by Steve | Oct 1, 1970 | Archive - 1970
Archive: Laymen, You Can Change the World
Condensed from an address by Howard Ball
United Methodist Layman, San Bernardino, California
Director, Lay Training, Campus Crusade for Christ
First Christ must change us. Then we can become God’s change-agents in a lost world.
Jesus said, “All power in heaven and earth is given unto me. Go ye therefore!” But we haven’t gone. We haven’t felt the need for His power. And because we haven’t been doing something that requires His power, we have sat back and looked helplessly at alien forces shaping world history.
The late Konrad Adenauer said before his death, “If Jesus Christ is not alive, I see no hope on the horizon for mankind.”
Do you believe that? Then let’s get out and attempt something that requires the power of God.
It was in 1960 that someone first presented to me the fact that Jesus is God. I had never heard that. I had started out as an Episcopalian in Waukegan, Illinois. I moved up to northern Michigan. There weren’t any Episcopal churches around, so we started attending The Methodist Church. I remember sitting on the hillside of the camp at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, with the Epworth League. I heard people talk about God. And I remember trying to comprehend what God could be like. I wondered. I imagined. But I did not understand.
I became married at a very young age. Then we had a child and everything was going great. Life was just a challenge. I was making more money than I thought I would ever make.
Then someone very close to me died. I jerked my head up out of the sand and I looked around. And I said, “Wait just one minute! What in the world is this whole show about? This person that I loved was alive yesterday – now dead. Where did she go? What does it all mean?”
I went to talk with people I thought had the answers. But I didn’t understand. I looked at my own life and I had a sadness apart from the loss of this loved one. I realized that my birth, my life had no real meaning. So I concluded, at the ripe old age of 21, that if there is a God, He is so busy with the big things that He wouldn’t have time for people like me. I concluded that the life I knew did not include the finding of God. So, I wrote Him off as unknowable. I chose the buck as my god.
For nine more years I chased that god. I caught him occasionally. I became a member of the Official Board of a Methodist church. I taught our college department in Sunday school. I chaired our annual fund drives. But I did not know God. No one, in all my 30 years of life, ever told me that God loved me – that Jesus is God – that His life, His death, His resurrection were relevant to my life.
If a man can grow up inside The Methodist Church and have this experience, do you wonder why we are in a crisis?
One day someone invited my wife to a Bible study. She thought of every excuse to get out of it. But finally my wife went to that Bible study. And was stirred! She asked me to go, and I did everything I could not to. Monday night, the night of the Bible study, was my night out with my buddies. But my wife is persuasive, and so I finally went. I sat down at the meeting, leaned back in my chair, and thought, “O.K., you got me here, now amuse me.”
I was amazed. The person who taught that class did something that I had not seen done. That person said, “Don’t take my word for anything unless you find it substantiated in context in the Bible.”
Then I heard that person read these words from John, the first chapter … “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.”
I sat there dumfounded. I did not know that was in the Bible! When I taught the Sunday school class, if I used the Bible at all, I used the book of Proverbs. (It had so many catchy sayings.) The rest of the Bible might as well have been original Greek!
That night I heard that I actually could participate in Christ’s life – if I was willing to exchange my will for His. I rejected this because it ran cross-grain to every philosophy I had based my life upon.
I am sharing this with you because this is the disease – this is the problem – that is rampant. I was no stranger to the church. I was as involved as one could be. But I didn’t know anything about God. My confidence, like John Wesley before Aldersgate, lay in what I was doing for God. I had not understood what God had done for me.
I almost divorced my wife. I almost left my family because I didn’t find within me the sort of man I was expected to be. Day after day I was challenged to love people as they were. To be no respecter of persons. I wanted to be that kind of man. But I didn’t have power to be that kind of man. And nobody came to me and told me how that power is available from God.
But God’s Word is quick and powerful. It is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Three weeks later, at my office desk, God’s Spirit used that Word which I had rejected. God’s Spirit brought it back to my mind. I sat there, trying to figure it out.
I had never done business with anybody motivated by love. That is why the Gospel didn’t make sense to me. I began to get a glimmer – maybe there is a motivation behind this that is different than what I have encountered before. And I began to look from that perspective. What if this were love … the kind of love I had always hoped existed but never believed did? What if this was of God?
And I began to look more and more closely to see what it would be like if something could be purely love – love that gave without trying to get selfishly.
Finally I began to comprehend the love of God. That is what I said “yes ” to. You never would have persuaded me with theology. You could have called me everything under the sun, but you would never have convicted me of my sin by that method. I was convicted of my need of God when I saw the difference between my nature and the love of God.
Laymen need to know God’s love. They can’t know it from an institute or an organization. But they can know it when you care enough. When you sit down and share it with them.
Our pastor visited our home when he heard that something had happened in my life and hers. Afterward, my wife told me what our pastor said.
“Barb,” I said, “you’ve got to be mistaken! You must have misunderstood.”
So I went to his office. I made an appointment with him because I couldn’t believe it was true that my pastor, this shepherd of the flock, had really ridiculed the death of Christ on the cross. That he had called it “slaughter-house religion.” That he had said it had no value. That he had laughed at my conversion. That he had told my wife, “Howard is too smart to fall for that.”
I visited with my pastor. And with a few tears I made the decision that I would have to resign from The Methodist Church. I did so because I was scared for my kids, my daughter and my son. I didn’t want to leave. I had a lot of friends. But I could not stay. I didn’t want that man to be the shepherd of my children’s spiritual welfare.
So I left The Methodist Church. I went to a place where the Scripture was preached. I just wanted to know about Christ. I wanted to know about this Man who was changing me into the kind of man that I always wanted to be. I wanted to know about this Person who was able to change our marriage. I wanted my kids to know that there was a better kind of life, so they will not have to go through the ricky deal that we went through. That’s why I left The Methodist Church.
But two years later, after I had a chance to grow and mature a little bit, I began to see the needs of other people who had remained Methodists. And God’s Spirit made me realize that I had turned my back on many people without Christ, just like I had been.
So we did something very difficult. With a lot of prayer, we went back and rejoined the very same church from which we had resigned. We told the pastor that we love Christ and want to help other people know Him too.
We began to talk simply about Jesus Christ. And we began to see lives changed.
We have got to solve one major crisis before we start tackling the world – that crisis is in the Church. We can’t help other people until we are first sure of ourselves.
Do you know tonight whether you are clean in the sight of God?
Do you know whether or not you are filled with God’s Spirit? If you don’t know, then you are part of the problem. Before you and I dare to tackle the crisis in our Church, let us tackle the crisis in our lives.
That has been one of my greatest problems. I began without relying upon Jesus Christ as the Lord of my life. Then, after I became a Christian, I found my Christian life in a decline. After a brief flurry of initial enthusiasm and a new quality of life, I found that I didn’t know how to walk with Christ. And I began to be very restless. Then someone shared with me a great but simple truth: as we receive Christ we are to walk with Him in the same way – by faith. We must live in the resurrection power of Christ. We must live in the power of the Holy Spirit.
