By Leroy Lawson
This January, Standard Publishing”s Publishing Committee, CHRISTIAN STANDARD”s contributing editors, and a few other key leaders met in a retreat to discuss the future. Key questions included, “Why does the Restoration Movement exist? What do we contribute? What is our vision for what Christian churches and churches of Christ should be and accomplish in the next decades? What do we want to look like 50 years from now . . . and what can we do today to begin painting that picture?”
Although much time was given to freewheeling dialogue, two speakers set the tone with their challenging papers. We”re publishing them this week and inviting all our readers to join the discussion.
It has been posited:Â We don”t need the Restoration Movement, but should let the movement sink into the church at large.
This familiar language takes us right back to early 19th-century beginnings of what later became the Restoration Movement1. It raises, as it should, the proper perennial question for a movement that doesn”t want to be a denomination.
WRONG ASSUMPTION
But what does “church at large” mean? The sentence assumes there”s one clearly identifiable, generally monolithic entity that we can dissolve into. Back to the Presbyterianism of the Campbells and Stone? Back to the Reformed church with its Calvinist theology and protests against Roman Catholicism? Back to Roman Catholicism itself? Would we be comfortable? Would we be of any use? If we”re going back, why not all the way back to the beginning””which brings us full circle, doesn”t it, since we”re a New Testament church movement?
Often this proposition is basically an admission of failure. We”re a unity movement, after all, and Christianity is far from united. We”d be hard-pressed to prove we can even unite ourselves.
Yet in a broader sense we have succeeded as a restoration movement””we just don”t own it. The Restoration ideal is widespread and still spreading, certainly when we compare our century with the 19th-century beginnings.
We might as well admit the grand vision of achieving unity by means of restoration was more idealistic than realistic. It was fostered by enlightenment rationalism, which seemed to believe if we could just get our thoughts right, all would be well.
Where”d they get that idea? Didn”t they have children?
Here”s the problem: if we insist on being a movement and not a denomination, we can”t control it. We”ll always be frustrated. But my own frustration has been tempered by remembering a story I heard of Bishop Gerald Kennedy”s experience in the 1950s.
As it was told to me, the bishop was charged with traveling to America to assess the condition of the Methodist Church. In his report he initially sounded positive: Everything is under control, he said. And that, he added, is the problem. He had found little room for the moving of the Spirit, for innovation and creativity, for individuality and initiative. The great holiness movement that gave birth to Methodism had crystallized. Too much control.
So the question is on target. If it”s not control we seek, but movement, then we must think together. More than that, envision together. I”m grateful to Standard Publishing for inviting us to consider and discuss these issues.
Let me state my bias up front: We need the Restoration Movement.
You might think this is the reason: To promote and perpetuate our institutions and agencies; our conferences and publishing houses; our missions, church planting, and benevolent agencies; our higher education and leadership training institutions; and our means for recruitment and preparation of professional ministry.
But that”s not reason enough for me.
The truth is we can lose all of these and still succeed as a movement. Institutions don”t define us; they are expressions of aspects of our ministry. We are a movement of the church; we”ll have failed when the church is dead. But if we do church right, we”re involved in something “the gates of Hell shall not prevail against” (see Matthew 16:18). Our purpose is that God”s “kingdom may come and God”s will may be done on earth as it is in Heaven” (see Matthew 6:10), not that any particular agency or institution or program may survive.
As participants in the Restoration Movement, we aren”t the whole kingdom, but we”re not ancillary to it, either. We have our assignment: to assist God”s purposes through the larger body of Christ on earth. We have a job to do.
At one time I pastored a church while serving as president of one of our universities. I obviously love and believe in education. But what kept me sane during those years was remembering that Christ established a church, not a university. The purpose of Christian higher education is to assist the church in fulfilling its mission, and not vice versa. Sometimes agencies and institutions do forget.
MUDDLED IDENTITY
Let”s consider some of the reasons for raising the issue now:
1. We have made our point and it has been adopted by many who are not “us.” We do not now own the movement for restoring New Testament Christianity””if we ever did; and we”re no longer isolated from the larger Christian world””which we certainly were at one time. We find Restorationist soul mates scattered throughout the national and international church scene.
2. We don”t have a distinguishable brand. As has often been pointed out, “Restoration Movement” is a terrible label. So is “Stone-Campbell Movement,” since most people even within the movement don”t know about either Stone or the Campbells. To quote Professor Fred Norris, “Our distinctive is that we have no distinctives.” So, as I said, “they” have trouble figuring out who “we” are
3. We have outlived our enemies””and as a result have a dimmed sense of identity. Some of “us” have trouble figuring out who “we” are. By 1928 we knew we were not Disciples of Christ, not a capella churches of Christ, not Fundamentalists, not Pentecostals, not even Evangelicals. Instead, we boasted, we are “Christians only”””and don”t you forget it!
