Africa and More

How Salty is the “Salt of the Earth?”

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?

It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.” (Matthew 5:13)

The Role of Confessional Institutions and Traditional Customs of Faith in Preserving Religious Life

I. Introduction

At the end of April, 2007 I traveled with two other Presbyterian pastors to African Bible College (ABC) in Kampala, Uganda. We were invited to do a “Spiritual Emphasis Week” for the small student body there. All classes were cancelled and we gave 14 sermons on First Thessalonians. It was wonderful to meet the students there and to hear about their lives.

Palmer Robertson, the Vice Chancellor of ABC Uganda, is fond of saying that this is Africa’s moment in history. People are very willing to discuss issues of faith, and unprecedented numbers of people are professing faith in Christ. A number of the older students at ABC leave behind spouses and children for months at a time in order to gain an education that will help them to serve the Lord in their land. Refugees from Congo and those who have suffered great loss in Sudan and Rwanda are so appreciative for the opportunity that they have to learn solid theology and to gain an excellent liberal arts education.

While we were there we heard the unwanted loudspeakers at 5:30 am every morning calling everyone to the Muslim morning prayers. But the biggest challenges to biblical faithfulness are not primarily coming from the Muslim minority or from others outside the ranks of professing Christians. The challenges are especially inside the church, where large numbers of people are professing to respond to the call of Christ. Hundreds of thousands gather to hear heretical American “preachers” tell them how to get rich and be healed. Everyone expects corruption in all spheres of life and society, though so many claim to be born again. In this kind of environment, though the revival be ever so genuine and widely felt, it is hard to believe that more than a very small percentage of the church will have anything to pass on to the next generation.

On the way back to New Hampshire, we were able to stop in the Netherlands for several hours and to meet with a pastor in one of the Dutch reformed churches ministering in a village outside of Leyden, the place from which the Pilgrims sailed for New England shores in the 17th century. I was shocked to discover that despite the legendary secularization of Dutch cities, our pastoral tour guide indicated that the situation in his suburban “village” is remarkably stable. There it is a very normal thing for generations of Protestant youth to attend six or more years of catechism classes in order to learn the faith, and to be admitted to the Lord’s Table by about the time they reach the age of twenty. They generally stay within their towns, worshipping the Lord and training up the next generation in the truth of Christ as they have for centuries.

This shocked me. The normal way of life in this man’s village is an amazing story of success in passing on the faith to the next generation – one that we never hear about. On our home turf of Northern New England small outposts of light struggle daily to demonstrate to a skeptical world that the God of the Bible is the true and living God. In at least one quiet village in Holland, structures that help preserve true revival within lasting communities of reformation have been operating for hundreds of years. Prosperity preachers in Africa may get plenty of public attention and fill stadiums today, but unless institutions and customs that support faithful living are put in place to train ministers and congregations in doctrine and godliness, the impact of all the enthusiasm may be barely felt within two or three generations.

It is the purpose of this paper to consider the connection between unusual times of heightened localized spiritual interest, and the formation of institutions and customs of worship and religious instruction. What are the conclusions that might be drawn from Scripture and history for Christian churches and schools today in Africa? What lessons can be learned for the life of the church in New England? What can be done to aid families in passing on faith to many future generations?

II. Life in One Dutch Village

Dean Anderson, a native of New Zealand, received his theological education in Holland and remained there to serve as a pastor in a village outside of the very picturesque city of Leyden. Leyden is today a very secular city. Church attendance is very low. But the situation in Dean’s village is quite different.

My village is Katwijk, 40,000 residents, most of whom are at least a member of a church (and 95 % of churches are one or other Reformed flavour). The largest church is the Hervormde Kerk (formally the state church), approx. 22,000 members spread over 10 buildings. The GKN (Gereformeerde Kerk – synodical, cf. CRC in America) has two large congregations. There is also the Christelijk Gereformeerde Kerk (= Free Reformed Church in Canada) with a sizeable congregation. Other churches are: Herstelde Hervormde Kerk (3 congregations, about 3,000 members), Gereformeerde Kerk Vrijgemaakt (my church, 170 members, = Canadian Reformed Church in Canada), Gereformeerde Gemeente (= Netherlands Congregations, i.e. Rev. Beeke in America), Gereformeerde Gemeente in Nederland, Nederlandse Gereformeerde Kerk, De Stek (a small church along the lines of Rick Warren), Baptist church (very small, not even their own building), a small Pentecostal church, Brethren (a very conservative group).

