by Steve | Jul 24, 1991 | Archive - 1991
Archive: Dreaming a Church into Reality
By Joe A. Harding & Ralph W. Mohney
Sundo Kim is a man with a vision. Years ago, the congregation was located in a building surrounded by factories and industrial buildings. A few miles away on the other side of the Han River, great high-rise buildings were being constructed to house the exploding population of Seoul. Dr. and Mrs. Kim began to search for property for a new church building to serve people where they were living.
The Kims found an ideal site for the new church in a pear orchard that literally was surrounded by buildings of the new city. Inquiries revealed that the property was not for sale. It was held by several members of a family that was not interested in the church. The Kims were not discouraged by the owners’ unwillingness to sell. Day after day they returned to the old pear orchard to kneel in the mud and pray. This continued for 30 days. They prayed that God would bless them with guidance so that they could have leadership in building a church that would glorify God and share the gospel of Jesus Christ.
After praying for 30 days, Kim went back to the owners of the property. They were still unwilling to sell. On Sunday morning, Kim shared his vision with the entire Kwang Lim congregation. The people’s hearts were touched by the vision of reaching unchurched persons for Jesus Christ in this new location. Kim invited members of the church to join him marching around the property, praying that God would help them in their mission. Members responded. They gathered on the vacant lot and began to march around the property, praying and singing as they marched. Like Joshua and the people of Israel of old, they dared to believe that the impossible could be accomplished.
Something happened! The owners suddenly reconsidered their refusal to sell. Disgruntled family members had changed their minds. Now the family was in total agreement to sell the property at a favorable price to the church.
The dream has grown beyond anyone’s expectations. Now, a beautiful new sanctuary with an excellent educational building stands on the site of the old pear orchard.
The Kwang Lim congregation has a dynamic ministry, paying pastors’ salaries in Poland and in other eastern European countries. Ministries have expanded to China, Japan, and the United States. Every year hundreds of pastors come to Kwang Lim for a spiritual renewal experience in a “Vision and Growth Seminar.” The Kwang Lim worship service is broadcast not only across Korea, but also to Hawaii and the western portion of the United States.
A young convert from Buddhism said to a visiting pastor from the United States, “I am so happy since I found this church. My friend invited me. I never knew about Jesus. I invited Jesus into my heart. I have found a new life in Jesus Christ.” The Kwang Lim congregation is an exciting demonstration of the power of yesterday’s dreams and visions that have become today’s realities.
Reprinted with permission from Vision 2000: Planning for Ministry into the Next Century (Discipleship Resources).
by Steve | Jul 23, 1991 | Archive - 1991
Archive: Seoul’s Burning Bush
What’s Their Secret?
By Carroll Ferguson Hunt
Our tour group of Westerners cowered against the wall at the top of the stairs, intimidated by the pushing, chattering throng of Koreans pouring past us. Even though for days we had inched through Seoul’s gridlock traffic in our van, confronting a solid river of people face-to-multiplied-faces was something else again—and outside Sunday school rooms of a Methodist church yet?
Our circuits crackled on overload.
But this is no ordinary Methodist church. We were visiting Seoul’s Kwang Lim Church, one of world Methodism’s largest, with 50,000 constituents, 4 Sunday worship services, 6,000 people attending Tuesday Bible studies, multiple choirs and orchestras, plus 60 teenage Sunday school classes—whose members were keeping the timid visitors’ backs to the wall.
How can all this be? Why, in this secular, materialistic era when Methodism is declining, are the halls, the pews, the prayer meetings, and the offering baskets overflowing in Kwang Lim Methodist Church?
As soon as the stairway traffic reduces to negotiable numbers at the 11:00 a.m. service, we were ushered to front rows in the balcony and handed earphones through which we receive simultaneous English translation. (The bulletin says they also offer Japanese on another channel.)
As we look around we see people rapidly filling the bright and warm 5,000-seat sanctuary. Masses of elegantly arranged flowers frame the huge wooden pulpit and crown the altar behind it. Orchestra members surreptitiously tune their instruments during the organ prelude and every seat in the choir section is filled.
Worship proceeds through components familiar to most Christians; hymns, Scripture, responsive reading, prayers. But if you sit quietly with your ears and eyes open, with all your antennae operating, you can sense a focus, a participation by the congregation not always present in average Sunday morning crowds. As you turn over in your mind the immensity of this church and its incredible success in ministering to thousands of Seoulites and other Koreans around the world, one question demands an answer. Why? What is so special here? What’s their secret?
