Repent and Embrace One Another
By Mike Khandjian

During my senior year of high school, and through junior college, I worked in a retail store that was turned around by a visionary manager who led it to profitability. Interestingly, his first move was the most difficult. He declared that he wanted to be able to see from one end of the store to another (the store was roughly half the size of a Target). It was littered with signs, displays, and unnecessary aisles that gave it a trashy appearance. As the clutter was removed, the store began to look like it would one day actually become. The rest came naturally.

I have had the privilege of being in the PCA for almost its entire existence, and as a pastor since 1983. The finest and most gracious of founders and leaders have helped shape Katherine and me, for which we are grateful. Of late, however, we have grieved over what could be compared to a store that has lost its vision for something beautiful and now appears ugly in every aisle, though deep down we know it isn’t.

In the way one might justify the need for clutter in an ugly retail store, we sometimes rationalize our attacks and harsh criticisms toward one another. I have been guilty myself. We claim righteous motives and even cite Jesus’ name. But how can He be pleased with a warring spirit?

I would argue that our unkind words and criticisms, rarely offered in person, amount not to unity but contempt — for Jesus.

Sure, we will disagree, and we can do this charitably, in a way that leaves the PCA stronger at the debate’s end. But every time we speak derisively or dismissively of one another, and whenever we allow outside and ultimately disinterested blogs and forums to suck us into their webs of sarcasm and self-righteousness, we become less, not more.

So I offer only a plea — a desperate plea — from one who has not always been a very good brother to my denominational siblings. My plea is that we do the hard thing — that we repent and embrace one another in the name of the One we have grieved.

Os Guinness writes that “Repentance is the beginning of becoming undeceived.” I have learned that I make a terrible mess of anything I attempt to fix apart from simple admissions. And when tensions are thick and damage is fresh, while the temptation may be to dig in and justify, the first step toward healing, though the most difficult, is to repent — like acknowledging ugliness in a store one hopes to turn around. Or plowing potentially fertile ground — with all the promise of lush crops and foliage — that has become hard and overgrown. If we do this, I believe the rest will come naturally. And we will discover that the resultant love and grace will enable us to navigate, discuss, and even celebrate our differences. We begin to become as lovely a denomination as we will one day be.

From its beginning, the PCA has never been blessed because it is pure or perfect, but because it is His. Peace.

Mike Khandjian is senior pastor of Chapelgate Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Md.

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