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Michael Tao
Many people think it is the responsibility of the local New testament church to start social reform, to do the charitable works, to bring in civilization and to fight for the social justice. I believe this kind of misconception is largely due to the indiscrimination between the responsibility of church and Christians in individual. I would like to quote a very good passage from the book "The Church that Jesus Built", written by Pastor Roy Mason, Th.D. and hopefully this can shed some light on the argument.
"As some conceive it, A CHURCH IS TO BE CHIEFLY ENGAGED IN THE WORK OF CIVILIZATION. In proportion as churches aid a nation to advance in the arts and sciences of civilization, they are thought of as having succeeded. Especially does this idea obtain as regards Christian effort on the foreign missionary fields. If only the heathen can be brought to dress properly, observe rules of cleanliness and sanitation, and adopt the ways and manners of civilized nations, it is often considered that the missionary has abundantly succeeded.
But, as I shall presently seek to prove, it is not the primary business of church to civilize. When on the mission field the dominant motives becomes to civilize, then the labours of the workers on that field are a failure from the standpoint of the true mission of the church.
Then there is the CLUB IDEA OF THE CHURCH that some have. It is to be feared that some look upon church membership largely as they do membership in some club or fraternal organization. Church work comes to be a sort of pleasant diversion, and it seems quite the nice and respectable thing to be a church member, especially if the church is one of the fashionable kind that includes in its membership some of the socially prominent persons of the community.
But of this idea it may be said that if a church is merely on a par with clubs, lodges, society and other such organizations, it has little to justify its separate existence.
Again, there are those who hold THE SOCIAL AND HUMANITARIAN IDEAL FOR THE CHURCH. To them the church's main concern should not be preparation of individual souls for life in an eternity beyond, but the transforming of society as a whole until this world becomes a better place for men to dwell during this present life. Their chief emphasis is not upon the then but upon the now. To the end of approximating the ideal they have in view, they insist that the church engage in all sorts of social service and reform. To those who conceive of a church in this way, as their ideas are carried out, the churches come to deal less and less with the spiritual and more and more with the physical. They are advocates of the "institutional" church, where, as one writer puts it, one can get anything from a sermon to a sandwich. In the church buildings of such a church recreational features are prominent. They have swimming pools, reading rooms, shower baths, gymnastic apparatus, social hall, etc. Often supper is served from the church kitchen, so fairs are constantly being planned. All in all the church building is used in such a way that people come to look upon it as a place to have a good time.
If Christ should enter some church buildings today. I am sure that He would throw out a lot of the things to be found in them. he would overturn and cast out the gymnastic apparatus, the motion picture machines and the other amusement paraphernalia, just as he overturned the tables of the money changers long ago and drove those who desecrated and secularizated the temple. His words to those who desecrate and secularize the places of worship today would be the same as to the same kind of culprits of long ago, when he said: "Mine house shall be called an house of prayer". Is there any reason in the world to believe that Jesus looks more leniently today upon the secularizing of the house of worship that he did two thousand years ago? Those who bring all sorts of secular things beneath the church roof, follow exactly in the steps of the Jews whom Jesus drove from the temple.
Of the view that makes of a church an organization whose primary concern is the improvement of social conditions, and the physical betterment of humanity it may be said that it is wholly at variance with the truth concerning the real mission of a church. True, social conditions improve where the gospel is preached and church thrive. Most great moral reforms have had their genesis among Christian people, but these things ought to be considered merely as by products of church activity and influence and not as things of paramount concern.
In regard to the matter of the church's mission, when there are so many divergent opinions, where shall we go for the truth concerning the matter? There is but one place to go -- THE NEW TESTAMENT. It is not a question of what this person or that person thinks the church should be, or engage in. It is a question as to what Jesus Christ founded His church for, and what orders he left for it to follow. Strange indeed that men should ever go astray in regard to the church's mission, when it is set forth so very clearly in His own words.
