Volume 2: Issue 1 | February 2019
Explanation of the Sixth Commandment
"You shall not murder."
-- Exodus 20:13
Consider the prominent place of the sixth commandment in the Sermon on the Mount. After Jesus told his disciples to glorify their Heavenly Father through good works, he pointed to the Law and the Prophets as their guide. Having emphasized our need for righteousness, he clarified what part of the Law he meant by explaining the Ten Commandments. And it is not at all surprising that he began with 'You shall not murder.' Murder is universally acknowledged to be a great crime, and mercifully few commit it. So Jesus was on safe ground, for him and for us, when he began with murder. All can agree and few will be scandalized.
But then Jesus tied murder to anger, and not just special anger, but anger with a brother. Who has not been angry with a brother? An only child? Not according to the Bible's definition of brother. And how we love to justify it: “He made me so angry!” As if we were not responsible for our own responses! Anger can be a right response to evil, but how hard it is to keep our anger pure, justified, and rightly expressed!
We must recognize our anger. The more habitually angry we are, the harder it becomes to recognize. Sarcasm, nastiness, and insults become reflex responses. We do not even see the anger we express, and we wonder why others are angry with us. Why won't others work with me? Why won't they spend time with me?
We must clear our heads and our ears and listen to ourselves. Jesus expressed himself very strongly, insisting that we must repent of insulting and reviling.
Yet if we are only resolving to do better next time, we have not listened to Jesus enough. He continued: "so if you are offering your gift at the altar" (that is, if you have walked the three days from Galilee to Jerusalem) "and there remember that your brother has something against you" (your brother back in Galilee), "leave your gift there before the altar and go" (on foot, at great length). "First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift" (Matthew 5:23-24.)
Jesus is teaching us that reconciliation is tremendously important. We must not let anger fester. From anger come strife, hatred, and murder. Like any bitter root, we are to resolve it immediately. The children of God are brothers and sisters, and there is little that destroys brotherhood more than anger and disrespect. Unresolved quarrels are the great destroyers of congregations.
The gospel proclaims that in Jesus Christ God is reconciling the world to himself. Alongside this good news is the requirement that we, who are reconciled to God, must seek to be reconciled to one another. "You shall not murder" means 'you shall repent of your insults, and urgently seek reconciliation.'
-- John Edgar
Proverbs Exposition
"The words of a man’s mouth are deep waters;
the wellspring of wisdom is a flowing brook."
-- Proverbs 18:4
The point of this proverb is unclear, as comparing two other translations reveals. “A person’s words can be a source of wisdom, deep as the ocean, fresh as a flowing stream (Today’s English Version).” “The words of the mouth are deep waters, but the fountain of wisdom is a rushing stream (New International Version).” The TEV interpretation teaches that people’s words are a source of wisdom; the NIV with its “but,” hints at a contrast between the deep and perhaps deceitful words of a person and the reliability of God’s ever-fresh words. Translations in the King James tradition, like the ESV, bring the Hebrew seeming lack of clarity into English, leaving the reader to try to grasp its meaning. I will follow the NIV’s interpretive rendering.
As deep waters hide what lurks beneath them, a person’s words may hide his thoughts as well as reveal them. Only the naïve take everyone’s words at face value, and the Book of Proverbs scorns the naïve. Early in his ministry, adoring crowds outside Jerusalem followed Jesus, but John notes, “Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people, and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man (John 2:24-25).” Jesus uniquely knew what people were thinking deep within, and while we do not, Solomon warns us that there are depths beneath another’s words that we can’t see.
The Bible, in fact, teaches that people do not know even themselves well. The inscription at the Greek oracle at Delphi exhorted suppliants, “Know yourself,” but we can’t know ourselves because self-deceit clouds self-understanding. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9).” Even those who want to know themselves are puzzled, as the Apostle Paul confesses: the good he would do, he does not, and the evil that he does not want to do, he does (Romans 7:14-24). Here is where the social sciences differ from the natural sciences as twilight differs from sunlight. Social scientists must reckon with their own not fully understood prejudices and wishes, while at the same time they try to study people, whose thoughts and motives are like deep waters. The social “sciences,” therefore, cannot even begin to approach the objectivity of physics and chemistry.
The wellspring of wisdom in the proverb is God himself, speaking through his prophets, and in these last days, through his Son Jesus Christ. God’s words are like a running brook, clear and transparent as they flow from their spring, enlightening all who hear. The Book of Proverbs itself is a part of that brook, giving better understanding of human and divine ways than psychologists, sociologists, or economists can manage. As God’s people continually discover, his Word is ever new, revealing fresh understanding with each reading, like a brook with new water that flows past us every second.
-- Bill Edgar
Atlantic Presbytery Day of Fasting: What Our Congregations Did
January 9th, 2019 A.D.
Noah Bailey
Cambridge, MA. 42.3736 N
1. What did you do to prepare your congregation for our day of fasting?
We announced the day of prayer and fasting several times in advance, particularly with a lengthy email that gave warnings, encouragements, and instructions. The Lord's Day prior to our Day of Fasting, elder Tom Fisher taught the Adult Bible Class on our Presbytery's history and the present need for a day of prayer and fasting. I preached from Daniel 9, emphasizing that God is with us and therefore we have hope.
2. What did you do as a congregation on that day besides fast individually?
We prepared and distributed a prayer guide based on the Lord's Prayer, which had three sections titled "Breakfast", "Lunch", and "Dinner," and we suggested that the congregation substitute their meal times with seasons of prayer. We gathered at the church building at 7:00 p.m. for an hour of prayer, using Psalm 67 as a prayer guide. Around 8:00 p.m., we broke our fast together.
Steve McCarthy
Walton, NY. 42.1695 N
1. What did you do to prepare your congregation for our day of fasting?
We printed the Presbytery motion with its purposes and instructions in the bulletin from our Fall Presbytery Meeting each week until January 6, as well as making verbal announcements. I preached on fasting from Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther and handed out the appropriate teaching about fasting from the Westminster Confession of Faith, our Testimony, and the Directory for Worship. I gave verbal instructions on fasting on January 6 and used a bulletin insert on fasting that I got from Bruce Martin. Finally, I preached a sermon on Psalm 90, calling us to repentance and drawing the connections between sin, lamentation, and death.
