Thoughtful Moments

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 05, Issue 73, 3 July 1942, Page 2

Thoughtful Moments

(Supplied by i.he Whakatana Ministers' Association)

THE I IMPORTANCE OF CHURCH SERVICES

Not long ago a Scottish provincial newspaper included the Following in its account of a Town Council meeting-: "The Town Clerk intimated that the .statutory meeting of the Council would lie held in December. There would be no election, but . . . there were several minor matters like the 'Kirkin' of the Council to be dealt with." Tc one reader at least, the interesting point was not that the town clerk —or his reporter —had made an obviously unintentional slip, but that no one seemed to notice that any slip had been made. Cautious interrogation of the readers of the journal, carried out largely among such of them as were themselves churchgoers or ministers, revealed the significant fact that nobody seemed to have seen anything incongruous in the description of the public worship of God as a minor matter. A Praying General Such an estimate of the importance of a rel'gious service is fairly widespread. The general view seems to be, indeed, that a man who spends too much time on religious matters (s concerning himself with what has no great bearing on the main issues of life. That was brought out very amusing'y when H. CI. Weils, in the course of a lecture tour in America, referred to Lord Core as one of these "praying generals." In the ensuing controversy, some people rushed to defend Lord Gort from the charge of wasting his time on this sort of thing; others maintained that he deserved all lie got. The curious tiling was that no one sccnifvd to notice that li. G. Wells was paj'ing Lord Gort quite a compliment by putting him ir- the same category as men like Oliver Cromwell and Stonewall Jackson, both of whom, spent a good deal of time praying and both of whom were by all accounts pretty good generals.

Fearless Faith Karl Barth in one of his books describes an incident almost incredible to those of us who know that our congregations prefer to rush out from the middle of a Communion Service at the first blast of the siren. The story was told Professor Barth by a Benedictine monk. During the iast war this Benedictine was chanting the Magnificat with his fellows in a church in Alsace. Suddenly a French shell crashed through the roof of the church and exploded in the nave. But the smoke thinned away and the Magnificat continued. Whatever may be said of such conduct, and however unlikely we are to follow it, one thing is clear, namely, that for these monks their church service was a vcit important matter. Their attitude was similar to that of the early Christians who held services during the persecutions of Nero and Domitian, of the Covenanters who tramped long miles to attend forbidden hill preachings, of the quiet and unassuming men and women of our own day,, who in other lands attend church services although they know such conduct will bring down upon them the displeasure and possibly the punishment of the powers that be. All these people risked or are risking prison, torture or death in order to attend Christian public worship. But clearly 110 one would run such risks for what he considered to be a minor matter. Here then is a very different attitude toward church worship from the one mentioned at the beginning of this article.

CUR SUNDAY MESSAGE

The Minority View It is somewhat disconcerting to find two such ' diametrically opposed views on a question which Sunday work and air raid dangers have made a very real issue. Granted the view that church services are 1 not very important, it is of no great moment that people are kept from them by the necessities of war work or in some cases by sheer unwillingness to enter a conspicuous building with a steeple. That is the majority view. Over against it, however, must be set the conviction of the minority that church worship is very important indeed. The testimony of this minority is the more impressive in that it is written not in Ink but in blood. It is also undeniable that had men and women not been willing to take risks in order to attend service, the Christian Church "would have died out a long time ago, probably about the time of Nero. Nonetheless we should not accept the view that a church service is a highly important matter unless we are willing to face up to its implications. To no one indeed does such a view present more difficulty than to a minister. For what man who is not a lunatic would wish 'f.is fellows to leave important war work or to risk their lives in order to come and hear his opinions? How Can He Help ? That is a problem which. must weigh heavily upon ministers in time of war or persecution. And yet is it not only an intensification of a difficulty which every church service presents to the man who conducts it? For what minister does not realise that during his ministry there enter into his church men and women, fighting against grim temptations, facing problems which seem insoluble, sometimes so buffeted by life that they are in despair of man and God? And they come to church for help. But how can lie help them? He knows that he, too, is a pilgrim of time, fighting against temptations of ins own, sometimes at his wits' end and sometimes with little enough tight in his own life. He realises that he has no knowledge ,of the spccial problems that his hearers are I'accd with and that some of them • are better Christians than he is. How in the world can lie help them? God Speaks Such is the acute personal form in which the question of the importance of non-importance of a church service presents itself to the man who conducts it. To the present writer it seems that light is shed on the problem only when the minister comes to realise that while he cannot help his fellows, God can, and that in the Bible which he expounds, God speaks to those who need help. To those suffering under the dreadful mystery of evil the Bible speaks of an Elder Brother who also suffered in the appalling blackness of Calvary, to those' wrestling with temptation it speaks of One who overcame temptation, to all driven to despair by life it tells of C?ae who faced life and drank its bitter cup to the dregs and rose victorious over it on Easter Sunday. The worst sermon that brings home one of these truths to one person in the congregation is not a minor matter. For it is God speaking, speaking through the lips of his frail and imperfect servants. All of which seems to show that the insistence on a ministry of the Word of God, based on the exposi-i tion of the Bible, is not just a demand of obscurantist theologians, but a vital necessity forced on us bj the living issues of to-day.