Many pastors retreat from this supposedly fruitless task to spend time in the many other “worthwhile” duties.

“Does the minister like to call?” This is a question often asked by the pulpit committee in search of a new minister. But is this question archaic? Is it possible to make “calling in the home” a vital part of ministry today?

Such questions may spring from a deeper quest: the parishioner fears he is unknown to his minister. A young couple said to me recently, “We have lived here for two years and direct the church choir; but the pastor has never been in our home.” A tone of rejection sounded in their voices. Could it be that in many denominations there is a direct correlation of the loss of church members and the pastor’s increasing apathy toward home visitation?

Many pastors retreat from the supposedly fruitless experience of calling to spend time instead in numerous other worthwhile duties—sermon preparation, Bible classes, committee meetings, the Sunday bulletin, and other endless tasks. And people come to them in need of pastoral counseling—a death, a baptism, a wedding—and so the hours are filled. There are also books waiting to be read, piles of periodicals that claim our time. But when the sermon has been preached, the Bible class finished, and we shake hands and greet people, do we really know them? Or do we have a sinking feeling that pastor and people are in reality strangers? Calling in their homes may breach this barrier and bring about a new unity and closeness. Too often attempts are made to bridge the gap with such substitutes as small groups and retreats. But can these really take the place of a visit in the home?

The home visit can be revitalized; the advantages are manifold. Consider the following:

1. I think about one person or one family in the church for at least one day. Doing so fixes their name, where they live, and their environment into my conscious thoughts. I am mindful that a good shepherd knows his sheep by name.

2. On arrival at their home, I see the setting of their daily lives. The way I am greeted at the door tells me something of their attitude toward the church and my ministry. Inside the home, I observe the arrangement of the furniture, the colors on the walls, and the pictures. It all speaks to me of the living habits of the family.

3. When I sit down to talk, I want to make certain I learn about the members of the family. I want to know the names and ages of the children, whether or not they attend church school; I want to know about both the churched and any unchurched members of the family; I want to learn of other members of the household—for example, an aging parent.

4. I am now on their ground. They have come to church, now I come to them. They have listened to me preach and teach; now I listen to them. They may tell me about the family, about their work, their joys, and their pain. I now sit where they sit. I become alive to them, caring, and building trust.

5. They may tell me about their journey of faith. A few appropriate questions will help them do this. They may speak of a significant religious experience, of times of barrenness, or of a life experience that brought renewal of faith.

6. It is important to discuss the “here and now.” Are they being nurtured in the church? What would they like to see changed? Have they dropped away from the church because they felt no one cared? While you may be inviting expressions of hostility, you are providing them an opportunity to release repressed feelings, and may find that a first step toward that family’s new redemptive relationship to Christ and the church. It could lead to their commitment to Jesus Christ.

7. Other factors may be revealed in the dialogue experience. A high school student’s need for a closer tie to the church may be noted. An elderly parent may be in a nursing home. Talent within the family not yet utilized in the service of Christ and the church may surface. The pastor can describe resources in the community or the church available for pastoral counseling or organizations that can give assistance with alcoholism, locate help for the special needs of children within the home, or discuss a church membership class.

8. I believe in ending a pastoral visit with Scripture reading and prayer. This is not to do “something religious” but rather to give recognition to Christ within that home. Like the breaking of bread in the Emmaus home revealed the Christ, sharing in dialogue around the Word opens the way for the Holy Spirit to reveal the Lord.

But having explored these values of the pastoral call, a minister still may say, “I just do not like to go calling in the home.” True, many pastors have found ways to use the telephone effectively as well as luncheon and office appointments as means of contact with members. But it may help to look at why we resist and to reevaluate our “standard work week” and provide for pastoral calling to become part of each week. Look at some of the possible reasons for resistance:

1. We may fear closeness to parishioners. We may be a bit shy, and bashful about taking the initiative in going to a home. The desk and the pulpit are more comfortable as the ground for launching our ministries.

2. It is hard to shift gears and listen. Our frame of reference is to preach, to talk, and to give information.

3. We fear criticism of our work—our sermons. We become vulnerable when listening to criticism, for most criticism carries with it pain.

4. People are not readily available. The closed door turns us off, and this gets in the way of developing productive calling.

5. We may feel that deacons, elders, and lay persons should be doing the calling. While these lay persons need training so they will be fruitful as they assist in this endeavor, the people also want to know their pastor.

6. We may say, “I have too many people,” or, “Our people are scattered over a large area. It is impossible.” Yet if you called on only two families a day, four days a week, for 48 weeks in a year, you would have been in 384 homes.

7. You say, “Look at the paperwork I have—church committee assignments, preparation for sermons, Bible classes, board meetings, counseling”—and you’re probably right! But many a pastor testifies that if he visits in homes, it affects his sermons, his classes, his counseling, his committee meetings. He knows the people, their homes, and their families.

A lot of energy goes into our resistance to pastoral calling in the home, energy that could be used to revitalize home visitation. Maybe in rethinking our priorities and emphasis in the ministry we can design a new strategy in home visitation.

It is nice to hear a child say, “I know our minister. He was at our house.” It is a thrill to hear a businessman say, “For years, I have been driving to the church; it feels good to have you stop at our home.” When an elderly woman shakes your hand on Sunday morning, it is a little warmer and has a little more gentleness in it because you shared coffee in her home this past week. And both of you knew Christ was there with you.

Neal A. Kuyper is director of the Presbyterian Counseling Service, sponsored by the Seattle (Wash.) Presbytery.

Man’s art takes the humble materials of creation and allows them to reflect the spirit.

Evangelicals tend to lament the lack of skillful writers brought up and nurtured in evangelical Christendom, who, in later life, remain faithful in their art to the Christian vision. But to emphasize our shortcomings may hinder the recognition of writers and other artists who are doing good work. It is thus fitting and important to celebrate the accomplishments of Robert Siegel.

Two of Siegel’s books were published this fall: Alpha Centauri, a fantasy novel (an excerpt is on page 30), and a volume of poetry, In a Pig’s Eye (Univ. of Florida Press). These follow The Beasts and the Elders, a collection of poems that prompted the London Times Literary Supplement to remark: “To meet the unpretentious versatility of Robert Siegel after the single-mindedness of other poets is like returning to the mainland after a tour of the islands.” Of Alpha Centauri, Madeleine L’Engle says: “Absolutely fantastic! Has all the qualities of classical fantasy.” My own reading of the second volume of poetry confirms the opinion of Poetry’s associate editor that, “In short, though still relatively young, [Robert Siegel] has demonstrated his mastery of the most difficult of artistic forms … he has already fulfilled much of his promise.”

A warm and radiant Christian faith informs Siegel’s work. Readers of Alpha Centauri will enjoy the superb way the narrative’s young heroine comes to embody the precept: Perfect love casts out fear. As a poet, Siegel draws from the best of the trinitarian romantic and neo-Platonic traditions within Christianity and crafts a poetry that urges the reader toward the place where “the fire and the rose are one,” where natural images reveal the supernatural that sustains them, the “divine milieu” in which the natural world and humanity move and have being. His incarnational aesthetic shows forth in poems that, while undeniably contemporary, are reminiscent of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and G. M. Hopkins.

I asked Bob Siegel about his vocation and his work. After undergraduate education at Wheaton College (Ill.), and graduate work at Johns Hopkins, he earned the Ph.D. at Harvard, where he worked with Robert Lowell, perhaps the most recent American poet to whom critics would venture to ascribe greatness. Coming to understand his vocation as a poet, Siegel feels that it was in his very early college years that he “became a loss to the world of getting and spending.”

After a period of agnosticism, Siegel underwent a “reconversion” as a college sophomore, spurred by reading Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. In this work, he says, the “journey of the Red Crosse Knight [plagued] by evil magicians, sorceresses, and dragons struck me … [with] the capriciousness of life, the sense of a lurking plot, the quick change of the beautiful into the terrible, and the terrible into the beautiful.” He found in “Chaucer, Spenser, Coleridge, and Wordsworth a sense of the divine underlying all things.” If pressed to provide an apologetic for his faith, although insisting that “an intellectual system … is never in any ultimate sense representative of faith, which transcends the mere intellect,” he would point to the philosophy of Coleridge as one schema that, for him, offers an excellent defense of Christianity.

The romantics stressed the need to counter the hegemony of reason over the other faculties of the mind. Similarly, in Alpha Centauri, the author expresses through a pastoral landscape and its mythic inhabitants—the centaurs—the need to present our “whole bodies” as a living sacrifice.

“As C. S. Lewis points out,” says Siegel, “the animals have always represented parts of us that we lost in the Fall, and that we will regain when we are renewed.… You can consider the beasts as the subconscious, the eight-ninths of our minds that are below the surface, the feeling and intuitive part.… In a rationalistic age there’s a tendency among Christians to block out that whole aspect of themselves, to concentrate on rational belief and the will—which of course are very important—but to ignore the feeling and intuitive side of themselves. Yet God, being a jealous God, wants all of us.”

The novel comes off as it does at the end because the heroine, Becky, sacrifices her own self-interest—her whole self—in the cause of the centaurs: she is committed to them as we are to be committed to Christ. Siegel says, “When she can forget herself, even her own fear of failure, and let something else work through her, then she can completely identify with [the centaurs] in love and things open up. I think there is a spiritual principle operating here. This whole climactic scene is central to what I believe is going on in the book.”

