On May 16 a conference featuring speakers of the Mid-America Reformed Seminary at Orange City, Iowa, was held in Wyoming, Michigan. The day–long meeting dealing with the general theme, “Christ Will Build His Church,” drew an attendance of about 90 people. Since the three professors were each presenting three lectures, each attendant had to choose between the three meetings being conducted in each period. A brief report on the conference can convey little more than a general impression of the speakers and the material each presented.
Nelson Kloosterman discussed the subject of “The Church Order as a Biblical Blueprint.” He raised the question-particularly relevant to the increasing anarchy becoming evident within our churches-whether the church order was intended to be a mere guide, or whether it was to govern the churches’ organization and activity. He noted that the Order was to govern and regulate what the church was doing, and that it was subordinate to the Scriptures. He observed that the relationship between the Scriptures and the Church Order is at present under attack, so that we are threatened, on one hand, by a Roman Catholic-style of hierarchy, and on the other, by a congregationalism which assumes that people have the sovereign right to do as they please. When a woman demands the right to office because she “feels called,” she is disregarding both the Scriptures and the lawful calling by the church. The speaker called attention to the decided shift already evident in the revision of our church order in the 60’s away from the earlier stress on the Biblical offices and structure, to the churches’ subjective action of “confessing,” “acknowledging,” and “desiring,” which really put “the Church Order up for cultural grabs.” (The speaker’s observations helped to clear up any misunderstanding that there might be about why our churches become increasingly confused and divided. When the Word of God is dismissed as no longer decisive because of cultural changes, should anyone be surprised if “church order” gives way to “church disorder”?)
Robert Grossman discussed the subject of public worship, stressing the fact that God’s Word not only commands Whom we must worship, but also how we must worship Him. Proper worship of God is therefore not to be degraded to “liturgical” experiments with varieties of entertainment but must be “in Spirit and in Truth.”
Mark Vander Hart, professor of Old Testament, focussed attention on the way the book of Malachi caned people to return to obeying the God of the Covenant. The plight of the people then, as also now, was a consequence of their breaking covenant with God. Symptomatic of their unfaithfulness to God’s covenant was their faithlessness in entering religiously mixed marriages and in breaking their marriage covenants by divorce. God detested such unfaithfulness, and called them, as us, to repentance and renewed faithfulness.
It was interesting to observe the variety of presentations, addressing a common theme of church rebuilding. Especially prominent in all of them was a constant emphasis on what is more and more glaringly absent from the decisions and activities of our denominational establishment, obedience to and proclamation of the Word of God. That emphasis bodes well for the new seminary as it attracts more students. Let’s pray for and support it.
PDJ
