By Four years. That’s how long this new church called Sojourn lasted before our first major internal crisis, and what a crisis it was. I used the word “internal” because there were some significant external crises right from the beginning.
A rough start
Sojourn Church in Spearfish was “born” or “planted” on February 2, 2020. That’s the day we held our first official Sunday service in the Young Center on the campus of Black Hills State University.
Sojourn was started by three couples (and their families) who had much in common in the areas of theology and ecclesiology, or so we thought at the time. The three men in those couples were the first and founding pastor-elders at Sojourn, with the general consensus being that I (John) would be the elder who did the majority of the preaching at our Sunday services.
Two and a half weeks after our first Sunday service, I was having back surgery, and one of our other elders was and had been preaching in my place after that first Sunday.
Five weeks after our first Sunday service, the entire world ground to a halt as a new virus called COVID-19 started its worldwide spread.
On May 24, 2020 we started meeting again as a church, carefully, and in a garage belonging to one of our families. A few months after that, we were again able to meet in the classroom at the Young Center, which is where we’ve been ever since, other than a few Sundays each year when the Young Center is closed.
The internal crisis of January-February 2024
Depending on who you ask, the reason for this crisis will be something along the lines of a difference in “ecclesiological vision.” To put it another way, the elders disagreed on where the church was going, what the church would look like, how it would get there, and what the leadership would look like that would lead it there.
I was first made aware of “the difference” on January 16, 2024, in a letter delivered to me at our weekly elders meeting. Less than four weeks later, on February 11, 2024, the other two elders stepped down from their role as elders and left the church. Roughly half the church followed them that day, or shortly after, leaving the rest of us wondering “What just happened?”
What did happen?
I’m still trying to make sense out of all this, and perhaps I never will.
In a nutshell, the two elders who left had expressed their opinions and criticisms on some church leadership matters, first to me privately and then to the church as a whole. What they wrote and said impacted everyone in the church in one way or another, and individuals and families who only a few weeks previous to this thought things at Sojourn were going well, were influenced by their statements and decided to leave the church.
In retrospect, I think it’s fair to say that one of two things are largely true in this matter:
- Either what was written and said invalidates the previous four years of Sojourn Church’s life; or
- The previous four years of Sojourn Church’s life invalidates what was written and said.
If anything, this has been a reminder of the warnings in the Bible, such as the New Testament book of James, about our words and the damage they can cause. Indeed, “How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!” (James 3:5)
What about God’s sovereignty?
I believe, teach, and preach the sovereignty of God, a sovereignty that I will not “sugar coat” or turn into some mushy, mealy idea that allows for a human will that is just as sovereign as God. The God who spoke this universe into existence is absolutely sovereign over his creation, including human beings, and at the same time, human beings are responsible for their thoughts, words, and actions. Divine sovereignty and human responsibility are two truths taught by the authors of Scripture, and those authors did not see any problem with holding both truths at the same time.
Having said that, how do church problems fit into that way of thinking? I’m still working that out, but not long ago I read through 1 Peter, and in 1 Peter 1:3-7 we find these words:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
“Grieved by various trials,” if our sovereign God has deemed them necessary, to test the “genuineness of [our] faith,” looking forward to that day when Jesus Christ will return and time will be no more. Various trials, including, I imagine, church splits and divisions that for some reason have been ordained as necessary by an absolutely sovereign God.
Does that mean we should be happy or pleased with things like church splits? No. I think we can say with certainty that Paul was not excited about the prospect of division in the Ephesian church (see Acts 20:30), or any other local church (see 2 Corinthians 11:28). But was he trusting in God and God’s sovereignty, even in matters such as this? Always.
VoM article about a church planting pastor and his wife
In the March 2024 edition of The Voice of the Martyrs monthly magazine, there’s an article about a church planter and his wife in Burkina Faso, a country in west Africa. This pastor’s name is David, and his wife’s name is Esther. After reading their story, I realized the trials that Sojourn recently experienced and that are still being felt, although real, pale in comparison.
According to this article, Burkina Faso is more than 50% Muslim, and there is active Islamic persecution of Christians and opposition to the gospel. David and Esther have planted churches in three different villages so far, and their experience has included death threats, at least one Sunday when it was just the two of them in church, and only eight people attending church services in their current location after two years of church planting efforts.
Some people might say that David and Esther should quit, give up, since their church is growing so slowly. I say that if they are being faithful to the gospel, teaching people about Jesus Christ and faith in him, and shepherding the flock that is there, then keep on keeping on. Growth, either numerically or spiritually, is up to God, not us. Perseverance means not quitting, even when things become or remain difficult. Especially when things become or remain difficult.
I doubt that I’ll have the opportunity to meet David and Esther in this lifetime, but someday in heaven I’ll track them down and perhaps we’ll chat for a while about planting churches in a fallen world, about the gospel of Jesus Christ, and about the sovereignty of God.
I couldn’t find this article on VoM’s website, but I’ve made a PDF of the article and uploaded it here if you’d like to read it.
A lesson learned
One thing that was revealed in that fateful elders meeting on January 16 is that another elder and myself had different ideas on who would be the “teaching elder” on into the future. We both assumed that the other was thinking like we were thinking, but that was not the case. To use an illustration, what started as a very small, nearly invisible crack in the sidewalk four years ago had grown into a seemingly uncrossable canyon. The lesson to learn from this is to talk through things extensively, even things that you assume you already know the answer to, things that may seem obvious.
It seems that it took four years of church life and ministry to realize that despite many theological similarities, we elders had some different views that proved to be incompatible, at least for those who left the church. And that may be all I’m meant to understand about the past few months until I cross over into eternity.
In the meantime, like Burkina Faso and everywhere else on this planet, Spearfish is very much in need of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and Lord willing, Sojourn will continue to be a light in a very dark world.