If you and I go out in the energy of the flesh, we will not give life. We will slash and cut. We will be part of the problem … unless we go in the power of the Holy Spirit.
There is a great crisis in our Church. Membership declined 201,000 last year. There was a $75,000,000 decline in giving last year. Why? Because the spiritual life of the Church has been withering. Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches … As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. ”
Are you willing to abide in Christ? If so, you will bear fruit. He has made this promise. If all of us right here in this room are willing to abide in Jesus Christ, then, fellow laymen, we can change the world!
What is your faith? If the first word that flashes into your mind is “United Methodist”, then I question your faith. Who is your God? The Church?
When you and I will look to Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church, and name His name above all names, that is the point of beginning. I am not here to perpetuate United Methodism. My Lord said that “He who saves his life shall lose it.” And we have been trying to save it as a denomination for too long a time. No wonder we have been losing! We OUGHT to lose, if we are simply trying to save a denominational name. But if we are willing to lose everything for His sake, then we will find all that really matters.
Methodism grew because it was a bunch of people who lost their lives for Christ’s sake. They were willing to be fools for Him. They were willing to be available to God. They were willing to be used by the Holy Spirit. When we are willing to go anyplace, everyplace, we will see how much power Jesus Christ has.
It is my privilege to be part of a company of men of many denominations – many of them United Methodists – who are saying, “Lord Jesus Christ, You gave a commandment. You said to go into all of the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. We shall see every person in this nation – every person around the world – confronted with the Gospel of Christ. ”
Sound like wild talk? I believe we can see it within 10 years. Why? Because we Americans have already shown our secular capability to promote a program and sell products. We have learned how to communicate Bonanza to 500 million people a week.
Is God at least as powerful as the communications media? He is the one who said “You go tell everybody. ” All the power on Heaven and earth are His.
I would like to share with you a strategy, which I believe God will use. I believe that we can see this nation confronted with the Gospel of Christ, on a person-to-person basis within six and one-half years. Yes – by December of 1976, every person and every home in America can have a personal eyeball-to-eyeball presentation of the Gospel of Christ.
We don’t need a new strategy for placing the troops. They are placed, all over this nation. The problem is, we have a form of Godliness but deny the power thereof.
There is no more time to play games. With 1 million people who mean business for Jesus Christ, we can see this nation reached with the Gospel in six and one-half years. That will change this nation.
Do you believe that if you were trained and equipped, you could bear witness to 100 families in your neighborhood? It can’t be done while we go to religious meetings and unsaved people go to hell.
The local church can change from being a gas station where empty tanks are filled up once a week, into a training center. The pastor, called by God to feed the sheep, is the leader. There needs to be a Director of Lay Evangelism in each church. He is needed to motivate and involve people in training for Christian witnessing. To live in the power of God’s Spirit. To share Jesus Christ. Once we laymen are walking in the power of God’s Spirit, we can be the church of 1 Corinthians, the 12th chapter.
We must begin to offer training according to the gifts that people have. If it is to lead a Bible study, train them in this. Train them in how to have informal evangelistic meetings (such as barbecues). Train them to share their faith in any type of setting where people socialize together. People are open that way.
My wife and I had the privilege of seeing over 100 commit their lives to Christ, here in this city just a few years ago, the first time we had a chance to go into homes and share the basic Gospel of Christ.
We can have many different strategies. We are not all alike. But if we walk in God’s Spirit, He can take the diversity that makes up the Body of Christ and knit us all together by His Spirit until we complement each other’s capabilities.
There are men in this room who have secular abilities in administration. You can free-up your pastors and other men to use for Christ their primary gifts. You can be a part of the fulfillment of God’s Great Commission, if you will walk in the Spirit and begin right where you are.
Are you a pastor? Ask God to show you how to make your church a training center.
Are you a layman? Go to your pastor. Tell him how much you love him and how thankful you are that God called him into the ministry. (It’s time we stop griping and start volunteering ourselves to be available, to be a help, to confront people with the Gospel of Christ.)
There are millions of people who believe in Christ as Savior and Lord who gather every Sunday morning in churches across America. Millions. What if each would commit himself or herself to share Christ with 100 families?
Laymen, do you want to part of the action? Then walk in His Spirit, and you will be part of the true Church. Give yourself. Volunteer. Help involve other people for the sake of Christ and His Church. Are you willing? If so – laymen – we will change the world!
by Steve | Oct 1, 1970 | Archive - 1970
Archive: The Other Six Days
Condensed from an address by Dr. Ira Gallaway
President, United Methodist Council on Evangelism
Superintendent, Fort Worth (Texas) District
The world is watching to see whether our faith involves us, as Christians, in the struggles and agonies of other people.
The Holy Spirit has a very rough time breaking through in our church. I used to think that was because the liberals didn’t believe in Him. But since I became a district superintendent, I’ve come to understand it’s also because the conservatives don’t trust Him. And so He has a rough time breaking through in our church these days.
Dr. Malcolm Muggeridge was recently being interviewed on a program in America. This famous iconoclast, wit, cynic, former editor of “Punch” became a Christian in his 60’s. He’s a sort of irrascible Christian now – not an orthodox one in our sense, but a tremendous man who’s sold out to Jesus Christ. He was asked a question about the world’s condition and he said, “Oh, the world’s empty. We’re at the end of civilization. There’s no question about it. Either Christ is coming again in His Glory, or this civilization is ending and God is looking to us to build a new one. One way or the other, we are at the end of civilization.”
He was interrupted by a man who said, “Dr. Muggeridge, that is such a pessimistic view of the world!” Then Malcolm Muggeridge said, “That is not pessimism, at all. That’s optimism. It would be pessimistic if God would let us build the kind of world we’ve been trying to build. But He’s not going to let us build that kind of a world. He’s going to make us change our world – or He is going to change it for us.”
I can hope in Christ with healthy optimism that we live in a time of deliverance. We live in a time of salvation. We live in a time of healthy change in the church.
Never before in modern times, if understand church history, has there been so much evidence of renewal and the winds of the Spirit blowing amongst God’s people. God, through His Holy Spirit, is causing many happenings in the church. He is doing His thing, bringing renewal.
We are most favored to be participants in the mighty acts of God in the 20th century. I’m not sure what may happen to the structure of the church, as we know it. And I am increasingly less concerned about that, than I have been in the past. I’m a part of that structure. But I am convinced that somehow, as I become increasingly under the direction of the Holy Spirit, and be true to the claim of God on my life, irrespective of what happens to the structure of the church, God will use my life.
I see some of my own children of faith {whom I call my children because God used my ministry to bring them to Christ) looking at this United Methodist Church and saying, “We can’t stay.” They are going off to sit someplace with a group of like-minded Christians. I am concerned about that. If God can use the church to bring you to faith, why not stay in that church and help redeem that church?
