by Steve | Mar 4, 1979 | Archive - 1979
Archive: Rescued, Refurbished, & Rededicated
By Charles W. Keysor, Editor, Good News Magazine
As all the world knows, Wesley Chapel in London has been rescued, refurbished, and royally rededicated. Now, a congregation functions in what had almost become a pile of historic rubble.
Is there a parable here?
Before restoration, the old Wesley Chapel was a building close to collapse. Now it survives, stronger than ever. It was rescued in the nick of time and so Wesley Chapel endures as a kind of manger of Methodism, a place which importantly reminds us of our roots in the great Wesleyan revival which reached from this place around the world.
So the place has been preserved. What is the condition of the faith which made Wesley Chapel important? In what condition is the message of Scriptural Christianity, the wellspring of this and every other true revival of religion?
ls it, like the old Wesley Chapel, crumbling away? How many among us, pastor or laypeople, retain a passionate zeal to save the lost and sanctify the saints? How many among us are warning people to flee from the wrath to come? How many are stressing that United Methodists are a holy people, raised up in the providence of God to spread Scriptural holiness throughout the land? How many among us are going on to perfection? How much of our preaching, teaching, and personal witness focusses on the free grace of God in Jesus Christ … the inward witness of the Holy Spirit … and blessed assurance—all wrapped in an awesome, reverential sense of eternity?
These great Bible truths were to original Methodist faith what roof, timbers, and bricks are to Wesley Chapel.
I suspect it is much easier to resurrect a decrepit building than to refurbish a faded faith. Yet, with God all things are possible, even this. So we should regard the rescue, restoration, and rededication of Wesley Chapel as a parable of what needs to happen in the faith of our church.
Unless this faith can be vitally rescued, refurbished, and rededicated, our church will become a zombie—alive in body but dead in spirit. Unless real faith is supernaturally renewed within us, all claims of renewal in the church will ring false.
So the new Wesley Chapel presents a challenge to “a people called Methodist.” If a building can live again, why not the faith of a church? God asked the prophet Ezekiel,
“Son of man, can these bones live?”
I said, “O Sovereign Lord, you alone know. ”
Then He said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! . . . I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’ ” (Ezekiel 37:3-6, NIV)
by Steve | Mar 4, 1979 | Archive - 1979
Thinking About China
By Charles W. Keysor, Editor, Good News Magazine
America’s sudden recognition of the People’s Republic of China has raised many questions. For example …
- Was it morally right to end relations with our longtime ally and friend, Nationalist China?
- Was it consistent for America, preaching a hard doctrine of “human rights” to sinners in Africa, Latin America, South Korea, and the Philippines, to recognize Communist China, a “human rights ” sinner whose transgressions probably equal or may even surpass Russia and Nazi Germany?
- Should such moral considerations be set aside for the sake of a potentially profitable business opportunity—selling to the teeming Chinese market, which Time magazine described as “one quarter of mankind”?
- Are we being naive (again)allowing US technology to empower a giant communist country, a declared ideological enemy of freedom?
Another, even larger question looms for Christians: does the new “open door policy” in China mean that Christians there will have more freedom to worship, witness, and live for Jesus Christ? Does the thawing out of US-China relations offer a new missionary opportunity to evangelize the world’s most populous nation?
However we may feel about political aspects of the China situation, Christians are obliged to consider first these Kingdom questions.
There is some hazard in speculating about China today. It is like a landscape hidden beneath swirling banks of fog. Presently, we in America have only a glimpse of this vast landscape. So we need to be cautious about drawing too many conclusions too firmly and too quickly.
The condition of Christ’s Church in China is uncertain. It seems that a solid nucleus of believers has survived the anti-Christian years of Chairman Mao. An encouraging sign is the large number of young Christians (new converts, according to Rev. Dr. Robert Coleman, the only United Methodist member of The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelism). Apparently Chinese Christians have triumphed “in spite of dungeon, fire and sword.”
This has happened before. Over past centuries, the Church of Jesus Christ has been invigorated repeatedly by persecution. Just as a grapevine, drastically pruned, bears more heavily, so Christ’s Church usually develops more vigor when opposition arises.
The hard years under Chairman Mao probably scared off many nominal churchmen … leaving a majority of battle-toughened believers who are ready to die for Jesus. Some of these Chinese Christians ought to come to America as missionaries! We need to meet and hear some people for whom the faith is precious unto death, ridicule, and exile. Such “frontline Christianity” stands in marked contrast to American religion, which the Wall Street journal described in an article commenting on the Jonestown cult massacre:
The decay of religion [in America] is unmistakable. The appeal of the cults expresses the profoundness of the human will to believe, the longing for the certainty of faith. The last place anyone would look today to fill this longing is in any of the mainstream religious denominations. They have little time for faith, being preoccupied with such issues as how to govern South Africa.
Apparently China is opening itself to the outside world in a remarkable turnabout from Mao’s isolationism. Yet it remains to be seen whether this new “openness” will include freedom to preach Jesus Christ as the only way to God (John 14:6). In India and elsewhere, intense nationalism makes it harder now for Western missionaries to come and stay permanently. China’s communist government is pragmatic but not soft-headed, so it will probably not offer a wide-open-door to professional Western missionaries.
