by Steve | Nov 14, 1979 | Uncategorized
Is there reality in our worship
By John R. W. Stott
November/December 1979
The Christian Church is fundamentally a worshiping community. According to I Peter 2:5,9 it is a holy priesthood, a royal priesthood whose function is to offer to God the spiritual sacrifices of our worship.
Now I venture to go even further than that. I believe that worship is the church’s priority task. Of course, it is popular to say that the church’s priority task is evangelism. I venture to disagree. I believe that the church’s priority task is worship.
Of course, this is an unnecessary dichotomy anyway, because we don’t have to choose between worship and witness. Each, properly understood, involves the other. It is impossible to worship and love God without loving my neighbor. And, it is impossible to love my neighbor without loving God. Therefore, worship and evangelism inevitably involve one another.
Worship is derived from “worth ship.” So true worship is an acknowledgment of the supreme, absolute worth of God. How can I acknowledge the unique and absolute worth of God and not be concerned that the rest of the world will recognize his worth equally? Therefore, true worship is bound to drive me and the Church out to witness. There is something essentially hypocritical about worship if it does not lead to witness.
Why do we want to evangelize? Do we want simply to win people, get them to profess faith, and be baptized – period? Why do we want them to come to Christ? Surely in order that people, having come to him themselves, will bow the knee to Jesus, give to him the glory that is due his Name, and acknowledge him as Lord – in other words, worship. Therefore, the ultimate objective of evangelism is worship.
Having worshiped, we’re driven out to evangelism in order again that there may be more worship. So, there is a continuous circle of worship leading to witness, witness leading to worship, and so on.
It is an unnecessary dichotomy – worship and witness, worship and evangelism. Each, properly understood, inevitably invokes the other.
Nevertheless, I think we must put worship first. Partly because our duty to God precedes and takes precedence over our duty to our neighbor, and partly because evangelism is only a temporary task. It will end when Christ comes again in glory and power, but we shall be worshiping God forever and ever and ever. It is the eternal function of the Church to be preoccupied with the worship of our Creator and Redeemer. That task will never come to an end.
As evangelicals we should not be ashamed to assert this. I say this because evangelicals are supposed to be interested only in evangelism, and I think it would be greatly for the health of the Church, as well as for the glory of God, if we said that we are equally or even more interested in worship.
The subject of worship has acquired a new importance in our day because of the contemporary quest – particularly in the Western World – for transcendence [something greater or higher than human wisdom and achievements]. What a remarkable thing this is! Young people, disillusioned increasingly (thank God) with the technocracy, are everywhere seeking something Beyond. They believe there is another dimension – a higher dimension – to life than scientists or technologists have ever dreamed or conceived. And today these young people are seeking this higher dimension.
Unfortunately, many seek it in mind-expanding drugs, in yoga, in the higher consciousness, in the flight to the East, in Transcendental Meditation, and in sexual adventures. Although they’re seeking in the wrong places, they are seeking transcendence. This is what they should discover in worship within the Church.
We need to remember that our Christian worship must be more than a social habit, more than a cultural convention. It must be real. It must be authentic. This means, I think, that there are three indispensable characteristics of a local church’s worship-characteristics which make worship both acceptable to God and satisfying to the worshipers.
- Worship must be informed and inspired by Scripture, the Word of God. Human beings never initiate the worship of God. For all human worship is a response to the divine initiative. Jesus says in his conversation with the Samaritan woman, “such the Father seeks to worship him” (John 4:23). He takes the initiative. He reveals himself in order to evoke our worship.
It is impossible for us to copy the Athenians, who had that foolish altar to an unknown god (Acts 17:23). You cannot worship a god you do not know! For if you do not know him, then you cannot know what kind of worship might be pleasing to him, acceptable and appropriate.
Jesus also teaches this clearly in the Sermon on the Mount. He dismisses heathen or pagan worship (Matthew 6:1-18). He says that the heathen have these repetitions.
That is pathalogia in Greek, meaning any kind of prayer whether spontaneous or liturgical, in which the mind is not fully engaged.
Jesus wants us not to worship like this.
Why not? Because the God we believe in, the living God who is revealed in Jesus Christ, is not interested in that kind of worship.
Instead, he wants us to come to him and say, “Our Father in Heaven, may your name be honored and your Kingdom come and your will be done.” In this spirit we come to him like little children, thoughtfully, intelligently, confidingly, trustingly. We know the kind of God we come to, that he’s our Father and that he desires us to bring him our worship. And so, the kind of God we believe in determines the kind of worship we will offer him. That is why the Psalms are full of references to his works of creation and redemption.
These provide God’s people with tangible ground for their praise. I was upset a bit at the International Congress on World Evangelization at Lausanne when we kept crooning “alleluia, alleluia.” A sort of mindless trance. I wanted to say stop! stop! stop! What are you saying “alleluia” about? It’s no good just saying, “We praise you,” “we praise You,” “we praise You.” That’s never so in the Bible.
Many psalms begin with the word “alleluia” and end with the word “alleluia.” But in between this “alleluia” sandwich there is tremendous theological content. We are told what we are alleluiaing about. We are told to praise the name of the Lord because of his mighty works, for his creation, and right on through to his redemption.
As a result, our minds are filled with an awareness of the greatness of the Lord. That is the reason for saying “alleluia.” We need to recover some content-full theological hymns and songs so that we can know what we are singing our praises about.
I long for more evangelical reverence. Why not teach our people to come to church early, not to hurry in during the first hymn or after it, but to come in time to be quiet as a prelude to worship? I wish we could teach people that instead of the bout of conversation, to be quiet at least a minute or two before the worship service begins. It’s quite a good idea for the clergy to come in and sit down and be quiet a minute or two before 11 a.m. Also, it’s a good thing to have periods of silence during public worship.
Our worship, if it’s inspired by God’s Word, will not only be reverent but warm. Worship is cold only when the preaching is cold. There is no need to stir a congregation’s emotions artificially when Christ opens the Scripture through the reading and preaching of the Word. That is what makes worship warm, joyful.
- Worship must be offered by the whole congregation. The second mark of true worship is that it is congregational.
During the Middle Ages, worship was a theatrical performance. The stage, especially the eucharistic stage [having to do with Eucharist or the sacrament of Communion], was the church chancel. The actors in the drama were the priests and the language of the play was Latin. Congregations were mere spectators in the audience, watching the drama performed by priests around what they called the altar.
One great insight that God gave to the Protestant reformers was a determination to replace this theatrical performance by congregational worship. This reform brought the action down from the chancel to the naves (people). The Protestant reformers insisted on the use of a language understood by the people.
The Church of England produced a book of common prayers, or, in the Church of Scotland, the common order. They did this because they were determined to involve and engage the people in congregational worship.
Some churches today have gone back to the Middle Ages. The pastor does everything while the people sit and doze and listen, interspersing their dreams with hymns.
The highest some churches reach in so-called congregational worship is that during the prayers a hundred, two hundred, three hundred people engage in their own individual prayers. Really, this is not much different than the medieval mass in which the congregation was just encouraged to go on with their private devotions while the priests performed up in the sanctuary.
Do we come to church in order just to enjoy our private devotions, although standing or sitting next to somebody else who is doing the same thing? Surely we should come together for public worship!
Therefore, anything that will better involve the congregation in common worship seems to me highly desirable. Take the seating of the church, which symbolizes our understanding of worship. The Roman Catholic custom was to erect a screen to segregate the chancel from the naves and the clergy from the people. Protestants have opposed this. Yet we tolerated a kind of confrontation between the clergy and the people which the traditional arrangement of pews creates. Over here you have all the people … and over there the clergy. This separation establishes a confrontation between the clergy and the people. It perpetuates and encourages that clerical domination of the laity which has been one of the most disastrous things in the history of the Church.