Most of Siegel’s energies have been directed into his poetry. He agrees that while the fiction writer wants to expand his tale—to say everything—the poet works at compression. “The lyric poem,” he says, “is organized spatially like the visual arts, while fiction is organized musically: it moves through time.” Citing Coleridge’s exploration of poetry in the Biographia, he settles on the formula, “the best words in the best order,” as a description of what makes the two genres essentially the same.”

For Bob Siegel, “poetry begins in a moment of sharp awareness when things rise up as words and words become things. The mind and what it observes fuse for a moment, and the circle of meaning is complete. The working out of the poem is an attempt to record and elaborate that experience. I sincerely hope that in its own dim way the process is a reflection of creation and also of a consciousness which we may one day clearly have. I agree with Tolkien’s line: ‘We make by the same law by which we’re made.’ ”

These remarks imply that each word in a literary creation is a logos, an utterance that brings into being—not merely refers to—the thing it signifies. Such a high view of language contrasts markedly with what might be called the “instrumental” opinion of many evangelicals: the word they view as a tool whose only purpose and justification derives from its limited ability to evoke the higher reality of spiritual things. Those who share this view generally place a greater importance on “principles” that lie behind a story rather than the tale itself. They ask the poem or story to illustrate an abstract proposition. But the poet who views words as logoi intends to create the experience from which one may choose to cull abstractions as one means of understanding that experience.

Siegel says the “instrumental” view can be traced back through the “Puritan fear of idolatry … [their eagerness] to distinguish the functional language we use to talk about Scripture from the inspired words of Scripture.… [They wanted to make sure they weren’t] idolizing language, as well as to be absolutely clear in what they said. The functional view was also encouraged by the scientific revolution: the Royal Society [of science] deliberately fostered a simple and straightforward kind of prose in its search for empirical truth. Its ideal harmonized with the intent of Puritan preachers to avoid the adornment and literary art that had flourished earlier in the century in such preachers as John Donne, who were full of puns and verbal plays and metaphors.”

Similarly, Siegel agreed that a one-sided emphasis on the spirit has a corrosive effect on the means, the language, by which we know and evoke the things of the spirit: “It’s so anti-incarnational. We seem to forget that God came into the world and took upon himself our flesh, took matter up into his divinity. That is the thing the Christian artist has constantly to remember: that God divinized flesh … God has honored not only our physical being but our desire to be subcreators; that is, to help him in the matter of creation.… He has graciously allowed us to extend and efoliate—I love that word of Coleridge’s—efoliate the creation. I mean, he may have created the tree, but we’re branches of that tree; we are there extending some of the leaves of it.… Man really has been given license in his art to take the humble materials of creation and to help extend it.”

Robert Siegel does so, and creation is fuller and we are the richer for his efforts.

Mr. Fickett is the author of Mrs. Sunday’s Problem and Other Stories (Revell, 1979). He teaches English at Wheaton College, Wheaton. Illinois.

An excerpt from the new fantasy novel, Alpha Centauri.

“The Moon of First Harvest” is an excerpt from the new fantasy novel, Alpha Centauri, by Robert Siegel (Cornerstone, 1980). The novel takes place in a mythic time when an evil people called the Rock Movers sought to exterminate the last of the centaurs. Transported through an aperture in time and space, a modern girl, Becky, finds herself caught up in this fight between good and evil; she must finally intercede with Providence on the centaurs’ behalf in order to effect their escape to the star Alpha Centauri. Her ability to do so depends on her enduring many trials, and, most important, learning several crucial lessons. Cavallos, a leader of the centaurs, enacts the most important lesson in “The Moon of First Harvest”; by risking his own life, he shows Becky that love (the source of all true religion) consists in an exchange of one’s own life for another. This is in direct opposition to the false paganism of the Rock Movers who are about to sacrifice another’s life to propitiate their angry god Phogros and thus secure their own well-being. Cavallos and Becky have just escaped from the evil city of the Rock Movers, Longdreth, when they have this excerpted encounter. It shows in miniature, like the works of C. S. Lewis, the “adventure of salvation.”

The moon had come up and her silver light winked through the leaves as Cavallos with Becky riding on his back threaded his way south in the shadow of hedgerows. This night was colder than last, the stars above bright and hard edged. The hint of fall that often haunts early August was in the air. All the insects in the world woke and sang to the full moon as she climbed toward the zenith.

Hour after hour they walked in a dream, punctuated here and there by light from a distant cottage. When they must cross an open field, Cavallos galloped full speed. The moon travelled south with them, and it was hard to believe the noisy crowds of Longdreth and Targ’s foul dungeons could exist in so quiet and beautiful a world.

Becky was nearly asleep when Cavallos stopped.

“What is it?” She sat up.

“Shhh,” he said. They listened. Far ahead and very faint, she heard a long, heart-rending wail.

“There it is again!” Cavallos exclaimed. “It seems to come from the top of that hill.” Becky shuddered. All evening they’d moved closer to the hills, and now the first of any size—still fairly low—lay across their path.

Without warning a light burst from its top. They saw a brief tongue of flame and a rush of sparks heavenward. The sparks were followed by a roar of many voices. The moon stood nearly overheard.

“They must be celebrating the Moon of First Harvest,” Cavallos said softly.

“We can skirt the bottom of the hill,” Becky suggested.

“Yes, we can. And yet—” he broke off.

“Yet what?” Becky shivered, afraid of his answer.

“Yet, if it hadn’t been for you and Rhadas, I would have been the victim at such a ceremony. I feel we must try to save whoever or whatever made that scream.”

And so began a night Becky never forgot. Swiftly they crossed the field into the trees at the foot of the hill. Slowly, tree by tree, they climbed to the top. Here the underbrush had been cleared away, and when close enough, they saw red flames flickering between the trunks. Keeping to the shadows, they crept closer. Soon they heard a rhythmic chant, a low drone, and glimpsed grotesque shadows passing between them and the fire. They couldn’t make out any words except the repeated name, “Phogros.”

The last tree was still 20 yards from the fire. Leaving Cavallos, Becky crept behind it. On the far side of the fire stood a group of men, women, and children in ordinary dress, except for a mark on their foreheads and holly in their hair. They were staring at something with great interest.

Becky jumped when she saw what they were watching.

Naked, except for leaves about the hips, seven tall men danced around the fire. One side of their bodies glistened blood-red; the other, black. The black and red paint divided them from their toes to their scalps, and the whites of their eyes shone hideously. Their hair, red and black to the waist, whirled madly as they danced. Each clutched a stone knife and chanted, raising it whenever he muttered the name of Phogros.

After a while Becky noticed something else. Next to the fire, on a low stone, lay a small bundle, mostly rope. Horns stuck out of one end and little cloven hoofs out of the other. “A sheep,” she thought. “They’re sacrificing a sheep.” Then the horns lifted and, as a log burst, she glimpsed a resigned and terribly sorrowful human face.

Stumbling back into the shadows, she gasped the news to Cavallos. “I was afraid of that,” he said, his voice cool and even. “They’ve found a faun.” Quickly he outlined a plan.

They moved quietly around the hilltop to a point directly opposite and about 50 yards below the top. On the way Becky took out her knife and tested its sharpness. From the new spot, they heard the frenzy increase. “There’s no time to lose!” Cavallos whispered.

Putting his hands to his mouth, his chest expanding far beyond a man’s, he called out in a deep and frightening voice, “I AM PHOGROS! I AM PHOGROS!”

The revel above came to a sudden halt. “I AM PHOGROS!” he repeated.

A high, almost feminine, voice shrieked. “Kill the blasphemer!” With a roar and a flicker of torches the crowd crashed down the slope toward them. Cavallos, Becky clinging to him, slipped quickly around the hill toward their original hiding place. The crowd, as he had gambled, hurried down the far side and spread out over the fields, looking for the “blasphemer.”

From behind the tree, they saw that five priests had left with the crowd. Only two now stood above the victim, watching the moon and chanting under their breath. Cries of “There he is!” and “This way!” floated up from below, answered by others of, “I see him!” and “Over here!” Soon the crowd would return. They must act quickly.

The priests now stood silent over the stone, their eyes wide and unseeing, waiting for the precise second the moon would cross the zenith. From one’s mouth a little foam trickled white in the moonlight. Slowly they raised their knives high over the victim.

“Now!” Cavallos said under his breath, and charged. “I AM PHOGROS!” he shouted, halfway across the clearing. Amazed, the priests turned to find a centaur bearing down on them. They staggered back as Cavallos reached down and snatched up the faun. As he whirled about, one shrieked and with both hands thrust a crooked knife at Becky. Cavallos’s hind hoofs lashed out. Thud, one caught the priest in the middle and his knife flew into the fire. With a cry the other priest turned and ran. Cavallos let that one go and rushed headlong down the hill the way they’d come. At the bottom he raced across the field without pausing, the faun still in his arms.

