A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Roy Bell is pastor of First Baptist Church, Calgary, Alberta. This article appeared first in The Canadian Baptist January 1986 edition. Used by permission. Though written originally for a Baptist audience, there is much that is relevant for Presbyterians, as well.
There is a good deal of excitement in many church groups in Canada today. The Pentecostal charismatics are growing rapidly. They have skilled and able leadership. They demonstrate social concern. By and large they are innovative and alive. They are neither inhibited nor afraid of the world in which we live.
The so-called right wing fundamentalist churches are also prospering. I understand that in British Columbia Federation Baptist Churches are numerically fewer than Fellowship Baptists and that in both Ontario and Quebec there are many more people in Fellowship churches on a given Sunday than in BCOQ churches. By and large our work in Canada is static or declining. We have not kept pace with the growth of population. In addition, we share with the institutional old line churches in Canada a sense of growing irrelevance as perceived by non-church going Canadians.
The old Protestant compact that dominated Canadian life is gone. When the United, Anglican, Presbyterian, Lutheran and “Convention” Baptists spoke on an issue, everybody listened. Even if we were to agree on one today, who would care?
How have we ended up in this kind of predicament? There is nothing wrong with being on the losing side if we have fought for something important. Indeed there is a sense of satisfaction if not real joy when that takes place. But can anybody say that of us? Have we lost because we have been faithful to the gospel and that times are against us? Hardly.
It would be beyond the scope of this brief article to explore the reasons, good or bad. why we have become impotent but the reality is there. The need for renewal of the institutional church is the most urgent need in Canada today.
I rejoice in the blessing of God upon other church groups but I long to see the institutional church in Canada renewed and revived. It will not do us much good to recriminate over the mistakes of the past but it would do us great good to look to the future. I do not have a prescription for renewal that is neat and easy but I do believe there are factors in renewal that need to be addressed.
Quite clearly, as one reads the book of Acts and sees contemporary movements in our day. the place of the Holy Spirit has to take priority. In our church situations we are afraid of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, for adequate reasons. We have seen division and disturbance caused by the charismatic movement. Whether it was because the people have been unable to respond to those who have entered a new experience or because those with the new experience have been too overpowering, it doesn’t matter very much.
A first step in renewal would surely be for us to understand the work of the Holy Spirit and the person of the Holy Spirit, biblically, theologically, and most of all experientially.
A further step in the right direction would be for us to admit with humility that we have not been adequate for the days in which we live. The exhortation in the Old Testament, “If my people who are called by my name shall humble themselves.” Were we to be the kind of church people who would humble ourselves before God, admit our failure and our faults, it would seem that a second step would be taken towards renewal.
A third step, seemingly simple, would be a willingness to welcome change, to embrace it. My experience of Baptist church life has been refreshing and encouraging but I am disturbed that change is so difficult for us to perceive and to implement.
This would need to include changes in styles of worship. Oscar Cullman maintains that worship in the New Testament was liturgical, charismatic and spontaneous. In most of our Baptist churches worship is none of these things. It is sterile. It is inhibited. It belongs to the 19th century and it lacks joy.
I am not arguing that the implementation of these three beginning steps would revolutionize church life, but I am pleading for a concern for the renewal of the institutional church of which we are a part. These steps would make a modest beginning.
You will notice that I have neither emphasized the authority of scripture, prayer nor evangelism nor social concern. It is not because these are unimportant; they are necessities. But I believe the first three that I mentioned are the urgent ones for us in Baptist work in Canada today. We desire to see the institutional church revived and renewed in order that in our day and age, once again, the claims of Christ will be pre-eminent in our land.
The urgency is not that we might grow and prosper but that the Lord might be magnified and that in our day and age a population, increasingly secular and pagan, might once again see the attractiveness of Christ.