OUR CHANGING WORLD

 

The National Church Growth Research Center is being set up in Washington, D. C. by Dr. Paul Benjamin, recently president of Lincoln Christian College (Illinois), who leaving that Christian Church-related institution to direct it. Convinced that the clergy of the churches of the world will never be able to take Christ to the world, Dr. Benjamin hopes to arouse those in the pew to become effective witnesses through research done at the center. He believes there is a great need for a center for church growth, strategically located, from which can emanate a variety of services which would challenge, instruct and assist believers throughout the world in meeting the compelling demands for Christian advance. He described it as “a ministry of research and writing in American Church Growth.”

One of our Churches of Christ in Denton County, Texas, not far from the one my family and I attend, has the “problem” of having the editor of our most controversial magazine in its assembly. Having only recently moved into our area, he honored this church by casting his lot with them. But for anyone who is different to be around ... Well, you know how it can be. The elders ruled that he would be welcomed but not used, not so much as to teach a class or lead a prayer. Ouida and I have been in meetings where this young brother has done both, and we can bear witness that few can pray and teach like that man. I heard a group of preachers up in the Midwest discussing this editor’s talent. One of them declared that a presentation he gave on the prodigal son was the most moving thing he had ever heard. Ouida and I visited the congregation recently, and sure enough, there sat the editor with his family—allowed to sit, and I presume to give (fellowship, you know!), but not to speak or pray. Ouida and I thought of those innovative prayers that he has led at unity meetings, where he had us stand and look into each other’s faces while he spoke to the Father, pleading for our love and oneness. But I had another thought: they don’t know what they’re missing. And so my mind wandered while some dear brother droned through a stereotyped prayer, same cadence and same cliches and same generalities. And there sat a man with the rare gift, very rare in the Church of Christ, of knowing how to lead a congregation to the throne of God. Ah, but the high price we pay for our fears and hangups! It is a wonder that we don’t drive away more people than we do. It can only be that they take heart that things are changing and that our narrowness is diminishing. And they are right! And thank God for the likes of that young editor, who keeps hanging in and trying to be part of the answer when it is not easy to do so. And I hazard the guess that God will hear his prayers, wherever uttered, whether the elders will or not!

In a recent issue of Firm Foundation the editor, Reuel Lemmons, observes that our church leaders should think twice before criticizing the cell groups that are meeting in homes across the land. He says this happens because our most talented people are “bored to death with having nothing to do.” It is the unused and uninvolved people that are attracted to such gatherings, he points out, and the church would do well to get with it and provide a ministry for these people. “More creative thinking by elders and preachers that would personally involve every member of the church would do more to cure these abortive groups than an the criticism in the world”. And he insists that this problem will not go away. “We have already lost a host of brilliant young men simply because they refuse to be sat on,” he says, and he thinks we’ll lose more if we do not face the facts and build a more creative ministry in our churches.

Four years ago the editor of Gospel Guardian listed 69 “issues” among our churches that more or less affect fellowship. He recently updated the list and the number is now 84, new additions including such “issues” as bus ministry, pant suits, tongue speaking, and women sitting in on business meetings. And he says the list is by no means exhausted, especially if he should list the men (preachers, I presume) who have become issues. He must be right about the pant suits, for another report has come my way of one of our congregations that is really having it out over this recent innovation. All this well illustrates how different we are in our likes and dislikes as well as in our doctrinal interpretations, and it should not take the wisest of men to see that we’ll never be one on the ground of sameness of thought. But we can be one in Jesus, bless his Name, pant suits or no. (My own Ouida makes her own pant suits, elegant ones of various colors and designs that accentuate her femininity. All it would take for our anti-pant suit folk to change their ways would be to see Ouida in hers. Oh, yes, our sisters who have to work behind open desks acclaim them as a blessing from God.)

