11/5/61

Scripture: Read Acts 2: 37-47

The Christian Church is an amazing institution! Think of its age -- nearly 2000 years. This particular congregation, right here, is nearly 100 years old. Think of the church’s world-wide geographic distribution. It is on every continent; I suppose in every nation. It is by no means dominant in every land. In some countries it is a very small part of the total life of the country. But it is there! Its members are witnessing with an effect that is like yeast in the great mass of life.

Think of the church’s variety in worship forms and government. Think of its inclusiveness of all kinds of people. When I think of these things I’m glad I’m a part of it. Think of the dynamic influence the church has had through the ages in changing lives for the better; in spreading the precept and practice of love; in establishing schools and hospitals and social welfare centers. Think of its influence in the struggle for freedom from slavery; of its concern for decent working conditions; of its contribution to art in painting, and music and architecture. We covet for the future the variety and virility and strength the church has shown in the past.

Of course we know the church has often violated its trust and has unwittingly misrepresented the God it professes to serve. I am not forgetting all of the common hypocrisies to which we are party; the shame of the church’s inquisitions, bigotry and divisiveness. It is one of the miracles of religion that it can survive the institutional wrongs committed in its name.

I belong to the church in spite of its shortcomings. And it think most of you do, too. For we believe deeply in the Church’s ultimate and permanent objective of making man conscious of his relationship to God. Out of that relationship come new activities in each era as people try to express their gratitude to God for what He is and what He does.

The church is the institution that keeps our local charities motivated. The United Fund in our community is drawing its 1961 campaign to a close with prospect of signal success. One reason why people are willing to support the agencies for which the United Fund campaign is conducted is that the church members of this town understand the philosophy of sharing. People need an enduring motive for their caring for their fellow men. The church understands the need for all sorts of philanthropies; and it undergirds them and maintains a continuous supply of people whose Christian faith impels them to serve their fellow men.

There is a great lift to be found in thinking of the countless young people who, influenced by our churches, have moved into lives of service in all kinds of good organizations. Of course some of them seem to have forgotten the church for a time, but they have been inspired through it, and, if some of them ignore it for a time, they usually come back to it when they start their own families. This happens generation after generation, not because the church is so skillful, but because people who expose themselves to it in even its crudest forms are relating themselves to an organization which is avowedly trying to keep people close to God. And such a contact does something significant to people!

You and I are coming, this week, to the time when we shall examine the proposed budget of our church for the coming year. The finance committee has held three meetings to work on that budget. Two of the meetings included representatives of each organization in the church -- essentially the Church Council. And these representatives have hammered out their estimate of the needs and the cost of the several facets of the church’s life and activity and service for a year. It is not an extravagant budget. In fact I wish that at some points it were larger. But it is a workable plan for enabling this church to be an effective organization of Christian people.

The Church Council knows that responsible officers need to have the best of tools available to aid them in their work. It has set salaries for the ministers, and compensation for the lay employees of the church, at a figure which it is hoped will free them of undue financial worries so that they can give their energies whole-heartedly to the work they must do.

The house of worship and service where we meet must be maintained, kept in repair, protected with insurance, equipped with fuel, lights, phone, water and so on. Our per capita fellowship dues, through the Winnebago Association, must be paid so that our denominational organization can keep functioning.

Nothing the church does is more important than training our young people to know about the nature of God and the insights people have had about him through the ages. For a long time, our church school has maintained itself with instructional materials secured with the offerings of the pupils themselves. The time has now arrived when we must provide additional supplies and equipment, better and more costly lesson material, visual aids and supplemental literature for the teachers to use. There is need for a modest youth budget in the general religious education structure. And so the item for Sunday School operations and improvement is to be increased, and deserves to be fully underwritten.

This budget does not provide for any extension of plant or property. We are now well aware of our need in this respect. But we need much more study of our program and potential before we are ready to proceed with definite plans. This is a must; but it is not so immediate as to be budgeted in our current plan of operation.

We ought to run our church school with all of the useful aids now available to public schools. Education in the area of religion should be of just as fine quality as that in any school. It should be as much a matter of concern to parents as is the day school their children attend. Probably some youngsters go through a stage of thinking they don’t like church school. We haven’t argued about it in our family, and I hope you don’t do so in yours. The kids go as regularly as they go to public school. We don’t expect the youngsters’ dislike of the dentist’s drill to keep him from getting his teeth cleaned and checked.

During a child’s early years, it is good to assume that there are certain things a family does. They include going to church and doing whatever is planned by the church for each age group, including us adults! That is why it is important to us that the church school have a chance to be first rate.

When you receive the finance letter and the budget sheets, which, together with pledge cards, will be mailed out this week, you will notice a continuation of some of those items we have called “Special outside aids.” We propose to continue small token contributions to the Wisconsin Council of Churches; the National Council of Churches; and the World Council of Churches, all of them reliable and worthy facets of our interdenominational Christian fellowship and service.

We like an emphasis on what goes on at our Conference Camp at Green Lake. The several Junior High, Senior High, and Pilgrim Fellowship Training camps provide a great experience for our young folk who can get there. Our Women’s Fellowship encourages the youth of the church to go by providing some scholarship aid. And, as a church, we propose to contribute a couple of hundred dollars again, for the general Green Lake Camp fund. Adult folk profit from trips to Green Lake, too -- women to the House Party, men to the Laymen’s Convocation, ministers to the pastor’s retreat, business women to a special conference, and whole families to family camp.

