OUR COVER

      All will recognise Alexander Campbell. This fine etching strongly depicts the character and vigour of one who pioneered the Restoration Movement in America.

      The figure forms the background to a simple symbolic representation of that ideal which is both heritage and destiny--the drawing together, in truth and love, of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. The lines, all reaching a focal point, suggest the New Testament ideal of unity--unity in Him Who is the Lord of the church and the centre of our faith and hope.

      The Federal Literature Department is pleased to publish the Manuscript of the Presidential Address delivered by W. A. Thompson at the recent 97th Annual Conference of our churches in Victoria and Tasmania, believing that it has many pertinent things to say to the members of the Restoration Movement at this time.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES--W. A. THOMPSON

      Grew up in the church at Gardiner, transferred in business to N.Z. in 1939, where he served our churches in youth and general brotherhood work and was a Director of the Auckland Y.M.C.A. In 1950 returned to Victoria and Boronia Church, served 8 years as Secretary, and is now an Elder. Immediate Past President Vic.-Tas. Conference, currently a member of Vic.-Tas. Executive, chairman of Dept. of Home Missions and Evangelism, Chairman of Advisory Dept., and Member of Nominations Committee. Member of Federal Dept. for Promotion of Christian Union. A Director of The Austral Printing and Publishing Co.

      This year has been quite a year of events for our brotherhood: If you will look back briefly with me you will recall:--

      1. W. W. Saunders was appointed our first full-time secretary of conference.

      2. A. A. Avery appointed by H.M. Department as a full-time field officer to assist the churches.

      3. D. H. Smith appointed secretary elect of H.M. Department and will succeed our beloved B. J. Combridge in 1963.

      4. Sonny Graham, a real Australian if ever there was one, has been appointed Minister of the church in Mooroopna.

      5. Youth Camp at Monbulk was burnt out in the January bushfires, but is already rebuilding.

      6. Training Classes for Diplomas of Leadership for youth workers have been most successfully run by our Dept. of Christian Education.

      These are some of the highlights of what has obviously been a year of progress as far as our brotherhood is concerned. Progress as an independent body that is!

      But has the year shown any progress along the lines of the aims of our fathers?

      Have we gone forward at all on the lines of our heritage??

      Have we progressed at all towards our destiny?

      During this conference year I have been privileged to visit a large number of our churches and to share in services with them. This has been a wonderful experience for me, and one I have appreciated very much.

      On these visits I have been most interested to note the variations in the patterns of the worship services of our churches.

      We don't normally visit many other services do we? Or not many of us anyway as we are so busy with the local work. But when we do it is surprising to find that others of our churches do some things quite differently from the way we do it in our own church.

      And I believe that is a good thing!!

      For after all, for years we have been saying:--

      In essentials unity, In non-essentials liberty, In all things charity.

      And it is good to see this liberty being practised in the forms of worship, and even though some of the differences are very great, they are not basic and so do not matter--therefore they are acceptable to all of us.

      In speaking to the churches I have been endeavouring to bring before our people the aim of unity--the very core of our heritage--the reason for which we came into being as a movement.

      As I have said many times during the year, and as has been said by many men before me, Churches of Christ were born out of a protest against sectarian division and intolerance in the churches of their day, and they aimed towards the unity of the churches.

      When this happened some 150 years ago, it was quite a unique thing!! The Christian world had passed through the old eras of domination and enforced conformity, and as W. E. Garrison puts it "The dissenters of the Church of England gloried in their liberty, and still more did the denominations in America.

      Nobody thought about unity! And our fathers revived the ideal of unity in this new setting. For the first time in 1500 years a comprehensive union of Christians was proposed, which was not required by law or enforced by the police. It was to be a unity of Christians perfectly free to divide if they wanted to. That was the new and audacious proposal."

      Yes, this emphasis on unity was a very unique thing, and, one which seemed to have a popular possibility of success. Therefore this movement flourished and went ahead.

But let us recognise here and now--it is no longer unique!!!

      The members of the other churches, over the past 50 years in particular, have come back to the theme of unity--the need for it--and are working for it with earnestness and zeal. Are we keeping pace with the prevailing mood?

      I wonder if we are and suggest that we need to beware of denominationalism and intolerance as unhealthy forms of traditionalism.

      Despite our protestations and bold claims of liberty in non-essentials, and charity in all things, (and if we are to remain unique we must not give up preaching and practising these things), so many things have tended to become essential simply because we have practised them for so long.

      We must remember that Thomas Campbell spoke of "Our brethren of all denominations" to lack in charity towards them would be to fail in our witness.

