My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.

Robert Frost “Two Tramps in Mudtime” (1874)

“one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead…”

Philippians 3:13

The Dull Edge

After many months of difficulty (I explain in a moment), I was given a mini-sabbatical from my church, though my fellow pastors said that they refused to call it a sabbatical since it was too short for their intention on that front.

I think everyone is exhausted these days because the days are exhausting. At the same time, there are reprieves which we can plan or discover which bring some renewal and a return to usefulness in ways that we hope.

It is like a knife that is well crafted and useful. When you are busy doing what you’re supposed to be doing, the wear of activity is welcome. But the edge must be “kept”. The usage (good) leads to dullness (bad). So the knife, like the life needs resharpening.

It is a comfort, if I extend the dull knife metaphor, to see that the dullness is not due to neglect, poor craftsmanship, or any other blame. The dullness is because of busyness. If the knife is dull, it means you did something.

Having ‘done’ something is a tricky thing to say for a pastor. On the one hand, a pastor doesn’t do anything; it is all of God and all of grace. So that sense that the source and the result are all to God’s glory, such a sense must be upheld. So a pastors is God’s instrument, the knife in his hand, rightly dividing the word of God, wielding the Word and being wielded as a wielder of the Word. God does it.

But on the other hand, the use that God makes of us as instruments is often tangible and intangible, rendering visible and invisible results, being consequential. Our agency under his sovereignty means that we can render to God our lives as dead sacrifices or living escapees from the altar of sacrifice (see Romans 12:1-2). But insofar as we are used by God, we can sometimes see that some work has been “done”. Paul could say remarkably, “we will not boast beyond limits, but will boast only with regard to the area of influence God assigned to us, to reach even to you.” (2 Cor 10:13).

Even Paul’s own metaphor of the drink offering of sacrifice being “poured out” (Phil 2:17) meant that he had “done something”. So as a pastor, even though the work of the care of souls leaves very little that can be tangibly said to be “done” in this life, there can still be a measures of accomplishment. One of those measurements is that the well-worn knife edge is dull. Dullness from done-ness.

Difficulty

In my experience most people do not enjoy hearing the complaints of other people. That is why it is so distinct that Jesus Christ, the suffering Servant has “borne our griefs” (Isa 53:4) and that the Spirit, “helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” (Ro 8:34). So we pray, “Our Father…” knowing that he hears and cares. But as for most folks, they don’t really want to know.

At the same time, we are all fascinated by people. We are incessantly curious about how others live. This is why social media works. It gives us windows into other people’s world.

My little world as a pastor is fairly provincial and eclectic. So are the difficulties. I’ll list them for interest’s sake:

• My wife and I have had a season of crisis counselling that turned from a short time (when a crisis can be managed) to a long time (when an ongoing crisis outstrips one’s ability to manage).

• We both have had a downturn in our health, no doubt related to the crisis in part. My wife’s management of autoimmunity had been going acceptably well but now there is no ‘management’ that is enough. I went from one diagnosis to two, both minor, but indicating that the edge was pretty dull.

• Our little rodeo life, which is a whole family sport/lifestyle is intense in seasons. The maturing it has brought for my sons has been immeasurable. But it’s an intense short season.

• The basement, backyard and deck are in stages of disruption because of a sewer backup. This is now the third time our basement has flooded going back to the epic loss in 2013 when all of Alberta’s rivers spilled their banks.

• My PhD dissertation lay dormant during covid days, and the crisis made it difficult to get traction. But time is ticking and if I want to finish in the next year or so I need to get it complete.

• I’ve had staff turnover at the church (all for good mission extending reasons) which have caused me to return to some administrative tasks that I used to delegate, and to step up in various other pastoral areas that needed to be caught. The senior pastor in a church is a drip pan catching everything that is not caught by others.

