 |
 |
 |
||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||
|
 |
Dear Congregation, I was greatly blessed by Steadman’s excellent message two Sunday’s ago taken from the passage about children being brought to Jesus, and have had cause off and on since then to ponder the main two points, that is, how may we bring children to Jesus (or hinder them from coming), and how we may go to Jesus as children. At the end of the sermon Steadman also touched on several areas of life where the passage may have implication, including baptism and communion. I think he is right that the passage bears on these two matters, though how it bears upon these matters is a difficult question, and his reflection got me thinking about our own approach to the sacraments at Covenant fellowship. At Covenant Fellowship we have people who come from a variety of church backgrounds and theological perspectives. This means that we have quite a varied view amongst our congregation on issues such as the end times, worship, election, creation, parenting, and worship, just to name a few issues. This variation in viewpoint also includes the issues of baptism and communion. We don’t want to be a church of self designated tow-the-line “Presbyterians” only. At the same time we are formally connected to and under authority of a Presbyterian system, and we take that seriously. Psalm 133 reads, “How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.” I am pleased to say that I have experienced an increased unity amongst bible believing brethren in our city, and even amongst our denominational family here in the Triad area. This unity of God’s people under the head of Christ is not just a nice sentimental idea. It is at the core of what God wants to bring about in and through the New Covenant people of God, where the dividing wall has been torn down, where there is no Jew or Gentile, Barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free, but Christ is al, and in all. Jesus himself prayed fervently for the unity of His people in His great high priestly prayer in John chapter 17. Much works against Christian unity, even apart from the everyday sins of pride and party spirit. We have inherited a “denominational” world, where lines of theology and practice are drawn at almost every turn. How do we know real unity given this reality? One way to have unity is for every church to consist only of those people agree on absolutely everything, but alas, these would be very small churches indeed, and none of them would agree with each other. Another way to have unity is to agree not to believe anything strongly, or anything really at all. This is more or less the idea behind churches with the word “united” in their names. But unity without truth is not really unity, at least not unity in Christ. But it will just not do to sit tight and comfortable in the divisions which separate us as churches and denominations within the evangelical world. Too much is at stake. Sometimes it is hard to walk the line of balance between flexibility and diversity on the one hand, and truth and theological oneness of mind on the other; between maintaining a certain diversity as a local church while also being good citizens within our affiliation and being appropriately submissive to our theological standards and ordination vows. It has always interested me that in those two area where unity ought to be most evident in the church at large, that is, in the sacraments of the church, in baptism and communion, we often find the greatest amount of difference of opinion between churches and often even within churches. Perhaps this is due to the serious nature of these sacraments of the church. Nevertheless, there is in fact but one faith, one Spirit, and one baptism. And the Lord’s Supper itself is meal for the whole body to celebrate and enjoy together. The unity of the body of Jesus is indeed a key aspect of the meaning of communion itself. We at Covenant Fellowship are committed to what is called “covenant theology,” out of which flows a certain understanding of who it is that makes up or constitutes the people of God, and out of which flows our understanding of the sacraments. It is only within a framework of Covenant Theology for example that the baptism of infants makes any sense. Yes, we really do believe we are baptizing infants when we sprinkle water over them and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We don’t do this because of tradition. We don’t do this because our forefathers said to. We do this out of biblical conviction that we should do so. We do this as a result of our understanding of who makes up the entity called the people of God, or the visible church. We would hope that everyone would bring their children forth for the sacrament of baptism. Yet, many people in our fellowship come out of and are partial to a Baptistic view of baptism. I would be delighted to try to reason from the Scriptures and talk anyone out of this position, but we do not push this, and baptism is one of those areas where we have agreed to have diversity, not just of thought but of practice, and, Lord willing, unity despite the diversity that is there. We wish and desire to be sensitive and pastorally flexible with regard to our families who are of a different mind on the matter of baptism. Our ecclesiology, our theology of the visible church, has us understand all children of those believers who make up our fellowship as members of that external group of people called the people of God, the visible church. This includes those children who have been baptized as infants and those who have not been. We treat baptized and non baptized children alike as covenant children and as members of the visible church. On that matter we are not flexible. One’s standing as a covenant child comes through being born into a believing family. Our children are real and legitimate members of the real external entity known as the church, the body of Christ. This does not mean that all of our children will grow up to be believers. But we expose them to the means of grace -- to the word of God, to prayer, to the sacraments, to the worship of the church; we disciple them, we teach them to believe in Jesus, to be sorry for their sins, to look to Jesus for forgiveness, to depend on the death of Jesus, to believe in the resurrection of Jesus; and we teach them to pray, to sing hymns, to say they are sorry, to love God with all their heart mind and strength. We do all of this in belief and hope that God intends to save them and is saving them. And we watch with awe as God grows faith and repentance in our children, often it seems despite us and our mistakes and fallibility as parents and a local