Stop Me Before I Turn Into A.W. Pink

 
May 2nd, 2006 by iMonk

Readers interested in an objective view of the life of A.W. Pink should read Iain Murray’s Biography of Pink, which has the virtue of being complimentary of Pink the theologian and teacher, and honestly critical of Pink’s eventual inability to be part of a church fellowship.
The important thing to remember about this post is this: As of May 21st, I am churchless, and at present I am up to my ears in plans to start something in my home, because there is no church within reasonable driving distance that takes seriously very much of what our family believes is important in the life of the church. I’ll be at a local church on Sundays when I am not preaching, but it will not be because I am embracing the theology, worship or missional vision of the place. For myself and my family to find and keep practicing reformation theology, frequent communion, the Christian year, liturgical worship, the public reading of scripture, and much more, we will have to take care of ourselves.
I’ll be at a church that doesn’t particularly represent my own faith journey because I’m following Jesus and I don’t want to turn into A.W. Pink.
So I’m dead center of this post. If any Calvinist wants to write or comment to the tune that I am criticizing someone else inappropriately, know at the outset that is not the case. I’m going to try my best to not be A.W. Pink, because I know how hard it was for Pink to deal with what he found in churches in his time.
The short story is this: After years of speaking, teaching and preaching, A.W. Pink eventually gave up on trying to find a church where he could worship as a member. He came to believe that there were no churches where he could participate or minister in complete support and good conscience. So he stayed home, with his wife, and typed his magazine. He gave up on the church, and while his gift of teaching was magnificent (in the opinion of most Calvinists,) he couldn’t find a single pastor he could support or a single church he could even attend the last two decades of his life. He withdrew and stayed home, writing those books your reformed Baptist church is selling at the booktable.
Pink wasn’t the first or last Calvinist to have this problem. Many of my Calvinistic friends are Baptists, and they aren’t happy with what is available to them in the Baptist churches in their communities. They don’t want to drive two hours to church, and they don’t want to start a church. So they go to this church and that one, never settling in, and never happy wherever they are. They are critical and unhappy with what they hear and experience in whatever typical Baptist church they find themselves in. They listen to their favorite Calvinistic preachers on the radio, they order CDs and DVDs, and they go to conferences. But they aren’t really part of any church, and they could give up going anywhere without much trouble.
Don’t take away the impression that these Calvinists are happy about this situation. They aren’t. They wish that Bethlehem Baptist or Grace Community Church were nearby, or anything remotely trying to move in that general direction. Instead, they are surrounded by churches that sometimes seem to be so different, even so antithetical to their own faith and practice, that it’s difficult to feel they can worship as part of the same gathered people of God.
It doesn’t take a great deal of time to find that this problem is never far from those who take their theology seriously. A well known Calvinistic blogger is dedicated to the task of pointing out the errors of current church movements. Along the way, post after post accumulates more and more names that can’t be trusted to stay within the boundaries of the truth. Seminaries, churches, ministries, and whole denominations are continually proven to be untrustworthy for the discerning Christian. It’s no surprise to hear this blogger admit that he hasn’t had a solid church home for most of a decade, with whole years passing without a church of any kind for the family.
In fact, it is rather remarkable to think of how many Calvinists I know- laypersons and ministers- who relate to either no church, one church, a few media ministries or a handful of like minded churches. To say they tend toward isolation within the fellowship of believers is an understatement. But I’m not carping at them. I thoroughly understand that most of them, given the situation, prefer it this way if there are no churches they can trust, much as Pink prefered his isolation to the problems that come along with seeking out fellowship with those with whom one has serious differences.
I grew up among fundamentalists who had turned “separation” into one of the primary definitions of discipleship. Sitting at home with an open Bible, listening to a radio reverend and criticizing every church in the community for having sold out was considered a fine way to live the Christian life. A.W. Pink’s retreat to the house was entirely understandable. The joke for years was that church splits were the primary way that Baptists started new churches. It wasn’t entirely a mythology, either. Separation has been a specialty of congregational types, with reasons that run that gamut from Bible translation to leadership style to how many visits from the preacher grandma got when her last toenail was removed in an outpatient procedure.
Pink’s separation was more serious. He felt, as do many Calvinists, that he was being asked by most churches to worship a different God; a God without sovereignty or a sovereign salvation. Today’s separationists often cite the flippant, shallow worshiptainment that dominates churches, Christless preaching and addiction to ridiculous trends as the reasons they can’t stay in the pew.
I’m not the one to judge anyone else’s situation. I just know that I don’t want to turn into my own version of A.W. Pink.
When my last Sunday as interim preacher for the Presbyterians ends, I’m going to get a back pew with the Baptists on Sunday morning. And I’ll deal with it. One Sunday in month, we may drive to the Anglican mission in the next county, but mostly I’m going to work on finding a way to preserve and practice the reformation faith that’s dear to me by inviting other folks to come to my home and worship with me. In other words, I’m going to paddle hard and go upstream. I don’t want to go over the falls to the rocks below.
One thing a good strong dose of catholicity has done for me: I believe that Jesus is way happier with his mongrel church than he is the isolation of a guy like Pink. Pink wasn’t in communist China. He was in Scotland. He had options. He just got too theologically picky. His temperament won out over some of the plainer truths of the Bible about Christian fellowship. He took his own theologizing more seriously than he did the Body of Christ, and that’s a mistake.
If you want to announce that all other Christians are apostate and you aren’t, then go that route. The similarity of such a desperate approach to the worldview of the cults is part of the price you pay. If you are sure that your ever increasing list of apostasy is the true path of following Jesus, then the Pink route may be the right one for you.
But if you need the visibility, the physicality, the humanity of the Body of Christ, you need to make some compromises. Perhaps you need to meditate upon this passage (and many others like it) and consider what it must have been like for Jesus to hang out with us for those years of the incarnation. How do you think he enjoyed church?