• Last of all, the church (Calvary Grace) has experienced all kinds of growth in the last couple of years. The growth is welcome, but it brings those ubiquitous “growing pains”. In the last two years we have seen the consequence of what I’ve come to term, “The Jordan Peterson Effect”. This is the search for meaning which many people, especially young men have embarked on, they have found Peterson, but hungered for more and come to the church. They’ve arrived as interested atheists and have been converted to believing followers of Jesus Christ. This is what pastors call “conversion growth”. There has also been numerical growth in the church that is stunning. I sent out a newsletter in December of 2023 noting the challenges of having 300 plus people in our building on Sundays, but by May 2024 we had added 100 people more on a consistent basis! This addition can’t be cited by us as proof of our cleverness. It is a stewardship nonetheless. We have to evangelize, disciple, “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13). Such an aim, who is sufficient for these things!

So you can see that in my small corner of the world, there are my own species of difficulty, but many of which are common to all. The friction of the difficulties makes the edge dull, and calls for a time to “keep the edge”. I thank God for a season to step aside and resharpen!

Doctor, Doctor.

My doctoral work continues at a better pace than before. There is nothing like a bit of margin to welcome in a big project!

I am a PhD student at the Theological University of Apeldoorn in the Netherlands. The doctoral program requires that I write a thesis of no more than 80000 words and present it for defense to the committee who are addressed as, “My honorable opponents.”

The subject of my research is the Scottish evangelical Robert Haldane (1764-1842). My question I’m attempting to answer is what was the newness or discontinuity which Haldane employed in his use of Scripture for polemics among Christians, their churches and agencies. How was his use of Scripture different than others and how was it the same? What I’ve found is that although Haldane’s views of Scripture were not uniquely new, they were simply the positions of the Reformed confessions, many Christians at that time had adopted novel, sub-biblical views. This made Haldane’s positions seem radical, when all they were offering was a retrieval.

After some challenges, I have narrowed my dissertation in this way with the method of “drilling down” into a theme throughout Haldane’s writings, rather than my previous method of offering a “picture in a landscape” which was a broad overview of everything in Haldane’s life. This switch of methodology has been very clarifying for me, and helps me to make progress. I’ve written two chapters with this new methodology. I need to rewrite two. And then write two more chapters of main content before wrapping up with some evaluations and conclusions.

Why bother?

Often younger men will pursue a PhD because they intend to work in academia as a career. For myself the motive is different, just as my age is older. I’m doing the research to improve my own thinking skills, namely to resharpen the knife (see above). A second motive is to take up my duty to be a theological leader in Canada. Although the idea of the pastor-theologian is a tricky one, more likely to render both vocations as jobs done poorly, yet there is a need to attempt to speak into the realm of ideas, and to take every thought captive to Jesus Christ as Paul told the Corinthian church. My last motive is to prepare for future usefulness if the Lord gives me days ahead, and in those days I may teach pastors more and shift away slightly from full time pastoral work. In other words the PhD helps to prepare me for a day of semi-retirement that may or may not come.

Questions

Do you have a project or task that you are taking up which you feel is a duty to pursue under God?

Do you feel black-pilled (despairing) or white-pilled (hopeful) when it comes to building, creating, and attempting new things?

Social Media:

I post regularly to Twitter/ X and use it as a small opportunity for testimony into the public square. Find it here:

 clinthumfrey (@ClintHumfrey) / X

I am praying and thinking about doing a TikTok channel, which seems like it is very much out of my lane, not to mention CCP spyware, and a swipe algo that might be bringing civilization down. At the same time, young people are there, and among religious groups, the Roman Catholics are dominating the space to define Christianity and the gospel. My sons remind me of this and are urging me to speak into this space.

Pray for me as I contemplate the challenge of being an old man attempting to speak into new media about the ancient faith.

Some helpful things I’ve come across lately:

Civilization with Kenneth Clark (1969). Using objects the story of Western Civilization is told. A necessary education you need to brush up on.

Flight 93 Election by Michael Anton (2016). An influential essay that has spawned many responses and critiques.

Open Access Theological Resources from Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. Great resource. See also the denominationally organized materials at the Confessional Library (mediafire.com).