“The Ordinary Means of Ordinary Outreach: Reaching Our World without Losing Our Way, Part 1: Prayer”

Nick Robison

I became a Christian during the height of the “Young, Restless, and Reformed” movement. What is probably most remembered about the movement was the passion of its members, among whom I counted myself. Passion is a wonderful thing, but it is also a wild thing that caused many of us in the movement to fail to see the dividing wall of hypocrisy that separated our actions from our confession. I was drawn to the movement because of its insistence upon the incomparable grace of God. I grew up in a very legalistic environment (Oneness Pentecostalism), but when I began to listen to the preaching of these “new Calvinists,” my heart was gripped by the love of God. Many of these preachers pointed me to the giants of the Reformed faith, people like C.H. Spurgeon, to whom I am still deeply indebted to this day. I still find bits of his sermon, "A Defense of Calvinism," nourishing my heart today.

Through many of the leaders of the YRR movement, my heart had become gripped by grace. I had been dead in my sins and trespasses but chosen and made alive by grace. I had run to sin but was always pursued by love, and in the fullness of time, grace, that lovely hound of heaven, seized me and made me His own. I had been told a lot about Jesus, but I had never been shown the heart of Jesus—the heart that was pierced not only by the spear of God’s justice but also the spear of His love, for it was the will of the Father to redeem His people, not through their own obedience, but through Christ’s active obedience in his living and his passive obedience in his dying. And God proves His love through the shock and awe of a kind of preaching that always portrays the Son of God as also being the crucified Lamb of God.

But just as Isaac Newton’s third law applies to physics, so it also seems to apply to our hearts: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” My heart had found the beauty of grace, but it responded gracelessly to those who I believed kept such a gem hidden from me. Passion had ironically caused me to forsake the very source of my passion. My heart was made light by grace, but my hands were made heavy with the judgment of others. There was an opposite reaction to what would have been rational: to give the same grace that I had been given.

I say all of this in preparation for a personal confession. I feel the same temptation rising up within me today in my own ministry, especially in regards to church outreach. I am tempted to forsake what I know to be true, in order to pursue what I know we need. I have never been a pastor, or a Christian for that matter, who paid much attention to “church growth.” The “seeker- sensitive” church movement never really appealed to me. In my Christian life, I have always felt that I was naturally predisposed toward the regulative principle of worship and church life. Through the Word, the Lord Himself has given His church her commission, to go out and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, and teaching them all that her Lord has commanded. But Christ does not leave it to the church to figure out how to do that. He has given us both our commission and the means by which we seek to carry out that commission. And I find it funny

that we call the commission of the Lord “great,” while at the same time we call His means “ordinary,” but they are only ordinary in the sense that they do not vary. If we are to make disciples for Christ, then we must disciple like Christ, by becoming rooted in the means that He has given us: Word, prayer, and sacrament. It is when the church is faithful in her exercising of those ordinary means, that God is pleased to bless His church with seasons of great fruitfulness.

But I feel a great passion rising up within me for the church and for the communities surrounding her. I see communities that desperately need the grace of Christ, and I see a church and a denomination that are desperate for the grace of reaching that community. I am still very new to the ARP. I was born, raised, discipled, and ordained in the PCA, and knew relatively little about the ARP church before I began to discern a call to become the pastor of Salem ARP. When I began my research, I was shocked to find that Salem, despite sitting just east of the Mississippi River, is very much on the frontier of the ARP. Although I am sure that this has never been an official position of the ARP, it does seem to be the case that the denomination has adopted a more organic principle of church development, opting to focus on “ingrowth” rather than “outreach.” By “ingrowth,” I am referring to the principle of making disciples of our children and family, and there is nothing wrong with this. It is a beautiful thing, and consistent with our core covenantal beliefs summarized in God’s great promise to Abraham: “I will be a God to you and to your children.” (Gen. 17:7). But even though a strong argument could be made for the primacy of ingrowth1, outreach ought not to be neglected. In fact, given the increased mobility of our society where more and more of our young people are leaving home to pursue career and family aspirations in other parts of the country, I fear that many of our churches who are dependent upon ingrowth for their subsistence will one day come to regret their neglecting of outreach.