2. What did you do as a congregation on that day besides fast individually?
We met together at 7:00 p.m. for a prayer service. We walked through Watson’s six steps of repentance, using the summaries given by Bruce, reading the Scripture proofs, singing from the penitential Psalms (32 and 51 in particular), reading the Decalogue in unison and holding moments of silence for self-examination and silent, personal confession. We also had a Scriptural Assurance of Pardon. We then had a time of corporate prayer centered on the four requests published in A Little Strength and for other needs in the congregation.
Daniel Howe/Gabriel Wingfield
Providence, RI. 41.8240 N
1. What did you do to prepare your congregation?
The elders alerted the congregation to the upcoming day of prayer and fasting well in advance. Pastor Howe preached about fasting from Matthew 6:16-18, and the elders sent an email to the congregation with an explanation of why Christians fast and the history of the presbytery that led to the called day of prayer and fasting.
2. What did you do as a congregation on that day besides fast individually?
We met at the church building for prayer in the evening and then broke fast together afterwards.
David Coon
White Lake, NY. 41.6770 N
1. What did you do to prepare your congregation?
I preached a sermon on January 6 dealing with fasting and developing a heart for the lost. We prepared a handout for the congregation that was a chart of White Lake Church’s ministries, with names to pray for.
2. What did you do as a congregation on that day besides fast individually?
The Church held a prayer meeting at 5:30 p.m., with times of prayer and singing, with 45 or so attending. We ended with a light dinner of soup and bread to end our fast.
Zack Dotson
Coldenham-Newburgh, NY. 41.5034 N
1. What did you do to prepare your congregation for our day of fasting?
We prepared the Congregation by a special letter, which informed them of their duties during the fast and what was required of them. The letter also provided an explanation as to why we fasted. In the weeks before the fast, I preached through Ezra touching on the doctrine of Fasting.
2. What did you do as a congregation on that day besides fast individually?
Because I was away the week of January 6, Coldenham held its fast from noon on Friday, January 11 until noon on Saturday, January 12. Noah Bailey of Cambridge preached a conclusion-of-fast-day sermon, and the congregation broke the fast together in a congregational meal.
Paul Brace
Hazleton, PA. 40.9584 N
1. What did you do to prepare your congregation for our day of fasting?
I informed the congregation immediately after our Fall Presbytery meeting, distributed A Little Strength (vol. 1, no. 5) with its articles on fasting, included a meditation on fasting on January 6 – mostly a summary of the articles in A Little Strength – and sent email reminders to the congregation about our Day of Fasting.
2. What did you do as a congregation on that day besides fast individually?
We had a prayer meeting at 6:00 p.m. split into four parts, keyed to the four parts of the motion calling for a Day of Fasting. We introduced each part with a Psalm, and then had fifteen minutes of “anyone can pray out loud” time. Afterwards we broke our fast with pizza. In Hazleton 21 attended the prayer meeting; in Harrisburg about 20 attended.
Bruce Martin
Ridgefield Park, NY. 40.8570 N
1. What did you do to prepare your congregation for our day of fasting?
We cited the Presbytery minute about the purposes for the fast, used bulletin inserts about how to fast and the meaning of repentance, and included fasting notes in various sermons. Some people fasted in preparation for the Day of Fasting.
2. What did you do as a congregation on that day besides fast individually?
We held a service in the evening that included singing three psalms. The rest of the time those present led in prayer. Members of other reformed churches in the area joined in the service.
John Edgar
Elkins Park, PA. 40.0697 N
1. What did you do to prepare your congregation?
On the three previous Sundays, after the opening prayer, I explained the Biblical reasons for fasting, and our presbytery’s reasons for calling this fast. In addition, on the day before the fast, we distributed by email the presbytery’s statement together with specific prayer requests.
2. What did you do as a congregation on that day besides fast individually?
We met at 6:00 p.m. for a forty-minute prayer service. We prayed through each of the three headings in the presbytery’s statement, with psalms in between and requests taken from the floor. After the service, those who could stay had a simple soup dinner to break our fast together.
Alex Tabaka
Broomall, PA. 39.9679 N
1. What did you do to prepare your congregation for our day of fasting?
The day of fasting, along with some of the motivating reasons for the day, was first announced to the congregation in a sermon on 11/18/18 on Isaiah 54:2-3, entitled “Broomall RPC, Enlarge Your Tent.” The day was then announced from the pulpit and in the bulletin for the several weeks leading up to January 9th. A week prior to the day of fasting, an email was sent to the congregation about the nature of the fast, including the words of the motion passed by presbytery for the day (which had been previously read from the pulpit), as well as information about the events scheduled for the day itself. The email also included the clear and helpful text of Daniel Howe’s article from A Little Strength. The Lord’s Day prior to the fast I preached a topical sermon on fasting, with a focus on Isaiah 58:1-12, entitled, “The Fast that God Has Chosen.”
2. What did you do as a congregation on that day besides fast individually?
We had an open prayer meeting at the parsonage from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. on January 9. At 7:30 that Wednesday evening, the church held a special service. I delivered a short homily entitled, “To You I Will Cry,” focused on a collection of verses from select Psalms. Each of our four elders then took one part of the Presbytery’s motion calling for the day of fasting, read a Bible passage, led in prayer for their respective part, and then announced a Psalm to sing in response. The following Lord’s Day, we had our once monthly Communion service, and I returned to Isaiah 58:1-12 for the Table Address as a follow up to meditate on our experience of fasting.
