by Steve | May 15, 1977 | Archive - 1977
Archive: The Missing Magnet
By Charles W. Keysor, Editor
The word from Mary Lee Clark Church in Oklahoma City is: “If you can’t stand before God and be proud of our church, then we have nothing to offer others.” So said the North Texas United Methodist Reporter for Dec. 5, 1975 in a lengthy article about evangelism.
She seems to be saying that the church is its own best attraction … that the church is a magnet which will draw people and somehow meet their ultimate needs.
As the Body of Christ, the church is important—but not in itself. The church’s importance is that of the candlestick which holds forth the light. The One who is the light of the world, Jesus Christ, is the glory of the church. Without Him being emphasized in all the church is and does, then the church is unattractive as a lampstand without light.
One barrier to effective evangelism is evident here: substituting the church for Jesus Christ as Christianity’s primary attraction. Stressing the church rather than Jesus Christ we offer people an empty lampstand instead of the light of life.
Jesus said, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself.” (John 12:32) HE is the church’s magnet!
HE provides the drawing power! Often the church forgets this. Often we get to lifting up other attractions, expecting they can increase attendance, membership, contributions, and committee activity.
Late in 1975, newspapers across the country printed a story about an “advertising blitz” used first by the First United Methodist Church in Pittsfield, Maine.
“We think the church has got to become more aggressive,” said the Rev. Robert Hannum, 44. “All types of institutions are competing for people’s time. We have to make them sit up and take notice.”
The local newspaper published three ads for the church each week with pictures and slogans including: “Same Day Service: In by 10, Out by 11.” Also advertised were free babysitting and transportation for churchgoers and the fellowship available at Sunday morning services.
How shall a church make its appeal? Shall it lift up its preacher as the big attraction? Some do. The trouble is, preachers change and the next one may not be a crowd-pleaser. What then? More serious, preachers are human. Having clay feet, they make poor objects of veneration. For when the preachers’ faults become evident, then disillusionment quickly comes.
Only Christ is perfect. That is why only He can be safely lifted up with no fear of disillusionment or letdown.
Shall a church advertise its warm, cozy fellowship? How, then, will it differ from a civic club, a garden club, or any worthwhile community organization? (In fact, their fellowship may be cozier and more profitable from a business standpoint.)
The uniqueness of Christian fellowship is Jesus Christ, alive and real among us. He said, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:20) Unless we praise Him openly and acknowledge His presence frequently, then church fellowship sinks to the level of mere religious cordiality.
Shall we appeal on the basis of well-furnished nursery and classrooms? Elegant sanctuary? Rich-voiced organ and mellifluous choirs? These are means, not ends. They are vehicles for transmitting and enlarging faith, for facilitating worship of the living God. No matter how elegant, church facilities cannot answer the deepest need of human hearts. Jesus can, and does!
Shall a church offer pride in its tradition? Shall it boast of 1, 000 members (but don’t admit that half are nominal!)? Of having on its membership rolls the richest and most influential people in town? Shall it lift up its perfected organization charts, its well-oiled machinery, the awesome size of its budgets and the diversity of its investment portfolio? Shall its programs for justice and human betterment be lifted up?
In none of these can the church compete with the world, on the world’s terms. Trying to outdo the world is always the church’s undoing.
Actually, the church has only one exclusive attraction. Only one reason for commanding people’s attention and loyalty. That is Jesus Christ, the church’s rightful Head. He is eternal. He set aside His glory and was virgin-born into a crude country stable. He became like us in all ways, except that He did not sin. For He was equally God and Man combined. Thus He participated fully in our sorrows; He was punished for our iniquities, and He tasted death on our behalf. Yet the grave could not hold Him! On “the third day He rose from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the [living] and the dead.”
With such a One to exalt and elevate, how foolish we would be to rely upon other appeals! Unless He is, indeed, lifted up in all the church is and does, then the church has little to commend it—to the people or to God.
by Steve | May 6, 1977 | Archive - 1977
Archive: On Finding Roots
By Charles W. Keysor, Editor
Several years ago I was browsing in a used book store. Back in some dimly-lit shelves marked “religion” I chanced upon two musty, leatherbound books published in 1853. In them were 150 sermons by John Wesley! I had stumbled onto a collection of all Mister Methodist’s surviving sermons—a sort of theological King Tut’s tomb, rich with treasurers for the mind and soul.
Happily I paid the bookseller $8.00 (who says there are no more bargains?) and have been enjoying them ever since. I began reading sermon #1 and have slowly worked my way down to #107, finished early this morning.
Often I have encountered God on the yellowing pages of Wesley’s “Sermons on Several Occasions.” It is as though 200 years had been magically erased and God was speaking to me across the gulf of two centuries.
To use an “in” expression, I have been getting in touch with my roots, my heritage as a United Methodist. In the process I have caught a glimpse of Methodism, pure and powerful, as God kindled it originally in the mind and soul of a great Christian.
Wesley’s language is sometimes archaic. And some of his 18th century quotations and illustrations are baffling to me, a man of the 20th century. But most of the time I find his insights about God and the human condition astonishingly fresh and, often, painfully relevant. Many times I have gently closed the old leather book, looked out the window, and said to myself, I wish all my Good News friends could read this!
I can no longer resist the urge to share a few of the Wesley gems I have discovered. Space permits only a tiny sample. I hope this will be an appetizer. I hope you will be tempted to shut off your television set and get better acquainted with a truly great man of God.
