After six decades of ministry, an eminent churchman assesses the health of the body of Christ.
David Elton Trueblood was born, as he likes to say, “in the last month of the last century” (December, 1900). That tells you something about his mind; it is always taking note of things others miss. He has a ready explanation for why he retired from teaching philosophy at Earlham College promptly at age sixty-five: “So people wouldn’t ask me why I didn’t.” Other octogenarians in Richmond, Indiana, may have trouble remembering their Zip Code (47374), but not Trueblood: it is, he notes, a palindrome.
He has decided not to write any more books; thirty-two is enough. They include such notables as The Predicament of Modern Man, The Company of the Committed, and The Incendiary Fellowship. But these later years are not for reposing; he is still the active president of Yokefellows International, his beloved order of laity and clergy who commit themselves to interior discipline and exterior ministry in the world. Trueblood maintains his lifelong habit of being in bed by ten each evening in order to maximize the next day s early hours. That is why LEADERSHIP editors Dean Merrill and Marshall Shelley arranged to interview him at nine o’clock on a bright October morning in his library, next door to Virginia Cottage, his home on the Earlham campus.
From sixty years of teaching, writing, and preaching (he was recorded as a Quaker minister when Warren G. Harding was president, and served as chaplain at Stanford for a decade), he talked about the well-being of the contemporary church.
Pastors and lay leaders, like everyone else, are prone to quiz themselves: “How am I doing? How is my church doing?” Are these good questions to ponder? Can they be asked too often?
Yes, there is a danger in asking them too much, because we are likely to become too aware of our own personal success. That is bad. The questions encourage us to become too self-centered.
But it is good to ask, “Are we increasing Christ’s kingdom? Are we in any sense doing what he intended when he invented the church?”
I use the word invented deliberately, since there was no church before Christ. An amazing invention it was, something far more revolutionary than we normally suppose.
I think we are too easily satisfied with conventional success. We fall back into an Old Testament mindset, in which we look mostly at how many people come to the temple for the ritual. That was what counted most under the Old Covenant. Meanwhile, we forget Jesus’ words in Matthew 12:~~”I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.”
Cheap Christianity can usually pull a pretty good attendance on Sunday morning. It is cheap whenever the people think of themselves as spectators at a performance. I’m always shocked when I hear Christians talk about being “in the audience.” Audiences are fine at the opera or the symphony concert, but worship is another matter.
In Christ’s clearest call to commitment, he didn’t say, “Come join the audience.” He said, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me.” The yoke refers to the operation of a team. Early Christians called each other yokefellow (Phil. 4:3) in order to signify a practicing, operating Christian, one engaged in a team effort.
So when leaders ask how the general operation is going, they must not be too easily satisfied with numbers. You can always get a crowd if you demand very little and put on a show. The promoters of the rock festival near San Bernardino last Labor Day got 200,000 to come and listen to loud music nonstop day and night. But if high demands are raised, the situation is far different.
Tell us a little more about what you see here in the late twentieth century that reminds you of Old Testament days.
Whenever we make minister synonymous with clergy, we are pre-Christian. A clergyman is a professional-one who takes on a responsibility and gets a certain prestige for doing so. One pastor actually said to me, “Yes, I know lay Christians need to be developed, but I’m not going to have a book table, because I don’t want them to know where I get my stuff!” He thinks of himself as part of an upper class, which is precisely what the priests did.
Has it occurred to you that all cultures before Christ had priests? They enjoyed great prestige. They were always closely allied with the monarchy, whether in Mesopotamia or Egypt or Israel. Julius Caesar was made pontifex maximus in Rome, even though everyone knew he was an immoral man. It didn’t matter; he had the title.
Christ turned this all around-and we tend to forget how drastically he did so. “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them,” he said in Matthew 20, “and their great men exercise authority among them. It shall not be so among you.” Then he made his revolutionary statement about coming to serve, not to be served. He turned the world upside down that day.
Unfortunately, we tend to forget, slipping back into the pre-Christian model of priests and temples.
Jesus did appoint leaders for the church, though, did he not?
He sent out teams of workers not to perform a ceremony but to liberate and to heal. Instead of employing the priests, who were numerous, he entrusted the future to ordinary persons. Have you ever thought what a good joke it was when he gave Simon the nickname “Rocky”? It was like us calling the tall man “Shorty” or the fat man “Slim”-we’ve done it always. I’m sure the others laughed when Jesus said it, because Simon was anything but solid. He was more like rubble than rock.
