Archive: Unity Among Dis-United Methodists

by Steve | Oct 1, 1970 | Archive - 1970

Archive: Unity Among Dis-United Methodists

Condensed from an address by Dr. C. Philip Hinerman
Vice Chairman, Good News Board of Directors
Pastor, Park Avenue United Methodist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Our ultimate hope is Jesus Christ, rather than human wisdom, plans, organization and programs.

Isn’t it ironic that we’ve formed a new denomination and chosen for a title the United Methodist Church? That would be funny, if it were not so tragic.

Here we are, a group of evangelicals, and we can’t even agree among ourselves. About 150 points of view are represented here tonight among all of us. Every one of us has a different idea, and a different approach. If we tried to get a resolution passed here, if it had any teeth in it at all, it would fail to pass muster.

There is just one thing holding us together, and that is our love for the Lord Jesus, and our great desire to see His Gospel proclaimed to a whole world.

Let me say two or three things about what I think is going to happen or not going to happen. I see several things I think are already happening.

First, I do not see any great spiritual awakening happening in the immediate future in America. Nor do I see a great conservative or evangelical renewal taking place in Methodism. I’m not worried about being charged with being a pessimist when I say this.

I’m not worried about being charged with being the carrier of bad news or one who depresses the people. What I am concerned about is to make sure that I’m reading the signs of the times correctly.

Nothing could be more wonderful than for a great spiritual awakening to break out tomorrow, to come and save America and the world in this sad and mad hour when we’re about to destroy ourselves. And I pray that out there somewhere in the tomorrows there is a new Wesley, a new Luther, a man of God’s appointing about to be raised up for just such an hour as this. But I’m only reporting to you that tonight I do not see this happening, as of this hour.

I think a rather overpowering case can be made for the exact opposite of spiritual awakening in our time. Instead, you and I are seeing the most terrible falling away from faith and Christian morals that has ever happened anywhere, in any land, at any time in the whole Christian Era. The spirit of antichrist fills our land.

Nor do I see any great swing back theologically or spiritually in the United Methodist Church, in the decade or in the immediate future.

Look at the power structure of our denomination. You must if you’re going to understand the realities of power and political force and the prevailing ideology in the church that exists today.

I know fellows that are very optimistic about the future and about our church. These friends attempt to put the very best connotation possible on every little event that happens at their annual conferences. If it’s a little bit more conservative this year than it was last year, that’s a source of hope. Or if there’s an evangelical or neo-evangelical article that appears in “Together Magazine,” that seems to imply a great trend is taking place. Or if a mild evangelical gets employed in a great bureaucratic office in Nashville, that seems to give you hope. Maybe we’ll be saved by the bureaucracy after all!

But these are not the realities of power politics in the church. These hopeful signs are not affecting the men and the ideas that control budgets and control boards, and control agencies.

To know what’s really happening in the church today you need to read the various journals. For instance, “New World Outlook,” the official publication organ of the socalled Board of Missions. You need to read the latest social pronoμncement of the Board of Evangelism. You need to note the radical social action of some of our theological seminaries. You need to read that sociological document called the Episcopal Address. But above all these things, if you want to know where the church is, and where we’re going, and what kind of politics prevail, then you must study the budgets of the church. These show where Methodism’s heart and mind really is!

These all show one thing: these all show the real spiritual condition of the United Methodist Church today. They show the intellectual ideology of the power structure of the denomination. It is no longer to save the souls of men and women. The prevailing ideology of the church is no longer to rush out with importunity to reach men possessing eternal souls and bring them in their lostness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and into the eternal relationship with God that’s possible only through His shed blood.

I’ll tell you what the prevailing ideology is in this church that I love, this church that I was born into and have been a servant of all the days of my life. It is total dedication to the improvement of men’s social and physical conditions.

