3. They will thoroughly democratize the life of the church, making it
the rallying place of a genuine Christian fraternity, in which men of
all ranks and stations meet on a common level, ignoring the distinctions
of rich and poor, cultured and ignorant, and emphasizing the fact of
Christian brotherhood. We have churches which profess democracy, but
there is reason to fear that many of them are little better than
oligarchies; that some of them come near to being monarchies. The new
leadership will discern the importance of making every member of the
brotherhood, no matter how humble, a partaker of its responsibilities,
and a helper in its services. They will know that the problem of church
administration is to make every man feel that he is needed. They will
grasp the significance of Paul's figure of the body and its members, and
will see that "those members of the body which seem to be more feeble
are necessary," and that "those parts of the body which are less
honorable" ought to receive "more abundant honor." They will have
workingmen in their vestries and their sessions and their boards of
trustees. They will show to all the world that they have accepted the
word of Jesus: "One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are
brethren."
4. This means that the life of the church will not only be thoroughly
democratized, but greatly simplified. All its administration will take
on plainer and less luxurious forms. The splendors of architecture and
art, of upholstery and decoration, of ecclesiastical millinery and
music, with which we now so often seek to attract men to the house of
God, will be put aside; and the followers of Jesus Christ will get near
enough to him to have some sense of the fitness of things in the
ordering of the houses of worship where the Carpenter is the social
leader and where rich and poor meet as one brotherhood.
Instead, therefore, of permitting the church to be invaded and
vulgarized by the luxury and extravagance of the world, they will turn
the current in the other direction. The church, under the new
leadership, will not take its cue from the world; it will enforce its
own standards upon the world. "Out of Zion will go forth the law."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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