educational encounters is equally relevant to disagreements between
adults. Many a husband and wife, for instance, fail to deal with a
disagreement or quarrel constructively because each is thinking only in
terms of the meanings he brings to the conflict, instead of trying also
to discover the concerns and meanings his partner brings. We all know
that sometimes the real cause of a quarrel is not expressed, with the
result that the quarrelers can only deal with the superficial meanings
of the conflict and in ways that further alienate them from each other.
The responsibility for communication in such instances calls for each
partner to pay attention to the meanings that the other one brings to
the conflict, and try also to help the other say what he means, for his
own and the sake of the other. In this way, constructive communication
may be resumed.
_The Purpose of Communication_
The question now needs to be raised: What is the purpose of
communication? There is a tendency on our part to regard consensus and
assent as the goals of communication. The attempt to get people to sign
on the dotted line, as it were, makes our communications aggressive and
imperialistic. The hearer is not respected as an autonomous, deciding
person, and this may cause him to decide against the message because of
the alienating way in which it is being presented. When the gospel is
preached without respect for the autonomy and integrity of the
individual, the effect is alienating. The same results occur when
parents act imperialistically in relation to the educational
opportunities in the home.
The goal of communication is not to secure assent and agreement, but is,
rather, to help the individual make a decision and translate it into
action. We have to face the possibility that we may not like his
decision, but that it may be the decision he must make now. For the
moment, the child may say "No" to some admonition or instruction that
his parent is giving him, which may seem like a breakdown and failure of
communication. On the other hand, if it is the child's own decision and
if the parent can respect it, while at the same time protecting the
child from its unfortunate consequences, it may be a step in the process
by which the child will eventually say "Yes." Reflection will reveal how
often we have arrived at an affirmative response by the route of a
negative one. The negative response was then seen as part of the process
by which we moved toward accepting a truth.
Preparation for church membership of both young and old needs to employ
this concept of communication. The instruction of many church members
has been so ambiguous that they are not clear about what they have
decided for or against. After all, we cannot say "Yes" to anything
without also saying "No" to other things. People who are prepared for
church membership should understand and be able to state the reason for
the faith they affirm, and know what alternatives they rejected.
They need help also in discovering what their affirmations and denials
mean for their way of life. Only then will they be able to make strong
and enabling commitments. One reason for the uncertain witness of many
so-called Christians and church members is that they have been persuaded
to be Christians without either having that relationship or its
alternatives explained to them. Young people in particular need help in
knowing what they are choosing against in order that they may be
unambiguously for what they have chosen. In an age when values are
confused and people's need for clear-cut loyalties is great, it is
tragic that the church's communication is confused. Let us try,
therefore, to communicate in ways that will help people to speak their
own "yeas" and "nays" with clarity and conviction.
_The Agent of Communication_
This thought brings us naturally to a consideration of the church as the
agent of communication. The church, as the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit, is the instrument that God created to speak and act for Him in
each generation. Our human response to His calling us to be His people
and servants produced the church as an institution, with its
organizational and denominational divisions. As any perceptive person
realizes, there is often conflict between the church as the fellowship
of the Holy Spirit and the church as institution. As institution, the
church faces the temptation of being more concerned about itself than
about God and His purposes for His people. As we saw in Mr. Churchill's
remarks, in Chapter I, the church can become so preoccupied with itself
that it loses its sense of responsibility for its mission to the world.
We saw also that the relationship between the church and the world is
intended to be close, for the world is the sphere of God's action, and
the church is the means of His action. The church, therefore, must be
found at work in the world, and must feel within itself the tension
between the saving purposes of God and the self-centered purposes of
man. This is what might be called creative tension.
The maintaining of this creative tension requires that the church as
institution be open constantly to the reforming vitality of the Holy
Spirit, and church people should be open-minded, adaptable, and ready to
live for God experimentally. They must be prepared to face the crises of
life as they occur individually and socially with courage and a desire
to lead the way for their fellow men. Instead of this, we find that
church people have the reputation of being ultra-conservative,
reactionary, and lovers of the _status quo_. The children of light, as
it were, are being dragged along by the children of darkness, and are
being compelled by them to face up to responsibilities which they ought
to have assumed in the name of God years before anyone else. Of course,
the record of the church is not altogether negative. In many places the
leadership and the membership of the church have courageously pioneered
the way in times of crisis and change. This experimental approach to
life and crisis ought to be more characteristic of the church than it
is. Where it does not exist, it is safe to assume that the membership is
serving itself rather than the Spirit of God.
