9/7/52

Scripture: (Read Luke 7: 18-35; Acts 4: 8-14)

Since you were good enough to let me attend it as a delegate, you are well aware of the meeting of the General Council of the Congregational Christian Churches in America held last June in Claremont, California. Not only did I attend, together with my family, this great denominational meeting, but one of our church young people, Beverly Randall, attended the meeting of the Pilgrim Fellowship General Council, held a week later at the same place.

Probably more than one of the congregational ministers who attended the Council preached on the next succeeding Sunday on some such theme as: “Echoes from the General Council.” I have waited until now to do so, since this is our first service, since then, as a Congregational group. I did refer to the inspiration of travel and fellowship in a sermon at our union service with the Methodists on July 6th.

Meetings of the Council extended over an eight-day period, from June 18th to June 25th. The Council met in a college town where 4 separate colleges cooperate in the use of educational facilities. Delegates were housed in the dormitories of Claremont, Pomona, Scripps, and Claremont Men’s Colleges, and had their meals in the college dining halls. The meetings of the Council were held in the Bridges Auditorium. It is the best adapted room, for comfort and convenience, in which I have known the Council to meet, in the several sessions that I have been able to attend.

Moderator of the Council sessions was a minister this time, Dr. Vere V. Lopes, who presided in excellent spirit, with restraint and yet careful guidance when controversial issues were discussed. The meetings were so skillfully conducted that there appeared little or none of the expressions of anger that characterize many meetings when controversial issues come to the floor for debate.

One of the spirited actions of the Council was the election of moderator, a layman, for the next two years. Three candidates were proposed in vigorous nominating and seconding speeches --Mr. John T. Beat of New Jersey, Mr. Robert Cashnan of Illinois, and Mr. Frank E. Korab of Kansas. After some close voting, Mr. Cashnan was elected on the third ballot. Mr. Cashnan has been, for many years, Business Manager of our Chicago Theological Seminary, and is still connected with the Seminary. He headed the successful Unit Plan Campaign in which laymen raised $1,200,000 to retire the denomination’s “debt of honor” in maintaining the retirement pensions of older ministers and their widows. He has written two important books on church administration and finance. He has served as president of the Chicago Congregational Club, moderator of the Chicago Association of Congregational Churches, and is presently serving his third term as President of the Board of Trustees of the Congregational and Christian Conference of Illinois.

The General Council is in good hands with him as moderator for the next two years. The office carries no salary and no authority to commit the churches to any position. But the Moderator does receive expenses in traveling among the churches and conferences during the biennium. And his counsel and experience are sought in the deliberations of many committees, commissions, conferences and other church groups.

The Chaplain of the Council, who conducted the daily worship periods of the Council, was the Rev. Albert J. Penner of Broadway Tabernacle in NY City. For the conduct of business, the delegates to the General Council are also members, during the two years of their election, of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission, and of the Board of Home Missions. At appropriate times during the week, the Council adjourns, and the delegates present are immediately called to order as the American Board or the Home Board.

The Board of Home Missions directs and encourages the work of many of our agencies in this country -- Congregational Christian related colleges, special ministries to migrant workers, and to new churches and development of new fields, pensions and retirement arrangements for elderly ministers and missionaries, procedures of stewardship and giving, and many other functions.

The outstanding recommendation of the Home Board came from the Church Building Society division. More than a century ago, this Society was founded among Congregational churches to channel Congregational aid to new Congregational churches being built in the, then, western parts of the nation. First to receive a grant from this society was the First Congregational Church of Omaha which received $500.00. That church is now one of the strong churches of the denomination, pouring back into the denomination many times the first investment made in it. Most of the work of the Church Building Society - revolving loans - are later paid back. But now, with about one-third of our national population shifting residence in a few years, new communities spring up so fast, with the need for new church equipment and ministry, that the funds of the Society are entirely depleted in a time of greatest need and opportunity.

So it was voted by the General Council to approve and support a campaign during the next biennium -- 1952-4 -- for $4,500,000 to be added to the loan funds of the Congregational Church Building Society. The Campaign to raise this amount was committed in the Board of Home Missions and the Missions Council jointly. Dr. Albert D. Stauffacher was released from the Missions Council to direct the campaign.

There was not one dissenting vote on this vital matter. The entire Council rose as one body in offering approval of this effort. Not many measures, in a body of such independent folk as we Congregationalists are, receive unanimous approval. But this one did at the General Council.

Now when you realize that we are a denomination of a little over one million members, and that we are now presented with an appeal for 4.5 million dollars for strengthening the church building program of our denomination, you can form some idea of the probable quote to be suggested to us in this church to be raised or pledged during the next two years. We shall hear more of it - much more - for this campaign is a spiritual “must” in our planning.

The meeting of the American Board of Foreign Missions held a particular interest for us. This year, the Board is sending out about 40 people for service in missions beyond the borders of our own land. Many of these are career missionaries - ministers and wives, educators, nurses, physicians, agricultural and social workers. Others are short term workers. Perhaps you all know that Anna Carol Kingdon, as a representative of the Oberlin-in-China association is under appointment for the next two years as an associate missionary of the American Board while teaching in a women’s college and a girls’ high school in Madurai, S. India. She is now on her way and it presently visiting in Europe until she resumes her voyage to India on September 16th.

When her mother and I picked up the program for the American Board evening we were surprised and pleased to see her picture, among six so listed, and deeply grateful for the recognition given her service. She was one of scores of people who have been, are now, or are about to be in foreign missionary service, who were in the processional that night; and was one of those called to the platform for recognition as about to be sent out.

