A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Harold Cumming is Professor of Forestry at Lakeland University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and serves on the Board of the Renewal Fellowship.
A new job, a new town, now to find a new church! Canadians are great movers, and at one stage of our lives my wife and I found ourselves in a typical Canadian situation. But moving has its down side as well as its excitement and anticipations. In moving to our new town, we were leaving behind a church that we loved. Ours was a lively church with warm Christian fellowship. Some of our very best friends were there. We could not help but miss both our friends and the spiritual support of our church.
Over the next couple of months, none of the churches of any denomination in our new town lived up to our memories of what we had left behind. Thus it was with great joy that we heard of the imminent arrival of one of our beloved former elders on a speaking engagement. We had a marvellous time over Sunday lunch asking about mutual friends, and about the progress of God’s work in that area. Then Tom and I retired to the living room for further talk. The next couple of hours’ conversation turned my life around as far as my attitudes toward church and lay ministry are concerned.
Tom started the conversation by asking how we were making out at finding a new church. I had to admit that we were not doing too well. None of the churches we had tried had measured up. Not even the one that he had been speaking at that morning. I went on to praise our former (his current) congregation, and especially our minister who, of course, was the sparkplug behind it all.
That was when I received a surprise, “Well, Steven is certainly very good, but you know, our church turned around before he came.”
I looked at him in astonishment. I had always assumed that Steve had been responsible for bringing the church to its present position. If he had not done it, how had that particular church become outstanding among all the other churches of the area?
I voiced my question, “I am really surprised to hear you say that. I always assumed that Steve had made the difference. When did it all start then?”
“Several years before. Our turnaround was well under way before Steve got there. Of course, he has had a major part in its continuation, but he was not the originator.”
I was becoming more interested and more puzzled, “Well, if Steve was not responsible for the church becoming so lively, who was?”
Tom paused for a moment, then spoke quietly, “Well, several of us were involved, but actually, I guess I was.”
The words were spoken so quietly, in such a matter-of-fact manner, that it took me a moment to realize what he had said. I almost gasped at the audacity. How could he simply sit there and claim credit for renewal of the church? How could our soft-spoken, unassuming elder turn into a braggart? I look at him in some astonishment. He was simply sitting there, quite quietly, with no apologies, apparently thinking about the events that had led up to change in that church.
Gradually, it dawned on me that he was not bragging. He was simply stating a fact. To my mind sprang a passage from Paul’s writing, a passage where one of our study-group members had snorted at Paul being such a braggart as he wrote about the work he had done. Now I realized that both Paul and Tom were simply telling it the way it was.
My next question was obvious, “How did you do it?”
“Well, with a lot of hard work. I saw a need for leadership in the congregation and I felt called to take it on. I began working with some of the others, and slowly things began to change. By the time Steve arrived, we had laid the groundwork for him to build on. Of course, he deserves a lot of credit for what has followed, but it was on the way before him.”
Then Tom turned and looked me in the eye, “You know, you should do the same thing here. Whatever church you choose may not be perfect right now, but you can change it. In fact, it is your obligation to change it. You should choose a church where you can do what I did. It is up to you to go in there and turn it around.”
I had received orders before in the business world, but never in my personal or religious life. If the person saying those words had been anyone else, I would have bridled. But coming from Tom, my elder, I saw this command as coming directly from God. I could do nothing but sit thinking about what he had said. It was a whole new idea to me.
Tom went on to describe one of the churches in our town that he had visited, and to suggest that it might be the one for us. I remember being very skeptical at the time. It took two years of looking around before my wife and I gave in and admitted he was right. But when we joined that church, it was not because we had discovered another warm, encouraging fellowship, similar to the one we had left behind. It was because we saw there a great potential, and felt called upon to try to help it come to fruition. My approach to churches and church life has never been the same since.
I suppose the way for this change in my thinking had been prepared to some extent by exposure, at our former church, to the teachings of Dr. James Kennedy, of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Florida. He had maintained very strongly, that lay people should not count on ministers to do all the work. To do that, he said was to be like a general in a war going up to the front line and trying to do all the fighting himself, instead of keeping track of the overall situation and directing his troops. Ministers as “teaching elders,” should be, in fact, teaching the members of the congregation and preparing them to do the Lord’s work. He pointed out that, according to Acts, when the first church was being spread abroad, the apostles remained in Jerusalem. The apostles were not the first ones to spread the good news. It was the ordinary Christians. Too many of us today, Dr. Kennedy maintained, were content to sit in our comfortable pews and “let clerical George do it” Lay people should be soldiers in the front line.
So responsibility for renewal rests on us lay people. But what are we suppose to do? Laying on a guilt trip without some direction would not be very productive. Some possibilities have already been mentioned. We can take on many of the chores that load down our ministers and prevent them from doing the works they should be doing.
We can minister to each other. How many of us have the understanding ear that is required to encourage others in the congregation to share their joys and their problems? Why should that responsibility to be left to the preacher? Some of us can become the lay leaders necessary to provide support to our ministers as they initiate moves toward renewal in our churches. But one other thing can be done that far surpasses any of these. We lay people can begin renewal by simply doing what we have been told to do. No, I am not now referring to, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel,” although that would be a good idea, too. I am referring to the other direct command that Jesus gave us just before he left us. Remember that he did most of this teaching by example, and by laying down principles from which we can develop applications to immediate situations. A direct command, then, must be something of outstanding importance. Probably you have now guessed my reference: “A new commandment I give unto you that you love one another.” Here is something that every lay person can do. In fact, only by each lay person doing his or her part can the command be carried out. It would not be obeying the command for the preacher to love us. We must do it ourselves.