The Changing Scene

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     Human beings never welcome the news that something they have long cherished is untrue: they almost always reply to that news by reviling its promulgator.--H. L. Mencken in "Minority Report."

     An entomologist, that is a bug-studier, could tell you without batting an eye that a gadfly is of the family Tabanidae. I didn't know that back when I used to drive a two-row cultivator pulled by a nervous team, or try to milk a jittery cow with huge horseflies buzzing the scene and crash-diving on the old girl's hide. And now I guess it doesn't make any difference whether I know it or not. When we talk about gadflies we generally refer to someone who goads our sacred cows, and "bugs" the brethren. A good way to get into real trouble with the folks is to stick a hatpin into a favorite balloon.

     You'll forgive me, then, if I deny any ambition to prod one of our borrowed institutions which we have had around "the Lord's church" so long we now think it's scriptural, just as we do a lot of other things we've invented or shoplifted from the bargain counters of some of our sectarian neighbors. Really I no longer get a bang out of pointing out that the whole idea of a professional ministry is foreign to the very nature of the family of God. Brethren do not want to re-consider their practice in the light of the word. They simply prefer to be left alone with it while they "restore" the primitive order.

     It used to be that most everyone thought I was kind of a crackpot, or on an anti-institutional "high" for advocating what all of our pioneers contended for so consistently. The generally expressed view was that even if the ministry of all the saints was scriptural it wouldn't work in this generation when the faith has degenerated into a spectator sport. Our brethren, unlike the Savior, come not to minister, but to be ministered unto. While he came to give his life they are content to come and give their money to keep the machinery running and the gears operating.

     This does not mean they are not sincere. It does not imply they are not children of the Father and my brothers and sisters. They are victims, as we all are, of the amalgamation of the once-delivered faith with cultural influences and affluent western civilization values. We have become organized and institutionalized. We cannot do anything Jesus wants done until we form a committee and pass a bunch of by-laws. We've painted ourselves into a corner and now the first and greatest commandment is "Thou shalt not rock the boat," and the second is like unto it, "Thou shalt not make waves." All of us want to be faithful, but our problem is how to be faithful to Jesus while also being faithful to the image we have carved out.

     A lot of good brethren used to think that the ultimate goal was to get a huge congregation, erect a massive cathedral and secure a staff consisting of a senior

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minister, an associate minister, a youth minister, a minister of education, and a minister of evangelism. The prime task of the elders was to arrange try-outs for rival candidates, bargain with them about salary and fringe benefits and hire the ones who could improve the community image. It was argued, rather vehemently, that we could not hold the people without a good pulpit man, an orator of outstanding ability. No one ever stopped to ask whether we ever truly had those whom you have to keep buckled into their seats with oratory.

     Then something happened. A revolution occurred in the world around us and "the establishment" came under fire. The establishment consisted of the political, the economic and the educational systems. It came to be believed these were always operated by an "in group" to manipulate the masses and to perpetuate injustices. Persons really meant nothing except as they were gears in the whirring wheels. As always, the revolution lapped over into opposition to entrenched religion.

     A lot of good folk thought the church would not be affected because it was not of this world. The body of Christ is not of this world but the institutional church is very much of this world. For years it has been talking about "the business" of the church, and has been trying to ape the world to get the job done. That is why it was affected by the industrial revolution, and also by the Space Age revolution. And the recent revolutionaries argued that the church has always tolerated greed and practiced racial hatred and segregation, using minority groups to provide entertainment because of their quaint mannerisms. Anyone who thinks this has not been true in the so-called restoration movement needs only to recall how Marshall Keeble, a genial conformist was used to attract white people to a tent which sometimes had a rope stretched down the aisle, with one side reserved for white folk and the other used as a "nigger heaven" like they had in theaters.

     In politics the battle raged around the police as guardians of the institution, and against judges as its protectors. In economics it zeroed in on corporation managers, and in education against the administrators, some of whom were locked in their offices while others were locked out. The protesters were not heard by most of us because we were trying to yell louder at them than they did at us.

     One reason we were not bothered too greatly was because the protest against the church and organized religion took a slightly different turn. People just dropped out, frustrated, empty and sick at heart, because they were hungry. And most of us thought it was good riddance of bad rubbish, which shows how low we can fall, when we think of God's thirsty people as rubbish. Jesus did not die for rubbish or garbage but for people. But some of us would rather live with garbage than with people.

     In any event, when the revolution was directed against the religious establishment it had to seek out as most revolutions do, a figure who was deemed responsible for the closed-door policy. Since the clergyman, or professional preacher was regarded as the authorized spokesman for, and the "top banana" in the religious structure, he lost face. He was toppled from his former pinnacle and his pronouncements, like the stock market, hit a new low in value.