So we were energized and scrappy and sure of ourselves when we were fighting””Baptists, denominations in general, erring fellow Restorationists, and more. But without a fight, who are we?
4. We have a generation gap””a definite reason for our dealing with this issue today. Younger leaders are taking their cues from each other, not their forefathers. They”re convinced they face different challenges from any faced by those who have gone before them.
It has always been so with fathers and sons””and it”s not a bad thing. (It does require a heap of patience and tolerance on the part of the fathers, though.)
PERSONAL QUESTIONS
So I ask again, Why should we exist? What do we have to contribute?
This is a very personal question for me: If I don”t belong with “us,” where else could I go? That”s the good thing about movements: you can”t kick me out. Of course, you can freeze me out if you abandon our Restoration principles and opt to be a sect or denomination instead. So far, though, you have let me hang out with you, even though you and I don”t agree on everything.
I hope we won”t freeze out the rising generation, and that they won”t give up on us because we seem to them to be white old fossils who haven”t died yet.
Another question Christian Standard Editor Mark Taylor asked us to consider is this: What do we want the movement to look like 50 years from now?
I don”t know what we will look like, but I know what I”d like to see: more color and much less racism; more appreciation for the spiritual gifts and leadership abilities of women; more awareness that we are an international, not just an American, movement; more intentionality in””as Doug Priest says””getting our hands dirty; more diversity politically, so that even Democrats can feel at home among us.
I”d have us continue in the direction we”ve been leading: even more megachurches; more church planting initiatives; fewer but better and more variegated colleges and universities; less paternalism and more genuine sharing in global missions.
VALUABLE CONTRIBUTIONS
Why are these my hopes? Because I think we have some valuable contributions to make to the church at large. Here are 10 specific values we have to offer within the larger Christian enterprise:
1. There is value in nondenominational connectedness.
I stress both: nondenominational stance, and connectedness. Interde-pendence, not independence.
In this very secular and too, too religious world, individual Christians and churches, even individual denominations, aren”t strong enough to be effective alone.
2. There is value in not being merely Evangelical, especially since Evangelicalism has become so politicized. We must be broader, more inclusive than that. It really is better to be mere Christians.
3. There”s value in our entrepreneur-friendly environment.
Let our leaders lead; let our dreamers share their dreams; let our icon-smashers protect us from our own idolatry. Let the mavericks roam.
4. There”s value in striving anew to be a youth movement.
In fact, we”ll survive only if we are one.
5. There”s value in acknowledging the authority of the New Testament and the preeminence of Christ over all other personalities and documents and theologies, especially systematic theologies.
We haven”t always correctly applied our slogan, “Where the Bible speaks, we speak; where the Bible is silent, we are silent,” but it does point us to the right source.
6. There”s value in continuing to aim for that elusive target, unity. We acknowledge it is helpful to be reminded of Calvin”s stress on the sovereignty of God, Luther”s on justification by faith, Francis of Assisi”s on love of all creatures. Likewise we do well to remember Campbell and Stone”s commitment to unity in spite of so many differences of opinion. “We”re Christians only, but not the only Christians.”
7. There”s value in stressing roots, even as we give our children wings.
We did not emerge from nowhere and were not birthed without cause. We are thriving because, remembering our origins, we have still been able to remain relevant to our culture, even as culture changes.
8. There”s value in constantly promoting the priesthood of all believers who use their individual spiritual gifts to build up and do the work of the church.
This teaching has the virtue of enhancing personal self-image without fostering self-centeredness. We”re gifted so that we may be gifts. We are called, all of us, to serve.
9. There”s value in being held together by ideas, values, goals, and mutual commitments rather than by ecclesiastical structures and bureaucratic demands.
10. There”s value in offering what we enjoy to others all over the world. For their sakes we must keep teaching what we”ve learned and sharing what we”ve been given.
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1This phrase is reminiscent of similar verbiage in The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery: “We will, that this body die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large; for there is but one body, and one Spirit, even as we are called in one hope of our calling.” For more details, enter the title of that document in an Internet search to find a wealth of sites with extensive comments.
LeRoy Lawson, international consultant with Christian Missionary Fellowship International, is a CHRISTIAN STANDARD contributing editor and a member of Standard Publishing”s Publishing Committee.
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