Why doesn’t the Church…?
First of all, my very best wishes for the New Year, - and for strength to cope with it!
Officially, of course, I shouldn’t wish you God’s blessing, because that might offend any who don’t believe in Him, on the example of one town council who had no Christmas lights up last Christmas. Occasionally, when something outrageous comes forth from the powers that be, someone says to me, ‘Why doesn’t the church say something, do something, make a stand?’ I sympathise, but the facts aren’t so simple. There just isn’t a single organisation that you can easily call ‘The Church.’ And there are very few social issues in our society on which there is total agreement. What we have is not one church but a multitude of local ‘churches’ meeting in different sorts of buildings, some even in schools or peoples’ homes. Some of them work very closely together; others won’t link up with anybody else… To the onlooker, the whole thing looks a hopeless muddle - ‘Why doesn’t the church get its act together?!’
Trouble is, the Church is a rather peculiar community. Most of it is organised, but it’s not an organisation (though some branches of it try to be!). And it’s not a club of likeminded folk (though some churches seem to act like one!), or a pressure group. The nearest bible word for it is usually rendered ‘fellowship,’ but it means ‘sharing a common life’, in a very radical sense - of a special kind of dependence on a Supreme Being made effective through commitment to Jesus Christ. It contains people of all sorts, good and bad and ugly, even fraudulent - with only one proper reason for belonging, an experience based on a sense of being forgiven. Don’t expect formal official statements or unanimous protests, just occasional stumbling efforts to explain a miracle they are still learning to live with.
Oddly enough, wherever those efforts have gained a hearing, they have changed whole nations, spawned thousands of good causes, brought hope and justice to poor and oppressed. And when they are rejected, things get violent… Maybe power politics is not the only strategy for change.
John Peck