How did you come to faith in Christ?
Dr. York: I grew up in North Carolina and attended Baptist churches off and on, but Christianity wasn’t really practiced in our home. As I got older, and we moved to Michigan, I equated a Christian with someone who does good—does good to people, does good in school, does good in sports. In my teenage years, I began to run into the problem of my own sinful heart hurting people. I had a lot of broken relationships and participated in things I shouldn’t have. I knew that they were wrong, but I did them anyway.
When I went to the University of Michigan, a man who was involved with the Navigators began to share Christ with me. I realized I was created to have a relationship with God, and my sinful heart was preventing that. I needed to have the Lord save me from my sins and give me a new heart. I professed faith in Him. I learned there the importance of the Scriptures as God’s way of communicating His light and truth to us.
I am thankful for those years where I got immersed in God’s Word. I started sharing what was happening in my life with my friends, and the sweetest fruit of my evangelism was my own wife. We had dated for a number of years since high school. Miriam was converted, and God led us into marriage and, eventually, into the RP Church.
You say you learned the importance of Scripture. What does that mean practically for someone who is exploring?
Dr. York: One of my life verses is John 17:3. Jesus is praying before He goes to the cross, and He says, “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” His great desire is for us to know His Father and to know Him. And the way we come to know Him is through His Word. The study of Scriptures is the study of God. Because of the Spirit, it’s not a dry study. When you study, His Spirit enlightens your eyes, your heart, and your mind, and you begin to hear God speaking to you, addressing issues of your life, helping you to understand more fully what it means to have a relationship with Him, to have that eternal life with Him that begins at the moment you become a Christian but is really eternal. The study of Scriptures is vital to being a Christian.
What would the 18-year-old Barry York think of the seminary president Barry York?
Dr. York: He would laugh. I laugh now, looking back, that God took this ignorant, foolish young man and converted him. I think about that all the time: that God saved me out of my sins and has given me the privilege of serving His kingdom. And I think of myself first and foremost as a pastor or shepherd. So that is how I operate because that is my true, primary calling. Being at RPTS is just a way that God has given me to express that in my life.
What were some highlights for you of being a pastor?
Dr. York: Initially preaching was very intimidating to me, so that wasn’t the highlight. I really had to grow into it. But as I persevered, and as the congregation persevered with me, I grew in that. Preaching God’s Word did become a love of mine, not because I like getting behind the pulpit and getting attention, but because I really enjoy studying God’s Word, thinking about how His Word applies to this group of people at this time, bringing that Word, and praying that God’s Spirit would make it active and living in their lives as they hear it. So I really enjoyed not only the preaching but then the follow-through of that discussion and interacting with people as I taught them personally, or discussed a sermon, or counseled them.
Part of being a shepherd is loving people, and God allows you to form relationships with people. It takes on so much more meaning when you’re developing relationships with people in the church, because they become not just lifetime friends but eternal ones.
Another highlight for me was seeing people converted and then learning how to help them grow in their Christian life. God directed us towards mercy ministry. It became a focus of our congregation to work with the rescue mission and others in the city. That taught me a lot. It’s very humbling work, both because of the situations that people are in and also the heartaches that come with it. Many people you are trying to help will end up turning away from that help. I was taught a lot through that. Church planting was a highlight, as well.
You said you clearly felt called to be a pastor and were comfortable in that role. How did God lead you to take the seminary position and, ultimately, the presidency?
Dr. York: It was a wrestling match, because at the same time I was being asked to consider the seminary professorship, which I came to in 2013, I was also called to another church. And I was serving a church I really loved. I had been there 22 years. I felt like the Lord was moving me on and that He was saying that I had completed what I had been asked to do in Kokomo. My wife was actually praying that way even a year before. She had this sense that maybe the Lord had something else for me to be doing. Going through that, with these two opportunities before me, I really thought, “God, I’m a pastor.” I thought the Lord was leading me to take this other call.
One day, while visiting the seminary, I sat in on chapel, and the psalm being sung was Psalm 102C. I had been working on this psalm with our congregation, memorizing it, and the words of that psalm struck deep in my heart as it talks about God’s kingdom spreading throughout the world, not only geographically but through time. As the gospel goes out, it’s going to go to people who are imprisoned, and it’s going to set them free. Even people who aren’t born yet.
