by Steve | Mar 10, 2023 | In the News
By Thomas Lambrecht —
A recent report by Lovett Weems of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership purports to examine the 2,000 or so churches that disaffiliated from The United Methodist Church by the end of 2022.
The Weems report was supposedly intended to discover the non-theological characteristics of these disaffiliating churches and how they are like or unlike the broader UM denomination as a whole.
After reading the report, one wonders if it was even necessary to have a prestigious team of researchers issue a blue-ribbon report that there are “more similarities than differences between the cohort of disaffiliating churches and the total pool of all United Methodist churches.” There is really nothing much to see here in the results of the analysis.
Nevertheless, in a fractious time where differences of opinion are characterized as “misinformation,” the report claimed: “But disaffiliating churches are overwhelmingly in the South with majority white memberships. They are also more likely to have a male pastor …”
The problem with issuing reports like Weems’ in a Twitter age is that statistics can make ham-fisted and non-insightful conclusions. The bullet point characterization shown at the top of this article is shallow and problematic. For example, one can look at the report and just as easily proclaim: Non-disaffiliating churches are overwhelmingly in the Northeast and West with majority white memberships. They are also more likely to have a male pastor.
Furthermore, someone can hardly be blamed for asking what exactly is the point of a study of a process that is only partially complete and does not have fixed variables for participants? Even The Lewis Center knows that all annual conferences are not treating the disaffiliation process evenly across the board.
Can someone be faulted for wondering if the fractured “analysis” was merely issued to paint disaffiliation as solely the interest of white, Southern, male clergy?
This is seen most prominently in Weems’ supposed three biggest takeaways. “The greater differences we found for disaffiliating churches compared to all churches came in the majority racial makeup of the congregation (white), location (Southern), and gender of the pastor (male).”
To fill out the picture, let us look more closely at what the Weems analysis shows and does not show.
A Preliminary Picture
The first thing that must be noted is that the data on which the analysis is based is skewed toward the early disaffiliators. About 2,000 churches had disaffiliated by the end of 2022, out of a total of about 30,500 United Methodist congregations. Thus, by the end of 2022, about 6.6 percent of all UM churches had disaffiliated. These disaffiliations took place over a 12-18 month period. That level of disaffiliation in such a short time is in itself extraordinary.
As noted earlier, each annual conference has a different disaffiliation process, and some annual conferences had an easier and/or more affordable process than others. Thus, the population of disaffiliating churches is not representative of what the whole population will be at the end of this process. Twenty-one annual conferences had fewer than 6 churches disaffiliate in 2022, including eight conferences that had zero disaffiliations.
Furthermore, there is still another year to run in the disaffiliation process before Par. 2553 expires at the end of 2023. Based on our contacts among annual conference leaders, the 2,000 churches that disaffiliated in 2022 represent less than half the total that will disaffiliate by the end of 2023.
In addition, if the 2024 General Conference provides a reasonable and just way for disaffiliation to continue, there will be more congregations leaving through the end of 2025. This will be particularly true if that continued pathway eliminates some of the egregious financial penalties being imposed by some annual conferences. Post-General Conference disaffiliation will increase if, as anticipated, the General Conference changes the definition of marriage, repeals the Traditional Plan, allows same-sex weddings, and welcomes non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy.
Weems’ analysis concedes, “It is anticipated that more will exercise this option [of disaffiliation] by the end of 2023 when the disaffiliation legislation expires. … It is impossible to know if further disaffiliations will mirror the characteristics of this first group of about 2,000 churches. There is a good chance that some patterns that are pronounced in their variation from overall United Methodist patterns may continue.”
The nature of the disaffiliation process as a disjointed, conference-by-conference process makes it less likely that the patterns of the early disaffiliators will persist in the final makeup of all disaffiliated churches in the end. One must take Weems’ conclusions with many grains of salt, pending a further analysis when we have come more nearly to the end of the process and have a more broadly representative sample.
Congregational Size
The first thing to note about disaffiliating churches is that they reflect fairly accurately the size categories of the general UM church. Weems found that “Compared to all United Methodist churches, disaffiliating churches are about the same mixture of churches by attendance size groupings.” The only real difference is that slightly more disaffiliating churches are between 25 and 50 in worship attendance, while slightly fewer are under 25 in worship attendance.
The story is floating around, spread by some UM leaders, that the disaffiliating churches are primarily small and rural. Weems found that is not the case. In our own analysis, at least 29 of the top 100 churches in worship attendance have disaffiliated or are known to be in the process of doing so. (There may be more.) Based on the overall percentage of churches disaffiliating (6.6 percent), one would expect only six or seven of the top 100 churches to disaffiliate. Four times the expected number have done so, meaning that the very largest churches are overrepresented in the population of disaffiliating congregations.
Location
Weems’ analysis makes a big point out of the fact that, so far, a greater percentage of disaffiliating churches are located in the South. Here are the percentages:
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JURISDICTION
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PERCENT OF TOTAL UMC
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PERCENT OF CHURCHES DISAFFILIATING
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North Central Jurisdiction
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21%
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14%
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Northeastern Jurisdiction
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21%
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2%
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|
South Central Jurisdiction
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17%
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38%
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Southeastern Jurisdiction
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35%
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46%
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|
Western Jurisdiction
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5%
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1%
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It is important to understand the context of why this would be so. Many of the northern annual conferences did not have functional disaffiliation processes until this year. On the other hand, many of the southern annual conferences had much shorter and simpler disaffiliation processes that were in effect already in 2022. So the southern churches got a head start on the rest and are somewhat overrepresented in the total of disaffiliating churches.
The South Central Jurisdiction is by far the one that is most overrepresented among disaffiliating churches – 21 percentage points above its expected proportion. That is almost entirely due to three annual conferences in Texas. The Northwest Texas, Central Texas, and Texas annual conferences experienced a very high percentage of disaffiliations that took place relatively quickly in 2022. Texas had half its congregations disaffiliate, Central Texas a bit less than half, and Northwest Texas nearly three-fourths. These percentages are obviously much higher than the 6.6 percent across the denomination and skew the results toward the South Central. Once all the disaffiliations are completed in 2023, it is expected that the percent in the South Central will be closer to 22 percent, not far from the 17 percent that the jurisdiction makes up for the whole.
It is true that the Southeastern Jurisdiction includes a disproportionate share of traditionalist churches. That is not expected to change when the final results are in. Northern and Western jurisdictions have suffered a much greater membership loss over the last couple decades, and that has affected the number of remaining traditionalists in those areas. Traditionalists in the south have not seen their annual conferences affected by disobedience and liberal theology to the same extent, so there has been less motivation to leave the church. However, it is expected that the northern churches should nearly double their percentage of the total disaffiliated congregations in the end.
This whole discussion under location points out why Weems’ analysis is premature and subject to change as disaffiliations continue.
Growth and Decline
Weems found in his analysis that disaffiliating churches were more likely to have grown in attendance in 2019 (the year he used for comparison, which was pre-pandemic). He also noted that disaffiliating churches received fewer professions of faith compared to the denomination as a whole. Does that mean the disaffiliating churches emphasized attendance more than membership? Or would the increase in attendance show up as an increase in professions of faith in a future year? Or is membership growth coming more by transfer in those congregations? We do not know the “why” of these statistics.
It seems risky to classify a church as growing or declining based only on one year’s changes in statistics. Any number of factors can cause a blip up or down in the numbers in a given year, but do not represent the longer-term trend. It would be wiser to use a three-year or five-year growth pattern, but that would take a lot more time and effort to run those numbers for over 30,000 churches!
Racial and Ethnic Makeup
The Lewis Center research staff is well-aware of how sensitive the issue of race and ethnic makeup of a congregation can be. The United Methodist Church in the United States has historically been an overwhelming white denomination. We have justifiably worked for decades to make it more inclusive to reflect the broader American population.
Historically, United Methodism’s racial makeup is made even more complex because we have time-honored relationships with African American sister-denominations such as The African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AMEZ), and The Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (CME).
That is why it is not a special revelation that the Weems team found that an overwhelming majority of disaffiliating congregations were majority white from a denomination that is overwhelmingly white (in the United States). (Of course, the Global Methodist Church does have non-white leaders on its staff and Transitional Leadership Council and welcomes majority-non-white congregations.)
