Called to be an Apostle—you!

It’s not hard to find grim predictions about the future of mainline Christianity in Northern Hemisphere countries. Sociologist George Barna says that the US is awash with former churchgoers who refuse to be tied down to a single denomination (see Revolution, Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House, 2005). And church growth expert Paul Nixon writes, “Most of the denominational faith communities that first evangelized North America are now rapidly down-shifting toward oblivion and near extinction” (I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church! Cleveland, Ohio: The Pilgrim Press, 2006). But here’s the headline from Nixon’s book: There’s a deceptively simple solution to the problem of free-fall church membership figures. What’s needed, he argues, is a corps of passionate “apostles” drawn, not so much from the trained ministry, but from people of all backgrounds who will fight for the future of their faith. In other words, apostles who look like you and me!

Actually, apostleship—an unrelenting, on-fire missionary spirit—is the very phenomenon that saved early Christianity from dying off in the first place, after the Master’s resurrection. Christ Jesus, of course, was the very first “Apostle and High Priest of our profession,” chosen by God to preach the good news, or “Gospel,” of God’s healing and saving love for all humanity. Then he called 12 apostles to take this message to their fellow Jews. After the Master’s crucifixion, they substituted Matthias for the treacherous Judas. Finally, Jesus himself commissioned Paul as an apostle to the vast Gentile population beyond Israel, converting him from persecutor to pupil, in a blinding moment of revelation.

And although the idea that you and I could be apostles may sound radical, or even blasphemous, to 21st-century thinkers, Mary Baker Eddy urged Christian Scientists over a century ago to think and act like apostles. “Keep in mind the foundations of Christian Science—one God and one Christ. Keep personality out of sight, and Christ’s ‘Blessed are ye’ will seal your apostleship,” she wrote to the founders of a new Christian Science church in Atlanta, Georgia (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 191).

To the Founder of Christian Science, apostleship meant something unprecedented. It meant “restoring an essential element of Christianity,—namely, apostolic, divine healing.” It meant literally following “the example of our Master and his apostles” as active Christian healers. It meant being willing, as “lesser apostles” of Jesus Christ, to face the “inevitable” suffering and ingratitude that he endured—and so “to enter into fellowship with him through the triumphal arch of Truth and Love” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures).

To be an apostle clearly takes bravery. Virtually all the original apostles launched out, after the resurrection, to preach Christ in new and often dangerous fields around the Mediterranean world—planting new churches, healing sick people, even raising the dead. For this, most of them suffered persecution. All but one are believed to have sacrificed their lives.

Today’s apostles—you and I—may not need to endure martyrdom. But we will need to take our mission to the very frontiers of human thought, as science, theology, and medicine are gradually transformed by the Science of Christianity, the Comforter Jesus promised. We’ll need to be plucky, creative, winning, unswervingly committed, indomitable—like the first apostles. And with God’s big-as-infinity help, we can do this and more. We may begin with small achievements, but if we’re willing, God will do wondrous things with our lives.

Apostles—people who reach beyond their comfort zone to bring the healing Christ-spirit to those who need it—don’t wear signs or costumes announcing their vocation. I’ve known shining apostles who were travel agents, construction workers, store clerks, athletes, lawyers, engineers, Christian Science practitioners and nurses, retired folks, parents, teens, children. Actually, the team of contributors, journalists, editors, and marketers who bring you the Christian Science periodicals each day, week, and month are all apostles, without exception!

Whether the apostolic work you and I do on any given day seems modest or monumental, it still has the power of God behind it. It still stands as a healing statement to the world that Spirit is all and matter is nothing. And it has historic consequences for the survival of the desperately needed institution of Church, and for the future of humankind.

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