As I was sitting there in the chapel—with people from different parts of the world—and thinking about how teaching there you can be preparing men to go out and preach and men and women to go out and serve the kingdom, and they’re going to go and bring the gospel to people that can affect a whole new generation and even countries. The Lord really humbled me that I was being asked to do this. I saw the influence the seminary can have on not only our denomination but also other workers in the kingdom, as there are many other churches represented there.
With respect to the presidency, that was not in the plans. I was on the board for nine years before I came to RPTS; I knew the plan of the board. I was coming to be a teacher, and I knew that I would still get to preach and write. That was what I strongly felt called to do. When the original plan wasn’t going to work out because of God’s providence, they started asking me about the presidency. I was very resistant. I thought there were other men who could do this work better than I. I’d said I’d be glad to support them in that.
But over time, the board, and Jerry O’Neill, kept gently pressing me. I asked them for time because I was still transitioning to RPTS, transitioning into a new congregation, and still working on my doctoral studies. Over that time the Lord helped the right questions to get asked and answered. I knew that if they were wanting me to do the job just like Jerry did that I didn’t feel like I could fit into that mold. Jerry is a uniquely gifted guy, and I couldn’t see myself in that role the way he was doing it. As the board worked with me, they said, “It’s OK to change some things about the model that you use.” That began to appeal to me.
Ultimately, the Lord always uses Scripture to help me to come to decisions. I wasn’t looking for it, but I was reading through Romans 12; in verse eight, where it talks about the different gifts of the church and how they’re to be used, it said, the one who leads must do so zealously. That was really the question: could I step into this and give it my whole heart or not? I did not want to go into this halfheartedly. The Lord impressed upon me that, with His help and by His grace, I could do this with my whole heart if the board asked me to and the Synod confirmed it.
Understanding that you didn’t have seminary president as a life goal, can you, looking back, see some things that helped prepare you?
Dr. York: First of all, even though I wasn’t raised in a Christian home, my dad was a leader. He was a plant manager and a chamber of commerce president. He was modeling some qualities of leadership that I would like to reflect in my life. I’ve been given wonderful mentors, and those men God has used in wonderful ways: men like Dave Long, whose influence led me into the pastorate, and who was a lifelong friend and mentor until the Lord took him two years ago.
Ted Donnelly has been another man the Lord has used greatly in my life. We have had a 30-year friendship. I didn’t think about it at the time, but we were just friends and he was mentoring me. And other men, like Roy Blackwood and Ken Smith, who God has used in great ways in the kingdom. Also, there have been opportunities to take on responsibilities, when you’re serving the church, whether it’s sitting on the Home Mission Board or serving on committees and presbytery and those types of things. God uses all those influences to help prepare us.
Then you go back to Scripture. There are many leaders in the Bible that God raises up, and often they are obscure men from the outside, which is certainly how I feel. I didn’t grow up in the RP Church. And again, I feel, as I’ve come into the RP churches, and then as an adult, I’ve been both out there as an unbeliever but also part in what we might call the Evangelical Wasteland. When I’ve come into the RP Church and seen its rich heritage theologically and in some of the wonderful traditions of the church and its structures, I just feel like a big cheerleader. I’m humbled by the opportunity to serve at RPTS. I feel like it’s a great trust that has been given to me, and I want to handle it that way before the Lord.
What would you say the seminary needs from you as president at this particular time in history?
Dr. York: A few things. Jerry has provided such stability and theological integrity over these years. I want to maintain that. I made a covenant with the Lord the first day I took the office; one of the things I said before the Lord is I’m not moving any of the ancient theological boundary stones that RPTS has. I love our Confession, and I want to live happily within that and work at preserving and promoting that into the next generation or two of men.
We’re also going through a number of transitions. I’m not the only new guy here. Keith Evans has been brought in for the Biblical Counseling Institute. David Whitla will be coming on board next year, and in the next few years we’ll be having other changes. There will be a lot of change to the mainstay of the faculty and key personnel.
That is going to be a big part: to continue to provide stability even as we’re going through these transitions. But I also think that it’s an exciting time with the rise of distance learning and the opening up of mission fields. I think it’s a key time for us to be exploring new models of theological training and the developing of men in particular for the ministry. That presents all kinds of challenges, such as how to work with others, how to train men in certain nations. It is going to be different than training someone who is going to some North American context.
