by Steve | Mar 12, 1993 | Archive - 1993
Archive: Jet Landings
The inner city is filled with dead-ends and closed doors. Well, it used to be that way.
by Boyce A. Bowdon
Near the door to the Jets’ room at Pennsylvania Avenue United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City, there is a cardboard box about two feet tall. The Jets know what it’s for. It’s where they dump their anger.
Who are the Jets? They belong to a youth group sponsored by Skyline Urban Ministries. They live in the inner city. Some of their neighbors are Bloods and Crips, gangs who frequently make the news with drug deals and drive-by shootings.
From early childhood, the Jets have heard the same messages that members of the gangs have heard—sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a shout: “You are poor. You are second-class. You don’t belong. You have no power. You will never amount to anything.”
But those discouraging messages are not the only messages the Jets have heard. Actions, as well as words from people they trust, have instilled in their minds and hearts the Jet credo: “God is a good God; and the world he created, in spite of its pain and suffering and rampant injustice, is a good world. Life is good just the way it is, even though painful. The past has made me the unique individual that I am—a divine creation. I am good in the eyes of God, even though I don’t always like the way I act. The future is full of possibility, and with God’s help, I can change my situation.”
Every Monday through Friday, as soon as school is out, more than 100 Jets, from elementary school through high school, come to two United Methodist churches—Epworth and Pennsylvania Avenue. During the next two hours they have refreshments, play games, share feelings, study the Bible and sing praises to God.
Clarice Johnson, Skyline’s director of education, says one of the ministry’s major objectives is helping Jets learn to constructively handle their anger and other negative feelings.
“At Pennsylvania Avenue Church, we tell our Jets to visualize dumping their anger in the cardboard box when they come in the door,” says Clarice. “During our sessions, if a conflict develops over whose turn it is to do something, we take time out and ask the ones who are fighting, ‘Did you forget to dump your anger in the box?’ Nearly always, they smile, walk over to the box, dump their anger, come back and work things out peacefully.”
At Epworth Church, a different method is used to help Jets work through their anger.
“During sharing time, everyone is encouraged to express his or her feelings—both negative and positive. The act of sharing spreads the load around,” says Clarice. “Once anger is diluted, it is more easily managed. We discover that we don’t have to carry our anger, or any other burden, alone—that friends are there to help us handle it; and that God is always near to help us change bad situations and to make the most of the ones that cannot be changed.”
Jets are taught that they are not helpless victims, Clarice explains. “We say to our kids, ‘You always have a choice, even if it’s a limited choice. With God’s help, you can make a difference in your life.”‘
Youth in the program are taught the Jet decision-making process: observe and judge the facts, weigh the values, make a decision, act on it and accept the consequences.
Clarice says that a student in middle school was about to get into a fist fight recently that could have caused him to be expelled, or could have ended in someone being severely injured. A Jet reminded him that he did not have to fight—even though that was his usual way of dealing with conflict. He walked his friend through the Jet decision-making process. His friend cooled off, and differences were settled without blows.
Says Clarice: “We encourage Jets to be peacemakers rather than participants in violence, but we can’t make that choice for them. We teach them that they have to choose, and that they have to accept the consequences of the choices they make.”
The Jets ministry, which began in 1975, is built on the premise that a personal relationship with God is the foundation of our attitudes, which in turn, influences our actions and shapes our lives.
Clarice knows the Jets’ ministry can change lives. It has changed hers.
“It’s difficult to grow up, period!” Clarice says. “But it’s especially difficult to grow up poor; and to be convinced that you are limited, and always will be; that this is your life, and it will never get any better.”
That’s how Clarice—the seventh of ten children—felt about herself when she was in her early teens. And the feeling was reinforced every day in her relationships, even by people who had good intentions.
“I can remember a test that I didn’t do too well on,” Clarice recalls. “The white teacher in the integrated school said to me, ‘Oh, that’s okay. You did the best you could.’ I was saying, No, that’s not okay. I’m a good student and this is not my very best. I remember being very hurt. I asked my older sister why my teacher expected so little of me, and she said, ‘It’s because you are black. She thinks you can’t do any better. And you are going to have to learn to live with that—not just from your teacher, but from nearly everybody. They think black people are dumb.”‘
“My teacher was a kind person,” Clarice reflected. “I know she didn’t mean to hurt me. She just didn’t know any better. I didn’t know anything about white people, and she didn’t know anything about black people.”
During her early teens, Clarice began to sense that for a black person in the inner city, doors to a better life seemed closed and locked. She told herself she had to accept reality and make the most of it.
But then came the summer of 1977, when Clarice turned 15 years old. She had an opportunity to earn money during the summer through a federal job training program that was set up to help youth from low-income families. She signed up to work for Skyline Urban Ministries in a children’s academy.
“I remember going into the training session,” Clarice says. “There was one other non-white person in the room. I wasn’t sure what this experience was going to be like. The leaders started talking this strange talk about how every person is unique and unrepeatable, and how possibilities are tremendous, and how the future is open for everyone.”
Clarice was skeptical at first.
“I said to myself, Yeah, the future is open. Tell this to inner city kids and they’ll laugh. But after a week of training, I felt like my future was open. My eyes were opened, too. I saw there was more than just my corner of the block. I was hearing that I could make it happen—that I had power. Me!”
Clarice began to pay serious attention to the curriculum that she was being trained to teach others.
“I was ready to go out there and give it an honest try. Not just to teach the lessons to other children, but to learn the lessons myself. That was the summer when my life began; I really started living!”
Clarice had grown up in a Christian home. “I had always been taught that God is real; and that he is in me, not just in heaven. But now, I had a new impression of my self-worth. The Holy Spirit had come into my life. I knew I really mattered. I felt deep inside myself that with God’s help, I could do something with myself!”
Clarice had a great experience teaching that summer, and she went back to school that fall with renewed determination to excel. And excel she did. She graduated from high school with honors. Clarice earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Central Oklahoma, and taught school for the next five years while finishing a master’s degree.
