Churches: The Apostolic Few

They used to joke in Lexington, Mass., that new residents didn't need to join a country club—they already had the Hancock Congregational Church. The gibe was unjust, but for a time it almost seemed as if Sunday worship services were lost in a crowded weekly calendar of dances, card parties, and other social affairs. Then, in 1948, a young engineer named Albert Wilson persuaded his new minister at Hancock, the Rev. Roy Pearson, to support a group of couples who would gather periodically for the study of Scripture and the mutual exploration of Christ's message for modern times.

It was a step that killed most of the cracks about the "Hancock Country Club." Today, the church has ten such groups of dedicated parishioners and their friends who meet for serious religious study in one another's houses. Dozens of other churches in the area have imitatively organized their own small study groups. Such gatherings, says Dr. Pearson, now dean of Andover Newton Theological School, show people "trying to be the church as the church ought to be."

"Christ's Strategy." Across the U.S., thousands of Christian laymen in the past decade have joined in forming such groups, and the small, informal "cell" of an "apostolic few" is becoming a significant new form of American religious life. "Small groups," says Dr. Clyde Reid of Union Theological Seminary, "are here to stay." Inevitably, some of the cells consist of faddists and the clique-minded; but most seem to be made up of dedicated Christians who have found that in company with a few fellow believers, they can learn about theology and the Bible and grapple with the concrete problems of living as a Christian in a secular society. Says Lutheran Pastor William R. Snyder, president of the Minneapolis Ministerial Association, and an ardent believer in the efficacy of such cells: "This is the way of the future for the church. We're only using Christ's strategy. He spoke to his 5,000, but he also spoke to his two or three."

These new Christian cells meet almost never on Sunday and rarely in church. In Chicago's Loop, there are three groups of business executives who meet monthly for lunch, prayer, and blunt, secret discussions of how Christian ethics apply to their office lives. Both the Senate and House of Representatives have groups of Congressmen who meet once a week for a prayer breakfast; so has Texas' House of Representatives. The thousands who belong to the cells of the Roman Catholic Christian Family Movement meet weekly for their discussions and Bible study in one another's houses.