Going back to the heart of everything, I want to see men raised up for pastoral ministry that have a zeal for preaching the gospel and caring for the poor. Matters of justice and mercy mean a lot to me, so I’m going to stay in the classroom a little more than Jerry was able to because of the way we spread out the responsibilities.
You obviously have been very busy. Work is taking a lot of time, and you have family and congregational commitments. So what prompted you to write Hitting the Marks?
Dr. York: It has been a long-term project. It began out of my pastoral ministry. I’d say it arose from two sources. One was the practical problem of being in a community where there are all types of new churches popping up and places calling themselves churches. There are people confused about what a real church is or is not, people going to things like the Salvation Army and saying that that was their church. I thought it was important to help clarify what is a church, how can we train congregations in that.
But, as you look at, particularly, the Reformers, they wrestled greatly with that question because, as they were coming up out of the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church was saying this is what the true church is. The Reformers were reading the Scriptures and saying, no, this is what seem to be the marks of a true congregation of God’s people. I found that those things are mostly buried in theological books and confessions, and your typical person in the pew doesn’t have ready access to them and have an explanation of why those particular marks. I thought it would be helpful, primarily to congregations as well as pastors, to have a resource where those truths were brought out of the confessions and theological tomes in a practical and accessible book.
You mentioned Reformed folks. Even among them there has been some difference of opinion about defining marks of the church: Are there one or two or three? And as you look at the broader Christendom, you can see up to at least 10 marks of the church. So why are you focusing on three?
Dr. York: I would agree there are many attributes churches have. There are not just three. Martin Luther referred to them as the holy possessions; the church is to be multifaceted. However, I think it’s important to differentiate between the kinds of attributes or the kinds of marks a congregation is to have.
Hitting the Marks is focusing on the marks of essentiality. How do you know whether a congregation truly is a Christian congregation, truly belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ? And it really goes to Him. The church is to be united to Christ; He’s the head of the body. So He is to be directing us and telling us who we are and who we are to be. The marks are reflected in who Jesus is for His people.
In our confessions we say that Jesus holds the three offices of prophet, priest, and king. He is the prophet who proclaims God’s Word to us. He is the priest who laid down His life for us in order to fulfill that Word. And He is the king who now rules over us by His Word and Spirit.
As the church, we should be reflecting those offices, and that is exactly what the marks do. The church is to be preaching the true Word of God because Jesus is the prophet. Or it is to be representing to the world the sacrifices Jesus made for us, which are represented most visibly in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper. It is not enough to have the Word preached or the sacraments present. It must work out in the life of a group of people. Then you are going to see it reflecting on their behaviors. So there will be true disciples of Jesus, those who are obeying His Word. That third mark of discipline, especially as treated by the Reformers, was more holistic. They not only saw the corrective side, which we often think of when we think of church discipline—of someone who’s sinning, having the church taking actions against their sin. They also thought of the formative side of discipline or discipleship where people are willingly following and obeying the Lord.
We have those three marks because of who Christ is. It’s confirmed in the Scriptures, because, when the church is described in certain places, it uses that terminology to describe them. Peter said in 1 Peter 2:9 about the church, You’re a royal priesthood. There is the kingly office and the priestly office that we have as we’re united to Christ. He goes on to say, You are these things so that you can proclaim the excellencies of Christ. You have that proclamatory role of that prophetic voice that you’re to have to this world as you preach the gospel.
It was clear as you wrote the book you were seeing faces and remembering people who have been searching for churches. How do you think most people are going about looking for a church today; and how should they look for one?
Dr. York: It could be an individual looking for a church, or it could be a congregation that’s dying or needs revitalization or is going through transitions. What often happens is, we look at peripheral things, things that are important but are not at the core of who we are as God’s people. For instance, I had people come to our church, and maybe they liked the preaching and liked the family atmosphere, but we didn’t have a youth group or we didn’t have a music program. They were making their decision about church life based on things you can certainly look for but are not at the core of what the church is to be.