In all probability then, Chinese Christians, not Americans or Europeans, will be carrying the ball to evangelize China’s unsaved millions. For Westerners, the future role will probably be mostly that of helper and cheerleader. Does this mean the end of missionaries? No. Rather, it means that God will be needing many missionaries of a different sort.
Today, China seems eager to receive technical assistance from abroad. This means that many Western technicians will be living and working in China—setting up computers, building modern factories, etc. Their salaries and expenses will be paid by governments or by large multinational corporations.
Some of these Western technicians could also be missionaries—mature Christians who might enter China as technical specialists and then engage in missionary work as a divinely-appointed sideline. They could witness personally to their Chinese fellow-technicians. They could serve as coaches, cheerleaders, and helpers for the native Christians who will be carrying the main burden of evangelizing in China. Such “new breed” China missionaries would follow an ancient, honorable pattern. St. Paul supported his own missionary endeavors by making tents while he was preaching and teaching in Corinth (Acts 18:1-4), and Paul was the greatest Christian missionary of all time.
Western technicians, functioning as “tentmaker missionaries” inside China, would have many advantages. The high cost of their salaries, transportation, and maintenance would be paid by others. This would free precious missionary dollars for recruitment, training, and assistance to the technician-missionaries- and also to Chinese pastors and evangelists, who may now have greater freedom to travel outside China. Technician-missionaries would have contact with many Chinese who might not be reached by more conventional missionaries operating out of church-sponsored schools, hospitals, mission stations, etc. (if these were permitted by the Chinese government—and this seems doubtful).
This concept of adjunct missionary service, utilizing Christians with secular technical specialties, would put into practice that grand old Protestant doctrine, the “priesthood of all believers.” It would offer laypeople a frontline responsibility for missionary evangelism, and the vitality of the Lay Witness movement shows how effective lay evangelism can be.
A recent report from Singapore suggests how Western technicians who love Jesus Christ might serve Him inside communist China. A Singapore doctor opens his home each week for Bible study and prayer. An American visitor was invited one day last summer. He found the doctor’s small living room jam-packed with 25 doctors and medical students, mostly Chinese. They spent about two hours intensely studying the Bible and its application to their lives.
“It was obvious,” recalled the American, “that there was great spiritual power in that home church. Who can guess what impact all these growing Christians may have for Jesus Christ?”
Transfer this scene to the People’s Republic of China. Multiply it by 1,000. Who can guess the results in eternity?
“We are on the brink of something new and daring,” says Dr. Coleman, who is Professor of Evangelism at Asbury Theological Seminary and a former member of the Good News Board of Directors. “It looks like this may be a time in God’s providence when He is getting ready to move in a new way—something unforeseen only a few years ago.
“Its exact form is not yet clear. But there will be greater opportunity for the penetration of China with the Gospel. In this, the Apostolic pattern of evangelism seems suddenly all the more contemporary! Paul, the tent-making Apostle, found sensitive hearts seeking God. Then he poured his life largely into them as a nucleus for the growth of an energizing Christian fellowship.
“I see this same pattern as the secret of evangelizing China today.”
To move as the Spirit leads, evangelizing China will require bold, creative missions leadership for the UM Church. What will be needed?
First, missions policy-makers must believe zealously that people outside of Jesus Christ are lost and perishing eternally, and that the central purpose of missions is to “rescue the perishing.” How? By emphasizing always Jesus Christ crucified, risen, and coming again. This eternal message does not change, even though missionary methods do.
Second, missionary recruiters must seek out mature Christian laypeople who are also experts in computer operation, business management, electronics, physics, chemistry, industrial development, communications—and a hundred other skills which abound in America and Europe. The Holy Spirit is capable of locating such people. Under His guidance, our missions leaders could recruit Christian technicians, train them in person-to-person evangelism and Bible teaching, then help them get to China under either corporate or government auspices.
Third, our missions leaders must sustain these missionaries-not with insurance, pensions, and medical supplies (these would be provided by secular employers), but with spiritual guidance, nurture, and patient, loving personal encouragement.
Fourth, among the millions of Chinese living now in exile outside mainland China are many fine Christians. They can be the evangelical leaders as they reenter China to win it for Jesus Christ. An example is the young Chinese medical student who took the American back to his hotel after the home church meeting mentioned above. The student said he was anxious to go back into China—as a doctor and as an ambassador of Jesus Christ.
Mission leaders in America will need to work closely with these “diaspora” Chinese,[1] whose nationality and language offer great natural advantages.
Fifth, mission leaders will need to work closely with those who are even now preparing to evangelize China. Many such groups are identified in the now-available Good News “China Packet. ” Another example is the thriving OMS International-affiliated Seoul Theological Seminary in Korea, where Asians are preparing for the evangelization of Asia.
