GLEN S. BROWN, was one of the first graduates of the Churches of Christ Bible College, in N.S.W. He has had ministries in N.S.W. and New Zealand and at Prahran, Victoria, and at present is minister of the Church at Footscray. He was elected Conference President-Elect at the recent Conference, at which he was the preacher of the Conference Sermon which is the basis for this present pamphlet. The original sermon has been expanded at some points to the required length for this purpose.

      Ours is certainly a changing world. It always has been of course, but change in the twentieth century has accelerated in an amazing manner. Men have tended to interpret ultimate truth in terms of these changes. Being amazingly successful with machines we tend to think that this is the way the universe is made. Until quite recently it was popularly supposed that human progress could be measured simply in terms of machines which could fly faster, produce more prolifically, or make the biggest bang. The production of the machine to end all machines has made us revise this notion and to remember that there are other faculties of human spirit by which human progress can be measured.

      Not all will accept this, of course. We read a short time ago that Mr. Khrushchev, confronted with the exquisite creations of Indonesian art said, "I don't like anything . . . they represent a bygone day, an era that is past . . . if we go on like this there will be no progress machines, machines are what you need." Dr David Read suggests that this sounds like the final chorus of a materialist musical, which should go like this:

      I don't want to give the impression that modern machines are a roadblock to religion, like all of God's gifts, they are for man's good, but I take issue with the crude belief that mechanisation is the key to human life. This universe is not a machine humming and spinning through space. The Church is not a machine for churning out religion. In this changing world, the fundamental need of human life is still the same. As Dr. William Temple, in his book, "About Christ", reminds us, "It is only in the eternal and unchanging, that the human mind, let alone the human spirit, can find rest." Again, Gerhard Ebeling in "The Nature of Faith" says, "A man can only have self-knowledge if thereby God is known . . . God and man are only known in relation to each other." There must needs be that that which can kindle the flame of meaning and hope in man. The significance of the person is still a basic need.

      We respond wholeheartedly to the word of the Living Christ when He says, "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the THINGS which he possesseth." Our whole personality leaps in response toward the One who says, in the midst of this meaningless mass of modern machinery, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly:" Erastus Evans, in "Pastoral Care in a Changing World", sees this need clearly when he says, "When the glamour of new scientific discoveries has been absorbed by the human race, the individual is just as much in need of an ultimate significance for his life as he was before; indeed more so, for he sees himself as a product of the upthrust of life on a speck of stardust whirling through the aeons in a tornado of galaxies."

THE LIVING CHRIST IS IN THIS WORLD TODAY

to meet man's need. He still brings the great message of God to man. In spite of his astounding knowledge, man is still living in a hell of alienation. Alienation from God, alienation from man, and alienation from himself. It is still true that beneath the appearance of exuberant, confident, material wellbeing, contemporary Western man is a hollow shell. He remains in the mire of what John K. Galbraith called an "affluent society." Nevertheless it remains true that the living Christ is the one hope of the world. Through Him reconciliation in all these spheres of man's need is a present possibility. The modern man has a sometimes disconcerting habit of being bluntly matter-of-fact. He may well ask, "Where is this living Christ?" "Is He simply the Jesus of History, who was executed, buried and resurrected and returned to heaven some two thousand years ago?" "Is this the one who as God entered human history at Bethlehem, and has now left us to our own devices for these two millennia?" If our reply to these questions is an unqualified "Yes," it is understandable that there is so little real interest in the claims of the Christian faith.

      In 1938 the Bishop of Dornakal, in India, told a large company of church leaders about the Christian conversion of a man who had been a Hindu. This enquirer, whilst reading the New Testament was fascinated by the life of Christ and profoundly stirred by the narratives of His death. Reading on into the book of Acts, he felt he was entering a new world. In the Gospels, Jesus was everywhere in the foreground. His work was prominent, His death and resurrection paramount. But, in Acts, the man felt, Jesus was in the background, whilst the foreground was occupied by the Church, the Disciples, the Fellowship. The Church continued, so to speak, where Jesus in the flesh left off. "Therefore," said this man, "I must belong to the church which carried on the life of Christ."