One of the agencies of our denomination which was brought into being in 1934, the Council for Social Action of our churches, came in for some constructive criticism and suggestions. There was, in particular, some opposition to its legislative committee in Washington. Supporters of the work of the Council for Social Action reminded that the Committee is constantly dealing with controversial issues, but said that the Council always welcomes criticism, and because of constructive criticism, has changed many of its procedures. Dean Liston Pope said that on 18 occasions, the Legislation committee did give direct testimony in Washington and granted that on 4 occasions, those testifying had exceeded the Council’s authority.

But in view of the sincerity of those reporting, and of the overall record of accomplishment of sincere concern for issues affecting the lives of people, the report of the Council for Social Action was received with commendation (not blanket approval) by a recorded vote of 689 for, 31 against, 19 abstaining.

One matter of severe controversy in our denomination for the past 18 years has been a resolution passed in the closing session of the General Council of 1934. It was a resolution condemning the so-called “profit motive.” Though passed at the same biennial session that brought into being the Council for Social Action, it was not a part of the program or principle of the Council for Social Action and has never been approved by the directors of the Council for Social Action.

In our meeting of 1952 at Claremont, it was voted that, without presuming to pass judgment on the General Council of 1934, nevertheless this General Council declares that the so-called “profit-motive” resolution of 1934 does not represent the views of this Council and this Council disavows it.

One evening’s service was taken over by the women. There was a symbolic presentation of the $226,000 Women’s Gift, and the speaker was Victoria Booth Demarest, daughter of the founder of the Salvation Army, and now one of the women who are ordained ministers of the Congregational church.

The National Laymen’s Fellowship was functioning actively during the Council. The laymen carefully selected and trained the 72 laymen who served communion on the first night to more than 2700 people. During the service these laymen were commissioned in an impressive service during which each received a pocket cross to be worn for the time being, on a narrow blue ribbon around his neck. On Saturday night, laymen conducted the meeting with Ronald Bridges as speaker and Walter Graham leading devotions.

The new president of the National Laymen’s Fellowship is Dr. Fred S. Richards or Oregon, who with the woman who became his wife was a student at Huron College while Mrs. Kingdon and I were in that school. At this Council session, he headed the hard-working credentials committee, his wife sharing in the long hours.

A high point, in the spiritual experience of many of those attending the General Council, was the Sunday Morning Service of June 21st. The entire big room and balcony were packed for it. Music for the service, and for the sessions of the Council all week long, was furnished by the Hawaiian choir of about 45 voices, from Kawaiahao Church, Honolulu. The preacher was the Rev. Theodore K. Vogler of Bath, Pennsylvania, recently retired from the Hinsdale Union Church in Illinois. His theme was “When Christ Has His Chance.” During the remaining minutes of this hour of worship here, I want to share with you some of Dr. Vogler’s thinking and inspiration.

Jesus Christ, by his own admission, had a poor chance of acceptance by his own generation. There was a certain childishness, a tired indifference, an insensitiveness to the great issues of life and death. Vogler proposes the belief that Christ has a far better chance with this generation than with his own! Beneath our superficial surface, we are not childish, we feel forced to grow up. We are tragically aware of burning issues of life and death.

This generation was frightened awake by the appearance and shock of a great gray mushroom cloud, the significance of which hangs over the whole earth. There is war and world-shattering revolution. There is the anti-Christ of communism, there is incredible tyranny, slavery and human misery for the exploited benefit of a single so-called class. And there is the apocalyptic terror of a possible cataclysm “like the coming of a new ice age or one of molten glass.”

We can hardly console ourselves with the notion that one more civilization may be going, and that a new one may blossom in its place, that the earth reserves people of unused gifts to carry on its spiritual life. The whole earth fights spiritual disease and we may live or perish together.

We are frightened. But this need not be all bad! Our fear may move us to action. The hope of the earth lies in those persons who, realistically aware of this darkness, call for light. It is here that Christ has his chance! Christ has his chance with us in the wide-spread feeling of disgust and shame that we live in a world that has fallen into so deplorable a state. We feel that we stand in the presence of colossal stupidity. Probably every sensitive person feels that way today.

Christ now has a chance to be our personal Savior -- a savior from a overwhelming, devastating sense of guilt which bedevils our days and drives men by the thousands to seek release or escape in dopey ways. None of us escapes the need of forgiveness. Who among us is possibly good enough to forgive the rest of us? We all need a sort of spiritual blood transfusion from a perfectly healthy soul. Now Jesus Christ has his chance, for He is that person!

Further, Christ has his chance in the midst of the world’s vast misery, its “giant agony.” He appeared in a day when life was cheap and bread was dear. His world then was one of poverty and disease, slavery and terrible suffering; restless, seething social discontent. Into that world stepped the greatest human heart that mankind had ever known; a heart that must be more than just human. He had compassion on multitudes, he healed, and fed, and comforted and blessed. Wayward Magdalene washed his feet with repentant and forgiven tears. Hardened men were touched to generosity. Poor forgotten souls found new validity. He exalted man as a child of God!

Christ took note of the revolutionary discontent of his time. He declared delivery to the captives of slavery and injustice. He lifted men’s eyes to an order of decent living and a standard of “bread enough and to spare.” His spirit is abroad in the world of today with the same hope. And it is a possibility! Christ can have a chance in the United Nations. Christ can have a chance through our missionaries as they feed and heal, and bless and lead and love. “There is no name under heaven among men whereby we must be saved, except the name of Christ.” Let us, with all our hearts and lives, open to Christ his chance in our day.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, September 7, 1952.