Why Randy's Going East - Part 2

Previously, in Part 1, I shared that the EFCA seemed like a good home for us, denomination-wise, and that the particular church we were attending seemed like a very good one. To fill that out just a bit—talk about a family-friendly church. Our girls were very well-loved by the nursery workers and Sunday School teachers and it was hard to have to tell them we were leaving when the time finally came to do so. We were in a supportive adult Sunday School class of parents of young children, and enjoyed their company and sharing a little bit of our lives together. I say all this to emphasize that it was not because of the people at our last church that we left it. Quite to the contrary.

Getting back to the “Christian Libertarianism™” (I'm going to trademark that phrase and make MILLIONS!) thing... Looking back on our experience in the EFCA, in my opinion, if you're in a church that does leave a lot of doctrinal specifics up to the parishioner, the church ends up somewhere on this spectrum:

1. No one in the church will be able to agree on much of anything, because of all the differences in doctrinal opinion, and there will be chaos.
2. Everyone in the church will ”get along“ without really agreeing on deeper theological matters, and therefore just have a weak sort of surface unity.
3. There will (mostly) be a unity of doctrinal belief—it just won't be codified.

A sneak-preview of my thoughts on Thirsting for God in a Land of Shallow Wells

Note: All scripture quotations herein are from the New King James Version (NKJV).

I definitely need to and want to do a full commentary on the book, Thirsting For God in a Land of Shallow Wells, by Matthew Gallatin. However, For now I want to just share a few little bits that have really blown me away.

Why Randy's Going East - Part 1

So, following Andrea's series on her backstory of why we're attending St. Anne and are seriously considering becoming Orthodox, I felt it was time to present my perspective. If I don't get around to it now I don't know when I will! Plus I don't think I'll feel like I can write on other subjects until this has been written. So, without further ado...

Where to begin? It is indeed hard to pick a point of beginning. My whole life, in a sense, has brought me to this point. For now, I'll try to stick to what's happened since we've been in Oregon.

OK, so for pretty much all of 2012 (through November, that is) we had been attending an EFCA church. We chose this church for a number of reasons, but a big one was their acceptance of members with a wide variety of positions on what they called “non-essentials”. I have to almost chuckle a bit because the EFCA, in attempting not to make doctrinal statements about certain issues, does so anyway by calling them “non-essentials”! But to be fair, they essentially hold to generally Reformed Evangelical theology.

Why was this “Christian Libertarianism” so attractive to me, you might ask?

Reevaluating Our Beliefs - Part 4

In Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 I (Andrea) have explained three of four streams that have flowed together causing us to explore Eastern Orthodoxy. This will be my final post on how we've gotten here; Randy may give his perspective in other posts. We will certainly have other posts on various theological and practical issues that we hope challenge you, you can learn from and will comment on.

In Part 3 I talked about several ways in which my role as a mother was causing me to doubt our current choice of church. This post will detail one more aspect of childrearing that was making me look elsewhere.

Reevaluating Our Beliefs - Part 3

In Part 1 and Part 2 I (Andrea) discussed the first two of four main threads that have led me (and Randy by extension) to discover and explore the Eastern Orthodox Church.

In choosing where to attend church once we moved to Oregon we found one we thought was perfect. No, we didn't really think it was "without issue" or "without problems." We just thought it fit the bill of:

• On the conservative end, theologically and socially.
• We would not be required to be re-bapatized.
• We could both commune.
• It was not too far to drive.

Other things that seemed like positives included a good balance of contemporary and traditional music in the worship service, established children's programming (i.e. nursery and preschool Sunday School available so we could be free of the girls during both adult Sunday School and the worship service), established community groups/Bible studies we could join (especially important for Randy to make friends in this part of the world).

In researching the theology of the Evangelical Free church we found it very appealing that they espoused "Unity in essentials," allowed for "diversity in nonessentials," and "charity in all." For our Protestant minds, frustrated by the division in the church, this was quite refreshing. God, however, had other ideas.

Reevaluating Our Beliefs - Part 2

In Part 1 I (Andrea) laid the groundwork for the long answer to the question "How long did it take you two to reevaluate your beliefs? It seemed rather quick." I ended saying I decided to see what the Orthodox church had to say about Calvinism and Arminianism. A quick and dirty Google search took me to a forum where the answer to the question "Does the Orthodox church believe something closer to one or the other?" appeared to be they believe both, depending on each individual and his needs and situation. Which is something we'd said, in jest, at the time of the discussion in Bible study. That itself was pretty awesome, actually, since it implied that God's salvation was not just one-size-fits-all (again, I find myself not fitting molds lately, so this was appealing.) ***I have since learned this is not the best way to describe Orthodox salvation theology, but I'm giving the play-by-play, so bear with me.*** Suffice it to say I was intrigued, at least.

Reevaluating Our Beliefs - Part 1

Jamie posed a great question in the midst of the latest Facebook dialogue about Orthodoxy. He asked, "How long did it take you two to reevaluate your beliefs? It seemed rather quick." I (Andrea) thought that was such a great question it warranted a blog post, not merely a FB comment. So thanks, Jamie!

The short answer is "Yes, it was a drastic and quick paradigm shift for us." Attending a typical, evangelical Protestant church for a year; before that being raised in the more traditional but still totally Protestant Lutheran and Presbo churches (that's for you, Scott!); attending thoroughly Reformed GCC. Yep, we were as steeped as we could be in Western, Protestant thought. So to suddenly be considering Eastern Orthodoxy, which is indeed in some ways externally similar to Roman Catholicism, and decidedly neither Western nor Protestant, is definitely eye-brow raising.

The long answer, however, is it has been brewing for quite a while, as described below.
:-)

I can picture it like it was yesterday sitting in one of the GCC Humanities Core classes when the Predestination discussion came up. I had never heard of it before (as Lutherans don't believe it in the same way Calvinists do.) As I learned about it I was always exceedingly uncomfortable. I couldn't fathom God being like that (i.e. deterministic in His sovereignty.) So mostly I just disagreed inside and rolled my eyes whenever the topic came up. For years.

Then we moved back here and I began listening to a Bible teacher who broadcasts on the local Christian AM radio station (comparable to WMHR, for the CNY readership). He is firmly non-Calvinist, but hesitates to call himself Arminian either (which in-and-of-itself I appreciate that he doesn't totally fit one mold or another, as I find myself more and more that way also.) Randy being Presbyterian by heritage I decided I better figure out whether or not I could ever sign on to Presbyterian theology, and predestination/TULIP seemed like a good place to start.

I listened to Steve Gregg's broadcasts and lectures until I was thoroughly convinced something closer to Arminianism made more sense than Calvinism or Lutheranism when it comes to how salvation is procured. This, providentially, coincided with our fledgling Bible study going through Romans. What I had been learning made so much sense I was actually able to articulate it coherently at Bible study without getting flustered or emotional even though I didn't have a perfect answer for every question raised. (Those of you who studied with me before may appreciate how huge this was for me.)

We are blessed to have in our group another history major who now teaches at a local Christian school. In addition to the knowledge and perspective that provides he grew up Pentacostal, grew disillusioned and discovered Lutheranism after college. In our discussions Joe often brings things back to "the early church" and the extant writings dating from the first and second centuries. In this discussion he said, "Well both Calvinism and Arminianism were 16th century ideas so I'd be more interested in what the Orthodox church has to say on the topic." So I looked it up.