      Do we realise that we exist to carry on the work that Jesus came to do? The Church looks at the world out of the eyes and heart of Jesus Christ. It beholds a world in a hell of alienation. What does the church have to offer to this world? It brings the Word and the power and the glory of reconciliation. It is then, that today Christ is alive in the Church. In such a form the Living Christ is in the world.

      Dr. D. Karl Heim, in "Jesus, the World's Perfecter," says, " . . . the existence of the church is nothing other than the perfected Christ, as the one who acts in history", and quotes Karl Ludwig Schmidt's statement in his "Theological Word Book of the New Testament," that, "Christ is the ecclesia." Emil Brunner in "The Great Invitation" says, "We are not merely to apprehend by faith the Saviour and what He once wrought for our salvation, it is rather that today, in this our earthly life, Christ must be formed in us." Dr. William Robinson, in "The Biblical Doctrine of the Church," says, "The Church is that concrete reality by which Christ becomes manifest to the world, and by which He acts in history." He says further, that it is, "this daring identification of the Christ and the Church that underlies Paul's discourses in Ephesians." In 1 Cor. 12:12 Paul identifies the Christ and the Church. His substitution of the word "Christ" when we would normally expect him to write "Church' is not accidental. Paul sees here two entities that coincide. It remains obvious that in a number of New Testament passages this thought of the identification of the Church with Christ appears. We are baptised into Christ when we are baptised into the Church, we thus become a part of "His body", of "His bride", at the same time we corporately constitute a "Colony of heaven" as Paul calls it. Thus it is that in the form of the

Church the identity of the Christ appears, and as such the Church is the Living Christ in our changing world. I am quite well aware that there are other concepts of the person of Christ made quite plain in the teaching of the New Testament, concepts which do not negative this idea, and in spite of which I assert that this matter of the identification of Christ and the Church, is the only means by which Christ may be known by the world.

      If the Church is the living Christ in our changing world, then we face the necessity of

THE RECOVERY OF CERTAINTY.

      Several years ago a Christian convert from India made a tour of churches across the United States. As his trip progressed, he became increasingly bewildered and disillusioned. At the end he told how that he had gone to America with intense expectation because he was going to the home church from which had sprung the new mission church in India. He therefore had expected to find a community of Christian people with a Christian faith that would be infinitely richer, more mature and zealous than that of the new little church struggling for its very existence in India. What did he find? It would have been disappointing and disillusioning enough if he had found simply a weaker faith. What he heard from the lips of the American Christians shocked him. Everywhere he went, he was repeatedly asked, "Do you think that Christianity, has anything to offer that is really better than what you can find in Hinduism?" What ever else this question means, it indicates widespread uncertainty in the mind of the Western Church concerning the validity of Christianity's claim to uniqueness.

      This uncertainty has existed for some time, in spite of the amount of money and personnel poured into missions in the past seventy-five years. It is the expression of a gnawing scepticism about the relevance of the Christian faith in our changing world.

      The uniqueness and universal relevance of Christianity are not to be grasped and demonstrated by a simple "look and see" method. But neither are Darwin's theory of evolution, or Einstein's theory of Relativity, or Toynbee's theory concerning birth and death of cultures. The "looking" and "seeing" involved in just understanding these theories, let alone evaluating them, taxes the best powers of the human mind. The modern spirit of open enquiry, which will not take any theory for granted, has now turned to question the claims of the Christian Faith. The membership of the church is shot through with doubt simply because it has not applied its best powers of understanding to the matter of understanding its own experience of God in Jesus Christ. Although Christians clearly accept the necessity of maturing in body, in mental attitudes, in social relationships, in economic and political responsibility, they have been content generally to remain at the level of children in their religious experience and ideas. Many surveys show the immaturity of attitudes toward God, Sin, Life, Death, The Bible, the Church, Jesus Christ. Especially does this become evident in much of our worship and in the religious resources that people have or fail to have for the meeting of the problems of every day living.