Pastor Sundo Kim had Malachi 3:7-12 read earlier, and as he begins his message on “The Important Lessons of Stewardship,” heads drop throughout the auditorium. You wonder, Has he lost them? Do they resent harangues about money just like we do?
Look again. People are not dozing nor inspecting their fingernails. They are looking up the Scriptures Pastor Kim refers to and taking notes on what he says about tithing. They’re even saying “Amen!”
Pastor Kim believes in his topic. “If you don’t tithe,” he says, “you are not a whole Christian.” The points of his sermon are simple and clear: 1. The Bible teaches us to tithe; 2. Tithing is practical; 3. Tithing brings blessing.
Basic stuff, wouldn’t you say?
“Ministers who don’t preach on tithing impoverish their people,” Kim asserts, and this is the sole time all year that he preaches on tithing. He makes no idyllic prosperity promises to his people, just cites God’s blessing of those who obey Him.
Does this approach work? You only have to look around you. Kwang Lim Church lacks for no good thing. State-of-the-art sound and video equipment, four-building church complex, mountain prayer retreat center, domestic and foreign mission projects, 22 associate pastors. Seventy percent of this church’s members tithe—without signing a pledge.
“Just do it,” Kim tells them. Basic, yes, but with a twist. A trust twist, if you will. Trust God to provide needed income by stimulating His people to do what He tells them to.
How does one, even a seasoned Christian leader like Sundo Kim, learn this kind of trust? What are his spiritual secrets?
Like so many Korean Christians, Kim’s spiritual formation centers on prayer. His daily prayer time stretches from 4:30 to 6:30 each morning. Saturdays he spends at Kwang Lim’s prayer retreat center, the “prayer mountain,” a concept and practice common among Korean Christians. There he prays and prepares for the four Sunday services, returning home at midnight.
Every part of Kim’s ministry is soaked in prayer. When Kwang Lim’s $7.5 million prayer center was only an idea burning inside his head, Kim prayed, expecting God to provide it all. Then, in trust, he bought land on a mountain slope an hour out of Seoul. Now among the rocks and pine trees sprawls a complex with a brick, stone, and glass auditorium that can seat 5,000, and facilities to feed and sleep 800 people.
Huge numbers, however, do not dominate the purposes of Kwang Lim ‘s prayer mountain. Scattered about the grounds are kneeling benches for private prayer. Tiny prayer cells, 104 of them, are private places with warning lights outside and doors that once closed can only be opened from the inside. Obviously, the center was designed for serious intercession.
But intercession is not the only Christian discipline in action at Kwang Lim’s prayer mountain. Pastor Kim takes one month each year for training church staff, plus deacons, elders, area leaders, evangelists; 3,360 of them, in fact.
“Without training we cannot have good leaders,” Kim asserts. Coaching his leadership staff is a priority in Kim’s ministry. In the most recent session, he talked to them about setting goals for their ministry.
“Back when our church had only 200 members,” he told them, “I set a goal of 1,000. People laughed at me and said ‘Impossible!’ But as soon as we reached 1,000, I aimed for 2,000.”
Kim’s audience listens carefully; he knows whereof he speaks since the church embraces a constituency of 50,000. “We know where we’re going,” he says. And he cites Jesus’ teaching in Luke 14:28-35 about planning. “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost…?” (NIV).
“Make a plan,” Kim tells his leadership team. “Set priorities.” Then he tells them how, and outlines the steps by means of his overhead projector.
After Kim’s lectures and after each Kwang Lim leader writes out his or her goals, sharing them with a small cluster of co-workers, they all receive communion together. As they celebrate the Savior, Pastor Kim prays for them individually, committing each one to the Lord and dedicating them to their assigned ministry.
Why does any church, even one this large, require 3,360 workers? One reason is in response to one of Kim’s tenets: “Kwang Lim may have 50,000 constituents, but it is not a big church. It is a collection of small churches. “Even small churches need leaders and if you have a collection of them—100, say—the number mounts of those responsible for nurture of each flock. And when Kim talked to his leadership team about turning goals into action he cites “prayer, visitation, development of friendships, discovery of non-Christian neighbors.” Why? To tell them about Jesus. To evangelize.
Deacons and elders, lots of them, are a way of life in Korean churches. At Kwang Lim they take their responsibilities seriously. So do the Sunday school teachers and workers, and Bible study leaders for small groups which may never grow larger than 10 participants. This restriction means there are now 400 such groups.