Other factors, such as the financial support that some ethnic churches receive from their annual conferences, as well as cultural dynamics, play into the decision of whether a given congregation will disaffiliate. When reading the report, it is also worth noting that many large Asian congregations on the West Coast and the Northeast are hampered by the requirement that they pay 50 percent of their (astronomical) property value in order to disaffiliate. Such a requirement makes disaffiliation financially impossible when they would owe millions or tens of millions of dollars.
So there are why racial and ethnic non-white congregations might think twice about disaffiliating.
Clergy Characteristics
Weems found that, “Compared to all United Methodist churches, disaffiliating churches have pastors who are less likely to be an active elder and more likely to be part-time local pastors, associate members, lay supply, and retired clergy.” Actually, Weems’ numbers show that pastors of disaffiliating churches are no more likely to be full-time local pastors, lay supply pastors, or associate members, compared with the denomination as a whole.
Disaffiliating churches were six percentage points less likely to be served by an ordained elder and three percentage points more likely to be served by a part-time local pastor or a retired pastor. Part-time and retired pastors are more likely to serve smaller congregations or congregations in transitional situations. Both full- and part-time local pastors are likely to be ordained as elders or deacons in the Global Methodist Church, meaning that GMC congregations will have a much higher percentage of their churches served by ordained clergy.
What struck me was the fact that only 43 percent of all UM churches are being served by an ordained elder. More UM congregations are served by full- or part-time local pastors or supply pastors. Yet the UM system is designed to serve mainly elders. Local pastors and supply pastors have no guarantee of a job and are at the mercy of the bishop and district committee on ministry. It is amazing to me that as many churches with local or supply pastors decided to disaffiliate as have done so. Perhaps one reason is that such pastors will have far more power and support in the GMC.
Weems also determined that, “Compared to all United Methodist churches, disaffiliating churches have pastors who are more likely to be male. Only 17 percent of disaffiliating churches have a woman as lead pastor compared to 29 percent for United Methodist churches as a whole.”
However, the numbers behind this conclusion are questionable. Apparently, the data used for Weems’ analysis does not include a designation of gender for the pastor. Weems and his team went through 30,000 clergy name by name and assigned the probable gender based on their name. I can only imagine the monumental workload this process took! It is a subjective judgment for each name whether it is male or female. The margin for error must be high. In addition, Weems has stipulated in email correspondence that they could not identify the gender for 3 percent of UM pastors and 5 percent of disaffiliating church pastors.
Because of these questions, it is dubious whether the “gender gap” is as wide as Weems suggests.
On the other hand, it would not be surprising that there would be somewhat of a “gender gap” among pastors in disaffiliating churches. I have spoken to numerous female pastors who have traditional theology and are therefore ostracized in their annual conferences because of it. If traditional-minded female pastors find United Methodism inhospitable, they would not likely stick around very long in the ministry or perhaps not even get admitted in the first place.
Conclusion
Mark Twain quoted the British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli as saying, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Statistics can sometimes be made to tell a false story or support a weak argument.
Weems’ analysis should be regarded only as a preliminary snapshot – an inadequate one at that – of disaffiliating churches at the end of 2022. The situation can and will change before all the dust has settled. The context around numbers can help us bring the picture into better focus. Most importantly, the numbers themselves do not explain “why” the picture is the way it is. For that, we will need to dig deeper over the years ahead. In the meantime, Weems’ analysis should not be made to tell a story that the numbers do not really support.
Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and vice president of Good News.
by Steve | Mar 9, 2023 | In the News
By James V. Heidinger II —
It would not be long before I began hearing much about Matthew Simpson, the renowned son of Cadiz, Ohio. He was a nationally-recognized Methodist bishop and then president of Indiana Asbury University (now DePauw University). He was also famously a friend and confidant of President Abraham Lincoln – preaching his memorial address at least twice, once in Washington D.C. and again in Springfield, Illinois.
I began to hear about Bishop Simpson (1811-1884) soon after my wife, Joanie, and I arrived in Cadiz in 1973 to serve the Drummond United Methodist Church. He was born in Cadiz in 1811 to a godly Methodist family.
You would not call Cadiz an impressive looking town. It is the county seat of Harrison County and when we came, it had some 4,000 people. Joanie and I still chuckle at her concern upon learning I had been appointed to the Methodist congregation in Cadiz. She had been in the small town years earlier with a boyfriend and after lunching at a downtown restaurant, walked out, looked at the weathered downtown, and said to her friend, “Wouldn’t you hate to live here?”
Well, in fact, we didn’t hate it, we loved it – and loved the people. We served there for eight years. (The Drummond church, dedicated by Bishop Simpson in 1876, became the Scott Memorial United Methodist Church in 1979, when the congregation moved into its newly-constructed church building.)
In 2011, Scott UM Church celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of Matthew Simpson and invited us to come back to help celebrate. While preparing, I providentially came across The Life of Bishop Matthew Simpson by George R. Crooks (Harper & Bros., New York, 1890). As I learned more about Simpson, I discovered much that was instructive about his life and times. (The quotations cited are from Crooks’ work.)
First, Simpson’s life reflects impressively the influence of one’s community in shaping one’s life. Crooks writes that Cadiz (and the Ohio Valley area) in the early 1800s was a “virtuous community.” Religious feeling “was intense, and religious zeal active. A traveler on horseback might often stop on a Saturday, at a lone school-house, and find residents battling with each other on ‘the five points,’ the divinity of Christ, or baptism, with all the energy of Luther and Eck at Leipsic.”
The Cadiz of 1811 was also, wrote Crooks, a “town which has been … noted for the brilliant talents of the members of its bar.” He cites Edwin M. Stanton, a native of Steubenville, Ohio, who became Lincoln’s secretary of war, but prior to that he practiced law a few years in Cadiz and was elected prosecuting attorney for Harrison County. He also notes John A. Bingham, the prosecutor of Lincoln’s assassins, who is honored with a statue on Cadiz’s courthouse square. The Simpson family’s small, unpainted plain frame house was also used for a schoolroom by his uncle Matthew Simpson, who would later be elected to the Ohio Legislature as a state senator. Cadiz was clearly a community of impressive, talented men.
Second, one sees the importance of early religious training. At the time of Simpson’s birth in 1811, his father was in poor health and died the next year. Simpson wrote that “Both he and my mother consecrated me to God, and their prayer was that if he should see fit to call me, I might be made a minister of the gospel.”
The Simpson home was a guest house for traveling preachers. But think about these particular guests! Simpson reported: “Passing westward in 1811, Bishop Asbury stopped at my father’s house, and Father [Henry] Boehm, in his reminiscences, states that he remembers Bishop Asbury’s baptizing the little boy, though I remember to have heard my mother say that she was not clear who had baptized me. She was troubled at the time over my father’s approaching death.”
The influences on his own spiritual life obviously began early and were consistent. Simpson wrote, “From the earliest period of my memory religious ideas were deeply impressed upon my mind. The instructions I received from my mother and from my uncle [Mathew], and the religious services at which I was present, so influenced my heart that I had a deep reverence for God. Many times have I lain awake at night thinking of divine truths, and especially of that question which all hearts will turn over, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ And how to come to Jesus? What I was to believe and how … were questions that deeply moved me.”
Third, Simpson’s life reveals the impact of early, rigorous education. This part of young Matthew’s childhood was remarkable to discover. It would be easy to consider Ohioans in the 1820s to be rustic, unlearned, and un-schooled people. Yet young Matthew wrote in his diary, “At 8 years of age, being pretty well acquainted with English grammar, I wished to study German. My uncle (Matthew) had a German Bible and an Old German grammar, and without the aid of a dictionary, but by comparing the English Bible with the German, I managed to read the German Bible through and to gain a knowledge of the elements of that language. In family worship every morning I was expected to read the German copy, while my uncle or my mother (in his absence) read in the English.”
At 12, he joined several young men in the academy that met in his uncle Matthew’s home, and while working half a day, he then studied Rosa’s Latin Grammar, read Historia Sacra, four books of Caesar, and a large part of Sallust’s Catiline. In the next 8-9 months, he finished a Latin course and studied Greek Grammar.
At 17 years of age, Simpson met the Rev. Dr. Charles Elliott, a professor at Madison College, in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, a small Methodist-related college in the Pittsburgh Conference. Elliott visited Cadiz, lodged at Simpson’s home, and offered Matthew – though he was still quite young – a position as an assistant teacher for some classes. He accepted and a few days later set out with $11.25 in his pocket to walk the 90 miles to Uniontown, arriving there the afternoon of the third day.
