GOOD WORD FROM ABILENE

Wesley Reagan gave a speech at the Abilene Christian College Lectures this year that deserves the commendation of us all. Even before I had opportunity to read the speech I had heard of its invigorating effect from those who were present when it was delivered. Quite obviously there should be more of this kind of thing at college lectureships, ideas that challenge the thinking and question the status quo. The rarity of such may be accounted for on two grounds: first, a man of deep conviction must be on the program; second, he must have sufficient courage to state his case. Within the framework of partyism, whether religious or political, this combination is indeed rare. The speeches at the centers of orthodoxy that cut across party thinking are, therefore, something like angels’ visits, few and far between. But we are thankful for what does come, and we commend both the brother and the college that made it possible.

Some of the points in the speech that are especially noteworthy are:

1. We have worked largely with a certain economic class of respectable white people in a narrow strip across a few southern states. Indians, Negroes, and the non-whites generally, along with the poor and the outcasts, we have cared little for. Our Great Commission in the “Revised Modern Practice Version” should therefore read: ‘Go ye therefore and make disciples of all middle class southern Anglos with good moral reputations.”

2. Where our congregations are large we are known by bankers, editors, school boards and civic clubs as people who pay their bills and make good after-dinner speakers, but we are not known by the poor. We are seldom seen in the slums, prisons, and charity wards of hospitals.

3. While a firm doctrinal stand is important, we must also be conscious of the cry of human need. Is Christianity a religion of doctrine only? Or is it a religion of service, giving and doing? Preaching compassion without practicing it is what James spoke of as the corpse of Christianity. We need to get down into the ditch of human need and dirty our hands and empty our pockets helping people.

4. Our urgent age of exploding population, nuclear warheads, and instant communication has made unity a practical necessity as well as a doctrinal truth. Denominations are discussing their differences, and some of them are uniting, and these efforts toward unity often represent a genuine concern for the Biblical doctrine of unity. We too should converse with those involved in ecumenical movements. In our recent past we have had much to say about unity, but our practice has been one of splitting and splintering.

5. While it is true that we cannot sit down at the conference table to negotiate the gospel, why can we not converse with others toward a mutual understanding of the gospel? Why can we not at least present our convictions and seek to understand theirs? How long can we stand in our pulpits and cry, “Unity, unity,” while we refuse to discuss with others the basis of unity? Until we try to understand and be understood, we actually contribute to the confusion and division in the religious world. Honest differences can sometimes be resolved by frank conversations. Mistrust, misunderstanding and misrepresentation can be minimized.

6. What are we saying to the public on the most pressing moral and spiritual needs of our time? Where is the John the Baptist among us who will rise up and condemn Herod’s adultery? We do little to preach the gospel to a society as a whole. We preach mostly to the Church with a few visitors. Evaluated from the standpoint of an evangelized world, we are an utter failure.

7. One of our desperate needs is to develop more powerful public preachers. We need preaching that will be quoted in the news columns of the papers, not because it is bizarre or sensational, but because it is relevant and incisive.

UNITY MEET IN DALLAS

The Seminar on Fellowship at Wynnewood Christian Chapel in Dallas in June was shared by more than a hundred brethren from at least eight different segments of Churches of Christ-Christian Churches, along with representative people from a few other groups. Interest ran high, the studies were inspiring, and the exchanges were penetrating. A wonderfully fine brotherly spirit prevailed throughout, with absolutely no untoward incident occurring.

These unity meetings have demonstrated, if nothing else, that brethren of widely divergent views, who have previously had no contact with each other because of the tragedy of division, can indeed come together and pray, sing, talk, and study. We have found it to be true virtually without exception that everyone who attends these gatherings is convinced that they are good for us all.

The press coverage was excellent if not incredible. Both of our metropolitan dailies gave us writeups, but one of them, the Dallas Times Herald, gave us daily coverage, providing five writeups that ran from 12 to 18 inches in two-column spread, one of which made the front page! The Herald also fed the stories to the Religious News Service, which makes its way around the world. I read about ourselves in one widely-circulated denominational journal that resulted from RNS coverage.

The newspapers thought it significant that a congregation within a divided denomination would invite all the divergent groups to sit down together and talk over the differences, and while they are at it to go to the trouble also of listening to what Jews and Roman Catholics have to say about it all. From these writeups came several interesting contacts, one of which was with three study groups in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area that meet from house to house on an ecumenical basis. Some of us have since met with one such group made up of Roman Catholics and Protestants, who visit with each other each month and study together the great writings of both Protestants and Roman Catholics. This is strictly at the grassroots level, and is carried on by laymen whose clergymen are not enthusiastic about it. I might give you a fuller report on this in these columns at another time.