      Therefore we should have this charity towards the other churches if we would be true to our heritage--for our fathers had it! !

      This is our tradition--our heritage!

      As one writer has expressed it: "Even the denominations which were inclined to be rather unfriendly to one another during the early part of the 19th century, generally regarded one another as Christians."

      In my reading of our heritage I have found that Alexander Campbell was of this mind too!

      In his famous Lunenburg letter he said:--"Who is a Christian? Everyone that believes in his heart that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God; repents of his sins, and obeys him in all things according to his measure of knowledge of his will."

      And on the subject of immersion, in the same letter he said for himself and most of his followers: "There is no occasion for making immersion, on a profession of faith, absolutely essential to a Christian--though it may be greatly essential to his sanctification and comfort. My right hand and my right eye are greatly essential to my usefulness and happiness but not to my life; and as I could not be a perfect man without them, so I cannot be a perfect Christian without a right understanding and a cordial reception of immersion in its true scriptural meaning and design. But he that infers that none are Christians but the immersed, as greatly errs as he who affirms that none are alive but those of clear and full vision."

Do we all accept that today? I wish we did!

      I know we believe in the baptism of believers by immersion--we are keen about it and must continue to be so. But concerning those who do not understand it as we do--are not concerned as we are--let us remember they are just as committed to Christ as we are.

      Let us remember: "In all things charity."

      Let us respect their integrity and

call them our brethren--for they are just that.

      Now please don't misunderstand me--I have not suggested that we give away our position on baptism--What I have said is that the man who does not, and cannot, see it our way should not be put "beyond the pale."

      Don't let us be so dogmatic that we legislate the other Christians out of Christianity! They are serving the same Christ as we are serving--He is our only asset.

In our heritage we find that--

      An honest, free and progressive investigation of the Scriptures was advocated years ago, in a statement made in 1869 by Isaac Errett, Editor of the Christian Standard.

      He emphasised the Disciples' attitude of freedom towards the investigation of the Scriptures, and freedom of religious discussion, which seemed to be threatened from within, and he wrote: "It is fatal to assume that we have certainly learned all that the Bible teaches. This has been the silly and baneful conceit of all that have gone before us.

      Must every man be branded with heresy or apostasy whose ripe investigations lead him out of our ruts? Must free investigation be smothered by a timid conservatism or a presumptuous bigotry, that takes alarm at every step of progress?

      Errors may sometimes be thrust upon us, but free and kind discussion will soon correct them. There is not a hundredth part of the danger from an occasional outcropping of error as the result of free thought and free speech as there is in Roman Catholic oppression.

      An attempt to preserve union on such conditions not only renders it worthless by the sacrifice of liberty, but will defeat its own purpose, and compel in time, new revolutionary movements."

      I believe that to push on towards that unity, we must remember and practise that liberty and that charity so often quoted.

      The divisions in Christendom should be a great burden upon our consciences, and even though there is a long way to go to reach unity--probably many many years--there is already great agreement among most Christians on the essentials of Christian belief, allowing for some differences of emphasis or interpretation.

      There is even more complete agreement on Christian morals.

      And diverse modes of worship cannot now be considered as justifying the perpetuation of our divisions.

      We are largely one in our loyalty to Jesus Christ.

      When we come down to grass roots, isn't a main cause of division, our loyalty to a denomination--the one to which a person belongs?

      We justify our exclusiveness as being derived from our loyalty to God. No doubt we are sincere in this, but it brings us to an impasse which prevents us reaching unity.

      We need to consider more carefully whether the two loyalties are really identical.

      When we examine the grounds of our loyalty to our own particular church, I think you will agree that we are forced to recognise that our sentiment is influenced by many factors which are not essentially religious.

      Sometimes it is mere familiarity or custom that makes us suspicious of a different tradition!

      The accidents of history are perpetuated because we have accepted them.

      Barriers of class, of colour, of language, of culture, become woven into our religious outlook and become real obstacles to unity.

      We are not consciously hypocrites, not really, but we deceive ourselves by our very sincerity.

      Our leaders I believe are recognising the large part these non-theological factors play in the disunity of Christians, and we are hearing more about them as they are brought into the open.

      But the rank and file members--you and me--we too must become aware of our unconscious prejudices masquerading as religious loyalty.

      Bearing that in mind--Where do we go? What do we do?

      Well are we aware of the urgency for the unity of the church?

      Let's think about that for a moment! First of all, what is the main aim of the church? For what does it exist?