How would you define a healthy fellowship?
A healthy fellowship is a redemptive fellowship. It is penetrating the world not for its own aggrandizement but to change the world. Almost all of Christ’s metaphors for the church are penetrators-salt to penetrate the food and keep it from decay, light to penetrate the darkness, leaven to penetrate the lump. The emphasis is never on the instrument but on the function. So a successful church is one that is changing the world, chiefly through the action of its members.
The members, by the way, are wonderfully placed. Some of them are in offices, some in banks, some in factories, many in homes, many in schools. The way we make the church grow is by making the members more effective in penetration.
The most exciting thing I know here in Richmond is a soup-and-salad luncheon every Thursday for men, all of whom are ministers in common life. Physicians, lawyers, factory workers, businessmen of all kinds, and even a few pastors meet at the library of the First Friends Meetinghouse exactly at noon. We close exactly at one-not 1:01-because these are people with responsibilities to keep. We begin with prayer, led by someone in the group, not an imported professional. We have our simple lunch, prepared by the women of the church, and leave our $2 on the table. At 12:20 we introduce new people, and then one of the group speaks for sixteen minutes, sharing something that has strengthened his life in the ministry. Last come questions and answers, with great freedom, and a closing prayer. We average more than the Rotary Club in town-sixty-five men on a normal Thursday.
Are these all from the Friends church?
Oh, no-that would destroy the idea. The mayor, who is Roman Catholic, is nearly always there. They come from all over-the only thing, we have in common is that we are all ministers in daily life. We have no officers, no structure, no budget, no minutes, no reporting-that’s what wears people out. We simply want to help each other penetrate the world.
Groups like this are going now in Muncie, Indiana, and Wichita, Kansas, and I hope it spreads farther.
I suppose I’m acting as sort of a pastor to the local group, in that I take more responsibility. But I am simply a coach. The pastor as coach is miles away from the idea of pastor as priest. The pastor as coach is not satisfied with good ritual and good buildings; he is satisfied only when people are being recruited into the ministry of daily life.
Some would say this recruitment can happen in public meetings.
Yes, it can. Lives are changed there, but not as often as we might think. I led a retreat in northern Ohio not long ago for twenty-two people, and I went around the circle asking each one to tell what had brought him or her into a full Christian commitment. I assumed some would mention a public meeting or a sermon. Not one did. They told about little people, the shoe repairman who made such a testimony in personal living that an impression was created, inconspicuous people. …
Nobody said Billy Graham or Elton Trueblood?
(Laughter) Not one! I didn’t expect them to say Elton Trueblood, but I thought someone would mention Billy Graham. Lives have certainly been changed by his public preaching, but my experience is that the great majority arc changed in a much less obvious fashion. If the church could make members realize this, that they are the team, what a difference it would make. How it would raise their sights.
I meet hundreds of strangers on airplanes and so forth, and I nearly always say, “Are you in any church?”
The usual answer is, “Well, sometimes I go to x church.” It sounds almost like going to the theater or the ball park. Once in a while someone will say, “Yes, I’m deeply involved in . . .” but it’s rare. I’m afraid the majority still think the church is something you go to.
How do you know whether your friends on Thursday are actually penetrating the world or just showing up for lunch?
Well, here’s one measure: How many of them are visiting in the jail? We got a fellow out of jail two weeks ago who apparently had been arrested unjustly. I went to the prosecuting attorney here in Richmond and persuaded him to drop charges. The point is, I could go to bat for the man, because of my life here. I was listened to, while he never would have been.
At lunch the next Thursday, I told what had happened and gave the man’s name and address. One of the group said, “I’ll go and see him.” He found him in a poor little shack-the man, his wife, and child with almost no food. So my friend got the members of his church to stock their pantry.
This is no big thing, but it’s concrete. At other times, those in our group who sell cars have arranged decent transportation for people who otherwise couldn’t afford it.
This kind of penetration is not so easily put into an annual report. Attendance and money are easy to write up for the annual business meeting, but you van never have a full report of the ministry of penetration. You will, however, see examples of it. What I most want people to realize is that this is expected, this is what the church requires.
