Putting the church on a full time basis

Front matter

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FEB 10 1932 ‘ LOGICAL gen | t wy } - - sy ase nmEEEERIRE ea a

Dedication

To the members of the Staff of Lake Avenue Church,

who through the years of my work, have helped con-

tribute ideas and labor to the building of the King-

Foreword

“THOSE who can, must.” This was the logical principle of the draft law in war time. In other words when the nation, on which we all depend, is in danger or great need, those who can do a certain thing well are under obligation to do it. If they do not do it voluntarily they must be made to do it. How this principle was then applied is still fresh in our minds. Men who were chemists were sent to government chemical laboratories. Manufacturers who had plants in which necessities could be manufactured found themselves and their plants drafted and set at work producing the things needed. The results achieved proved the validity of the principle.

THERE IS A MORAL CRISIS

Weare not, to-day, at war as a nation. However, we have real dangers and real needs. Many think these dangers and needs are even greater than they were in war time. The enemy now is not from without but from within. The attack is not on the group but on the individual. The battlefield is not in Flanders but in daily life. The danger is not to body but to the moral idealism of our citizenship. Success on the part of our present enemy will result, not in leaving soldiers dead in body but in rendering our citizens ineffective in the fight for good citizenship and moral living. ix x Foreword

Leaving figures of, speech aside, however, let us face the plain facts. Nations go to their downfall not so much by destruction from without as by weakness from within, That the virility of a people and the stability of national institutions are directly related to moral idealism is perfectly clear. That.laxness of moral ideals in individuals and groups can endanger the power of the nation is a commonplace of history.

If these things are true, then none of us can be indifferent to any indication that such a real loosening of moral idealism exists. We do not need here to go to some of the extremes into which many alarmists rush when they think each new generation is going to perdition because it does things differently.

But even the most casual observer must be impressed with certain downward moral tendencies that are in evidence to-day. To mention but a few problems: consider the ‘crime waves’’—the unstabilizing of home life—the “revolt of youth,” so-called, and the lazy and selfish abdication of parents from the duty of worthy control of their children. Think of the lawlessness, the graft in political life even in high places and the apparent indifference of our greatest States to such conditions. Look upon the masses of people who have apparently lost any sense of moral obligation in the matter of citizenship as indicated by their refusal to even take the time to vote. Think of our supine indifference to the men who, for filthy lucre, exploit sex in magazine, novel and film, debauch our youth, and make scandal the commonplace of headline, billboard and magazine stand.

Foreword xi

TO WHAT LENGTHS WILL WE GO?

Let any citizen demand of himself an answer to this question, “If we continue to go as fast in the same direction along these immoral lines for the next fifty years as we have been going for the last _ eight years, just where will we be in our obedience to law, our sense of responsibility in citizenship, our respect for public office, our ideals that undergird home life such as purity, fidelity and genuine love, and our appreciation of the spiritual that alone can make material progress a blessing and not a curse?”

One does not need to exaggerate, nor to deny many fine things that exist, to admit that there are many tendencies in evidence among us which spell decadence. These must be checked. Like the French at Verdun some group must be found that will write in the stone where it will symbolize an iron purpose “They shall not pass!” These tendencies must be stopped and a trend in the other direction established or we shall pay. There is no magic providence which will exempt this nation from the penalty that has always attached to the general attitude toward life best indicated by that solemn word of old “The nation that forgets God.”

MORALITY THE CONCERN OF ALL

There are those to-day who scoff at the moral ideal as though its creation were of interest only to the paid propagandists of religion. Slowly, however, it is beginning to dawn upon us that\ morality is to society what cement is to concrete. It is the binding

Xil Foreword quality. It is the element that binds the individual particles together. It makes what was a mass of separate pieces into a unit upon which as a foundation, the superstructure can stand.

What is moral action? In a real sense, it is such a mode of life pursued by an individual as will give to another the same fair treatment he desires for himself. He acts so that he establishes satisfactory relations between himself and his fellow men. As individuals are moral the group is knit together and becomes stabilized. Immorality is selfishness. It is _indulgence of the one at the expense of the many. \ Kant long ago pointed out that no one has a right to act in such a way that if all other members of his group followed his example it would wreck the group of which he is a part.)

