Archive for category: Musings

In the past 25 years, 40 million persons in America (15% of the USA population) who self-identify as “Evangelicals” have left the institutional church. Why is that? And is there a way to “bring them back?” In in their excellent book The Great Dechurching, Jim Davis and Michael Graham, with Ryan P Burge, wrestle with these challenging questions.

In this relatively brief Musing, I cannot adequately address the plethora of helpful insights, backed-up by much data, that is presented in this very informative book. Therefore, what follows will focus primarily  on my understanding of the authors’ reflections on “Belief,” “Belonging” and “Behavior.”

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My desire to understand the truth about all aspects of our world is insatiable. After 40 years of serving as a teacher and academic administrator at four Christian liberal arts colleges, I formulated a description of higher education at its best in just three words: “Conversations Seeking Truth.”

But the goal of uncovering the truth about any given contentious issue has fallen on hard times because of a strong tendency to gravitate toward one of two unacceptable extremes: relativism and tribalism.

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Numerous Christian churches, and their denominations, are being torn apart by an inability to orchestrate respectful conversations among members who strongly disagree regarding human sexuality issues. This is especially true for the issue of same-sex marriage, where the major disagreement is between those who hold to a “traditional” view of marriage (God intends for marriage to be reserved for a man and a woman) and a “non-traditional” view (God will bless a same-sex marriage where the partners make a covenant commitment to love each other for a lifetime).

I will now point my readers to a splendid example of how one church, Covenant Christian Reformed Church (CCRC) in Sioux Center, Iowa, under the leadership of their Senior Pastor, Joel Kok, has modeled a redemptive path in the midst of this current vitriol. My hope and prayer is that this story will inspire many other Christian churches, and their denominations, to replicate the redemptive approach exemplified at CCRC.

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In his compelling book The Last Politician, Franklin Foer asserts that “Politics is … an ethos that requires tolerance of competing truths” (pp. 3-4). He portrays President Biden as tolerant of “competing truths,” which leads to Biden resorting to “old-fashioned politics: deal-making andcompromise.”

Since the words “deal-making and compromise” have fallen on hard times. I will attempt to explain how I believe President Biden is using these words as an expression of his tolerance of competing truths.

I don’t believe that the words “competing truths” mean that here are “alternative facts” about a given issue or situation; a non-sensical idea perpetrated by Kellyanne Conway. There is only “one truth” about the issue or situation at hand. To be sure, only an all-knowing God has a complete grasp of that truth. And the fact that I am not God presents a considerable challenge.

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After eight years of splendid ministry at the church I attend, American Reformed Church in Orange City, Iowa, our co-pastors, Mike and Elizabeth Hardeman, resigned to accept a call at another RCA church in Pella, Iowa. Verlyn Boone was then appointed as a transitional pastor, charged with the task of shepherding our congregation toward the appointment of a new pastor or pastoral team. To inform that search, Verlyn asked members of our congregation to envision “new beginnings” at our church. What follows is my dream for a new beginning, which I shared with the congregation on October 1, 2023

Pastor Verlyn has encouraged members of our church to envision possible “new beginnings” for our congregation. I have a really big dream for one such new beginning; a dream that some would say is impossible to realize.

My dream is that all of us at our church learn how to disagree lovingly and respectfully about our strong disagreements about some contentious issues, such as political affiliation and same-sex marriage; two issues about which I know we have some strong disagreements.

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