“There they go—on a horse,” a voice cried out. Becky saw the sparkle of a torch behind them to the right. Cavallos jumped the first hedge, turned a sharp left, and began a wild zigzagging detour around the hill, far ahead of their pursuers. Becky hung on for dear life. After three fields, the farm land gave out and they found themselves in a moonlit beech wood by a stream sparkling among boulders. Cavallos waded in and climbed upstream to avoid leaving a scent.

After a half-hour, they paused to listen. There was no sound of pursuit. Breathing hard, he put down the faun by a moonlit pool, and Becky dismounted to untie him.

“Bless you! Bless you!” was all the faun would reply to their questions as he rubbed his limbs, sore and stiff from the ropes. “Ah, that was a close one, that was!” He kept looking to every side, as if he couldn’t believe they weren’t surrounded by enemies.

By dint of much patient questioning, Cavallos and Becky managed to calm the faun and to piece together his story. He’d been one of a nutting party that ventured out of the wild wood to collect the still unripe acorns favored by the fauns. They’d dared to search for them on the hill sacred to Phogros.

“I sneaked off from the party to have a bit of a snooze,” the faun winked, “and went to sleep under an ash. When I woke, I was surrounded by the two-footed kind. They held hooked knives at my chin.” The party of reapers had bound and imprisoned him. At the memory, he snuffled loudly.

“Do you know these hills then?” Cavallos asked, changing the subject.

“Aye, I was raised in them,” the faun winked again and then, suddenly suspicious—“Why d’ye want to know?” Cavallos explained that their only chance was to hide deep in the hills before they were tracked to this spot.

“And if you don’t wish to roast, we’d better hurry!” Cavallos added, not unkindly. At a whisk, the other was off.

Dorm (for that was the faun’s name) proved to be a reliable, if unusual, guide. He led them up the stream by leaping from rock to rock and then on a stony path that only his eye could follow. Last, he disappeared. When they’d nearly given up on him, he returned to lead them across the shoulder of a hill. Finally, squeezing between two rocks (at least Cavallos had to squeeze) the party entered a small dingle crowded with giant rowan and beech. The dingle had limestone sides. It was watchfully silent.

Dorm gave a low whistle. Suddenly the rocks were scrambling with fauns. They crowded around him, all speaking and laughing at once. A very fat female, with white hair on her head and haunches, shrieked and waddled over to him weeping. At that, all the fauns wept.

Some threw dust in the air and stamped their feet, so mournfully glad were they that Dorm had returned. Only after this commotion had gone on for some time did they notice the centaur and human.

When Dorm had introduced his new friends and told of the rescue, the others cheered and formed a ring about them. They danced in a circle, moving feet and short tails so fast that Becky saw nothing but a moonlit flashing of hoofs. All was done to the skirl of pipes hidden in the rocks, sounding like the soul of a beech tree bleeding from a broken branch. The dance and music stopped. For a moment the trees sighed and rustled; Becky glimpsed a figure with pipes scurrying into a hole. The dingle was empty, except for themselves and Dorm.

“My people are very shy, and it is time to go on,” he whispered. “Also, the trees tell us men follow.” He led them out the other end of the dingle, down a ravine into a forest of solemn elms. The moon had set by the time they came to its far edge. To the south open fields grayed in the early light. They paused.

“Goodbye,” Dorm sighed, and once again burst into tears. Becky tried to comfort him, but it was no use. She herself felt sad, though she’d known him only a few hours.

“Here,” he said, handing her a small pipe of greenish wood. “Breathe on it lightly and it will play itself—especially in the moonlight.” When she looked up again, he was gone. She and Cavallos stared after him wordlessly. A robin gave a sleepy cry, and they heard from far, resounding on a hollow log, the tattoo of little hoofs.

Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Thanksgiving offers us an opportunity to reflect on this often misunderstood dimension of Christian experience.

What is Thanksgiving, if it is not praise and worship? The annual holiday not only gives Christians a chance to celebrate with a truly spiritual, God-honoring perspective, it also forces us to reflect on the basic meaning of worship itself. In fact, every gathering of Christians ought in some way to be marked by the thanksgiving-day spirit so nobly, powerfully expressed in Psalm 150.

But consider first two axioms. The first is a simple fact: God made us to worship; the second is an unsettling confession: Most of us do not do it very well.

God made us to be worshipers. Life has no other purpose than to be rendered up to God in adoration and gratitude. “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father” (Col. 3:17). The Shorter Catechism reminds us that the true end of man is “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” God made man for a purpose, and that purpose is worship.

However, most of us do not worship very well. A. W. Tozer noted correctly that worship is “the missing jewel in the evangelical church.” In most places worship is subordinate to preaching, evangelism, Christian education, and pastoral care. It is all well-intentioned, but questionable. Even in some of the noteworthy models of church growth, the prime Sunday morning hour is viewed as a preaching service. Once the “opening exercises” are dispensed with, everyone can concentrate on the high point, namely, the sermon.

Worse things could happen to the gathered believers, of course—but so could better things. Tozer says it well: “The purpose of God in sending his Son to die and live and be at the right hand of God the Father was that he might restore to us the missing jewel, the jewel of worship; that we might come back and learn to do again that which we were created to do in the first place—worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, to spend our time in awesome wonder and adoration of God, feeling and expressing it, and letting it get into our labors and doing nothing except as an act of worship to Almighty God through his Son Jesus Christ.”

Because we miss this truth we get our priorities wrong. After an individual is converted we immediately make a worker out of him. But God’s intention is otherwise. God wants a convert to learn first of all to be a worshiper, and after that to be a worker.

By reflecting on the truth of Psalm 150 we can get our spiritual house in order. It is not enough to know God meant us originally and primarily to be worshipers; we also need to know that his will in the matter of worship is clearly spelled out.

Psalm 150, the summary psalm of the Psalter, teaches the where, why, how, and who of worship. While this psalm is not a legalistic rule for contemporary worship, it is an important biblical standard to which we can relate what passes for worship today.

Praise God in his sanctuary … praise him in his mighty expanse. When God’s people gather together, it is for the purpose of worship, which includes adoration, confession, instruction, and response. Most any place in God’s creation can become an informal sanctuary. Why not worship on the freeway, in the classroom, in the laboratory, even in the supermarket? God is there—and he is worthy.

Praise him for his mighty deeds. Peruse the Psalms and you will be treated to a recital of God’s goodness: he has created us as the apex of his universe; we are important (Psalm 8); he leads us into pleasant places (Psalm 16); he provides all that we really need (Psalm 23); he forgives: no sin is too great (Psalm 32).

God answers prayers (Psalm 40); he takes shelved sinners and restores them to usefulness (Psalm 51); he provides grace as we grow old (Psalm 71); he gives us his Word to guide us (Psalm 119); and when all others fail, we find that he is entirely trustworthy (Psalm 146). As the contemporary gospel chorus puts it, “God is so good; God is so good; God is so good, he’s so good to me.” He deserves our praise.

Praise him according to his excellent greatness. All his works notwithstanding, God is worthy of our worship simply because of who he is. Wasn’t that Isaiah’s experience in the temple when he was awe-struck by the one who is holy, holy, holy (Isaiah 6)? The sons of Korah said it for us, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised” (Psalm 48:1).

The psalmist suggests that we praise God with trumpet sound, with harp and lyre, with timbrel and dancing, with stringed instruments and pipe, with loud cymbals—yes, even with “resounding cymbals.”

Is this a bit too much for us? Does this sound more like a Saturday night youth concert than a Sunday morning worship service? Perhaps the fault lies with our image of worship as a solemn, even morose experience. As the Devil says in The Brothers Karamazov, “Everything would be transformed into a religious service: it would be holy, but a little dull.” Often true, isn’t it?

Worship frequently degenerates into a formalism that is devoid of vitality and spiritual life. Biblical worship, I contend, is celebration. That is not to say we are to be flippant or careless (see Psalm 89:7), nor that we gather in order to exchange emotional highs and get spiritual goose pimples. When I was a child, I was given to occasional restlessness during church services. I was admonished to “sit still, you’re in church.” Somehow I got the wrong message. My folks never intended it—but I was getting the impression that God was a grouch; I wasn’t convinced I could ever enjoy him. I’ve changed my mind or, better yet, the Bible is changing my mind.

The characteristic note of Old Testament worship is exhilaration. No wonder we read, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go into the house of the Lord’ ” (Psalm 122:1), and, “Let the heart of those who seek the Lord be glad” (1 Chron. 16:10). Many churches need a healthy dose of Psalm 100: “Shout joyfully to the Lord … Come before him with joyful singing … Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise” (vv. 1, 2, 4).

Worship should both fill the mind with God’s truth and the spirit with God’s joy. How strange that we can yell till we are hoarse at the World Series—and on Sunday turn as cold and lifeless as drugstore Indians when we are confronted by the most earthshaking news in human history: the invasion of our planet by God. That is worth getting excited about. Let’s have more spiritual celebration; the saints in Scripture did.

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Worship is not the exclusive domain of the preachers, liturgists, instrumentalists, and vocalists. The only qualification is that we breathe and, of course, that we love God. Have we ever left church complaining that we got nothing out of the service? Sure we have. But, let’s be clear about one thing: worship is not something done for the laity; it is an experience in which all share. The question is, “What do we bring to the service?”

