C 07 - Building a Brotherhood

BUILDING A BROTHERHOOD

7. The ministry has the attraction of being engaged in the work of building the brotherhood of the Christian Church. Conversion is only the first step in salvation, which covers the whole growth and fruitage of the Christian life. And so the minister is not done with converts when he has preached them through the door of conversion into the Church; rather his work has only begun. He is to build them up in salvation and service into a full-grown Christian life; and he is to build them together into the brotherhood of the Church. Building the Church was a fundamental fact in the teaching and purpose of Jesus. “I will build my church, “ he declared. Paul was constantly insisting on building believers into a temple and into the body of Christ and into brotherhood. All the saints are to be “ fitly framed together “ as polished stones which thus grow into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit. 7 “Seek that ye may abound in the work of building up.” “Brethren” is a common title with which Paul addresses believers. “Love the brotherhood” is the admonition of Peter, and the brotherhood of believers in Christ is the central fact in the New Testament idea of the Church. The minister is the architect and master builder in this work. He supplies the plans and specifications out of the Word of God and the perfect Pattern in the person of the Lord Jesus, and he is to guide and inspire his people so as to eliminate divided plans and purposes, waste and friction, and fit his people together with close joints and cement them into solid union with love, and thus build them into unity and brotherhood, a temple of the Holy Spirit full of truth and light.

One of the dangers of the pulpit is that the minister may think that his main business and the measure of his success is just to preach striking and brilliant sermons and draw an audience. He is apt to measure him self and be measured by others by the size of his crowd. He is then tempted to count his hearers instead of considering their Christian character and spirit. This is a fallacious standard and a false aim. “An audience,” says Dr. Charles E. Jefferson, in his book on “The Building of the Church,” “is not worth working for. An audience is a set of unrelated people drawn together by a short-lived attraction, an agglomeration of individuals finding themselves together for a brief time. It is a fortuitous concourse of human atoms, scattering as soon as a certain performance is ended. It is a pile of leaves to be blown away by the wind, a handful of sand lacking consistency and cohesion, a number of human filings drawn into position by a pulpit magnet, and which will drop away as soon as the magnet is removed. An audience is a crowd, a church is a family.” A crowd can make an audience, but only Christians can make a church. Jesus did not care for crowds and rather avoided them, and there is no record that when he preached to crowds he got a single soul, but when ho talked with Nicodemus or with the woman of Samaria he got that one. He was not seek ing to attract a throng, but was building a brotherhood.

If the minister should think of his church as a brotherhood, it is equally important that the church also should think of itself under this concept. Very suggestive and subtle is the influence of a name as it insinuates its meaning into the consciousness of those who use it. If a church thinks of itself as the wealthiest and most important church in the town or city it may next think of itself as a social club and then it will insensibly be based upon and governed by the artificial distinctions and conventional rules of a social club.

It will then have doors constructed of wire netting that will sift out its members and let in only those that belong to its social class, and when others get in through the wires they will be made to feel in subtle ways or be told in brusque terms that they are not wanted; and very likely it will have members that do not know one another and do not want to, and other members that do know one another and are sorry that they do. But if a church thinks of itself as a brotherhood and really cherishes this idea, the caste spirit will be cleared out of its consciousness and it will grow toward this ideal.

Now it is the business of the minister to set up this ideal and strive to realize it. To knit his congregation into a family, to build his church with all its open or hidden factions and social distinctions and childish alienations and petty meannesses into a brotherhood of mutual unselfishness and harmony and love, is a hard task, calling for infinite tact and patience and love, but it is the true mission and measure of a minister.

If he is simply delivering brilliant sermons and attracting crowds he may flatter himself and be flattered by his members as a great preacher, but he may be only sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal and may be really only playing an actor’s part and be guilty of folly.

He is a great preacher who can attract large numbers of people to Christ and make them brothers in him. To stand in the center of a congregation and knit it into fine and strong brotherhood by filaments that are spun from his own soul, and vitalize it by arteries that run from his own heart is the true work and the rare privilege of a minister, and it is one of the great attractions of his calling.