In a real sense the moral man is a builder, the immoral man a destroyer. The moral man is an asset, the immoral man a liability. The immoral man is a parasite, he exists and thrives only because there are enough moral people on whom he can prey. Goodness carries not alone its own burdens but the load of badness as well.

THE ‘‘GOOD” CARRY THE ‘“‘BAD”

In a certain town there is a department store. Most of those who trade there pay their bills. Some, however, do not. They are what the merchant calls “dead beats.” They buy, but by various methods escape payment. But who does pay those bills? Do other delinquents gather funds to make good this loss? No, indeed! Does the department store head magnanimously agree to pay this deficit? By no

Foreword X1il means. What usually happens is that an amount équal to these bad bills is charged into “overhead” and a sufficient price charged for the goods that are sold to offset the uncollected bills. In plain English, honest people pay the bills for those who are known in the business world as “dead beats.” This runs all through life. The first man electrocuted in New York State, so we are told, cost the State One Hundred Thousand Dollars. Does anyone suppose he paid this? Or is anyone simple enough to think that his fellow criminals raised the money and bore that expense? No, they did not! Who did pay the salary of judges, police, and jury? Who paid for the food of the criminal while he was in the penitentiary? Who paid a thousand other such items which made up the bill? These, gentle reader, were paid for out of the taxes collected from the honest people, people who for the most part went about their daily duty and never dreamed of crime, but they were nevertheless carrying the burden of that criminal parasite.

Goodness is a matter of concern to all. It is a matter of indifference to none. The creating of moral character is an essential industry. Moral idealism is a necessary ingredient of society. Upon it rests the satisfactory processes of citizenship. Upon it, and it alone, can we erect homes that will give to either the husband and wife, or their children, such a relationship as will be stable and helpful. If we have it we are safe. If we haven't it we are in process of disintegration.

No right minded citizen can be indifferent to any tendencies or symptoms which point to its disappearance. If, therefore, there are such tendencies to-day

XIV Foreword it behooves us as a nation to face the danger, mobilize our forces and change the situation.

HOW DO WE GET “MORALITY” ?

But where can we get moral character ? How shall the average man produce for himself and his children that element in his life that will make him honest instead of dishonest, pure instead of a profligate, a helpful citizen instead of a criminal? How can I put into my lad something that will make him refuse graft and serve the people if he is ever in public office? How develop within my girl that which will enable her to walk the path between girlhood and womanhood in purity, and come to her home of the future with the treasures of real love unwasted? This is the serious question.

This product cannot be turned out of some factory as we make bodies for Ford cars. It cannot be dug from the earth nor drawn from the sky. It cannot be put into that lad of mine with a hypodermic needle, nor grafted onto my girl by a skillful operation. How shall we get moral character?

MORALITY A BY-PRODUCT OF RELIGION

It is my conviction, and one with which I believe most will agree, that/ we get a better quality and quantity of moral fiber in personality as a result of. religious conviction than we do in any other way. If morality is to work it must come from the inside out, not from the outside in. A person must have his motives touched. He must want to be good and do good. If he doesn’t, if he wants to do wrong he will find a way to do it in spite of orders or laws.

Foreword XV

Moral training that stops short of touching the springs of action within will not stand in the evil day. “Honesty is the best policy,” but if honesty isn’t the best policy, what then?

But if we are to put moral desire into the springs of action in a personality it is no minor operation. A real major operation must be performed. My contention is that such a change comes nearest taking place when a human soul comes face to face with its Maker, sees in His Son, Jesus Christ, the plain embodiment of the highest moral code of which the world has dreamed, and feels in response to the challenge of that Christ the longing to be like Him, to yield to Him and fight by His side for His Kingdom. Morality is caught, not taught. If we want it for our boys and can get them boundlessly enthusiastic over a moral personality, we are far along the path toward making morality desirable and natural to them. These conditions are filled supremely in the Christ of the Christian religion.( Morality

without a moral God back of it is a “will of the - wisp” that will change with each person’s idea of right and wrong.) |

Not every person who professes to follow Christ will be morally perfect, but every person who honestly yields himself to follow Him will have put himself in contact with the greatest known force that can help him achieve moral rectitude.

If we are to produce moral character we must seek it through the channels of religious training. It was Washington who long ago said in substance: Let us indulge with temerity the idea that moral character will long be maintained without religious conviction. And it was a modern novelist and not

XVI Foreword a minister who pointed out that while one generation which renounces the religion of its fathers may, in part, maintain its moral standards, when the next generation comes on it will have neither the religion nor the moral action. Morality without religion is sterile so far as passing it down to the generations which come after is concerned.

THE CHURCH CONTROLS RELIGION

But it is here that the church is called into court. The church, in our country has a “corner” on religion. It refuses to allow the State to have any controlling power in things religious and protests vigorously when any attempt is made to that end. The State has need of moral citizenship. That moral citizenship can best be produced through religious training. The responsibility of the church, therefore, is clear. It should:produce the religious training to undergird moral living. This is clearly its function.

When one comes to ask how completely the church is meeting this need he cannot help being dismayed. Over one-half of this generation of children is getting nothing at all in the way of religious training. Some put the proportion as high as two-thirds. More than this, of those who get some training, a large proportion is absent so much of the time, or, if the children come they get instruction of so inadequate a kind as to meet the above need in a very small way. In the face of the opportunity which these children present the church, that greatest institution of religion, is, to say the least, only partially meeting that responsibility.

Foreword XVil

THE CHURCH MUST FACE ITS RESPONSIBILITY

Now if anyone is to try to meet this lack, we may be sure the church should be the one to assume the main responsibility. Not only because she has this “corner” on religion but because she professes this as her field, she has the only large group of trained religious teachers, she also has a vast equipment, she owns the only large accumulation of financial resources free to be applied for this purpose, and because she is free to throw herself into this need without any. limitation. Other institutions must do this, if they do it at all, by indirection. Nothing hinders the church from being whole-hearted in this enterprise. Certainly we have no one else to whom to look. Our schools cannot and our commercial life will not teach religion as a means to character. If it. is to be done the church must take the lead. The world has a right to look to it to do so. The draft law principle was this: “He who can, must.” It applies here. The church must rise to do its utmost to supply this need. It may not fairly be blamed for not doing the impossible but it certainly is under compulsion to so run itself that it will produce a capacity output of the product the nation needs. This is no time to run such “a factory” on a basis of ten per cent of its capacity.

THE CHURCH MADE BY ITS LEADERS

It is at this point that the light begins to focus upon the ministry and the lay leadership of our churches. A church is but a body of people. The people function largely according to leadership. If

XVili Foreword the leadership is alive to the task and efficient in plan and method the organization tends to produce results. This is true in commercial life as business men can testify, but it is just as true in church life. Wise and aggressive leadership usually means an aggressive and fruitful church. On the other hand, a lethargic and inefficient church is often but the reflection of an indifferent and visionless leadership.

It has always been a great privilege to exercise leadership in the church of Jesus Christ. But leadership does not make the church the private possession of the leader. The position is not given to anyone to allow him to indulge his love of power. He is there as a general manager would be in a factory, to use a commercial figure of speech, to so manage the institution that it turns out the largest possible output of the needed product. If a business manager does not do this he is displaced and another is found who will secure this result. So all who are in positions of leadership in any given church, whether in a professional or volunteer relationship, are responsible to God and man to see to it that that organization functions at full capacity, both in producing the largest possible number of people committed to Christ’s way of life, and in pouring into society in general as large an amount of religious conviction and moral idealism as it is in its power to generate.

INEFFICIENT MANAGEMENT WEAKENS OUR WORK

These things being true it is our duty to consider our work in the light of these facts. Insofar as we find that we are not leading our institutions to work

Foreword xix efficiently for the Kingdom of God, we should make changes of method or approach or equipment or any other changes necessary and possible to secure results. We will be held accountable for our stewardship in terms of our leading. This is no time any more than it was during the war for us to be producing non-essentials, nor is it the time for using an equipment which is capable of achieving great things for the Kingdom of God, simply to do some things that may be interesting but useless.

When to-day we approach much of our church work in this mood many questions at once spring into the foreground. If we were members of a General Efficiency Board for the Kingdom of God coming to study about any church with the simple question in mind: “Is this organization and its plant so used as to make it most helpful in meeting the supreme need of our day, namely, to produce people who know and will live the way of the Christlike life” isn’t it fair to say we should have some severe criticisms to make?

