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Page 42
We cannot, of course, be content with an unrealized unity of the Church.
Every little group of Christians, in the first age, felt itself the
embodiment in its locality of the whole Church, and it was at one in
effort with followers of Jesus everywhere. It exercised hospitality
towards every Christian who came within its neighborhood, welcoming him
to its fellowship and expecting him to use his gifts in its communion.
We want the whole Body of Christ organized, so that it is vividly
conscious of its unity, so that it does not waste its energy in
maintaining needlessly separate churches, so that followers of Christ
feel themselves welcome at every Table of the Lord, and every gifted
leader, accredited in any part of the Church, is accepted as accredited
in every other where he can be profitably used. The practical problem in
Church reorganization is identical with that which confronts society in
politics and in industry--how to secure efficient administration while
safeguarding liberty, how to combine the solidarity of the group with
the full expression of its members' individualities. To be effective the
Church must work as a compactly ordered whole. Individuals must
surrender personal preferences in order that the Church may have
collective force. Teamwork often demands the suppression of
individuality. There will have to be sufficient authority lodged in
those who exercise oversight to enable them to lead the Christian forces
and administer their resources. But we dare not curtail the freedom of
conscience, or impede liberty of prophesying, or turn flexibility of
organization into rigidity, lest we hamper the Spirit, who divideth to
every man severally even as He will. We do not want "metallic beliefs
and regimental devotions," but the personal convictions of thinking sons
and daughters of the living God, the spontaneous and congenial
fellowship of children with their Father in heaven, and methods
sufficiently flexible to be adaptable to all needs. We look for an
organization of the Church of Christ that shall exclude no one who
shares His Spirit, and that shall provide an outlet for every gift the
Spirit bestows, that shall bind all followers of Christ together in
effort for the one purpose--the Kingdom of God--enabling them to feel
their corporate oneness, and that shall give them liberty to think, to
worship, to labor, as they are led by the Spirit of God.
Meanwhile there are some immediate personal obligations which rest upon
us. We cannot be factors in the organized Church of Christ, save as we
are members of one of the existing churches. A Christian should enroll
himself either in that communion in which he was born and to which he
owes his spiritual vitality, or else in that with which he finds he can
work most helpfully. A Christian who is not a Church member is like a
citizen who is not a voter--he is shirking his responsibility.
We must free our minds from prejudice against those whose ways of
stating their beliefs, whose modes of worship, whose methods of working,
differ from our own. We are not to argue with them which of us is nearer
the customs of the New Testament; that is not to the point. Wherever we
see the Spirit of Christ, there we are to recognize fellow churchmen in
the one Church of God. We do not wish uniformity, but variety in unity;
for only a Church with a most varied ministry can bring the life of God
to the endlessly diverse temperaments of men and women. We are not
seeking for the maximum common denominator, and insisting that every
communion shall give up all its distinctive doctrines, ritual, customs
and activities. We do not want any communion to be "unclothed," but
"clothed upon," that what is partial may be swallowed up of fuller life.
Dogmatists, be they radicals or conservatives, who insist on a
particular interpretation of Christianity, ecclesiastics who arrogantly
consider their "orders" superior to those of other servants of Christ as
spiritually gifted and as publicly accredited, sectarians so satisfied
with the life of their particular segment of the Church that they do not
covet a wider enriching fellowship, and churchmen whose conception of
the task of the Church is so petty that they fail to feel the imperative
necessity of articulating all its forces in one harmoniously functioning
organization, are the chief postponers of the effective unity of the
Body of Christ.
We have to consider the particular communion to which we ourselves
belong, and ask whether there are any barriers in it that exclude from
its membership or from its working force those who possess the Spirit of
Christ, and so are divinely called into the Church and divinely endowed
for service. We must make our own communion as inclusive as we believe
the Church to be, or we are not attempting to organize the Church of
Christ, but to create some exclusive club or sect of Christians of a
particular variety.
We must study sympathetically the ways of other communions, and be
prepared to borrow freely from them whatever approves itself as
inspiring to Christian character and work. A Presbyterian will often
refuse to avail himself of the great historic prayers, simply because he
thinks he would be copying Lutherans or Episcopalians, forgetting that
he is heir of the whole inheritance of the Church, and that his own
direct ecclesiastical forbears freely used a liturgy, and even composed
some of the most beautiful parts of the Book of Common Prayer; and an
Episcopalian will not cultivate the gift of expressing himself in prayer
in words of his own because this is the practice of other communions.
As every communion employs in its hymnal the compositions of men and
women who in life were members of almost every branch of the Church of
Christ, so each should as freely use methods of propaganda, or worship,
or education, that have been found valuable in any communion. The more
freely we borrow from one another, the more highly we shall prize one
another, and the more completely we share the same life, the more
quickly will our corporate oneness be felt.
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