The Organic Nature of the Church -3

The Rt. Rev'd Dr. Ray R. Sutton

What if? What if the evangelism of the early Church had been conducted like the modern Church? Surely the Coliseum, the circus, would have been the model. After all, more people were interested in the circus than the Church. The thinking according to modern man would have therefore been to imitate the circus to attract unbelievers into the Church. Show the pagan some pagan credibility. The Coliseum was the greatest show on earth, consisting of extravagant games of the highest realism; as a matter of fact, they were real! People could have real vicarious participation as they watched animals and humans compete in every imaginable kind of arrangement. Competitive engagement... that's what it was.

For the Church to compete in the market place of the world, it should have become the greatest "spiritual" show on earth! Whereas the Roman circus had gladiators, the Church could have offered her own Christian gladiator competitions. They could have fought each other and then given their testimonies. Since the Coliseum presented animal competitions, the Christians could have trained their own animals; they could have called it, "Christian Canine Competitions". . . Come hear Christian trainers tell why they tram animals better because they are Christians.

Yes, the early Church could have imitated the Circus to build the Kingdom. The fact is, however, the CHURCH DIDN'T IMITATE PAGANISM TO WIN PAGANS! As far as we can tell from history, this was not the case. Instead, Biblical theology and not the sociology of the Greco-Roman culture determined how they worshipped and lived. The early bishops and clergy of the Church never took a poll of what would attract unbelievers from the pagan temples. They never conducted a market analysis. Never, no never, no never did they look to the world for a model of how to motivate the world to the Messiah! It's really quite simple. If you accommodate the world to win the world, the world will never really be won. And in the end, Christianity will be lost. This is what has happened in our culture for most of this century. We have been assimilated to the point where we have become the enemy. The Rev. Dr. M. Allen Dickson has said it so well, "Sociology instead of Christian theology has driven the Church for so long that the culture of the Church has become the culture of the world. No wonder our analyses confirm our premises. We have imitated pagan culture for so long that we no longer know how to be the Church. The result has been that we have given up the Church to win people to Christ. But having given up the Bride of; the Groom, many of us realize that those who have released the Church have really not won people to the Christ. We have enticed them into religious clubs."

The ancient prophet Joel echoed this observation. We have just read a portion of him at Ash Wednesday services. However, let us never forget why God was judging Israel at the time. It was the period before the Assyrian conquest in A.D. 722. Yet, we are told in the first chapter, "For a nation has come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion" (1:5). Israel had not been defeated as yet by the enemy. But in a sense they had already become captive. The lion was upon the land. In other words, they were already a prisoner. How? Militarily they had not been defeated but culturally they had already succumbed. This explains why God had sent such a devastating judgment on the land: famine, followed by pestilence (the army of locusts), followed by drought. Significantly, Israel is told to repent in the same fashion as the Ninevites, in sackcloth and ashes. For the Biblical reader this is quite a telling parallel. The Ninevites were a pagan nation converting under Jonah. The comparison seems to indicate that Israel had become paganized. Their repentance was to return to being the people of God: Scripturally, liturgically, morally, and culturally.

In view of the message of the great prophet, Joel, it never occurred to the early Church to become the world to win the world. They didn't set up the circus. Instead, they built the Church, and build they did until a point where the coliseum became defunct. The Church became the center of society. Witness had been transformed into true worship to the point where virtually the whole Greco-Roman world wanted to worship God! The early Church, a time so analogous to our own' did something right!

Somehow we must recapture the witness of the ancient Church. This is the challenge of my third and final talk on the organic nature of the Church... Once again, we turn to St. John 15.. In the final paragraph of this chapter, we find a closing verse, "And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning" (15:27). Let us begin by considering the organic nature of witness expressed in this verse.

First, Christ refers to "ye" in the plural as the witness. Evangelism led people not only to the King of kings, Christ, but it of necessity took them into a new kingdom, the Church. There can be no king without a kingdom nor kingdom without a king. The Gospels and Acts say that the Church should preach the "Kingdom of God". Not only must the King, Christ, be accepted, but true acceptance is gauged by submission to life in His kingdom In other words, the Doctrine of the Church must be brought back to evangelism. There simply is no real evangelism or missions without the kingdom, the Church.

