“80% of you are catholic and the other 20% are charismatic”. I still remember the words as clear as day and I am taken back there. It’s 8 am on a Wednesday morning. I’m sitting in a new lecture hall of Moore Theological College and I am outraged!
I’m the kind of first year student that brings the bad reputation to the college: I know stuff. I can do second declension Greek nouns so I can rate myself as a theologian. I’m an evangelical student at an evangelical college studying to be an evangelical minister. And now I am being accused of being catholic or charismatic?! This is an insult, it is an outrage!
The problem is that the person who made this declaration is Dr Graeme Goldsworthy who can trump all my qualifications by being everything I am, as well as an evangelical faculty member of said college, not to mention a well known author and an incredibly humble and godly man. But, isn’t he meant to be one of us? How could he make such a scandalous accusation?
As Graeme (we were told to address all the faculty members by their first names) made this declaration, I remember looking around at everyone else. The lecture, on biblical theology, moved on as if nothing had happened. Was no one else as outraged as I? Why was no-one saying anything?
Why was I not saying anything?
As the years have gone on, I have reflected that Graeme is right. Most of us are catholic, in a sense. In fact, I said nothing because I was catholic. I do not mean that I was Roman Catholic; I wasn’t listening to the pope or worshipping Mary.
I mean I was functionally catholic: I had placed myself under the authority of the church. Not the pope, of course, or even my bishops as such, but the community that is around me.
Just look at the reason for my silence when this accusation was made: I said nothing because everyone else said nothing. My silence proved Graeme right.
The thing is I am not alone. As a culture, Australians are a highly pragmatic people. This has leaked into ministry philosophy. The first port of call of many gospel co-workers in my tribe, when faced with a problem, is not to open scripture or to pray, it is not to go to God. Rather it is to ask, “What are they [whoever is doing something in a similar field] doing? Does that work? Maybe I could do that?” The authority is in the community*.
*Graeme did also mention the other 20%. There is a minority that place themselves under the authority of their own emotions and feelings. “This feels right to me so I should do it.” Whether or not this is an accurate depiction of the charismatic movement now, it was the way the word was used at the time.
Rescue From Functional Catholicism
How was I rescued from my functional catholicism? God put people around me to slowly help me out of this. Yes, I realise the irony here of God using the community I had put authority in to rescue me.
There was one man, a little older than me. He was not my boss, but we worked on a team together. He kept forcing me to ask the question:
Am I doing this simply because it is the latest fad that everyone else is doing? Am I doing this because it seems to work for others?
There’s also a flip side, of course: am I failing to do something because it’s something my ‘tribe’ isn’t currently doing, and might not be approved of? He kept questioning my functional catholicism.
This man’s mantra was ‘think from first principles’. He kept pushing me, and the team I was working with, to first work out if what we were doing is grounded in scripture. It forced me to ask: what is God saying and how does that affect what I am doing here? It forced me to move my authority in God’s word, not the approval or disapproval of my ministry network.
But I’m Part of the Reach Australia Network …
I’ve been part of the Reach Australia network since just after my wife Audrey and I planted a church. I often hear people say, “Reach Australia are the pragmatic people”.
But the quote misses the mark. That is not how the Reach Australia network thinks. Even if we did think purely pragmatically, there is no arsenal of silver bullet methods to make your church grow. One of the things I regularly hear at network events is the reminder from God’s word that only he brings growth (1 Cor 3:6).
As compatibilists, we believe that God chooses to work through human means to bring about his plans. That means what and how we do matters, and that we can learn from each other how to be better stewards of the resources and opportunities he has given us, even as we pray for him to grow his kingdom through us.
The Reach Australia network is focussed on gospel workers to do this the most effective way possible, growing a network that learns together and from each other.
But this sounds, or at least smells, like functional catholicism. Even as I am writing this, I am forced to ask myself, have I become my own enemy?
First Principles
What does it mean to think from first principles? As my friend would remind me, we need to start with a blank piece of paper and an open Bible, praying that God would give us wisdom and then thinking. And we need to think hard. This is hard work!
As an example, take something like ‘preaching systematically through a book of the Bible’. Where in the Bible does it tell us to do that? The short answer is there is nowhere in the Bible that says we must preach exegetically through it. But the nature of the Bible is such that it is all God’s word (2 Tim 3:16) and so we should not miss any of it. Preaching systematically through a book of the Bible is a good way to make sure we are preaching all of it. But it is not the only way. Understanding the principle helps us understand the practice.
Practical Catholicism
Practically speaking, we can’t sit down and work out everything from a blank sheet of paper every day. We still have to face all the choices to make wise, fruitful decisions about the way we shepherd the people given to us.
Here is where the learned wisdom of our Reach Australia network is so valuable. We can learn from others’ wins and losses, often refined over years, telling us what tends to work when it comes to making disciples in our current context.
There is a kind of practical catholicism in the life of ministry. But only if we see it for what it is, human servants helping other human servants in a divine work. This is the role, at least partly, of the Reach Australia network. In fact, this is why we call ourselves a network and not an organisation. We help each other. One of the dangers of functional catholicism is that it is so cultural and therefore subconscious.
The Solution to Functional Catholicism
The solution to functional catholicism is to think from first principles. Perhaps not everything, but at least some things. We need to dig deep into God’s word and understand what he is doing, what he is thinking and what his heart loves.
We need to reform ourselves from the way that the world thinks, what we have fallen into thinking from habits and what may have come from our functional catholicism. We need to question our thoughts, our motives, our actions and our strategies against our theological understanding and convictions.
Even the process of stopping and thinking through one thing at a time will train our minds to assess ideas, rather than simply grabbing and doing them because that is what everyone else is doing.
Practically, my suggestion is to pick one thing a week and ask questions. Lots of questions. Why do I think that? Why do I do that? Is it from scripture or is it because I saw someone else I admire do that? What does scripture have to say? How does the pattern of the gospel change how I think? If I was convicted I was right on this and everyone else thought I was wrong, would I change my mind?
That last question should make you stop and think, “Am I functionally catholic?”.
Peter Hughes has worked in church planting, university ministry and Anglican parish ministry for the last 25 years. At Reach Australia he develops resources for gospel workers, including our podcasts, and helps to raise and develop the next generation of church planters. He’s a member of Kellyville Anglican Church in Sydney.
