Our Work at New Foundation Fellowship
The Concern of the New Foundation Movement
by Lewis Benson
Through the study of the writings of George Fox in recent years there has been a rediscovery of the universal message that he preached, and some have been called to go forth and preach it. What is that message? The message that was the starting point for the early Quaker movement was a gospel message. It is from this same starting point that new life can be generated in the Society of Friends today.
Workers in the New Foundation Movement have learned to avoid using the word gospel in publicity announcing their meetings. Many potential attenders of these meetings think of the word gospel as having a meaning that is forever fixed and defined by the way it is used by evangelical Protestants. There are famous preachers in the world today who are preaching that Christ has the power to forgive us and pardon us for offenses against God and humans. He has the power to remove the burden of guilt for sin and to promise the believer a better hope for a future existence after death. He will do all this for all who accept him as their personal savior.
George Fox preached a different gospel. He claimed that churches of his day were preaching a Christ who could save us in our sins but not from our sins. He maintained that Christ is able not only to forgive but also to deliver us from captivity to sin and enable us to gain the victory over the evil in our lives, and give us the power to resist temptation. Fox also saw that the church is, or should be, a community of disciples who are taught by Christ and who learn together, obey together, and suffer together. This community is brought into existence by the preaching of the everlasting gospel.
At the heart of this everlasting gospel is the proclamation that Christ is alive and actively present in the midst of his people. The purpose of this kind of gospel preaching is to cause people to experience a personal encounter with the living Christ. After 30 years of preaching this gospel, Fox declared: "I turned you to him who is able to save you, I left you to him." This living Christ, who is present in the midst of his people is present in a functional way; that is he leads his people, he teaches his people, he orders and governs his people. We know him by what he does. These activities of Christ as he is "present in the midst" are what Fox calls the offices of Christ, and what he said about the offices is the chief feature or hallmark of his gospel preaching. Jesus Christ is our savior not only because of what he did in the days of his flesh but because of what he does now when we receive him as our living teacher, counselor, and leader. For Fox, to accept Jesus as savior and not to know him and receive him in all his offices is a contradiction in terms. Those who heard this gospel and received it came to know by experience that "Christ has come to teach his people himself."
The reason for the vitality and rapid growth of the early Quaker community was the power of the gospel they preached. It is sometimes argued that the vitality of the early Quaker movement was mainly due to the charismatic leadership of Fox and that when he died, this vitality evaporated. We are left to infer that Quakers must be content to remain in the doldrums until God sends another charismatic leader like Fox. I think this is a specious argument because it does not examine closely enough the nature of Fox's charisma. The charisma or gift that God gave Fox was an unlimited faith in the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. If Quakers have lost the consciousness of world mission and the spiritual vitality that goes with it, it is because they have lost the everlasting gospel that Fox preached.
In his ministry to the world, Fox constantly proclaimed that, "Now the everlasting gospel is preached again, after a long night of apostasy since the Apostle's days." For Fox, the word apostasy meant the gospel had been lost, and this meant that the gospel order, gospel worship, gospel ministry, and gospel righteousness had also been lost. The recovery of this gospel meant the recovery of the church order, worship, ministry, and moral strength that become accessible to us through the power of the gospel. A church that has everything but the gospel is like a motor car that has everything but the motor.
The early Quaker movement revolved around one steading central purpose, namely, to preach the everlasting gospel to the inhabitants of the earth. When, toward the end of his life, Fox exhorted Quakers to "go on with the work," it was this central task that was on his mind. The failure of early Quakerism to continue to grow as a dynamic movement was due to its failure to go on with the work of preaching the everlasting gospel to the inhabitants of the earth. Today the goal of Quaker outreach seems to be to keep from falling below a decent level of smallness. It is no wonder that this program does not cause the young to see visions and the old to dream dreams.
If there is to be a reproclamation of the early Quaker message to the world, it must be rediscovered, repossessed, and preached again. Today the early Quaker message is being recovered and preached again by the workers in the New Foundation Movement.
What Fox rediscovered was the functional Christology of the first Christians. The heart of his gospel preaching was the proclamation concerning the offices (or functions) of Christ as our living prophet and teacher, our shepherd and bishop, our orderer and counselor, our leader and king who rules in our hearts by faith. Those who received this gospel, and were convinced of the truth of it, began at once to gather together to wait to feel Christ's presence in their midst in all his offices. This was the first outward sign of convincement.