The Reformed churches (majority) give regular catechism from 12 years to about 20 when, normally, young people would do profession of faith. They sing mostly psalms, some virtually exclusively, and mostly in the old fashioned way (quite slowly, without rhythm).

The mayor of the village also has a theological education, is conservative Reformed and has a preaching license for the Hervormde Kerk. The local council pays for the Reformed youth work of the Hervormde Kerk in the village! (Church and state?)

Indeed, you see here God’s blessings on faithful covenantal village life. Although, the number and variety of churches also show the result of sin (not that secession is necessarily sin, but it arises because of sin). My personal preference would be for the village churches to unite, but this is only feasible if they give up their national ties to denominations. That is not going to happen. And it is in the national ties to sometimes liberal denominations (even if the village churches are conservative) that means that I, for example, could never be comfortable in the Hervormde kerk.

One important factor in Reformed churches is also of course a strong eldership, but you knew that!

Our lengthy layover in Amsterdam on our way from Uganda to Boston was extremely beneficial. It was a most enlightening visit for me. After spending some time thinking about sustaining spiritual life in the context of African villages, here I was suddenly seeing a modern Dutch village with surprising spiritual strength.

(As a side point, the question of an economically sustainable model of discipleship/Christian education for village life in East Africa is a very important one. Institutions such as churches and schools that support parents in their job of training their children cannot continue for very long if they are not economically viable. Could there be something in the Protestant experience in Holland that would be useful for Africa today?)

I first presented some thoughts on these issues in Adult Sunday School in our Presbyterian church in Exeter just days after I had returned from Africa. The congregation seemed interested in Pastor Anderson’s report concerning the contrast between city and village religious life in Holland. They could not help making the connection to our very different environment in 21^st century New England. It appears that a stable, sacramental, reverently worshiping, communal, catechetical approach to the Christian life has continued virtually unchanged in villages like Katwijk for several centuries. This is strikingly different than the New England experience, where Calvinistic Congregational churches quickly lost their savor with the challenge of enlightenment ideas, Arminianism, Unitarianism, and large-scale catholic immigration - but then especially with the disruption of a busy modernity that has commodified American religion. What we are left with in New England is unclear. To catechize the children of the church is to do something odd here. To neglect it in the village of Katwijk would apparently be very odd, at least for the majority of the population that belongs to one of the protestant churches.

I do not wish to present an incorrect account of the struggles of the Dutch people to hold on to orthodox Christianity as if to suggest that this has been an easy thing to do. A 19^th century essay written by Abraham Kuyper, a Prime Minister and founder of a Protestant University makes it clear that keeping the faith in the churches and schools required great diligence. Writing about those who had abandoned the historical confessions of faith (theological/political “Liberals” in his terminology), Kuyper wrote:

This is what they proposed: (1) all clergy were to be educated at state universities; (2) the professors would mainly be recruited among Liberals; (3) synodical administration was to be completely in Liberal hands; and (4) the regulations of the church were to be gradually transformed into a set of rules governing an ethical-religious association without a common Confession. (Bratt, 249)

Kuyper also noted the interest that those who favored a break with Dutch religious tradition had in controlling schools:

To a certain extent the same can be said about education. The Liberals were also unwilling to respect the independence of the School. On the contrary, it was to be a tool and its staff a recruiting-cadre for elections. (Bratt, 250)

While I have not studied these matters and am not pretending to understand the political and religious struggles of 19^th century Holland, Kuyper’s words by themselves obviously suggest that the institutions of church and school were arenas for intense theological struggle.

It would be incorrect to think that the Dutch tradition was one of intolerance. Kuyper’s desire for true freedom is reflected in the earlier Dutch tradition that some scholars contend had a significant impact on none other than the Pilgrims who settled on New England shores two centuries before Kuyper’s day. These English speaking Seperatists sought refuge in Leyden, not far from the village of Katwijk, and they were apparently changed by their stay in Holland.

