The headline read, "He Can `Marry' People If Not Distracted By Mouse." The article was about a scam operation that was exposed in Cleveland, Tennessee this past year. The operation ordains ministers for $20 each.
The president of the Huntsville, Alabama, Better Business Bureau decided to check out the operation. She sent in an application and a check for her few-months-old cat. She answered questions truthfully and listed his birthdate as a few months previous. Explaining his call to ministry she wrote, "To make people happy and not hunt birds." She directed friends whom she wrote down as references to admit that the applicant was a cat if they were asked. Sure enough, her cat was officially ordained as a minister of the Gospel. (1)
The church of Jesus Christ has taken a beating in the media in recent years. There are always those who would take advantage of people's gullibility. Unfortunately, religion is an area where many people are quite vulnerable. Fortunately most people are able to separate the misdeeds of the few from the highmindedness of the majority. Still, many of us have a feeling that the church is not all Christ has called her to be. That is sad. The church of Jesus Christ is the most important institution in all of society. Even those outside the church long for the church to be all Christ called it to be.
There is a delightful scene in WINNIE THE POOH that goes something like this:
Pooh: "Did you fall into the river, Eeyore?"
Eeyore: "Silly of me, wasn't it?"
Pooh: "Is the river uncomfortable this morning?"
Eeyore: "Well, yes, the dampness you know."
Pooh: "You really ought to be more careful!"
Eeyore: "Thanks for the advice."
Pooh: "I think you're sinking."
Eeyore: "Pooh, if it's not too much trouble, would you mind rescuing me?"
If a society ever needed rescuing, ours most certainly does. Sensitive hearts know it does even sensitive hearts outside these walls. How much longer can our inner cities be allowed to deteriorate? How long can society afford girls who are children themselves having babies with no father to help raise them? How can children have any chance at all where drugs are available almost on every street corner? How can we tolerate boys and girls going to school in fear? When is somebody going to do something to help those experiencing daily poverty of mind, soul and body.
Of course, the inner city is not alone in confronting problems. They extend into the city's financial district and its suburbs as well. Our society is experiencing a moral drift, a decline in commitment to others, a mefirst attitude that robs life of its most vital ingredient connectedness.
"Pooh, if it's not too much trouble, would you mind rescuing me?" This is the plaintive plea of our society to the church of Jesus Christ.
In order for us to become a rescuing community, however, we need to recapture some of the elements that propelled the early church. Eleven rather fainthearted disciples and a handful of faithful and devoted women turned the world of their time upside down. We need to recapture what they had if we are to be what they were. Jesus' last words as recorded in Luke 24: 4549 should help prepare us as it prepared them:
"Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and he said to them: `Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high.'" (RSV)
THE FIRST ELEMENT WE MUST RECAPTURE IS A SENSE OF WHO WE ARE. Someone once wisely commented, "Being busy in church is not the same thing as being godly. If being busy created godliness then insects would be closer to God than man." We can be a very busy church, even be a growing church, and still be ineffective in the work of the Kingdom, if we don't know who we are. Let's consider an analogy.
The painter Rubens is recognized even today as a genius. His work has been so influential that we sometimes talk about the "Rubinesque" figure. Rubens was also quite a businessman. Unlike many other immortal artists, Rubens was fortunate enough to taste the fruits of success while he was still alive. He was highly commissioned for his work. In fact he was so highly compensated that he opened what one writer called a painting factory. He hired a school of pupils, and started an assembly line! He made the initial drawings and the pupils filled them in. Then with a few master strokes, he completed the paintings.
Now consider who we are. We are students in Christ's school. We are not masters. We simply fill in the sketches he has already begun. When we have done all we can, he provides finishing touches to produce a masterpiece. To understand our role in such a way relieves us of the burden of being sufficient in our own abilities to do what he has called us to do. We are his students, his servants, his apprentices. He is the Master.
THE SECOND ELEMENT WE MUST RECAPTURE IS A SENSE OF WHAT WE ARE ABOUT. John Gardner, Former Secretary Health, Education & Welfare, once said something very wise. He said, "In the absence of criticism every organization ends up being managed for the benefit of the people who run it: most schools tend to be run in such a way as to serve the purposes of the teachers; the Navy tends to be run for the benefit of naval officers; the vested interests of postal employees are the predominant factor in controlling and directing the future of the post office; the policies and practices of most universities are explicable chiefly in terms of the vested interests of the professors." If that is true about schools, military services and bureaucracies, it is also true of the church. When we are at our worst, we are under the delusion the church exists for our benefit rather than for the world.
