A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Dr. Dent is currently the Associate Minister at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Cornwall, Ontario. He also serves on the Church Doctrine Committee and is Convenor of Congregational Life in the Synod of Quebec and E. Ontario.
I had nothing to say. I felt nothing coming to mind. I was experiencing a vacuum, a void, an emptiness. Perhaps it was due to the busy-ness of the previous months. Perhaps it was because it was a lovely sunny summer day. Perhaps it was because we had just driven over 5,000 km to get where we were going. Perhaps it was the caffeine I was drinking or not drinking. In any case, I had nothing to say. Nothing to write.
And upon reflection, I believe that this nothingness was the most creative, affirming, non-event that has recently come into my life. When I was a student in seminary, we used to joke about how long the article in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy was on the subject of “Nothing.” It was a real conundrum, an irony that has rocked the great minds of history. “Nothing” really is something.
The nothing I experienced in that moment this summer was really some thing. It was as if for a few seconds I experienced a kind of autism, a disconnectedness. And yet out of this lack of resources within came the realization that God alone can create out of nothing (ex nihilo).
My thesis: Our triune God brings us – brings me – to nothing as preparation for spiritual renewal. The problem in our secularized age is that there is no real need of God. We are sufficient. It is only as we come to the end of our resources, to the means of grace which might be called “emptiness” or “nothingness,” that God births that magisterial, creative work of lively faith.
The Scriptures are full of word-pictures to illustrate the necessity of a fresh start. Genesis 1 is the beginning: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light (Genesis 1:1-3, NIV).
Here God takes the tohu-ve-bohu (“formless and empty”) of our lives and our communities and causes something to happen which never has before. He takes the empty or half-empty state of the self and the community and brings light. Not only light but beautiful, colourful growing things. No matter how you feel about the current state of your congregation’s (and denomination’s) spiritual health, be certain that God wants to do a re-newing where you are.
In C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, in The Magician’s Nephew, the great lion Aslan sings a dark, formless world to life and gives the gift of colour, refreshing water, clean, vibrant air, living plants and animals, and even the gift of speech to some. He sings new life into that place. Some visitors from London and elsewhere have the privilege of hearing that creative new song.
Each of us has the privilege of hearing that same life-bringing spiritual music as our Lord sings it into our congregations and communities. We need to ask God for his light to shine, his music to bring new life, and we need to revel in what we see him doing. I’m not talking about styles of worship music or the status of lighting in the church building. Sometimes we worry about these things, for example, our music programmes, visitation and Sunday Schools and what they do and don’t do. Sometimes we feel the darkness and coldness of some of our people rather than the wonderful warmth and light and colour of our Lord working in our midst to do something fresh and new. This is not newness for newness’ sake, but spiritual life.
Ask God to let you see the work he is doing in your midst by grace. Thank him for what is obviously his creative touch and breath of life. Intercede for those areas and people who need him and may not even know it.
A second word-picture is given in John 3 where the Master’s summarized version of faith is given to a religious leader at night: re-birth. From the darkness (and comfort) in utero to the brightness of the light (and discomfort) of birth. New life. All the wonderful possibilities of a little one coming into the world with all her gifts and abilities. With that birth comes pain and struggle, usually for the people around the one who experienced the change. The spiritual parents and friends are key to establishing a healthy start with God. In building a new and renewed community, many young spiritual lives can have the effect of a pre-school bedlam. Patience and sensitivity to others’ needs will help. Helping something new take place is a costly and painful venture. Renaissance. Huge shifts in life understanding and life-style.
God alone knows the extent of what it cost him to bring the universe into being. We know it cost him his Son. We should be prepared to give of ourselves beyond what we ever imagined before as we seek the renewal of ourselves, our families, our congregations, our denomination and the Church throughout the world.
You are the one God will use to begin such a work in your home, in your congregation, in your workplace, in your town or city, in your nation. “But who am I? I haven’t got anything really special to give. I’m not a leader…” And we hear the echoes of Moses and Jeremiah, the great prophets and leaders of God.
