There is Something Right About Staying - 22
Rooting for the hometown
How does this all get boiled down to church eldership? This way.
Just as in a family, a good father will stay and protect and train and build up and work alongside of the members and things that belong to his household, so will the man who God raises up to take responsibility for holding office in the church.
When we love God we don’t flee from responsibility we learn how to take it on. And it is because God gave us those people and things over which he wants us to be faithful stewards. To drop them, or cast off those responsibilities is to fail God’s trust (at best). At worst it is to defy God.
Ideally, the God-loving man learns responsibility in his youth. He learns to be a dutiful member. If the boy loves God then he knows he needs to love and honor his parents. He knows he needs to learn how to get along with and care for his siblings. He is taught the importance of respect for his grandparents and how proper it is that they are cared for as they age. He learns to be thankful for his roots.
A young man should not be taught, “When you are old enough, don’t stick around here, but go make a life for yourself!” That is telling him that he need not care for the household he grew up in. That is wrongheaded. It is unwise. It is not God’s way. It is to teach him to be selfish.
Of course, there may be instances in which the boy turned man has to walk a different road. It is not his first choice, but God’s call on his life1 will cause him to be geographically positioned on the other side of the country, or continent.2 There are only so many places where you can be a nuclear physicist or engineer rockets.
This geographical separation from the household he grew up in should cause him some heartbreak. Further, this geographical separation should not be a relational separation. God’s calling on his life does not divorce him from his parents, grandparents, siblings or the genealogical family tree.
Yet, it appears, his own house will be built at a distance. Perhaps he gets married and has children and grandchildren. As he excels at his calling, God will surely add to his dominion obligations. Still, God keeps him responsible for mom and dad and others. His heart has stayed connected to them, to his past, for it is the past God gave him.
If the specially called man ends up spending his entire life in a location far removed, then he needs to build up and teach his household to be stayers, there. He wasn’t cut loose to be God’s vagabond. No one gets to be a lone ranger. No one gets the right to self-define. Instead, he must learn what it looks like to love God and the people of his second community.
As it is in the family, so it is in the church. Some may leave to pursue God’s calling, but it should be according to the advice and blessing of the church. And the bond of brotherly love should remain. To leave without these is a sign of selfishness and of heartlessness.3
We are reminded of the two stories of men from the beginning of this chapter. They were leavers, transients, vagabonds. One would leave churches because he was never given a platform to teach. The other left churches because he never invested in the people of the congregation. And so when something got preached that he disagreed with, there was nothing that kept him glued to the church. It was never about how he should treat the people of the church. Such men should not be made into elders anywhere. They think too much of themselves and find it easy to leave.
A man’s calling is not self-proclaimed. It should develop over time and be supported by the family and church authorities God structured into the man’s life. There is a sense in which the young man should seek godly advice and a modicum of permission.
People realize the unnaturalness of picking up and leaving the community of one’s upbringing. This is shown by the high degree of return once the man and his wife have children of their own. They usually gravitate to be near family again.
I’ve known leavers who wanted nothing to do with the church and chose to defy the instruction of the elders. They chose autonomy. They put themselves first. However, I know two men, currently, who I count as stayers, though conditions are not perfectly to their liking in the churches they attend. Both of them disagree with theological points that their church holds. One came in knowing he would not fully agree with his church’s views on baptism. The other grew away from many of his church’s denominational views. His church is pentecostal and he has become Reformed. Both of them love their churches (the covenant people) and realize that there can be differences of opinion and yet God’s love still covers us as we all grow together. I would suspect that if either wanted to leave that they would seek advice and blessing before they did. That would be my hope.