John 17:20-26; Colossians 3:9-17; 1 Thessalonians 5:19-24
I decided to do a fourteenth and concluding sermon in the Six Streams of Living Water series. Let’s assess what we have learned and how we can apply it in the life of our church.
We have learned that in the early nineteenth century founding days of our Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement and in our period of most rapid growth in the early and mid-19th Century, all Six Streams were operating within our movement. This was true in the other mainline Protestant churches such as Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian. Most mainline churches were built (1) on the authority of inspired Scripture and the compelling Great Commission characteristic of the Evangelical Stream, (2) on the focus on personal transformation into Christlikeness characteristic of the Holiness Stream, and (3) on the guiding and empowering presence of the Holy Spirit characteristic of the Charismatic Stream. The other three streams were present also. Then, settled middle class spiritual complacency and the influence of skeptical higher education on the training of clergy caused mainline churches to become less friendly to the streams on which they had been built, causing the less comfortable and less educated members of mainline churches to withdraw and start their own denominations. These new denominations tended to be primarily One Stream denominations, either Evangelical or Holiness or Charismatic. Without the checks and balances of the other streams, they fell into excesses and abuses, but they still had a dynamism that caused them to thrive better than the old mainline churches.
Meanwhile the old mainline churches focused at the congregational levels on respectability and at the leadership levels on the Social Justice Stream which they eventually overly politicized and inadequately grounded in personal morality, driving even more believers from their folds. The result of all this is that the old mainline churches in this country are in precipitous decline. Is there hope for recovery? Perhaps, but it will take bold action.
While Judy and I were in Indianapolis, we became acquainted with a United Methodist congregation in Ginghamsburg, Ohio, a bedroom community outside Dayton. About 15 years before we became aware of it, the congregation was in rapid decline and down to 90 members. We were told that the Methodist hierarchy wanted to close the church and so sent them the pastor that they thought least equipped to renew the congregation and most likely to alienate their members. The bishop appointed Michael Slaughter. At first, it looked like the hierarchy had it figured right. Slaughter arrived and announced his program for attempting to renew the church. The membership dropped to down to 45. But then it started to grow. In a few years it reached 300. In a few more years it reached 2,000. According to its website, the congregation is now 4,500 strong in weekend worship attendance, the largest United Methodist Church in Ohio.
Don’t worry, that won’t happen here. We are not sitting in the path of urban sprawl. In our setting, topping 300 combined in two or three worship services by 2020 is a plenty big goal. But the principles on which Slaughter renewed a mainline church are still valid for us.
More than on any other Stream, Slaughter built on the Evangelical Stream with its focus on the authority of the Bible, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the bringing of people to faith in Christ. Slaughter announced that the first principle of growth would be to move from the vague theism that was being taught in the church before his arrival to clear proclamation of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Further, he asserted that telling people about Jesus was the business and purpose of the church and that this purpose would govern everything the church did, even how it worshiped. He wanted to be clear from the beginning with every person to whom the church presented the gospel that following Jesus costs us everything that we might want to claim as our own rights. In other words, a believer in Jesus Christ holds no area of his or her life back from Jesus’ command, from dedication to Jesus’ mission.
Also in line with the Evangelical Stream, Slaughter announced that scriptural truth would be the primary source for everything they preached and taught, for everything they believed and did.
Going beyond the Evangelical Stream to the Holiness Stream, Slaughter insisted that their scriptural foundation was not just for information, but for transformation. To support this transformation he asked new members to covenant to follow certain practices that are typical of disciples of Jesus Christ, things very similar to our 9 ways, including belonging to a small group that incorporated accountability to the covenant and to spiritual honesty.
In line with the Charismatic Stream, Slaughter saw a major function of the church as helping members identify their spiritual gifts and to respond to the callings, leading, and empowerment of the Holy Spirit.
He insisted that strong spiritual leaders were part of the Holy Spirit’s work, that they were not managers, but Spirit-led visionaries who must hear and articulate the vision and mission of the church and then embody and model important aspects of that mission and vision. In other words, the leader must tie together the Contemplative, Charismatic, and Incarnational Streams… listening to God in prayer, discerning the leading of the Holy Spirit, and living it out in daily life, and that the pattern set by the adventurous leaders was then to characterize the whole membership.
Slaughter did not neglect the Social Justice Stream, but moved it beyond ideals, positions, and stands and moved it into tangible commitments. Slaughter insisted that the mission of the church included serving the least and the last. For starters, he asked each church family to consider connecting to one underprivileged inner city Dayton child and buying the same kinds of gifts, clothing, and school supplies for that child that they bought for their own children. That’s where the rubber (of expensive athletic shoes) met the road. He then used these connections to inner city life as the foundation for building vision for all sorts of missions to address the underlying problems. He encouraged members to find their individual callings to social service and to pursue them. In short, Slaughter led his church to a well-rounded approach that brought together every one of the Six Streams, and it was very fruitful. I don’t know if he even knew about the Six Streams concept. He just did them, and it worked.
Does that mean that we should imitate the Ginghamsburg church? Not in the details. God led Slaughter and the members of his church to do what was right for Ginghamsburg and Dayton, Ohio. God will lead us to do what is right for Berryville and Carroll County, Arkansas. But I believe that the healthiest of churches anywhere will have all six streams flowing together, with appropriate checks and balances.
I began by talking about the fact that what led to success for the early Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement was lost, fragmented in mainline churches. I am suggesting the Six Streams as the corrective for that decline. The great thing is that it is not only a moving forward, but also a return to what made our movement (and the other mainline churches) strong in the first place.
How do we bring the Six Streams back together? We do it with a combination of openness and caution. We drop our prejudices against the best parts of each stream. We guard against the worst parts of each stream. For instance, for the Evangelical Stream, we develop an enthusiasm for the richness of inspired Scripture and for obeying the Great Commission to go and make disciples, but we guard against angry crusades against those we identify as sinners. For the Holiness Stream, we take very seriously the purpose of God to restore our lifestyles to fit with the image of God, but we guard against legalistic self-righteousness. For the Charismatic Stream, we welcome the leading and empowerment of the Holy Spirit in all its Scriptural actions, but we guard against undiscerning fascination with all things supernatural and spectacular and speculative. And so on.
The Apostle Paul demonstrates this open and cautious pattern with regard to the Charismatic Stream in 1 Thessalonians 5:19-24. Paul establishes two guidelines for openness: do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophecies (that is, Spirit-given messages). He establishes a basic rule for how we evaluate prophecies: test everything; hold fast what is good; abstain from every form of evil. He puts the measuring rod before us, our wholeness and maturity in Christ: Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely (or make you totally holy), and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus. He makes clear that this is the work of God: He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.
That kind of sane balance is what we are aiming for with all Six Streams, and we are aiming for the result of wholeness in our church life and wholeness in our personal lives. May it be so. Amen.
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