Elevate the pulpit in the church once more, in its zeal and its assault against hell. Station a Bible on that pulpit, an open Bible, and assert that whatever is heard elsewhere, in God’s house hearing shall be accorded the preached Word. Let this preaching be a curiosity and a persistent exposition of the Word: make it voluable, vociferous and violent.
The Church Aggressive
Inform the world that heralds are in it with clear words to call a people back from the abyss’ edge. Forget the sales pitch, abandon the soft sell, discard the grey flannels, pigeon-hole the pushed programs and incinerate the sure-fire charts. Let the minister confess it: soft talk is ridiculous in a hard world, meek answers do not fit ominous questions, dilettante dialogue does not guide bewildered souls, and entertaining wit generates no conviction. Ground the ecclesiastical ad men, the promotional experts, the organizational conformists and the itinerary executives: ground them to pulpits and pews. Pull the firing pad from under their mecurial feet before they have us all in orbit, dizzily wheeling in circles, reaching for goals no one wants and landing on moons nobody needs. Challenge men with the Word’s either/or, enthrone eternity’s message on the consciousness of all, raise the call to repent across the luxury-laden land, and lay comfort on the line where the knees bend, the fears coalesce and the tears fall.
Let preaching command the life of the Church, rock persons free from sin, uproot them from false securities and drive them to pursue conformity to Christ. Make the articulated impact of pin-pointed preaching block fallacy’s roads, blow the bridges on pride’s highway, close all self-saving bypasses, and leave no avenue traversable except the way to Him who is the Way.
Electrify peoples and pastors into dialectical societies reasoning around the Word: the weather can wait, the Word won’t. Companion with the men of courage who come with the Word, and wise thought, strong comfort and counsel deep. Force the world to know that liberty’s voices are rising and faith’s thoughts are flowing from the gushing up of the Gospel interpreted, heard, exchanged and applied. Command the pulpit voice to preach on, to sustain the weary with words, to provide reason’s medicine for the mind, and to give hope’s balm for the heart. And, let the peoples’ Amen punctuate the words from the Word.
When the voice from the sacred desk ceases and the Amens from the pews fade, remember: they have returned to Him who sent them, never void, but with long lines of the redeemed leagued in love to Lord Jesus Christ. Come Back, O Church, Come Back to the Preached Word!
The Church In Unity
Recall the Church to knowledge of itself as the body of Christ: summon persons to join Christ’s body. Tell it abroad that no one who belongs to Christ is alone but is member of all who are his; and, illustrate the fact through fellowship’s acts. Admit that he has imposed unity but we are reluctant to receive it. Declare that our one Head prays still for the cooperative efforts of his body, its oneness of heart and singleness of love.
Let response to the Word gain momentum. Stay it not for fear or favor. Dare the proponents of aloneness before God to repeat the Lord’s prayer in the first person singular. Provide people their one, last opportunity to quit majoring in minor distinctions and become the one mind and heart of Christ before a macerated world. While we are a spiritual unity before God, striving to serve him however varied the means, the world will note well that God’s encounter with man redeems from self-concern and builds the community of his will where none has been before.
Fire the technicians of togetherness and throw open the roof to the floods of grace requiring everything said to be WE, and everything done US. Outlaw all audiences and actors before God. Put a people of God before him and affirm that he is the only auditor of our worship, ever mindful of our response to his Word and our brother’s need. Make Christ’s Church, now, earth’s grandest joy and this life’s nearest touch on the things of eternity: a window on truth, an aperture to love and a bit of heaven on earth: Thy kingdom come!
The Church Aflame
This is the Church militant, allied to the cross and companioned to the resurrected Christ. Command it to march on, thrusting united praise to the ramparts of heaven, thrilling all with a rhapsody of trust, and hoisting a harmonic paean to Christ above the din of this world’s jarring noises. Oh for a singing Church, a knee-bent Church, a hallelujah Church, a Church orchestrated to the unity of the Holy Spirit!
