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Vol. 1, No. 4 - April 1994
Defects
of the Radical Personality
| By
Dan Trotter
This issue we will turn our gaze away from the problems of the institutional church, and direct our attention towards a serious problem within the house church movement: the constitutional defects of the radical personality. House church Christianity is alternative Christianity, and alternative Christianity attracts alternative Christians. People who never ask why, who are content with mindless ritual, who are theological yes-men, are not going to leave the institutional church for radical home church Christianity. This means that people in our movement tend to be free spirits. The result is that home churchers are rarely bland: they are usually very, very good, or very, very bad, in terms of their disposition. Before we look at the downside of the radical personality, let's appreciate what's good. Radical New Testament Christians tend to be extremely devoted to the person of Christ, and very devoted to one another in brotherly love. They have to be, if they are going to survive in a house church environment. They tend to be seeking individuals, because they don't have a priestly caste to teach them how to live spiritual lives. House church Christians are generally happy with life. Their families are robust, and they are pleasant people to be around. So please remember this, as I discuss some of our problems. It appears to me that there are essentially six negative personality traits that threaten to afflict us who are in this movement: cynicism, pessimism, discontent, perfectionism, weirdness and hyperintensity. 1. Cynicism. A house church Christian is, by definition, a radical, at least in terms of twentieth century American Christianity. (Actually, in one sense, a house church Christian is very conservative: "radical" comes from the Latin root "radix," which means "root." This means house church advocates want to go back to the church's roots: the way the church was when the church was still young. Radical Christians don't want to overthrow anything.) Because the radical NT Christian has examined just about every aspect of modern conservative Christian life there is, and rejected about ninety percent of it, he has become used to rejecting things. This can get to be a habit. Pretty soon, the radical Christian is rejecting things that shouldn't be rejected: submission to authority, for example. Because of the heavy-handed tyranny exercised by so many (not all) pastor-popes, the radical Christian tends to look at legitimate authority cynically, judges the authority's motives, assumes the authority is a creep, and refuses to listen to him.  "There are six negative personality traits that afflict us: cynicism, pessimism, discontent, perfectionism, weirdness, and hyperintensity" It's hard not to be cynical when you are radical. You look around, and pastors are preaching sermons on "faithfulness," and you know their budget's hurting, and you know their primary interest is not your spiritual well-being. You see preachers all hot and lathered about God's latest move, and you know it's nothing but their flesh at best, or a con at worst. But I don't care how bad it is out there, my fellow house churchers, there ain't no excuse for cynicism. Cynicism is self-defeating. After you have finished being cynical about the institutional church, you'll then start being cynical about your brothers and sisters, then yourself. You might even become cynical about God letting all the nonsense go on. One of the most radical figures in history was Jesus Christ, and I see nothing to indicate He was a cynic. His religious system was a lot worse than ours, but he was focused on a better kingdom. Oh, sure, he let the Pharisees hold it, but he never got gloomy about it. NRR probably errs on the side of flippancy, but there's a reason: we want to stay away from sourpuss radical Christianity. There's nothing worse. "A pessimist is doomed from the start. A house church Puddleglum will never see the Bride in her New Testament purity." 2. Pessimism. Closely allied with cynicism is pessimism. You don't have to be in the church-in-the-home movement long to get very discouraged. Your institutional friends humor you, and think you have a "pet doctrine," or that you're going through some kind of stage. You scour your home town for kindred spirits, and are lucky to find one. Worse, you constantly run into people who get all excited about house church, but won't lift a finger to get involved. Pretty soon, you start getting sour on the future. A pessimist is doomed from the start. A house church Puddleglum will never see the bride in her New Testament purity. He will spend his whole life bemoaning the sad state of the institutional church, but he will resign himself to the awful fact that there will never be anything better. The church will never be restored with this kind of thinking. I am more aware than most of the terrible difficulties involved in getting involved in home church, but I have hope. A year ago, I had no idea there were folks like you all over the country, and the world (see the letter from Nigeria this issue) seeking radical NT community. It still looks impossible, but I have hope. I have to. I'm not going back to the institutional church. 