The Fellowship of Saints                                                                  10/11/42

 

Scripture:  (read Philippians 2: 1-11)

 

One of the books published this year (1942) is a volume by Carol McAfee Morgan called “Rim of the Caribbean.” After teaching in Syria and in India, Carol McAfee returned to her native Missouri to marry the Rev. Barney N. Morgan.  Since their marriage, the Morgans have lived in Puerto Rico and in the Dominican Republic.  They know the Caribbean area well, and Mrs. Morgan writes, in an attempt to acquaint all of her readers better with the countries and people between us and the great South American continent.

 

Just two of her sentences, I want to bring to you this morning.  “There is a new spirit of friendship,” she says, “between the United States and the countries of the Caribbean world.  This attitude came into existence when North America awoke to the fact that being our brother’s keeper was not enough and that we must become our brother’s brother.”

 

I hope that the “Good Neighbor” policy of our government toward the South American countries may be an evidence that we are all ready to be not our brother’s keeper, but our brother’s brother in the sense of real neighborliness.

 

Last night, I read, with satisfaction and pleasure, the newspaper report that Britain and America had negotiated with China for the immediate relinquishment of those extra territorial rights which we have claimed by treaty for so long, and which have been a source of so much dissatisfaction and humiliation to the Chinese.  It looks as though we were going to try to be not a brother’s keeper toward China, but a brother’s brother, a man to man ally of the people whose struggle against aggression for past six years we could not help but admire.

 

Today has been designated as “State Conference Sunday” among the Congregational churches of our State.  During three days of this past week, ministers and delegates of the church met at Mineral Point church for the annual meeting of our churches in this state.

 

It was a fine conference, and the best attended in recent years.  What is this State Conference known as the “Wisconsin Congregational Conference?” It is a voluntary association, for mutual help, inspiration and effectiveness, of the ministers and lay representatives of our Congregational Christian Churches in this state.

 

One of the committees of this State Conference suggested, and promoted this year a plan of pulpit exchange on this Sunday.  According to this plan the pastors of two Congregational Churches in neighboring communities would exchange pulpits for the day and preach sermons on the importance of the work of the State Conference. You see my face, and hear my voice this morning because the other minister involved in the exchange suggested by the Conference Committee had already made other arrangements before word was received from the committee.  This is the sermon that might have been heard ten to eighty miles from here while you listened to a discussion of a similar subject by a traveler of the same distance.

 

Anyone with business experience is interested in budgets and balance sheets.  But I sometimes wonder if any of us are able to visualize what a couple of figures on the annual budget sheet of most of our churches represent in flesh and blood living terms.  One of those figures is a small item for “Winnebago Association Dues.” It represents payment of 17 cents for each active member of our churches to the district Association to which we belong.  It is a fund to which every church of this Congregational Association is expected to contribute at the same rate.  Two cents of this per capita  gift provides the administration expense of the Association.  Seven cents of it is forwarded by the Association to our State Conference toward the conference expenses to help maintain the office at Madison and help about twenty important committees to function.  Eight cents is forwarded, through the State Conference to our national body, the General Council of Congregational Christian Churches - again for administrative expenses of our denomination or branch of the Christian family.

 

The other figure on our budget sheets to which I refer this morning is a larger item for “Benevolences.” It is nearly, though not quite, the figure suggested as our church’s share of the general missionary work to be carried on by the churches of our state.  It is this work of this item, especially, that I want you to see in terms of flesh and blood and spirit and accomplishment. Much of it goes through “apportionment.” Some of it goes through special channels.

 

Slightly more than one half of this item ($510) is spent for work of great and rewarding importance in this State of Wisconsin.  We of the Congregational faith are not a church that “takes orders” from above.  It is the special, democratic genius of a Congregational Church that each local church governs itself completely.  Its actions and policies are governed, not by a bishop, but by its members themselves.  Our Association with other churches of the state is entirely voluntary and we rejoice in the cooperation which that represents.

 

There are many enterprises that can be done best “together.” And so we have a central headquarters in Madison with a modest staff headed by our State “General Superintendent,” Dr. Theodore Faville, who has served our churches in this capacity for the past 20 years.  (Dr. Faville began this service with his election at the State Conference at Janesville in 1922, with our own Mr. George Mead presiding as Moderator.)