Trumpet the call to regroup to Christ, and acknowledge that his is the glory that binds us in the circle of unrelenting effort and love unalloyed. Pray for a chill to set on us from Calvary, a blaze from the Upper Room and a thrill from Easter Morn. Magnify the worship of Christ’s Church: assemble the Church around the Lord’s Board and proclaim: This is the family of God, nourished by Christ, sustained by grace and vitalized by the Spirit. Come back, O Church, Come back to the worship of God, through the Saviour and by aid of the Holy Spirit!
The Church Alert
Give nerve and muscle to the decisions and convictions of a worshipping people. Let new knowledge grip us. Cease trivializing the loyalties of the redeemed by merely adding their names to committees, putting them to odd jobs and extracting portions of time and pieces of money from them. Can religious hobbies absorb the energies of a people in communion with the Lord and in communication with the Word? Society can protect itself against stacked committees and professional stances; but evil has no defence against Christians exercising 24-hour-a-day commitment to Jesus Christ. Let the results of preaching-worship materialize wherever the people go. Charge Christians to think and act Christianly in their cars, their homes, their jobs, their politics and their play. Have at home a little church, guided by forgiveness, correction and love. Make affairs of office, factory and field opportunities to unravel the meaning of the Gospel, and make the long hours of leisure targets for minds that have heard from the Word and hearts that worship the Lord. Let all life become live footnotes to preaching-worship. Deny the plea to do “something special” for Christ, deny it with the declaration that everything must be done for Christ. Say aloud that there is no protected niche for those who have preached, heard and worshipped; tell these favored ones that every facet of life must be brought captive to Christ, every act impelled by his will, and every attitude squared with his Lordship.
Are we so soon done with his mission? Eager ones, returning with report of having done the Christian task, stand at the foot of the Cross and see that ten lifetimes will not take you beyond its shadow! Bow before the empty tomb and understand that a hundred life-spans will not open all life’s crevices to its brilliant rays!
Remind those startled by this day’s leaping advances in science, and horrified by the same day’s plunge to new lows of immorality, that Christ reigns beyond the rocket’s final sputter, and that he still calls for the repentance of those who befoul themselves and all they touch. Say to those beguiled by the pretensions and idolatries of Left and Right that Jesus Christ is King. Assert that those purcased by his blood and pardoned by his life must be patriots to his purpose. Show that earthly loyalties are valid only when derived from homage to Heaven. Say to all that the day of all knees’ bowing to his personal and cosmic Lordship will come. Meantime, following him, it is ours, through evil days, to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.
This is mission: to proclaim Christ’s redeeming grace to people where they are. There is little glamor here, but grace, not glamor, is our glory. There is small public favor here, but fidelity, not acclaim, is our goal. There may be meagre success here, but success is God’s to give or withhold: our job is to try where the trying is hardest. Our mission’s crown of success may be made of thorns: He whom we serve found it so. From dark nights, in due time, God splits the sky for the bursting forth of Easter Morn. Come Back, O Church, Come Back to the mission of Christ!
The Spring Of Our Hope
Soldiers of the cross! You may crumple under the crossfire of this world’s hell, but for you the security of an impinging eternity is infinitely greater than the calamities of earthly deviltry. While earth’s battles rage, the veteran Captain of our salvation trains all for destiny’s decision and eternity’s call through total loyalty to his Word, worship and work.
The last day comes when the bruised and broken body of Christ, target of satanic fury, becomes the Church victorious. Its stigmata shall be its glory, the scandal of its cross shall be its crown, and its shredded garment shall become its seamless robe clothing the redeemed of all ages. It shall keep only what it has given away in Christ’s name, and it shall enter Paradise, at God’s call, supported by those to whom it is the messenger of grace.
The Christ of God, long since returned from Calvary’s bloody victory, shall meet it and greet it and claim it as his own for ever.
Come Back, O Church, Come Back: the Master calls you to His preaching, His worship and His mission. Come back, bearing your shield of faith, or be carried on it, but come back!
