by Steve | Sep 15, 1993 | Archive - 1993
Archive: Contempt of Court
The Supreme Court’s Lawless Law Invites Lawlessness
By Richard John Neuhaus
The following is excerpted from an address delivered in late June to the National Right to Life convention in Milwaukee.
I want to spend some time revisiting the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, not only because it supports and expands the lethal logic of Roe v. Wade but because it so clearly exemplifies the nature of the crisis that is upon us. I am struck by the fact that, since Casey, some very careful and thoughtful people are raising questions about the moral legitimacy of our constitutional order. Perhaps that is not surprising, for the five justices in the majority claim that their decision must be followed if the legitimacy of the court, and of law itself, is to be maintained. Similarly, the four justices dissenting recognize the ominous character the question engages, comparing the decision with the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857 that tried to write human slavery into the Constitution.
The questions raised by Casey are every bit as solemn as those pondered by Lincoln at Gettysburg. If the interpretation of the present court majority finally prevails, it may well be that thoughtful citizens will conclude that this constitutional order is an illegitimate regime, and that they are absolved from obedience to its laws. Perhaps this grand political experiment—what the Founders called a novus ordo seclorum, a new order for the ages—has turned out to be a failed experiment. Experiments do fail, empires do collapse, republics do decay, and democracies, too, can bring about their own ruin.
Nonetheless, I believe that we—as individuals and as a movement—should do our best to resist the conclusion that it is all over with the American experiment. Our purpose is to recall America to its constituting truths. We must persist in believing, so long as it is believable, that the lethal logic of Roe v. Wade is an aberration; that it is neither a true account of the Constitution nor of the people that we have become. And yet, as hopeful as we must be, we cannot deny the solemnity of the questions that have been raised.
The Casey decision is a decision which comes down on one side of the culture wars in America. More than for politics, for law, for economics—the great battle is for the culture. What do we mean by the culture?
For some time now we have been engaged in a war over the culture, which is nothing less than a war over what kind of nation, what kind of people, we will be. It is not a war of our choosing. The war was declared—it is daily and exultantly redeclared—by the proponents of myriad revolutions who presume to know better than we how we ought to live; and they do not hesitate to employ the power of the state to enforce conformity to their designs. For some time now we have been two nations: one concentrating on rights and laws, the other on rights and wrongs; one radically individualistic and dedicated to the actualized self, the other communal and invoking the common good; one viewing law as the instrument of the will to power and license, the other affirming an objective moral order by which we are obliged; one given to private satisfaction, the other to familial responsibility; one typically secular, the other typically religious; one elitist, the other respectful of the common sense of common people.
Of course that description is drawn with broad strokes, but it roughly describes the lines of the culture war in which we are engaged. The reality is evident enough to anyone who attends to the increasingly ugly rancor that dominates and debases our public life. And, of course, for many Americans the lines of the culture war run through their own hearts. As the Casey decision makes evident, the lines also run through the Supreme Court. But the five justices who made up the Casey majority leave no doubt about where they stand. The decision is a clear declaration of belligerency on one side of the culture wars.
The decision endorses the radically individualistic notion of the self-constituted self. The abortion liberty is necessary, we are told, in order “to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” I am told that among constitutional lawyers this is called “the mystery passage” of the decision. The justices wax theological about the mystery of human life in total disregard of precisely that: the mystery of human life. For the court, the mystery of human life is to be defined by the individual; for most of us, the mystery of human life is discovered as a gift. For the court, authentic personhood requires freedom from any encumbering community; for most of us, to be a person is to be a person in community.
When I said that the court waxed theological, I did not mean it simply as a figure of speech. Although the three authors of the majority opinion—Kennedy, O’Connor, and Souter—seem to be blithely unaware of it, they are proposing the establishment of what might be called a state religion. Religion is commonly defined as that activity which deals with “ultimate concerns.” It is hard to get more ultimate than the “concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” In most religions—Judaism and Christianity, for instance—the self is understood in relationship to other realities—in relationship to community, normative truth, and even to revelation. The court, however, recognizes no other reality than the isolated individual defining his or her reality.
Permit me to be entirely candid: The Supreme Court’s depiction of the self, of community, and of what is meant by ultimate meaning is incompatible with Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and every tradition that espouses normative truth. Not incidentally, it is also incompatible with the actual experience of almost everybody on earth. In effect, although not in name, the Supreme Court is proposing a religion. For those of us who already have a religion, it is obviously a false religion. As distressing as this state of affairs may be, we should not be entirely surprised by it.
It has been said that if you can justify abortion, you can justify anything. There is a deep truth in that. If you set out to justify the attack on something so primordial, so given, so foundational to human community as a mother’s love and responsibility for her child; you have to come up with a new explanation of fundamental reality, a new worldview, and finally a new religion. The Supreme Court of the United States has come up with the Religion of the Sovereign Self.
To be sure, it is not really a new religion. It is the belief to which human beings have been prone since the disastrous afternoon in the garden, when humanity began its long and bloody march through history singing, “I did it my way.” The creed of the autonomous self was promulgated by the radical secularists of the Enlightenment, and is still preached by their disciples today. Against that creed, the founders of this nation declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
In one of the most stunning passages of a stunning decision, an imperial court argues that, since it has chosen sides in the culture wars, the American people are obliged to submit to its decision. Listen to the court: “Where, in the performance of its judicial duties, the court decides a case in such a way as to resolve the sort of intensely divisive controversy reflected in Roe … its decision has a dimension that the resolution of the normal case does not carry. It is the dimension present whenever the court’s interpretation of the Constitution calls the contending sides of a national controversy to end their national division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution.”
