Mail me comments, suggestions, warnings, flames, whatever Our grappling with the disciplines was not over. So many ministers look at the structures we have arrived at and, with no idea of the pain involved, feel that it would be so much easier to start out fresh and call a new congregation into existence around a different understanding of church. They feel that in their own denominations a tremendous pressure is exerted to increase the number of members. "Being the church," said one young minister, "means doing something to bring more people in. Success is not measured in faithfulness but in how many names are on the rolls."
To fight for integrity of membership within existing structures is certainly extraordinarily difficult, but there is hardly any path that frees one from that struggle. In all of us something powerful is at work which seeks to remake the new concepts into the old. "Community" can quickly be changed into "conformity," and "call" into "duty." I like in Exodus the statement that says, "God did not guide them by the road ... that was the shortest; for he said, 'The people may change their minds when they see war between them, and turn back to Egypt."'* It is so easy to turn back when conflict without or warring factions thin threaten our peace.
And then there is the old monastic cycle: devotion produces discipline, discipline produces abundance, and abundance destroys discipline. The cycle moves inexorably on and tremendous effort is required to break its pattern when we come to the place where discipline is sliding.
Our own time of terrible crisis came in October of 1969. On the third Sunday of that month, for the first time in the twenty-two years of the church's history no one stood up to make his or her commitment. We did not follow the tradition of annually renewing our covenant because the fourth discipline, "Be a vital contributing member of one of the confirmed groups, normally on corporate mission," was in question.
We had had difficulty with this discipline before. In the spring of 1965 we had held a meeting of the members in which three persons presented the differing viewpoints. After several weeks of discussion, the fourth discipline was confirmed; exceptions, however, would be made for illness and for those who wanted to meet together to deal concretely and creatively with their everyday vocations as mission in the world. No effort was made to cover every possible exception since it was emphasized that flexibility and openness to the guidance of the Holy Spirit would always be the primary emphases in any decision, and that we could never insist On simple adherence to the law.
We thought then that the matter had been settled, but four years later when we looked one day at our mission group rolls we had to face the fact that one-fourth of our members were in no group at all. Again, we came together to look at the painful matter of our division. Once more we gave over our congregational meetings to careful consideration of the fourth discipline. Recommitment Sunday was postponed Until we arrived at a decision as to exactly what our commitment was to be.
The question was whether a part or all of the congregation would normally be on mission in membership structures which include the inward and outward dimension. It was obvious that there was a real difference in judgment at this point. Some felt that the inward-outward structure of the mission groups defined the church as a servant people called into existence to be the community for others. Many contended that this was too narrow a definition and that one was often better able to live out one's servanthood in individual mission. To this the cry came back, "Where then is the place of accountability? Where does one grapple with one's own darkness and gifts, struggle with being a person in depth relationship with others? Where does the church embody in her structures what she proclaims from her pulpit?" The reply came: "We could contain both emphases and let those who wanted the corporate dimension be in mission groups, and let the others live on a more individualistic basis."
Gordon said decisively that he did not believe that we could contain both viewpoints under the same organizational and institutional roof without seriously blunting and ultimately losing that which has been our peculiar vision. He further said that he did not believe additional dialogue would serve any constructive purpose. He reminded us that we were not at the beginning of the process, but at the end of one which had been going on for four years. He said that he felt that the question was not one of further defining our differences, but the more one of deciding what we were to do about our differences. "How do we free those with different calls to be faithful to those calls?"
When the long weeks of anguish were over, the fourth discipline was again reaffirmed. At least a half-dozen persons did not make their recommitment that day in late March. Some remain close and dear friends who continue to follow a costly and radical obedience to the Word, as they hear it, and one can only affirm that the for any of us is to do the will of God and humbly to pray the prayer of Thomas Merton, "I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you." , Every religion and every denomination is founded on division defined in disciplines that enable a people to move toward that which they see. Most of these disciplines make our own look shabby, but somewhere along the way they have been abandoned. They remain in the books , but are not taken with any seriousness. My guess is that our own experience gives glimpses of what may have happened. Because we do not want to exclude anyone, we bend to everyone's wish and in the end have no style of life which is noticeably different from that of any other grouping of people. We give no one anything to be up against. We have been transformed by the world-not by the secular outside us but by the secular within us, that part that believes so fervently that something can be had for nothing and that we should not have to choose.
What we did at that important juncture in our life was to face the importance of structurally implementing a description of "Who we are." "Verbal assent," said Gordon, "can mean little. The implementing structures are crucial." We ended up by saying that the members of the church would live out their lives in small groups on corporate mission. To drop out of a mission group would literally be to drop out of membership in the church. The Council as the governing body of the church was reorganized as a "Mission Council," comprised of two representatives from each confirmed mission group, who served in rotating order for a period of a year. Representatives reported to their groups what transpired in Council meetings. Any decisions made were binding on the whole membership. When the Council determined that an issue was of such nature as to require confirmation by the total membership, a general congregational meeting was called.
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