An article by James Gustafson

My first experience with the freedom which is so much a part of the Covenant came one day while I was sitting through the closing session of its Annual Meeting in 1967. The sessions were held that year in Pasadena, California, where I was attending seminary. I was in a state of rebellion against the organizational and theological tightness of the Church as I had experienced it to that point. I was echoing the sentiments of Bishop Lesslie Newbigin who has said: "It is the sign of our spiritual weakness that we lust for tight organizations wherein everything is governed by a set of inflexible rules. The multiplication of rules is the sure sign of spiritual decay." I was beginning to feel that I was not going to be able to work within this constricting tightness at all.

As I sat in that closing session of the Annual Meeting, however, I heard Dr. Clarence Nelson, the outgoing president, say, ‘We have had some hot theological discussions here this week and we have by no means agreed on all the matters at issue. The thing that thrills me, however, is that we have been free to be ourselves and yet are one in Jesus Christ." It took great discipline on my part to keep from jumping up and shouting "Praise God!" At last I had found a group which was free enough to allow individual diversity within the overall unity in Christ.

That day marked my spiritual marriage to the Covenant. Since that time I have joined arms officially with its people in doing the work of Christ around the world. I have found that this fellowship is not only freed up to discuss theological and ecclesiastical issues sanely, but also to risk bringing the Gospel to the world in a new, creative, and flexible way. I have also found it free to risk losing itself in cooperative ministries around the world-seeking to make the Church of Jesus Christ, not the fame of the denomination, the focus of its mission. Finally, I have found the Covenant freed up to risk experimenting in mission around the world, bringing glory to God by enabling the Church to grow.

During the past four years I have worked within the context of this freedom as a missionary to the Church in Thailand. As I have served as the Covenant representative in that country, I have become convinced that the Church is able to serve the world only in direct proportion to its ability to take its eyes off itself and its own security and fame, and focus on living the Gospel for the glory of God alone. To be able to take our eyes off ourselves and focus them on that task is to be freed up to serve the world in a way that it has not often been done before. I have found that my relationship to the Covenant enabled me to serve in Thailand in just that way. So I praise God for my experience with Covenant freedom.

It might be said that my experience is unusual and not at all representative. Obviously I cannot speak for all Covenanters. The freedom I have experienced in the Covenant is not necessarily what each Covenanter is or must be experiencing at this point. In spite of the diversity of our experiences, however, there is a real sense in which the freedom I have come to cherish lies at the heart of our heritage.

Over ninety years ago, the movement which has grown into the Covenant we know today was born of precisely this kind of freedom -- freedom to risk putting tradition and denominationalism behind, to risk making God’s Word and work the focus of the movement. The early Covenanters, out of hunger for new life in Christ, broke the dead formalism of the organized Church. They found unity in their insistence on the new life in Christ, which grew out of the new birth and was supported by their common acceptance of the authority of Scripture. They were people of the Word, who adopted the slogan, "Where is it written?" as the crucial question in their theological dialogue. Yet they fiercely guarded against solidifying their theology into a system or their new life into a pattern. They cherished their freedom to be who they were -- opinionated at times, yet bound to consider each other; for in coming together they found the new life which was missing in the dead formalism from which they had sprung.

They were also free to risk being God’s people and to risk doing God’s work. At the heart of their fellowship was a strong belief in the authority of God’s Word. Although differences of opinion could arise on peripheral matters - even at times on the central ones - there was no doubt that God was in control and that those within the fellowship were one in Jesus Christ. Where the Church is one in Jesus Christ, there is no risk in allowing diversity at other levels. It is where the Church has prostituted its unity in Christ to the gods of traditional distinctives or organizational uniqueness that real risk occurs.

In essence, the early Covenanters did not set as their goals the perpetuation of a particular kind of organization or structure, or a particular system of theology. They aimed at living out the new life in Christ within a fellowship of persons uniquely freed up to be themselves while dedicated to the authority of the Word of God. In a world which loves systems and a Church which is fond of perpetuating as ab-solutes a host of Christian subcultural systems, this was an exciting and daring way to live. To risk being freed up in the way the early Covenanters were is to place oneself at the cutting edge of the Church of Jesus Christ today. Thus, in the ninetieth year of the Covenant, the challenge of our heritage comes ringing across the decades, daring us to risk being freed up in this day to serve the world in the spirit of our forebears.

