Why Start a new Church, in Steinbach (of all places)?

That’s a good question and one we have struggled with for half a year now. However, after thinking about it, praying about it and talking about it for months, we decided, as led by the Spirit, that it was the right thing to do.

Firstly, we live in the area so we want to go to a church where we live.

Secondly, there are no churches in Steinbach or area that are the kind of churches we want to attend or work in. I realize that may be taken as a slam on the churches in the Steinbach area, but hear me out.

Unfortunately, it is our experience that the churches in the area have knowingly or unknowingly crept away from biblical teaching and practice.

You may have experienced this yourself; it has happened to all of us. We’ve been told by church members that the Bible is not relevant to an issue when they say “what does the Bible have to do with this?” They have traded the Word of God for any of the following; dreams and visions, personal experience, the prevalent world view or for their own ability to reason out the truth. But the Word of God is the only infallible way in which God has revealed himself to us. It is our only guide for right and wrong and the only way to know what God wants of us.

These pseudo-christians would say “Yes, but who’s interpretation of the Bible?” implying the Bible is open to interpretation. But the Bible is not hard to understand or interpret, it is just difficult to submit to.

They will say they don’t understand when they simply don’t want to believe it says what it says. They find it inconvenient to accept the truth, or they find it offensive to their world view. They find they can not resolve an apparent paradox and instead of admitting they are imperfect in understanding, (or maybe too lazy to do the work of understanding) they write it off as - “it can’t really mean what it appears to say”. This then becomes their proof that it is hard to understand. It does not fit their world view and whatever does not fit must be discarded as untrue or massaged until it does fit.

The answer of course is simple but extremely difficult: let the Bible create your world view and then see life and circumstances from that perspective, not the other way around.

If this makes you wonder why churches are so different in their theology (if the Bible is easy to interpret), it's because all theological disagreements between churches come down to the following - a rejection of God's Word as our only guide, unfamiliarity with the whole of God's word, bad application of hermeneutical principles (principles of Biblical interpretation), or sometimes just hair splitting over irrelevant issues.

So why not change the churches we are attending or alternately choose a church that is already close to what we believe and work within that one?

The answer to the first question is the institutional inertia. After decades of experience it has become apparent that many “Christians” (who should really be referred to as Churchians) resist any change or any thing that does not look like what they expect to see in a church. You may start to reform a church but eventually the Churchians start pushing back. They want church on their terms, to feel like and sound like what they have come to expect. They don’t want strange people in their church that dress different or have a history. They want their pastors and elders to behave in certain ways and according to their ideas of what a Christian leader should behave like - not a Biblical view, just what they have been trained to expect. They would in truth, be horribly offended by Jesus or any of his disciples but they don’t know their Bibles well enough to know this.

Our churches are structured poorly. Any small group of Churchians can get rid of a pastor when he becomes too offensive to them. In our last church, a small group of people (who thought they held the majority view because they only talked with each other) got rid of our pastor against the wishes of the elders and the majority of the congregation. The elders could have put an end to the take-over but did not want to rock the boat by telling the congregation what was going on. 

It is a sad truth that too many church leaders care more about giving offense than about speaking the truth. They have come to believe being nice and not offending anyone is a higher Christian virtue then speaking the Truth. They have misinterpreted "speaking the truth in love" as "if you can't say something nice don't say anything at all".

They do not know that being hurt or taking offense is entirely under the control of the person being offended and with practice becomes an impenetrable shield against facing the truth. 

Some leaders are also people pleasers and have confused and conflated people liking them with themselves being loving and Christ like. Again they don't know Jesus or their Bibles at all. There is not a chapter in the Gospels in which Jesus is not offending someone and doing it knowingly. He most certainly was not a people pleaser, nor did anyone's opinion of him make any difference in how he conducted himself or what he said.

So to be blunt, if you have a pastor that is not willing to offend powerful people (within the church), you don't have a pastor.

He will not protect you against false doctrine creeping in, he will not protect you from yourself and he will not protect you from each other. 

We want a church with strong and empowered leadership. Leadership who know they are accountable to God for telling the truth and protecting his people. Leadership who are not people pleasers and who know that taking hurt and being offended (from hearing the truth) are shields to be broken, not conversation stoppers. 

If you are familiar with the churches in the area, you will know why we don't fit on that point at all.

Thirdly, moving into a church and changing it from inside, very simply, that would be a sin - a sin we would have to give account for. Even though we are convinced we are right in our assessments of what is needed and  our theology, God has put in place rules regarding authority. We would be working against and trying to subvert existing leaders and God does not permit that under any circumstance. It is rebellion against God, regardless of whether we are 100% right in what we are trying to change.

So we are left starting our own church. Granted we are in an enviable position. We are starting with an experienced and seasoned pastor, who knows God’s Word and will preach it fearlessly. We have an existing experienced elder board in place and we have our doctrine and practices already worked out.

We are Covenant Reformed in our Theology and if you want to know what that means, check out our website http://www.covreformedchurch.org/ . or just think John Piper or John MacArthur. 

We would love to have you join us. Come as you are but don’t expect to stay that way. We want God’s word to change us. The real us, how we think, feel and react – not the way we dress or any of the other superficial traits that have been attached to Churchianity.

Starting August 7^th, 10:30 AM, Fireside Room, Pat Porter Center, 10 Chrysler Gate, Steinbach