Church is more than an hour a week. That is what I was trying to say when I wrote Your Other Vocation-that the Christian always has a two-pronged life. He or she must be a competent journalist or lawyer or industrialist-and must also be in the ministry of Christ in the world.
In your autobiography you wrote, “An untrained ministry is potentially harmful.” So there’s more to being a healthy church than just mobilization?
Absolutely. Jesus said not only “Take my yoke upon you” but also “Learn of me.” The church must become a seminary if it is going to have a universal ministry. The pastor is the ideal person to be the dean of the seminary, drawing out the ministry of others, equipping, enabling. Those potent words of Christ, “Learn of me,” will change our whole focus on ministry.
What if the pastor says, “I may be the dean, but I have no faculty. I am alone”?
He has to develop his faculty by training some of the members to train others. He must not fail to make a start.
What should be the curriculum of this “seminary”?
The first task is to deepen the spiritual lives of the people. So many today live so superficially. We can awaken and enrich them through the classics of Christian devotion-a rich body of material that is mostly unknown. If I were a pastor, I’d spend nearly all of my time teaching, and I would start right off with a class on these ten books:
Augustine’s Confessions
The Little Flowers of St. Francis
The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis The Devotions of John Donne
Pascal’s Pensees
The Journal of John Woolman
A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life by William Law
Doctor Johnson’s Prayers
The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith
Thomas Kelly’s Testament of Devotion
All of these are in paperback and in good modern-English editions. Any ordinary person can grow tremendously through this type of material.
Most people don’t know how to pray, for example. What better way to teach them than through Samuel Johnson’s prayers? At the end of his life, in desperate sickness, he asked his physician how many more days he would live. The doctor estimated two, barring a miracle. “Very well,” he replied. “Stop all medication, though the pain be terrible, for I would meet my Maker with a clear mind.” He then wrote this prayer, the last thing he penned:
Almighty and most merciful Father, I am now, as to human eyes it seems, about to commemorate, for the last time, the death of thy Son Jesus Christ our Savior and our Redeemer. Grant, ID Lord, that my whole hope and confidence may be in his merits, and his mercy; enforce and accept my imperfect repentance; make this commemoration available to the confirmation of my faith, the establishment of my hope, and the enlargement of my charity; and make the death of thy Son Jesus Christ effectual to my redemption. Have mercy upon me, and pardon the multitude of my offences. Bless my friends; have mercy upon all men. Support me, by the grace of thy Holy Spirit, in the days of weakness, and at the hour of death; and receive me, at my death, to everlasting happiness, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.
That teaches not only the devotional life; it teaches theology. If we don’t raise the sights of people with this kind of training, they will pray in strings of cliches. We must soak them with great models.
Johnson even wrote a prayer when he commenced work on the dictionary. No wonder Malcolm Muggeridge calls him the greatest Englishman who ever lived. Reading prayers such as this gives people ideas for their own lives. They learn that prayer befits all occasions of life, not just the church.
There are other parts of the curriculum for a healthy church, of course-the Old and New Testaments, theology, the history of Christian thought, Socratic logic, Christian ethics. I have dwelt upon the devotional classics only because they are so often ignored.
You spend a lot of time with lay people; you talk with many of them when their pastors are not in the room. Do they care about these things? Are they concerned about the health of their churches?
I hear them saying they are dissatisfied because they are not getting the kind of education that would develop them. They assume these great courses are going on in the theological seminaries, and they think their minds are equally as good as the students there, so they want to know why they’re being cheated. They are tired of the tough questions being avoided.
When I talk with these people, I don’t call them laymen. A layman is a second-class citizen. I am a layman in regard to law because I have not passed the bar; thus, I am not allowed to practice law. There is no place in the church of Jesus Christ for those who cannot practice. I say to people, “You are not a layman. You are a minister of common life.”
It almost sounds like a staff title.
I was so pleased with one signboard I saw outside a church in South Carolina. It read:
MINISTERS: ALL THE MEMBERS
EQUIPPER: REV. JOHN SMITH
The true ministers were the folk in the pews.
I would be willing to ordain people to the ministry of journalism, or banking, or photography-why not? What an opportunity they have. They meet people I will never meet. Think of the chances a loan officer has to minister: he can keep young people from ruining their lives by overborrowing.