The 11 years the Pilgrims spent in Holland saw them grow in responsibility, adaptability, and self-government. As Bradford Smith put it in his biography of William Bradford, “The libertarian tradition at Plymouth, with its profound influence on American life, is not primarily English. It is Dutch. Simple justice demands that we acknowledge this . . . . Thus, during their Leyden years, were the Pilgrims perfecting themselves for the undreamed of work of founding a new nation. In religion, they grew milder and more tolerant. In business and craftsmanship they learned a great deal from the thrifty, ambitious and highly capable Hollanders. Too, the Dutch flair for efficient government and record keeping, the spirit of republicanism and civic responsibility were to bear unsuspected fruit in a distant land.”[ Bradford Smith, Bradford of Plymauth (Philadelphia: Lip-pine. oft. 1951), p- 78]

The Pilgrims left Leyden in 1620; William Bradford described their departure in a now-famous passage which later gave the Pilgrims their name: “So they left that goodly and pleasant city which had been their resting place near twelve years; but they knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits.” [William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952. 1982), p. 47.]

http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=1575 : The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty - November 1988, Vol. 38, No. 11, “The Pilgrims in Holland”

By Robert A. Peterson

The tolerance that was apparently part of Dutch life is important for our purposes. The tradition in Katwijk was not maintained primarily by the force of the state, but by some other power that we are seeking to explore. Kuyper rejects the idea of state coercion in establishing a religious hegemony. He sees this as an abuse of state power, fundamentally antitheitical to his notion of “sphere sovereignty.” For Kuyper, the rule of Jesus the Messiah as King of Kings is mediated through human beings and is not wholly entrusted to any one “sphere” of society. He critiques the “Caesarism” of the all-powerful state, considering that to be an evil alternative to a true tolerance and liberty that would allow churches and schools to be something other than the tool of political power. Kuyper insisted that God was sovereign over all, but that the delegation of that sovereignty proceeded not entirely to a single ruler or entity, but was divided among more than one sphere.

But here is the glorious principle of Freedom! This perfect Sovereignty of the sinless Messiah at the same time directly denies and challenges all absolute Sovereignty among sinful men on earth, and does so by dividing life into separate spheres, each with its own sovereignty.

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that His disciples were “the salt of the earth.” Salt has a preservative role. But when salt loses its flavor, it is no good for anything, accept to be thrown out. The imagery He used suggests a world that is in a state of decay, but people of faith who are a part of a new resurrection world are to be different from the world around them, and thus slow the decay of the earth. In some historical situations, despite remarkable beginnings, the salt of Christian witness in a movement or community has quickly lost its savor. In others, such as in the village of Katwijk, the salt has shown an amazing centuries-spanning capacity to retain its saltiness.

The Separatist “Pilgrims” left Leyden in 1620 for northern “Virginia” (actually modern-day Manhattan), ending up instead on the shores of Cape Cod. They were later followed by a larger number of Puritans who firmly established the congregational heritage of New England. The Dutch Reformed faith took hold in the Holland that the Pilgrims left behind. The challenges to New England Congregational life have already been noted above. Dutch religious traditionalists have also faced very significant challenges in the last century. The plan for maintaining diversity in the Dutch environment from the days of Kuyper to the present was called “pillarization.” The idea was to allow separate institutions that reflected diverse religious traditions and customs to co-exist alongside each other, according to the freedom that was to be protected by the State. But this pillarization that allowed the salt to retain its savor has been disappearing in recent years according to one modern commentator, yet the reformed lifestyle lives on in the reformed remnant:

In the last quarter of the 20th century the typically Dutch system of pillarization eroded and has almost disappeared now, but contrary to that general tendency the experiential reformed pillar has grown and is relatively stable. The core of that pillar is in many ways formed by the Reformed Congregations.

By founding their own organisations and institutions the members of the Reformed Congregations and other reformed people who were congenial with them, isolated themselves not only from the secular world, but also from liberal Christian institutions. Of course that isolation is not absolute, but on several fields that were directly related to their belief system. In that way they created a social sphere of their own, that helped to sustain (especially for young people) the plausibility of the experiential reformed doctrines and life style.

The total group of experiential reformed people in the Netherlands amounts between 250,000 and 300,000. That number was more or less constant during the last decades. The relatively high birth rate compensates the undeniable losses to the secular world and to other less orthodox Christian groups.