He boarded with Dr. Elliott, along with four or five other boarders. These (boarders) and one or two others read the Bible in family prayer, and they adopted the plan that each would read from a Bible in a different language from the rest, including the Vulgate, the Septuagint, as well as the Hebrew, French, and German Bibles. Simpson wrote that “after prayer, the various readings of the several versions were a subject of more or less extended conversation.”
After a few months teaching, Simpson felt he had benefited greatly from his studies there, but returned to Cadiz to attend to his family responsibilities, especially his widowed mother and his uncle Matthew. So much, though, for our thoughts of poorly educated, unschooled, Ohioans on the American frontier.
Fourth, his experience at the Dickerson camp meeting is instructive. I had heard while in Cadiz that Simpson was converted at that camp meeting. That was not the case. Just weeks after returning home from college in Pennsylvania, he heard about the revivals that were taking place, particularly the one in the Dickerson neighborhood several miles outside of Cadiz (the old Dickerson Methodist Church remains there today as an historical marker). So, he attended one Sunday and returned on Monday to accompany his sister home.
He wrote about that experience, “I found that a remarkable religious interest had appeared during the day, and that several boys and young men, some of whom had been very wild, were awakened.” He attended that Monday evening and was not “specially interested” until those who were seeking religion were invited forward. A large number went forward, among them some of the young men he had noticed. He was deeply interested in the scene and wondered, “Why I, who had been so religiously educated and whose life had been so guarded by Christian influences, should not experience the same religious emotions as they.”
He moved toward the front and noticed a young man with whom he had formed a “pleasant acquaintance,” but who was not “a professed Christian.” He made his way through the crowd, then “I laid my hand gently on his shoulder and asked him if he would not like to go forward for prayer. His head dropped, the tears started from his eyes, and he said to me that he would go if I would go with him.” They went forward, found a place to kneel and pray.
There were many earnest prayers and Simpson wrote, “I was sincere, wished to be a servant of Christ, but did not feel any special earnestness of spirit.” This is a fascinating glimpse of a godly young man who grew up in an intensely Christian home, reading the Scriptures daily, and probably never knew the “moment” he became a believer, or of a time when he did not believe. (Such an experience is unusual in our day. Interestingly, the late Ruth Bell Graham, wife of the late evangelist Billy Graham and reared in a godly home, said she could not remember the time of a conversion.)
Soon after this experience, however, Simpson was resolved that he would unite with the Church, which he did. And having done so, he writes “I became intensely anxious to benefit in every possible way the young men who were the subjects of the revival.” He proposed a young men’s prayer meeting which was kept up for some time and “was the product of great good.” Soon after this, Simpson felt the need for a Sunday school in Cadiz. Two or three efforts had been tried, but had not continued. So, with Simpson’s lead, a Sunday school “began in the Methodist Church in Cadiz with some half-dozen scholars, and has not been abandoned from that day until this.” (“This” being probably 1890, when Crooks’ book was published.)
Fifth, Simpson’s election to the episcopacy reflects great integrity. In May of 1852, Simpson was elected a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In viewing episcopal elections in today’s church, I am saddened by what they have become. Simpson’s comments about it were refreshing to me. “The choice of my brethren led me to very serious reflection. I had greatly enjoyed the society of my family, and had several children in whose education I was deeply interested. But, as I had resolved to accept the voice of the Church as the will of God, and as I had never solicited in any manner a vote as a delegate to the General Conference or for any office connected with it, I felt that the arrangement was wholly providential” (emphasis mine.) From what I have read of him, Simpson would never have sought status or prestige. That would have been repugnant to him.
Sixth, Simpson became a giant on the American stage. Somehow during the course of his episcopacy, Simpson became a friend and a confidant of Abraham Lincoln. When the president was invited to speak and could not accept, he would sometimes pass the invitation along to Bishop Simpson. The latter had become a gifted orator, often bringing crowds to their feet with his persuasive blend of Christian piety and love for America.
It would fall to Bishop Matthew Simpson to preach Abraham Lincoln’s memorial service, which he did at least twice as noted earlier, once in Washington, D.C. and again in Springfield, Illinois.
In his memorial address, Simpson said, “Abraham Lincoln was a good man; he was known as an honest, temperate, forgiving man; a just man; a man of noble heart in every way.” While admitting not having spoken at length with Lincoln about his faith, he said: “This I know, however; he read the Bible frequently, loved it for its great truths, and he tried to be guided by its precepts. He believed in Christ the Savior of sinners, and I think he was sincere in trying to bring his life into harmony with the principles of revealed religion. … He never spoke unkindly of any man. … I doubt if any president has ever shown such trust in God, or in public documents so frequently referred to divine aid.”
His words became more moving as he continued, “Standing, as we do today, by his coffin, let us resolve to carry forward the policy so nobly begun. Let us do right to all men. Let us vow, before Heaven, to eradicate every vestige of human slavery; to give every human being his true position before God and man.”
And then becoming lyrical, he said movingly: “Chieftain, farewell! The nation mourns thee. Mothers shall teach thy name to their lisping children. The youth of our land shall emulate thy virtues. Statesmen shall study thy record, and from it learn lessons of wisdom. Mute though thy lips be, yet they still speak. Hushed is thy voice, but its echoes of liberty are ringing through the world, and the sons of bondage listen with joy. … We crown thee as our martyr, and Humanity enthrones thee as her triumphant son. Hero, martyr, friend, farewell.”
Simpson’s eloquence was seen in one further public gathering, nearly a year later, February, 1866, in the Hall of the United States House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. The occasion was the final meeting of the U.S. Christian Commission, and the presiding officer was Schuyler Colfax, then Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. The Commission had been formed in 1861 “to promote the spiritual and temporal welfare of the soldiers in the army and the sailors in the Navy, in cooperation with the Chaplains.” The Commission, which had offices in most of the nation’s major cities, was then going out of existence. Gathered in the audience were recognized political and religious leaders from across the country who had helped carry the nation through its trials. (Interestingly, there was no concern then about the separation of church and state.)
Simpson was the speaker for the impressive gathering. Hear his moving words: “But beloved workers, as we part, we go to other fields. We shall not be an organized body, but we shall be active laborers. There are other fields. Vice in many forms is to be encountered and vanquished. Cities are to be evangelized. Freedmen are to be educated. But when the law and the sword have accomplished their utmost work, they cannot change unwilling minds. The moral work remains to be done.”
Then before the large, influential gathering of American leadership, Simpson became the evangelist, saying: “We must carry the gospel to men of all ranks, classes, sections, and prejudices, for one thing alone can make us truly one – the love of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
He continued with great passion: “Workers of the Commission, continue to shine as stars. Your light cannot be hid. … But the workers are not all here. Scattered over the land they are with us in spirit. They are not all visible. Some fell on the battle-field, whispering with their dying breath the name of Jesus. Some fell by disease contracted while ministering in the hospital. May they not be here also? [He is beautifully aware of the “great cloud of witnesses.”] These galleries are densely crowded. Are there not higher galleries? Above this light, beaming so softly upon us, may there not be purer and brighter lights? May not the unseen be very near us? May it not even be that he, our martyred one, whose seat is vacant here, but who cheers us twelve months since, looks lovingly upon the scene?”
But after his mention of his beloved friend, he moves on from Lincoln, urging all to fix their eyes on Christ. “Be that as it may, there is a far greater among us, who hath said, ‘Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.’
Brave workers, go to your fields! They are ripening to the harvest. Work for Jesus, and ‘what your hands find to do, do it with all your might!’”
I still find his words moving, even after many readings. Simpson did not seek fame or recognition. He felt unworthy of the call to preach and nearly withdrew from candidacy, saved only by the encouragement of a godly neighbor. He was an authentic, scripturally-grounded servant who reminds me of the one of whom Jesus said, “You have been faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things.” And so He did.
James V. Heidinger II is the president emeritus of Good News. He was the president of the United Methodist renewal ministry for 26 years. Dr. Heidinger is the author of The Rise of Theological Liberalism and the Decline of American Methodism (Seedbed). It can be ordered HERE.
Photo: Mathew Benjamin Brady, Library of Congress Prints (Public Domain).
by Steve | Mar 3, 2023 | In the News
By Thomas Lambrecht —
In this season of our denomination’s life, Methodists of goodwill should advocate for a fair exit process and terms for local churches and clergy desiring to realign. Many annual conferences in the U.S. have adopted fair processes for disaffiliation. Some have even adopted gracious terms that relieved the financial burden on disaffiliating churches to a greater or lesser extent. Other annual conferences have adopted processes or terms that many traditionalists consider to be unfair, and we continue to advocate for annual conferences to change those processes and terms.