Gnosticism Today: How the Church Opens the Door to Gay Marriage
Careless Christian Wedding Ceremonies
With Unintended Gnostic Disregard of the Two Sexes
A recent Protestant wedding helped me understand how our country has come to accept gay marriages as a matter of simple fairness and justice. The pastor, a graduate of a very conservative Presbyterian Seminary and himself no advocate of gay marriage, began with a few words about marriage. Here is what he said in full:
"Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today in the presence of these witnesses, to join [Jack] and [Jill] in holy matrimony. Marriage is a divine ordinance instituted for the promotion of our happiness and the glory of God. The sacredness of the relation is revealed by the fact that the Holy Spirit has selected it as an apt emblem of the union existing between our Lord Jesus and His bride, the Church. The happiness contemplated by this union is realized by those who fully appreciate its sacredness and are faithful in the performance of the mutual obligations growing out of it, and seek daily God’s blessing."
Listening, I felt suddenly critical. First, “in the presence of these witnesses” did not explicitly mention God as the most important witness. Second, the “divine ordinance” of marriage is to promote “our happiness and the glory of God,” apparently in that order? The last sentence repeats only the “happiness” purpose of marriage. Most unsettling to me, this introduction, except for the names, would fit a ceremony involving two women or two men just as well as it fit one for a man and a woman.
When I got home from the wedding, I pulled out what I said at weddings. It was only marginally better than what I had just heard. Here are my words:
"Marriage is an honorable estate, instituted by God. It signifies to us the mystical union that is between Christ and his Church. Christ himself honored the estate of marriage by attending the wedding ceremony in Cana of Galilee, where he also did his first miracle. The Apostle Paul names marriage as honorable among all people. Therefore, marriage is not to be entered into lightly or thoughtlessly, but rather reverently and soberly in the sight of God."
I then checked the 1789 Book of Common Prayer of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Its “Form of Solemnization of Matrimony,” begins:
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this company, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony."
I omitted the Prayer Book’s very first sentence: that we meet in the presence of God for the purpose of joining “this Man” and “this Woman” in marriage. Ouch!
I went back further. How did the 1662 Book of Common Prayer instruct ministers of the Church of England to begin a wedding ceremony? Here it is in full:
"DEARLY beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man's innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church; which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee; and is commended of Saint Paul to be honourable among all men: and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men's carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God; duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained.
"First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.
"Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body.
"Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity. Into which holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined. Therefore if any man can shew any just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace."
With its first stated purpose for marriage, procreation, along with its clear reference to “this Man” and “this Woman,” the 1662 Book of Common Prayer marriage ceremony can only be for a man and a woman. If everyone in our society had heard these words at the start of every wedding, would it not have been much harder for the gay marriage folk to get their way than it has been?
The 1647 Westminster Confession of Faith chapter, “Of Marriage and Divorce,” teaches: “Marriage was ordained for the mutual help of husband and wife; for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue, and of the Church with an holy seed; and for preventing of uncleanness (24.2).” Might the blunt description in the Prayer Book of marriage as “a remedy against sin,” or the WCF’s equally blunt “for preventing of uncleanness,” be a helpful prod towards marriage for single people succumbing to sexual sin? And isn’t the absence of any language about happiness in the Confession and Prayer Book bracing? Marriage is about mutual support and procreation, not happiness; it is about the other person, including children, not me being happy!
How has our country come to embrace the absurdity of two men “marrying?” One reason: the Christian Church, long before gay marriage was on the horizon, began failing to teach God’s purposes for marriage, especially bearing children. Instead, it embraced a Declaration of Independence “pursuit of happiness” or a Disneyesque “happily ever after” motif.
Wedding ceremonies regularly attract people who never attend church services. Some ministers, like me, have failed to use this opportunity to emphasize in our opening statements that marriage is for a Man and a Woman, it is for children, for mutual help, and to protect from sexual sin. How did these omissions slip in? Perhaps a Gnostic emphasis on souls, but not bodies, made it easy for ministers to slide into describing marriage in an asexual manner – asexual not in the sense that it did not involve sexual relations, but asexual in the sense of marriage uniting two people rather than uniting “this Man” and “this Woman,” and asexual in the sense of not naming children as one of God’s main purposes for marriage.
Other forces have certainly been at work in our society to make gay marriage seem first plausible and then inevitable. But the failure of Church officers in wedding ceremonies to state explicitly the Bible’s teaching about marriage – it is between “this Man” and “this Woman” -- has played its part in birthing the brave new world of marriages where children are a biological impossibility. Marriage is a life-long covenant of exclusive sexual faithfulness between a man and a woman, for their mutual benefit and for the bearing of children. Ministers of the Gospel need to begin explaining that marriage is between a man and a woman at the start of each wedding ceremony. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer might be a good place to start.
-- Bill Edgar
Book Review:
The Tech-Wise Family
by Andy Crouch
Grand Rapids: BakerBooks, 2017
It is not an exaggeration to say that over the last 15-30 years, information technologies like the personal computer, high-speed internet, and smartphone have utterly changed daily life for people around the world. This rightly makes many people uneasy: we want to live faithfully at a time when daily habits and patterns of life are shifting radically. How can we develop wisdom (clarity as to how to live in the world) and courage (the guts to be wise) in ourselves and our children? That is the practical question Andy Crouch sets out to answer in The Tech-Wise Family.
In most of his writing Crouch focuses on the intersection of faith and culture. His past books include Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power and Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. He studied classics and theology, was editor of re:generation quarterly for five years, and served as an InterVarsity campus pastor at Harvard. He is also a husband and father, and in this book we get a very detailed look into Crouch's family home life.
The Tech-Wise Family makes the case that we need to develop wisdom about technology. It is changing so fast that we are constantly playing catch-up. Very smart people are spending enormous sums to suck us into our devices, and if we aren’t purposeful we will find ourselves absorbed to an extent that is unhealthy for our families, minds, and even our souls. Christians (and everyone else) are playing “catch-up” in figuring out how to use (and not use) technology.
Crouch encourages people to adopt the motto “Our family is different,” and to take an overall approach he calls “almost almost Amish.” Technology, he says, should be used with intention and care. It’s in its proper place when it helps us bond with real people whom we should love, start great conversations, care for our fragile bodies, and acquire skill in other cultural domains (sports, cooking, car repair, music, etc.), as well as cultivate an awe for the created world.