Away back in the very beginning of our church’s life, after formal organization of the congregation by its 10 charter members, the first church building had to be erected. With heroic effort, 2400 dollars of the 2800 dollar cost was raised locally in the logging community of that day. The remaining 400 dollars came as a grant from the Congregational Church Building Society. Actually it need never be repaid, legally, so long as the build is used for church purposes. But the Council feels that it would be a fine thing to make payment on that old obligation now, in what will be our centennial year, 1962. We propose to include 200 dollars in 1962 and probably another 200 in 1963 to take care of this item in appreciation of the fact that we of this church have had the same kind of help in our past which we now try to assist new churches in receiving.

The largest single item in “Special outside aids,” you will find to be a proposed contribution of 1000 dollars to the Chicago Theological Seminary. This is an increase of nearly 10% over last year’s contribution. The Seminary has embarked on a more independent and promising course than for some years past. And its costs for the education of ministers have risen so sharply that this seems warranted. If the church is to have the services of consecrated and well-trained ministers, it becomes a concern of the churches to help back up that training.

It is a highly significant fact, that I have only recently realized, that nine of the ministers who have served or are serving this church, have been trained at the Chicago Theological Seminary. Fred Wheeler, Fred Staff, Robert Locke, Arthur Leonard, Merle Stevens, Fred Hyslop, Robert Kingdon and Donald Minnick have all been graduates of the Chicago Theological Seminary. And Noel Breed had some of his training there just before coming here for a pastorate. Surely this church has a special stake in keeping alive and strong this “school of the prophets!”

Our contribution to the special two-year effort to raise the Christian Higher Education Fund has been completed. Some of this giving we may now properly add to the item we call “benevolence” for the undergirding of Our Christian World Mission.

Our Congregational churches are now under a real challenge to raise the annual support for our Christian World Mission from 7 and one-half million to 11 and one-half million dollars annually. This we can do, if we will increase benevolence giving by 30%, or if we will add to our former giving one-half of our Christian Higher Education Fund goal. That is to say our church can meet its share fully if we add last year’s CHEF figure to last year’s benevolence figure.

This I wish that we might do. But our Church Council and Finance Committee have not thought it wise to go so high this year. The benevolence item in the budget does represent, however, a substantial advance over last year. I hope that we shall fully subscribe it or oversubscribe it.

About these benevolences; I know that there are local charities in the community that call for our attention. I wish that we could entrust them to the wider base of individual support in the community; we all do share in their support. But let us put our church corporate support into the things only churchmen will support. Churchmen are the only folk who can be expected to carry the financial load of church-supported activities. We have a special obligation for church-related colleges; church-supported programs on state university and college campuses. We have a special obligation for American Missionary Association schools, for a vast array of home missionary efforts, and for a splendid mission abroad.

The old notion of converting the heathen to Christianity in one generation has had to give way to a more realistic notion of mission. But the mission is just as urgent! Wherever people of the Christian churches of other lands need understanding; loving, sharing help, let us be ready with that help.

Last spring we were thrilled with Herman Lies’ report on Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s work in Samburu. That’s fine! But Dr. Schweitzer’s work is only one tiny spot needing understanding and help. Did you notice in Friday’s Wisconsin Rapids Tribune an AP dispatch to the effect that Zulu leader Albert John Luthuli has been given a passport by the somewhat disapproving government of South Africa to go to Oslo to collect his award as 1960 Nobel Peace Prize winner? Do you know who this Nobel Peace Prize winner is? He is an outstanding Congregational Christian layman, product of education in the mission schools made possible by our mission money, trained at Adams College. He is a member of an honored African family. His father was an African preacher who did missionary work among his own people. He was elected Chief of the Zulus and has become a leading exponent of non-violent efforts to work for the progress and welfare of his people.

Missions helped to produce Albert J. Luthuli, Nobel Peace Prize winner and extraordinary Christian. Incidentally, I have shown you his picture on the cover of a copy of our United Church Herald of a year ago (the October 6, 1960 issue).

Do you know that your missionary dollars help to build chains of “kindness and responsibility?” Kenneth Anthony, Executive Secretary for the Congregational Christian Service Committee, tells a true story of Christian people in Angola, Africa, meeting on the World Day of Prayer. They contributed an offering which, considering their own extreme poverty, was exceedingly generous. Instead of finding ways to spend it in their own poverty-stricken communities, they sent the whole amount, $150, to the American Board in Boston with the request that it be sent for relief in the Congo! See how the patient work of missionaries, sent to Angola in the past by our benevolence support, has resulted in the “chain of kindness and responsibility.”

Alford Carleton has remarked that “the church exists to turn the hard-hearted into the tender-hearted.” It has happened over and over again in that area where we share the gospel of understanding love with people of every land and circumstance.

Some of you may have heard our National Moderator, Merita Kahlenberg, speak of her visit to the mission school at Casa Mia in Italy. Do you know that 9 thousand unwanted children have been gathered into Casa Mia, given shelter, schooling and a chance because people have cared enough to support that mission enterprise. Our benevolence dollars do the most thrilling sort of things! And that makes underwriting this part of our budget a privilege and a joy.

In fact the whole matter of church support and service is a matter for joyful participation. Next week, on Stewardship Sunday, I expect to discuss some aspects of our stewardship. For then, and for today, I want to underline the joyful nature of our church participation. It is no light and flippant matter, but it is a matter of deep satisfaction.

Two years ago, at the General Synod meeting in Oberlin, Ohio, the United Church of Christ approved and adopted a Statement of Faith -- not as a requirement but as a testimony. The first statement in that Statement of Faith reads:

We believe in God, the Eternal Spirit, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and our Father, and to his deeds we testify.”

Midway through the statement, we come to this affirmation:

“He calls us into his church to accept the cost and the joy of discipleship.”

As we contemplate our opportunities and our responsibilities at this season of enlistment and loyalty, may we accept the cost of our stewardship, and enter into the joy of full discipleship. For our lives can be multiplied through our church!

AMEN

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, November 5, 1961

Imiola Church, November 9, 1969 (First 5 pages).