Hitting the Marks is trying to help people make those more careful distinctions: Let’s talk about the essential identity elements of the church, and then, from there, as we examine those, there could be ways in which the church could be revitalized simply by going back and looking at their preaching ministry. I know some congregations who have had a minister who is worn out, and something like a sabbatical or receiving further training on preaching can bring him back and help the church to reestablish more fully that mark. Or congregations begin to get lax in the attention that they’re paying to worship or listening to God’s Word, and Hitting the Marks addresses that. You look at the confessions of faith, and the way that the Reformers are writing about the sacraments was like a love expression of what God has done for us. They valued the sacraments like treasured jewels, and we so often say, “Oh, we have communion today,” and communion can become a halfhearted experience. Going back and appreciating what Jesus has done for us through shedding His blood can have a renewal impact upon the congregation. I know churches that have allowed discipline cases to go untreated for years, and then they wonder why God is not bringing more fruit to them. Perhaps He wants to do some pruning and have them cut off some of the deadness of their congregation in whatever form that may exist so that life can spring forth once again. We’re not tending to the vineyard like we should be in our congregations and teaching the whole congregation how important it is to be holding one another accountable and interacting with one another and overcoming sins together.
In Hitting the Marks I am trying to get people to look at the core elements. From there, we can start talking about, How’s our evangelism program? Would a food ministry to the poor be an important thing? Those things need to flow out of who we are rather than replacing our core identity. Churches can begin to be known not for whether they are really people who are hearing the Word of God and loving what Christ has done and growing in holiness; they can become known as the church that has the exciting youth ministry or the Christian school; those things become chief. And I think when they do, we start drifting from our calling and our purpose as God’s people.
When you mentioned, for example, a youth group or a Christian school, many reading this would agree those are not essential marks of the church. Those might be appropriate and good, but there are other marks of the church that, as some people would define it, are essential: service, community, unity, growth, biblical offices, worship, suffering, prayer, evangelism, discipleship, family, grace. Those are all characteristics of the church. How do you differentiate between characteristics and core?
Dr. York: That’s a good question. In some of those that you have mentioned, there are clear lines. With others, there is more of an organic sense to it. You have to be careful. For instance, one of the questions that often arises is, Why isn’t love a mark? Jesus said in John 13, the world will know you’re my disciples if you have love for one another. My response to that is, OK, love is to be a mark, but how do you know if a church has love or not? How do you measure love? In talking about what a true congregation of God’s people is, we need some objective things we can measure. You can objectively look at a church and—not just in one sermon, but over time—tell whether this church is preaching from the Bible or not.
There are a lot of churches that are not preaching from the Bible. To preach from the Bible is to love people ultimately because God’s Word is His words of love to people. The gospel itself is His expression. Romans 5:8 says that God demonstrates His love in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So we have to see the love of God in the preaching. The sacraments are like—as I use as an analogy in the book—wedding rings. They are symbols, holy symbols of God’s love for us, and so He wants those placed upon us in love.
Discipline is love. The Father disciplines those He loves. Proverbs speak of this over and over. It says that if a father doesn’t discipline his own son, he hates him.
To have preaching, the sacraments, and discipline in place doesn’t necessarily mean that, if I visited that church, I could walk away and say that is a loving church. The essentials are not the only thing about the church, but from them should flow forth love. Let’s say a church is not caring for the poor in its midst, for instance, or it falls into the trap described in James 2 where people are running over and honoring the rich folk, but when the poor man comes into the congregation, they’re sort of pushing him into the corner. That’s a huge problem. How does it get addressed? I think you go back to the core. We are to be a people who should be caring for the poor, but how do I get people there? When God was moving our congregation to care more for that, it started with the preaching and the training of people and then bringing the poor in and helping them to see us as the body of Christ and learning how to practice these things.
You mentioned another thing: worship. At the heart of worship is all of these things. We go to church for worship. Central to it is the Word of God, its reading and teaching and preaching, and it’s essential that worship should be the practice and the observation of the sacraments. Central to worship should be issues of life where we are being disciplined and discipled in the ways of the Lord. So worship flows out of these core elements as well.
Some of the book’s diagrams and its cover were inspired by a thought from Luther, who was showing in a certain work the relationship between pneumatology—the study of the Spirit’s work—and ecclesiology. The Spirit’s presence in the church, that’s the temple of God, and when the Spirit of God is present in the body of His people, then we should see core things established, which I would say are these marks. Radiating out from that are these other things that you’re mentioning: growth, evangelism, a heart for missions. Those things should be radiating out, but they might be considered more like attributes of faithfulness that should be there and are tied to the essential marks.
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Drew Gordon is editor of the Witness.