Churches “Self-centered”

In the book Saints on Main Street, Peter Day, editor of Living Church magazine, states that the typical neighborhood church is “self-centered.” He says clergymen concentrate on “church work” rather than “the work of the church” in the outside world. Maintaining that many churches give little thought to serving others, he writes: “This is a great period of prosperity in the life of the parishes. Most of them are growing according to every index of success. Their membership is on the rise, the Sunday School is bursting at the seams, old debts are being paid off, new ones are easily floated for ambitious new building projects, men and women are active in parish groups, financial contributions are increasing, and people are praying, studying and working harder than ever before. There is, however, a curiously introverted quality about the entire enterprise. Typically, the parish measures its progress not according to the norms of its service to community and world, but according to the norms of its own size and financial strength. Similarly, it measures the usefulness of its members not by their service to mankind but by their service to the parish itself.”