Mister Methodist of the 19th Century

by Steve | Mar 2, 1976 | Archive - 1976

Mister Methodist of the 19^th Century

By Eddie Robb, Student, Perkins Theological Seminary, Dallas, TX
Contributing Editor, Good News

In the fall of 1818, Peter Cartwright was invited by one of the prominent Presbyterian pastors of Nashville to preach in his church on Monday evening. As usual, a great crowd of people gathered to hear the famous frontier Methodist preacher.

Cartwright’s sermon text that night was, “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”

As Cartwright was reading his text, General Andrew Jackson walked up the aisle to the middle post and gracefully leaned against it. There were no vacant seats.

“Just then,” Cartwright recalled, “I felt someone pull my coat, and turning my head, my fastidious preacher — whispering a little loud – said, ‘General Jackson has come in! General Jackson has come in.’“

I said, “Who is General Jackson? If he don’t get his soul converted, God will damn his soul as quick as He will a Guinea [slave].'”

The host preacher was, needless to say, highly embarrassed. He tucked his head down low and would have been thankful for leave of absence. But the congregation, General Jackson and all, burst out laughing.

The next day General Jackson met the Methodist preacher and said,” Mr. Cartwright, you are a man after my own heart … I highly approve of your independence. A minister of Jesus Christ ought to love everybody, and fear no mortal man … If I had a few thousand such independent, fearless officers as you were, and a well-drilled army, I could take old England.”

Andrew Jackson had sized up Peter Cartwright correctly: He was fearless and he was independent. In this respect he was right for the times.

Our nation, our church, and Peter Cartwright grew up together. In 1783, the treaty was signed in Paris recognizing the United States of America’s independence. In 1784, the Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in Baltimore. In 1785, Peter Cartwright was born in Amherst County, Virginia.

The times were marvelously favorable for the nation, the Church, and the boy. The principles of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” which in Europe were beginning to assert themselves in the mad struggles of the French Revolution, were in America established upon a firm basis of a constitutional democracy.

For the infant Church, also, the times were auspicious. The Methodists, with their missionary spirit and matchless organization, were superbly fitted to meet the needs of those pioneer days —to carry the Gospel message into the remotest hamlets, and to organize the scattered converts into the disciplined life of Christ.

And for the boy, born into a home of poverty and hardship, grappling from early childhood with problems of frontier life, these, too, were times of promising hope. While Peter was growing up, there were two strong influences contending for him. One was his father, who was not a Christian. The other was his Christian mother. Peter’s father gave him a racehorse and a pack of cards and encouraged him into a wild life. “I was naturally a wild, wicked boy,” Cartwright later wrote, “and delighted in horse-racing, card-playing, and dancing.” My mother remonstrated almost daily with me, and I had to keep my cards hid from her; for if she could have found them, she would have burned them. …”

In the end, it was his mother’s saintly influence which prevailed. In the spring of 1802, Peter Cartwright “found peace with God.” That same year he received a license “to exercise his gifts as an Exhorter in the Methodist Episcopal Church, so long as his practice is agreeable to the Gospel.”

Speaking of his call to preach, Cartwright later wrote, “If I had been seeking for money I would not have traveled, for I knew that I could have made more money splitting rails than I could traveling a circuit when I started. It was not honor, there was no honor about it. It was to fulfill my own convictions of duty.”

Peter Cartwright rose to fame as a campmeeting preacher. Both Methodists and Presbyterians held campmeetings in those days. They were, in fact, the great events of the entire year. Thousands of people from miles around would gather. Ten twenty and sometimes thirty ministers of different denominations would come together and preach—night and day. At times these meetings lasted three or four weeks.

Amid such scenes as this Peter Cartwright, as a preacher, was almost without a peer. He had a clear, strong bass voice which he seldom strained even in times of strongest emotion. He could sing, preach and pray day and night for an entire week. His own soul kindled with the flame of his message, and sinners often fell before him like soldiers slain in battle.

Here is a description of a scene which followed his preaching one Sunday morning: “Just as I was closing up my sermon, and pressing it with all the force I could command, the power of God suddenly was displayed, and sinners fell by scores through all the assembly. We had no need of a mourners’ bench. It was supposed that several hundred fell in five minutes; sinners turned pale; some ran into the woods; some tried to get away and fell in the attempt; some shouted aloud for joy.”

