Church “Retreating” From Change

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32099, 22 September 1969, Page 16

Church “Retreating” From Change

The church today was often trying to take cover from the changing world, said Professor L. G. Geering, principal of Knox Theological College, Dunedin, in a sermon at St Matthew’s Anglican Church, St Albans, ! last evening.

“Retreat is no place for a prophetic people,” he said. “Whether we are Protestants or Roman Catholics, Anglicans or Presbyterians, none of us can claim to be the only stalwarts of the truth./

Professor Geering said the greatest periods in the history of Christianity bad not been when it was retreating into a spiritual castie of defence, but living dangerously and leading social changes. “If the church today is not living change it is caught out of position,” he said. These changes were making their impact in a hundred different ways, said Professor Geering. On one band there were the extremists who were looking to the end of the world and on the other hand there were the people who wished to play down ail the talk of change on the grounds

that nothing unusual was happening at all. The truth was somewhere between the two. Changes that had been going on for We last 500 years were now breaking out to the surface at an alarming rate, he said. Role Of Church “We have to ask ourselves what is the role of the church within the context of this tremendous turmoil and ferment of change. “There is considerable bewilderment both about the future in general and the future of the church in par-

ticular, and the role which we must play.” In the middie of this bewilderment there were more and more’ people who were drifting out of the church, slowly at first and often unnoticeably. At the other extreme there were Christians of all denominations who refused to recognise any cultural crisis at all.

“Between these two there are a large number of Christians who recognise that change in some form must be accepted but who feel bewildered because the way ahead seems so confused,” he said. Professor Geering said that if the church was to take the lead in guiding the world to a new, fruitful, global culture much of the structure of the present which was known and which was rightly valued would have to be destroyed to make way for the new. The problem was, however, how could destruction and rebuilding be done at the same time. Unity First “If the church is going to lead tiie world of nations to unity it must first itself, recover unity,” he said. “It must abandon its denominational divisions. They are no longer of any relevance to our world and there is no point in endeavouring to retain them any longer than we can.”

The concept of the church as a power structure must also be abandoned. Emerging from the change would be new forms of worship, involving less of the other world and more of this world. The church would also be in politics, but not in one party, and in civic affairs, but not as a pressure group. Professor Geering said that many people would be tempted to give up because they felt the change would not come quickly enough. Many also would be tempted to resist change and many might be tempted to just sit down and leave it to someone else. The church, however, could not delegate its task to the few.