Renovating Holiness: A View from the Dutch Pews (Ank Verhoeven)

Editor's Note: This essay is part of the Renovating Holiness project.  Ank Verhoeven is a pastor in the Netherlands, and this essay reflects a series of dialogs with the people and pastors of Vlaardingen Church of the Nazarene, a church of some 1,700 people. 

Vlaardingen Church of the Nazarene

    Personally, I feel torn.  I love theology; I really do.  I love to talk about it; I love to think about it; I love to study it.  But I so hate how it can divide people.
 
    I just read a discussion on Facebook, of all places, about creation versus evolution. There are arguments to and fro, but all seem to be missing the point of the relationship between God and man.  In a loving relationship people are never testing the words of their significant other to be scientifically true, are they?  It just matters if everything that is significant for the relationship is true, and more importantly, trustworthy.  Why should God’s Word be treated so differently?
    In the present discussion concerning entire sanctification, it is no different.  
There are arguments against arguments, dividing people more than unifying them.  In my opinion, that should never be the purpose of the discussion.  Is the Church of the Nazarene not the place where tolerance for differences in interpretation should be most expected and even valued?  I cannot accept the fact that a theological difference could lead to division in our denomination.  That is why I wanted to participate in the project of the formation of this book.
    I put myself to the task of discovering how the people of my own congregation perceive the concept of sanctification, hoping to find points that would bind us, instead of divide us.
    The Dutch are Calvinistic from origin.  A couple of years ago, there was an internet test issued on how much people score on a Calvinistic attitude towards life, and even atheists (and Nazarenes) scored well above 60%.  Calvinism among the Dutch is often characterized by remarks as: ‘If you’re born for a dime, you will never become a quarter,” or “If your head sticks out above the wheat on the field, don’t be surprised if you lose it in the mowing.”  All of these sayings are trying to make sure that you remain a very humble person.  Success is in no way applauded as it is in the United States.  The possibility of being holy or perfect, even in the meaning of John Wesley’s “Christian Perfection” is, therefore, hard for us Dutch to wrap our brains around.

Renovating Holiness Project: Early Responders

Photo by GenBug.

This week Thomas Oord and I announced (here and here) that we are launching the Renovating Holiness Project.  We are inviting Gen-X and Millennial Nazarenes from around the world to revision sanctification with us.  We have inherited the doctrine of sanctification from our grandparents and great grandparents.  In order to make this theological structure work for our friends and children, the whole house needs major renovation.
We thought you might be interested in some of the introductory essays from the contributors who have responded already.  Not a bad turn out after just a few days.  Enjoy.

Erik Groeneveld (Netherlands/Australia):

The topic of my doctoral thesis is 'a practical application of a Wesleyan theology of love in decision making processes' (working title). I build my thesis on Tom Oord's approach of love and on the Government Network Theory (GNT) I came across during my Masters of Public Administration. What Essential Kenosis and GNT ties together is a relational way of decision making, instead of top-down decision making. In GNT-language, the pastor (as representative of the church board) should take on a position of 'network manager', embedded in the congregation, intentionally engaging with different voices and opinions to take these into account when a decision needs to be made. 

My field research among the Australia and New Zealand clergy shows that too often church boards or pastors consider themselves capable enough to take decisions, leaving out opinions and feelings of the congregation. Obviously, in the end the church board needs to take a decision. But my hypothesis is that when the congregation had the opportunity to engage in the process leading up to the decision, they feel acknowledged and valued. It is an expression of love when this opportunity has been given intentionally and not randomly. 

My idea is to leave out the technical language in the essay and spice it with some interesting quotes (anonymously of course) from pastors I interviewed.

Ryan Giffin (Pastor & PhD candidate, Kentucky)

I would like to explore Paul’s theology of holiness as simultaneously individual and communal, and the potential his theology has to renovate our understanding of holiness in a way that is more faithful to the teaching of the NT and more sensitive to the world of Millenials and Gen Xers. Historically the Church of the Nazarene has emphasized individual aspects of holiness. While crucial, Millenials and Generation Xers are more interested than previous generations in relational and communal aspects of holiness. Paul’s theology holds both together in ways that honor our past and embrace our present.

Rick Lee James (songwriter, Ohio)

I would love to write about how the monastic tradition informs our discussion of sanctification? Thomas Merton has been a real influence on my understanding of holiness through books like 'No Man Is An Island', 'Contemplative Prayer', and 'Life and Holiness.' There is a real communal understanding of holiness in Merton's writings which is directly passed down from his monastic roots that I find helpful to the discussion of holiness for the Nazarene Church today. 