Sixth, soon China will be sending thousands of its brightest young adults to study in America. Someday they will be among the leaders of new China, and God will bring them to us! What a strategic opportunity! If some encounter Christ in our midst, He will return with them to China, where He will use them in strategic ways and places.
United Methodists live in every sizable US metropolitan area, near almost every US university or college, so we have an unmatched opportunity. We can help evangelize China right in our homes.
Here are six practical suggestions. Many United Methodists have been waiting and hoping for the UM Church to step out creatively and boldly in world evangelization. There will be no shortage of dollars, prayers, or personnel for those mission leaders who catch a glimpse of God beckoning from China, “come and help us.” (Acts 16:9)
[1] Chinese living in dispersion outside of mainland China.
by Steve | Mar 2, 1979 | Archive - 1979
MAN …
broken, twisted, dead ..
reaching for God and seeming almost to touch Him …
Though in reality, separated from Him
by the infinite gulf of sin.
GOD … the fire that consumes
and the love that warms …
redeeming us through
The Cross of Christ
by Dr. David F. Wells, Professor of Church History Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois
The New Testament never says that Christ lived for us, thirsted for us, was tempted for us, or became weary for us, true as all this is. What it says, and says repeatedly, is that He died for us. More precisely, it says that He died for our sins, bearing them as His own, assuming responsibility for them, and suffering the full wrath of God in consequence. In view of the clarity and insistence of this apostolic witness, the fact that it is so commonly misunderstood is remarkable.
In 1894 R. W. Dale wrote in Christian Doctrine that there were two types of belief about the Atonement, and his division still holds. According to the one conception, “Christ achieves our redemption by revealing God’s love to us,” and according to the other, “He reveals God’s love to us by achieving our redemption.” In both views, Christ’s life shows human life in its perfection and His work [on the cross] divine love at its height. But to the question, “Does Christ redeem us by revealing God, or does He reveal God by redeeming us?”, they give differing answers.
That Dale’s delineation is still strikingly accurate suggests that despite the more Biblical insights injected into Protestant theology during the Barthian era, matters now stand more or less where they did during the age of classical Protestant liberalism. Indeed, theologians today are not infrequently pleased to speak of themselves as “chastened liberals.”
Protestant liberals like Ritschi and especially Harnack expressed an optimism that grew out of their evolutionary understanding of life. They announced the coming Kingdom that would consist of the realization of God’s universal fatherhood and man’s corresponding brotherhood. Jesus was the historic Pioneer of this message, they said, and His pioneering, in revealing God’s love, is redemptive. This conception evoked the scathing response from Niebuhr that it offered a God without wrath who had brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a real cross. The shallow optimism that underlay it was shattered by the First World War in Europe and the Depression of the 1930s in America.
Although the same optimism has not reappeared, there is nevertheless a widespread understanding of Christ’s death that is still classically liberal. For instance, the 1973 Bangkok assembly of the World Council of Churches defined salvation as freedom from societal sins. Working back from the effects of sins, it then deduced from these the nature of the Atonement.
Sin was here conceived in a purely horizontal manner: what we need to be saved from is racial oppression, economic injustice, sexual prejudice, class distinctions, and psychological inhibitions. Jesus is important because He exhibited freedom from, and opposition to, these evils. Indeed, His example, by which the love of God was revealed, has provided our redemption. The Church’s mission is to call men to a full humanity through Jesus, whose “salvation” brings liberty, unity, justice, and peace.
During the last 10 years, the same model of understanding the work of Christ has been used in the so-called “political theology” that has refined the horizontal understanding of salvation in relation to the political order. [Here], salvation means freedom from economic injustice, political corruption, and class oppression. Towards this end a Christian-Marxist dialogue has been established, and the cost of discipleship has been described in terms of revolution by Jurgen Moltmann, or at least active resistance by Daniel Berrigan. Similarly, James Cone has made black racial identity the basis for his assertion that “Black Power” demands are Gospel correlates. Different as these conceptions may be in details, they agree that sin is a disruption of just horizontal relationships in society, that salvation is the rectification of these, and that insofar as Jesus is important, it is because He pioneered this movement as a Revolutionary, or at least a Dissenter.
Sin undeniably has horizontal ramifications, though this is hardly the discovery of the World Council of Churches. While government exists to curb lawlessness, it is sometimes the vehicle of it; minorities are oppressed in spite of the law and sometimes because of it. Given man’s inherent greed, it is a foregone conclusion that the American economic system, even if it is preferable to the alternatives, will never deliver equitable treatment to all who are embraced by it. And sin, even if it is at root a religious concept, issues in psychological disruptions and even personality derangements.
The basic divergence in interpreting Christ’s death, then, does not arise because some think of sin societally (horizontally) and others think of it only religiously (vertically). New Testament faith acknowledges the horizontal dimension, but the new liberalism denies the vertical aspect.
Is sin most to be feared because it breeds distrust, foments greed, causes personality to disintegrate, fuels cruelty, and leads to institutional corruption? Not according to the New Testament. It is most to be feared because it draws down the anger of God. What makes man’s predicament hopeless, on the one hand, and what necessitates a Gospel, on the other, is not man’s inhumanity to man, ghastly as that sometimes is, but the fact that the world lies under God’s condemnation. The Atonement, therefore cannot be understood merely as the genesis of societal reform; it must be seen, centrally and primarily, as God’s provision for averting His own anger.