(Mar 9:19) And he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.”

It’s becoming more and more common for Pink-style Calvinists to cut and run at every mention of Rick Warren or any sermon that fails to take the 5 Points seriously. But I want to present a closing argument for staying in there.
The other day we had “Teacher Appreciation” Day at OBI. One by one, our teachers were called up front to be applauded, cheered and given a Cracker Barrel gift card. Can you beat these benefits at your job? I think not.
One of the teachers is my neighbor, Steve Grant. Steve is a real math teacher. Old school. Hardcore. Tough. Brilliant. Demanding. He loves math. He wants his students to love math.
He’s at a school where more than half of the students probably will struggle to pass first year Algebra at best. He’s at a place where math excellence will be glimpsed only rarely. It has to be frustrating for Steve. He could teach so many other places, but he stays at OBI.
He stays. He is here. He isn’t one of the teachers that bad mouth our students and take off. He isn’t one of those people who have to have it his way or they hit the highway. He stays, battles, keeps at it, makes demands, fails the ones who don’t make it, takes the brilliant ones as far as he can- and there always are some brilliant ones. He is a math teacher, and he’s choosing to make a mark with his life by staying in the battle with us.
I love that about Steve and so many of our teachers. They may get discouraged with what they see and experience on many days, but they choose to stay here, to be part of the community, to nurture and create something that would never exist otherwise. The staying is what matters, because the staying is about the really important things in life and ministry.
This is the choice I’m going to make by going to church where I will probably never hear what is important to me. Ultimately, though, what matters is not my theology, but CHRIST’S LOVE for these people. They are still the people Jesus bought with his life and blood. He loves them. I can encourage, pray, share, teach, hope and stick with them as he does. And I can start something in my house that keeps the fire alive for me and others like me. I can keep paddling against the stream. I can not give up.
Pink was a very smart man, but he imagined that God resembled his theology. He was wrong on that. God isn’t the sum of my theology. We see God perfectly in the person of Jesus. Jesus and the unlovely, Jesus and the sinful, Jesus and the sinful, Jesus and the unfaithful, Jesus and the losers. Jesus with the last, the least, the lost and the dead. Jesus with those whose sins will crucify him. He’s the one who wants that messy, crying woman at his dinner. He’s the one who wants Zaccheus on his team. He’s the one who wants Peter to feed his sheep. It’s Jesus sticking with the Corinthians and the churches of Revelation. It’s Jesus who sticks with me. That’s what God is like. God is like Jesus. Not like A.W. Pink’s theology, as right as it might be.
Pink should have followed Jesus to a church of actual, real, messed up, screwed up, ignorant Christians, and not given up on what Jesus didn’t give up on.

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