There’s something rotten in the RP church, and it might be me. Let me explain. Recently, I became convinced that the Reformed church is suffering from a lack of joy. I wrote about this observation in Reformation 21, the online magazine of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, in an article entitled, “The Joy of the Reformed.” In that article I offered a couple of suggested causes for this lack of joy, one of which is a phenomenon I refer to as “theological immigration.” Here is how I described this phenomenon:

Over the past 20 years the Reformed church, particularly through the efforts of men like R. C. Sproul, has been very successful in drawing people out of evangelicalism and assimilating them into the ranks of the Reformed. What attracted these immigrants were the things that they perceived as woefully deficient in evangelicalism. These included things such as irreverent worship, imprecise doctrine and sloppy to nonexistent church government. In other words, most of the immigrants to the Reformed world made their migration because they were dissatisfied with evangelicalism. They were evangelical malcontents.

I contend that many who came into the Reformed church out of this massive wave of immigration entered the church with an embattled spirit. Many of them came ready to fight. Many desired to be “truly Reformed.” In other words, many of them entered the Reformed church grumpy.

Before I continue, let me state that this grumpiness was not entirely unwarranted or unfounded. Many of those who migrated into the Reformed world did so based on sincere conviction, and they were properly reacting to serious theological errors. But I believe their migration experiences knocked them a bit out of balance. The pendulum swung too far. Many of the newly naturalized members of the Reformed community have displayed a lack of humility regarding their own theological positions and a lack of charity toward the theological positions of those who disagree with them. To put it bluntly, one of the major challenges facing the Reformed church is that it is populated with far too many grumpy young men. I know this because I am one of them. My name is Anthony Selvaggio, and I am a grumpy young man (albeit not quite so young anymore).

I came into the Reformed church grumpy, and I believe that the grumpiness of men with backgrounds similar to mine is contributing to an unhealthy atmosphere that is stifling the effectiveness and joy of the Reformed church. The RP Church is not immune to this problem. The grumpy young man syndrome is exacting a toll on the life of our denomination. Among the ministers there is less fraternity than there should be. Men are much too uncharitable to each other and much too suspicious of each other. Sometimes this grumpiness permeates the preaching of ministers whose sermons sound more like lectures on why everyone else is wrong rather than why God is so glorious.

I believe this adversarial spirit has contributed to a decreased sense of joy in the eldership, the ministry and in the worship of many of our congregations. But this is not just an issue for ministers. Every congregation has its own DNA that is made up of the collective genetic pool of its members. Sometimes there are dominant genes in that DNA that have a disproportional impact on the zeitgeist of a congregation. When that dominant contributor is a magnanimous, mature and joyful Christian, he or she can serve as a healthy catalyst for new life and growth in a congregation; but when it is the grumpy member who exercises such a role, the results can be stifling and devastating to the life and work of the church. The grumpy church member who has taken the role of self-appointed elder, defender of the true Reformed faith and legislator of congregational norms can suffocate the life of the church.

A wise and learned RP pastor once told me that the greatest threat facing the RPCNA is not that it will go liberal, but that it will become so self-absorbed, calcified and embittered that it will simply shrivel up and waste away. Perhaps our greatest threat is not the liberals, the emergents, or N.T. Wright and his disciples. Perhaps we’ve seen the enemy and it is us. Maybe we need to consider anew Paul’s warning in Galatians 5:15, “If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.”

Do not abandon hope. There are many reasons to be hopeful regarding grumpy young men and the future of our denomination. Grumpy young men often become less grumpy through God’s work of sanctification and through the inevitable process of human aging. Personal hardships and disappointments are experienced that make the heart more capacious toward others. What seemed important five or ten years before begins to seem trivial. People, relationships and the big issues of the gospel begin to eclipse the sideshows that often consume so much of our youthful energy.

In addition, we have the reality that God is sovereign and that Christ will build His church. We know that He who began a good work in us “will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6).

In the next column we will explore some other reasons to be hopeful about our future by examining some potential remedies for the challenges posed by grumpy young men syndrome, but for now that’s how God’s Word speaks in your world.

—Anthony T. Selvaggio