As one raised in the Reformed, the Reformed worldview has long been embedded within my consciousness as foundational to my entire way of living and understanding the world around me. However, only recently have I come to comprehend exactly what this Reformed worldview actually is and the full extant of its impact upon my life to date.
While much has been written about the topic, little attention has been given as to the implications of the Reformed world and life view for the area of church planting. The North American church is in the midst of a severe decline of commitment to organized Christianity and is often accused of being utterly irrelevant. In an attempt to reverse this trend, the past decade has seen an increase in interest in ecclesiology; primarily younger congregations are re-evaluating, rethinking, and redefining what it means to “be” church with such terms emerging on the landscape as missional and incarnational. These two terms are staples in the church planting with nearly every church planter adopting them and giving their personal nuance to their meaning.
Even within the Reformed churches – such as our own Christian Reformed Church of North America – missional and incarnational have become the popular buzz words appearing in much of the material published by Home Missions, in the Banner, and in every day conversations among church leaders. As a church planter, it has been impossible for me to ignore the influence of such thinking. Yet there are two questions pertinent to church planting that must be answered: 1) Can the Reformed world and life view accommodate these popular catch-phrases of contemporary evangelicalism? 2) What exactly does a church plant founded upon a Reformed world and life view “look” like?
These are the questions this paper will attempt to answer, albeit rather broadly.
World and life view as a concept is an oft misunderstood term that few people ever think about. However, we are all shaped by a particular world and life view, often unconsciously, that has a profound impact upon our every-day lives. For that reason, becoming aware of our particular world views can often prove to be more beneficial than detrimental.
For the purposes of this paper, I will work the following definition of worldview: “the comprehensive framework of one’s basic beliefs about things” [Wolters, Albert M. Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), 2.] Wolters goes on to explain that the ambiguity of this definition is intentional for the reason that worldview is a rather far-reaching and broad term [Ibid.]. Contained within this one term is all that affects the attitudes, opinions, convictions, and actions of any given person. Within the scope of worldview is religion, politics, morals/ethics, culture, and any number of other areas of study that may lie in one’s background.
One cannot begin to describe the distinctly Reformed world and life view without bringing attention to Dutch politician and theologian Abraham Kuyper. The overly referenced, sentinel worldview statement is from Kuyper’s inaugural address at Free University in which he boldly declared, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” [Bratt, James D. (ed.), Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), 488.].
Kuyper further elaborates on this worldview throughout much of the six lectures that have come to be known as his “Stone Lectures” or “Lectures on Calvinism.” The particular Reformed distinctive that is clearly communicated through these speeches is that “Calvinism made its appearance, not merely to create a different Church-form, but an entirely different form for human life, to furnish human society with a different method of existence, and to populate the world of the human heart with different ideals and conceptions” [Kuyper, Abraham. Lectures on Calvinism (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1943), 17.] Distinct from other church traditions, Calvinism did not emerge as merely one more way of doing church (as so many missional and emergent church leaders emphasize), but as a comprehensive way of looking at and living life.
When properly understood, any attempt to “do” ministry within a Reformed context must be affected and shaped by the Reformed world and life view. In other words, long-established congregations and new church plants must both be primarily concerned with declaring the sovereignty and kingship of God over all areas of life, both religious and secular. Inconsistencies occur when we become more concerned with being attractional, missional, or incarnational than we are with living according the example of the prophets of Baal who ultimately declared, “The LORD, he is God! The LORD, he is God!” [1 Kings 18:39].
Filed under: Christian Living, Church Planting, Culture, Ministry, Philosophy