So what does this look like? Crouch offers “ten commitments” as practical principles. The first, and in keeping with the overarching theme of the book, is that “We develop wisdom and courage together as a family.” “Technology” is more than “tools.” Tools help us do work; tech does the work for us. It’s ubiquitous: “easy everywhere.” The ends (purposes) of family are very different from the ends of technology. Family is about the formation of persons. “Technology is a brilliant, praiseworthy expression of human creativity and cultivation of the world. But it is at best neutral in actually forming human beings who can create and cultivate as we were meant to” (66).
Crouch goes on to discuss the physical layout of our homes. What is all your living room furniture pointed at? If it’s the TV, you are set up to focus on consuming entertainment. It’s better to focus on creating. The Crouch family does have a TV (in the basement), but the living area is filled with books, musical instruments, a fireplace, and (when their kids were younger) a child-sized craft table. There are modern conveniences (central heat, refrigeration, a modern stove) but overall the house is well-designed to “reward skill and active engagement.” If you take only one practical tip from the book, Crouch begs, go to “the room where your family spends the most time and ruthlessly eliminate the things that ask little of you and develop little in you,” (79).
We give our devices time off: “one hour a day, one day a week, and one week a year.” This is one of the places where The Tech-Wise Family shines. Crouch offers some of the best thinking on the Sabbath commandment, and on the importance of giving rest to others, that the reviewer has ever read. He contrasts work and rest (God-given parts of human life) with toil (endless, fruitless labor) and leisure (fruitless escape from labor, normally at the expense of other people’s labor). A game of pickup football can be restful, but watching the NFL is leisure. This is not particularly a technology problem, of course, but technology makes it incredibly easy for work to become toil (it comes home with us on our phones and laptops) and rest to become leisure (bored? pick up your phone and start playing or scrolling). We can bring both of these things to a halt by turning our devices off. If you don’t do this already, try it: no phone at least during dinner and on the Lord’s Day. See how twitchy you get without it.
Several of Crouch’s other suggestions also focus on controlling when (during the day or stage of life) we decide to use or not use technology. “We wake up before our devices do, and they ‘go to bed’ before we do.” “We aim for ‘no screens before double digits’ at school and at home”— meaning that kids should have as little screen time as possible before they’re 10 or so. “We use screens for a purpose, and we use them together, rather than using them aimlessly and alone.” Screen use shouldn’t be the default antidote to boredom — which it often is, because it’s engineered to be endlessly captivating and exciting in a way that reality usually isn’t. But reality is meaningful and repays our attention, whereas after hours spent scrolling, we feel like Bilbo did after too much time with the Ring: “all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread,” (quoted on 147). “Car time is conversation time”— not time for solitary absorption in our devices. It’s a particularly good time for uninterrupted discussion — as many parents of teens have found.
“Spouses have one another’s passwords, and parents have total access to children’s devices.” This seems obvious, but it isn’t to many people. Children should have privacy, in their rooms or in the bathroom, but phones are not the place for that. There is a world of trouble to get into, and it is a parental duty to keep them from that trouble. In addition, being one flesh, spouses’ phones should also be open to each other’s scrutiny.
Crouch’s penultimate commitment will be one that Reformed Presbyterians appreciate: “We learn to sing together, rather than letting recorded and amplified music take over our lives and worship.” Sing at home as well as at church. And finally, “We show up in person for the big events of life. We learn how to be human by being fully present at our moments of greatest vulnerability. We hope to die in one another’s arms.” Real, physical presence: this is the stuff of real life, and it is what all of our technology should be aiding and encouraging.
A final note: scattered through the text are a number of charts and graphic presentations put together by the Barna Research Group based on their polls. Occasionally they’re useful, but for the most part they add nothing to this outstanding book.
-- Daniel Howe
The Character of a Deacon
Part 2 of 3 in a Series on Deacons
After two summers in the Boston area, I have discovered how to distinguish a tourist from a local: the tourist waits for the crosswalk sign. Bostonians march across the street like they own it, knowing cars come with brakes. Likewise, I can spot the Cantabrigians (people from Cambridge) on the T (the subway): they are all holding books. And everyone here knows that I have lived west of Mississippi because I am wearing cowboy boots. Humans cannot escape displaying the credentials of their upbringing or character. Likewise, God has revealed to us the markings of deacons: Deacons display a devotion to Gospel living.
Upon the cornerstone of Christ and the foundation of the Apostles, Paul lays down the qualifications for those who wish to take responsibility for the Church’s ministry of mercy. Anyone who would give away Jesus’ riches so that the hungry might hear and the oppressed find freedom must be of surpassing godliness. The Apostles in Acts 6 and Paul in I Timothy 3 require three qualities of deacons:
1. Known to have a reputation for dignity and integrity.
2. Controlled by the Spirit, and not by alcohol or greed.
3. Demonstrated wisdom show in faithfulness, shown even in times of trial.
Deacons must be believers of good reputation. What qualities constitute a good reputation? Deacons must be reverent, or dignified, well spoken of, honest and never “double-tongued” people who say one thing in one situation and the opposite in another. Servants of the poor must furthermore be known as good, and this goodness must be rooted deep within them. Habits of dishonesty will produce a reputation for being someone not to be trusted. On the contrary, a deacon must have an integrity that makes his public reputation for honesty compelling. All of these sides of a deacon’s character must be observable, not just hoped for or assumed to be the case.
Second, a potential deacon submits to the Holy Spirit. The Apostles in Acts 6 sought men who were “full of the Spirit.” Paul requires that they not be full of love for money or alcohol, because drunkenness and greed cannot coexist with the Spirit in a person (Ephesians 5:18). Where alcohol or greed controls a person, the Spirit cannot control him. Deacons who distribute food and drink must allow the Spirit within them to be masters of their own appetites for food and drink. Likewise, all who administer the Church’s finances must not have “sticky fingers.” The office of deacon exists to give away the Church’s resources, not hoard or consume them. A Spirit-filled deacon lives with an open hand to others, not to himself.
