Advent 2000:

'Say publicly what you believe,' Seminary speaker challenges Christians

 

Dr. William McClain, center, is shown with Urban Theological Institute students Curtis Haynes, left, and Daryl Washington. Haynes is the Seminary's Chief Financial Officer.

PHILADELPHIA -- Churches from mainline Protestant denominations are in decline because they don't "speak the grammar of grace publicly," a United Methodist Methodist Professor of Preaching told a Seminary audience this week. His topic was "Identity and Mission of the Church: Naming the Name of Jesus in Public."

Many mainline church members share a flaw in attitude that also afflicted the Prodigal Son in Scripture, said the Rev. Dr. William McClain during an Advent Lecture Series at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia (LTSP). "The problem the Prodigal Son had is not that he went away or took goods. It was a problem of identity. He forgot who he was," McClain said. He teaches Homiletics (Preaching) at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and also teaches in LTSP's Urban Theological Institute, which supports African American leaders to expand their credentials while they study part time.

 

Dr. William McClain chats with a former Urban Theological Institute student of his, Aaron Bass, a recent graduate of the Seminary.

McClain said many mainline churchgoers are content to be members rather than disciples. "The challenge to mainline Christians is to be able to declare publicly what they believe," McClain said. "Who is Jesus to you?" he asked. "This Jesus has the power to transform lives. This Jesus offers hope and promise to the sick and the divorced and the dying. This Jesus can set prisoners free, but many of us don't talk about the drama of our faith in the first person. Instead we settle for the etiquette of polite convention, for schemes and strategies, setting goals and objectives. We have become present-day Gnostics who deal with faith in the privacy of our own lives. We never tell strangers publicly that we have been claimed by a story of grace in Jesus Christ."

The result of such an attitude, McClain said, is that the gospel becomes trivialized. "It is reduced to therapeutic terms and isn't taken seriously enough….Who we are determines how we behave. If we are confused about our identity we will behave and talk differently than if we name publicly who we are." And if mainline Christians continue to fail to name Jesus publicly and discuss passionately the power Jesus has to transform lives, the result will be that hurting people will go elsewhere. The elsewhere will likely be to less substantial traditions "willing to accommodate them with the grammar of the marketplace, where people who claim to represent the full gospel are really full of themselves and know nothing of the full counsel of God."

McClain spoke to a dinner audience Monday, December 4, and to a convocation audience December 5. He is a visiting professor on the LTSP campus for the spring of 2001. Dr. McClain conceived of and chaired the conceptual group which assembled "Songs of Zion," a music book in which he wrote much of the historical material on African American spirituals and gospel songs. The volume has sold more than 1.5 million copies around the world. He's the author of a half-dozen other books and in 1978 established the Multi-Ethnic Center for Ministry at Drew University in Madison, NJ.