- “As you cannot have too little confidence in yourself, so you cannot have too much in [God].” (# 98, On Redeeming the Time)
- “Let not love visit you as a transient guest, but be the constant temper of your soul. See that your heart be filled at all times, and on all occasions, with real, undissembled benevolence; not to those only that love you, but to every soul of man. Let it pant in your heart; let it sparkle in your eyes; let it shine in all your actions.” (# 105, On Pleasing All Men)
- “Every Christian is happy; and he who is not happy is not a Christian. … If religion and happiness are in fact the same, it is impossible that any man can possess the former without possessing the latter also.” (# 82, Spiritual Worship)
- “It was impossible for Lazarus to come forth, till the Lord had given him life. And it is equally impossible for us to come out of our sins, yea, or to make the least motion towards it, till He who hath all power in heaven and earth, calls our dead souls into life.” (#90, Working Out Our Own Salvation)
- “Oh that God would give me the thing which I long for! That before I go hence and am seen no more, I may see a people wholly devoted to God, crucified to the world, and the world crucified to them! A people truly given up to God, in body, soul, and substance! How cheerfully should I then say, ‘Now lettest thy servant depart in peace!’” (# 92, Danger of Riches)
- “They that bring the most holiness to heaven will find the most happiness there: so, on the other hand, it is not only true that the more wickedness a man brings to hell, the more misery he will find there; but that this misery will be infinitely varied, according to the various kinds of his wickedness.” (# 78, Of Hell)
- “Whoever improves the grace he has already received, whoever increases in the love of God, will surely retain it. God will continue, yea, will give it more abundantly: whereas, whoever does not improve this talent, cannot possibly retain it. Notwithstanding all he can do, it will infallibly be taken away from him.” (# 95, An Israelite Indeed)
- “Nothing is so small or insignificant in the sight of men, as not to be an object of the care and providence of God: before whom nothing is small that concerns the happiness of any of His creatures. There is scarce any doctrine in the whole compass of revelation which is of deeper importance than this. And at the same time, there is scarcely any that is so little regarded, and perhaps so little understood.” (# 72, on Divine Providence)
If you do not have the good fortune to find Wesley in a used book store as I did, you can meet him in these pages:
Wesley’s 52 Standard Sermons. H. E. Schmul, Salem, OH. $6.96.
Forty-Four Sermons. John Wesley. Allenson, Naperville, IL. $6.75.
A Pocket Book of Wesley’s Sermons (13 sermons) condensed by Charles Britt. UM Discipleship Resources. 75¢ each, 10 or more 65¢
The Journal of John Wesley (condensed). Moody Press, Chicago, IL. $ 3.95.
by Steve | May 5, 1977 | Archive - 1977
Archive: Facing Spiritual Starvation
by Charles W. Keysor, Editor
Browsing through some back issues of Good News I read again an editorial written back in 1970: “How Laymen Can Survive.” I was struck by the fact that its subject, spiritual starvation of the laity, is still with us. In fact, it remains the major source of anemia in United Methodism—probably the main reason we have lost over 1,000,000 members since 1968.
There is need to think afresh about spiritual starvation, for many United Methodists exist in what is best described as a spiritual Sahara.
First, the problem.
Without sound, consistent preaching and teaching of Bible truth, how will non-Christians be saved? How will children in our Sunday schools come to know Jesus Christ personally? How will those who are Christians “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?” How will the church seem different from any civic organization? How will it answer people’s deepest and most intimate questions if its message has lost an eternal dimension?
Across the church, anguished voices protest the famine of Scriptural Christianity. Anyone with ears not stopped shut can hear the cries. Listen …
“I was about to give up because our church is so far removed from … the teaching of Jesus.” (Oklahoma)
“In our section of the country, a great number of United Methodists have left our denomination simply because they could not live on the ‘straw’ they were getting.” (Washington)
“We asked the bishop for a Gospel preacher. People, I think, are hungry for this kind of food.” (Texas)
“We work for revival in a church that is almost dead.” (Iowa)
“I can no longer sit under poor preaching and denial of the Word of God. Our minister says that Revelation is ‘rubbish’ and Paul’s conversion is ‘cheap dramatics.'” (Minnesota)
The voices of starving laypeople! Hundreds of such outcries have come to Good News since 1966—from United Methodists around the world. The problem is universal; it is the death-cry of a once-great church that is starving spiritually.
What is the answer?
The church needs to come to its senses. It must begin doing what Jesus said was the basic responsibility of Christian leaders: “Feed my sheep.” (John 21:15-17) Unfortunately, much of the feeding in United Methodism has to do with non-spiritual matters. Until the Holy Spirit brings dramatic changes in many hearts and minds, the sheep won’t be fed. This means that laypeople face three stark alternatives:
(1) Quit and find a church where Gospel priorities are not ignored.
(2) Continue starving spiritually, i.e. commit suicide.
(3) Take the initiative and create what the church institution itself seems unwilling or unable to provide: opportunities for spiritual growth.
This third alternative seems most likely to please God. Obviously, He does not want His children to commit spiritual suicide! We do not think He wants believers to quit the church, far-gone as it may be. Had God wished this, Jesus would have departed from the Jerusalem Temple. But He did not. Instead, our Lord worshipped and taught in the Temple, even though He was vigorously critical of its leaders (Matthew, chapter 23). The example of Jesus requires us to remain and be used as God’s leaven.
It is often true that we don’t depend radically upon God’s grace until we face some personal crisis. That was Paul’s thought when he wrote: “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” (II Corinthians 12:10)
Could widespread spiritual starvation thus be a blessing in disguise? Could this crisis force UM laypeople to take the initiative and begin exercising their ministry as a “priesthood of all believers?” Could the present emptiness lead, in sheer desperation, to some spiritual awakening of the people?
Recently a pastor from another denomination talked with a UM layman. “How come,” this minister asked, “that I see some of your lay people conducting Bible studies and active in witnessing? My people come to church and sit and listen—but I can’t get them to DO anything!”
Our United Methodist extremity may, indeed, be God’s opportunity!