Finally, someone under consideration as a deacon must exhibit Gospel thinking. The Seven in Acts 6 had to be men “full of wisdom.” Paul states that the deacons must be faithful in belief and behavior, with a “clear conscience” and proven blameless (I Timothy 3:9-10). Wisdom means a sound understanding of the Gospel and an ability to steer skillfully through life’s turbulent waters. Deacons must have both. Ministers of mercy must know and live the Gospel, exhibit fidelity to it in trial, and know how to meet needs in a way to open a person to the Gospel message and free him to join in the worship of God. A Gospel-shaped deacon lives to share the Gospel with others.
A reputation for integrity, being controlled by the Spirit, and showing faithful wisdom characterize women as well as men. Many women live Spirit-filled, Gospel-shaped lives with generosity and faithfulness. A careful reader may have observed that Paul’s descriptions of an elder in I Timothy 3 always used the pronoun “he,” but his qualifications for the deacon use the pronoun “they.” In verse 11 of I Timothy 3, Paul explains his reason for a difference in pronoun. Unlike the office of elder, the office of deacon includes women. Jesus’ diaconal ministry depended on women (Matthew 22:56). Paul calls Phoebe a deacon (Romans 16:1). And in I Timothy 3, Paul explains that the women in this office must have the same qualifications as men: dignity, integrity, self-control, and faithfulness. They too must be known as self-denying servants who are devoted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Neither the work nor the qualifications are explicitly or exclusively male. The responsibility and privilege of destroying need-based barriers to the means of grace belongs to both men and women who are full of the Spirit and of wisdom.
Paul ends by noting the place where qualified candidates will first exhibit their godliness: at home. In marriage, deacons must be a “one-woman-man”, that is, exclusively faithful to their vows. In raising their children and in other household relationships, these servants of Christ maintain a Gospel-based, Spirit-empowered management, shepherding souls to Jesus. If someone diligently and selflessly meets the needs of others in their own house, they are likely to be adept and faithful at meeting the needs of others in God’s house. “House” in Paul’s usage is much bigger than what we call a “nuclear family.” It includes business partners, employers or employees, servants, even neighbors and friends. In marriage, in child-rearing, and indeed in all interpersonal relationships, a deacon displays a Spiritual drive and Gospel goal.
This is the character of a deacon: a man or woman who is known to be full of the Spirit and of wisdom. A good prospect for the office of deacon is one who already lives a generous life of self-denial at home. Such a person does not abandon the goal of teaching the Gospel nor relying on the Holy Spirit for strength, no matter how tempting or tiring the work may be. Persistent devotion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to the work of His Spirit, qualifies a saint to be a deacon. But, why would anyone want the job?
-- Noah Bailey
Notable Servants of the King in Atlantic Presbytery Churches
Mary Evangeline Metheny
1879-1940
Baltimore & Second Church Philadelphia
My mother, Eleanor Coleman Edgar, was the life-long friend of Teddy Downie, the only child of Janet Downie, a sister of Evangeline Metheny. A story I heard from my mother was this: after World War I, Evangeline had charge of daily distribution of food to refugees somewhere in Turkey. To maintain order, she sat the desperate hungry in rows and kept them in line with a bullwhip. One day three women from Britain visited and were horrified at Evangeline’s methods, so incompatible with Christ’s gentleness and love. Next day Evangeline allowed them to show her how to distribute food with Christian kindness. There was a riot, several men were killed, and the next day, Evangeline did it her way again.
(After my first year of teaching at the American Academy in Larnaca, Cyprus, I thought: “Bill, you should have remembered the story about Evangeline and the whip!” My Greek and Turkish students, heirs of the Ottoman Empire, were reared to respect power. My first miserable year, I tried to merge student input with teacher authority, American style. Anarchy won. The next year, I adopted the role of teacher dictator. Everyone was happier.)
The first of five children born to David Metheny and his second wife, Mary Dodds, Evangeline grew up in Latakia, Syria, and Mersine, Turkey. She could speak, read, and write nine languages: Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Armenian, and Kurdish, along with Italian, German, French, and, of course, English. After her father died, she moved to the States with her mother. From age seventeen to twenty-five, Evangeline belonged first to the Baltimore RP Church and then to Second RP Church in Philadelphia, where her older brother Dr. S.A.S. Metheny was an elder (see A Little Strength, vol. 1, no. 5). For the 1903-04 year, she was a missionary with the Jewish Mission in Philadelphia. A writer, she published several articles for The Hebrew Messenger, a poem in the 1905 Atlantic Monthly, and others elsewhere. Her photo in the Hebrew Messenger reveals a handsome, strong young woman. Then in 1905, Evangeline returned to Syria.
Except during World War I, Evangeline, from 1905-1936, taught in and, after 1919, was headmistress of, a school in Alexandretta, Syria, operated by the Scottish and Irish Reformed Presbyterian Churches. She also traveled to villages in the hills behind Alexandretta, making friends in Arabic, Orthodox, Armenian, Turkish, and Kurdish villages, telling them Bible stories, and sharing the love of Christ. In 1917, she left America where she had gone during the War to join the Red Cross in Palestine as an interpreter. They called her “polyglot Metheny.”
Illness in 1936 forced Evangeline to retire, and she moved to Beaver Falls to live with her sister Janet Downie. She finished Geneva College, and was immediately hired as an English teacher. Following a stroke suffered while speaking in chapel at Geneva, Evangeline died in January 1940. Shortly thereafter, publisher Fleming H. Revell, founded in 1870 by the evangelist Dwight L. Moody, printed her book of stories, North and East of Musa Dagh. The title was inspired by Franz Werfel’s famous 1933 novel Forty Days in Musa Dagh, about the successful Armenian defense in 1915 against the genocidal Ottoman expulsion of Armenians during World War I. (Musa Dagh – Mount Moses – is a 3500-foot high mountain close to the sea, about 50 miles southeast of Alexandretta. It is close to the ancient city of Antioch; a little to the east is Idlib, Syria, the center in our times of much fighting.)