Let it be clear beyond doubt that we, together with millions of other Americans, do not accept the so-called mandate of this court. Neither do the four dissenting justices accept it. They call it an “Orwellian” decision and invite a comparison with Nazism in which our court, as Fuhrer, demands the obedience of the Volk. The court says that citizens will be “tested by following” its decision. Suddenly it is not the court, but the American people who are on trial. Perhaps it is even contempt of court to hold this decision in the contempt that it deserves. If that is the case, let the record show that we are in contempt of court.
We as a country have been this way before. Remember that at the time of Dred Scott, all three branches of government were in the hands of the pro-slavery forces. (And it is perhaps encouraging to remember that James Buchanan was a one-term president.) Before and after he became president, Lincoln strove for the overturn of Dred Scott. He failed, and war came. There will not be a civil war like the last one, but the destructive effects of alienation and anger are already evident in our society as a result of law that is divorced from constitutional text, moral argument, and democratic process. The ever fragile bonds of civility are unravelling. Lawless law invites lawlessness.
The four justices dissenting from Casey are not alarmists, but they are raising an alarm. Those who refuse to listen bear responsibility for the consequences. The justices wrote: “Against [this decision] are the twin facts that the American people are not fools.” It is in large part up to those of us who are assembled here to make sure that the American people will not forever, will not for long, be denied democracy or treated like fools.
Richard John Neuhaus is the editor-in-chief of First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life (156 Fifth Avenue, Suite 400, New York, NY 10010), and the author of several books including The Naked Public Square and Freedom for Ministry.
by Steve | Sep 14, 1993 | Archive - 1993
Archive: The Heart of Evangelism
By Edward L. Tullis
“I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people; to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior” (Luke 2:10-11, NRSV).
We hear much today of the need for “renewal” or “revitalization” of the church. This discussion usually centers around the numerical decline and decreasing financial support for the mission of the church. It is not a concern for United Methodists alone, but for nearly all of the so-called mainline churches.
Perhaps the most serious problem we face is that we deal largely with symptoms, and do not get to the profound spiritual crisis that confronts us as a church. As we seek to understand what the renewal of the church really means, we become increasingly polarized in our views.
Several years ago when the General Conference decided that evangelism should be one of the missional priorities of our church, I was serving as the president of the Division of Evangelism, Worship and Stewardship of the General Board of Discipleship. Harry Denman, life-long evangelism leader in United Methodism, sent me a telegram. It simply said: “Ed, don’t let the church spend a quadrennium defining evangelism.” I was not sure what he meant, but I soon found out. United Methodism has no consensus on what evangelism is, or what renewal really means.
Spiritual renewal will not come to United Methodism if we simply rearrange the furniture in the church. We will not be renewed by the friendly fellowship of a pale spiritual community which lacks the life-sustaining energy of the Holy Spirit. Our renewal will not even come from the advocates of “church growth.” Church membership growth is a legitimate function and must be a continuing concern; however, we cannot simply seek to find those who are as much like we are as possible, recruit them for membership, and expect the church to be changed.
At the expense of being misunderstood, I further contend that an agenda of benevolent activity will not in itself renew the church. It is critical that we feed the hungry, but while continuing to do that, a vital church must ask why these people are hungry. It can be dangerous to begin probing into the reasons we have so much hunger in an otherwise prosperous community, but such a quest is a part of evangelism. And evangelism is at the heart of a vital church.
Defining evangelism is not simple, but I would describe it as the faithful proclamation in word and deed of the saving power of God in Christ Jesus. It is God calling us to wholeness, then exhorting us to make known the good news of Jesus Christ to those inside, outside, and beyond the church. It is allowing this evangel (or truth) to shape the message and lifestyle of the church, its mission, and its very being.
I am aware of the inadequacy of such a definition, but it is one that arises out of 35 years as a local pastor, 12 years as a General Superintendent, followed by 8 years of again being an active part of a local church.
Evangelism is superbly illustrated in our text: “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people; to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior.”
Good News of Great Joy
In his Yale Lectures, Bishop Gerald Kennedy tells about an inquiry made of a Methodist bishop regarding a preacher in his area. “He is supernaturally dull,” said the bishop. ”No man could be as dull as he is without divine aid.”
How can this be, when the very nature of the gospel message calls for it to be proclaimed with a sense of excitement? The song of the angel at the first Christmas was not a dull, monotonous droning of a trivial word. It was headline stuff, blaring forth good news about one who offered a way that brought answers, and brought us in touch with the reality of God.
Much of the ineffectiveness of the church today lies in the fact that we dish out good advice, but do not proclaim good news.
The pastor during my high school days, George Traynor, was not a well educated man. Even a high school boy could point out numerous mistakes in his grammatical construction, but he impressed us as being one who had “good news” for us. At that young age I said to myself, “If Christ can do this for Brother George, he can do it for me.” And he did!
Newscope carried the word recently of the death of Walter Towner. That name probably meant little to most who read it, but for my generation, even the mention of that name had brought joy and excitement. In a dreary time of a continuing depression during the 1930s, Walter Towner influenced a dynamic youth movement in Methodism that produced two generations of strong leadership for our church. His sharp mind, his flashing smile, his vibrant personality called our youth to put “Christ above all.”