Then she focused on her most ambitious dream.
“My mother had taught me that a good education is the key to the kind of life I want to live. I dreamed of earning a Ph.D. It seemed like a childhood fantasy, but Skyline taught me to look beyond the barriers and to dream big.”
During the next three years, Clarice completed a doctoral program at Oklahoma State University—all the while teaching at OSU and the University of Central Oklahoma.
Clarice was making more money teaching than she had ever expected to earn. “As the kids say, I was living large,” Clarice says with a chuckle.
Job opportunities began to open. In fact, she had teaching offers from two universities. But she declined both. Instead, she returned to Skyline for a salary that was significantly less than her other offers.
Why did she turn down better pay and a chance to get away from the inner city?
“This is what God put me here for,” Clarice says. “All the doors that God opened for me led here.”
Actually, Clarice had never left Skyline. She has been serving in the Skyline ministry nearly half her life—ever since that summer of 1977, when she was 15. All through her college and graduate school days, even though she was extremely busy, she made time to work with the Jets and other Skyline programs.
She rarely works only nine-to-five; she takes work home with her. In fact, she often takes children home. Some stay weekends. A few parents have even offered to let her keep their kids forever, and the kids have not objected.
“I want to feel that I have worked at making a difference, that I have given back to inner-city children what was given to me,” Clarice Johnson explains. “This is my chance to start paying my dues. I want to help those who are impoverished, emotionally and spiritually as well as financially—who feel embarrassed about who they are—to discover that they are God’s children.”
“I pray that young people who think they are stuck in a dismal situation will discover that Christ can set them free and empower them to be who they are meant to be— ‘unique and unrepeatable.’”
Boyce A. Bowdon is the director of communications for the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church.
by Steve | Mar 11, 1993 | Archive - 1993
Archive: The Devaluing of Evangelism
By Bishop Louis Schwengerdt
March/April 1993
For 175 years, we the people called “Methodist” were enthusiastic and evangelistic. In the 1960s we stopped being both. A dramatic change took place. We became a different church. What happened? Why did we change?
Be reassured that some United Methodist churches are still enthusiastic and evangelistic. The faith of those in the congregation is deepening, and they are reaching out with the message of Jesus Christ to those outside their church walls. If we could by some miracle clone those pastors, or persuade others to be like them in theology and commitment, we could once again reform this continent.
Professor Earl Marlatt used to tell his students at Perkins School of Theology that the poets of today are the philosophers of tomorrow and the politicians of the future. Ideas are tremendously powerful and ultimately life-changing. They can either establish a communist government or cause its collapse. Ideas can give birth to a democratic nation or destroy the moral foundation upon which a free society must be built, causing societal collapse.
Merely changing programs, altering structures, or even relocating General Board offices will not bring about the renewal we seek; because the forces that came into prominence in the 1960s have changed our souls, shaped our attitudes and even modified our vision of who we are and who we want to be as United Methodists. Only a major renewal can deepen the faith of those who are already sitting in the pews, and give our churches the spiritual energies that are needed in order to reach secular people with the gospel message.
Let us look at the first idea that led to the forces bringing about that tremendous 1960s theological shift. In 1932, William Ernest Hocking’s book, Rethinking Missions: A Layman’s Inquiry After One Hundred Years, argued that:
I. Christian denominations should not try to convert people from their ethnic religions. Hocking believed that Christians should help the Buddhists, Muslims or Hindus to be better representatives of their own religions. He further suggested that all religious traditions can learn from each other; that Christians should share the best of their religion, and accept the best from other religions.
This view of the goal of missions was taught in most United Methodist seminaries; it was required reading when I attended Perkins School of Theology from 1947-1950. Arnold Toynbee, the world-renowned Anglican philosopher and historian, continued Hocking’s argument in his book, Christianity Among The Religions of The World. Toynbee wrote that it is vital for Christians “to try to purge our Christianity of the traditional western belief that Christianity is unique.”
Dr. D.C. Mulder, a World Council of Churches (WCC) official, carried this idea even further by stating at the WCC’s Vancouver meeting in 1983 that we should not evangelize at all, because it makes it difficult to have dialogue with people of other religious faiths.
The ideas of Hocking, Toynbee and Mulder are the dominant theological positions held today by the majority in the WCC, the National Council of Churches (NCC), and our own General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM).
Regardless of what we might wish, the majority in power positions today hold to Hocking’s view of the equal value of all religions. The decline of overseas missionaries for all mainline Protestant churches from 1962 to 1979 was enormous, and was the direct result of a confusion in the need for evangelism brought on by the ideas expressed by Hocking, Toynbee, and Mulding. The number of missionary volunteers declined in the Episcopal Church by 79 percent; the Lutheran Church of America by 70 percent; the United Presbyterian Church in the USA by 72 percent; the United Church of Christ by 68 percent; the Christian Church Disciples by 66 percent; the United Methodist Church by 46 percent; and the American Lutheran Church by 44 percent.
I witnessed the power of Hocking’s position four months before I retired from serving as a bishop. For a number of years, the New Mexico Annual Conference has been a sponsor of a ministry to the Navajos called The Four Corners Native American Ministry. There are two GBGM missionaries involved in this work, and for a number of years this ministry has been approved as an Advance Special. United Methodists across America have been most generous in their support for this vital ministry, giving more than the cap placed on this Advance Special by the GBGM.
The Four Corners Ministry believes fervently in evangelism. Every summer Henry Begay, a Navajo pastor appointed to the Shiprock UM Church, takes his tent and holds revival meetings in the remote parts of the Navajo nation. To members of all the clans, Henry Begay has been an answer to their prayers, because in their Bible study groups – which are like the house churches in China – they have been praying that God would show them the way to relate to Christians beyond the Navajo nation. The UM Church is the fastest growing denomination in the Navajo nation, with six new congregations planted in the last seven years.
Early in 1992, a complaint was registered with the GBGM that the Four Comers Ministry was imposing on them the white man’s standard, because the Navajo pastors were rejecting the ancient tradition of taking the drug peyote in worship. These pastors were also preaching that faith in Christ could free the Navajos from the fearful taboos of the night-time runners.