From Evangeline’s introduction to North and East of Musa Dagh:
“The races ‘north and east of Musa Dagh’ – that is, from Alexandretta, the northernmost seaport of Syria [grabbed by Turkey in 1939 and so today a part of Turkey] eastward to the Euphrates – are like one of their own thickets, where bay, myrtle, Christ-thorn, wild roses, holly-oak, styrax, smoke-tree and lentisk, bound together by bryony, brambles, and clematis, inextricably tangled yet distinct, bear flower and fruit in beauty each after its own kind.”
In that region she got to know...
“Alaouites...Jews, both indigenous and refugees from Ferdinand and Isabella; Armenians, the same as the Romans found them to be; Hellenic and Arab Christians, descended directly from apostolic converts; and, greatly predominating, Moslems of all races, Arabs, Turks, Kurds… I have eaten the bread and salt of every race inhabiting the lands north and east of Musa Dagh; let these stories, written to make them known and loved…be the expression of my thanks for kindnesses past counting.”
Evangeline’s book is a page-turner. Once you start it, you will care what happens to twelve-year-old Abla, born to a dancer from Aleppo and a father whom neither Abla nor her mother could identify. Abla ran away from the dance troupe before her mother could sell her, and finally – but I don’t want to ruin the story. (The out of print book can be found at https://babel.hathitrust.org, or can be bought online at the usual places.) Elsewhere in this issue of A Little Strength is an account of Evangeline’s rest one afternoon in the house of a village sorcerer, a descriptive masterpiece evoking the ways of village peoples whom she loved in the mountains above Alexandretta. (Later issues of A Little Strength will contain other pieces that Evangeline wrote in the late 1930s.)
In its report to the 1940 Synod, our Foreign Mission Board wrote:
“Thus Miss Metheny grew to young womanhood among the peoples of the Near East, speaking their language and from her childhood understanding their customs and needs… In gifts of mind and spirit, in culture and education, Miss Metheny must be reckoned in the front rank of those who have served the Master in Turkey and Syria…. Her last testimony is that she loved these people all her life.”
Walter McCarroll, pastor of Second New York and founder of the American Academy in Larnaca, Cyprus, noted Evangeline’s death in the January 31, 1940 issue of the Covenanter Witness: “Our Board joins with the mission boards of the Scotch and Irish Churches in paying tribute to a gallant and heroic missionary.” That she was.
-- Bill Edgar
My Friend the Sorcerer
By Evangeline Metheny
Reprint of Covenanter Witness, 3/27/1935, p. 198
“And when he had turned in unto her, she covered him with a mantle.” -- Judges 4:18.
The east wind that blows day in and day out in our villages and makes the trees lop-sided had been tearing at me for hours as I wandered from door to door, reading here and telling a Bible story there. It was mid-afternoon of a winter’s day and I had been going since morning. Often my story was told out of doors, and my hearers and I sitting in a gale that nearly blew you off your feet. I made for the port of Abraham’s hospitable cottage.
“Sister,” I said to his wife, “spread me a bed and cover me up. I am dead tired.” She laid a rush mat on the earthen floor of the one room cottage, took down a mattress and heavy wadded quilt from on top of some huge basket-shaped wicker bins, spread them out on the mat, laid two far from fresh pillows at the head and called to me to lie down. Warmly she tucked me in and presently the warmth and the sound of the wind lulled me to sleep.
I waked, or half waked, presently and found myself alone. She and her husband and little niece had all vanished. “Where are you all?” I called.
My hostess came in. “We are outside; we thought you would rather be alone.”
“Outside in all this wind and cold? If you are going to leave the room to me, I’ll get up and walk up town instead of waiting for the carriage. Go and call your husband and little Yamany to come in. What? Do I want you all to catch your deaths of cold so that I can be alone?” She called them and they came in and I fell into a still deeper sleep.
When I waked next it was nearly dusk. Not only the family, but a lot of their neighbors were in the room this time. A girl was holding a little fellow of two years upright in front of my host. The wee fellow’s bare toes spread out on the earthen floor. Abraham had a string of beads in his hand that he was passing and repassing around the baby’s ankle. At first I thought it was a game and watched drowsily, the sleep not yet out of my eyes. Then I realized that it was an incantation that was going on. Presently Abraham had someone break an egg in a copper bowl. He inspected it as a Roman augur might have inspected the entrails of a bird to get the omens. Then he told them to throw it out behind the cottage. It did seem too bad when they like to eat eggs and so rarely get them. All the time the little boy was very solemn. Finally the girl took the crushed eggshell to make a charm for him to wear.
Most often when I come to the cottage I find Abraham with some “patient” squatted on the floor in front of him. Abraham asks details about the person, or whatever person he represents, consults two or three greasy books, and writes and writes. Sometimes he consults his beads. Sometimes he knots strings. Paper or knotted string are given to the patient or his proxy and carried off to be worn in an amulet case around the neck, or bandolierwise under the arm.
They come to him to know a lucky name for a new baby. Or there may be a child who cries and cries, or one who is pining. They come to have Abraham change the name and find a lucky one.
A frequent visitor is a Turkoman woman from a village a long way off. She married a man much older than herself for his money. He is very rich, they say. But he is miserly and besides he has some disgusting ailment and she is tired of nursing him in hopes of getting his money. She has no child, so if he dies without giving her his money and property, it will all go to his family. I have been told this tale in very guarded terms, but I understand that the Turkoman woman is trying to get Abraham to write her a spell that will induce her old husband to make over his property to her. Abraham is quite willing to write this charm if she pays him for it. But she seems to want another charm to make the old man die off and leave her a widow. This Abraham steadfastly refuses to do. He doesn’t think it would be cricket.
I lie for a while thinking what a queer business it is that I should be tucked up so peacefully abed in a sorcerer’s house, and that I should be so fond of his wife. Then they say the carriage has come for me, and I throw off the heavy quilt and shake myself tidy, say good-bye and go out into the howling windstorm.
Glad to Be Black
By William Pickens
Reprint of Covenanter Witness, 4/25/1935, p. 268
One year The Congregationalist asked a number of men for what blessing they were most thankful. Among all the answers this from William Pickens, of Talladega, Alabama, a Negro, stood out alone. He was thankful for being black.