At times strange physical manifestations and self-delusions and even impostures were associated with the revival meetings. Cartwright gives us a quaint description of a violent affliction known as ‘the jerks,’ which at times would sweep through a congregation.

He says: “A new exercise broke out among us, called ‘the jerks,’ which was overwhelming in its effects upon the bodies and the minds of the people. No matter whether they were saints or sinners, they would be taken under a warm song or sermon and seized with a convulsive jerking all over, which they could not by any possibility avoid. The more they resisted the more they jerked … I have seen more than 500 persons jerking at one time in my large congregations. Most usually persons taken with the jerks, to obtain relief, as they said, would rise up and dance. Some would run but could not get away. Some would resist; on such the jerks were ·usually very severe.”

Cartwright was a thundering preacher, whose bluntness and fervor suited him ideally for the frontier, where the pulpit was often a stump, or a rude log platform in a clearing, or even a dance floor!

One Saturday night he stopped to eat at a frontier inn. A fiddler started playing, and a beautiful young woman walked up and asked Cartwright to dance — not recognizing him as the preacher who thundered against dancing.

But Cartwright calmly took her hand and walked to the middle of the dance floor. Recalls Cartwright, “I then spoke to the fiddler to hold a moment and added that for several years I had not undertaken any matter of importance without first asking the blessing of God upon it. … Here I grasped the young lady’s hand tightly and said, ‘let us kneel down and pray’ and instantly dropped on my knees and commenced praying. …

“The young lady tried to get loose … but presently she fell on her knees. Some of the company kneeled, some stood, some sat still and all looked curious. … While I prayed, some wept and wept out loud, and some cried for mercy.

“I rose from my knees and commenced an exhortation, after which I sang a hymn. The young lady lay prostrate, crying for mercy. …

“Our meeting lasted the next day and the next night, as many more were powerfully converted. I organized a society, took 32 into the church and sent them a preacher.”

Several of the converts became ministers of the Gospel, and Cartwright later observed, “In some conditions of society I should have failed; in some I should have been mobbed; in others I should have been considered a lunatic.” The reason for Cartwright’s triumph on the dance floor — and, indeed, the triumphs of his ministry: “the immediate superintending agency of the Divine Spirit of God.” Probably Peter Cartwright is as widely known for the strength of his right arm as for his preaching. His was a muscular Christianity. The great crowds which thronged to the camp meetings included not only the devout and curious but also the lawless. Often scoffers and other ruffians tried to break up the services.

For example, in a campmeeting he was conducting “in the edge of Tennessee” about the year 1824, a group of local hoodlums armed themselves with clubs and vowed they would ride their horses through the camp and break up the meeting.

The next day when they invaded the camp, Peter Cartwright was ready. He recalls, “Their leader spurred his horse and made a pass at me; but fortunately I dodged his blow. The next lick was mine, and I gave it to him and laid him flat on his back.”

The rest of the mounted rowdies, seeing their leader knocked down, wheeled around and fled. Such were the campmeeting battles during those pioneer days.

Like most frontier preachers, Cartwright had little formal education. “A Methodist preacher in those days, ” he says, “when he felt that God called him to preach, instead of hunting up a college or Biblical institute, hunted up a hardy pony of a horse, and some traveling apparatus, and with his library always at hand, namely, a Bible, hymn book and Discipline, he started.”

Cartwright, however, was no enemy of education. He was an eager reader of books and was a patron of good reading in the many homes he visited. He claimed that during the first 50 years of his ministry he had distributed $10,000 worth of literature through the scattered hamlets of the frontier.

“It has often been a question that I shall never be able to answer on earth, ” he wrote, “whether I have done the most good by preaching or distributing religious books.”

Furthermore, he was a supporter of schools. Both Illinois Wesleyan University and McKendree College boast of him as one of their founders.

Peter Cartwright was a constant and earnest student of the Bible. In his early years, especially, he hankered for debates and theological foes. With wit and subtleties of argument he would castigate Arians and Calvinists and demolish Baptists and Campbellites. Cartwright was simply caught up in the times. The robust individualism of the frontier fostered this type of rampant sectarianism.