Somehow we must find a way to stand faithfully and at the same time create opportunities for Christian growth. How can this be done? How can the widespread apathy and hostility toward things spiritual be overcome?
We begin with this word from the Lord:
If God is for us, who is against us? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies, who is to condemn? Is it Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. (Romans 8:31,33-35,37)
Because of this great assurance we dare to say, with the Apostle Paul, “I CAN do all things in Him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13)
I know a husband and wife who are claiming this victory. Their church situation is far from ideal. Nevertheless, they teach an adult class and once each week there is an “open house” in their home. Young adults feel free to drop in for friendship—and for spiritual questing. This has been happening for several years; and as a result a number of young adults have awakened spiritually and have grown in Christ. Many have brought their new-found faith to the church, where some have begun teaching. Thus more Biblical Christians are involved in the church as the couple’s home-class ministry bears Gospel fruit.
It can be done—without a majority! Without ponderous committees. Without denting the church budget. All that is needed, really, is a few people who are willing to pioneer … who love God’s truth … and who believe that God-plus-one is a majority.
Who says Christians should always expect everything to go easily when we are doing God’s will in a world that is hostile to Him? (James 4:4)
At this point a prophetic word must be spoken. Many people act like helpless babies. They always insist that they must be FED … by the preacher, by the Sunday school class, by prayer/sharing groups. The emphasis is always on what others can do to help ME; never, apparently, is there a thought of being responsible for self or others. Like tiny babies, these want only to be spiritually bottled, burped, and bedded.
Have they no Bibles? Are they unable to read and think? Are they strangers to the Holy Spirit, the supreme Teacher? Can’t they read Christian books, draw strength from Christian friends? Is there no deep and abiding relationship with God, who has promised that no believer would be ever alone—in this world or the next? Is there no solace in prayer? Is there no finding of self by losing of self in service to Christ and His Gospel?
To lie back complaining passively, “I am not being fed!” is a copout … an excuse to escape taking responsibility to grow as a Christian in spite of obstacles. We are, remember, supposed to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work His good pleasure.” (Philippians 1:12,13) Wallowing in self-pity, we easily forget Whose we are—and in Whose strength we stand.
John Wesley faced heavy opposition when he began preaching the Gospel in the 18th century Church of England. Doors were slammed in his face. He was condemned as a trouble-maker and “enthusiast.” Yet he persisted. He kept on because God had laid upon him the obligation of the Gospel. Never quitting the Church of England, Wesley formed Methodist Societies where starving people could find Christ and could then grow in grace.
by Steve | May 3, 1977 | Archive - 1977
From a long-forgotten book by an old-fashioned liberal, some wise counsel about …
Archive: Prayer as communion with God
by Harry Emerson Fosdick
taken from the book, “The Meaning of Prayer”
©1915 by the International committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association (with introduction by John R. Mott)
When a man begins to make earnest with prayer, desiring to see what can be done with it in his life, he finds that one of his first necessities is a fairly clear idea of what praying means. In most lives, behind all theoretical perplexities about this problem, there lies a practical experience with prayer that is very disconcerting. When we were little children, prayer was vividly real. We prayed with a naive confidence that we should obtain the things for which we asked. It made but little difference what the things were—prayer was an Aladdin’s lamp. By rubbing it we summoned the angels of God to do our bidding. Prayer was a blank check signed by the Almighty, which we could fill in at will and present to the universe to be cashed.
Such a conception of prayer is picturesquely revealed in the confession of Robertson of Brighton, the great English preacher. He gives us this paragraph about his childhood:
I remember when a very, very young boy going out shooting with my father and praying, as often as the dogs came to a point, that he might kill the bird. As he did not always do this, and as sometimes there would occur false points, my heart got bewildered. I began to doubt sometimes the efficacy of prayer, sometimes the lawfulness of field sports.
Once, too, I recollect when I was taken up with nine other boys at school to be unjustly punished, I prayed to escape the shame. The master, previously to flogging all the others, said to me, to the great bewilderment of the whole school: ‘Little boy, I excuse you: I have a particular reason for it.’ I was never flogged during the three years I was at that school.
That incident settled my mind for a long time, only I doubt whether it did me any good. Prayer became a charm—I fancied myself the favorite of the Invisible. I knew that I carried about a talisman unknown to others which would save me from all harm. It did not make me better; it simply gave me security, as the Jew felt safe in being the descendant of Abraham, or went into battle under the protection of the Ark, sinning no less all the time.
Many of us can look back to some such experience as this with prayer. But, as with Robertson, serious doubts soon disturbed our simple-hearted trust. How often we rubbed this magic lamp, and no angels came! How steadily our faith in its efficacy gave place to doubt and then to confident detail! As experience increased, we relied not on prayer but on foresight, work, money, and shrewdness to obtain our desires.
Frederick Douglass said that in the days of his slavery he used often to pray for freedom, but that his prayer was not answered until it got down into his own heels and he ran away. In that type of prayer we came increasingly to believe. But where, then, is the old trust that used to look for gifts from Heaven? Indeed, when in anguish we have cried for things on which the worth and joy of life seemed utterly to depend, our faith has been staggered by the impotence of our petition and the seeming indifference of God. We have entered into Tennyson’s crushing doubt:
Mother, praying God will save thy sailor,
Even while thy head is bowed,
His heavy shotted hammock shroud
Sinks in its vast and wandering grave.
This practical disappointment with prayer as a means of getting things leads most men to one of two conclusions: either a man gives over praying altogether; or else, continuing to pray, he seeks a new motive for doing so, to take the place of his old expectation of definite results from God. Men used to put flowers on graves because they thought that the departed spirits enjoyed the odor. Although that superstition long has been overpassed, we still put flowers on graves; but we have supplied a motive of sentiment in place of the old realistic reason.