When dark days loomed around us, Christ spoke through Walter Towner with a commanding graciousness that changed the direction of life for many. That spirit never left him. During my days as resident bishop in Nashville he was on the Scarritt campus. Then well into his eighties, he was serving as curator of a museum. The great good news still so dominated his life that even students of that generation gravitated to him.
The gospel means good news. It is not a recitation of laws. It is not an announcement of a burden to be borne. It is the good news of a lifting of every encumbrance of life.
We are bearers of good tidings of great joy. This world hungers for good news. Let’s not go door-to-door peddling home remedies. Let’s stand on the street corners and in the pulpits of our daily relationships proclaiming God’s love illuminated in Jesus Christ—the real remedy for the grave illness of our time.
More Than Shouting Hallelujah
The gospel is a word of salvation centered in Jesus Christ, God’s Savior of—and for—the world. “To you is born a Savior.”
Recently I have been reading the sermons and speeches in the New Testament, giving special attention to the book of Acts and the Epistles. It is evident that one person dominates the life of the New Testament Church. The theme is one—”Jesus Christ is Lord.” It is clear that Jesus Christ is the unique Son of God, and that Jesus’ vicarious suffering and death on the cross is the means God used to redeem the world. The message is that faith in this crucified one, who is now our living Lord, is the means whereby we enter into God’s salvation.
The message is repeated over and over again:
“There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
“If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come!” (II Corinthians 5:17).
“God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ. . . And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation” (II Corinthians 5:19).
We receive one over-all impression as we read these sermons and speeches: We cannot be tentative or ambivalent about Jesus.
I recognize that such statements as these are unacceptable to many, even in our UM Church. There is a growing universalism in our denomination which wants to leave an open door to the possibility of finding God apart from Jesus. Jesus is not seen as the unique Son of God, but is considered one of several persons who has revealed God to the human race.
One hindrance to developing a vital church is our mixed signals about what is essential in the Christian faith. The one absolutely essential doctrine which cannot be compromised is that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God, and that we are justified before God through faith in him. This seems to me to be the main point of the Bible. To deny this role of Jesus, for me, takes the urgency out of our message and the edge off evangelism.
We have lost our power and effectiveness. But a return to certainty about Christ will give us a new sense of being a vital part of the family of God through Christ. We will say with Paul: “We are Christ’s ambassadors as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (II Corinthians 5:20).
We cannot afford to be indecisive about Jesus. It is through him that we gain our understanding of God. It may seem harsh and disconcerting making such statements in a pluralistic society. Is it not enough to declare “God is Love”? Without Jesus that word is a wishful thought, for it is through Jesus that we understand love as the redeeming purpose of God.
Jesus Christ is the indispensable disclosure of God. That seems to me to be the gospel, and we must declare this truth with certainity.
Christ is For All
Earliest Christianity was a genuinely Christo-centered faith. And the study of this faith makes it clear to me that God’s intention, wrought through Jesus Christ, was to extend salvation to humanity on a universal scale. The angelic message was that this good news of great joy was “for all people.”
It is at this point that outreach becomes mandatory to the community of faith. It is important that we communicate the authenticity of the gathered body. It is important that we teach God’s call to his church to be pure. But many of our pastors see themselves as chaplains to a membership of perhaps 350 people; they do not see themselves as a leader of 350 witnesses called to move out into the community in transforming ways. If I understand the New Testament, we are called as an authentic church to take seriously the making of disciples, in other words, outreach.
We often see the evangelistic outreach of the church as something someone else does—someone especially gifted for the task. Or we see it as the role of some other church down the street. It may be their ”thing,” not especially ours.
I am not so sure that many of us urgently feel that all people need to hear the message of Jesus Christ. We do not carry with us the same conviction expressed in I John 5:12: “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
If God is to renew the church, and only God can, then we must allow the power of God in us to be expressed in faithful discipleship; and a sine quo non of discipleship is outreach. Only those churches which make disciples are alive; all others die.
We must not neglect any potential believers in our communities. There are so many and they are so varied. May I stress just one group that has been called by some “the no-longer Christians.” As we go through the seemingly unending process of what we call “cleaning the membership rolls,” we mark off hosts of people who were once an active, committed, and vital part of the Christian community. These “no-longer” Christians are often those who are uninspired, disillusioned, bored, and convinced that the local church is no longer pertinent and vital. I believe this is a large group—one that is “not far from the kingdom.”
If the church can give even the faintest sound of being alive, develop concerned outreach, and proclaim the truth, we may yet find our way back to the koinonia that once nourished and sustained us. This is a critical issue. Vital mission comes from a vital church that is being renewed in its inner life. Our witness to the world, if it is to be effective, must spring from fervor within our own church.
A vibrant congregation of faithful disciples will be a seeking, finding, sharing, and growing fellowship. This is actually happening in some of our churches, and it can yet be a part of the life of your local fellowship.
The final word of the good news is resurrection. Resurrection for Jesus did not mean an escape from the earth and all its problems to another more pleasant realm. For him it was a victory that meant a return to power, in and through his church. Such resurrection power can yet give life to the work and witness of God’s church.
The testimony of the New Testament is that things went right when the disciples stayed in the presence of Jesus. The difficulties began when they wandered off and left his influence.
My prayer is that each of us will stay in the presence of our Lord until his resurrection power renews us, guiding us to once again become a Resurrection Society—an Easter People.