Editor James L. Herrell, in a recent issue of The Disciple, writes of the rise of fringe groups within the church, attributing this to our neglect of ministering the whole gospel. He says a case could be made for such anti-cleric groups as Jehovah’s Witnesses on the basis of our neglect of the doctrine of the priesthood all believers. Teachers have turned away from such biblical concepts as healing and spiritual rebirth, and so there are fringe groups that have emerged to take up the message we have abandoned.

Rafe Miller, minister to the University Place Christian Church in Champaign, Illinois, writing in The Disciple explains the name Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), which is the official name of that part of our Movement. He was asked why the parenthesis could not be dropped and allow Christian Church to be the name. He feels that no church has the right to call itself “the Christian Church”, for they are all Christian churches. Until the church upon the earth is truly one, we should denominate ourselves in keeping with conditions, and so while one is Christian Church (United Methodist) another can be Christian Church (Presbyterian). He also observes that Alexander Campbell preferred the name Disciple, while Barton Stone chose the name Christian. So in the Restructure Plan they managed to combine these in such a way as to present themselves in a manner consistent to their desired place in the Christian world, and so the name Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

A two-column spread appeared in the May 5 issue of the Nashville Tennessean of how the Radnor Church of Christ in that city is gung-ho for withdrawing fellowship from members considered unfaithful to the church and its teaching. No particular offense was cited, but the four elders of the congregation are on record for being in favor of a house cleaning. And they have already asked the other churches in the city for cooperation by not providing a haven for those excluded. One elder cited 1 Cor. 5, insisting that this “should have been practiced by Churches of Christ all along.” He estimates that 50 or 60 of their members will be counseled and prayed with, and if they are not “restored” they will be withdrawn from. Apparently the purge is intended for those who attend irregularly, for one woman in the church is quoted as saying that she thought withdrawal was for the “horrible, horrible person” and not for the irregular attender. She added, “I’m afraid there’s going to be a lot of new Baptists.”

Speaking of the nomenclature “Disciples of Christ,” C. S. Lambert of Dallas tells me he longs to see a sign outside one of our towns, beckoning people to church, that would read like this: Disciples of Christ welcome you would be across the top, followed by all the Restoration churches in that town, with Church of Christ and its address, the Christian Church and Disciples of Christ and their locations. Good Campbellite thinking, Chester!

The Bering Drive Bullets, a baseball team of the Bering Drive Church of Christ in Houston, plays in the Brazos Church League, and as our people are wont to do, they are holding their own with the Methodists and Episcopalians.

Luther Norman is a 92 year old preacher. Looking back over 70 years as a minister, he recalled recently in the Firm Foundation of how he made 17.00 for five months of labor with one church back in 1903. He also provides a little history on the organ controversy. Once the instrument was installed in the building in San Marcos, Texas, one sister Driscol, an aged woman, slipped in a window and with a hatchet chopped the organ to pieces. That shows that it takes a woman to get these issues settled! That might be one way to settle the matter these days: smash em! But things could get out of hand if such issues as the Sunday School and women teachers were settled in that manner!

Marvin Bryant, one of our specialists in converting “denominational” preachers, has recently reported the conversion of at least two more Baptists. One of them, a man in Bell Gardens, Ca., was “baptized into the Lord’s body,” Marvin tells us. The man was reared in a believing home, was immersed when he was 16, and has been a minister for 36 years among the Baptists. Nothing is said about the other Baptist preacher being rebaptized, also a man of long years of preaching. It is just as well that Marvin didn’t do his work in the early days of our Movement, for he would have rebaptized the likes of John T. Johnson, Raccoon John Smith, Phillip Fall, Jacob Creath, Samuel Rogers, and a host of other Baptist ministers who took their stand for the ancient order. It did not occur to our pioneers to immerse immersed believers. Even poor old Alexander and Thomas Campbell would have to be “converted,” for it was a long time after Elder Luce, a Baptist, had immersed them that they realized it was “for the remission of sins.” I agree with Alexander Campbell that it is irreverent to baptize one who has already been baptized, unless per chance he was void of faith in Jesus at the time of his immersion.