3. Discontent. Radical Christians are more often than not very discontent. Many of them are still within the institutional church, having damaged their integrity and their peace of mind by making those thousands of excuses that keep them in a situation in which they have no business being. One wonders who is more to blame: the institutional church for being so awful, or the radical Christian for not having the fortitude to leave. These radical brethren will always be discontent, and there's no helping them, until they come out. On the other hand, the radical Christian who has come out is often just as discontent as his like-minded brother who has stayed in. He may be naive, and think that doing house church is a simple matter of getting some brothers and sisters together for a meeting in a living room. As you know, nothing could be further from the truth. Oftentimes it takes going through hell in order to experience a taste of the kingdom. When the new wears off, and the honeymoon is over, and the marriage begins, many radical Christians are shocked at the hard reality of learning to have the cross operate in their lives through the agency of their brethren. These naive Christians will continue to look for the perfect "meeting," or for some magical answer to the problem of their unhappiness. Words like covenant, and community, and commitment are alien to them. With their minds focused on the horrors of their past lives in the system, they are unable to focus on the hard task at hand of establishing the kingdom. And so they remain discontent. 4. Perfectionism. Closely allied to discontentedness is perfectionism. Since radical Christians are by their nature critics of the status quo, it is very easy for them to forget how difficult it is, in this grubby world, to even maintain an imperfect status quo. It might do us all some good every now and then to stop and ponder that even though what we're doing is a whale of a lot better than the institutional alternative, that with which we are replacing the institutional church is far from perfect, and in fact will never even be close. I recently heard of a brother who slammed the door as he walked out of a house church on his way back to the system. His beef: the sharing wasn't mutually edifying enough, and the elders of the church weren't chastising people enough for not edifying one another properly. People like this are hard to please. Personally, I wouldn't bother trying. 5. Weirdness. The institutional church thrives on a conformist mentality. You wear the right clothes, you believe the right denominational doctrines, you read the right books, you listen to the right speakers, and you NEVER disagree with the pastor-pope. When the radical Christian escapes this stultifying nothingness, he is apt to feel giddy with "freedom." The next thing you know, he refuses to go to his kinfolks' weddings and baptisms, he's spitting tobacco juice on the plush carpets of his local Protestant temple, he's decided to quit paying taxes, which is all right, because he's not working anymore to have any income to pay taxes on, because he's too busy "seeking God" to actually work. He begins to exhibit the social graces of a donkey with B.O. I don't know what the answer to this is, except to show a lot of grace. But hey: how can you criticize anyone for being weird? After all, you read the New Reformation Review! 6. Hyperintensity. This is a besetting fault of all radicals, not just house church Christians. On one hand, it is easy to understand the intensity of one who has caught a hold of the radical NT church vision. It's so refreshing, so exciting, so different, and why hasn't anyone told me about this before? But ideology is never a substitute for relationships with people. If people aren't going to listen to you, Jesus has a free word of advice: "Shut up." Didn't he say not to cast our pearls before swine? You can tell when people are ready to listen to you: they are so hungry, they practically beg you to tell them about church. You don't need to aggravate those who aren't interested. WARNING!! The Surgeon General has determined that if you are depressed by the state of the organized church, you need to get over it! We need to take the time and enjoy the "unbought graces of life." The Southern agrarians hated Northern radicals, and one reason was their propensity to spend all of their lives trying to remake the world without spending any time trying to enjoy it. House church radicals need to relax and remember: we can still have fun in this life, even though the Constantinian abomination we view with disgust will exist as long as we do. So what. When you find a Christian still in the system, quit worrying about the sad fact that he is still in the system, and find something exciting and interesting about your brother. You'll be a lot happier, and a whole lot less frustrated. DIALOGUE...
