11/6/60

Scripture: Mark 3: 19b-35 (especially 32-35)

Jesus was a family man. He was born into the house of Joseph of Nazareth and his betrothed wife, Mary. The scriptures speak of several later brothers, referring to them by name, and of “sisters” in the home. They knew a normal family life -- the love of father and mother; and the joys and disciplines of living with each other. They knew the tasks and the requirements of the household. They became acquainted with the carpenter shop where Joseph worked and earned the wherewithal for daily bread.

Jesus was easily conversant with the carpenters’ trade. Very likely he worked at it, learning its skills from Joseph. Tradition has it that Joseph died while the family was young and that Jesus may very well have been the one to operate for a time, before his mature ministry, the family’s carpenter shop.

Be all this as it may, Jesus knew the life of the family as intimately as any one else who has been born into, and raised in, a good home. But Jesus had his own way of looking at his life with all mankind from the point of view of one who sees beyond one’s most immediate family. He loved his mother, but he had a great love for other mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters as well.

This comes out in his comment as reported in the latter part of the Scripture lesson this morning. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.” [Mark 3: 32-35]

Jesus arrived upon earth through the God-created process of birth; grew as a child and youth in the home whereunto he was sent. But he knew the needs, and his own call to serve, beyond the needs and hopes and plans of his own family. In a way, that is a picture of the situation of his church. A church -- our church -- is like a family. We meet for worship. We work together. We live in fellowship and service. We have a house and a program of activity. But we are a part of a community, a city. We are concerned with the people of this state and nation. We are brethren of people all over the earth in the same sense that Jesus was talking about when he said, “Whosoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister and mother.”

You and I live in families. We are concerned that the children and youth of our families have health, and education, a place among their friends as they grow. We are concerned for both body and spirit of all our family folk. But the authentic mark of our Christian churchmanship is not just that we try to live decently and do well by our families and get to church on most Sundays. These are important. But one of the marks of a Christian is his concern for the whole human race. “Where Christ is, there is the church.” And wherever Christ is, people can not be content with any little, self-satisfied, ingrown church. But the church’s ministry of concern and service and love reaches out as far as the Holy Spirit can use its abilities and its dedication.

In other words, the church is mission. And I want to talk about that for a while this morning. Our church is concerned for people of all sorts and conditions, near and far, all over the world. We love First Congregational Church of Wisconsin Rapids. And through our Christian World Mission, we love our fellow Christians near and far as well.

Now, I do not suggest that we be at all smug. For no one can rightly be smug or self-complacent while there are such glaring needs for physical and spiritual help at so many points in the world, and we belong to a denomination whose giving to missions is shamefully low in comparison with certain other denominations, and in light of our ability. But it does happen to be a fact that this church led all other Congregational Churches in the state of Wisconsin in the percentage of our giving to missions in 1959 as compared to our home expenses giving. In the October issue of “Wisconsin Church Life,” on page 11, this church in Wisconsin Rapids is credited with missionary giving for that year in an amount that equaled 31.1% of our home expenses. The amount was $5,546 for our Christian World Mission.

I’m glad that we have given that much, and I hope we will give more, and I’m glad that the Church Council has agreed that we ought to try to raise our sights for the coming year by about $450 in budgeted benevolences. But I am bound to say that I agree with some who have said that one reason that our percentage looks so well is that we have not raised our home expense giving as much as we should have done through these years of inflation and prosperity. And so our Church Council, working with the committee on finance, is making some recommendations to all of us in this church concerning the kind of budget we ought to underwrite for the coming year. We will be receiving this information in this week’s mail, before our Stewardship Sunday service (we used to call it “Loyalty Sunday”) next week.

But now let us review some of the things which we do when we give to our Christian World Mission. Our undesignated gifts, forwarded as benevolence checks through our Conference office, help to support a mission along at least 5 areas of the Christian cause.

(1) One of these is the Congregational-Christian Board of Home Missions. This is the board that is concerned with the Christian witness in the USA and its possessions. It has several divisions -- such as the Christian Education Division; the Higher Education and American Missionary Association Division; the Division of Church extension and Evangelism; Ministerial Relief Division, and the Pilgrim Press division.