Worship in Scripture is filled with participation by the laity. They were involved in sacrifices (Exod. 20:24); in bringing offerings (Neh. 10:39; Deut. 12:11; Psalm 96:8); in providing music (2 Chron. 5:13); in giving thanks (Psalm 35:18); and in confession (Isa. 1:16).

One notable thing about a New Testament church service must have been that almost everyone came feeling he had the privilege of contributing something to it. “To sum up, my friends: when you meet for worship each of you contributes a hymn, some instruction, a revelation, an ecstatic utterance, or the interpretation of such an utterance” (1 Cor. 14:26, NEB).

Stephen Winward has said that the “most obvious (and some would maintain the greatest) weakness of some forms of Protestant worship, is the undue predominance of the one man ‘conducting the service.’ There is a ministerial monopoly.… How can this state of affairs be rectified?”

It is well for us to affirm that worship is like dialogue. Like Jacob’s ladder, worship is a stairway on which there is a movement in two directions: God comes to man, and man goes to God. When we worship we should meet him with our adoration, our confession, our pliable will, and the offering of ourselves and substance.

Years ago I read A Faith to Proclaim by James S. Stewart. In the chapter on “Proclaiming Christ” there was a section entitled, “When the Church Rediscovers Christ.” When I come to church expectantly, it does not matter if the room is poorly ventilated, if the choir is flat, or even if the sermon is prosaic. If I have an encounter with the living Christ, I have worshiped. Worship is to meet him.

That experience can occur anywhere, by any believer with his God, and ought to be a moment of deep spiritual exhilaration. For this purpose we were created.

A Weatherman’S Thanksgiving

And now … because Thanksgiving is a particularly significant holy day to me, I’d like to step out of character as your weather reporter for a few moments and share something with you. It is a bit of wisdom out of the ancient past. Within this wisdom is a secret—the secret of making every day a Thanksgiving day.

Most human beings are in one of three broad categories insofar as they relate to Thanksgiving. Each of us is invited to a great feast—a feast we call life. The food is superb—the wine incomparable. Some sit down to this feast, wolf the food, drool the wine out of the corners of their mouths, get up and walk out of the banquet room without word or glance.

Some there are who eat and drink with obvious relish and a sense of impersonal gratitude, yet never look toward God the Most High—their Host—who sits at the head of the table.

Others, unlike these heedless ones, cast warm, bright smiles of appreciation, gratitude, and thanksgiving toward the One who is the Giver of ail gifts.

But then there are those who prefer to sit at the feet of their Host—to bask in the effulgent light of his smile—not spurning the feast, but choosing him in preference to all his gifts.

And lo, to such as these, angels of the Lord come bringing even choicer viands and more splendid wines—gifts greater than the ransom of ten thousand kings. Reverently they place them at the feet of those who love the Most High God—the Giver of all gifts—above all else.

Thank you for listening—we return you now to WKWF.

STEPHEN J. CONSTANT

Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.

A new and exciting spirit for evangelism is coming into the American Christian community.

In the first seven years of the 1970s, the United Methodists lost nearly a million members, the United Presbyterians just over a half million, and the Episcopalians just under a half million.

Some evangelical churches, too, noted signs of decline: in 1977 baptisms among Southern Baptists in Texas decreased for the first time in history. Even the fast-growing Assemblies of God has seen a two-year decline in Sunday school attendance.

In light of this, what are the prospects for growth in the eighties? I am optimistic because of the potential. Church growth does not come about by accident or coincidence, but by a combination of the blessing of God and human planning. Most church growth is intentional. When God’s people desire growth, pray for it, and plan and work for it, it usually occurs. It can happen in the eighties.

Roots

To see what God has in store, look first at post-World War II patterns. The fifties can be characterized as a decade of church growth. Most denominations, whether mainstream or otherwise, experienced steady increases in church membership and attendance. New churches were being planted regularly. In 1950, for example, 57 percent of Americans were church members; by 1958 the number had increased to 67 percent. The decade of the fifties, in fact, capped at least a century of steady growth in most American church groups.

Few if any church leaders suspected in 1959 that the coming decade would bring a reversal to mainstream American denominations. It now appears, however, that the sixties can be labeled a decade of transition. The momentum of the fifties carried the churches through to just about 1965. Then the most severe decline in church membership and attendance in the history of the mainstream denominations began as if on cue.

In this decade of transition one highly significant fact must be noted: not all American churches began losing members in the mid-sixties. Between 1965 and 1975, for example, while the Lutheran Church in America lost 5 percent of its members, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod gained 3 percent. The Presbyterian Church in the U.S. lost 8 percent, but the Church of the Nazarene gained 8. The second largest American denomination, the United Methodists, lost 10 percent while the largest, the Southern Baptists, were gaining 18. The most drastic loss was 34 percent in the Disciples of Christ—but the Assemblies of God were growing 37 percent at the same time.

The Seventies: A Time of Reassessment

As nonchalant as some church leaders were about the drop in membership in the early seventies, they did eventually begin to face the unpleasant fact that if such losses continued, their institutional existence would be in jeopardy. By 1975 they were asking why Americans seemed to be turning away from mainstream churches but not from religion in general.

A key stimulus to this reassessment was the 1972 publication of Dean Kelley’s book, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing. It brought membership trends to widespread public notice and is on nearly everyone’s list of the most influential American religious books of the decade.

As a result of the reassessment, for example, two thoroughgoing official studies of membership trends in the United Presbyterian church and the United Methodist church were published. Also, the Hartford Seminary Foundation was commissioned to establish a two-year think tank from a cross section of religious researchers, sociologists of religion, and denominational executives from the main denominations. Financed by the Lilly Endowment, the group’s study, Understanding Church Growth and Decline 1950–1978, was published in 1979. Sixteen scholars contributed under the general editorship of Dean R. Hoge and David A. Roozen. The book was the capstone of the decade of reassessment.

The Hartford consortium, however, concentrated on only one of the two areas up for reassessment in the seventies. They dealt largely with trends in membership in the main American denominations, mostly (with the exception of Southern Baptists) those belonging to the National Council of Churches. Equally important was reassessment among denominations in the evangelical stream that were growing, but not at rates commensurate with their potential. Look first at the Hartford assessment.

Mainstream Decline

Analyzing the drop in membership in mainstream denominations is complex. As Hoge and Roozen show, trends in church membership are caused by a sometimes delicate interplay of four factors: contexts at both national and local levels, together with institutions at national and local levels. Dean Kelley’s book stressed the national institutional factors. The Hartford consortium generally (though not unanimously) thought contextual factors were more significant in explaining membership trends.

Though a member of the Hartford consortium, I believe Kelley’s position has much merit (he was also a member of the consortium). To me, the chief causes of the great decline were national institutional factors, meaning decisions made by denominational bureaucracies and translated into policies, programs, and budgetary allocations. Contextual factors do not seem to be the key because, for instance, while mainstream denominations were declining, in the same contexts evangelical denominations were growing. Both were happening in the same nation and in the same states. On the local level, in many suburbs where all could have grown, conservative churches were growing more vigorously than mainstream churches. In transitional urban areas, while Anglo-American churches were leaving, whether evangelical or mainstream, new churches taking their places tended to be of the evangelical stream. The central institutional problem concerned priorities of ministry. Though complex, clearly the relation of the ministries of evangelism and social service is crucial.

What happened in the sixties? The social climate is well known. The civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, the hippie movement, the death-of-God viewpoint, situation ethics, and other social and psychological factors convulsed the religious world. Those already inclined to be “public Protestants,” as Martin Marty might say, particularly developed strong guilt feelings about the politically conservative nature of the American church. Those in power used this guilt to give social service top priority on the agendas of the mainstream denominations. Some were advocating theologically that “the world should set the agenda.” Evangelicals in general were not convinced, believing that the Bible should set the agenda.

Here is the major point: the studies cited show fairly convincingly that a strong emphasis on social service is not in itself a cause of decline in church membership. Churches can be very active socially and still grow vigorously—and here is a large if—if they do not give social service a higher priority than evangelism. But precisely this mistake was made first in the national offices, then on the level of judicatories, and then in many parishes in the mainstream denominations in the midsixties. Evangelism and the multiplication of churches, the primary stresses in the fifties, took a back seat. In their enthusiasm for social service, some leaders went so far as to ridicule evangelism as “scalp hunting” or “the numbers game.”

The result? In a seven-year period (1970–1977) the United Methodists, for example, lost 886,000 members, the United Presbyterians lost 526,000, and the Episcopal Church lost 467,000.

During the seventies—the decade of reassessment it might be called—some of the mainstream denominations began to reevaluate their priorities. Few, if any, did it with more determination than the United Methodists. In their 1976 Quadrennial Conference in Portland, Oregon, they established three priorities for programming over the following four years. Reportedly only two of them, reducing world hunger and strengthening ethnic churches, were previously recommended by denominational executives in Nashville and New York. The third, evangelism, gained its place among the three as a result of grassroots pressures. Theoretically all three have equal priority, but in practice the budget for evangelism is minuscule compared to the other two.

Reassessment by Evangelicals

Were churches in the evangelical stream slowing down during the seventies? While mainstream churches were reassessing their ministries, evangelical churches, which by and large had not reversed priorities, tended to coast along. Most of them were growing. Toward the end of the decade, however, some conservative churches and denominations saw they were not growing as fast as they could.