Edward L Tullis is a retired bishop of the United Methodist Church. As bishop, he served in the Columbia, South Carolina and the Nashville, Tennessee Areas. Reprinted by permission of Forward: An Evangelism Journal for the United Methodist Church, published by the Foundation for Evangelism, 366 Lakeshore Drive, P.O. Box 985, Lake Junaluska, NC 28745-0985.
by Steve | Jul 19, 1993 | Archive - 1993
Archive: Inner City Dad
Keith Johnson and His Vision for a Neighborhood
By Rober Moeller
It was a hot, sticky July night in the inner-city. The atmosphere was cordial, but guarded, among the racially-mixed audience that had gathered to hear a Christian musician. Without warning a middle-aged man, obviously intoxicated, jumped on to the stage, grabbed a microphone, and began singing a rambling rendition of a familiar gospel song. The white musician put down his guitar, took a step back, and glanced nervously around as if to say, “someone please help.” But the concert organizers were equally unnerved. They knew that one wrong move on stage could touch off an ugly scene.
As the crowd held its breath, a young black teenager appeared on the stage out of nowhere, walked over to the intoxicated man, shook his hand, and quietly led him off the stage.
You could almost hear the sigh of relief go up from the crowd. The music resumed, and the tensions on the blacktop quickly dissipated. The concert, and the church’s image in the community, had been rescued by the quick-thinking actions of a 17-year-old named Keith Johnson. Today, 15 years later, Keith Johnson is still a reconciler within his community and church. He is now the associate pastor of the lively and energetic Park Avenue United Methodist Church in downtown Minneapolis.
Keith and his wife, Andrea Thurston, are working to model the joys and struggles of Christ-centered family life with their three boys, Kyle, Taylor, and Andrew.
“The task of role-modeling is not one that comes naturally,” says Keith. “I was raised in a single-parent family. I’ve struggled to learn what it means to be an effective and involved husband and dad.”
Overcoming difficulties is nothing new to Keith. He has overcome a fatherless home, a predominantly white culture that treated him either as a novelty or a nuisance, and a depressed neighborhood that dared anyone to do anything more than just survive.
A father’s leaving home is an emotional earthquake, difficult to measure except in seismic terms. Keith’s dad left when he was seven-years-old and it registered a 9.0 on the family’s Richter scale—destroying the security and stability of his home.
“I felt as if I were on an island by myself, with enormous responsibilities,” he remembers. Two things were clear—he was now on his own, and he was now the man of the house.
Prejudice at the Pool
Minnesota is primarily a Scandinavian culture where the telephone directory has thousands of listings for the name Johnson. But to be black and named Johnson puts you in a category all your own.
Keith recalls being part of an experimental program that sent young minority children into the Minnesota countryside to experience farm life during the summer.
“When we would go into town, people would gather around me and just stare. I suspect several of them had never seen a black person before. One woman stepped up with a camera and took a picture of me before I knew what was happening.”
But at times, simple curiosity changed to raw prejudice. “The second summer I was out in the country I went swimming with the white family I was living with. As soon as I climbed into the pool, everyone else started climbing out. It’s the first time in my life I had ever been called a ‘nigger.’ Even though the neighborhood I came from was poor, I was relieved to get back home and just be one of the kids again.”
In junior high, Keith ran into someone that would profoundly change his life. As he was walking down the hall one day, he noticed a girl reading a book. Her name happened to be Angel.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“The Bible,” she replied. “And it says that if you don’t become a Christian you will go to hell.”
Not surprisingly, Keith was shaken up. He asked what he needed to do to become a Christian.
“Go home and ask Jesus into your heart,” she said matter-of-factly.
Keith took her advice seriously. He went home, got on his knees and prayed, “God, I don’t know who you are. But Angel says that I need a ticket to heaven. So I’m going to invite Jesus into my life right now. Please come in.”
With little more than the advice of a ninth-grade girl to steer him toward God, Keith Johnson met Jesus Christ. While working the next day at a super market, Keith noticed that a woman had dropped a $20 dollar bill on the floor. He picked it up, went over and tapped the woman on the shoulder and said, “Here, you dropped this.” She was so surprised she just took the money and walked out. The next day at school he found Angel and said, “I’m a Christian! I found $20 dollars and gave it back.”
The next winter Keith received a brochure in the mail from Park Avenue UM Church announcing a trip to Florida for teenagers. This trip would be Keith’s first church experience. He remembers looking around the bus and seeing something very unusual; black and white kids sitting side by side. “I sensed a great openness and love toward me from the staff,” he recalls. “This church was different.”
Slowly Keith began to take on leadership responsibilities in the youth program at Park Avenue. “I remember sharing the gospel with a young man sitting on the top of the church bus one day,” says Keith. “He prayed to receive Christ while perched up there on the roof. It was a tremendous experience to realize that God could use me.”
Leaving Pharaoh’s Court
When Keith graduated from high school, he attended a Christian college far from the city. Although he enjoyed his new suburban surroundings, the call of God began to disturb his peaceful life.
“I began feeling a burden for the community I had grown up in,” he recalls. “Like Moses who decided to leave Pharaoh’s court, I knew I needed to go back and live with my people who were in need.”
As Keith’s love for his community blossomed, so did his love for Andrea, a beautiful young woman he had met on his Florida trip. “I fell head over heels,” he remembers. It was easy to understand why Keith had become so attracted to Andrea. Her grace and beauty had twice earned her the title of runner-up in the Miss Teenage Minnesota Pageant.
Shortly after Andrea and he were married, Keith took a sales position with a major corporation. Keith’s energy, gentle way with people, and natural charisma earned him promotions.
