WHAT CAN BE DONE FOR CHURCHES OF CHRIST?

Jimmie Lovell, editor of Action in California who is now well into his 80’s, has more right than most of us to speak of his concern for the present plight of Churches of Christ. No one among us has made a greater commitment to programs of Churches of Christ than he, especially in the area of foreign missions. For decades he has been a veritable one-man missionary society, gathering and dispersing millions of dollars and doing it well.

He is now so concerned about the, Churches of Christ “dying on the vine” that he is advocating a kind of “summit” meeting in an effort to ascertain what has gone wrong. In a letter “To some of my brothers in Christ,” which includes me, with an attending note that I pass my copy on to Carl Ketcherside, he quotes from both the living and the dead among Church of Christ leaders to the effect that “There is much evidence today that the church is falling apart.”

That quotation, coming from J .M. Powell, would in itself be sufficiently disquieting if true, but one must realize that brother Powell is not referring to what this journal would call “the catholic church of Jesus Christ upon earth,” which embraces all those around the world who make up the Body of Christ, but to a particular few within that Body known as “Churches of Christ,” who are concentrated primarily in the Bible belt of the American south. That church, the universal church of God, is not falling apart, and it will never fall apart, or “the gates of hades shall never prevail against it,” as its Head once put it. In fact this is a great era of renewal for the church, and futurists are now saying that the church’s gains in Africa and India mean that those nations will one day be the greatest Christian nations of the world.

But brother Lovell is understandably worried about what he calls the Church of Christ, and we share that concern. His list of “major problems” could be summarized as:

1. A lack of concern for world evangelism. In his November Action brother Lovell notes that in 1974 we had 724 missionaries overseas. Today there are 427.

2. A steady shrinkage of membership. He thinks that maybe as many as thousands of churches have ceased to exist, and that the overall member-ship has declined by one or two million in recent years. A better explanation of the new figures that have come from recent research is that the membership of Churches of Christ has always been inflated.

Brother Lovell estimates that we may lose at least one of every two that we baptize.

3. Preaching is becoming more and more a profession. “Money plays a major role,” he says in the letter, and in his journal he opines that preachers might one day be unionized. They concentrate where the money is, he notes.

4. Divisions within Churches of Christ. Brother Lovell calls it “Mutilation of the body of Christ,” and he notes that not one major wound has ever been healed.

5. There is a leadership crisis. He calls the late Batsell Baxter to witness that we have a leadership crisis, and he sees Reuel Lemmons, editor of the Firm Foundation, as the only one at “the top level” who makes known “our various and harmful conditions” and who suggests ways of righting them.

So, brother Lovell calls for summit gatherings, first a small one to set the tone and then a larger one, the purpose of which is to “save” the church from its downward direction. He wants us to take a close look at the “beautiful ongoings” and “the weak spots” alike in hopes of turning things around. “I have no intention of riding anything very long headed downward,” he says in the letter, which sounds ominous coming from Jimmie Lovell, the eternal optimist.

While it is unlikely that I could be of much help at such a summit gathering, and even more unlikely that I would be invited in the first place, I will accept brother Lovell’s invitation to offer suggestions and criticisms. He wants to pass them along in a kind of “think tank” operation.

First, we need to realize that the church catholic does not need to be saved. It is already saved. It does not need any saviors: It already has a Savior. It is not sick and it is not about to die, and it is not necessarily on a downward trend. It does not necessarily have the problems listed above, even if it is always in need of reform, until it becomes the church triumphant in heaven.

Second, I have no interest in saving a sect, and it just may be that this is what brother Lovell is talking about, if indeed he is able to consider such a possibility. There was once a small summit of our pioneers known as the Springfield Presbytery. Like brother Lovell, they were concerned for the unity of the church. They drew up “The Last Will and Testament” for the “body” they had created, in which they said: “Let this body die and sink into union with the body of Christ at large, for there is but one body and one Spirit.” Let there be a summit of our leaders in which we declare “Let the ‘Church of Christ’ die and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large.” By this we would mean that we will henceforth count all other believers in Christ as our equals and will not longer make our opinions and unique practices (such as acappella music) a test of fellowship.

Third, while I appreciate my brother’s concern that we have a “Think tank,” especially since our folk do such little real thinking in or out of tanks, I am persuaded that we must first learn how to be together and to pray together. Without confrontation! So let there be a larger summit to which we invite our people from Christian Churches and Disciples of Christ (perhaps still others at future summits, but let the first one be those of our own heritage), and let us be together in prayer and fellowship.

At this summit we might listen to some of the more renowned leaders of each of the three groups, but let us have one condition, one ruled by love: this time we meet to recognize how much we have in common and not to discuss differences. We can meet in small groups to pray and discuss our common problems, and then assemble to hear great preaching from all our people. But most of all we will learn to be with each other and to pray, together. In doing this we will be pleasing our heavenly Father, for that is what Jesus did. He prayed for the unity of all believers.

Fourth, the crisis for the Church of Christ just now is not that it grow, at home and abroad, which is brother Lovell’s chief concern, but that it cease being a sect, or that it overcome its sectarian tendencies, which Reuel Lemmons seems to concede, with brother Lovell’s appreciation. If brother Lemmons is about the only answer to our leadership crisis, as Jimmie seems to think, then let us look to him to point the way to our becoming a more loving and accepting people and thus repudiate the myth that we are the only Christians.

Let brother Lemmons take the lead by stating explicitly that while we have the right to be non-instrumental music, we do not have the right to reject our brothers who use the instrument.

Let him take the lead in resounding the plea of our pioneers, which is the basis of our heritage, that we can all unite on the basis of loyalty to Jesus Christ, and that we not make our opinions a test of fellowship, whether these be millennial theories, Sunday Schools, Herald of Truth, instrumental music, missionary societies, methods of serving Communion, tongue-speaking, the divorce problem, theories of inspiration, etc., etc.

Let brother Lemmons show us that we can differ on such matters as these and accept each other as brothers in Christ, that congregations can differ on such matters and still do some things together, such as feeding the poor of the world and evangelizing the lost. We can always have a “think tank” around in which differences are discussed in a spirit of loving forbearance, but always within the fellowship, not as a condition to fellowship.

Finally, I would suggest to brother Lovell that there is already more “turning around” than he realizes. It may not be in the direction that he has in mind! For instance, I would rather have fewer missionaries abroad who preach Jesus Christ and the grace of God and who cooperate with other churches in reaching the lost than to have the number brother Lovell wants, who preach the “Church of Christ” and who number other Christian missionaries as among the lost and compete with them rather than cooperate with them.

We have a growing number among Churches of Christ who, like Thomas Campbell, are sick and tired of the janglings and jarrings of our sectarian strife. They are the real heroes, not our editors, and they are the ones who will make us a freer, less sectarian, more responsible, more spiritual, more accepting people—down the road in a brighter tomorrow.

And, Jimmie, they are already having their summits, each one with the Lord, which may be the only summit any of us need.—the Editor