I left the church at age sixteen, but I still loved Jesus and wanted to be his disciple. I still read my Bible. I still attended youth group with friends on Sunday nights (youth group never felt like church to me). I just didn’t want anything to do with the church. I concluded that the church was a necessary evil that God tolerated. The church was a tool, not a great tool or a sharp tool, it was more of a blunt instrument that God in his grace condescended to use, even if it did cut poorly and was largely ineffective.
The good news was that when Jesus returned and made all things new, the church would be renewed, which in my mind meant that the church would someday go away. Once the work was over, that tool could finally be put on the shelf and forgotten, and all the better for it.
I was young and arrogant and believed that I alone saw the limitations of the church, where others had not, and so if other Christians wanted to go on limping along with the church, if they were satisfied with a church impotent, then fine, to each his own. But I knew better and I was determined to live a faithful Christian life outside of the church. It was just me and Jesus, and “just Jesus” was just alright with me. But God had other plans. Soon I discovered that my way of thinking was not alright with Jesus.
I finished my last two years of high school only attending youth group, and it was at youth group that I met Darren. Darren was one of the volunteer leaders and he was a recent graduate of Geneva College, a small, liberal arts college in Beaver Falls, PA, connected to the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. Darren was cool. I liked Darren. He was handsome and athletic, he had a mullet and he drove a vintage 70’s Ford Mustang. He also graduated from Geneva with a degree in biology and was a high school biology teacher.
Darren knew how much I enjoyed biology and he told me that Geneva was a good Christian school and that I should consider attending. Neither of my parents graduated from college but Darren knew that I had a capacity for learning and he wanted to see me pursue higher education. My evaluation was simple: 1) Geneva is a Christian school and 2) Darren recommended it. All my boxes were checked.
I knew nothing about the RPCNA, nor how different the reformed world was from my charismatic upbringing, but I would soon learn. In my senior year, I was singularly focused and applied to no other school but Geneva. Providentially I was accepted, but due to financial limitations, I had to defer my acceptance for one year. I was devastated. Instead, I spent my freshman year at our local community college, or “thirteenth grade” as I call it.
That year I continued my studies in biology and drifted farther and farther from the church. I was now in my third year of conscientious objection from Sunday morning worship but as a college student, I was also absent from youth group. My Christian formation stagnated, but I thought, “If I can just hold on, next year I’ll be at Geneva College with other Christians.” Geneva (or just the thought of it) became my proxy church.
I eventually made it to Geneva for my sophomore year. But when I got there, there were three things I had not anticipated encountering. First, I was unprepared for how the school’s commitment to Reformed Theology would confront the semi-Pelagianism I had unknowingly adopted during my upbringing. Contact with Reformed theology produced sparks as what I thought I knew about the faith came into contact with the hard facts of what the Bible actually taught. Second I was not prepared for how the Lord would call me away from the study of biology and into the ministry. Finally, I had no idea that I would meet my wife at college.
Holly Burns was a freshman the year I transferred. As a transfer, I was incorporated into the incoming class. In retrospect, I can see that it was God’s providential ordering of all things that deferred my start at Geneva so that I could meet Holly. By my junior year, we were dating, and I had changed my major from Biology to Christian Ministry.
It was during my sophomore year that I got connected with an on-campus ministry called “Upper Room.” As a junior, I provided leadership through music and weekly planning. I loved Upper Room, and since I wasn’t going to church anymore, it became my new church. I soon discovered that much of my weekly time, attention, and energy were focused on the mandatory Bible classes and on preparing for our Upper Room. I found myself thinking about ministry far more than my labs and biology studies. And the Lord seemed to be blessing the efforts. At the start of my sophomore year, we had eight students at our first meeting, by the end of my junior year, there were close to 300.
I spent the summer between my sophomore and junior years trying to discern if God was calling me to ministry. I spoke with friends and trusted advisors, and I finally came to the decision that would I change my major to Christian Ministry in preparation for graduate studies in theology. Never once did it occur to me that there might be a serious inconsistency between my newly declared major and my resolved disinterest in the local church…that is until I sat down to talk with the school’s chaplain, Rev. Timothy Russell.