This vertical dimension to the Atonement gives God’s love its real sanctity, but for several reasons it has not been as prominent in evangelical thought and preaching as I believe it is in the. New Testament.
It is obvious that the notion of God’s wrath is subject to serious misunderstanding, for it could be equated with human anger. Human anger is invariably tainted with and becomes the servant of evil. With anger comes malice, hatred, revenge, jealousy, distrust, and uncontrolled passion. Clearly, God’s anger is free of these defilements. What, then, is divine wrath? According to Frederick Godet, it is:
… moral indignation in all its purity, the holy antipathy of the Good Being for that which is evil, without the slightest alloy of personal irritation, or of selfish resentment. It is the dissatisfaction which is excited in a pure Being by the sight of impurity; it signifies the outward manifestations which testify to this deep dissatisfaction, and the sufferings which result from it to him who has provoked it. The wrath of God, so understood, is a necessary consequence of the profound difference which separates good from evil. To deny this would oblige us to consider evil not as the opposite, but simply an imperfect form, of good.
[Godet’s Biblical Studies: Studies on the New Testament, ed. by W. H. Lyttleton, London, 1895, p, 152]
What God’s wrath achieves primarily, says P.T. Forsyth, is the practical recognition that His holiness is still unchanged and unabated. “Without that God cannot remain God; He would be Father, but a partial not Sovereign Father,” as Samuel Mikolaski puts it in The Creative Theology of P.T. Forsyth. Brunner, who speaks of wrath as “the negative aspect of holiness,” goes on to say that it is necessarily an “objective reality” that stands between God and man. The price of affirming all this may be the appearance of “foolishness,” as Paul said, a lack of sophistication; but it is that kind of “foolishness” in which God excels.
And is it really so unsophisticated?
What the divine judgment tells us is that good and evil are not equally ultimate, they are not on the two ends of a cosmic seesaw tilting up and down eternally. The days when error can be on the throne and when truth can be condemned to the scaffold are numbered. The time is coming when God’s zeal will “burst into flames.” What opposes His will, on earth and in heaven, will be destroyed.
This fact alone gives us both a mandate and a rationale for interpreting life in moral terms. This is what provides a major incentive to be moral, and this is why the New Testament, which is so intensely ethical, so insistent upon our choosing good, is so often eschatological.[1] To speak of God without acknowledging His wrath is to postulate His ethical indifference. More than that, it is to require man’s ethical indifference, too. What at first sight may appear to be rather cross, and has no doubt been treated crassly in innumerable “fire and brimstone” sermons, is actually of the essence of the nature of God and the whole moral order. Inevitably, then, it is of the essence of the Atonement, too.
We should be grieved that eschatology has been so trivialized by the recent rash of popular books on the subject. Some of these books amount to nothing more than Christian horror stories; they pander to the same morbid interest that leads people to read cheap scandal sheets. Eschatology, instead of dealing with the deep and profound issues of good and evil, has been reduced to a calendar of events, a fair number of which, I dare say, Jesus Himself would have been amazed to learn. This is not the level on which we are invited to think about good and evil in Scripture; if we insist on doing so, our grasp of the Atonement will be correspondingly shallow.
The work of Christ [on the Cross] is a complex mystery, and the New Testament writers ransack their vocabulary to find language to express it. Their chief words are: redemption, by which Christ delivers sin’s captives from their bondage at the ransomed price of His life; sacrifice, by which our guilt, both as subjective shame (its psychological dimension) and as objective blame (its metaphysical dimension), is dealt with; propitiation, the way in which God’s wrath is averted; and reconciliation, the restoration of fellowship between God and man.
Although each of these words focuses on a different aspect of this mysterious exchange, whereby our sin is imputed to Christ and His righteousness to us, the theme of reconciliation probably takes in as much of the work of Christ as any. Reconciliation presupposes a prior hostility between two parties. At first sight it may appear that man is hostile toward God but that God is not hostile toward man, for in Romans 5:10 and II Corinthians 5:20 only man’s reconciliation is mentioned, and in II Corinthians 5:18, Ephesians 2:16, Colossians 1:20, God is spoken of as reconciling us to Himself. If this were the case, then Christ’s work would be directed only toward changing our distrust of God and not toward changing His disapproval of man.