Gracias! - Review

Last week I took a spiritual retreat up to the mountains of northeastern South Korea (just below the border).  While there, I picked up a Nouwen book out of the monastery library.  Nouwen has been my most common spiritual director on retreats down through the years.
Gracias! did not disappoint.  It was full of profound cultural and spiritual insights which I needed to hear.
Gracias! tells the story of Nouwen's six month sojourn in Bolivia and Peru in the early 1980s while he was attempting to discern whether he was called to serve in Latin America.  If you think back about your world history, Latin America was a mess in the 70s and 80s.  For hundreds of years Latin America was ruled by European colonialists and their grandchildren.  Native Americans and people of mixed ethnicity were poor, uneducated, and deeply oppressed.  The fair skinned ruling class wanted to keep them that way, but around mid-century, the poor slowly decided that they didn't want to stay poor.
The Catholic Church - by far the largest religious group in Latin America - took a "preferential option for the poor" and assisted them in developing their lives through education, health care, better farming, better saving, social organization, healthier diets, etc.  Gustavo Guiterrez was developing and teaching his now famous - Liberation Theology - at this time.  As the poor gained knowledge of their human rights and hope that enabled them to shed fatalism, they began to push for reforms.  As the reformers were first ignored, then punished, then brutally persecuted, reform slowly merged into revolution.
And - given the power dynamics of wealthy nations, USA vs USSR, democracy vs communism - all of these issues in Latin America were set in the light of communism versus everything else.  80-90% of Latin America was poor at that time, and anyone who sided with them or helped them risked being labeled as communist, leftist, destabilizing, disruptive problem-makers.  The result was mass persecution of the Catholic Church whenever and wherever it openly assisted the poor.  People began to disappear.  The martyrs began to be counted by the dozens, then hundreds, then thousands and tens of thousands.
It is in this milieu, Nouwen was considering a life among the poor in Latin America.  A brave question and a brave sojourn.
I learned or relearned three important lessons through Nouwen's reflections.  Some of the most meaningful parts of the book came in his reflections of Gustavo Guitierrez's lectures which Nouwen attended several times.
1. Reform takes time.  I consider myself a reformer, a progressive, someone who is participating in the larger reform of the Church of our time.  I deeply want us to return to our Biblical and Christlike roots as a church, which will - yes - include much more service to the poor, but also much more love for all our neighbors and much more intense commitment to understanding and following Jesus in every possible way and reform in our structures and styles of doing church.  I have struggled with others' resistance, apathy, and lip-service to this reform.  However, observing the Latin American struggle from the distance of space and time encouraged me - oddly.  Their struggle - far more painful than ours - persevered as was largely successful, though it is still incomplete and ongoing.  If they can persevere in the face of persecution and death, I can persevere in the face of complaints or walk-outs.  Also, some of the people in the liberation theology group advised Nouwen that this all takes a great deal of time, that progress is slow, and that it must be done at the pace of the people not the pace of the reformers.  I felt a strong call to perseverance and patience.
2. True reform is deeply spiritual.  Gutierrez lectured on the spirituality of liberation and explained that without maintaining a deep connection with God, we lose the both the heart of love and the will to persevere.  Gutierrez advocated spending time in the "useless" work of prayer and meditation.   Nouwen observed that many of the reformers around him were hostile, angry, and militaristic (at least in words and mindset if not in action).  But the "old fighters" called these young bucks to peace, to patience, to connecting deeply with the Spirit of God, and to working patiently with the people even if that means suffering with the people as the people develop their own desire to further the reformation.  I felt a call to go deeper in my own spiritual life - even if that means less time for "tasks" and "productive" things.
3. Gratitude is central.  Nouwen was deeply struck by the inherent gratitude of the Latin American people.  They view everything as the gift that it is.  Life is a gift.  Food is a gift.  Work is a gift.  Home and family are gifts.  Every good thing we have is a gift from a gracious God.  As a reformer, as someone who deeply wants our world to be better, often I can focus on what is lacking the good that we need but is not yet.  Often I can look at our world as one large bundled collection of problems and deficiencies.  This is an extremely distorted view.  Yes, our world is broken and needs healing.  But even amid our brokenness, God is at work, and God has blessed us with innumerable good gifts.  Despite the dents and the dust, these gifts retain their glorious goodness, and I am - we are - called to celebrate these many gifts at all times and in all places.

The Josh rating: JJJJ.