"Commitment"

"Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier." II Timothy 2:1-4 The hope of civilization is the church. Without a true revival our future is as bleak as the Romans. What reason is there to suppose that our civilization in contrast to those, which preceded us, will endure? Any person who has not faced this question is hardly alive. That many different ways of life have flourished and have then declined and disappeared is beyond contradiction. Consequently there is no real probability that the fate of our civilization will be different - unless. The precise character of this unless is the most urgent question. A close analysis of the past will reveal that neither material nor technological success is sufficient for endurance or even survival. Life goes down whatever the physical conditions may be unless there is a relevant faith, and not just any faith. It must have certain features, and it must be held with both intellectual integrity and dedication by self-conscious groups of people. Here lies the crucial relevance of what we mean generally when we refer to the church, since endurance requires both a spirit and a fellowship. Little is gained without the spirit, and separated individuals cannot maintain the spirit. Therefore the church must be cherished, criticized, nourished and reformed. The church of Jesus Christ with all of its failings, blemishes, and divisions, is our only hope. Assuming the necessity of the church as a redemptive society we need to ask some searching questions concerning the existent church. Has the salt lost is savor? Has it lost its power to preserve, to keep from corrupting? Keep in mind the condition of the society around us is largely a reflection of the condition of the church. We are the light of the world. No civilization ever failed until its church failed. The seriousness of the condition is largely hidden from us because of certain signs and superficial success to which we can always point for comfort if we so desire. For example: it is possible to find comfort in: church membership, Attendance, Building programs. It is important to recognize, however, that motives for buildings are far removed from those of a redemptive society. In some areas the buildings minister to pride. Idolatry of the church building is one of the real dangers of our time. The fact that the church and the building are identified in popular speech is disgusting and should be something of a revelation. Perhaps one of the greatest signs of decline is the overall public acceptance of the church. We cannot have a public meeting however secular without religious representation. Jesus is patronized and not worshiped. Political big wigs, movie stars, and others profess Christianity yet no change is seen in the life style - religion thinks this is great! A look back to history reveals that the world accepts Christianity, only after its life and vitality have been lost. Constantine did not embrace the Christianity of the upper room. The church must be forced to look at herself and by the spirit make an honest assessment. I am not saying that the church is worse than it has been, which may or may not be true, but I am saying she is weaker than she might be. The real problem before us is not whether our faith has declined, but how can it be made to live vitally again? How can it be made more relevant to contemporary society and its urgent needs? The purpose of this message is to some how see where we are that we may be able to go forward, using powers which may otherwise be wasted. Realism and idealism are both needed and are needed together. The church must have dreamers, but those dreamers must be forced to face reality. Joseph dreamed of preserving God's people, and was made to face the reality of his dream. The defense of engagement in sober realism is always that, without it there is no real possibility of idealistic advance in the future. The worst tragedy of the 20th century plagues the church today, and is the results of religious dreamers who were not forced to face

the reality. Though there has been great gains as well as losses in the modern church I feel at this point it is more profitable to stress the losses. For when we know where we are, we can find our way back home. By knowing we can avoid complacency. Our enduring faith must be that of Ezekiel, no matter how dry the bones may be, breath can come into them and they can live. Much of the present tragedy lies in the fact that many who want to be part of Christ's cause cannot feel at home in the church as they find it. They are looking for a bold fellowship, and what they find is: A complacent society, concerned with its own internal politics, or so unimaginative as to suggest the world can be saved through hymns and sermons. The needle seems to be stuck in a groove. Many seekers cannot abide the church as they see it. It is not that membership demands too much, but that its demands are too small. The major weakness of the modern church can be termed Segregation. Segregation from the common life, by being limited geographically to a religious building. Limited temporarily by over emphasis on an hour and a half Sunday morning meeting. Limited in personal, by the assumption that religion is the responsibility of a special class called the clergy. The damaging effect is the same. When we think that Christianity is what goes on in a building the damage comes in the perfectly natural tendency to minimize Christianity in other places. When we think of Christianity as what transpires on Sunday morning, the tendency is to suppose that what goes on at other times, in factories, offices, etc. is not equally religious. When we think of religion as the professional responsibility of priests, rabbi's, clergymen, the major harm done lies in the consequent minimizing of all other men and women. The harm of localizing responsibility to a few professionals, no matter how dedicated, is that it gives the rank and file a freedom from responsibility it does not have. The major danger of contemporary Christianity then, is that it makes small what ought to be large. By segregating Christianity in place, time, or personnel, we make it relatively trivial. Concerned with only a part of the experience when it ought to be concerned with the whole life. Whenever the church means merely a building, a special kind of service, or a man with a particular dress, the salt has truly lost its savor. In so far as this is true, it is not only church members but the church itself that requires a radical conversion. Superficially the church appears to be riding high, but a closer examination of the situation is discontenting. Our position is not unlike that of the Roman Empire, when it appeared to be at the height of its glory. It had great show and power at the center, but was actually losing province after province at its edge. The contemporary lost provinces are numerous as far as the church is concerned, but three are especially disturbing. Higher education - though once in our culture-is far from true today. If the campus is largely lost territory, so far as unapologetic Christian faith is concerned, the same can be said of youth in general. The third loss province is organized labor. The test of the vitality of Christianity is to be seen in its effect upon culture. The more we recognize the deep similarity between our own culture and that of imperial Rome, the more we see the significance of a great passage in the late Boris Pasternaks Dr. Zivago. Our shame is that the new Rome is not equally challenged. Pasternak wrote: "Rome was a market of borrowed gods and conquered people, a bargain basement on two floors, earth and heaven, a mass of filth convoluted in a triple knot as in an intestinal obstruction, Dacians, Herculeans, Scythians, Sarmatians, Ayperbouans, heavy wheels without spokes. "Eyes sunk in fat, double chins, illiterate emperors, fish fed on the flesh of learned slaves, all crammed into the passage of coliseum all wretched. And there unto this tasteless heap of gold and marble life came, light clothed in an aura, emphatically human, deliberately provincial Galian, and at that moment gods and nations ceased to be and man came into being, man the carpenter, man the plowman, man the shepherd, man who does not sound in the least proud, man thankfully celebrated in all the cradle songs of mothers and in all the picture galleries the world over." Jesus must live, live, live again in His church. It is hard to exaggerate the degree to which the modern Church seems irrelevant to modern man. The

church is looked upon as something to be neither seriously fought nor seriously defended. A church building is welcomed as a good place for weddings, a good place for children to go to Sunday School. They might learn helpful things. The point is such conceptions are wholly consistent with the idea that the church has only marginal relevance. We do not expect for the most part to find the gospel centered in a burning conviction, which will make mere men and women change occupations, go to the ends of the earth, alter the practices of government, or redirect culture.