I grew up with two younger brothers, and we enjoyed playing all sorts of games together – card games, board games, and physical games. In the process, we all became acutely aware of any behavior by another brother that we could label “cheating.” None of us wanted to let the other one get away with unfair, cheating behavior. In fact, such behavior could result in ending the game on the spot (sometimes with a bit of hot-headed violence involved)! If everyone wanted to continue playing the game, the unfair behavior had to change.
While we can call out unfair behavior in the disaffiliation process, the difference is that local churches cannot “quit the game.” Local churches cannot abandon the disaffiliation process if they want to disaffiliate. They have to play by the rules established by their annual conference, fair or not. The annual conference holds most of the power, except in a few states where a last-resort lawsuit might open the door for a church to nullify the trust clause and leave the denomination.
What is fair?
It might help to begin with a description of a fair process. After all, what is fair to one person might not seem fair to another.
Information sharing. The first requirement of a fair process would be an informed congregation. For years, Good News has been advocating for pastors to bring their lay leaders, if not also the whole congregation, up to speed with what is happening in the United Methodist denomination. Thousands of churches are operating in the dark today because their pastors in the past failed to prepare them for this moment. A few annual conferences and bishops have gone so far as to prohibit pastors from sharing information with their congregation about options for disaffiliation.
An informed congregation can make an informed decision about what is best for it in its own unique ministry context. That means the congregation should have open access to different perspectives: those wanting to stay in the UM Church and those wanting to disaffiliate. Members should have a chance to read and/or hear from advocates for both positions, ask questions, and discern for themselves what course that information leads them to favor. To prevent either one of the perspectives from sharing their information with the congregation only means the members will not be fully informed.
To label information that one disagrees with as “misinformation” – and therefore to censor that information – is a manipulative tactic that ought to have no place in Christian conversation. If someone shares information that some believe is incorrect or misleading, the answer is to counter it with correct information and fuller context. We must give adults credit for an ability to digest competing perspectives and contradictory information in order to discern a legitimate way forward. Otherwise, a knowledgeable elite will be tempted to keep that knowledge to themselves and attempt to dictate to the “ignorant masses” what the elite believes is the best course of action. Such a course would show contempt for individual dignity and free will, as well as discounting the power of God’s grace to lead and guide the individual and the congregation.
Transparent Process. Most annual conferences have developed a checklist or sequence of steps that local churches can follow to move through the discernment process to make a decision. That process should be transparent and available to all congregations. (There are a few annual conferences that have no published process or have not made it available to congregations.)
The process that annual conferences use should be flexible enough to accommodate the needs and contexts of local churches. The Wisconsin Annual Conference set a deadline of September 1, 2022, for churches to enter the discernment process. Any church that missed that deadline cannot disaffiliate. That level of unrealistic rigidity is not helpful or fair. On the other hand, more and more annual conferences are adding special sessions for this coming fall to act on disaffiliation requests prior to the expiration of Par. 2553, which is very helpful and fair. It is also fair for annual conferences to put in place a disaffiliation process that could be used after Par. 2553 expires at the end of 2023.
Financial Costs. One of the financial costs for disaffiliation is a payment of the congregation’s fair share of unfunded pension liabilities. Given that Wespath has drastically reduced those liabilities since the beginning of 2021, conferences should make use of the latest calculation of that liability, so that congregations are not overcharged to satisfy this agreed moral obligation. At the same time, it would also be fair for annual conferences to use existing conference pension funds to offset some of that liability. After all, the disaffiliating local churches contributed toward those conference pension funds and ought to share in the benefit of them. Unfortunately, most annual conferences are not taking that route.
When Par. 2553 was written, the authors envisioned the payment of a second year of apportionments as a way to cushion the annual conference against the loss of future apportionments. It would enable the conference to have time to adjust its budget and programs to fit the new reality, based on the number of congregations that remain. That is a fair provision that we support.
The levying of additional costs beyond the two required by Par. 2553 run over into unfair territory. Asking the congregation to reimburse grants they received ten years prior ignores how the benefit of those grants resulted in greater congregational vitality and higher apportionment payments for those ten years. The conference has already benefitted and should not require reimbursement. Some annual conferences are charging the congregation up to 50-60 percent of their assets (buildings, property, and bank accounts). Congregations already paid for their buildings and upkeep, in most cases without any help from the conference. The congregation should not have to pay for their building twice. This is simply a tactic to discourage disaffiliation and line the pockets of the annual conference at the expense of the local church. At the extreme, the Greater New Jersey Conference has added nine different costs beyond pension and apportionments, making it financially unfeasible for most congregations to disaffiliate. Such an approach is patently unfair.
If annual conferences develop a clear and transparent process of disaffiliation that allows for open sharing of information from all perspectives, allows reasonable timelines for the process, and does not impose additional costs, congregations can and do make the decision of what works best for them in their ministry context. Such a fair process honors the agency and maturity of the church’s members and creates a foundation of trust, upon which future relationships and cooperation between denominations might be possible.
Changing the Rules in the Middle of the Game
Unfortunately, as bishops and annual conference leaders have seen the desire from a substantial percentage of their churches to disaffiliate, they have at times short-circuited the process in order to prevent disaffiliation. My friend, the Rev. Scott Field, likens this to Lucy pulling the football away as Charlie Brown tries to kick it. Some churches attempting to follow the disaffiliation process in good faith have had the football pulled away and disaffiliation unfairly refused.
This began in 2021 when congregations in a few U.S. conferences were told they did not qualify for disaffiliation, since the annual conference was following the Book of Discipline. Churches in the central conferences outside the U.S. have been told they also cannot disaffiliate under Par. 2553. All these churches are deprived of using a provision enacted by General Conference in 2019 (four years ago!) to allow disaffiliation.
Last fall, three churches in the Arkansas Conference were refused disaffiliation by a majority vote of the annual conference. They had followed the process, received the necessary vote in their local churches, paid the required amounts, and been approved by both the cabinet and trustees of the annual conference. Yet, the conference still pulled the rug out from under those churches.
On the last day of 2022, the North Georgia Conference “paused” all disaffiliations until after the 2024 General Conference, when the Par. 2553 disaffiliation process will no longer be in force. About 150 local churches were in the discernment process toward making a decision, and the rug was pulled out from under them. Although all presentations made by North Georgia Wesleyan Covenant Association representatives had to be pre-approved by district superintendents, the conference still accused the WCA and others of “misinformation.” Instead of simply correcting the alleged misinformation, the conference took the draconian step of forbidding all disaffiliations until a time when there may be no disaffiliation process available.
Now we are hearing of other bishops and annual conferences following the North Georgia playbook with individual congregations. Several who had church conferences scheduled to vote on disaffiliation have had those church meetings cancelled due to the presence of alleged “misinformation.” In other instances, bishops are halting the discernment process for individual congregations and requiring them to do an extensive study of their community and the impact of the local church’s ministry before being allowed to proceed. Such a study is supposed to be done before closing any United Methodist church, yet it is rarely done in practice, and the disaffiliating churches are not closing. This is simply another way of putting an unfair bureaucratic roadblock in the way of local churches wanting to disaffiliate.
All that traditionalists are asking for is a fair discernment process for local congregations to follow. If the congregation fairly considers all perspectives and wants to remain United Methodist, we obviously have no problem with that. However, unfair elements should not be introduced into the process to influence or coerce congregations into remaining UM. Such coercion does no good for building an enthusiastic support for United Methodism and it poisons the atmosphere for any future potential cooperation or relationship between United Methodism and the Global Methodist Church or other disaffiliated congregations. For the sake of the cause of Christ, the church must give a witness to the world that it operates with fairness, transparency, and integrity. It is not too late for that to happen, but time is running out.
Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and vice president of Good News.
by Steve | Mar 2, 2023 | Front Page News, Uncategorized
Harbinger? Asbury, Jesus People, and a Timeline of Crosscurrents
Hughes Auditorium at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky. February 2023. Photo courtesy of Suzanne Nicholson.
By Steve Beard —
After two weeks of an extraordinary spiritual stirring on the campus of Asbury University, The New York Times eventually reported in a lengthy story that “more than 50,000 people descended on a small campus chapel to experience the nation’s first major spiritual revival in decades – one driven by Gen Z.” The student-led round-the-clock public meetings came to a crescendo when the live-video simulcast of the Collegiate Day of Prayer on February 23 was broadcast from the campus in Wilmore, Kentucky.