The Board of Home missions helps, where needed, in the building of new churches. That is, it helps just as far as the finances we give will enable it to help! This Board conducts research studies to help develop sound strategies for church extension. It conducts pastor’s schools, like the one this church authorized me to attend at La Foret last summer. It supports the program of Student Summer Service in undeveloped, or underchurched places. It helps churches with their program of evangelism. It conducts a specialized ministry to minorities. It maintains some aid to 25 church-related colleges and contributes to a religious ministry at more than 85 other colleges and universities. It supports 2 hospitals, including Ryder Memorial Hospital in Puerto Rico.

It has worked to bring fresh insight into the meaning of Christian higher education. It gives guidance to Sunday and vacation church schools. It prepares church school and study materials. And it aids certain of the Congregational Christian ministers who are ill or retired with insufficient income; also the widows and dependent children of such ministers.

All of these fields are touched by the Board of Home Missions. One of the latest projects of the Board is some help for, and encouragement of, the establishment of a proposed new church-related college in Florida. A host of such colleges have been established in the early years of our denomination, but this will be the first to be undertaken in this century!

Now how is this ministry supported? Well, about 24% of our benevolence giving goes to this part of our Christian World Mission - the Board of Home Missions.

(2) A second agency supported by our missions giving is the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Oldest of the boards for foreign missions among the Christian Churches of America, the American Board marks its 150th anniversary this year! It had its inception in two forms of dedication; the determination of some college-trained young people to carry the gospel of Christ to countries other than our own, and the determination of others to enter the business world dedicated to the adequate support of these missionaries.

Its main emphasis is now to help the Christians of other lands to help themselves. The American Board helps to organize new churches and strengthen existing ones; helps churches to become self-supporting. It prepares younger churches to launch their own missions programs. One of the astonishing characteristics of the Hawaiian churches was their early sending of Hawaiian missionaries to other Polynesian and Melanesian Islands of the Far Pacific!

The Board’s missionaries prepare younger church members to be evangelists, teachers, preachers, workers in their own countries. They work with other Christian agencies in a united witness overseas. The Board assists in the education of youth in nearly a thousand strategically located schools and colleges. It helps to prepare men and women to be skilled and responsible leaders in their own national life. It fosters care of the sick through the ministry of 39 doctors and nurses in 9 different countries. It supports and administers hospitals and dispensaries serving more than a half million patients annually. It attacks hunger and malnutrition through welfare services and agricultural demonstrations.

These are some of the practical functions performed by the American Board through its Secretaries and missionaries abroad. About 24% of our benevolence dollar goes for this work, which ought to be tremendously expanded!

(3) A third agency which is supported by giving to Our Christian World Mission is the State Conference work. In our case, this is the Wisconsin Congregational Conference. 40% of our benevolence dollar goes to this work right here in Wisconsin.

The Conference cooperates with the Board of Home Missions in initiating new church projects and guiding them through critical years. Some assistance is given to weak churches until they are renewed and independent. The youth ministry guides young folk in conferences of young folk, and takes a special interest in youth who are preparing for church vocations. The conference strengthens the ministry through retreats; assists with laymen’s and women’s work; provides a library of visual aids and program materials. It helps the pulpit committees of vacant churches to get in touch with available ministers; it serves as a link between the local church and the total mission enterprise. It initiates and follows through certain projects like the rebuilding of Green Lake Pilgrim Camp and the new home for senior citizens at Whitewater - “Fairhaven.” This ministry right here in our own state gets larger support than any other single instrumentality of our mission program.

(4) A fourth agency of Our Christian World Mission is the Christian Council for Social Action. This agency is the church’s instrument for seeking to know the will of God in social, economic, and government relationships. Through its modest staff, it helps some churches to organize local social action committees; stimulates discussion and study through publication of Social Action magazine giving a Christian perspective on a wide variety of social issues such as the population explosion; labor problems; problems of the aging and of juvenile expression; gambling; obscene literature; use of Sunday; and a host of other problems needing study and intelligent action by people of Christian understanding.

It sponsors four 5-day leadership training institutes in differing parts of the nation. It conducts a World Order Seminar in New York and a Churchmen’s Seminar in Washington; directs tours to Europe and Mexico; prepares packets of material on current study themes. About 7.2% of our unallocated benevolence dollar goes to the work of this council.

(5) And then there is a fifth agency, somewhat more recent than the rest, but critically important -- the Congregational Christian Service Committee. This is the agency by which we reach out in compassion to the destitute millions of the world. This is an appalling field of need!