When Christians meet in houses we gather around in a circle. Somehow we need to secure this intimacy again in our public worship. We need a sense of the congregation being gathered around the action.
In our own church in London we have recently made all the furniture movable. The chancel furniture is movable, the pulpit is movable, the Communion table is movable, the baptismal font is movable. For a Communion service, the table is brought right forward and the people feel they are gathered around the table for the Lord’s Supper. If it’s a baptism, we bring the font forward, closer to the people. If it’s a preaching, we put the pulpit in the center and the people are gathered round. We want to overcome this appalling feeling of confrontation, of separation, between laypeople and clergy.
Related to seating is the question of lay participation; it’s good to involve laypeople also in the reading of the Scripture lessons.
God has gifted many Christians with good voices or an understanding of Scripture so that they can read well. We can also involve laypeople in giving testimonies from time to time or being interviewed about some significant aspect of their lives as Christians. These can greatly enrich our worship.
Why should the pastor always lead in prayer? It’s a very good thing for the laypeople to lead the prayers individually or as a group.
Bach once composed a fresh cantata for every Sunday. And at a Roman Catholic cathedral in Holland there is a group of young people who produce and compose a fresh folk mass every Sunday. Do you have a little worship group in the congregation to help the pastor with the composition of the worship?
There are people in your congregation with creative and innovative artistic and liturgical understandings, laypeople who need to be involved with us clergy in preparing worship that is acceptable to God.
- Worship must be related to the contemporary world. Public worship can have a very damaging effect on our Christian lives if worship is regarded as an escape from the real world. A minister in the United Church of Canada, writing about the Jesus People, has said that like the early Christians they live simply, they read Scripture, they break bread together. But he goes on, “Like drugs, a Jesus religion can be an escape from the world in which He is incarnate.”
We gather together as the Lord’s people on the Lord’s Day for worship; then we scatter into the world for our witness. This is another rhythm of the Christian life – gathering and scattering, gathering in church in order to scatter as Christians out into the world. It is vital that we keep the gathering and scattering together in our minds; that we don’t divorce them from one another. In church on the one hand, and at home and at work on the other, we are in the same world.
God’s world. We mustn’t live a double life, oscillating between two worlds, secular and religious. Instead, we must carry our business into our worship and our worship into our business.
Many worshipers, when they come to church, deliberately and consciously step out of the real world into a religious world which has nothing to do with ordinary life. They even step back three or four centuries into an Elizabethan world which no longer exists. And when they look around at the ecclesiastical architecture or the clerical dress or the liturgical language, they must sometimes wonder if they’re dreaming. Is this the real world?
I want to urge that we must worship in modern English! I believe honestly it is inappropriate to worship the living God in a dead language. Oh, we’re so used to “thee’s” and “thou’s” and other archaic words and phrases. But using such archaic words tends to separate our worship from reality.
That is why using today’s language is indispensable, if our worship is to have about it the quality of reality.
It’s very important, as we worship, to keep in our minds the modern work-a-day world to which we belong. Do our worship services encourage the congregation to shut out of their minds the world of their home and of their job and of their community life? If so, then we are promoting by our public worship an unBiblical, spiritual schizophrenia. And we are contributing to that divorce of the sacred from the secular – possibly the most disastrous thing in the whole history of the Christian Church. We need to teach our people that the God whom we worship is the living God who created the world of work and marriage and homes and leisure and community.
His Son, after all, was incarnate and lived and died in the world. So we must not shut out the world in order to retreat into God. Instead, we must worship the God who made and rules the world. We must submit to his sovereignty that bit of the world in which we are involved day by day.
In its widest sense worship is living for God. It is honoring God in the totality of our lives. The hour or an hour and a half in which we mouth our hymns, songs, prayers, and praises simply focuses and verbalizes what is (or ought to be) the direction of our whole life. The sacrifice pleasing to God, according to the Scripture, is not just the praise of our lips, but the offering of our bodies and our money and our service in the world of everyday affairs (Romans 12:1,2). That is true worship! And Scripture states with great plainness that mere words, when divorced from social righteousness, are nauseating to God, disgusting to Him (Amos 5:21-24).
So we need to help people, in public worship, not to forget the world, but to remember it. Not to escape from life into God, but to bring all our life, as it were, with us and subject it to God as an act of worship. At least some of our prayers in church should be really concrete and topical, relating directly to the contemporary concerns of the people. Not just mentioning the sick and the bereaved by name and the missionaries {although that is very good), but also to take up newspaper concerns that are local, national, and international: racial conflict in the community, war, tragedy, disaster, high-jacking.
Public worship is God’s people responding to God’s Word in God’s world. And so my final exhortation is: do let’s toke trouble over the worship. A lot of preachers, I’m afraid, come to church with a prepared sermon and an unprepared service. It seems to me we ought to take equal trouble with the worship as we do the preaching.
John R. W. Stott (1921-2011) was Rector Emeritus, All Souls Church in London. This article is appeared in the November/December 1979 issue of Good News and is condensed from an address Stott delivered to a combined meeting of leaders of Good News and the Covenant Fellowship of Presbyterians.
by Steve | Nov 11, 1979 | Archive - 1979, Uncategorized
Francis Asbury: Super Circuit Rider II
Charles Ludwig (1918-2002)
November/December 1979
Good News
“America! You go to America and, and leave Elizabeth and me alone?” exclaimed Joseph Asbury, straining across the butterfly table. “You can’t do that. … Mother and I are getting old. It won’t be long until we can’t work. Already –”
“The Lord has spoken,” interrupted Francis, firmly.
An agonizing silence followed. Loud ticking of the grandfather clock hammered through the modest English cottage. Then it boomed the hour. Boom …. Boom …. It was midnight.
“How many people are there in America?” managed Joseph.
“Ten years ago there were 1,700,000.”
“Then why should you go?” A hopeful smile crossed Joseph’s lean face. “We have almost 8,000,000 here in the United Kingdom. Besides, 300,000 of the people in America are black slaves. I read that just yesterday.”
“Because I must be obedient to God,” replied Francis.
“How much money will you make?”
“Have no idea. John Wesley and I didn’t discuss that.”
“If God has called Francis, then he should go,” broke in Elizabeth, forcing the words beyond the lump in her throat. “I’ll miss him. Oh, yes, I’ll miss him.” She began to sob. “But we must remember, Joseph, I had a vision from the Lord that one day Francis would be a great preacher. And it seems like yesterday when he was saved from that near fatal fall ….”
As his ship eased into the wide Atlantic on September 4, 1771, Francis struggled with his emotions. Would he ever see his aging parents again? He kept his eyes focused on St. Mary Redcliffe Church until the coastline disappeared. This sanctuary on the hills above Bristol had served as a landmark for centuries.
John Wesley had encouraged his preachers to keep journals. Up until August 7, the opening day of the conference in Bristol in which Francis was selected to go to America, he had neglected to do this. Now he opened his newly purchased notebook and thrust his quill into the ink. Included in his first notation are the lines: “I spoke my mind and made an offer of myself. It was accepted by Mr. Wesley and others, who judged I had a call. (It was my duty to go where the conference ordered; only one or two objected.)”
He did not touch the journal again until September 4th. This time he wrote about his embarkation: “… we set sail … and having a good wind, soon passed the channel. For three days I was very ill with seasickness; and no sickness I ever knew was equal to it. …”
His next notation was on the 12th. This time he wrote: “Whither am I going? To the New World. What to do? To gain honor? No, if I know my heart. To get money? No: I am going to live to God, and to bring others so to do. … The people God owns in England are Methodists. The doctrines they preach, and the discipline they enforce, are, I believe, the purest of any people now in the world. The Lord has greatly blessed these doctrines and this discipline in the three kingdoms: they must therefore be pleasing to Him ….”
