Joseph Dutko

For over five years, Joseph Dutko has served as a pastor at Richmond Pentecostal Church, a multi-ethnic congregation where people from over forty nations gather together each week. His wife Hannah (M.Div 2012) works in Richmond, BC, as a chaplain at Pinegrove Place Care Home. Both are also part-time, stay-at-home parents during the week when the other is working. As the Christian Education Pastor, Joseph preaches, teaches classes and seminars, runs the young adult ministry, leads spiritual retreats, and facilitates the sacramental life of the church (baptism and the Lord’s Supper). He also writes for his denomination about issues related to Pentecostalism.

In every age, the church is faced with a unique set of challenges. Regent alumni describe some of the pressing issues of our own time and place, and share innovative ways of addressing them.

A phrase I heard repeatedly at Regent College to describe North American believers is “practical atheists,” meaning that many confess belief in the gospel but live as if God does not really exist. I think this is the one of the main challenges facing our churches today. The causes of practical atheism in the church are many, but in my experience two prominent ones come to mind.

First, consumerism and materialism are the “gods” many of us are actually serving in the church and are the standards by which we live our lives. The recent Advent/Christmas season is a microcosm of this year-round challenge in the church. Many gladly confess that “Jesus is the reason for the season,” but their time and money often say that retail spending is the reason for the season. One of the church’s responsibilities (and what I aim to do during seasons like Advent) is to creatively draw people into the larger Christian story and offer them an alternative way of ordering their lives, which prophetically speaks against the practical atheism that so many in the church embrace. We invite them into a different story—and ultimately into deeper union with Christ—praying that that story becomes the one all-consuming passion in every part of their lives.

Second, the church sometimes offers people a one-dimensional gospel. Namely, all you have to do is be “saved” and then “hang on” until you get to heaven. This teaching leaves the church and its believers mostly irrelevant since they end up living as practical atheists in their communities. For example, many Christians might see the main point of their vocational work as being a good Christian witness so that they can evangelize their coworkers and maybe bring them to church on Sunday. But of course our work is so much more than that. I consistently preach and teach classes on work in order to help people discover that what they do at work can be just as spiritual as sharing the gospel with others. It is always so much fun to watch people’s imaginations come alive as they begin to realize that they are reflecting the image of God in their daily work when they create order where there is chaos, bring beauty where there was none, oppose injustice, and serve and love others in the workplace.

As a pastor, I feel one of my main responsibilities is to follow the Spirit in awakening people’s imaginations, to help them see and participate in the inbreaking of the kingdom of God in our church and city. What this looks like will vary from place to place. Richmond has the highest percentage of immigrants in all of Canada and is one of the most multi-ethnic cities in North America. Therefore, part of our mission and prophetic witness at Richmond Pentecostal Church is in bringing, binding, and reconciling people together from our community who might not otherwise gather together. Church matters because we cannot participate in this vision alone. Our weekly gatherings renew our vision to go out into the world and participate with the Spirit in the work of redemption in all parts of society. In other words, as others have said, the goal of the church gathered is to become the church scattered. It is this vision that drives me to continue to challenge the practical atheism in the church and the messages that lie behind it.