The most unique feature of the seminar was the appearance of The Rev. Raphael Kamel of St. Monica Catholic Church in Dallas, who told us that he would never have shared in such a program five years ago - “and it would have been too bad for me if I had!” He was pointing out how much his church had changed: “The Catholic Church has changed more in the past five years than in the previous 300 years!”

The priest was friendly, humble, yielding, even to the point of being disarming. He was obviously sincere in his plea that all Christians learn to work together in those ways consistent with their convictions. Someone asked him if he had to ask his bishop about appearing on the program, or if he had to give an account of his remarks. He explained that he was perfectly free to do as he wished, that he had said nothing to the bishop, and that the bishop would not expect him to do so. From the experiences that we were having with some of our own brethren the question arose as to whether Church of Christ folk are as free as Roman priests!

The Jewish rabbi was all wound up to tell us how the Christian unity movements looks to a Jew, and how he thinks the Jews are related to it all. But he had an attack of some kind the morning that he was to appear. We felt we were the losers. I had appeared at the rabbi’s congregation in Dallas some months before, and I was sure he would be an interesting experience for our brethren.

The bulk of the seminar was, of course, given over to the family affair of our own divisions. There were many highlights. Prof. DeGroot of Texas Christian University observed that the important thing in the immediate future was communication with each other, something we have sadly lacked, but which has now begun. He pointed to the forty mergers of denominations in recent years as a hopeful sign, but saw the work of unity as extending well into next century.

Prof. Clarence Stanke of Midwest Christian College in Oklahoma City (an Independent Christian Church brother) defined fellowship as a two-way relationship between God and man, one vertical and one horizontal. The vertical is between man and God, the horizontal between man and man. The vertical makes possible the horizontal. It is the vertical that should concern man, for the horizontal will follow in due course. Man does not control the horizontal anyway, for it depends on the vertical for its existence.

Harold Fite of the Castleberry Church of Christ in Ft. Worth, which is labeled these days as “conservative,” insisted in a friendly and brotherly manner that substantial doctrinal agreement and uniformity in interpretation of scripture is essential to unity. While Frank Morgan of the Hampton Place Church of Christ, which would be classed as “liberal” by brother Fite’s group, did not speak to that particular point, he did emphasize that fellowship is the work of the Holy Spirit, and it is as we become more spiritual that we are drawn closer to each other.

Carl Ketcherside, of non-instrumental Church of Christ background, pointed out that the same thing that makes one a son of God makes him a brother to every other son of God. “Brotherhood is not created by a relationship to each other, but by a mutual relationship to the Father,” he said.

Prof. S. Lewis Johnson of Dallas Seminary, a Baptist and a Greek scholar who enriched the seminar by sitting on the panel on Kerygma and Didache and their Relation to Fellowship, warned against letting ecumenical concern cause doctrinal indifference. He admitted that doctrinal agreement is not necessary to fellowship, but it does strengthen fellowship.

If we had awarded a prize to the one who made the most timely, provocative, and resourceful presentation, I personally would consider it a draw between that given by Thomas Langford, a new Ph.D. from TCU but of non-class Church of Christ who joins the faculty at Texas Tech this fall, on Identifying the Heretic; and A. Dale Crain, minister to a Lincoln, Neb. Christian Church (Independent) who spoke on The Church and Individual Freedom.

We will not try even a sentence summary for we hope to present articles by both of these men, based on their presentations, within the near future. But these men, like Obert Henderson and Curtis Lydic who were also on the program, represent a young crop of intelligent minds and dedicated hearts that are going to make a difference in the church of tomorrow. Wise enough to remain within the framework that Providence placed them, they are also spiritual enough to rise above partyism and catch the vision of what the fellowship of the saints can mean to us all.

It is only when men are left free that they can seriously strive toward excellence. A stale orthodoxy breeds mediocrity and superficiality. It can be terribly dull and unedifying. Brethren who complain of such things in the lectureships at the Christian Colleges should have a unity meeting, inviting first of all those with whom they differ the most, and leave each one free to say what he will. We will be glad to insure it against dullness! And with men on board such as we had in Dallas, you will be thankful for it all and fully confident that all have been blessed, even when your audience is a mixture of Ph.D.’s, preachers, students, laborers and housewives.

One aged brother declared most seriously that it was the greatest experience he ever had, and another brother wrote: “It was probably one of the most significant meetings of its kind in this generation.”

As we say in these parts, one day we were in high cotton and the next day in tall corn, and in the evenings we ate high on the hog!

WHO PREACHES THE GOSPEL?

Sometime back the following notice appeared in Christian Reporter, a newspaper about Churches of Christ in the Dallas area:

“A picture directory of the preachers of the Gospel of Christ in the Dallas area is being planned for an early issue of the Christian Reporter. All the preachers in the area are requested to send a recent glossy print photo.”

