L. A. S by L. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 9, 1902

L. A. S

By L. A. S.

The church as a business enterprise is a failure, says the Rev. Mr. Trevorrow, pastor of St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal church in New York City. This statement he made to his congregation on a recent Sunday, his reason for the utterance being that the increase in church membership had fallen almost to nothing, being for the past year only eighty-four one-hundredths of one per cent. “He hastened to assure the startled congregation,” says a press dispatch, “that the church, the Methodist Episcopal Church at least, was not ‘a business deal,’ but he acknowledged that it was as much a business failure as any other church.”

According to figures culled from a recent number of The Church Economist, Mr. Trevorrow said there had been a loss the past year of three thousand nine hundred and sixty in the M. E. Church membership. Two thousand Methodist churches in this country had made no increase in membership. In view of this condition of things, he said, an imperative call should be issued to the so-called Christians of the twentieth century commanding them to be loyal to the church.

Mr. Trevorrow did not explain to his congregation how a church could be successful as a spiritual institution and at the same time be a failure as regards growth in membership. We think any one would have great difficulty in reconciling such conditions with each other. The successful church is not anywhere set forth in Scripture as a business failure. In the days of the apostles, thousands were added to the church in a single day. The Holy Spirit was poured out on the day of Pentecost, and three thousand souls were converted by Peter's one discourse. The Holy Ghost has never been withdrawn, but has remained ever since in the earth as the divine agency for drawing souls into the Christian fold; but the Christian church has fallen away from its first love of the truth, so that God cannot work through it as he did on the day of Pentecost. It is not the power in the world to-day that it was then, simply because it is not now the spiritual success that it was then. The same degree of spiritual success will produce as marked results now as were seen in the days of Peter and Paul. This will be demonstrated when the Spirit is again received by the church in full measure, in the latter rain.