The Farm

Sharing is caring!

“Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” Matthew 19:29

A couple of weeks ago, as I was rummaging through some of my father’s old pictures that my sister had sent me, I came across a large picture of a farm.

Judging from the frayed and discolored cardboard it was mounted on and from the quality of the picture itself, it was obviously very old. It was an image of a beautiful two story farmhouse, a large and immaculate barn, and hundreds of fertile acres.

I had seen it once before while visiting my sister. We both assumed it was a picture of the farm my father was born on in Canby, Oregon.

But when I turned it over, I noticed the name “Opdal” printed on the back of the cardboard and suddenly everything fell into place.

The picture I was holding wasn’t an image of Dad’s birthplace at all. It was a picture of my great grandfather Baeraug Reese’s farm in Opdal, Norway. The beautiful farm I was looking at was the one he sold when he and his family immigrated to the United States in order to escape religious persecution.¹

He used the proceeds from the sale of his farm to finance, not only his family’s passage, but also the passage of dozens of his neighbors and spiritual sojourners from Opdal.

The reason Bearaug and his fellow believers were being persecuted in Norway was because they refused to worship in the Norwegian state church. Instead, they wanted a “free” church – free from politics and secular involvement – that stressed having a living relationship with Jesus Christ as a result of being born again spiritually through faith in him, not simply being born physically into the state church.

As I held that picture of Baeraug’s farm in my hand, I thought, “My great grandfather did what Jesus describes in Matthew 19:29. He sold this amazing farm, left loved ones, friends, neighbors, and his own country, to live in a dugout dirt home on the side of a hill² on the lonely planes of South Dakota. All to follow Jesus.

Bearaug Reese, and thousands of Scandinavian immigrants like him, founded what would eventually become The Evangelical Free Church,³ “Evangelical” referring to the need for a personal salvation experience, and “Free” referring to the absence of any kind of involvement in, or control by, secular state politics.[/note]

I am telling you this story because I am confident that, if Bearaug Reese were alive today, he would be distraught at how the tangled relationship Evangelicals have with President Trump has so compromised the church’s testimony to the world.

From Constantine to the Crusades to Hitler, Christianity has a history of allowing secular rulers to use the church and corrupt the church for their own ends. Luther, in Pagan Servitude of the Church, vividly describes how corrupt and dissolute his church had become because of such involvement.

It is our obedience to the Great Commission that changes hearts and people and communities and nations, not politics. The church does not need any help from Donald Trump, nor any other politician for that matter.

If we don’t get back to our roots, and soon, we Evangelicals will become a dusty relic in America’s attic.

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North American and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt their widowed and single parents in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry

Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church here.

_______________________________________________________________

Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom

and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.

_______________________________________________________________

1. You can read Baeraug’s story in “Some Pioneers and Pilgrims on the Prairies of Dakota,” by Rev. John B. Reese.
2. His first home may have been a sod hut. We are not sure. There were no trees at the time in the Upper Great Plains and hence no wood to build with, so homesteaders like my great grandfather lived in either sod huts or “dugouts” in the side of a hill.
3. Evangelical Free Churches are baptistic in their theology. The only difference from Baptist churches is in their governance. EvFree churches, as they are often called, require multiple elders and deacons, with the pastor simply being one elder among equals, while most baptist churches see the pastor as the only elder working with multiple deacons. A well-known EvFree pastor is Chuck Swindoll, former pastor of Fullerton EvFree in California for many years.