Our Real Estate
W. Carl Ketcherside
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The changing world will demand a changing approach if we are to make any impact upon it with the Christian witness. And we do not like to change our tactics! We would prefer to continue with "business as usual" and pad our reports to make it appear that we are gaining. We have been betrayed into a "tried and true" philosophy which has convinced us that anything we have tried is true, and anything we have not tried cannot be. But time is running out on us while the world is outrunning us!
It is difficult for us to contemplate taking the world for Christ without becoming involved with building programs, structures and edifices. Accordingly, because of this emphasis, our concern is often not to find where stark need exists, but where we can find a building site with space for a parking lot. We may deliberately move the leaven out of an area of real mission into one of unconcern, but which is compatible with our "image."
But our transformation from a rural to an urban society, and the corresponding ascendancy of backward nations with their increasing population figures, may force us to completely re-think our strategy. We may find that some things which we regarded as essential are only incidental to the work of the Master in our generation.
We cannot always retreat from reality in spite of our success in doing so thus far. The myth that we can flee to affluent suburbia and maintain the kingdom of heaven as a commonwealth of white middle-class Americans will fade away under the cold blue light of fact. We must go back into the world which we left for it is a part of the "all the world" into which we have been sent. And it doesn't make any difference how sticky, or dirty, or smelly it may be. We were not told to go into the clean, sanitary part of the world, but into all of it, and some of it is pretty messy, and often bloody!
Suppose we resolve to leave our air-conditioned salt shakers and penetrate the strange world at our urban doorsteps, to lose our lives in order to find them! No one can ever really influence those who are forced by a hundred factors, known and unknown, to dwell in the inner city ghetto, unless he moves into the area, and identifies with them as Jesus did with us. Gospel meetings and crusades will not reach them. Those who conduct such spectacles really hope they will not be packed with the unkempt and unwashed, the pimps and prostitutes, the addicts and alcoholics. Nothing would create more consternation than for a great multitude of these to "come early and get a good seat." The people who "amount to something" would soon absent themselves from the place and regard the effort as a flop!
You can't really do much good by bringing a little "Jesus talk" and dumping it in the inner city each evening, and then racing your car from the area as soon as the "ordeal" is over. You have to drop behind the lines as a volunteer commando for Christ, and learn to go native, and to live off the area. You have to get accustomed to flies and cockroaches in the bedroom, and to rats and mice in the kitchen. You may have to ride elevators to vertical high-rise slums, which stink from urine and fecal matter. And you may also have to endure with compassion the language of those who accost you
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Our problem is that we must learn to love mankind and not just a certain kind of man. We must become human sculptors in the school of Christ, and envision the image of God, scarred and broken, underneath the hard exterior. We must learn how to bring it to the surface with the tools of love and faith. And this requires more than mere casual association. Often we are held back from the "inner city" because we have no church buildings, and yet these could prove a hindrance.
When a few people are led to Christ in a high-rise apartment building, let them meet in one of the apartments. Let those in other buildings do the same. Each place may arrange its time of meeting on Lord's Day to suit the schedule of the attendants. A little "church in the house" whose adherents must work all day as chauffeurs, or maids, or cooks, might meet early in the morning, or late in the evening. The coffee table in the living-room, or the breakfast table in the kitchen, could become the Lord's table. There might be as many communities of the saints as there are great buildings in a housing project! Jesus can be a good many places at the same time!
Such meetings could be more "sharing experiences" than anything else. Stately ritual, robes, choirs, and all of the other paraphernalia of the modern institutional church would seem out of place in a little apartment. There would be little need for someone to bring in a pulpit stand and deliver a formal address. But it would be relatively easy to capture the family feeling which provides warmth and understanding. And it is the sense of "belonging" which the Way must restore in our day of the lonely crowd. The larger the congregation the harder it becomes to implement the command to "bear one another's burdens," but a house church in the teeming inner city can develop a real sense of compassion for all.
It is not really a valid argument that we must own an elaborate meetinghouse in which to proclaim Jesus to the lost. Christianity had its greatest growth during the almost three hundred years when it owned no buildings. A study of the book of Acts will reveal that the Good News was heralded forth in the Jewish temple, in synagogues, in a vehicle on the main highway, in private homes, on a river bank, in prison, in the inner city marketplace, in a Greek lecture-hall, in a Roman court, etc. The only place where the preaching was not done was the one place where most of it is done in our day--a house constructed by the saints for the purpose!
We do not argue that it is wrong for the saints to own communal real estate, or that it is wrong to speak in ecclesiastical edifices, or that we should disband suburban or rural communities of believers. Not at all! We simply say that when we use the lack of church-owned real estate as an excuse for not penetrating any area we are badly at fault in our reasoning. The church is people! And people who are saved can fulfill their mission only when they confront people who are lost with the claims of the risen Lord.
In the Bible we do not read of a Christian moving a sinner from where he was to go hear someone tell him what to do to be saved. Our task is to get men and women into Christ, not into buildings. It may yet be proven that we made a mistake in providing American funds for mission compounds and structures in foreign lands. We might have helped more by taking a knowledge of Christ and allowing the natives to erect their own meetingplaces or to gather where they would and could, even under the shade of trees. Often we have constructed a command headquarters before we had a soldier in the field. A changing world may force us in some places to abandon our comfortable barracks and go back to the foxholes and trenches on the edge of "No Man's Land." It would not always be a tragedy if we were forced to flee to Christ instead of to the suburbs! Our real estate in Him does not depend upon real estate.