Show Laymen Not Doing Their Full Duty in the Work of the Church By LEON C PALMER Secretary Brotherhood of St St Andrew liE laymen of the church today constitute our greatest l- l T J resources They are not working as they should It takes Episcopalians a whole year to bring one person into the church if it latest statistics are arc correct Ninety per cent of the church work is is done as a rule by hy 10 per cent of the members Our real problem is employing the unemployed getting idle Christians and nom nom- nominal inal nominal members to accept personal responsibility for definite Christian service ce Thousands of Christians today have hare a merely negative religion religion a 8 futile piety They hey are good but good for tor nothing They are ties tics so far as definite service to the church is concerned We join in singing the great martial hymns Onward singing Christian Soldiers YE Soldiers of the Cross etc but too often it H is not a church army going forth to battle but like a hospital witha with a large number of patients and anda a few overworked nurses Many rectors are kept so 50 busy nursing the sick ick Christians that they tiey have no time left for going out into the l high ways h-ways ways and hedges to constrain others to come in Our churchmen are arc inclined to say Let George do it George be- be be inO being beinO the rector We have looked ing upon our clergy as men whom we have ha employed and pay to do our religious work for us just as we employ a stenographer or file clerk a policeman or janitor The church is not growing as it should This applies to practically nil all Christian bodies Latest statistics show that nearly one third one third of the parishes and congregations of the four largest Protestant bodies reported not a single conversion during the last year Lay Evangelism is today the greatest need of the church as a solution for this situation |