     How far he fell in the minds of those who were crystallizing a new culture can best be understood when it is recalled that the village preacher was once called the dominie, or lord, and then the parson. This is simply an Anglo-Saxon word for "the person." The local curate was the man of highest honor. Often he was the only person who could read. Those who received a letter had to visit him to learn what was in it and to have him reply in their behalf. When they raised a good crop of vegetables they always took the preacher enough to see him through the winter. When they butchered, they took him some of the best cuts of meat. He was always called upon to pray at school functions, and

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was the only one called upon to return thanks for blessings in any home he visited.

     He was quite literally the person in the community. He was expected to talk in a different way, and to have a wholly different bearing from others. When he was seen approaching, ribald laughter was softened, and shady stories being told by members of the flock were suddenly brought to a screeching halt. He lived in the parsonage, the home of "the person" and some of our brethren wholly unaware that the world has changed about them still call their place of residence "the parsonage." Some of them do not even know what it means, and most of them are unconscious of the fact that the glory has departed.

     I was born into "the old world" when science had not yet made possible the intellectual breakthrough and the preacher's word was still an end to all controversy. But now the community at large no longer regards the preacher's home as the orb around which all else revolves as satellites. So much did the reputation of the clergyman fall (call him what you will) in the eyes of the educated world that the surest way to empty an auditorium on a university campus was to announce that a minister would speak. There were exceptions but they were rare indeed. Men such as Billy Graham, with smooth-functioning machines, could drum up a crowd, but lesser lights who tried to duplicate his crusades had to organize furiously to import busloads of constituents from their own segments of the religious complex to make even a fair showing.

     For one thing, the smart young thinkers of our day, steeped in history, knew about the original religious crusades, and the very word turned them off. It will always be a real question as to how much we have contributed to the energy shortage by "a crusade" conducted in a large central auditorium by a personable brother from Arkansas, or somewhere else. The last one I attended found the place just about surrounded with buses bearing the label "Church of Christ." Pressure was put on to bring sinners to be converted by the sermon under the influence of crowd enthusiasm and mass psychology.

     The last night I attended was a little like "old home" week at one of "our colleges," with people standing up on the seats before the show got under way to wave at someone from down home, and wives hunching their husbands to keep them awake. The message was the good news about Hell and who would have the red carpet treatment of the devil. It was apparent that hell would be more crowded than the auditorium. Across the street was the jail noted for its homosexual rapes. A block away was the police station with its constant parade of prostitutes, addicts and pushers. The little island of light was surrounded by the pagan world, but no one seemed to know it. They came and listened and got in the buses and went home, thrilled that hell was not for them!

     I am happy when anyone is baptized into that wonderful glorious relationship with my precious Lord, blessed be his name, whether it is in a portable baptistery erected on a huge stage, or in a creek in the cow pasture, such as the site of my own obedience, while simple country folk sang, "O happy day that fixed my choice on thee my Savior and my God," as they looked through the shimmer of their tears. But I occasionally have vagrant thoughts about such things as crusades among people who are proud that they "call Bible things by Bible names, and do Bible things in Bible ways."

     Like the university students, I am probably prejudiced by my knowledge of history which indicates that "the crusaders" were whipped into a frenzy by some pretty scroungy characters like Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless. Fortunately, the brethren who promote our crusades are good men, earnest men, eager to capture the "holy land" from the agnostic Turks and the arrogant Muslims of our generation. But they do not go where these are. Our real problem is that we meet together to talk

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among ourselves about other people, but the other people do not know we are there, unless someone persuades them to come.

     Recently I talked to an enthusiastic and well-meaning brother who wanted to organize a "Children's Crusade." Young people would do the singing, act as ushers, lead in prayers, and do the preaching. I did not tell him that the original "children's crusade" set up in France, by Stephen, a shepherd-boy of Cloyes, ended in disaster with the kids sold into slavery. It never fails to impress me that in the days of yore, described in the scriptures, no one who met a sinner ever hauled him somewhere else to hear someone else tell him about Jesus. No one ever organized something first in order to tell the old, old story. I have known men who have been secretaries of "evangelism committees" for years, who have never once visited a neighbor to talk about Jesus. All they have ever done is to interview professional "Jesus talkers" to try and hire one to do the work God has called us all to do. It could be that bringing in someone from a distance will have more effect upon the community because he is not so well-known. In some cases it is a good thing he isn't. Sometimes our brand of Christianity suffers as folk come to know us better. It does not wear well under the constant observation of skeptical pagans.