One day a district sales manager offered him a position that in three years would boost his salary to $70,000 a year. But there was a catch. The manager told him point-blank, “For two years, you’re going to have to give your heart and soul to the company.” With the birth of their first son only weeks away, Keith couldn’t see sacrificing his family for a career jump-start. He turned it down.
God again reminded him of his old neighborhood, prompting him, along with Andrea, to pray for an opportunity to return. Not long after that, Keith became program director for a ministry to teenagers in Minneapolis.
Sensing the need for further theological training, Keith resigned his position after three years and enrolled at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. As the weeks unfolded, Keith discovered that God had more in mind for him than just studying theology.
“The Lord began to dig down deep into my life and deal with the scars and pain of my childhood,” says Keith. “God began challenging me, an adult child of an alcoholic, toward honesty, truth, and confession. Then, on a Palm Sunday during a private spiritual/retreat, God specifically called me to the pastorate.”
As graduation time grew near, both Keith and Andrea knew home, not as teenage kids from the neighborhood this time, but as a husband and wife team committed to preaching the gospel and serving the community for Jesus Christ.
De-mythologizing Black Families
One of the first challenges Keith has taken on at Park Avenue is dealing with the myths and misconceptions regarding black families in the 1990s.
“One major misconception is the idea that urban families don’t care for their children as much as suburban parents do,” he says. “People need to realize that inner-city moms and dads do care. If they’re not home to take care of their kids, it isn’t because they’re apathetic, it’s because they’re struggling to survive. Urban folks do care, but because of their economic plight, many are forced to work day and night just to stay alive. That does not leave much time for parenting.”
Another myth Keith challenges is the idea that strong, black fathers don’t exist in the city. “They do in fact exist,” he asserts. “There are several black fathers in our church who are doing a marvelous job of raising their families.”
Keith and his wife have found particular encouragement from an older African American couple at Park Avenue, Bill and Beverly Cottman. “They’ve done a wonderful job of raising their children,” says Keith. “They could appear on any talk show and give advice on the right way to raise kids. As far as I’m concerned, they’re experts on the subject.”
Keith rejects the idea that there is a great difference between urban parents and their suburban counterparts with regard to their value systems. “We value monogamy, chastity, and honesty—so-called traditional values—just like everyone else. What’s usually lacking is available role models to show how to instill these values in our children.”
“I’m trying to address the needs of African-American families,” says Keith. “I called together the African-American men of the church to fellowship and talk with one another. In light of the Rodney King incidents, I felt it was important we discuss what positive steps we could take in the community.”
Keith and fellow black staff member Chris McNair are working to mobilize the black males at Park Avenue to become involved in the lives of young boys who have no father at home. Chris has begun a program called “Simba” (Young Lions) where young boys in the neighborhood are connected with older black men from the church who serve as mentors.
Doing It Right This Time
Keith realizes that if he is going to be the kind of father his boys need, it will require vigilance and sacrifice. “I guard my day off. One morning a week I care for our two year-old. One Sunday a month I sit with my family during the worship service. One day a month I actually spend time at school in the classroom with my children. Perhaps most important, every Monday night Andrea and I go out for a date.”
Remembering his own experience of growing up fatherless, Keith is determined to give his own boys a different life from the one he had known as a child. He views it as an opportunity to do it right this time, “God has given me the chance to replay the joy and excitement of the childhood I missed. My goal is to enjoy them, and to shape three future fathers and grandfathers who will be a blessing to their families, the society, and the church. But without Christ, I couldn’t do it.”
“I’m on a journey,” continues Keith. “I didn’t have good role models. I didn’t have people to show me the way. But God is meeting that need through the body of believers. As the Scriptures say, ‘God sets the lonely in families’ (Psalm 68:6). I’m thankful for the larger family God has placed us in at Park Avenue United Methodist Church. It’s a tremendous learning experience.”
Robert Moeller is a contributing editor with Leadership Journal and president of the Wordsmith Group, Inc.
by Steve | Jul 16, 1993 | Archive - 1993
Archive: Whither Sunday School?
By Riley B. Case
The United Methodist Publishing House recently released results of a study in an attempt to explain why UM Sunday school curriculum sales have decreased by 67 percent over a 30-year period. Sales have plummeted from 31 million units per year in the early 1960s to 11 million units in 1992. For those of us who have invested prayers and efforts over those thirty years, desiring to bridge the gap between the UM Sunday school materials and the evangelical constituency of the UM Church, there is a sense of sadness.
The reasons given for the decline sound all too familiar. Indeed, they are a classic church bureaucratic response. There is no admission that there is a problem with the product. Nor is there any suggestion that the people producing the curriculum are out of touch with people in the pews. Even while reporting on the disastrous decline, the news release claims that grass-roots complaints about biblical biases in the material have been addressed.
According to the study and the ensuing discussion, the problem has to do with factors like the economy (the economy?), television, photocopying machines (can we believe this?), membership decline (perhaps the result as well as the cause for curriculum decline), staff reductions leaving fewer persons to promote the material, and the scuttling of the old United Methodist Council on Youth Ministries (a radical group that was openly critical of the Sunday school as an institution).
These are poor answers to a serious problem. The Curriculum Resources Committee is one of the few agencies in the church that has its effectiveness measured by a bottom line. Unfortunately, the Board of Global Ministries and the seminaries do not have to be judged by the same bottom line. Sales are market-driven. Either the product is not meeting needs, or someone else is doing it better. It’s that simple.
