Living Churches feature: Kortright Church

A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Robert Bettridge is the pastor of Kortright Church, Guelph, Ontario.

INTRODUCTION

The work and ministry of Kortright Presbyterian Church is barely five years old. It was in September of 1980 that the Presbyterian Church in Canada, the prayers of many individuals, and ultimately the will of God resulted in the planting of a congregation in Guelph, Ontario.

I, as the pastor appointed by the Board of World Mission, have been exceptionally privileged to have been witness to this church’s growth and development. Many people from different walks of life have found their way into the fellowship of this church and professed Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord.

Of the approximately one hundred and fifty persons who have joined the congregation as members in the last five years, about one-third were Presbyterians, one-third were members of other denominations, and one-third were non-Christian or unchurched. Another one hundred and fifty or so adults are quite faithfully affiliated with our church as adherents. In spite of this remarkably diverse and motley bunch, we have seen demonstrated a tremendous degree of unity among the people. This I believe to be a direct result of our church’s intentional effort to love God with all our heart and mind and strength, and to love others as we love ourselves.

This characteristic of love both for God and for people, is one of the most striking characteristics of our congregation. Visitors often comment on the warmth and hospitality they receive.

Love that manifests itself in notes and letters of encouragement, flowers to congratulate new moms, cards sent to those in hospital. The love in the congregation meant a lot to Lynda who was nursed day and night by some of the teens in our church when she was confined to bedrest for several weeks. Love is demonstrated in the meals that are delivered as long as necessary to the families of women who are incapacitated because of illness or childbirth. Love is demonstrated by the members when they join the church and profess their faith. Daina once said that it seemed as though marriage vows were being exchanged between those who were professing their faith and the Lord, and indeed that is what is happening.

People are falling in love with Jesus and learning to love others with regenerated hearts. These warm hearts are manifested in our worship service, in tears, as an individual shares his pain over a loved one’s illness or death. Tears flow freely as another person stands and confesses his sin and asks the congregation to forgive him. Laughter is heard as the lay people share their victories in Christ, such as when people witness of the coming of Christ into their lives, or give testimony of a healing that they have been blessed with. Laughter is heard when the children pile out of their pews and offer their gems of wisdom during children’s story time.

In reflecting on the reasons for why our church has been so blessed with such a wealth of resources, answered prayer and vitality, and of course love, the first thought was that it must be the will of God. Yet God’s desire is that all his people should be living such lives in community, and I wondered why it is that so many of our people who come from other church fellowships, have lamented that their home church was so cold, lifeless, and unloving. Surely God doesn’t love our people any more than anyone else. And surely our own congregation is not anymore sanctified than other churches. Far from it. Our church is very young and immature, and there is a mountain of matters which need to be dealt with both corporately and privately as we seek to be that which God intends for us to be.

Of course it is the will of God that has brought about the vitality of our congregation. Apart from him we can do nothing, but on further reflection, I have concluded that another factor has been that the leadership of the congregation has been very wise. The Session has been faithful at tilling the soil of the lives of our people, and creating an environment which has proven to be conducive to the growth of the congregation in their walk with Christ.

The careful tilling and caring of the lives of people have been instrumental in encouraging the planting of the Lord to take root and flourish. We believe that only God can bring the increase, but like Paul and Apollos we are to play a part in the planting and the watering of the seed.

This process of husbanding the work of the Holy Spirit and facilitating the ministry of the church finds expression in many ways. However, the one aspect of Kortright which I have chosen to highlight in this article is the careful attention paid to developing a structure which will facilitate the work of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus tells of the importance of wineskins. It is essential for wineskins to be soft, supple and responsive as containers of new wine. The new wine bubbles and ferments and churns within and the wineskin container (structure) needs to be able to accommodate the unpredictable pressures in order to be a vessel with integrity. We believe that churches and their structure can, like new wineskins, remain responsive and useful in enhancing the ministry of the people; or like old wineskins, remain inflexible, fixed, rooted and be torn asunder when the Lord’s Spirit begins the process of renewal in their midst.

