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 Writing
PLAIN TALK while "on the road" in full-time meeting
work poses many problems, not the least of which is finding
"quote material" for this page. "Quotes"
from church history are solicited from our readers.
The
following comes from "The Disciples of Christ" by
Garrison & Degrott, The Bethany Press; and is the more
significant because the writers clearly favor missionary
societies.
We quote from the Preview, pp.16.
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"The
union of these two streams (followers, in a general sense, of
Stone and Campbell; rft) produced a body of from twenty to
thirty thousand adherents. It was wholly without organizations
of wider scope than the local congregations, which exercised
complete independence.
For
years the Christians had had some loose "conferences"
covering small districts. These were gatherings of the
ministers, or "elders", for fellowship, the exchange
of reports of their churches, and the arrangement of their
preaching appointments. The Reformers, as soon as they became
separated from the Baptists -- by dissolving Baptist
associations in which they had gained sufficient strength, and
being put out of others -- began to hold even more informal and
unecclesiastical gatherings for mutual encouragement,
acquaintance, and edification. From such rudimentary beginnings
grew "county cooperations" for the sending out of
evangelists, state meetings, and in 1849 the first national
convention and the organization of the American Christian
Missionary Society.
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These
organizations, voluntary and unauthoritative as they were,
always disclaiming any power to control the local congregations,
nevertheless contained the seeds of trouble as well as the
promise of effective service; and the seeds ripened faster than
the promise, for hot controversy about the legitimacy of
missionary societies became a divisive issue long before the
societies themselves achieved any notable results.
But
geographical expansion and numerical increase did not wait upon
the efficiency of the societies or the building of missionary
budgets. Population was moving westward with a fluidity that is
amazing, considering the difficulties of travel and transport.
The Disciples were a part of that migrant host. They rode the
crest of that wave of the advancing frontier which swept across
woodlands and prairies and left behind it a deposit of rural
homes, villages, towns, and churches."
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Note:
the early church in this country was "without organizations
of wider scope than the local congregations." (2) Loose
"conferences" and "county cooperations"
(where several churches acted collectively, rft) set the stage
for "the first national convention and the organization of
the American Christian Missionary Society" (3) These were
"voluntary and unauthoritative" organizations -- which
make "our" present day inter-church projects perfectly
safe, according to some very short-sighted men of today.
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