Expositions of Holy Scripture: Second Kings Chapters VIII to End and Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Esther, Job, Proverbs, and EcclesiastesMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Second Kings Chapters VIII to End and Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Esther, Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes
And yet again what are we organised for? Not merely for our own growth
or spiritual advantage, but also, and more especially, for spreading
faith in Christ and advancing His glory. All our organisation, then,
is but an arrangement for doing our work, and if it hinders that, it
is cumbrous and must be cut away or modified, at all hazards.
Ecclesiastical martinets are still to be found, to whom drill is
all-important, and who see no use in irregular valour, but they are a
diminishing number, and they may be recommended to ponder the old wise
saying: 'Where no oxen are, the crib is clean, but much increase is by
the strength of the ox.' If the one aim is a 'clean crib' the best way
to secure that is to keep it empty; but if a harvest is the aim, there
must be cultivation, and one must accept the consequences of having a
strong team to plough. The end of drill is fighting. The parade-ground
and its exercising is in order that a corps may be hurled against the
enemy, or may stand unmoved, like a solid breakwater against a charge
which it flings off in idle spray, and the end of the Church's
organisation is that it may move _en masse_, without waste,
against the enemy.
But a further guiding principle to shape Christian organisation is
that of the Church as the body of Christ. That requires that there
shall be work for every member. Christ has endowed His members with
varying gifts, powers, opportunities, and has set them in diverse
circumstances, that each may give his own contribution to the general
stock of work. Our theory is that each man has his own proper gift
from God, 'one after this manner, and another after that.' But what is
our practice? Take any congregation of Christian people in any of our
churches, and especially in the Free Churches of which I know most,
and is there anything like this wide diversity of forms of service, to
which each contributes? A handful of people do all the work, and the
remainder are idlers. The same small section are in evidence always,
and the rest are nowhere. There are but a few bits of coloured glass
in a kaleidoscope, they take different patterns when the tube is
turned, but they are always the same bits of glass.
There needs to be a far greater variety of forms of work for our
people and more workers in the field. There are too few wheels for the
quantity of water in the river, and, partly for that reason, the
amount of water that runs waste over the sluice is deplorable. There
is a danger in having too many spindles for the power available, but
the danger in modern church organisation is exactly the other way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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