So men who learned to pray in childlike expectation of getting precisely what they asked, are disillusioned by disappointment; but they continue prayer, with a new motive.
“Never mind if you do not obtain your requests,” men say in this second stage of their experience with prayer. “Remember that it does you good to pray. The act itself enlarges your sympathies, quiets your mind, sweetens your disposition, widens the perspective of your thought. Give up all idea that someone does anything for you when you pray, but remember that you can do a great deal for yourself. In prayer we soothe our own spirits, calm our own anxieties, purify our own thoughts. Prayer is a helpful soliloquy; a comforting monologue; a noble form of auto-suggestion.”
So men returning disappointed from prayer as a means of obtaining definite requests, try to content themselves with prayer as the reflex action of their own minds. This is prayer’s meaning, as they see it, put into an ancient parable:
Two boys were sent into the fields to dig for hidden treasure. All day they toiled in vain and at evening, coming weary and disappointed home, they were met by their father.
“After all,” he said to comfort them, “you did get something—the digging itself was good exercise.”
How many today think thus of prayer as a form of spiritual gymnastics—what Horace Bushnell called “mere dumbbell exercise!” They lift the dumbbell of intercessory prayer—not because they think it helps their friends, but because it strengthens the fiber of their own sympathy. They lift the dumbbell of prayer for strength in temptation, because the act itself steadies them. Prayer to them is one form of mental culture.
But this kind of prayer is not likely to persist long. A thoughtful man balks at continuing to cry, “O God,” simply to improve the quality of his own voice. He shrinks from the process which Charles Kingsley describes in a letter as “Praying to oneself to change oneself; by which I mean the common method of trying by prayer to excite oneself into a state, a frame, an experience.” If he does indulge in such spiritual exercise, he must call what he is doing by its right name. It is meditation. It is soliloquy, but it is not prayer!
When a man indulges in this occasional self-communion for spiritual discipline, there is no sense of fellowship with God to remind one of Jesus’ great confession, “I am not alone, but I and my Father” (John 8:16). His meditation can be called prayer only in the qualified phrase of one of the parables, where a man “stood and prayed … with himself” (Luke 18:11).
Is not this a typical experience of modern men? They find themselves impaled upon the horns of a dilemma. “Either,” they say, “prayer is an effective way of getting things by begging, or else prayer is merely the reflex action of a man’s own mind.” But this dilemma is false. Prayer may involve some thing of both, but the heart of prayer is neither the one nor the other. The essential nature of prayer lies in a realm higher than either, where all that is false in both is transcended and all that is true is emphasized.
To Jesus, for example, the meaning of prayer was not that God would give Him whatever He asked. God did not. That sustained and passionate petition where the Master thrice returned with blood-stained face, to cry, “Let this cup pass” (Matthew 26:39), had no for an answer.
Neither did prayer mean to Jesus merely the reflex action of His own mind. Jesus prayed with such power that the one thing which His disciples asked Him to teach them was how to pray (Luke 11:1). He prayed with such conscious joy that at times the very fashion of His countenance was changed with the glory of it (Luke 9:28, 29). Can you imagine Him upon His knees talking to Himself?
Surely when the Master prayed, He met Somebody. His life was impinged on by another Life. He “felt a Presence that disturbed Him with the joy of elevated thoughts.” His prayer was not a monologue, but dialogue; not soliloquy, but friendship. For prayer is neither chiefly begging for things, nor is it merely self-communion; it is that loftiest experience within the reach of any soul, communion with God.
Of course, this does not answer all questions about prayer, nor exhaust all its meaning. Definite petition has its important place. But the thought of prayer as communion with God puts the center of the matter where it ought to be. The great gift of God in prayer is Himself. Whatever else He gives is incidental and secondary. Let us, then, consider in particular the significance which this truth has for our idea of praying.
For one thing, the thought of prayer as communion with God makes praying an habitual attitude, not simply an occasional act. It is continuous fellowship with God, not a spasmodic demand for His gifts.
Many people associate prayer exclusively with some special posture, such as kneeling, and with the verbal utterance of their particular wants. They often are disturbed because this act gives them no help, because it issues in no perceptible result at all. But even a casual acquaintance with the biographies of praying men makes clear that praying is to them a very different thing from saying prayers. One who all her life had identified with prayer certain appointed acts of devotion, properly timed and decently performed, exclaimed, ” Prayer has entirely left my life.” Yet when asked whether she never was conscious of an unseen Presence in fellowship with whom she found peace and strength, she answered, “I could not live without that!”
Well, that is prayer—”not a mechanical repetition of verbal forms,” as A. C. Benson puts it, “but a strong and secret uplifting of the heart to the Father of all.”
Let any of the spiritual seers describe the innermost meaning of prayer to them, and always this habitual attitude of secret communion lies at the heart of the matter. They are seeking God Himself, rather than His outward gifts. As Horace Bushnell says: “I fell into the habit of talking with God on every occasion. I talk myself asleep at night, and open the morning talking with Him.”
Jeremy Taylor describes his praying as “making frequent colloquies and short discoursings between God and his own soul.”
Sir Thomas Browne, the famous physician, says, ” I have resolved to pray more and to pray always, to pray in all places where quietness inviteth, in the house, on the highway, and on the street; and to know no street or passage in this city that may not witness that I have not forgotten God.”
Ask a monk like Brother Lawrence what praying means to him. He answers, “That we should establish ourselves in a sense of God’s presence, by continually conversing with Him.”
And ask the question of so different a man as Carlyle, and the reply springs from the same idea, “Prayer is the aspiration of our poor, struggling, heavy-laden soul toward its Eternal Father, and with or without words, ought not to become impossible, nor, I persuade myself, need it ever.”
