Editorial January 16, 1971 Issue

What Do We Expect of a Church?

Carl J. Welz

Many Christians today are wondering what is happening to their churches. Why are they not as full as they used to be? Does the Christ message have less attraction today than in earlier years?

Mankind is more involved in a whirl of material activities than it ever was, and this perhaps leaves the individual less time to feel the emptiness of life in matter or to feel man's native attraction to divine Love. But man's native attraction to divine Love has never changed. Appeals made to this native attraction eventually succeed; whereas promises made to the selfish desires of mortals succeed only until the mortal thinks he has found a better way to satisfy those desires.

At least some of the prosperity of Christian churches has been built on promises to satisfy selfish mortal desires: one-two-three steps to eternal salvation; a sense of peace through meditation or human counseling; the healing of sickness through ritual or through the mere repetition of words about Truth; the use of spiritual truths for the purpose of gaining material wealth—all these with little concern for one's relationship to infinite Spirit, God.

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