One of the most fruitful insights into the nature of the church in modern writing is that which recaptures the biblical idea of the servant church. This negates the triumphalism that is the constant temptation of the people of God. Christians may be personally humble and ready to take the lowly place, but they see the Church as altogether glorious, as that to which men ought to pay homage.
Now it cannot be denied that a body of biblical evidence can be cited in favor of such views. The men of the New Testament may have been insignificant and unimportant in the eyes of the men of their day, but they did not pull their punches when they spoke of the glories of the Church to which they belonged. They saw it as the body of Christ or as his Bride. They saw it as the people of God, as a royal priesthood, as a holy nation. They saw it as a holy building, as the household of God, as the new humanity and more. The New Testament is eloquent of the high regard in which the first Christians held the beloved community.
While the Church was a small persecuted minority, this was kept in perspective. Believers knew that the Church was glorious, but they knew also that its place in the world was a lowly place. They were in no danger of triumphalism.
It was different when the Church conquered the empire. It became the fashionable thing to be a Christian. Church leaders became “princes of the church,” and the trappings of royalty became accepted as a matter of course. The attitude that went with this has persisted through the centuries. Christians have come to accept complacently enough the idea that the Church ought to be seen as the object of public acclaim and honor. People must be taught to come to the Church bringing their homage and their gifts.
With that there came an emphasis on the place of the clergy. Obviously the chief officers of such a splendid organization were worthy of high regard. Bishops and other leading dignitaries were given a place in high society, and their words were listened to in the counsels of the Church with special interest.
And this was not a matter that concerned episcopalianism alone. In time a clericalism of one sort or another seems to have made its appearance in all the churches. The minister has tended to become a more important figure than his flock. We love to set up a kind of ecclesiastical hierarchy, giving greater honor to some and a lower place to others. We have turned the churches into institutions with a recognizably worldly organization and set of values. It has seemed inevitable that we should be in some kind of competition with one another as we strive to build up bigger and better organizations with more and more of the trappings of worldly success.
But in recent years many sensitive churchmen have been examining all this with a critical eye. They have been convicted of the fact that it is hard to square the modern church with its affluence and its many tokens of “success” with the church of the New Testament. They have been asking how Christians can more fully conform to the scriptural norm and with a good deal of unanimity have been answering in the word “service.” Many books and articles written in recent years in one way or another bring out the truth that it is the function of the Church to serve, not to claim some place of superiority.
This is a most important gain, and one that is not yet fully appreciated by some sections of the Christian community. It is important that we dwell on the thought that Christians are here to serve.
But as we work out our role in the modern situation, we should take care not to regard this service in the wrong way. Some Christians are so convicted of the world’s need and the church’s failure that they can see nothing more for the Church than that it be an agency for public service. Let the Church find out the needs of the community and then give itself over to filling those needs as adequately as it can, is the thought. The proclamation of the Gospel can best be done in deeds, not words. Let us be doing, not preaching. With this goes a tendency to forego the Church’s traditional readiness to make new members. An increase in the numbers on church rolls, it is pointed out, does not necessarily mean a surge forward in the discharge of the Church’s obligation to God and man.
Many are reasoning that, far from trying to increase its numbers, the Church should be indifferent to them. It is fascinating to find some recent Roman Catholic writers saying that some people ought not to be church members at all. The Church can best fulfill its role for such people by facilitating their departure into the secular community where they will live full lives of service with no reference to the Church.
No informed Christian would wish to criticize this wholehearted desire to bring home to modern Christians the importance of rendering their full measure of service in their communities. It is well that we realize to the full the implications of being Christians in as needy a world as ours.
But it is important that we also stop to ask ourselves what we are doing as the Church. Are we completing our function when we speak prophetically against racism, when we denounce warmongering, when we support anti-poverty programs, strike a blow for women’s lib, and the like? To read some of our modern prophets one would gather that the answer is an unequivocal yes. The Gospel is muted, at least as regards any call for repentance and personal commitment to Christ.
But this will not do. One of the fundamental teachings of the New Testament is that the Church is in business to bring men to Christ. Granted that the outworking of the faith necessarily involves practical service, it still remains that nothing in the Bible sanctions the canceling of the evangelistic imperative. It is still as urgent as ever it was that Christians call men, not simply to the alleviation of their material needs (important as that undoubtedly is), but to faith in Christ. The fact that it is easy for Christians to concentrate too much on increasing the size of their congregations ought not to be allowed to obscure the truth that there is a sense in which they must always try to make men church members. They can never cease trying to win men for Christ, to bring them into membership of his Body.
In their zeal for abandoning triumphalism, some have sat loose to the command to preach the Gospel. But Christ’s last command to his followers stands with unabated force. A church that ceases to make disciples is a faithless church.
