RCA-Classis of the Canadian Prairies Annual Meeting

October 28th was the annual meeting of the Classis of the Canadian Prairies, a regional gathering of member churches of the Reformed Church of America. The RCA is the oldest Christian denomination in North America. It has a large U.S grouping and several churches in Canada. While I studied at Seminary in Langley, B.C, Canada I attended an RCA church called Home Church.

Home Church is a recent church plant by Jim Moerman. The churches vision is to be a church for the unchurched, for God’s prodigals who are wanting to come home but may not know the way or are unsure of what they can expect from God their Father. While attending Home Church I served in a part-time capacity for 18 months as the Associate Pastor and my main aim was discipleship ministry.

Jim Moerman recently put me in contact with RCA Executive Secretary John Kapteyn who in turn connected me with Classis of the Canadian Prairies lead Ron Opmeer. Through these contacts I was given an opportunity to be guest speaker at the annual meeting I mentioned above.

I was given 35 minutes to speak on the topic of understanding and responding to Muslims. First, I need to say that such a topic is very wide and has its challenges. Second, it offers a great opportunity for me to speak on something which I am excited about and which I believe is a necessary and important part of Christian life and thought. In order to address the issue I focussed on three specific ideas.

1) The doctrine of Allah.

This might seem an interesting starting point but here is my reasoning. It has been said the proper study of mankind is man. I have also heard it said that the proper study of a person is a study of their notion of God. Let me briefly elaborate. If you can understand the character and nature of that thing, person, or idea which is of ultimate importance to someone than you will be able to deduce what things that someone finds most important. For example, if some person ‘worships’, not literally but through word and deed, wealth than it is likely that their character will evince certain characteristics. It is the same with people and their ideas of the supreme being, of the divine person.

With this as my basis I made a brief study of what it is that Islam’s source materials, the Qur’an and Tradition, teach about the character and nature of Allah. I focussed on the primary notion of Allah’s unity and then upon his will, knowledge and power as these are the primary attributes of Allah emphasized in these source materials. For interpretation of the materials I used the foundational writings of the 9th century Islamic theologian Ash’ari, a man thought of as the father of Islamic orthodoxy.

2) The many faces of Islam.

This second point focussed on the idea that though the Islamic source materials teach certain ideas about Allah, these ideas may be varyingly interpreted by Muslim’s to produce communities that have distinct character’s. For example, Sufi mystics hold to a different idea of Allah’s relation to his creatures and his nature of communicating to man than do Sunni’s and as such each community shows distinct characteristics.

I drew a parallel that this sort of division is seen in less historical groupings as well. There are fanatics who emphasis aspects of Allah’s judgement and wrath. There are vast numbers of Muslims that hold strongly to the traditional interpretation of Allah. There are many Muslims who being influenced by modernism are less dogmatic about the truth claims of the source materials and moralize their faith. There are Muslims who are named as such culturally and not religiously.

I suggested that Christian efforts to understand Muslims must recognize these categories and the variations of interpretation found in the global Muslim community. Considering this is the case a Christian’s best efforts at understanding their Muslim neighbour is to talk to that neighbour, learn from them and discover Islam through their eyes.

3) Responding to Muslim’s

Here I changed the topic a bit. Rather than talk on how to respond to Muslim’s I emphasized that we should rid our thinking of polemical attitudes and seek to build relationships. To do this I focussed on three things.

First, we need to respect our Muslim friends and neighbours as people. Second, we need to communicate with them with integrity, which means we need to understand, live and clearly communicate our Christian faith as we seek to explore spiritual truth with our Muslim friends. Third, we need to know and speak what is core to Christian faith and that is the life and teaching of the man Jesus the Christ.

I hope to have a copy of the video that was recorded on that evening and post a link to it here as soon as I am able.

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