It is not enough to sing "All hail the power of Jesus' name . . . to him all majesty ascribe" if we do not have a direct experience in our worship of an encounter with the living Christ as our king, our prophet, and our teacher. This encounter with Jesus Christ leads to the worship that belongs to the New Covenant. This worship was not designed to supplement or counterbalance some other kind of worship. This new worship was the starting point from which grew a whole new understanding of how God's people in the New Covenant should be ordered. Fox called this church order "gospel order." The gospel that Fox preached brings with it a new church order, a new worship, a new ministry, a new way to answer God's call for righteousness.
I have been talking about what the everlasting gospel is, but there are also questions as to how, where, when, by whom, and to whom the gospel is to be preached.
Fox taught that there are four ways by which the gospel can be preached. First, preaching by word of mouth; second, the witness of our lives as we seek to live the life of discipleship and serve God in newness of life; third, by the brethren loving one another; fourth, the witness made by responding to the challenge of hostile critics. Fox did not regard these four ways as alternatives. The witnessing community needs to have them all. Preaching with our lives is not a way to evade the necessity of making a clear gospel proclamation through the spoken word. Indeed, without such a clear proclamation it is not possible to sustain the work of evangelism for very long.
The gospel that Fox preached brings with it a new church order, a new worship, a new ministry, a new way to answer God's call for righteousness. How are we to deal with the question of where the gospel should be preached? The short answer is, to the inhabitants of the earth. The term everlasting gospel is the one most frequently applied by Fox in the gospel he preached. This term occurs only once in the New Testament (Rev. 14:6), where it is stated that this gospel is to be preached "to them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, kindred, tongue and people." Insofar as they were able, the early Quakers tried to carry out a program of universal mission. But even a universal mission has to begin somewhere. Jesus instructed his Apostles and witnesses to begin in Jerusalem. In 1650 it was revealed to George Fox that the reproclamation of the gospel was to begin as a mission to all the parish churches in England, but soon it spread to North and South America, Europe, the West Indies, and the Near East. The reproclamation of the everlasting gospel today was started in 1974 by members and attenders of Friends meetings who began with their own meetings in England and the United States but soon moved on the Ireland, Canada, Japan, France, and Spain.
In answer to the question of when the gospel should be preached, some have maintained that this is entirely in the hands of God. When he gives the word, the gospel will be preached, but until then we must be silent. There is an element of truth in this. The work of spreading the good news is God's work. God's preachers and workers must be commissioned by God and must not run before they are sent. But the work of proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ is the perennial task of the church. I am skeptical about the authenticity of any church that says it has no call to preach the gospel. The call has been given, and we cannot justify our slowness to respond on the ground that God himself has lost interest.
The God we worship is one who visits us, and sometimes the divine visitation is experienced more intensely than at other times. The early Friends felt that God had drawn very near to them and, through them, was restoring the golden age. A new apostolate was being raised up and the hearts of men and women were being made tender to the word of life that they preached. What they experienced 300 years ago is being experienced again today. A new apostolate is being raised up, and in places where Friends could hardly bear to hear the name of Christ a few years ago, people are experiencing an encounter with the living Christ by the convincing power of the everlasting gospel. Fox wrote to Francis Howgill and Edward Burrough, "Stir abroad while the door is open." Today the door seems to be more open among Friends than it has been for generations. This is an exciting time to be a Quaker.
Now we come to the question of who should preach this gospel. In the days of the Apostles and the early Friends the preachers of the gospel were ordinary folk, and this is the way it is today. The first Apostles were not required to produce testaments that they had received rabbinical education. They were sometimes poor speakers. Even the most gifted of them were humbled by the magnitude of their task. "Pray for us," pleaded Paul, "that God will open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ." It has been truly said, "It is laid upon the stammering to bring the voice of heaven to earth."
Although the gospel preacher need not have academic credentials, he or she will do well to prepare for this work by cultivating both a patient spirit and a bold and valiant spirit. George Fox exhorted Friends to "come into that which stands in the patience; with which you see where others stand and reach that which is of God in everyone." He wrote:
Do not much strive with unruly talkers but keep your peace in the spirit and power of Christ, that will overcome and wear out all that is contrary to it . . . And condescend to the meek, and to every appearance of the Lord God [in others], and make everyone's condition in the truth your own; in that you will deny yourselves and become all to all in the truth, so that none may be hurt in the truth, nor made to stumble.
[Fox] found that the greatest response came from the multitudes on the grassroots level and the greatest opposition came from those who were engaged in maintaining the religious establishment and its institutions.
Those who go forth in the work of gospel preaching need to learn to work with others and to help and encourage one another. Along with a patient and self-denying spirit, gospel preachers must learn to be valiant for truth. The path chosen is not a well-beaten path. They will often find it necessary to make a way where there is no way. They must learn not to become easily discouraged. They must go on with the work, knowing that the witness that is made in faith is never in vain.