Looking back 150 years, we realize Cartwright sometimes squandered his energy on petty conflicts. But more often he fought mightily against spiritual deadness prevalent on the American frontier. And on the vital social problems of his day he had no hesitation to speak out and take action.

He was, for example, uncompromising in his hatred of slavery. That’s why in 1824 he moved to Illinois — to “get clear of the evil of slavery ” and so his children would not marry into slave families.

But the slavery dispute moved to Illinois, too, so Cartwright entered politics to oppose it. In 1828 he was elected to the lower house of the Illinois General Assembly. And in 1832 he beat another anti-slavery candidate — Abraham Lincoln. “I was beaten,” Lincoln later wrote, “the only time I have ever been beaten by the people.”

Cartwright later ran for the U.S. House of Representatives. This time, however, he was defeated … by Abraham Lincoln.

For 65 years Peter Cartwright served in the active ranks of the Methodist ministry, 50 of these years as a presiding elder. He was elected to General Conference 13 times.

Within his ministry he had seen in American Methodism growth unparalleled in Christian history … he had seen an army of Methodist preachers come out of the homes of common people to win the West … he had seen societies springing up in the wilderness, and churches rising in new villages … he had seen the small and despised people of his mother’s church grow to be one of the mightiest of Christian denominations.

Peter Cartwright was Mr. Methodist of the 19th century!

Father Otterbein III – The Gentle Revolutionary

by Steve | Jan 2, 1976 | Archive - 1976

Father Otterbein – The Gentle Revolutionary

Part III

by Sondra O’Neale

Otterbein was 26 years old when he took his first pastorate at Lancaster, PA. The congregation was difficult, having been without a pastor for a year and a half. But there was one family of particular spiritual joy and hospitality: Mr. and Mrs. Abraham Leroy. They had four daughters and one son. French Huguenots, who spoke German as well, they had escaped to Switzerland because of state persecution against Protestants. Later they came to the U.S. and settled in Lancaster. Of particular attraction to young pastor Otterbein was 17-year-old Susan Leroy.

Nearly 10 years later she became his wife. In fact, she was the one love of his life. There is no record left as to why or where Susan Leroy Otterbein died. But we do know she was buried at the York church just six years after their marriage. The tender love Otterbein had for Susan is shown when some 50 years later, two days before his own death, he asked for a silk purse she had made. He had carefully saved it over the years, and after gazing on it a long while remembering the winsome Susan, he raised it to his lips and fondly kissed the keepsake.

A man of God is often lonely. Outside of memories of Susan, Father Otterbein had few friends. There were co-leader Martin Boehm and G. Adam Geeting, a convert of Father Otterbein’s who became his lifelong son in the ministry. And there was the pillar of American Methodism, Bishop Francis Asbury.

Asbury was greatly impressed when he first heard about Otterbein’s work among the Germans. In 1774 he wrote Otterbein urging him to accept the twice-offered call to pastor the German Evangelical Reformed Church in Baltimore. It was Asbury’s plan that Baltimore become a preaching center of the Great Revival and that Methodism would have an increasing influence on the three-state area.

Father Otterbein agreed, fully aware that the move would further damage his weak relations with the German Reformed denomination to which he belonged. During his 22 years in America, enemies in the church became more vocal in opposing him. They agitated the synod until Adam Geeting was expelled. They held long tirades against the “wicked fanaticism” of the Otterbein movement, particularly the “revival meetings in experimental religion that called for a new birth.” Further, the church extending the call had split from the more conservative First German Reformed Church of Baltimore because they favored the Otterbein views.

When Asbury and Otterbein met, the seasoned, ordained, intelligent, well-educated German preacher was 48 years old. He could speak little English. Asbury, by contrast, was an itinerant preacher who was just beginning his rise to fame in America. He was 29 years old and could speak no German. Nevertheless, they knew the same Lord and were united by the same Holy Spirit. Thus, their close companionship continued for 40 years. Asbury insisted that Otterbein assist in his ordination as bishop. Otterbein tenderly exhorted the young evangelist, always gently resisting Asbury’s efforts to obtain a commitment for union between the Methodist and Brethren churches.