The church that is preoccupied with itself can no more express love for
others than can a self-centered individual. Church members who are
primarily concerned about the maintenance of a church and its
educational unit on a particular corner in a certain town create a
diseased organization. It suffers from a condition which, in an
individual, would be called hypochondria. It is necessary, of course,
for an individual to give some attention to his diet, cleanliness, and
health in order that he may live his life and do his work. Likewise, the
church needs to give some attention to its maintenance, for it needs to
be nourished in its gathered life in order that it may do its work in
its dispersed life.
The decisive role of the church is not in the church's church, but in
the world: ministering to people at the beginning of and during their
married lives, accompanying them in and through their marital failures,
and helping them to learn from their experiences so that if they marry
again they may do so with more understanding and resourcefulness;
guiding them in the raising of their children, and helping them to
correlate the insights of the social sciences that throw light on the
nature and meaning of human development, especially the ultimate or
religious meanings of that development; helping them find their place in
the world's work with as much meaning as possible, and nurturing in
them a faith and courage that makes it possible for them to face the
conflicts, temptations, and sins of modern industrial life; standing by
them in all the crises that they encounter in the course of their human
existence; encouraging them to advance in company with the most creative
minds on the frontier of human exploration and experimentation; and
fearlessly traveling with them as they wrestle with the changing value
structures of each new generation, and guiding them in the use of their
leisure. But most of all, in and through all of these ways, the church's
task is to try to reveal to men that, though their identity in the world
may be confused and lost, in their relationship with God they are known
and loved. The church, as a fellowship of men, should exist not only to
proclaim this truth in the abstract, but to live it in the sphere of the
personal and social.
_Various Concepts of Ministry_
Every congregation and every member of a congregation needs to ask what
image of the church governs its life, because our images can be idols
that keep the church from being the instrument of God's action, and
because that image can keep us from being persons in whom the Spirit of
God can be incarnate. Such an examination calls for that sort of
rethinking of our conception of the ministry that the Reverend Mr. Gates
called for in our first chapter. The conception of the ministry held by
both ministers and laymen will naturally reflect their conception or
image of the church. Here both the ordained member and the lay member
are caught in the grip of stereotypes that threaten to stifle the
vitality of the church's ministry. Especially is this true in a time
like our own, when the social order is undergoing radical changes.
All too often lay people assume that the problems of the ministry and of
the church belong to the clergy alone. Many conscientious ministers
today, erroneously assuming this responsibility, are confused as to what
their role is. The problem of ministerial roles belongs to the whole
church. It is not easy in this time of transition for ministers to be
sure of what is expected of them. They sense or see clearly that the old
images and patterns of the minister of the gospel do not fit the present
time, and, therefore, are not safe ones to follow. Nor do the unsettled
conditions of our civilization give very clear-cut clues for the
formation of new and relevant concepts of the ministry. Consequently,
many ministers, including far too many young ones, seek refuge in
different stereotypes which fail to serve the church, and only provide
them with the means of evading the real challenges of their task. What,
then, are some of these stereotypes?
First, some ministers settle for a stereotype of the priesthood. They
seek to recapture and transplant in our age an earlier and relevant
priestly vitality that succeeds today only in assembling the dry bones
or external forms of that role. Or, they may succumb to the preacher
stereotype. Under the influence of that image, they think of the
preacher as a performer, a sermon as a performance, and the congregation
as an audience. That image is partly a product of the monological
understanding of communication, and partly a result of the human need to
justify oneself by an oversimplified function. The proclamation of the
Holy Word as mere content and without dialogical intent is not true
preaching of the gospel. Holy words were never meant to be used to
justify ministerial function. The Word of God justifies us, but our
words about the Word of God do not justify us. Furthermore, the Living
Word did not enter the world imperialistically, and that Word should not
be preached presumptively now, but with the expectation of having to
engage the world responsibly. Still other ministers try to find a
contemporary concept of ministry by modeling themselves after one of the
respected patterns of our society: the business executive, the
physician, or the group therapist. But as controlling images of the
church's ministry, these are not comprehensive, and they too tend to
become constricting stereotypes.
Then there is the stereotype of the local church, which is still thought
of as a parish in a nineteenth-century neighborhood sense. In most
places the parish community is no longer the center of people's common
life. The neighborhood in which the church is located is an area to
which people come home from their varied activities in order to sleep.
