"When The Church Supports Children In Boles Home"
When brethren have idols to justify, there is no limit to the extreme positions that they will occupy and to the wild assertions that they will make. Writing under the caption, "When the Church Supports Children in Boles Home," in the February 10, 1958 issue of the Boles Home News, Gayle Oler attempts to answer what he calls "some of those illogical ideas that are often peddled by opponents of congregational cooperation and the care of children in children's homes." As to how "illogical" some of those ideas are to which the Boles superintendent refers can he decided by the reader after we have evaluated some of his statements.
Brother Oler's first statement is a misrepresentation of the facts. He says, "We have been hearing some strange things about what it means when churches support children in Boles Home." The fact of the matter is, churches have Boles Home in their budgets and they contribute regularly to the Boles Home corporation. His assertion implies that churches are boarding children and paying the Boles corporation for the services rendered. This is not true and no one knows that it is not true any more than Gayle Oler. This writer personally knows of a church that for years contributed six hundred dollars annually to Boles Home and it had never placed a child in that institution. His statement also implies that there are those of us who oppose a church contributing to the support of a needy child. It seems much easier for the Boles Home superintendent to arouse prejudice than for him to present the facts. We do object to churches supporting and maintaining such institutions as Boles Home, a corporation which provides care and exercises control of the children that are in it. Brother Oler knows what the issue is, and the very caption of his article is a misrepresentation, nothing short of subterfuge.
Brother Oler then proceeds in his article to deal with "some of those illogical ideas." He writes, "It is said that when a church cares for a child in Boles Home it means that we think the church is not sufficient to do its work. Such is not the case. It means that we recognize the church is sufficient to do the work God gave it, among which is visiting the fatherless, and that the church is doing just that very thing. Whenever the church visits any fatherless child, in any home whatsoever, it is not the slightest indication that the church is insufficient to perform its work. It means that it recognizes its work, and that it recognizes that the church is not a home. It means that the sufficient church is demonstrating its sufficiency. It is all sufficient as a church, but not sufficient as a home.
The home is sufficient as a home, but not sufficient as a church." To properly deal with this argument, it is quoted in full. If placing Boles Home in the budget of the churches means that the church is visiting the fatherless and that it is demonstrating its sufficiency as Brother Oler contends, then let him apply his argument to Buckner Home, a Baptist institution in Dallas. According to him, churches could scripturally place Buckner Home in their budgets because it would be the church visiting fatherless children and the church would be demonstrating its sufficiency. Notice that he says, "Whenever the church visits any fatherless child, in any home whatsoever, it is not the slightest indication that the church is insufficient to do its work." By comparing the charters of Buckner Home and Boles Home, it is plainly seen that both institutions are set up on the same basis and they exist for the same purpose. If one institution can be supported out of the treasuries of the churches then so can the other, according to Brother Oler's own argument.
Brother Oler, like Brother Woods and other institutional proponents, confuses a place with an organization. He says of the church, "It is all sufficient as a church, but not sufficient as a home." Brother Oler assumes that when the church provides a place for the care of the needy, it has assumed the work of the home because a home is a place. Brother Oler and his colleagues confuse the issue. The church is more than a place; it is a divine institution. The home also, is more than a place. The point is that both the church and Boles Home are organizations that provide a place for the care of the needy. Since both the church and Boles Home are organizations, the issue is not what means and methods either organization may employ to care for the needy, but which organization is to do the work. Boles Home is a corporation that provides a place and it exercises the control of those children placed in its care. So, if the church cannot do its own work in caring for those who come within the scope of its care without having to establish and maintain an institution such as Boles Home, which in turn provides the care and exercises the control of the benevolence, then the church is insufficient to do the work that God gave it to do, regardless of what Brother Oler says.
Furthermore, if the church cannot provide means and methods for doing its own work without establishing such institutions as Boles Home, then upon the basis of the same argument, how can the church furnish means and methods of Bible teaching, such as classes, without forming another organization through which to do that work? What would apply to benevolence would likewise apply to edification. Does the church form another organization in order to accomplish its work of teaching? If means and methods provided by the church in the field of benevolence becomes an organization, one in addition to the church, then why would not the same thing apply to the fields of evangelism and edification? So, our institutional brethren have moved in with the brethren who oppose the method of teaching the Bible in divided classes in that both groups contend that means and methods are organizations. Who is it who occupies the same position as the anti-class brethren? We are paging Brother Guy N. Woods!
