OUR CHANGING WORLD

 

Over the past several years eight congregations in Yorkville have been working together to provide food for the destitute poor as the “Yorkville Common Pantry.” Two of the churches are Roman Catholic, two are Episcopalians, and one each of the Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Disciples. We had get-togethers at each of the churches in order to get better acquainted and to share new insights on how we can become better witnesses for the unity of the church. At one gathering we heard an Anglican Franciscan friar who pointed out that we cannot work across denominational lines and do anything significant about the divided state of the church until we learn to love one another on an individual basis. Furthermore, he said, we can’t love one another unless we know one another, and there is no way to know one another if we do not meet one another. It is therefore evident that those Christians who are concerned for the unity of the church are obliged to find ways of meeting, knowing, and loving across denominational lines. —Comer Shacklell, Westfield, NJ

(We must all humbly bow penitently to the friar’s logic. Many of us have been blatantly inconsistent in claiming to be a unity people while at the same time practicing an exclusivism that keeps us separated from other Christians. —Ed.)

Arnold Hardin of Dallas tells in his church bulletin of attending the ACU lectureship this year and finding it to be largely a gathering of old people, with comparatively few young couples. It was another sign to him that “We are losing or have lost a generation of young people.” But it could mean that the new generation is not as much lost to us as to the ACU lectures, which have a reputation of being notoriously safe.

The Feb. 28 issue of Time tells of how a member of the Collinsville (Ok.) Church of Christ is suing the elders for over a million dollars over an invasion of her privacy, along with “a willful intention to inflict emotional distress.” When the elders sent her a scarlet letter, incriminating her as an adulteress and threatening public exposure, she did everything except to get on her knees before them, she says, to dissuade them from taking such action. When they eventually exposed her to the congregation, urging the people to have no more to do with her and making it a public issue, she decided to take legal action. She told the press that it upset her that “these men think they have the authority to mess with someone’s life like that.” Assuming that our sister, a 36-year old divorcee with four children, was guilty as charged, it is questionable that any good is done by sending a scarlet letter. Would not the loving approach of Scripture be more appropriate: “If anyone is overtaken in a trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness” (Gal. 6:1). Threatening letters are the work of tax offices and police stations, not the fruit of a shepherd’s heart. One wonders if such action would have been taken if the transgressor had been one of the elders or a wealthy business man. One thing is sure, the accused, who is a nurse, is no Hester Prynne of The Scarlett Letter fame, who stoically bore her public chastisement, as Time notes, and she may eventually teach our elders more than they ever supposed they could learn from a woman. Already the court has ruled that it is not a matter to be left to the church, as requested by the elders’ attorney.

The above news item has received extensive coverage, appearing in Newsweek as well as Time, newspapers across the country, including the New York Times, and also national TV coverage. The trial has since been conducted and the jury ruled in the woman’s favor, allowing her $390,000 in damages. If we were an introspective people, this could be an occasion of deep soul-searching, especially on the part of our leadership, as to why we as a people have such a bad press, generally, not only in this particular instance. But more often than not we turn our heads the other way and avoid the painful discipline of self-scrutiny.

One of our readers who is impressed with the way the Church of Christ world ,is changing sent me a tape recording of Rubel Shelly’s address at the last Pepperdine lectureship, which was a study on who is a false teacher. Rubel stated that one can be “in error,” like Apollos, and not be a false teacher. Defining the false teacher as one who is rebellious against God and concerned for dishonest gain, he told the Pepperdine audience that our people have been “too quick to shoot from the hip” in branding folk. While all truth is important, some truths are more important, and it is a denial of the crucial truths that makes one an enemy of the faith, he avowed. We have erred in the past as a people, he insisted, by dividing over things of “lesser weight.” While nobel efforts as this one usually lack in concrete illustrations as to what is meant (such as making false teachers of those who are premillennial or who use an organ), we nonetheless rejoice and are confident that in time such heroes will be saying, “for example, this is what I mean.”

Nan Dean, 2032 Sage Trail, Hurst, TX. 76053, phone 817-498-0170, is an encouraging example of the progress being made in the ministry of women among our people. A teacher of the grace of God, she presents a series of studies that women’s groups find both informative and liberating. Already she has been invited to several Churches of Christ and Christian Churches in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, but she is free to make occasional visits farther from home. Ouida and I have listened to her tapes (and we know her personally) and find her presentations to be exciting, always biblical and reasonable but never judgmental.