To be sure, this habitual attitude is helped, not hindered, by occasional acts of devotion. Patriotism should extend over all the year, but that end is encouraged and not halted by special anniversaries like Independence Day. Gratitude should be a continuous attitude, but all the months are thankfuller because of Thanksgiving Day. “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy” is a great commandment, and to keep one day each week uniquely sacred makes all days sacreder.
So if all hours are to be in some degree God-conscious, some hours should be deliberately so. The biographies of praying men reveal regularity as well as spontaneity. One would expect John Wesley to undertake anything methodically, and prayer is no exception. In addition to his voluminous Journal, Wesley kept diaries, scores of which have been preserved. On the first page of each this vow is found: “I resolve, (1) to devote an hour morning and evening to private prayer, no pretense, no excuse whatsoever; and (2) to converse face to face with God, no lightness, no facetiousness.”
The greatest praying has generally meant habitual communion with God. And this expressed itself in occasional acts that deepened the habitual communion. But whatever the method, alike the basis and the end of all was abiding fellowship with God.
There is a viewless, cloistered room,
As high as Heaven, as fair as day,
Where, though my feet may join the throng,
My soul can enter in, and pray.
One harkening, even, cannot know
When I have crossed the threshold o’er;
For He alone, who hears my prayer,
Has heard the shutting of the door.
The thought of prayer as communion with God relieves us from the pressure of many intellectual difficulties. To pray for detailed gifts from God … to ask Him (in the realm where the laws of nature reign) to serve us in this particular, or to refrain in that—this sort of entreaty raises puzzling questions that baffle thought.
To commune with God, however, is not only prayer in its deepest meaning; it is prayer in its simplest, most intelligible form. Here, at least, we can confidently deal with reality in prayer, undisturbed by the problems that often confuse us. For the standard objections to prayer—the reign of natural law making answer impossible, the goodness and wisdom of God making changes in His plans undesirable—these objections need not trouble us here. When a man sits in fellowship with his Friend, neither begging for things, nor trying to content himself with soliloquy, but instead gaining the inspiration, vision, peace, and joy which friendship brings through mutual communion, he does not fear the reign of natural law.
The law of friendship is communion, and prayer is the fulfilling of that law. So fellowship in the Spirit may be free and unencumbered; theoretical perplexities may be left far behind. We may range out into a transforming experience of the Divine friendship, when we learn that prayer is not beggary, not soliloquy, but rather that it is communion with God.
This interpretation of the innermost nature of prayer as the search of the soul for God rather than for His gifts, has, to some, a modern sound, as though it were new—invented, perhaps, to put the possibility of praying out of reach of this generation’s special difficulties. But to call this view “modern” is to betray ignorance of what the choicest people of God in all centuries have meant by praying.
Recall St. Augustine’s entreaty in the fourth century, “Give me Thine own Self, without whom, though Thou shouldest give me all that ever Thou hadst made, yet could not my desires be satisfied.” Recall Thomas a Kempis in the fifteenth century praying, “It is too small and unsatisfactory, whatsoever Thou bestowest on me, apart from Thyself.”
And then recall George Matheson in the nineteenth century, “Whether Thou comest in sunshine or in rain, I would take Thee into my heart joyfully. Thou art Thyself more than the sunshine; Thou art Thyself compensation for the rain. It is Thee and not Thy gifts I crave.”
This view of prayer is neither peculiarly modern nor ancient. It is the common property of all Christian seers who have penetrated to the heart of praying. The intellectual puzzles are found in the fringes of prayer; prayer, at its center, is as simple and profound as friendship.
The inevitable effect of this sort of communion is that God becomes real. Only to one who prays can God make Himself vivid. Robertson of Brighton has already described for us his crude ideas of prayer in his boyhood. Listen to him, however, as at the age of 25 he writes:
It seems to me now that I can always see, in uncertainty, the leading of God’s hand after prayer, when everything seems to be made clear and plain before the eyes. In two or three instances I have had evidence of this which I cannot for a moment doubt.
An experience like this makes God vivid. But to many people, God is only a vague Being in whom they have no dealings. They have heard of Him in the home from childhood and never have entirely escaped the influence of their early teaching about Him. They have heard of Him in the church. They have heard of Him from the philosophers. And when a scientist like Sir Oliver Lodge says, “Atheism is so absurd that I do not know how to put it into words,” they see no reason to dispute.
All this is like the voice of many astronomers saying that there are rings around Saturn. Men believe it who never saw the rings. They believe it, but the rings have no influence upon their lives. They believe it, but they have no personal dealings with the object of their faith. So men think that God is, but they have never met Him. They never have come into that personal experience of communion with God which says, “I heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee” (Job 42:5).
Nothing is real to us except those things with which we habitually deal. Men say that they do not pray because to them God is not real, but a truer statement generally would be that God is not real [to them] because they do not pray. Granted a belief that God is, the practice of prayer is necessary to make God not merely an idea held in the mind, but a Presence recognized in the life. In an exclamation that came from the heart of personal religion, the Psalmist cried, “O God, thou art my God” (Psalm 63:1).
To stand afar off and say, “O God,” is neither difficult nor searching. We do it when we give intellectual assent to a creed that calls God, “Infinite in being and perfection; almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will.” In such a way to say, “O God,” is easy—but it is an inward and searching matter to say, “O God, Thou art my God.” The first is theology, the second involves vital experience; the first can be reached by thought, the second must be reached by prayer; the first leaves God afar off, the second alone makes Him real.
To be sure, all Christian service (where we consciously ally ourselves with God’s purpose) and all insight into history (where we see God’s providence at work), help to make God real to us. But there is an inward certainty of God that can come only from personal communion with God.