Take Moses for example… But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11). Here Moses asks God in a rhetorical fashion about his identity, when in fact he knew exactly who he was. He was the adopted son of Pharaoh, luckily snatched from death in the river. He was a murderer. He was fugitive from justice and from both his adopted family and his birth parents. He was a hot head. He knew he was running away from his former life. Moses knew his sins, just as you and I do. And God knew Moses’ sins just as well as he knows yours and mine. But there is forgiveness and a fresh start for all who know Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. If we confess ours sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). Moses knew who he was and questioned why God would be able to use him at all. We are like that. But you and I need to trust the Lord to be sufficient to overcome our sins and to minister through us by the power of the Holy Spirit. For the work of renewal and new life is his and he is with us.
Let’s look again at Moses: Moses said to the Lord, “O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue” (Exodus 4:10). Once we sense we are inadequate for the task of leading or enabling a work of God to begin or continue, then we begin to question our abilities. But I’m not as good a speaker as so-and-so. I just don’t have the gifts and abilities to the work the Lord is calling me to do (for example, share my faith, help others grow in theirs, etc.). And on top of this, many who read this have had gifts and abilities questioned or criticized and even maligned. Leadership in the church today is said to be experiencing more overt conflict than ever before. How can we be realistic and objective about our gifts and abilities? How does the Lord use what we have or don’t have?
God is gracious. And we need to remember that we are not alone. We need to depend on each other for our strengths and weaknesses. When a fellow believer is found to be lacking, we need to come alongside him or her and lend our strength to their ministry. In our Presbyterian tradition, we strongly believe in the corporate sharing of leadership between the elders, the minister and other believers who take up leadership roles in the church. But when things go wrong, then individuals are singled out and hurt. Sometimes it’s the minister, sometimes an elder, sometimes a church member or adherent, often all four. But we need to remember, 1) the Lord’s promise of Exodus 4:12: “Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.” God is with you through the worst and the best. He always is there even after all others might be gone. And, 2) he does give you what you need to decide is the best path for his people, his community as well as your own needs. We must make decisions in light of both the congregational and personal needs. The Lord doesn’t destroy one to build up the other. Both go hand in hand. The hard questions need to be heard. The conflict needs to be faced. But in the end, 3) we commit the decision to the Lord. He is the One to whom we all give an account in the end. It is his opinion that matters most. This is important to remember throughout both the struggles and the good times in your congregation. That way the pride of “being right” gives way to the Lord who sees it all. All of us then come to the place where Job was before God, hurting, with nothing to say or boast: Then Job answered the Lord: “I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand over my mouth” (Job 40: 3,4 NRSV).
And what about the prophet Jeremiah: “Ah, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child” (Jeremiah 1:6). Age and experience is sometimes used as a reason to shy away from being an agent of spiritual renewal. But God reminds us that it is his call and his care that sustain us rather than inter-personal reputation alone (sometimes called the “grapevine”). Of course, there is always an interplay between reputation and God’s call. But our calling process of a minister (and hopefully of the elders and other church leaders) is a serious one that we together commit to the Lord. The Lord used Jeremiah in spite of his self-questioning and possible excuse to not serve God. He chose this little one to be his prophetic instrument of renewal. May I be so bold as to suggest that you are such a little one as Jeremiah was. The power of the Holy Spirit in your life must not be under estimated.
You may think you are a nobody, just another person in the pew. Or maybe you’d like to be just a nobody, just another person in the pew, because your leadership energies and creativity are approaching zero. If you feel this way, God has you in that empty spot where his amazing and surprising new beginning can take place.
Feeling at the end of your resources? Wondering if this Church year will knock you over like a thundering bowling ball?
Remember the widow who faced losing her house, her children, her sanity because her husband had died and left her with all kinds of debts because he had gone to Elijah/Elisha’s seminary? (See 2 Kings 4:1-7.) All she had left was a nearly empty tiny jar of oil.
God took the nothing and desperateness of her situation and filled every container in the community to overflowing. That is the reality of the Holy Spirit in an individual. That is the reality of renewal going on in our congregations, in our denomination.
It’s a quiet thing. Just as the widow had closed the doors and it happened in a quiet way, so we must not pretend we are the great ones. We may be little in the media sense. The action here is nothing to take notice of. But in God’s economy, as Francis Schaeffer said, “there are no little people and no little places.”
As God takes you back to “Square One,” as Eugene Peterson says, may you experience the fullness of your lack. What will God do, if we think we can bring about his new life by our resources, by our cleverness? As Jesus said, “Apart from me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5).
Nothing will lead us to God. It seems that other wise, we will lead ourselves into fantastically diverse forms of nothing.