Coni

by Steve | May 3, 1976 | Archive - 1976

Archive: Coni

The Story of a Seeker

Seven years ago—when I was 17—I was with the “in crowd” in high school. But things didn’t move fast enough for me. I was bored and looking for something that was more exciting. As the pressures of school grew, and the uncertainties of what lay ahead increased, my social drinking habit turned into an everyday crutch.

I remember one morning pulling myself out of bed. I took a few steps, and then suddenly my body started to tremble. It wouldn’t stop until I had that first drink. I reached into the cupboard but it was bare. I couldn’t even find a drop in my “stash” places. I turned the apartment inside out like a wild animal. The need became like a fire spreading through my whole body.

I ran out of the apartment and knocked on the other tenants’ doors, begging for some booze. Finally I called a friend on the phone. He brought half a fifth of liquor. I drank it to steady my nerves, and it lasted until I got to my “second home,” a bar. A so-called friend came over and sat down by me and said, “Coni, you can’t live without it.” These heavy words made me realize I was an alcoholic.

My mental processes started to fall apart, and my body looked more like the body of a 40-year-old woman than a 22-year-old girl. I decided to ask my parents if I could move back home after being away for four years. They said it was o.k.—on the condition that I wouldn’t drink and that I would get a full-time job. I agreed.

Things were going all right until the third day. Then I had my first taste of withdrawals. I just could not go through with it, so I ran to my only comforter, the bottle. I went on a two-week trip with the bottle and then returned home. I couldn’t see any way out. So I downed 14 thorazines (pills). Somehow I lived through it and after four days of recovering, my father hit me with one of his lectures. I remember only one sentence: “Get out of this house, Tramp.”

I really wanted help. So I decided to visit a “headshrinker” once a week. After three weeks the doctor and I agreed that we were getting nowhere. I knew that I couldn’t go on like this, so I committed myself to a state hospital as a “manic-depressive alcoholic.”

I spent the first month in solitary confinement. During this time I went through the most agonizing changes as my body and mind were trying to function without alcohol.

During my second month I was able to live in the ward like a human with other patients. They were mostly there because of drugs. I became friends with Greg. He had pleaded insanity in court after being “hassled” for possession of dangerous drugs. After being released, he was allowed to come back and visit me. He always brought “pot” (marijuana). I shared it with fellow patients. One day Greg brought a surprise for me—a tab of “acid” (LSD).

I decided to take it. An hour passed and nothing happened. So I went to a birthday party for three wards at which I was supposed to be master of ceremonies. When I was reading off the names of people who were getting birthday presents, I suddenly became speechless. Everything became distorted and I started seeing beautiful rays of many colors. That was my first taste of acid—but not my last.

Shortly after my release I decided to go out and really try to find myself. I moved to a section of town where the hippies and beatniks lived. I thought this would be a place where I could really do, say, and think like I wanted—be myself. After moving into a nice, but old, apartment, I discovered that I was living in an area occupied by criminals, junkies (dope addicts), and prostitutes. But as long as I had my “acid” I wasn’t worried.

It wasn’t too long before I found myself in a reeking, filthy house, surrounded by about 15 guys with a pile of white, powder—methedrine. They called it “speed.” They asked me if I wanted a “hit” and I found myself sitting with my sleeve pulled up. I was pumping my arm with a closed fist and a dirty rag tied tightly around my upper arm. The needle pierced my skin—it missed the vein and hit the muscle. It stung like 12 wasps had converged upon my arm at the same time! Before I knew it, my body was filled with the most titillating sensation. I bounded out the door—overflowing with new life.

“Speed” became my love, the only thing I wanted around. Soon my apartment was open to anyone.

After being “high” for 14 days without rest I “split” to California. After two weeks I returned and found my apartment filled with “speed freaks,” (methedrine addicts). Across the room a pair of dark eyes met mine—it was Shane.

Somebody told me he was married. I also learned that he was the biggest dealer in Portland, the sole supplier for pushers and street dealers. He started coming to my apartment to “do his thing.” Shane gave me two large “hits” for letting him use my apartment. From then on my soul belonged to the dealer.