And for an increasing number of men whose work keeps them on the road,
even sleeping at home occurs only on occasional week ends. These and
other stereotypes stifle the full power of the ministry and keep it from
being equal to today's task. Too many ministers, in consequence, feel
alone and separated from their people, and are bewildered by the
complexity of their work and the ambiguous results of their efforts.
Lay people, on the other hand, receive little help in overcoming their
stereotypes of the ministry and gravitate to a concept of the church
that is hard to distinguish from a middle-class country club or a social
service center. Another complicating influence is the current emphasis
on the lay ministry. The general stress on the priesthood of all
believers had made both clergy and laity less sure about the role of the
clergy, even to the point, figuratively speaking, of seeming to unordain
the ordained, and without clearly defining the ministry of the lay
member.
Is there an answer to these confusions and ambiguities? What can clergy
and laity now do to find their present and new role in the life of the
church and world? There is an answer to these questions which, if
followed, will open the ministry of the whole church to the renewing
vitality of the Holy Spirit.
First, the role of the clergy and the concepts of it are the
responsibility of the whole church. But the clergy are more conscious of
the problems of the church and of the ministry, and they should,
therefore, share them with the laity. Ministers make the mistake of
keeping "their" problems, which are really the problems of the church,
to themselves, instead of making sure that the rest of the church
members are aware of and assuming responsibility for them.
Second, if the clergy are to share these concerns with the laity, they
must break through the stereotypes held by both groups as described
earlier. There is evidence that both ministers and laity are suffering
restraints as a result of their false images of each other. The question
is: Do the clergy dare to reveal themselves as spiritual leaders who do
not always know the answers, and who themselves need desperately to be a
part of a church that is a supportive and accepting fellowship? When
asked why they do not discuss problems of the church within the church,
ministers often reply: "What would my people think of me? I'm supposed
to be the answer man." The truth is that many laymen welcome being
released from false images of the clergy.
Third, ministers, therefore, need to be dialogists rather than
monologists. This might turn out to be the appropriate concept of their
role for this day. As representatives of the gospel, which was born of
the full meeting and full interchange between God and man in Christ, the
minister must learn to engage in dialogue with his people, and to
participate in that dialogue with God which goes on in their living. The
great questions of the church and the ministry are not going to be
solved by the ordained ministers alone, but by the clergy and the laity
accepting communication with each other as a part of their common
ministry, and together bringing the gospel into dialogue with the world.
It is imperative that ministers and people talk to each other deeply,
not about the housekeeping of the church, but about the church and its
message, about its place in and relation to the world, and about its
ministry, including the respective roles of clergy and laity. This kind
of persistent, continuing talk is imperative for two reasons: first, it
brings out and correlates the truth that is in man about these matters;
and, second, the Holy Spirit reveals the truth of Christ to and through
men who give themselves to each other in earnest search for the truth.
_The Church and the World in Dialogue_
We may conclude, therefore, that the problems of the ordained ministry
in the world today are the problems of the church. Members of the
church, including the clergy, must take the risks of communication,
which are the risks of creativity, and talk with one another about their
concerns. We must do this with the expectation that God will speak and
act through our dialogue together, so that it will become our dialogue
with Him. Out of this will come new insights and concepts for our
respective roles, with a new awareness of our task for Christ in the
world. It would seem, then, that our most effective starting point for a
new and relevant image of ourselves for our task today is that of men
who are in dialogue with God through their dialogue with their people.
The spirit of this dialogue, however, must be the Spirit of Christ. The
form of the ministry needs to be rethought in each age, but it must be
formed by a double focus on Christ's ministry and the need of the world
today.
Some of this dialogue, of course, has already been going on, and out of
it certain insights have already appeared about the relation of the
clergy and the laity. In the _gathered_ church, with the focus on the
worship, pastoral, educational, and organizational life, the ordained
member is the chief minister and the lay members are his assistants.
This does not mean that the lay people are working for the pastor and
that their loyalty is to him. Instead, it means that both are working
together for Christ and their loyalty is to Him. Within that
relationship the congregation has called a member, usually trained and
ordained, to direct it in performing the church's functions. The
minister is entrusted, for example, with the educational work of the
church. Some of his educational responsibility is delegated to the
organization known as the church school. A few laymen are selected and
professionally trained to be directors of Christian education; others
from the congregation are trained to be the teachers, but, as such, they
are serving as assistants to the one who is officially responsible for
that activity. Likewise, when laymen are used in church visitation, they
do so as assistants to the minister, to whom this official
responsibility is delegated.