Kwang Lim’s constituency, members, catechists, inquirers—are divided into 17 areas. Each area is shepherded by an evangelist and three Bible women who visit and counsel and love the 1,000 families of their flock. Numerous Wesley-style class meetings meet on Friday nights in each area and this is the blueprint for lay evangelism. Christians of the Kwang Lim fellowship find it easy to invite their non-believing neighbors to a small, warm group meeting in their home, and their neighbors find it easy to accept such an invitation—a common practice among most Korean believers.
This is why, as the 11 o’clock service draws to a close, we see several people move from their seats toward the front of the auditorium. Dr. Kim has called for all new believers to meet him in front of the pulpit. The congregation applauds as ten or a dozen individuals cluster around the pastor to receive his greeting and a small gift from the church. They, by this public appearance, tell God and their world that they are beginning training for baptism and embarking on the Christian way.
As we watch that small band of men and women who have begun their first steps onto the Christian way, as we see pleasure and embarrassment merge on their faces at this public attention, what secrets for success have we learned from Pastor Kim and Kwang Lim Church?
First, we see that Jesus, God’s Son, is Lord here, and that a personal relationship to Him underlies all else. Second, we know that Pastor Kim trains his huge leadership team with care and devotion. Third, we know that Bible study, prayer, and tithing are normal disciplines for the people of Kwang Lim Church, as is evangelism among their neighbors, friends, and family.
People come from across the globe to query Sundo Kim about the success of Kwang Lim (which, incidentally, means “Burning Bush”) Church. They discover as they look and listen that the practices and principles upheld by Kim and his astonishing congregation are the simple tenets of biblical Christianity instead of some new formula they hoped to find and copy at home.
Instead of unwrapping a new secret for success created by a clever leader, we who want to know how he does it are led to the foot of the cross and told to look into the face of the Savior; then follow Him.
Why It Works!
by Carroll Ferguson Hunt
Christians from all over the world make pilgrimages to Seoul to learn from Dr. Sundo Kim and his Kwang Lim Church. No one, it seems, comes away unaffected by what is seen and observed there.
Frank Warden, author and corporate president of Trinity Bible Studies, pastors two churches near El Paso, Arkansas and has visited Kwang Lim several times where his Trinity Studies are used. He speaks of the Korean congregation’s “enthusiasm in worship,” which he found especially affecting one Sunday morning when 4,000 new members joined the church fellowship.
“The people are enthusiastic about Christ and the church,” he says. “They are Christ centered and Bible centered. It is a most amazing worship experience. A hush drops, and especially during prayer there is a sense of holiness.”
George Hunter III, Dean of Asbury Theological Seminary’s E. Stanley Jones School of Mission and Evangelism and church growth leader, discovered during his visit to Korea that “the Kwang Lim Church is an outstanding example of a church growing through meeting people’s needs; its preaching, group life, and teaching are all need-oriented. Also, they grow because they plan for growth, which is an important part of their long-range strategy.”
Anyone who visits Kwang Lim and other Korean churches, large and small, can not ignore the emphasis on prayer which permeates Christian living there. A delegation of Chinese pastors and lay leaders from Hong Kong went home determined to develop monthly all-night prayer meetings to fuel the growth and spiritual development they hunger for. American and Japanese Christian leaders carry away similar commitments when they see what can happen when God’s people pray.
Terry Faris, member of the UM Kentucky Conference for 23 years, visited Pastor Kim in Seoul and heard him discuss the secret of growth at Kwang Lim Church. Kim opened the door to a small room, his prayer closet, and said to Faris, “Here is the secret…I meet God before I meet people.”
Faris returned to apply Kim’s secret to his own ministry. “I had a junk closet off my office that was full of old bulletins and reports, but after visiting Korea I asked the custodian to clear it out and build a prayer closet.
“Our congregation also added a couple of early morning prayer meetings—on Tuesdays and Sundays at 6 a.m., whereas before we only had a Friday morning men’s prayer time. They’re well attended, too!”
by Steve | Jul 9, 1991 | Archive - 1991
Archive: Not by Water Alone: On Baptismal Regeneration
By Bishop William R. Cannon
July/August 1991
Although the Committee to Study Baptism has yet to issue its final statement, the working document should cause grave concern in our church. The fact that it has been adopted, at least in principle, by the committee over the strong protest of Bishop Ole Borgen, a Wesleyan scholar of renown, and has elicited a negative critique by eminent UM theologian Thomas Langford, who is also a member of the committee, should prompt our Board of Discipleship to be alert to any of its doctrinal deviations before recommending its conclusions to General Conference.
