I would add them to it.
I know a church like this. My brother attends it with his family, and doesnt recognize any of what I point out.
It is a PC church interested in how Christianity and ‘Jesus’ can serve social justice and control over people to create the heaven on earth they deem appropriate.
AFter attending many services over a few years (I don;t live in his town) it finally hit me succinctly: ‘Some churches serve God. Some churches serve people. This church serves people.’
And I know in their hearts the ministers (a man AND his wife) would smile at this statement.
They have altered church hymns (many) to serve PC language and altered meanings to satisfy their notion of the right way. It is shocking. Very few people pick up on this– and don;t know what to say when it is pointed out.
When I saw Christmas hymns altered to remove the male pronoun and to remove the sacrifice of God I was dumbstruck. How could my family sit there and not see what this is????
I could NOT be a part of this church. It is not Christianity– it is Churchianity and its a big problem.
What’s the best way to destroy something you don;t like??? JOIN it– and then demand ‘equality’ and change if its standards offend you. The church must learn how to guard against this.
Oh yes. Today we visited the Napier Cathedral, and they have a weekly Eucharist (Anglican old style) on Tuesdays because the 1931 Dunedin Earthquake occurred on a Tuesday. But the church repelled the son: he said it was dead, and he has some spiritual discernment.