Archive: I Am Convinced…

By James V. Heidinger II, Editor, Good News Magazine

This is my first word to you on the editorial pages since becoming the new Executive Secretary /Editor of Good News. I am still adjusting to the awesome responsibility of giving leadership to Good News. The challenge of continuing the faithful and courageous leadership given by Dr. Charles W. Keyson the past 15 years is nearly overwhelming to me. I appeal to you for your prayers on my behalf.

After 12 years in the pastoral ministry (four as associate pastor at Dueber UM Church in Canton, Ohio, and the past eight as pastor of the Scott Memorial UM Church in Cadiz, Ohio), the new assignment to Good News is a definite change of direction. I am excited about the challenge before me and about the opportunity of working with the outstanding staff of Good News.

Also, I am grateful to Bishop James S. Thomas for granting me the appointment “beyond the local church,” which allows me to maintain my relationship with the East Ohio Conference.

With a move to Kentucky planned for mid-June, this spring brings a number of new things for our family: the new job, a new home and community, and in the next several weeks a new addition to our family as my wife, Joanie, is due with our third child in early May.

This first editorial is an appropriate time for me to share some of my reflections and personal convictions about Good News and the United Methodist Church. Some of these ideas, perhaps, will be themes treated more fully in future editorials.

First, I am convinced that spiritual and evangelical renewal is happening across America in the mainline denominations to a greater degree than any of us can imagine.

This past March 9 and 10, I met in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with leaders from renewal groups representing nine mainline church bodies. In attendance were delegates representing the Anglican Church, the Church of the Brethren, American Baptist Church, United Church of Christ, United Presbyterian Church in the U.S., Southern Presbyterian Church, Mennonite Church, Roman Catholic Church, and the United Methodist Church. This was my first involvement with these renewal group leaders who come together with an amazingly similar agenda of concerns. These are devoted pastors and laity who love their churches, who are concerned about the loss of spiritual vitality and Biblical witness in their churches, and who care enough to become involved in working for renewal.

All of this convinced me that God, in His Sovereignty, has raised up Good News and these other renewal groups to fulfill His purposes in His Church. In a similar way, God has raised up some 52 renewal groups within the United Methodist Church in as many annual conferences. God is saying to us once again, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19).

Second, I am convinced that doctrinal and theological faithfulness is vital to lasting church renewal. Our present renewal in United Methodism, whether via the Lay Witness Mission, Good News, Charismatic Renewal, or the Church Growth Movement, needs right Biblical doctrine to inform it and give it stability. Right doctrine remains indispensable for right faith and practice.

All of this says that we must be willing to enter the arena of doctrinal controversy. At the risk of seeming narrow or exclusive, we must insist on doctrinal definition.

Dr. Tom Oden, in his highly significant work, Agenda For Theology, Harper & Row, 1979, observes that “Doctrinal definition is as essential to the task of theology as identifying a phony dollar bill is to the job of a bank teller” (p. 107). To define anything is to be forced to set a boundary. There can be no definition of anything, he adds, without “excluding from that definition that which is different from it” (p. 108). He goes on to note that it has been the task historically of both pastor and theologian to say, “Here marks the exact line that distinguishes authentic from counterfeit Christianity.”

Unfortunately, we embraced “theological pluralism.” This has helped make United Methodist pastors and theologians so irenic that many have become “theological pacifists”; they are offended by nothing, regardless of how heretical. It is time for doctrinal renewal.

Third, I am convinced that Good News has prevented untold thousands of United Methodists from leaving their church. Others may speculate whether this is true. But for those with long-time involvement with Good News or for those opening the mail in the Good News office these days, we are sure of this. The “letters” section of the magazine has attested to this in nearly every issue. The familiar phrase is, “If it were not for Good News, my wife and I (husband and I, family) would have left the United Methodist Church by now.” I thank God for those of you who have stayed. I urge all of our Good News supporters to stay with us, work, pray, and’ trust God to bring deep and lasting renewal to United Methodism.

Fourth, I am convinced that Good News is representative—not of the extreme right of our church, as we are so often portrayed, but of the large grassroots middle of United Methodism. Personally, I do not view Good News at the opposite end of the continuum from the Methodist Federation for Social Action, as we are so regularly positioned. In reality, I believe that hosts of pastors and laypersons across our vast church are in basic theological agreement with us. I feel many district superintendents and even a number of our bishops share our concerns for renewal within the church. Unfortunately, we have been caricatured so long as extremists and/or right wing reactionaries (the emotionally-loaded phrase used automatically to dismiss a valid perspective without consideration), that many who would agree with us have not risked involvement with Good News. I invite many of you who—for whatever reasons—have remained spectators in this serious struggle, to join us in our efforts for Scriptural Christianity within the United Methodist Church.

Finally, I am convinced that many reading this editorial have enjoyed the luxury of neutrality and non-involvement too long. It is time you let your voice be heard. If one is halting and timid in entering the fray for the very future of United Methodism, I fear that person is also halting and timid in his stand for truth within the local church.

As Dr. Keysor mentioned in his final letter to the Good News family in April, there are new sounds and indications that some of the church leadership are beginning to talk again about accountability. He wrote in that letter, “None of this would be happening without the pressures from Good News. For 15 years we have articulated some deep, across-the-church concerns which have found expression in print through Good News only.” Dr. Keysor was exactly right in so saying. There are hosts of us indebted to him for his visionary and faithful leadership to Good News. I just pray for many hundreds of you to break the bonds of your timidity, neutrality, non-involvement, fear, and institutional loyalty, to help us in this vital ministry to bring Scriptural renewal to our church. God is indeed saying, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19). I pray you will not only perceive it, but that you will be a part of it.