A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. John Allan is the past Moderator and currently pastor of St. Andrew’s Church, Victoria, B.C. This article is the Moderator’s Address to the 117th General Assembly.
As we come here tonight to open the 117th General Assembly I wish I could tell you all is well with the church. I cannot. We are in a crisis. If we find comfort in the fact that other churches are too, it’s false comfort.
Those who know me expect a three-point sermon. My three points are: 1) the challenge without; 2) the challenge within the church; 3) Christ’s answer to the challenge.
1. The Challenge Without
Church membership and attendance in this country have been declining for twenty-five years. Reginald Bibby’s survey, “Project Can ’90” completed last February, found that most Canadians have such a nebulous, ill-defined idea of God that God has no measurable impact on their lives.
Forty years ago seven in ten Canadians attended church regularly. Today it’s two in ten. My province, British Columbia, now shares the dubious distinction of having the lowest attendance, with Ontario, the heartland of our church.
The church has had some bad press. Sex scandals at Mt. Cashel and of prominent TV evangelists, and disillusionment in the United Church over gay ordination, have contributed to the low esteem with which the church is held today.
Our society is increasingly secularized. The church exists in a multicultural, pluralistic society – a society in which there is no clear moral right and wrong. The “if it’s right for me” ethic has invaded every aspect of society. The playboy philosophy – “if it feels good, do it” – is the morality by which most people live.
We live in a society that does not know the gospel of Jesus Christ. A young man came to me with some personal problems. He was born in Montreal and lived there and in Toronto. I asked, “Jim, do you remember the story of Jesus on the cross?” He thought for a moment and replied, “No, I don’t remember that story.”
This is not someone from the jungles of Borneo. It is a young man educated in Canada, living in Toronto.
The day before Good Friday I was at the bank. Two women behind me were complaining about the long wait. One said, “Why is there such a long line?” The other replied, “I wondered too until I saw the sign that the bank is closed tomorrow and Monday. I forgot that it’s Easter.”
“I forgot it’s Easter.” That’s not the minority, that’s the voice of the majority speaking to us.
That’s the challenge we face today.
2. The Challenge Within
The challenge that faces us is both outside and inside the church. In the church we need to get our priorities straight We can continue to do what we’ve been doing. We can hide in our holy huddles behind stained glass windows ignoring the challenge out there. But it won’t go away.
Our congregations will continue to grow older until someday in the next century the last Presbyterian in Canada is buried. Then nobody will have to worry about the location of Church Offices or the need for a new hymn book, or how many members should serve on what committee.
When Paul wrote his letters it was exceedingly difficult to be a Christian. The world was very hostile to the Christian faith.
We act as if living in a pluralistic society is a new experience for the church. It isn’t. It was in just such a world that the church was born, and thrived.
Paul wrote: “I beseech you therefore by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
We are commissioned to go into the world and proclaim the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The church is a mission to the world. We are evangelists. We are here to share the good news. We may be put off by the excesses of TV evangelists. But that is no reason to retreat to the other extreme. We have good news to share, good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ.
Why are we afraid of evangelism? Why are we afraid to tell the story of Jesus and his love to those who don’t know it? Maybe it’s because we really don’t believe anymore.
Do we believe that Jesus died on the cross to save us from sin and was raised by the power of God?
Or is it because we no longer take sin seriously? If we’re not sinners, then we have no need of a Saviour, and we have no gospel to share.
Or is it because we have swallowed the propaganda of the world – that any religion will do, that it really doesn’t matter what a person believes as long as he or she is sincere and nice? Peter said, “There is no other name given under heaven whereby you must be saved.”
We have been losing our young people. Every year we agonize over the loss. We’ve tried to make the church more relevant with happy, campy songs and guitars. We think if we replace Bach with the Beatles we’ll keep the kids – but it doesn’t work. A recent study of young people and the church done in Germany shows that the real alienation of the young goes much deeper. They find it hard to reconcile our God of creation with the scientific view of creation they’re taught in school. They find it hard to reconcile our God of love with the pain and suffering they see in the world. They find it difficult to stand up to the peer pressure of an increasingly secular world. We put them on committees and bore them to death. We should be grappling with them over the basic problems of life.
3. Christ’s Answer to the Challenge
Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he it is who bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
If you travel through the Niagara area in wintertime you will see long rows of dead sticks. These are the grapevines. In the spring new shoots burst forth and produce branches that bear grapes.
Jesus is the vine, we are the branches. Branches get chopped off, pruned, broken. The amazing thing about the vine is the way you prune the branches off in the fall and next spring it grows new branches. The life is in the vine, not the branches.
The real life and vitality of the church is not in us; it is in Christ. The real source of power and wonder and love is not in us; it is in Christ. We are only the branches; Christ is the vine.
But having said that, I must go on to say the branches are expected to produce fruit. If we are not, we should ask why? Our Lord tells us.
“He who abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit for apart from me you can do nothing…”
“Abide in me… live in me… dwell in me…” The word appears ten times in the first ten verses of John 15.
“Abide” has to do with relationship. We live in Christ, he lives in us. He is our life, our strength, our hope. Paul wrote, “For me to live is Christ.”
Unless we find our life in Christ, we will not bear fruit. To live in Christ we must be people of prayer, we must read our Bible listening carefully for the voice of our Lord. We must deliberately and continually open our lives to the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit.
Only when we are living branches of the living vine will we bear fruit for Christ.
Only when we are in a living relationship with Christ will we be able to invite our young people and our neighbours to join us and share his love and grace.
Tonight we come to the Lord’s Table. We hear the Lord say “this is my body broken for you… this cup is the new covenant in my blood…” We remember Jesus dying on the cross and raised from the dead for us.
Look at these symbols of Christ crucified and risen! What does he mean to you? What do you say to him? This is our sacrament, our vow and promise of faithfulness. May God grant us all grace to live for Christ, to share the gospel of his love, and so to be his church bearing much fruit.