FROM a dedicated pastor in Australia comes an eleven-page assessment of our real needs as a church. While acknowledging progress in the finishing of our task, he also faces up to the fact that something must be seriously wrong or we wouldn't be taking so long for the work to be completed.
He has been encouraged by the continued emphasis on revival and reformation that has come to the church since the General Conference session in 1966. But what is the matter? Why is there not greater evidence of a decided change for the better both in unselfish dedicated living and in the evangelistic outreach? In seeking a way out of the dilemma he dis cusses the possibility that our problem is the changing climate of the world, or the need for better methods. He probes the possibility of the problem's being with the administration of the church, or perhaps owing to a basic lack of commitment on the part of the majority of our church members.
Although in each of these areas he sees room for improvement, still, he observes, there are hopeful signs in each of these potential problem areas. The final solution that he arrives at is one that every reader will agree with. His suggestion is that the problem is with one's own personal experience, particularly as it relates to his prayer life. He sees the greatest problem facing church members as being their inability to pray properly. As he states it, "Every thing else greater Bible knowledge, greater service, victory over sin all are concomitant to this great lack. For genuine prayer is in reality a reaching out to God in utter dependence and this is all He is looking for. Even if our hearts are cold arid unresponsive and we do not feel like praying, we must cry out to God to teach us how to pray so that heaven is moved to act on our behalf."
Having said this, the writer looks at his own experience, which is what I have done while reading his words and I hope other readers will too. He writes: "I realize that actually I do not love my people as I really ought to. I have allowed the pressures of the work to prevent me from visiting them in their homes enough, and from taking time to listen to their needs and just plain love them. Like many of my colleagues, I have constantly to fight the subconscious temptation ministers face, to use my people; use them to fling rebukes at, rebukes that are really a reflection of my own needs and impotency to finish the work. I have even faced the temptation of using them to satisfy my own spiritual ego and climb the ladder of acceptance in our Adventist world. I realize too that some of my sermons have not always been as relevant, as packed with food as they ought to have been. God forgive me for all this.
"But basically my greatest need is that of my church member him self to learn how to pray and to lead my people with me into this experience; to get my priorities right and not allow the machinery and materialism of the denomination, good in itself, to get in the way. Even if all of the church does not respond to the call to prayer, it is needful to work like Jesus did through the small core of folks that do respond. Among Jesus' followers at the moment there are only a small number who really love Him, and among that small number fewer still who love Him in the same way as did John the beloved disciple. But those few must pray till they move God to ignite the rest of us.
" 'As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God? When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance' " (Ps. 42:1-5).