It is a church dedicated to providing better housing, better lighting, better streets, better air to breathe. I heard of a fellow who has just been appointed to be Chairman of Water, Sanitation and Garbage for his annual conference. In this polluted environment of ours, that’s a job devoutly to be sought! It is a church dedicated to fairer employment practices, to better race relationships, to better international relations. (And that, of course, is contingent always upon the international and political prejudices of the particular board or agency.)

I don’t have any trouble saying all of this. This is the church that I read about today in all of our journals. I think without hesitation it is possible to say that this is the central thrust of our boards, our agencies, the episcopacy, our college faculties, our theological seminaries.

I read an amazing document by one of the evangelism leaders of a large American denomination the other day. He said that we are not to convert the souls of men in America in the name of evangelism – because 80% of the Americans have already been converted to Christ! So social action, social involvement, improving the bodies, and the physical conditions of the men constitute evangelism today.

For 20 years I’ve lived in an interracial community and served in an interracial church situation. I think if anybody in this room cares about the bodies of people, I care. If anybody in this room cares about living dangerously, I care. If anybody in this room cares about changing the structures of society, for the human betterment of the people of this country, I care about that.

But that’s all secondary, if you’re a Christian man! If you believe men have souls, and that they are alienated and estranged from God (that’s a nice way of saying that they are lost) then I’ve got to fight for something better than better plumbing, better housing and better race relations – long overdue as some of these civic and cultural and social issues are. I must become a man possessed to pluck brands from the burning, as John Wesley said. That’s terribly old hat, terribly old fashioned. And it is utterly antiquated as an ideology in our church and in our time.

But if it is true, and I have neglected it, then in that hour when I stand before the living God in judgment I must give an accounting of the deeds that I have done, and the kind of trumpet that I have sounded. I do not see any great revival coming. And I do not see any evangelical turning in the United Methodist Church in the near future. But one thing I do see happening in the future is the rapid emergence of COCU as a great ecclesiastical and political reality. This, I believe, is coming with fantastic speed. It may well be an institutional reality in this decade. And it is coming, as you all know, from the top down, rather than from the bottom up. But it is coming none the less. And we are all going to be swept into this great debate in the next quadrennium, about whether we want in or whether we want out. We shall all be driven to decide whether we want to belong to a great super denomination with junior and senior bishops controlling the political realities of the church. And it will be a church with a creed that is surely the lowest common denominator of a doctrinal statement, written so very carefully so as to offend the fewest possible people.

The COCU planners are having a great deal of difficulty deciding whether to let us out if we want to get out. That is, local congregations. That’s rather interesting, isn’t it? I think they’ve already changed their mind two or three times. I rather feel boxed in already!

I read in the “Christian Century” a report of one delegate who was at the committee writing up the proposed plan of union. And when they were debating whether to let local congregations vote to get out, one of the fellows, according to the “Century,” said: “Absolutely not! Don’t give any local congregation this option. Else, all those conservatives will leave us.”

So apparently, at least some of the delegates want us all to stay in COCU’s bosom. That surely ought to make for the happiest fellowship this side of Pentecost.

Recently Dr. Donald Bloesch, who teaches at the United Presbyterian theological seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, wrote an amazing prophecy about all of this. He said “I hesitate to predict the future course of the ecumenical movement, but I can suggest one possibility on the basis of present trends. Instead of one church, there might be very well two churches emerging in the not too distant future. One of these will be Hierarchal, Monolithic, and Syncretic, concerned with worldly power more than biblical truth. The other will be Evangelical, Spiritual, Charismatic, and authentically Catholic. This spiritual church will be a church under the Bible intent on bringing the world under the dominion of Christ; the worldly church will be a church that practically deifies its own tradition and external forms. The spiritual church will be missionary minded: it will see its mission as going out into the world and upholding Jesus Christ as the Savior of the lost. The worldly church will seek to promote dialogues with the world religions as well as with Marxism and other forms of secular humanism, in order to discover a common unity. The spiritual church will be intolerant, and exclusive in matters of faith, but its intolerance will be based upon the love of Jesus Christ that goes out to all men. The worldly church will seek to advance itself, and therefore will be preoccupied with correct forms of ministry and polity. The spiritual or charismatic church will gladly die for the advancement of the Kingdom of God and for the conversion of the lost.”

