Hello Reader,

Do you ever feel the strain of trying to hold it all together? I don't just mean juggling all the challenges of adult life, but a world and culture that feels like it wants to tear itself apart?

I think of that scene from Spiderman: Homecoming, where everything goes wrong on the ferry and Spider-man is left trying to spin his webs between two halves of a ship that are threatening to fall apart. He has dozens of webs stuck to each half of the ship and he sits in the center, straining with all his might to keep it from sinking.

Sometimes that is what it feels like to be part of our world today. I feel it very personally as I try to be faithful and fruitful in my denomination - the Reformed Church in America. Since our annual meeting in June, I have been on task forces, ad-hoc committees, and countless meetings and phone calls trying to hold together what feels like it is threatening to fall apart within my region.

I know some of you have been there. I know some of you are there right now. In this kind of season, I believe we need more people who are willing to have both theological conviction and Christ-like compassion.

If you resonate with that call, I want to offer a brief reflection about what it means for me to hold the Belhar Confession right now that I hope will be beneficial to you.

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Fierce Unity in a Time of Fracture

I have chosen to stay within my denomination, the Reformed Church in America. "Chosen" might be too strong or too weak of a word. I feel compelled to stay. I have been forced in numerous conversations to try and justify my decision. My denomination is changing. Many people have left over the past several years for a variety of reasons -- sexuality, money, authority, discipline, race. Yet I, someone who was not born or raised into this denomination and who holds firmly to a traditional orthodox understanding of marriage and sexuality, feel compelled to stay. Why?

I usually tell my reasons around the vows that I have made before God and the church -- to fight heresy AND schism, to seek those things that make for unity, purity, and peace. However, my reasons are also rooted in the Belhar Confession.

The Belhar Confession of Faith was written in the context of apartheid South Africa. Apartheid was a system of separation and oppression that was instigated and even upheld by strands within my own Reformed tradition of Christianity. This is part of our own history. It began as a pastoral concession to allow the white and black South Africans to come separately to the Lord's Table, but morphed into an entire system of racial oppression.

In this context, the Belhar Confession was written as confession of faith, a call for unity, a rebuke of sin, and a summons to repentance. It was all of those things at once. You can read the whole confession here, but I am struck by one particular section of the confession as it relates to our present day situation.

"that unity is, therefore, both a gift and an obligation for the church of Jesus Christ; that through the working of God’s Spirit it is a binding force, yet simultaneously a reality which must be earnestly pursued and sought: one which the people of God must continually be built up to attain (Eph. 4:1-16)" (Article 2)

Unity is both a gift and an obligation for Christians. It is a gift because we are united to Christ as one body through the work of the Spirit, but it is also something we must work for. Our natural sinful tendency is toward disunity and division. However, the unity of Belhar is not a generic "let's all get along" kind of unity. It is a unity that confronts sin, that faces threats to the gospel (status confessionis), and even issues rebuke and rejections. Yet, Belhar reminds us that we must seek the unity of the church in the midst of these circumstances, not by fleeing from them.

In Apartheid South Africa, disunity would have been easier in the short-term, but the cost would have been much higher over time. The history of apartheid bears this out. The cost born by members of the body of Christ was extreme. This is true of all sin and abuse. Initially, getting out is harder than simply staying in with the way things have "always been."

"Belhar challenges us to consider whether our disunity as a church is actually an attempt to avoid the hard calling of unity and holiness -- of being the church."

Stephen C. Shaffer

Doesn't the difficulty of getting out of situations of sin and abuse actually argue for getting out of a church or denomination that is doing something you disagree with? Certainly there are situations where we should leave, where our conscience is being violated and we cannot live out our convictions without punishment. But even then, the choice is not easy. Belhar challenges us to consider whether our disunity as a church is actually an attempt to avoid the hard calling of unity and holiness -- of being the church.

Separation and disunity seems easier. For many of us walking through denomination conflict and fracture, it seems easier to leave and walk away. I won't lay down judgment on every decision of every pastor and church. However, I will say that our Christian witness requires us to reject choosing between conviction and compassion, between purity and peace, between fighting heresy and fighting schism. Unity is both a gift from God and an obligation for us to pursue.

I stay because I am called to pursue a fierce unity for the people of God. I stay because my own restless spirit wants to take the easy path of going where I don't have to face this particular conflict and I know this is a false peace. I also stay because these are the people God has called me to love, to serve, and to grow as a disciple of Jesus, both correcting and being corrected so that we grow into maturity in Christ.

I will close with something I wrote back in 2021 in Rooted about our temptation to flee when God is calling us to stay:

As a culture, we are tempted to look for something new when things get difficult — Different job, different church, different home. While there may be times where moving on is right, often this masks our restless spirit. People are often less exciting, more mundane, or even more ugly in real life. Disappointed with what we find, we can be tempted to move on. Relationships, homes, work, and church are all are less glamorous in real life than in the photo-shopped images in our heads. Months in, the relationship doesn’t have the same spark as it did on the first date, so we move on. We learn that the house that looked perfect when we bought it suddenly has chipped paint and nail holes everywhere and we grow discontent. We discover that the church we thought was the place where everything was finally going to be right turns out to be filled with sinners just like the last one. So we flee, looking for perfection, but landing only in perpetual immaturity.

Right when we need most to be rooted, to stay with our discomfort, and to listen well for what God is saying to us, we want to leave. We live on the surface instead of setting down and establishing roots. In doing so, we often miss opportunities for growth in Christian maturity. Perseverance is a pathway to maturity. (Rooted: Growing in Christ in a Rootless Age, p. 65-66)

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Rooted: Growing in Christ in a Rootless Age

The soil of our society is not particularly well-suited for growing deep roots of character and Christian identity. The... Read more

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New Videos

I recorded and posted four videos this past month on my Youtube channel. Three were part of my series teaching the basics of the faith through the Heidelberg Catechism ("Catechism Class") and one was a book review of an excellent work on Christian Leadership by Mandy Smith.

Writing Updates

With recording Youtube videos (and a slew of church/school/denominational meetings), my translation work has slowed down a bit, but I have reached 136,689 words for 2024. Thanks for all the support. Once I finish editing Lord's Day 45-52 of the Ursinus commentary, I plan to release it as an e-book, so that we can all grow in our life of prayer before God.

However, though not directly related to my writing, my wife and I had the opportunity to write an article about what God has been doing in our church over the past couple years. If you are interested, you can check it out below. It has been amazing to witness all that God has been doing at Bethel.

All Because of God

Rev. Stephen C. Shaffer & Rev. Olga Shaffer

Read the Article

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