[Editor's note: The following letter is a response to an open appeal in our last issue. We wanted to find out why anyone would write NRR with notepaper entitled "Notes from a Sensuous Woman."] Dear NRR: I was delighted to read your reaction to my notepaper. Actually, I use it when writing to my Congressman and Bishops. Now I can add EDITORS. Your reaction indicates that you may not have observed the subtle difference between sensuous and sensual. I'm all for the former and have trouble with the latter. At any rate, it is good to read that you are part of the good experience of gathering together in a small group to share the good gifts of the Spirit. Our group is a bit larger and the experience of coming together to share our faith pilgrimage and search for meaning is something that is dear to us all. So dear, in fact, that former members who had job transfers, drove from Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and upper New York state just to be with us as we celebrated our Good Friday way of cross service. Amazing! --Pat Kluepfel, Ledyard, CT Dear Pat: May your editors offers you some friendly advice? Please don't send your "Notes from a Sensuous Woman" stationery to your Congressman and Bishop. Given the present moral state of our Congress and the ecclesiastical establishment, we don't think that most Congressmen and Bishops can discern the "subtle" difference between "sensuous" and "sensual." You are asking for trouble! --DLT
ONE MILLION DOLLAR REWARD!! For Scriptural Evidence of committed believers who were:
Dear NRR: I am a Nigerian. I serve the church here as a teacher. I also direct a home for needy children. Recently, I got my first copy of Voices Newsletter and there I read about NRR and developed interest in it. May I know about your family and the group you belong to? I am very much interested in forming a community. Please, do you know anybody there would would want to come over here and help us start one? --Ernest Udom, Calabar, Nigeria Dear NRR: Your newsletter is the best of the three I have been receiving. I think that would be because of the straight talk, and the light touch. Like it or not, people of our time are not turned on much by "theology." What they do know is that they are tired to death of spectator Sunday mornings, where spiritual growth can be all but impossible. And I suspect there is at least an unconscious wishing for a simple community of brothers and sisters who are living the life together and discovering joy and love. Please tell us about yourselves. What do you do? When do you meet? How many? Are such as the Artie Hall's there with you, or do they fellowship elsewhere? Do you sing, play guitars, share the weekly leadership? What's working, what isn't? I think we all want your story, in particular. Ken Stenberg, Lake Stevens, Washington Dear Ken: Artie Hall, one of my old college friends, is a public school teacher in Florence, S.C. He loves the classics, and loves to write. He is an excellent speaker. He is forty-something, and is married to Susie, and has two daughters, one college-age. He has had a vision of the church for quite some time. He left the organized church about a year ago, and has been commuting to Columbia, S.C., where his daughter attends college, and where he meets with a house church group that started a year ago last February. Les Buford is an old friend of mine that I met approximately 20 years ago. We were fellow elders of a plural-elders cell church in Camden, S.C. for several years in the eighties. Les has since moved to Clemson, S.C., where he sells photocopiers. He does all the photocopying of NRR. He has been meeting for a year or so with others brothers and sisters in his home. He is utterly devoted to the vision of the NT bride of Christ. I am a professor of Business Administration at Coker College, Hartsville, S.C. I meet in a house church in Sumter, S.C., my home town. We have 12 adults and 14 children. We have been meeting officially since February, 1993, and I have loved every minute of it. I have been believing all the stuff you see in NRR for more than 20 years, but none of my friends did, so I just held it to myself. But when I saw the stirrings in my friends, I decided to push ahead, in order to move from the theoretical to the actual. I feel quite the neophyte, but I have learned a ton in the last year, and expect to continue to do so. I'm going to save answering your question about what we do in the church till another issue. I've been contemplating doing a "day in the life of a house church" issue, by taking a recording of a meeting or two, and writing down what goes on. Also, I am thinking of getting someone with more experience than me to do an article somewhat on the lines of: "the five stages in the life cycle of a house church." From what I've read, all house churches seem to go through similar problems, and hit certain rough spots in their journey. Thanks for your questions. It had never occurred to me to give personal information about ourselves. We are actually quite ordinary people, friends from way back, who have suddenly been consumed with an idea whose time, I hope, has come. --Dan Trotter
SOUTHERN HOUSE CHURCH CONFERENCE May 20 - May 22 Clemson University
The First Annual Southern House Church Conference is coming May 20-22, to Clemson University. Since we have announced it, we have been able to arrange for Gene Edwards to speak at the Saturday night session. For those of you who don't know Gene Edwards, he is the brilliant, prolific, iconoclastic, hilarious, sanity-challenged house-church radical who is so radical he makes NRR seem like the official organ of the Roman Catholic Church. He is the only speaker I have ever heard who literally makes time stand still. |
You may send your opinions, flames, weighty observations, etc., to
Dan L. Trotter
work e-mail:
dtrotter@pascal.coker.edu
home e-mail: dantrotter@yahoo.com
Since 09/30/00 this number of people have ignored the Surgeon General's warning and have read this thing, resulting in gosh knows how much mental and emotional trauma: