The fulness of the church

When someone is made a member

of the local congregation, by Confirmation or whatever form of admission is practised, it is clearly stated that he becomes a member not in the local body alone, but also of the "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church." Where the Spirit of Jesus is present, the local body is in fact One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, but it contains those qualities as the acorn contains the oak. The vision of the Church needs to be enlarged. Its full spread, and glory, the great commission given to it and the power of the claim it makes on our loyalty do not appear, until we see beyond the local body to the fullness of the Church in which we believe. There is a stubborn devotion in most congregations to their local interests and mission, which has been the despair of all enthusiasts for world issues. Yet we must not despair.

The universal aspects of the Church's mission

in the world absolutely depend on the moral and financial support of local congregations. All the brave resolutions of our Assemblies are paper tigers until the support of the local churches comes in behind them. Therefore, the worship, teaching and other organisations in the congregation must bring continually before the members the real dimensions of the Church as One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. The Historical Dimension Beyond the local there is the historical dimension. Our worship in our local Church spans the centuries. The Creed states the faith in which men and women down the ages built their lives. Even if we- do not repeat the Creed, the Bible lessons make us one with thousands of years of faith and hope. It is a tragedy that the Old Testament is so little read in our non-liturgical Churches. Even when it is read, there is a strong likelihood that that passage will be chosen from the Psalms or the poetic parts of Isaiah. This is to deprive our people of their proper heritage.

The Bible links us,

in our twentieth century Churches, with thousands of years of the human story. It is an essential part of our faith as Christians, that we hold it with the fathers, the martyrs, the saints who in every age have tested it and found that God is faithful. The Universal Dimension Beyond the local there is the universal dimension. We sing hymns to Christ, and commemorate His death in the Sacrament, "with all men everywhere who invoke the name of our Lord Jesus Christ-their Lord as well as ours" (1 Corinthians 1: 2). The Church we belong to is co-terminus with the planet. When we call God our Father we are praying with and for the whole family that is struggling and suffering, sinning and hoping, and in spite of everything praising God, across the continents. The Mystical Dimension Beyond the local there is the mystical dimension of the Church. We believe that God is eternal. Whatever that means, at least it says that time as we experience it is an episode in a greater story. The Church, in its communion with God through Jesus, shares in His Eternal Life. So our communion with God and with each other is not constricted by time.

The author of the New Testament

"Letter to the Hebrews" puts this fact in a memorable figure. He says we in our Christian life and worship are like runners in the arena, watched and cheered on by a great crowd on the surrounding terraces. Non-Churchly Groups There is yet another dimension beyond the local Church. We may call it the "non-churchly" groups, comprised of people who appear to repudiate our traditional Churches, yet call themselves Christian, and in their concern for humanity and their devotion to Jesus cannot be denied their claim to be His disciples. At one extreme there are groups whose oddities in behaviour worship and dress exclude them from conventional Church circles. At the other extreme are radical thinkers, who seem to reject much of the traditional teaching of the Creeds, and understand obedience to Christ largely in terms of political and social causes. In between there are innumerable groups which have declared the institutional Church irrelevant. There is no place here for an attempt to categorise such groups, to criticise them or to appreciate them. Indeed they are so different from each other that generalisations would be irrelevant. Broadly, the position taken here is that such non-churchly groups must be accepted as for the Kingdom of Christ and not against it. We dare not forget that Jesus himself was an outsider. It is urgently necessary for the congregations to maintain contact with these groups.

They point to some failure in the traditional Church,

or some sign of the Spirit, that we must heed. It must be recognised that the Spirit is also in them. Not only for the Church's sake, but also for the sake of the persons in such groups, the Church should have a pastoral attitude towards them. Most of them look impatiently for some kind of ultimate Event-political peace, the Second Coming of Jesus, complete social freedom, unrestrained love, or whatever it may be. When the dream does not come true, what then? When Jesus' Second Coming is delayed, will faith and enthusiasm sink together? A time comes when disillusion displaces hope. The Church is well practised in dealing with deferred hope. Its pastoral experience will certainly be needed. The Local Congregation and the Whole Church All this means that our successes and failures in our local congregations have to be seen in proportion. In the wide ranging desert warfare in the Middle East during the last war, it was essential to know what was going on along the whole front, not only in a particular pocket. We are strengthened in our faith and our efforts for the faith, by our awareness of millions of others who have discovered that Jesus saves, and in their own way are broadcasting the news of His salvation today

When we say "Our Father"

we put ourselves alongside an immense brotherhood stretching all over the continents. We share in their hope for Christ's Kingdom, their struggle for daily bread; like them we offer forgiveness and accept it for ourselves; like them we pray for grace in the day of testing; like them, against all opposition, we blazon our faith that the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory belong to our Father. In every denomination we must give hard thought to the question, how to keep before the scattered congregations in their absorption with the pressing needs of their own parish, the vision of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church to which they belong. This can happen in various ways. The teaching programmes of the local Church can contain the vision of the Church Catholic. The Sunday School syllabus can have projects which inform the children of the great breadth of their family. Confirmation Class is a specially appropriate time for teaching about ecumenical matters. Pulpit teaching and the programmes of the various organisations can be framed with a reference far wider than the local community.

Further, congregations need to take with great seriousness their denominational obedience. Denominations have no place in the New Testament Church. They are theologically nonsense, economically stupid, socially divisive. They are an ill consequences of pride and impatience. Yet, bad as they are, for the present they are inescapable. We must face facts. If the local congregation is to take its due share in Industrial Mission, Church Extension, Overseas partnership in evangelism, in representing to Government and other authorities the considered views of the Church, if it is to share the efforts and sufferings of Christ's people today, then it must do so mainly through the channels of its own denomination. Until major Church Unions come we are stuck with denominations and must use them, imperfect as they are, to widen the horizon of local Christians, and give an opportunity to share in a greater field of mission. The Church and the Kingdom of God A final word must be said about the relation between the Church and the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is the hope of Jesus, and His Apostles, and every generation of Christians.

We look for a community

in which Jesus is Lord, in which there is mutual acceptance and love among the members, where the end is not profit, power or pleasure but the good will of God, and where the prizes go to the humble and willing servants. In a real sense, though imperfectly and temporarily, Jesus is Lord in the congregation, and the blessings and love, joy and peace are to be found there. So we can boldly claim that the Kingdom of God is here, in the Church. But this is so only partially, temporarily and in restricted places. The community of the Church is only a token of the Kingdom, for which, in the Church, we pray and work. In fact we must always look in the Church for Jesus Christ to come again. Dreams of a completely renewed community, of perma-nently restored sinners, of complete harmony among members and others, are as far away as the classless society, or the hygienic city, or a world in which all have enough to eat, or permanent peace. These are Utopias, and the hope in Christian mission of such perfect solutions is delayed until Christ comes again. But meantime there are signs, tokens, foretastes of the final Kingdom, which in themselves provide powerful support for Christian congregations in their sacrificial work. There are moments in united worship when the certainty of Christ's immediate Presence and ultimate victory possess a whole congregation.

There are experiences of fellowship,

temporary and partial maybe, which show with clarity the power by which Christ makes men one, traversing all human boundaries of status and class. Such moments do not establish proofs to one who is outside the fellowship, but they confirm, in the minds of Christian men and women, that the future belongs to Jesus Christ. When we know that we are claimed by Jesus for his Kingdom, then we pray for it, work for it and hope to share in it. Our prayer is honest when it rises out of our belonging in the, local Christian community which in spite of its glaring faults is still, with no alternative, the reality of that Kingdom now and the sign of its coming in the future.