Thinking Naughty Thoughts on Church and Why I Think We Need
to Change by Johan Van Der Merwe
With all the moxy of a street preacher, Johan Van Der Merwe
in his new book Thinking Naughty Thoughts on Church opens up about his honest
questions about the church. Growing up
in the church, going through Bible school in the Pentecostal tradition and
having a brother as a minister, Johan has seen the good, bad, and the ugly of
church. The main reason Johan eventually
left the church was because he could no longer stomach ‘all the unquestioned
traditions that have become part and parcel of Western Christian spirituality,
which by implication includes the whole idea of ‘belonging to a local church’
and adhering to all the practices associated with doing so” (25). The rest of the book is Johan’s outlining of
these unquestioned traditions also known as tithing, communion, the local church,
leadership, sermons, church buildings, and worship. In turn, Johan asks some really good
questions of the traditional practices of the local church. Some of these questions are on my mind with a
few different ones. The only drawback of
the book is that some of the answers given to these questions are not fully
engaged with reference to biblical teaching, church history, and practice.
Johan grew up in the church, was strongly influenced by his
brother and went to a fundamentalist, Pentecostal Bible College. With these facts in mind, Johan came to a
breaking point with church. The first
chapter relates JVDM’s tension between belonging to a local church and the ‘communal
expressions of faith that are found wanting’ (41). Prior to this statement, Johan gives a
laundry list of his practices including not going to church but meeting with
believers, not tithing to a local body but giving money to charities, and
seeking to find expressions of church, worship and community that are at home in the world but not
hindered by traditional church (39-40). JVDM has a striking way of critiquing the
institutionalism of the church and all its foreign beliefs infiltrating worship
of the true God. He goes onto offer a definition
of the church as ‘a people sharing a common life and a common mission modeled on
the example and empowered by the Spirit of Christ’ (50). Later on in the chapter, he writes, “And what
if this eternal purpose is expressed best, not through creeds and rituals, but
through a common a common life and a common mission mirroring the life, mission
and teachings of Jesus Christ” (71)? I
appreciate Johan’s desire to include elements of community and mission
alongside focusing on the life of Christ as something to be imitated. But, I think he has set his idea of church up
for a quick failure. If we are to value
the life, mission, and teaching of Jesus Christ, what elements of his life are
we to focus on? Furthermore, Johan doesn’t
want creeds included in the definition of church but he has set up his own by
making central the life, mission, and teaching of Christ. Filling out what it means to value the life,
mission and teaching of Christ will inevitably be a return to core theological
and practical commitments.
I appreciated Johan’s insistence that there are some big
problems with the church. He writes, “One,
a singular person or small group of people are charged with most if not all of
the ministry that ought to be the portion of the whole body….the ‘lay people’
consciously or unconsciously begin to outsource our responsibility to others
who have been deemed more qualified than ourselves” (150). This is a huge problem in our churches, not only
with respect to the paid ministers in churches, but also with respect to the
few lay leaders who bear much of the responsibility for the church. People will pull back from taking up
responsibility in the church because this or that person has done it in the
past. I think what might be a problem alongside
the difference between paid professionals and laity is an understanding of the
church as a volunteer organization by many.
What you have with this is people who will help when it best fits their
schedule but often drop off in help after a few months. There is not a sense of serving God, helping
the church live out its mission and loving Christ by serving. I don’t share Johan’s refusal to see
full-time ministers as deserving of their pay by tithing members, but I do
share his concern about radical separation between ministers/laity.
This book was a really interesting read that brought up some
good questions. Unfortunately, Johan
missed many of the major arguments for topics such as church leadership by
failing to go the fount of wisdom, namely the Scriptures. A thorough study of the Pastoral Epistles
gives a reader a better grasp of church leadership and its value than focusing
on other texts.
Thanks to SpeakEasy and Johan Van Der Merwe for the complimentary
copy of this book for review.
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