      What are the grounds for the claim to uniqueness that the Christian Church has? An eleven year old, confronted with some such question in Bible School, asked the naive yet profound question, "How did we first get in touch with God?" Let it be understood quite unequivocally that the chief driving force of the Christian mission to the world derives from this experimental character of the Christian Faith. We know that in Jesus Christ we have met God, whereas Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Plato, Mohammed, Mary Baker Eddy, Joseph Smith, Karl Marx, and a

host of others have given to men nothing but dim uncertain shadows of the reality in which human life is grounded. Without the vitality of this personal experience, Christianity becomes nothing more than a family habit or a cultural inheritance. These cannot long sustain the loyalties and decisive energies of men.

      If, however, Christianity is to be truly world-centred instead of self-centred or church-centred we must pursue this question, "How did we first get in touch with God?" As we relentlessly push this question, back beyond parents, beyond the local church, to the very commencement of the church and then back beyond that. Inevitably we come to the realisation that we didn't get in touch with God, but He got into touch with us. God's revelation to man in Jesus Christ, and God's written Word that reveals Him to us are the only adequate foundations for the necessary recovery of certitude.

      If we are, as the Church, the living Christ in our changing world, we face a further necessity in

THE REDISCOVERY OF REALITY.

      Again, Erastus Evans reminds us, that "When the Church descended to such mundane matters as just wages, racial oppression, or nuclear tests, an injured howl that churchmen should keep to their own concerns was raised at once." It is all very well to maintain that the Church is concerned with the "spiritual" aspect of man, and of course the idea does mean something, but let us be very careful that we do not banish religion to a remote and unimportant region of life. There is a "spiritual" sphere of life, but our thought must be clear about it, and when we define it we must be sure that it is not in an unchristian and unbiblical way. The Pauline distinction between body, soul, and spirit, can be pushed to a degree that becomes neither Pauline nor biblical. Let us realise that the trichotomy of popular thought in this matter is far from realistic. Man is an indivisible whole. His need is met by the living Christ in the whole of his life.

      Into the whole world, and to the whole man we are commissioned to go with the Gospel of reconciliation. The "whole world" refers not only to the horizontal spread of humanity over the face of the earth but also to the perpendicular heights and depths of human society at any one place and time, as well as the whole of the experience of human personality from the greatest heights of hope to the deepest despair. The advent of Christ into the world in the form of the Church bids us realise that something of ultimate significance is happening to the world. The whole world. We have however, lost something at least of our understanding of Christ's mission to the world in the Church. Hendrik Kraemer is largely right when he asserts that, even in its vast missionary and evangelistic programme the Church is primarily concerned with "its own increase and well-being." Herein the Church of today is manifesting that same error which was so fatal to ancient Israel. It is being assumed that the goodness and grace of God in Jesus Christ is meant for the members of the Christian community as an end in itself. There is little or no awareness that this special gift of grace imparts also a tremendous responsibility, a call to service as agents of reconciliation. It is assumed that only the church rather than the whole of creation, is the object of God's love. So the congregation repeatedly sings: "The church's one foundation is Jesus Christ HER Lord . . . from heaven He came and sought HER . . . and for HER life He died."

      This introversion of the Church's understanding of its own ministry and mission is no sure sign of deep spirituality and firm conviction. On the contrary, it is the clear expression of the central sin of selfish self-concern, with little if any of Christ's compassion for the lost and

lone. This lack of concern and conviction of relevance for the world, actually serves as a cover for a deep-seated doubt that this is really God's world, and that He rules and He seeks to redeem all nations and creatures, from the most insignificant inhabitant of the earth to the farthest starry system. The most serious stumbling block in the way of the fulfillment of the church's mission in the purposes of God is simply this loss of a sense of reality. The majority of Christians are honest enough to admit that their knowledge of the Bible and of Christian doctrine is hopelessly shallow and inadequate, partial and mixed up; that their participation in the life of the church is very much marginal in relation to their total activities; that their comprehension of Sunday morning worship and preaching is very much confused and uncertain; that their private prayer and devotion is practically non-existent. They view their Christian faith as a whole, therefore as something hesitant, tenuous, unreal and impotent. They seriously doubt that their being Christian distinguishes them in any significant way from the sea of worldly paganism in which they are immersed. In the silences of their own inner communion they seriously wonder whether Christ really does heal them of all their diseases, of body, mind and spirit. How then can such lifeless and unreal experiences fit us for the work of reconciliation in the world to which God has called us all?