The Christian Church is growing at an unprecedented rate around the world today. In Africa, it is breaking all growth records. By the year 2000 the Church in sub-Sahara Africa will have grown to an estimated 351 million strong (46 percent of the total population). Over 14 percent of the population of South Korea is now Christian, and growth continues. Couple all this with the fact that in 1900, non-Christians outnumbered Christians seventy-five to one in Asia and twenty-eight to one in Africa, compared to twenty-two to one in Asia and two and a half to one in Africa today. The total impression is that the Church of Jesus Christ is expanding at a surprisingly rapid rate. Today is a day of great opportunity. It is a time to rise up, go forward, and fulfill our mission in the world.

In spite of the evident surge in church growth today, however, there are "problem points" within the Church which keep it from moving into the world with the Gospel in a full-er, more effective way. In spite of great opportunities for growth - both qualitatively and quantitatively - the Church at many points remains inflexible, bound up in a way which keeps it from becoming all that it could and should be. God is obviously at work seeking to expand his Church in this great day of growth, and people are just as obviously responsive to the "good news." Yet the Church is hung up at certain problem points which tend to cripple it and keep it from moving ahead in its God-given mission of discipling the nations.

I am convinced that what is now needed is a movement within the Church which will free it up at these problem points. Only then will Christ’s Body begin to realize the potential it has for turning the world rightside up. I am also convinced that this will only take place as groups within the Church become free enough to take their eyes off themselves and risk making the Body of Jesus Christ and its growth their only focus. The situation in the world today demands a church which is flexible, culturally diversified, and united in a spirit of cooperation in Jesus Christ. But the Church is still inflexible, strongly tied into the cultural tra-dition and forms of the western world, and full of factions and divisions.

During the past four years in Thailand I have learned how the Church is being held down and bound up at just these problem points: 1) it does not experience the cooperative unity between various groups and thus is robbed of the power which comes from unity in the Spirit of God; 2) it has not been incarnated into (put into the flesh and form of) the various cultures existing in the world today and so is stripped of clarity in its communication of the Gospel; 3) it does not have the flexibility needed to change or modify its strategies of mission.

Such problems can be erased if groups within the Church can dare to risk greater freedom. I believe that the Covenant has the potential - drawing both from its heritage and its present stance - of becoming one such group within the larger Church today. Our freedom is exactly what is needed within the larger Church of Jesus Christ. This freedom allows for flexibility and diversity within the overall unity we find in Jesus Christ, thus enabling the Church to cut across these problem points which have long acted as barriers to its full growth.

Three principles are suggested by these problem points. I believe they are essential for the Church which seeks to serve the world today. They are principles which require a freed-up Church for implementation, and the Covenant seems ready to practice them.

The first principle is: To serve the world effectively, the Church must risk unity and seek cooperation among its various groups.

Perhaps one of the greatest obstacles to the work of the Church around the world is the flagrant disunity which exists within the body of Christ. This is not a new disease; it has existed since the days of Paul. Even in New Testament times Christians were starting separatistic movements which found their uniqueness in the different heroes they followed: some Apollos, some Cephas, some even Paul him-self. These men were good men, but the act of these groups to set themselves apart as the spiritual elite went against the teaching of the Word of God. Today, Christians still build movements -- some around men and some around tra-ditions (Christian subcultures). The men are good men, but the groups tend to perpetuate a sick kind of separatism which makes it difficult if not impossible to cooperate with those whose theological stance is different or whose tradi-tion does not seem as biblical as theirs.

This emphasis on perpetuating our uniqueness as subcultural groups within the larger Christian community is one of the most glaring problems facing us today. Uniting in the spirit of Christ is impossible when different groups are turned in on themselves and establish their main goal as self-preservation and perpetuation.