“God,” said Emerson, “enters by a private door into every individual.”
One day in Paris, a religious procession carrying a crucifix passed Voltaire and a friend. Voltaire, who was generally regarded as an infidel, lifted his hat.
“What!” the friend exclaimed, “Are you reconciled with God?”
Voltaire with fine irony replied, “We salute, but we do not speak.”
That phrase is a true description of many men’s relationship with God. They believe that God is; they cannot explain the universe without Him. They are theists, but they maintain no personal relationship with Him. They salute, but they do not speak. They believe in the church. And especially in sensitive moments when some experience has subdued them to reverence, they are moved by the dignity and exaltation of the church’s services. But they have no personal fellowship with God. They salute, but they do not speak.
When men complain, then, that God is not real to them, the reply is fair, How can God be real to some of us? What conditions have we fulfilled that would make anybody real? Those earthly friendships have most vivid reality and deepest meaning for us, where a constant sense of spiritual fellowship is refreshed occasionally by special reunions. The curtain that divides us from the thought of our friend is never altogether closed, but at times soul talks with soul in conscious fellowship. The friend grows real. We enter into new thankfulness for him, new appreciation of him, new intimacy with him.
No friendship can sustain the neglect of such communion. Even God grows unreal, ceases to be our Unseen Friend and dwindles into a cold hypothesis to explain the world, when we forget communion with Him.
by Steve | May 1, 1977 | Archive - 1977
Archive: Some ABC’s of World Hunger
by Rev. Dr. Robert W. Sprinkle Director, Community Outreach Ministries, St. Petersburg, Florida
former member, Good News Board of Directors
The world’s food crisis is not, in any simple sense, an “act of God.” It has taken several centuries of careful human ingenuity to produce it. Even the hungriest part of the world—also, of course, the poorest—has nonetheless been the recipient of at least the rudiments of modern technology. The technology has lowered infant mortality rates, curbed some diseases, made whole nations dependent on imported fertilizer, and otherwise made the underdeveloped nations part of a worldwide interdependent economy.
Now it becomes clear that the promises implicit in the technology we have exported (promises proclaimed worldwide via electronic media) are only one side of the coin. Humankind’s techniques and systems, used and controlled as they are on spaceship earth, are now having the unwanted effect of making starvation and malnutrition possible on a far grander scale than ever before.
Today’s scenario of starvation is a profoundly human product. We each and all are responsible because, in spite of our wonderful technology, millions starve while others grow fat. Answers—solutions—are hard to come by, even for those who can brave the mountains of facts to reach their own conclusions. Solutions are not clear and agreed upon, and there is the growing doubt whether any of our political and economic systems have the will, the vision, or the mechanisms to implement such solutions. This is especially doubtful where such solutions entail significant sacrifices on the part of people who now enjoy abundance and power.
Our situation, then, in all its promise and despair, is precisely that of fallenness. We see in ourselves, individually and collectively, a twisted divine image and bondage to both self-interest and apathy. Our responsibility to have dominion over the earth (Genesis 1:27,28), confronts our failure even to provide food for our world’s children. Therefore who is free of condemnation?
But a sentence of “guilty” should not be the final verdict when Christians deal with any problem. That is not where we stand, because in Christ is the possibility of solution to all problems.
Not only can the world’s food shortage and oversupply of people teach us about abdicated responsibility and human fallenness; it can also show us how better to live by God’s grace and grace alone. And in the freedom that grace provides, in the new creation that Christ brings, perhaps we can grasp the power provided by the Holy Spirit to be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers … and feeders.
Grace, as Bonhoeffer taught us, is costly. Discipleship (following Jesus) is not simply a guilt-trip. After our guilt is faced honestly and dealt with through the Cross, the pardoned one finds the freedom to obey and serve the life-giving Lord. One dimension of that obedience and service has to do with our relationship to the least of Jesus’ brothers and sisters: in this case, those who are hungry.
Our Lord gave Himself completely for us—and for those who hunger now. Scripture dares to claim that His grace is sufficient for every human need (II Corinthians 12:7-10). He makes us instruments of that grace, in practical ways witnesses to His power and love. Our money, our time, our vision, our commitment—these can be the means of fulfilling His words and promises to the world. Our disobedience, our apathy, are not simply failures to feed an empty stomach, worst of all they are failures to obey God’s call to compassion and to make the love of God real and tangible to other people.
To respond faithfully to God in a world that hungers both physically and spiritually is to sense that one’s life in Christ can be a part of God’s strategy for dealing with these hungers. In john’s Gospel, Jesus says that the bread God gives for the life of the world is the life of His Son (6:35-59). As Christians, we are bold to reckon ourselves to be a part of His ongoing life. Are we too, then, not consecrated in some sense as God’s means for making bread available to the world through our discipleship? And is not that Bread Jesus Christ Himself, the answer to soul hunger, as well as bread which meets the hunger of our stomachs?
“Give them something to eat,” Jesus said to His disciples. He fed the multitudes with nourishment both physical and spiritual.
By itself, what they had (or what we have) is not nearly enough to go around (Matthew 14:13-21). But by miracles multitudes can be fed. We need only to put what little we have into Jesus’ hands, without reserve, simply trusting and expecting that He will multiply it miraculously, now as long ago. In His hands, by the power of the Spirit, what we have can be more than sufficient. I suspect that this is as true for the church on a global scale in feeding millions as it was for the twelve in feeding thousands (Mark 6:30-44).
Grace cost God the death of His Son (Romans 5:6-11). In response, we have the privilege of giving our lives in His service (Romans 12). To do this is to experience God’s love flowing through us, meeting both the spiritual and the physical needs of a hungering world. His love cannot be held selfishly by us—or stored; it can only be shared.
