Yesterday marked one year since my Substack launched. The anniversary of the first newsletter is tomorrow. Congratulations (or condolences) can be passed along as you like.
I was struck some years ago by Ecclesiastes 7:2: “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will take it to heart.” We presume it to be Solomon who sagely presses his finger upon those of us who skip the wake for the Super Bowl party. “What are you doing?” he says. “Don’t you know what you’re missing out on?”
Funerals are more plentiful than birthday parties, Super Bowl parties, or even an occasional Epiphany Celebration (Yes, I attended one recently.) Consequently, even if you appreciate the sanctifying and sobering effect the presence of death and grief bring, it would be understandable not to go out of your way to attend a funeral, especially if you had been kindly invited to some other event. After all, there could be some holy purposes in other gatherings as well. And there will always be another funeral.
Nevertheless, this past Saturday I invited a pastor-friend to join me in attending a memorial service for a deceased brother in a neighboring association. Wayne Patton was a long-time educator in Christian schools over a remarkable career in five states and one U.S. territory. He was a teacher par excellence. Not only did he serve capably in diverse Christian school settings, but he served on the pastoral staff of two churches. He ultimately passed away as a result of complications from ALS/Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Patton was 70.
I met Wayne a few years ago. In truth, we probably only had two or three conversations. Though we didn’t live far apart and had many overlapping social networks, our paths simply didn’t cross. But he was a highly respected man in our Free Will Baptist family, and his daughter-in-law and my wife are friends. It felt appropriate to pay my respects. I didn’t quite expect all that I was to witness at the service.
First, it was an extremely well-attended memorial service for a Saturday morning in dreary January. Second, attendees included many from out of state. Third, the five congregational songs were all beautiful and stylistically diverse. They fostered an especially worshipful occasion. Fourth, there were four different speakers: Wayne’s son, his pastor, a brother-in-law, and his precious wife. Each of them had their own unique way of speaking about Wayne, his life, and the circumstances of his death. They were earnest, clear, thoughtful, and challenging.
Frequently throughout the service my eyes welled up with tears. Do remember, I barely knew Wayne. Fairer to say that I knew more about him than anything. But I was moved by the sweetness of it all. It was, in so many respects, an ideal memorial service, odd as it sounds to call a memorial service “ideal.” It had many moments of tenderness, humor, narrative, and exhortation. The service lasted well over an hour, but it didn’t feel quite that long.
As my friend and I drove back home we reflected together about numerous elements of the day. We both had been able to have several substantive conversations with different people. Even today I continue to think of how Wayne’s church has experienced his illness and passing, especially given how faithful he had been to them as he served as a preacher, teacher, and shepherd during a pastoral transition. I continue to think of how his son, apparently not known for words, used them to incredible effect at the service. I’m still thinking about the many remarks made about Wayne’s curiousness, intellectual appetite, love of reading, and passion for teaching. Oh, I wish I could have known him better!
As one who frequently conducts funerals, I know all too well how difficult many funerals and memorial services are. I know that the deceased was often not an especially faithful person. I know families often don’t think biblically about grief (or anything else). Still, we ought to recall Solomon’s point: “this is the end of all mankind, and the living will take it to heart.” The big takeaway isn’t the quality of the deceased person’s life, as significant as that is. The point is that good people and bad people, mature people and immature people, fruitful people and unfruitful people will all die. I will die. If I’m wise, I’ll take this to heart. I’ll take the occasion of dying and death to remember my own mortality and prepare accordingly.
Now Solomon’s emphasis on the certainty and inevitability of death doesn’t preclude other possible lessons. In fact, just one verse earlier in Ecclesiastes says, “A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of birth.” One’s death effectively seals their fate; it concludes the story of life. No more words to utter or deeds to do. Our life will now speak for itself.
So hearing people extol the character and impact of one who has departed this life is instructive, not just humbling. He’s gone, but his legacy lives. That’s inspiring.