Interestingly enough, the worldwide premiere of Jesus Revolution – a film about a hippie spiritual awakening of the ‘60s and ‘70s – took place on the following day. In the works for six years and told through the eyes of Greg Laurie, the film features charismatic evangelist Lonnie Frisbee and Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel. The Southern California congregation had roughly 30 people in 1966. It grew to 15,000 in less than 10 years. The 200 cribs in the nursery illustrate the age of the new membership wave.
Times change. Culture morphs. But, rolling back the clock, there is a spiritual connection between the Asbury campus in Wilmore and the noteworthy events on the West Coast through the Jesus People.
Fifty-three years ago, also in February, the students at then-Asbury College experienced a similarly lengthy revival in Hughes Auditorium. The 1970 Asbury revival is spoken of in reverent tones for the generation that experienced a “divine moment” that lasted for more than a week. Legions of teams from Asbury testified in churches throughout the country about what had occurred on campus.
“The unusual revival which came to Asbury College early in 1970 and spread to scores of campuses across America is evidence that God is still at work in His world, lifting men and women out of self-centeredness, secularism, and boredom,” observed Billy Graham.
In retrospect, the 1970 Asbury revival was one very unique and distinct aspect of a dizzying array of spiritual touchpoints taking place within a tumultuous era. “With the Lord, it is usually in the worst of times that the best things happen,” observed Graham in the foreword to Robert E. Coleman’s One Divine Moment. “The Protestant Reformation, the Wesleyan Revival, and the Great Awakening in America in the nineteenth century are examples.”
In 1970, Asbury was a heartfelt awakening localized on a college campus that can be seen as a vibrant expression of an unmistakably wider simultaneous and distinct spiritual passion brewing in West Coast coffeehouses, communes, and Pacific Ocean mass baptisms 2,100 miles away.
Completely unique and regionally-oriented, both movements made global impacts and were sparked by the spiritual hunger of young people – from straight-laced students to scruffy hippies.
While the 2023 re-percolating of the historic well of revival at Asbury was broadcast internationally via TikTok and other social media platforms, the chronicling of the Jesus People movement five decades ago was done through the medium of national magazines.
In 1966, Time magazine provocatively probed the question “Is God Dead?” for its cover story. Five years later, Time’s psychedelic cover story reported on “The Jesus Revolution.” In that same year, Life magazine wrote about “The Groovy Christians” and Look magazine declared: “It’s an old-time, Bible-toting witness-giving kind of revival, and the new evangelists are the young. They give their Christian message with cheerful dedication. Turn on to Jesus. He’s coming. Soon.”
Responding to the 1970 experience at Asbury, Graham pondered: “Perhaps the eruptions of revival which swept through a segment of our college youth in the early months of 1970 are harbingers of what the Holy Spirit is ready, able and willing to do, throughout the world, if Christians will dare to pay the price.”
Some modern day church leaders are left wondering the same thing.
********
When Time reported on the nationwide spiritual movement in the early 1970s, it featured three groups: the Jesus People, the “straights” (non-hippie young people), and charismatic Catholics. “The movement, in fact, is one of considerable flexibility and vitality, drawing from three vigorous spiritual streams that, despite differences in dress, manner and theology, effectively reinforce one another.”
For Good News readers, the following timeline attempts to put broad cultural movements – both good and bad – within an ecumenical faith-based context of the era of 1960-1974.
Timeline
1960 – YWAM (Youth With A Mission) founded by Loren Cunningham (Fall). More than 60 years later, YWAM is considered the largest mission-sending agency in the world.
• John F. Kennedy is the first Roman Catholic elected as President of United States (November). Amongst supporters, his administration was dubbed “Camelot,” a literary reference to the legend of King Arthur and his court.
• Teen Challenge is launched by David Wilkerson. His mother helped found two coffeehouses in Greenwich Village (The Lost Coin and The Living Room).
1961 – Dr. Gabriel Vahanian publishes The Death of God: The Culture of our Post-Christian Era (January)
• Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) is launched by Pat Robertson (October)
1962 – Marilyn Monroe dies at age 36 (August)
• The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council is launched to renew and reform Roman Catholicism (October)
• Cuban Missile Crisis (October)
• James Meredith becomes the first Black student to study at the University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss. (October)
Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park, photo by Steve Beard.
1963 – David Wilkerson writes The Cross and the Switchblade. It sells 11 million copies in the first 10 years. (January)
• In August, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers the “I Have a Dream” speech in front of 200,000 on the Washington Mall (August)
• In September, A Ku Klux Klan bomb kills four African American children at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama (September)
• C.S. Lewis, author of Mere Christianity, dies on same day that President Kennedy is assassinated (November)
1964 – The Beatles appear on the Ed Sullivan show in front of 70 million viewers (February)
• Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy is on cover of Time (May)
• Civil Rights Bill of 1964 is signed into law (July)
• John Sherrill, a reporter for Guideposts magazine, publishes They Speak with Other Tongues (August) about the widespread charismatic movement
• Dr. Martin Luther King wins the Nobel Peace Prize (December)
1965 – Dr. Harvey Cox publishes his book The Secular City. “The age of the secular city, the epoch whose ethos is quickly spreading into every corner of the globe, is an age of ‘no religion at all.’ It no longer looks to religious rules and rituals for its morality or its meanings.” (January)
• First American combat troops enter the Vietnam War (March)
• In its article, “The God is Dead Movement,” Time quotes Dr. Thomas Altizer, associate professor of religion at Emory University: “We must realize that the death of God is an historical event, that God has died in our cosmos, in our history, in our existence.”
• The Presbyterian Lay Committee is launched to work for renewal and reform in its denomination.
• Dr. Martin Luther King and Congressman John Lewis, also a clergyman, attend President Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law. (August)
1966 – John Lennon states: “We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.” (March)
• “Is God Dead?” is the cover of Time on April 8, 1966. The provocative 5,600 word essay was written by Time religion editor John T. Elson. “In search of meaning, some believers have desperately turned to psychiatry, Zen or drugs. Thousands of others have quietly abandoned all but token allegiance to the churches, surrendering themselves to a life of ‘anonymous Christianity’ dedicated to civil rights or the Peace Corps.”
• Anton LaVey launches the Church of Satan. “This is a very selfish religion,” LaVey said in an interview. “We believe in greed. We believe in selfishness and all of the lustful thoughts that motivate man because this is man’s natural feeling.” (April)
• Charles Keysor writes “Methodism’s Silent Minority” in the Christian Advocate, the journal for Methodist clergy (July). “Within The Methodist Church in the United States is a silent minority group. It is not represented in the higher councils of the church. Its members seem to have little influence in Nashville, Evanston, or on Riverside Drive. … I speak of those Methodists who are variously called ‘evangelicals’ or ‘conservatives’ … A more accurate description is ‘orthodox,’ for these brethren hold a traditional understanding of the Christian faith.”
• World Congress on Evangelism sponsored by Billy Graham and Christianity Today’s Carl F.H. Henry held in Berlin (October)
1967 – Timothy Leary urges 30,000 hippies at the “Human Be-In” held at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco to “Tune in, Turn on, Drop out!” (January)
• Elvis Presley releases his album, “How Great Thou Art” (February)
• Catholics from Duquesne University (Pittsburgh) experience a Holy Spirit encounter at a Episcopalian retreat. Subsequently, the “First International Conference” of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal is held at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. (February)
• Evangelical United Methodists publish the first issue of Good News magazine (March). The lead article by Los Angeles Bishop Gerald Kennedy was titled “The Evangelicals’ Place in The Methodist Church.” The issue also included the sheet music and lyrics to the hymn “God Is Not Dead” by the Rev. M. Homer Cummings.
• The Beatles release Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (May 26)|
• Six-Day Arab-Israeli War (June 5-10)
• “Summer of Love” draws 100,000 hippies to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury to hear rock music, experiment with hallucinogenic drugs, and hear anti-war and free-love speeches (June)
• At an inter-denominational gathering hosted by Billy Graham and Christianity Today in Washington D.C., three of the Methodist delegates were Charles W. Keysor, editor of Good News; Dr. Frank Stanger, president of Asbury Theological Seminary; and the Rev. Philip Worth, chairman of the board of Good News and Methodist clergy from New Jersey (September)
• The Living Room, a Christian hippie outreach/refuge, is launched in Haight-Ashbury
1968 – Christian Life magazine’s January cover proclaims: “Psychedelic Christians: Where and How They Live.” The story, “God’s Thing in Hippieville,” is written by Maurice Allan. “They are by all conventional standards, a weird mob. I like to think of them as a kind of evangelical Robin Hood and his merry men. With their different costumes, communal ghetto-style living, and anti-authoritarian ways, they outwardly resemble the mythical English folk-hero. Also, like him, they are essentially on the right side of what is righteous and good. Sideburns, para-military jackets, thigh-high dresses, red Indian motifs –they dig these and/or other tell-tale marks of the interstitial culture of the psychedelic scene. Strongly pacifist, not unduly patriotic, yet they love Jesus Christ, and their allegiance to him is undeniable. They stroll like medieval mendicants along Haight street, strumming autoharps, playing harmonicas and passing out day-old doughnuts.”
