Dear Friends
One of the issues that perennially confuses Christians is the place ‘The Church’ should occupy in the sphere of political, social, and (increasingly nowadays) environmental concerns. So it was not surprising that the 3rd Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization I recently attended in Cape Town, although excellent and encouraging in many ways — and how could a global gathering of thousands of fellow believers of nearly every tribe and nation but be a wonderful testimony to the power of the gospel at work in the world? — was marked by a certain lack of clarity which I fear could prove dangerous to a new generation perhaps less than familiar with the clear evangelical priorities of the founder of Lausanne, the global evangelist Billy Graham.
One of the most striking of the many superb video presentations was footage of the great gospel preacher in his prime speaking at the first such Congress at Lausanne in 1974, repeatedly challenging all present to see that
‘we have one task: to proclaim the message of salvation in Jesus Christ...This is a congress of world evangelization. We are enthusiastic about all the many things churches properly do, but our calling is to...evangelism...From the time of the early apostles evangelism has been the lifeblood of the church. This congress convenes to re-emphasize those biblical concepts which are essential to evangelism. Evangelism can mean nothing else than proclaiming Jesus Christ by preachers to persuade men and women to become his disciples and responsible members of his church. We have one task – to proclaim the message of salvation in Jesus Christ, in rich countries and in poor, among educated and uneducated, in freedom or oppression... We are determined to proclaim Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit that men may put their trust in him as Saviour, follow him obediently, and serve him in the fellowship of the Church of which he is the alone King and Head.’
An unequivocal clarion call to the primacy of gospel proclamation! But it seemed to me that at the 3rd Lausanne Congress, enthusiasm for the ‘many other things’ was so much in evidence that issues of ‘The Church’s response’ to poverty, AIDS, social justice, child exploitation, global warming and so on tended to dominate the programme, to the quiet subordination of Billy Graham’s absolute priority for disciple-making evangelism.
"Evangelism can mean nothing else than proclaiming Jesus Christ by preachers to persuade men and women to become his disciples and responsible members of his church."
This trend to see the mission of ‘the Church’ as a much broader concern is increasingly evident in contemporary western evangelicalism today, perhaps not surprising since, as Os Guinness observed (in one of the best conference multiplex sessions), social justice is very popular today, whereas evangelism is extremely politically incorrect. How true that is! No preacher is likely to be vilified in the UK for campaigning against poverty, but soon he may well be for proclaiming Christ as the only God and Saviour, and calling someone to repent and leave their life of sin (especially if that includes sexual sin). Moreover, in an internet age, when pictures of the world’s suffering are beamed into our lives daily, such temporal needs can so easily appear more pressing than the abundantly more fearful, but invisible, calamity facing those whose eternal future remains without Christ. Alas, as our friend Isaac Shaw (Director of the Delhi Bible Institute) said to me a few years ago about Christian people’s willingness to send large sums of money to India for disaster relief but not for gospel evangelism: ‘we have plenty of pictures of the devastation after a Tsunami, but no video we can show of the sheer horror of hell.’
I have no doubt that those who want ‘The Church’ to focus much more on these things do not reject the gospel. Of course not; they assume it, and the need for evangelism that flows from it. But it is that very ‘assumption’ that worries me. Because the trouble is that when the gospel is assumed as a truth that ‘goes without saying’, in the end it will almost certainly go without being said at all. As Don Carson observed of a once clearly-evangelical movement,
‘the first generation believed and proclaimed the gospel and thought that there were certain social entailments. The next generation assumed the gospel and advocated the entailments. The third generation denied the gospel and all that were left were the entailments’.
"No preacher is likely to be vilified in the UK for campaigning against poverty, but soon he may well be for proclaiming Christ as the only God and Saviour."
That, sadly, describes all too many institutions which may retain the name ‘evangelical’ in their title, but have long since abandoned the biblical evangel. It should be a salutary warning to us all.
So, what is the answer? If, as the original Lausanne Covenant bids us, ‘We affirm that evangelism and socio-political involvement are both part of our Christian duty. For both are necessary expressions of our doctrines of God and humankind, our love for our neighbour and our obedience to Jesus Christ‘ — and we surely must affirm that, since it is clearly biblical truth — how are we to understand where the priorities of the Church lie, and what our mission as God’s people ought to be?
