Overcoming Sermon Block: The Preacher’s Workshop
A Revolutionary Gospel: Salvation in the Theology of Walter Rauschenbusch
Holidays, Holy Days, and Special Days
A Positive Word for Christian Lamenting: Funeral Homilies
The Forgotten Beatitude: Worshipping through Stewardship
Star Thrower: A Pastor’s Handbook
A Pastoral Prophet: Sermons and Prayers of Wayne E. Oates (editor)
The Abiding Presence: Communion Meditations
Which Voice Will You Follow?
The Difficult Sayings of Jesus
Beginning and Ending a Pastorate
Conversations with My Grandchildren about God, Religion, and Life
The Rebirth of the Church
Responding to the Call
to Christian Discipleship
William Powell Tuck
Energion Publications
Gonzalez, Florida
2020
Copyright © 2020, William Powell Tuck
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Scripture quotations marked Moffatt are from the James Moffatt, A New Translation of the Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments. New York: Doran, 1926. Revised edition, New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1935. Reprinted, Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1995.
Scripture quotations marked TEV are from the Good News Translation in Today’s English Version-Second Edition. Copyright © 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.
Scripture Quotations marked Phil or Phillips are from The New Testament in Modern English, Copyright © 1958 by J. B. Phillips.
Scripture quotations marked NEB are taken from the New English Bible, copyright © Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press 1961, 1970. All rights reserved.
Some Scripture quotations are the author’s own translation.
ISBN: 978-1-63199-509-5
eISBN: 978-1-63199-514-9
Energion Publications
PO Box 841
Gonzalez, FL 32560
http://www.energionpubs.com
With appreciation to
Bluefield College
where they encouraged me
and helped equip me educationally
as I began my preparation to serve as a minister
Table of Contents
1 Let God Kindle a Fire Within 1
4 In the Power of the Spirit 41
5 The Task of the Church Today 49
7 The Rebirth of the Church 73
9 The Ministry of the Church 99
10 Addressing the Gospel to Young Adults:
11 The Gospel’s Challenge to Young People:
An Open Letter to Bill as He Leaves for College 121
14 My Dream For The Church: A Summary 157
Preface
The Christian Church is in a time of transition, evolving, transformation, re-evaluation, and some say even dying. Some churches have indeed died, and their buildings have now been transformed into restaurants, museums, art galleries, motels, schools, parking lots, or just torn down. I have served as an interim pastor in several churches that could seat five hundred or more in their sanctuary and that now struggle to have fifty persons present for worship in the same building. What is the cause of this decline in church attendance today? Countless reasons are given. For some, it may be a part of their general distrust of all institutions like the government, the news media, etc. Many persons are just not interested in going to worship on Sunday. They had rather use the time to relax, participate in recreation, visit family or friends, shop, sleep late, travel, watch television, go to the mountains or beach, or dozens of other reasons could fill the page. The “nones” and many of the millennials seem little concerned about institutional religion. They may claim to be spiritual but not religious, certainly in the sense of attending a church service on Sunday morning. In a 2018 survey, the number of “nones,” those who don’t affiliate with any specific faith tradition, now are tied with Catholics and evangelicals in the largest religious groupings in our country.1 Some have vacated the church pews because of what they call the “two-faced” version of the Christian faith among many church goers and the moral contradictions in their everyday living. Another reason for others is the attitude some say that the church has toward the LGBT persons, the role of women in the church and society, and the sexual immorality of many of the religious leaders, priests and ministers, in the church today. Referring to the early Church’s anointing at Pentecost, Barrie Shepherd raises the question of what has happened to that “bright descending light” in this question:
But that bright descending fire
that melted hearts to kindness sent them
out across all gulfs to spend themselves for
others’ sakes, what put it out? Or why has it
flamed fainter, ever fainter with the years?
Is there a sacred oil can yet rekindle such a spark?
Or are we doomed to batter one another with
the truth through the encroaching dark? 2
This book is one minister’s efforts to challenge the institutional church to finds ways to ignite that Pentecostal flame again, to discover how the Church can be “re-born” again, to reach out to the non-churched today, also