Three days later, on the 15th, Asbury opened a window to his character by scribbling, “Our friends had forgotten our beds, or else did not know we should want such things; so I had two blankets for mine. I found it hard to lodge on little more than boards ….”
Money and personal comfort were always secondary to Francis Asbury.
When Asbury landed in Philadelphia on October 27, he was unknown. His five years of circuit riding in England had not been heralded in the New World. Indeed, he was not even asked to preach on the day of his arrival – even though it was Sunday. But always a gentleman, he took his seat in St. George’s Church and listened to Joseph Pilmoor, one of the pair John Wesley had dispatched to America two years before.
Those who listened to Asbury’s sermon the next Monday saw a slender young man, five-feet, nine inches tall, with exceedingly blue eyes and blond hair that brushed his shoulders.
After about two weeks in the Quaker city, Asbury went to New York to work with Richard Boardman. This city of 18,000 had a strong Methodist congregation and Asbury was welcomed with enthusiasm. Manhattan, then, was an interesting place. He visited spots made famous by peg-legged Peter Stuyvesant; dropping in at the former home of Peter Minuit who had purchased Manhattan for $24 worth of beads, and stopping at Wall Street where slaves were sold at auction.
He was intrigued with history, but after two weeks in New York he was restless, unhappy. Missing a saddle and the music of the constant click of a horse’s hoofs, he confided in his journal: “At present I am dissatisfied. I judge we are shut up in the cities this winter. My brethren seem unwilling to leave the cities, but I think I shall show them the way ….”
Two days later, and without requesting permission from anyone, he borrowed a horse. Together with Richard Sause he rode to Westchester, some 20 miles away.
There, he preached in the courthouse. Alone, he continued on to West Farms, New Rochelle, Rye, Mamaroneck, Philipse Manor. Soon he had formed a circuit. Each night he slept in a new bed. It was hard work, but he enjoyed being tired in the work of the Lord. Such tiredness was refreshing.
Having established a circuit, Asbury then turned it over to another preacher and set about creating a new one. To him, every mountain, every new settlement, and every home offered an invitation to preach the gospel. Sometimes he preached to thousands; on other occasions to only a handful. But to Asbury, the size of the crowd did not matter. God had called him to preach; and that is what he determined to do.
As Asbury’s circuits expanded, so did his troubles. The mood of rebellion in the American Colonies continued to deepen. This made things awkward for the Methodists.
After all, the followers of John and Charles Wesley were merely an arm of the Church of England, and the head of the Church of England was none other than His Majesty, King George III!
The political situation for Francis Asbury, and other Methodist preachers born in England, was extremely hard. All of them had to be – at least on the surface – loyal to England. And to make things worse, John Wesley had reissued Sam Johnson’s book, Taxation No Tyranny, under the title A Calm Address to Our American Colonies. This book stressed loyalty to English authority, so it was like a match lighting a fuse. Having issued it under his own name, Wesley was accused of plagiarism. And since it had a great sale in America, all Methodist preachers were suspected of being Tories – or even English spies. Indeed, the political atmosphere became so tense that many Methodists – especially preachers – were tossed into prison. Asbury himself was once forced to hide in a swamp to escape arrest. (This was an irony, for Asbury’s sympathies were secretly with the Americans.)
Following the Revolution, American Methodists were in an uncomfortable position. They were American citizens – but at the same time they were paying at least lip service to George III. Because of Methodism’s connection to the crown through the Church of England, Wesley’s church had two alternatives. Either the Methodists in America could become an arm of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the American branch of the Church of England, or they could become an independent body.
But if the Methodists became independent, how were they to receive Holy Communion? This was an urgent question, for Wesley had insisted that no Methodist should receive the sacraments unless they were served by an ordained Anglican priest.
Pondering this problem, Wesley finally decided that he would personally ordain Dr. Thomas Coke and send him to America to ordain Asbury, and eventually others.
This was clearly against English church law. In protest to his brother’s action, Charles wrote a poem:
How easy now are Bishops made
At man or woman’s whim!
Wesley his hands on Coke hath laid,
But who laid hands on him?
Learning that Coke was coming to America to ordain him, Asbury came up with an ingenious strategy. He agreed that he would accept ordination, but only after the circuit riders had voted on it. This was a daring idea, for the circuit riders were scattered throughout Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Moreover, messages spread very slowly in those days before radio, TV, and quick transportation.
How, then, were the circuit riders to be contacted in time to get to the specially-called conference at the Lovely Lane Church in Baltimore announced for Christmas Eve, 1784? The answer was Freeborn Garrettson! This preacher, who had freed his slaves before Methodists were required to free their slaves, was afraid neither of judges, devils, poverty, nor distance. With less than six weeks to fulfill his errands, he started out. But busy as he was, he preached along the way as he rode from place to place, alerting preachers to the important meeting in Baltimore.
Although Asbury and Coke never exchanged a cross word, a struggle for power simmered below the surface in their relationship. Asbury knew and understood the circuit riders. Coke did not. Nevertheless, when the circuit riders reached Baltimore, Coke would have the advantage because he was completely new to them. Asbury did not thirst for power. Still, Coke, a rich, inept doctor of laws from England, could easily make mistakes that would set American Methodism back a dozen years. Ah, but there was a way out.
While awaiting the approach of Christmas Eve, Asbury encouraged Coke and his assistants to ride some circuits and meet the people. Such work would be helpful – and also it would expose Coke’s talents to the Americans.
At the time, Asbury was 39 and Coke was 37. Both were bachelors.
Writing about this conference, Dr. Coke got to the point: “On Christmas-eve we opened our conference which has continued 10 days. I admire the body of American preachers. We had nearly 60 of them present. The whole number is 81. …” The circuit riders agreed that Asbury should be ordained superintendent. But because of the Discipline, he could not be elevated to that high position all at once. So Asbury was ordained a deacon on Saturday; an elder on Sunday; and superintendent (bishop) on Monday!
It was at this conference that the Methodist Episcopal Church was born. Among those who laid hands on Asbury at the ordination service was Rev. Philip Otterbein of the German Reformed Church. The leaders of the new American denomination still felt loyal to John Wesley; and they made a solemn pledge that “during the life of Rev. Mr. Wesley we acknowledge ourselves his sons in the Gospel, ready in matters of church government to obey his commands.”
That pledge, however, was not honored for long. Three years later the circuit riders met for another conference. This time they not only refused to make Wesley’s nominee, Richard Whatcoat, superintendent, but they also voted to drop Wesley’s name from the minutes! However, they still loved and honored John Wesley. But they were members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Moreover, they were on their own as a church, declaring independence even as their new nation had freed itself from English domination.
Asbury, now recognized as bishop, continued to ride herd on the growing army of Methodist preachers. He ruled kindly, but with an iron hand. His salary was the same as that of the circuit riders. Being a bachelor, he encouraged his riders to remain bachelors also.
Like Wesley, he was highly organized and methodical. Asbury maintained stated hours for prayer, reading, writing, and relaxation. He seldom laughed. Troubled with ill health during most of his ministry, he relied on his own medicines – and prayer.
Asbury dressed like his preachers. He “wore a low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, a frock coat, which was generally buttoned up to the neck, with straight collar. He wore breeches or clothes with leggings. Sometimes he wore shoebuckles.” His one luxury was that whenever possible, he wore blue.
Always on the go, Asbury became one of the best-known men of his times. He knew President Washington, stayed with Governor Van Courtland, and sometimes vacationed in the homes of the wealthy. Being a celebrity of his age, letters addressed: Francis Asbury, U.S.A., were delivered to him on schedule.