GBGM staff persons believing that the ancient religion was of equal value to Christianity decided to drop the Four Comers Ministry from the approved Advance Special list. This action was taken without consulting the bishop of the area or any of the conference representatives to the National Division of the GBGM, the Board of Global Ministries, or the UM Women. These representatives and others immediately met with all of the Navajos present at annual conference, stating their objection to the dismissal of the Advance Special listing. They requested that a consultation be held about the Navajo nation in the fall of 1992. Dr. Randolph Nugent, General Secretary of the GBGM, a man who does believe in evangelism and the saving power of Christ, was present. Thanks to his witness and that of other concerned Christians present, the decision was made to restore the Four Corners Ministry to the approved Advance Special list.
For those of us who are committed to evangelism, this story ends with good news. However, many of the decisions about missions are still being made according to the philosophy of William Hocking, the ideology which declares that it is not necessary to convert anyone to the Christian faith because all religions are of equal value.
The second idea that changed mainline Protestantism and the UM Church was:
II. The adoption of the Freudian ethic as the accepted moral code. When I was in seminary, the depth psychologists and the psychoanalytical physicians were the gurus who believed that they had a greater understanding of human nature than any theologians or biblical scholars. We turned to these doctors of the subconscious to heal us from all traumas and neurotic or psychotic behavior. Dr. Sigmund Freud, in his book Civilization and Its Dis-Contents, expressed concepts that were accepted by all therapists, both lay and clerical. An illustration Freud used to describe his attitude toward the Victorian moral code was one of a starving man seated at an elegant dinner table, waiting for each course to come, and being required to use the proper utensils for each bite. According to Freud, what the man wanted and needed to do was to take the food in both hands and devour it. Freud blamed the Victorian culture for repressing and controlling the instincts. He believed that repression caused the illness he saw in dreams and in psychoanalytical therapy.
According to Freud, another major cause of neuroses was the way parents treated their children, hemming them in with rules and regulations. He believed that if children had complete freedom to choose, and if they were allowed to express their subconscious desires, they would naturally develop patterns of wholeness and emotional stability. Many children growing up in this era came out of psychotherapy blaming their parents for all their emotional problems. ‘There are no bad children,” the therapy said, “only bad parents.”
In pastoral counseling we were taught that we should never ask any judgmental questions or use the word “sin” for any behavior. We were to hold up an emotional mirror before the counselee. When they saw their problem, they would correct their difficulties without any help from the counselor. We were not to use the word “sin,” because the problem was the conditioning by society and the parents, not the action of the troubled one. Making a moral statement would impose a code of ethics on the counselee, blocking the inner search for the traumatic situations that were causing the behavior. From this theory came the popular phrases, “If it feels good, do it”; “Let it all hang out”; “Look out for number one”; “Grab all the gusto”; and “Go for it.”
The influence of this philosophy on mainline Protestant churches was so powerful that we stopped preaching about sin, salvation, repentance and redemption. We removed the Ten Commandments from the Communion ritual. We decided that sins are forgiven before there was repentance, recompense for the sin, or a desire to rise and sin no more. Our preaching dropped the biblical language and concentrated on themes of tolerance, acceptance, affirmation and community building.
It was not until the Civil Rights movement that the word “sin” reentered America’s consciousness. Now the sins are racism, sexism and ageism. We do not call promiscuous sex, breaking the Sabbath, coveting, or bearing false witness, sins. We talk of criminal justice, but not of justice or the victims of criminals. We do not insist that criminals make recompense to those they have harmed. A few judges are requiring this to be done, but they have had little support from Protestant churches.
Secular society has completely adopted the Freudian ethic. The tragedy is that so many of our church members follow suit. We see church members coveting, buying on Sunday, consuming alcohol and drugs, lying, ruthlessly climbing and using power just like secular people. Success in the ministry is measured by secular standards of salary and church size. We speak of church growth in terms of success rather than changed life styles.
The inculcation of the secular value system into Christianity has caused many believers to feel that the church doors are definitely open to visitors, but we do not want to impose our desires on them. If they wish to come, they will. Until we “offer them Christ,” there does not seem to be much difference between those outside and those within the church. This thought leads into the third idea that brought about a significant change within the United Methodist Church:
III. The erosion of biblical authority for moral and spiritual living. When people asked the late Carl Michaelson, “What is the difference between the old hermeneutics and the new hermeneutics?” his reply was clear. “In the old hermeneutics we interpreted the Scripture. In the new hermeneutics, the Scripture interprets us.”
We need both the old and the new interpretation of Scriptures. We cannot have too much knowledge about the Bible. However, what has happened in our time is that we gain the knowledge, without then applying that knowledge. The new hermeneutics, according to Michaelson, has to do with the application of our biblical knowledge.
For example, we need to go beyond understanding the sociological and economic situation at the time of Jesus when he said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be fed.” We need to ask ourselves, “Do I truly hunger and thirst after righteousness, or do I just hunger and thirst for things, for power and praise?”
Knowledge about the Scriptures does not automatically make us spiritually alive. This comes only as we apply what we know about the Scriptures to our daily lives. You may recall the conflict Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer had with many Lutheran and Free Church pastors during the reign of Adolph Hitler. During his first year in office, Hitler decreed that he would not interfere with affairs of the church as long as the church did not interfere with affairs of the state. All churches would be free to evangelize, but not to criticize the Third Reich. This won him great support from the majority of the clergy, especially ministers of the Free Churches who had been harassed by the Lutheran State religion.
Bonhoeffer would listen to and read their sermons about the recent de-mythologizing theories, their fine descriptions, and their appeals to be loyal to the church. But he noted that they said nothing as Hitler began to invade countries and kill millions. He felt that they were leaving out a vital part of the gospel.
Bonhoeffer established criteria for evaluating a sermon which he believed every pastor should follow. They are as valid today as they were in his time:
Is it faithful to the Scriptures?
