Rebuilding the church!

November 1960 – Letters by William Still p74

The following are the Notes of an address given by William Still at a meeting of the Baptist Ministers’Fellowship, held during the Scottish Baptist Assembly in Aberdeen, 24-27 October 1960

My brothers, I would like to speak to you about the ageless things of our Christian faith, which evangelical fashions, just as much as any other fashions in Christendom, are likely to cloud over and conceal, to the detriment of the Church of our day, to the decline of its true nature and growth, and to the failure of its impact upon the nation and nations, and the loss of its preservative and cleansing power in the society of men.

We often hear the Church’s dual tasks – of teaching its own and preaching to others – pitted against each other, or set in priority over one another. Of the different arguments which rage over this question of evangelism versus edification, the one I consider most serious and hazardous to the chief task, or even sole task, is evangelism, the great commission in the Gospel by Matthew being quoted in support.

I think we have to be careful here. Those who have been most involved in evangelism know best that it is exhausting work and many of God’s servants have exhausted themselves in it. Like youth work, it is a most exacting and arduous form of service, which takes all the greater toll of our total powers because it is constantly making appeal to the generally indifferent mass of humanity. But, you may say, that is no reason for dispensing with it because it is costly. But the reason why it is so costly is that, divorced from the total life of the Church, it tends to go out on a limb of the Christian tree and wave itself almost off the trunk, until it loses all relation to God’s overall purpose. But what are we seeking to do? Save or win the world, or prepare for Christ’s Kingdom by calling out and building up His church? The answer we give to that question matters a great deal. ?We are perhaps far too eager, optimistic, and active. Now this may seem to be the veriest heresy to some of you men, but it could hardly be said that I am inactive, or that I am not concerned for fruitfulness.

The Church’s first task, it seems to me, is to keep being herself in a changing world, and thus to build herself up and fortify herself against the growing onslaughts of evil, as prophesied in history and in each successive generation. This she can only do by being, not evangelically minded, devotionally or convention minded, socially minded, ecumenically minded, or politically minded, but by taking the whole Word of God as he diet and feeding and building herself up on that. Thus she preserves her strength for every heroic task, including all these, and makes impact often painful impact, upon all the life of her day. To this end I think we all, without respect of denomination, need to dismantle our Churches, congregation by congregation, right down to the stocks. Then we must build them up again upon a more severe pattern, and strictly on the one unchangeable foundation of Jesus Christ, in order to meet the challenge of our day.

Now, I do not believe that this will carry everyone’s judgment, but for the sake of argument (just to hear what this babbler will say!) let us in imagination take our own congregation down, stop all meetings, activities, organizations, clubs, socials, until there is nothing left but an empty building and an undifferentiated group of people – all segregation of age groups, Sunday School apart, being abolished – who owe some kind of allegiance to Jesus Christ in that particular place. What are you going to do? What are to be your foundations? What are to be your bare priorities? What is the life of the Christian congregation? It is the indwelling, unifying and incorporating Spirit of Christ. What is its sustenance? It is the Word of God. How is the Word of God to be ministered so that it becomes the spiritual bone, flesh and life-blood of God’s people? The Word must become flesh again, as it did in Christ, and that flesh must die the death to self, which is so costly, for “except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone; but if it die, it brings forth much fruit”. We must digest our Lord’s stark words: “If any man hate not…he cannot be my disciple.” And that Word of God, broken down by the Spirit, and made spiritually edible and assimilable by the devoted labours of God’s called and consecrated servant and by the prayers of His expectant and believing people, will find lodgement, any kind of lodgement – from a barb to a caress – in the hearts of the saints. In this way the Church of Jesus will become a living thing, all untrammelled by time-consuming and dreary organisation, from which all sorts of potentialities, both gracious and explosive, will emerge. A hungry people, an anointed man, the Word of God, the Spirit’s breath in prayer and worship and spiritual fellowship, the water, the bread and wine – you need nothing else to form a Church that will come alive and alight, and glow and burn and flame its way through a community and people and nation, until by spontaneously improvised strategies it makes it way to the uttermost part of the earth.

