The Church’s Serious Obstacle
“THE most serious obstacle in the way of church growth,” says an Indianapolis paper, “is the fact that people refuse even to do the church the honor of persecuting it. They simply let it go—are indifferent to it.” In explanation of this the same paper makes these comments, which are forcible because of their truthfulness:— This is true of very many, nominal Christian people. So many of them seem merely to play with their religion, to patronize the church, to join it and adhere to it for unworthy reasons, and to make it a cloak and cover for their ambitions, that conscientious men on the outside are disgusted and repelled. The church itself is much to blame for this condition of things. It does not demand—it begs. It is content with so much less than it has a right to insist on. The mere matter of raising money for church purposes has some bearing on this question. When you present a good proposition to a business man, he does not hesitate to invest his money in it. But the church, which, if it is anything, is the light of the world, the ark of safety, the teacher of mankind, and their divinely inspired guide into truth, is forced to beg for its very life, and to resort to fairs, lotteries, grab-bags, and entertainments of all sorts in order to wheedle money out of the pockets of men, who, on the Christian theory, owe all that they have to the church. Is not the idea that the church can not successfully compete with golf and other Sunday sports a humiliating thing to think about?—Surely it is. The church must live up to its claims. It must not all the while be seeking the aid and protection of the law . . . If the church was ever needed in the history of the world, it is needed to-day. But it must find some way to demonstrate to an exceedingly practical and much-absorbed generation that it fills a great need. To do this it must be earnest, must believe its own gospel, and enforce its discipline on rich and poor alike.