By the time of its first annual meeting in 1800 to form an official church body, the United Brethren in Christ were indeed an attractive prize for the merger-minded Asbury. There were some 100 men in the Brethren ministry. The community prayer meetings and churches had extended hundreds of miles from places Otterbein had pastored. Organization was urgently necessary to assure that each congregation would be served by an overseer or circuit pastor, and that articles of faith and church order was followed. Venerable Fathers Otterbein and Boehm were named bishops of the United Brethren in Christ. But they were quite aged and the younger men, particularly Christian New- comer, would be responsible for further organization and growth of the church.

Father Boehm died in 1812 at the age of 87. He had preached the gospel for 55 years and it was only fitting that Bishop Asbury would deliver a notable eulogy.

His beloved friend and co-worker, Philip William Otterbein, died at the same age of 87 one year later. He died simply, as he had lived. All of his financial earnings had been given to the church or to the poor.

He never officially left the Reformed denomination, but Otterbein did indicate his intention that the United Brethren continue by giving apostolic ordination just days before he died, to two of the young ministers who succeeded him and Boehm.

To the end he was true to his life conviction that not “in denomination” but “in Christ” mattered. His funeral services were held in a Baltimore Lutheran church. A Lutheran pastor preached in German and a Methodist pastor preached in English. An Episcopal pastor conducted the ceremony at the grave site.

When Bishop Asbury heard the news, he cried, “Is Father Otterbein dead? A great and good man of God! One of the greatest scholars and divines that ever came to America or born in it. Alas, the chiefs of the Germans are gone to their rest and reward …. Forty years have I known the retiring modesty of this man of God, towering majesty above his fellows, in learning, wisdom, and grace, yet seeking to be known only to God and the people of God.”

The Future of The United Methodist Church

by Steve | Jan 1, 1976 | Archive - 1976

The Future of The United Methodist Church

1976

by Rev. Michael Walker Pastor, Salem-Kinser United Methodist Church, Greenville, Texas

The question of the future of the United Methodist Church is important to each of us. We have invested our lives in its life and work; we have given of our dollars to support its outreach and build its institutions. I suppose that there really shouldn’t be any question as to the future of our church which was undoubtedly raised up by God in the 18th Century and has had a valid ministry through many decades. But the fact is that when we read our Bibles and when we are sensitive to what is going on in the church we become concerned. Some of our episcopal leaders have shown an awareness of great problems emerging in our church. Bishop Gerald Kennedy said some years ago, “Too many churches today are only second-rate country clubs and nothing more. I don’t wish to be negative, but at times when I look at the church in North America, I worry that it may not be part of the healing, but instead part of the disease.”

When the church was in its heyday, Bishop Hazen Werner stated in 1960, “Our proclamation of the Gospel is arrested because of our dryness of soul. …Our lives have been dried by the hot winds of secularism. … Conversion is a fact of history, but not an experience of today. …The Gospel is a term, but not good news. … ”

In 1973, in his first address to the North Texas Conference, Bishop W. Mcferrin Stowe declared, “The Church has lost her authority. Having sometime since lost a clear understanding of her identity, being uncertain therefore about her purpose, she now wonders what she believes or what she should believe. She lacks the voice of certainty, which always arises out of strong convictions and deep commitment. So the ancient question is heard anew, ‘If the trumpet sounds an uncertain sound, who will prepare for battle?’

“There seems to be no captain on the ship, no compass … there is a growing need for purpose, conviction and authority.”

These observations by church leaders do not surprise those of us who are evangelicals. We have shared their concerns and for some years now have been working and meeting with a view to seeing spiritual awakening and reform within the UMC. What many are asking is this: Does all this effort make any difference? That is a difficult question to answer, because it is not easy to view the church nationally. It is easier to assess how a particular board or agency· is responding to our efforts … or to assess the progress toward evangelical renewal in a specific annual conference. But the larger picture is ambiguous. My own personal assessment is that we have reason to be encouraged about the denomination if we look at the progress evangelicals have made in the past years. But if we look at how far God wants us yet to go toward recovering Scriptural Christianity, then we can hardly be anything but discouraged.

Let’s note some of the developments (and we cannot mention them all) which most evangelicals find cause for new hope within our church. The existence and ministry of Good News itself continues to be a source of encouragement. Since our beginning in 1966, while we have often made mistakes and have been far less effective than we needed to be, the movement and the magazine have given evangelicals a national voice and a visibility before the denomination which has made an impact. The emergence of our sister organization, The Evangelical Missions Council, has provided a strong voice for a Biblical outreach.

