Let Us Build Churches!
There is one significant and heartening aspect of the present day crisis in the church which we believe has escaped the notice of many conservative and faithful brethren. And that is that the liberal and "social gospel" brethren among us carry the seeds of their own ultimate destruction in the very nature of their appeal. Their tremendous emphasis on social projects will inevitably wreak the same havoc among them that such an emphasis has brought to the denominational groups which have espoused it. Youth camps, recreational centers, orphan homes, old folks' homes, parochial schools, have an insatiable appetite; it is impossible in the very nature of things for all of them to have all that they want. But the clamor from them is insistent and strident.
In a very few years these institutions are going to break down the barriers that thus far have stood fairly intact against church contributions to the colleges. Indeed, the Gospel Advocate coterie of brethren have as a group never had any convictions against such, and have refrained from pushing their appeals only for policy's sake. But with their gradual breaking down of the conservative and fundamentalist attitudes among the churches east of the Mississippi, it is certain to follow that the colleges will more and more be invading the church treasuries of that part of the country. And, of course, there are a very considerable number of the more liberal minded brethren in Texas and the west who have chafed under the "no contributions to colleges from the church treasury" practice which has so generally prevailed thus far.
We believe the next ten or fifteen years will certainly see a real push by these brethren to "get the colleges in the budgets" of the churches.
With what results? It is a foregone conclusion that with the ardent backing of the Gospel Advocate in this endeavor, and the "behind the scenes" encouragement of most of the faculties of several colleges among us, the Firm Foundation will offer only "token resistance" (as she has on the institutional orphan home receiving church contributions), and that hundreds of congregations will join the procession.
And that is where lies the hope of faithful brethren. For, while the "social gospel" brethren are expending their energies and their funds and their zeal in promoting a myriad of "institutions", those who are content with the simple New Testament church will be building congregations! There can be only one ultimate end to this divergence in emphasis — each group will become strong in that to which it gives its energies.
The state of Texas has afforded a thrilling example of how this matter worked out over the last seventy years. When the split came with the Digressives at Austin in 1886, the liberal Digressives took between eighty and ninety percent of Texas Christians, and practically swept the state clean of church property, taking almost all the church buildings. They had the wealth, the numbers, the church buildings — and the "organizations". And now, seventy years later, what is the picture? Well, Churches of Christ outnumber the Digressives in Texas by about four to one!
Why ?
We think the answer is fairly obvious. Each group gave itself to the building up of that which it regarded most highly. The Digressive brethren spent their funds and their zeal in promoting all kinds of societies, schools, organizations, and institutions; the few discouraged and battered brethren who had come through the battle gradually regained their morale and went to work with a zeal in building congregations! Each group builded that which it regarded most highly.
This article is being written in Sacramento, California, where the editor is engaged in a gospel meeting. We have just closed two fine meetings in the San Francisco Bay area, and will be out here for another month in still further work of this sort. All over California we are finding real evidences of growth, aggressive evangelistic zeal, and solid support of the ancient gospel. This is a state of great energy and enthusiasm: Some brethren out here are giving thousands of dollars, and limitless hours of service to youth camps, orphan homes, recreational centers, church socials, colleges, and various organized and institutionalized charities — and thousands of other brethren are exerting themselves to the utmost, making sacrifices of almost incredible proportions to build congregations! We have found without any question that the greater evangelistic zeal in building new congregations and in supporting gospel preachers both at home and abroad lies with the conservative brethren in this state. Their energies are not divided, their goal is simple and singular. They have one thing, and one thing only, in mind — the building of congregations of the Lord to the saving of the souls of men! These brethren are not divided between two loyalties — loyalty to the Lord and loyalty to some human arrangement; on the contrary, all their energies, all their time, and all their resources can be channeled into the one great task of preaching the gospel and building churches.
The end result is as clear as it is inevitable; one group will build schools, hospitals, orphanages, youth camps, social centers; the other group will build congregations.