Boston Church of Christ …

BOSTONIANS IN DALLAS: YUPPIES AGLOW

The “Boston” church in Minneapolis, which wears the name of the Tri-Cities Church of Christ is apparently disbanding and going out of business. Not because it has had no success, but perhaps because it has had too much of the wrong kind. Though it was only a few years old, it was with its 300 or more members one of our largest congregations in the north. But it had a revolving door problem, with people enthusiastically entering the front door and disappointingly exiting out the back. The demise of the Tri -Cities work stemmed in part from a bad press. Their “image” of being a regimenting, manipulating cult became such a problem that the leaders decided to fold their tents and move on, advising the faithful to relocate in Chicago if possible.

The media had a heyday. TV talk shows presented disenchanted former members who told of how the church attempted to program their lives. Students reported that they were told whom to date and not date. A psychologist revealed that he had been employed by parents to “deprogram” their children who were pressured into the church while in school. In some cases the students were actually kidnapped and deprogrammed.

What surprises me about this development, which I learned about when in Minneapolis recently, is that our Boston brethren allowed such adverse publicity to faze them in the least. They usually interpret such opposition as “Book of Acts” persecution and go right on growing and glowing. This is the first time I know of that one of their churches has called it quits. So there may be factors at work that I do not know about.

They are usually anything but quitters. In the past decade they have grown to something like 25,000 members in about 75 churches in 27 nations of the world. A new church will typically baptize at least 100 the first year, and by the time it is three years old it will have upwards of 300 members. The leading church in Boston began with 30 members (after splitting over the new approach) in 1979. Today about 3500 members meet in Boston Gardens. The second leading church, the Chicago Church of Christ, baptized 1000 people in 1988 alone, and in that same year sent out 52 workers to evangelize in six urban centers. A “pillar” church, such as San Francisco, may send as many as twenty or thirty workers to Singapore or Calcutta. If they cannot enter a country as missionaries, they will go as students, enrolling in the universities.

A decade or more ago in Charleston, Illinois, I was personally involved in one instance when Boston “turned the world upside down.” They claim to be right out of the book of Acts, so yes, turmoil might follow in their train. I was in Charleston to work with a student group sponsored by Christian Churches. I had previously ministered to the Heritage Chapel Church of Christ in that town that later became part of the Boston program (or “Crossroads” it was then called). They had invaded Eastern Illinois University and had the campus in an uproar. Some students had withdrawn from school in order to escape their pressure tactics. Some who joined the church complained that their lives were so regimented that they could no longer do their school work. They had to get clearance for anyone they dated or associated with. The administration was up in arms and the ministerial association posted notices on campus warning against the “cult” and offering help.

I heard one student’s story, who, though she considered herself a Christian, was led to believe that this new church would bring her closer to Christ. She soon found herself so controlled by her new associates that she at last sought escape, which she found difficult. They laid a guilt trip on her, telling her she would go to hell if she turned back. She was not even to visit her parents, who were members of the Christian Church, and she was told that they were lost. She became emotionally distraught as did a number of other students. Liberation itself was a traumatic experience.

I have continued to receive similar reports through the years. One evangelist that I eminently trust wrote me recently from Toronto: “Up here they are very legalistic and dogmatic. They are very sectarian and do not recognize as Christians any other brand of Church of Christ. They are a cult here.” The mainline Churches of Christ have been almost paranoid in their opposition, publishing numerous books and articles, conducting seminars, and running newspaper ads exposing the Boston church as unscriptural, apostate, and cultish. When Boston “hit the ground running” in Atlanta, 27 congregations in the area ran an “Open Letter To The Boston Church of Christ” in the Atlanta Journal disassociating themselves from them and announcing that “We will do all within our power to deter others from becoming involved” in their movement.

In Dallas a letter was circulated among the Churches of Christ warning that the Bostonians were in town. A prominent minister used a Sunday morning sermon to detail their heresies and to warn his members to stay away. The Boston folk probably appreciated the free advertising!

While they have generally been united and a peace among themselves in their recent years of growing and glowing, they had their problems earlier on. The mother church in Gainesville, F1. (Crossroads), along with some 15 other congregations, disassociated themselves from Boston once that church gained the ascendency, mainly over questions of authority and polity.