For far too long, evangelism has factored out the Doctrine of the Church. Now we find ourselves in a culture that factors out the Church as well. It is time for a major rethink among orthodox theologians. One of those has been the Rev. Dr. Joe Aldrich who has written two very important, popular books on evangelism, Friendship Evangelism and Gentle Persuasion. Upon graduating from seminary, I nearly became the youth pastor at Joe's Church in Southern California. I remember well an evening in his home in Newport Beach. We were discussing the principles of friendship evangelism that were later to be published. He had amassed some revealing statistics about the organic connection between the Gospel and the Church. Joe has long since become crippled with Multiple Sclerosis and has approached death. Before he was afflicted with this disease, however, he produced' the statistics that he began to share with me in his extremely important book on evangelism; called, Gentle Persuasion. Here are a few:

Joe in his book does two things in these important statistics. First, he measures the commitment to Christ by long-term loyalty to the Church. This reflects the Biblical organicism of St. John 15, "He who will not have the Church as his mother cannot have God as his father." [Cyprian, Calvin] Moreover, Dr. Aldrich has begun to analyze why people stay in the Church and why they don't. He concludes that it has everything to do with how they are "birthed" into the kingdom. If they are evangelized wrongly then they are born with ecclesiastical birth defects that ultimately lead to temporary conversions. The Parable of the Soils describes them as faulty soils in which Christ is not permanently cultivated.

Second, Dr. Aldrich provokes us to see the fallacy in making the "decision" the goal of evangelism. He says, "If our goal is to 'decision' all nations and our neighbors, then our methodology doesn't much matter. If we, however, are to help them become disciples of Christ, our methods become critically important. . . . As we think of methodology, we are looking at networks were thinking of those clusters of people linked around a common cause or location. How are you going to best influence those with whom you are in regular contact - the gang at the coffee, the ladies in the baby sitting co-op, the parents and players on the team, those folks in your neighborhood, the PTA, your hunting buddies?" (Gentle Persuasion, p. 99). Dr. Aldrich shifts the focus of evangelism away from the individual and the. decision to what he calls a 'network" and the relationship. In other words, the witness of the Church is living and complex. This is an organic approach to the world and the witness of the Church.

He says at another place, "On an almost cyclical basis, the concern levels of church leaders reach the point where they feel compelled to plan and execute another evangelistic 'outreach.' The community is perceived as a one-dimensional, nameless, faceless mass of businesses, houses, and people with no "organic connection". Once the faithful have done enough 'evangelism' to salve their collective consciences, they flee to the safety of their facilities, schedules, and programs" (Gentle Persuasion, pp. 131-132). Joe even uses the word "organic" to describe what guilt-ridden, individualistic evangelism fails to recognize. This is another way of decrying the fallacy of evangelism without the Church, or kingdom.

Second, the plural reference to the "ye" in John 15:27 means witness should be viewed as a corporate act. Not only is a person led into a kingdom, but he/she is brought by the kingdom to Christ and His Church. Bringing someone to Christ is a corporate act. It is organically accomplished in the same way that a plant is grown. One plants, God sends the rain, and another harvests. Growing things is a corporate effort and so is evangelism in the Church. Remember the paralytic who was brought to Christ by four men (St. Mark 2:2-12)? Christ had come home and so many people packed into His house that a paralytic could not be brought to him. It took four men digging a hole in Christ's roof to lower him to Christ. Dr. Aldrich tells the story of a llama farmer in Sisters, Oregon. This farmer was a committed Christian. "He loved a scruffy little town character for more than sixteen years. A pastor friend recently moved into the community, met this town mascot, and led him to Christ." Joe says that his "1friend reaped a well-cultivated soul." Later, however, Dr. Aldrich tells the story of how the group had lunch with this pastor. The minister asked an interesting question, "Who do you think led that man to the Lord, the llama farmer or me?" "Rising to the occasion, one of the group responded, 'the llama farmer.' 'No,' replied the pastor, 'neither of us did. Whenever a person is saved, it is always the Body of Christ that leads him to the foot of the Cross."' Dr. Aldrich adds his own editorial comment, "I like that! In most conversion stories, there's a grandmother who prayed, a parent who lived right, a peer who spoke, a pastor who proclaimed, an author who wrote, an evangelist who appealed, a friend who listened, and others who served." Does not St. Paul speak this way when he says that some water, others cultivate, and yet others harvest (1 Corinthians 3)? Even in the case where an individual is brought to Christ by one so-called person, if we examine deeper, a network of people was involved in the evangelism.

