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  Letters

Enjoyable Reading

Although I am not affiliated with the NACCC, I enjoy receiving your magazine. I am an ordained Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) minister and receive a variety of denominational magazines, including our own The Disciple. I find The Congregationalist more to my liking. The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is a Congregational Polity based organization with some structure, though the congregations call the shots just as yours do. Just a little information concerning our churches.

As I said, I enjoy The Congregationalist very much. I find it easy reading with very little advertising (I like that). The stories are well done and it makes for very interesting reading. In fact, I like the publication so much that I sent my renewal under the Editor’s Roundtable heading. I thought you just might like to hear from someone who enjoys your magazine and is nor from the NACCC.

May God continue to bless you and the Congregational Way.

Rev. Paul J. Sternisha, Wauseon, Ohio

Suggestions for HOPE

This is a reply to the article in the most recent The Congregationalist, titled, “Our Hearts Cry Out,” by the HOPE president Amanda Collis and supporters.

It’s grand you are “on fire for Christ”! With prayer, faith, hope, lots of love, and plenty of hard work, you can accomplish wonders. Don’t wait for anyone else to change. Christ calls us individually to be a blessing to those around us. The chances are that your churches and communities include people who are ill, frail, lonely, needy, or neglected, who could use your Christian caring. Being a blessing to others brings blessings back to you and causes joy in heaven.

Regarding spiritual growth, inter-generational small home groups that gather for Bible study are one of the various ways to achieve this. If you don’t have one available, start one, and begin building each other up. Maybe your HOPE mentors can recommend a guidebook from the many available and help you get going. Our four lay-led groups are a great success. The one I attend includes three former members of HOPE.

As for your hearing about leaders who “don’t support the belief that Christ is our salvation,” I read The Congregationalist regularly, from cover to cover, but haven’t sensed a movement to promote that view. As you know, NACCC has no authority over the beliefs or actions of individual members or member churches. Congregationalists have freedom of conscience under God. We treasure that freedom! I can assure you that our particular church is and always has been Christ-centered. The Mission Statement we adopted at our Annual Meeting this year is proof of our intent to continue to follow Christ.

Catherine C. Melendy, Congregational Church of Soquel, California

Fuel for the Spirit’s Fire

I would like to extend a note of thanks and appreciation to the myriad of people who made our most recent Annual Meeting in Lansing, Michigan, such a resounding success.

A special thanks goes to Betsy Mauro. Her innovative and insightful touch was very much in evidence. How wonderful to have our meeting be characterized by an underlying and overarching sense of worship and celebration! Worship is the foremost identifying characteristic and hallmark of the church. It both defines and unifies us. It also set the tone for the entire meeting. To view our Association through the lens of worship was truly radical. To see our Congregational partners in Mission and the student graduates of CFTS in the context of worship was edifying and deeply moving. Who will ever forget Tim Gossett’s powerful call to pray for those involved in the work of mission, to know them and their families, and to pray for them personally?

The theme of the meeting was carried through consistently–from the general sessions to the workshops to the resource room. I was particularly taken by the work of CCD (a continuation of many years of challenging and formative program on their part) in bringing the seminar on church revitalization. The fact that a workshop would cut into the attendance in the general sessions was a “pleasant dilemma.” When have we ever had to move to a larger room to accommodate those desirous of attending and add a second workshop session? And at the same time, we all witnessed the way in which the dynamics of revitalization are being introduced to the life and work of our Association.

We seem to be taking our own advice in that we are beginning to think of ourselves as an organism (a living entity) rather than an organization. The shift is monumental! It is refreshing to hear us talk in terms of who and what we are rather than what we are not. “What in God’s name are we doing?” Is there any more important question? Here in Plymouth, we have been asking this same question–thinking and talking in terms of Ministry Vision, revisiting and reaffirming our covenantal relationship with God, and how that translates in terms of our purpose and direction as a church. The meeting in Lansing provided us with additional fuel for the Spirit’s fire . . . WOW!

Again–thanks to all–Moderator, Executive Committee, leadership team, planning committee, Executive and administrative staff, and the list goes on . . . “THANK YOU.”

Rev. William P. Fillebrown, Plymouth, Massachusetts

‘Leap into Modernity’

Referring to Jonathan Edwards, today’s Congregationalists invariably cite only his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”—as did Dr. Harry R. Butman in his review of Dante’s Inferno (April/May/June 2001, page 12).

To read Edwards’ most famous sermon only as literal hellfire is to overlook the context of New England’s Great Awakening (1730-1750) and his own deepening search for the meaning of religious experience.

It’s worth noting that the greater number of his sermons were doctrinal and pastoral, often setting forth in joyous, tender, rhapsodic language the beauty of religious contemplation. To neglect these sermons, especially “The Divine and Supernatural Light” (1734) is to know but half or less the man.

That said, we need to take “Sinners” for what it is, not mere emotionalism, but a profound reckoning with our alienation from God. The sermon awakens us to an all-sovereign God who destroys human deceits; lays bare our secret motives; shatters confidence in human strength, achievements, reason, technology. Whether we use the image of a spider dangling by a thread over flames or the thinnest layer or cortex to describe insecurity, only God’s loving mercy keeps from a living hell.

New England’s premier historian, Perry Miller, described this 1741 Enfield sermon as “America’s sudden leap into modernity.” Theologian H. Richard Niebuhr said Edwards’ preaching represents awareness that at every moment we are “as ready to plunge into the abyss of disintegration, barbarism, crime and war . . . as to advance toward harmony and integration.” (Certainly former Nebraska senator and war hero Bob Kerrey would understand Niebuhr’s point.) It’s not putting the case too strongly to say with Professor James Carse that “Edwards’ [imprecatory] sermons, particularly ‘Sinners,’ were for his day what Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ is for ours.”

When Dr. Butman writes, “I have never personally preached a sermon on hell, nor have I ever heard one by an NACCC minister,” I wonder how he interprets a “heart of darkness” unless the condition of someone who, in freedom, chooses to reject God’s light and love, and so lives in the hell of alienation.

Better to be in the hands of an angry God than in no hands at all. But Edwards praises God’s loving hands as well.

Rev. Dr. Harold P. Simonson, Tacoma, Washington

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