In most conferences there has developed a greater freedom for evangelical pastors and churches to be themselves, and in many conferences the evangelical renewal groups have provided an identity for evangelicals and a vehicle for common action which has given them far greater influence in the annual conference.

The charismatic movement and the lay witness movement have in recent years been instruments of renewal in thousands of individual lives. The spiritual vitality brought through these movements has resurrected many churches. We praise’ God for this continuing stream of spiritual power in the UMC.

A greater number of our pre-ministerial students are now finding their way into seminaries which are unapologetically committed to the Word of God. I understand that now the independent Asbury Theological Seminary has more United Methodist students than all but one of our denominationally-owned seminaries. And in each of our own seminaries there are groups of young evangelicals with a deep commitment to the historic Christian faith, who hold great promise for the ministry of the UMC.

But if these things bring us encouragement, there are others which contribute to our daily dilemma. Doctrinal pluralism heads the list. Pluralism is heard by most evangelicals to mean, “It doesn’t matter what you believe ” or, “All theologies are equally valid.” Formalized by the 1972 General Conference, it is invoked more and more. Now it is advocated in the first chapter of a new book of UM beliefs which states, “Pluralism is a major tenet.”

Last year was a most traumatic year. It saw the continuing membership decline, coupled with a fading aggressiveness in evangelism; a prostitutes’ convention held in a California United Methodist Church; and the denomination’s Council on Youth Ministries’ call for the ordination of homosexuals into the ministry. In the first case, the public response of the local episcopal leader offered a weak, I-wouldn’t-have-done-it-that-way kind of statement. And the rest of our leaders were practically silent. In the case of the recommendation of the Council on Youth Ministries, the church’s leaders responded negatively only after months of official silence. And today, some in the Board of Church and Society are working to get the General Conference next year to soften our already moderate position on homosexuality in the church’s statement on Social Principles.

The Evangelical Missions Council, organized a year-and-a-half ago, following action taken here at Junaluska at the 1973 Convocation, has in good faith tried to effect changes in the policies of the Board of Global Ministries, policies which would reverse our Church’s retreat from an aggressive and evangelistic mission strategy. Finally, after many efforts, it has become obvious that the Board of Global Ministries will not substantially change its present course in the foreseeable future.

And then there is the Church School Curriculum. After years of writing papers, letters, holding meetings with the curriculum-producing agencies, only a little progress has been made. While we are grateful for what has been done, more and more evangelical congregations are finding it necessary to switch to independently published materials in order to maintain the integrity of their local church’s ministry of the Word.

Evangelicals look at these developments and tears fill our eyes. Our hearts ache with a burden to see a church renewed in faithfulness to the Word of God. So we keep on praying and planning for that to happen. Tonight I want to suggest some directions our church must take in order to be faithful to Scriptural Christianity. These keys to the future include a recovery of theological conviction, a rediscovery of the Bible, evangelical ecumenism, renewal among the clergy and in the seminaries, and the strengthening of the evangelical wing of the church.

1. The first imperative for a viable future is to recover a sense of theological conviction. Presently, we are in a state of theological and doctrinal anarchy. Everyone does his own thing theologically. We are fascinated by every theological fad. No norms seem operative, except those of intellectual respectability and institutional expediency.

In contrast, the thing that distinguished Jesus from the teachers of His day was that His words were spoken with authority and confidence. The same authority was characteristic of the apostles and the early church. The truth had been revealed in Christ and their job was to boldly proclaim it. The world today desperately needs the church that will stand up and declare what it believes to be the essential core of Scriptural Christianity.

When we talk like this we open ourselves to the charge of advocating dogmatism. John Stott, in his powerful book, Christ, the Controversialist, writes:

… Historic Christianity is essentially dogmatic because it purports to be revealed faith. … If God has spoken, … why should it be thought ‘dogmatic’ to believe His Word ourselves and to urge other people to believe it too? This of course does not mean that we know it all … but neither does it mean that the Christian can make no confident statements. It is true that our dogmatism should be limited to that core of central truths clearly revealed in Scripture, but on those things we need not be doubtful or apologetic.

