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Archive for the ‘Moral Suasion’ Category

The promise of play

Posted in Culture, Family & Family Issues, Family Religion, Fatherhood, Moral Suasion, Motherhood & Childbearing, Paternalism & Patriarchy, Transgenerational Faith, WPE Editor on December 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »

As Reformed people, we are deeply committed to the covenant. We have a solemn responsibility to our children—who after all are not ours, but the Lord’s. We as parents and as pastors have a sacred trust. As pastors, we require solemn vows of parents as they present their covenant children for holy baptism. As parents, we take those public vows in deep, humble gratitude for the manifold grace of God in ‘spreading His skirt over our little ones.’ With faith, we lay hold of the gracious promise, yet with a real trembling for the stewardship that is ours to raise them up in the “fear and admonition of the Lord.”

And yet, while our covenant-tradition is clothed with solemnity and gravitas, the lighter side of life shines through (or, it ought to!) as we endeavor to light the flame of faith in our children. There is a place for play; and, in fact, there is great promise in it. I’m increasingly convinced after twenty years of pastoring, twenty-five years of parenting, and now almost two years of grand-parenting, that one major ingredient of parenting and, yes, even pastoring, involves play. And I believe this is all the more vital in small, first- and second-generation Reformed and Presbyterian churches who lack the longevity of larger multi-generational churches. The margins are smaller and the risk of losing our children greater. Especially in our circles, the imperative to do all we lawfully can to create a home and church environment where our covenant children will naturally want to profess faith, commune, marry, bear children, and put down deep roots in our rootless world.

But whether your church is large or small and your subculture more fragile or more robust, these children are still ‘ours to lose.’ Yes, the Holy Spirit must regenerate. Enculturation is a barren womb without free and sovereign grace. But our responsibility, in giving and taking baptismal vows, is not just to catechize and keep good order in home and church. We may and must, if I may put it this way, “win” our children winsomely. And so I say, let us play.

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Another prescription for community renewal

Posted in Free Church of Scotland, Missiology, Moral Suasion, Parish in American Context, Parish Theory & Practice, Parochial Strategy, Social Byproduct, Social Issues, The Gospel & the Poor, Theology of Community, Theology of Place, Thomas Chalmers on August 25, 2023| 1 Comment »

Community is dead. R.I.P. This short article by Dr. Carl Trueman laments the evaporation of community–at least in the West–and of its historically Christian nexus, the Church. He then offers a strategic prescription in the rediscovery of hospitality, no doubt in the spirit of Rosaria Butterfield. I couldn’t agree more. If we are embodied souls living in real places with zip codes and GPS coordinates, we as Christians need to love our neighbors in very tangible ways for their salvation — and as a happy byproduct, recreate community.

But I think this malady requires more than one prescription. Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), the pioneer of the Free Church of Scotland in which Trueman spent many years, was even in his day deeply troubled at the disintegration of then-modern community. The Industrial Revolution had forced masses of country folk into the slums of Britain’s factory-choked cities. It grieved him to his core that these people were living in grinding poverty and were completely falling through the cracks of the Church of Scotland’s traditional spiritual care, forming a bloated underclass of unchurched “home heathen.” And the mechanized web of misery only strengthened its grip by the complete and utter absence of community. His assessment is surprisingly contemporary: “As the matter stands, juxtaposition forms no security whatever for acquaintanceship—insomuch that the members of distinct households might live for years under the same roof, unknowing and unknown to each other.”

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The spell of (evangelistic) home visitation

Posted in Family Religion, Gospel Tactics, Locality & the Law of Residence, Moral Suasion, Parish Theory & Practice, Parochial Strategy, The Gospel & the Poor, The Romance of Locality, Thomas Chalmers, Visitation Evangelism on October 9, 2020| Leave a Comment »

“There is one lesson that we need not teach, for experience has already taught it, and that is, the kindly influence which the mere presence of a human being has upon his fellows. Let the attention bestowed upon another, be the genuine emanation of good-will, and there is only one thing more to make it irresistible. The readiest way of finding access to a man’s heart, is to go into his house; and there to perform the deed of kindness, or to acquit ourselves of the wonted and the looked for acknowledgment. By putting ourselves under the roof of a poor neighbour, we in a manner put ourselves under his protection—we render him for the time our superior—we throw our reception on his generosity, and we may be assured that it is a confidence which will almost never fail us. If Christianity be the errand on which the movement is made, it will open the door of every family; and even the profane and the profligate will come to recognise the worth of that principle, which prompts the unwearied assiduity of such services. By every circuit which is made amongst them, there is attained a higher vantage-ground of moral and spiritual influence; and, in spite of all that has been said of the ferocity of a city population, in such rounds of visitation there is none of it to be met with, even among the lowest receptacles of human worthlessness. This is the home walk in which is earned, if not a proud, at least a peaceful popularity—the popularity of the heart—the greetings of men, who, touched even by the cheapest and easiest services of kindness, have nothing to give but their wishes of kindness back again; but, in giving these, have crowned such pious attentions with the only popularity that is worth the aspiring after—the popularity that is won in the bosom of families, and at the side of death-beds.”

Thomas Chalmers, Collected Works, 14:49-50

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The original “West Port” story

Posted in Articles, Free Church of Scotland, Locality & the Law of Residence, Missiology, Moral Suasion, Parish Theory & Practice, Parochial Strategy, The Romance of Locality, Theology of Community, Theology of Place, Thomas Chalmers, Vignettes from 19th Century District Visitation, Visitation Evangelism, West Port experiment, WPE Editor on April 14, 2020| Leave a Comment »

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My 2018 journal article, “Desert Rose: Thomas Chalmers’ West Port Experiment (1844-1847),” published in the 2018 edition of The Confessional Presbyterian. Images used by permission. To purchase a copy, click here.