Is it faithful to the text?
Is it faithful to the confession?
Is it faithful to the congregation?
Does it establish a relationship between the Old and the New Testament?
Does it establish the relationship between the Law and the Gospel?
Bonhoeffer did not want his students to omit any Scripture when a question about the relationship of the Law and the Gospel was asked. One reason we are not evangelistic today is that most people in our church eliminate from the faith by which they live those passages that apply to being evangelistic. It is easy to do this when we put ourselves in control of the Scriptures, and use our Bible training to say that certain passages applied only to former times and have, therefore, no validity today.
An example of the selective use of Scripture to fit a preconceived idea can be found in a statement by the United Methodist committee appointed to study homosexuality: “The church cannot teach that all biblical references and illusions to sexual practices are binding today just because they are in the Bible. Specific references and illusions must be examined in the light of the basic biblical witness and their respective socio-cultural contexts.”
If the committee were to ask the questions that Bonhoeffer asked his students to make of every sermon text, they could not have made that statement. When we take all of the Scriptures seriously, we will have come a long way on the path toward establishing the Law and the Gospels as spiritual and moral guides. As long as we read the Scriptures with preconceived notions of what is valid and not valid, what we will follow and not follow, we have eroded the authority of the Scriptures, and taken the road toward making the UM Church a secular church.
The combined power of these three concepts is awesome. Hocking’s view that all religions are equally good, Freud’s practiced view that the only sins are the restrictions that culture and parents place on the developing child, and the current popular view that we can be selective in using and excluding Scripture passages so that they fit our own ideas have taken us down the path toward being a secular church. Some of our present members are comfortable in that setting; but there are others who hunger and thirst after righteousness, who want to be told how to change their lifestyle to become more Christ-like. They cannot be fed by a secular church, by a church that is just a center for good works and fellowship rather than a saving station.
We will never be an evangelistic church until our theology changes.
Louis Schowengerdt (1926-1998) is a retired bishop of the United Methodist Church. This article is adapted from an address delivered to the 1993 Council on Evangelism in Houston.
by Steve | Mar 11, 1993 | Archive - 1993
Archive: The Priority of Evangelism
By John Ed Mathison
Forget about all of those theoretical books on church growth. John Ed Mathison has seen Frazer Memorial United Methodist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, multiply from a 400-member congregation in 1970 to its present mega-church status. Without question, Mathison believes that evangelism has been the key to growth. —the editors
In order to develop a model for growth, our church created a planning group called the “Joel Committee,” taken from the Old Testament prophet who encouraged “the old men to dream dreams and the young men to see visions” (2:28).
Prayerful planning is essential for growth. We must discover God’s plan for our congregation and implement it, coming to terms with the priorities of the church. Congregations do not have the resources to spend their time, energy, or money without defining priorities.
After prayerful consideration, the priority for Frazer was established as that of making disciples, that is, evangelism.
The committee took time to carefully define evangelism because the word has been so misunderstood, producing regretful negative connotations with too many people. Therefore, we felt that our definition of evangelism had to reflect Scriptures such as: Matthew 28:18-20; Mark 16:14-16; Luke 24:45-48; John 20:19-22; and Acts 1:6-8.
On the basis of these biblical mandates, evangelism includes every member of the congregation. As such, evangelism—introducing people to Jesus—is the starting point for all of the ministries of the church. Stewardship, education, social action—all are the products of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Stewardship and tithing are important, but people do not tithe until first their own commitment to Christ is in order. Social concern is crucial, but the motivation must come out of what Jesus Christ has done in our individual lives.
Frazer’s definition
Evangelism is the proclamation, by word and deed, of the saving act of God in Jesus Christ to people, with a desire that they will decide for faith and become Christian disciples through the church.
Each word of the above definition is important.
The word proclamation is used rather than the word preach, because preaching in today’s culture usually denotes what happens behind the pulpit. Proclamation in the New Testament was what happened in the marketplace as people shared with each other concerning the event of Jesus Christ.
Proclamation is the “good news” that God has become known to us in the form of Jesus: “The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, … full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
Proclaiming the “good news” concerning the kingdom of God does not deal with ideas about God, but with the reality of God.
Proclamation is not an ideal, or a set of truths to be grasped, but sharing what God’s grace has done in your own life. The validity of the proclamation is not measured in terms of success, but rather in terms of faithfulness to the biblical mandate to “witness and make disciples.”
Evangelism is not having a revival once a year, or having some kind of special worship service, but that which happens when lay people share with each other in their everyday living.
The heart of Frazer’s growth is based on lay people, not clergy. Many churches have a concept that the pastor is paid to be the evangelist. But the pastor does not have the contacts with unchurched people that the laity have.
Our definition also places the emphasis on word and deed. Who a person is often speaks more loudly than what the person says. Lifestyle communicates and proclaims.
The Bible is not only a record of the historical acts of God, but a touchstone to show the activity of God for today: “It was not with our fathers that the Lord made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive today” (Deuteronomy 5:3). Biblical proclamation is not commitment to formulated dogma of the past, but is open to God’s dealing with people today as God’s Word engages our contemporary situation.
Evangelism is not just a matter of proclaiming, but also a “desire that people will decide for faith and become Christian disciples.” This brings the hearer to a time of decision. Our message is proclaimed with a desire that the hearer will respond for faith.
Finally, evangelism aims at the making of “disciples through the church.” The Christian life is a converting process. This is why the term evangelism, when rightly understood, is synonymous with “making disciples.” Evangelism happens as God continues to work in the lives of disciples, reaching out through them to make new disciples, and making their own discipleship ever more full and true.
The Bible teaches in John 3:3 that we must be “born again.” Doctors are not allowed to deliver babies and leave them lying on the street. They would have their licenses rejected and be prosecuted for malpractice. Someone has to feed the baby, change the baby and, care for all the baby’s needs.
People who decide for faith are reborn as babies. Some evangelism efforts just end there and leave them on the street, and “babies” have no chance of survival by themselves. We must nurture and care for them until they become mature enough to become reproducing disciples.