Is this our Church? If not, what use are all our activities? Shall I tell you what will be the fruits of such rigorous concentration and simplification as I suggest? People will be converted, and people will become mad. Some that are converted and many that are not will alike become mad; but at least a tiny nucleus will be built up in the faith and find their own spontaneous expressions of service. You will not have to organise them; and if some depart, others will take their place, to whom the freshness of the Word of God winged by the prayers of the saints and by the Spirit of God will become the most sensational and heart-warming news to thrill their new-born souls. They will dele deeper into their pockets without any one telling them and the offerings will swell, and the question on everyone’s heart and mind will be: Lord what will You have me to do? Social pastoral work, mere polite visitation, will be largely submerged by vital dealing with souls. The fascination of the power of the Word of God preached simply in the spirit will altogether preoccupy God’s servant: his priorities will radically change and he will be sought out by those who would discuss with him the practical (sometimes painfully practical) implications of the preaching and teaching of the Word of God. He will soon be obliged to take an interest in Christian work in lands and places and stations other than his denomination may be working in, as the Spirit thrusts out his young people into the four corners of the earth, and he finds like John Wesley that almost overnight the world has become his parish.

Is this a dream and an exaggeration? I do not believe it is for me to be more specific, less I in anywise abuse or take advantage of your brotherly hospitality, but I can tell you that the beginnings of such a work are taking place today; in your denomination and in mine. But some may say, What of the rest of the Church? All our multifarious activities and agencies? Well, what about them? What more is there and what need of more, when such bare priorities have so potent an effect? A bare foundation? There is nothing bare about the Word of God when the Spirit brings it home in its fulness, sweetness, power and effect. This is the Church: worshipping, praying, receiving the living Word. The rest is frills and largely fruitless dissipation of effort, body and soul, a weary and wearying round that wears us out and gets us nowhere and merely keeps the por of social fellowship boiling on the hob.

Do you want converts? Do you want money? Do you want candidates for the mission fields and the ministry? Do you want to make impact upon local government and eventually upon national government, upon education, trade unions, the arts? This is the way. Notice I did not ask, Do you want to build up a large congregation with a great family constantly growing in upon itself in prosperity and self-satisfaction? Because this is not the way to get a name for yourself as a ”successful” minister. For the congregation that is fed on the living Word of God and in which everything is subservient to its impact and power is a congregation which, being living, is also on the move. There will be constant comings and goings. As soon as and sometimes even sooner than, young folk are built up in the faith, God will thrust them out here and there, far and near, at home and abroad. Others will have to take their place, and others after them, until your Church will become a clearing house and for all but a faithful nucleus, a temporary stopping-place where men and women are charged with the Word of God before being drafted to battlefields of their own. “There is that scatters and yet increases.” And they in different measures will reproduce their kind, and you will soon have grandchildren and great grandchildren, far sooner than you could have them biologically, until they become an army.

My brothers, I believe there is more hope of this in Scotland today than for fifty, sixty, a hundred, even a hundred and twenty years. Of course there have been many movements back to the Word of God, both sound and spurious, and there have been many movements back to the Spirit of God both resoundingly loud-mouthed and spurious. The one without the other, the Word without the Spirit, or the Spirit without the Word, is useless. But bring the two together: no mere sound orthodoxy, sound asleep or stone dead an no mere Pentecostal ecstasy flying kites high in the wind of but a few scattered, hag ridden texts, but the ”Word of God which lives and abides for ever” in its fulness, having become in God’s man crucified flesh, pouring itself forth from anointed lips in burning consecrated power and we may yet see in our beloved land a movement which will make the ”Fifty-Nine revival look pale, and which may bring in a day of sober revival and intoxicated persecution to make the angels in heaven marvel and the Father-heart of God rejoice for the sufferings of His Son, and the glory of His Name. Yours sincerely, William Still