Surely the editor would be startled if he were deluged with a mailbag full of pictures from hundreds of preachers, including Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and all the rest. Should that happen we presume the editor would be able to go through them and identify “the preachers of the Gospel of Christ in the Dallas area,” just as we have brethren who have the unique talent of going through the telephone directory and identifying the Christians, based primarily upon what church they belong to.

Dr. W. A. Criswell, who for almost a generation has ministered to the First Baptist Church in Dallas, the largest of all Baptist churches, will not be included in the preachers’ picture gallery. The judgment is that he does not preach the gospel of Christ. It is not that he is wrong in some of his doctrinal views, but that he does not preach the gospel. I read articles by Bishop Martin of the Methodist Church in journals published abroad, and he is definitely one of the great churchmen of the nation, let alone of the Dallas area. But we will not find Bishop Martin’s picture in the directory, for he does not preach the gospel of Christ.

Even the renowned Billy Graham, who is a member of Criswell’s church, cannot get his picture in. He doesn’t preach the gospel either.

The Christian Reporter is not proposing a picture gallery of those preachers who are right on all doctrinal points (by the way, whose picture could possibly be included?) but “the preachers of the Gospel of Christ in the Dallas area.” We are persuaded that the editor does not quite mean what he says. He means “the Church of Christ preachers in the Dallas area.”

Well, not quite that, for there are a score or more of Church of Christ ministers that he would not include. There are now some six or seven preachers among the premillennial brethren in the Dallas area, all of whom will accept the editor of the Christian Reporter into their fellowship, but none of whom he will accept into his picture gallery of preachers of the gospel.

There are others: the “antis” of all descriptions, as they are called. The non-class, non-Herald of Truth, non-cups preachers in the Dallas area would add up to nearly a score. Are these not preachers of the gospel?

So what the editor really means is something like this: “the preachers in the Dallas area who belong to our particular party within the Churches of Christ.” But that isn’t the orthodox way to say it.

Who is a minister of the gospel of Christ? Who qualifies for the Master’s picture gallery? Must we conclude that only those ministers who are loyal to the particular tenets of a Church of Christ group are gospel preachers? The condition of both the church and the world is bad enough already without any such conclusion as that.

When a man proclaims victory over sin through the risen Christ he is a gospel preacher. Men like Dr. Criswell, Bishop Martin, and Billy Graham proclaim the glad tidings of heaven. They may err in their instructions as to how men are to respond to the gospel, just as we all err in many things, but they are as much preachers of the gospel as any of the rest of us.

“I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.” (I Cor. 15:1-4) It was in proclaiming these facts of heaven that made Paul a gospel preacher. The same proclamation today makes the one who proclaims it a gospel preacher, be he a Methodist bishop, a Baptist evangelist, or a Church of Christ minister from Abilene.

It is risky business for preachers or editors in any area to take it upon themselves to determine who should be included in a list of gospel preachers. By means of their pulpits and editorial columns they bind and loose as they please. A man is out when “the gospel preachers of the area” no longer accept him. Despite our claims of congregational autonomy, these conditions prevail. The historians label such maneuvering ecclesiasticism. Jesus had other words to describe it.

OPERATION DEEP FREEZE

We may suppose that Robert C. W. Ettinger intends to be taken seriously in his book The Prospect of Immortality, in which he suggests that science may find a way to freeze a person who has died, thus preserving him until such time as medical knowhow is able to correct what caused his death, at which time he will be thawed and restored to life. The book is not intended as science fiction, but is rather a serious proposal as to what the future might hold for man. It just might be, Ettinger supposes, that man may someday conquer death itself, just as he has succeeded in conquering most of the diseases that has for centuries plagued him. Science must yet defeat such things as cancer, heart-diseases, multiple sclerosis, and psychiatric illnesses — and then the greatest of the antagonists, death itself!

Ettinger observes that there are different stages of death: clinical, biological, and cellular. If the death process can be arrested after the first stage, which is only the cessation of heart beat and breathing and is not a degeneration of cells as the later stages are, by instantaneous freezing, then the body can be stored until science knows how to correct the causes of death.

Presumably one could choose the age of the future in which he would like to live again. If he wanted to avoid any such embarrassments as coming back at a time when his widow would be married to another man, or when he would have to face many of his old unpaid debts, then he could decree a new life for himself a thousand years from now or even ten thousand. This way he could satisfy his curiosity as to what the world will then be like. In that case his frozen carcass would be labeled: “To be resuscitated in 11965 A.D.”

Ettinger recognizes some rather formidable problems to his proposal, both practical and scientific. It would be costly, as much as $50,000 per body. There is the medical problem of overcoming the bodily damage caused by present-day freezing methods. Too, one has to be frozen immediately, so he can’t “die” just anywhere. He certainly can’t drop dead on a hunting trip if he expects to live again in 11965 A.D. Then you have the problem of senility. Who wants to be an old man forever? Ettinger’s prospect of immortality offers no hope that one can return young. Not the least of the problems is the one that we already have: over-population. Add to this the problem of storing all the bodies and “Operation Deep Freeze” appears unlikely.