Bishop Asbury refused to give up, to retire. When weakness settled over him, he resorted to crutches. He had hoped to preside over the General Conference which was to meet in Baltimore on May 2, 1816. He never made it. After a rain storm in Granby, South Carolina, he wrote the last entry in his Journal: “We met a storm and stopped at William Baker’s, Granby.”
After resting in Granby for a few days, Asbury boarded a carriage and headed for Baltimore. Friends begged him to rest. Instead, he preached two or three times a day en route. When he reached Richmond on March 24, 1816, he was nearly blind and unable to walk. Still, he insisted on preaching.
Sitting on a table in the old Methodist Church, he preached on the text: “For he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth” (Romans 9:28). This was his last sermon, but he insisted on going to Fredricksburg to preach again. After four days of travel, he was forced to give up at Spottsylvania – a mere 20 miles from his objective.
While resting in the home of George Arnold he collapsed. On Sunday morning he summoned the family to his bedside. His text was the twenty-first chapter of Revelation, but he was too weak to read it. After a few sentences, uttered with great effort, he raised his hands above his head. Moments later, Bishop Francis Asbury stopped breathing.
The conqueror of the long trails had received his last call – and he was ready. The date was Sunday, March 31, 1816. The time was 4 p.m.
Charles Ludwig (1918-2002) was the author of more than 50 books, including Francis Asbury: God’s Circuit Rider (1984).
by Steve | Aug 12, 1974 | Uncategorized
The Apostles’ Creed says it best
By Bishop Nolan B. Harmon
Fall 1974
Good News
Within comparatively recent years there have been placed in our Methodist orders of worship (in The Discipline, The Book of Worship and the Hymnal) along with the Apostles’ Creed, two other “Affirmations of faith.” These were the official formularies of the Methodist Episcopal Church previous to union, and went into The Discipline of the united church in 1939 and then into The Book of Worship when it was first issued in 1944 “for those who might wish to use them.”
One of these statements is called “A Modern Affirmation.” The other is “The Korean Creed.” Many ministers today seem to prefer one or the other of these statements to the august symbol of the Faith itself, if indeed they have their people repeat any creed at all.
Each of the affirmations is introduced by the impressive statement: Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is the one true Church, apostolic and universal, whose holy faith let us now declare. Then follow in place of the tremendous item by item declarations of the apostolic witness, a few carefully worded sentences, some of which are open to varied interpretations as they express certain Christian viewpoints, but all a long way removed from the comprehensive, unmistakable directness of the Apostles’ Creed itself.
Now no one can object to these modern affirmations being used occasionally as explanations of certain truths of the creed, provided – and this is an important proviso – that the one who uses them, and the people who are led to repeat them, know exactly how far they go and do not go. I for one can say these affirmations with a right goodwill, since I know what they mean, and that they are ex parte only. What I do object to is to give the impression by the sonorous introduction and the constant use of these affirmations in churchwide worship that they embody anything like the comprehensive faith of the Christian Church.
Let it be granted that the Apostles’ Creed itself does need amplification and explanation, and should have it in all sorts of sermonic and doctrinal teachings. The creed was not written to explain but to list in bare, terse, iron-ribbed language, the factual, actual fundamentals of the Christian faith. Each one of these fundamentals does need explaining, but at much greater length and in sermons and doctrinal teaching which every minister and Christian leader should be prepared to give, and that continuously.
Indeed the Korean Creed, which is much better than the Modern Affirmation, was written as Bishop Herbert Welch explained in The Christian Advocate [August 1, 1946, p. 973] to be “intended primarily as a teaching instrument.” It went into The Discipline of the Korean Methodist Church where it is published today as a “Statement of Belief.” It was the goal of those who drew up this statement to make if “brief, including only the few essentials of a practical Christian faith … simple, couched in non-technical language.” This was certainly an understandable move as Bishop Welch and Dr. J. S. Ryang, later bishop himself, worked out this short confession for the nascent church whose people could not then have taken in more.
As to the Modern Affirmation, Bishop Welch tells us in the same issue of The Christian Advocate that this was drawn up by Professor Edwin Lewis of Drew Theological Seminary at the request of Bishop W. P. Thirkield, then chairman of the Commission on Worship and Music of The Methodist Episcopal Church. It was to be “a brief statement of Christian faith which, in addition to the Apostles’ Creed (italics mine), might be recommended to the Church.” So Dr. Lewis wrote, “And the judgment of the commission … was so favorable that his (Dr. Lewis’) statement was adopted without change.”
As one who knew Dr. Lewis well and greatly admired him, and indeed acted as his editor for his later books (I was book editor of the church then), it can be said frankly that Dr. Lewis wrote this statement some years before he came to that ephocal point in his life when he admitted publicly that he had changed greatly in his fundamental theological viewpoint. The Edwin Lewis who wrote the Christian Manifesto of 1934 was not the Edwin Lewis who put out (and the General (Conference adopted) the ambiguities of the Modern Affirmation. Even had he been the same man, let it be noted that the Modern Affirmation was to be in addition to – not a substitute for – the Apostles’ Creed. If it and the Korean Creed also can be seen as formularies to supplement and not supplant the Apostles’ Creed, well and good. But full-bodied faith for the church today these affirmations certainly are not, and it will be a bad day for any congregation which is led to believe that they are.
Look at the differences: The Apostles’ Creed affirms belief in God the Father Almighty … and in Jesus Christ His Only Son our Lord; it affirms His Incarnation through the Virgin Mary, his appearance in time before Pontius Pilate, His Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, Session on the right hand of God, and declares that He will come to judge the quick and the dead. The whole Christology of the Christian faith is summed up in that one mighty paragraph.
But what says the Modern Affirmation: “We believe in Jesus Christ, Son of God and son of man.” That statement is, of course, correct, but it is exactly the one used by many Unitarians who explain that we are all “sons of God” as well as sons of men, and of course Jesus was also. No unique Sonship, no “only begotten” is herein affirmed.
The “gift of the Father’s unfailing love” goes on the Modern Affirmation. Yes, but how given? No birth, no date in time, no crucifixion, no death, no resurrection, and especially no second coming and no final judgment. What a truncated, lopped-off “holy faith” we are thus led to declare!
The Korean Creed does it much better, calling Jesus “God manifest in the flesh, our teacher, example, and Redeemer, and the Savior of the world.” All that yes, but how one would like to hear breaking in the long roll of the war-drum of the Nicene Creed with a Jesus Christ who is God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made … Who for us men and our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. In contrast with that mighty sentence these modern affirmations sound like the tinkling of ice cubes in a glass of water over against the roar of a heavy surf on the edge of the illimitable sea.
And what of Resurrection, what of Ascension, what of a final Judgment, what of life in the world to come? They just aren’t there. To be sure, the “life everlasting” is in the Korean Creed, but not much of the rest of the vast divine program which the Apostle’s Creed sets forth, and upon which the church rests the sureness of its hope.
As to the Holy Spirit, the Modern Affirmation declares belief in Him as “the divine presence in our lives.” The Korean has “God present with us for guidance, for comfort, and for strength.” Both these statements are true, but here comes in the troublesome ambiguity of the word “spirit.” I have known many a man refer to the “spirit of God,” or pray for “the spirit of Jesus to be upon us” whom I knew had not the slightest idea of affirming belief in the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. The Apostles’ Creed said flatly: I believe in the Holy Ghost.
Incidentally, it was a bad day for Trinitarian belief in Methodism when Holy Spirit was substituted for Holy Ghost in our copies of the creed. I am one who said so at the table when this was done, as I was on the Commission on Worship when the change was made. One distinguished leader argued that the word ghost had connotations that made it frightening to children; another stated that the word spirit out of the Latin Sanctus Spiritus had always been in the church. Old Dr. Forlines of the Methodist Protestant group, who combined vast erudition with practical sagacity, moved that we print two editions of the Creed, with Holy Spirit in one and Holy Ghost in the other. So we voted, but when the edition of the Creed came out in Ritual and Discipline of the early 1940’s it was Holy Spirit and that only. (I am glad to see that in our new Hymnal in the Creed we have got an asterisk which allows Holy Ghost as an alternative.)
