I, King Laugh, your brother and partner in the affliction, kingdom, and endurance that are in Jesus, was on the isthmus called Pine County to support my family in its hour of need. I was searching for a church at which to worship, and I took a notion to write in seven Substack posts what I have seen in seven archetypes of disease within the Evangelical churches of this locale: Edifice 69, Outside Baptist Church, Non-Dairy Creamer Bible Fellowship, Leavenedhole First Baptist Church, Presbyterian F.C., Rockefeller Baptist Church, and St. Napoleon Anglican Church.
To the Frozen Chosen gathered in a beautiful old UMC sanctuary, the Tim Keller acolytes gathered in a movie theater downtown, and their white-collar, suburban, professional parents gathered in a building that would not still be standing without substantial financial competence, diligence, and fortitude,
The cold porridge in the UMC bowl is not cold towards God, but it does seem to have forgotten that church is for the sake of man. The rigor of the liturgy is poisoned by the metal shavings of your axe to grind against “man-centered worship” in other churches and is slowly asphyxiated by the mirthless, bone-dry way in which you execute it. The hardest part of speaking to people is deciding what good, true, and lovely things not to say this time—there will certainly be next times, God willing—how to distill the essence of the things that will be said into manageable points, and then conveying those in a coherent way relevant to an overarching theme and the people with whom it is shared. Some choose to exposit, instead—the meat of which still ought to be cooked into edible morsels for the listeners, not crammed down their gullets in raw chunks—but it is a fresh hell to witness someone wade through theological sticky notes for the better part of an hour. If my children aren’t tempted to hate God because they love sin, they might flee the Lord just to escape the pain of having to sit through your sermons, brother!
The hot porridge in the buttery movie-popcorn bowl is not cold towards man, but it cannot nourish him sufficiently because it masks the flavor of God the way that a Long Island Tea masks the alcohol: by taking incredibly distinct spirits and turning them into a drink that has a single, quite unalcoholic flavor. Such a drink seems incredibly refreshing, but it is quite the opposite. So it is that you can have elders who have little wisdom, competence, or character and who cannot even serve the elements without the pastor holding their hands—for he is the only true elder in authority, if equally young and lacking in qualifications—but appear to be soundly governed. Rather than worry about what the Trans person at the coffee shop where you write your sermons would think of them—they aren’t coming to hear them, you silly Billy, particularly since you don’t invite them so much as objectify them to gratify your self-image as humane—or explaining what you are going to do before doing it for each and every liturgical element—for the sake of the imaginary pagan visitors you wet your jammies dreaming about but never verify are present—why don’t you try to do something about the elders “not knowing their Bibles very well”; it is just Totes McGoats wonderful that they “know how to apply the gospel to their hearts”, but the Trans woman’s anal fistula—a complication of the transition surgery—is gonna need a little more than that and your seeker-sensitive sermonizing to know what the fuck to do with her life.
The lukewarm porridge would lose its minds at the pronoun snafu, but that is about the only thing they seem to want to do anything about—well, if you count synchronized anxious whinging doing something. A disgraced former pastor in attendance said it best: “the PCA is a bus where everybody has their own set of brakes”. As a child of a Classical Dispensationalist and an erstwhile student of Biola’s philosophy program, I had thought that most of the criticism of Calvinism was overblown; you have proved me wrong. Do you genuinely believe that the church “making elders”—in other words, discipling everyone to maturity and expecting universal participation in the process in good faith—is a presumptuous activity? Are you waiting for God to drop them in your laps by way of seminary and search committee? If you current pastor’s sermons are so good—and, other than musical curtains to match the drapes, that is all there is to the core mission and ministry of your church—why has no man matured enough in this congregation to do the work? I think that we should look for horses and not zebras, here: it is because he did not actually lead anyone.
The sad truth is that you are as lost as the Baptists, just in a different socio-economic context. You are well ordered, know what you think, execute efficiently, and don’t let your buildings molder. You sing well, generally preach more competently, and handle governance with professional acuity. Baptists tend to be more relationally aware, empathetic, and helpful, but part of the reason you aren’t is that anybody who would stick around has paid their dues at the clubhouse and wouldn’t dream of playing with an untucked shirt. I can tell you that no Baptist church has a sticky note on the computers in the A/V booth instructing the volunteer not to get distracted worshiping Jesus, lest they ruin the experience for everybody else with a slight delay in slide transitions.
When it comes to changing people’s lives, you not only assume that they are going mostly fine but have the stones to say that “Christianity is not about living better lives” because “Mormons can do that”. I suppose your callousness to the plight of the gay Christian is not surprising. Their life is too “messy”, too far from your own experience of everybody mostly thinking the same things, doing the same things, and—most of all—not needing help. You slander those trying to serve the Lord faithfully because you can’t be bothered to read outside the denominational statements on the matter and view questions about its arguments and evidence as an unnecessary and pesky nuisance. Not long ago, I would have thought that you were ignorant because you didn’t personally know or encounter gay people, but gay Christians have shown me the tragic truth that it is far more likely that gay members of the body don’t feel comfortable sharing their sexual orientation with the church for fear of how their brothers and sisters in Christ would treat them. When the leaders of the denomination define desire as sin—thereby condemning Christ in Gethsemane—it is hard to hope for better among the rank and file.
I will stop short of saying that you love the sociological benefits of Christianity more than Christ, but I think that many members do and, based on my conversations with you, that is something that you not only tolerate but attribute to God’s sovereign will. God will hold you personally accountable for each child lead astray by your misguided apathy towards the souls entrusted to your care, and He will not be pulling the Westminster standards or denominational memos out to check your work. Every apathetic man not challenged to step up or out will ride to hell on your dime and pay the entry fee with a pound of your flesh. Do not cling to your temerity to accuse God of what is your fault. Do the work. Disciple. Discipline. Raise up a new generation of leaders and not just pew filling doctors, lawyers, and accountants. There is a Lazarus outside all of our doors, and we have no love for or of God if that poor wretch suffers while we study. Hearken to the words of William Farel to Calvin when the latter man sought, like Jonah, to escape the tedious work of Reformation in Geneva: “May God curse your repose! May God curse your studies, if in such a great necessity as ours you withdraw and refuse to give us help and support”.
The cold porridge ignores the needs of all men to focus on a God who has no needs, the hot porridge ignores the neighbor in the pews to find “better”, needier neighbors in the streets, and the lukewarm porridge finds the people able to hide their needs and tells everyone else to shut the fuck up and leave them alone—in the tacit, decorous way that only wealthy people know how. None of you is seeking and saving the lost, teaching them to obey all the commands of Christ, or doing so in love that would reveal the invisible God thereby. We were commissioned as ambassadors, not bureaucrats, brothers and sisters. We are not God; He is able to BE Lord and Savior without our attention being diverted from the work which He has commanded us to do; it is not humble, obedient, or honoring to God to be so pessimistic about human nature that we won’t listen to what He tells us about ourselves and others or commands us to do in His Spirit: it is hubris. Let us, then, bear His image as human beings and, by His mercy and grace, as new creations destined for glory which no eye has seen nor ear heard. It will certainly be better than anything we build here, so let us work on the temple of the Spirit not made by hands.
Your Paedocommunionist Brother,
King Laugh