As my escapade with “speed” continued, I began to lose contact with reality. Once I sat for four days staring into space. I couldn’t move or speak. I spent 24 hours on my stomach in a house, paranoid, thinking that the “pigs” were outside my door and windows look-in. One day I hid myself in a closet, standing on my head for a half hour. Twice I took an overdose of “reds” (second pills). But always I survived.

Shane moved to the coast and I had to look for another contact. In order to get drugs, stealing, cheating and lying were necessary. Twice I attempted to kill. I lived in smelly, cockroach-infested rooms. I slept in hallways, porches, and rooftops of apartments. I experienced barbiturate poisoning, desoxin poisoning, mass hallucinations and “freak outs.” I turned into an animal. I couldn’t reason, think, understand, read, or speak except for making noises.

I didn’t take drugs to find myself or to find God, just to get away from facing the fact that I was trapped.

In January I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I didn’t have any reason to live. So I took two bottles of yellow jackets (pills). Shane found me and took me to the hospital. For four days they tried to keep me alive. My heart stopped beating but it started again.

Shane came and got me at the hospital. He took me to a motel where he said I could stay. But a soon as he left, I went out t “score” again. I was going to make it. I wanted to die and that was all. So I got some more barbiturates and decided to “mainline” them, which would kill me for sure.

I was walking around in the snow with this dope in my pocket, looking for a place where I could “shoot up.”

Then Shane found me. He had come back to the motel and found me gone. He knew what I was going to do so he went out looking for me. Having no other place to take me, Shane took me to my parents.

By that time I had extensive brain damage. My mental processes were all messed up. I could hardly even talk. The state gave my parents two weeks to make a choice: either they would hire a 24-hour-a-day nurse to take care of me or commit me to a hospital.

The only person I wanted to see was Margaret Hansell. She had been my closest friend in high school. She and her husband, Bill, were working with a Christian organization in California. It had been three years since we had seen each other. My parents were pretty desperate so they contacted Margaret and Bill, who invited me to come and live with them.

In early February I arrived at Bill’s and Margaret’s apartment. After 15 hours of sleep and some food, Margaret and I sat down to talk. I pulled up my sleeve to show her what had happened since I last saw her. Both my arms were covered by meshy yellow and black bruises. My veins had collapsed from “shooting up” heroin.

The sight was too much for Margaret. She burst into tears and she told me that I didn’t have to go through all that. She said that God had a much better life for me if I would just take it.

Then I thought, here comes the big pitch about Christianity! My mind was made up that Margaret and Bill weren’t going to preach Christianity to me. When I heard the word “Christian,” I thought of church, rules, confinement, and authority, which turned me off. I threw the whole thing out before they could even tell me about it. I told her that I’d been to church and had tried it. I said Christianity might be fine for them, but it wasn’t for me.

What she said then caught me off guard. She replied that Christianity isn’t a religion—it’s a Person, Jesus Christ.

So I listened for the next 20 minutes as Margaret shared with me about her personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This was new to me. I thought God was distant and inaccessible. But Margaret talked as if she knew God … as if He were close to her.

The next day I spent trying to put the puzzle in my mind together. Margaret had given me a small pamphlet which told about God’s love for the world. But it also said that we are separated from His love and need to come back to Him. The pamphlet told the story of Jesus Christ who was the Son of God and who had actually come to this earth to bring us back into relationship with Him.

On the fourth day, Friday, Margaret asked me to go with her and Bill to another meeting. I wanted to stay home and it took a lot of convincing to assure them it would be safe to leave me alone for the evening.

After they left I went to the phone to make a long distance call to Shane. But as I passed the hall mirror, a strange thing happened. I expected to see the ugly reflection I had seen before—my eyes with deep circles under them, and my body scrawny and sickly. But what shook me up more than ever was what I saw inside me. It stood out at first glance. Even after leaving the mirror I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

What I saw in myself was utter despair. I realized that I needed help. I was desperate, so I picked up the pamphlet Margaret had given me.

