The Teaching Church.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 30, Issue 5, 1 July 1939, Page 4

The Teaching Church.

EXTREMES TO AVOID "A Living And Growing Organism" When we try to state what is meant by "The Church" there are two extremes to be avoided. One is the rigidly narrow, the other the excessively vague. We are all more than familiar with both these errors, though the latter is the prevailing tendency of the present day. The following statement by Francis Hall supplies what we need: — "Primarily the Church is (a) The ecclesia, or assembly which God has called from the .world and organised and (b) The Body of Christ mystically extended to men." It is "an assembly," not a mass of units gathered into a crowd, but "an assembly" with a common purpose. It is "an assembly which God has called from the world" and the means of which God calls us is the beauty of His love revealed m Jesus Christ. It is "organised" because the whole method of government of the: Church is that of a kingdom. It is "the Body of Christ" m the sense that it is made up of those, who have become members of the Mystical Body of the Lord Jesus. All this shows that the Church can never function m full power so long as the present state of schism lasts and so long as we have to speak of "Churches." Yet there is hope for the future m that the majority of Churches agree that Baptism is the rite of admission to the Church. In that agreement we may discern the germ of a future unity of organisation. We can all agree with the following extract from the report of the Theological Commission of the Faith and Order Movement: — "The Church is to be looked on, not as a merely conservative or static society, but as a living and growing organism, and communion, the Holy Spirit guiding us into all truth."