Jesus fed people on two levels—first he provided soul food (Mark 6:34), then food to keep alive the body (Mark 6:35-44). In our times it is tempting for us Christians to miss this balance-to want to concentrate on either spiritual OR physical feeding. The truth is, each is incomplete by itself. It must be both/and, not either/or. For Jesus was utterly clear that God cares for both the body AND the spirit of every person. Our temptation is to encourage some unbiblical split that would have us trying to feed one part of the person only. For example, could the starving children in Bangladesh live what God means their lives to be if we put only bread and milk on their table (if indeed they have a table)? Or if we placed Bibles in their hands (if they can read) and ignored their malnutrition? No, our model is Jesus, who offers more than enough to meet every human hunger.
In the light of the world hunger crisis, what disciplines, what programs, what personal life-style changes should the Christian community consider? There are no simple or easy answers. We have been given much in the way of technology, mobility, and freedom to choose how we will use our wealth. The basic issue is to realize that all of these resources are at God’s command to be used in ways and for purposes pleasing to Him. If we are clear at this point, we will put our resources at God’s disposal. Thus we can become part of His solution to the world hunger crisis instead of remaining part of the problem.
by Steve | Mar 4, 1977 | Archive - 1977
Archive: All That Glitters…
A firsthand account of one man’s experience visiting the notorious Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco.
by Robert Wood, Good News Contributing Editor
“The color of wet sand,” I mused as Glide UM Church rose before me. It was a mid-October Saturday morning, bright with sunlight and unwontedly warm for San Francisco at that time of year. I was approaching the building from the south, the “tenderloin” section of town that runs right up to the church. Beyond it lies the better hotel district.
Along the street faded signs offered rooms for rent beginning at $3 without bath. Porno shops were here and there; one extolled itself for having the largest selection of “appetizers” in the Bay area, while across the street and down a few doors another was going out of business.
As I passed the entrance to an alley, I noticed two drunks asleep in the shadows, their empty bottles around them. Pages of old newspapers scudded up the avenue ahead of the wind … thrift shop employees unlocked their doors … a woman in a rumpled bathrobe emerged from a cluttered doorway to check out the daylight. Somewhere in the distance I heard the wail of a police siren.
Infamous Glide! I expected to see the marks of degradation and consequent ruin everywhere. Ceiling paint will be flaking off, restrooms will be dirty and well-provided with colorful graffiti, I fancied. Without a doubt, I’ll run into some shocking perversion in a back corridor.
But it was not so. The outside appeared to be freshly stuccoed. Inside I found the restroom not only spotless but without a mark on the walls. This in spite of the fact that the facility is available to the passerby, and so helpfully advertised on the street for the non-English speaking by photographs of a bathroom stool and a lavatory.
“Nice,” I said to myself, regarding it.
Approaching a desk near the entrance, I inquired whether any activities were scheduled for the day. None. But I heard voices down the hall, and bent on unearthing some evidence of Sodom come to church, I headed in that direction. The man keeping the desk barked at me, “Come back here. You can’t go in there.”
Aha! So it was Sodom! I explained again that I had some time to kill and was hoping the church would have something planned. He told me gruffly that that meeting was not open to me but that I was welcome to return the next day, Sunday, when things were planned to run from 9:00 till 1:00.
With that I left. As I did, I stopped to read an announcement on the window: “Glide is a church of the people that works for social change by joining the community struggles day to day and in the streets.” Next to that was a poster inviting me to the Coyote Hookers [prostitutes] Masquerade Ball to be held across the street at the Hilton. Queen Ida and her Bonton Zydeco Band were to be featured.
Disappointed at not finding Glide resembling the mouth of hell, I returned to my car. But tomorrow! Ah! Surely the Sunday service would give me something to write home about.
Reasoning on Sunday morning that the more unusual I appeared the more anonymity I would enjoy in an assembly of oddities, I wore a poncho I’d purchased a year earlier in Ecuador. It was comfortable in the chilly building, and I snuggled into a corner of a pew near the back where I could see well.
That was a warm, cordial greeting the young black gave me as I came in, I thought (“Welcome to Glide. The celebration is just beginning”). I recognized an usher who had been part of pastor Cecil Williams’ roadshow at General Conference in Atlanta in ’72. In fact, it was he to whom I’d pointed out former Glide pastor, Dr. J. C. McPheeters, who sat across the church from me that spring afternoon in Atlanta. The usher had hurried off to get Cecil and introduced the two men.
The “celebration” began with the band or whatever, electric piano, electric guitar, etc., banging out a “prelude” while slides were flashed onto what had been the chancel wall. Most of the pictures were of human need or of Cecil Williams preaching. Here was a picture of Mao; there one of Angela Davis. Blacks behind fences and blacks with pol ice suggested oppression and brutality.
“Nothing is more important,” one slide read, “than freedom and independence.”
When Cecil came (not nearly so dramatically as I had thought his entrance might be, nor so bizarre his clothing) we sang “The Battle Hymn of The Republic” which Cecil topped off with a vigorous jitterbug. The Glide Ensemble, a troupe of about 17 men and women in their early and mid-twenties, I judged, sang, “Lord, take me back to when I first believed,” which I found at once well-sung, wondrously rhythmical, and extremely poignant in its rendering.
The ensemble followed that with something whose words escaped me (though I sat through both morning services), but whose frenzied tempo shook the building. Growing increasingly unhinged, the soloist seemed almost frenetic, and at the 11:00 celebration, any number of people were in the aisles in a spirited transport.
Cecil’s sermon surprised me. It was not so much what he said as it was that he said it at all. “I declare to you,” he began, “that this is no longer a church. It is a liberated zone, a liberated space, a liberated place.” That means, he explained, that he (and we) can do there what he has to do when he has to do it. Subsequently he developed his message on the words “feel,” “say,” and “be.” He concluded by asserting that here he is free to be nonreligious when he has to be, by which he meant to have done with piosities. I couldn’t have agreed more.