In the other instances of reconciliation in the New Testament (Matthew 5:23, 24; I Corinthians 7:10,11), however the focus actually falls, not on the enmity of the offending party, but on the need to assuage the anger of the person against whom the offense was committed. This pattern is duplicated precisely with respect to the Atonement. In Romans 5:8-11, for example, what is underlined is not primarily that Christ has changed our feeling about God but rather that He changed God’s feelings about us. The enmity to which Paul refers (v.18, “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled …”) is clearly God’s, not ours; otherwise he would have said: “If, when we felt enmity toward God, we were able to lay it aside through Christ’s death …. ” On the contrary, what He affirms is that in reconciliation, no less than in justification, we are helplessly passive; we must be reconciled and we must receive, rather than effect, our reconciliation (v.11). Man is therefore separated from God by sin and God is separated from man by wrath. For reconciliation to be effective, God must be able to look on man without displeasure and man must be able to look on God without fear. And what was required has been done, as the words of that wellknown hymn affirm:
Bearing shame and scoffing rude, In my place condemned he stood; Sealed my pardon with his blood. Hallelujah! …
In the reconciliation of Christ, sin is expiated, wrath is propitiated, and our alienation from God is overcome.
Our redemption is not achieved by Christ’s revealing God’s love to us; rather, Christ reveals God’s love to us by achieving our redemption. Indeed, the apostle John goes so far as to say that we would not even know the real nature of love (I John 3:16) unless God had undertaken to shoulder our guilt and make common cause with us in our sin. Divine love, therefore, is not even understood outside the context of this Cross. It is with the Cross that we must begin, and it is with the Cross that we will end (Revelation 5:9,10). The simplest message of the evangelist and the profoundest message of the theologian are the same: Christ bore our sins, mediating between the estranged parties. There was no other Gospel known in the early Church; there should be no other Gospel known in ours.
[1] Having to do with God’s plan for ending history and completing His Kingdom through the return of Jesus Christ at the end of the age.
by Steve | Mar 1, 1979 | Archive - 1979
Archive: Taking On the TV Goliath
An exclusive interview with Rev. Don Wildmon, founder of the hard-hitting National Federation for Decency.
Q There has been some debate over how much influence TV exerts. What do you see as the nature and extent of this influence? How does it measure against principles and teachings of the Bible?
A Its influence is absolutely tremendous! Ask a five-year-old how you spell relief, he will reply ROLAIDS.
TV has such an influence that no politician would dare oppose it. Why? Television can make or break a candidate. We have seen that in our lifetime. So the politicians are not going to do anything about TV programming. The Federal Communications Commission is not going to do anything. They have let us know that they are not in the “moral” business. They are there to license the stations, not to influence the content of the programs.
How does TV’s influence measure against principles and teachings of the Bible? Basically TV is teaching principles totally opposite of those taught by the Bible. Inch-by-inch, little-by-little, TV programmers are moving us into an area where we will accept right as being wrong. In the Old Testament it says “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” (Proverbs 16:25 RSV) Television is teaching America that adultery and pre-marital sex, homosexuality, violence, etc., are all acceptable … that profanity is normal … that the name of God can be casually used in vain like you would say, well, “have a coke.”
Ten years ago if you would have heard a “hell” or “damn” on television you would have been shocked. But now such words are commonplace. In fact, there are very few words of profanity which have not been used on prime time television.
Nine or ten years ago we would not have accepted the sexual contents of many present shows. But TV has de-sensitized us, little-by-little. The ultimate end of all of this is hard-core porno on television.
I made that statement over a year ago to a newspaper and they laughed. But about one month later a TV critic for the New York Daily News interviewed Tony Randall. He said they would put porno on tomorrow if they could get away with it. Tony Randall is a man who has been in the television industry for 20 years. He quit because he would not put more T & A’s in his program (T & A’s refer to the parts of the female anatomy).
So, little-by-little TV is teaching us to accept things we should not accept. Recently I saw a show with a man and woman undressing … getting into bed. Then I saw the man getting on top of the woman before the scene was cut. Little-by-little. Eventually they are going to show the whole thing.
Ninety percent of all sex shown on television is presented outside of marriage. Thus, the sacred side of sex—as it was intended by God to be a beautiful sharing experience between a husband and a wife—is rarely presented by television. Instead, sex on TV is usually exploitive, manipulative, perverted.
Homosexuality is hardly ever shown in a bad light. The public doesn’t realize that the organization which has the most influence on television, other than television itself, is the homosexual group. They pre-screen and approve every television script dealing with homosexuality. They spend 20 hours a week in an office in New York going over proposed television scripts. That is why you are not going to see homosexuals ever presented honestly on television. How contrary can you get to the Bible?
Q You have been quoted as saying that TV is a drug. Please explain.
A Check it out with your children. Set a child down, let him watch TV. Your son or daughter will watch, hour after hour. If there is not something on he or she really likes, then the child will find something and will watch that.
Television takes no effort. You don’t have to move a muscle; all you have to do is turn it on and sit. You don’t even have to use your mind; somebody else does your thinking for you. So you become addicted. You don’t have to relate to anybody. You don’t have to go through the necessary turmoil or exercise of learning how to relate or talk or do. You just sit there being entertained passively. That’s why TV is a drug. We become addicted to it and we have to watch it.
Q Some people are saying that Americans (and United Methodists) have lost the capacity to get angry about evil. Do you agree?
A Yes and no. You can’t say that about all UMs. But as an institutional church, we have lost much of our righteous indignation, our holy anger about personal sin. Because the moral changes in our society have come about little-by-little, inch-by-inch, we have been conditioned gradually to accept them without getting angry or very upset.
