A Farmer Went Out To …
A Farmer Went Out To …
In God's providence, Amanda and Chad Roegner, my sister and her husband, were able to get things lined up for me to spend two weeks at the Highlands Study Center in early June. I was excited at the opportunity because of all the good things Chad and Amanda had told me about it but I was relatively new to the study center's teaching so I wasn't too terribly sure what to expect. Also, since I was educated in a government school I didn't quite know how the "read and discuss" format was going to work. I would soon find out that this was a very natural way to learn. On the way down to Virginia from my home in Iowa, Chad and Amanda gave me the book All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes: The Christian and Pop Culture to read while we were driving. I quickly began to realize why they were so unhappy about the prevalence of the television in my life, with my immersion in pop culture.
The night we arrived in Virginia I was invited to come eat and worship like I was a close friend in the home of a family that I had never met before. While I was still thinking about what I had read on the way down I glanced into the living room area and I was struck with the fact that this was one of the first living rooms I had seen where the chairs were set up for ease of conversation, not ease of viewing the television. This would not be the last time that I saw people making deliberate application to their lives.
A few days later I began to read and converse with Jonathan Daugherty. In the beginning of my time at HSC, I learned a lot about culture. The first book Jonathan gave me to read was Angels in the Architecture. As I was reading through this book I began to see the vision and hope that drives the members of Saint Peter. One important aspect of HSC is that you are surrounded by a body of believers covenantally building the Kingdom of God. After reading a book you go out and see what you read lived out. How many people in the modern church hold feasts to celebrate baptisms or hold barn dances not to commemorate the past but to rejoice before God in the here and now? This not only reinforces what you read but gives you an idea of how you can implement what you learned. Also, things that you might have forgotten are continually refreshed as you see it put into practice. The more I learned about culture, the more I realized just how indistinct I was from the world and how much I needed to repent of this. Another thing that I realized through all of the conversations with various people was how shallow mass communication is.
I was born and raised on a family farm in rural Iowa where corporate farming is becoming more and more prevalent. Family farms are being pushed to get big or get out, and more and more are getting out. Children do not wish to carry on the family business, so the farm gets sold to investors and rented out at high prices to huge farmers, and the parents end up spending their children's inheritance in a nursing home. It has gotten to the point where nearly everyone believes bigger is better even though this means that the kids must go to state schools to get them out of the way and the mother must work to buy groceries because the children can't raise chickens and tend a garden. Covenantal agrarianism is just one of the many aspects of an optimistic eschatology that is encouraged and lived out in the lives of the members of Saint Peter.
If you spend any time at all at the Highlands Study Center you will quickly notice God's hand of blessing on this covenant community. Children are in abundance and growing in grace and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, God is adding to their number almost daily (at least while I was there), the whole counsel of God is faithfully preached from the pulpit, and the flock is closely watched over by the shepherds. In short, you see God fulfilling His promise that "If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments and perform them . . . I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people." (Lev. 26: 3, 12). You can't help but look for the other blessings listed in Lev. 26 happening, some of which have been despised and rejected by this nation of late. Just to see this aspect of Saint Peter Presbyterian Church and the Highlands Study Center is far more encouraging than any amount of reading material or conferences could ever be. As a member of a small church struggling to get started, this encouragement was and is critical. At times it can seem like you are a lone voice speaking in the wilderness of a land that God has given up for judgment—but He hasn't yet. There is not yet a famine of God's Word in the land. (Amos 8) If only the church would repent and be faithful in the small things in life, then maybe God would send true revival. If, however, such should tarry in our lifetime, at least when that great day comes God will be able to say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
This past week a baby, who happens to be my niece, was born into our church, and there are two others on the way. Whenever I see these children I can't help but be encouraged as God blesses our church. I cannot help but be hopeful of what is to come, knowing that before my very eyes is—as Christ said—the Kingdom of Heaven.
Ed Sents visited with us the first two weeks of June. We pray he will be able to return soon. We pray also that God would bless him with a godly wife, and godly seed.