In the Frazer definition of evangelism, the phrase “through the church” is essential. This is a structure of accountability. The congregation is designed and gifted to assume the nurturing, discipling process. This means that the church has a great responsibility for each person, and each person has an ever-increasing responsibility to become involved in the whole process of making disciples.
Assimilation, therefore, is a vital part of evangelism. It becomes important for the person who has made a new commitment and joined the church to become involved in a small group and in a function of ministry.
The concept for the church is really understood at two levels—the overall community of the membership of the church, and the different subgroups or “communities” that are formed around several different dynamics. Some of these small groups are based on special interests or talents; some are sociological, economic or vocational groupings. It is essential for the new member to become involved in a small group and in a function of service.
The purpose of these small groups is to minister to the world and to the community itself. It is crucial for the direction of interest to be both out to the world and in toward the group—for service and fellowship.
In summary, the purpose of evangelism is to produce disciples who by word and deed will proclaim the good news in the day-to-day situations of life. This proclaiming calls and gathers people into the church, which provides communities where the new disciple can find fellowship and service. Evangelism becomes self-propagating in the sense that proclamation produces disciples who, through the church, become proclaimers who produce disciples, and so on.
Each ministry at Frazer is evaluated yearly by the Council on Ministries, according to the criterion of whether or not it is making disciples. Frazer does not have the time, money, or energy to be involved in good programs that are not making disciples.
The Result
An excellent example of evangelism in operation is seen in the lives of two people in the Frazer family. It all began when some members took seriously the importance of carrying the good news to all people—even to those in prison. About eight years ago, one of the prisoners named Tommy Waites made a commitment to Jesus Christ.
The prison ministry helped disciple him in the Christian faith. Tommy was serving a life sentence. About six years later, he was up for parole. Two of the requirements for parole were to have a place to live and a place to work. After seeing several doors close for Tommy’s employment, the committee suggested that the church hire him as part of the custodial staff, which it did.
Tommy has no formal education, but he is a diligent student of the Bible and an excellent communicator. He loves to talk to people while he does his custodial work. He even became an extremely popular Sunday school teacher.
About five years ago a man in Montgomery, Wes Strane, who had not been to church in years, was invited to come to Frazer. Wes did not really like being in church and resisted coming, but finally decided to play it safe by coming on a Sunday night. During the closing prayer time, he saw a seriously handicapped young man trying to make his way down to the altar. The man was holding on to each pew as he went forward. God used the scene of that young man to touch the heart of Wes Strane. He thought to himself, That boy is crippled in body, but I am crippled in my mind.
Wes got up from his pew and helped the boy down to the altar, and knelt beside him. It was there that he confronted the reality of a God who really cared for him and was calling him to be a disciple. Wes made that commitment. He is an example of what can happen when people invite others to church!
Wes joined a Sunday school class and became interested in the prison ministry.
One Sunday morning Tommy Waites was invited to teach a large adult class. Wes Strane was sitting with his wife on the front row. Tommy was thanking the church for reaching out to him in prison, and was describing what God had done in his life. He said, “One place God had a hard time changing me was in my attitude toward white policemen. I hated white policemen. But when God changed my life, he changed my attitude toward them, and today I have learned to love everybody—even white policemen!”
Just then Wes Strane stood up and said, “I am an ex-white policeman. I didn’t go to church for years until I was invited to come to Frazer. God has changed my life. The one area where God has had the most difficulty with me is in my attitude toward black prisoners. But I am here today to witness to the fact that God has changed my hatred of black prisoners into a genuine love.”
At that point, these two men walked toward each other and embraced in front of the class. It was the most moving lesson that had ever been taught in that room. It was an example of the results of evangelism. You cannot legislate human relationships and race relations. The answer to the prison problems lies in the kind of prison ministry that changes the hearts and attitudes of people. The answer to changing racial prejudice is found through evangelism—making disciples.
Shortly after this, some lay people suggested that Tommy should be involved in a large housing project where we wanted to start a ministry. It is the worst drug-pushing area of our city. Several different churches and organizations had tried to start ministries there, but had failed.
We talked with Tommy about starting a ministry there. The first person to volunteer to help him was Wes Strane! Today these two provide a vital service in the Riverside Heights Housing Project. On Sunday mornings they have about 75 adults in worship, and often have more than 100 boys and girls in Sunday school. They are disciples making disciples with an important ministry in that section of town.
This is why evangelism is a priority. Social concerns, stewardship, education—all are expressions of love motivated by what Jesus Christ has done within the lives of disciples. Through evangelism, every member becomes essential to the heartbeat of the church.
John Ed Mathison is the senior pastor of Frazer Memorial United Methodist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. This article is adapted from his book, Tried & True: Eleven Principles of Church Growth from Frazer Memorial United Methodist Church. Copyright 1992 by Discipleship Resources, P.O. Box 840, Nashville, Tennessee 37202. Adapted by permission of the publisher.
by Steve | Jan 13, 1993 | Archive - 1993
Archive: The Touch of God
Hungering after the presence of God will bring the church back to Life.
By Sandy S. Kirk
“I felt like the dead sent to raise the dead,” groaned John Wesley after fruitless attempts to convert the lost. Yet isn’t this the cry of the United Methodist Church today? In the midst of a dying world, sadly we must admit: We feel like the dead sent to raise the dead! “We are wasting away like a leukemia victim when the blood transfusions no longer work,” laments Bishop Richard Wilke in his book, And Are We Yet Alive? (Abingdon). Former church history professor, Gerald Anderson, reports that at the rate we are losing members, by the year 2045, the number of United Methodists left in this nation will be a whopping—two!
John Wesley, however, refused to be complacent about his own spiritual deadness. He was hungry for a witness of the Spirit, the assurance of his salvation, a touch from God in his heart. A healthy spiritual appetite urged him onward in his search for God.
What about us? Do we have a healthy spiritual hunger for the presence of God? If not, perhaps this is one reason for the dryness in the church today.