I think we seriously misunderstand the nature of evangelism with an individualistic approach. For one, we place too much pressure on an individual. For another, it makes us impatient when a person does not respond to one person. Rather, the witness is corporate.

Third, plural reference to witness by our Lord in St. John 15:27 implies not only a corporate act but a corporate recipient, the family. Evangelism was to be aimed at the family, not the individual. When Jesus commissioned the disciples, He said, "Disciple the nations, baptizing 'them' in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (St. Matthew 28:19). Notice that the antecedent of the plural pronoun "them" is "nations". In the Greek text, however, they are a different gender. Some have noted that this discrepancy explains why nations were not baptized all at once in the New Testament. Some, such as Augustine, thought that the nations should be compelled to come in. Charlemagne used this interpretation to justify revival at the point of the sword. However, when we examine the Book of Acts, there is a more preferred interpretation. The nations were baptized "household by household". Moreover, we should not forget that the Apostles took their families with them. Therefore, it seems that the evangelism of the New Testament involved families of Christians reaching other families, networks touching networks. Perhaps this explains the rapid spread of Christianity across the Roman Empire.

In a day and time when the family of Western culture is in serious disrepair, it would behoove the Church to think through evangelism from the point of view of the family. Actually there is an incredible program being used by a number of parishes. I know of an evangelical Episcopal priest in El Paso, Texas, who has transformed the outreach of his parish this way. The program works best if it replaces the Sunday School concept. If you think about it, Sunday School programs emerged during the Industrial Revolution when the father's work was separated from the home but traditional families were still intact. These programs served important catechetical purposes, and still can, but in some cases we might consider the state of the family at the end of the millennium in the midst of another kind of revolution, the technological revolution. Not only the fathers are separated from the home, but so is everyone else. Tragically, the Church sometimes separates the family as badly if not worse than the world. The program I am describing has done this type of rethinking. It asks families to commit to three hours one night a week at the church. The families come together to this youth program. They eat a meal together and with the church family Manners are taught and the children learn to eat together with the parents in a civilized way. After the meal, there are all kinds of catechetical training for the whole family together. The priest, who I know has implemented this program, has taken a typical thirty member Sunday School program and turned it into a two hundred strong youth ministry. As I understand it, they have also added a new building to the parish to accommodate the growing outreach. It is touching the entire community through the families of the parish. This is one example of evangelism family by family, an organic corporate act.

Fourth, the plural reference to Jesus' command to bear witness implies the formation of a culture. Evangelism forms not just individuals but a group,. a culture. In this sense, it is the creation of an entire culture. T. S. Elliot brilliantly made the point in his book, Christianity and Civilization. To paraphrase him, the goal of the Gospel must be to raise up not only Christians but a whole culture of Christians. It is implied in the Great Commission when our Lord says, "Disciple the nations." Christianity, true Christianity, will be culture transforming because the Church brings the culture of Christ to the cultures of the world. In the early Church, it was this culture of the kingdom that became so attractive to the unbeliever.

