The uphoilding of the congreg

There is no point at which a Christian is fully mature, or a Christian congregation at last fully equipped with the gifts of the Spirit to fulfil its mission. The process of Christian nurture, from cradle to grave is continuous. Members of the Church need to be built up to confess their faith; to stand up against the buffetings of fate; to endure suffering for Jesus' sake; to take their share in Christian service to the world; to discover and rediscover the priorities of their mission. For this process of up-building there are at least four separate gifts given to the Church of God through the Spirit of Christ.

Worship

The first is worship. It is supremely in their worship of God as the Father, of Jesus His Son as the Lord, and of the Holy Spirit as the one who makes Christ a present reality, that Christians are fitted for the race they have to run. It is right to think of worship as a gift. For it is an event which happens only as God, in His freedom and goodness, comes to meet His people. Further, the response they make in worship is possible only as the Spirit of God moves them to give themselves in love and service. Of course worship is more than a tool for the equipping of Christians. It is more than a means of grace. Worship is the reason why the Church exists. It is why the world has been called into being. Here however we treat it in this restricted function as a gift for the building up of Christian men and women in faith and love. In worship we look up to God, submit our lives to the light of Christ, and are raised above ourselves to participate in what God is doing, in the wide world and down all the ages, for the salvation of mankind. It is therefore a first pastoral concern that all the congregation take their proper part in it, and, on the other hand, that the worship in Church is of the kind that will effect its proper purpose.

The reform of worship is the first item on the agenda for the renewal of the Church today. The Roman Catholic Church, in Vatican II, had its priorities right in this respect. The Church of England has come a long way in restoring the simplicity and power of the Holy Communion as the core of parish worship. In most of our congregations however we are at the place where, with varying degrees of exasperation, we recognise the need for reform, but have not yet come to consensus about the main lines on which reform must move. It is therefore somewhat presumptuous for one man to say what he thinks are the main requirements. On the other hand it may be that it is by the offering of all that progress can be made. Here then are what seems to one man to be the lines along which our worship in the congregation must take new shape. Since worship is toward God, there has to be a large place for sheer adoration, positive affirmation of what we know of God in Christ, humble admission of the vast mystery that is still hidden.

This cannot be achieved by chatter. We must wait on God in awe and wonder. When Christ calls us, He calls us to worship the Father, Lord of heaven and earth. So it is the Father Almighty. in all His majesty and tenderness, that must draw the mind of the worshippers. Secondly there must be participation by all. This is not often achieved by introducing responses. Scottish congrega-tions do not seem to take to responses. It is not achieved either, when one or two persons out of a crowd of hundreds read a lesson or take part in a prayer. It is the whole company that must take part. The most obvious way is in the singing of hymns. Hymn singing is "a means of grace. One of the reasons for young people leaving our churches is that the hymns are stale and flat for them. We must find from them how, in their own idiom they want to sing the praise of Christ. And what can we do about the prayers?

How can the prayers become truly the prayers of the congregation. taking up those great issues that are most in the minds of our people. old and young. and bringing them to God in language they can understand? Perhaps before the prayers are offered we must find out what they want to pray for. Participation will almost certainly mean that the monologue sermon prepared by the minister alone, will not be the invariable centrepiece. Finally, one hopes that we will find real participation when we bring back as the act of our worship the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, not as a great formal mustering of the flock, every head counted, but as the simple gathering of Christ's people round the bread and wine that portray the deepest mystery of Christian living, where all share in the action.

The third element that we must look for in the reform of our congregation's worship is spontaneity. In a discussion about worship recently in a manse in the Outer Hebrides, all present were asked to say what they wanted. For one, it was more silence. Another wanted contemporary hymns to contemporary music. A third wanted discussion begun and summed up by the minister. Still another wanted incense! There was a feeling that worshippers needed to express their joy and liberation in movement. And finally, almost with one consent, they wanted the Holy Communion to be much more frequent. It may be that the revival of Pentecostalism has a great deal to give us here. Reverence does not mean rigidity. We can learn from the Pentecostal groups how to be free and joyful in praising God. The freedom of worship which we enjoy in Protestant Churches makes it possible to put into effect these longings and convictions.There is no need to wait for permission of higher authority. What seems to be needed at the moment is open exchange at all levels, including young people, and attempts in the congre-gations to shape a flexible order of worship.

Fellowship

The second great gift for the up-building of the congregation is fellowship. Jesus called his disciples "to be with Him." The pictures we have of Bethany, Galilee, the Upper Room, Emmaus, all show close fellowship as the core of Christian living. There has been a kind of re-discovery, in recent decades, of the power that is unlocked when Christian people meet together round the Bible, in prayer, in conference or in joint action. We find, as we receive from others, how much we ourselves have to give. Openness to each other creates a new situation. Our people will not be built up in the faith by "sitting at the feet of the ministers alone. Ministers find that they too have to get more than they can give. The grace of Christ and the teaching of the Spirit come to us through the fellowship of believing and seeking minds Fellowship in the Church in modern times has come to be debased in meaning. It is often used to refer to a sort of social meeting in which it is pleasant to be together. The fellowship of the Spirit means that, but far more than that. It means the oneness that comes from sharing experience in obedience to Christ.We never come to the end in our discoveries of fellowship. There is always a long way still to go in our understanding of and delight in other persons. "Did not our hearts burn within us as we talked." It is one of the great gifts to human beings, enriched a hundred times by faith in Christ.