The church as a vessel of God’s grace to a lost and hurting world is not the grace itself. Only the Holy Spirit can bring about our justification, and our sanctification. But we as a vessel of God’s grace must do everything in our power to be faithful and responsive to the leading of Christ to accomplish his will both in us and through us. It is as we begin to accommodate the Lord and stop insisting that the Lord accommodate us that we discover renewal taking place.

The following outline gives a very superficial, but I believe helpful introduction into the whole process of creating a new wineskin. It will be helpful to keep in mind the picture of a wineskin as an inverted triangle.

In order to remain flexible and responsive to the ever-shifting fermenting of the Holy Spirit’s new wine, a church’s vision must be developed with strategies which will enhance the ministry potential of the congregation. These strategies are born of goals and objectives which are formulated by Session and its advisors (subcommittees). These goals are adopted by the congregation and create a series of milestones to strive towards. (For example of the kinds of Goals first established for the Kortright congregation, see Inset. Please note that the goals must flow from a stated purpose.)

The purpose or lack of one, is a critical key to an effective vision for ministry. So much of the church’s vitality is sapped because we do not know what our purpose is as a church. I remember as a student appointed to serve in a summer mission, when this concept of purpose first became clear to me. I was sitting in on the congregation’s Session meeting. This was a joint meeting between the Board of Managers, the Session, and an official from the church offices in Toronto.

The meeting was called to plan the task of building the church. It started out amicably enough, with some lighthearted joking, but soon degenerated into quarreling, and disagreement, as only sessions and boards can do, as to what their priorities should be. Finally one of the elders spoke out and seemed to sum up the facts. He said:

“What are we fighting about? The building is as good as built. We have the money, we have the land, the contracts are signed. But my question is, what do we do when we get inside the church? Is the church more than a building? If so, what is the task of the church? Why are we building this building?”

He was so right! This congregation had lost sight of its purpose, and all the planning and programming was of no value without a vision of the overall mandate a church must have in order to be effective in ministry. Indeed, without a purpose, the programming can actually begin to drain the energies of the congregation. Without a clear mandate it is all too easy to become involved in business we have no right being involved in.

Tears flow freely as another person stands and confesses his sin and asks the congregation to forgive him.

Another problem of a purposeless church is that the programming, instead of being a means to an end, soon becomes an end in itself, so that instead of offering a worship service (program) to lead people into the presence of Christ (purpose), we offer a worship service, because churches have worship services, and whether or not it is effective is not a consideration, as long as the doors are opened, the hymnals are straight, and the Pastor has his collar on backwards. The purpose is absolutely essential for an effective vision, but it must be a purpose born of sound biblical principles to be a church. The preceding organizational principles are commonly respected in the business world as essential for an efficient and and profitable corporation. The church like any other human organization should respect these principles as valid for managing the structure of ministry in our fellowships. However that which separates the church from all other human organizations and structures is the set of assumptions, of principles on which we base our purpose and goals. It is our principles which shape our values and our life as a church of Jesus Christ.

The following is a brief summary of an extensive study our Session performed over several months one summer.

We believe that all creation belongs to God. But because of man’s sin and rebellion the whole of creation has been polluted and alienated from our Holy Father in Heaven. Into this context God sent Jesus to be the light of this dark world. God also gives power to any who would believe in Christ to become children of God. In Christ we find redemption for all of the disruption created by sin in our life. Those who are adopted into the family of God by faith in the Son of God, receive grace to become more and more Christlike in our life and attitudes. This process we refer to as Sanctification. We, the company of the redeemed, form the body of Christ in the world. We become the church and hold forth the Christ light to a fallen and sin-sick mankind. All who would respond to the love of God in Christ by faith receive grace to become justified and are baptized by the Holy Spirit into the Kingdom of God.