It is not easy, however, for a church group which has built up years and years of tradition to lose itself and work at finding unity with other groups through Jesus Christ. That involves risk -- the risk of taking eyes off self (denomination) and putting them on the Church and its work around the world, of letting God keep his Church theologically sound and organizationally effective, of admitting that he can work through others who may not think or act just like we do. It involves the risk of taking our hands off the Church and allowing God to direct it as he knows best. Such willingness to risk (from man’s point of view) is not really all that risky (from God’s point of view). For, as we stop trying to manipulate God and his Church, he becomes free to move us forward in a spirit of unity and cooperation until we become the vibrant, living body of Christ we were meant to be.

The Covenant, I think, is one of a very few Christian fellowships which is liberated enough to risk such cooperative unity with other groups. In 1971 my wife and I were sent to Thailand as Covenant missionaries to work with the oldest and largest Christian group in Thailand, a united body called The Church of Christ in Thailand. This body is almost 150 years old and has some 27,000 Christians (out of a total 37,000 Christians in the country, less than one tenth of one percent of the total population). The CCT was begun with the uniting of the Presbyterian, American Baptist, and Disciples of Christ groups. Over the years others have joined the adventure of working in this union. Today eleven groups cooperate by sending missionaries to share in the work, the Covenant being the most recent.

In a real sense, we had to be free to risk losing ourselves as a denomination for the sake of working toward the growth of the Church. We did not work to plant Covenant churches; we worked to help the churches already united with the CCT to grow and expand in their ministry to the Thai people. This very freedom enabled us as Covenanters to play a very important role in the work of the Church in Thailand. There are quite a number of evangelical groups who are working outside of the CCT, doing their own thing and planting their own kinds of churches in Thailand. We found that we were accepted by these groups, too, since the Covenant is evangelical; yet we were also accepted by the CCT groups which had been classified by the other church groups as "liberal." In many instances, we became the bridge between divided parts of the body of Christ and were able to be instruments of reconciliation between them.

The Church in Thailand is still a long way from being united in Jesus Christ, but the first steps have been taken. I trust that we, the Covenant, will continue to take advantage of our unique opportunities there, working to set others free to do the same. For as people are freed to accept diversity in form and tradition without denying the unity there is in Christ, they will begin to experience the power necessary to serve the world in a fuller way.

The second principle is: To serve the world effectively the Church must risk incarnating God’s Word in every cultural form where it is sent.

One of our greatest failures as churches around the world lies in failing to allow for cultural diversity. As a result, we don’t speak as clearly and forcefully as we might. God’s Word must be born into every culture much as Jesus himself was born into the world of the Jew and grew up a Jew. The Word must be allowed to "possess" the various cultural forms and expressions which exist. Only as it does so will it truly speak to the vast variety of cultures and subcultures which make up the human race.

Many claim that this involves a risk, and they are right: it is a great risk from our human standpoint. We are forced to take our hands off the Church and allow it to permeate soci-eties we know little or nothing about. We can easily become skeptical of that which we cannot control-much less manipulate, or even understand. But again, if this is a risk, it is not risky. God is in control, and any risk which is taken to help the Church speak more clearly will find support in him. In a real sense God risked everything when he became a man: he risked misunderstanding; he risked putting himself in man’s hands; he risked being manipulated and controlled by men. But he did it in order to speak clearly to mankind. Through the years there has been misunderstanding, of course, and manipulation of God and his Word. Yet the Church has kept on growing and people have been brought into a living relationship with God through Jesus Christ. All of this because God "risked" becoming a particular man living in a particular culture. How can we dare question the validity of such an approach?

Yet the Church today seems to do just that. We question the wisdom of the incarnation by refusing to extend the princi-ple around the world. Much of our work has been focused on transferring the form of Christianity (usually Western) along with the content. In many countries the form of the church has been imposed on the culture rather than allowing it freely to grow out of that culture. Whenever this takes place, the full content of the Word, even though it is there, fails to be transmitted to that culture, since the Church is not speaking clearly in the cultural forms and expressions appropriate to that society.

