GATHERED
by Lloyd M Hall Jr

Preamble
At the end of the Twentieth Century, we Congregationalists are surrounded by Roman Catholic parishes that are comprised of a larger number of families than any of our Churches can claim as members.  We are reminded constantly by the media and the popular Christian press that there are successful mega-Churches sprouting in most urban settings and that the evangelistic Churches are growing at a faster rate than the older mainline Churches, who, in fact, may be declining in membership.  All this has led to an ill-founded insecurity complex on the part of our Churches and a generalized sense of failure.

In part this reflects the observable reality that too many of the continuing Congregational Churches since 1957 have been firmly committed to certain details of our polity without sufficient grounding in our ecclesiology.  What escapes the religious news headlines is that the vast majority of Protestant Christians still worship in small and medium sized Churches.  Is it possible that this remains true because those Churches most closely resemble the apostolic Churches formed under the immediate authority of Christ?  Is it possible that congregationalism (note the lower case “c”) is becoming more and more dominant in Christian Churches because it is closer to the way Christ would have us be?

We have a wealth of literature and tradition that explores the rationale and the reality of the apostolic Churches; and of the re-incarnation in the Congregational Way.  The future for that Congregational Way is not to be found in becoming a mimic of the world’s promotional and organizational patterns but, rather, in understanding and authentically practicing the Way commended to us by our Lord.  Authenticity and, therefore, validity demands that we come to understand our polity as a necessary result of our ecclesiology and not as an end in itself.

Introduction
In his wonderful lecture series, The Congregationalism of the Last Three Hundred Years as Seen in Its Literature, Henry Martyn Dexter suggests that Nathaniel Emmons, by the middle of the eighteenth century,

"included in his understanding of the Congregational way the notions that (1) A specific form of church government was instituted by Christ in the eighteenth of Matthew - which is Congregationalism, (2) Christ is the sole lawgiver of His church, and all the power which Congregational churches have is to interpret and apply His law; being entrusted with no legislative, but only ministerial, functions, and (3) A Congregational church is a pure democracy (508)

The notion that a Congregational Church is a pure democracy is tied to our understanding of Covenant; and the power of the Church relates most properly to the mission of the Church, which follows its establishment.

The Nature of the Church
To launch discussion and provide a "handle" for our understanding of Church, I have long suggested to Confirmation Classes that what is required for a Congregational Church is that you have "Christian people, together, praying."  This, after all, is the Pentecost paradigm.  And it points to the radical character of a Congregational Church.  Dependent, as we are, upon Matthew 18.20 ¹ we come together, believers in Christ, prayerfully certain that Christ - REALLY! - will join us. Not only is that sufficient warrant for a Church but is the New Testament pattern that best enables Christ's Church to be what he intends.

Fredrick Meek wrote in 1947 that
"The needed and effective doctrine of the Church is that conception of the Church found in the New Testament itself, unencumbered by the accretions of institutional necessity [. . .] which our Congregational forebears knew, and which American Congregationalists in this century [. . .] have allowed to slip from the center of their thought and life" (32).

That Church begins with believers in Christ who are called, by Christ in the Holy Spirit, to unite with a particular congregation--a visible Church. It is a voluntary act of affiliation, an act of the will responding to the leadings of the Spirit.

When that fellowship of saints meets and worships together, they are lead by Christ. R. W. Dale affirms that "Christ is the true Lord of the Church, and His authority is to be exerted through the concurrent action of all the members of the Church, because according to the Christian ideal, all the members of the Church are one with Him "(62). It is not enough that we simply gather in the name of Jesus Christ. We need to exert those offices of fellowship and worship that allow us to know the presence of our Lord

Lifting up Acts 2:44-45,² interpreted by 4: 32-34,³ which refers to the social life of the believers in Jerusalem in the opening stage of the existence of the Christian Church, Dexter tells us that they "'were together;' that is, they met in the same place--which is one radical feature of a Congregational church [. . .]" (Hand-Book 28).

