Welcome to #ATLT, At the Lord’s Table: A Conversation, a series of over 50 posts from varying authors about the beautiful, mangled Church. Look for at least two new posts every Monday through Saturday between January 25th and February 22nd. Join us in the conversation? See you in the comments.
I’ve been in church my entire life. I grew up in a non-denominational church (read: charismatic/pentecostal but doesn’t want the heat that comes with embracing the denomination) until I was 20. Then I began attending a First Baptist Church where God breathed life into me. Ironic, given that many of those I knew at my old church would consider this a “spiritually dead” church. Yet, that is where God chose to make me spiritually alive, or at least finally feel that way.
Through conversations with the discipleship pastor I became exposed to Calvinism for the first time, not just the doctrines of predestination and election (which I adamantly railed against for months prior to meeting this pastor) but Calvinism as a whole. Through his constantly, lovingly kicking my legs out from under me showing that I didn’t really know what I believed, or why, I became obsessed with studying Scripture to prove this “Calvinism” to be the devil I felt it must be. Oddly enough, the more I searched Scripture, the more I came to agree with and love Calvinism. The more I understood about the Doctrines of Grace (and I still don’t fully understand them), the more I came to love Christ and His Scriptures.
Currently, I’m a covenant member of The Village Church, where God never ceases to change my heart in ways I’d have never expected through means I’d have never anticipated. One of my good friends, Mike, is the young adult minister at Northplace Assemblies of God, so from time to time it’s my joy to worship with them as well.
So, I’m a Calvinist who loves worshiping both with my home church, which embraces the Reformed doctrines, and an Assemblies of God church, at which many people would argue against them. And here I stand: a Reformed Christian who speaks in tongues, prays prophetically, embraces Complementarianism, and loves Mark Driscoll writing a blog for Preston, who probably disagrees with at least half of what I hold dear. Where do we find the grace to worship with each other, converse with each other, and love each other despite such drastic differences? The Table.
The one thing I’ve come to learn over the past few months is that God’s grace is much, much bigger than I can ever imagine. Grace is quiet and subtle, and it is violent and fearsome. But grace is also all-sufficient. When I take communion with my home church, it is not the common doctrines or practices which unite us, but the broken body and blood of our Savior those elements represent. When I worship with a church that I probably disagree with more than agree with (on the whole, not the young adult ministry itself), it isn’t political correctness that allows us to worship in the same place without offending each other. In that moment, I find that all the denominational differences are drowned by the blood of Christ, and the doctrinal differences somehow fit together and are made whole by the broken body of our Savior. It is in this remembrance that we find unity, peace, grace, and love.
It is in this remembrance that we find true beauty: that God would die for a bunch of people like us who just don’t quite get it yet, and never will until we reach eternity with Him.
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read the post before this one, here.
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Don Sartain
Reformed guy who loves Jesus. Member of The Village Church. Single for His glory and his good. Writes about Theology, the Bible, and life application at TransformingWords.org. Trying to be missionally driven.
© 2012, Preston. All rights reserved.
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