 

Dr. Faville is a seven-day-a-week man.  He works vigorously and effectively on state finances, functioning of 20 committees, scheduling speakers and special meetings desired by many of the nearly 200 churches of our conference.  (You remember that he was present two years ago to take part in the Service of Recognition which was held near the beginning of my ministry with you.)  He preaches nearly every Sunday in some pulpit where he is invited to come for special celebrations, supplying, or promotion.  I don’t see how a man endures the strain of such constant work as he accomplishes.  He is tremendously valuable to our fellowship.

 

Associated with him is our Field Superintendent, Rev. Charles Wicks whose work, especially with the smaller churches of our conference and their pastors, carries him tens of thousands of miles up and down the state.  He is a splendid “missionary-at-large.

 

Dr. John W. Wilson serves our churches as “Pastor-at-large” on a part time salary that is little more than a retirement pension.  Mrs. Frank Klouda is conference book keeper and does a great amount of secretarial work.

 

At the University in Madison is our student pastor who has charge of work among our Congregational students at the University of Wisconsin.  James Flint has just left for further study and Jack Telfer has taken over the work for this year.  (Incidentally, I heard two students who appeared at the state conference with Mr. Telfer speak very enthusiastically of the way in which the six or seven freshman boys of this church are entering into the life of that Christian group which we support by our sharing.

 

Miss Marjorie Meyer, conference office secretary and worker with young people in the Pilgrim Fellowship, is known and highly regarded by young folk who have met her at Green Lake conferences and on her visits to our Sunday Evening Club last year.  She is the sixth member of this state conference staff whose varied work is tremendously worthwhile in our state.

 

A considerable amount of our support goes to the conference support of 15 missionary pastors of 28 churches in our state that can not afford the services, even of an underpaid pastor without that help, and yet are vitally important.  Who can measure in dollars the value of their services?

 

Roughly one fifth of our “benevolences” or $215 goes to the Home Mission Boards of our faith in the nation.  In this brief time I could give you only an inkling of the scope and the tremendously worthwhile character of this work.

 

This Board helps to support at least 3 colleges in the South for Negroes, including Tongaloo in Mississippi, Tillotson in Texas, and Talladega in Alabama.  Mr. Stanton Mead, who is a Trustee of Talledega, and others from our church who have visited the college, can tell of the splendid service rendered at this college by an inter-racial faculty headed by Dr. Buell Gallagher.

 

And if you have ever heard Dr. Mary E. Branch, the Negro president of Tillitson, speak about her young folk in the student body there, you realize how intensely practical is the Christianity expressed in this support through the Home Boards, of this work for Negro youth.

 

There are also a number of schools (at least 5) for white young folk supported in the South - some among the poverty ridden people of mountain districts.  The Home Board also supports the work of the Ryder Memorial Hospital in Puerto Rico - now a defense outpost of our nation.

 

The same board also sponsors an important and practical piece of missionary work among the Dakota Indians.   These are fields of the Home Boards in which every one of us who makes any contribution to the church budget has a part.

 

Nearly one fourth of our “benevolences” (or $235) goes through our American Board of Missions to foreign lands.  And, my friends, this is still a filed of major importance.

 

One more item - 4% of our “benevolences” or $40 goes to our 10-year old Congregational Council for Social Action.  The Council was commissioned by us to study the various practical expressions of our social order, and to help us to study them intelligently so that we may know what seem the intelligent and Christian directions in which we should be moving. 

 

                        One task - Committee for War Victims and Services - including refugees, prisoners, relief to people of some attacked countries, rehabilitation, chaplain’s needs.

 

That part of our support in giving which we call “benevolences” is our practical way of attacking evil with good, confident that good is the only way that evil will ultimately be overcome.  It is a Christian’s extra which he offers, beyond the efforts of the secular citizen, which the government cannot and ought not do, but demonstrates more than anything else a Christian nation’s determination to be a “brother’s brother” to all who can be approached.

 

In our benevolence giving, we make practical our belief in the “fellowship of the saints” beginning right here and now.

 

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Dates and places delivered:

 

            Wisconsin Rapids, October 11, 1942

            Nekoosa, October 10, 1943