The members of one church ought ordinarily to dwell in such vicinity to each other that they can meet in one place; and ordinarily, the members of one church ought not to be more in number than can meet in one assembly, and manage their affairs by one administration ⁴ (16).

The idea of a "gathered Church" is not a list of subscribers to an article of organization, largely unknown to one another, but a body of believers who meet together with such frequency and in such numbers that they are well acquainted. As Richard Mather said of the Church, "in respect of Quantity no more in number [than] in the days of the New Testament, but so many as may meet in one congregation" (Sell 31). The ideal to which we aspire according to Arthur Rouner Jr. is that the Church should be

[. . .] a living testimony to the sense of community in Christ, of 'koinonia' as the Greek has it, which from the earliest days has been the essence of the Christian life. The whole power of the early Church was in the fact that it was a fellowship, a family of God who deeply loved and cared for one another because they loved Christ. This was their power! (140).

"In the New Testament," wrote Henry David Gray, "we have before us a Church which is the corporate life of men and women holding a common belief in Jesus Christ, and knowing themselves to be animated by a common possession of the Holy Spirit" (Holy Spirit 16). I have suggested that P. T. Forsyth "recognized that for Church to be Church there must be a continual and reciprocal interaction between members and the Holy Spirit. Anything less is not Church" (Hall 12).

Walking Together
Covenant
The first implication for a body of gathered saints is that the common unity with Christ and the call into a particular Church establishes a particular relationship among those saints and with Christ.⁵ That relationship finds its expression and permanence in the Church's covenant. As Steven Peay observes,

“The covenant is not simply an individual act, but is, as Ames noted, involved in the gathering of the church which is the result of entering into this relationship. As a consequence of the lasting nature of the covenant, the church's continuity is also assured" ("Congregationalism" 3f).

It is critical to remember that the Church's covenant, regardless of its explicit content, is primarily about relationship. The Congregational Way, in spite of common misunderstanding, does not, Peay continues,

"speak of the constitution and by-laws or the mission statement before we do the church covenant, [doing so] will reduce our Way to the level of an organizational model rather than a living relationship. Everything we do as churches should derive from our oneness of profession of the Lordship of Jesus and our covenant relationship with him and with one another (Peay "Saints" 43).

As David Travell notes, the Church's covenant is an exquisite way of uniting people and enabling a common witness, "providing they are true covenants, that is, they are about a commitment to a relationship, not about making rules and agreeing conditions" (10).

We should note again that the vision of the Church in the Congregational Way is always of a Church that both can and does meet regularly all together in one place. It is a fellowship of believers well known to one another because they engage in frequent and meaningful intercourse.

The Democratic Character
The second implication for the Church is that the establishment of equality in Christ and mutual responsibility in covenant lead us to understand that the Church of the New Testament necessarily implied a Church of a purely democratic character. As John Wise writes in his defense of the Congregational way:

For certainly if Christ has settled any form of power in his church, he has done it for his church's safety and for the benefit of every member. Then he must needs be presumed to have made choice of that government as should least expose his people to hazard, either from the fraud or arbitrary measures of particular men. And it is as plain as daylight, there is no species of government like a democracy to attain this end (137).

Another tenet of our Way that runs against the grain of popular understanding is that democracy, in a Congregational Church, is not an axiom of power or entitlement but of obligation. While it does preclude the presumption of power by external or internal authorities, it equally precludes the evasion of responsibility by any covenant member. We cannot have it both ways: to proclaim democracy when we would exercise authority but practice Presbyterianism when we would foist our obligations off onto others. Ours is a pure democracy not a "representative democracy."

As Forsyth reminds us, "it was in no idea of political democracy or individualism that Congregationalism took its historic rise, but in obedience to Jesus Christ in the face of all the powers or majorities around it. It was the mother of political democracy and freedom, but not its child" (Faith 193).