I wondered whether I felt this way because God wasn’t part of my life. He seemed to make a difference to those other kids I’d met recently—and certainly to Margaret and Bill! They had the most beautiful marriage.

But I didn’t want to jump into anything. So I checked every verse in the pamphlet with a Bible. Near the end was a verse from Revelation where Christ was saying, “Listen, I stand at the door of your life and knock. If any man will hear my voice and open the door I will come in to him” (Revelation 3:20).

After I read this verse, my feelings came bursting out. I said, “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.

“I don’t believe in anything and I don’t have anything. And since I am cursed to life I want a reason to live. I’ve hit bottom and can’t seem to get out.

“Christ, You said that if I ask You into my life You will give me something worth living for. So now, Christ, please come into my life. I want You as my Savior and God. I want a meaningful life and most of all peace of mind.”

The first thing I felt was a deep sense of forgiveness–like everything I’d done before didn’t count anymore.

Within the next few weeks one thing stood out—I lost my appetite for drugs. Two months later I began to see deeper results: reality began to replace fantasy. I felt a new inner strength which enabled me to face life in a way I never had before. Self-concern began to win over self-destruction. For the first time in my life I could move unselfishly.

Christ became real to me—not just as something Margaret talked about, but in my own life. The amazing thing was that all this happened without any conscious effort on my part. I wasn’t making it happen—it just was. (Reprinted from Good News, 1970 ).

The Portland General Conference: The Second Week

by Steve | May 1, 1976 | Archive - 1976

Archive: The Portland General Conference: The Second Week

By the time delegates were seated and the General Conference began its business session Monday morning, 170 items had been cleared through the various legislative committees and were waiting final action. With thousands of items yet to come, the General Conference voted to consider together all items on which 90 percent of any legislative committee had voted negatively. On the last day these would be processed under one “blanket” vote of non-concurrence—with the understanding that any item could be removed for individual consideration if the General Conference wished.

A major action was taken to make permanent the Commission on Role and Status of Women, with an annual budget of $200,000. Created in 1972 to monitor and promote women’s rights within our denomination, CRSW has now become a permanent addition to the UM bureaucracy. This vote, vigorously contested, showed the full power of the feminist movement. Other expressions of its strength were a vote in favor of supporting the Equal Rights Amendment, and pressures to remove “sexist” language from printed materials of the UM Church.

Surprisingly, there was little debate on a resolution favoring return of the Panama Canal Zone to Panamanian control. It passed quickly, as did a resolution putting the UM Church on record in favor of removing felony penalties for possession of “small amounts” of marijuana.

Like an iceberg revealing the tip of a submerged ice field, the power struggle between national boards and the bishops showed itself in a debate over the bishops’ participation in setting churchwide “missional priorities” between General Conferences. The agencies wanted to severely restrict episcopal participation to only three, but a majority of General Conference delegates were reluctant to grant the bureaucracy such unrestricted power. Delegates voted to include bishops prominently in this process.

This helped tilt the denominational power balance back toward the annual conference and local church, of which the bishop is chief pastor. Ideally, bishops and the general boards ought to provide a system of checks and balances—as do the legislative and executive branches of federal government. But many observers feel that the power balance is now weighted heavily in favor of the general boards—with the result that opinions of churches are often undervalued.

The issue of “liberation” was raised prominently by Bishop Emilio de Carvalho of Angola. Denying that “communism took over Angola,” he told the General Conference that the “fundamental issue in Southern Africa is liberation.” The church in Angola, he said, is not divorced from this struggle, “which offers the church a great opportunity to become truly Christian.”

The much-publicized Rhodesian Bishop, Abel T. Muzorewa, was unable to leave Africa. He cabled his regrets and the General Conference voted “solidarity” with these two African bishops. The inference lying behind this vote was possible approval of armed ” revolution, which Bishop Muzorewa has indicated may become inevitable in Rhodesia.