I have come to dearly love the ARP, and being a member of our presbytery’s ONA committee, I want to passionately labor to see that we will have a church legacy to pass down to our children, even if they move west of the Mississippi. I believe that we as a denomination have an urgent need for outreach and church planting. Because of this, I am so thankful that we as a denomination have something wonderful to offer to our communities, nation, and the world. Personally, I think the world would be better off with more ARP congregations ministering the grace of Christ.

There is certainly a need for outreach, but there is a temptation to seek it through any means necessary. I (and we as a denomination) must be careful not to allow the urgency of the situation to cause us to forsake our principles. Christ has already given us the means of free grace by which to reach our neighbors and to make disciples of them. We need only strive to be faithful in our administration of those means, and trust God to give the growth.

With that being said, I would like to spend some time over the next few articles studying how a steadfast adherence to the ordinary means of grace is not contrary to our reaching the modern world. I would like to draw your attention first to the means of prayer. I am currently reading through William Bridge’s "A Lifting Up for the Downcast." The great thesis of this book is that the Christian never has a reason to be discouraged. He may have many reasons to be humbled or grieved, but he never has a reason to be discouraged. In one chapter, he deals with the Christian who is discouraged because of his neglect of Christian duty. When I came to this chapter, I was expecting Bridge to spend a great amount of time on works of charity and benevolence, but he didn’t. The Christian duty that he comes back to time and time again is the duty of prayer. The reason that Bridge gives for emphasizing prayer is because prayer is the grace by which all other graces are received. He writes, “The old bird goes abroad to fetch food for the young ones, and they lie in the nest gaping to receive the food upon its return; and if the old one be killed abroad, the young ones will die presently at home. So here, prayer goes abroad and fetches provision for all our graces, and they all lie gaping to receive this provision from the mouth of prayer; if prayer be killed, how can those other graces live?” 2

Church growth, whether it be found in our existing churches or in the planting of new churches, is a grace, for this was the case when Barnabas came to the church in Antioch in Acts 11. When he came to the city and saw the rich growth of the church there, Luke tells us that what he saw was “the grace of God.”3 If we are to partake in this wonderful work of outreach, we must fight the urge to enter into it by carnal means. It will not be through forsaking our principles, doctrine, or even our Presbyterian identity that God will show us favor, but through our taking the posture of a beggar, and with empty hands, praying that God would be gracious to us. Our seeking grace without prayer is as useless as an explorer seeking a new world without a ship to take him there.

Prayer must be outreach’s trailblazer, making our path straight. Without it, we are lost, and our witness is in vain. Yet, it seems to be the case for many true Christians that the grace of prayer is a hard one to come by. We sense in ourselves a weakness in prayer. We come to prayer with much difficulty, and then, when we actually enter into it, we find it awkward, tedious, and even strange. How can we be more free in our approach to God? I have found the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God to be a wonderful blessing in my own struggles in prayer. To realize that through Jesus Christ I approach one who looks upon me as His own little one. And whether I approach Him in strength or in bumbling and stumbling weakness, He still regards me as being more precious than I regard my own children, for His paternal love is holy and infinite while mine is sinful and small. And yet, how many of us, when we see weakness in our own children, are moved to pity them and bear with their weaknesses until we are able to aid them in growing strong? The same must be true for God, only to an infinitely greater degree. With one hand, He soothes us, and with the other, He strengthens us. Here again, Bridge is a master. He writes, “What [God’s children] lack in performance, He will make up in indulgence. He proclaims this

unto them, that He will require no more than He gives; He will give what He requires; and He will accept what He gives.”4

So, let us not seek to fill the needs of the church by our own talents or by adopting the passing fancies of our modern age. Our Lord’s kingdom is not of this world, nor are the means used for the building of that kingdom. We must lean on the strength of the Lord in prayer. Yet we must not be too timid to approach God for His help because of our current weaknesses. Your Heavenly Father is infinite, and the stores of His grace are boundless. He sanctifies the weakness of our prayers with the strength of His Son. Our God is a God who uses even the weakest of prayers to accomplish His eternal purposes. Therefore, let us not forsake the means of prayer, but earnestly seek our Father’s mercies as we pursue His glory to the ends of the Earth.

1 Gal. 6:10 So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

2 William Bridge, A Lifting Up for the Downcast, (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2020), 134. 3 Acts 11:23

3 Acts 11:23

4 Bridge, A Lifting Up for the Downcast, 135.