THE NEED FOR REFORM

PART THREE REFORMATION NEEDED

Out Creator of our wonderful world sent Jesus to tell us how to live together. (Essay 1) This teaching has been the moral foundation of the development of our society for centuries. (Essay 2)
My faith survived about 50 years of regular worship in the Anglican Church in which I was brought up. (Essay 3) I then eventually found simple ministries concerned only with Christian living in daily life. They merely apply Christ’s Teaching and recognise the availability of help from the Holy Spirit to help those who pray. This has been a real and ultimate fulfilment of my faith. (Essay 4)

Since our Christian worship should be our primary aim in life, I am concerned that so many years of traditional church worship yielded so little. Formal church worship contains too many additions that distract attention from Christ’s Teaching. Consequently the majority in most western nations believe in God but the numbers who attend church worship are declining steadily. (Essay 6) The manmade distractions are now accepted in many aspects of church worship. (Essays 5,6, 7,9 and 10).
Our greatest tragedy and challenge is that this undermines the foundations of society at all levels, from personal to national.
What is needed is a return to Christ’s simple messages to individuals on how to live as taught in the Gospels. This is where we serve God and it is where preachers should concentrate their teaching.


Essay 11 OUR PRESENT ENVIRONMENT
The explosive advances in technology offer exciting advances in many fields for a brighter material future.
In contrast, the declining support for Christianity is tragic and ominous. It threatens our individual and national adherence to, and fulfilment of, our Creator’s purpose for us.
Modern populations. The increasing wealth of western society gives people independence and confidence. The explosion of telecommunications allows access to unlimited information worldwide.
Anyone who serves the public must now take account of how rapidly their needs and expectations are changing.
The businessmen who lead technology are independent, competitive entrepreneurs. Their motivation is to meet the changing needs of their customers. Their rewards are from beating their competitors in responding to change. They are flexible and dynamic.
The churches are dominated by large established organisations. Their power is held at the top. Their leaders choose replacements so they are self perpetuating and answerable only to themselves. They are conservative and are governed by their traditions, which evolved over centuries. Their reward is that they believe that theirs is the way to serve God.
Their dedication is unquestionable. However they are set apart from other organisations which change in response to the changing needs of society. This accounts for their falling support.
The major churches are central to the problem. A large majority of Christians profess membership of these churches. Increasingly many are merely nominal Christians. The support of even the active members of these churches is declining.
Christians should spare no effort to identify the causes and reverse this decline.

THE PROBLEM
These deceptions, which more and more potential Christians cannot accept, are the cause of the decline. They are the manmade additions to teaching and worship which have been added to Christ’s Messages. (PART 2) He came to teach us how to live. He did not come to found religious denominations. These have been created by men since Christ and they are deceptions from His mission.
Exceptions are those who believe these deceptions, as I did for too many years, that this is how God should be worshipped. Many are Sunday Christians whose weekly worship is expected to secure forgiveness and salvation. They miss the fulfilment of Christ’s loving Messages for daily living.
The Old Testament is a major distraction which should not continue to be revered by Christian churches (Essay 9). Because it is included in the Bible it is revered as Holy Truth.
Revering the Old Testament is a major deception and a misleading distraction from the worship of Christ.
Conclusion The churches are losing support. This is tragic because it is not Christ’s Teaching that is rejected, but that it is obscured by the manmade deceptions which now predominate in church ministries. They must come down from their mountain to where the people are, and leave their baggage behind. They must discard the belief in their own holy power and in the sanctity of the traditions which govern church affairs.
The changes required, are to return to teaching how Christ’s Holy Messages are the guide to every individual every day. The Holy Spirit is available to help them achieve this.

UPDATING CHRISTIANITY
Teaching Discarding the deceptions would allow churches to concentrate on their real task of teaching how Christ’s Messages are the foundation of Christian living.
Unlike technology, which is constantly changing, the underlying principles of Christ’s messages are timeless. However our lifestyles are now far more complex than those of His audiences 2000 years ago. His Messages need to be adapted to apply to all the wide variety of issues in our present lives.
In all situations Christians should be guided by the commandment to love their neighbours. This should be the basis of deciding what is right and wrong in all our many decisions.
We deal with people all the time, with family at home, with colleagues at work, with friends in our social life and with strangers when we drive or go shopping. This is where we serve God. Christians should be caring, tolerant and control their emotions. An appropriate guidance is to ”do unto others as you would have them do to you.”
Earning and spending is another major part of our lives. At work we can do the minimum necessary to keep out of trouble. Alternatively we can give our best to serve others, according to our talents.
We must then divide our incomes between spending on ourselves, saving for the future and giving to others in need. Everybody’s priorities are different, but we each have choices about what we believe would be God’s will on how we spend.
We also have civic choices, whether it is only in voting, or in decisions in public office. Christians should be guided by what is right for the community, and not what is popular or may bring personal rewards.
Recent examples of the faith and ultimate successes of other Christians are powerful examples to strengthen faith.
For example, Martin Luther King was an outstanding Christian. He had enormous successes over the years in a tense campaign opposing discrimination against blacks in USA. These included the right to ride in the same buses as whites, to full voting rights foe blacks.
As a committed Christian he insisted on non-violence. He even instructed his followers to follow Christ’s injunction to love their enemies, in this case their white opponents. They included brutal ruthless racists who tried to terrorise blacks through beatings and even murder. God helped this faithful Christian to succeed in doing what was right.
This example is laboured because this was a reality of Christian living today.
Even the lowliest Christian needs the faith and strength to choose what is right and uncomfortable. This is what churches should be teaching to help in life today and tomorrow.
These are examples of areas where Christians must make choices every day which are guided by Jesus. This is what churches should teach. The relevance and credibility of this teaching should satisfy the critical and discerning people of today.