Most of us are rather uptight about the control of the church. Whether it will be controlled by the liberals, the radical secularists or the evangelicals. I get a rather uneasy feeling at this meeting even, that those of us here think that if somehow we could get in charge of the church at Nashville, New York or Washington, suddenly things would be vastly improved. But I’m not sure at all that would be the case. As a matter of fact, I have worked through the temptation to say in this speech that the number one opportunity for evangelicals is to wrest control of the church from those who would make it a totally secular and social action institution. Renewal will not be brought about by control of structure.
Yes, we’re hung up about the structure of the church! And who is going to control it. My mind is at ease at this point. In so far as my life and ministry is concerned I join with Martin Luther, and John Wesley, and with countless others down through the ages. My life and ministry is committed to a Gospel of conversion to God, and a disciplined servant life, under the authority of the Word of God, and direction of the Holy Spirit – whatever happens.
This is His Church, and as we are His people He will always have a place of service, a place of full life in this world and beyond, for you and for me. As he said to those who were under attack in Jerusalem 900 years before Christ, “Be not afraid, nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude that comes against you, for the battle is not yours, it is Mine.”
We’re on the verge of another Reformation, or a Wesleyan kind of revival in the church of our day. There is an irony, indeed, that many wonderful evangelicals cannot see this. It’s going to happen, whatever the dogmatic, secular radicals do – whether fearful woe-preaching fundamentalists believe – it’s going to happen. These cannot stop it because church reformation is of God. God is going to raise up new faith and new hope. I feel it in the very marrow of my bones!
Luther could not have predicted the Reformation. And Wesley had no great schemes to build a church, by dividing his own. But both men had a passion for God and His will in their lives – and a passion for souls. And God did a mighty act in their ministries. They brought men to Him and were vital change-agents, to use a modern word, as channels for God’s love and power in their time.
I am not unconcerned about whom we select as general officers of our church or the type of structure that evolves. But instead of seeking to capture the Church, we must again recapture for the Church in our day, the absolute need for conversion to God and His love, repentance, forgiveness and new birth.
But, we must at the same time make clear that men who are thus changed have their privileged responsibility and holy duty to live lives of love and service in His world. God does not call us to go to church; He calls us to be the church.
Far too often we evangelicals have not sought ways to love and serve our fellow men. And this is where my commitment lies. So far I have been able to do that with the greatest freedom within the United Methodist Church. If I have been intimidated, I haven’t been smart enough to know it.
The secular power boys (and there are many of them) seek control of church structure. They may completely gain it. But if they do it will be a skeleton, it will not be the Church.
The greatest lay revival of modern days is sweeping the Church in the lay witness movement. And there does not seem to be anything the church structure can do, but go along. Praise the Lord! This faith and action movement, relating people to the Bible and relating people to Jesus Christ, is generating a new movement for God in our time. I truly feel sorry for those pastors and church administrators who oppose the lay movement, primarily because they are fearful that it cannot be controlled.
My number one problem as a church administrator is not primarily with the young radicals, but with the institutional churchmen who fill most of our big churches – who want to preside over still waters and slowly sink rather than risk for God. These are not willing to risk their lives.
One of the most difficult adjustments in vocational call for a modern pastor is learning “what is his thing?” Where is his action opportunity?
There was a day when he was the prophet-preacher. The spokesman for the whole congregation, or perhaps for the whole town. As the best educated and perhaps most respected man in every town 50 years ago, he spoke with authority on everything.
But that’s not true any longer. The world is saying “No” to us by passing us by in droves. I know no church that has a problem seating the Sunday morning crowd.
I believe that the pulpit is still the key to a fruitful ministry. There’s no question that effective evangelical preaching will bear fruit. The modern day pastor, though, had better recognize that he must learn to sit in the back seat and let his laymen get in the front. The world will listen to laymen much more readily than to preachers in our day.
I like to emphasize the role of teaching elder. And that, my dear friends who have been to seminary recently, or 40 years ago, we have not been trained to bel To work to equip all the people of God for work in His service will require a new mindset for us. A new determinism. A new dimension. A new orientation of time. It will require teaching time with men, women, youth and children. Throughout the week. Week after week. Year after year. If we’re to raise up a people of God for our time we must equip our people.
My friends in the ministry, I would ask you today to give up your career, and reaffirm your calling. Quit worrying about where you are preaching or where your brothers are preaching. See God’s opportunity right where you are.
I yearn to see a group of preachers together in our day who say, “I don’t care where I’m sent. I am called to serve God, wherever I am sent.’ Dare we believe that God will use His Church – even the cabinet of The United Methodist Church?
The number one opportunity for an evangelical pastor in our day is to come before God daily in his own life. Then he brings the people of God there to equip his people for service in the work of the ministry. This is not so much being pastor in charge, as it is being servant-teacher of the flock. We’ve got to come to a new understanding of that if we’re to be a part of renewal in our day.
The world is passing the church by. It’s saying in effect, you don’t matter anymore. You have no answers for my life. But the world cannot pass Christian laymen by – men who man the lathes. Who sell the goods. Who work at the offices. They’re there where the action is, where God’s prospective people are. That is why they must be trained to witness for Him, to talk about the Gospel in everyday language to everyday men at the workbenches of America, in the classroom, in the backyard, or wherever God calls us.
Most Christians today are basically orthodox. That is not our basic problem. It is not that our intellectual belief is that far off, but that our commitment does not match our faith. We must go into the ghettos of our world, and into the poverty pockets, into the minority situation and into the racial problems, rough as they may be.
We must go and give our lives and witness there to our faith, in tutoring, day care and all other sorts of ministries. We must go and win this great cauldron of seething revolution for Christ. Otherwise we’re going to have revolution in our day, and a state of dictatorship will prevail in this land in ten years. We have no choice, but to go and lay down our lives for Jesus Christ, however hard that may be. This may take some of us out of our comfortable pulpits, and some of you laymen out of your comfortable pews.
The other crisis area in the life of civilization and society that I see today is the youth culture. I guess the thing that distresses the most, perhaps, is when a pastor says to me, “I don’t have time to spend with these young radicals! I just can’t stand hippies!”
You see, my oldest son has been a hippie for six years. We don’t know how it happened, and it’s been rough in all our lives. But I know them as human beings. I’ve spent time in Haight Ashbury, observed the witchcraft, the black magic and astrology that is all there. Unless we’re redemptive here, we’re going to lose the next generation. And many of them are open to Jesus Christ because they’re willing to risk all for a new world.
At the Berlin Congress of Evangelism there were a couple of stone age Acco Indians named Comë and Quemo, from South America. In 1956 a group of missionaries (Wycliffe Bible Translators) were trying to reach these people, to put their language into print and lead them to Christ. In an attempted contact, their plane was burned. All five of them murdered.
