A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Calvin Brown is the Executive Director of the Renewal Fellowship.
Come near me and listen to this:
“From the first announcement I have not spoken in secret: At the time it happens, I am there.”
And the sovereign Lord has sent me with his Spirit.
This is what the Lord says-your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
“I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go.
“If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been a river, your righteousness like the waves of the sea sand, your children like its numberless grains; their name would never be cut off nor destroyed from before me.”
Isaiah 46:16-19
Isaiah reminds us that God is always calling us to come near to him and to listen. It is not uncommon, however, for humankind to run away from him and to cover our ears. At Christmastime we sing “O come, O come Emmanuel” but at times when he actually threatens to show up in untraditional ways we cover our ears and sing the “familiar” carols even louder in an attempt to drown out the new song that God wants us to sing. I am not suggesting that we should not be singing the old carols but suppose for one year the singing of old carols was outlawed by church and state. Would Christmas have to be cancelled? The answer to this question may be the answer, in truth, to another more vital question: is Christmas mostly a time to worship God in the flesh, who has come among us (Emmanuel), or is it primarily a time of religious and family sentiment? Memory is important, and in fact it is a vital part of what makes us human, but if Christmas is primarily about memory, then we are a past tense people and God calls us to also be a present tense people. We are not to be only a people who once listened, but a people still listening. In the sixties and seventies it was in vogue to emphasize all that we could not know about God – that God was mystery, the holy Other and the unknowable. There is some truth in those assertions and they are a guard against arrogant presumption that claims to have a corner on all spiritual truth, but we live in a different age. While many theologians and professors are still beating what has become that boring old drum of uncertainty, they have missed what the Spirit is calling us to be at the beginning of the third millennium. We only echo what Isaiah declares in similar circumstances in his time; from the first announcement I have not spoken in secret: at the time it happens I am there. In times of anxiety and fear in which we live, we have a clear message to proclaim. There is a salvation openly and confidently spoken about – it is not secret – everyone can hear and in it God is present!
We need to recover and reclaim personal and corporate ownership of the great truths of the Reformed faith and then with courage live it…
The message is that God knows how we are to live and what we are to accept as true. Accepting this approach will be humbling and means surrendering our control and self-direction, but the reward is clear – clear from the witness of the past and clear from the promise of the future. If only we hadn’t forgotten that, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in now with such a sad prognosis for our children’s world, declares Isaiah. The peace we have is transient at best and consistent justice is clearly getting harder to find. Nevertheless, there really is hope for our children and that is to seek a renewed life with God. As we fellowship with him our destiny is assured and our future made certain.
What Isaiah tells us is a plan for the Presbyterian Church in Canada today! In February, the national church has planned a one-week “think tank” and I am one of many from across the country invited to attend. We do not need our “best minds” to figure out a better “church mouse trap.” Rather, we need people who realize that we are called to renewal and the only plan with a future is the one God will give us. We need at the end of the week to be as confident as Isaiah in saying, “The sovereign Lord has sent me with his Spirit.” It may not appear that anything “new” in terms of progress or theological approaches has come out of it, but only a sense that we have recovered for ourselves and our children the reality that we are God’s covenant people and he will lead us as we look to him alone for direction. We need to recover and reclaim personal and corporate ownership of the great truths of the Reformed faith and then with courage live it and proclaim it in contemporary forms. If we do, I am absolutely persuaded we shall indeed have “children” as numerous as the sands on the seashore and our name will never be cut off from before God.
This strategy of prayer and listening is the very strategy that our Regional Renewal Task Forces, newly established in the Atlantic provinces and in Eastern Ontario, are being urged to model.
Please give thanks to God for the wonderful provision he gave as I visited the Ottawa, Montreal and Eastern Ontario Region in November. I was well received by the Lanark-Renfrew and Ottawa Presbyteries. The Church Growth Workshop sponsored by the Ottawa Presbytery, that I was theme speaker at, was well attended and well received. I was blessed also by the warm welcome I received from the Principal and students at Presbyterian College. They share many of the concerns about theological education that we, as a Fellowship, and many others in our church do. I had opportunity to share about the work and approach to renewal of the church that the Renewal Fellowship undertakes. Although the devil tried seriously to distract us through various means a few days before I was to leave for Ottawa, and although my vehicle was stolen during my stay in Ottawa and some damage done, the Lord heard your prayers and gave me incredible peace in the midst of it all and eventually the van was recovered.
We are meeting biweekly with the students at Knox College to mutually encourage each other in our evangelical faith and it is indeed a blessing to see the desire for integrity and faithfulness among our students.
Plans for the Annual Meeting to held March 8 & 9/96 at Bridlewood Presbyterian Church in Scarborough, Ontario are moving into place quickly now, and we hope you are praying for the Spirit’s presence there in power, and planning to attend yourself as well. Dr. John Stackhouse from the University of Manitoba is the theme speaker and the theme topic is “New Realities, New and Renewed Responses.” Dr. Stackhouse is recently quoted in a national religious survey by MacLean’s magazine as saying: “There seems to be a cultural exhaustion after the ME decade of the 70s and the ME-TOO decade of the ’80s… Spirituality holds much allure for a society facing widespread economic hardship, political uncertainty and family breakdown… From around the water cooler to the Internet, spirituality is in vogue. People are looking for the transcendent.” Dr. Stackhouse will help us understand where we are positioned as a church, the differences between the church and the world, and finally, the unique place and opportunity a renewed Presbyterian church has in ministering effectively in the current situation. I believe this could be a significant turning point for our church and the Fellowship.
We will also be discussing the proposal to apply to Assembly for “official” recognition as an “autonomous organization” within the Presbyterian Church in Canada.
We will be asked to consider also if we wish to pursue closer ties with Presbyterian and Reformed Renewal Ministries International (P.R.R.M.I), an American Presbyterian Renewal Movement. I have appreciated the opportunity to get to know the staff of P.R.R.M.I. better in the last few months.
I ask for your prayers as I continue to preach at various churches and lead workshops. The next planned workshop, on Evangelism, sponsored by the Presbytery of Waterloo-Wellington is planned for May.