The first restrictive rule in the Constitution of the United Methodist Church states: “The General Conference shall not revoke, alter, or change our Articles of Religion or establish any new standards or rules of doctrine contrary to our present existing and established standards of doctrine.” Though no open attack has been launched against this rule and no doctrine has been formally introduced to contravene our Wesleyan standards, we have whittled away at our theology with a hodgepodge of beliefs and practices that dilute, if not outright contradict, our Methodist doctrine. We have done this through our liturgies, rituals, revision of rites, nomenclature in forms of worship, and in the addition of services and prayers for special events.
The present proposed statement on baptism goes beyond mere implication, however, and becomes a substitute for the Methodist doctrine of conversion and regeneration and, therefore, violates the first restrictive rule.
The report changes the concept of the church from a body of faithful people, dependent on the pure Word of God and the sacraments, into a sacrament itself. The church becomes a place where grace is dispensed through the ceremonial act of baptism, guaranteeing a person full incorporation into the Body of Christ. The paper reads:
“Baptism is Christ’s act in the church, the sacrament of initiation and incorporation into the Body of Christ. Wherever and whenever the people of God are gathered, Christ is in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20), making available all that he has accomplished for us in his life, teachings, passion, death, resurrection, glorification, and bestowal of the Holy Spirit” (lines 252-258).
Wesley, in contrast, says a person is incorporated into the Body of Christ, not through the ordinances of the church – baptism included – but through holiness of heart and life. He taught that,
“The church is called holy because it is holy, because every member thereof is holy, though in different degrees, as He that called them is holy if this whole body be animated by one spirit, and endued with one faith, and one hope of their calling: then he who has not that spirit, and faith, and hope, is no member of that body. It follows that not only … none that lives in outward sin, but none that is under the power of anger or pride, no lover of the world, in a word, none that is dead to God, can be a member of His Church.”(1)
To be sure, the act of justification takes place when a sinner accepts Jesus Christ as Savior, is forgiven by God, and accounted righteous for Christ’s sake. But, in Wesleyan theology, simultaneous with justification comes regeneration, or conversion, in which the person is actually made righteous and is given the power not to commit sin. Justification and regeneration are concomitant – two sides of the same coin.
The committee’s report also affirms baptismal regeneration:
“God bestows upon all baptized persons the presence of the Holy Spirit, marks them with a seal, and implants in their hearts the first installment of their inheritance as sons and daughters of God … Baptism is a gift of God. By water and the Holy Spirit we are initiated into Christ’s holy church and incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation” (lines 203-206; 138- 141).
The report continues: “Being born again is not something added to baptism; it is a baptismal experience, a part of the process of turning from sin and turning to God” (lines 322-24).
Wesley denies this. He categorically states that baptism is not the new birth: They are not one and the same thing …. For what can be more plain than that one is external, the other an internal, work: that the one is a visible, the other an invisible thing, and therefore wholly different from each other? – the one being an act of man purifying the body; the other change wrought by God in the soul, so that the former is just as distinguishable from the latter as the soul from the body, or water from the Holy Ghost. From the preceding reflections we may observe that as the new birth is not the same thing with baptism, soil does not always accompany baptism. They do not constantly go together. A man may possibly be ‘born of water,’ and yet not be ‘born of the Spirit.’ There may sometimes be the outward sign, where there is no inward grace. (2)
The committee’s report states that signation, or anointing with oil by making the sign of the cross, is appropriate as a part of the act of baptism (lines 444-46). While this practice is acceptable in Roman Catholicism, it has never been the practice in Methodism. Wesley would be horrified at its introduction. He asked,
“But can we think it for the majesty of baptism to have it dressed up like a form of conjuration? .. . And what are the benefits imprinted on the mind by these fantastical ceremonies? Or when is it such benefits arc promised as these arc said to signify? Is it not rather a debasing of it, to have such rites and prayers introduced into it, as signifying that which baptism was never appointed for?(3)
The treatment of infant baptism in the committee’s report keeps within the traditional Methodist teaching and practice. The report does not vary in any way from the viewpoint of Mr. Wesley, who did not deny the possibility of regeneration through the baptism of infants as long as they manifest Christ’s way of life in thought, word, and deed as they developed into adulthood. In that sense, infant baptism anticipates the response of the individual to the call of Christ once they reach the age of accountability. As the report presupposed, this can be, and it is hoped will be, an unbroken outgrowth of infant baptism. Thus, the person will always have felt that he or she has been a vital member of the Body of Christ.