WORK WITH YOUTH AS AN ILLUSTRATION

For one thing, let us face the relation of the average church to youth. One thing is clear. If we are ever going to put moral character into a person the time to try to do it is before that person is twenty-five. The reasons are obvious. It can be done more easily. And, if we succeed we can use the product longer. If a church has One Hundred Dollars to spend to secure moral character it will get more for the same money spending it on folks under twenty-five than on those over twenty-five. There is no xx Foreword ere nr eae EF SETEESE A SS DCSE AE OE ARATE OS IME EE TPL TER ae | argument on this. Yet when one looks at the average church one finds that it spends ninety per cent of its money on folks over twenty-five and from five to ten per cent on folks under twenty-five. Often its best equipment is purchased with the older group in mind, and what is left is given to the younger group. While not all churches can be criticized for this rea- ‘son it is tragic when we consider how large is the number that are run on the basis that when the ~ carpet on the auditorium floor is worn it should be transferred to the primary room, or when the new piano is purchased it should go into the auditorium and the old one that sounds like a tin pan should be shifted to the kindergarten department. The Master who said to put the child in the midst, must be shocked sometimes to see the little child put in the basement or the attic, or anywhere that is left after the older folks have their big room with its high ceiling, its colored windows, its splendid organ and the rest of its fine equipment.

IT IS WORK THAT PAYS BEST

Though work with children is the most fruitful field into which the church can enter, over and over again we can see both pastor and church officials in church after church, take the attitude that such work is a side issue, to be run by the few enthusiasts interested in it, so long as they do not get in the way of the main work for the adults or so long as these enthusiasts can get money from the children to finance it.

When these same children are seeking an education in things secular we do not dream of their pay-

Foreword XXi ing for it with their pennies, nor do we plan to house

them in the second-rate equipment left after their parents have helped themselves. No indeed, these children are made to feel that a secular education is of tremendous importance. The finest buildings, the loveliest location of rooms, the most adequate equipment, the best trained teachers that money can secure, are there to emphasize dramatically to the mind of the child that it is an important thing to be trained in grammar, arithmetic and the other elements of a secular education. His parents rise every morning regularly to see that the child takes advantage of these opportunities and they are chagrined beyond measure when their offspring is even tardy at school.

WE MAKE IT A SIDE ISSUE

But when the child turns to the place where he is supposed to get his religious education, no such imposing array of conditions impress him with its importance. Indeed, from the room in which he is taught to the teacher who teaches he is often impressed with the feeling that this thing does not amount to very much. And often his parents instead of feeling chagrined when he is tardy, conspire to inveigle him into entire absence on the excuse of weather, if bad, or an auto trip, if the sun shines.

Then we hear the lament that our children do not think seriously enough about religion, when our very actions, the way we run our churches and the very environment in which they come for religious instruction proclaims far more loudly than any words of ours that we do not think it is a big enough thing

XXil Foreword to put at the center but only large enough in importance to warrant our giving it the left overs.

LET US STUDY OUR BUILDINGS AND METHODS —

The church needs to re-think its work with the child and youth in the midst. Re-think the plants, if need be. A building is only a tool with which to do the work of the Kingdom of God. It is not a sarcophagus ‘erected in memory of departed contributors. One would think, at times, that churches evidenced their religious devotion by the way they clung to equipment long since antiquated. If tools are outgrown let us get better ones. If the old plant built twenty-five years ago is useless as an equipment in which to do the work of religious education, let us get a better one. People who refuse to ride in an auto of the vintage of ten years past can understand that there are improvements being made yearly in the style of equipment for so important a work as religious education. Why not have an up-to-date model? We do in everything else from dresses to radio and vacuum cleaners.

Let us rethink our methods. A method is only most valuable when it is the best way of doing a certain piece of work. If there is a better way and we cling to the old method then that old method becomes a hindrance to efficiency. Yet how often we find church workers feeling that they are doing all that can be expected of them when they maintain things as they have been in the past. Often indeed in religious things we fall back piously on the “it was good enough for my fathers, it is good enough for me” principle. People who wouldn’t dream of driving in

Foreword XXIli a buggy when an auto is available, women who wouldn’t be seen in dresses of the style of fifteen years ago, yet pride themselves in doing the Kingdom work in the “good old-fashioned way.”

