Leading from the Front: Reformed Faith in the City

While the churches that hold to the Reformed faith tend to be a feature of the leafy suburbs and the middle classes in Britain, their counterparts in America have seen some exciting exceptions in US cities.

Over the past 30 years Reformed pastors and theologians have seen the need to target the city with the gospel in its fullest sense and they have witnessed God's blessing upon their labours on a truly remarkable scale. This influx of Reformed Christianity to urban areas has impacted many American cities, but the experience of the Reformed community in Philadelphia has had a very significant part to play in the overall picture.

Foothold in the city

Much of what has happened in Philadelphia has found its focus in the work of CUTS (The Centre for Urban Theological Studies). CUTS is a fully accredited theological training institute, owned and run by an association of urban churches, most of which are either Baptist or Pentecostal and is located in one of the inner city areas. Since these churches are themselves in downtown areas and understand the needs of ministering God's Word there, they broker the educational needs of their constituencies to qualified teachers and appropriate courses from other institutions.

The work of CUTS goes back to the early 1970s when it was initially known as the Westminster Memorial Institute. (The name-change took place in 1978 when a partnership was forged with Geneva College in Western Pennsylvania.) A key figure in the development of its work was (and continues to be) the Rev. Bill Krispin who grew up in the city and has always been firmly committed to the church's being involved there. Right up until 1994 he presided over the development of the school and the broadening of its influence, not least through the establishment of a respectable and extremely helpful journal.

Some of the earliest links between the embryonic Institute and the outside instructors who taught the courses were with Westminster Theological Seminary to the north of the city. Some of the pastors and church leaders of the inner city churches approached the faculty of Westminster and said in effect: 'You have all the theology, but we have all the people! Won't you come and help us?' This led - after a measure of initial reluctance - to professors from the seminary venturing in to take classes in downtown Philly with the kind of audiences they were not used to addressing.

The key to building bridges

Crossing those social and cultural barriers in that way was significant in itself, but an even more important development was to follow in the early 1980s. It was around that time when several Seminary professors, including Harvie Conn, Roger Greenway and David Clowney, sold their homes on the outskirts of town and chose to move into one of the inner city areas. This brought them nearer to CUTS itself, but it also gave them an opportunity to become involved with city churches in the local neighbourhoods.

The challenge of this move was enormous. It had huge implications for the families involved in terms of schooling, friendships and social contact. The men were the first to admit the struggles that were involved - sometimes to the point of facing violent threats - and the temptation to move back out to somewhere less stressful. However, they remained involved in local churches and the work of CUTS, as well as their teaching commitment to the seminary.

Their courage in being prepared to lead by example was a significant factor in making their ministries far more effective among their new neighbours than they could possibly have imagined. On one occasion when the stresses of life in a violent neighbourhood almost forced one of the families to up and leave, it was the tearful pleadings of unbelievers in the community as well as those of believers from the church that persuaded the family concerned to continue in the work they were given.

This example was to have much wider ramifications. It inspired others to follow suit. Some students in the seminary opted to live in the city (with all the inconvenience of travel arrangements and other impracticalities that incurred), instead of the more attractive neighbourhoods around Westminster. This was to provide a vital new dimension to their preparation for the ministry. Far from developing the necessary skills for inner city work at a theoretical level in the classroom, they developed a personal love for the people of the inner city through direct contact and relationships. This provided the best possible foil against which to hone and apply their schooling in the Reformed faith, and see it put to the best possible use in real life situations. Many have gone on to work in city churches and not a few have ended up in London.

Pastors helped

Other professors were stirred to become involved in the teaching at CUTS and were positively surprised by what they met there. Getting involved with mostly black pastors who had congregations sometimes in excess of 3,000 members, and seeing their new-found enthusiasm for serious Bible study and solid theology, seemed almost too good to be true. Most of these pastors had received no formal theological training and this was reflected in their preaching and leadership in their churches. When the pastor of an 800-member church was telling one professor about the fact he was now using worthwhile commentaries in his preparation, and the fruit of his studies was filtering through to his people via the pulpit, he was asked if his congregation had objected to this shift. 'Far from it,' came the reply, 'where I lead, the people will follow!' The somewhat bemused teacher later relayed the whole episode as being like 'a charismatic success story in reverse!'

Wider benefits

Many of the benefits of this work have been felt in Philadelphia itself. Not only have professors, students and staff from the suburbs been drawn to the city, but those who have been on the receiving end of these blessings have themselves been used in the suburbs! Some of the pastors in the churches affected by the work of CUTS made such progress in their own studies that they were taken on as staff at Westminster and other colleges.

Another spin-off at a wider level has been seen in the establishment of similar ventures in other city settings. Redeemer Presbyterian Church in down-town Manhattan, New York, has not only been greatly used to proclaim the gospel and establish a Reformed church in an urban environment under the ministry of Dr. Timothy Keller, but has also become the hub of a far-reaching training programme using the model established by CUTS in Philadelphia. This also employs the skills of seminary professors and trained pastors to teach and train people involved in lay-ministry plus those who are engaged in full-time pastoral work.
It is a striking thing to see how Reformed Christianity is thriving in terms of numbers as well as quality in many American churches, while their British and European theological cousins so often find themselves struggling to survive. The reason might well be as much psychological as spiritual. 'Where an Englishman sees a problem, an American sees an opportunity! In gospel terms, the city with all its ugliness and evil is not an obstacle to the message of Christ, but is rather an open door!

Just as in New Testament times the great missionary apostle made a bee-line for the city as a matter of policy wherever he went, so it should be for his successors in the apostolic tradition! The success of establishing solid and thriving, theologically-sane churches in ethnic, socially-deprived, drug and crime-ridden ghettoes does not depend on the charisma of the preacher, or clever programmes for church-growth, but on the power of the gospel. All it takes is the faith to believe that the gospel really is powerful and the courage to act upon that, and the rest can be safely left in God's hands.

The example of men like Bill Krispin, Harvie Conn and Roger Greenway in their willingness to lead from the front, is a challenge to all who pastor in city areas. The work of the church is not ultimately about neighbourhoods and class, it is about people and their deepest need. God has chosen to use people to carry the gospel to other people, and that requires relationships that become the living bridges for gospel communication. Only as we dare to build such bridges across to those who are inevitably very different from us, will we have the thrill of seeing God do his work in ways that can only bring honour to his name.

Further information about CUTS can be found at: http://www.cuts.edu.

Leading from the Front: Reformed Faith in the City

Foothold in the city

The key to building bridges

Pastors helped

Wider benefits

Mark G. Johnston, Grove Chapel, Camberwell

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