In his book A Thirst for God, Sherwood Wirt explains this sad but profound truth: “When we are physically hungry and miss a meal, our appetite becomes ravenous. But if time passes and we receive no spiritual food, we may lose our appetite for it. … Malnutrition sets in and we cease to care. ”
Could malnutrition be destroying the United Methodist Church today and we have ceased to care? If so, how can a robust spiritual hunger be restored? Augustine gave the answer: “I tasted and it made me hunger and thirst: You touched me, and I burned to know Your peace.”
You see, in physical hunger, we eat and our hunger is satisfied. But in spiritual hunger, we taste and our hunger becomes voracious. The more we eat, the hungrier we become. As St. Bernard said, “We taste of Thee, the Living Bread, and long to feast upon Thee still: We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead, and thirst our souls from Thee to fill.”
This was the kind of hunger that drove John Wesley. The presence of God was missing from the church of his day, most of all from his own life, and he was panting after God with all his heart. His throat was parched for the living water, and he knew—the same God who creates the thirst will quench it with himself.
One can feel the aching dryness of his soul as he cries, “I felt like the dead sent to raise the dead, a Judas sent to cast out devils, a lion in a den of Daniels. I could only pray in my despair: ‘Oh, thou Savior of men, save me from trusting in any thing but Thee! Draw me after Thee! Let me be emptied of myself, and then fill me with all peace and joy in believing.”‘
Charles Wesley’s Search for God
John was not alone in this questing after God; his brother Charles also had an insatiable thirst for God’s presence. Like John, Charles had returned from a disappointing trip to America, and he too was desperately hungry for God.
On Pentecost Sunday, May 21, 1738, Charles awoke with a sense of great expectancy bubbling within him. With all his might he prayed, “Oh, Jesus, You have said, ‘I will come to you.’ You have said, ‘I will send him, the Comforter, unto you.’ You have said, ‘My Father and I will make our abode with you.’ You are God, who cannot lie. I wholly rely upon your most true promise. …”
And this is the secret.
Charles was not asking for wealth or healing or power or gifts or anointing. He was asking for Christ himself. Later he wrote, “In me a quenchless thirst inspire, a longing, infinite desire; and fill my craving heart. Less than Thyself O do not give; in might Thyself within me live; come all Thou hast and art. ”
Indeed, this was the highest kind of prayer. He was asking God for God. With a yearning heart, he was knocking on the door of heaven, asking continually for the promise of the Father, the blessed Holy Spirit.
This is the prayer God waits to hear, for on that same night something amazing happened to Charles, who had been deathly ill and was staying in the home of a godly mechanic and his sister.
On the same day he had prayed so fervently for the Holy Spirit, the mechanic’s sister received a dream from the Lord, and was commanded to tell Charles he would recover in body and soul. For two days she struggled with the message as it surged and burned in her spirit. Finally, after her brother’s prodding, she went to Charles’ room and thundered, “In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise and thou shalt be healed of thine infirmities!”
When Charles realized these words were from Christ himself, though spoken through a human vessel, he reached out to Jesus with his whole heart and took hold of the promise. Like a bucket scooped down into a fathomless well, he dipped into the wells of salvation and drank deeply of the heavenly waters. And in that one divine moment, Charles Wesley was born again.
The next day the power of God came upon Charles and led him into deep intercessory prayer for his brother John. As he prayed, the Lord’s presence was so strong, he said, “I almost believed the Holy Spirit was coming upon him.”
And indeed he was! Within 48 hours of this earnest intercession, the power of God fell mightily upon John. May 24, 1738, John Wesley entered that obscure little room on Aldersgate Street in London, and as the powerful words of Martin Luther were being read, the Holy Spirit fell upon him and ignited the flame of Christ within his heart forever.
The Holy Spirit is Our Wesleyan Heritage
God touched John and Charles Wesley with his Spirit, and their lives burst into flames that eventually spread throughout all of England. We need that touch today. It is our heritage.
Without the literal presence of the Holy Spirit in the church, like faith without works, we are dead. Charles Spurgeon explained, “Without the Spirit of God we can do nothing. We are as ships without wind or chariots without steeds. Like branches without sap, we are withered. Like coals without fire, we are useless. As an offering without the sacrificial flame, we are unaccepted.”
Yes, we need to seek the fullness of God’s spirit, like John and Charles Wesley, until we find Him. Wrote Bishop Wilke, “The wind of the Spirit, ah, that is what we need most. … We cannot baptize only with water or we die. We must baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit.”
“He Touched Me”
I sat in a meeting with a group of Methodists one night 20 years ago. I had been earnestly seeking to be filled with the Holy Spirit for months. That day a deep, cleansing wave of repentance had swept through my heart and prepared me for what was getting ready to happen.
As the people joined in the hymn, “He Touched Me,” I was silently and desperately praying, ” O Come, Lord Jesus! Come, Lord Jesus. … ”
I didn’t realize at the time that this is the prayer God waits to hear. But suddenly, the Holy Spirit came upon me and flooded my spirit. I felt as though every fiber of my being had been awakened and filled with God’s presence. Waves of his love coursed through my heart, and desire for God’s word ignited in an instant.
That touch from God changed my life forever, but I made a terrible mistake. Fifteen years passed before I learned the importance of asking continually to be refilled with God’s Spirit. Said Dwight L. Moody, “A great many think that because they have been filled once, they are going to be full for all time. But oh, we are leaky vessels! We have to be kept under the fountain all the time in order to stay full.”
Let’s End the Debate and Pray!
It’s time to be done with the divisive debate over “when ” we are filled with the Holy Spirit. The question is: are we being filled now?
We need to invite the Holy Spirit to come and fill us afresh every day. Then we need to invite God to come to our bone-dry and languishing churches. Like John and Charles Wesley, we need to pray,” Breathe, O breathe Thy loving Spirit into every troubled breast!”
If the heavens seem shut, if rains of revival are not falling upon the church, we need to do just what God said to do in times like this:
“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain … if My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land ” (II Chronicles 7:13-14).