• Johnny Cash records “At Folsom Prison” (January)
• Evangelist Oral Roberts becomes a member of Boston Avenue United Methodist Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma (March)
• At “His Place,” a coffeehouse rescue mission on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, Arthur Blessitt urges addicts and runaways to try “getting high on Jesus.” (March)
• Dr. Martin Luther King is assassinated (April)
• The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church merge to form The United Methodist Church (April)
• Senator Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated (June)
• Calvary Chapel pastor Chuck Smith meets “Jesus People” evangelist Lonnie Frisbee in Costa Mesa, California. Together, they launch House of Miracles communal house.
• On Christmas Eve, the crew of Apollo 8 read in turn from the Book of Genesis as they orbit the moon (December)
Chuck Smith and Lonnie Frisbee baptize young people in the ocean.
1969 – The Christian World Liberation Front (CWLF) is established by Jesus People in Berkley, California, by former Campus Crusade for Christ staffers (April)
• The Byrds record Art Reynolds’ gospel song “Jesus is Just Alright with Me” (June)
• Right On, put out by the Christian World Liberation Front, was the first of the underground published Jesus newspapers, appearing in Berkley (July).
• Chuck Smith and Lonnie Frisbee baptize thousands of young Jesus People converts in the Pacific Ocean at Pirates Cove in Newport Beach, California
• The Woodstock music festival attracts more than 400,000 young people to Bethel, New York (August)
• The Hollywood Free Paper is launched in Los Angeles as a Christian response to countercultural underground newspapers. Published from 1969-1978, it had print runs that sometimes exceeded more than one million copies per issue. (October)
• Billy Graham preaches at the 1969 Miami Rock Music Festival from the same concert stage as Canned Heat, the Grateful Dead, and Santana. Graham actually donned a disguise to get a feel for the festival the night before he would preach. “My heart went out to them,” he wrote. “Though I was thankful for their youthful exuberance, I was burdened by their spiritual searching and emptiness.” (December)
Students pray at Asbury College in 1970. Screenshot.
1970 – The students at Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky, experience an unusual revival beginning on February 3. Classes were cancelled for a week. “The young people in this movement have been the key,” Dr. Dennis Kinlaw, president of Asbury, wrote in Good News. “Faculty and administrators have been chauffeurs and guides while the Spirit has used the young to open closed doors and storm the enemy’s bastions.” An estimated 2,000 witness teams went out to churches and at least 130 college campuses around the nation.
• Professor Bob Lyons and students from Asbury Theological Seminary (also in Wilmore, Kentucky) host the first Ichthus music festival in May. It would be held in Wilmore from 1970-2015.
• Good News publishes the testimony of a transformed drug addict named Coni, republished from Right On, the Jesus People newspaper in Berkeley. “Jesus, they call you God. They say you can change people’s lives. Right now I can’t dig life. Living in this rotten world is a bummer. All I can think about is nodding out forever. But for some outrageous reason, life wants me anyway. I’ve tried to end it three times, but every time I came through,” confessed the young woman. “I don’t believe in anything and I don’t have anything. And since I am cursed to live, I want a reason to live. I’ve hit bottom and can’t seem to get out.”
• The Cross and the Switchblade film released nationwide starring Erik Estrada and Pat Boone (June)
• Good News hosts the first convocation for evangelical United Methodists in Dallas. Speakers include E. Stanley Jones, Bishop Gerald Kennedy, and Tom Skinner. (August)
• “Some call it an ‘underground’ movement. Others describe it as the closest thing to New Testament Christianity this country has ever seen,” reports Rita Klein in Christianity Today. “But those involved – thousands of bearded, long-haired, rather unkempt former hippies – term it a ‘spiritual revolution.’”
• The Rev. Dennis Bennett, an Episcopal priest, publishes Nine O’Clock in the Morning, about experiencing the baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues.
• First Baptist Church of Houston sponsors SPIRENO (“Spiritual Revolution Now”) youth rallies featuring evangelist Richard Hogue.
• The Word of God covenant community is launched for charismatic Catholics in Ann Arbor, Michigan
• Judy Collins includes “Amazing Grace” on her “Whales and Nightingales” album
• Rick Griffin, a leading designer of 1960’s psychedelic posters and closely identified with the Grateful Dead, became a born-again Christian.
• Time publishes “Street Christians: Jesus as the Ultimate Trip” in August. “Jesus freaks. Evangelical hippies. Or, as many prefer to be called, street Christians. Under different names – and in rapidly increasing numbers – they are the latest incarnation of that oldest of Christian phenomena: footloose, passionate bearers of the Word, preaching the kingdom of heaven among the dispossessed of the earth.”
• Hal Lindsey publishes end-times best-seller The Late Great Planet Earth
• Inter-Varsity Christian Youth Conference has 12,000 participants at the University of Illinois (December)
Jesus Christ Superstar black light poster.
1971 – Billy Graham uses index-finger gesture while riding in the Tournament of Roses parade on New Year’s Day and acknowledges the Jesus People chanting “One Way!” along the parade route
• Look magazine’s February cover proclaims: “Today’s Kids: Turning to Jesus, Turning from Drugs.” In his story, “The Jesus Movement is Upon Us,” Brian Vachon reports: “It’s an old-time, Bible-toting witness-giving kind of revival, and the new evangelists are the young. They give their Christian message with cheerful dedication. Turn on to Jesus. He’s coming. Soon.” The now-defunct Look was a national bi-weekly with a circulation of about six million. “It was unquestionably the most remarkable week of my life,” wrote Vachon. “They had the best sounding music I’ve ever heard. Everyone wanted me to accept Christ, too. I haven’t decided yet, but I’m thinking about it.”
• With a circulation of seven million, Life magazine publishes “The Groovy Christians of Rye, N.Y.” – a 3,500 word feature by Jane Howard about newly-converted teens and their befuddled parents. “They don’t see their new faith in terms of rebellion, or of fundamentalism, but as the dazzlingly simple cure for a ‘hunger’ for absolute truth – a famine … as acute in Westchester County as anywhere else. … the growing band of new Christians have been looking intently backward, all the way to the first century A.D., and are clearly transfixed by what they find.” (May)
• The musical Godspell is first performed off-Broadway in the East Village of Manhattan (May)
• With a circulation of four million, Time‘s cover proclaimed “The Jesus Revolution.” The provocative 5,600-word essay was written by Time religion editor Mayo Mohs, with reporting from Richard Ostling, Barry Hillenbrand, and Margaret Boeth. “Jesus is alive and well and living in the radical spiritual fervor of a growing number of young Americans who have proclaimed an extraordinary religious revolution in his name. Their message: the Bible is true, miracles happen, God really did so love the world that he gave it his only begotten son.” (June)
• “Youth are turning to Christ on a scale that perhaps we’ve never known in human history,” Billy Graham tells the crowd gathered at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. The Christian World Liberation Front arranged for busses from the University of California campus in Berkeley, luring curious onlookers with the bold letter message on the side of the busses: “People’s Committee to Investigate Billy Graham.” (July)
• Donald M. Williams writes “Close-up of the Jesus People” for Christianity Today. “Up until now, youth evangelism has been inaugurated by adults. Now it comes by youth. The same hip teen-ager who last year turned his friends on to drugs may now be turning them on to Jesus.” (August)
• Billy Graham publishes his book, The Jesus Generation. “Tens of thousands of American youth are caught up in it. They are being ‘turned on’ to Jesus.” Other books in the genre published in 1971 included The Jesus Movement in America, by Edward E. Plowman; Jesus People Come Alive, edited by Walker L. Knight; House of Acts, by John A. MacDonald; Turned On to Jesus, by Arthur Blessitt; The Jesus People Are Coming, by Pat King; Jesus People, by Duane Pederson; The Jesus Trip, by Lowell D. Streiker; and The Jesus Kids, by Roger C. Palms.
