The Gift of Place

It is a point of theology with me, taken from 1 Corinthians 12, that we are given not only a spiritual gift, but a place to use it and a Holy Spirit-produced result. From time to time I am reminded how good that is. When I attended church with my parents on Sunday night I realized how grateful I am that I have been given the privilege of serving Jesus in California among Evangelical Free Church of America believers for the past 18 years. It’s not that I couldn’t minister in Coeur d’Alene, but like a missionary new to the field, I’d have to study the culture and adapt to it.

Attending the church was a vivid reminder that expressions of public worship are cultural. The forms this church uses I’m sure help the worshippers to connect with the Father. But I kept noticing the pastor in coat and tie and the use of the hymnbook and the singing of “Count Your Blessings” followed by a time of sharing “how God has blessed you.” The pastor’s sermon was much like our experience in Pennsylvania at the reformed Presbyterian church in which a member of the Sunday School class dodged the plain reading of the text “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world,” (1 John 2:2) by saying that “obviously” John didn’t mean the whole world, but only those who are chosen by God to be saved. His comments during the sermon on Moses were filled with dispensational observations that left the text gutted (in my opinion) of any application of actual story and got entangled in issues of how one was saved under the old covenant and how one is saved under the new covenant and the security found in the new covenant and the lack thereof under the old covenant. (As a side bar, I wish the pastor had emphasized the fact that despite the discipline exercised on Moses, not allowing him into the land, it is clear his salvation was absolutely secure since Moses shows up at the transfiguration.)

All this to say, I have become enculturated to Central and Southern California and I love it and I’m so thankful to God for the privilege of being there. And I am grateful that there are faithful people who know and are part of the culture in Northern Idaho so that Christ is preached and lived among all people.