We Are More Than Ourselves 10/15/44
Scripture: I John 1: 1-7
Text: J John 1: 7a; “..if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.”
One of the attractive features of attendance at larger, representative, church group meetings is the sense of fellowship and strength that one gets while mingling with those from other churches. Six of us felt that way ten days ago at our State Conference meeting in Green Bay. Last summer I was thrilled with it while attending the General Council in Grand Rapids. Twice I have been lifted in spirit while attending sessions of the Mid-West Regional meeting of our denomination’s “Missions Council.” Our young people sense it when they go to Green Lake in the summer.
We know, here, this morning, that we are a fellowship of Christian folk meeting together for worship. And we are stronger in the knowledge that we are more than just ourselves when we come here. We are added to each other, perhaps multiplied by each other, when we become aware that we are a church - more than just our personal selves. The churches are the organized Christianity of the community.
Now if we become more than our own selves in the fellowship of a local church, we grow in importance and outreach as we remember that we are a part of one great denominational family of the Christian Church. I propose to discuss this larger fellowship a bit this morning.
The Congregational Churches of this land do not account for the largest numbers in membership. The 18 bodies of the Baptist Churches number 11 million people. The 16 bodies of the Methodist Church have 10 million members. Lutherans (17 bodies) have 5 million; Presbyterian churches (10 bodies) have 3 million; the Protestant Episcopal Church claims 2 million; and the Disciples of Christ 1 million 700 thousand.
The Congregational Christian Churches report a little over one million one hundred thousand members. That is not over-awing beside the others I have named. It is also much larger than a score of smaller churches and sects. And the quality of its membership stands favorably in the light of its sister communions.
We are a modest-sized communion, but our traditions are great and our fellowship is one in which to take delight and satisfaction. Now lest anyone should think this remark sounds complacent or smug, let me hasten to add, however, that we are woefully short of what Christians or a church could be and I believe should be. Our gospel is a message of which we are not ashamed, as an early follower of the Nazarene put it. The church is basically good and, though it has suffered in numerical and physical strength under persecution in those parts of the world where it is violently opposed, it comes through the fire stronger than ever in spirit. And yet it ought to be stronger and more “full of fire” here without waiting to be persecuted. Why should about one-third of the total membership of a church be considered a fair attendance at the worship of God on the average Sunday morning?
There are about 40 million Protestants and 20 million Catholics listed on the church membership rolls in our country. Where are the rest of the 130 million? Barely half of the people of our nation bother even to be nominal members of any church. And of those who are Church members, Dr. A. T. Boisen estimates that about 15% are really dead-in-earnest about the business of being Christian and hard-at-work in the cultivation and promotion of the faith.
It is hardly necessary to dwell on the shortcomings of the churches in general, or of our church in particular. Suffice it to say that we have no occasion for being smug when half of the people of this great nation don’t even bother with any church, and coast along on the benefits of a civilization motivated by Christian ideals without doing a thing themselves to exalt and perpetuate those ideals.
If you and I and the average citizen should think that, after all, “human nature” is the same everywhere and peoples’ consciences are a sufficient guide to right living, we have only to examine briefly the ideology of those who live under non-Christian or anti-Christian influence.
The very standards of that is right or wrong to the Shintoist are vastly different from the Christian standard. The very standards of what is right or wrong to the one who puts state above person is vastly different from the Christian standard. The Japanese militarist, the Soviet or Nazi leader, who believes that whatever will strengthen the power and prestige of his state is the only right is simply in another realm from the Christian standard. It behooves us to be mightily concerned over the promotion of a Christian standard which exalts not a state within which people amount to nothing except as they live for that state, but which exalts a God before whom people are precious, realizing their fulfillment only in serving His righteous ends!
Our world is in peril, with none but a false hope, unless Christians everywhere are mightily concerned, and effectively at work bearing the gospel of Christ to the non-Christian world near at home and abroad! This is true even in wartime - I should say especially in wartime!
The Yale University corporation very rightly observes: “Of what worth is freedom from want, if our minds be on a lower intellectual level; or freedom from fear, if we have a less cultured life to defend; or freedom of speech if we have poorer thoughts to express; or freedom of religion if we bring a less enlightened faith to the worship of God?” There is only one way to keep freedom of worship over a period of time, and that is to use that freedom to worship and to bring others to a desire to worship!
Well, what does our own church do that represents more than just itself? For one thing it supports, in giving and in interest, the so-called missionary work of the Congregational Churches supported by our so-called “apportionment” or “benevolence” contributions. Approximately half of our giving in this field goes to strengthening our fellowship and outreach within the state of Wisconsin. It maintains the continuing service of our State Superintendent, Dr. Theodore R. Faville, one of the best Superintendents among our churches in this country. It maintains the capable service of our field Superintendent Rev. Charles H. Wicks, who is especially capable in advising the rural and smaller parishes. It maintains the conference office where they make their headquarters in Madison. It maintains the services of a director of student work, now Rev. Leonard Detweiler. We have only two such ministers to students in our fellowship in this country. Wisconsin has one of them in the person of Detweiler at the University of Wisconsin. Other great denominations have more such student pastors for their young people at the great universities of the land.
Our apportionment giving helps to put out a helping hand to a few hard-pressed churches in strategic areas that demonstrate they are willing to help themselves. Usually this means paying part of the modest salary of a minister to serve these churches. It helps to maintain the work of committees of Congregational Church members charged with the work of promoting our larger responsibilities. It assures our young people their summer conferences at Green Lake and Northland - and that work is growing.
