 OUR PAST, THE KEY TO OUR PRESENT PROBLEMS
Across the nation Churches of Christ are faced with a host of preachers and teachers who have undertaken a campaign to mold and changed them according to a new pattern. These "agents of change" think they have found something new and better for the Lord's church, but in reality what they are promoting is almost identical to the changes proposed by the progressives among our churches in the 60 years from the end of the Civil War to World War I. The changes they insisted upon ravaged our brotherhood with strife and division.
When the dust was settled there were tow separate bodies Churches of Christ and Disciples of Christ/Christian Churches. Those who departed from us had begun a journey which continues to this day, farther and farther from the Biblical ground their fathers occupied. - Those brethren were unhappy with our acappella singing. They desired choirs, soloists, pianos and organs. * They felt that a brotherhood of independent congregations could never do the Lord's work in an adequate way. They proposed all sorts of brotherhood organizations to manage that work. They created missionary, Bible, tract, publishing, benevolent and other societies, believing they could do it better.
- They were convinced that our preachers were not reaching their full
potential as simple ministers or evangelists, and so they reshaped theirs to be pastors and reverends. - They felt lonely an alienated from their ministerial peers in other
religious bodies, so they joined their ministerial alliances and eventually the Federal Council of Churches (Now, The National Council of Churches). - They were embarrassed at their fathers' resolves to be Christians only and the church which Christ built and blessed. Such an approach seemed narrow and ungenerous to others, so they began to seek acceptance as fellow denominationalists.
- They felt shackled and restricted when obliged to abide by the authority of the New Testament in their faith and practice. They needed the Old Covenant to broaden their range of options for worship. Eventually, even that did not provide adequate latitude for their innovations.
- They concluded that we were mistaken in not placing women in our pulpits and leadership offices. So they remedied that by doing so.
- Eventually they concluded that the whole idea of restoring the original faith and practice of the church was an obsolete and unworkable idea and abandoned it.
Within 40 years (by 1906), the differences between the progressives and our fathers was so great that it was clear they were two different bodies of people. Today you can examine the mature fruit of their progressive ideas by visiting a Disciples of Christ church. They still talk about our common past, but in faith and practice there is little that we hold in common. Today the seeds, if not the plant, of all of these departures from the faith are found among us. The great grandchildren of those courageous men who stood in the forefront of the battle and salvaged a small remnant of faithful disciples are prepared to embrace the apostasy that was rejected by their forefathers. Like Hymenaeus and Alexander, they are making shipwreck concerning the faith (I Tim. 2:19-20). Let all who love the Lord reject their overtures. JHW |