Southern Baptists are a case in point. Under the motto, “Bold Mission Thrust,” they had determined at home and abroad to confront every unbeliever with the gospel by the year 2000. During the seventies, while the American population was growing 7 percent, the Southern Baptists were growing 17 percent. But in 1977 an ominous statistic began to appear. In 1976, 1977, and 1978 the number of baptisms decreased nationwide. In 1977 and 1978, for the first time in history, there were fewer baptisms in the Texas State Convention. Some say, “As goes Texas, so goes the Southern Baptist Convention.” In 1978 Southern Baptists netted only 121 new churches—a meager 0.4 percent increase—and over 6,000 churches did not report baptisms. These figures are well known to SBC leaders who refuse to rationalize the lack of growth and are making changes before they, too, face a drop in membership.

Several other evangelical denominations are gearing for accelerated growth even though they have not experienced actual decline. It is true that Pentecostals, for example, grew 48 percent during the seventies while non-Pentecostal evangelicals grew only 10 percent. However, two of the most vigorous Pentecostal denominations, the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) and the Assemblies of God, have noticed signs of slowing. A two-year decline in Sunday school attendance, for example, was a clear danger sign to general superintendent Thomas Zimmerman. He introduced a program for expansion, and the Assemblies of God now call the eighties “The Decade of Church Growth.”

In the Church of the Nazarene, home missions executive director Raymond Hurn noticed a gradual decline in the rate of membership growth in the midseventies. With the backing of the general superintendents, he launched an intensive training program in church growth throughout the denomination. Prof. Paul Orjala wrote a denominational study, Get Ready to Grow, which sold 50,000 copies in the first six months. Every Nazarene district superintendent has now taken formal church-growth training. The scholars in the Nazarene colleges and seminary have been introduced to these concepts, too. Change has already occurred.

Many other examples could be mentioned. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has provided church-growth training for all their district presidents and executives of evangelism and missions. Many Churches of Christ and others have accelerated their growth through consultation with Paul Benjamin of the National Church Growth Research Center. The Christian and Missionary Alliance, already one of the nation’s most rapidly growing denominations, in 1979 took what has to be the boldest step of all: they set a seven-year goal of doubling membership by 1987, their one-hundredth anniversary.

Action for Growth in the Eighties

If the fifties were a decade of church growth, the sixties of transition, and the seventies of reassessment, what lies ahead for the eighties? These years all will be more like the fifties than the sixties or seventies, with great potential for evangelism, church planting, and church growth. Consider four groups:

1. Mainstream denominations. To me, the most exciting possibility for the eighties is the potential turnaround in the declining growth patterns of many denominations. If this happens, it will be a first in American history. Given the sociological life cycle of institutional churches, declines of this nature are seldom reversed. But they can be. The key to significant change, I believe, will be a reexamination of priorities. Evangelism and church planting need to regain the top position in denominational philosophies of ministry.

Evangelicals in these denominations realize that social service need not suffer as a result. Holistic mission can be held high. In fact, as the Gallup surveys tell us, churches that have held to the biblical priority of evangelism have actually ended up making more of a contribution in the area of social ministries than churches that have reversed their priorities and allowed evangelism to slip down the list.

2. Evangelical denominations. Fundamentalist and evangelical denominations should continue to grow and accelerate. In general, they have not been tempted to reverse biblical priorities. They believe in the evangelistic mandate. Probably Pentecostal denominations will continue to lead the way in growth, and non-Pentecostal evangelicals can learn much from them.

As we move through the eighties, I see an increase in the number of superchurches on the one hand and of house churches on the other. We will probably see the building of a significant number of sanctuaries seating 2,500 to 5,000. One is under construction in Orlando, Florida, to seat 7,500 and another planned for Birmingham, Alabama, seating 10,000 (both Assemblies of God). Many unchurched Americans will be attracted and won to Christ through these superchurches.

But many are repulsed by them and are more inclined toward house churches. Perhaps the model in Los Angeles by the Open Door Community Churches, under the supervision of Robert Hymers, merits careful study. Membership and the number of house church congregations have both doubled each year for the last three years. They seek to maintain that rate of growth and project 1,000 house churches of 35 members each by 1985.

As evangelical churches grow in the eighties, it will be instructive to watch the development of new, creative denomination-like structures that are not members of the National Association of Evangelicals or even listed in the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. They do not like to be called “denominations.” Many even refuse to count their members. One example is the group of Calvary Chapels, offspring of Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, California. An unofficial goal of some of their leaders is 10,000 churches by the end of the decade. Their target is the “rock generation,” young adults, ages 18–29, who, according to the recent CHRISTIANITY TODAY-Gallup Poll, are most likely to drop out of more traditional churches. Churches that want to learn more about ministering to this segment of the population can get good clues from the Calvary Chapels.

3. Local churches. In the final analysis, all church growth takes place in local churches. While many find themselves in areas of low potential for growth with some even suffering from terminal illnesses, many others—probably the majority—can grow if they have determination and are willing to pay the price. Churches belonging to denominations need not wait for denominational programs to come along: a large and growing number of resources is available to them. So many institutes and agencies geared toward helping local churches grow have emerged that they are forming a professional society called the Academy of American Church Growth. They produce films, books, home study programs, seminars, games, Sunday school curricula, computerized surveys, long-term planning models, and many other aids. These combine with an increasing number of denominational resources to make church growth a possibility for most local churches.

4. Those who share the faith with others. I perceive a new and exciting spirit for evangelism coming into the American Christian community, both Protestant and Catholic. We all need to encourage one another in this. Less energy should be expended in criticizing and demeaning, and more in praying and supporting. Anyone can find fault with the Four Spiritual Laws, or a Crystal Cathedral, or buses in Hammond, Indiana, or a 100-foot banana split in Sunday school. But after reviewing Philippians 1:15–18, one wonders whether the apostle Paul would use his energy that way. He would at least be pleased that Christ is preached.

Support in prayer and encouragement for evangelism can be shown through the American Festival of Evangelism scheduled for Kansas City in the summer of 1981. If the anticipated 20,000 clergy and lay leaders from all denominations come together, the festival could provide a major impulse for evangelizing our nation in the eighties. The planners hope it will feature the kind of evangelism that produces not merely decisions for Christ, but people who accept responsible church membership as well.

What does the decade of the eighties have in store for the church in America? It will present unprecedented opportunities for growth if only God’s people redeem the time, direct their prayers to the Lord of the harvest, and dedicate themselves and their resources to appropriate action.

Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Responses to the CT-Gallup Poll present an optimistic self-image of the local church that is difficult to find.

On a typical Sunday morning, according to the Gallup Poll conducted for CHRISTIANITY Today, some 36 percent of our American population is likely to find itself in church. Some are dropins, doing their monthly duty. Probably about 12 percent of the faces in the average congregation will be vaguely familiar—they come in a couple of times each month to maintain a nodding acquaintance with God and their coreligionists. Others are well known: folks who seem always to be standing around waiting for the church doors to open.

Looking around at the faces, you wonder: What are these people like? What do they expect of the church? And what are they willing to give?

While the CHRISTIANITY TODAY-Gallup Poll cannot provide a profile of your local church or mine, it has provided some very suggestive data about the Great American Congregation. It has told us some ways the G.A.C. reflects our society, and some ways it differs.

In this article, one of the series exploring data from the CHRISTIANITY TODAY-Gallup Poll, we will focus narrowly on that Sunday morning crowd, and draw a profile of the people who show up.

The True Believers

The CHRISTIANITY TODAY-Gallup Poll distinguished three groups identified as “evangelical.” One group, the orthodox, hold hard to the fundamentals of the faith, and read Scripture and attend church at least monthly. Another group, the conversionalists, shares the monthly minimum of involvement in church and Scripture, but is distinguished by a reported conversion experience: an identifiable point in time when Jesus Christ was asked to become personal Savior. Finally, there was a third group, the orthodox/conversionalists. Members of this group reported a personal conversion experience and adherence to an inerrant Scripture, a Christ who is true God and true man, and a conviction that salvation is found only through personal faith in Jesus.

While 54 percent of the general population are unable to make it to church even two or three times a month, over 83 percent of all three “true believer” groups are present each week. So, in our Great American Congregation, most people in the pews will at least be already convinced, if not converted. It follows that a wise minister might consider directing sermons to the people who are there—not to those who are absent.

By the way: when present in church on Sunday, the evangelicals in the Great American Congregation are likely to give generously. Over 50 percent in each category (and over 60 percent of the orthodox/conversionalists) claim they contribute 10 percent or more to their church or other religious organizations. And another 18 percent claim to give 5 to 9 percent of their income.

Still, attendance and giving patterns don’t really tell us much about the Great American Congregation, so the CHRISTIANITY TODAY—Gallup Poll probes a little deeper. It pictures the congregation at work, and provides a disconcerting glimpse of what the congregation expects from its church.

The G.A.C. in Action

To understand the bustling activities of the Great American Congregation, it is helpful to know what its members view as the top priorities of Christians.