A couple of years ago Donald K. Faris, writing in “To Plow With Hope,” suggested that you visualize a line starting from your front door, made up of the hungry of the world -- many ragged and disease-ravaged, with pinched faces. The line goes out of sight over the continent and the ocean, around the world -- 25,000 miles -- and returns to your front door. On and on it stretches, circling the globe not twice, not five times, but 25 times, and there is no one in the line but hungry, suffering humanity. If you drove 10 hours a day, averaging 50 miles per hour, it would take you three and one-half years to cover the length of the present line. What is more, as populations increase, the line is expanding over 20 miles a day!

In the face of such terrific need, the work of the Congregational Christian Service Committee and the committees of other church groups is small enough. But there is a significant ministry of help here too.

Our committee engages in these kinds of help: shipping tons of clothing, layettes, bedding, school supplies and needed drugs to families in most desperate need; participating in the United Clothing Appeal; conducting some schools for children and literacy classes for adults. It helps wartime amputees; assists in supporting the Heifer Project; supports the SOS (Share our Surplus) program, by which American surplus goods are shipped to the needy in 28 countries. It ships multi-purpose food (Meals for Millions) to India, Korea, Taiwan and Italy. It channels gifts for CROP (Christian Rural Overseas Program.) It helps to find homes for refugees, as legislation permits. Its representatives help minister to the needs of thousands who are confined to refugee camps. It is constantly alert to emergencies, brief or prolonged, helping to meet them either by its own agencies, or in cooperation with Church World Service, or the World Council of Churches. About 4.8% of our benevolence dollar goes into the work of our Congregational Christian Service Committee.

(6) There is one more agency of our denomination which demands our attention. The Annuity Fund for Congregational Ministers helps ministers and their wives to prepare for retirements years. The annuities are bought with funds accumulated by deposits of churches, and usually by members themselves. But the deposits of those who ministered through the 20s and 30s were so small, and inflation has taken such toll, that many of the annuities available to older ministers now retired are altogether inadequate. So it has become vitally necessary that some of the apportionment dollar, usually allocated to the other 5 agencies I have described, go to supplement those annuities which have proved too meager.

This, then, is a picture of what our mission program does, and it describes the need for our continued, and increased, support. For all is not well enough; our mission has seen better days; it must face better days again! These are times of decision.

The other day, a retired American Board missionary made it vivid when he came into the Board office. The secretary had important things to do, but the old missionary was urgent and insistent on his attention. He was much in earnest when they sat down. “Now look,” he said, “when I went to the foreign field with the American Board 49 years ago, I was one of 800 missionaries. Today, we have 350 out there. What’s happened?”

What’s happened? Every one of us must search our hearts for the answer. The Board has 8 or 10 times the number of requests than the number that can be filled. Do we have the vision that our fathers had, when people of rare ability volunteered their lives in missionary support, and countless others got under the load of their support?

The tide must turn. The American Board wants to advance all along the line. The Home Board has already drawn heavily on reserves, and calls for advance. The Annuity Fund must have $450,000 in new money to bring pensions for some of the retired ministers and widows up to a minimum standard. Leaders in Our Christian World Mission want to see a 59% increase in apportionment giving in 2 years! Spelled out in dollars, our denomination should increase its missions giving from $7,236,000 in 1960 to $11,500,000 in 1962!

Is this a pipe dream? Of course not. The mission is at heart God’s mission. It is our Christ who commanded, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” [Matthew 28: 19]. In the next verse he added, “And, lo, I am with you always.” [Matthew 28: 20]. We are not alone; we set our sights and go forth in the power of God’s assurance as did our fathers.

I trust that we shall underwrite the proposed missions budget of our church with willing enthusiasm. For that is one way in which we ourselves are missionary partners.

Followed by The Day’s Prayer, from John Baillie, A Diary of Private Prayer: Charles Scribner’s Sons, copyright 1949.

O Heavenly Father, give me a heart like the heart of Jesus Christ, a heart more ready to minister than to be ministered unto, a heart moved by compassion towards the weak and the oppressed, a heart set upon the coming of thy kingdom in the world of men.

I would pray, O God, for all those sorts and conditions of men to whom Jesus Christ was wont to give especial thought and care:

For those lacking food or drink or raiment:

For the sick and all who are wasted by disease:

For the blind:

For the maimed and lame:

For lepers:

For prisoners:

For those oppressed by any injustice:

For the lost sheep of our human society:

For all lonely strangers within our gates:

For the worried and anxious:

For those who are living faithful lives in obscurity:

For those who are fighting bravely in unpopular causes:

For all who are labouring diligently in Thy vineyard.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, November 6, 1960.