In the first centuries, the Church was distinguished by its service to society. Concerning the care of infants, it was said of Christians, "They do not cast away their offspring" (E. H. Oliver, Social Achievements of the Christian Church, p.31). Regarding hospitality, "deaconries, hospitals and hostelries run by the Christian Church were in many cases the only inns for travelers and the only refuge for the weary" (R. Paul Stevens, Liberating the Laity, p.102). Pertaining to the burial of the dead, Christians formed the first burial societies. As for the care of widows and orphans, Cornelius of Rome "counted besides his 46 presbyters, 7 deacons, 7 sub-deacons, 42 acolytes, 52 exorcists, readers and janitors; not less than 1500 widows" (George Hunston Williams, "The Ancient Church," in the Layman in Christian History, p.48). Concerning the status of women, Libanus remarked upon hearing the story of the pure and noble life of Anthusa the mother of John Chrysostom, "Heaven! what women these Christians have" (Oliver, Social Achievements, p.73). Therefore, the Church did a better job of taking care of its own as well as the world's own. Robert Louis Wilken in a recent issue of Christian History magazine says, "The early church was not something that spoke to its culture; it was a itself a culture." Apparently, the social was not antithetical to the Gospel. Neither was it among many of our evangelical ancestors. In the preface to John Wesley's 1739 hymnbook, he wrote, "The Gospel of Christ knows no religion but social, no holiness, but social holiness" (Findley Edge, The Greening of the Church, p.97). In the words of Charles Sweazie, "Social action without evangelism is like sowing grains of sand in the soil; evangelism without social action quickly heads towards superstition" (Liberating the Laity, p.96). The living culture of the church took care of its spiritual family. I think this explains why education in the Church has been so effective. In fact, I would say to you that every parish should be working toward the goal of some kind of parochial school to provide kingdom education. It is only the fully trained disciple(s) who can transform this pagan culture into the kingdom of God. Therefore, the organic nature of witness requires that evangelism creates culture.

Fifth, the organic witness called for in St. John 15 implies evangelism by "presence." At the heart of our theology is the reality of the presence of Christ, albeit a real spiritual, mystical presence as the Articles of Religion say. Nevertheless, we do not believe real absence. The reality of this realism should penetrate every aspect of our theology, especially our evangelism. If you look closely, the principle of presence is found in our Lord's comment about witness: '~e also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning." Because they had been present with the Lord and He had been present with them they would be able to witness through His and their "presence." Evangelism, true evangelism, cannot be done at a distance in some impersonal way. Here is the fallacy of most Church growth approaches. They often aim us at thinking in terms of reaching the most numbers, which of necessity moves the Church into mechanical, contrived, and impersonal approaches. These techniques might produce numbers but not necessarily true conversions. Besides, the unbeliever smells a rat when he sees the Church coming with a market analysis approach. It is not real because it lacks the reality of presence.

Several years ago some Christian couples were sitting on their patio discussing their concern to witness to their neighbors. They noticed that these neighbors had wild parties and apparently needed Christ. The question was, "How do we best take the Gospel to them?" After much dialogue among themselves, the Christians decided to rent a blimp. The Gospel blimp, as they called it, could drop tracts in their neighbors' yards. The tracts would explain the Gospel to them much better than they ever could.

The fateful day came when the blimp arrived. The unbelieving neighbors heard the noise and couldn't believe their eyes. Outside they went to track the noise so close to the rooftops of their home. The Christians who had employed the blimp watched and prayed fervently. They asked God to convert their unbelieving neighbors through the proclamation of the Gospel.

Suddenly tracts began to fall from the sky like huge snowballs. They hit the grounds of the unbelieving neighbors. In astonishment they picked up the pieces of paper and started to read. Instead of responding favorably, they erupted with anger. Their lawns were littered and they weren't interested in Christian propaganda. They threw the tracts down as they dragged garbage cans out of their garages to clean up the mess.

The Christians observed. Their response was a sense of evangelistic pride that they had done their duty. They spoke in platitudes to one another such as, "The word never comes back void . . . who knows, maybe some day one of our neighbors will remember the words of the tract and believe;" another person said, "It just goes to show you how hardened unbelievers are nowadays;" and another said, "That settles it, now we know that they are not the elect... it's time to rent the blimp for some of our other neighbors' yards."

What's wrong with this picture? Evangelism must involve people. One man has said that the most important vestment of the Church is the shoe. Only humans can truly go and only humans can truly lead people to Christ if they are present to convey the presence of Christ.

Sixth, the presence implied in an organic witness helps us to see that witness involves an ethos. It is not simply a program. An ethos has to be cultivated in the parish that conveys an atmosphere of growth. Programs alone do not necessarily grow a church. For example, I have just mentioned a program that was effectively used. However, just implementing this program will not necessarily work in your parish. In fact, have you noticed how a program will work in one church but not in another? The reason is "ethos." This is an organic aspect of evangelism and church growth. Plants not only need someone to water, plant and harvest, but they also need an environment conducive to growth. So in the Church, there needs to be the proper environment for growth that I think is even more important than the programs. IL Paul Stevens puts it this way in his invaluable little book Liberating the Laity, "It is not primarily a "program" that is needed, but an "environment." An environment is the sum total of the social, relational, and spiritual attitudes and factors in a society or group that influences what the individual thinks of him or herself and what he or she does. The word 'atmosphere' is close to what we mean. What most needs to be equipped is not the laity, but their environment, the local church" (Liberating the Laity, p.26).