As I was pondering these issues, I came across an extremely helpful article by Campbell Campbell-Jack, a colleague in ministry here in Possilpark, Glasgow, which sums up the matter far better than I could have done, with great clarity and incisive wit to boot. Here’s what he says:
‘The Church should stay out of politics,’ a statement frequently repeated by those who are strenuously attempting to change the social structures of the country and a statement which I support. ‘It is the duty of the Church to influence policy in a biblical direction whenever it can,’ is the response of committed Christians, and a statement which I support.
In Reformed theology we have traditionally spoken of the Church in terms of the Church visible and the Church invisible. This distinction has its uses, mostly psychological to reassure Christians that the antics of the Church and some of its members doesn’t invalidate the reality of the faith.
A more helpful way of looking at the Church is to make the distinction highlighted by Abraham Kuyper, one of the great Reformed theologians and political, cultural and social activists. As well as being an activist he was also that rarity, a successful Christian politician. Kuyper distinguished between the institutional Church and the organic Church.
The institutional Church is the denominational structure, the committees and courts, Kirk Sessions, Presbyteries and Assemblies and their equivalents. Then there is the organic Church, these are the Christians, living breathing people of God. It is the task of the institutional Church to support and enable the organic Church to be the Church.
The institutional Church exists for the sake of the organic Church. Today we have reversed that situation and the organic church seems to exist for the sake of the institution. The average Church member sees him or herself having the task of keeping the Church going, a kind of pew fodder whose faithfulness keeps the institution functioning.
Meanwhile the institutional Church makes pronouncements on the environment, the economy and education etc. The General Assembly sees more posturing than a Milan catwalk, the usual suspects line up to give their opinion on every subject under the sun, and meanwhile the Church shrinks in numbers and influence.
Christians should be involved as Christians in politics, charities, pressure groups, every kind of legitimate social activity, that is their job as salt and light. The institution exists to enable the members to do that work, not to tell them what they should be doing or doing it for them.
If the teaching elders of the Church are not doing their work of equipping the people of God to be the people of God then the ministers are failing in their job. If the pronouncements of the courts of the Church have become a substitute for the action of the organic Church then they are failing in their job. It is the task of the institution to help the living Church, not substitute for it.
The sight of the Church of Scotland in one of its fits of activism making solemn resolutions on political matters is laughable. I say that deliberately because that is what the world does, it laughs. In 2005 the G8 met in Gleneagles, as did tens of thousands to protest against globalization. At the same time the General Assembly was meeting and it was proposed and resolved that churches should ring their bells in their support. Here we had tens of thousands of mostly young people, deeply committed to their cause and willing in some cases to risk arrest for it, and what did the C of S do, we resolved to have a fit of guerrilla campanology. Laughable if it wasn’t so sad.
The Church should stay out of politics to allow the Church to be up to its neck in politics.’
"as an organized, institutional body devote ourselves to nothing else than proclaiming Jesus Christ...to persuade men and women to become his disciples and responsible members of his church"
For ‘politics’ include humanitarian relief, social concerns, matters of justice, medical care, and ‘all the many things’ which the Lausanne Covenant rightly points out must be the result of evangelism, the ‘responsible service in the world’ of transformed, selfless disciples of Christ, and you get the picture very clearly. In all these things it is the task of the institutional Church to support and enable the organic Church to be the Church.
Historically, it is when the institutional Church has done this —been most focused on the proclamation of the evangel — that the organic Church has not only enlarged the kingdom of heaven, but most impacted the kingdoms of the earth also. When it has neglected the gospel, it has achieved neither. The great social reforms of Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect that shook Britain in the early 1800s were the fruit of preaching of the Great Awakening, not vice versa.
Let ours not become the generation which assumes, far less denies the gospel; rather may we heed Billy Graham’s appeal to let the Church be the Church, and as an organized, institutional body devote ourselves to nothing else than proclaiming Jesus Christ ... to persuade men and women to become his disciples and responsible members of his church.
Yours for the gospel,
William Philip