The fundamental understanding of the ekklesia, for us, is that Christ is immediately present in--and only in--the gathered fellowship of believers. We can only be who we say we are when the work of the Church, be it worship or service, is done under the immediate headship of Christ; and that is only possible when we " meet constantly together in one Congregation, for the public worship of God, & [our] mutual edification⁶ (Walker 208).

We should consider three quick points before leaving this exploration of what it means for us to "walk together."

The gravest challenge to Congregational polity in the last century was not organic ecumenism but, rather, American individualism. We have raised "the right of private judgment" to the apex of our value scale at the expense of our corporate--and, therefore, Christ-centered--life. John von Rohr reminds us that Horace Bushnell retained the sense of our polity when he opposed revivalism as "too individualistic, too separated from the organic social connections in life where friends, family, and church provide context and help us as vehicles of grace" (289).

Rouner almost seems to be speaking to a different age when he states that this is "the whole meaning of the Church Meeting: that the people gather together in prayer to do the church's work; that they refuse to cast the burden solely upon a few directors or trustees, [. . .]" (111). This preservation of the burden is not often our contemporary experience. Too often, we are ready, as Gray suggests, "to let others who know better decide" (“Congregational Way” 5). But it is simply not enough to elect, or to otherwise select, the ones who will do the work of the Church. To transmit the work--and therefore the responsibility and decisions--to the clergy or to select Boards and Committees is to drift toward what Dale called "intra-congregational Presbyterianism."

Anthony Pappas and Scott Planting in their little book, Mission: The Small Church Reaches Out, confess to not being prepared to define "small church." You gather from the text what kind of Church they have in mind but the critical relevance for us is that the Church they address is a Church that potentially operates as a Congregational Church. The dynamics are of a body of folk who know one another very well and work together more by inspiration than plan. "When things go right," they say, "in the small church, they go right at the personal level and no impersonal organization or structure can compensate for the personal. The small church lives and moves and has its being in a world of persons and relationships" (38).

What We Do
As with so much that he wrote, Forsyth's words at the beginning of the twentieth century seem equally pertinent at the beginning of the twenty-first:

Christian people are more devoted to the busy effort of getting God’s will done on earth than to the deep repose of communion with God’s finished will in Christ. It is characteristic of the last half-century that it aims not so much at a Christocracy, where Christ has a household and is master of it, as at a Christolatry – a mere latreia⁷ of Christ, where he is worshipped mainly through the service of the public (Positive Preaching 76)

Loren Mead echoes the same thought when he writes, "What the church is is more important than what it does. And the heart of the church’s being is the deep conversation between God and God’s people that the community works out in its life of worship – in its temple" (117)

Neither would suggest that the good works of service to humankind are inappropriate for the Church. They simply are not primary, nor are they the stuff of salvation. The Church, first, must turn itself to "the ministry of the Word⁸ [which] is the chief agency of the Holy Ghost, and the chief function of the Church; whose business is not simply publication of a truth but confession of an experience--of the indwelling Spirit as its life" (Faith, Freedom 15). We are challenged to provide the environment in which our fellow saints can continue to grow, to serve, and to be healed. "The Church" writes Gray, "is a fellowship of persons by means of which each is enabled to seek richer communion with God, fuller development of self, and greater service to others. The church is a free association of persons under the leadership of God's Spirit apart from Whom we cannot know God " ("Nature and Purpose" 7).

And it is from that foundation we proceed to wider service. As Meek said:
Here in the Church local is the fellowship of the redeemed; that Christian society who are in truth separated from society, and who because of their experience of Christian fellowship together under Christ, go out into that society reinforced and reinvigorated, a Christian army of invasion (40).

We do well to think of the Church (and here, as usual, I mean the Church local), as did Forsyth when he wrote, "The Church is precious not in itself, but because of God's purpose with it" (Work of Christ 4)

Less Is More

Rouner reaches beneath the mechanism of the Church covenant to the heart of the relationship.
Christian people, members of the same church, must meet together often enough to know each other; often enough to know each other's deep concerns, differences in viewpoint, and special needs. You cannot love a man you do not know. You cannot achieve unanimity of spirit with someone with whom you have not talked and prayed (57).