What is the mission of the church? "That repentance of sins and forgiveness may be preached in his name to all nations..." The essential mission of the church is to witness to the grace of Jesus Christ. It is to call our nation to righteousness, both personal and social, and to proclaim the good news that we are forgiven, accepted, made right by the cross of Calvary. Our chief task then is evangelistic. We are a community in the rescue business. We will never be the church Christ means for us to be until we center in on that reality.
This doesn't mean that we are to go out and harass people into the kingdom. A wife asked her husband, "Dear, Who was that at the door?" The husband answered, "It was that new minister. He has been by four times this week." The wife asked, "What is his name?" Her husband answered, "I think it's Pester Smith."
We aren't called to pester people. We are called to offer hope to people who need rescuing. That is the second element we need to recapturea sense of what we are about.
THE THIRD ELEMENT WE MUST RECAPTURE IS A REALIZATION OF THE SOURCE OF OUR POWER. Jesus instructed his disciples to "stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high."
This may be the weakest link in the church today. Nels Ferre wrote of a Christian convert from Hawaii who spoke about prayer to a seminary in America. "Before the missionaries came to Hawaii," she said, "my people used to sit outside their temples for a long time meditating and preparing themselves before entering. Then they would virtually creep to the altar to offer their petition and afterward would again sit a long time outside, this time to `breathe life' into their prayers. The Christians, when they came, just got up, uttered a few sentences, said Amen, and were done. For that reason my people called them `haolis,' `without breath,' or those who failed to breathe life into their prayers."
There is a powerful indictment here about the way many of us have come to deal with our prayer life. Prayer has become a perfunctory exercise. In the words of the Hawaiian lady, there is no "breath, no life" in our prayers. If it is true, however, that Christ has relieved us of the burden of being adequate for the calling to which he has called us, it is also true that to be effective in his service, we must throw our lives upon him. He is the source of our power. If we neglect our prayer life, we cannot hope to be all he calls us to be. Maybe this is why the church today is often so anemic.
Douglas Hyde was a member of the Communist Party in Britain. He says that as a member of the Communist party which then numbered only 45,000 in all of Britain, he fully expected to win the country to his ideals. His comrades expected the same. When he joined the Catholic Church and left the Communist Party, however, he found himself in a group 100 times larger than his previous one. Yet he found no one who expected the Catholic Church to have much effect. Here was 10% of the population holding a set of ideals, and they felt themselves too small to effect any change! (2)
The church of Jesus Christ is a sleeping giant. There are millions and millions of us around the world. We are still by far the largest movement of any kind. There is nothing in this world we cannot achieve. The reason we have lost our dynamic character is that we have been neglecting our power lines. We need to stay in the city until we receive power from on high!
There is one more important thing that needs to be said. THE FOURTH ELEMENT WE MUST RECAPTURE IS THE AWARENESS THAT ALL OF US ARE INVOLVED IN GOD'S PLAN. The work of Christ is not the work of the pastor, or the education director or of a few highpowered evangelists. The work of Christ is the work of us all. There wasn't a single ordained, seminary trained clergyperson among all those who torpedoed that first community of believers into the most powerful force in the society of its time. Farmers, fishermen, homemakers, tax collectors, ordinary people fueled the church's growth and influence in New Testament times.
About a year ago, a major corporation announced it would be moving its corporate offices across the country. During an interview with the press, the board's chairman was asked if he expected that most of the employees would make the move. He said that he felt that most of the important employees would transfer, but secretaries and others would not. When the secretaries read in the paper the next day that they were not among the "important" employees, they decided to call attention to their importance by not answering any phones for one day. They did all of their other duties, but answered no phones. The turmoil which resulted from this demonstration of importance caused the board chairman to make a public apology. (3) In the work of Christ, there is no one who is unimportant. We all count.
Would you mind rescuing me? That is the plaintive cry of the world today. My prediction is that this cry will increase in intensity in the years ahead. Will we heed it? Only if we remember who we are, what we are about, where our power comes from and that each of us are important to the work of the Kingdom.
In the window of a New York City hardware store was a sign: "We Repair Every Type of Vacuum Cleaner." Just below this sign was a second one: "Needed at Once-Experienced Vacuum Repair Person."
A sign like that might be hung out in front of many churches today. We need to stay in the city until power has come upon us from on high. Then we will be ready to assist Christ in the rescue and repair of his world.
1. The Knoxville News Sentinel (July 28, 1989), Section A, p. 2.
2. Douglas Hyde, DEDICATION AND LEADERSHIP (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1966), p. 33.
3. William E. Diehl, THANK GOD, IT'S MONDAY, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982).