Two women, Elizabeth Elliot and Rachel Saint, a wife and sister of two of the missionaries, decided God wanted them to complete the work started by their husband and brother. Nobody thought they could do it. But they went ahead. They settled in Quito, Equador. And they waited. They felt that God was leading them, and He would provide.
Then out of that jungle came a young girl who was thrown out of the tribe because she’d broken the tribal laws. She was banished under penalty of death should she return. So she was living out of the alleys and the gutters of Quito. They heard about her, sought her out, and brought her into their home. They nursed her back to health; they learned her language and they led her to Jesus Christ. Then they asked her to take them back to her people. It meant death. But she took them. A strange miracle: she didn’t die. And neither did Elizabeth Elliot. Or Rachel Saint.
The tribe took them in and built shelters for them. In Berlin, Rachel Saint told us that 80 percent of this tribe are now Christian. Comë is the chief and Quemo is the Pastor. Elizabeth Elliot stood up and said, “Quemo is the man who killed my husband. And he’s also the man who baptized my daughter into the Church of Jesus Christ.”
In Berlin Comë and Quemo were asked how was it before Jesus Christ. And they said, “Before Star came (Rachel Saint was called Star) and told us about Jesus, it was very dark. Very dark. Now it is light.”
How about your enemies? “Oh, we have no more enemies. We only have friends who don’t understand.”
David Sumano, a Nigerian chieftain’s son, came rushing past me, ran up onto the stage, grabbed these two Indians, and said “I understand! darkness and now light!”
Will it work? Oh God help us, it will work! God will still work His miracles if we give our lives.
Let us pray: Holy Father, thank you for giving me a piece of the action, and letting me be a disciple of Thine, as one saved through Jesus Christ my lord. Amen.
by Steve | Oct 1, 1970 | Archive - 1970
Authority for the Church in Crisis
Condensed from an address by Dr. Dennis Kinlaw
President, Asbury College
The world has been changed – and will be changed – by men and women under dynamic authority of God’s Word.
Ours is a day of crisis. The evidence is on every hand. One of the obvious facets of this crisis is in the area of authority. I’m aware that authority is not an “in” word at this particular time. Ours is an age counted as one of revolution. The very character of revolution is that it is resistant to authority. So this is a naughty word with unacceptable connotations – of extrinsic force which imposes upon a man a pattern of life and structure of existence which he really does not want and would never, himself, choose.
Yet that is a very limited understanding of authority. There is an authority that is not external and alien to man, and that does not connote force. There is an authority that connotes, rather, Truth. Not something alien to be resisted, but a key to the very nature of reality. Truth that enables one to find his own fulfillment and his own real freedom.
We believe that holy Scripture is not just the best wisdom that human reason can give us about the nature of reality. We believe that it is the very wisdom of God. We believe that there is a God, differentiable from us. And from the rest of the creation. This God is sovereign over His creation.
We further believe in the fact of sin and that man has been critically damaged by sin. We believe that man is unable, in himself, to see the true nature of ultimate realities, those that relate to the supernatural. He sees only dimly the true nature of created things. “The New York Times,” “Look Magazine,” “Naked Came the Stranger,” the morning news, as well as any textbook on abnormal psychology illustrate this.
We believe that God is good, and that in His goodness He was not content to leave men without a key to the nature of their existence. That key is given to us in holy Scripture.
To speak of its authority is not to bring up the connotation of force, obscurantism or something antithetical to man’s best interest, or his freedom. Rather, it is the chief guide to man’s true freedom. True humanism. And when that authority is destroyed, the real human values go with it.
Positivism, scientism and religious education, in this century, have been committed to saving us from a superstitious view of God and the world. From a life of fear that includes such supposedly dehumanizing and immoral things as the belief that violations of moral law have eternal consequences.
Jesus would speak more simply of hell. And that the real key to life in this world lay in a relationship to Another, the supernatural.
The promises, though, of those who wanted to free us from a literalistic Biblicism, from that impressively invoked Bibliolatry, have simply succeeded in breaking the authoritative hold that Biblical revelation once held on the mind of our Church, and of our society. To be honest with you, I myself can hardly call what I see as a result, progress.
Look at the massive appeal of astrology to our American people. Let me remind you that there are far more people reading horoscopes this morning than there are reading the “Upper Room.” Or take the significant rise of demonism and witchcraft in our society. It has been my privilege to do a fair amount of work in the history of ideas, especially in the role of magic, myth and the occult in human life. As far as I can find, the only societies where man has ever been freed from astrology and from witchcraft, have been societies where the Old Testament was at one time influential and looked upon as the Word of God.
Could it be that the liberal religious education movement (that took away from us the confidence in the Old Testament Scriptures Jesus had) took from us also those ideological forces that kept us from imputing to the stars a power that Genesis says they do not have? For the life of me, I do not see that reading horoscopes is superior to accepting Genesis with its affirmation that God is sovereign over all things and the sole determiner of human destiny.
When faith in the Scriptures as the authoritative Word of God goes, men inevitably turn to the creation for light on their lives instead of to the sovereign God. Man carries his s????se of eternity very uneasily. Man intuitively believes that there is another world, that is different from his obvious world.
You may think it is progress when we strip from men belief in another world that includes the supernatural as it is pictured in the Scriptures, with God, angels, satan and all. But when that stripping away leads, as it has in our society, to witchcraft, demonism and to Rosemary’s Baby, then I prefer to return to the Old Testament. And even to the so-called “sub-Christian” apocalypse of John, which gives me courage to believe that evil in any form is really no threat to the sovereignty of God.
I do not find such Biblical faith demeaning to man, but encouraging, uplifting. It is a force for hope and goodwill in the world, a force for freedom from superstition and from fear in our society. The stripping away of the sense of God’s presiding Spirit that characterizes the life lived in the fear of a Holy God, never frees men. He simply turns then to a presiding spirit that ultimately debases him and enslaves him.
The non-evangelical has never seemed to understand us when we speak about the absolute character of moral Law. We do not believe that the moral Law is absolute because it is law; we believe it is absolute because it is the Law of God. We believe that God is morally discriminating. Very discriminating. We believe that the ultimate basis for the difference between right and wrong lies not in the human situation nor in the mind of man himself, but in the very nature of a holy God who changes not, and who calls Himself, the Holy One of Israel.
Thus, when man does wrong, his problem is not primarily with himself, nor with his neighbor against whom he has sinned. His primary problem is personally with God. And God is the bigger problem and the more permanent one, because He is that Holy One, the Eternal One, and because He is offended.
It is not offensive to us, as evangelicals, to think that God can be offended by immoral conduct, whether it is sexual irregularities, or overcharging the poor in the ghettos. We worship Him the more because He is capable of being morally offended. In fact, we rejoice that His antipathies to evil are so great that we are assured that evil will not ultimately prevail. His sovereign holiness gives promise of that.