There will be a noticeable tension between the spiritual church and the secular culture, whereas the worldly church will tend to reflect and embody the values and the goals of the culture.

Dr. Bloesch concludes: “True ecumenism does not deny structural unity, but it does seek to bring all things in subjection to Jesus Christ and His Gospel. It does not even rule out the papacy. But as Bonhoeffer has affirmed, only a Pope who submitted unreservedly to the Word of the Bible could be the shepherd of a united Christendom.”

Now please hear me clearly. I do not say that we are not to trust men. I do trust people. But I will not put my ultimate trust into the hand of any man, any institution. I want to belong only to One – to entrust myself only to that Terrible and that Awful and that Saving Name.

I was preaching in a Western conference, this last year, and I was talking about the Good News Movement. I got through preaching one day, preaching about like I have here tonight. Various people came up and made good comments or critical comments. And after a while, a young fellow that I’ve known for some time came up to me. He’s been out of seminary about eight years. He’s gone from a little tiny church to a great big church, and to a number of very prominent political positions in his annual conference. He knows the right people and knows how to say the right words.

He came up to me and he said, “Hinerman, you know what you are? You guys with Good News are a bunch of losers.”

I said, “You mean I’m a loser?”

He said, “Oh no, Phil, I didn’t mean you. I meant all your friends are losers. They’re just not smart. They just don’t know how to play the game. They’ve lost out. They lack expertise. They lack sophistication. They just don’t know how to make it in today’s church, and in today’s world.”

That’s what I like about the new breed – their modesty, their humility, their never-failing self-effacement. It’s beautiful.

The sad thing is he really believes that. But I want to tell you that it doesn’t take very much brains to be political in today’s church. And it doesn’t take a great deal of personality to get ahead in today’s church. What it does take is a thing called loyalty. You join up. You belong to the Machine. And you don’t make your criticisms of the great denominational monolith in public, or on the printed page.

I believe the committed evangelical will work for true ecumenism, seeking fellowship with evangelicals in all the denominations. I think Bloesch is probably right: God is preparing His Church, His elect, that company of believers. You are not self-righteous, my brothers, when you believe that Christ died for your sins and when you know that you are a sinner who has been saved by grace, and that you could go to hell even yet if you lose contact and fellowship with Him. To declare this is not being self-righteous.

I believe God is raising up in all denominations a band of His own, a band of believing people who are willing to die for Jesus’ sake. I don’t believe it matters much what label is over the door anymore. When people leave my church and tell me they’re moving to Chicago, or to Duluth, or to Dallas, and they say “Do you know anybody down there? Do you know a good Methodist church there?” I say, “You find some place where your soul is fed, out of the Word of God.”

I believe that the committed evangelical will work harder than anybody else in the church for real human justice. I believe that we evangelicals will work harder for the alleviation of human suffering and for the changing of all corrupt and prejudiced social structures. This canard that the evangelical has never been socially involved has been put to the lie and it is by scholars like Timothy Smith who magnificently point out that it was the revivalism of the 19th century that produced many of the great social institutions of the 20th. If we do have a revival today in America, out of that revival will come more human justice, more compassion for our brothers, whatever the color, than out of all the social pronouncements of the church to this hour.

The evangelical will do something more than be born again. He will do something more than just get converted. He will put his total trust and make his surrender totally to Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and as the Son of Man, The Savior of the world. He will continue to work within the denomination, and within the denominational structure as long as possible, until he is driven out or led out. But he will not make his commitment to any man or to any Machine. He will get rid of that terrible fear, in the visceral areas of his life. He will stand up, Luther-like, God’s free man.