On the other hand, in the work of the _dispersed_ church, which is
active in and serving the world, the chief minister is the layman who,
in the home or in the office, on the street or in the shop, in the
school or in the university, or wherever the work of the world is going
on, _is_ the church in that situation and must be the minister of Christ
there. The ordained man, in this aspect of the church's work, is the
assistant or resource person.
This concept of the complementary relationship between the ordained and
the unordained should inform the church's gathered life. The sermon, the
preparation for church membership, all adult education programs, and the
general ministry of the church, need to be conditioned by the thought
that the purpose of the official teachers and preachers and
administrators of the church's program is to prepare and guide the
people of God in the performance of their work _in the world_, as
representatives of Christ there. Resources need to be created in the
church's program whereby people can come back from their ministry in the
world, be helped to understand what has happened, and by reflection upon
it learn how more effectively to be the church in the world. For this
reason, seminars for parents need to be held in order that they may
receive assistance in understanding their role as ministers of the
church in the home. Seminars for businessmen and professional people
also are indicated for the same reason. A point of focus for all church
membership courses should be the question: When you become a member of
the church, how are you going to exercise your ministry in the world?
This orientation could be the source of a new evangelism that would make
its witness heard in the depth and detail of human life.
_The Reunion of the Church_
We turn now to consider some of the implications of what we have been
thinking for the reunion of the church. If the church is the instrument
of God's action in the world, and its members are supposed to be the
incarnations of His Spirit by means of which He accomplishes His
purpose, the condition, as well as the concept of the church, is
important. One of the tragedies of Christendom is the fact that the body
of Christ is so divided and its parts live in such competitive
relationship that the purposes of God are obscured and blocked.
Movements toward reunion have borne fruit, with the result that some
denominations have resolved their differences and reunited. But much
more progress needs to be made, if the church is to be equal to the
demands that modern life is making on it for spiritual leadership.
In each denomination there are clergymen and laymen who have erroneous
concepts and understandings and expectations of the other denominations.
I direct a training center which is attended by clergy and laymen from
many denominations. These people often are surprised to discover, as a
result of studying together the church's nature and purpose, how much
they have in common. They discover that doctrinal differences are not as
great as they had thought, that there are no denominational differences
built into human nature or into human problems, and that they have many
resources in common, namely, the God-given and redeemed resources of
human relationships, the Scriptures, prayer, preaching, pastoral care,
and teaching. Many of them have been heard to say, "I am glad to have
had it revealed to me that in some ways our differences are more
apparent than real." This kind of insight, however, is not possible
unless a situation is created in which representatives of different
denominations can begin to trust each other, and to think and
communicate below the level of their differences. It is possible to do
this, however, and more of it should be done. There is no reason why the
local congregation should not invite neighboring congregations to come
together with it for a study program for the purpose of finding their
common brotherhood in Christ and their common responsibility for the
community in which they live. A divided church does not make a good
organ for the communication of love.
We come now to the distinctive contribution of our discussion thus far
in this matter of the unity of the church. The work of reunion, of
course, is the work of the Holy Spirit. But our response to Him in
approaching reunion should be centered in a study of His purposes for
the church _now_ and _in the future_, rather than on a reconciliation of
the _differences that occurred in the past_. It is exceedingly
difficult to undo the mistakes of the past and to change the rigid
images and patterns that have been forged by the misunderstandings of
our predecessors. Merely trying to adjust them to each other will not
do. It is something else again to be willing to change these by giving
ourselves to a responsible consideration of what God wants His church to
be and to do _now_, and thus attempt the reunion in response to present
and future values.
The images that Presbyterians and Methodists and Episcopalians and
Baptists and Lutherans now have of themselves might be changed, thus
making possible changes in their images of one another, and this would
certainly open the way to deeper levels of communication. Instead of
this, we have members of different denominations thinking rather rigidly
about themselves and others. Our identities and responsibilities are
accepted in terms of differences that were laid down in the past, and
may be held independently of what God may be wanting His church to do in
this moment. The church is not the Kingdom of God; it is not the end of
God's action. It is a means to an end, and, as circumstances of human
life change, it is not inconceivable that God would like to have us make
changes in that instrument for man's salvation which He created.