This is not a time to pack our bags and abandon ship. It’s a time to humble ourselves at the wounded feet of Christ; to seek his presence in prayer; to repent of our loss of spiritual appetite, and ask the Lord to open heaven and rain the spirit of revival upon the church. Said Charles Spurgeon, “Death and condemnation is preferable to a church that is not yearning after the Spirit, crying and groaning until the Spirit has worked mightily in her midst.”
Won’t you join with Methodists all over this world to pray, “O come Holy Spirit! Breathe upon our malnourished hearts until we can feast once again on the presence of God in the church. Then at last we will be like a church—risen from the dead, bursting with God’s life, and bringing that living bread to a hungry, dying world.”
Sandy S. Kirk is a freelance writer and contributing editor to Good News. She is a Bible teacher and the wife of R.L. Kirk, pastor of St. Luke’s UM Church in Lubbock, Texas.
by Steve | Jan 12, 1993 | Archive - 1993
Archive: Interview with Thomas Oden
What caused you to begin seriously re-thinking your theology?
As a 40 year old scholar I was goaded, pestered and badgered into reading the ancient Christian writers by an incomparable, caring Jewish friend—Will Herberg. A central irony of my personal story was that I did not become a decent concentrated Christian theologian until I had been accosted, arrested and admonished by a no-nonsense traditional Jew. Even after I had been teaching for 12 years in a seminary, Herberg was far more aware of the classic, consensual Christian tradition than was I who had been educated, ordained and specifically employed to be a Christian theologian.
What events were pivotal for you in recharting your course?
I got a shock when my clever, resourceful son dropped out of school during his junior year of high school. That sent a clear signal to me that I had not been earnestly listening to him as a father. The crisis with Clark placed a restraining torque on my previous liberal trajectory as a nondirective Spock-speak parent. Clark, in time, would splendidly reenter the educational sphere, to become an exceedingly well-trained, well-credentialed, hi-tech engineer.
The Supreme Court decision on abortion, weekly meetings with Will Herberg, disaffection with the McGovernizing Democratic Party and the attempt to do experimental student-centered contractual teaching with spiritually snarled student dropouts of hip culture—all these factors gradually moved me toward an incremental reversal that took 10 years (1968-78) to come full circle. Later came a penetrating dialogue with Eastern Orthodox theologians—Vigen Guroian, John Breck, Tom Hopko and David Ford – and theologians of the Roman Catholic tradition, especially Avery Dulles and Joseph Ratzinger. The Holy Spirit was not impatient in allowing me plenty of time to work through this transition, guiding me through a tangled path before coming home to classical Christianity.
The increase in abortion-on-demand caused you to rethink the values of modernity. How did this happen?
In a late-night session at the International Hotel in Geneva, while attending the 1966 World Council of Churches World Conference on Church and Society, I sat up to wee hours debating with Paul Ramsey on abortion. When, in the following year, I read Paul VI’ s encyclical on sexuality, Humanae Vitae, while I was still contending for liberalized abortion legislation, my conscience was stung, but not transformed.
The extreme 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, leaving the unborn child defenseless, finally brought me to an acutely nauseous revulsion over my own vacillating participation in abortion advocacy. Once I had crossed over the line of moral nausea, I could never return. It changed my life not only about covenant sexuality, but about the wider socialist-progressive political ethos to which I had been uncritically committed.
You have called the church back to classical Christian teaching or what some would call “Orthodoxy.” What is orthodoxy?
Orthodoxy means thinking with the ancient church about the apostolic preaching. Christian orthodoxy is textually defined by the apostolic testimony, as a fulfillment commentary on the Hebrew Bible. Christian orthodoxy is succinctly defined sacramentally by the baptismal formula (in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit), and defined confessionally by the ancient baptismal confession with its precisely remembered rule of faith as recalled in the Nicene, Apostles’ and Athanasian Creeds with their subsequent interpretations. Under heretical attack, supplementary definitions emerged in the seven ecumenical councils and in other consensually received regional councils that have held fast through the changes of Protestant reform and modern messianisms.
Classic Christian orthodoxy is that tradition that has repeatedly centered the consenting church in the early consensual interpretation of the apostolic witness. Why important? In order that anyone who comes to receive holy communion may be free to receive it as apostolically delivered, as thinking with the church so as not to receive a false rendering of the apostolic testimony, but the same testimony as that attested by the apostles. As Orthodox Judaism calls Jewish congregations back to classical rabbinic sources, and as Roman Catholic orthodoxy returns constantly to drink from the well of the Roman teaching tradition, so does classical Christian teaching among Protestants serve in our time to call us back—as did Wesley—not merely to our Protestant roots but to our pre-Protestant grounding in early Christian scriptural interpretation.
If we are firm on the primacy of Scripture, why are the consensual teachings of the first five centuries so important?
Only to make clear how the earliest church was reading Scripture. The consensual writers—Athanasius, Basil, John Chrysostom, Gregory Nazianzen in the East, and Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory I in the West—constantly warned hearers not to listen to these men if they spoke contrary to Scripture. They said in effect: if I happen inadvertently to say something contrary to the apostolic testimony that you have repeatedly heard in the services of worship where the Hebrew Bible and the gospels and epistles are regularly read and interpreted—if that happens do not follow me, but Scripture as interpreted by the mind of the believing church.
There is nothing in the central tradition of orthodox hermeneutics that pits tradition against Scripture. Even the oral tradition that was remembered by Basil and others was never pitted against the written tradition of apostolic writings, but only received gratefully as a complement consistent with them. There is no way to validate or argue for the orthodox tradition without continuous reference to Scripture, since orthodoxy is nothing more or less than a consensual ecumenical tradition of scriptural interpretation.
How have your colleagues at Drew and across the UM Church responded to your theological “reversal”, as you call it?
It was not a conversion of 180 degrees, but a substantial course-correction that involved a re-tracking.
