Lawrence Kelley.]

Over the past several months I have been receiving information in the mail concerning a “brotherhood” effort to evangelize the whole United States in one great effort. The idea is to pool financial resources from churches all over the country into one fund, and use that fund to pay the expenses incurred in mailing out the brochure to every household in the nation. The brochure tells about God, His word, and the plan of salvation. Those overseeing the effort explain the plan in these six points:

“Brethren offer $17 million to evangelize the nation. Elders of Sycamore church of Christ accept the oversight of the project.”

“Produce a simple, yet quality mailing piece explaining the Gospel, with a response card for more information.”

“Mail that piece into every home in America in July, 1991—100 million—the largest mailing in the history of the U.S.”

“Back up that mailing piece with ads in Reader’s Digest and other major media.”

“Have Gospel meetings and other local efforts centered around this theme the same week.”

“Have follow-up arrangements made through local congregations or World Bible School where the church is numerically weak.”

The idea behind all of this is indeed noble. They say, “Christians banded together can accomplish world evangelism as we have been commanded.” The command mentioned here is the great commission uttered by Jesus, “Go unto all the world and preach the Gospel.” This appears to be a good, efficient, organized way to teach the lost. The only problem with this great campaign is that is goes beyond the law of God; it speaks where the Bible is silent. Allow me to explain.

If our desire is to be the same church that we read about in the New Testament, the one Christ promised to establish (). Second, the word church is used to speak of a group of Christians in a specified area that meet together in order to work and worship as God has directed the local church to do.

Christ provided the universal church no earthly organization, therefore no mission to fulfill as a functional entity. The only officer the universal church has is Christ, who is even at the right hand of God. When we strive to create a hierarchy though which the universal church can be activated we are going beyond that which is authorized in the New Testament. The only functional unit of the Lord’s church is the local congregation with its members, deacons, and elders (). Every single command Christ gave the church can be performed by the local congregation.

It was a denial of this truth that lead to the missionary society in the last century. The societies’ proponents argued that the fulfillment of the great commission required congregation cooperation through the missionary society—a hierarchy established to activate the universal church. Our divergent brethren make the same error when they place the elders of the Sycamore church of Christ over the nationwide evangelistic effort. The Bible limits the oversight of elders to the one congregation which is among them (). The elders of the Sycamore church are overseeing the word of churches all over the United States. It is clear that these elders are overstepping the jurisdiction given them by Christ.

The proponents of this massive effort say, “We do not know of a single plan among our brethren, at any point in our American history, for national and world evangelism. This is the key: it is a real workable PLAN.” I must differ with that statement. We here at the Southside church have a plan, the blueprint of which is found in the Bible. Passages like Acts 8:4 that tell us disciples are to go about making disciples in a one-on-one setting. The apostle Paul said that in his lifetime the gospel had been preached to every nation (), and they did this without a One Nation Under God program. The world will be saved when individual Christians go everywhere preaching the gospel. Not by some great “brotherhood plan.” Let us return to the old paths. Let us speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where it is silent!