The difficulty is that the word Spirit lends itself to all sorts of interpretations, as there may be 57 varieties of a holy spirit. The name Holy Ghost cannot possibly be mistaken for any emanation or effulgence, but denominates unmistakably the Ineffable Person who with the Father and the Son is to be worshiped forever.
And what of the church? Well, there is no church at all in the Modern Affirmation. In the Korean Creed it becomes a “fellowship for worship and for service.” It is that, of course, but the church, holy and catholic, far transcends earthly patterns of work and worship. It has an entity all its own apart from the fellowship of its earthly members, which fellowship of course is a precious matter. But the church is something vastly more. It is the “pillar and ground of the truth”; “purchased by the blood of Christ”; it is the “company of the first born in heaven”; it exemplifies and embodies the communion of the saints, those on earth and those in glory; it is the body of which Christ is the head, and against which the gates of hell shall not prevail; and this church, holy and catholic, is not even mentioned in the modern substitute creed.
One would not know there is a communion of saints and a forgiveness of sins. Neither are mentioned in the Modern Affirmation. Neither is there a resurrection of the body and a life everlasting in the Modern Affirmation. The goal of it all is “to the end that the kingdom of God may come upon the earth.’’ The Korean does do it better with a belief in the “final triumph of righteousness” – doesn’t say when or where – and while it affirms life everlasting, it leaves out the resurrection of the body.
The fact is, this Modern Affirmation (leave the Korean Creed aside a moment) was written and adopted in the heyday of that curious, optimistic, irresponsible liberalism that came to full flower in the first three or four decades of this century. Anyone could then see that the world was getting better and better. To stop war, you simply promised not to fight. (Hitler and Mussolini were waiting in the wings.) To bring in the kingdom, you got laws passed in Washington, and the idea that the spirit of man could be evil – well, this was our Father’s world, and “pie in the sky by and by” was the contemptuous way in which the whole concept of eternity was banished.
Then came on one world war and then came another and all that unthoughted, this-worldly optimism was swept away by genocide and torture on a cosmic scale worthy of the Dark Ages, and the emergence as world powers of proudly atheistic nations. It was realized anew what the church of the ages has always known – that there is a vast malevolent spirit of evil loose in the world (Edwin Lewis wrote God and the Adversary to express this powerfully), that it is a kingdom not of this world which the Lord came to bring and which remains always the true inheritance of the people of Christ. But 1910-1939 couldn’t see it.
Another thing that should be said is that when any item of the Apostles’ Creed is omitted, the whole corpus of belief is mutilated and denatured. Many people do not believe in the Virgin Birth and so do not repeat the creed in order to avoid affirming that. But see what happens when no mention is made of the Lord’s birth. There will be belief in “God, the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ His Son our Lord, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified,” etc. No true Incarnation – God just picked out a good man, a normally born Jesus, and made him to be both Christ and Lord, redeemed the world by Him, and has “put all things under His feet!” No real Advent; no tidings of great joy; God to be father just used the body of a human male (proxy fatherhood!) to bring into the world His co-eternal Son! It simply does not add up, certainly not against Matthew and Luke. Admittedly the Virgin Birth is a matter of faith, as it is something which no man, living or dead, ever could or ever can prove or disprove, and which the Virgin Mary herself said she could not understand. But I do not think modern theologians see what they give up when they glibly say they cannot accept it.
Or try ending the Creed at: He ascended into heaven. Period. Period. No Session, no Return, no final Judgment “where the works of earth are tried by a juster judge than here.” Where does that leave us? Right with those modern novelists who clearly depict all the injustices of this world, and cry out against all its evils and wrongs, but not believing in any God, or any world where things will be righted, they take their shotgun and their life. And why not? If there be no God to “judge the living and the dead” why not a pistol or a bottle of sleeping tablets? No wonder the world lacks hope and purpose if it lacks the whole Gospel.
To be sure, we Methodists do leave out the “descent into hell,” but even those who affirm it never claim that it is of the esse of the Faith. John Wesley did keep the descent into hell in the text of the Creed he sent to American Methodism (in Adult Baptism), but he struck out the Article of Religion (Number III of the XXXIX) affirming it, when he picked out 24 of the articles for us here. But on this side, Coke and Asbury got the descent into hell out of the text of the creed in short order. Research shows it is not in the early copies of the creed; there is no sure Scripture for it; and whether it happened or did not happen, it is not relevant to the vast truths of Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection and Judgment to come, basic to the Gospel itself.
Analyzing these “modern” affirmations is not done to argue with brother ministers and leaders of worship over what they personally believe or do not believe. What is objected to is the public palming off as “the Holy Faith of the Church,” these 20th-century affirmations which sound so lofty and leave out so much. If they supplement, yes; if they supplant, no. Let the Apostles’ Creed be used and let its verities be explained and preached – the whole Gospel for the whole world.
Bishop Nolan B. Harmon (1892-1993) was a retired episcopal leader of the Methodist Church when this article was published. He retired from the active episcopacy in 1964. In retirement he edited the Encyclopedia of World Methodism and served as a visiting professor at Emory University, continuing there into his 96th year. This article was condensed from Christian Advocate August 22, 1968. Used by permission. Copyright © 1968 by The Methodist Publishing House.
by Steve | Sep 11, 1973 | Uncategorized
Many Hearts are with You: A warm episcopal welcome
September 1973
By Earl G. Hunt, Jr., Resident Bishop
Charlotte (NC) Area, United Methodist Church
We are honored and privileged and delighted to have you meeting within the boundaries of the Charlotte Area, the Western North Carolina Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. I bring greetings not only as the Resident Bishop of this area, but also as the president of the College of Bishops of the Southeastern Jurisdiction.
When I pastored in the city of Atlanta many, many years ago, I had a dear old parishioner who was a widower. Every time I went to visit, he served me a memorable refreshment: a collard greens sandwich, without relief of mayonnaise. It was a sore trial, imposed on the fidelity of the pastoral spirit of a Christian minister. But the reason I remember this dear old gentleman is because of something that he said to me again and again: “I knowed you was coming because you was so long about it.”
Anybody who is even vaguely familiar with the trends within the Christian community ought to have known that a resurgence of interest in evangelical religion was coming—because it was so long about it.
I have already told you how welcome you are: now as a bishop of the church, I want to make three very simple observations. I trust these will find their way appropriately into the context of this high and holy and significant Convocation week.
First, our plight (that is, the plight of the Christian Church) is in many ways a plight for which we, ourselves, are primarily responsible. I’m aware that there is a kind of apocalyptic secularism round about us. This has created a climate in which it is difficult to think spiritual thoughts or to do spiritual things, but there are some other factors, not as far removed from the preachers as the lay people of the church. For example, there has been an overemphasis on organizational structure. Organization is essential, but it ought always to be kept to a silent minimum.
There has been a doctrinal dilution- a failure on the part of the Church to articulate the great truths about God, about His Son, about His Holy Spirit, about human sin, about salvation, about prayer, about judgment, about eternity. As a result we have produced a generation of spiritual pygmies instead of religious giants.
There has been an eclipse of preaching, but I thank God that it seems to be in the process of vanishing! I have never noticed that my Charlotte area churches have had serious attendance or budget problems when there was a messenger of God standing in the pulpit week after week, saying something in a language that the people could understand, about the Good News of Jesus Christ. Before we blame the times totally, for the problem in which we find ourselves, we ought, as honest men and women, to take a long look at those things for which we ourselves are responsible.
