Renovation not Innovation

In 1890, reviewing his 20 years' pastorate, Dr. Gordon remarked: "We believe we have learned much, through divine teaching, as to the true method of conducting the affairs of God's church; have proved by experience the practicability of what we have learned; and have largely united the church in the practice thereof. Innovations have from the beginning been strongly urged. 'Innovations'? No! that word implies newness, and God is our witness that in theology, in worship, and in church administration it is not the new to which we have been inclined, but the old. Renovation, rather, is what we have sought. With a deep feeling that many of the usages which have been fastenend upon our church by long tradition [he's talking about buying pews and formal choirs, etc..] constitute a serious barrier to spiritual success, it has been my steady aim to remove these. In general, we may say, it is our strong conviction that true success in the church of Christ is to be attained by spiritual, not by secular, methods by a worship which promotes self-denial in God's people, and not by that which ministers to self-gratification; by a cultivation of the heart through diligent use of the Word and of prayer, and not by a cultivation of art through music and architecture and ritual. And with the most deliberate emphasis we can say that every step in our return to simpler and more scriptural methods of church service has proved an onward step toward spiritual efficiency and success." His whole ministry, then, faced backward - away from the pitiable modern devices and schemes and substitutes to "that higher, holier, earlier, purer church," from which we are ever departing, and to which we must ever return if we are to live.

- all from Adoniram Judson Gordon, A Biography

submitted by Jennifer Dixon