I should have been happy in Memorial Church. It was my first pastorate out of seminary and one of the top ten charges in the state. I had my doctorate, my travel abroad, and was a member of two important boards. (An old-school evangelist, with Paul's shipwreck en route to Rome in mind, used to say, "If you can't swim, get on a board!") I was well fixed and Uncle Bill Blaine, who wasn't too careful with his figures of speech, said, "Reverend, if you play your hand well, you've got it made."
Memorial was the church of Riverby—imposing and important. A liberal sprinkling of lawyers, doctors, merchants, and politicians sat in the pews—on Sunday mornings, that is. We were definitely in. Everything was peaceful for nobody was likely to get excited enough about religion to start a commotion. The only spot in Riverby that was more tranquil was Valley View Cemetery. (There were other similarities!)
But I couldn't shake off a haunting dissatisfaction with the status quo. At seminary we aspiring young Timothys sat up late many a night talking about what would happen if somebody should resolve to be: just a Christian. What if one should set out—free from all the trappings, the accumulations, the traditions, the Establishment—to recover the elemental simplicity of first-century Christianity? I had read In
His Steps years before, and although it certainly had no literary excellence, the fact that eight million copies had been sold and that it is still being read certainly indicated something. We seminary upstarts never settled anything in our discussions, but the theme was intriguing and I still had spells pondering it amidst the modern complexities of Memorial Church.
What a commentary on modern Christianity—that after twenty centuries of it we should be wondering what would happen if we started out to take Jesus Christ seriously! Shouldn't we have been doing just that all the time? What are churches for? Why should it be sensational today to be really a Christian? Shouldn't the exception be the rule? Why should it be unusual when it was meant to be the norm? Alas, we are so subnormal that to be normal would be counted abnormal!
I suppose I would have gone on mulling over the matter in uneasy moments—but never doing much about it—if Stephen Lynn had not come to Riverby. My church visitor had discovered him and reported him to me. I went to see him in his bachelor apartment over by the river. I found him to be very pleasant, but not disposed to talk about himself. Any individual who does not like to talk about himself is a rarity to begin with! When I saw that he was not inclined to give much personal information, I switched to other topics and found that he opened up when we got around to spiritual matters. He had no theological training, but was well read, and knew how to handle his much-used Bible. When we talked about this matter of taking Christ seriously Stephen Lynn glowed. It was contagious. He opined that too much of our Christianity is secondhand. It is like eating canned goods instead of vegetables from your own garden.
"I want to be a first-hander," he said. Lynn lamented that we seem more interested in perpetuating an institution than in reproducing an experience, and quoted Dr. J.B. Phillips' words about Christianity beginning as an experience, but becoming a performance. He was not antichurch, but spoke of "the church within the church," the fellowship of true believers everywhere. Organization and system and the Establishment are means to an end, but when they become ends in themselves, God starts over with a new fellowship. We are seeing this in underground movements, Lynn said, in prayer and Bible study groups, extracurricular activities. Some are wild and way-out, but the false implies the true. God raises up the irregular to revive the regular. These things come and go but the church rolls on. (These were some of this surprising man's ideas.)
Of course I knew all this already but while I viewed it academically from the security of my salaried pastorate, Stephen Lynn was really out to give it a try. He said we needed people who would simply trust Jesus for everything and see what would happen. I was convinced that for Stephen Lynn something would happen soon!
Rumors began to get around that a stranger was approaching various individuals to discuss their spiritual needs. Stephen Lynn talked to men at work, called on offices, visited homes, conversed with others on the streets. He had nothing to sell, no organization to join. His subject was Jesus Christ—and since he was peddling nothing—it threw his listeners off guard. There was nothing professional about it for he was perfectly natural. Nobody told him to attend to his business for this seemed to be his business. There was nothing bookish about it, as though he had taken a course in personal witnessing with chapters on how to deal with different cases. It wasn't bearing witness so much as just being a witness.
After he had been in Riverby some weeks Lynn started a little prayer meeting and Bible study in his apartment. ("The early church started in homes, you know."). Ten came the first time, then they filled his living room and from there they moved to a room at the Y. Two of my flock were in on it from the start: Linwood Sanders, a good Christian who always liked such gatherings, and Sarah Lott, wife of Howson Lott, real estate man and a hardened old sinner. She had prayed for Howson for years and seized every opportunity for such prayer as a drowning man grabs a straw.
Curiosity got the best of me and I attended one of Lynn's meetings. They sang a few songs and he gave a brief Bible message. Then they prayed. There was nothing strange or unusual except that old-fashioned prayer meetings are strange and unusual! The report had started that Lynn was a member of an off-beat sect. And of course there was the suspicion that he was starting a new church. He stopped that by advising converts to join some church where the Bible is believed and taught. Actually, he was starting a new "church within the church" by seeking to stir up a fellowship of Christians who would infiltrate all their churches with a new experience and a fresh testimony of vital original Christianity. He warned the group severely against becoming mere troublemakers in their churches. He said there are two kinds of division mentioned in the New Testament: division on account of Christ (John 7:43; 9:16; 10:19) and divisions on account of false teachers (Romans 16:17). He said everything depended on whether the division was on account of Him or them!
Lynn made it very clear, however, that Jesus did not come to earth to bring peace but a sword, and that loyalty to Him would divide families (Matthew 10:34-39; Luke 12:49-53). He said we were long on membership and short on discipleship these days in our churches, and that following Christ was the costliest business on earth, but paid greatest rewards. He scored cheap Christianity that would accept Jesus as Saviour—but refuse to confess Him as Lord. He said salvation was free but that it cost Christ everything to provide it and would cost us everything to possess it. (I can see how this would jar the average congregation to whom joining church is merely the accepted thing to do—a status symbol that will look good in an obituary someday!)
Stephen Lynn closed his meeting with prayer. Everybody prayed from the heart. What a contrast to the pitiful sentence prayers on Wednesday night at Memorial! How we try to pull out of hearts what is not in them! ("What is down in the well will come up in the bucket," but, alas, so many wells are dry.)
I came away from that meeting with the words of our Lord, I came not to send peace but a sword, burned into my heart. Would I dare to really trust Him for everything and see what happens? Was I afraid of the sword?