• Associated Press names “Jesus People” one of its top ten stories of 1971
• People of Praise, an ecumenical intentional community begun by charismatic Catholics, is begun in South Bend, Indiana
• Andrew Lloyd Weber’s rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar” is first performed on Broadway (October)
• Kenneth N. Taylor’s personal paraphrase The Living Bibleis published
• J. Benton White, coordinator of the religious studies program at San Jose State College in California, writes “New Youth Revival Exploits Feelings of Powerlessness” about the Jesus People for the Christian Advocate, the journal for Methodist clergy. “How do we respond? How do we get involved? I’m not certain we need to. Perhaps as some of these youth mature in Christian faith, they will find that the established churches will meet their needs. In the meantime, the professional role should include trying to understand young people while at the same time preserving the essentials of faith as we have experienced it. And we need to ask ourselves why this religious revival had to take place outside the confines of established denominations?” (December)
1972 – Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm announces her run as the first African American woman for the U.S. Presidency from Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn (January).
• The United Methodist Council on Evangelism was held in San Francisco. According to the February 3 issue of the Christian Advocate, there was heckling and debate between a contingent of Jesus People from Berkeley and the controversial pastor of Glide United Methodist Church. The booing occurred after the Rev. Cecil Williams claimed that evangelism was “theologically abstract, irresponsible, and unchristian.” The session was “quickly overshadowed by a verbal confrontation between the Berkeley group, Mr. Williams and his friends.” Speaking at the Council on behalf of the Jesus People was Dr. Jack Sparks of the Christian World Liberation Front.
• Explo ‘72 was an event organized by Campus Crusade for Christ and held at the Cotton Bowl stadium in Dallas. Tens of thousands of young people attended the event. “The Rev. Billy Graham, the evangelist, says it’s a ‘religious Woodstock,’” reported the New York Times.“In any event, a meeting under way here is the largest religious camp meeting ever to take place in the United States.” Special guests included Roger Staubach, quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys, and Johnny Cash. (June)
• Life’s cover story, “The Great Jesus Rally in Dallas,” covered the Campus Crusade event (June)
• Dr. Jack Sparks of the Christian World Liberation Front speaks in St. Louis at the Good News Convocation for United Methodists. He shares about his counter culture ministry in Berkeley, California, and challenges the young people in attendance to abandon the hotel and witness for Jesus in a park. According to Christianity Today, the following day, sixty young people and fifteen adults shared their faith with strangers at the St. Louis Zoo. (August)
• A Time to Be Born, a book documenting the Jesus People movement in Southern California, was published by Brian Vachon with pictures by Jack and Betty Cheetham. The three had worked together on the February 9, 1971, feature for Look magazine.
• “Surely we can extent the hope to Jesus People that in spite of our dissimilarity, change can and will take place within the established church,” wrote the Rev. Ralph Bailey in an article titled “Both Generations Needed to Bridge the Spirit Gap” for the Christian Advocate, the magazine for Methodist clergy. “In so doing we would be helping them to see the possibility that they may be able to ‘put it together spiritually’ with that context. We could, but will we? The old questions come back to haunt us. ‘Why bother? Do we want them here?’ How we deal with these questions and their attendant fears may determine whether thousands of Jesus People decide to ‘do their thing’ in or outside the church as we know it. Hopefully we can both reach out across the Spirit gap and then cross over to iron out some of the other kinks in our relationship.”
• The Doobie Brothers release their version of “Jesus is Just Alright with Me” (November)
1973 – Jesus People USA, an intentional Christian community, sets up base of operations in Chicago’s North Side
• Larry Norman releases his album, “Only Visiting This Planet”
• The Rev. Dennis Bennett helps start Episcopal Renewal Ministries, soon renamed Acts 29, to promote the charismatic renewal movement within his denomination.
• Key ‘73 was launched as an ambitious nationwide pan-denominational evangelistic campaign. According to its Congregational Resource Book, the program had the “vision of every unchurched family in North America being visited by someone who comes with loving concern to share his faith in Christ.”
• Johnny Cash releases film Gospel Road: A Story of Jesus, a project he and his wife June fully financed. “It’s my life’s proudest work,” Cash told the Nashville Tennessean. “John came up with the idea of doing the crucifixion in lots of places to show that Christ died for people all over the world,” said documentary film director Robert Elfstrom, an agnostic. “We ended up doing it once at Jericho in Israel, on the waterfront in Brooklyn Heights, on the Strip in Las Vegas, at the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, and in Death Valley.” While they were filming in Death Valley, reports Robert Hilburn in Johnny Cash: The Life, “a VW minivan filled with hippies drove up, and they stopped to watch. They got out, smoked some dope, and then returned to the van. As they sped off, the driver yelled, ‘Good luck with the resurrection!’”
Steve Beard is the editor of Good News.
by Steve | Feb 24, 2023 | Home Page Hero Slider, In the News
By Suzanne Nicholson —
(The Asbury University revival gives us a window into the heart of God and how the Holy Spirit works in unusual ways in the lives of his people. The following article was written almost a week ago when public services were still being held around the clock and contains helpful reflections to give us perspective and greater understanding about God’s way of working. This piece was excerpted from a longer articlepublished on Firebrand Magazine. – Editors)
What do you do when the streams of living water suddenly burst into a flood? The spiritual outpouring that began at Asbury University on February 8 was spontaneous and unexpected. After an ordinary chapel service, a number of students felt called to linger and praise God. As students responded, the Spirit brought an immense sense of joy and peace. More students came. The Spirit remained, and so did the students. Worship has continued ever since, and – as a result of social media posts – thousands of Jesus-seekers have poured into the small town of Wilmore, Kentucky.
Theological Reflections
The day before the revival began, my Growth of the New Testament Church class was discussing Peter’s speech in Acts 3 after he healed a man in front of the Temple. Peter had described Jesus’ death and resurrection and then challenged the audience: “Repent, therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord and that he may send the Messiah appointed for you, that is, Jesus, who must remain in heaven until the time of universal restoration that God announced long ago through his holy prophets” (3:19-21). Our class had discussed the beauty of the description, “times of refreshing,” only to experience that refreshing the very next day!
My students had noticed in Acts several places where – after the Spirit’s coming at Pentecost – the disciples had been described as being “filled with the Spirit” (e.g., 4:8, 7:55, 13:9). They wanted to know if Luke was simply reminding his readers that the disciples had been filled with the Spirit previously, or if this was a new filling. At the time I described it as sort of a turbo-charge: there’s always gas in the tank, but sometimes you need an extra burst of power for the task at hand.
As I’ve been reflecting this week, two other metaphors have come to mind that might be helpful. It’s important to remember that the Spirit who is present at Asbury this week is the same God who was present three weeks ago and is the same God who will be here long after the crowds have dispersed. The difference is in the level of communion we are experiencing. God is always feeding us by his Spirit, but some occasions are a bit more special. It’s like sitting down to meals three times a day, but occasionally indulging in a fantastic Thanksgiving feast, enjoying all the special dishes with the best of ingredients, and sharing the overwhelming spread with anyone who shows up to partake. The Spirit is giving us a feast right now.
My favorite image, however, arises from Psalm 1:3: those who delight in the law of the Lord “are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.” Believers who regularly commune with the Lord through prayer, Bible study, corporate worship, receiving the Eucharist, and other means of grace are the trees planted by streams of water, receiving their nourishment. But occasionally we need flood waters to spur new growth – not the destructive floods that wipe away homes, but rather the essential spring flooding of the Nile that brought much-needed water and nutrients to agricultural lands in the ancient world.
This is where we have found ourselves at Asbury these past two weeks. We are planted by streams of water, but the dry air of secular culture surrounding us has left us thirsting for more. The thousands of visitors to campus have only demonstrated how much spiritual thirst exists right now. These people are desperate for relief, life, and hope, and they are willing to wait in line for hours to enter the place where the veil between heaven and earth is remarkably thin right now. The Holy Spirit has graciously sent gentle flood waters to revive us, reshape us, and empower us for the work ahead. We are receiving a sort of spiritual Miracle-Gro, a nutrient boost to inspire new growth. We are drinking deeply from this refreshing gift.