The Rev. Stevens goes; on to tell an interesting anecdote to illustrate what he calls the "atmosphere" of church. He relates,

This is an ethos that says "go away." Many times I have been asked to go into churches and talk about church growth. I learned many years ago that stagnant churches usually don't grow, not because of the pastor, but because the congregation really does not want to grow. In fact, there is an old axiom' "churches that really want to grow, grow." Take a church that has not seen many new members and watch what happens if somehow new folks begin to come. Some of the very people who said that they wanted it to grow become quite concerned. When they do, they give off "go away vapors." They send up an environment that often crushes the life out of visitors. And so they don't come back. In one sense, ethos is objective and measurable. It is as simple as a relaxed, accepting, and excited atmosphere. In another sense ethos is not. However, a parish either has it or it doesn't. And there is one simple way of finding out. It grows if there is an environment for growth.

Therefore, the final paragraph in St. John 15 speaks of the organic nature of witness. It is an ethos, and it is everything else and more that has been presented in this lecture. I have tried to say that the Church witnesses most effectively when it witnesses organically. I have only had enough time to shed light on an ancient approach to evangelism that has become so alien to the modern Church. Much more needs to be done in the rethinking of witness and evangelism. Hopefully this has been introductory enough that it will spawn in you a reconsideration of the corporate, organic nature of evangelism. Allow me to close with a parable from the famous preacher, Peter Marshall. It is called "the keeper of the spring."

Once upon a time, there was a quiet hamlet in the Alps. It attracted tourists from all over the world. Its beauty lay in the idyllic state of this picturesque village. The little community, however, was fed by a stream from the top of the mountain that poured through a waterwheel on a pond. The soil was rich as a result of this irrigation system. Lovely flowers and trees therefore canopied this paradise. Animals grazed around the pond, their source of life where the waterwheel turned. And in this garden was a caretaker, whose responsibility was to keep the waterwheel unclogged and running.

One day, the mayor of the town called a meeting. Accounts were running short. The budget needed to be cut as the solution. The most costly and likely item to be removed was the keeper of the spring, the caretaker. All he really did was pick up a few leaves and putz around. So the decision was made.

At first all went well. The little paradise continued to thrive on its own. Summer came and went with the usual abundance of tourists. Then fall came. The leaves began to tumble to the ground. Without a keeper of the spring, the leaves piled up in the little pond at the center of the hamlet. Gradually they bundled up around the waterwheel until it quit turning. The water stopped moving and began to stagnate. When spring came, the water poured over the banks of the pond. Crevices were cut into the soil to provide a way of escape for the water. Animals were driven away. Eventually summer came. With the pond stagnant, life did not bloom as was accustomed.

Word spread to the tourists who normally vacationed there. And as the year closed with another fall, the mayor heard that the tourists were not going to come back at all. Another meeting was called. A long speech was made about the importance of the tourists for the survival of the hamlet. What could be done? A voice came from the back of the room, "Bring back the keeper of the spring." So it was voted unanimously to pay what was needed to rehire the caretaker. As a result, the pond was cleaned, the waterwheel began to turn' and the hamlet was returned to paradise.

This brief parable points out the organic nature of evangelism. Yet, it does more. It summarizes the organic nature of the Church. Nothing happens in isolation. Our relation to God is Trinitarian. Our union with God is related to our life with and in the Church. Our witness is corporate to the corporate, namely the family. The organic nature of the Church is a profound truth. It requires our complete devotion. Blaise Pascal, the great seventeenth-century Christian philosopher and defender of the faith once asked, "What will become of men who despise little things, and do not believe great ones?" The organic nature of the Church is a great truth to be recovered that little things might not be despised. God help us to do so. Amen!

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