Thursday: The Center of Gravity in the Pew
WEEK 19
THURSDAY
THE CENTER OF GRAVITY IN THE PEW
Acts 6:8-10
We come now to look at the church at Antioch as having within it the marks of the New Testament church.
We must note first of all what went into the making of that church. It was founded by the lay group that was scattered through the persecution that arose over the martyrdom of Stephen. “Now those who were scattered as a result of the trouble that occurred because of Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch. They proclaimed the word. . . . The Lord’s power was with them, and a large number came to believe and turned to the Lord” (Acts 11:19-21). The founding of the church by a lay group is important. It put Christianity just where it ought to be—not in the profession but in the person. Adolf von Harnack, the historian, says, “All the early conquests of Christianity were carried out by informal missionaries.”* No movement is strong unless it is a lay movement. If the church is organized around the minister, it is a weak church. The center of gravity must be not in the pulpit but in the pew. The minister must be the guide, the stimulator, the spiritualizer of an essentially lay movement. Every Christian, as a Christian, must be the bearer of the good news. A century ago the church in Norway was a minister’s church; the laity were forbidden by law to teach the Bible lest they teach heresy. A farmer began to read and teach the Bible in his home. He was put in jail and spent seven years there. But this lay movement became the center of mission activity at home and abroad. The clergy are now cooperating with the laity in these missionary enterprises. But the laity are the driving force.
The movement of Christianity passed from the hands of the apostles to this lay group, which was centered in the seven. It was the seven, not the twelve, who became the center of revival and the center of missionary activity. So God set the stamp of approval on a church centered in the laity by making them the center of God’s drive outward into the nations. The Antioch church was a lay church.
Lord, put the sense of your power and approval on what we do and say this day. May we have a sense of carrying out your program with your power. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Whatever God approves, God uses. God’s approval must be on all I do.
* No source was located for this exact quotation, but see Adolf Harnack, James Moffatt, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908).