I grew up in the South, and I grew up in the evangelical tradition. I remember that great old southern prophet, of the early half of this century, Henry Clay Morrison. I will remember one thing he said after I have forgotten all the other things. Henry Clay Morrison had been a Methodist all his life. When he was 80 he was still saying, “I don’t belong to the Methodist Church. I am a member of the Methodist Church. I belong only to God!”

The true evangelical man has a mighty faith, he has a victorious hope. He isn’t a pessimist; he is God’s supreme realist.

Because his hope is in the Lord of history. The lord who speaks. And he trusts the Lord who acts in man’s time and in man’s history.

His hope is in the Parousia*, the hope of His blessed appearing. The world’s darkness deepens all about us. Times become more venal, and men more evil, and institutions more corrupt. But this man of faith looks up, because his redemption and his salvation draws nigh.

*Parousia: the physical return of Jesus Christ, as prophesied in the Bible.

Archive: The Black Crisis in the Church

by Steve | Oct 1, 1970 | Archive - 1970

Archive: The Black Crisis in the Church

Condensed from an address by Tom Skinner, Evangelist

Black Americans are not much influenced by a church whose Gospel excludes personal involvement. Wanted: Christian radicals who are willing to be fools for Jesus Christ.

It’s a real pleasure and opportunity to be here. I appreciate very much your broadmindedness in allowing a renegade Baptist to address you.

I believe there are three main crises that we must deal with in our time. One is the crisis of identity. It is a crisis that is becoming acute across our country. People want to know who am I? Why am I here?

The second crisis is a crisis of community. Once I find out who I am, the question is, “Who is the person next to me? The person I work with?”

The third issue is POWER. Once I find out who I am, and once I find out what’s my responsibility to my neighbor, where do I get the power to pull it off? Where do I get the power to be what I ought to be?

Now in the light of that, what is the black crisis that we face? And what is the Church’s response? What is the evangelical response to this crisis of our time?

To clearly understand, we must try to get into historical perspective how that crisis developed. To do that I must take you back to when the first ships landed in America at Jamestown in 1619. On those ships were approximately 40 black people. Notable among them was Isabel and Antony who sired the first black family on American soil in 1624. Black people have been a part of American society from its very inception.

Between the periods of 1619 and 1660 our country had no race problem, as we know it today. Our country, rather, had what was known as indentured servanthood. People who were criminals or who were in jail for one reason or another in England, were allowed to be released from jail as they were bought by more prosperous people who were coming to the New World. Those indentured servants would work for seven years; then they would be released to develop their own lives. Both black and white people held indentured servants.

Both black and white people were indentured servants.

But by 1660 there developed cries from certain sectors of society. The white indentured servants could run away, and very easily assimilate into the rest of society. It was very difficult to recapture them. But black people who ran away – It was very easy to recapture them because of their high degree of visibility. It was therefore decreed that only black indentured servants would be used.

By 1701, slavery became a permanent way of life in American society and only black people were subjected to this. During this period of time, millions and millions of black people were shipped as slaves from Africa via the West Indies, to the United States. Along the way, hundreds and thousands of them died.

Someone with a moral conscience began to ask the question, “How do you justify killing so many people?” To provide a rationale and basis for the slave trade, someone answered, “Suppose they are not people. Suppose they are subhuman. Suppose they do not have a soul. Suppose they do not even have a brain. Suppose they are just slightly higher than animals.”

Upon such remarks and such theories was predicated the whole philosophical basis and rationale for slave trade.

Slavery was upheld by three sectors of society. One, it was upheld by the economic system because slavery was economically feasible. Two, it was upheld by the political system. Politics and economics in American society have always run hand in hand. The third sector that upheld slavery was the church. There were numerous religious institutions in American society that preached that slavery was ordained by God and that God had ordained that black people should be hewers of wood and all the rest.

