The posted article below is an excerpt by Emil Brunner from Toward Our Second Century, a report of the plenary meeting of the World’s Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Organization at Geneva, Switzerland in July, 1953. Archived by the World Alliance YMCA
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“From its very beginning the YMCA has set great store by the fact that it is not a church.
It has rather exhorted its members to join a church. This conception and policy has stood the test and will remain the same in the future.
The ecumenical movement, however, and more especially the creation of the World Council of Churches, has required a re-thinking which, of course, has to start from and be based upon the New Testament.
If we read without prejudice what the New Testament says about Ecclesia, we see that this word signifies a reality which resembles the YMCA at least as much as today’s so-called churches.
The bodies which generally are recognized as “churches” are at least as different from the Ecclesia of the New Testament as the YMCA.
For Ecclesia is nothing else than a brotherhood of people bound together with Jesus Christ and with each other by the Holy Spirit and leading their daily life in such fellowship.
The Ecclesia is described to us as a common life under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, a common life in Faith, in Hope, and in Love, where what we are used to calling characteristic features of a church, “ecclesiastical” institutions, ecclesiastical offices, ecclesiastical actives do not play an essential role.
The following points deserve attention:
- There is no distinction between priests and laymen, but the whole community is “a priestly people”, everybody is expected to to act in a priestly manner.
- There is no sacrificial rite, but on the contrary: by the sacrifice of Christ all other sacrifices are done away forever, whereas everybody, each member of the community, is supposed to dedicate his or her life to God as an acceptable sacrifice.
- Each member of the community is called upon for service in the community. There is no difference between “active” and “passive” members, but, as each organ within a living organism exercises its function to the benefit of the whole, thus everybody within the Ecclesia is an organ fit for a function of which a “service” is expected and rendered. Non-active members have to be regarded as non-functioning dead organs and be cut off.
- There are certainly special Sunday meetings of the community for “worship”. But again, what matters most is that everybody contributes to the edification of the community, that nobody is passed over because some want to monopolize speaking.
- But these Sunday meetings of the community are not called Divine Service. On the contrary the daily life of the individual Christians, who dedicate their life to God as sacrifice, explicitly receive this title. Therefore, everyday life in the service of men in love is the genuine divine service.
- For this reason there is such a gulf, characteristic of our ecclesiastical life, between “Divine Service and Everyday Life”, between a “spiritual” and a “profane” realm outside. Everything is “spiritual” – even the most secular thing, if it is done united with Christ; then also eating and drinking then also trivial everyday work is “spiritual” if it is done “in Christ”.
If therefore the members of a YMCA by their faith are really united with Christ and the love which is flowing out of this faith unites them with the fellow members that they feel as brethren, and if these members regard their activities as service to Christ and to the brethren and sacrifice their lives in this service, they are Ecclesia as well as any church.
This insight is of utmost importance because it permits us to conceive our “secular” work, be it in sports groups, in professional evening classes, in manual work of the Boy’s Town in Indian slums, as spiritual work, as “church work in the meaning of the New Testament.”
Not the subject itself, Bible Study or sports, but the motive for the one as for the other: to serve Christ and to serve the brother, constitutes the difference between spiritual and non-spiritual; not the affiliation to a certain church makes our work Christian, but the belonging to Christ of each worker.
On the other hand, this insight makes us independent from the principle of “practical success.”
There are other organizations today, UNO, UNESCO, international emergency organizations or individual governments, doing the same as we do, seen from the outside, doing it even better than we can because of more money available to them.
Yet it is quite another thing, as it does not spring forth from the source of love of Christ and therefore is not realized in the same spirit.
Our social work does not have its value in itself, but as a demonstration of the love of Christ.
We are not a YMCA because of the model swimming pools available to everyone, but because we build and use a swimming pool to bring the love of Christ to young men.
The YMCA has little importance as an institution of welfare.
The YMCA either is a form of Ecclesia or it is nothing.