The closer we grow to one another, the better the chance that we will be able to surmount our human idiosyncrasies and power struggles and become the body of Christ. It is only in the congregation that is small enough to allow the development of those relationships that authentic Congregational witness is possible. A church is possible on many other grounds but, on any other ground, it would not be a Congregational Church.

"In American culture," write Pappas and Planting, "a small church is often incorrectly seen as a diminutive, voluntary organization when, in fact, it is a face-to-face society, a culture-bearing organism [. . .].. It's a living entity in which persons and relationships are the foremost realty" (xii). It is, perhaps, a radical thing to suggest that “persons and relationships” (horizontal and vertical, if you will) are and ought to be foremost in the life of a Church. That, however, is what we think. It is not the institution, the clergy, the buildings, nor even the theology. It is the face-to-face-relationship of believers with one another and with our Lord.

The cover of Carl Dudley's Making the Small Church Happen carries these words:

In a big world, the small church has remained intimate. In a fast world, the small church has remained steady. In an expensive world, the small church has remained plain. In a rational world, the small church has kept feeling. In a mobile world, the small church has been an anchor. In an anonymous world, the small church calls us by name (qtd. in Pappas and Planting 72).

Or, as Pappas and Planting argue, "The small church is valuable in and of itself, and its unique identity offers a perspective that needs to be clearly heard on the denominational level."

The membership of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches includes Churches that fall into the "larger Church" category, those that incorporate a membership of 500 or more. Their fellowship and witness bless us. But most of the Churches of this Association are - like most Protestant Churches - in the "smaller" or "medium-sized" categories.⁹ In the NACCC 2001 Yearbook, 48% of our reporting Churches have at least 100 members but fewer than 500 members. An additional 44% of our Churches report fewer than 100 members. We are not a denomination with many large Churches. Speculation might suggest, in this "bigger is better" world, that this marks some fundamental flaw in our way of being Church. I counter that we have a tendency toward smaller Churches precisely because that is what our understanding of Church requires.

In this respect the answer to the question of this symposium, "Are we who we say we are?" is, "yes"--at least potentially. The vast majority of our Churches are of a size to affect true community in the covenant life of the Church. That we are sometimes dismayed about that is perhaps a neurotic response stemming from our failure to appreciate the absolute authenticity and advantage of the New Testament Church pattern.

A caveat and reality: The Cambridge Platform, in the same breath in which it argues for a Church of one congregation, goes on to say that the number gathered should not, ordinarily, be "fewer, then may conveniently carry on Church-work" (III, [4]). Local circumstances will dictate, but it is clear that a Church may decline in numbers to a point where it is no longer viable. Our polity cannot be an excuse for failing to evangelize and to maintain the vitality of the Church for Christ.

Implications
(First) While there are real tensions for some of our Churches about "survival," the greater problem is the continuing conviction that our general failure to replicate the theater/arena church life of contemporary "successful" churches represents a failure in our mission. It was a similar social reality into which Forsyth spoke when he suggested that

The greatest problem before independency [Congregationalism] is how to regain its place in the great world Church. [. . .]. Some way which shall make the Church a real and respected power for the practical purpose of God with society. (Faith, Freedom 306).

With an appeal not to press this analogy too far, let me suggest that in most of our communities--or a larger community nearby--we know of a large and successful restaurant. We also know that almost anywhere we go we can locate a much smaller McDonald's. The Congregational pattern is the smaller community-based Church. Our "success" in the world will not be marked by the great campus but by the proliferation of Churches witnessing to Christ according to our Way. When it comes time to consider a "second service," we are well advised to consider a second Church.

(Second) The grounds upon which Church life is to be established and/or evaluated need themselves to be defended. Are those grounds to be the values of a secular and avaricious society? Of academic sociology? Or shall their ground be in Scripture and the immediate headship of Christ? In the final sense of things, the freedom retained by the continuing Congregational Churches can only be validated, indeed justified, by its strain against those forces that would subvert its radical loyalty, its obedience to the living and redeeming Lord.

