Browsing Through Old Papers
THE JOHN T. HINDS ARTICLES ON INSTITUTIONS: The following article is the second in the series by John T. Hinds on institutions. Brother Hinds was answering a querist and the questions and answers are pertinent to the institutional questions today. You will do well in reading and studying the articles.
What Is A Church Institution
Last week I gave attention to three queries affecting the subject of what is necessary to constitute a church institution. The querist had several more on the same line, which I will condense and consider now while the subject is fresh.
4. A number of Christians form a company, buy printing equipment, employ printers, and publish a gospel paper. The work is not self-supporting and the churches are asked for freewill contributions. Would you report this to the tax collector as a church institution?
No; it is a private business run by a private company, notwithstanding the members of the firm are all Christians. It is no more a church institution than a bank or any other business conducted by private individuals. The church as a body or a congregation as such, has nothing whatever to do with it. The company could ask for freewill contributions for the business if they wanted to, just as individuals could advertise religious books for sale or ask for contributions to help print such books. But these appeals for support for a private business should be made to individuals, not to congregations as such, and congregations as such would be under no obligation to pay any attention to such appeals; in fact, they should not heed them. Let private business take care of itself and congregations attend to their own affairs, and there will be no serious trouble result.
5. Are societies organized for printing and distributing Bibles church institutions, and do they supplant the church in its work?
See answer to number four.
6. If church members have a midweek Bible class at private homes and the same members have another Bible class at the church house before church services on Sunday morning, is this Bible class a church institution?
If this class at the homes is under the direction of the elders, then it is simply a church work. If it is a work undertaken by one or more members individually, then it is nothing more than an individual effort at trying to teach the Bible. It would be just the same as if a Christian lived in a community where no congregation exists and should invite his neighbors out to his house to study the Bible with him. If Bible classes on Sunday, either before or after the regular church services, are under the general supervision of the elders — the elders appointing the teachers and directing the work — then it is just church work, not an institution at all. The elders appointing some to teach others is just the same as appointing someone to take a ham of meat to a poor widow. Please note that classes so conducted do not and cannot affect the church service, which occurs at another time.
7. If a congregation should be organized with elders and deacons, is it not necessary for Christians of different congregations to organize, if they go together to do a certain work?
If the work they are doing is a private, individual work, they would have a perfect right to organize and likely would do it. If they were attempting to organize to do the church's work or form an organization that would be binding on congregations, they probably better not "go together." It may seem advisable from a human viewpoint to organize congregations to do more effective work, but it remains a fact that the apostolic congregations did not so organize. However plausible such organizations may appear, the danger of their resulting in binding on the church a human ecclesiasticism should prevent their being started. Christians might individually send support to the same missionary through the ordinary means of banks and mails and not organize anything. Congregations might do the same. Or congregations or individuals might send help to a work being directed by another congregation without organizing anything.
8. Is it proper to call any organization a church institution except the church? Is the term, "church institution," Scriptural If so, in what sense should it be used?
It is hardly correct to call the church a "church institution." The church is a religious organization, or religious institution, but the church is the thing itself; hence, the term, "church institution," is not appropriate unless you mean some kind of institution separate from the church as such. In this sense it is applicable only to something that is operated by church members and for the good, indirectly, of the church. For example, religious papers may be called "church papers," yet the church as an institution is not in the school business and can never be until it organizes some kind of conference, synod, or association which it binds upon the congregations as a governing law. Until that time all papers and schools will have to remain as private, individual enterprises unless some one congregation gets big enough to start something of the kind as their own individual work.
9. Was Paul working through a human institution when teaching in the school of Tyrannus?
Paul had been driven from the synagogue because of opposition and was teaching in the school of Tyrannus, which probably means nothing more than that he was using this school building as a meeting place to preach to those who would come. But, if he had been a regular teacher in that school, and taught the Bible to all who came, he was doing only what every other good Christian should do if he has the chance. As individuals, we have Paul's example for teaching the Bible wherever and whenever the opportunity comes — privately, publicly, individually, collectively, in schools, on street corners, in prisons, on land or sea.
The same brother has a question on orphan homes, which must wait till another time.