If it is not Ecclesia it is useless, amateurish duplicate of public welfare institutions.
Thus we arrive at this peculiar statement: the YMCA is inwardly Ecclesia, church in the meaning of the New Testament; outwardly it is a welfare institution for young people of all nations.
The fact that it unites this interior with this exterior makes its character and is the basis of its peculiar, incomparable activity.
There are, therefore, two dangerous deviations which may cause the YMCA to miss its destiny.
The first: that it loses its soul, that it ceases to be Ecclesia.
The second: that it loses its particular body, that it becomes a mere institution of one of the churches, a “church youth group” whose main purpose is Bible study.
The first one is wrong extraversion, the second a wrong intraversion.
In the first case, the YMCA ceases to be Christian; in the second case it ceases to be YMCA.
The centenary of the year 1955 must help each local and national YMCA all over the world to grasp this insight of the homogeneousness of body and soul and to win back the soul which the YMCA has lost in many places.
There is less danger for the exterior, for the “body” of the YMCA; for this exterior social service is evident to everybody and can be started rather easily.
The main danger is the first, the loss of the Christian soul, the character as Ecclesia.
The most important task of the Ecclesia in the New Testament is to make Christ known to all men.
Therefore the most important task of the YMCA is to win the youth of our time for Christ. Youth for Christ, Christ for Youth.
Whether this is done by swimming pools, evening classes, sports training or Bible and Prayer Meetings is not the main question.
What matters only is the aim that young people come into a living contact with Christ.
This, however, can only happen if the Bible is read, where it is preached; and where experiences are shared in a heartfelt, sincere, brotherly manner.
The soul of the YMCA cannot live without being nurtured and purified by the sources of faith.
We may imagine the ideal YMCA a society of young people looking very worldly, open to everybody, which is attractive by its activities for young people and renders service to them. But while it looks rather worldly from the outside, the leading men inside are eager to speak to the young people of Jesus Christ as soon as they ask: why are you doing that? why are you so kind to us? why are you interested in just me?
To proclaim the message of Jesus Christ with a few words in such moments, to explain what actually is a YMCA – that is the proper aim.
The YMCA is a proof that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is no “religion” but the love of men based upon the love of God.
Therefore it is possible to bear witness to Christ by simple exterior services.
Where there is real love towards men, there Christ is at work; where Christ really is at work, there is genuine love towards men.
The foundation of Ecclesia is God’s Love in Jesus Christ, received and accepted by human hearts.
There is no need for a creed, even the Paris Basis, a model of brevity.
Who loves Christ and is willing to obey Him belongs to it. Who does not love Him and does not obey Him does not belong to it.
The love of Christ is the sole criterion; the unquestionable manifestation of this love to Christ is love to the brethren, willingness to serve the brethren.
Therefore the “Christian Religion” is something so simple, something so ecclesiastical, something so laymen-like.
That is why the YMCA has such an extraordinarily good chance to serve Christ.
The churches have their particular values and services and the YMCA cannot do better than remain on a good relationship with them all.
They certainly have much to give to their members which the YMCA cannot provide.
But, it is able to give the most essential to young people if its soul, its hidden innermost, is the communion with Christ, which moves it to act and guides it, that is to say if it really is a kind of Ecclesia.”
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Professor Brunner is considered one of the greatest European Christian theologians in the early to mid 20th century. His enormous and brilliant influence on the YMCA is revealed in this essay he penned, inspired by his friendship with John R. Mott, to encourage and guide the Y in their faithfulness to Christ amidst a radically swift-changing post-war culture in Britain, Germany, and America.
For a very brief overview of Emil Brunner’s life, Christian ministry and theological significance, read this overview by the Study Centre for Faith and Society.
For more about the brilliant and compelling writings of Emil Brunner, read this review by Roger Olsen.
For more in depth exploration of Dr. Brunner’s scholarship, read this paper by Alister McGrath.