Declining curriculum sales are indicative of the problem of the denomination. Methodism is an evangelical movement gone awry. The crisis is not of recent origin. The Boards of Education of both the northern and southern Methodist Churches were among the first agencies to commit themselves in the 1920s to “modernism,” an approach that indicated a willingness to make adaptations in the faith in order to communicate to the modem world. Any approach to faith that was not swept up by modernism was labeled “fundamentalism,” an ideology which, according to one of my seminary professors in the 1950s, “was an anachronism, and would be gone in another generation.”
Many of us wondered why traditional Methodism, as we had always known it, was now labeled “fundamentalism.” By whatever name, there was a lot of it around and it was not going away. By the 1960s, traditional Methodism was on the increase; and its adherents were puzzled, confused, and sometimes angered by the approach of Sunday school material that seemed more interested in life situations, the modern world, and becoming well-adjusted, than in communicating the faith.
Curriculum sales during this period were propped up by a constant pushing of the denominational loyalty button. “True Methodists” used only Methodist materials, which were theologically liberal, educationally fashionable, and supposedly suited for every church and situation; large or small, urban or rural, of whatever cultural, theological, racial, or educational background. If churches did not like the material, it was not the material’s fault. The problem, according to the institutionalists, was a lack of training, poor attitude, or a misguided understanding of the true purpose of Christian education on the part of churches and teachers.
In 1967, Good News was organized as a voice for the evangelical constituency of the Methodist Church. In one respect, it might be said that pain over curriculum matters did more to launch Good News than any other factor. There was a widespread sense among evangelicals that the church, which had nurtured them in so many ways and through which they wished to minister for Jesus Christ, dogmatically insisted on the use of curriculum materials which did not reflect, and was sometimes openly scornful, of their own understanding of the faith. Still, the “Good News types,” being fairly traditional, remained among the strongest supporters of the Sunday school as an institution, at a time of social ferment when criticism from other factions dismissed the Sunday school as outmoded and irrelevant.
On April 18, 1969, at O’Hare Inn, Chicago, the first of a number of “dialogue” meetings were held between curriculum editors and representatives of Good News. The Good News group argued that the UM materials represented a theology that had long-since deviated from the church’s doctrinal standards, and that Sunday schools were in trouble.
In the July-September 1969 issue of Good News, twenty-three pages were devoted to “Our Curriculum Crisis.” There was a sense of desperation in the articles, particularly in regard to youth. Arguments were made that the church was in danger of losing a whole generation who were being denied a clear, compelling presentation of Christian truth. Today, the words sound prophetic.
In the January-March 1970 issue of Good News, Charles Keysor wrote an editorial entitled “Cyanide in the Church School.” The commentary was direct, strident, and confrontational. Erroneous teaching in curriculum materials was infecting and poisoning the entire church, he said. The intensity of the editorial, and a number of articles to follow, reflected the frustrations of United Methodists who could see no improvement in the materials.
One cause for alarm among Good News affiliates was the realization that numbers of United Methodists, including some of the church’s brightest and best, were defecting to more evangelical denominations. While the curriculum materials and the Sunday schools were not the only reason for the exodus, desire for forthright Christian teaching was the main reason given for many of the departures.
Church leaders quoted “studies” and denied that any significant exodus was taking place. One of the first official responses to Good News was offered by the editor of curriculum resources, and was entitled, “How to Quote Some of the Words—and Not Tell the Whole Truth.” This widely-circulated pamphlet from the early 1970s painted Good News people as basically right-wingers and irresponsible fundamentalists. According to the pamphlet, the resources were biblical and responsible. All theological points of view were represented and the church would resist pressure from unofficial groups, the pamphlet stated. Variations on this response were repeated time after time during the years that followed.
Despite these responses, numbers of persons—whether acquainted with Good News or not, whether identified as evangelicals or not—continued to ask questions. Why so very little Scripture memory work? Why were there no pictures of Jesus on the cross for elementary children? Why no mention of original sin or hell or wrath of God? Where was the way of salvation presented? Why were basic church doctrines like the Virgin Birth, or Christ’s Atonement for sin, or the Second Coming always presented with qualifying statements, if at all.
The 1972 doctrinal statement, with its emphasis on pluralism, gave evangelicals a new argument. The Discipline stated that the curriculum materials should be of such nature as to meet the needs of all groups in the church. The question now was: Did evangelicals qualify as a group? If so, what was being done to meet their needs?
The official response to “meeting the needs of all groups” was to incorporate evangelical writers from time to time, and include evangelicals in the planning process. Evangelicals argued that this did not “meet the needs” for literature with consistent quality that could be used without apology. Many former members of the Evangelical United Brethren Church were appalled by the curriculum that was thrust upon them in their merger with Methodism. There was even an argument made for an evangelical “track”—a separate line of materials that would be confessional in nature, consistent with the doctrinal standards, and would interpret the Scriptures from a supernaturalist frame of reference.
An opportunity for an evangelical “track” came with confirmation materials. Good News made specific suggestions as to how additional resources could service the needs of evangelicals. These were summarily rejected. Good News then prepared a text that was submitted for approval as supplemental material. This too was rejected with the explanation that studies showed there was no need either for revision or for additional materials, particularly of the type Good News was proposing. Good News proceeded to publish its popular We Believe confirmation materials, and has subsequently sold more than 200,000 units.