Especially in the last decades Dutch society became more and more secular. That makes a great difference from the period before 1960 when the religious parties had a majority in the Parliament and Christian schools, newspapers, trade unions and several other organisations on a religious basis had an important place in society.

At the moment influential groups in society and in politics not only see orthodox religion as something outdated, but also as dangerous for the security and the welfare of a liberal society.

They primarily look at Muslim fundamentalists, but they also criticise the conservative protestants, especially those in experientially reformed circles. They promote a heavier control of religious schools and put up for debate the government subsidies for that kind of education. The SGP already lost a large amount of the government subsidies for political parties. This also happens to the youth organisation of the Reformed Congregations (and other churches).

As a result of this development, members of the Reformed Congregations and other congenial groups feel themselves as an isolated and uncomprehended minority, only tolerated in the margins of modern society. But not only in society the position of the Reformed Congregations is an isolated one. The same can be said about their position in the ecclesiastical spectrum. They don’t participate in any national or international ecumenical organisation. (“How to Cope with Modernity?” Chris Janse)

The on-line source Wikipedia cites the following demographics:

According to the CIA World Factbook,[1] as of 2002 the religious makeup of the Netherlands was 31% Roman Catholic, 13% Dutch Reformed, 7% Calvinist, 5.5% Muslim, 2.5% other and 41% none. However, according to a survey[2] done in 2006, 25% of the Dutch people are Christian, 3% adhere to another organised religion (Judaism, Islam, Hinduism etc) , 26% are 'unbounded spiritual' (individual spiritual beliefs, agnosts, etc), 26% are non-religious (moderate) humanist and the remaining 18% are non-religious non-humanist.

Whatever else can be said of the struggles of the remaining reformed minority in Dutch villages like Katwijk, one cannot help but be impressed with the doctrinal, sacramental, and ethical continuity that allows a minority community to live as a full participant in modernity while maintaining vital religious traditions of Christian continuity. Here we do not have an Amish-like rejection of modern life, but a confessional and behavioral life that makes historic Christian faith and morals plausible to each new generation of young Christians.

III. Confessional Christianity

Much of modern Christianity is almost entirely experiential. The Dutch tradition did not reject the vitality of Christian spiritual experience, but along with other reformed groups insisted that the experience of Christianity needed to be governed by confessional statements that were designed to function under the authority of Scripture. These were not replacements for the Bible, but systematic summarizations of the Bible, useful for doctrinal clarity and especially for teaching. In the Dutch tradition, the written confessional documents of the church are called the “three forms of unity” which are the Belgic Confession (1561), the Canons of Dort (1619), and the Heidelberg Catechism (1563).

For our purposes the Heidelberg Catechism is the most significant. This document has been of great importance to the week in and week out life of worship and instruction in reformed homes, schools, and churches. Organized into 52 sections, the catechism was read through in its entirety every year. The person who faithfully attended worship every week would gain a strong familiarity with the unifying Christian doctrines within the larger covenant community. The question and answer format was very useful for memorization, family discipleship, and church instruction for those who were preparing to publicly profess their faith in order to be admitted to the Lord’s Table.

This final matter was a major part of the Dutch Reformed life. The doctrines of the faith were thoroughly taught and considered over a number of years before someone took his place among the number of adult professors who communed at the Lord’s Table. Admission to this sacrament was not precisely tied to the proof of saving faith but to the willingness, knowledge, and capability of taking on the adult responsibilities of that profession of faith. Having a vital confessional core tied to the congregational Christian experience of worship and instruction, particularly when linked to the admission to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, is a powerful tool in keeping the content of faith before the community of believers as a normal part of the life of faith. Without a strong confessional component to Christian experience, a movement of vital Christian life can quickly give way to a new generation of spiritual decline where the pillars of doctrine-based Christianity are not so much explicitly rejected as simply forgotten or ignored.

IV. Seasons of Revival

This is not to suggest that experience is unimportant. Throughout history seasons of religious revival have had surprising impacts on many lives. In Acts 2 we read of an amazing openness to the message of Christ that came from the work of the Spirit of God. Jerusalem quickly became filled with homes that served as worship and teaching centers. Later in Acts 19 we read of a similar amazing work of God through the ministry of the Apostle Paul in the city of Ephesus. So many people heard and embraced the Christian teaching of Paul that the makers of little idol statues became enraged because of the decline in their business. We call this kind of major move of openness to God and His Word “revival.”

