A Review by Philip Watkinson of
"An Unfinished Restoration Acknowledged"

I just finished reading  "An Unfinished Restoration Acknowledged" (CS 6/10/2007 - read the article here) by Gary Weedman, president-elect at Johnson Bible College, Knoxville, Tennessee, and couldn't help being incensed by it . In this essay he encourages his readers to "embrace" and "engage in dialogue" several "...contemporaries who are not part of the Stone-Campbell Movement", but that "have taken up some aspect of a restoration theme."  He accurately  states that "... most readers of Christian Standard would be uncomfortable with some of their views", yet he exhorts us to "...applaud their desire to return to the ancient church, listen and learn from their perspective, and be willing to engage them in dialogue, adding our own understanding of the need for the restoration of ancient Christianity."

Frankly, I don't have the vaguest idea of what "ancient church" he has in mind because he doesn't say, but by the individuals that he recommends that we "listen and learn from" it is obvious to me that he is not referring to the church founded on Jesus Christ and his apostles, as recorded in the pages of the New Testament. In fact, I am pretty sure that he must be speaking of the post-apostolic church - you know, that apostate church that came into being after the close of the first century. For example, the church that Robert Webber idealized (he passed away recently) was the same one that corrupted the Gospel that developed into the Roman Catholic system:
 

Biblical symbols such as baptismal identity and Eucharistic thanksgiving will take on new meaning. The church will be less concerned about having an eschatology and more committed to being an eschatological community. An Interview with Robert Webber, author of The Younger Evangelicals by Jordon Cooper, Wednesday December 11, 2002 Read the Article

A brief glance at the teaching of the Eucharist from the pre-Nicene period provides insight into the early church’s understanding. The Fathers taught that continual spiritual nourishment was provided to believers at this great feast. First it is clear from the writings of Justin Martyr in the middle of the second century that this is no empty symbol. Christ is really present in the bread and wine. He feeds us in the remembrance of His salvation. He feeds us through His presence which is accomplished through prayer. - Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Evangelism, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI, 2004, page 114.

My most memorable encounter with a style of worship different from my own occurred at a weekend retreat more than twenty years ago. I had joined a praise and prayer group while doing graduate work at Concordia Theological Seminary in St. Louis. The group consisted of Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians and evangelicals who met monthly to read and discuss Scripture to pray together, to talk, and to just have fun. When the time came for many of us to graduate and move on to new places, we decided to bring our two-year fellowship to an end with a weekend retreat at a local Catholic conference center. It was there we faced an issue we had never even discussed. Could we take Communion together? Could a Catholic priest give the bread and wine to an evangelical? Could an evangelical receive the bread and wine from a Catholic priest? 

We were all sitting on the lawn of the monastery near the chapel. The monastery stood on a hill overlooking the rich Missouri farmland, and the smell of the fresh spring grass was in the air. I heard the priest say, “We are going to conclude our retreat with a liturgy in the chapel. You are all of course welcome to come, but I don’t know what to say to you about the bread and the wine. As a rule we Catholics only allow other Catholics to receive the body and blood of the Lord. But I have agonized over this separation of our churches, as I know you have.”

He paused and continued, “I have decided to break with Catholic tradition and offer you the bread and wine. Why? Because it is my experience that all of you are true Christians devoted to our Lord. But I cannot tell you what to do. You may not feel comfortable receiving the bread and the wine. You must make that decision for yourself. If you don’t come to receive, your decision will be respected, and if you do come, you will be welcomed.”

Then I lifted my face toward the sun and felt its warmth. Closing my eyes, I allowed my life in the church to pass before me. My prejudices rose up within me: What are you doing here? You never worshiped in a Catholic setting, let alone received the bread and the wine from a Catholic priest! Then I considered the spiritually rich times I’d shared with these people for two years. I heard again my Catholic friends speak of their love for Christ, pray with fervency, and express a real desire to know the Scriptures and live by its authority. Those memories said, “Go ahead. After all, there is only one Lord, one church, one faith, one baptism, one Holy Communion.”

 In that moment, God broke through the walls I had allowed to separate me from my brothers and sisters of different denominations. I am convinced the prejudices we hold and the walls we build between ourselves and other communities of Christians actually block our experience of God’s presence in our lives. Our biases cut us off from the spiritual communion of the fullness of the body of Christ. God dwells in his church, and to reject a part of God’s church is to reject him. Furthermore, rejecting a part of God’s church keeps us from experiencing what the creed calls “the communion of the Saints.” When God broke down my walls, he brought me into richer fellowship with the body of Christ throughout the world. Robert Webber, Signs of Wonder: The Phenomenon of Convergence in Modern Liturgical and Charismatic Churches, Star Song Publishing Group, Nashville, Tennessee, 1992, pages 3-4.