Dr. Frank Warden, then a member of the Good News board, proposed an extensive Bible study based on the Bethel Bible series. Curriculum people indicated they felt the church would not respond to such a serious study. Dr. Warden, on his own, then prepared the Trinity Bible Series for United Methodists that was immensely successful in several thousand UM churches. A decade later, the Curriculum Resources Committee finally responded to the expressed need and produced the Disciple Bible study which has been a bright spot in some otherwise dismal sales figures.
By the 1980s, Good News was involved in a number of other concerns—missions, funding patterns, theological education—and curriculum became a less-pressing issue. The need for materials that could be used in good conscience by evangelicals was still there, but there was the feeling that the official structures of the UM Church were unwilling or unable to address it. It was at that point that United Methodist evangelicals launched Bristol Bible Curriculum. At least there would be a UM-based curriculum alternative for churches.
Sales for the official curriculum materials continue to sag. From the published reports, there is no reason to believe that the committee, in an effort to determine the cause for the sales slump, ever bothered to speak to any of the number of former-United Methodists who have since found homes in Baptist and Nazarene churches. If they had, one assumes they would not have been so quick to blame the extraordinary curriculum decline on secondary issues such as photocopiers, the economy, and need for more staff persons.
Riley B. Case is pastor of St. Luke’s UM Church in Kokomo, Indiana, a Good News board member and a contributing editor.
by Steve | Jul 15, 1993 | Archive - 1993
Archive: Do We Still Need Missionaries?
By Dick McClain
As long as I can remember, I’ve been around missions and missionaries. I still recall when, as a seventh grader in Hong Kong, the need for world missions first hit home to me in a personal way. I was watching my dad’s slide show, “Hong Kong Harvest,” in our living room in Kowloon. A visitor was being introduced to ministry in the world’s most densely populated city. I had seen the presentation so many times before that if the tape recorder had malfunctioned, I could have finished the narration all by myself.
But that night was different. I began to cry as I watched the unfolding story, and knew then that my life had to be invested in helping people know Jesus.
It was a surprise to me years later to learn that not everyone in the church was enthusiastic about foreign missions—a hot topic of debate in the United Methodist Church. I’ve discovered since then that many people are often unclear about what is meant by missions. One school of thought seems to regard virtually everything the church does as “mission” (note: no “s” at the end of the word). Richard Niebuhr narrowed that concept only slightly when he described mission as “everything the church does outside its walls.” However, we need to discuss foreign missions with a sharper vision than Niebuhr’s.
I propose that we understand missions as cross-cultural Christian ministry that has as its aim the reaching of those who have no allegiance to Jesus Christ, and making them Christian disciples. Three concepts are central: cross-cultural ministry, focusing on those who have not come to faith in Jesus Christ, and the goal of making Christian disciples.
With this understanding in mind, we can distill several questions that swirl around the great missions debate.
Question #1: Why Missions?
If missions has to do with Christians seeking to reach across cultural boundaries in an effort to point others toward Jesus, then the question naturally arises, why should we be doing that? After all, missions are costly business! Is the need for this activity sufficient to justify the cost? In other words, do all people everywhere really need Jesus?
The answer to this question depends on how you answer several others. Who was Jesus? Was he the Son of God? Is he the only Savior of the world? Can people come to a saving knowledge of God outside of faith in him?
Suffice it to say that missions is rooted in several foundational convictions: the uniqueness and finality of Jesus Christ, that Jesus’ death on the cross was the only atonement for sin which God has provided, and that humanity is lost apart from faith in Jesus.
In his recent article “The Devaluing of Evangelism,” retired Bishop Louis Schowengerdt illustrated what happens when church leaders reject the uniqueness of Christianity, challenging the evangelistic imperative that believers have historically affirmed (Good News, March/April, 1993). As a result of such changes coming to mainline churches, there was a 46 percent drop in the number of missionaries sent out by the UM Church between 1962 and 1979, a 68 percent decline among the United Church of Christ, and a whopping 79 percent reduction in the Episcopal Church.
Nevertheless, not all of United Methodism has lost its vision for missions. In the face of the relentless retreat of official denominational mission programs, many United Methodists have felt forced to minister outside the official structures.
In fact, far more United Methodists are serving around the world as missionaries today outside of our church’s official structures than are serving through the General Board of Global Ministries.
I am always meeting up with those who do not accept the uniqueness of Jesus, or those who just don’t believe that the question of people’s eternal destiny even matters. I am often tempted to try to convince them to rethink their views. But that is no longer my main concern. Dr. Ralph Winter, founder of the U.S. Center for World Mission, challenged me several years ago to focus my energies on trying to mobilize evangelicals to act in a way that is consistent with our stated beliefs. Our Latin friends are correct in stating that orthopraxy (right action) is as important as orthodoxy (right belief). It does little good to say we believe the world needs Jesus if we don’t make every effort to make him known.
Question #2: Why Missionaries?
Behind this question are several others: Isn’t the church already in every country? Why not let the nationals do the work? Isn’t it very costly to send missionaries? Missions, yes; but are missionaries really still needed?
First of all, the love of Jesus should motivate us to send missionaries. When Melville Cox, Methodism’s first foreign missionary, was about to leave for Liberia in the early 1830s, a friend challenged what he believed to be Cox’s foolhardy plan. “If you go to Africa, you’ll die there!” his friend warned. “If I die, then you write my epitaph,” was Melville’s quick retort. Caught off guard, his friend responded, “But what should I write?” Cox’s thoughtful answer is inscribed today on a monument in his honor in Monrovia, Liberia: “Though a thousand fall, let not Africa be lost.”