      Surely it is Evangelistic--this main aim--nothing more or less than that those who do not know Christ may come to know Him!

      And for this cause we should be harnessing every man and woman professing a Christian faith. And we need to watch ourselves in this realm of Christian witness. We so often loudly lament the chilling apathy of our times, but the truth is that this is a day of opportunity, unrivalled opportunity if only we would seize it.

      It is easy and common to accuse the ministers of being lazy and out of touch with reality. Who has not heard their preaching described as prosaic and dull?

      There may be some truth in the charge though it can be greatly exaggerated. Some are lazy but most are sincere and hard-working.

      But if we really want to know the weaknesses of the church we find them in our lay members, in you and in me. We all know the Mormons, and despite our feelings about their theology and dogma, they do impress us. They possess no regular ministers but make a wide impact out of all proportion to their number. And the secret is that they are all missionary-minded. The banker, the lawyer, the teacher, the doctor, the journalist--all are live wires conducting the current of their faith to the world.

What will make US feel the urgency to break through our caution and our defences?

      It is just because this world is so appallingly divided that it must be given an unmistakable demonstration of the power of Christ to give unity.

      In a day when the walls of partition--whether they be of iron or bamboo, or of apartheid enactments--rise higher and higher, only a showing forth, in that which claims to be his body, of Christ's power to break down and make men one, can be sufficient.

      And the need is urgent!

      Let's not deceive ourselves by quoting all that we are doing in the way of missions, both at home and abroad. We surely do deceive ourselves if we pretend that in any serious degree the churches are organised for missions either at home or overseas.

      Far too much effort is being wasted on maintaining a set-up that caters for the religious tastes and preferences of the small church-going minority.

      And far too little drastic reordering of our resources and ways to try to get to grips with a generation in which the great mass is wholly alienated from the church and its gospel.

      Not only if we look right out to the divided world in which we live but also if we look at our neighbours, we shall see the irrelevance of our divisions, and the way they deny the reconciling gospel we are called to proclaim.

      The need of the world is so great, so urgent, that a united front is imperative!

      We need to be zealous in study. We need to be open in mind. We need to be constant in prayer.

      We need to be urgent and obedient in action, that we may be fit to be used in this task of evangelising the world. To contribute to this end as a body, we Churches of Christ must get our own house in order. We have our Departments of Conference, elected democratically by the member churches. Through them we work, seeking to advance the cause of Christianity.

      The Department of Home Missions and Evangelism secretary, B. J. Combridge has prepared a booklet on a Federal basis, which seeks to help the churches to bring back the responsibility of evangelism to the individual church member.

      Field Officer A. Avery is out in the churches helping in this way too, to bring a realisation to the man in the pew, the "one meeting a Sunday" and one meeting a week man, that it is his job to evangelise.

      I have heard it said that a tent mission is the only way to effectively evangelise.

      May I respectfully answer that they did not use tents in the days of the apostles they used "man to man" (the women of our churches are using "woman to woman") as the method, and that is what we want today more than anything else, and this is what your Department of Home Missions and Evangelism is trying to foster.

      Your Department of Christian Education is doing the same thing--leaders are being trained to train the youth in just that--that's what they are doing in their camps too!

      In Overseas Missions work in India and the Islands our workers are training local leaders so that they can lead and tell their own people the Christian message.

      Your Aborigines Missions Department is doing just the same thing too!

      Federal Literature Department is putting out material to make us think--and surely we need to do that to progress in our faith. It's what our fathers did to give us our heritage, and they would want us to do likewise and not blindly accept and follow their pattern.

      Federal Christian Union Department is trying to foster understanding with other Christians and that is what they should be doing to be true to our heritage.

      Federal College of The Bible exists to train leaders to train more and more people to evangelise.

      These, and all other Departments of our conference are the means by which we build up for a more effective witness.

      Therefore surely in and through these avenues we should be concentrating all our energies and forgetting our differences.

      Our fathers had their differences as we well know, but they got on together well enough to give us our heritage.

      Cannot we do likewise and prove to the Christian community at large, that as we can exist happily with our differences, so could the various Christian faiths exist happily together in a bond of union.

      Then we would be nearer that so urgently needed common platform from which the man in the street might be reached. And all the while as individuals we would be truly living our faith, and be missionaries in the true sense of the word.

      For if nothing else, just that is our true heritage, and as expressed by Winifred Garrison: "Our destiny will be determined by our decisions in respect to the issues presented by the ecumenical movement, and these decisions will depend greatly upon our willingness and ability to use the best of our heritage from the past in the interest of the present and the future."