By James V. Heidinger II,
President and Publisher

GOOD NEWS PERSPECTIVE – No. 4, October 9, 2007

   Welcome to the fourth issue of our new email newsletter, Good News Perspective. We continue to get positive feedback from folks about it. Many of our Good News readers like the idea of an update from us every other week, between issues of the magazine. If you enjoy it, please pass it along to others and urge them to subscribe by emailing us at: perspective@goodnewmag.org.                    

UNITED METHODISTS CALLED TO PRAYER FOR GENERAL CONFERENCE
Some 200 persons gathered in the Brentwood United Methodist Church in Brentwood, Tennessee, for a conference urging the church to begin praying for the 2008 General Conference in Ft. Worth, Texas.

Sponsored by the UM Board of Discipleship and Aldersgate Renewal Ministries, participants heard Rev. Suzette Caldwell, associate pastor of the massive Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas, say “God does not need people telling him what to do. Prayer was created for God’s purposes to get us from the natural to the supernatural where God’s plans are.”

“The goal was to strengthen and empower our ability to pray: as individuals, as families and as congregations,” said Sandy Zeigler Jackson, the chief organizer. “With the coming General Conference…and other critical events happening in our world, it is crucial that there are intentional prayers of the people to undergird and influence these happenings.” For the full story, go to: LINK .

NCC CUTS 14 STAFF POSITIONS, NOMINATES KINNAMON AS NEW HEAD
The Governing Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC) announced a staff reorganization September 27 which will include the cuts of 14 staff positions in light of a million dollar budget shortfall. 

The NCC, an ecumenical body with some 35 member denominations, has had a turbulent financial history the last several years but was believed to have entered smoother waters. However, the Council’s Acting General Secretary said the budget shortfall came from lower-than-expected income from two of three main revenue streams for the NCC—denominational contributions, foundation grants, and royalties. Prior to the cuts, the NCC employed about 40 full-time staff.

The NCC also announced the nomination of the Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon to serve as the new General Secretary, taking the place of former head, United Methodist Dr. Robert Edgar. Kinnamon was well-known in the Disciples of Christ when his 1991 candidacy to head that denomination met with strong opposition from church members who said his theological views denied the authority of Scripture.

“It is ironic that a clergyman who was judged as too far outside of the mainstream to lead his own admittedly liberal denomination would now find himself nominated to lead a much broader group of churches, many of whom are significantly more conservative than the Disciples of Christ,” said Rev. Jim Tonkowich, President of the Institute on Religious and Democracy. For the full story, go to: www.ird-renew.org.

ASBURY COLLEGE INAUGURATES SANDRA GRAY AS 17TH PESIDENT
This past Friday, October 5th, Asbury College inaugurated Dr. Sandra Gray as its 17th president. It was a beautiful and very moving day to see this gifted leader officially commissioned as the president of my alma mater. It was also an emotional day for me, as I was concluding 28 years as a member of Asbury College’s board of trustees.

I am profoundly grateful for this extraordinary liberal arts college located just 20 minutes southwest of Lexington in the village of Wilmore, Kentucky. I came to Asbury as a student in 1960, still new in my Christian faith, and found friends, classmates, and professors that helped me become grounded in my relationship with Christ. 

It was an emotional day, too, because those of us on the board view Dr. Sandra Gray as a deeply gifted, spiritually-mature United Methodist who will give strong, wise leadership to Asbury College. For several decades she has been actively involved at Centenary United Methodist Church in Lexington, one of the largest and most influential churches in the Kentucky Annual Conference. Sandy, as her friends refer to her, has held nearly every leadership position possible at Centenary. Her former pastor, now-Bishop Al Gwinn, was present and preached the message at her Commissioning Service prior to the inauguration ceremony. Sandy is highly regarded by the Asbury College faculty, by her colleagues in Christian higher education, and by the business community in Lexington.

Asbury College is an acclaimed four-year Christian Liberal Arts College in the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition. It is dedicated to equipping men and women through its commitment to academic excellence and spiritual vitality. It is ranked No. 1 in Kentucky for teacher preparation. Since 1984, its Broadcast Communications department has worked with its students in helping them broadcast the Olympic Games. One media expert referred to Asbury College as the “Harvard of broadcast communications.” It is also a liberal arts institution that has a heart for world missions.

Most importantly, however, Asbury is a liberal arts institution highly-regarded for its excellence in academics, experienced by students in an environment that is authentically Christian and spiritually alive. If I sound proud or a bit biased about Asbury, I suppose it’s because I, uh, really am. For more information about Asbury College, go to: www.Asbury.edu 

WOMEN’S DIVISION SEMINAR TARGETS AMERICAN STRUCTURES
In what was probably their strategic plan of action for the next four years, the Women’s Division staff and directors gathered to map plans for their targets of action at the quadrennial National Seminar, August 11-16, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Some 200 United Methodist Women attended the Seminar, selected for their diversity and their commitment to social justice. The Renew Network’s President, L. Faye Short and husband, Dennis, attended as press representatives for Renew, the women’s program arm of Good News.

The Bible study leader for the Seminar was the Rev. Janet Wolf, an ordained United Methodist pastor in the Tennessee Conference and now professor at American Baptist College in Nashville. Problematic in her presentations was the fact that “evil” was most always presented as systemic rather than personal. The path to progress was identified as confronting and changing current systems rather than working to improve them.

Rev. Wolf made the highly questionable claim in one of her presentations that “When sin is referenced in scripture, sin is collective and structural and not about individual moral failure.” In their report about the Seminar, Faye and Dennis question that claim saying, “Such a view overlooks the fact that Christ’s call to repentance and discipleship was nearly always personal and individual. To deny the reality of personal moral failure in the church’s definition of sin is to seriously misread the biblical witness.”

In a session “Daring to Dismantle Structures,” the participants were ask to name the institutions that were barriers to progress and needed to be “turned upside down.” Those called out included “capitalism, the church, Congress, The White House, education, the military, the media, health care, the Department of Defense, the corporate world, banking, family, law enforcement, and belief systems as they related to patriotism and the role of government.”

I couldn’t help but wonder just what kind of nation we would have were all of these institutions to be “turned upside down.” What would be put in their place? Are these institutions the real locus of evil for us? Might those institutions be subject to improvement were those involved in them to become better persons? Is this the real agenda of the Women’s Division? Do United Methodist Women across the church really share this agenda?

One must question just what the theological assumptions are that undergird these views, which are actually touting social revolution as the panacea for our nation’s ills. For the full report about the National Seminar by Faye and Dennis, go to: LINK