We are free, he declared, to be whatever we are or want to be. ” If you want to be gay, be gay,” etc. (At the 9:00, he had, in his opening greeting, told us that we were all welcome regardless of who we were, why we were there, or how we were dressed. Just then an usher tapped me on the shoulder and motioned me to the rear. Over the din of the band, I heard him saying something about security in a place like that and did I have anything hidden under my poncho. I invited him to search me, which he didn’t. Later, between services, he apologized.)
The thing about Cecil’s sermon that impressed me was, as I stated above, not what he said but that he said it at all. Why, after 12 years and after building a reputation as an iconoclast, should he pick a random Sunday morning to affirm what everyone already knew about him? I wondered whether he rang the changes on that theme every Sunday. To preach an introductory credo after a dozen years seemed incredible.
Well, what about it? What were my impressions of Glide UM Church and its pastor?
I could remark about the absence of all Christian symbolism. The room (dare I call it a sanctuary?) had been stripped of anything that would identify it as a Christian church. Gone were the cross, altar, pulpit, Bible, chancel rail, hymnals, organ, candles, etc. Nor was there prayer, though we were invited to use a time of silence as we chose (“there is a force among us stronger than the chains that bind us”). But we were not told what that force is.
I could remark about Cecil’s declaration that he had ceased any reference or appeal to the Bible because he couldn’t understand what all those “begats” mean anyway (the fellow behind me obligingly explained its meaning in the vernacular to his companion).
For me it was uncommon to see men wearing their hats during a worship service and to have another saunter down the aisle with a lighted cigarette in his hand midway through the sermon. And it was unusual, between services, to have offered for sale literature on a variety of what are often regarded by many as revolutionary causes. Cecil was available to autograph the current copy of the San Francisco magazine on whose cover he was featured as “San Francisco’s spiritual revolutionary.” Sociological and psychological studies on homosexuality, farm labor propaganda, and celebration T-shirts were among other items available.
I could remark about Cecil’s statement that people don’t need to be “saved,” they need to be liberated, and that he was going to liberate Ian Smith (applause and cheering). Or about his announcement that the next Sunday Senator Frank Church would be present to talk about the CIA (laughter) and, hopefully, Caesar Chavez would be there, too (thunderous stomping).
But I can’t really comment about any of that. There is no doubt that Cecil Williams and Glide UM Church are a long way from historical Christianity. Reports have circulated for years of his espousal of causes of doubtful propriety (didn’t the prostitutes of the country meet in that building?). He made it clear enough that he has abandoned the Bible as the authoritative standard, and he has, I should suppose, made it equally clear that he doesn’t give a hang about ecclesiastical authority.
But for the life of me I couldn’t find the experience, the service, the motivation and theological underpinnings behind it, one whit different from that of any liberal/humanist United Methodist preacher and congregation. Well, yes, there is a difference. Cecil is honest about it, and he does it with more flair. And he also has hearing him those who would never set foot in either a traditional liberal or a traditional evangelical church.
The tragedy of Glide UM Church, it seems to me, lies right there. While only 60 were in the 9:00 service, several hundred filled the pews at 11:00. Here was a pithy, full-toned cross-section of humanity. Multi-racial, multi-cultural; people highly educated, and I suspect, the nearly illiterate; the straight, the gay; the depressed and deprived, the privileged. They were all there. But what were they offered? About as much as in the traditional liberal church and in the evangelical church that has lost its fire. But the ordinary church is not so strategically located.
San Francisco is one of the key cities of the earth, with its port facilities bringing people from around the globe. The cosmopolitan character of its residents makes it one of the most zestful of places. Besides that, Glide UM Church, as I mentioned, stands on the very edge of the tenderloin. It ministers to both the smart set and the “other half,” an extraordinary opportunity for any church. Except that Cecil Williams declared, “This is no longer a church. It is a liberated zone. …” A liberated zone seems to have lost contact with the power to change lives. It merely affirms that we are free to be what we have to be when have to be it.
The Apostle Paul was pastor to a similar congregation in a similar city. To the Corinthians he wrote back to say that thieves, murderers, whores, and gays have no part in the kingdom of God. BUT, he added, “such were some of you.” The implication is that under his preaching people were not left merely free to be what they had to be when they had to be it; they were changed to be what they could be under God, what the best of humanness is meant t be. J. B. Phillips in his book Ring of Truth, calls Paul’s assertion of the contrast between what the Corinthians were presently, and what they had been “an astonishing piece of Christian evidence.”
The heart of Glide beats for humanity. They care about people. They accept each other. The fault lies, it seemed to only a seven-hour exposure, not so much in what is asserted and done, aberrant and sometimes bizarre as this may be, as in what is not asserted. To offer people merely friendship, moral support, financial aid, and whole-hearted acceptance, commendable and wonderful as these may be, is not really all that is to be said. However, a liberal church that offers no more, and an evangelical church that displays no evidence of concern or power are scarcely in a position to criticize.
That night and across the Bay I happened upon an evangelical church (not United Methodist) just as the service was commencing. They were all “properly” attired. All the customary things were done. When we sang, mournfully enough, “Make Me A Blessing,” I shuddered, especially through the first stanza, because the “weary and sad” from “the highways and byways of life” had been dramatically real to me that morning at Glide, while noticeably absent here.
We had a 30-minute discourse, soundly orthodox, on the attributes of God without a word about what difference they make to me in my situation. There were no youth, blacks, or Orientals, no Chicanos, no joy, no expectancy.
Are God’s thoughts regarding that congregation greatly different from what He must think of Glide? I wondered.
