The Unsolved Problem. How the Church Is to Be Lifted to a Higher Level
The one object of the World Missionary Conference was to take all the problems connected with missionary work and to strive so to solve them as to form the basis of a missionary science in which all the Churches could unite. And by all accounts the attempt has met with wonderful success.
And yet the chief and the most difficult problem of all has not been solved. Every question in regard to the organisation of mission work at home and abroad has been answered, but it is admitted that the most important problem of all is, how the Church is to be roused to that deeper and fuller life in Christ, without which there is no possibility of Christ being made known to all the world in this generation. The Conference appears to have thought that this question must be left to the Churches themselves. And yet one cannot but think that the Conference might have spoken out with great authority and power, suggesting to the Churches how to begin, and what to do, for kindling the enthusiasm without which the aim of the Conference cannot be attained.
In Dr. Mott’s book, The Decisive Hour of Christian Missions, he devotes the first three chapters to a survey of the field, and the indication of what the hopeful signs are as well as the threatening dangers that urge to immediate action. Chapter IV. bears the title, “The First Great Requirement: An Adequate Plan.” After pointing out the almost insuperable difficulties which have to be overcome, ere the thought and life of whole nations can be changed, he asks, “How is such a seemingly impossible task to be accomplished?” and gives the answer that the first essential is, that the Church should have before it a plan, adequate in scope, in thoroughness, in strategy, and methods, to meet the situation. The chapter is devoted to point out the main features of such a scheme.
If the task that the Church has in the mission field is so difficult, that it cannot be undertaken without an adequate plan, as the very first requirement, what are we to think of the far harder task to which the Church at home is called, of rousing Christians out of their apathy, and training them to become the devoted servants of Christ, full of enthusiasm for the King and His Kingdom? In a previous chapter we saw how strongly, almost hopelessly, the Conference thought of the present state of the Church. They have stated the problem with terrible clearness, but left it unsolved. They have not given us any plan for the campaign, and as yet there is not much indication that the Churches as such are girding themselves for this work of supreme importance. The leading of Christians on to that deeper and intenser vitality, to that more abundant life in Christ, without which the work cannot possibly be done, is a question of life or death.
It is with the greatest diffidence that I venture to make some suggestions as to what is needed if the Churches are really to gird themselves for the task that the Conference has left to them.
i. We shall first of all have to set clearly before ourselves and others, what the true calling of the Church is, and of every believer. Christ expects that every one that knows His love shall tell of it. Christ claims that every one who is made partaker of His redemption shall yield himself, as the first object of his existence, to live for the coming of His Kingdom. Christ asks and expects that, just as the loyal subjects of a king are ready in time of war to give their life for the kingdom, so His redeemed ones, in the power of His Spirit and His love, shall live not for themselves, but entirely for Him who died and lives for them.
As long as these thoughts are counted too high, and are not accepted as the very ground work of the relation between Christ and His Church and every member of it, our attempt to lift the Church into the more abundant life will be in vain. Unless God’s children can be brought to accept of this standard and to count such a life their highest happiness, and to believe in the power of Christ to work and maintain it in them, there will be little hope of that intense vitality without which the Church cannot fulfil her calling.
2. A second step will be the discovery of what the real cause of the evil is, its terrible power over us, and our utter impotence to over come it. It will not be enough that we confess that we have been unfaithful to Christ’s charge, and that it is our guilt that men are perishing in darkness. We must go deeper than this. We must ask how it comes that, with our faith in Christ, there has been so little love to Him, and the souls He has entrusted to us, that we could imagine that our religion was pleasing to God, while all the time we were grieving our Lord by the neglect of His last and most cherished commands. We shall find that, at the root of all, lies the selfishness that sought and looked to Christ for our own personal salvation; the worldliness that kept us from living in the power of His death and resurrection; and the self-satisfaction that rested content with a religion which was for the greater part in the power of human wisdom and in the form of godliness. We shall have to be brought to the conviction that there is an entire revolution in our inner life needed: the God on Whom we counted to bring us out of Egypt, in conversion and pardon, must bring us, by a still more mighty experience of His grace, into that life of the New Covenant in which God will dwell with us and walk with us.
3. Who is to take the initiative in all this? Shall it be a Conference, which, just as the Edinburgh Conference did with regard to the Foreign Field, seeks to master and formulate all that is needed in connection with the spiritual work? Or can we count upon each Church considering the question separately, and giving time in its Assembly, or Council, or Congress, to deal with this subject as one of the most important that could be brought before it, and then leading the way in that deep humiliation and fervent supplication which is absolutely essential, if the longed-for change is to come? Or shall it be left to individual men to gather around them small companies, to begin the work of confession, and of intercession for the power of the Holy Spirit through Whom alone the supernatural quickening can be wrought?
4. And who are to be the agents in carrying out this work? We all naturally think of the ministers as God’s messengers, who have been given by Christ, “to perfect the saints for their work of the ministry in building up the body of Christ.” Paul felt how absolutely he was dependent on the prayers of believers. Let us begin at once and beseech God that He would raise up men in the ministry, with the courage of their convictions, to sound the call to a new repentance and the new consecration, and in the boldness of faith to tell what Christ is going to do for the Church if it will but yield to Him.
But we shall not only need to look to the ministers, but kto encourage every Christian who is seeking in earnest to serve Christ, to take part in the great Crusade for winning soldiers for the Lord’s army. There are many who are longing for some one to lead them out into a life of liberty and devotion to Christ, which they have seen from afar, but have never yet been able to attain. Let men and women take courage and speak out, telling those around them what happiness there is in a life spent for Christ, and what certainty of strength there is to be found in Him.
As those who have already taken part in the great work of intercession for missions begin to pray importunately for the quickening of the Church around them, some hearts that have hitherto been content with the hope of heaven as the one aim of their Christian life, will begin to waken up to the attraction of Christ’s claim, as it is brought to them by living witnesses around them, and God will most assuredly hear prayer and give His blessing.
5. “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came upon them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.” In the plan of campaign everything depends upon the supernatural; upon the all-sufficiency of God; upon His infinite love and power, yielding Himself to be led by the prayers of His children to the place where His Spirit is to descend, and to the work that He is to do. Nothing less is needed than a new creation, a resurrection from the dead, bringing forth out of carnal, worldly Christians the new creature in Christ Jesus, in which old things are passed away, and all things are become new. Nothing less than this is to be our aim and expectation. And the more absolutely we believe that God alone can, that God most surely will, quicken the dead, the more simple and unceasing will be our persistent importunate prayer that God Himself will do for us what to human thought appears impossible.
6. One word more. Let us never forget — everything begins with and depends upon the individual. Let no one who hears the call of God to this new consecration wait for the Church, or wait for his brethren. Let him offer himself with his whole being that Christ may be magnified through him. Dear fellow-Christian, begin at once, and give God no rest until Christ has the place in your heart which He claims. Let devoted loyalty to His Kingdom be the fruit of intense attachment to His person. Let His love become a holy passion, and let Him find in you one upon whom He can count to seek above everything and at any sacrifice, that His name may be made known to every creature.
Depend upon it: God will use you to lift others around you into the fulness and the fruitfulness of the abundant life in Christ Jesus.
God grant that the unsolved problem may find its solution in the fervent prayer of His believing people!