Yet in Wesley’s experience, and more especially in his familiarity with the experience of others, this was seen more in the failure than in the observance. Most of the people he knew sinned away all the benefits of infant baptism. Therefore, that which baptism signified, namely repentance, forgiveness, and the cleansing of the heart and mind with the power to lead a new life, needed to be accomplished anew. Wesley accepted infant baptism as a proper rite in the church but he did not stress its importance or emphasize its practice. He says,
“I tell a sinner, ‘You must be born again.’ ‘No,’ you say, ‘He was born again in baptism. Therefore, he cannot be born again now.’ Alas, what trifling is this! What, if he was then a child of God? He is now manifestly a child of the devil; for the works of his father, he doeth. Therefore, do not play with words. He must go through an entire change of heart. In one not yet baptized, you would call that change, the new birth. In him call it what you will; but remember, meantime, if either he or you die without it, your baptism will be so far from profiting you, that it will greatly increase your damnation.”(4)
Baptism in itself was not of vital concern to John Wesley. The important issue in this regard with him was the new birth or conversion. Consequently we in Methodism celebrate the Aldersgate experience, not the date of John Wesley’s baptism as an infant at Epworth. Luke Tyerman, the most thorough and exhaustive of Wesley’s biographers, does not even record the date of his baptism. He does tell us he was admitted to holy communion for the first time when he was eight years old, his father believing that at that time he was able to understand the meaning of the sacrament and that his childhood devotion entitled him to that privilege. It was his conformity to the transforming reality of which baptism is only the outward sign that led to his invitation to the Lord’s Supper. In my opinion, the open confession of one’s faith in Christ, based on the conscious assurance of forgiveness with strength to lead a new life, and the affirmation of these by joining the church should be the basis for receiving holy Communion, not the act of infant baptism. All persons baptized in infancy should, as is now the practice, be so nurtured in the faith by precept and example that they may come to faith in Jesus Christ.
The first Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, based one the decision of the Christmas Conference of 1784, permitted rebaptism of any who desired it when they experienced conversion and joined the church. The Discipline was published in 1785 and approved by Wesley, who reprinted it in 1786. Charles Wesley actually rebaptized anyone who requested it. Our church has always been a Spirit empowered, evangelical church, never a liturgical, sacramental church. Why countenance a small committee to change our church into something it is not? It has served God and His people well for 200 years. To accept the report of this committee would mean a revision of our theology and ecclesiology.
ENDNOTES
- Sermon LXXIV, 28, Works, Jackson Edition, Vol, VI, p. 400.
- Sermon XLV, iv, 1-2, Works, Jackson Edition, Vol. VI, pp. 70-11.
- Works, Jackson Edition, Vol. X, pp. 115-116.
- Works, Vol. VIII, pp. 48-49.
William R. Cannon is a retired bishop of the United Methodist Church, former dean of Candler School of Theology, former chairman of the executive committee of the World Methodist Council, and author of 14 books. This article is adapted from Challenge, a newspaper published by Ed Robb.
by Steve | May 23, 1991 | Archive - 1991
Archive: Pentecost’s Promise
The Joyful Grace of the Holy Spirit
By Gary L. Moore
As we approach this Pentecost season it is good for us to think about the work of the Holy Spirit in our United Methodist Church. Beyond just thinking, we should be praying and expecting an empowering move by the Holy Spirit to revive our church.
Like so many others, I became even more mindful of the power and ministry of the Holy Spirit through the witness of charismatic United Methodists. Believe me, I had plenty of questions about their experience of “baptism in the Holy Spirit” and the “gifts” they talked about (especially tongues, healing, deliverance). However, their love and joy were infectious. And even though I was inhibited and uncomfortable with their style of worship, I couldn’t escape the fact that it was alive and energetic; and that their prayers were filled with a sense of expectancy.
Testimonies like this could be multiplied 350 million times during the twentieth century. According to David Barrett’s statistics, the Pentecostal/charismatic movement is the fastest growing Christian movement in the world. It crosses denominational lines and is occurring on every continent.
Many leaders worldwide are praying for God to “pour out His Spirit upon the global Christian community during this decade, empowering her to do the work of world evangelization in the power of the Holy Spirit, together!” As this movement has matured during these last 20 years, there has been a growing sense of unity of purpose across the world…”a striving together for the faith of the gospel” (Phil.1:27).