On a slave plantation, very few children went around saying “Mommy” or “Daddy.” Because they didn’t know who they were. The slave masters, rather, developed what was known as a stud system. This was where a healthy male slave would be allowed to cohabit with a healthy female slave until she was pregnant. Then he was moved to another quarters to do the same thing. Within the course of 10 years he could have brought into the world 100 children – and never allowed to “father” any of them.

During this period of time, with the exception of some radical Christian groups, the church in general never opened its mouth. And that same church which condemned immorality, which held up high moral standards about marriage and about sex, still allowed immorality to prevail among slaves in order to breed other slave children, in order to keep the economic system going.

In 1865 Emancipation came. And the black man was set free. But all Emancipation did was to decide what the slave was not. It never defined what he was.

Society then turned to the former slave and said, “Now that you are free, you are to settle down. Become the husband of one wife, the father of your own children. And you are to assimilate into American cultural society.” They expected this man to “pull himself up by the bootstraps” and make his way in the world.

The amazing thing was that he began to do it. Between 1865 and 1877, black people began to move into the main stream of political life. Between those 12 years, the state legislatures in South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana were controlled by black politicians. The speakers of the house in the state legislatures of South Carolina and Florida were black. A black man was Lt. Governor of the State of Louisiana for four years.

By 1877 there developed cries from certain sectors of society which said that the former slaves were moving too far too fast. They said, “He has only been freed for 12 years. Don’t these black people know that these things take time? They must learn to be patient. ”

Between 1877 and 1901, all kinds of attempts were made to eliminate black people from public political life. The last black person to be elected to the United States Congress and Senate was in 1901. Between 1877 and 1925, more than 6000 black people were lynched in this country. They could be disarmed, their women raped, their children beaten, their homes burned. But they could not have recourse to the courts of law.

In 1918, World War I came. The black man put on an American uniform and went off to defend the American system. Now you must give him credit! He had been denied his rights. He had been disenfranchised, relegated to 4th class citizenship. He could not buy a home in any community he could afford to live in. He was not allowed to vote. He could be lynched for looking at the wrong person too long. He was forced to walk on the other side of the street. He was subject almost to animal existence. And yet he put on a American uniform and went off to defend the democratic principles of a nation that had so nobly denied him those principles!

Today, more than 17 percent of the fighting forces in Viet Nam are black; 43 percent of all the casualties in Viet Nam are black. It is not the black man who is burning his draft card and running off to Canada.

As a result of being stationed in the armed forces in World War I, the black man became exposed to such large cities as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles. And word began to trickle back to the south, where then 90 percent of the black population lived, that if black people would migrate North they would find greater economic and political opportunity. So during the late 1919’s and early 1920’s there was a fantastic movement of black peoples to northern cities.

But when they arrived North, they discovered that the patterns of segregation were not too different from the South. They were forced to live only in certain communities. They could buy or rent only in certain neighborhoods. They discovered that when they moved into certain communities in large numbers, whites moved out in large numbers.

Ironically, and sadly and tragically, among those people who packed up their belongings and ran, were those Bible-toting Christians who said that Christ was the answer. They sold their homes and moved out and at the same time said “the Gospel was for everybody. ” But they said that while they were running.

I was born and raised in New York City. Let me, in seeking to develop this crisis for you, relate to my own personal experience. My bitterness and my attitude reflected then much of the attitude that exists now in the black community towards the Church and towards Jesus Christ.

My father being a preacher, I grew up in church. I went through a fantastic search for identity – trying to find and discover who I was. I knew I was black. I knew I lived in a black community. But no one ever told me what that meant.

Turning on the television, I found nothing that I could really identify with. There was Rochester. They said that was me, and I said, “No Way!” Of course there was Amos and Andy. That was an insult.

During this whole period of time there wasn’t anything I could say with dignity and honor, that is me.

