We are confronted today by a strange spectacle: those who presume to provide spiritual leadership, those whom we might hope “the Holy Spirit has made overseers to feed the church of God,” appear to be more confused and uncertain than those whom they are to lead.
There remain, of course, many leaders who firmly distinguish right from wrong and separate truth from error. But the general confusion seems so deep and so widespread that laymen who are hungry at heart often cannot perceive which leaders are faithful to the truth. In their discouragement they try not to be greatly concerned; life already presents enough burdensome complexities. And as a consequence, men drift into agnosticism and indifference. Millions simply do not try to determine who is right and who is wrong; often they conclude that no one really knows.
Something is drastically wrong in the Church. We read of the “religious dilemma,” of the “paradox of the Church.” Men do not hesitate to assert that the institutional church is impotent, dead, or dying. How true it is that few churches show anything very desirable about the Christian life. “As an active and dedicated churchman,” writes Keith Miller, “I had seen from the inside that to call the Christ of the New Testament Lord of the average congregation’s contemporary activity in any true sense was preposterous.” He is honest and he is right.
As a lawyer with no theological training but with a good deal of earthly experience and some training in analyzing fields and reducing confusion to communicable basic issues, I think we ought first to isolate the problem. What is really wrong with the Church?
Many orthodox Christians will say that the main issue is whether or not the Bible is the Word of God. Certainly that is a basic question; however, I can show you countless congregations that will give a rousing yes but are nonetheless confused, spiteful, and spiritually paralyzed. Others may consider the real issue to be whether Jesus of Nazareth was truly God. Still others may point to the reality of the resurrection. But although all these matters are basic to the Christian faith, none is the really crucial question. And that is part of the problem. Billy Graham rightly says that the Church is answering questions nobody is asking. We seem to have forgotten that man’s subconscious cravings are basically selfish. They are not philosophical.
Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. He was confused, but Jesus went immediately to the heart of his problem and said in essence, “Sir, the entire basis of your life is wrong. Everything you have worked and slaved for all these years is worthless. Your pride in your intellectual attainments, position, and prestige, your fine ecclesiastical robes and your phony ecclesiastical righteousness, your worldly church system—all this is an abomination to God. You are absolutely on the wrong track. Unless a man is born again, unless he begins life as a new creation on an entirely different basis, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” Nicodemus, who had invested so much in the system, could not grasp what Jesus was saying. Having not experienced rebirth, he could only ask, “How can these things be?”
The basic question, the one that human beings, because of their self-interest, want most to have answered but are unable to articulate, is simple: Does God really intervene to change men’s lives? Is Christian conversion a reality? Can something really happen to a man that transforms his life? That is the question the dying world would ask if it knew what to ask. And it is the question that all too often the Church is failing to answer.
If the answer is no, then, of course, there is no good news to tell, and there is no need for anyone to teach us to tell it.
Is rebirth a fact? Many of the clergy do not know. Several brilliant clergymen have told me that the term “born again” has no meaning for them. I believe them when they say that, and I admire their honesty. But they have no place in the ministry, not unless they really want, at least, to be born again and as little children receive Christ.
Some other clergymen are less forthright. They have their own private explanations for what Jesus meant, or they may even give lip service to the fact of regeneration. But they have never experienced rebirth, and they are apt to substitute a nasty little set of self-righteous rules. They condemn all who disagree with them, take great comfort in selfishly distorted applications of the doctrine of separateness, publish journals of hate in the name of Jesus, and, incredible though it may seem, pray for the downfall of some of his saints.
It would be well if godly clergymen could protect us from the vicious and the phony within their ranks, but the disease is out of control. It has been neglected too long. For years seminaries have been hiring professors and grinding out clergymen with great emphasis on scholarship but with little apparent regard for spiritual regeneration. Now many laymen long accustomed to trusting ordained clergy, and wanting to do so still, are bewildered and disillusioned.
Is there a remedy for this deplorable situation in the churches? If there is, it must come from a rediscovery by laymen of a full lay ministry and from the reactivation of the clergy in the role of “player-coach.” The answer does not lie with the clergy alone. It never has. The remedy lies with born-again laymen who grasp the questions men are asking and minister to them in their need. This means witnessing by word and life to the utter transformation God can bring to pass in the lives of men. Laymen have long neglected this ministry, but it is exactly the ministry Christ gave them. The role of the clergy is to teach the laymen how to do the job.
God is doing some marvelous things in the world today. Certainly his power has not diminished. The acts of the apostles are still going on. The unregenerate cannot see this, and the mass media rarely take note of such things. But miracles are taking place today in small groups of authentic Christians all across the country. Significantly, the most successful groups seem to be interdenominational. Their message is simple. They know God because he has transformed their lives. In their new lives they are learning to tell about the great things God has done for them. Their message is like that of the man who was born blind. When asked by his furious pastor, “What happened to you?”, he admitted that though he didn’t know much theology, he did know that he had been blind but now could see. These authentic Christians may not know a great deal of theology, but they know Jesus. They are not anti-church, yet they are often rejected by those in the institutional church who feel uncomfortable in the presence of Spirit-filled Christians. They appear to be a threat to unregenerate ministers, and for this reason their ministry is often lost to the institutional church.
It is through these people, however, that the institutional church has its great opportunity. God has raised up a great multitude of witnesses who serve as instruments of his redeeming love in the world, and for these witnesses the institutional church, despite its faults, still provides the greatest opportunity for reaching a perishing world. Will it make itself available? Or will it persist in refusing to let God’s people do his work?
As long as the institutional church retains its headless priesthood, the yearnings of the vast multitude that sit dying in the pews will not be answered. And unregenerate clergymen may well continue to ask with Nicodemus, “How can these things be?”
Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”