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Wise-as-serpent evangelism

Posted in Church of Scotland, Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls, Family Religion, Free Church of Scotland, Gospel Tactics, Locality & the Law of Residence, Missiology, Moral Suasion, Parish Theory & Practice, Parochial Strategy, Vignettes from 19th Century District Visitation, Visitation Evangelism, WPE Editor on April 9, 2020| Leave a Comment »

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“As to the attendance of the people on the Sabbath ministrations of the missionary, you will doubtless find that they will give you very fair promises. They may all say they will go to church; but by many of them the promises will not be kept. In such circumstances, a very good plan, which I would recommend to you, would be this, — Let either the agent of the district, or some person on whom he can depend, after the hour at which the various churches go in, go to the district where the defaulters, — reside, and entering one of their houses, beg to be allowed to conduct a family exercise, to which the neighbours may be called in. Depend upon it, they will take it very well. They will of course feel themselves caught . . . but still they will tolerate you, and make their escape next Sabbath, by going to the place of worship. That’s one of a variety of doing the thing. It will bring them in contact with the gospel at any rate. The great matter is to get them into the habit of church-going.”

-Thomas Chalmers, 1844 lecture on the eve of the West Port Experiment

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Gospel pleading

Posted in Gospel Proclamation, Ministerial Fidelity, Moral Suasion, Pastoral Theology, The Free Offer of the Gospel, The Sacred Ministry, Thomas Chalmers on February 19, 2019| Leave a Comment »

“He would bend over the pulpit,” said one of [Thomas Chalmers’] old hearers, “and press us to take the gift, as if he held it that moment in his hand, and would not be satisfied till every one of us had got possession of it. And often when the sermon was over, and the psalm was sung, and he rose to pronounce the blessing, he would break out afresh with some new entreaty, unwilling to let us go until he had made one more effort to persuade us to accept of it.”

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“Being crafty, I caught you with guile”

Posted in Church of Scotland, Gospel Tactics, Missiology, Moral Suasion, Parish Theory & Practice, Parochial Strategy, Vignettes from the Old Parish Way on November 27, 2018| Leave a Comment »

“Some Highland Evangelicals (in the 18th century) resorted to coercive tactics to compel people to hear their message. A mild example was Walter Ross’ confiscation of the cooking utensils in a fishing village that repeatedly emptied of its suspicious inhabitants when he approached. He returned the pots and pans after entertaining the villagers at a meal two days later. At that time they promised to receive his visits and to attend church.”

-Stephen A. Woodruff, The Pastoral Ministry in the Church of Scotland, p. 242

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In it to win it

Posted in Locality & the Law of Residence, Moral Suasion, Parish Theory & Practice, Parochial Strategy, The Romance of Locality, Thomas Chalmers, Visitation Evangelism on March 30, 2018| 1 Comment »

Below is an extract from an upcoming journal article I’m writing on Thomas Chalmers’ territorial (parochial) method of outreach.

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The method also capitalizes on the power of moral influence. Now, as we have seen already, the very doctrinal keystone of Chalmers’ model was the stern, Calvinist doctrine of human depravity. Attraction might work, if men were not half bad. But as they are altogether bad – spiritually speaking – there must be aggression. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, the aggression must be gentle. The laborer must go among the people and “ingratiate” himself in their affections by his manifest care for them, body and soul, parents and children:

… he is to watch every opportunity, to go to them especially at those seasons when, through sickness or death in their houses, their hearts are peculiarly open and susceptible to impressions from one who comes to them in the character of a friend and comforter, as interesting himself in the education of their families, and by a thousand nameless offices and topics of introduction by which you may make a pretext or a reason occasion of visiting them: and you will infallibly, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, meet with a cordial welcome from this alienated population.

This aggression is the force of moral suasion, or as he wrote elsewhere, the “omnipotence of Christian charity.” That the people are thus susceptible highlights Chalmers’ convictions of a certain abiding goodness in human nature, which the territorial method exploits. It may not always result in conversion, but it should very well restore a population to regular church attendance – a more hopeful prelude to conversion.

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Parish minister, gainer of souls

Posted in Church of Scotland, Gospel Tactics, Gregarious (Social) Principle, Locality & the Law of Residence, Missiology, Moral Suasion, Parish Theory & Practice, Parochial Strategy, The Romance of Locality, Vignettes from the Old Parish Way, Visitation Evangelism on June 14, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Here is a delightful vignette of old parish ‘missions,’ if you will, in 17th century Presbyterian Scotland.  The minister, William Guthrie (1620-1665), labored to be all things to all men, that he might gain some.

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“After William Guthrie came to Fenwick, many of the people were so rude and barbarous, that they never attended upon divine worship, and knew not so much as the face of their pastor. To such, everything that respected religion was disagreeable; many refused to be visited or catechised by him; they would not even admit him into their houses. To such he sometimes went in the evening disguised in the character of a traveller, and sought lodging, which he could not even obtain without much entreaty, but, having obtained it, he would engage in some general amusing conversation at first, and then ask them how they liked their minister. When they told him that they did not go to church, he engaged them to go and take a trial; others he hired with money to go. When the time of family worship came, he desired to know if they made any, and if not, what reasons they had for it.

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