It is our conviction that the moral nature of the Creator has affected the creation. So that human life is morally conditioned. The key to the character of human life is reflected in the Ten Commandments. These are not encroachments upon human dignity and freedom. The Law of God is never grievous; it is a doorway to freedom.
Of course our society looks upon it oftentimes as being oppressive. It looks upon the sexual code of Scripture as Puritanical and oppressive. The rejection of the Biblical authority in this area is often pictured for us as a way to freedom and to fulfillment of our humanity.
Yet our history has known no hour when. we were more confused and less satisfied sexually. The removal of the Biblical restraints has also removed from us the possibility of the ennoblement of monogamous love, faithfulness, and that near-sacramental experience of a marriage relationship centered in Jesus Christ.
The Puritans were the only people who could preach freely and reverently on successive Sundays a series of sermons on the Song of Solomon without embarrassment. I, for one, find “Playboy” and the literature of the new morality a poor substitute for that little Old Testament book.
Or take the matter of intellectual freedom and scientific inquiry. Again and again, orthodox Christian faith has been looked upon as the enemy of academic freedom, and the promotion of knowledge. But it is in the Western world, where the Bible has had its greatest influence, that the university has reached its zenith. Where science has made its greatest triumphs.
Let it also be remembered that the most productive educational force (as far as a force that has produced educational institutions) is Protestant evangelicalism. And let it be noted that it is in our present day, when the hold of Scripture upon the common mind has been broken, that the university has reached its point of greatest jeopardy. When academic freedom is becoming most heavily circumscribed.
Inextricably tied to the submission to the Word of God, is the best flowering of the human spirit. To destroy confidence in and obedience to Holy Scripture is to take from our life both corporately and privately that mucilage that is necessary to hold our lives together. The infallible Word of the living God is not the enemy of our freedom, but the source of the very ideological framework necessary for freedom to really flourish.
The strange thing – the ironic thing – is that in large measure the Church has led the fight to break the ideological hold that Scripture has had upon the American mind. It is rather obvious that the Church, with its church school, its literature and its religious educational program, has succeeded in teaching its children not to take the Bible seriously. The cry of the evangelical is that the Church has not, by so-doing, made us better men, nor brought us to a larger freedom.
You wonder how is the best way to tackle the massive human problems that face us in our day. The picture of a few men gathered together to pray, to read the Bible and to seek God’s will from His Word and from His Spirit, seems innocuous – tame to a day far more oriented to action. But let me urge you not to despise the revolutionary potential in a few men seeking to subordinate themselves to the Word of God, and to the full implications of those teachings.
On the 6th of July in 1886, 251 young men met together with Dwight L. Moody at Mt. Hermon in Massachusetts. They began to pray and read Scripture, and talk. In that group were three young men. One from Harvard, one from Princeton, and one from Oberlin. These three young men had laid on their hearts by the Spirit of God a great burden for world evangelism. And they began to talk to some of their friends in that group. On the 10th day, A. T. Pearson came in and spoke on “all must go and go to all.” These men were challenged, and invited all of the other 248 students who were interested in the evangelization of the world to meet together and they got 21. Those 21 began to talk and to pray, and by the end of the four weeks there were 99 young men who had committed their lives to the evangelization of the world. On the last day of that student conference, the 100th young man volunteered. It’s my understanding that that 100th man was named John R. Mott.
Those students began to move out across American campuses. They picked up men like Robert Speer, and Samuel Zwemer. And with a passion for the evangelization of the world in their hearts, they began to change the temperature on American campuses.
Within 20 years, the student body at the University of Pennsylvania was contributing $12,000 a year to the evangelization of the world. Contributing likewise the U. of North Carolina, the U. of Michigan, Amhurst, Carleton, Hamilton, Cornell, Vassar, and others. Within 25 years, better than 4,000 of these young men were scattered across the world, building institutions like the Yale of China, and spreading the basic ideals that have moved most powerfully in the 20th Century. And out of that came the idealism that has swept our century and led to concepts in the United Nations of development for underdeveloped nations.
Missionaries, with an eye on another world, went with the only ideals that can transform this world. Out of this came such movements as our World Council of Churches, originally closely identified with cooperative evangelism (let’s forget our differences in order to reach men for Jesus Christ).
Do not despair when a group of people get together to read the Bible and pray and seek God’s will. It may well be that the most revolutionary political meeting that was ever held, as far as the modern world is concerned, is that one with Dwight L. Moody and his 251 boys at Mt. Hermon.
Do you know what I would like to think? That God might begin to do something in a group like this Convocation. And in the young people that are committed to us. These might become imbued with ihe ideals and Spirit of Jesus Christ. Transformed by His regenerating power. Caught up by a Pentecostal anointing on their own hearts. And sent out to provide some of the spiritual power that can make the revolutionary Truth of God a reality in tomorrow’s world.
The world often passes by the meetings that often have the longest historical shadows. And when men get right with God, in terms of their own personal relationship and in terms of their responsibilities to their brethren, beneficent effect always comes.
A German refugee from Adolph Hitler came to Chicago a number of years ago. His name was Mies Van Der Rohe. He was an architect. And he began to teach at Illinois Institute of Technology. He turned to some of his colleagues and said, “Gentlemen, you give me one good student a year, for 10 years, and I can change the face of Chicago.”
In Chicago today you will find in most every major architectural office, a student of Mies Van Der Rohe. And you will find the Chicago Civic Center, a $35 million project, the Federal Building, the New Circle Campus of the University of Illinois, and a host of other work as living evidence that one man with one student a year for 10 years changed the face of a city.
Could it be that God wants us to turn our attention to the young people who are committed to us? Should we begin to say to God, “You give me one student a year and let me reproduce under Your Spirit something holy and sacred in terms of human commitment and in terms of human vision.” Perhaps this is how we can realize the dream of those early Methodists who talked about reforming a continent and spreading Scriptural holiness.
We must not let anyone strip us of what insight God has given us, as to where our salvation lies – and the larger salvation of mankind. It is not the naturalistic processes, whether secularly or religiously conceived, that will save us. No, we must look to a transcendent God who yet rules in history. In Him alone our salvation lies. And in love for this God and in love for our brother, we must submit ourselves rigorously to His Word. We must do this not out of obstinacy, but out of love for others – even those who do not understand us, or those who oppose us. And others to whom this hope perhaps yet has not come.
Have patience and be faithful. The future belongs not to that which is inconsistent with holy Scripture, for all that is transient and must pass away. The future belongs to the Word of God. Let us keep ourselves and our fellowship anchored in it.
by Steve | Oct 1, 1970 | Archive - 1970
Archive: The Crisis in our Church
Condensed from an address by Dr. Charles W. Keyser,
Editor, Good News
Pastor, Grace United Methodist Church, Elgin, Illinois
Unfaithfulness in a hundred forms – that is the anatomy of church crisis.
As I looked out over this great Convocation, I thought what an amazing miracle! What a wonder God has wrought. It hardly seems possible that God has brought over 1600 of us here to Dallas from across the country-and around the world. I understand that one brother has come all the way from New Zealand.
