Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-05-05
CITY IS CHURCH'S
GREAT PROBLEM
Dominating Civic Life in Di-
minishing Degree; Needs
Broadminded Leadership
The International Sunday School les
son for May is The Missionaries
of Antioch" Acts I1:19-3O
BY William T. Ellis


of Antioch" Acts I1:19-3O
BY William T. Ellis
The Bible. like the human race, be-
gins with garden and ends with
city. Christianity got its name and
its world vision in a city, and a big
heather city at that. Everybody knows
that the Church's greatest present
1 problem is that of the modern city.
/ Broadly speaking, the Church is suf-
/ fering defeat in urban centers. She
Is dominating civic life in diminish
ing degree. Where problems are
/ thickest, there churches are fewest.
Worse yet, the Christian leader with
a civic sense and spirit is rare almost
10 the degree of invisibility. Most min
listers in great cities think in terms of
I their own parishes. II is notorious
that no movement or leadership has
I ever been able TO get the New York
pastors together for active cooperation
/ i'll any city-wide Christian service.
| Each is overwhelmed by his own paro-
chial problems. A need that underlies
most other needs in our modern
church life is for leadership that will
think in large units.
The City Problem Not New
There is oNermuch wailing about
\ the new problems which have been
! created for the Church by the modern
city. This lament seems TO assume
that Christianity was constructed in
units of rural congregations. Frankly,
this is nothing less than absurd. The
Christian Church began in Jerusalem.
Its first notable victories were won
there, in the face of such opposition as
is found nowhere in Christendom to-
day. The greatest conquest of the
early Church was in the third city in
the Roman empire, Antioch, with its
half-milliO residents
Now Antioch was no modern Phila-
delphia, predisposed by tradition and
aptitude toward Christianity. The
bitterness of its heathendom is
glimpsed in "Ben-Hur," with its pic
lures OF the denominations of the Grove
of Daphne, five miles out of Antioch.
/ II was from this great heather city
! that Christianity received its name;
and 1t was in Antioch that there began
the missionary enterprise for the con-
quest of the cities of the old world.
In Antioch vast number turned 10
/ Christ. That result was won by lay
men. average folk who had been scat
tered from Jerusalem by the tribu-
lauons that arose over the martyrdom
of stephen. AS they went they
preached The brands that had been
/ sent flying far and wide by the foot of
persecution each started fire in some
new place. Those early disciples were
/ like the modern Korean Christians.
who sometimes move their homes and
| their businesses to new communities
for the Gospels sake. The first and
final dependence of the kingdom has
been upon the witnesses" who bear
( testimony, wherever they may be put,
I to the new life that is in Christ Jesus
New Light On Old Places
One Is surprised when he realizes
how cosmopolitan was the early
/ Church. We find the dispersed dis
J he Brit Itch,
island in the Mediterranean, where
now troops are garrisoned. and about
which the warships are sailing to-day;
and to old Phoenicia, the maritime
nation lying along the upper coast of
I Palestine and Syria: and to the great
city of Antioch. Antioch has recently
} come into the news because of the
marvellous defense which its Armenian
I Christians made for fifty-three days
on a mountain outside. of the city
| against the attacking Moslem hosts.
The personnel of the Church at
Antioch. which as the biggest city in
the whole region became the natural
rendezvous of fugitives from Jeru-
salem. was even more cosmopolitan
vet We find among the names Lucius,
the Cyrenean-all students of geogra-
/ ply identify Cyrene as within the
modern Tripoli, which Italy lately
seized from the Turks-and Manaen.
/ the foster-brother of Herod: and Saul
from the university city of Tarsus and
Simeon the Blacll-who may have
been the Simon of CYrene who carried
the cross of Jesus: and Barnabas of
Jerusalem.
With such leadership the new
Church at Antioch could not be paro-
chial or provincial. II had to think in
terms of the then known world. The
sympathies and contact and outreach
o. the Church membership ran as far
as the Roman dominions. Intolerance
was impossible to these men blazing
with the zeal for the crucifed Christ
] 1t was easy for them to slip over
! the fence of Judaism and carry the
I Good News TO the Gentiles also Their
/ breadth of vision made II impossible
I for them to be holden by the narrow
/ prejudices of Judaism. So their con-
verts among the Greeks grew with
such rapidity that the news was
quickly carried to the mother church
at Jerusalem.
\ Radical Revival
That news from Antioch upset the
Jerusalem leaders. They were con-
servatives. and solicitous for the pre-
/ serVation of the tyne. The fear of
heresy had gripped them. 1t was with
| sincere and pious alarm that they
| learned that the Christians exiled to
/ Antioch had preached to Gentiles as
we'll as to Jews.
Little did they know that this fact
I chronicled the high water mark of the
history of the Apostolic Church. One