Second, the tides of the hour are with the evangelical movement. My dear friends, you have no idea how favorable the climate of the church is for those concerns in which you are interested. You have no idea how friendly the viewpoint and how great is the anxiety of the bishops about these concerns. I could go down the roster of episcopal leaders and give you name after name after name of your own bishops whose hearts are with you all the way.
However there are three perils that give me grave anxiety as I confront my own deep commitment to the evangelical cause—and as I view yours. The first of these is false doctrine. There isn’t anybody as badly mixed up in the Christian community as an evangelical Christian who is basically wrong on some of the things he believes. The charismatic movement has brought so many signs of hope to our move-in history. But it has also brought possibilities of real peril for those who misunderstand the truths of God about the Christian experience or the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
I spent yesterday in Winston Salem with one of God’s great gentlemen, Dr. John R. Church. We were having dinner together and he said to me, “In this whole business of the modern tongues movement, we have to be very very careful to discern that which is of God, as opposed to that which is of the devil.”
He went on to say something which I, personally, believe to be extremely basic and important-that our safest course in determining the truth about the Holy Spirit is to follow the classical Biblical, Wesleyan position on this great doctrine. It is a corrective for some of the contemporary misinterpretations of this truth. We have to watch false doctrine.
Also, we have to guard against having only a superficial social consciousness and conscience. The time is past (if indeed it ever existed) when real religion could flourish apart from a redemptive ministry to the great agonies of mankind. You cannot live as a Christian apart from the problems of racism, poverty, and the moral revolution in our day. Where these great issues exist, God expects His children to take stands for righteousness. My friends, the only evangelical movement that can survive and bless this generation is the evangelical movement that has, without apology and with great courage, a forthright Christian position on the great social issues of our day. We mustn’t wear it as a veneer; we must acknowledge it as a part of the timber of our faith.
And then there is the age-old peril, the religious sin of pharisaism. I live with it every day. I realize that I’m so often right on things, don’t you? It’s very hard for me not to be judgmental where you’re concerned, when you don’t see it my way. Oh, God needs to give to every born-again Christian a fresh outpouring of the gift of humility. We need to remember that judgment is the prerogative of the Almighty, and not the privilege of His child. This pharisaism, it turns off the world we want to convert, before the world ever has a chance to hear the message of the Savior.
Three perils. This is the hour of evangelical religion, but these three things haunt us.
Finally, Heaven will bless this week, and this great movement within the United Methodist Church, if there is always integrity, and if there is always a compassion in the enterprise. That means that our proper objectives are the glory of God, the good of His Church, and the salvation of human beings. That’s all. That’s all. No self-glory, no self-aggrandizement, no vengeance upon a structure or a church that somehow did us wrong, just the glory of the Heavenly Father, and the strengthening and the good of the church, and the salvation of human beings.
If our hands and our hearts are pure, we are as certain to receive Heaven’s blessing as we are sitting here tonight.
Let me close with a text. Over in the book of Judges, 5th chapter, 20th verse, there is one of those great, startling sentences of Scripture. Across the years it has spoken to me and ministered to me as a Christian man. It’s part of the triumphant chant of a woman named Deborah, the warrior prophetess of Israel.
You remember the story—Sisera was the captain of the hosts of the King of Canaan. And it was Sisera who was leading the forces against God’s people. Suddenly Deborah cried out that the very stars in their courses fought against Sisera.
This is one of the great truths of the Christian faith. There’s something in God’s universe, there’s something in the very nature of His creation, that means all of the forces that He ever made ally themselves on the side of His righteousness. And so we do not stand alone! We do not battle in solitary agony. The stars in their courses fight for us. It’s still His Church, my friends. Not yours, not mine. It’s still His Church. And the stars in their courses fight for the causes of God.
by Steve | Sep 9, 1973 | Uncategorized
Many Hearts are with You: A warm episcopal welcome
September 1973
By Earl G. Hunt, Jr., Resident Bishop Charlotte (NC) Area, United Methodist Church
We are honored and privileged and delighted to have you meeting within the boundaries of the Charlotte Area, the Western North Carolina Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. I bring greetings not only as the Resident Bishop of this area, but also as the president of the College of Bishops of the Southeastern Jurisdiction.
When I pastored in the city of Atlanta many, many years ago, I had a dear old parishioner who was a widower. Every time I went to visit, he served me a memorable refreshment: a collard greens sandwich, without relief of mayonnaise. It was a sore trial, imposed on the fidelity of the pastoral spirit of a Christian minister. But the reason I remember this dear old gentleman is because of something that he said to me again and again: “I knowed you was coming because you was so long about it.”
Anybody who is even vaguely familiar with the trends within the Christian community ought to have known that a resurgence of interest in evangelical religion was coming—because it was so long about it.
I have already told you how welcome you are: now as a bishop of the church, I want to make three very simple observations. I trust these will find their way appropriately into the context of this high and holy and significant Convocation week.
First, our plight (that is, the plight of the Christian Church) is in many ways a plight for which we, ourselves, are primarily responsible. I’m aware that there is a kind of apocalyptic secularism round about us. This has created a climate in which it is difficult to think spiritual thoughts or to do spiritual things, but there are some other factors, not as far removed from the preachers as the lay people of the church. For example, there has been an overemphasis on organizational structure. Organization is essential, but it ought always to be kept to a silent minimum.
There has been a doctrinal dilution- a failure on the part of the Church to articulate the great truths about God, about His Son, about His Holy Spirit, about human sin, about salvation, about prayer, about judgment, about eternity. As a result we have produced a generation of spiritual pygmies instead of religious giants.
There has been an eclipse of preaching, but I thank God that it seems to be in the process of vanishing! I have never noticed that my Charlotte area churches have had serious attendance or budget problems when there was a messenger of God standing in the pulpit week after week, saying something in a language that the people could understand, about the Good News of Jesus Christ. Before we blame the times totally, for the problem in which we find ourselves, we ought, as honest men and women, to take a long look at those things for which we ourselves are responsible.
Second, the tides of the hour are with the evangelical movement. My dear friends, you have no idea how favorable the climate of the church is for those concerns in which you are interested. You have no idea how friendly the viewpoint and how great is the anxiety of the bishops about these concerns. I could go down the roster of episcopal leaders and give you name after name after name of your own bishops whose hearts are with you all the way.
However there are three perils that give me grave anxiety as I confront my own deep commitment to the evangelical cause—and as I view yours. The first of these is false doctrine. There isn’t anybody as badly mixed up in the Christian community as an evangelical Christian who is basically wrong on some of the things he believes. The charismatic movement has brought so many signs of hope to our move-in history. But it has also brought possibilities of real peril for those who misunderstand the truths of God about the Christian experience or the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
I spent yesterday in Winston Salem with one of God’s great gentlemen, Dr. John R. Church. We were having dinner together and he said to me, “In this whole business of the modern tongues movement, we have to be very very careful to discern that which is of God, as opposed to that which is of the devil.”
He went on to say something which I, personally, believe to be extremely basic and important-that our safest course in determining the truth about the Holy Spirit is to follow the classical Biblical, Wesleyan position on this great doctrine. It is a corrective for some of the contemporary misinterpretations of this truth. We have to watch false doctrine.
Also, we have to guard against having only a superficial social consciousness and conscience. The time is past (if indeed it ever existed) when real religion could flourish apart from a redemptive ministry to the great agonies of mankind. You cannot live as a Christian apart from the problems of racism, poverty, and the moral revolution in our day. Where these great issues exist, God expects His children to take stands for righteousness. My friends, the only evangelical movement that can survive and bless this generation is the evangelical movement that has, without apology and with great courage, a forthright Christian position on the great social issues of our day. We mustn’t wear it as a veneer; we must acknowledge it as a part of the timber of our faith.