Christian Education

The third great medium of upbuilding in the congregation is Christian Education. In the beginning the followers of Jesus were called "disciples" or pupils. After Pentecost, we hear, the people kept coming for instruction. It is a strange innovation in the Church to arrange for the teaching of children up to confirmation, and after that to leave the matter to chance. John Knox was anxious for the instruction of adults as of children in the Bible and the reformed teaching. Catechising meetings, in Scotland, were attended by all. The Church has given lip service for some decades to the need for teaching adult members. In the British Churches, however, little has happened to effect it. The time is ripe, in every congregation, to examine the scale and effectiveness of our Christian instruction at all ages. We have first to be sure what we want to teach. Yet it is here that we meet with some confusion. The turmoil in theology in recent years has reached down to the level of congregations. Surely the best guide is the Bible itself. The Church is based on the Bible.

Christian people are people of a book. Where the Church has received new life, it is invariably by a new discovery of the Word. But teaching of adult members if it is to be helpful, will not be in the form of systematic doctrine. We need to find out from our lay members what they need, and try to meet their need. Then we must be clear why we are teaching. It is not only for academic interest or curiosity. We want to teach our members in the faith so that they can live it out and thereby confess it. The aim of Christian education is the witness of Christians to what they believe. When we come to methods of instruction we find an immense wealth of expertise. There are few congregations in which the minister will not find, if he looks, a group of people more expert than he is in the skill of communicating. They could help in assessing the value of a sermon, the various classes, and in suggesting the best use of time and gifts to get the message through. The Church has been slow to use the gifts of the laity in its work of education.

The Ministry

The fourth great gift of Christ to his Church, for the upbuilding of the people in faith, is the ministry. That is, the specialist ministry of those set apart in the function of teachers, pastors and evangelists. In most churches the people rely on the paid clergy too much. Evangelism, instruction, leadership and even prayer, are thought of as clerical functions. This has been a tragic loss. The ministry exists to help upbuild members in their faith so that they can evangelise, instruct others and fulfil their vocation of prayer. A proper awareness of the gifts of the Spirit would mean without doubt that the Church could revise drastically its requirement of full-time professional servants.

In almost all our churches there is a crisis affecting candidates for the ministry. There are obvious reasons underlying the scarcity. It may be, however, that at a deeper level than the ecclesiastical and economic reasons, there is a question of God's Providence. May it not be that the Church is being forced to clarify its understanding of the ministry? Suppose we try to understand that the ordained minister's function is from the point of view of the congregation. This is not to say that there is no other point of view.

Without any doubt, however, it is a perspective that has been neglected. If we can understand the charge which Christ lays on his congregation, then we are better able to see the work of the ministry in that context. A congregation exists to worship God, to serve its com-munity and to spread the faith. It is the whole body that worships. serves and proclaims Christ. So the ordained ministry's function is to help the members of the congregation in those three aspects of their vocation. This point of view has been explicitly stated by St. Paul, who says that Christ has given Apostles, Prophets. Evangelists and Teachers 'to equip God's People for work in His service, to the building up of the body of Christ." (Ephesians 4:11-12) It has been taken as something of a victory in liturgical progress that the altar in Roman and Anglican Churches has tended to become free-standing, the priest facing the people during the worship rather than turning his back to them.

But if it is on/v the priest who faces the people we may have accentuated, rather than diminished, the gap between the priest and people in the act of worship. With the fixed East-end altar the priest as one of the congregation made his offering of praise and prayer and vow. He led the whole congregation, doing with them what they all did. Whatever the physical arrangement may be, this remains the function of the ordained minister. The beautiful picture in the Bible of the relation between the minister and the people-the figure of the shepherd- gives the same view. The Bible shepherd goes before the flock. They go where he goes. There has been a tendency in recent literature about con-gregational structures to make a division between pastoral and missionary purposes.

This is not a Biblical distinction. If a minister sees his task as taking care of the members, and the members see their part as being taken care of, this is a serious misunderstanding of the pastoral command "feed my sheep." The pastoral care of a congregation is best done when members are helped to understand their own pastoral and missionary responsibility for others. So in place of the extreme clericalism which has affected both Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, we need to build up the relation between minister and people, in which it is seen that all are involved in the whole calling of the Church, and the minister's place is to lead, encourage and train members for their calling.

A woman in the North of Scotland, recounting her blessings, said "I have a good minister, and a good doctor, and I am thankful." The bond that grows between a minister and the members, like the doctor-patient relation-ship, can be one of the most creative and satisfying experiences of life. It is a great privilege to be on the receiving end of the trusting confidence and loving interest of Christian people for their pastor. In spite of all the strong theological reasons against clericalism, it seems to be true that the faith of Christian people and their loyalty to the church need a personal focus. The minister becomes that focus, and should be humbly aware of it. Like all other personal ties. it needs to be tended and promoted. The rewards of diligent "pastoral visiting" are immeasurable.

The Gifts of the Spirit

These four gifts, worship, fellowship, teaching and ministry, are given to the congregation as a whole, to be exercised and developed by the whole congregation. The variety of the "gifts of the Spirit" mentioned in St. Paul's letters does not separate the minister from the congregation. On the contrary, the spiritual ability to love and serve one's neighbour and to confess Christ as Lord is given without any such distinction.