community. Usually this faith and repentance grows imperceptivity such that we cannot designate a time or place when our children became Christians, and they cannot often in their own memory name such a time either. That is really the absolute ideal. We do not as a local church or as a denomination ascribe to the doctrine of “the age of accountability.” Nor do we look to some formulaic “sinner’s prayer” as a sign of conversion. Rather we trust that as our children avail themselves of the means of grace, and as they profess faith (simple and childlike as that profession may be) that God is indeed at work in them, and we give them the benefit of the doubt. We expect that God is saving them, for that is how God does things through Covenant families. Thus we tend to look at our children less as non Christians and more as Christians, covenant children in whom God is at work for salvation, until or unless they show clearly signs that they are otherwise. And just as human birth and growth is often a messy and painful proposition, so also is spiritual birth and spiritual growth. This is just as true of us as adults and is true of our children. But as a church we look earnestly to God to act in the lives of covenant children to bring them to Himself and grow in them saving faith, and we accept the professions of faith of children as real until a life pattern of rejection of that faith shows otherwise. This is the clear and consistent pattern of churches and Christians guided in their ecclesiology and life by this approach to Scripture that we call covenant theology. Back to baptism….Many of our families see baptism differently than we see it officially as a denomination and as a local church. We are OK with that, and pastorally want to be accommodating. So, if a family sees baptism as a sign primarily of the person’s personal faith in Christ, and thus sees it as an entry rite only for professing adults or professing older children, we work with that, and we baptize their children after profession of faith at an older age. And we are not as a church committed to the superiority of any one mode of baptism, and so we work with the families on that score as well. If you want sprinkling, we sprinkle. If you want pouring, we pour. If you want immersion, we immerse. You won’t get that flexibility at your local Baptist church. OK, this makes things little messier all around, and offers its own set of problems for our children as a whole. But we desire to have unity within the diversity that we have, and we do not wish to see baptism be a matter of division between us. This takes grace on both sides - on the side of the Baptistic folk to bear with our view and practice of infant baptism, and on the side of the Presbyterian folk to bear with the decision of many families not to have their young children baptized, and the inconsistency of practice that this brings into our corporate life. Yes, grace is needed on both sides. There are some similar unity issues with communion. For example, some would like us to have communion every week. I am somewhat partial to this myself. Some would rather we used wine instead of grape juice. Some would rather we had communion around a central table. Some would rather we not dispose of the elements of communion that are not used. Some see communion as more solemn, quiet, and reflective event. Others see it as a more lively celebrative community event. When it comes to the matter of children and communion we also have a diversity of view within our fellowship, and a growing diversity within the Presbyterian world. There is a significant and growing movement within Presbyterian churches to open up the communion table to all covenant children. We have not as a session embraced a thoroughgoing paedo-communion perspective, though I think that at least grappling with this matter is a natural outworking of holding to a covenant theology perspective. I would commend several resources to you to learn more about the subject, arguments for and against, and merely say to you don’t dismiss the idea until you have looked into it. You could check out the web site www.paedocommunion.com which is highly sympathetic to paedo-communion. To their credit they have links to articles that you can read both for and against paedo-communion. You could also consult the text of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church 1988 Majority Report on the subject, which you can find at http://www.hornes.org/theologia/content/1988_opc_study_committee/majority_report_in_favor_of_paedocommunion.htm. This is one of the clearest articulations of the paedo-communion view that can be found. But again, we at Covenant Fellowship have not as a session embraced a formal paedo-communion stance which would have us offer the communion elements to all covenant children regardless of age. Our elders may have varying degrees of sympathy or non sympathy toward a full paedo communion position. I don’t think any of us adopt it as our own position, though I know for myself I will spend a lot of time over the next decade grappling with it. But it is not the position of us as an eldership. Our position, our approach, flows less out of a consistent paedo communion approach and more out of the more optimistic view that covenant theology has regarding the spiritual development of covenant children. We see the communion table as being open to those children who profess belief in Jesus, who understand the basic idea behind communion, and who want to partake as an expression of their own faith in Jesus. In effect we open up the communion table to all professing believers, including children, and do not await some particular age or a process of confirmation before accepting a profession of faith as credible. Again, this approach stems from the almost universal view within covenant theology about the work of God in the lives of covenant children. Our official approach as a local church is that we leave it to the parents to determine their children’s readiness to participate in communion. We offer our help and counsel to parents, are available and happy to talk to them about their children and communion, and are happy to talk to their children. My own counsel would be that it is important that the child not be partaking just because other children are. It is important that the child not have a superstitious idea about the elements. It is important that the child understand the basic symbolism of the communion elements. It is important that the child from his or her own standpoint be a believer in Jesus Christ. But in the end we leave it to the parents as to whether their children partake. When it comes to believing children and communion there are