I had the impression – the strong feeling – that I had been left out. That I had been denied. Eventually, I entered into a life of violence. I didn’t care what happened to the people around me, because when one doesn’t know who he is, there is no possible way by which he can relate to anybody else. During this period of time I came under the influence of a group of people at school in Harlem, known as the Black Nationalists. My social science teacher was a nationalist. Very candidly he said “Tom, your problem is that you’ve been brainwashed. You’ve been educated and trained and brought up under Christianity which is nothing more than a white man’s religion given to black people in order to keep them in their place.”

They pointed out to me that the leading exponents of hate, segregation and bigotry in American society were Christians. They pointed out that the most segregated hour in American society was 11 o’clock on Sunday morning. They pointed out that the church was irrelevant to me as a black man because the church presented an irrelevant Christ, and an irrelevant religion and an irrelevant theology.

Buying this, I rebelled while continuing to go to church. I joined the Black Nationalist movement because I felt it was the only hope for freedom for black people. This was the response of an overwhelming number of other people who grew up in my community. And it is an overwhelming response of young angry black men and women across America today.

I had difficulty in responding to anything that was religious because there were two basic extremes that I had met with. One was what I call the pseudo-existentialist, better known as the beatnik or the hippie. He looked at life and said it was difficult and complex. The Establishment was corrupt. The people in it were mixed up. The world had no worthwhile values. So he copped out. Sat on a mountainside, created his own world, established his own values, and, in fact, became his own god. He was a coward because he didn’t have the guts to face life.

But on the opposite extreme was another coward. He was what I called the hyper-Christian. He called himself, “A Bible-believing fundamental, orthodox, conservative, evangelical Christian.” He had a half a dozen Bible verses for every social problem that existed. The problem was, he would never get involved.

You went to him and told him that a place like Harlem existed, with 40% slums. You told how there were more than 45,000 drug addicts supporting an average habit of more than $50 per person per day. And you tried to explain that you could set your watch as to when the police would drive into the neighborhood to collect their bribes to keep the rackets going. You told this evangelical how it was not uncommon for some ghetto mother to wake up in the night and send a piercing scream through the community as she discovered that her few-weeks-old baby had been gnawed to death by a vicious rat.

If you went to this Christian and you told him some of this, his reply was “What those people up there need is a good dose of salvation.” That was true – but I never saw him in Harlem, ministering that dose. If you told him about the social complexities, and the racial oppression, of black communities like Harlem, he would come back and say, “What we need to give those people is Christ. Christ is the answer.” I would agree: Christ is the answer. But Christ has always been the answer through somebody. It has always been the will of God to saturate the common clay of a man’s humanity with His own life, and then send that man out in open display in a world of conflict as a living testimony that it is possible for the invisible God to make Himself visible in a man. So that Christ through man becomes the answer.

My evangelical friends would say Christ was the answer, but they would never come. They would spend millions of dollars to send missionaries to reach black people across the sea. But they would not spend one dime to cross the street of their own town to talk to a group of black people.

Nobody told me how Christ would solve the problem of racism.

Nobody told me how Christ would stop white people from lynching black people.

Nobody told me how Christ would bring racial justice in the courts for black people.

Nobody told me how Christ would make it possible for black people to buy a decent home.

The nagging question was, If Christ was the answer, then why were all those Christians who had Christ still bigoted? Why were their churches still segregated? Why were they running away from black people?

One night I was mapping out strategy for a gang fight. I was listening to my favorite radio disc jockey when my program was interrupted. A man started talking, from II Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17, “If any man be in Christ he is a new creation.”

I wanted no part of it because I had a problem with this guy Jesus. The impressions that I got of Christ was that He was some kind of softie. An Anglo Saxon, middle class, Protestant, Republican. Irrelevant to my kind of situation. Jesus came off very smooth. Very effeminate, very soft. And I said, “There is no way I can be committed to that kind of Christ. He would never survive in my neighborhood. We would do Him in on any street corner, and we wouldn’t have to wait until after dark. He just didn’t seem tough enough, based on the way the church painted Him, to deal with my kind of dilemma.