ATTRACTIVE EVIL AND DOLEFUL GOOD

We who are in the church need to realize that the forces of evil keep up-to-date in their methods. If an invention occurs to-day the devil uses it to- “morrow to make his wares attractive to all, more especially to youth. But “goodness” is as susceptible of being marketed in an attractive fashion as is “badness.”’ If we use the same brains and energy in placing the claims of the Kingdom of the Master, as is used by others in setting forth the fascination of the claims of evil, youth will respond as quickly, yea, even more quickly, to the former than to the latter. If I did not believe this I should give up the ministry.

But if “evil” comes down the main street of our town with a fine, big Pierce Arrow bus, with cushioned seats, electric lights and hydraulic shock absorbers, and bids our children ride, while “goodness” comes down the same street clad in an antique garb of black, riding in a rickety hack and drawn by a sway-backed horse, we cannot in fairness blame youth for choosing to ride in the first conveyance.

WHY BLAME YOUTH?

It is so easy when our methods and tools and point of approach do not prove interesting to youth to react by blaming the young people instead of our-

XXIV Foreword selves. “This Godless generation” ‘We never did that when we were young” are symptoms of this attitude. No one needs to ignore the problems which are presented in dealing with youth at any time, least of all to-day, in order to realize that we will get nowhere by trying to shift the blame for our own shortcomings to the shoulders of the young people.

In all arguments pro and con as to relative goodness or badness of the younger generation there are four old-time facts that have been frequently referred to which will guide us in our attitude.

First, whether the young people of to-day are better or whether they are worse than we were when we were young, anyway, they are all we have.

Second, whether they are worse now than we were at the same age, they were as good as we were when they started.

Third, if they are worse now we are the ones who brought them up.

Fourth, whether they are better or whether they are worse, neither they nor we will get far by our pointing the finger of scorn or suspicion at them. This is not an easy age for any of us. Old as well as young are confused and fail. The problems are mutual and if either group fails we all pay. Therefore, our place, as the older generation is by their side, attempting to understand their viewpoint, enabling them to utilize such as they can of our experience, and mutually trying to find a way through this rather dangerous and critical period.

Nothing could be more tragic just now than for those who desire to exploit our children for commercial gain to concentrate on getting the viewpoint

Foreword XXV ER a EE ETA ROSA TT BS PA EE EE IE EE LEI IEE TIES TEE LEBEL LOLS EDD VELL ALE of the new generation, being eager to adopt methods that will make their ideas and wares attractive to youth, while those who lead the church of Jesus Christ are lethargic and old-fashioned and blame youth because it is not interested in religion which is presented in a package fifty years old.

WE NEED EFFICIENT CHURCHES Ree LT ELLE LEAT SALTO TE NTN re

The church of any generation is what the people in control of it in that generation make it. It is a serious and solemn responsibility to be a leader or officer of a local church at any time, but that responsibility is even heavier just now in view of the shifting standards of our times and the confusion into which this shifting of standards has thrown both younger and older people. We are thinking our way through new paths. Many of the old signposts are down. Both youth, and the world at large, have a right to turn to us expectantly. Therefore, as church leaders we must be more than ever alive to our opportunities and be certain that the institution we control is so managed that it contributes its worthiest answer to the questions we all face.

Every local church, therefore, should become an experiment station; a laboratory for devising ways and means of most efficiently achieving the end desired.

What is true for the church in its relationship to method and equipment and in relation to that part of its constituency that is young, is true as regards its relationship to its men, its women, its finances, its evangelistic program, the homes of its people, its. community contacts, the missionary enterprise, and

XXV1 Foreword all the manifold interests which it proposes to maintain.

WHY THIS BOOK?

This book attempts no final answer to the problems raised in this foreword. It simply professes to be the report of certain laboratory experiments carried on by one church in this field. We make no plea that other churches do as we have done. We realize that the method that will work with one group will not always work with another. We record here our experiences with the hope that they may at least be suggestive to others, but we do make an appeal here that every local church through its pastor and leaders will give itself to a careful study of its situation, to critical self-examination and then wholeheartedly and unanimously make such changes as are needed to enter the opportunities of its field with the greatest efficiency for the Kingdom of God. If any of our experiences can help stimulate this reaction we shall consider it worth while having recorded them.