Such a gathering as this was beyond the fondest hopes of those who began the Good News Movement back in 1967. Back then we, too, had a dream. We dreamed of a day when Methodist evangelicals would not sulk in silence and shame. We dreamed of a day when we would, instead, be drawn together by the Spirit of God for positive and constructive action to cure the crisis of the Church.
Back in 1967 we dreamed of an informed but silent minority becoming an un-silent majority … filled with holy boldness … ready, willing and able to speak up and die, if necessary, for the convictions given to us by Jesus Christ. And we dreamed of a time when millions of Methodists would want to take more seriously the promises they had made to God and vows taken when they joined the church as members, or in the sacred moment of ordination.
Pastor or layman, each one of us promised God to uphold The Methodist Church. (or, more recently, the United Methodist Church). We made this decision freely. We undertook this commitment gladly because we believed that we could be loyal Methodists at the same time we were faithful followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We saw no contradiction then, and we see no contradiction now. Because the Methodism that we uphold is based on eternal Truth – God’s Truth as it is revealed, first, in the Person of Jesus Christ, and also in the pages of Holy Scripture. I speak of historic Methodism of our Articles of Religion, our Articles of Faith from the E.U.B. Confession, the Wesley Sermons and the General Rules. These constitute true Methodism – Methodism of the Bible, Methodism of our Discipline.
You and I know that there is a vast and tragic discrepancy between this historic Methodism that is our spiritual birthright, and many of the attitudes and the practices we find in United Methodism today. We have all experienced these painful discrepancies. All of us have suffered and anguished because of them.
Now we have reached a place where. we can no longer keep silent! We can no longer stand idly by while unfaithfulness to God and our beloved Church destroys the once-great force for God, known as Methodism. We cannot be silent! And we will not be silent! For silence in the present Church crisis may be our greatest contribution to that crisis.
Too often there have been compromises with the truth. Too often pastors and laymen have shied away from the hard task of standing for God’s Truth when the crowd is going in some other direction. Too often the desire for advancement in the church, for the good will of church leaders, has muzzled Methodism’s prophets into limp and shameful acquiescence.
To remain silent in the Church crisis is equal to renouncing our commitments to Jesus Christ and also to His Church. So here we stand in Dallas. We can do no other. So, help us God!
What is the Church crisis?
I have been asked to attempt a broad diagnosis. The task is so enormous that only a few of the most important facets can be looked at in the time that is available.
Let me, first, make a generalization: The Church crisis must be seen as unfaithfulness. It all boils down to this. A Church that is not faithful to its Lord, to His commands and His instructions, is sure to be a Church in crisis.
A Church is in crisis, also, when its leaders, and its people are not brave enough to be faithful to their own deep convictions and beliefs. Unfaithfulness in a hundred variations. That is the Church crisis.
Perhaps the greatest and most tragic manifestation of United Methodist unfaithfulness is in evangelism. Nowhere is the crisis etched more starkly. For nowhere in the life and mission of the Church is Jesus’ word of instruction any clearer or more explicit. Our Lord says to the Church, “Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples” (Matthew 28:19a).
What could be plainer than this? Make disciples. Evangelize. Article Five, of the E.U.B. Confession of Faith says, in part:
” … Under the discipline of the Holy Spirit, the Church exists for the maintenance of worship, the edification of believers, and for the redemption of the world.”
This is United Methodist doctrine. You can read it on page 45 of your Discipline. But many United Methodist laymen, pastors and other leaders apparently do not believe that the world really needs redemption … at least in the eternal sense of the word.
Redemption from race prejudice … yes.
Redemption from cultural dehumanization … of course.
Redemption from insensitivity to the needs of others … certainly.
But many United Methodists who stress these kinds of redemption laugh at the idea that individuals need to be redeemed from sin. And that because all men are sinners, all are therefore separated by nature from God. Denying these basic truths of Scripture and Methodist doctrine, many United Methodists believe that nobody is lost-in the eternal sense. Nobody is really perishing. Nobody is destined to spend forever suffering in hell.
This is why United Methodist enthusiasm for evangelism is sagging. And, to make matters worse, we are going through a fad which calls evangelism anything and everything that the church does. Some tell even us that Christ needs not be mentioned at all. And so we find evangelism without an Evangel. A strange and grotesque unfaithfulness, indeed!
Too many United Methodists stop after emphasizing the need for eternal redemption. It is almost as if God had no concern for what is happening to people next door, down the street, or around the world. And this is surely a major factor in the Church crisis.
People who ignore the social responsibilities of the Christian faith are just as guilty of apostacy and heresy as those other people who have wrongly eliminated the eternal. Scriptural Christianity – that is, true Methodism – has two dimensions. One for this world, and the other for the world to come. These are opposite sides of the same coin. To ignore either side is to be disobedient to our Lord Jesus and His both-worldly Gospel.
I wonder whether we are all familiar with the United Methodist Social Creed. We ought to be. It is not the devil’s invention as some suggest. No, it is an attempted expression of that indispensable Christian concern for others. Others, whom Jesus has called us to love as much as we love ourselves. The fact is, this can happen only when Jesus Christ fills our lives with Himself, that “love divine, all loves excelling, that joy of Heaven to earth come down.”
I am glad that the objectives of this great Convocation include these words: “to challenge all United Methodists to confess our own failures, and to make a more radical and selfless commitment of our lives to Christ … and to work to eliminate those forces which brutalize our fellow-men.”
We do care about racial hatreds.
Yes, we care what the younger generation is trying to say through its angry protests.
We do care about war, about disarmament, about the rape of our environment.
Another great area of church crisis is unfaithfulness in love and concern toward each other. Our Lord said, “A new commandment I give you: love one another …. If you have love for one another, then all will know that you are my disciples ” (John 13:34, 35).
This great principle can be seen in Wesley’s General Rules, which are properly part of the United Methodist’s ethical heritage. Wesley instructed: “It is expected of all who continue in these societies that they shall continue to evidence their desire for salvation … by doing good especially to them that are of the household of faith” (Discipline pg. 50, 51).
Is there not an awful discrepancy between this high ideal of practical love, and the way we often treat each other in the Church? Is it love to engage in Tammany Hall politics, where the goal is to wipe out those who disagree?
Is it love to have liberals driving conservatives out of the church?
Is it love and consideration when our Board of Education ignores decades of pleading by loyal Methodists for literature that does not violate their faith and Christian experience?
Is it Christian love when United Methodist curriculum editors force upon the Church secular concepts so radical that many loyal Methodists feel obliged to leave the Church rather than subject their children to new morality, ethical relativism and doubt enshrined as truth?
Is it love and honesty when certain elements take money given by the people for one purpose and then use that money for a completely different purpose … a purpose to which many of the givers are violently opposed?
Is it love and concern when church pressure groups make one-sided public pronouncements which inflame our tensions and increase our polarization?