Charismatics are often described as overzealous, tongues-speaking, fanatics who have invaded our churches. True, there are many who have not matured in their experience and have had a negative impact on this world-wide movement of God’s Spirit. On the other hand, there are those who have been equally immature in their desire to rid the church of that kind of folk, claiming that they are disruptive and divisive. There are, however, tens of thousands of maturing Spirit-filled United Methodists who feel called to stay, pray, and work for the renewal of our denomination.
No matter what our label, it is essential that we all come to understand and embrace the ministry of the Holy Spirit in and through the body of Christ. A charismatic, or Spirit-filled Christian, should be a “joyful, grace-gifted Christian.” Toe definition that I have come to use is derived from the Greek word charismata, and from my understanding of the Spirit filled life.
First, the Holy Spirit encourages us with joy. The Greek word char means joy. Scripture says that “in thy presence is fulness of joy” also “the joy of the Lord is my strength” (Neb.8:10). Jesus promised this joy to those that love and obey Him. If we live in the reality of a daily relationship with Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit, the joy of the Lord will be obvious. This joy comes not from our theology, but from learning to “be in His presence.”
Secondly, the Holy Spirit also enables us with Grace. The Greek word charis means grace. The unmerited favor of God that grants us the free gift of salvation is truly “amazing grace.” If that grace is overflowing in our lives, the result will be grace-fulness or graciousness toward others. If we are full of grace, we should also be filled to overflowing with the love of God. Scripture teaches that the evidence of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is the love of God flowing in and through our hearts (Romans 5:5). Love orders our life according to the priorities of Jesus. Our love of God compels us to praise and worship Him, and to be obedient to His word. To love one another compels us to love His church and to be intentional about edifying the body of Christ.
Third, the Holy Spirit empowers us with spiritual gifts to build up the body of Christ. The Greek word charisma/charismata means gift or gifts (I Cor.12-14;Romans 12; Ephesians 4; I Peter 4:10-11). Christians should all be gift bearing, allowing any and all of the charisms of the Holy Spirit to flow through us for the benefit of others. We must recognize that it will take all of God’s gifts flowing through all of God’s children to touch all of God’s creation. It’s the only way that the task will ever be completed, “‘Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord of hosts” (Zech 4:6).
We must be aware of our calling. We are saved, sealed, sanctified servants with the same anointing as Jesus (see Luke 4:17-19; 1 John 2:20,27; 2 Cor.1:21-22). Jesus was a servant. He said that the essence of our lives would be that of a servant (see Matt. 20: 25-28 and Luke 22:25-27).
The year I began to seek a closer walk with God and to desire the power of the Holy Spirit I had an encounter with God that radically changed my life. When the Holy Spirit came upon me, I was filled with a peace that passed all understanding and a love that the world could not give. My heart was filled to overflowing.
After my encounter with the Holy Spirit, I began to anticipate the gifts of the Spirit in my own life. Prophetic words and words of wisdom gave direction and guidance. There was healing for damaged emotions, memories, relationships, and a physical problem. A new language of praise and power seemed to intensify my sense of God’s presence and power in my life. Gifts began to flow through me to bless others; exhortation and leadership enabled me to challenge, motivate and equip others for the work of the ministry.
As Spirit-filled Christians we should live in an experiential awareness of the presence and power of God. We have the privilege of walking daily with Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit. We should learn to expect His presence in praise and worship. We should expect His power in the proclamation of Scripture. We should expect the preaching of the Word to be accompanied with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power (see I Cor. 2:4-5). We should live with an evangelistic expectancy that God will “add daily those who are being saved” (Acts 2:47), and that He will use us as His instruments.
Regardless of our respective labels as Christians, the apostle is clear when he addresses the church and says, “Be filled with the Spirit. Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks for all things, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father” (Eph.5:18-20). The work is too great and the time is too short to attempt the work of the kingdom in the weakness of our own flesh… we need to be filled, and filled, and filled to overflowing, with the Spirit of the living God!
Isn’t it time for the people of God to stop analyzing and criticizing one another? Shouldn’t we stop trying to determine whether or not another person is filled with the Spirit according to our definitions? It’s time to stop arguing and start using whatever charisms (gifts) that we have been given by God to serve one another and to bring praise and honor and glory to Jesus. He alone is worthy!
