"On Sunday morning, August 19, 2001, I (Andrew Davis) began corporate worship at First Baptist Church Durham by calling on the members of the church to repent. The church had just elected a woman deacon for the first time in its history, and deacons in our church’s polity were treated as spiritual leaders with shepherding responsibility for the flock. I had been teaching the congregation that Scripture reserves spiritual leadership to men, and I had made private efforts to forestall this result. Still, the church voted in a woman as an authoritative spiritual leader.
So I began worship by calling on all the people of FBC to repent—including myself. In the spirit of Daniel 9, I felt that all of us must take responsibility for violating God’s clear guidance. My call was an object of horror to many of the members of the church. They were outraged. In their minds, repentance was something you do at the beginning of the Christian life and then never need to do again. For them, it was as if I were saying, “Because you voted for a woman as a deacon, you are not Christians.”
But I didn’t believe that at all. Rather, I know that because of the power of indwelling sin described so clearly in Romans 7, a healthy Christian life is one of constant conviction over sin and repentance from that sin.
A church that stops reforming is dead. And as dangerous and uncomfortable as church reformation can be, the far greater danger is not reforming. FBC Durham was a church very much in need of reform.
CHURCH REFORM REQUIRES SUFFERING
My personal journey with FBC’s road of reformation began in August of 1998. I remember kneeling before the Lord in my office at Southern Seminary where I was finishing off my PhD dissertation.
The pastoral search committee at FBC had called on me to come and preach to the church in view of a call to be their senior pastor. I needed to know the will of the Lord in this, whether or not he was calling on me to serve in that way. James 1:5 promises that if we lack wisdom, we should go to God and he will give it. So I knelt and prayed and sought the will of the Lord: “Lord, do you want me to go there and preach that sermon? And if they accept me, do you want me to serve you there?” During that prayer time, I had an unmistakable sense of the Lord’s pleasure in this, that it was his will for me to go. That sense of a clear calling from God served me well in the future years.
But I had no idea of the suffering that awaited me in this church. Looking at the text more carefully now, I see that the promise of wisdom in James 1:5 seems to be linked to the suffering that God ordains in our lives. James tells us to “consider it pure joy” whenever we face trials of various kinds, knowing that the testing of our faith produces endurance, and that endurance is necessary for God to finish his sanctifying work in us. God seems to be saying, “Seek my wisdom in the midst of your suffering and you will gain perspective.” But if I had known ahead of time what reception awaited me at FBC when I initiated reform, it’s possible that I never would have gone. Thus, in view of my cowardice, God simply let it be known that I should go. The rest would become clear in God’s own good time!
A BRIEF HISTORY OF OUR CHURCH REFORM
In 1998, FBC Durham was a church in need of reform. It was the oldest congregation in Durham, founded in 1845, and it took pride in being the “First Baptist Church.” In the 1950s to 1970s, it was also the place where everyone who wanted to be anyone in Durham would have attended. By the time I came, those days were over. Yet the memory lingered.
Some godly men had preceded me as pastor and done solid biblical work, laying a good foundation for me in many ways. Best of all, they had left a motivated remnant of godly men and women who were eager to see FBC become a healthy and fruitful church. But these pastors who preceded me had also suffered significant persecution from the same cabal that awaited me. Behind the scenes, these pastors had been threatened, bullied, manipulated, and basically forced out of their ministries."
The full article by Pastor Davis can be read in full here