G. K. Chesterton once wrote:

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition and has settled on the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.

Professor James Stewart agrees, “It is quite mistaken,” he writes, “to suppose that humility excludes conviction. Humble and self-forgetting we must always be, but diffident and apologetic about the Gospel, never.”

Another criticism of a call for certainty in theological matters is that it promotes controversy. This results in our church most often in cries for tolerance and pleas to remain positive.

On the matter of being positive, we in Good News have heard much. “If you must sound sure of your viewpoint,” we are told, “at least don’t be critical and negative about other viewpoints.” But such a statement ignores the teaching of Scripture, the clear example of the Church leaders of the past, the ritual of our own church, and the practical necessities of communication. Titus 1:9 gives the duty of the elder in the church. It is to both “… give instruction in sound doctrine [positive] and also to “confute those who contradict it.” [negative]. We are called to be both positive and negative. In the ordination service for elders we vow to not only “minister the doctrine of Christ,” but also to ” … defend the Church against all doctrine contrary to God’s Word.” The Evangelical must not be intimidated into silence at the presence of unbiblical teaching by the accusation of negativism.

And then there’s the matter of tolerance. John Stott says:

We need to distinguish between the tolerant mind and the tolerant spirit. Tolerant in spirit a Christian should always be, loving, understanding, forgiving, and forebearing others, making allowances for them, and giving them the benefit of the doubt; for true love bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things. But how can we be tolerant in mind of what God has plainly revealed to be either evil or erroneous? In Revelation 2:20 Jesus judges the church at Thyatira for tolerating false teaching and immorality.

No right-thinking evangelical loves controversy. It is very distasteful. It is never our first choice. Our first choice is – like Jude’s, in verse 3 of that little letter – to declare our common salvation; but sometimes it is necessary to “contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” This, of course, must always be done without bitterness or personal insult, but it must be done. The example of Jesus is clear at this point. Committed to the truth, He did not shrink from declaring publicly His opposition to wrong doctrine, to point out error, or alert His disciples to false teachers.

I quote from Stott one more time:

… If we loved the glory of God more, and if we cared more for the eternal good of the souls of men, we would not refuse to engage in necessary controversy, when the truth of the Gospel is at stake. The apostolic command is clear. We are to ‘maintain the truth in love; being neither truthless in our love nor loveless in our truth, but holding the two in balance.

Wesley’s famous phrase from The Character of a Methodist, “… We think and let think” has been grossly abused to promote a careless view of the doctrinal issues. The whole point of his phrase in its context is that “we think and let think” on peripheral issues of Christian doctrine – but on those which “strike at the root of Christianity” we do not yield.

What can be done to move us toward having greater theological certainty? Good News has taken a positive step in developing a “Statement of Scriptural Christianity.” I commend it to the whole church for consideration. I would also like to call for the General Conference to acknowledge the weakness of our Doctrinal Statements (Discipline, Part II), adopted in 1972, which center around pluralism and for the General Conference to revive the original vision given to the Theological Study Commission by the 1968 Uniting Conference. That vision was to develop a new statement of faith based on the Articles of Religion and the EUB Confession of Faith.

2. Closely related to the need for new conviction in our theological positions, is the urgent need for rediscovery of the Bible. It does not require very wide contact with the people called United Methodists to discover that we have not effectively taught, and our people have not learned, the Bible. What I am calling for is not just printing Scripture texts in more prominent places in our church school materials. We must come to a new confidence in the Bible’s reliability as the Word of God which must be a norm for our whole lives, especially as it is related to the church. A new emphasis on the authority of Scripture will lead in turn to a new emphasis on the content of the Scripture. Here are some specific initiatives which might move United Methodism in this direction:

a) Evangelical churches which are close together could cooperate in forming Bible Schools, with one or two-year programs in the Bible Institute tradition, yet without the rigidity of many schools in fundamentalist circles.

b) I would like to suggest also to larger evangelical churches that instead of hiring another associate for general pastoral duties, you might hire a full-time teaching minister … a “professor in residence” who would devote his time to teaching the Bible, basic doctrine, Christian ethics, etc.