While the mainline Churches of Christ present one side of the picture, it is only fair to acknowledge that there is another side, which I saw when I visited the Princeton (N.J.) Church of Christ two years ago and only a few weeks ago the Dallas-Ft. Worth Church of Christ Jesus. You will notice the name change of the latter congregation, the only instance, I believe, in America at least, where “Church of Christ” has not been used by this group. In this area they found the “Church of Christ” name an obstacle to their mission, thus the slight name change.

When I was a student at Princeton a generation ago and working among churches in New Jersey, we could only dream of having a congregation in that university-seminary city. A Church of Christ was at last started but it struggled for decades. When it accepted part of the Boston program - the methodology and personnel but not the hierarchal structure (It is not listed as a bona fide Boston church, I think) —it began to grow so rapidly that it was discussed among the Presbyterian clergy when I was back at Princeton Seminary for an alumni gathering. I was eager for Sunday to come so that I could visit and see for myself.

The moment I stepped inside the building it was apparent that it was no ordinary Church of Christ. People were everywhere, blacks and whites alike, and they were excited and happy. A black brother led the singing and he really reved it up. Worship was a celebration. There was no ordinary Sunday School. While the children repaired to classes, the adults remained in the assembly room for a service that lasted upwards of two hours. There was teaching, preaching, singing (acappella), reading, praising, and of course Communion. Lots of enthusiasm. The teaching was strongly biblical and the preaching was urgent. I learned that they had house meetings through the week, the hallmark of all growing churches. And that was Princeton where I supposed a Church of Christ could never flourish!

As for my visit to the DFW church, I arrived at the classy hotel where it was to meet almost two hours early, and took my seat in the lobby awaiting the action. Sure enough, it was not long before I was approached by one of the workers, inviting me to the service. He happened to be a former mainline Church of Christ missionary, sent out by one of the prominent churches in Dallas. He told me how he told the Dallas elders his story, that he was leaving and joining the Boston church where he could really do evangelistic work. They gave him their blessings. He was re- trained in Boston and eventually sent to DFW. All that is fine with me, but when he and others tell me that they were rebaptized and that they were not really Christians until Boston came along, it is difficult for me to take. A Church of Christ missionary to Australia for years and not a Christian!

I must have talked with a dozen former members of the mainline Church of Christ that day, some having served as elders for many years and some preachers, and they all had been rebaptized by the Boston church and only then became Christians, they said. There was only one unpleasant experience, when I questioned a former longtime elder in a south Texas church. “I can see why this church would appeal to you,” I said to him, “but why be rebaptized? You were not a Christian all those years that you were an elder?” I didn’t intend to offend him, but he didn’t like it. He started thumbing through his Bible, justifying his action. I got a small taste of their persistency. He wanted to come to Denton and prove to me the rightness of his action, which I did not encourage.

They talk about “Lordship” baptism, but when the apostle Peter (1 Pet. 3:15) urged believers to reverence Christ in their hearts as Lord, which they might not have been doing, he did not call for their rebaptism. If we are baptized every time we experience a new or deeper walk with Christ, we render the ordinance meaningless.

But overall I have to give the DFW and the Boston church high marks. They are doing what the rest of us only talk about. They had about 700 there that Sunday a.m., mostly visitors. After some three years of ground work they had about 125 members by the time of their inaugural service. They started 15 minutes late, which is typical of avant garde churches (Traditional churches start and close on time!), and they went for about two hours. Like Princeton, the adults were all in the spacious ballroom while children (lots of them) were parceled out according to age in other parts of the hotel.

When they started they came on like Gang Busters. Five song leaders, black and white but all male, spread out across the front of the large room and began leading heart songs, some of which were Boston edited, such as “This mega-light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.” And did they ever rev it up! It reminded me of a college basketball homecoming game with cheer leaders rallying the troops and cheering on the team. They praised the Lord with such vigor that there was no way for heaven not to notice. We all stood for 20 minutes, clapping our hands and praising God. It was for real. But it was not what we call “charismatic.” I had no problem at all in getting fully involved. These were my sisters and brothers, mostly Yuppies (I may have been the oldest person there and there were only a handful anywhere near my age), and I fell immediately in love with them all.

