Seamless Calvinism
The church is largely misunderstood in today's world. Most folks who are not part of the Church don't wake up Sunday mornings thinking, "Gosh, I think I really should go to church today!" This reality is part of what leads many to conclude that evangelism has as its heart the building of relationships.
Along with this relational orientation of the average unbeliever, or "spiritual but not religious individual," it should go without saying that distinctions among different flavors of Christianity are difficult to grasp. Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestantism--seem like odd, intramural debates to the average person.
Not that the things which distinguish these three great Christian traditions are irrelevant or meaningless. But, it presents a credibility issue. And we're not even talking about different strands within Protestantism, or, dare I mention, strands within the reformed movement of the Protestant world.
All this paints a giant canvas of unintelligibility for many in our society, one in which traditional Christian and Protestant assumptions are no longer valid.
This leads some thinkers and strategists in the church planting world to think and talk in terms of Christians in this country being forced to live more like missionaries than like people at home. As individual Christians live like missionaries, the churches they are a part of become less part of the establishment, and more like missionary outposts in the midst of an alien culture. Such churches are MISSIONAL.
Van Til is famous for articulating a robust viewpoint of common grace; that is, non-saving goodness of God that reflects the Father's orientation of the mercy "of delay" in this season when the People of God await the final consummation of the Ages. Judgement is coming, but this is an age when the rain "falls on the just and on the unjust."
So, when gathering together a new faith community--when church planting--it is important that the stout theology reformed Christians are known for is more like the skeleton of a beautiful figure than the armor on a warrior. It is what gives form and structure to our whole beings, rather than what people have to penetrate in order to find out who we really are as persons.
I think of this as Calvinism without the seams. That being so, let's get dressed!