Gary L. Moore is executive director of the United Methodist Renewal Services Fellowship (UMRSF), also known as “Manna Ministries.” UMRSF sponsors an annual National Conference on the Holy Spirit known as “Aldersgate” which will be held this year in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This article is adapted from Ed Robb’s Challenge newspaper.
by Steve | Mar 7, 1991 | Archive - 1991
Liberalism Through Time
By Steven O’Malley
1. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) has been called the “father” of modern liberal Protestant theology. He combined the emphasis upon personal, subjective piety, learned from the Moravian tradition in which he was reared, with a receptiveness toward the development of biblical higher criticism. This left him disenchanted with the entrenched theological scholasticism of his day. As a popular preacher and later professor of theology in Berlin, Schleiermacher was attracted to the rising Romanticist movement, but he was disturbed when its spokesmen disdained religion because of their sophisticated humanist outlook. He criticized their position in his first book, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultural Despisers (1799), and he proceeded to erect a new theological position in his major constructive work, The Christian Faith (1820-21).
In the latter work, Schleiermacher based religion not in a “knowing” or “doing” but in a “feeling of absolute dependence.” Within that framework, Christianity is regarded not as the only viable religion, with Jesus of Nazareth viewed as the only perfectly God-conscious Person who has lived. Further, he announced a goal-directed religious faith, whose object was the realization of the kingdom of God upon earth.
2. William Ellery Channing (1720-1842) was the foremost exponent of the Unitarian Theology while he served as pastor of the Federal Street Congregational Church in Boston. He was recognized as a “saintly” exponent of Arian views on Christ, which denied the eternal deity of the Son. He adopted the name “Unitarian” for the movement in 1815, and a decade later the American Unitarian Association was founded under his guidance.
3. David F. Strauss (1808-1874) was a student of F.C. Baur (1792-1860) In the renowned Tubingen (Germany) school, that had applied the tenets of Hegel’s dialectical idealism to New Testament studies. The result was Strauss’ publication of the sensational Leben Jesu (“Life of Jesus”) In 1835, that began the 19th-century quest for recovering the “actual” Jesus of history, as opposed to the “Christ of faith,” as confessed in the Christian creeds.
4. Horace Bushnell (1802-1876), a Yale-educated Congregational pastor in Hartford, Connecticut, published the pioneer work advocating a “gradualist” approach to Christian education in his Christian Nurture (1847). This work argued against the revivalists’ insistence upon an emotional, instantaneous conversion experience as the basis for saving faith. He modified these views later in life.
5. Frederick D. Maurice (1805-1872) was an Anglican theologian who became deeply influenced by Darwin’s evolutionary hypothesis and who drew from it in developing his theory of Christian socialism as a “higher” form of evolving civilization that would supplant capitalist society. During his career as a priest and a professor at Cambridge, he increasingly advocated the primacy of God’s love as a force that will universally prevail over all forms of human rebellion against God.
6. Karl H. Graf (1815-1869) In his Gescluchtliche Bucher des Alten Testaments (1866) {“The Historical Books of the Old Testament”) argued that the lengthy “document that uses Elohim for God and includes the creation story in Genesis represents the basic “constituent” of the Pentateuch and was the latest section of it to be written. This became designated as the so-called “P” document. He thereby argued against the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.
7. Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889), a student of Schleiermacher, developed a theology based on the ethical implications of Jesus’ teaching concerning the kingdom of God. Here, he argued for the primacy of “moral values” as the proper focus for religion, and he advocated abandonment of any attempt to make scientific, factual judgments about Christian doctrines. His major work was The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation (1870-1847).
8. The two chief proponents of the Social Gospel movement in the United States were Washington Gladden (1836-1918) and Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918). The former, who is called the father of this movement, served as a Congregational pastor for 36 years in Columbus, Ohio, where he advocated what he called “applied Christianity,” which was intended to counter the laissez faire attitude of Christians toward issues of social justice. The Baptist pastor-turned-professor Walter Rauschenbusch, galvanized these concerns into a systematic work entitled A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917). In it he advocated the transformation of the nation, and not just the church, into the moral kingdom of God upon earth.
9. Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918) was a prominent German Old Testament scholar who taught at Guttingen. He interpreted Israel’s cultural history in evolutionary terms, believing that the Hebrew religion developed from ‘‘tribalism” to “ethical monotheism.” He developed the documentary hypothesis of the Hexeteuch (the first six books of the Old Testament including the so-called J, E, D, and P documentary sources). By appealing to these sources, he argued against the traditional Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch (the first five Old Testament books).
10. Henry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969) was a prominent American preacher and popular author who served New York Presbyterian and American Baptist churches and gained national fame as pastor of the nondenominational Riverside Church, also located In New York City. He further served as professor of preaching at Union Theological Seminary In New York. In these posts Fosdick sought to reconcile the disputes between science and religion in such a way that he became identified by American fundamentalist Christians as the symbol of religious modernism. At the same time, he criticized “modernism” for its intellectualism and moral ineptitude.