Fully half of our benevolence giving goes to the promotion of the gospel beyond our state through the Home Mission Boards of our communion and the American Board of Missions to foreign areas.
Mission schools such as Pleasant Hill Academy in Tennessee, Talladega College in Alabama, and Tilletson College in Texas, are helped with these funds. Missions to American Indian settlements are supported; ministers and other leaders are sent into defense areas and places where people have not yet organized to worship and teach and live their religion.
Take a peep at one little spot where home mission support is helping - the Fort Berthold Indian Mission at Elbowoods, North Dakota. There the missionary, Rev. Harold W. Case, and his wife, have the job of trying to know all of the 1900 people on the reservation or away in the armed forces. They preach the gospel and then proceed to make it practical. A 65-year-old woman lives in a neat cabin made of cottonwood logs and plastered mud. It has a dirt floor, swept clean and dampened to lay any dust. The windows are clean and curtained. It is inviting in appearance. When asked where she learned to keep her little home so attractive, the elderly Zora replies, “Why at the mission, of course.” She had quilts of beautiful design. Asked where she got so many quilt pieces, she replied, “I bought them at the mission store.”
A clothing room functions where those who can afford it purchase garments, and the needy are helped. Two girls come to the mission school dressed in rich-looking coats. The missionary scolded their mother for being extravagant, for he teaches economy and thrift as a means toward self-respect. The mother replied with a twinkle in her eye, “Why Mr. Case, I bought just one coat at the clothing room, and made two out of it for the girls.”
There is a mission farm where they raise a few beef cattle and more milch cows, raise grain and hogs to pay for overhead, own their own combine, threshing machine, ensilage cutter and corn binder, sell seed to others because theirs is grown free of weeds. They are working for a new barn and a pasteurization plant so they can sell 500 quarts of milk daily to a nearby school and hospital. They run a cooperative laundry and find it works so well that they hope to get similar laundries started in each of their eight districts. In a country where many have to haul water several miles from a river, it will mean much to them to be able, instead, to bring their laundry to a place where they can clean it with water on tap.
What could be better use of mission money than to keep missionaries on a field where the good practical level of living for people is being raised, by their own efforts like that? And those things don’t just happen, because somebody shells out some money and advice to a lot of Indian people. They happen because the preaching and teaching and living of the Christian religion fires the hearts of these people with their own desire to live better.
Now what about foreign missions? Perhaps I told you before that I had received a letter from one of our own young men in New Guinea - Joe Goodrich - who said, “Religion has reached these parts where I am. Missionaries found their way into these God-forsaken jungles many years ago and it was their good work that made it so easy for us to win the natives’ confidence.”
You and I know that that confidence has meant the difference between success or failure, life or death, to hundreds of our men throughout the islands and jungles in the west and south of the vast Pacific.
There is a pair of missionaries from our churches, working in Sirur, India - Paul and Betty Cassen. They have a special place in the hearts of British soldiers stationed there. Dozens stop off there for tea every day. Betty keeps boiling water on her old cook stove every day. It is a wood burner and on hot afternoons the temperature in that kitchen may go to 100 degrees or over. But many grateful Tommies far from England regard the Cassens as “the finest Americans in India.” And of course that is just incident to their regular mission assignment there!
China, as bitter as she is over the treatment accorded her through many years by many white men (and for which we shall all certainly be called to account) is nevertheless our friendly ally because the self-giving of missionaries in practical service and preaching and teaching effectively offset the evils of Imperialistic greed and produced some Christian leadership.
Japan became our mortal enemy because the Christian forces were not able to work fast enough through the years to offset the Non-Christian tactics of Japan’s own government and the un-Christian dealings in the Orient of a lot of that 50% of our Americans, and most other nations, who are not interested in the church or Christianity. The situation in Japan is a hard nut to crack anyway; and we didn’t get it cracked in time! Who says the churches have “no business tampering with the affairs of the world?” They have no business neglecting those affairs! Men and women die if they do!
Which brings me to our denomination’s “Council for Social Action.” I have the uncomfortable feeling that a lot of good Congregational people are uneasy about that Council, and believe that they don’t like its name or its portent. I suspect that they think of it as a council for “Socialist” action. Forget it! It is “social” action. If we Congregational Christian people make it what it ought to be, it is simply our denomination’s way of bringing what we believe to be Christian principles to bear actively on the movements and problems of our day. The Council’s Service Committee is poised right now to follow the military advance of Allied armies into Greece with practical help, from our churches, for the people of a little nation whose heroic resistance prevented the Axis from going up through the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean before we could get organized to prevent it!
And do you know who will be on hand to “help” and influence those people in Greece if Christian forces and Allied agencies don’t? Well, the Soviets are right at hand! They are our strong allies in warfare, but let’s not pretend that their ideology is what we want for ourselves or our friends! The Christian Churches of all the world had better be in “action!”
Well, these are glimpses of what we do through our benevolence giving - through our state conference, our Mission Boards and our modest little Council.
And we are asked to do more. I will tell you frankly that the suggested “apportionments” are being revised this year, which means that we in our church are being asked to increase our benevolence giving. By the time of our every-member canvass a little over a month from now, we should decide what goal we will accept - and this in addition to our regular home support, our special projects such as furnace, manse, unit plans, war victims and services giving.
What is the load that we want to carry in order that we shall really be more than ourselves? And what of our own personal devotion and service?
(Ronald Bridges at Green Bay: “We are all 1A.”)
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Delivered at Wisconsin Rapids, October 15, 1944.