I was impressed when they announced that the offering would be for the poor. A midweek offering is for local needs. Since they rent the space they need, usually in a hotel, they have no building to pay for or maintain. They can move from smaller to larger hotels at will, and they don’t have to lug hymnals from place to place. Each family has its own hymnal (Boston arranged) and brings it to meeting along with a Bible, even though they sing mostly from memory, and I do mean sing!

They were excited, committed, and in love with each other. I saw a radiance in their faces that is all too rare in our staid churches. I really went for it! But I also go for a quiet, dignified Episcopal service where they kneel on rails to pray and take the Eucharist on their knees. The Boston brethren may not yet realize how diverse worship can be in different churches all around the world, reflecting cultural differences, and yet all be pleasing to God —depending on what is taking place in the heart! Where I have a problem is in many of our Churches of Christ where we often look bored and unattentive and sit in our pews and address the God of heaven as if he were a bell hop. But I’m not leaving, either for the Episcopalians or the Bostonians. I believe God has let me down where he wants me. But if you visit them they will be after you.

The sermon went on and on, almost an hour, but it was well done, being an urgent appeal for repentance, drawn from the story of the Prodigal Son. The young, handsome evangelist observed that people caught up in all sorts of sins are in the hog pens of this world and need to repent and come home to a forgiving Father, but so do those that are in dead churches. He made discipling (winning souls) and being discipled (nourished and discipled by other believers), which is at the heart of Boston theology, essential to being a Christian. “If you are in a church where you are not discipled, you should run, not walk, away from such a church,” he forcefully’ declared. You can’t just “be a member” and “go to church” and be a Christian. If you are lukewarm, if you are not a disciple, if you are not committed, you are not a Christian, he insisted.

I demurred on one point in particular. Those who are spiritual do not necessarily have to leave a “dead” church (Who makes this judgment?). It may be where God wants them. The church at Sardis was called “dead” by the Lord (Rev. 3), but there were some who had not defiled their garments and were “worthy,” and the Lord did not tell them to leave. Neither am I sure that every Christian is called to be a “disciple” as interpreted by Boston.

This is where renewal movements like Boston have an advantage over traditional churches. Most churches appear to be dead or dying, and most Christians seem to be lukewarm with little or no real commitment. But there are many in such churches that want a change, who would with some encouragement take religion seriously. These are the ones that are attracted to the Boston call for repentance, commitment, and discipleship. Mainline churches are threatened by such an onslaught of zeal and dedication. A Boston congregation will do more growing in a year than a mainline church does in ten or twenty years. The Boston brethren can say with some justification when other Churches of Christ criticize them, “We’re practicing what you’ve been preaching all these years.”

Most criticisms of the Boston church by the mainline churches are over matters of opinion and methods, not over basics of the faith. They criticize their practice of evangelistic authority, which comes with poor grace from people dominated by “elder authority.” They criticize their polity, insisting that “pillar churches” (that supervise other churches) are not scriptural, but Boston points out, correctly I believe, that their arrangement is as scriptural as a radical congregationalism where churches have little or no contact with each other. An Abilene professor has even ventured to psychoanalyze them, suggesting that they are of a particular psychological mindset. The Boston folk only need to respond, “Professor, psychoanalyze thyself!”

Anyone who supposes that there is something “wrong” with these brethren would do well to take another look. In Dallas I met an engineer, a geophysicist, a doctor, a nurse —all young, intelligent, prosperous, and beautifully committed to the Lord. They are willing to go anywhere in the world to serve Christ, and that is exactly what many of them do, whether to Buenos Aires, Singapore, or Hong Kong, often at their own expense. But everything is voluntary, with no one forced to do anything. When I asked them about the charge of manipulation, control, and highhanded tactics, they readily conceded that they have made mistakes in their earlier days and were not doing those things anymore. Since they eventually lose about 40% of the ones they baptize (which means they keep 60%, a high average according to church growth experts) it is understandable that they would get some bad press from some highly critical former members, who are usually the ones the media interviews. They seldom interview those who stay and who affirm with joy, “I didn’t know what it was to be a Christian until I found this church.”

