The Local Congregation Reborn

Whenever Bishop Azariah received candidates for membership in the Church of South India, he had them place both hands on their heads and say, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel”—a dramatic reminder that each new member of the Christian church is to be also a messenger of the Good News.

Ever since the Madras Missionary Conference Christian leaders have been increasingly preoccupied with the meaning of Mission and Church. This concern reached its climax last fall with the publication of two significant books, The Missionary Nature of the Church by a Dutch theologian, Johannes Blauw, and Upon the Earth by an Asian Christian leader, D. T. Niles.

Conceived at Willingen ten years ago, these books reflect not merely the thinking of two church authorities but the wrestling of conference groups and consultations in many cities of the world. Evangelical readers will object to a few things, such as the soft-peddling of eternal punishment or the statement that only a few verses in the Old Testament have missionary significance. But such matters aside, the double-barreled thrust of these books is biblically oriented.

At the present time new books on mission theology are not hard to come by: they float like cream among the top echelon of the Church. But application of their truths is needed at the congregational level, both at home and abroad. Such “homogenization” calls for some drastic changes.

The concept of the local congregation must be transformed. Principal C. H. Hwang of Taiwan aptly describes the prevalent pattern as the “active pastor, passive sheep structure.” Often evangelistic emphases have contributed to this misunderstanding. People are led to believe that they are saved to be served. This “only believe” theology does not build sound churches.

On the other hand, the suburban-type church has bred the go-getter, do-it-yourself kind of minister, who is jovial and an excellent mixer, and who can balance the budget besides. The sheep are curried and petted. But Jesus never recommended a “sheepfold mentality.” “Go your ways,” he said; “behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves” (Luke 10:3).

A church true to the Bible, then, is a visible fellowship of people in a given geographical locality who have banded together because they have been saved from sin by Christ and are committed to sharing this salvation with all men everywhere. Through those who have become His, the indwelling Christ ministers to the world.

What God can do through congregations in which each member is a minister remains yet to be discovered. Pioneering in what a ministering congregation can do is the exciting prospect of those churches and ministers who heed the call to this new kind of missionary obedience.

The missionary congregation will be a ministering one. Christ shows compassion to the multitudes through such a congregation. It is there to help whenever someone is robbed and beaten on the Jericho road. Distant disasters or local trouble will find these ministering members sensitive to Christ’s leading.

The new congregation will be a witnessing congregation. Within witnessing distance of every believer in the United States are thousands of lost souls. To bring them to Christ is the job of each church member.

The entire church membership will become a missionary society, also. Together all members form a special kind of community like that of First Peter 2:1–9, a community of holy, kingly, priestly people who belong to God himself and exist primarily for broadcasting the excellencies of him who has called them out of darkness into his marvelous light.

That there are 42,250 Protestant missionaries at work abroad is no reason for boasting. Of these, 27,219 come from North America. In other words it takes the efforts of eleven churches—2,596 Protestants—to send out and support one missionary. A more desirable gauge of a congregation’s vitality, it is suggested, ought to be one missionary per forty wage-earning believers. Budget-wise, a good starting point is to spend no more for “us” than for “others.” Were the congregational pattern of missionary concern to operate in this way, there could be 422,500 missionaries at work overseas.

A New Image Of The Ministry

When everyone in the congregation becomes a minister, what happens to the pastor? He will be needed more than ever, but in a completely new role. Instead of ministering to a congregation in the usual way, he becomes its teacher and leader.

First of all, the minister in his new situation will use all his gifts of preaching and teaching to create a new image of the ministering congregation. Then small groups of convinced members will form for further guided Bible study and self-education in person-to-person witnessing. Next, each lesson will be applied to concrete situations in the community, and there will follow gatherings in which the experience thus gained is shared and discussed. Concurrently Christ will be indicating opportunities of service and calling attention to fields in urgent need of harvest hands.

Another form of fruitful activity is that of mothering new churches. Every town knows churches which are old enough to be mothers but which remain barren. While some are fifty years old and can point to no daughter church, many younger churches have already “mothered” a dozen daughter churches. Sheep which do not reproduce soon become mutton.

One way a congregation reproduces is by subdividing. Dinosaur churches are too ponderous to be effective ministering congregations. They need to subdivide. Groups of members in outlying areas begin to meet locally. They form a study unit or a prayer cell. Soon a Sunday school is organized, and the group grows into a ministering congregation.

Many local churches, however, will find that they cannot make such a beginning. Members and even ministers will agree with Hendrick Kraemer when he says, “Let us frankly say, by using the title of a well-known book, the first requirement for the problem of evangelism is ‘not a conversion of England, but a conversion of the Church.’ “Where people have no faith to communicate, they need first of all to hear the Gospel themselves. These are the sheep—sometimes whole flocks—who have strayed and need to be brought back to the joy of obedience.

The theological education of the trainer-minister will also be different. Missions courses, if they exist, are usually found on the last page of the seminary catalogue. What courses there are, are usually lumped with other optional classes. Now that missions is belatedly found to be a master of the house, however, it demands its rightful place at the center of study. At this point much prayer and prodding will be needed, for it is here that the low priority of missions in the local congregation has its genesis. No general upsetting of seminary chairs is called for, but rather, that all courses be taught from the point of view of the mission of the Church. Faculty meetings and forums need to concentrate on putting Mission at the heart of the curriculum.

To be effective in his new role, however, the minister-trainer will want special training in the techniques of the ministering congregation. He himself needs to become adept in personal evangelism. He must have courses in adult and Christian education, and must also acquire a knowledge of the theology, methods, and principles of the contemporary missionary movement. These are no longer electives; they are core subjects for every parish minister.

The impact of evangelical forces overseas is undeniable when contrasted with that related to the World Council. This strength can be traced directly to the missions emphasis in our Bible colleges and institutes. Moody Bible Institute alone accounts for 2,700 missionaries now on the field, and Prairie Bible Institute for more than 1,000. Much care should be exercised lest the current trend towards accreditation—while good—lead to a weakening of missions departments.

Worldwide Cross-Fertilization

The problems of leadership education are not confined to North America. Along with other patterns, we have exported also our image of the active pastor and his passive sheep. So even in the younger churches abroad the transforming of congregations into ministering and witnessing missionary churches must have first place on the agenda, and their ministerial training programs must move missions from the periphery to the center of study.

At present at least 411 members of the younger churches have left their native lands to become missionaries. Eighteen countries have not only sent but have also received such missionaries. This marks the beginning of a great Christian cross-fertilization. American churches likewise are using more and more ministers from overseas.

That such cross-fertilization can take place is due to the remarkable spread of the secularistic revolution. A leveling of culture peaks and an upgrading of valleys by popular education is making urban centers all over the world more alike than ever before in history. So long as the Christian has learned to make technology serve the cause of Christ (and the average suburbanite has not), he is a good candidate for a foreign tour of service. He will be able to bring a message of hope to those whose religion and culture cannot cope with the revolution. Christ calls those who know him as Saviour to go to those who have lost their moorings and are adrift. Unless they go promptly, millions of God’s children will be lost in a miasma of cults and ideologies.

Our present ratio of one Christian worker to 21,000 of the population is not nearly enough. Only as local congregations in city, town, and countryside are reborn in obedience to the Great Commission can Christ’s longing for souls be satisfied.

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