Maybe one of the great contributions the church has to offer its young, and even the unbelieving world at large, is the clear-eyed ability to face the reality of death. Not only does this mean we face the experience of suffering and dying differently, but actual situations where we could easily evade places of suffering and dying—the burn ward, the nursing home, and yes, funerals and memorial services—aren’t too much for us. With God’s Spirit, these are the very places where resurrection people dare go, seeking to learn, serve, and grow.
Celebrating One Full Year of Churchatopia
As I mentioned in the opening word above, this newsletter marks the one year anniversary of this little venture. This newsletter is the 72nd piece of content posted, whether newsletter, article, excerpt, or some other type of material.
Many readers will be familiar with my prior decade of editing and contributing to the Helwys Society Forum. I’m grateful that my HSF friends continue to maintain an archive of my work on the site. By the way, their contributors continue to provide material worth reading, so check them out.
I mention HSF here because there was roughly a year and a half between the time I resigned my post there and launched this Substack page. I knew I would eventually want to spend time on some other writing endeavor, though the shape of it was unclear to me for the longest time.
Eventually I found Substack to be an incredibly energetic and dynamic place for excellent journalism and independent authors of all kinds to get their thoughts out to interested readers. And given the subscription model and options associated with Substack, it seemed that it gave writers the opportunity to develop their work and audience to whatever degree their efforts and excellence would allow. So Churchatopia was born.
I’m not sure that my expectations for readership were especially concrete. I had an idea of the impressive audience we were able to generate at HSF, but that was after years of trying to consistently post interesting and wide-ranging work. It was also a team effort, so the weight never fell on a single person. A solo effort like Churchatopia was bound to be challenging, but I was committed to trying to make a go of it.
Looking back over the past year, I’m very humbled and grateful. I’m humbled because I feel a responsibility to think well and write clearly each week about something that might appeal to more than three or four people. I’m grateful because despite the modest readership I’ve developed, I definitely see that those who read most regularly (Substack can tell you which subscribers access your site most frequently) also happen to be people who have been encouragers, both from a distance and in person. I even bumped into an out-of-state reader at the service on Saturday who spoke a kind word about the work I do here.
I thought readers might like a glimpse of the top ten most viewed posts from the first full year of Churchatopia. Note the diversity of the posts and be aware that these aren’t listed in any particular order. However, they sure have generated a lot of interest, for which I’m thankful.
Seven Things You (Maybe) Didn’t Know about Francis Schaffer (guest post by Chris Talbot)
Two Crucial Reminders for Discipleship
In Memoriam: J.M. Creech (1938-2022)
On the Validity of the Regulative Principle
The so-called “Regulative Principle of Worship” (guest post by Dr. Robert Picirilli)
Is the Regulative Principle of Worship a Straitjacket?
Follow-Up:
In my last newsletter, I explored the tension between rightly recognizing cultural decline, while also seeking to be responsible and honest in how we characterize things. In some sense, I was trying to argue for sober analysis of our circumstances while also not burying the good. In his recent newsletter, Russell Moore addresses a parallel dynamic of being committed to the church as a manifestation of God’s glory, while also telling hard truths about it. In his words, “to show the glory, we must also tell the truth.” Check it out.
Currently Reading:
Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
I can understand the reluctance to actually talk about sex because genuine discussion isn’t going to be fun. It’s going to demand real, critical reflection, and that would mean we’d have to at least consider saying no to things we’ve come to feel entitled to. It would require us to humbly weigh our individual choices, preferences, and habits, be open to admitting genuine error, accepting responsibility, and making meaningful commitments to real change, all of which combined are about as much fun as having someone knock your favourite drink out of your hand and slap you on your sunburned shoulders while handing you four years’ worth of overdue tax bills. Even more difficult, it would force us to ask whether our culture as a whole has made some serious missteps about sex, especially in the past sixty years or so. But so far it seems that we would rather talk about power and strive to parse ever more precise definitions of the word “consent” than seriously question the dogma of unencumbered erotic licence. We’ve long ago left the harbour of old-fashioned marriage aboard the ship of entitlement to sexual bliss, we say, and even if we don’t really know where it’s going, and even though it seems to be leaving wreckage and suffering in its wake, anyone foolish enough to suggest calling it back to port must be prudish, puritan, regressive, or repressed.