However, there are still United Methodist lay people, pastors, and local churches who do get angry at evil. The trouble is, they don’t have a channel to express that righteous anger adequately. Our church institution stifles that anger, sometimes because they say expressing it is negative and not loving.
Q What is your organization, the National Federation For Decency?
A At the current time NFD is spending 99 percent of its efforts trying to make TV a clean, wholesome, constructive influence in our society. We are almost two years old. We are not sponsored or affiliated with any particular church. I happen to be a UM minister, a member of the North Mississippi Annual Conference, under appointment to the NFD by my bishop. But that’s the only relationship between the N FD and my denomination. The NFD is independent, something like Good News, as I understand your movement. Working with us are Catholics and Baptists, Presbyterians and Methodists, Mormons and Jews.
Q How did NFD begin?
A One night I was watching TV with my children during the Christmas holidays of ’76. The three choices on our three channels offered sex, violence, and profanity. I decided that I had had enough; I was not going to take any more without fighting back. I did not know what I could do, but I knew I had to do something, as a Christian and a parent.
It began with a “turn-the-TV-off week.” Then our efforts mushroomed. I felt increasingly that this was God’s will for my life, to give myself to trying to make TV a clean, wholesome, constructive influence for our families. So we founded NFD.
We are non-profit. My board is made primarily of UM members including ministers, housewives, a basketball coach, insurance people, and some others. I have had contact with these people for several years. On our board, we have no people with money, no well-known people, no national personalities.
Q How does NFD operate?
A On a basis of knowledge, facts. We have a process by which we monitor programs on prime-time TV. We invite people in different parts of the country to participate as evaluators. We train them to monitor for us. The results are sent back to us, tabulated, and put into a computer. This is how we know precisely what advertisers sponsored what shows, what the content of each show was, how much sex and how sex was presented. We get to know a tremendous amount about each particular show. As we compile data over a period of 12 weeks, this gives us a pretty good knowledge of the practice that an advertiser follows. Then, when we talk to that advertiser, we can talk from a basis of fact—not emotion. This is the reason for our success in dealing with Sears, Ford, and other large companies. They know what we are talking about, and we can back it up.
Q How is NFD financed?
A We began on faith—we had no money. For the first seven months while I was with NFD I received only $1,400 salary. I invested nearly $5,000 of my own money to get the NFD going. But for the last year we have been able to pay our own way.
We receive not one penny from the UM Church as an institution. We receive no money from our annual conference or any other conference. We receive no money from the government or any foundation. We have no “big money” on our board.
Our organization is financed entirely by individuals and local churches. Ninety-five percent of all our gifts are in the $10 or less class. We have a subscription fee of $10 a year to our NFD newsletter. It goes out once a month. From that money, basically, we survive. The biggest gift we have received from any church or individual was $300.
Q Boycotting your activities. How do you answer people who think that boycotting is not an appropriate strategy for Christians?
A When I started NFD, boycott was a very dirty word for me. Why? Because boycott was the method that the blacks had used indiscriminately against whites in our state. Some innocent people were hurt unjustly.
For the first few months of the N FDs existence, when we tried to get someone to boycott, it was nearly impossible.
My attitude about boycotting changed. One day I was sitting in a UM church at a meeting of the Board of Christian Social Concerns. We were discussing TV and its influence, and somebody said that the answer might be to boycott sponsors who help pay for this trash. I shuddered. But across the table from me was a young mother with two small children. She spoke up: “What’s wrong with boycotting? As a Christian and as a mother, I have not only the right but the responsibility NOT to spend my money with those companies that help destroy values that I believe in.”
For 20 years I had preached Christian stewardship from the pulpit. But now, for the first time, I suddenly realized in a new way that Christian stewardship goes beyond giving your tithe to the church. It also involves where you spend your money and who you help with your money.
Yes, boycotting is a very definite part of our strategy. Our boycotts are not directed against innocent people and innocent businesses that have no power to change anything. Instead, our boycotts are directed against companies which have complete control over their advertising policies and choose to sponsor harmful TV. Here is our philosophy: Where advertisers spend their advertising money is their own business. If they want to sponsor “Deep Throat,” it is their money. Likewise, where we spend our money is our business. We have the right to spend our money where we want. And certainly we have the right to say to any company, “If you want to sponsor ‘SOAP’ or ‘Charlie’s Angels’ or ‘Vegas’ or some filthy movie, go ahead. But if you do that, then we are going to make sure that we spend our money with your competitor.”
That is as American as apple pie. And I am convinced it is also thoroughly Christian. For the Christian has the positive responsibility to help promote clean, wholesome, constructive values. Also, there is an opposite and negative responsibility—Christians should refuse to support and encourage those who encourage the breaking of God’s laws. Remember—part of the money you spend on a product is used to pay for TV advertising. Will you thus be a party to promoting values which destroy the very foundation of the church and society?
Q How can individual United Methodists and/or churches tie in with your activities in behalf of wholesome TV?