When we first went to Thailand I asked Christian leaders in the Thai Church what the difference was between Christianity and Buddhism. Invariably I got the answer: "We do things differently. They sit on the floor and chant and we sit on chairs and sing hymns." The difference noted was almost always a difference in form rather than a difference in substance or content.

This emphasis on the form of Christianity, largely adopted from the West, fits right in with Thai religion. The Thai are great assimilators and have adopted the cultural forms of many nations over the years. The religion of Thailand, Buddhism, is a good example of this. The Thai are basically animists; they find power for dealing with life in their interaction with the occult. The occult is the content of their real religious beliefs. Buddhism, adopted from India in the early days (c. 200 BC), has become the form of their religion. As the Thai accepted this foreign religious form they made it their own by infusing it with the meaning and content of animism and the occult. Buddhism is a veneer (what appears to the eye to be Thai religion), but animism and the occult is the heart (what is in fact their religion).

It is an easy matter in a country like Thailand to take a form of religion like Christianity and substitute it for the Buddhist form. The problem is that Christianity then becomes a veneer in much the same way Buddhism has been. The fact that the form of Christianity which we bring does not really communicate the content of the Word in that culture merely adds to the possibility of Christianity becoming a formal veneer. In such a situation we trade the risk of incarnating the Word into Thai culture (which is not risky) for the risk of transferring a form of Christianity, which is familiar to us but not to them, and imposing it on Thai culture (which is terribly risky).

We so easily fall into the same sort of problem that the Jew-ish subculture did in New Testament times. They tried to transfer a complete form of Jewish Christianity onto the new Gentile converts of that day. The Apostle Paul speaks out strongly (even to cursing them) against these misdirected Jewish Christians, saying that those who try to impose such cultural systems or forms of Christianity on others are to be damned (accursed). His was strong language, but it must be remembered that Paul was speaking out against those making the good news of God something more than God had intended it to be. It was all right for them to carry their own types of cultural baggage, but to impose it on others was a sin against the Church. Later the Jerusalem Council upheld Paul and decided that Christians must be free to develop their own cultural forms in every cultural setting. The need is as great today as it was then. The Church must be freed up to incarnate itself into all the cultures of the world today if it is ever to serve the world as Christ intended.

I am convinced that the Covenant has the potential for initiating this kind of ministry in the larger Church today. Freedom to develop different forms of expression, and freedom to live out the new life in Christ through different subcultures is the essence of our freedom of diversity within the unity of our oneness in Jesus Christ. Covenant churches in the United States are completely diversified. They are not alike, and this is good as long as the differences are differences in form and expression which enable them to minister to their particular subcultures more effectively. This freedom of diversity in form and expression is a Covenant strength, and it gives us potential of becoming a catalyst for the incarnation of the Word within other churches and cultures.

The third principle is: To serve the world effectively, the Church must risk being flexible enough to constantly evaluate and change its strategies of mission in the light of its goal: the worldwide growth of the Church.

Another great problem within the Church today is its rigidity. We begin preaching the Gospel in a way which may have value for that time and place, but before long we get so tied into that way of doing things that to threaten it threatens our security also. This is especially true in other coun-tries. The way it was done 150 years ago becomes baptized as the only way to do our work today. Such rigidity robs the Church of its ability to reach out and touch people where they are with the good news that God loves them. The mission of the Church becomes the perpetuation of doing things one way, which is of little use today.

When we first went to Thailand, I was greatly troubled by the fact that the church represents less then one tenth of one percent of the total population. I could not understand this, because there is much evangelism and I was constantly hearing about results from evangelistic services. As I looked closer, however, I discovered that although there were results from such evangelism, these results rarely were integrated into the church. One of my friends had the joy of seeing 1,500 people make initial decisions to follow Christ over a three-month period. About six months later I asked him where they were and he said he did not know. They had not been integrated into a church and had there-fore never grown in their relationship to Christ. They were lost to the Church because the Church had not taken the responsibility of discipling them and involving them in its com-mon life.