Is it love and concern when laymen who object to certain church policies are told, “Get out if you don’t like the way we are running the church?” And “you can go to hell.”
When the world looks at United Methodism, as the world is looking right now, will the world say, “See how these Christians love one another?”
The Church is in crisis because we have been unfaithful to God and to each other in the matter of concern, respect and willingness to coexist as Christian brothers with those whose opinions may differ on matters not essential to salvation.
Let it be clearly said for all the world to hear and understand: We seek faithfulness on the part of United Methodist pastors, laymen, church leaders and employees of the church. Faithfulness to those great principles of our doctrines and our Discipline which are the foundation of Methodism. We seek faithfulness to the vows and the promises by which we all became Methodists. Faithfulness to Jesus Christ and to His Gospel.
That is our desire! That is our goal! That is our demand!
Multitudes of faithful Methodists are sick and tired of unfaithfulness. Their dollars have built Methodist churches and pay Methodist salaries. Their sons and daughters fill Methodist pulpits and staff Methodist institutions around the world. Also, they fill Methodist pews Sunday after Sunday.
Many of these faithful Methodists are disillusioned, frustrated, angry. They are feeling betrayed by their leaders. It is time to sound the alarm! Unless these loyal Methodists begin to see that unfaithfulness is coming to an end, they will send their dollars elsewhere. Their sons and daughters will serve Christ outside of the United Methodist Church. And we will see them no more.
I am not being pessimistic; I am being realistic. For these things are already happening. We all know it. But we have been reluctant to face the truth. It is time that these things be said openly. Better face the truth now, than lose another 200,000 members next year. The Church may not have much time remaining before the Lord of the Church calls us to account.
Another dimension of the Church crisis is revealed by John chapter three, verse 3. Here Jesus tells Nicodemus, “No one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again.” This and other passages in Holy Scripture make it very clear that man, as he is, is not fit for fellowship with God. A miracle must happen: sin must be paid for. There must be a profound inner transformation of the ethics, the emotions, and of the value standards. As Martin Luther put it, the inner self must be liberated from bondage to Satan.
John Wesley’s ministry was based upon this great goal of bringing sinners into a glorious new and right relationship with God. Wesley said: “The Church has nothing to do but to save souls. Therefore, spend and be spent in this work. It is not your business to speak so many times but to save souls as you can, to bring as many sinners as you possibly can to repentance.”
Our Methodist doctrine makes this clear. Article seven says “Original sin standeth not in following Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk) but it is the corruption of the nature of every man … whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil and that continually” (1968 United Methodist Discipline pg. 38).
And the ninth E.U.B. article, on page 46 of our Discipline, says, in part, “We believe we are never accounted righteous before God through our works or merit, but that penitent sinners are justified or accounted righteous before God only by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. …”
How strongly does the United Methodist Church today emphasize the absolute necessity of deep transformation through life commitment to Jesus Christ? We seem to hear more often that man is basically okay – that no inner transformation is really necessary. Powerful forces in the Church are urging celebration of humanity, without the prior experience of redemption clearly emphasized in Scripture, and in our Methodist doctrine.
Millions of United Methodists have never been confronted with the radical demand of Jesus: “You must all be born again.” And so there has ceased to be much real distinction between the Church and those outside of the Church. A Church no different from the world can make no real impact upon that world. How can we expect to, when a great number of those calling themselves United Methodists have not experienced the new birth which allows them, by faith, to enter God’s Kingdom and thus be fully His children? In failing to stress the requirement of new birth, we have been diametrically opposed to the explicit requirement of our Lord. And a disobedient Church is sure to be a Church in crisis.
It is interesting to hear what Jesus had to say about the climax of world history. Speaking of the dreadful and mysterious “last days,” Jesus predicted: “Such will be the spread of evil that many people’s love will grow cold. But the person who holds out to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:12, 13). And Jesus told the Church at Ephesus: “Here is what I have against you: You do not love me now as you did at first” (Revelation 2: 4).
A Church must always guard against the cooling of its devotion to Jesus Christ. Is United Methodism ablaze with love for Jesus? Do laymen commonly witness to their love for Him? Do our ministers train their laymen to share Christ as a way of life? How many pastors love Jesus so much that they would accept a less prestigious appointment for His sake? Does our church school literature kindle fires of loyalty for Christ? Do our seminaries and colleges care most of all about deepening practical devotion to Christ, sending out into the world tough, mature Christians who love Jesus enough to be fools for His sake? Is our love for Christ hot enough so that we would leave our air-conditioning and our million-dollar church buildings behind to follow Him who had no place to lay His head? Do we love Him more than our property? More than our programs? More than our pensions? More than our familiar rituals? More than our prestige and authority? More, even, than our denomination?
A Church is in crisis when its love for Christ grows cold – when other things become primary objects of loyalty and devotion. Unfaithfulness … that is the problem.
In Matthew 18:19 we can see another aspect of the Church crisis. Jesus says, “Whenever two of you on earth agree about anything you pray for, it will be done for you, by my Father in heaven.” This is just one of many places where Jesus teaches that prayer is important as eating or sleeping or breathing. Who could imagine a Jesus who cared not to pray?
From the strong Scriptural emphasis upon prayer, John Wesley drew a portion of the General Rules. You can read these on page 51 of your Discipline. Wesley said that a Methodist shall continue to evidence a desire for salvation, among other ways, by “family and private prayer.” A non-praying Methodist is as much a contradiction as fire without heat.
What about the prayer life of United Methodism?
I will always remember something that happened when I was just beginning my studies for Local Preacher’s License. I went to a meeting with a number of ordained Methodist ministers. A buffet supper was served, and somebody suggested that we ought to pray before eating. A number of the pastors snickered.
The crisis in United Methodist prayer life can be seen among laymen, too. In the average United Methodist Church, what percentage of laymen are ready, willing and able to lead in prayer? How many laymen regard praying as important as watching “Bonanza” on television? Or showing up at their place of employment on Monday morning? How many pastors really teach the way of prayer to their people?
No element of the church crisis is more serious than the shriveling up of United Methodist prayer life. It is bad news when people cannot pray naturally, out of faith’s overflow. When, instead, they have to read printed prayers composed by other people. When this happens – and it is happening – then spiritual sickness has progressed to the point of near-death. When prayer is not second nature to people called Methodist, when only the professional minister is willing or able to pray, then spiritual rigor mortis has already set in.
I am always amazed by the great optimism which Jesus felt about the Church. Our Lord said of the Church, “Not even death will ever be able to overcome it” (Matthew 16:18b). In other words, Jesus believed that the Church, His Church, is going to triumph. He cautioned his disciples that reverses would come. And discouragements. Suffering and betrayal, too. But in spite of every obstacle, the Church is going to triumph. So said our Lord Jesus Christ to His disciples.
