A "Twentieth Century Church"
ONE of our great cities of the West is building a nine story church at a cost of $750,000. It is to be open seven days in the week, and will contain cafés, bedrooms, restaurants, sleeping porches, tennis courts, and an auditorium seating 2,500. It is really to be a church-hotel-club. The pastor of this proposed "twentieth century church" says: "It is poor business to invest so much money and allow it to be idle six days of the week. Worship is not all. Men and women need social life. Young people want a place they can call their own. Many people shy at fine Gothic churchly buildings, just as they shy at a pale, pious, buttoned-up, strait-laced preacher." "This is first century Christianity with twentieth century action. It is organized human kindness plus the strength of redeeming grace." But the whole thing sounds as though "redeeming grace" would be kept in the background, and after all, the social club side of the enterprise would be the biggest thing. It is possible to keep people so happy and so contented in a social way that they fail to connect with the power of the Lord Jesus Christ that will transform their lives. Social and business disaster is sometimes the thing that has to come into a life in order to arouse the individual to the need of salvation. The salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ fits people for the highest form of sociality and for the keenest enjoyment of social life. But after we have received salvation, our ideas of social life are very materially changed. The "pale, pious, buttoned-up, strait-laced preacher" is the extreme on one side, and the hilarious fun of the world is the extreme on the other. Both are to be guarded against and shunned as we would shun poison itself; for while God's word warns us against the strait-laced Pharisee that was thankful he was not as other men, it also utters its warning against those who would make the last days perilous by being lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.