The worst story I know-and I am told it is a true story-is about the preacher who came to Laymen’s Sunday, the first Sunday of October, and preached on the lay ministry. (That was his first mistake; he should have had one of the members do it.) He was persuasive, however, because at the end, when he said, “Will any men who are willing to dedicate themselves to the lay ministry please come forward?” a hundred men responded. And someone who was right close to the pastor heard him mutter softly, “O God, how can I use a hundred ushers?”
He entirely missed the point of his own sermon.
I do not mean to diminish the pastorate-I make it vastly larger. I call pastors to engage not in Operation Addition but in Operation Multiplication. This is the point of Ephesians 4. For the pastor to think he is the only minister is to minimize the task.
Having observed the North American church for sixty years, do you think it is getting healthier or sicker?
Both. I can name places where the universal ministry is being developed, but they are few. I do, however, see some real gains. First, we have at last come to a widespread recognition that the church and the building are two different things. People do understand that the true church is not the structure on Jackson Avenue; it is where one person is teaching philosophy and another is cobbling shoes and another is teaching kindergarten. In this we are getting back to the New Testament. If you had gone to ancient Corinth and asked where the Christian church was, nobody would have sent you to the corner of Eighth and Main. They would have sent you to where Paul and his friends were making mobile homes-tents, that is. He himself explained this on Mars Hill when he said, “The God who made the world . . . does not live in shrines made by man” (Acts 17:24).
Is this why the Quakers say “meetinghouse” instead of “church”?
Yes. We’ve lost on that one as far as the general speech is concerned, but it does preserve the distinction between the redemptive fellowship on one hand and the building on the other.
The second big encouragement I see is that many Christians are recognizing that minister and clergy are not synonymous. The more who realize that, the better.
You said a few years back that faith has three essential aspects: the inner life of devotion, the outer life of service, and the intellectual life of rationality. How is the third area doing?
Well, it needs lifting, too; all three legs of the stool are essential. We must teach people to pray, to serve, and to think.
How do you teach people to think?
Chiefly by dialogue. That’s what Plato said. One person’s thinking stirs another person’s thinking. My great teacher at Johns Hopkins, Professor Arthur Lovejoy, said, “All the history of philosophy is one continuous dialogue.”
Tonight I have a group of young pastors and their wives coming here to talk. (Now that I’m liberated, I can use my time for things like this without asking a committee.) We’re going to deal with hard intellectual problems, so they can return to their churches and do the same.
What will you talk about?
We’re going to talk about how to be fair to other religions without compromising Christ’s claim to be the only Way. This is the hardest intellectual problem many of them face. So I must help them.
Why? Because the Christian must outthink the world. We must not leave good thinking to the pagans. We’ve got to get in there and fight if the common opinion is ever to be changed and the Christian cause to prevail. Christians must be better thinkers if they are going to penetrate the world.
Almost forty years ago you wrote, “The terrible danger of our time consists in the fact that ours is a cut-flower civilization. … We are trying to maintain the dignity of the individual apart from the deep faith that every man is made in God’s image and is therefore precious in God’s eyes.” Are the flowers dead yet?
Almost. One of the saddest things in my life is that my prediction has come true. Look at the decay of so many people through drug abuse. Millions have ruined their lives this way, chiefly because they were so empty. They grasped for significance and elation, only to destroy themselves.
The loss of emphasis on chastity is a terrible loss. I go to many universities, and in almost none of them is a good word ever said about chastity. Promiscuity is assumed, even condoned, and in some cases encouraged. The flowers have been cut from their sustaining roots.
Thus it is more important than ever for the church to be healthy. The church is what I believe in. I know it is often poor and dull, but it’s the best thing we’ve got, and I thank God for it. So when I drive through the country and see a little meetinghouse, I always take off my hat. They may have had some awfully poor preaching there, but when I think of the sacrifice, the dedication represented in that little place, I’m grateful.
However sick the church is, our land would be an awfully lot sicker without it. It’s our best hope. That’s why I want to encourage it and make it dissatisfied with low standards.
If we could see the church as a society of ministers in the world, we would approach the radical change Christ sought to initiate. If that were generally accepted, the change would not be small. It would be enormous. Christ did not seek to build a little thing. The chief way you and I are disloyal to him is when we make small what he intended to make large.
Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