I soon discovered that one of the main reasons for the failure of the Church at this point was the lack of trained leadership within it. Out of 175 churches in the CCT there are less than forty trained pastors. The laymen have limited knowledge of the Word of God, and they are led by elders who have little if any training in the Bible. There was no way that such churches could possibly integrate new Christians into the Church, and they were not prepared for the growth which came to them.

For years the Thai Church has been zealous in its evangelism (basically proclamation). It is a common practice to hold evangelistic meetings for two or three days in churches across the land. The problem is that this is not what is needed most for growth today. Perhaps in the early days, when there were no churches, the need for evangelistic meetings was great. Today, however, due to the one-sided emphasis on evangelism, the Church is floundering and losing many of those making initial decisions for Christ. A change in strate-gy is needed.

The great challenge in Thailand today is not so much to evangelize as to train. There needs to be training in the Word of God and in leadership principles, to prepare for the growth God wants to give. Until there is grounding in the Word, and until the leaders are equipped to teach and to integrate new Christians, all efforts at evangelism will add very little. As true as this is, however, it is very hard to break the traditional pattern or strategy.

I do not mean that evangelism is unimportant. It is very important. The point is simply that at this time - in one small country, Thailand - the crying need is for equipping the Church for growth. Unless the Church is able to disciple the new Christians coming into it, these new Christians will never last. And if the new Christians continue to fall away from the Church after their initial contact with it, simply because it is not equipped (with trained leaders and laymen) to disciple them, the Church will never grow no matter how much evangelism is done.

For the past four years we have been working at creative new ways of training both leaders and laymen in the Udorn district of the CCT. We are using Theological Education by Extension principles, training our leaders where they are and not requiring them to come to a rigid institutional training program. The flexibility of such a method is fantastic. It is hard work, as the materials for this extension training have to be written by us and revised again and again as we find what portions are not working satisfactorily. But God has blessed as we have been faithful in training and equipping. During the last four months of 1974, God brought over 500 new Christians into the Church. This was not due to evangelistic meetings but rather to the daily witness of Christian laymen in our churches. As new Christians came to Christ they were met by a Church which was able to open its arms and take them in. Today they are being led into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ and with their fellow Christians.

This flexibility to discover and meet real needs is the secret of a vibrant, living community. In Thailand, as well as in other places, there are many who have never bothered to look closely and ask what really needs to be done to hasten growth. Rigidly ignorant, the Church continues to do what it has done for so many years, and then wonders why growth is so difficult to achieve!

I believe that the Covenant is at the cutting edge of the whole Church in its openness to evaluation and change in strategies of mission. Under the leadership of Rev. Russell Cervin, many studies have been and are being made by Covenant missionaries in areas where the Covenant is working. The focus of these studies is to determine new strategies for growth in these days. Not only are studies being made, however; experiments in mission are also being conducted by Covenant missionaries. Those conducting these experiments have studied the church and are now seeking to meet some of the needs which they have discovered. All of this makes for an exciting new day in world missions for the Covenant.

The great thing is that we are not alone; there are other groups which are beginning to loosen up and become flexi-ble, too, in the areas of evaluation and change. The fact remains, however. that many Christian groups still maintain a hostility to open evaluation of their work and they are afraid to implement some of the ideas born of critiques by other groups. I believe that one of the aims of the Covenant should be to maintain freedom and flexibility so that continued research and evaluation of its work and the constant experimentation in preaching the Gospel can witness to real growth through freedom. Perhaps, through demonstrating that there is no real risk in being freed up, we can convince others to follow this path to a fuller expression of what it means to be the Church of Jesus Christ today.

Ours is a time of great potential, but it will only be fully realized as Christians are freed up to take a good look at themselves and correct some of the problem points which are causing them to stumble in their mission. To serve the world, the Church must be free to risk cooperation, incarnation, evaluation, and change in the name of Jesus Christ. May God give us, the Covenant, the ability to grow in the freedom we have inherited and in our ability to share this unique freedom with the rest of the world.