While the general public believe Christians’ top priority should be “concentrating on the spiritual growth of one’s self and family,” the top priority of over 50 percent of each evangelical subgroup (the real churchgoers in our country) is “to help win the world for Jesus Christ.” The next highest evangelical choice for top priority is personal and family growth. While there is mild interest in joining groups and supporting causes that improve the entire community as the first priority, strengthening the local church seems more important to evangelicals. Participating in efforts to influence legislation at any level, even on important issues, fades to relative insignificance as the top priority. But it must be noted from other poll data that this does not mean evangelicals are uninterested in influencing legislation.

Thus, when the Great American Congregation swings into action, the chances are its workers see themselves as helping to win others to Jesus and contributing to spiritual growth, while incidentally helping strengthen the local church.

If we imagine our typical American Sunday congregation, as portrayed in the poll, made up of some 200 people, we can translate the percentages into some fascinating numbers. So let’s go visit the G.A.C.

It’s Sunday morning, not yet time for the worship service, but almost the Sunday school hour. As we go in we can see dressed-up boys and girls—some delivered by a proud parent—enter the classroom doors. As usual there are a few teens dodging here and there in the corridors, awaiting a last-minute summons before straggling into their rooms.

According to the poll, some 35 adults in this 200-person Sunday congregation are Sunday school teachers. This seems rather high, as most churches of this size have between 15 and 18 classes. Apparently the Great American Congregation doesn’t have the staffing problem of the churches with which I’m familiar. Also, according to poll percentages, the G.A.C. has no less than 42 adults working with children and youth overall, while 52 visit the sick and elderly. Visitation is actually more popular than holding church office, or working on building maintenance: each of the last two involves some 35 of our 200 attenders.

It is likely the same individuals may be involved in several church tasks; the poll doesn’t tell us that. It does reveal that of those evangelicals who do volunteer work, over 50 percent give from one to five hours a week. Only 13 percent give less than one hour.

It’s fascinating, as we watch these busy Christians leave after the service, to realize that according to information given Gallup, a large number will “talk to people who are not members of [their] own faith about [their] own religious beliefs” daily. Even more say they will talk about their faith at least once in the coming week, but not daily. So, of the 200 who showed up this Sunday to form our Great American Congregation, 70 say they will speak up about their faith to at least one person in the next six days!

I must confess I’m a little skeptical of this rosy picture of the Great American Congregation in action. Not that I doubt the poll or its methods. It’s just that no behavioral scientist views self-report as the most reliable source of information about behavior. It is always important to check self-reports against other kinds of measures. I wouldn’t insist that respondents to this poll tended to give themselves the benefit of the doubt in reporting their activities. I would, however, suggest you might compare the poll’s data with personal observations and with other congregations before equating the testimony with reality.

Congregation Members in Need

“Ask not,” John Kennedy said, “what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

It seems from the CHRISTIANITY TODAY-Gallup Poll that members of the Great American Congregation have taken Kennedy’s advice, but applied it to their churches. Evangelicals show a solid sense of responsibility for involvement in the church’s ministries. But neither evangelicals nor the general public expect much help themselves from the church.

Earlier I said the picture of what the congregation expects from the church is disconcerting. I have to confess that this reaction reflects a view of the church that may not be shared by all. My own bias is toward that biblical portrait of the church as a family of brothers and sisters. In God’s family, burdens are shared with others and carried by one another (Gal. 6:2). And, if one brother lacks, another helps with his material needs (James 2:14–17). In my idealism I see the family of God as the relational context for growth toward maturity (Eph. 4:13–16), where deep and real caring exists.

But it is apparent that evangelical members of the Great American Congregation do not experience the church this way. The poll reveals that an evangelical with a problem relating to physical needs (such as food, clothing, or shelter) would be slightly more likely to turn to a volunteer community organization than to a member of the clergy. A friend (Christian friend?) or neighbor ranks even lower as a source of help. And three times as many evangelicals would turn to members of their immediate family as to the church or to volunteer agencies. (Evangelicals rank government organizations lowest of all as places to turn, while members of the general public prefer the government to the clergy, 9 percent to 5 percent.)

There seems to be clear notions about what kinds of help it is appropriate to seek from the church (represented by the clergy), and the kinds of help it is not appropriate to seek. If one has a problem with personal development (growth as a human being), church and family are equally acceptable as sources of help. For something “spiritual or religious,” the church is the place to go, even for the general public. Clergy outranks family as a source of help with alcohol or drugs, but so does the volunteer community organization.

What is disconcerting to me is that a “friend or neighbor” consistently ranks low in every problem area. If we can assume that the clergy represents the church as an institution, “friends or neighbors” ought to reflect interpersonal relationships between members of the same congregation. Clearly, from the CHRISTIANITY TODAY-Gallup Poll, the typical evangelical does not perceive his church as a helping community, nor his fellow believers as persons he feels free to turn to when he is in need.

Questions About the Great American Congregation

To me, one of the great values of a poll such as this one is in the questions raised, not the answers it provides. On such a criterion, this poll provides a significant peek at the church in American society.

Generally speaking, self-report types of measures are reliable when they deal with what a person believes. We should be quite impressed that the 1,553 persons, questioned at random in over 300 scientifically selected locations, included 317 (20 percent) who professed evangelical beliefs and/or Christian experience. This is a higher proportion of the general public than I, at least, would have expected.

But also speaking generally, self-report is less reliable when used to measure behavior. Any responsible social scientist who tries to develop a description of the behavior of a given population will try to use several kinds of measures. It is thus important to recognize the limitations of the Gallup-type questionnaire in behavioral areas. We can say with confidence the poll actually portrays what the respondents report as their behavior. But we cannot say it accurately portrays the behavior itself.

But, allowing for this, the comparative figures with the general populace are reliable—assuming evangelicals are no better than the average in describing truthfully their own conduct. Thus we have to raise questions about the poll’s picture of the Great American Congregation in action on purely methodological grounds. Are there really that many people out there, witnessing weekly? Are the Sunday school and other church agencies as blessed with willing workers as the poll indicates?

This kind of question should be answered by each individual reader in reference to his own congregation and the churches of his community. And, if the picture at home looks bleak compared to the dynamic impression given by the poll, try not to feel too bad. It might be that your congregation gives a more reliable picture of actual behavior than does the poll.

Again, on methodological grounds, we can expect a high level of reliability of answers when individuals were asked where they would turn for help. We have moved away from actual behavior to attitudes and perceptions. It is just because these answers are probably reliable that they are so disconcerting—and that they raise so many significant questions.

What is the church to most evangelicals? Are relationships in our churches so sterile that we hesitate to turn to brothers and sisters in God’s family when we’re in need? Is Scripture’s picture of a loving, living, intimate community in which our needs are met as alien to modern believers as the poll results seem to suggest? And, if the poll does describe reality, must we settle for our contemporary experience? Or can we look to God with yearning, expecting him to bring about what Scripture suggests can be?

We’re left with a mixed picture of the Great American Congregation. We are a church with surprising numerical strength and a high level of activity. But we seem marred by a disturbing impersonality. I wonder: With all our busyness, do we really care about people?

It would seem from the survey that we doubt whether other Christians care about us.

Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Believing sometimes results from first doing.

What is the relationship between our internal beliefs or attitudes, and our external actions? People generally assume that beliefs and attitudes determine actions, so if it is desirable to change the way people act, their hearts and minds had better be changed. This assumption lies behind most of our teaching, preaching, counseling, and child rearing. But if social psychology has taught us anything during the last 20 years it is that the reverse is equally true: we are as likely to act ourselves into a way of thinking as to think ourselves into a line of actions.

Let’s take a peek at this action-attitude research, see how it squares with the biblical understanding of faith and action, and then consider practical implications for church life and Christian nurture.

Action and Attitude

Social psychologists agree that attitudes and actions have a reciprocal relationship, each feeding on the other. In fact, the effect of our attitudes upon our actions seems not as great as most people suppose. People’s expressed attitudes toward the church, for example, are only moderately related to their church attendance on any given Sunday. This is because any particular action, such as going or not going to church on June 1 is the product of many influences, not just one’s attitude toward the church. It is therefore not surprising that attempts to change people’s behavior by changing their attitudes often produce only modest results. Smoking, television watching, and driving practices are examples of habits not much affected by persuasive appeals.

Although attitudes determine behavior less than commonly supposed, the complementary proposition—that behavior determines attitude—turns out to be far more true than most people suppose. Individuals are as likely to believe in what they have stood up for as to stand up for what they believe. Many streams of evidence converge to establish this principle. Consider two:

The foot-in-the-door. A number of experiments indicate that if you want people to do a big favor for you, get them to do a small favor first. In the best-known demonstration of this, Jonathan Freedman and Scott Fraser wanted California housewives to place a large, ugly “Drive Carefully” sign on their front lawns. Tests showed that they were more likely to do this if they were first approached on behalf of a smaller favor of signing a safe-driving petition.

In this situation, as in countless other experiments demonstrating the effect of action on attitude, the behavior (signing the petition) was a chosen, public act. Time and again social psychologists have found that when people bind themselves to a public behavior and perceive this as their own doing, they come to believe more strongly in their action. Also, the effect on the housewives’ attitudes was evident in their subsequent willingness to commit themselves to an even more substantial action, demonstrating the reciprocal influence of action and attitude.

