CHURCH, MISSION OF

Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, won a strategic battle with comparative ease and little loss of men. When asked for the explanation of his victory over the enemy, he said, “The enemy had seven cooks and one spy, but I had seven spies and one cook.”

Perhaps the church lacks power because it majors on the minors and minors on the majors.186

A generation ago, Dr. F. B. Meyer said this about the local church: “It is urgently needful that the Christian people of our charge should come to understand that they are not a company of invalids, to be wheeled about, or fed by hand, cosseted, nursed, and comforted, the minister being the Head Physician and Nurse; but a garrison in an enemy’s country, every soldier of which should have some post or duty, at which he should be prepared to make any sacrifice rather than quitting.”187

The hero of Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court was wise enough to install dynamite under the foundation of all the munitions plants and factories he had built. He realized that should there be an uprising against his “new” nineteenth-century ideas, these factories (once so helpful) might be taken over and used against him.

There is wisdom to this approach for the church. Every new building, and every new program ought to have ample dynamite poured into its foundation so that if in the future these things become obstacles to the mission of the church, they can be removed to clear the ground for greater works.188