Sadly, Rev. Russell passed away on March 30, 2020, from complications arising from Covid-19. I was heartbroken when I heard the news. Ironically, I was in the process of reconnecting with Rev. Russell just before he died. In fact, we texted each other as he lay in his hospital bed, just days before they put him on a ventilator. Rev. Russell died just a few days later. I will never forget Rev. Russell and I will always be grateful for the way God used him to bring healing into my life.
Rev. Russell was the school’s chaplain. He was a large, tall, African-American man. His fingers were like garden hoses and he had a strong and unmistakable voice. He was physically imposing, and he could own a room, but his temperament was gentle. Rev. Russell truly loved students and we loved him, we respected him. That’s why I scheduled an appointment with Rev. Russell to seek his counsel.
Things were getting pretty serious between me and Holly and we were talking about marriage. I was thinking about proposing. It was a big decision and I needed to talk to someone. I asked Rev. Russell if I could see him and he said, “Absolutely.” When I sat down in his office, I shared with him why I was there and that I was thinking of proposing to Holly and I needed some advice. He listened patiently to everything I said. When I finished, I asked him what he thought. What he said back knocked the wind out of me. “Nate,” he said in a serious tone, “where are you going to church?”
After all these years, I can now see that God providentially ordered this meeting. God set me up to address something that was disordered in my life. It was a small campus, and Rev. Russell knew I was skipping church on Sundays, so he took this opportunity to say something to me about it. I remember the feeling that rose up inside me when I heard the question. I was indignant, I was angry, but mostly I was embarrassed. I did not expect the question, and I had no good answer to offer. “Why in the world are you asking me that?” I thought, “That’s not why I came here, that’s not what I want to discuss.” I was offended. He confronted me on the issue I was trying to ignore. I don’t remember what I said in response. I mumbled something. I tried to remind him of my leadership role at Upper Room. He didn’t buy it. Mostly I was trying to say anything I could to avoid the question.
Rev. Russell persisted, in a kind, yet straightforward manner. He told me in no uncertain terms that what I was doing was wrong. “Go to church,” he said, “Go as an act of obedience.” He told me that if I wanted to get married, then the first thing I needed to do was take responsibility for getting myself and my future fiancée to church. It didn’t matter if I liked or disliked church. What was important was the act of obedience and the commitment to a weekly rhythm of faithfulness. He reminded me that church wasn’t primarily about me, it’s about God and that as Christians we go to church because we love God and God commands us to go. If I claimed to love Jesus, then I had to go to church because Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).
The whole encounter was disorienting. I went to see Rev. Russell to get marriage advice and instead, he confronted me on my abandonment of the church. Eventually, we got around to talking about relationships and proposing, but I left that meeting thinking more about church than marriage. Soon after, Holly and I started looking for a church to attend together. It was a slow start, but we eventually decided to worship at Holly’s home church, which was about forty minutes away from campus. It was another charismatic congregation, and I really didn’t like it, but we decided to attend as an act of obedience to God.
We stayed in the church through graduation and were eventually married there.1 And over the remaining two years of my college career, God started a work of rehabilitation and healing. God was restoring me to the church. I couldn’t shake Rev. Russell’s admonition. His challenge to me instigated a reevaluation of values and I began to think more closely about the church, what it is, and why God called it to be. Soon certain convictions about the church crystalized in my mind.
Photo by Brandee Taylor on Unsplash
- Sadly, corruption eventually found its way into this church as well. The health and wealth gospel came to dominate the congregation, creating several divisions within the congregation. Several years after we were married, the pastor of the congregation committed suicide in the bathroom of the church manse. It was believed that he was addicted to painkillers following surgery, having battled debilitating rheumatoid arthritis for years. As the disease advanced it became more obvious that the pastor was suffering physically, and as his body declined it was more difficult to maintain a credible witness to the gospel of health and wealth. I believe the incongruity became too much to bear. Without an adequate theology of the sovereignty of God and the sufficiency of Christ through suffering, Christians are left to despair. Sadly, this “full gospel” church had no good news to offer this hurting pastor. After the suicide, the church declined and a few years later the property was sold to another congregation and the building was converted to an after-school center. ↩︎
The Parrhesians 