You might say I was surprised by joy! I found myself ministering to God in praise, and God in turn was ministering to me. I had never had an experience like that in my life. In that Catholic chapel, a new worship experience had bumped up against that old prejudice of mine, and a new attitude was born. I had taken into myself the experience of another tradition, I had been in dialogue with another worship tradition, and I was surely the richer for it. Ibid. page 5

The spirituality of the medieval mystics and the spirituality fostered by the sacramental system when it was at its best was now supplanted by intellectual knowledge. The rejection of everything Catholic then led by the Protestant notion that knowledge and spirituality were the same. For nearly five hundred years the spirituality of Protestantism has been expressed in the quest for knowledge. This quest found a happy partner with the emphasis on reason in the modern period. In the postmodern era, however where knowledge is not enough, there is a longing once again for the disciplines that produce a spirituality rooted in the mystical and sacramental traditions. Robert Webber, Ancient Future Evangelism: Making Your Church a Faith-Forming Community, Baker Books, 2003, page 29.

 

Apparently, Mr. Gary wants us to "embrace" the Roman Catholic church and "engage in dialogue" with it. The fact that Robert Webber was an infidel and and unbeliever at heart doesn't seem to faze him at all. Listen to Webber's own personal testimony (Click Here to Listen)

Another heretic that Mr. Gary would have us embrace is Richard Foster, a promoter of contemplative prayer and a student of Thomas Merton, who learned his procedures for contemplative prayer from Buddhists and Hindus. Read what Richard Foster said about his mentor:
 

Thomas Merton has perhaps done more than any other twentieth-century figure to make the life of prayer widely known and understood… His interest in contemplation led him to investigate prayer forms in Eastern religion. Zen masters from Asia regarded him as the preeminent authority on their kind of prayer in the United States. Richard Foster and Emilie Griffin, Spiritual Classics, San Francisco, CA: Harper, 2000, First Edition, p. 17

 

Now read what Thomas Merton said about his brand of spirituality:
 

It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race,… now I realize what we all are… if only they (people) could all see themselves as they really are… I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other… At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusions, a point of pure truth… this little point… is the pure glory of God in us. It is in everybody. Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Garden City, New York, Doubleday, 1989), pp. 157-158
 

A whole lot more could be said about Richard Foster and his Renovaré organization, but I believe that the above quotes are sufficient to convince anyone of sound judgement that Mr. Gary either has a severe discernment problem, a short memory, or he is deliberately trying to pull the proverbial wool over our eyes. I suspect the latter to be the case.

Moving on, what in the world is this Ekklesia Project anyway? By the way, did you notice how the CS conveniently provides a URL link to their website for those like me who are asking that question? It is
http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/ The following information is taken from the web site of the Ekklesia Project. Their goals and intentions are given below. Recommended reading in line with their agenda follows.

 

The founders of The Ekklesia Project are drawn from a wide range of Christian traditions and legacies. Included in their number are mainline and evangelical Protestants, Catholics and persons schooled in the Anabaptist tradition. They are scholars, pastors, church leaders and writers. After much prayer, study and reflection, they have come to see that the time is right for initiatives aimed at church-centered renewal within the Christian family, and that increasing numbers of people are becoming aware of the limits of the so-called Constantinian bargain that compromises the Gospel in order to cultivate good relations with secular institutions of political, economic and social power.
 

The intent of The Ekklesia Project is to remind the church of its true calling as the real-world community whose primary loyalty is to the Body of Christ, the priorities and practices of Jesus, and the inbreaking Kingdom of God.
 

Roughly translated in everyday language, The Ekklesia Project is an emerging/emergent church organization with ecumenical proclivities with a determined dominionist socio-political agenda.

To bring this epistle to a close, let me remind you of Mr. Gary's final statements in his article:
 

There are other persons and movements beyond these four that emphasize one or another aspect of restoration. The point here is not to provide an exhaustive list of such movements. Rather, it is to point out that each view has its own peculiarities and emphases. Each realizes there is much lacking in the contemporary church, a view that was a shared conviction of leaders of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Each believes that the restoration of some aspect of the ancient church must be realized to correct those deficiencies of the contemporary church, another shared conviction of the Stone-Campbell Movement.

I encourage those of us in the Stone-Campbell fellowship not to abandon our Restoration heritage, but rather to embrace it warmly and engage enthusiastically in dialogue with others who acknowledge the evil of division, the inadequacy of some of contemporary evangelicalism, and the value of seeking restoration of the ancient life of the church.
 

Wow, if he has given us the crème de la crème of his so-called contemporary "restorationists", I can't wait to see who else he must have in mind to promote. Again, the "ancient church" that Gary is talking about is not the New Testament church that I read about in the scriptures. Gary's insistence on using the term Stone-Campbell Movement is more telling in my view. It effectively betrays the mindset of a neo-liberal who sees the rich history of the Restoration Movement as little more than a mere hick-up in the centuries-old tradition of the "ancient church." I feel sorry for those who will be studying under him and for the generations of heretics that Johnson Bible College is gearing up to produce. May God have mercy on us all!

All this reminds me of something my friend Scott MacIntyre of WoodAndSteel.net wrote about his Dad who was an electric engineer:
 

My dad had another saying that was birthed out working many years at an institution of higher learning. "I love guys with Ph.Ds. They spend their whole life studying a single bucket of sand. They learn more and more about less and less. Before long, they know everything about nothing." No offense to anyone who has earned a Ph.D, but my dad's statement has validity toward self-proclaimed experts of church growth and structure. They know more and more about manipulating the church into what they think it should be, and less and less about what the Bible teaches about the church.  http://www.woodandsteel.net/dad.htm