In light of the above understanding of Scripture, it is our conviction that the mission of the church is therefore to work toward renewal, as the Holy Spirit enables. This renewal is to be first of all a renewal of the heart which is accomplished when we establish a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This we refer to as our justification, and it comes to us through the grace of God by the Holy Spirit through faith in Jesus Christ. This new-found relationship with God is deepened through the process of sanctification, and leads to a deepening of our relationship with one another. Our sanctification results in a ripening of the fruits of the spirit and the transformation of our lives by the renewing of our minds. The process of redeeming a world and sanctifying sinners is done solely through the enabling and energizing of the Holy Spirit. Without the power of God enabling Christians to live their lives for Christ, none of our structures would be of any value. Churches would be lifeless corpses going through the motions of religious life, but not having any life of their own. “Unless the Lord build the House they labour in vain that build it.”

 
The value of the wineskin is not the skin itself so much as the wine which it contains. Yet without a proper container to transport and make readily available the wine would not be able to reach us. It would remain remote in some barrel far removed from the average person. The church as a wineskin has a job to make available to a hurting world the love of God for them. Without the church, the gospel would remain remote and unavailable to the common man. Only ecclesiastical ascetic monks would be able to achieve enlightenment. Yet, the church is a wineskin, a vessel for transporting and sharing the gospel of salvation. The business of establishing a structure for ministry which will best accomplish this purpose is the business of every church.

This process of renewal which we are to work toward is fourfold: renewal of the heart, renewal of the mind, renewal of the world, and especially renewal of the church. We have chosen to synthesize the above-stated principle by formulating a purpose statement. A purpose statement should be easy to remember. Ours is printed each week in our bulletin, and serves as a constant reminder for us as to why we are a church. Our purpose statement was developed by the Session after extensive examination of the scriptures, and theological reflection, and prayer. It was then adopted by the congregation. Simply stated our purpose as the Kortright Presbyterian Church is “To Know Christ and to Make Him Known.”

This statement sums up concisely our mandate to renew the church through the process of getting to know Christ, and to renew the world about us by making Him known, to those who are as yet still unredeemed. Every purpose statement should be unique and particular in its application of biblical truth to one’s own specific context. This purpose has served us well as we have attempted to carry it out in the establishment of goals for the specific application of our discipleship.

Several areas of goal setting were necessary and such areas as Christian Education, Worship, Missions, Congregational Life, and Stewardship became channels by which we could direct the relational concepts of renewal. These goals are reconsidered every few years. Not that they would ever cease to be a concern or responsibility but that the exercise of that responsibility does change as the nature of the context of ministry changes.

Each area of ministry was then further developed in light of the above principles and purpose. The process of enabling missions, or stewardship to be realized as objectives were considered and specific tasks were adopted and set into motion. These objectives are administered and managed by the members of the congregation, who are discerned to be gifted and called to particular aspects of the church’s vision for ministry.

The process of renewing a people and a world is awesome. Many churches fail in this process because they are either selfish or self-conscious. Their carnality is demonstrated when they are not open to the possibilities which are ours in Christ. They limit themselves not because of God’s inadequacy but because they can only see their own limitations. Opportunities to exercise faith in God’s sufficiency, and obedience to his calling, are viewed as obstacles and giants to which we appear to be as grasshoppers. Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin, and our churches sin because we are afraid to step out in faith.

Another problem in the carnal church is the limitations placed on the privilege of ministry. One last principle which we seek to facilitate is the priesthood of all believers. Our goals are such that we attempt to incorporate every member of the congregation in some aspect of the ministry. All the cylinders of a car’s engine need to be working for the engine to be effective. All the parts of the body need to be performing their functions for the body to be healthy. And as a congregation we believe the task of effectively working with the Holy Spirit at producing renewal, can only be realized if we work corporately as a community, as a body. Many churches manifest their carnality in their ungodly individualism. Not only do many ministers discourage the laity to discover and implement their own unique giftedness in Christ, but many congregations prefer it that way.

The priesthood of believers is an important aspect of renewal which has for too long been undermined by the professionalization of the ministry. Therefore the Session seeks to facilitate the ministry of each person. I as the pastor have a specific ministry as does each member of the body of our church. It is in this way that we have been in some small measure effective in ministering to a world in desperate need of a healing relationship with Christ and his people.

