Taking the Church Seriously

I'm preparing to read the following devotional thought at staff meeting this morning. It's from my hero, A.E. Whitham and his essay, "Taking the Church Seriously". Whitham wrote in the 1930s ... this one hit me right between the eyes today.

My plea is that we take our Church seriously--her prayers, fellowship, sacraments, and preaching. We may have a different conception of the Church, of her functions and the scope of her authority, from that of others. But the Divine necessity for a Church, its spiritual uniqueness as an institution, the belief in a special grace through her sacraments, the conviction that her preaching and teaching are of things revealed to men supernaturally in Christ, these seem to me to be the only justifying grounds for the elaborate and expensive machinery of the Church, the costly demands upon her sons and daughters for sacrificial service, the rituals and observances, whether ornate or simple, the punctual and regular attendance we exhort people to make at her services, and the distinction we feel between her gatherings and that of any other society on earth.

The Church that exalts to the highest degree her importance and necessity, her Divine validity, may or may not survive in popular esteem, but this is certain, that a Church will never survive, and does not deserve to survive, that belittles herself, and qualifies her claims until they cease to be claims and degenerate into weak and apologetic invitations. This pathetic effort to win men into the Church by echoing their own unthinking indifference and disparagement of the Church has gone so far that to speak with respect, not to say reverences, of the Church, calls forth angry retort and remonstrance from the members of the Church itself, as though you were accusing her of sin.