      When it is truly the Spirit of God who draws, refashions, commands and empowers the members of the Christian community, when the Church is impelled from within by the Holy Spirit to live and to act in accord with the Spirit in all things in the world, so shall the redeeming power of the creator be brought to the whole creation. This central, driving, overruling sense of mission will be regained by the church only as it rediscovers and re-explores its experience of reality.

      As the church is the living Christ in this changing world, we must share

A RESOLUTE RESURGENCE TOWARD CHRISTIAN UNITY.

      In an article on "New Dimensions in Christian Unity" by David Colwell, published in the American Christian on December 16, 1962, we read, "Not many years ago discussion about Christian unity tended to fall into pragmatic terms: We spoke of the need of streamlining our operations, of the scandal of competitive action on the mission field, both at home and abroad." These aspects are still validly within our thinking. However, it cannot now be denied that we face the matter of Christian unity from a new centre. There is a new compulsion and a new motivation. We are impelled to talk to each other by the clear call of our Living Lord. Is Christ divided? How can the living Lord speak to our changing world if He is divided, and if He has a number of differing voices? Than any other single factor the one categorical imperative of the Christian Faith in this changing world of ours is Christian unity. We of Churches of Christ have talked about and formulated slogans and imagined that we more than any other Christians have been conscious of the evil fraught with many evils that the open scandal of disunity constitutes. Yet even among us, divisions are perpetrated and perpetuated on individual idiosyncrasies of interpretation and emphasis.

      In his article on "Unity and Witness" appearing in "The Australian Christian" on May 2nd, 1961, Principal E. L. Williams does well to remind us that, "It is not for one Christian to choose unity as his particular interest and for another to choose mission for his passion. Our Lord's prayer for unity that the world may believe has joined together what man dares not put asunder." There has seldom been a time when Christians of all traditions have been more ardently seeking to realise their true unity in

Christ. The modern movement--known as "ecumenical" from the Greek word meaning "the inhabited earth"--is not simply a shrewd attempt to combine forces in an emergency, but a steady seeking to find that visible unity which is Christ's clear will for His church.

      In "The Unfinished Task", Stephen Neill says, "It is not the business of the World Council of Churches to press for any particular form of union, or to issue instructions to the Churches. It is its business incessantly and clearly to recall to the Churches the meaning of 'the proclamation of the whole Gospel to the whole world by the whole Church.' It is in the light of that supreme obligation that many of our present divisions seem unreasonable and irrelevant." The hour is come when we must do something about this most vital matter of Christian unity. In the face of the fact that we, who have been pleading for Christian unity for one hundred and fifty years, have allowed this matter of unity to become little more than a traditional plea, and in face of the fact that there are other peoples making a very genuine attempt to enter into a real unity, we must move now. Talk is no longer enough. This changing world will surely refuse to allow us another one hundred and fifty years in which to decide what we will do about it. Our Living Lord is speaking to us now.

      The second report of the united commission of the Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational churches is now available. It is my conviction that the very least that this present situation and the impelling voice of our Lord will allow us to do, is to seriously study and consider this report. These Churches which so soon seem to be determined to bring into being "The Uniting Church of Australia," must remain an indictment and a challenge to every thinking person within our movement.

      With this realisation of necessity, and the reality of the call of Christ, when he utters words like, "The World," "The Gospel," "Every creature," and when we remember his High Priestly prayer, let there be among us a resolute resurgence toward the unity of the Church, that herein Christ may speak to the world.