A Write and tell us that you or your church want to become a part of NFD. Send $10 so we can send you our monthly NFD newsletter. It will show precisely what you can do … and it tells a lot about the world of television as it really is. This would make a good project for a Sunday school class, circle, prayer-sharing group, or council on ministries in your church.
Q Is there any overlap between your work in NFD and work being done by the official communications agency of our church?
A Yes and No. Our church helped to develop what I consider to be the finest teaching instrument about TV, Television Awareness Training workshops. This is a tremendous educational study of TV and we recommend it to everyone.
But as far as getting involved directly to change TV by putting pressure on somebody, we don’t see any overlap. I have to be perfectly honest (and it hurts me to have to say this) but I have been disappointed by the silence of our institutional church in this particular area of TV. And also as far as alcohol, drugs, and pornography.
Indeed, what good will it do if we provide a “Great Society ” with adequate housing, good medical care, food, clothing, etc., if our society becomes a moral pig pen?
If the church had been doing an effective job, I would never have begun the NFD. I try to work through the church where possible, but there is not an organization in our church that is doing the work that NFD seeks to do.
I wish that our church would do more. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t expect it will as an institution. Individuals in the church, and local churches, yes. And this is the reason for the NFD-to give you a place to tie in, so that many people can work together for the principles of Biblical morality.
Q If you had one wish concerning the UM Church, what would it be?
A I wish that we would find something that seemingly we have ignored if not lost entirely—awareness that sin is real, that sin can destroy us, and that in order to be saved from sin you have to be saved through Jesus Christ. This applies in every area of life, not only social but personal also. Salvation involves life transformed according to the righteousness of Christ, so I wish our church would speak to some of the personal and moral issues of our society. We do a pretty good job speaking about the Panama Canal and some of the other issues such as abortion, law of sea, and the Kent State killings, etc. But somewhere along the way, I wish we would say something also about the sacred worth of individuals … about pornography and how it degrades human worth … about TV that teaches profanity and immorality and violence. And it ought to have some kind of program to act for righteousness and justice in the realm of personal morality.
by Steve | Jan 7, 1979 | Archive - 1979
Archive: Now is the Time to Begin!
The first in a continuing series of articles intended to help United Methodists make a positive impact on the 1980 General Conference of our church.
by Rev. Dr. Robert W. Sprinkle, Good News Political Strategy Chairman and Director, UM District Urban Ministries, St. Petersburg, Florida
General Conference of 1980 is only 1½ years away. This means that it is time for evangelicals to gear up the political machinery that we can use to give our faithful witness to the direction we see Christ leading His Church.
Why so much lead time? One reason is that the next meeting of your annual conference (most of them will meet in May or June of 1979) will elect the delegates who will represent you at General Conference in Indianapolis in the spring of 1980. To be prepared for those delegate elections from annual conferences, evangelicals will need to begin soon to organize efforts in your annual conference to elect the best possible delegates. (Electing these delegates will be the subject of this column in the next issue of Good News).
So we need to elect delegates who preferably represent, or at least are sympathetic to, the concerns of evangelicals. This, in turn, implies that we need to be able to state clearly what those concerns are. There is no one “Good News position,” or official evangelical position, on a great many issues. But it is possible to reflect here some of the concerns that surface repeatedly when evangelicals within the UMC discuss the state and future of our denomination.
These concerns, modified and applied to your local situation, can form the basis of discussion with persons who are likely candidates to be elected as General Conference delegates. So here are some sample questions that might be grist for a questionnaire to prospective delegates (in no particular order):
1. Membership Decline:
The UMC has lost over a million members in the last decade.
A. What are the causes of this membership decline?
B. Are there any theological factors in this loss?
C. What should be done to change this trend?
D. Would you favor the development of a separate Board of Evangelism and Church Extension?
2. Missions Retrenchment
The UMC’s total number of missionaries serving overseas has declined from 1,500 to under 700 in recent years.
A. What are the causes of this decline?
B. What theological factors are at work?
C. What should be done to change this trend?
D. Should the Board of Global Ministries retain the prerogative to decide which UM agencies may work overseas?
E. Should alternate, voluntary missionary societies be permitted within the UMC, in addition to BGM?
3. Abortion:
At least one UM board is a member of the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, and RCAR operates from an office in the UM Building in Washington, D.C.
A. Should the UMC and/or its boards participate in RCAR?
B. Should the UMC and/or its boards participate in “pro-life” groups?
C. Should the UMC and/or its boards not join coalitions on this issue?
D. Is there some other position the UMC should take regarding abortion?
4. Superintendency:
Proposals will probably be submitted again regarding “term episcopacy” and elected district superintendency. (There is no evangelical consensus on these issues at present.)
A. Do you favor or oppose “term episcopacy?”
B. If you favor it, would you wish to see 8- or 12-year terms?
C. Would you support or oppose a proposal to change the Discipline to allow for the election of district superintendents by all the members of an annual conference (as the EUB’s formerly did)?