But I am realistic enough about human nature to think of still other problems, some of them indeed gruesome. I can envisage an age (The Post-Atomic Era?) in which the nations that are seeking to rebuild civilization will be at war with each other over the great depository of icy cadavers in the North Pole. The wrong side wins and we are all aroused from our winter of contentment only to be made slaves of a tyrant!

Up to this point I have been only half-serious, in case you have to be told, but Ettinger is more than half-serious. His new book is a reflection of an age that is becoming increasingly ignorant of the will of God. Ours is a nation that is behaving more and more as if there were no God. Unlike Hagar who was so conscious of the presence of God in her life that she could say, ‘Thou, God, seest me,” we are a people who, more like Nietzsche, behave as if God were dead.

We are allowing science to become a sacred cow. Science certainly has the holy calling of taking what God has given and actualizing its potential, but science is not God. Science can explore what God has opened, but it cannot open what God has shut.

The Bible makes it clear that “It is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Heb. 9:27) Our point is not that man is to die only once and not twice, as Ettinger would allow; but that man does indeed have an irreversible date with death, science not withstanding. Death is according to God’s will. The Stoics, as humanistic as they were, were better philosophers about death than many in our secularistic age. Marcus Aurelius said, “Do not despise death, but be well content with it, since this too is one of those things which nature wills.” Epictetus wrote: “If you seek to avoid death you will be unhappy.”

The Christian hope of immortality is a glorious contrast to that of Ettinger and it has much more meaning than that of the Stoics. Paul could speak of his desire to depart and be with Christ (Philip. 1:23), and he mentions that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18). He also speaks of “a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1).

To the Christian death does not mean cessation of life, but a transition to a fuller expression of life. It is thus the gateway to the most abundant life.

He who has the keys to death and hades said: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 11:25-26)

THE GREATEST MISSION FIELD

Elton Trueblood’s book The Yoke of Christ is one that we would almost make a man read. His chapter on “Conversion within the Church” is especially provocative. It is here that he speaks of the church as one of the great mission fields: “Our main mission field today, so far as America is concerned, is within the church membership itself.”

He points to the fact that only 4 % of all Americans claim no church affiliation. The world has thus overflowed the church, filling it with unconverted souls. Many who claim membership rarely attend, and many others who do are by no means dedicated to the Cause of Christ. Membership in a church is therefore almost meaningless, for it is fashionable to belong to some church. It is mildly anti-American not to belong. Trueblood calls for conversions within the church rather than to the church. Our task is to reach the present membership of churches with a message of such vitality that they experience a real conversion to Christ. Even though membership is virtually meaningless, it has one enormous advantage: it renders one vulnerable to a deeper appeal. They are there to be reached, many of them are.

He observes that most American churches do very little growing from without, that most conversions are either the children that grow up in the church or people who come from other churches. Adult conversions from the world without are few. The main reason for this is that the church itself is so much like the world that conversion from the world no longer makes sense. The church itself must experience conversion.

Trueblood illustrates this point by a reference to a downtown church in Glasgow, Scotland that thought its days of vitality were over. But then it caught fire; the people, not the building. It now not only has a full house for worship, but the members themselves are ministering to the downtown community. They team up and visit coffee bars, conduct street meetings, and draw derelicts back to the houses of worship. They have ex-convicts singing in the choir. Friday nights are given over to those whose lives are broken.

He observes that the Billy Graham Crusades have been criticized for getting too many “decisions” from those already in the church. In New York they poured out of the large choir in order to make their commitment, which drew criticism from the press. Trueblood says this is a misunderstanding of conversion. One may be singing in a choir and yet be in need of rebirth. Those that Jesus reached by his ministry were not “Skid Row” characters, but people who were already religious. ‘You must be born again” was uttered by Jesus to one who already had church affiliation. The apostles went forth preaching the message of repentance, their labors centering in the synagogues of the Jews.

Are our own churches indeed a mission field? Is not the world too much with us also? We need not wait for outsiders to come into the assembly before we plead for reform. Among our own people we can see the difference between mild religion and a vital Christianity. Surely Christian faith has little meaning until it can say, as did Jesus, ‘I am come, not to be ministered to, but to minister.” So few of our people are concerned for the woes of others. We are deceived in supposing that success is measured by brick and mortar, budgets and programs, meetings and committees. In our day of affluence it is much easier to erect lavish buildings than it is to cultivate dedicated hearts.

We do well to remember that among the strongest words in the Bible on repentance were spoken to a congregation of Christians, and it was at the door of that church that Jesus stood, requesting entrance.

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may be rich, and white garments to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and chasten; so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Rev. 3:15-20)