“I cannot answer in two hundred words; I could not answer in two thousand words. And yet I might indicate the answer in a single word: I am thankful that I am one of the lowly. That being one of the lowly I have the gracious opportunity of interested struggle if I would rise even a little way. That I was not born on the top of the hill, but must climb. That I have at least a chance to learn the whole way of life, in that the whole way is before me. I thank God that I can have an enlightened sympathy for the lowly, and a faith in the friends of the lowly. That my own experience of the goodness of the men who are up forbids me to say or think that all men are selfish and sordid. Nay, more, that I am learning to look at the worst deeds of my fellowman as sad mistakes rather than monstrous meanness – and that in consequence I hate no man. Pity is more reasonable than hate.
“I thank heaven that I have been born into a great country, where there are great rivers to cross and great mountains to climb – great fights to fight and great problems to solve.
“White reader, I am glad that I am black and that you are white – and that you and I must live in the same country, with the same laws, the same language, and the same religion. In that rare mixture of sameness and difference, of unity and variety, you and I have the most enviable opportunity of all history to help the providence of God in establishing the fact of the brotherhood of man. It is better that you are white and that I am black. The measure of our difference is the measure of our opportunity. If both were white or both were black – ‘if ye love them which love you’ – then our opportunity for reaching toward God would not be better than that of a thousand monochromic civilizations of the dead past. With all our heart thank God that you and I have the peculiar privilege to justify the ways of God to man!”
Should the Cyprus Covenanter Churches Split Into Greek and Armenian Ones?
By William Wilbur Weir
Reprint of Covenanter Witness, August 5, 1931, p.95.
“If the missionaries retire in Cyprus and become simply advisors, and the native Church is given full power, what will happen? No one knows. I venture only two guesses. The Greek brethren would have a cross put on the church. Why not? Isn’t the cross the sign of the Christian religion? Doesn’t that show the building is a church? But how about the worship of the cross? They would risk that. A second thing that would happen; the two nationalities now composing the Church would soon separate. Perhaps they should. But are we forming Churches or clubs? Is a Church worthy of the name if it is founded on national lines because each is jealous of the other nationality?”
Editor’s note on Weir’s questions:
1) Weir’s musings were part of a critique of Roland Allen’s still influential book, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? Allen argued that missionaries should preach and then move on as Paul did, allowing new churches to grow, govern, and support themselves: no schools, no medical work, no mission compounds. His mission experience had been in China, with its ancient and unified language and culture. The Middle East, where peoples, religions, and languages were all mixed together, is where Weir served.
2) A few years after Weir wrote, both Reformed Presbyterian congregations in Cyprus divided along national lines, Greek and Armenian. None of the four resulting churches really prospered in the years following.
-- Bill Edgar
Thoughtful Questions I've Been Asked During the Past Month
1. Charismatic Question: What is the argument for the cessation of the gifts of the Spirit in I Corinthians 12?
a) Someone speaking in tongues, without love, is just a lot of noise (I Corinthians 13:1).
b) Tongues will cease (I Corinthians 13:8). Charismatic gifts did, in fact, cease after the Apostolic age so completely that a mid-second century heresy called Montanism claimed to revive them.
c) Faith, hope, and love endure, and love especially is the mark of a Christian (John 13:35). Private prayer continues, sometimes unable to find words to express what the Spirit in our hearts is saying (Romans 8:26).
d) The most desirable and continuing spiritual gift is prophecy, not speaking in tongues (I Corinthians 14:1-5). Prophecy means to speak God’s Word. With the completion of the Scriptures, the preaching of the Word is prophecy. Before the Bible’s completion, true predictions of the future validated the prophet (Deuteronomy 18:22, I Kings 22:17, 28). God always vindicated the predictive words of his prophets (I Samuel 3:19). Make enough predictions and some will come true, but “prophecy” in today’s charismatic churches that predicts the future is no more reliable than economists’ predictions.
e) When the Gospel first penetrates a new location, or in times of great danger and distress especially, the Spirit may still grant unusual gifts for a particular need. There are many such events through the years. Nevertheless, where the Word of God has gone, Jesus’ parable about Lazarus and the rich man reveals how God normally deals with those who have the Bible. “And [the rich man] said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house— for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’ (Luke 16:19-31).” God is not bound in any age from doing miracles. But making things like speaking in tongues the test of spirituality is utterly mistaken.
2. Baptist Question: After 1689 when they had no ministers, why did the Society People (also called Cameronians, Hill People, or simply Covenanters) in Scotland not choose their own ministers?
a) Like nearly all of the Christian Church through the centuries, the Society People believed that only properly ordained ministers could ordain other ministers.
b) Jesus began this procedure. He chose twelve men to be with him, to send out to preach, and to be his witnesses. They in turn ordained the first elders (Acts 14:23, I Timothy 4:14, II Timothy 1:6). Peter even called himself an elder (I Peter 5:1).
c) Those whom the apostles ordained likewise ordained the next generation of elders (Titus 1:5). Apostolic succession, not Navigator one-on-one “discipling,” good as that may be, is the point of Paul’s instructions to Timothy to teach other men who will be able to teach further men (II Timothy 2:2). The Church follows this plan when it trains and ordains pastors and elders.
d) As with baptism (look up the 4th Century Donatist controversy), the Society People understood that the validity of someone’s ordination does not depend on the spiritual state of those doing the ordaining. Thus, Roman Catholic presbyters ordained most of the first generation of Protestant preachers, such as Martin Luther. Luther would never have set himself up as a minister of the Gospel, or allowed a gathering of Christians to do so.
e) The Society People of Scotland, therefore, waited for a properly ordained minister to join them to have a minister, and then they waited for a second minister to constitute a presbytery, which could then ordain new ministers. Only in this way could they continue the Apostolic succession of elders and so claim to be the true Church of Scotland rather than a mere schismatic sect.
