THE executive director of the department of evangelism for the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., G. Paul Musselman, recently wrote in one of the most popular of America's magazines, The Saturday Evening Post:
The most compelling mission of the Church today is not in the far-off, least civilized corners of the globe. The biggest task lies right at the heart of urban civilization, in the tall towers and asphalt jungles of our cities. That is where the Church has failed. It is a failure that is told in terms of dwindling congregations and closed church buildings— and an increasing inability of the Church to enter the lives of those who desperately need something of the spirit to give meaning to our materialistic civilization.
The cities! What a challenge they have ever been, but what a heartbreak they are in this twentieth century! It is reported that in the past fifteen years New York City has lost 300 churches, Chicago 150, Cleveland 72, and Detroit 63. Reports of leaders themselves indicate that of the Baptist denomination alone the number of people moving from rural or other urban areas who do not reaffuiate with the church would fill nine thousand average-sized churches!
Dr. Musselman makes another challenging observation worthy of our most sober reflection:
Church leaders are taking a new look at expensive church buildings in which clublike congregations sometimes ignore the world outside and slowly hug themselves to death in huge structures they no longer can support. It is strange that the Church of Him who had not where to lay His head is today deeply worried about the maintenance of its expensive real estate. Yet the fact is, it is easier to raise money for bricks and mortar than for people and programs. One hard-pressed inner-city church strained its resources to build a new office-and-educational building—but fired a curate and a parish worker to balance its budget. Perhaps Protestantism must lose a few more status symbols before it remembers that its destiny is not to be a custodian of property but to be the creator of a Christian culture.
To this solemn appraisal we can hardly plead immunity. I can testify to the truth of this from wide observations and present developments close up. I live and labor in America's most congested populated area. There is a greater population per square mile, a greater number of cars per square mile, than any other place in America. Yet, in spite of nearly one thousand conversions in four years, a net growth of less than three hundred is realized! Nor is this an isolated instance, all of which makes the challenge of the asphalt jungles of our world one of our overriding emergency needs.
Annually Seventh-day Adventists expend millions for the erection of magnificent hospitals equipped with the finest equipment. Yearly we construct buildings of fine proportion, design, and function to house our ever-widening educational network from the first grade through one of two universities. Our fine staff of elementary teachers is growing ever larger, until their number in some local fields is now greater than the number of pastors staffing our districts of churches. Our congregations are being housed in well-built, beautifully equipped buildings, and pastored by degreed ministers, who have a decreasing number of churches in districts under their care.
The truth is that while totals increase percentages drop, and the temptation is to be satisfied with the ascending graph and not be concerned with the steady slide of the actual individual participation in the task of world evangelism. The Abrahamic mathematic equation, when Abraham pleaded for Sodom, is again confronting the modern asphalt jungle. We search often in vain for the faithful ten souls. Let's face it! How heavily do the millions of the great cities concern us? Once we had thriving churches in these urban centers only to have congregations sell these properties at handsome profits, and then join the trek to suburbia. What of our labors for the cities, not to say anything of suburbia itself!
Here we are on the verge of eternity, and we stand with pitifully small evangelistic budgets while we face soaring costs to maintain the overhead and understandable demands for additional physical facilities. Surely the hour is upon us when a revitalized emphasis, a reaffirmation of our faith, and a distribution of our financial resources demand a long look toward the doomed and the damned of the asphalt jungle.
A recapture of the early Advent burden is due. Consider these words:
My duty is to say that God is earnestly calling for a great work to be done in the cities. New fields are to be opened. Men who know the message and who should feel the responsibilities of the work have manifested so little faith that because of difficulties or fears there has been a long neglect.— Evangelism, p. 37.
In the cities of today, where there is so much to attract and please, the people can be interested by no ordinary efforts. Ministers of God's appointment will find it necessary to put forth extraordinary efforts in order to arrest the attention of the multitudes. And when they succeed in bringing together a large number of people, they must bear messages of a character so out of the usual order that the people will be aroused and warned. They must make use of every means that can possibly be devised for causing the truth to stand out clearly and distinctly.—Ibid., p. 40.
Those of our people who are living in large centers would gain a precious experience, if, with their Bibles in their hands, and their hearts open to the impressions of the Holy Spirit, they would go forth to the highways and byways of the world with the message they have received.—Ibid., p. 50.
Calamities will come—calamities most awful, most unexpected; and these destructions will follow one after another. If there will be a heeding of the warnings that God has given, and if churches will repent, returning to their allegiance, then other cities may be spared for a time.—Ibid., p. 27.
In 1903 the messenger of God wrote— "O that God's people had a sense of the impending destruction of thousands of cities, now almost given to idolatry."-—Ibid., p. 29.
This is the hour to which we can if we will, and we must, proudly point and say, "God's remnant people are not failing the cities!"