Further, I had difficulty with this person Jesus because the church pictured Jesus as the head of the American System. They wrapped Him up in an American flag. They said a vote for Jesus was a vote for America. They made it that Jesus was the president of the New York stock exchange, chairman of the Republican Party, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. Super-capitalist extraordinary. Jesus Christ, therefore, came across to me as a segregationist, who was prepared to step on me to keep me from being where I ought to be, as a black person.

Let me say to you, with all the love I know how to say to you, as evangelicals – stop allowing yourselves to be brainwashed by other people in this country who call themselves conservative! They are not conservative theologically. They are not conservative Biblically. They happen to be conservative politically. Anybody who uses the word conservative, we bring them right into our ranks, whether they are committed to Jesus Christ or not.

Christ’s life, His Death, His resurrection and His shed blood, from that you cannot move me. But ask me to adopt certain political ideologies, in the name of conservatism, I cannot do that.

Jesus Christ is not an American, any more than He is a Russian. He’s not a Republican, any more than He’s a Democrat. He’s not a capitalist, any more than He’s a socialist or communist. He is the Lord of Heaven and earth!

If you have a political point of view, about Viet Nam or about race, don’t try to put God in it. Search out the Scriptures. Find out where Jesus would be, before you ask Him to endorse your particular political views.

It would be an insult to me as a black person to say that the reason I’m angry and the reason I’m militant is because the communists got to me. I don’t need a communist to tell me a man’s got his foot on my neck. I don’t need a communist to tell me that I can’t buy a home in the community I can afford to live in. I have the God-given intelligence to know this for myself. I’m reaping the results of discrimination, not the communists. A radical is a person who gets to the root of a problem

A radical is a person who deals with diseases, not symptoms. A revolutionary is defined as taking an existing situation that is unworkable, doing away with it and replacing it with a system that works.

For the first time in my life, I heard on that radio broadcast that the whole reason that Jesus came was to be a true revolutionary! “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. ”

There is something wrong with man’s nature. He is cut off from God. He is independent from God. He is doing his own thing. The results are racism, hate, war, murder, lust, violence and conflict. Jesus came by His death to destroy this human nature. By His shed blood to forgive it, and by His resurrection to impart a new man-a man who is willing to trust HIM. Now if that is not revolution, what is?

There arose in the hills of Jerusalem a radical revolutionary by the name of Barabbas. And they had to arrest Barabbas as an insurrectionist, a murderer and an anarchist.

But out on those same streets was another radical. His name was Jesus. He had no guns, no tanks, no ammunition. Of all the dumb things in the eyes of the militants, He went around preaching a thing called the Kingdom of God!

Fundamentally, there would have been no disagreement between Jesus and Barabbas in terms of diagnosing the Roman system. Barabbas probably said, “the Roman system stinks! It’s oppressive, it’s militaristic, it’s racist.” And Jesus would have agreed. But the disagreement between Jesus and Barabbas would have been in the propagation of the solution. Understand this.

Jesus would have said, “Barabbas, alright. Everything you say about the Roman system is right. But what are you going to do about it? You are going to replace the Roman system with your own messed-up kind of system. And there is basically no difference between you and the Romans.

“What I have come to do, Barabbas, is to establish a whole new order. And that new order is built on Me. I’ve come to establish a whole new Kingdom, and that Kingdom is not like anything that exists. I’ve come from heaven. God has sent Me as His son, as One who was with Him before the foundation of the world, to impregnate the common clay of men’s humanity with new life. And I’ve come to bring a new Kingdom into the hearts of men.”

Jesus went out, and began to rap that down. And by the hundreds, people began to come around Him and sit at His feet. At the feet of a Man who was more alive than any man they’d ever met. From miles around they came.

