The State of the Church

words have through the World Missionary Conference received a new meaning. One of the outstanding and abiding results of that remarkable gathering has been the new and vivid picture presented to the Church of the world-wide need of the Gospel message, and the world - wide opening there was for the bringing of that Gospel to every creature; and then at once the question arose, Will the Church be able to enter these open doors? It was clearly seen that the State of the Home Church was an all-important factor in the possible solution of the great questions which were raised by the Conference.

Indeed, before the Conference itself assembled, in the very first papers that were issued calling for prayer on behalf of the Conference, it was pointed out that everything would depend on the Home Base for Foreign Missions: that is, on the fitness and readiness of the Church to respond to God’s call. It is well worth our while to read again some of the sentences from that first call to prayer. “As we contemplate the work to be done, we are conscious that the fundamental difficulty is not one of men or money, but of Spiritual Power. The Christian experience of the Church is not deep, intense, and living enough, to meet the world’s need. The end of the Conference will be attained only if it lead to the more perfect manifestation by the Church of the Spirit of the Incarnation, and of the Cross. The only hope of the Church being able to meet the opportunity is, that there should be a new vitalising of the whole of the Church.... This quickening of the whole life of the Church is indeed a great thing — an I impossible thing, we are tempted to think. But does it seem so impossible when we get the conviction that God, being what He is, wills it? It does not seem so impossible when we saturate ourselves in the thought of the Gospels, with their repeated teaching, ‘Ask and ye shall receive.’”

In the Reports of the Conference we find the same thoughts expressed in different words. Thus in Vol. I., “Carrying the Gospel,” we read under 3 A, “The missionary problem of the Church to-day is not primarily a financial problem, but it is how to ensure a vitality equal to the imperial expansion of the missionary programme. The only hope of this is for Christians to avail themselves of the more abundant life through Christ, bestowed in the pathway of obedience to Him.”

Again, “A crucial factor in the evangelisation of the non-Christian world is the state of the Church in Christian lands. Until there is a more general consecration on the part of the members of the Home Church, there can be no hope of such an expansion of the missionary enterprise, as to result in making the knowledge of Jesus Christ readily accessible to every human being.”

Once more: “The most direct and effective way to promote the evangelisation of the world is to influence the workers, and indeed the whole membership of the Church, to yield themselves completely to the sway of Christ as Lord, and to establish and preserve at all costs those habits of spiritual culture which ensure lives of a Christlike witnessing and spiritual power.”

The Introduction to the Report on “The Home Base of Missions” (Vol. VI.), on its very first page speaks of securing, above all else, “such a spiritual atmosphere throughout the Church, that the very temper and spirit of Jesus Christ shall live i anew in the hearts of all His followers, and that through them His life may flow forth to the world lying in darkness.”

This is further emphasised in the first chapter, which opens thus: “The subject which has been entrusted to the Commission drives us back at every turn to the question of the spiritual condition of the Home Church. Has that Church sufficient vitality for the tremendous task to which it is called? We realise that the fundamental problem is that of the deepened sincerity of the religious experience of the Church, the quality of its obedience, the intensity and daring of its faith.” At the close we read:” There can be no forward movement in missions, no great offering of life, except as these are attained through a deepening and broadening of the spiritual life of the leaders of the Church, and a real spiritual revival among the members. New methods can accomplish nothing unless begun, continued, and completed in prayer, and permeated from first to last with the Holy Spirit of God. Back to Divine wisdom, to the living power of Jesus Christ, back through prayer to the source of all power, must be the watchword of all Missionary Societies, of all the leaders of the Church, and ultimately of the entire membership, if the great commission of our Lord Jesus Christ is to be carried out. We therefore recommend that every endeavour be made to propagate the spirit and habit of prayer among all

Christian workers, old and young, confident that; when the entire Church shall devoutly pray for the] coming of the Kingdom, the triumph will already * have been achieved. We must make men understand that it is only their lack of faith and half-hearted consecration that hinders the rapid advance of the work, only their own coldness that keeps back His redemption. We must ever bear in mind that He is eager and able to save the world already redeemed by Him, if only we, His professed followers on earth, were willing that He should. We are frank to confess that it is futile to talk about making Christ known to the world unless there be a great expansion of vitality in the members of the Churches of Christendom. That this is the will of God, that the most remote human soul shall have the opportunity to know Jesus Christ as his personal Redeemer, there can be no doubt; that the opportunity and means are sufficient we are all aware; the work halts only because the entire Church is not yet in full submission to His will.”

Other commissions see and speak of the same great need in the use of words such as these. Co-operation, if it is to lead to unity, necessitates a spiritual revival, which must be in its very nature supernatural; the reinforcements needed depend on the spiritual state of the Churches which are to supply them; the very religions which Christianity is to replace teach her that her own life must first be lived on the supernatural plane, the power of a living faith in a living God.

“If our missionaries are to be fitly and fully prepared ‘to convince the world,’ they must go forth from a Church in which the Spirit of Christ is evidently at work, in whose whole policy and character and life the Gospel is continuously and irrefutably proved to be in very truth the power of God unto salvation.” Let me beg every reader, be he minister or member, to look back and take in the thoughts which have been expressed in reference to the state of the Church, until he comes to realise the intense solemnity of what that state implies, of the place which God calls her to take, and what is needed if God and the world are to find her ready for the work that awaits her.

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