5. Exemplary Behavior of Ministers:
An avowed, practicing homosexual has been reappointed to the pastorate of Washington Square UMC in New York City. The case was made by non-evangelicals that the Social Principles Statement, which speaks to this issue, is intended only as a set of guidelines and not as binding church law on the subject.
A. Would you favor or oppose adding specific language to the Discipline that would prohibit any practicing homosexual from being appointed as pastor of a UM congregation? From continuing under episcopal appointment?
B. Are there other forms of behavior which should be specified in the Discipline as contradictory to receiving an appointment?
C. Should the Social Principles Statement be kept or changed? If changed, what do you suggest?
6. Itinerancy / Appointive System (whereby pastors are appointed annually by the bishop):
A study report is soon due on the status and future of the itinerant ministry.
A. What changes, if any, would you like to see in the appointive/itinerant system?
B. Should local pastors have voting rights at annual conference?
C. Should an ordination and conference membership procedure be reinstituted that provided an alternative to eventually attending seminary?
D. What initiatives and prerogatives should local churches have in the appointment-making process?
7. Church Structures:
Several proposals are already being discussed that would affect church structure, and perhaps evangelicals too:
A. Should there be quotas for ethnic minorities and women on general boards and agencies?
B. Should UM Women’s units be optional or mandatory in the local church?
C. Would you favor one general program journal, the Interpreter, to cover the programs of all work areas? If so, would you favor ending subsidies to other special interest official periodicals such as response, engage/social action, New World Outlook, etc.?
8. Priorities:
In addition to the three existing missional priorities, there is talk of adding priorities on worship, family life, UM higher education, and perhaps others.
A. Do you favor designating some causes for church-wide emphasis over the next four years?
B. If there are officially designated priorities, how many can be practically pursued?
C. Are priorities permanent? If not, how would you de-prioritize a cause?
D. Which items would you name as missional priorities for the next quadrennium?
E. What “mix” of apportionment (required) and Advance Special (optional) giving should be used to fund missional priorities?
9. “Sexist” Language:
A concern has emerged that the UMC eliminate “sexist” language from liturgy, curriculum, and printed program resources.
A. Do you consider use of terms such as “men” in reference to people generally to be “sexist”?
B. Do you consider use of “Father” in reference to God, or to Jesus as His Son, to be “sexist”?
C. If a decision is reached to make some changes to avoid “sexist” language, would you favor it affecting only newly-produced materials or should there be a revision of traditional resources (creeds, hymns, etc.) as well?
10. Curriculum:
Church school curriculum income reported by the UM Publishing House have fallen 6.8% and 3.3% in the last two years, respectively. Several suggestions have been made to change this trend:
A. Would you favor or oppose a specifically evangelical “track” of literature for all age groups published by our church?
B. Would you favor or oppose a process whereby materials produced by other publishers could be reviewed by the UM Curriculum Review Committee for consistency with Wesleyan doctrine; and if consistent, materials could be sold through Cokesbury as approved curriculum?
C. Do you favor or oppose the present policy under which UM congregations are limited to using UM curriculum?
D. Are there other suggestions that you have for improving UM curriculum?
11. Doctrine:
The UMC, under the doctrinal statement added to the Discipline in 1972, operates in a pluralistic context. A matter for clarification is how pluralism relates to doctrine, and particularly to the Wesleyan concept of “a core of doctrine.” This core, which for Wesley was composed of beliefs necessary to salvation and full Christian faith, is left undefined in the 1972 doctrinal statement. There will be efforts in 1980 to specify some beliefs as belonging to the core of doctrine.
A. Do you think that beliefs belonging to the core of doctrine can be specified?
B. If so, what are some elements that you would identify as being essential within the core?
C. Would you favor or oppose dropping the 1972 doctrinal statement (Paragraphs 67 and 69) from the Discipline?
D. Would you favor or oppose naming at least one basic doctrine, for example the necessity of Christ’s atoning death on the Cross for our salvation, as belonging to the essential core of doctrine?
12. Stewardship:
Each General Conference decides on priorities for church funding, apportioned and Advance Special categories, and the overall financial plan for the coming quadrennium. Some likely issues include:
A. Should the overall level of apportionments be increased, kept where it is, or decreased; and by about what percentage?
B. Are there items now a part of apportionments which you believe should not be under apportionment?
C. Are there additional items or causes which should be apportioned?
13. Other Topics
This is a good sample of possible questions to raise in interviews or questionnaires with prospective delegates. Some evangelicals are considering joining with other caucuses to do joint questionnaires.
Other topics could be easily added, regarding the ethics of boycotting, the quality of seminary education, etc. And although this article lists some of the basic questions, these questions merit some reflection as to what answers evangelicals want to hear. We hope that this list will spur our thinking about the issues likely to face the 1980 General Conference, and that your thinking will lead to action in making an evangelical witness felt in the political arenas of our denomination.
Thoughtful church members need to reflect on these questions and come together to discuss them. In so doing you will be strengthening the UM Church by thoughtful participation in the democratic process which our church wisely provides.
Why not form one or more study/discussion groups to explore these and other significant issues? We would like to hear what is happening in your church. – The Editors