And then there is the age-old peril, the religious sin of pharisaism. I live with it every day. I realize that I’m so often right on things, don’t you? It’s very hard for me not to be judgmental where you’re concerned, when you don’t see it my way. Oh, God needs to give to every born-again Christian a fresh outpouring of the gift of humility. We need to remember that judgment is the prerogative of the Almighty, and not the privilege of His child. This pharisaism, it turns off the world we want to convert, before the world ever has a chance to hear the message of the Savior.
Three perils. This is the hour of evangelical religion, but these three things haunt us.
Finally, Heaven will bless this week, and this great movement within the United Methodist Church, if there is always integrity, and if there is always a compassion in the enterprise. That means that our proper objectives are the glory of God, the good of His Church, and the salvation of human beings. That’s all. That’s all. No self-glory, no self-aggrandizement, no vengeance upon a structure or a church that somehow did us wrong, just the glory of the Heavenly Father, and the strengthening and the good of the church, and the salvation of human beings.
If our hands and our hearts are pure, we are as certain to receive Heaven’s blessing as we are sitting here tonight.
Let me close with a text. Over in the book of Judges, 5th chapter, 20th verse, there is one of those great, startling sentences of Scripture. Across the years it has spoken to me and ministered to me as a Christian man. It’s part of the triumphant chant of a woman named Deborah, the warrior prophetess of Israel.
You remember the story—Sisera was the captain of the hosts of the King of Canaan. And it was Sisera who was leading the forces against God’s people. Suddenly Deborah cried out that the very stars in their courses fought against Sisera.
This is one of the great truths of the Christian faith. There’s something in God’s universe, there’s something in the very nature of His creation, that means all of the forces that He ever made ally themselves on the side of His righteousness. And so we do not stand alone! We do not battle in solitary agony. The stars in their courses fight for us. It’s still His Church, my friends. Not yours, not mine. It’s still His Church. And the stars in their courses fight for the causes of God.
by Steve | Aug 9, 1973 | Uncategorized
“Christ Above All?”
Condensed from an address by United Methodist Evangelist Ed Robb
From the St. Louis Good News Convocation
Good News Summer 1973
I think I would like first of all to give you a word of encouragement. I travel all over the United States, around the world. In recent years and the last two or three years particularly, I’ve seen the Spirit of God moving as I have never seen before in my lifetime. And of course, many of you have found this true also.
But another thing that encourages me is, more and more, I am seeing the Spirit of God working in the United Methodist Church. And I believe that this great Good News Movement has made a significant contribution toward that end. I believe that great things are going to happen yet in the United Methodist Church. I am seeing more evangelicals in positions of leadership and taking part in the structures of the church than I have ever known in my 26 years in the ministry. I am encouraged about this. I believe that there is a place for those of us who call ourselves conservatives in the United Methodist Church. I believe there is a place of leadership for us. I believe we have a contribution to make within the United Methodist Church.
I was ordained a good many years ago, and when I was ordained, I knew that the leadership of the United Methodist Church was dominated by liberalism. This would be the case of almost every man here tonight who is a United Methodist minister. Is that not right? You knew it was a liberal church.
But I have found a freedom to serve my lord in the United Methodist Church. I have never had a district superintendent or a bishop who has tried to tell me what to preach.
I also want to say this. I have been told for many years, that United Methodism is an “inclusive” church, a pluralistic church. I believe it is. And I appreciate this fact. There is room for me. But if this is a pluralistic church, why can we evangelicals not have representatives on the faculties of the theological seminaries of United Methodism? I would guess that a great percentage, if not the greater percentage, of money that is being given to United Methodist institutions is being given by evangelicals. By conservatives. I want to know why — if we are an inclusive church — we do not have our representatives within the institutions of our denomination? Recently a United Methodist institution had two vacancies in the department of religion. I submitted the names of five competent Ph.D’s who had degrees. from prestige schools. But not one of them was chosen. I ask you why. I ask you, United Methodist leaders, Give us a chance! Give us a place of expression. Give us a part in the decision-making processes of United Methodism.
If we do not have representatives in the religion departments of our colleges and our theological seminaries, you are going to see the money and the students going elsewhere.
We have come to St. Louis to give witness to the Church and to the world, “Above All Christ.” This is an attractive slogan. It is a proper theme for a Convocation of evangelical Christians. For we affirm that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself (II Corinthians 5:19}. The only God that we know is the God that has come to us in Jesus Christ. All other great religions are founded upon a system, upon ethics, upon philosophy; the Christian faith is founded upon a Person, Jesus Christ. He is our message. He is our hope. He is our religion. He is our salvation. He is our God. It is to Him that we owe our allegiance. We worship Him. We adore Him. We come to St. Louis to praise Him. He is our King. The best definition I ever heard for Christianity is this: Jesus Christ. He is our faith. So, we say, “Above All, Christ.”
Now what does this affirmation imply? It’s easy to have a motto, a theme. But if we really mean it, what does it demand of us? “Above all, Christ.” If we are going to put Christ above all, it is going to require courage. But I have discovered that when you really follow Christ, unapologetically, without reservation, He gives you the courage.
General William Booth was standing before a Methodist Conference, asking for an appointment as evangelist. They voted “no” and Katherine Booth stood up in the balcony and she cried out, “No, never! No, never, William.”
William Booth walked out of the conference without any security, but obeying God — and founded the great Salvation Army.
If we are going to put Christ above all, we will likely be controversial. This Convocation is controversial. This Movement, as most of you know, is controversial. But any vital movement is going to be a controversial movement. And any person who takes a clear stand for Jesus Christ is likely to be a controversial person. We are likely to challenge the status quo. And there’s too much vested self-interest, too many anxious to preserve the status quo.
We look back at such great men of the Church as Martin Luther. But don’t you ever forget that in his lifetime Luther was controversial, a most hated man. I see him standing before the Diet of Worms. They demand that he recant his Protestant faith, and Martin Luther cries out, “My conscience is captive to the Word of God. Here I stand. I can do no other.”
Today John Wesley is universally respected, but it was not always so. He was invited to preach at Oxford University, and in the afternoon after his sermon he wrote, “I preached at Oxford today, but I fear it was for the last time. He was almost right; it was 30 years before he was invited back. They thought that they had invited a frustrated priest, but instead a flaming evangelist came to the campus. They did not want that; he was controversial.
The prophets of God, by their very nature, are controversial. They challenge the status quo. They probe our conscience. They make us uncomfortable. The Church has a history of killing her prophets and then 300 years later canonizing them. We love dead saints, but we don’t care for living prophets. But I would that God would raise up in our time the prophets of courage and boldness who would die to declare the truth of God.
If we are going to put Christ above all, then we are going to have a compassionate concern for the hurts, the heartaches, sins, and the suffering of this world. Oh, that as Christians, as evangelicals, we would be moved by the suffering of the world! It hurts me when my liberal friends are making a greater impression upon the world about their concern and about their care than you and I are making. We must carry a burden for the lostness of the world, if “Above All, Christ” is truly our theme. We must love the unlovely and the lonely, if we are truly going to be followers of Jesus Christ. Evangelicals are not going to make the impact that we want to on the Church and the world by witch-hunting for doctrinal heresy or by political manipulation. I have never read in the history of the Church where revival or renewal have ever come that way, have you? If we are going to experience renewal, and if God is going to use us in the Church today to glorify Christ, to bring needed reform in the Church, it is going to be because the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ is in us. Not only that we are orthodox. Not only that we believe the Book.
Hardnosed fundamentalists seeing a heresy behind every bush are a most unattractive people. There is nothing so dead as dead orthodoxy. Evangelicals maneuvering for political power tend to become like those they are seeking to replace.