As for fallout, there is a Church of Christ in Burlington, Mass. that was started for the purpose of ministering to Boston dropouts. The preacher, Jim Woodruff, has a loving attitude toward the Boston church, and the leaders of the Boston church reciprocate in kind. They appear to accept the fact that they are not for everybody.

What I hear most of the critics in Churches of Christ say of the Boston church is something like, “Don’t be so different and on fire, come back home and be ‘normal’ like the rest of us. Or else get lost.” They should rather be judged by their fruit. They are not preaching another gospel, but Jesus Christ and him crucified. They go to the streets, the malls, the workplace, the parks, even bars (but not door to door) to invite folk to their homes (or to the assembly) for Bible study. They introduce them to Jesus in the Gospel of John, then to Acts, then to the epistles. They show them how to be a disciple, “each one teach one,” and to be discipled (caring for each other’s souls). They are effective in working out marriage and family problems. They are often together in each other’s homes. They love each other and stand by one another.

In their assemblies they lift up Jesus Christ, praising him as the Lord of glory. They preach and teach only from the holy Scriptures. They wear only the name of Christ. They break bread together each Lord’s day and sing acappella (but make no point of it). They are of us, born of us, and we should not disenfranchise them. We can disagree without drawing lines. As our pioneers have urged us, we should judge each other only in terms of the Spirit of Christ, not on methodology or differences in interpretation. As I have indicated, there are things about the Boston work that concern me, some rather seriously, but I nonetheless see the Spirit of Christ in their work, so I say more power to them. We can all be wrong about some things, as we all surely are, and yet be right where it really counts, in reference to Jesus Christ.

The best treatment I have read of the Boston work appeared not in the Church of Christ press, but, oddly enough, in a Christian Church publication, the Christian Standard. The writer, a missionary to Brazil who did his homework on the Boston movement, points to weaknesses, such as their doctrine of rebaptism and their failure to develop diverse talents by making everyone a preacher, he praises them for their zeal to reach the lost, which includes a goal to reach all the world in this generation. He admires their insistence on accountability (You cannot be a member of the Boston church and not be an accountable disciple of Jesus), and he concedes that there is a narrow line between “control” and accountability.

The Standard writer uses the Boston church to challenge his own Christian Church folk. “Many of our churches could be classified as dead or dying,” he writes, and he calls on his people to repent and start doing more for Jesus. We should wake up!, he tells them, and if we don’t, he adds, we might not be around in a few years.. “Lookout! The Bostonians are coming,” he warns. He goes on to say that if this new movement captures some of their members, we should understand that they are tired of dead churches and want to do something for Jesus.

Perhaps it is too much to expect our people to respond in a similar way to one of our own avant garde groups. We are reluctant to change and to learn from others, especially from our own who venture beyond the traditional paths. The Boston church, which spends its money on the poor and on missions rather than elegant edifices (They have not yet erected their first building), has a lot to teach us. I was surprised when a professor of missions at Abilene went to Boston “to be trained” and is now working for them in Japan, but I admire him. He was an “expert” in missions, but he realized he did not know it all. May we too, like that humble professor, realize by the bowels of Christ that we might have a thing or two to learn.

Somebody is going to have to drag us kicking and screaming into the 21st century, or as the Standard writer put it, we may not be around in a few years. Who knows but what it might be the Bostonians. The Lord pulls surprises on us like that, you know. —the Editor

 

Are Men Changing About Women?

Christian women have much to be encouraged about. This same church that enforces the subordination of women through its formal authority structure is now peopled by men who, in their personal relations with women, are beginning to repudiate the principle of male authority. It is common to see our Christian men exercising authority with restraint resembling reluctance. Indeed, it would appear that many church men would genuinely welcome women to the ministry if they could be convinced from Scripture that the traditional exclusion of women is wrong. Many of them are the fathers who raised this educated generation of women; the younger men were our peers in Sunday school and are now our friends, our brothers, and our husbands. When in their company alone, the issue of subordination becomes irrelevant because they already practice spiritual and temporal equality with women. —Faith Martin in Call Me Blessed