Several responses predominate: Some cheer and say I wish I had said that and am grateful for your saying it. Other look at me with a vague sense of pity, and sometimes with crocodile tears, because I now have by my own admission put myself in the position of wishing to contribute nothing new to the history of theology. Too bad about Tom, they say. Once he was creative, innovative, but now he has deprived himself entirely of the privilege scholars have of creating new thoughts. Meanwhile every moment of textual listening, free inquiry and historical investigation into the ancient apostolic tradition is new for me and piled high with imaginative possibilities.
Other colleagues are put on the defensive, and decide to feel vulnerable about what I am saying, and this elicits in some an understandable frustration that sparks exasperation and anger at times. But that is a small price to pay. I have never had to suffer much for the truth, even though I am willing to die for it if need be, if the situation requires, insofar as I am faithful to my baptism, for that is what my baptism means.
I am deeply grateful to be a part of a faculty where freedom of inquiry is highly valued. There are some ways in which the freedom to inquire into religion at Drew is greater than at Ohio State University or Michigan State or other tax supported universities. I am grateful to be able to teach religion in a setting where the tradition of classic Christianity can be taken seriously as a project of intellectual and textual inquiry. I am grateful for bright colleagues very different from myself, for feminist and form critical and deconstructionist colleagues. I am grateful even for outright heretical colleagues who challenge me to be more clear about my own grounding in classical Christian teaching. I am grateful to be teaching in a university where the archival resources of the Wesleyan tradition are unexcelled anywhere in the world, a gift far beyond my deserving, and I have Paul Hardin, Jim Kirby, and Ken Rowe to thank for this.
I am a valued member of this university faculty, partly because I have been around so long (22 years), less so because colleagues believe that my trajectory is plausible for their scholarship, although they are usually willing to listen, some with seriousness; and most are willing to incorporate some aspects of it cautiously into their own projects. I think this is true of all my colleagues at Drew Theological School.
Are there elements in classical orthodoxy which evangelicals have ignored or failed to appropriate?
Evangelicals can learn much from early Christianity about sanctification of the whole of life, about walking in the way daily as informed by the grace of baptism and Eucharist. The annual cycle of seasonal celebrations of the Christian year has been all but lost by the gaunt, abstemious, puritanical side of evangelical memory. There is much that modern evangelicals have forgotten about the sanctification of time and space. Some have fixated upon “me and the Bible, and especially me,” so that what Bible reading becomes is primarily an assertion of inward feelings. This has sadly prevented readers from meeting with the history of the Holy Spirit, or learning that the Spirit has a history, and that the body of Christ being called forth in that history has unity, not simply the ‘centerless’ diversity we have been taught to look for by skeptical historiography. Beware of the “evangelical” who wants to read the Bible without the historic voices of the church, who is only willing to listen to his own voice or the voices of contemporaries in the dialogue. Evangelicals have usually been the losers when they have systematically neglected the saints and martyrs and consensual writers of the earliest Christian centuries.
Evangelical and charismatic communities are moving toward several decades of recovery of the liturgical life that they have been so deeply missing, a retrieval of the liturgical tradition that Wesley took for granted, the religion of the Prayer Book, and the apostolic tradition as recollected during the earliest Christian centuries of persecution. These communities will be profoundly reformed by classical liturgies, returning to mode of worship that were far more available in the third century than the twentieth.
What can United Methodists do to help direct our denominational seminaries a way from faddish theologies and toward classical orthodoxy?
Congregations do well to honor the tradition of freedom-of-the-pulpit, provided the preacher remains reasonably accountable to the constitutional doctrinal standards: the Articles of Religion and Wesley’s Standard Sermons and Notes Upon the New Testament. When that does not occur, when preaching inveighs against the teachings of the doctrinal standards that have since 1763 been written into Wesleyan constitutional polity, and remain even today constitutionally unamendable as restricted rules, congregations need to proceed fairly and in due disciplinary order.
Where UM theological education produces ordinands intent upon deliberately undoing the constitutionally United Methodist doctrinal tradition, the pastor-parish relations committee should think and talk and pray together about it before any peremptory moves are made. It is fitting to use the proper disciplinary avenues of communication and feed-back in our polity and constitutional system. First openly consult, then if ineffective, follow disciplinary grievance procedures, and if necessary call pastors to accountability. Meanwhile evangelicals do well not to pick away at those seminaries that are currently trying to come more in touch with the Wesleyan tradition.
Where overly tenured faculties have been formed and habituated so as to systematically block out Wesleyan and evangelical teaching, they cannot expect boundless, forbearing, ardent support from the moderate constituency. Fiscal discipline may be the only available mechanism by which recalcitrant seminaries can be taught that they must become accountable to their actual democratic constituencies and to their historic mission. Some basic reformulation of the Ministerial Education Fund may have to occur if equitable correctives are not made.
It appears that the UM Church, for all practical purposes, ignored the fact of more than 200,000 signatures to the Memphis Declaration. Will the UM bureaucracy ever respond to the grassroots voices?
I have a different take on this than the question assumes. It does not seem accurate to say that the UM Church has ignored those signatures. Some of the bureaucratic elites have tried to ignore them, but even if they expended their mightiest efforts they could hardly muster half that many signatures for their pet cause of sexual experimentation and legitimized abortion. Let them try to match it. The 1996 General Conference petitioning goal perhaps should be set at a quarter million signatures. In their petition, signers would do well to challenge the spend-and-act-up, condom-abortion wing of Methodism to attempt a signature campaign of their own. Then centrists and moderates could double whatever signatures the radicals produced.
It seems a defeatist exaggeration to say that it had no effect, but it is also unfair to the 200,000 to say that they had a lasting or absolute effect. It is destined to be a continuing struggle. The signatures affected the homosexuality issue substantively, and the abortion issue considerably, and the fiscal responsibility question to some modest degree. It was not wholly ignored.
The question premises two distinguishable entities: the UM Church and its cumbersome bureaucracy. The broader church is, I believe, responding, but the bureaucrats are tardy, and often bending only as funds are withheld.