Brother Oler refers to another "illogical" idea by writing, "Some would allege that when the church supports a child in a children's home it is the same thing as endorsing and supporting the missionary society. Exactly the opposite is true. The Missionary Society is an alteration of the New Testament organization of the church, but the children's home is not." We have already dealt with Brother Oler's dodge on the support of the children in Boles Home by showing that churches are supporting the institution out of their treasuries, but now he attempts to show the difference between Boles Home and the Missionary Society. Boles Home and the Missionary Society are alike in that they are both organizations set up to do the work that God gave the church to do, they are both supported by churches out of their treasuries, and both organizations stand between the church and the work being done. Churches that support the Missionary Society are contributing to an organization that provides means and methods in the field of evangelism and churches supporting and maintaining such benevolent societies as Boles Home are contributing to an organization that provides means and methods of care in the field of benevolence. If neither the Missionary Society or a benevolent society altered the organization of the church, they would not be justified on the basis of the above, so Brother Oler has no point on this whatsoever. He only confuses the issue and it is clear again as to whose idea is "illogical."
Third, Brother Oler says, "Some would assert that when a church asks Boles Home to receive children and administer to their needs it means that the church is shirking its responsibility of caring for such children." Now who can be so naive as to believe that all the children in Boles Home are sent there by churches which were unable to care for them? We happen to know that such is not the case, but the issue is whether churches can build and maintain benevolent institutions which in turn provide care and secure "possession and control" of children. The Missionary Society advocates deny that churches are shirking their responsibility to preach the gospel when they contribute to the Missionary Society but their contention does not justify the Missionary Society any more than does Brother Oler's contention justify the church support of Boles Home. Again, he has avoided the issue.
Finally, Brother Oler writes, "Still others declare that a church has lost its autonomy when it elects to care for a child or children in a home for the fatherless. But once again, the exact opposite is true. The church exercises its autonomy. It elected under its own elders to care for the children in the place, in the manner, to the extent and for so long a time as the elders in their wisdom determined." Suppose we put his argument on autonomy to the test by applying it to the Missionary Society. In his defense of the societies in the Otey-Briney Debate, J. B. Briney asserted, "They are voluntary organizations." It is denied by those who defend the Missionary Society that churches lose their autonomy when they contribute to it, but nevertheless it is true that churches voluntarily surrender their autonomy when they place their evangelism under the control of the society board. J. B. Briney made exactly the same kind of argument for his societies that Gayle Oler makes for churches doing their work through Boles Home. Briney argued, "When a thing is commanded to be done, and the method of doing it is not prescribed, those commanded are at liberty to use their best judgment in devising ways and means to carry out the command." (Otey-Briney Debate, p. 162). The idea that a benevolent society is only a means selected by the elders of the churches by which to do their work has a familiar echo. The truth is, neither the missionary society or the benevolent society is a means or method by which the churches do their work but both are organizations in between the churches and the work of evangelism and benevolence. If churches send donations to the Missionary Society, whether they lose their autonomy or not, they are supporting a society that provides the facilities for preaching and therefore it takes over that work that is to be done by the church. But Brother Oler asserts that churches lose control of the money when they send it to a preacher. A man is greatly pressed for an argument when he fails to distinguish between a church paying wages to a preacher, a laborer who is worthy of his hire, and sending donations to a benevolent institution. If the preacher who is paid by a church becomes another organization through which the church functions in the matter of evangelism then the man would have something that would begin to approximate what he has in the Boles Home institution, but since the preacher is not an object of charity, but is an individual who is being paid for his work, Brother Oler's argument is wholly irrelevant to the point of issue. He is hardly in any position to be referring to others with "illogical" ideas.
Before closing his article, Brother Oler refers to us who oppose churches supporting such institutions as Boles Home as snipe hunters. No, we have not been hunting snipes. Our objections are by no means the fanciful imaginations and curiosities of the snipe hunter. We have found a real animal. It is the same monster that is responsible for Romanism, the Missionary Society, mechanical instruments of music in worship, and every other innovation that is responsible for division. In fact, the digressives have made a pet out of this animal. Its features are described by J. B. Briney when he said, "The congregations cannot pick themselves up and walk off, one going here and another there, and another yonder, in the accomplishment of the work; but by combining and putting the matter into the hands of wise committee, (elders or a board of directors, H.H.H.), chosen with reference to their knowledge of the men who may be selected to do it ... Now when you have a committee like that, you have a missionary society. It may have this form of organization or that form or the other form, but it is an organization nevertheless. It is a society nevertheless. It has its head, its president, it has its treasurer to receive and pay out money; it has its secretary to see that things may be done decently and in order, and whenever you have such an organization as that, you have a missionary society." (Otey-Briney Debate, p. 168). Now who could better describe the animal that we have found any better than the digressives who feed, nourish, and sustain it? Yes, we have found a real animal. It is the failure to regard the authority of the word of God.