Against today’s prevailing pessimism over the Church’s future, the optimism of Jesus seems almost naive. Today, both the theological left and the right write off the Church as irrelevant, dead, hopeless, useless. In our seminaries, would-be pastors often get the idea that the real “action” cannot be found in the Church.
If we really believed our Lord, would so many be so pessimistic? I think the problem comes because we fail to properly distinguish between the eternal Church of Jesus Christ and the human institution called church, an institution that we have built. Jesus’ Church is built upon Himself, upon principles found in the Bible. But the human institution known as church is often built more upon the operating principles of General Motors, emphasizing luxury, size, dollars and prestige.
This pseudo-church is crumbling. Sagging. Dying. And it deserves to die! For it has profanely taken the name of the Church without accepting the spiritual reality of the Church. It has claimed the privileges of the Church, without yielding itself in obedience to the Lord of the Church.
The unfaithfulness of the pseudo-church was revealed by one United Methodist pastor who said, “My people would be upset if I suggested they were sinners.”
Thus we try to build bigger membership rolls. Bigger buildings. Bigger budgets. Bigger staffs. Bigger bureaucracy. More grandiose programs. But is all this really the Church of Jesus Christ?
God is already answering that question. His judgment is pouring down like a mighty stream on the pseudo-church. Its members are fading. Its budgets are shrinking away. And it is subject to the ultimate indignity of being ignored by the world.
But meanwhile, the true Church, the Church of Jesus Christ, goes on toward final victory. And the gates of hell shall not prevail against this Church. Its Savior is Jesus Christ – not Paul Tillich, not Rudolf Bultmann, not Dietrich Bonhoffer. Its ultimate authority is Christ and the Bible, not “New Creation,” not “Motive,” not “Together,” not “Engage.” Its power is the Holy Spirit, not the spirit of Saul Alinsky, not the spirits of the late Bishop Pike, not the spirit of the Ecumenical Institute.
If you belong to the real Church, you will not be dismayed because of the crisis. By faith you will hear Jesus saying, “Do not be afraid, little flock! For your Father is pleased to give you the Kingdom” (Luke 12:32). This assurance sets the real Church free. Makes the real church “A Christian community, free in its inner life to be in mission in response to the Holy Spirit, affirming Jesus Christ to all men as divine Savior and Lord, serving as a reconciling community, and participating in God’s work of human liberation.”
This Church need not fear the crisis. Its battle cry is “In Christ, we shall overcome someday!” We know that a sovereign God is in our midst, working. It is a privilege to serve this wonderful God. And we rejoice because in this crisis – in this moment of dangerous opportunity – we may be His messengers, His proclaimers of truth, His servants, His reformers, His slaves.
I have lifted up some important aspects of the Church crisis. Obviously, there has been time to touch on only a few highlights:
- Undue pessimism about the Church.
- The shriveling up of our prayer life.
- Cooling of our devotion to Jesus Christ, Lord of the Church.
- Failure to present clearly and categorically Jesus’ radical demand for conversion that reaches all the way down into value standards and emotions. Conversion which changes people so they will be able, by the power of God, to change the world.
- The growing impatience that many loyal United Methodists feel because of unfaithfulness in their seminaries, in their church school literature, and, sad to say, in their church leaders at all levels.
- Blindness to both the social and to the eternal dimensions of our Lord’s two-sided Gospel … a Gospel for this world and the next.
- Dying enthusiasm for evangelism.
- Showing too little love and respect for each other.
May God help each of us to become part of his solution to the crisis! Let us no longer be content to be part of the problem!
I close with words from God, through the Apostle Paul. Words especially suited for a Church in crisis.
“We are often troubled, but not crushed; sometimes in doubt, but never in despair; there are many enemies, but we are never without a friend. And although badly hurt at times, we are not destroyed” (2 Cor. 4:8,9). ” No, in all these things we have complete victory through Him who loved us. There is nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God, which is ours through Christ Jesus our Lord” {Romans 8:35, 37-39).
by Steve | Jan 2, 1970 | Archive - 1970
Archive: Cyanide in the Church School
By Charles W. Keysor, Editor, Good News
It is surprising what one can learn from our United Methodist church school curriculum. For example, in the United Methodist Teacher I-II, Spring 1969, page 100, we read this concerning the Resurrection of Christ: ” … the drama of Jesus would be far stronger and make a far greater appeal to this post-Christian age without all this supernatural claptrap brought in at the end with a dead man suddenly brought back to life again. Wouldn’t the story of Jesus of Nazareth be more powerful and truer to itself in being less self-centered, if his life had ended in death? How much more courageous were he to give his life in obedient trust to God who made him and gave him his mission without this ‘reward’ tacked on at the end. Some people say they’ll take their Christianity straight, thank you, without any Hollywood ending that leaves everyone living happily ever after. It’s an understandable reaction, this mood that rejects the Resurrection stories as pious fiction …. ”
This is another example of the poor taste and bad theology which is forcing many loyal United Methodists to stop using official curriculum materials. One Methodist put it this way: “Why feed cyanide to the people in our church school?”
For years, Methodists have been complaining to the Board of Education. Countless attempts have been made to communicate with the man responsible for our literature: Dr. Henry Bullock. But he seems not to care if people disagree with him.
In Matthew 18:15-17, Jesus tells how Christians should resolve differences. “If your brother sins against you, go to him and show him his fault. But do it privately, just between yourselves.” Hundreds, probably thousands, of personal letters have been sent to Dr. Bullock over nearly two decades. There is no improvement—only degeneration. “But if he will not listen to you, take one or two other persons with you, so that ‘every accusation may be upheld by the testimony of two or three witnesses,’ as the Scripture says.” The July 1969 issue of “Good News” reported a recent meeting at which a delegation of evangelicals met with Dr. Bullock and colleagues responsible for curriculum policy. Other groups have met with Board of Education personnel to discuss literature problems. To no avail. “But if he will not listen to them, then tell it to the church.” A golden opportunity is now before us to carry out this third step of reconciliation. That is sending petitions to the General Conference, which will meet in St. Louis, Mo. April 20-24, 1970. WE CAN ASK THE GENERAL CONFERENCE TO DIRECT THE BOARD OF EDUCATION TO CREATE OR APPROVE CURRICULUM MATERIALS THAT EVANGELICAL TEACHERS, PASTORS, CLASSES AND CHURCHES CAN USE. Why should viewpoints contrary to United Methodist doctrine be forced upon large numbers of people who want only to be 100% Methodist in the church school?
There is a fourth step which Jesus advocates as a last resort: “And then, if he will not listen to the church, treat him as though he were a foreigner or a tax collector [outcast].” Ostracism is prescribed by our Lord for those who refuse to be reconciled. Applied to the literature question, this means cancelling orders and causing economic boycott.
Must it come to this? We hope this final, drastic step will not become necessary.
Will a church that talks reconciliation—and is raising $20 million to finance reconciliation in the world—refuse to practice reconciliation with its own members?
