My focus has been elsewhere lately, but in the last few months three significant studies on childhood-to-adulthood faith retention have been published, all which validate the arguments laid out in Keeping Kids Christian.
The Experience of God’s Love in Children. World Vision and the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University studied how children experience the love of God. Christianity Today has a good write-up of the study. This is slightly different than the question of faith retention, but the “how” covers the same territory: the relationship between children and adults. The study found that children experience the love of God through their families, particularly their parents. Kids understand God’s love, not in abstract categories, but in concrete, relationally grounded human connection. Parents, families, and the adults of the church providing care and guidance is crucial for kids understanding the love of God. All people grab onto models for thinking of God, and kids inherently look to their parents to be that template.
Childhood Experiences with Adulthood Religious Outcomes. Published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, the authors looked at preexisting data sets to examine seven childhood factors: parental marital status, conversations about faith with parents, childhood religious service attendance, mother/father religious service attendance, and the quality of the relationship with one’s mother/father…
The question of whether the EPC rescinded its old Position Paper on Homosexuality, and if so, when this happened, was an item of debate at this year’s General Assembly. This question is unfortunately complicated by the unique combination of the EPC’s traditions, culture, and parliamentary rules. I’m going to address the procedural question first, and then provide some comments on the contents of the Position Paper on Homosexuality.
The EPC has two kinds of documents it produces from time-to-time. The first is Position Papers. Act of Assembly 05-03 (2005) defines Position Papers,
A Position Paper is intended to set forth the mind of the General Assembly of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church on a subject of compelling interest because of developments in the church or the culture at large. A Position Paper is intended to enable the Evangelical Presbyterian Church to make a definitive statement to itself, the Christian community, and the world. It is not intended to be an exhaustive theological statement nor a complete exegetical biblical study on a particular issue. A Position Paper must be adopted by one Assembly as a Preliminary Paper, subject to revision and discussion, and must be adopted or withdrawn by the act of another Assembly. While stating the definitive position of the mind of the General Assembly, a Position Paper does not have the status of a Constitutional document nor is it to be regarded as binding on the conscience of churches or individuals.
This definition is a refinement of a process that was established by Act of Assembly 84-09 (1984). The second kind of document is Pastoral Letters…
This week my denomination, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, held its 46th stated General Assembly in Denver, Colorado. This is the annual meeting and council (synod) of my church, and every pastor has a right to attend and every congregation may send elder representatives. Due to the subject of same-sex attraction and ordination, this was the most intense and contentious assembly in recent EPC history, if not its most divided assembly ever. More on that towards the bottom. But there was quite a lot of other things going on at the assembly, and below is a summary of the official actions taken.
To amend the EPC’s constitution requires a majority vote of one assembly, a majority vote of three-fourths of the presbyteries over the next year, and then a majority vote of the subsequent assembly. The GA completed that amendment process in four areas that essentially cleaned up and standardized language related to the ordination process.
The EPC’s formal ecumenical relationships are called “fraternal partnerships” and are aimed at increasing cooperation on mission, church planting, theology, and education. The EPC entered into a fraternal partnership with the The Evangelical Church of Egypt (Synod of the Nile), which is a wonderful development….
I have a review of Myles Werntz’s Contesting the Body of Christ: Ecclesiology’s Revolutionary Century up at Mere Orthodoxy.
“I believe in the church.”
This article of the Christian faith seems unusual compared to others in the church’s creeds. Our faith, like everything else about us, is fallible and marked by sin. Still, this is a confession of God’s divine action and preservation of Christ’s body. There is a church, and it is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. But what does this pronouncement look like in practice? The early twentieth century’s ecumenical movement had promising energy, but it has largely faded. Now, after a century marked by fragmentation, schism, and deepening denominational stratification, discussions of the church and its oneness seem exhausting and exhausted…
The church is one because it is the body of Christ animated by His Spirit. Its unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity are not external additions; they arise from its very life. To be the church is to be these marks. With this overall thesis in mind, Werntz traces the ways different twentieth-century Christian traditions “contested” or worked out what the church’s essence meant for their lives and practices…
I’m back at reformation21 with an article on what constitutes church health when things are declining. Here’s an excerpt:
“Who can change the sinner’s heart?”
Imagine if Jesus told the parable of the sower as if he were a church health guru:
The seed is the word of God. Those ones that fell along the path, snatched up by the birds? They heard the word, but your preaching wasn’t enthralling enough, and so the devil got ‘em. And the ones on the rocky soil? Well, what did you expect? If you call people to repentance, to be completely reconstructed by God’s grace on his terms, they’ll walk away. Duh. And then of course the ones that fell among the thorns couldn’t find the perfect programming tailored for their niche demographic at your church, and so they didn’t mature.
This is preposterous! This absurdity is not how Jesus talks.
And yet something very much like this logic has quietly settled into parts of the modern, evangelical (and dare I say it?), Reformed church. When the gospel does not appear to “work,” we assume the problem must lie in the delivery system—insufficiently compelling preaching, inadequate programming, or a failure to craft the right strategy. The implication is subtle but powerful: if we would only improve the machinery of ministry, the harvest would follow.
But that is not how Jesus tells the story…