Many of the most exciting ministries which have been developed at Kortright have been born out of the inspiration and leading of the Holy Spirit in the minds and hearts of the laity.

We have many customary and traditional programs of ministry in the life of our church. These have been energized and given a dynamic vitality by the blessing of God. However, our purpose of getting to know Christ and make him known has been useful in creating a number of exciting and somewhat unique experiences in ministry as well.

In the area of stewardship, we were confronted with the decision of whether or not to hold a bazaar. This was recommended for the purpose of raising funds to help in building a building. Our congregation considered the matter and decided that it would not be right for us to sell our services in the name of Christ, with the expectation of realizing a profit. Our purpose limited us to only those programs which were ministry-oriented and served to enhance our relationship with Christ. In the end the congregation elected to only have free-will offerings as a means of raising funds, and as a means of worshipping God. This was so foreign to the experience of some that concerns were expressed to the Presbytery which resulted in a Presbytery visitation of our church. The Presbytery affirmed the decision of the congregation to put their trust in Christ to provide and the results have not been disappointing. In five years the congregation has developed an excellent level of stewardship for a church our size (our budget is over $100,000) and we now worship in a building of our own, which is able to facilitate the work of our church effectively.

In the area of Christian education, we have determined that the Christian’s obligation to learn does not cease after he/she reaches puberty. Therefore there is a strong emphasis on adult Bible study. As a result we have about a dozen small groups of people studying the Scriptures together each week. This ministry of Bible study has so gripped the hearts of the people that this year the lay people created their own curriculum and recruited leaders for several new studies without the input of the “trained professional” in their midst. I must say at this point that I do find this somewhat threatening at times. As the pastor I sometimes begin to feel redundant and obsolete when I see the laity coming into their own and exercising their gifts in ministry, in ministries which have been traditionally the responsibility of the minister. Yet this is exactly what we have been praying for and it is very exciting and affirming to see it happening.

Bible study has also been a significant means of reaching the neighbourhood women for Christ. Again the lay-people began to work with my wife Nancy at developing an evangelistic outreach to our neighbours through home Bible studies. Our “Ladies Breakaways’” are in several neighbourhoods and engage women from the church with their neighbours in Bible study and discussions about the faith. These women are writing their own studies, training their own leaders, and are effective in leading women into a new or deeper relationship with Christ.

We believe that churches and their structure can, like new wineskins, remain responsive and useful in enhancing the ministry of the people…

It is not just the women who are on fire for the Lord. Five of the men in particular have banded together and created a quartet, “Proclamation”. They have been given a great concern for ministering to the churches within our denomination and have developed a reputation for excellence and zealous evangelism which is well deserved.

It is also exciting to see how the Lord is creating both a concern for evangelism and a concern to see justice served in our world. How unfortunate it is that some churches choose to embrace either one or the other as a cause. A church in the midst of renewal will most certainly demonstrate a growing appreciation for the redemption of hearts and the redemption of our world. Our mission in the realm of justice is well illustrated by the Christian Ethics in Action fellowship group. These are persons in our church who particularly feel called to work for the establishing of a Christian ethic for life in our community. Worship services, community film nights, and weekly Bible study are all aspects of this important consciousness-raising ministry. Another expression of concern for those less fortunate than ourselves is the P.A.C.K. committee (The Peoples’ Assistance Committee of Kortright). We strongly affirm our responsibility to provide for the physical and emotional needs of people as well as the spiritual. In an effort to minister to the whole person, we have chosen to get personally involved in the distribution of food, raising of donations, paying for counselling, medical expenses and utility bills of people in need. We do not believe the church of Christ in Canada can continue to depend on our society or the “Sally Ann” to perform these acts of mercy. As renewal spreads we believe more and more churches will begin to resurrect the Deacons Court, of which our P.A.C.K. committee is a contemporary expression.