Revival is testified to not only in biblical accounts, but in the pages of history. Christian and non-Christian observers alike are forced by the data to admit that something extraordinary took place in America between the years of 1730 and 1760. Yet by the time of the American Revolutionary War, church attendance had returned to low levels. The heat of revival did not last, and the confessional institutions and customs that might have preserved spiritual vitality for centuries were not sustained.

In our day, we read credible accounts of revival not so much in Western countries, but in many other places around the globe that have been enjoying a special moment of Christian interest and enthusiasm. One such place is East Africa, where one commentator points to a beginning of this special season in the interactions of two men in 1929:

September 1929 was an all-time 'low' for Dr Joe Church, missionary in the tiny East African state of Rwanda. The country had just experienced the most terrible famine; his fiancee was ill in Britain and he feared she would not be passed fit for service in Africa, and he had just failed his first language examination. Worn out and discouraged, he decided to take a break in Kampala, the capital of neighbouring Uganda.

Joe Church stayed with friends on Namirembe Hill and on the Sunday morning walked up to the cathedral. Outside it was an African standing by his motor-bike. His name was Simeoni Nsibambi.

'There is something missing in me and the Uganda church. Can you tell what it is?' Simeoni asked Joe.

The two men spent two days studying the Bible and praying together. In a subsequent letter home, Joe wrote. There can be nothing to stop a real outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Rwanda now except our own lack of sanctification.' Both men were transformed and Joe went back to Gahini in Rwanda a new person. Immediately conversions began to take place, and Christians started to confess faults and resentments to one another. Forgiveness was experienced and broken relationships restored.

The East African Revival had started. From Rwanda, it spread to Uganda and Kenya. Its effects have been more lasting than almost any other revival in history, so that today there is hardly a single Protestant leader in East Africa who has not been touched by it in some way. (New Dawn in East Africa: the East African revival, January 1, 1986)

This kind of revival cannot be manufactured by man, but is presented in the Bible as the work of God, who alone gives such extraordinary growth (1 Corinthians 3:7).

V. Institutions and Customs of Reformation

What is to be our response to such a movement of God? Is there some standard of belief and life that the Christian church is to be rooted in, thereby being continually “re-formed” back to a given pattern, even after extraordinary times of enthusiasm may fade? This is what is implied by the word “reformation” in the heading above. Is the church to be an evolved and forever evolving entity, or is it to have a given core that it must continually come back to, thereby making it reformed and ever reforming?

If we return to the example of unusual growth in Ephesus under the ministry of the Apostle Paul and others, Paul’s final speech to the leaders of the church in Ephesus in Acts 20 is instructive. Also helpful is First Timothy, written to Paul’s younger associate who had been left in Ephesus for the appointing and training of elders. We can also consider Paul’s letter to the churches in Ephesus that we know of as the Epistle to the Ephesians.

It is very clear that Paul was urging upon these church leaders that they continue in the doctrines and the ministerial example that they had been taught by him and had observed in Him. He does not suggest any possibility that they would avoid troubles from outside the churches and even from within their own number. In fact he assures them of the opposite – they will face trials. In the expectation of dangerous and challenging days ahead he commends them to a stable God and to his unchanging word of grace. He encourages them to stick with the pattern of life and biblical teaching that they have seen and received.

In First Timothy we hear of troubles in Ephesus from those who presume to be teachers who need to be urged not to teach any different doctrine (1 Tim. 1:3). The letter ends with an instruction to Timothy that he must “guard the deposit” that has been given to him (1 Tim. 6:20). It is clear that there must be some understanding of the faith that is stable and given, by which innovations are tested. Courageous, gifted, and tested leaders are central in both Acts 20 and First Timothy, not to be agents of spiritual innovation, but as guardians of a godly heritage. False messages and bad religious habits are treated as fables and myths that would corrode the good deposit of gospel truth that has been given once for all time.

The churches in Ephesus needed to be firmly established in God’s Word and leaders who held to approved doctrine were to be identified, trained, and installed with the manifest approval of the church (I Tim. 3:1-7). Teaching the followers of Christ was seen as the essential way of continuity for the churches, and that teaching was measured against some fixed deposit of “sound words” (1 Tim. 6:3) in accord with standards of godliness that had been received.