     Telling people about Jesus is not a professional job. Grace has not been put into the hands of suave dispensers to be glibly dispensed. Because we have hoodwinked ourselves into thinking it is, our motto now is, "There he is. Lord, send him!" We have about come to the end of our string. Prices have been going up. The cost of preaching the good news is inflated. Getting a good preacher is as difficult as getting a good plumber. Those who have a record of "success" and who can demand a princely sum including fringe benefits--housing, car allowance, secretary, social security assessments paid, and three meetings per year to pick up enough extra to buy the children's school clothes--can negotiate with the pulpit committee (whatever that is), and turn down the call. Many are called but few choose to come. It is evident from reading his letters that Paul was not a good organizer. No wonder he had to make tents.

     Do not get me wrong. I am not blaming the preachers at all. Most of them are not paid too much. They must combine the talents of office administrator, community co-ordinator, hospital chaplain, director of organized activities, camp supervisor, liasion man, umpire, referee and trouble-shooter. I doubt you could ever adequately reimburse a man for exercising the courage, or poor judgment, to hire out to a congregation whose members have fought, gouged and hacked away at each other for three generations while singing "Peace, peace, wonderful peace, coming down from the Father above." What is it worth for walking boldly into a den of brotherly lions bearing a signboard reading "Church of Christ--Romans 16:16"? What is the going rate for sticking your head into a meat grinder or jumping headlong into a community rock crusher?

     What kind of salary can recompense one who clings to a job because of a commitment made around a campfire when he was fourteen years old, and who knows that his disillusioned wife is slowly coming unglued with her personality ripped to shreds and torn to tatters by trying to "keep up the image"? How can you pay a man for driving him to the brink of insanity because even his

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most intimate relationship with his wife is a matter of cold routine and duty because she realizes she married a man who is owned by others and these have first call upon him because they own the house, they put up the money, and they have first claim upon him? What can you pay a man to rear his children in a goldfish bowl or a shop window where everyone is watching for a flaw or looking for a lapse in a freckle-faced kid who knows that a family picnic is always contingent upon someone not going to the hospital with a ruptured appendix, falling off the tractor with a heart attack, or having a dish-throwing contest after three weeks of fighting and bickering "in the name of the Lord"? How do you make it up to a man whose son said, "My Dad was so busy saving the world he lost his own children"?

     No, the preachers are not to blame! If they all quit tonight and went to work in service stations or teaching school, it would not cure the situation. It would come unraveled like a sweater on which someone pulled the wrong thread. You see, the congregations are not to blame either! Not even the "official board," whatever it is, and the elders and deacons who invented it are to blame. What is to blame is The System. We did not create it. We inherited it. Probably no one created it. It is like Topsy in Uncle Tom's Cabin who said she was not born, she just "growed." Like the machines of industry, so is the system. We no longer have it, now it has us. We've tried to make ourselves believe that it is of God, that He is the Father of a system instead of sons and daughters. We've tried to make ourselves believe that it is the body of Christ, and that he is the head of a system instead of living members. And we quote scriptures to clothe the system with respectability so that the shame of its nakedness will not appear.

     Now the wheels are whirring at such a rate we cannot think. We are dizzy with meetings, many of which are meaningless. We have loaded calendars with all kinds of inane gatherings which keep our intellects down to the minimum and assure we will not think too deeply, nor reflect upon our direction. The merry-go-round of religion never stops, and the music is never silenced. It was Georges Bernanos, the French priest and philosopher, who wrote the most poignant stuff about what happens when you get caught in the machinery. Once he said:

     "I ask God's forgiveness if the spectacle of the fool scratching himself affords me pleasure. The evil is not in the tool but in the mystery that encourages and exploits him, that encourages in order to exploit. The brain of the fool is not an empty brain, it is a congested brain wherein the ideas ferment instead of being assimilated, like undigested food in an infected colon. When one reflects on the means of coercion that the System has at its disposal and that grow more powerful each time, one realizes that the mind can keep its freedom only at the cost of an unremitting effort. And which of us can boast of keeping up our efforts to the end? Which of us can be sure, not only of resisting all the slogans, but of resisting the temptation to set one slogan against another? Moreover, the System indulges in any form of self-justification; there is no time; the catastrophes follow each other too quickly. It prefers to impress its victims with the idea of an inevitable necessity."