11., Albert Knudsen (1873-1953), a student of the personalist philosopher Bordon Parker Bowne, sought to draw the implications of this philosophy that stressed the centrality of human personality into a theological system. He taught at the Methodist-related Boston University. A critical issue in evaluating his major works, The Doctrine of God and The Doctrine of Redemption, is whether personal idealism or the Christian faith is the controlling element in his thought. L Harold DeWolf, author of The Case for Theology in Liberal Perspective (1959), was among Browne’s second generation of students, and he exercised considerable influence in the curriculum of Methodist theological studies in the postwar era.
12. The Federal Council of Churches, established in 1908, was the product of a conciliar or cooperative movement among several major American denominations that was especially concerned to orchestrate an approach to address the major moral and social issues of the newly-urbanized United States. It was preceded by the formation of several state councils and federations of churches, and its successor was the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, formed in 1950. On an international level, the ecumenical church conferences on Faith and Order and on Life and Work were merged to form the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam in 1948.
13. When Harvey Cox published his startling work, The Secular City (1965), “secular” had become a positive rather than a negative term, partly under the influence of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s concept of “religionless Christianity.” Cox repudiates “secularism” but accepts “secularization,” which he defines as the irreversible historical process in which societies are “liberated” from supernatural views of reality in favor of so-called “open” views of the world.
14. Black theology has its roots in the non-violent ideology of Martin Luther King, Jr. (d. 1968), the champion of the American civil rights movement of the 1950’s. His “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” is considered a major manifesto in the advance of that movement Black authors in the 1970’s, such as James Cone, increasingly abandoned Kings’s call for non-violence in social protest, that King had learned from Gandhi, and favored a confronting approach that did not eschew the use of violence, where necessary. The canons of Marxist class conflict were more predominant in the “black power” ideology. These influences also become predominant in other dimensions of recent trends toward a “theology of liberation.” The latter Include Rosemary Reuther’s call for a radical feminine theology and Jose Bonlno’s call for a theology of social liberation within the Latin American cultural context.
A school of 20th-century American theologians, who have been associated with the University of Chicago, has attempted to integrate themes from the natural philosophy of Albert North Whitehead with the liberal Protestant tradition. They have sought to demonstrate the objective reality of God by an appeal to a scientific, naturalistic metaphysic rather than by appealing to traditional Christian theism. Major theologians In this school have included Charles Hartshorne, John Cobb, Jr., and Schubert Ogden. The latter two have conducted their work within the context of United Methodist theological seminaries.
Steven O ‘Malley is professor of church history and historical theology at Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky. This article appeard in the January/February 1991 issue of Good News.
Other notable theological dates
By Steve O’Malley
1799 – New scientific worldview, as advocated by Galileo, Newton, and Copemlcus. Secular and Humanist themes from the Enlightenment of the 18th century, as represented by Immanuel Kant. (1724-1804)
- Friedrich Schleiermacher: “The Father of Protestant Liberal Theology.”
1835 – David F. Strauss begins quest for “Jesus of History”
1843- William Ellery Channing, patriarch of American Unitarianism begins writing
1848 – Horace Bushnell’s progressive view of Christian education in Christian Nurture (1847)
- The critique from Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto
1859 – Fredrick D. Maurice was the major exponent of Evolutionary Liberal Theology in Anglicanism
- The challenge from Charles Darwin’s evolutionary hypothesis The Origin of Species
1866 – Karl H. Graf publishes his Geschichtliche Bucher des Alten Testaments (“The Historical Books of the Old Testament”)
- Albrecht Ritschl publishes A Theology of Moral Values
1883 – Julius Wellhausen publishes his Prolegomena to the History of Israel
1900 – Washington Gladden: “Father of the Social Gospel In America
Frank Mason North led the adoption of the Methodist Social Creed
1907 – Formation of the Methodist Federation for Social Service
- The liberal Journal, The Christian Century, is founded
- The formation of the Federal Council of Churches which later becomes the National Council of Churches.
1917 – Walter Rauschenbusch publishes A Theology for the Social Gospel
1920s – Major Impact of Preaching of Emerson Fosdick
1929 – Formation of the Universal Christian Council For Life and Work, forerunner of World Council of Churches
1930s – Major impact of Personalist Theology of A.C. Knudsen at Boston
1948 – World Council of Churches