3. Modern Question: Why don’t you use instruments in worship, especially since the Psalms speak of cymbals?
a) For centuries, the Christian Church emphatically did not use instruments in worship. As Thomas Aquinas wrote in the 13th Century, “Our church does not use musical instruments, as harps and psalteries, to praise God withal, that she may not seem to Judaize (quoted in Girardeau, Instrumental Music in the Worship of the Church, 1888, p. 159).” The term a cappella, which in English means simply “vocal music only” means in its original Italian “chapel style” singing. A cappella singing, in short, is Church music.
b) Instruments were for the priests and Levites to use in the Temple sacrificial worship. When animal sacrifice ended with the death of Jesus Christ, so did instrumental music in worship when God gave the gift of his Spirit.
c) While instruments in Temple worship stirred the emotions of Jewish worshipers, the Holy Spirit enlivens the emotions of Christians in God’s worship. Instruments were a “type” of the coming Spirit, now unnecessary. Indeed, when a church without instruments is low in the Spirit, one can hear it immediately in the singing.
d) Church worship imitated synagogue worship, which mimicked Temple worship, but without the sacrifices and all that went with them. In the Church, where everyone is a priest, everyone sings, as many New Testament passages attest (Matthew 26:30, Acts 16:25, Romans 15:9, I Corinthians 14:15, Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16, Hebrews 2:12, Hebrews 13:15).
e) God commands Christians to offer him a “sacrifice of praise (Hebrews 13:15).” Christians offer that sacrifice when they sing to the Lord “chapel style,” with their whole hearts, lungs, and souls. Instruments that professionalize the Church’s music interfere with the spiritual worship of the saints; they are unnecessary; they Judaize the Church’s worship; they should not be used.
-- Bill Edgar
What Happened to Atlantic Presbytery?
Remnant congregations from New York, Vermont, Philadelphia, and New Brunswick-Nova Scotia Presbyteries make up Atlantic Presbytery. Two of the Presbyteries looked shaky in 1900, and two looked strong.
Future Atlantic Presbytery in 1900
# Congregations # Communicants
New Brunswick-Nova Scotia 3 143
New York 15 1,694
Philadelphia 5 612
Vermont 3 132
TOTAL 26 2,581
As the congregations in New Brunswick-Nova Scotia and Vermont Presbyteries weakened, they joined New York Presbytery. Later, Philadelphia Presbytery merged with New York, which was renamed Atlantic Presbytery. Atlantic Presbytery declined in numbers until 1990, and then grew slowly.
Atlantic Presbytery 1970-2016
# Congregations # Communicants
1970 8 404
1980 7 307
1990 6 263
1999 8 310
2010 8 375
2016 10 400
What happened between 1900 and 1990 to reduce membership in our part of the Covenanter Church by nearly 90 percent? The economic basis for rural farming congregations slowly disintegrated after 1900. In Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, members moved to suburbs far from their churches and from one another. People moved west. In a failure of retention, children and sometimes adults simply left and went to other churches, or nowhere at all. The steady in-migration of Covenanters from Ireland and Scotland ceased with the advent of World War I, and the recruitment of new members failed to stem overall decline.
One further factor played the largest role in the decline of Atlantic Presbytery. Many faithful members in these years never married. Those who did had few children. According to a 1916 United States census report on churches, Reformed Presbyterian Church membership was 60 per cent female and 40 per cent male. A 1903 report to Synod estimated that two-thirds of the Church’s members were women. Not surprisingly, a 1914 Synod report on youth groups found they contained 839 women, but only 439 men. One result was a significant number of unmarried women. Alongside people not marrying, family size declined. In 1861, infant baptisms were 6.2% of the membership, that is, one baby per year for every 16 members. In 1920 they were 2.2% of the membership, or one baby per year for every 45 members. (George Coleman, Christian Nation, 1921, 4/27 and 5/4).
The decline Coleman notes varied in different parts of the Reformed Presbyterian Church during the twenty years after 1920. From 1920-39, New York Presbytery recorded 40 infant baptisms and Philadelphia 25. New York Presbytery produced a baby every year for every 79 communicants, Philadelphia a baby for every 76 communicants. Kansas and Pittsburgh Presbyteries, on the other hand, had a birth rate from 1920-39 double that of New York and Philadelphia. In Kansas Presbytery there were 159 infant baptisms, or one for every 40 communicants per year. In Pittsburgh Presbytery, there were 164 infant baptisms, or one for every 37 communicant members every year. Not surprisingly, these two Presbyteries did not decline after 1900 the way Atlantic Presbytery did.
Ordinarily, the Christian Church grows through its own children. One reason for marriage, according to the Westminster Confession of Faith is “…for the increase…of the Church with an holy seed…. (23.2).” Christians want revivals, times when large numbers of people are converted and join the Christian Church. But revivals were rare in apostolic times, and they have been rare since then. Usually, Churches grow by “natural increase.” If young people do not marry, and families have few children, the Church will grow old and decline in number.
What about the retention of our children? The Reformed Presbyterian Church became very concerned after 1900 about that challenge, pouring effort into youth groups, Presbytery conferences such as White Lake, a quadrennial conference, and still other initiatives. These are no doubt helpful, but they cannot substitute for family spiritual vitality or engaging congregations where faith, hope, and love abound. Since 1900, the Atlantic Presbytery not only had an extremely low birth rate; it has also retained few of the children it did have. Even many of the children of pastors and elders went to other denominations, or left the faith completely.
What should be done? Going forward, we need to face our past failure to retain most of our own children; we need to promote marriage and child-rearing; and we need to focus our attention above all else on living our faith in our households and making our churches places where our children grow in faith and love, where they want to raise their own children in their turn.
-- Bill Edgar
Prayer Request
Ask God for our families: 1) that those not having the gift of being single will seek and find godly mates; 2) that God will bless families with many children to raise for the Lord; 3) that each family will worship God daily; and 4) that our children will publicly confirm their baptism in Christ with faith working through love producing lives of hope and service.
A Thank You to Generous Readers
We would like to thank nine of our readers who have made contributions to A Little Strength. Your support helps keep the publication in print, by providing for printing, mailing, and a tiny stipend for layout. None of the authors or editors receive anything. If you appreciate what you read here and would like to help us keep going, send your contribution to A Little Strength, 901 Cypress Avenue, Elkins Park, PA 19027, or click here.