I recognize the need of working through the structure. I recognize the need of participating in conference debates. But let us remember this: we have never yet had a revival because of a victory at General Conference. We have never seen renewal come to the Church because some individual was elected bishop. Revival and renewal follow Pentecost. When we have a Pentecost, then we are likely to see change in the Church. When you and I make a full surrender, make a complete dedication, when we have a new baptism with the Holy Ghost, then we are likely to have revival. Then we are likely to see changes at General Conference. Then we are likely to see some great men raised up by God, elected to the episcopacy, to lead us forward in a mighty way. It follows Pentecost, it does not precede Pentecost.
I challenge you today, fellow evangelicals, fellow United Methodists, fellow Christians, to put “Christ above all” in stewardship. I’ve been hearing something lately that disturbs me greatly: “God’s children deserve the best.”
When I was in Chile a while back, I was preaching at a community called Libertad. A humble, frame, unpainted Methodist Church. It was 40 degrees, and they didn’t have heat in the building. They had no organ. They didn’t have a piano, and they had little rough benches that people sat on. I ‘II always remember the day I walked up to that little church. There, standing in the mud, in the rain, in 40-degree weather, was a little 10-year-old Chilean girl barefooted. When I go back to Chile, I ‘II tell that little girl (and the tens of thousands like her all over the world) that American evangelical Christians deserve the best. I’m sorry we couldn’t send you any shoes. I’m sorry we couldn’t help you paint your Church. American evangelical Christians deserve the best.
I was in India last year. We went up to a typical Indian village. And we went into a typical Indian village home. Open fire with no chimney. Two dark rooms with no ventilation. Seven children sleeping on the cow-dung floor beside their father and mother. Two water buffaloes, their most prized possession, in that same room sleeping with them there. Their annual income was $60.00. When I go back to India, I’ll tell them that American Christians deserve the best.
A prominent author recently said that any Christian minister who has more than two suits is a hustler. There’s just enough truth in that statement to make me feel rather uncomfortable. Does it you?
“Above all, Christ” . . . in stewardship. We have professed the faith, but we have not always lived it. We have talked humility, sacrifice, but our hearts have shrunk from them. We have lived to see militant atheists stagger us with the utterness of their self-giving.
Have you read Dr. Sangster’s The Pure in Heart? It’s a great book. He tells of Alger Hiss and Whitaker Chambers, an editor of Time magazine and a former communist. One of the grand jurors asked, “Mr. Chambers, what does it mean to be a Communist?”
He answered that when he was a Communist, he had three heroes. One was a Pole, one was a German Jew, and the third was a Russian. He said the Pole was arrested for taking part in the Red terror of Warsaw. When he was put into prison, he requested that he be given the job of cleaning the latrines of the other prisoners, for he said, “It is a Communist philosophy that the highest and most developed of the party must be willing to do the lowliest of tasks.” This is one of the things it means to be a Communist, Whitaker Chambers said. His second hero, a German Jew, was arrested for participating in a revolt. He stood before the military tribunal; the judge sentenced him to death. Eugene Levine said proudly, “We Communists are always under the sentence of death.” Mr. Chambers said, “That, too, is what it means to be a Communist.”
He said his third hero was a Russian pro-revolutionary who had been arrested for his part in attempting to assassinate the Czarist Prime Minister. He was sent to Siberia. He wanted to bring to the attention of the world the awful conditions of Siberian labor, so one day he drenched his body in gasoline and became a living torch.
Whitaker Chambers said, “This, too, is what it means to be a Communist.”
While we have been talking about commitment, while we have been playing church, while we have been mouthing the words, while we have been going through the motions, the Communists have become more committed, and they have conquered more than 1/3 of the world – while we have been in retreat.
I’ve got a minister friend with a large church. One day one of his inactive members called him and said, “I’d like to come by for coffee.” While they were drinking coffee, the layman said, “Do you happen to have a pledge card?”
Now if you want to make your pastor happy, just ask for a pledge card! The pastor gave him a card and the man signed the pledge for $600 a month. The pastor was rather astounded. He said, “Would you mind telling me why you made this generous pledge? You haven’t been giving anything to the church.”
The layman said, “I’ve been successful at making a living, but I’ve been a failure at making a life. I have a son who has a rather meager salary, but he is giving $600 a month to the cause of Communism. I cannot allow my son to outgive me,”
Are we going to allow a pagan world to outgive us? To outlove us? Are we going to be committed to Jesus Christ? Are we truly going to put “Christ Above All” in our lives?
I have been studying some conference journals. They reveal some interesting facts. I have discovered that churches with evangelical pastors have the best record in missionary giving. Their Advance Special record is impressive. I have also discovered that these same churches have a better evangelistic record. Evangelicals have the motivation to win the world to Christ.
Lest we smugly wrap the robes of self-righteousness around ourselves, we should look more closely at the facts. I have a liberal friend of whom I have been most critical. The other day I was visiting with him and discovered that he goes to the jail every Sunday to share Christ’s love with the prisoners. I have not witnessed in a jail in years. Also, I learned that he has been actively involved in the black churches of our city. Before we throw stones, we had better examine ourselves.
Have we put “Christ Above All?”
Some time ago I read a novel about a young married woman who was having severe personal problems. She had a brother who was a renowned priest. Someone suggested that she discuss her problem with her brother. “Oh, no,” she said, “I could not do that. He is too busy with important things like ecumenicity to be bothered with me.”
Is that the story of some of us? Have we been so busy with important things like church renewal that we have no time for persons?
I know an evangelist who has traveled around the world preaching the Gospel. He has preached from some of the great pulpits, coast to coast. Last month he was working in his yard. Two young boys aged seven and three stopped and visited with him. He asked them if they went to church.
“No!”
He asked them if they knew who Jesus was.
“No!”
They lived across the back alley from the evangelist — I am that evangelist.
Are we witnessing? Are we witnessing where we are?
If we are serious about putting “Christ Above All” we must carry Him out into the world. Too long we have proclaimed the Gospel from the captivity of the sanctuary! Too long we have been satisfied to convince the convinced! Too long we have moved in the isolation of a Christian ghetto! Are we frightened by the world? Are we inhibited by the world? Are we insecure in the world? Is our concept of the Kingdom of God and the duty of a Christian too limited?
Some time ago I was in the home of a Presbyterian elder. Some friends called and asked him to go to the precinct convention of his political party the following week. He answered that he did not have the time because he was going to a Christian meeting that particular night.
I submit to you that the political convention might have demanded his Christian concern more than the committee meeting scheduled at his church. The Kingdom of God does not stop at the front door of our churches. Our faith demands involvement in the world, in the name of Christ.
Three years ago, last January I was in Kansas City. One afternoon I was having coffee with three young ministers. One said to me, “Ed, last summer I was in Chicago at the Democratic Convention and participated in the demonstrations.”
I said to him, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
He answered, “Ed, I have chosen the way of radical obedience. I am completely dedicated to Jesus Christ.”
I felt rebuked. For while I disagreed with this young man very much, I had to respect his dedication. He was willing to put his reputation, his ministry, his future, his very life on the line for what he believed. And where were most of us moderates and conservatives? At home watching our color television sets in the comfort of our airconditioned homes, wringing our hands and crying out, “What is the world corning to?”
Some time ago I received a magazine with a statement by Jonathan Edwards on the cover. I liked it so well that I pinned it on my clothes closet wall. This is the statement. “Resolved, to live with all my might while I do live.” I like that, don’t you? I see so many people vegetating, not really living. There are so many who are carefully protecting themselves. I want to live with all my might!
So, I have changed the statement and made it my own. It now has been painted by an artist, is framed, and hangs on my study wall. It reads: “Resolved, to live with all my might for Christ, while I do live.” □