One last evidence of the renewal which is manifesting itself in our congregation is in the area of worship. It is astounding to me that people who have such a broad experience and background both within the church and without have been able to attend our weekly worship and find themselves blessed. The worship service is a key element in the structure of our church. It is in the worship service that we seek to remain soft and responsive (like a new wineskin) to the leading of the Holy Spirit in a particular way. I believe that it is this modelling being done in the worship on Sunday which encourages the congregation to strive to be responsive to Christ throughout the week.

Therefore, we have developed a worship service intended to enhance not only our fellowship with God, but also with each other.

Lay people are purposefully invited to share in the service in formal ways and informal. Formally we have them occasionally engaging in almost every aspect of the worship service, including the preaching. Informally we have an opportunity for the congregation to share with each other during each worship service.

We call this sharing time our praise and prayer time, and it usually follows the message. The Praise and Prayer time is used as a time to respond to the sermon, to rebuke one another, to affirm one another, to confess sin publicly, to weep with each other, and to laugh with each other, to manifest the gifts of the Spirit and to bring one another’s concerns to the Lord in prayer. It is here that all of us experience a living demonstration of what it is like to be a member of the body of Christ. The headship of Christ, the mutual dependence on one another in the body, and our mission to the world is effectively illustrated by the spontaneous and lively interactions which the Holy Spirit orchestrates during the worship service. Here again is an aspect of the ministry at Kortright which from time to time makes me nervous. With all this discussion on the importance of structure it must be underlined that the structure must be flexible and responsive to the leading of the Holy Spirit. This means that our structure of the Praise and Prayer time is wide open for anybody to stand and share anything. The potential for what can happen is limitless, and I have often wondered what would happen if we allowed the common people to spontaneously share. My fear has proved groundless as my confidence in the sovereignty of God and the ministry of the body has been affirmed by the mature and insightful manner in which the people have used this opportunity. Occasionally someone shares inappropriately or excessively, but the congregation has proved resilient and caring in their response and are able to see the hand of God at work in the way we respond to these situations.

There is much more that could be shared about the wonderful privilege it has been for me to be associated with this church; I have learned a great deal about the nature of ministry while here. If there is only one thing which you retain after reading this article, please remember this, that it is not God’s will that any should perish. God want to bring renewal to his creation. God has the resources to accomplish that renewal. The World and the Devil are both defeated enemies. They have no power over Christ. Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, even now, and rules his kingdom seated on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

The priesthood of believers is an important aspect of renewal which has for too long been undermined by the professionalization of the ministry.

How sad it is that so many churches are withering away, without experiencing the rivers of living water which Christ promised to us. How especially sad it is when one realizes that the only reason that renewal is being withheld is because of the carnality of the Church of Jesus Christ herself.

This has been painfully made clear to us at Kortright. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary which might be interpreted from the vitality of the fellowship, we have found over and over again how the Holy Spirit confronts our carnal nature, both as individuals and as a congregation. Oftentimes we feel that what renewal is taking place is happening by the grace of God in spite of ourselves rather than because of anything we have managed to do for the kingdom.

Structure and programming alone do not a renewed church make. The programming ideally should be a byproduct of the transformation which is being accomplished in us by the Holy Spirit.

However, as the Lord has been helping us in our efforts to be focused on Christ, his sanctifying love has repeatedly brought us to conviction about our own sin. We have so much more work to do by way of reforming our attitudes, our conditioning, and our behaviour. Our young congregation is very much a product of our world’s ‘‘Me generation”, and we are struggling to mature and adopt a servant mindset. We have a long way to go yet as far as purifying our motives, and clarifying our vision, and regularizing our obedience. Please pray for us that we will be able to resist the wiles of the evil one. Pray that we will not be conformed to this world. Pray that God will continue the process of transforming our lives by the renewing of our minds, and we will pray that together we might light a flame for Christ in the hearts of our churches which will lead to a national, indeed global, renewal of God’s people.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow and praise him for the renewal he is accomplishing in our world today!