As the apostle Paul expressed it, “Christ’s love compels us” (II Corinthians 5:14). You cannot love him, love the world for which he died, and not want to make him known.
Secondly, Jesus commanded us to go. The Great Commission was his last commandment. It ought to be our first concern!
A sentence from Clay Cooper’s Nothing To Win But The World burns in my heart: “He needs no call who has a command.” We don’t have to wait for a special call from God to get involved in missions. He has already called the church to go.
During the Gulf War, one of our young missionary families returned to their central Asian field where they work among an unreached Muslim people group. The city to which they were returning was rife with anti-American feeling. Thousands had marched in the streets in support of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. One supporter said to this young couple, “You must be incredibly brave to return to your country at this time.” The missionaries responded, “No, we are no more courageous than anyone else. For us it has nothing to do with courage. It is a simple matter of obedience. God has called us to go, and we have decided to obey him.”
A third compelling reason for sending missionaries grows from a clear understanding of the nature of the world in which we live. While some make much of the fact that the church already exists in every country, the world isn’t really divided up by countries. As Donald McGavran, father of the Church Growth Movement, has pointed out, the world is an intricate mosaic of people groups. For example, Ghana—a country the size of Pennsylvania—is made up of tribal groups speaking some 50 languages.
Jesus’ command was to make disciples of every “nation,” not every “country.” The Greek word for nation is ethne, from which we derive the word ethnic. His order was literally to go to every “people group” with the gospel.
Of the world’s 5.1 billion persons, 33 percent are (at least nominally) Christian. Forty-one percent have been “evangelized” but are still non Christian. (They have some access to a clear gospel presentation, even though they have not accepted it.) But that leaves one quarter of the world still truly unevangelized or unreached. One and one-third billion people have no access to churches, Bibles, missionaries, or religious broadcasts. They have virtually no opportunity to hear and accept—or reject—the gospel.
Just as important as the total number of unevangelized persons, however, is the number of unreached people groups. Some eleven thousand such groups (as defined by language, culture, or sub-cultural grouping) still have no culturally relevant church or Christian witness, or the Christian presence they do have is too small to be able to reach the rest of the group for Christ.
As long as there are thousands of unreached people groups and hundreds of millions of unreached persons, there will be a need for “outsiders” to bring the gospel to them. By definition, that means missionaries are still needed.
Summarizing his life ministry, the apostle Paul concluded that it had always been his ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known. As a matter of strategy, Paul targeted those who had never heard. The unreached people movement in modem missions employs the same principle. United Methodists would do well to get on board. Our denomination alone has three congregations for every unreached people group in the world. Think what God could enable us to do by way of finishing the task if every United Methodist congregation was committed to personally targeting one of the world’s remaining unreached groups.
Question #3: Why Us?
Granted, missionaries should be sent. But why from the United States? Don’t our colonial background and our imperialistic tendencies render us suspect—perhaps even fatally flawed—as missionary candidates (i.e. predominantly white, middle class, north Americans)? And besides, isn’t it too costly to send westerners as missionaries?
In response, we need to be clear about what ought not be our reasons for sending our missionaries. They must not go just to make themselves feel better. (Despite the hardships involved in living in other countries, it’s certainly possible for missionaries to be motivated toward missions by a desire to meet personal needs.) Nor should missionaries go because of some misguided notion that to do so is to make the “ultimate sacrifice” for God. Even more to the point, no north American should go because “those poor (i.e. ‘uncivilized’) people desperately need our help (i.e. our ‘enlightened’ western way of life).” There is no room for cultural arrogance in missions today. Those who go must see themselves as simply “one beggar showing another beggar where to find bread.”
We should praise God for the internationalization of missions that we are witnessing today. A century ago the word “missionary” was almost synonymous with “westerner.” Thankfully, that’s no longer the case. The churches of Asia, Africa, and Latin America have risen to the challenge of world evangelization in recent years, and are sending increasing numbers of cross-cultural workers to some of the neediest areas of the world. Still, there is ample justification for our sending forth missionaries.
Since the Great Commission was given to the whole church, we might better ask, “Why not us?” How can we exempt ourselves from the call to go and make disciples? Does the fact that it’s more costly to send westerners than missionaries from developing countries justify our “subcontracting” to the church in less affluent countries the task of sending their sons and daughters? Should we expect them to pay the price of separation from home and family and adjustment to new cultures, while we merely bankroll their effort from our place of ease in the west?
Time magazine (May 22, 1989), in an article entitled “Those Mainline Blues,” noted that “spreading the gospel abroad was once a quintessential mainline activity, but today evangelical agencies sponsor four-fifths of American Protestant missionaries.” I am convinced that our churches are in desperate need of a heightened world vision if they are to be spiritually revived. That vision cannot come, apart from a renewed commitment to sending forth laborers into the world’s harvest fields.
The bottom line is quite simple. God is still calling forth Christian men and women from the church in the U.S., and directing them toward missionary service. For them, going is a matter of simple obedience. For the rest of the church, obedience demands that we send them.
The countdown to A.D. 2,000 echoes louder with each passing day. Many “Great Commission Christians” have adopted the goal of completing world evangelization by the end of this second Christian millennium. The task can be finished. If all God’s people made Jesus’ last command their first concern, there could really be a viable Christian witness among every people, tongue, and nation by the turn of the century. Jesus didn’t give us an impossible task; just one that requires us to move forward on our knees, depending upon his Spirit.
Dick McClain is the director of missionary personnel for the Mission Society for United Methodists.