There can be no rationalization that permits the ekklesia, the called out of the world, to evaluate its holy authenticity by the standards of the world from which it is called. As I have suggested, "When we live our ecclesiology, when we are intentionally charismatic, when we are Christ-lead, we are the way that has the greatest potential for being open to what God has in mind" (Hall 16).

(Third) I periodically receive stockholder notices of annual corporate meetings where Boards of Directors are to be elected and perhaps some other business transacted, though not much. Too often our participatory level in the Church is of a similar magnitude. We show up for the Annual Meeting to elect those who will, actually, be the Church for the coming year. The validation of our life as Christian communities according the New Testament pattern demands greater commitment and participation. Our opportunity to be parts of the body of Christ, not just "virtually" but actually, demands our active ownership and work in the Church.

It is the gathered saints, constantly following Christ's lead, that give us the capacity to respond to the world around us without cumbersome mechanism and bureaucracies. It was with that in mind that Washington Gladden wrote, "it is the glory of our Congregational system that it is so flexible, free from the wrappages of ecclesiasticism, that it feels these quickening divine influences sooner than some other systems do and responds to them more promptly" (28).

(Fourth) As ministers, lay-people, and as a denomination we need to both recognize that we are a denomination of mostly small and middle-sized Churches; and celebrate, develop and exploit that realty. We should encourage the awareness that Pastors called to modestly sized Congregational Churches are called to actual Churches in the actual world--not way stations en route to a "real" Church.

(Fifth) Each Church will need to revisit the basic understandings as it moves forward. Our goals and objectives, while being responsive to contemporary needs, must also be consistent with our way of being Church.

(Sixth) We need, as a fellowship of Churches, to work together on creative ways to finance our way of Church life in the twenty-first century.

Finally

Gaius Glenn Atkins & Frederick L. Fagley in 1942 observe that
Dr. Bacon said that the study of the Cambridge Platform was of interest primarily because it showed how little the churches had departed from the principles of their fathers in the 200 years that had elapsed since its adoption. It should be noted that the churches have changed very little in principles and methods in the years since 1865” (289).

It remains true in the year 2000 that the essential character of a Congregational Church is consistent with the historic realities on American soil and with the core of the practices of the New Testament Church. "So great a cloud of witnesses" should give us pause before we criticize or bemoan who we are. I close with these additional words from Peter Taylor Forsyth:

[…] the test to which Congregationalism is being exposed does not concern its power to show a fine spirituality, or a keen philanthropy, or a zeal for social reform. But it is the question whether it is a capable trustee for God and man of anything so searching, critical, and revolutionary, so creative, universal, and eternal as the Gospel committed to the Church in the New Testament is. (Faith, Freedom, 253).

¹ (NRSV) For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”  (Return to text)
² (Acts 2:44-45 NRSV)  All who believed were together and had all things in common; [45] they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. (Return to text)
³ (Acts 4:32-34 NRSV)  Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. [33] With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. [34] There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. (Return to text)
⁴ Boston Platform, II, I, 3 (Return to text)
⁵ See Cambridge Platform, IV and Boston Platform II, I, 4 (Return to text)
⁶ Cambridge Platform, IV, 4; spelling modernized. (Return to text)
⁷ latreia = religious duty (Return to text)
⁸ Forsyth holds the “Word” to be the Gospel, which is in Jesus Christ and not the scriptural canon per se. (Return to text)
⁹ Most of the larger Churches practice a polity that Dr. Dale called "intra-Church Presbyterianism." They, nonetheless, usually maintain critical characteristics of Congregationalism and are unlikely candidates to become mega-Churches. Indeed, the tension between the Congregational character and a "practical and efficient management" is sometimes troublesome. Work needs to be done in exploring this phenomenon. (Return to text)
 

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