Preaching. Customary sermons include the triumphs of prophets 3000 years ago, in a different society. They sound good but they are irrelevant to Christian living today. Instead there are innumerable examples of, triumphs through faith, of those who did what was right, regardless of the difficulty or dangers to themselves.
We all have to make choices between right and wrong, no matter how humble our own situations.
The Parables are vital which concern issues of daily living and should be applied to Christian choices today.
Our own faith can be strengthened by the innumerable examples of the faith and strength of other contemporary Christians.
Worship Christians gather to give thanks, to repent and to pray for help and strength to renew their faith. Worship and prayer should cover all the aspects of our complex Christian living where faith is needed.
The real help from the Holy Spirit, which is available to all the faithful, should be emphasised more often. Testimonies of successes or triumphs through faith of other contemporary Christians can also strengthen our own faith.
Preachers should report examples of God’s real help to faithful Christians who pray for it. He is here to help the faithful all the time.
Specialisation (Essay 7) working life is increasingly demanding, narrow and specialised. Workers depend more and more on sound reliable advice from others. As a farmer I depend heavily on a variety o f competent specialists, such as agronomists, entomologists and pathologists.
Churches should be the specialists in Christianity to provide reliable relevant teaching to their flocks.
This is not about esoteric issues of theology, but about issues of faith in every day contemporary Christian living. Teaching on these real issues of life will be a more demanding task for churchmen if they abandon their current irrelevant routines. They are the specialists that busy congregations depend on to equip them for their daily Christian living.
Church teaching at this level has therefore a real new responsibility to teach and sustain the faith of worshippers in their every day living.
Conclusion The challenge for Churches is to present Christ’s Teaching in forms which are meaningful to the changing lives of their members. Teaching should be comprehensive and credible if it is to meet all the needs of the Christians of today.
The faith of worshippers can be strengthened by examples of how contemporary Christians receive help from the Holy Spirit.

TEACHING THE YOUNG
Churches have a vital responsibility to teach young children how Christ’s messages should be the guide to their lives. (Essay 8)
Later they become independent in a new exciting life. Our Creator gave a wonderful range of pleasures, but Christians should enjoy them with self-control. They need to be warned against self-indulgent excesses of drink, sex or drugs. These may appear to be exciting but they lead only to emptiness and even dependence.
Churches owe it to these newcomers to present these messages in credible teaching. I am unaware of the effectiveness of current efforts. I can only recall my own sterile introductions 60 years ago. (Essay 3)

RETURNUNG TO CHRIST
Our Creator’s most momentous gift to mankind was sending Jesus to tell us His purpose for living in His wonderful world. This is the only time God lived with mankind and revealed His loving and forgiving nature. His power to heal and the help available from the Holy Spirit were also without precedent.
Declining support to fulfil our Creator’s purpose is tragic and threatens mankind at all levels. Individually those who fail to live according to Christ’s teaching will miss fulfilment. No matter how hard they pursue selfish pleasures, they will find that they are empty in the end.
Family life and social stability are already breaking down. It has been alleged that as many as half of marriages in USA will end in divorce. Single parent families are increasing. In one inner city community in USA, seven out of ten children are born out of wedlock.
The decline in the stable family upbringing already results in problems in UK, such as binge drinking, drug dependence and crime to pay for drugs. These problems are all the result of lack of Christian values and self discipline which should be acquired at home.
Our civilisation was built on Christian values and morality. As these decline so will society as other manmade doctrines replace them.
The tragedy is that people have not rejected Christ’s teaching, but that too many churches have allowed it to be obscured by their own manmade deceptions.
The challenge for the future is for all Christians and their churches in particular, to return to Christ’s Teaching of God’s simple purpose.
It is the recipe for every individual of how to live with and love the rest of humanity. This is the fulfilment of His purpose for us.
Churches owe this to mankind and to God.

CRUSADERS WANTED
Change will not come from committees of clerics. A second Reformation, led by articulate tough-minded Christians is needed. Martin Luther, John Knox and John Wesley, did just that. They were condemned by the churches but Luther rebutted the accusations because he only preached Christ’s messages and opposed the manmade additions to worship by the churches.
These men of God identified the misleading deceptions of the churches and offered more real alternatives. This saved millions of Christians. They were all tough committed Christian heroes prepared to stand for what they believed was right.
Please come forward new Christian reformers for the twenty first century, mankind needs you.
The emperors need to be told that they have no clothes!
Amen.

John Danckwerts
Phone Harare +263 4 575545
PO BOX AP 27, HARARE AIRPORT, ZIMBABWE.
stjude@zol.co.zw

PS I have put a lot of effort in to these thoughts. Brickbats, criticism or comments by e-mail would be welcome.
Sadly only four out of about a dozen ministers to whom an earlier draft was sent have commented. One word “rubbish” would have done. JPD