Confessions of faith are nothing more than approved understandings of “sound words” by which all teaching and behavior is tested. If individuals teaching and living against such standards are not to be countenanced, certainly institutions and customs that are corrosive to the deposit of biblical faith and practice would not be permitted to have free reign in the important task of Christian discipleship (Matthew 28:19). The Apostle writes to the Ephesian churches directly urging them not to be tossed about “by every wind of doctrine” (Eph. 4:14) and making sure that fathers in every church household understand the obligation that they have to bring up their children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” By now we should have a good sense that this body of truth that is used for the Christian nurture of the young is not thought by Paul to be an evolving and variable matter of choice, but is some fixed content of gospel doctrine and life that is to be known and passed on as it has been received.

This must involve all the tools that the church has been given for the fulfillment of this ministry including sacramental practices, formal and informal systems of instruction and worship, and systems of leadership in families and throughout the entire body of believers. The expectation is that everyone will “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Eph. 4:15) and that this will happen from speaking and living the truth in love within Christian community. As stable biblical truths and approved practices of worship and life are passed on from generation to generation, institutions are defined and customs of family and church life become rooted in the practice of a people who claim to be ruled by the Word of God. This work of continual reformation seems to be the Bible plan to keep the church true to her Savior and Lord.

VI. Revival and Reformation

Now that we have briefly explored both revival and reformation, we can consider the logical possibilities of the absence or presence of either or both of these things. First, what if there is revival but no reformation? What can we expect when there is a time of unusual Christian gospel interest and openness (revival) without institutional investment and customs of worship and life in accord with a fixed revealed truth (reformation)? Without the institutions and customs that define a certain type of life as normal, we can only expect that challenges to biblical truths and behavior will begin to take hold, perhaps very quickly, within the life of a faith community. Much of the earlier life of faith will soon be forgotten.

What if we see significant efforts of reformation at a time when there are no remaining signs of revival? It is easy to see that vigorous efforts at the establishment of new biblical patterns will appear very odd to the prevailing culture of the church, since she has already been so thoroughly conformed to the patterns of the world around her (Romans 12:1-2) without perhaps having any recognition of her poor spiritual condition. Some faithful churches and schools may be established as a remaining witness to the world around them, but without a major move of God’s Spirit, there is little reason to think that people will be willing to redefine cherished assumptions of identity, belief, and behavior that would allow them to embrace new ways of life that seem strange even to the remaining Christian community in such a place.

In the third place, we can easily dismiss the no revival, no reformation option. Here is a community and church at peace in its own worldliness, without even the thorn of small efforts of biblical faithfulness suggesting another way.

The final logical alternative is the combination of a time of revival coinciding with or immediately followed by solid works of reformation before the effects of revival have completely evaporated. Here we have an opportunity for a Christian community that can be distinctive for centuries with a saltiness that will not quickly lose its savor, as we considered in the case of the little village of Katwijk.

VII. Conclusion

In East Africa today there has surely been a lengthy time of revival, but will solid works of reformation be accomplished? It would appear that time is swiftly running out. The pace of heresy and corruption seems swift as rogue preachers fill stadiums with the promise of miracles. Now is the hour to invest in institutions of learning that are tied to solid doctrinal and ethical foundations. These institutions must be able to weather future decades of political instability and must be economically viable in a place of much poverty and disease. Here we still have the possibility of fruitful village life that could yield centuries of stable godliness in families, churches, schools, and in the community customs that define the lives of millions. But this will not happen without courageous, ethical, and doctrinally sound African leadership.

What about the world of Exeter, New Hampshire in the beginning of the 21^st century? There is no particular sign of widespread revival here today. What can praying Christian ministers and churches do in this environment where biblical living seems implausible to so many? God alone is in charge of the future, and he calls His servants to labor faithfully at the work of reformation, even when the yield may seem small. Pillarization of a sort is yet possible, though the reformed pillar may seem to be a tiny thread in a sea of non-practicingism. Yet still there are people in need who become aware of sin-sickness, and there are yet those who want a “doctor” who will listen, pray, and teach (Matthew 9:9-13). This is what we must do, entrusting our churches, our schools, our families, and our very lives to the One who is able to establish the work of His own hands.