Sometimes action and attitude feed one another in a spiraling escalation. In well-known experiments of social psychology, Stanley Milgram induced adult males to deliver supposedly traumatizing electric shocks to an innocent victim in an adjacent room. People were commanded to deliver the shock (said to be punishment for wrong answers on a learning task) in gradually ascending steps from 15 to 450 volts. The “shocking” result—that 65 percent of the participants complied right up to 450 volts even while the supposed victim screamed his protests—seems partly due to an effective use of the foot-in-the door principle.

The “teacher’s” first act was innocuous (15 volts) and the next act (30 volts) was not noticeably more severe. By the time the supposed victim first indicated mild discomfort the teacher had already bound himself to the situation on several occasions and the next act was, again, not noticeably more severe. External behavior and internal disposition can amplify one another, especially when social pressures induce actions that are increasingly extreme. And so it is that ordinary people can become unwitting agents of evil.

Effects of moral and immoral acts. All this suggests the more general possibility that acting in violation of one’s moral standards may set in motion a process of self-justification that leads ultimately to sincere belief in the act. Experiments bear this out. People induced to give witness to something about which they have doubts will generally begin to believe their “little lies,” assuming they felt some sense of choice in the matter. Saying is believing. Likewise, harming an innocent victim—by muttering a cutting comment or delivering shocks—typically leads aggressors to derogate their victims, especially if the aggressors are coaxed rather than coerced into doing so. Times of war provide the most tragic real-life parallels to these laboratory feelings: here, too, immoral acts corrode the moral sensitivity of the actors.

Happily, the principle cuts in the other direction as well. Moral action has positive effects on the actor. Experiments demonstrate that when children are induced to resist temptation, they tend to internalize their conscientious behavior, especially if the deterrent is mild enough to leave them with a sense of choice. Moreover, children who are actively engaged in enforcing rules or in teaching moral norms to younger children subsequently follow the moral code better than children who are not given the opportunity to be teachers or enforcers. Generalizing the principle, it would seem that one antidote for the corrupting effects of evil action is repentant action. Evil acts shape the self, but moral acts do so as well.

These few examples illustrate why the “attitudes follow behavior” principle has become an accepted fact in contemporary social psychology. Since the phenomenon is more clearly established than its explanation, social psychologists have therefore been busy playing detective, trying to track down clues that would reveal why action affects attitude. One explanation suggests that we are motivated to justify our actions as a way of relieving the discomfort we feel when our behavior differs noticeably from our prior attitude. An alternative explanation is that when our attitudes are weak or ambiguous, we observe our actions and then infer what attitudes we must have, given how we have acted; what we say and do can sometimes be quite self-revealing.

Neither view necessarily implies that the effect of action is a mindless or irrational process. Our thinking is stimulated by our action. The reasons we develop to explain our actions can be real and intellectually defensible. A student wrote me, “It wasn’t until I tried to verbalize my beliefs that I really understood them.”

Regardless of what explanation is best, we can find a practical moral for us all: each time we act, we amplify the idea behind what we have done. If we want to change ourselves in some important way, we had better not depend exclusively on introspection and intellectual insight. Sometimes we need to get up and act—to begin writing that paper, to make those phone calls, to go see that person—even if we do not feel like acting. If Moses, Jonah, and other biblical characters had waited until they felt like doing what God was calling them to do, their missions would never have been accomplished. (Indeed, if not acted upon, ideas often begin to fade until recharged by new action.) Fortunately, we often discover that once we have written the first paragraph or made the first call our commitment and enthusiasm for what we are doing begins to take hold of us and drive us forward under its own momentum.

Action and Faith

The social-psychological evidence that action and attitude generate one another in an endless chain—like chicken and egg—affirms and enlivens the biblical understanding of action and faith. Depending on where we break into this spiraling chain, we will see how faith can be a source of action or how it can be a consequence of action. Both perspectives are correct, since action and faith, like action and attitude, feed one another.

Christian thinking has usually emphasized faith as the source of action, just as conventional wisdom has insisted that our attitudes determine our behavior. Faith, we believe, is the beginning rather than the end of religious development. For example, the experience of being “called” demonstrates how faith can precede action in the lives of the faithful. Elijah is overwhelmed by the Holy as he huddles in a cave. Paul is touched by the Almighty on the Damascus Road. Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos are likewise invaded by the Word, which then explodes in their active response to the call. In each case, an encounter with God provoked a new state of consciousness, which was then acted upon.

This dynamic potential of faith is already a central tenet of evangelical thought. For the sake of balance, we should also appreciate the complementary proposition: Faith is a consequence of action. Throughout the Old and New Testaments we are told that full knowledge of God comes through actively doing the Word; faith is nurtured by obedient action.

What contribution does action make to religious knowledge and faith? Reinhold Niebuhr and others have called attention to the contrasting assumptions of biblical thought and of the Platonic thought that permeates Western culture today. Plato presumed that we come to know truth by reason and quiet reflection. This view, translated into Christian terms, equates faith with cerebral activity—orthodox doctrinal propositions, for example.

The contrasting biblical view assumes that reality is also known through obedient commitment. O. A. Piper has written in the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: “This feature, more than any other, brings out the wide gulf which separates the Hebraic from the Greek view of knowledge. In the latter, knowledge itself is purely theoretical … whereas in the Old Testament the person who does not act in accordance with what God has done or plans to do has but a fragmentary knowledge …”

For example, the Hebrew word for know is generally used as a verb—something you do. To know love, we must not only know about love, we must act lovingly. Likewise, to hear the word of God means not only to listen but also to obey. We read in the New Testament that by loving action one knows God, for, “He who does what is true comes to the light.” Jesus declared that whoever would do the will of God would know God, that he would come and dwell within those who heed what he said, and that we would find ourselves, not by passive contemplation alone, but by losing ourselves as we take up the Cross. The wise man—the one who built his house on rock—differed from the foolish man in that he acted upon his word. Merely saying “Lord, Lord” does not qualify one as a disciple; discipleship means doing the will of the Father. Over and again, the Bible teaches that the gospel power can only be known by living it.

The theological understanding of faith is built upon this biblical view of knowledge. Faith grows as we act on what little faith we have. Just as experimental subjects become more deeply committed to something for which they have suffered and witnessed, so also do we grow in faith as we act it out. Faith “is born of obedience,” said John Calvin. “The proof of Christianity really consists in ‘following,’ ” declared Sören Kierkegaard. Karl Barth agreed: “Only the doer of the word is its real hearer.”

C. S. Lewis captured this dynamic of faith in his Chronicles of Narnia. The great lion Aslan has returned to Narnia to redeem his captive creatures. Lucy, a young girl with a trusting, childlike faith in Aslan, catches a glimpse of him and eventually convinces the others to start walking toward where she sees him. As Lucy follows Aslan, she comes to see him more clearly. The others, skeptical and grumbling at first, follow despite their doubts. Only as they follow do they begin to see what was formerly invisible to them—first a fleeting hint of the lion, then his shadow, until finally, after many steps, they see him face to face. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer concluded in The Cost of Discipleship, “Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.… You can only know and think about it by actually doing it.”

Christians will surely want to understand and communicate their faith as rationally defensible. Yet when Jesus counseled that the kingdom of God belongs to those who come like a child, he reminded us that codified intellectual understanding need not precede faith. Jesus called people to follow him, not just to believe a creed. Peter dropped his nets, leaving all behind, and only much later did he verbalize his conviction with the declaration: “You are the Christ.” Although we must remember that justification is the gift of God—Peter does not achieve his own conversion—the meaning of faith is nevertheless learned through obedient action.

Implications for Church Life

So far we have seen that the modern social psychological view of how action nurtures attitude is paralleled by the ancient biblical understanding of knowledge and faith. How might this consensus be usefully applied in church renewal and in the development of personal faith? Anyone who understands the principle is capable of brainstorming its application. Just remember: commitments to behavior that are public and personally chosen (rather than coerced) are especially likely to stimulate internal change. To illustrate, consider how we might apply this to the administration and leadership of the church, the planning of worship, and the nurturing of personal faith.

First, a top priority for churches must be to make their members active participants, not mere spectators. Many dynamic religious movements of today, ranging from sects like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and the Unification Church, to charismatics and discipleship-centered communities, share as common denominator an insistence that all persons on board be members of the crew. That is easier said than done, but it does provide a criterion by which to evaluate procedures for admitting and maintaining members, and a principle to apply in implementing programs of parish life. As a local church makes decisions and administers its program it should constantly be asking: Will this activate our members and make priests of our believers? If research on persuasion is any indication, this will best be accomplished by direct, personal calls to active commitment, not merely by mass appeals and announcements.

In worship, also, people should be engaged as active participants, not as mere spectators of religious theater. Research indicates that passively received spoken words have surprisingly little impact on listeners, and that any resulting changes in attitude are less likely to endure and influence subsequent behavior than when the same expressed attitude emerges from active experience. This points to the desirability of stimulating listeners to rehearse and act upon the spoken word, and of enabling the congregation to participate actively in the liturgical ritual. The public act of choosing to get out of one’s seat and kneel publicly before the congregation in taking Communion is but one example. When people sing responses, write their own confessions, contribute prayer, read Scripture responsively, take notes on the sermon, utter exclamations, bring their offerings forward, pass the peace, or sit, stand, and kneel—acts that viewers of the electronic church do not perform—they are making the liturgy their own work.