Finally, to whom is the gospel to be preached? At a meeting in Tokyo a few years ago this question was being discussed, and when I was given an opportunity to contribute to the discussion, I said, "Wherever there are people who are alive and breathing they are the people you should be trying to reach." But in many parts of the Quaker world today it is taken for granted that the Quaker faith can appeal only to a very small number of people. An old Quaker woman told me many years ago that I must be mistaken in my concern to spread the Quaker message because, she said, "There are already as many Quakers in the world as there can be."
George Fox declared that "the Lord God and his son Jesus Christ sent me forth into the world to preach the everlasting gospel." He understood that the "world" included the "churches which men had made and gathered" and it included "all the world's religions." He was to preach toe gospel to the inhabitants of the earth, but he soon discovered that there is a wide range in the way that earth dwellers respond to the gospel. He found that the greatest response came from the multitudes on the grassroots level and the greatest opposition came from those who were engaged in maintaining the religious establishment and its institutions.
In Luke (6:20) we are told that Jesus "lifted up his eyes on his disciples and said, 'Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.'" Jesus' disciples were not paupers, but they came from the class among the Jews who did not have a formal education at a time when the only formal education was religious education. They were regarded as disreputable and religiously and morally ignorant by the more privileged classes of the Jews. Suzanne DeDietrich says, "There are two groups of men for whom Jesus can do nothing; the materially secure who cling to their goods, and the spiritually secure who cling to their systems and institutions." The "poor" to whom Jesus and the Apostles and George Fox preached were the grassroots people who, without being necessarily impoverished or destitute, were not to be numbered among the spiritually or materially secure. To such people Jesus said, "Come unto me all ye who are weary and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." He announced at the beginning of his ministry that he had been sent "to bring glad tidings to the poor," and when asked by John's disciples to authenticate his ministry and mission, he replied, "The poor have the gospel preached to them."
The everlasting gospel that Fox preached is now being preached again among Friends and it has mostly been preached on the grassroots level. Can it be that there are "poor" in the Society of Friends? A recent survey of 288 new members from 82 Friends meetings revealed that more than half were in the managerial, teaching, technical, or professional occupations. Only 2 percent were in the "blue collar"" category. Seventy-six percent of these new members were college graduates, and 12 percent were students who will, presumably, become college graduates. Quakers are not an underprivileged group, and their reputation for material success is legendary. But those who are preaching the everlasting gospel today are finding that, at the grassroots, many Quakers feel lonely, spiritually impoverished, and morally confused. They have been told that the Quaker denomination is, by definition, a pluralistic society and that the medley of voices and conflicting counsels in our meetings are there by design and that this is the best arrangement possible for this kind of religious society. They are told that the individualism that has become the chief feature of modern Quaker life is a primary good which must be preserved at all costs. They are treated to books that extol the Quaker denomination of the present day and that promise that if you understand this denomination as a religious phenomenon you will know everything you need to know about the Quaker vision. But, in spite of being deluged with what might be called "supply-side Quaker literature," grassroots Quakers are uneasy and secretly yearn for a more solid foundation on which to build their faith and their lives.
After attending a New Foundation meeting in London one Friend remarked, "I always knew there was more to Quakerism than they have been telling us."
Since the New Foundation preaching mission began ten years ago, there has been no lack of people who want to come together to hear the gospel that Fox preached. But the laborers are few. The number of workers in this field is certainly growing, but it is not an overcrowded occupation.
I am thankful that by keeping to the simplicity of the gospel, early Friends bore witness to the gospel foundation that stands sure. They can help us to build on the same foundation today. Through the writings of Fox many are discovering this gospel and some are preaching it. The world-overcoming faith of the Valiant Sixty is being experienced again. The call to go forth and preach the gospel is being heard and answered. Men and women are being inspired by Edward Burrough's account of the first Quaker missionaries in the 17th century. Burrough says:
Then [the Lord] having thus armed us with power, strength, and wisdom and dominion, according to his mind, and we having learned of him, and being taught of him in all things, and he having chosen us into his work, and put his sword into our hand, and given us perfect commission to go forth in his name and authority, having the word from his mouth what to cut down and what to preserve, and having the everlasting gospel to preach to the inhabitants of the earth, and being commanded in spirit to leave all, and follow him, and go forth in his work, yea, an absolute necessity was laid upon us, and woe unto us if we preached not the gospel.
A leading George Fox scholar, author of many publications, including Catholic Quakerism and Prophetic Quakerism, Lewis Benson [was] one of the founders of the New Foundation Movement. He [was] a recorded minister of Manasquan (N.J.) Meeting.
Reprinted by New Foundation Publications with permission from April 1, 1985 Friends Journal.
