Every church defines itself by its theology, and Grace Fellowship was no exception. At the center of every Christian church's self-identity is the belief that Jesus is the Son of God and that he died for our sins—if a group cannot agree with that statement, we really cannot call it a Christian church. Beyond that absolute core belief, however, every church has defining theological statements that are non-negotiable self-definition statements. If a person or group cannot agree, for example, with the doctrine of transubstantiation and acknowledge the authority of the Pope, the label "Roman Catholic" doesn't really fit.
Theological self-definition of Christian churches looks a bit like a bull's eye target, though the edges of the rings might be somewhat blurred. For most churches, the central, "must-have" doctrines include statements about the sacraments (baptism, Eucharist, etc.) and often statements about how the believer can learn divine truth (authority of the Bible, for example). A bit further out are statements that are extremely important, but not necessarily in the category of "disqualifier" if one doesn't believe them (the Presbyterian doctrine of predestination might fit here). And further out are what I would call "theological habits." (The most typical Episcopalian Eucharist is red wine and unleavened wafers, but white wine and home-made bread are possible. The bishop would probably not complain about Wonder bread and Welch's grape juice.)
Grace Fellowship Church fits into this pattern. In my many years there, I never heard a teacher who doubted the deity of Christ or the authority of Scripture. The bull's eye of self-defining theology was there too, but its contents were different from those of other churches.
More Grace Haven History
Ray Nethery, along with several others of the early leadership, had a background in Campus Crusade for Christ. The original point of Campus Crusade was that existing churches had done a poor job of evangelism and that students at secular colleges needed to hear the message of the Gospel. Crusade stressed the basics that all Christian churches have in common and aimed at sending students back to their home churches. Because of this need to relate to a wide spectrum of belief, Crusade (along with other para-church organizations such as Youth for Christ and InterVarsity) avoided discussions of denominational specifics such as the theology of baptism. The money to run Campus Crusade came from a wide variety of community members who were active in many different churches, so this was another reason to avoid teaching a specific Baptist or Presbyterian (or some other denominational) theology.
The early days of Grace Haven Farm mirrored Campus Crusade: students came together from a wide variety of churches (to which they would eventually return) and a lot of the financial support for staff members came from supporters who were in a wide variety of denominations.
Theology in the developing Grace Fellowship Church
Because of the early campus ministry strategy, GFC was home to a wide range of church heritage: Baptists, displaced Roman Catholics, Methodists, and others all showed up at the Farm and Grace Fellowship wanted to include them all. There was also a very real possibility that a strong emphasis on one particular strain of theology would alienate a large segment of the group. In addition, Ray pointed out (quite correctly) that many church splits and a lot of antagonism in American churches arose over issues that were just not worth the battle. Therefore, one of the early absolutes of Grace Fellowship was that we could not discuss theology. At all. Discussions of theology were considered one of the evils of "the established church," and it was pretty common to hear (though not from leaders so far as I can remember) that discussions of theology were a prime way to quench the Holy Spirit. Apparently, God didn't like it when we tried to define our beliefs.
Another core idea was Ray's "umbrella theory" of the church—Grace Fellowship was to be an umbrella to cover a wide variety of fairly independent groups and ministries. There was not a great deal of supervision or accountability involved—the umbrella was largely a legal fiction. People who wanted to start a new project could easily get the leadership's blessing, but rarely anything else—no counsel, advice, oversight, or money. Youth ministries and Sunday school, for a very long time, were entirely independent and unsupervised—if nobody complained, the leadership was totally hands-off.
As the Sunday morning meeting at the Lodge became more like a traditional church and the house churches faded into being mid-week Bible studies, a "family sovereignty" theology began to emerge. Each family was a separate cult or sect in the sense that it had unique beliefs and the family leadership (almost always the father) wasn't answerable to anyone. Whether intentional or not, the pattern seems to have come from the book of Judges:
In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (Judges 17:6)
Obviously, this was an outgrowth of the "no theology" doctrine as well as the "umbrella" doctrine. Pushing theology and church policy decisions down from the overall leadership to the individual families had some very odd effects:
- The decision about who was a church member was never in the hands of anyone in leadership. People decided (to use Ray Nethery's phrase) to "member themselves" with the church. There were no official standards or oversight, and for a very long time, there could be no official list of church members. (Presumably, if someone decided to leave the group, they would "dismember themselves.")
- Because each family had its own theology, Sunday school teaching ran into obvious problems. When a sharp teenager asked the teacher to explain baptism or the Lord's Supper, the only possible answer was "ask your father."
- As time went on, Grace Fellowship became more and more Baptist, but with an odd difference. Most "established churches," whether Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, or Baptist, have an agreed-upon procedure by which a child makes a transition to full adult membership and becomes eligible (among other things) to receive Communion. A typical Roman Catholic age is fourteen; Presbyterians, Methodists, and Episcopalians usually instruct the child and admit him/her at about the same age. Baptists want the child to reach the "age of accountability" before being baptized, and that age is often about ten but can be as young as seven. But in the GFC the idea was that the father of the family made the decision about the child's baptism (no congregation-level leaders were involved), so we saw a sort of "race to the bottom"—it became a point of pride for the child to be baptized younger and younger. ("My child accepted Christ and was baptized at age four!" "Well, MY child was baptized at three!") And because the individual family made the decision whether the child was ready for the Lord's Supper, a similar Eucharistic race took place: I've seen mothers pushing bread and grape juice into the mouths of infants who were barely able to handle solid food.
- Another oddity of this "family/tribal church" philosophy was that Grace Haven (which was founded upon the idea of bringing young people to Christ) became unequipped to deal with solitary youth. One young man who was a member of the youth group, a faithful attender, and (so far as anyone can tell, right up to this day years and years later) a solid Christian believer wanted to be baptized. The problem was that his father was dead and his mother had no interest in religion. He wasn't in a church family, so there was no procedure for him to be approved for baptism. Obviously, this sort of thing wasn't a matter for the elders. (The issue was eventually resolved by temporarily appointing me as his father for the purposes of baptism.)
Radical agnosticism about theology and a desire to be totally hands-off about church policy caused some very specific problems, especially when it came to marriage and divorce.
Several divorces happened in close succession, and the elders were sort of paralyzed. If the wife wants a divorce and the husband doesn't, the "family patriarch leadership" can't solve the problem. Most "established churches" have thought through divorce issues and have agreed-upon policies in place, but Grace Fellowship (because they had agreed never to think through things like this) was completely blind-sided when someone wanted a divorce. Each instance of divorce was a totally unexpected novelty and the leadership had to begin from square one to figure out what to say and do about it. "Go ask your father" didn't work in this case.
At about the time three or four couples were divorcing, three or four other couples wanted to get married—but with a problem: one or the other (or both) of the prospective marriage partners was previously divorced. Now what? Asking the family patriarch for a ruling obviously wouldn't work because he wanted to get married in the first place. Again, without any policy decisions, the church leadership was blind-sided, and the results were far from uniform. One couple had to leave town. Another could get married, but not in the church building. Yet another were married as if there was no issue. There was no policy, no public discussion. Things just happened.
Looking back on this era, the word that comes to mind is “drifting.” In many ways, the leadership wanted to stick with the “hippies dancing in the meadow” model, and some of the leaders were mainly tuned to arm-waving and clapping rather than really leading, but time was catching up with the church. Teenagers were getting married and having children. Church-wide issues needed to be considered and discussed, but for a very long time, we just drifted.
In the Old Testament, the Book of Judges was never seen as the high point of Israel's history.
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