Church Succession

Okay, Cindy brought this topic up so I thought I’d open the door on it so she—or anyone else—could comment. But I’m no expert and am not sure I have a dogmatic opinion on it. The issue is church succession: how should churches be started...and how have they been started throughout history?

Some claim that churches should reproduce new churches. In fact, they say, God’s true type of church has been propagated this way since the days of the apostles. I suppose this is called unbroken succession.

Others say God’s true type of church has always existed at any given point in history, but that the genealogy has not followed an unbroken chain of succession. That is, just before a good church faded from existence in the Alps, another one might have sprung up in Wales to keep the flame alive. I guess this is called church perpetuity.

Still others say that the New Testament church got off track and basically went out of existence for several centuries when the Romans melded it with the pagan state religion; but thankfully the Reformers tinkered with the Catholic model a little bit and--voila!—God’s church was resurrected from the dead. This is the Protestant view.

So does it matter? Does it matter how churches are started or who leads them? Some people start home churches from scratch. This can occur out of pride, or desperation, or even necessity (I’m thinking of underground home churches in China). Others think a church needs to be “planted” by a mother church. And the present reality is most churches are actually started by seminaries or mission boards that may be only nominally affiliated with any church.

As to the historical angle, here is Charles Spurgeon’s opinion:

"We believe that the Baptists are the original Christians. We did not commence our existence at the Reformation, we were reformers before Luther or Calvin were born; we never came from the Church of Rome, for we were never in it, but we have an unbroken line up to the apostles themselves. We have always existed from the very days of Christ, and our principles, sometimes veiled and forgotten, like a river which may travel underground for a little season, have always had honest and holy adherents.”

The Story of Maeyken Wens

[I wrote this for a magazine called The Pillar several years ago. It's taken from an important old book called "Martyrs Mirror," which can be found online here. Maeyken’s story is here.]

"Oh, how easy it is to be a Christian, so long as the flesh is not put to the trial, or nothing has to be relinquished; then it is an easy thing to be a Christian." Maeyken Wens, the author of these lines, was not mocking Christians who were fortunate enough to practice their faith free from persecution, but was merely reflecting on her life prior to her arrest.

The setting was Antwerp, Belgium, 1573. Maeyken Wens, like hundreds of her Christian countrymen, had been apprehended and imprisoned by the Catholic authorities for not conforming to their self-serving theology. In this instance, painstakingly recorded for us by the historian Thieleman J. van Braght, Wens and three other women (apparently engaged in a Bible study or prayer group) were bound by the hands, thrown into a fetid prison, and prohibited from returning to their families. On several occasions priests would enter their cells and demand that they denounce their faith and embrace the Catholic dogma. But each attempt met with failure as Wens and her companions continually asserted the doctrines of Christ over those of the church-state.

That was in April. Maeyken Wens did not see daylight again until taken to the public court in October, 1573, to be sentenced. During six months in prison, her faith did not falter. She wrote to her husband, an Anabaptist minister, "I regret that I am not more thankful for all that comes upon me, for it is all the work of the Lord. We ought to thank the Lord in adversity as well as in that which is agreeable to the flesh.” Since imprisonment and physical torture could not sway her, the tribunal rendered quick judgment on Wens. On October 5th the sentence was handed down: she was to have her tongue fastened to her palate by means of an iron screw (presumably to stop her from witnessing to others) and then be burned at the stake. To add to the shock of this sentence, the judges declared that the execution should take place within twenty-four hours.

Though most people would have tried every loophole possible to avoid the sentence—plea bargaining, renouncing their faith, begging for mercy—Maeyken Wens did not flinch at the verdict. That very night, her last night on earth, she wrote to her fifteen year old son, Adriaen: "My dear son, be not afraid of the suffering; it is nothing compared to that which shall endure forever. The Lord takes away all fears.” To this she added a remark that seems almost incomprehensible to our modern sensibilities: "I did not know what to do for joy, when I was sentenced."

For joy? It is difficult to imagine today's Sunday socialites and disciples of watered-down Christianity facing execution for their faith with joy. The reasoning might follow this line of thought: "My dead body would be useless to God. I will renounce my faith under pressure. Then, when the heat is off, I will do great works for God." But Maeyken Wens, like the millions of Christian martyrs before her, knew the gravity of such self-centered pliability. Perhaps she had heard stories of Romans converting to Christ when they heard the Christians singing hymns while the flames licked the flesh from their bodies. Perhaps she had known fellow countrymen who were greatly moved by the unswerving devotion of similar Belgian Christian martyrs. In any case, she willingly marched out to the marketplace the next morning with her friends, each with her tongue screwed tight, as the crowd gathered to watch the spectacle.

Not wanting to desert his mother in her life's greatest trial, Adriaen Wens took his three-year-old brother Jan and went to the marketplace to be near during her last hour. As they tied her to the stake, however, he passed out and did not regain consciousness until the crowd had scattered. His mother had been consumed by the flames, and he had been spared the experience of witnessing her death. He rose to his feet and walked over to the pile of smoldering ashes that surrounded the charred stakes. Sifting through the ashes, he found what he was looking for: the iron screw that kept her from witnessing. He kept it in remembrance of her, no doubt telling generations to come the story behind the unspectacular, blackened screw.

To this day the story lives on, moving non-Christians to reappraise their perceptions of Christianity, and moving Christians to be living examples for a world saturated with inconsistencies and cowardice. "Oh, regard not the great multitude," Maeyken Wens wrote to her son, "or the ancient custom, but look at the little flock, which is persecuted for the word of the Lord."

Engraving of Adriaen Wens at the place of his mother’s execution