c) The church could also benefit from a new cassette Bible teaching ministry. United Methodist evangelicals could be recruited to offer effective exposition of the Word on a continuing basis to Sunday school classes, so often plagued by poor teachers or unsound materials. If available nationally on a subscription basis at a reasonable cost; individuals, too, and the many small groups in our local churches would find this invaluable. It would help dent the widespread Biblical illiteracy among our people and would nourish their souls.

d) And I would renew Good News’ long-standing call to our Board of Discipleship for an alternate church school curriculum, written and edited by those holding a high view of the Bible’s reliability and authority.

e) There is one more proposal: We need skilled Bible expositors who will train United Methodist preachers in Bible preaching. Many preachers are criticized for not preaching the Bible, when we have never been taught how to preach it in our seminaries. Let’s pray that God will raise up someone with this vision in our day.

3. Another must for the United Methodist Church today is to embrace the many evangelical parachurch organizations and ministries which are, in fact, nurturing most of our best laypersons and clergy. Thousands of our youth are receiving vital nurture from Inter-Varsity, Campus Crusade, Young Life, and Youth for Christ. Adults and youth alike are being touched and changed through ministries like the Institute for Basic Youth Conflicts, Navigators, Institute for Church Renewal, and the many charismatic ministries. Then there are the evangelical magazines, radio and TV ministries, and publishing houses. The truth is that without these ministries feeding United Methodists through the side door, it is doubtful what kind of church we would have, if one at all. Yet, these organizations are frowned upon and often opposed by denominational leaders. I call upon our church to not only embrace these ministries, but to learn from them what United Methodist people are hungry for.

4. Renewal among the clergy must also begin soon if the future is to hold promise. In addition to a new sense of doctrinal clarity and a return to an authoritative Bible – already mentioned – I would like to speak briefly of three other crucial needs of the clergy.

First, we need a new level of servanthood more than a new level of professionalism. Second, there must be a new emphasis on the pastor as equipper and less emphasis on the “general manager” concept of the pastor. Third, there is a desperate need for us to have courage … courage to vote “No” sometimes, courage to follow the narrow way of Scripture, courage to be creative, courage to preach a costly gospel, courage to trust God more than the security of the connectional system. The most compelling recent illustration of our need for courage is the church’s failure to respond in any disciplinary way to Glide Memorial Church for hosting the prostitutes’ convention last year. The clergy must be renewed!

There can hardly be a reformation among the clergy until there is a radical revamping of the chief wellsprings of the church’s faith, the seminaries. Here the pastors are taught that teach the persons in the pew. Here the persons are taught that write and edit our church school curriculum. No other part of the church has played a larger role in shaping our present faith than the theological seminaries.

A few weeks ago a UM seminary professor told me that he had recently visited on the campus of one of our more conservative seminaries, interacting with students and faculty. He told me with concern that he had found no more than three persons among the entire faculty who would affirm the resurrection of Christ from the dead. John Lawson, who for some years had been teaching church history at our Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, gives his view as an insider on the state of theological education in his book, An Evangelical Faith For Today. He writes of the seminaries:

It is common knowledge that some teaching which is regularly, and indeed customarily, given in seminaries is contrary to Scripture, and to the chief planks of the historic Christian faith, and to the doctrinal standards of the responsible Christian denominations. We are not referring to minor doctrinal issues which, in the past have divided the denominations. … We have in mind the leading essential elements of the practical gospel of salvation. The most painful thing is that seminarians often receive teaching that is diametrically opposed in important particulars to the articles of faith to which they have to subscribe at ordination.

Lawson concludes:

Someday there will have to be a great awakening, a far-reaching repentance, and a painful reappraisal.

The time for that great awakening in our seminaries is NOW.

The time for that far-reaching repentance is now. Let’s begin that painful reappraisal now.

5. The final point that needs to be made is this: If the UMC is to ever be a renewed church, the evangelical wing of the church must flourish. Some things that will encourage the evangelical wing of the church to grow depend on the general church. I could call on the leaders of our church to recognize our right to be in the church and not to question our loyalty. I would call on our bishops and district superintendents to not try to “balance” churches which have had a uniquely evangelical character, by deliberately appointing pastors who are liberals or merely institutionalists. I would call on the church to face the issues raised by evangelicals openly. Avoiding controversial issues breeds more division than honestly confronting them.