     The System (call it what you will, even "Church of Christ"), which often destroys integrity and makes good men compromise, is not God's doing and it should not be marvelous in our eyes. It is not the fellowship of the saints which was intended to satisfy deep human needs and provide the cooling water of life for parched souls. I know people who are caught in the gears and who dread to even attend a meeting of the saints on Sunday. They are boiling and seething inside when they are forced to listen to "the company lawyer" take the stand and rip them off, while being paid with the money they had wanted to use for a family vacation but dared not do so because they had to "lay by in store." It is bad enough to have salt rubbed into a wounded spirit without being billed

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for the salt. When people dread to see Sunday come because they will be subjected to a soul-deadening and lacerating experience, may God have mercy. We missed out on restoring the early Christians and restored the early Pharisees.

     It would be wonderful if we could face up to reality and admit that we have provided an image and developed a machine which is not patterned after God's design at all. I doubt that most of us will ever be able to do so. Our brethren are entrenched in the idea that the "Church of Christ" as we have made it is the church of God as he wanted it. They have confused a nineteenth-century movement with first-century faith. If someone questions the validity of some of our cultural accretions and additions he is harassed and persecuted as an attacker of the Lord's church. We treat prophets as they have always been treated.

     History will reveal, however, that there was never a reform that was not sparked by a "heretic." Bland conformists never work a reformation. W. H. Auden says their watchword is, "We would rather be ruined than changed." We do not have the concept of ministry, fellowship or service which was revealed by the holy apostles. What we do have is a synthesis produced by sectarian pride and fear of human failure. The faith today is big business. Men sit up nights thinking up schemes and gimmicks with a religious slant to get the shekels from the purses of those who are a soft touch when Jesus is mentioned. They are not about to return to the simplicity and unadorned worship of God which was a part of the freshness of the morning of the new creation.

     Then every congregation was a training center for every saint. There was no officer's training school for an elite group. The whole word was taught to the whole church, and leadership rose to the top from among the brethren as cream rises upon the milk. Every bite of the bread of life is for every child of God. Every drop of the milk of the word is for every member of the family. There are no soldiers in the army of God who do not need the shield of faith. Every person is expected to carry the sword of the Spirit. There is no concept of one man carrying the shield for the company or of wielding the sword for the rest. Each person is to be trained to the use of his fullest potential. That is God's will, and it is regrettable that it is not generally our goal.

     Men must be "led in worship" because they can no longer praise God. Service is now something to be conducted and not something to be rendered. We now "hold services" rather than bestow them. And this must be done by someone trained in the art because the saints are no longer qualified to exhort one another, edify one another, or share insights and spiritual strength. Men who have been bishops or pastors for years, become frantic when a preacher gets a cold or goes to the hospital, and have to burn up the wires to try and borrow someone to come over and feed their flock on Sunday morning. They are unable to throw down fodder for the sheep without having someone come in who has studied homiletics, hermeneutics and pastoral psychology.

     Once I wrote a paragraph in my book The Royal Priesthood which I want to repeat here with the hope that you will meditate upon it:

     "The religious world in general has lost the pattern of the corporate worship of the original community of baptized believers. The early church gathered around a table; the modern church sits before a pulpit. The Lord placed the table in the church so it could remember its debt to him; the clergy placed the pulpit in the church to bring it in debt to them. In the early church they all spoke one by one; today all the speaking is done by one. Then the spirit was kindled; now it is quenched. Then they claimed to love each other and talked about Jesus; now they claim to love Jesus and talk about each other. In those days all exerted an effort to exhort; now all must be exhorted to exert an effort."

     I find myself disturbed by one attitude. Many brethren seem no longer

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concerned by what is scriptural. They have become pragmatists so their objection to mutual ministry, the sharing of all the gifts of the saints, is simply that it will not work in these days. There is always the demand to produce a congregation which is successful without a minister hired to minister to the saints, that is, to pastor the sheep. It would seem that our task should be to determine the will of God and make it work rather than to devise an alternative. We are not legislators but citizens under a Sovereign.

     Regardless of what else may be said, we have lived to see a myth exploded. The idea that men will no longer assemble for simple sharing sessions has been blown to smithereens. I know three "house churches" composed of former elders, preachers, and men from every walk of business life. These assemble every first day of the week in homes of the saints where the coffee table becomes the Lord's table. Here any saint can express his heartfelt views. No sectarian sign adorns the building, no one is paid for serving his brethren.

     In spite of this I am staying where I am, because I believe that all effective reformation comes from within. I refuse to believe that God's way will not work. Somehow and in some way, we will see again the informality and spontaneity of the early saints, and ritual and form will lose their significance. I shall probably be saying a lot more about it if I live, and if I do not, others more eloquent will arise and say it better than I can voice it!