Jesus’ words went out with such weight! His light became so effective! Who He was penetrated so that people began to drop everything and come after Him. He began to shake the whole Roman Empire. Without firing a shot. But a whole Roman system is shaking beneath this Man’s life and message. So they had to arrest Him. Because He was dangerous. He came to change the system, and anybody who tries to change the system is dangerous.

So they locked Him up. And they made the mistake that’s been made down through history. They thought they could get rid of an idea by getting rid of the man from whom the idea originated. So they nailed Him to a cross-little realizing that they were playing into the hands of God.

The whole reason that Christ came was to bear in His own body our sin. Our independence. Our alienation from Him. When He hung on that cross the Bible declares He was the just dying for the unjust. He who knew no sin became sin that we through Him might become the righteousness of God. On that cross He shed His blood to cleanse us of the works of our independence. On that cross He was experiencing the hell we deserve. He was becoming the sacrifice, the Lamb of God, in our place.

They didn’t know that. They took Him down off that cross, laid Him in a tomb, rolled a stone over His grave. They wiped their hands and they said, “That is one radical that will never disturb us again. ” And they went away content that it was all over.

But three days later Jesus Christ got up out of the grave. The Bible declares that He arose as a new man, the Leader of a new creation. The Establisher of a new order.

I discovered Him. I found Him. I became attracted to that Christ. Not a namsy-pamsy sissyfied Jesus. Not an effeminate, soft Christ. But a Christ of justice. A Christ of mercy. A Christ of love and compassion. I was in accord with Him because I discovered that when He walked the face of the earth, He rubbed shoulders with people like me. He ate and drank with sinners. (He was even disregarded by the “Fundys” of His day, who wrote Him off on the grounds that He was hanging out with worldly people, losing His testimony.)

I found out that He was my kind of Jesus. So I gave my life to Him. Now I know who I am: I am God’s son! A member of the royal family of God.

There are a lot of people who haven’t changed their attitudes. There’s still places I can’t live. Still people who don’t want to fellowship with me. Still folks who shake my hand and call me their dear colored brother. My answer to them is simply this: “I’m God’s son. If you don’t want to rub shoulders with royalty like me, that’s your problem, not mine. ”

I know what my responsibility to my neighbor is. My responsibility is to love, not looking for anything back. And all I ask is that you give me the privilege to love you. Whether you love me back or not is totally irrelevant.

Now don’t mix that up with softness. Don’t think that because I love you that means I will allow you to walk over me. Because if I allow you to walk over me, you are not only dehumanizing me, you are dehumanizing yourself. And I love you too much to let you do this.

Now I have the power to be God’s son. Jesus Christ, the Resurrection and the Life, now lives in me. Knowing this has relieved me from trying to carry around in my inside pocket a bunch of rules and regulations. Don’t do this! Stay away from that! Don’t touch that! Don’t go near that!

Praise God, I’ve been delivered from those evangelical hang-ups. All I have to do is simply make myself available – allow Jesus Christ to do His thing in me. I have not had to give up my blackness in order to be a Christian. But Jesus Christ now lives His life through my redeemed blackness.

I challenge you as Christian evangelicals – that is the revolutionary Christ you will have to preach. Not a Christ of any man’s system. But a Christ who is God.

There’s no way that I can respond to your Jesus when I discover you have moved out of the neighborhood to avoid me. There is no way that I can respond to your Christ when you have sheltered your sons and daughters because you’re afraid I’m so irresistible they’ll have to marry me. There’s no way that I can respond to your Christ if your church remains segregated and closed. There is no way that I can respond to your Jesus if you’re not willing to pay the price of being a real brother to me. And a brother is a person who lays down his life for his friend. That is what the Church is going to have to do if it’s going to meet the present crisis.

Archive: Laymen, You Can Change the World

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!

Archive: The Other Six Days

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.

Authority for the Church in Crisis

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.