COME INTO MY CLOSET! PART 5

Or, Can’t I PLEASE Be a Presbyterian?

The remainder of my time at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School was spent trying to catch up on a ton of things I realized I should have learned a long time before. Things were flying at me from every direction. I was thinking so much that my brain was starting to smoke. (Even my brain was Presbyterian!)

I was still serving as youth pastor at the church in Medinah, IL. An event happened there that would shape my life forever. After I had been there only a month the senior pastor called me into his office and informed me that he was resigning. This was a rather large church which had two morning services. Within days the deacons called a meeting to try to decide what they would do in the interim. Somebody came up with the idea of turning the early service into a kind of youth service. I was shaken from my reverie when I heard the words, “…and Dave can preach at it!” “Now wait just a doggone minute here! I’m a youth pastor. I do youth talks, not sermons!” My protests were useless. I started preaching every week in the early service while they brought in my former professors from Wheaton and other great speakers to handle the second service and the evening services. Talk about intimidating!

In my new Calvinist clothes I had to admit that this was not just bad luck but it was the providence of God! God was doing something that would force me to take a quick one hundred and eighty degree turn. This preaching arrangement went on for a little over a year while I was at TEDS. They finally found a new senior pastor. He was a great guy. I really liked him and he seemed to like me. The only problem was that he couldn’t preach. We soon discovered that he had preached both of his sermons during his candidating week. Before long there were complaints. Then I heard the words of doom, “Hey, why not have him split time in the pulpit with Dave?” If there are any youth pastors or associate pastors out there, let me just say this: If you ever hear these words, RUN! It’s over for you. Your days are numbered. Even I was smart enough to know that.

In the meantime my plans were also being ruined on the theological front. I’ll be brief. My view of eschatology (the end times) was quickly running toward a Presbyterian view. All the futuristic stuff of my childhood evaporated when I began to understand apocalyptic literature. It was certainly prophetic, but it seemed to me that almost all of the prophecies had already been fulfilled by the end of the 2nd century. And the millennium? Gone!

Church government? The church government with which I grew up couldn’t be found anywhere in the New Testament. Being faithful to my oath I decided to try to figure out what I believed about church government. Let’s see…there seem to be elders who are in charge of just about everything. Deacons seem to be in charge of almost nothing other than serving the church. The pastor seems to be an elder who has the gift of preaching and/or teaching. Hmmm. What denomination is most like this? Presbyterian!

That was it! I really was a Presbyterian! I decided to come under the care of the local PCA session and become a PCA church planter. The Presbyterian Church of America was the up and coming denomination with all my pub buddies. I was really excited!

That’s when I had the Lutheresque experience. Remember when Luther celebrated his first mass and sloshed the blood of Jesus onto the altar and he almost passed out as he elevated the host? My moment had to do with baptizing a baby. (Please don’t hate me here.) Thankfully, I wasn’t the one doing the baptism. I might have dropped the baby. In short, I had to go back and study the sacrament of baptism and I was convinced that baptism was for believers. Needless to say, the PCA wouldn’t have me.

Oh well. I’m graduating from an Evangelical Free Church seminary, aren’t I? They’ll have to take me, won’t they? As I sat with the executive minister for the Southern California district of the EV Free and planned where I would plant a church for them everything was sailing along beautifully. As he closed his notebook and told me how glad he would be to see me back in SoCal, he said in passing, “Of course, you are pre-millennial aren’t you?” “No, in fact, I’m not,” I naively replied. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We can’t use you.”

I am a rock. I am an island. And a rock feels no pain. And an island never cries. A man without a denomination. A Calvinist, amillennialist, Presbyterian church government, baptistic mess! That’s what I was. Oh please! Can’t I be a Presbyterian?