Not everyone has found it comfortable to explore this movement of the Holy Spirit. Some students have said they feel pressured to go and join in the revival; others are skeptical or fearful of what they will encounter. Some students are experiencing the refreshing of the Spirit as they pray in their dorm rooms, rather than joining the immense and, for some, intimidating crowd. Some students have stayed in Hughes Auditorium for a few minutes at a time, while others have remained for hours or even days. These different experiences should remind us that we need to be gentle with one another, because what each of us needs from the Holy Spirit may be different. God is gracious enough to meet us where we are, and we are all at varying points in our walk with the Lord.
Yet we should also keep in mind that there is something powerful about being in community and hearing testimonies of how God is working among the body of Christ. When others publicly repent of their sins, we may be moved to do the same. When others praise Jesus in loud voices, we may experience a similar joy in the Lord. When others intercede in prayer for the nations, we may be urged to follow suit. Witnessing together the movement of God, we are strengthened for our own testimony just as we strengthen those who are giving testimony. Ephesians 4:15-16 reminds us of God’s desire for the body of Christ to be knit together in this way: “speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.”
Some have asked how this outpouring of the Holy Spirit came about. How can it be replicated? The simple answer is that this was a spontaneous act of God, a beautiful act of grace. It was not manufactured. Asbury University simply had another average, ordinary chapel service, and God chose to move. We have done nothing ourselves to make this happen.
That’s not entirely correct. People have been praying for revival for years – some, for decades. God delights in these kinds of prayers. God responds in his own timing to the cries of his people. But make no mistake: this is not a “work.” The prayers of the people are a response to what God has done previously. God’s grace comes first, the people respond with prayers for more, and God pours out his grace once again.
What is so stunning about this kind of outpouring is that it is locally focused. We regularly preach the truth that God who created and sustains the universe is accessible anywhere – whether in foxholes or brothels or athletic fields or beaches or homes or churches. God is available to all who cry out to him. And yet there are times when the Spirit appears profoundly in a particular location. When Moses met God, he saw a burning bush that was not consumed, and he was told to remove his sandals because the place on which he was standing was holy (Exodus 3:1-6). When God led the Israelites through the desert, he did so by a cloud of his presence during the day and by fire at night (Exodus 13:21). God’s glory filled the tabernacle (Exodus 40:34-38). When the Spirit poured forth at Pentecost, it filled a house in Jerusalem where believers had gathered (Acts 2:1).
These kinds of manifestations of God’s presence have continued through the centuries as God regularly revives his people. Now God has chosen this season to pour forth abundantly his Spirit at Asbury University. But this does not mean that God is any less accessible in your home church. Pray for the refreshing Spirit of God to bless your community. Be persistent. Wait with longing. Don’t give up hope. And don’t forget that even as you await the flood, you are trees planted by water. Drink deeply of the Spirit who is always present. The flood is no replacement for the daily drinking from the streams of God’s goodness.
A Few Practical Notes
As the Spirit began to move, the leaders have worked hard to keep the emphasis on Jesus. No one leader has emerged, but a large team is working together to make sure the music, the testimonies, the personal narratives, the discussion of Scripture all focus on glorifying God rather than on individuals in the room.
Repentance has been a large part of what God has prompted among those in attendance. In order for God to revive us, we must confess the ways in which we have followed our own wills rather than the will of God. We must be willing to flee sin and be transformed by a loving God who desires to give us a life of flourishing (2 Chronicles 7:14). We have been called to a life of holiness.
Flexibility is an incredibly important part of responding to the Spirit. Our churches and institutions often have policies and procedures – routines that keep the cogs of progress running smoothly. But when the Spirit suddenly shows up in powerful ways, the rule book may need to go out the window. Our administration at Asbury encouraged professors to be flexible with assignment dates and attendance policies for those who have felt called to worship in Hughes Auditorium. Leaders have been creative in addressing unforeseen needs – a snack table outside the back door of the auditorium for those who remain for hours, portable toilets outside for those waiting in line to gain entrance to the packed auditorium, a baby changing table placed outside the restrooms (not your typical equipment here!).
In the early church, organization developed over time. At first, the believers simply gathered together and “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). Later, in Acts 6, deacons were appointed to distribute food to the Hellenistic widows who had been overlooked in the daily food distribution. Structure was introduced to make sure the needs were met. Similarly, here at Asbury systems have developed quickly to meet pressing needs. At first, volunteers simply showed up and asked where they could serve; now, sign-up lists have been created and leaders appointed to organize the needs. Flexible structures are important.
Discernment is perhaps one of the greatest needs. How is God moving? How can this gift best be stewarded? Where might people intentionally or unintentionally be leading this community in a different direction than God desires? Constant prayer is an absolute necessity.
Spiritual outpourings today contain an element not foreseen in previous generations: social media. Word about this movement of God has spread like wildfire on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms. In the past, teams of evangelists needed to travel from town to town to spread the word, but now in a matter of days people on the other side of the planet have heard about what is happening in Wilmore, Kentucky. For the first week and a half of this outpouring, Asbury University intentionally chose not to livestream the revival (other than our previously scheduled student chapel services). Some in the crowds, however, have been livestreaming non-stop.
We need to be concerned about the potential for abuse. Those who are unaware they are being filmed but are moved by the Spirit to repent publicly of their sins – even if they are in a room of 1,500 people – are not expecting to later see their testimony spread to millions across the globe (including family far away who may not appreciate the personal revelations) or that their images may be turned into memes. When we post under these conditions, we should consider posting short snippets of praise and worship so that God may be glorified. But we must be careful not to abuse others in our eagerness to share. Just because we can post intimate personal testimonies to social media does not mean that we should.
This dynamic is admittedly different when those present are aware that they are being filmed. On Sunday, Asbury University President Kevin Brown announced that Asbury will begin livestreaming services during the next week. Believers across the world who cannot physically travel to Wilmore will be able to see how God is moving here. It remains to be seen, however, the ways in which broadcasting will affect the nature and tenor of testimonies and worship. My prayer is that the focus remains on God as our audience and not those watching through their screens.
What Happens Next?
As I write this, thousands of strangers are on campus – so many, in fact, that on Sunday police officers had to close access to the main road into Wilmore. The town simply does not have capacity for any more visitors. The crowds have been unsettling to some of our students, who have found their routines significantly disrupted. Yet I am reminded that these newcomers are standing where we were two weeks ago when we drank deeply from the well of the Spirit – thirsty and desperate for a touch from God. We need to be careful, once we have drunk from the flood, not to lose compassion for those who remain thirsty.
Our administrators have done well to support this public longing for God, but they also recognize that this outpouring is not meant to remain here, but to spread. President Brown announced on Sunday that the services at Asbury for the general public would end on Monday, February 20, although evening services for high school and college students will be held through February 23. After that, services will continue at locations other than Asbury University.
My prayer is that revival will come to you. This refreshing Spirit is not for us alone, and there is plenty to go around. Scripture is full of language describing the abundance of God: “hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). Already reports are occurring of revivals on other campuses, such as Lee University and Samford University.
The challenge will occur, however, after the flood waters recede. We must not forget that we are still trees planted by living water. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, even if we experience God in different ways on different days. We cannot forsake the normal means of grace in search of floodwaters alone. It will be important in the days ahead for local faith communities to disciple those who have found new life as a result of this outpouring. We will need to teach Scripture in depth and provide small-group support and accountability to help people make sense of what they have experienced and challenge them toward deeper relationships with Jesus.
This flood we are experiencing today is meant to revive us for a purpose – to share the joy and the love of God with those living in a dark world. As this revival has been occurring, we have simultaneously watched tens of thousands of dead being pulled from the rubble after the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. We have witnessed several more mass shootings, including one on the campus of Michigan State University. We continue to see famine and poverty, addiction and despair, racism and sexism, abuse and ailments across the world and in our homes. We need this refreshing of the Spirit more than ever as a testimony that God has not abandoned this dark world. We have tasted and seen that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8). This is the hope for a world gone wrong.
Our experience of this hope empowers us to go and preach the good news to the dying and the destitute, not only through our words, but also through our actions. God calls us to perfect love of both God and neighbor. If we keep this refreshing Spirit to ourselves, then we have missed the point. God has given us shalom – wholeness and healing and flourishing – so that we can bring the love of God to others. If we proclaim the love of Jesus but do not demonstrate God’s love by helping the poor and destitute, then we are nothing but a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal (1 Corinthians 13:1). God forbid that we turn these songs of praise into nothing more than a noisy interruption.
Suzanne Nicholson is Professor of New Testament at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky. She is an Elder in the Global Methodist Church and serves as Assistant Lead Editor of Firebrand. Republished by permission of Firebrand (firebrandmag.com). Photo: Shutterstock.