within our doctrinal standards and form of government certain tensions that are hard to resolve. Many Presbyterian bodies who do not accept a consistent paedo communion position still are trying to clarify or resolve the tensions that remain, and are in many cases looking into rewriting their standards. Here is the problem. On the one hand communion isn’t just an act of obedience, something we do; it is a means of grace, something through which God does something. We believe that God works in and through communion to build both faith and repentance. No matter how hard we try we cannot fully explain this reality, that is, how exactly it is that God is present and at work during the communion meal. But we believe that he is. We believe that communion is a “means of grace.” Thus, communion is something that we need, something that helps us and builds us up in our faith. Coming to Jesus includes coming to Jesus in the communion elements which represent him and his work. In a way that is mysterious, and which we can not fully understand or explain, communion is a “means of grace.” And our own book of worship tells us that communion is to be extended to everyone who believes in Jesus as Lord and Savior. It is to be offered to all professing believers. Just as it is my obligation as a Christian minister to call all men, women, and children to believe in the Lord Jesus, it is also my duty and obligation as a Christian minister to invite and encourage all who so believe in Jesus to partake of communion. This duty is pressed upon me by the Scriptures, and by our own book of worship, and it is my earnest personal belief that I should do just this. This invitation goes out to all who believe in the Lord Jesus, including children. If a child believes in Jesus, he or she will hear my invitation to all who believe in Jesus to come to the communion table, and he or she will want to partake. It is my deepest desire as a Christian pastor, as a parent, and as one who has vowed to help in the raising of all covenant children, to see children believe in Jesus, and to see them respond in that belief by wanting to partake of the Lord’s Supper. Not only is this the right desire for the believing child to have, but participation actually helps them in their faith. At the same time, we have a distinction within our form of government between “communicant” and “non communicant” members. The former are those who have joined the church in their own right, through profession of faith, and through assent to the membership questions, etc. This ”status” of communicant membership gives them the same full voting privileges as adults, and also grants them access to the communion table. To many Presbyterians granting adult membership to a young believing child is unwise. After all, the child cannot vote for president; he or she cannot sign his or her own name on a legal contract and cannot give consent to his or her own medical care. Yet we would have them elect and choose elders in the church, approve a church budget, and participate in church discipline? This means that we are saying, in effect, that unless a child can read an excel spreadsheet, make wise financial decisions, know and understand other people well enough to make informed decisions about potential elders, that they cannot also have credible professions of faith, and cannot take communion. To many, and to our session as expressed in our official position, this is an untenable approach. Some Presbyterian bodies have created a third status of membership, a kind of communicant but not voting membership. Many if not most other evangelical Presbyterian bodies are granting full membership to children at a younger and younger ages, such that five or six or seven year old children are becoming full “voting” members. So you can see that one is left with difficulty either way one turns, either denying access to the sacraments to one whom you have just invited to partake of it (that is, a child who believes in Jesus as Lord and Savior), or naming such a child as a full adult “member,” even though the child may be clearly too young to be such. Our official approach as a church at this time is a compromise between various options. It straddles the tensions in our form of government, and it places us in the middle range of the debate within Presbyterian circles about children and communion. We may yet come to a different or more well defined approach that gives more or better specific direction to parents. We will revisit this periodically, and we welcome your input. Just so you’ll know, a great many churches and pastors are struggling with this issue. Even last week for me at Synod the subject came up many times in conversations. It is a very lively and current issue indeed!. And for now, at Covenant Fellowship, we leave it to the parents to make the judgment regarding the child’s readiness to partake. As we struggle with the tensions in our own form of government, we choose to allow participation in communion rather than grant full membership to a young minor child. It is possible that a child, even one who professes to believe in Jesus, may desire to participate in communion, but the parents, either out of principle (given a certain understanding of the credibility of the faith profession of children, or out of an understanding of age of accountability, or out of conviction based on how they read 1 Corinthians 11), or as a result of believing that their own particular child does not understand the idea of communion well enough, or as a result of believing that their children are not believers, may forbid their participation. To a child who may want to partake this can feel like I as a pastor am inviting them to eat the break and drink the juice, and their parents are hindering their participation. Yes, this can be awkward for a parent or a child, particularly as the child sees other children partaking taking the bread and drink. I would say to such a minor child (if asked) that he or she should trust in the counsel of his or parents and listen carefully and humbly to their concerns, and honor their decision cheerfully. And so, we still leave this to the parents, and respect and honor their decision and their discernment regarding their own children, and yet we still invite all who believe to partake, young and old alike. I hope this writing gives you some greater insight into our practice regarding the sacraments at Covenant Fellowship, particularly as regards the unity within diversity that we hope and try to maintain. We would value your input and are open to coming to a different position as time goes on. In Christ, Joel |
 |
|
 |
|
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||