The principle has its limits, of course. We can become so preoccupied with doing things that we no longer have time quietly to receive God’s Word of grace and direction for our lives. Like the Pharisees, we can substitute our deeds for God’s act, or think that any kind of action will do. To say that action nurtures growth in faith is not to tell the whole story of faith. But it does tell part of the story.

The action-attitude principle can also shape Christian education and Christian nurture. Since researchers have found that the attitudes we form by experience are most likely to affect our actions, we might consider new methods of developing faith. For example, few Christian families appreciate and reap the benefits of family worship. Old Testament family practices helped people actively remember the mighty acts of God. When today’s Jewish family celebrates the Passover by eating special foods, reading prayers, and singing psalms, all of which symbolize their historical experience, they are helped to renew the roots of deep conviction and feeling. As Tevye exclaimed in Fiddler on the Roof, “Because of our traditions every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do … Without our traditions our lives would be shaky as a fiddler on the roof.” Among Christians, family celebrations frequently become more common during Advent. With a boost from the church, home-based activity could be extended to celebrate all the great themes of the church year.

Although church and family ritual may sometimes degenerate into a superficial religious exercise, few of us appreciate the extent to which the natural ritual of our own personal histories has shaped who we are. Many of the things we did without question in childhood have long since become an enduring part of our self-identities. Indeed, because we have internalized our own rituals, we find it difficult to recognize them as rituals, but easy to recognize other people’s rituals.

We can illustrate this principle in many areas, but the overarching objective on which legitimate applications converge is this: we want to create opportunities for people to enact their convictions, thereby confirming and strengthening their Christian identity.

Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Beware of Plays Bringing Greeks

The news is out that a well-known Greek instructor from an equally well-known seminary has resigned his post in order to go into religious drama.

“Yes, it’s true,” he told me, as we munched gyros at Dominick’s. “I’ve always wanted to be an actor. I became a Greek teacher only to please my mother. She’s Phi Beta Kappa, you know.”

“Well, the Greeks were great dramatists,” I replied, trying to sound very erudite. “All your training hasn’t gone to waste.”

“Mother said the same thing when I told her I had resigned,” he said, “She’s Phi Beta Kappa, you know.”

I asked him if he had written any plays yet.

“No, I haven’t,” he answered. “Right now I’m working on my autobiography. My publisher thinks that a Greek professor turning actor is a novel thing. I’m calling the book From Lightfoot to Footlights. Mother thought it was a good title. She’s—”

“Phi Beta Kappa—yes, I know. But back to your new calling. Is there much demand these days for religious drama?”

“Indeed there is! People don’t want to hear preaching these days. This is a looking generation, not a listening generation. Haven’t you heard of television?”

“So you really feel that being an actor and replacing the preachers is better than being a teacher and training the preachers?”

“Of course! Most of my students abandon their Greek the minute they pass the final. If they used it in their studies, it would be a different story. I’d feel then like I was making a contribution to the church.”

I paid the bill (unemployed actors never have any money) and we left the restaurant. “I plan to adapt Aristophanes, Euripides, and Eumenides,” he said before we parted. “Quite frankly, it’s all Greek to me!”

“Let’s hope it isn’t curtains for you,” I said under my breath, and I went home and dusted off my Greek New Testament.

EUTYCHUS X

“A Word Fitly Spoken”

The October 10 editorial, “Of Shepherds, Fiefs, and the Flock,” was refreshing. It explained in relevant and precise language the growth of a nationwide social malignancy. Ultimately, we can all acknowledge Satan’s authorship of this “people control,” but such a generalization may carelessly disregard the ingenuity of a most insidious opponent.

The appropriate reminder of the Salvation Army’s quiet servitude brings to mind Solomon’s exhortation: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver” (Prov. 25:11), a word spoken here that reminds us of what true service really is.

JONATHAN K. DEVORE

University of California

San Diego, Calif.

Errant Interview

I read with great interest the interview with, and the article by, F. F. Bruce [Oct. 10). What did not come through is what troubles me. Dr. Bruce does not hold to biblical inerrancy, so that his contribution to evangelical life has been seriously undermined.

Searching questions could and should have been asked of Dr. Bruce about Deutero-Isaiah and a late date for Daniel. While some may agree that biblical inerrancy should not be the primary thing that should be said about Dr. Bruce, yet it is something that a full-scale review of his life should have mentioned.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Wheaton, Ill.

Long Overdue

Dallas Willard’s “Discipleship: For Super Christians Only?” [Oct. 10] has been long overdue. Dr. Willard is right on target when he declares that for several decades the churches of the Western world have not made discipleship a condition of being a Christian. Yet the Bible teaches that only disciples who follow the example and teaching of Jesus receive eternal life and enter the kingdom.

RUFUS JONES

Wheaton, Ill.

As one who has been preaching the gospel for something like 60 years, I should like to register my wholehearted concurrence with Dallas Willard. What we have largely in evangelical circles today is a diluted gospel, which equates saving faith with more intellectual assent to revealed truths, with no consequent heart submission to Christ as Lord of the life. The all-too-popular idea that one can accept Christ as Savior without receiving him as Lord of one’s life is what A. W. Tozer correctly termed “The Modern Heresy.”

A. E. HORTON

Tracy City, Tenn.

Faith or Works?

Tom Minnery’s news report, “The Adventist Showdown” [Oct. 10], brought to mind the futility of attempting to interpret in a few short paragraphs some of the key issues of faith of a church body.

It must be noted that the approximately 115 Adventist churchmen who gathered at Glacier View included many of the church’s theologians, who, instead of “keeping a low profile” expressed their convictions with vigor and forthrightness. After days of earnest study, the group reaffirmed its consensus regarding the historic position of the Adventist church on the issues under discussion. If anything, the Adventist church has been strengthened by this affirmation, resulting in more vigorous proclamation of these issues.

REV. RAJKUMAR ATTIKEN

Defiance, Ohio

The article presented a biased and misleading view of what is happening in the Adventist church. Descriptions of some doctrinal teachings (especially the investigative judgment) do not accurately reflect the mainstream understanding of the church.

I am one young minister (33 years old), seminary trained, who doesn’t plan to leave the church, because it taught me that I am saved by the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary and therefore I have no need to fear the investigative judgment.

M. JAMES ROBERTSON

Portland Adventist Academy

Portland, Oreg.

I am a young minister not in sympathy with Desmond Ford’s denial of the investigative judgment. Certainly Christ atoned for everything on the Cross. But that does not release us from personal accountability to accept the gospel. And whenever there is accountability, there is judgment. This has to take place before Jesus separates his believing sheep from the unbelieving tares at his coming.

REV. MARTIN WEBER

Anaheim Adventist Church

Anaheim, Calif.

Semantic Problem

Reviewer Willard Harley said that perhaps I have semantic problems in my book Psychology from a Christian Perspective [Oct. 10]. I think the semantic problem is that he read only section headings and not content.

I do not say that Transcendental Meditation illustrates man’s spirituality—I say that it “is a version of the Hindu religion and advanced meditators increasingly find themselves adopting a Hindu philosophy.” I do not even use the term “occult visions” to illustrate man’s spirituality—I do discuss visions, but ones from God, and say that “as Christian psychologists we need to develop criteria for distinguishing between visions and hallucinations.”

RONALD L. KOTESKY

Asbury College

Wilmore, Ky.

Last night I watched the “great debate,” and on the very day this issue went to press, you pulled a lever, or marked a ballot to determine our next President. The debate didn’t help me much: I didn’t learn anything new and I have serious misgivings about this method of trying to decide elections. After all, we are selecting the chief executive for our nation, not a debater. Yet, as I penned this note, I breathed a prayer of gratitude to God—gratitude because I live in a democracy where I can cast my vote freely and where it counts. Democracy isn’t perfect; it’s just better than possible alternatives. But it is no better than the people and the rulers they choose. Therefore, I also pray for my country—that its freedom continue, its justice increase, its moral heritage be revived, and its Christian citizens bring salt and light to every dark corner. I also pray for our newly elected President. He needs our prayers. And, as Sara Killian Cooke points out (see p. 15), we have not always dealt wisely or kindly with our presidents.

We also conclude our study of pacifism and the just war. On this extremely divisive question, we do not expect all Christians to agree. However, because of the critical importance of this issue—both to the cause of justice and to our own personal lives—it is imperative that we bend every effort to search the Scriptures for the mind of God and honestly walk in that light.

This is another full issue. Larry Richards tells us what kind of people show up in our churches on a typical Sunday morning. Peter Wagner analyzes prospects for church growth in the eighties; Dan Baumann provides suggestions for more meaningful worship; and David Myers raises some searching questions about the degree to which right beliefs lead to right conduct.

An unusual item for CHRISTIANITY TODAY is a piece of fiction, “The Moon of First Harvest,” by Robert Siegel. To complement this excerpt from Siegel’s new fantasy novel, Alpha Centauri, Refiner’s Fire interviews the author.