The “code words” of “liberation” and “struggle” were often heard and seen at General Conference. Obviously, the idea of revolution in the political/social sphere has deeply penetrated the thinking of some significant UM leaders. This sentiment surfaced during heated debate to amend a proposed bicentennial resolution, making provision for injustices suffered by Indians and other minority groups during America’s 200 years.

The General Conference also elected members of the Judicial Council, our denomination’s “supreme court.”

A great variety of special meetings were held at noon, in the early morning, at dinner, and late at night. Delegations from most annual conferences had at least one dinner together. One unofficial meeting featured two former students wounded at Kent State; another included Iowa Bishop Thomas with Dennis Banks, leader of the American Indian Movement. (Banks had skipped bail after the Iowa annual conference of the UM Church had put up $5,000 bail money and another $5,000 had been furnished by the UM Board of Church and Society.)

Tuesday the General Conference continued until 10:30 p.m., an extra hour beyond scheduled adjournment time. The torrent of legislative items mounted and some of the more controversial measures were debated.

A new “Diaconal Ministry” was established for lay men and women working for the church full-time. Dean Langford of Duke Divinity School defined “diaconal” as “the ministry of servants or service.”

General Conference continued the Ministerial Education Fund, by which our 13 UM seminaries are primarily financed. Delegates suggested that the two UM seminaries in Ohio and the two in Atlanta move toward consolidation, to eventually reduce the total number of UM seminaries to 11.

Adopting a resolution on peace, the General Conference voted amnesty for “thousands of persons who have conscientiously refused to participate in war in a variety of ways.” Thus the principle of non-violence and pacifism was endorsed a day after General Conference had declared “solidarity” with two liberation leaders in Africa, where violence may not be rejected as an instrument of social change.

Beneath the surface, over the past several years, has been a growing concern about effects of the “quota system,” which was adopted in 1972 in an effort to overcome inequity in minority representation in UM funding and leadership posts. “Quotas” have since become the vehicle by which certain ethnic minority groups (Asians, blacks, native Americans, Hispanics) representing 4.3 percent of the church membership, now exercise great influence over church funds and executive positions.

Two UM bishops have publicly declared that quotas must be abandoned. Doubts are growing as the consequences of quota-system hiring have become more evident—for example, church extension in the National Division of the Board of Global Ministries.

Against this background of deepening churchwide concern, the editor of Good News submitted to General Conference a petition calling for an intensive study of “the effect of the quota system upon the proficiency and functioning” of UM boards and agencies “and upon the competence of those employed through the quota system.”

This petition was adopted by General Conference, which ordered the General Council on Ministries to investigate during the next four years. Some observers interpreted this vote as an expression of growing hesitancy concerning emphasis on minority empowerment, prominent since 1970, and reflected in allocations of money made by the 1976 General Conference. Two other anti-quota signs: General Conference refused to vote that 40% of UM agency executives be women; the EUB quota system, established at merger in 1968, has been set aside for 1980.

J. Robert Kemmerly, MD, member of the Good News Board and lay delegate from Louisiana, was instrumental in pressing for greater accountability of boards and agencies, as well as the debate on health care. Good News Board Member Tom McQuary was a Louisville delegate. Two former board members were also active as delegated: Robert G. Mayfield, Kentucky and Charles S. Kerr, Eastern Pennsylvania.

As delegates ploughed through mountains of legislation in the closing days of the second week, thoughts were turning toward 1980. Some 1,200 pens were given out, bearing the slogan “Indiana Area Welcomes You to the 1980 General Conference.”

“Born to Raise Hell” was the provocative title of the Wednesday afternoon sermon, preached by Dr. T. Cecil Myers, pastor of First UM Church, Athens, Georgia. Reading this news item early Wednesday morning in the “Daily Christian Advocate,” delegates received an umntent10nal, but perhaps prophetic, omen of the day’s legislative activity.

A long and vigorous debate was conducted over a proposal to change the present life tenure of bishops and elect them for eight years only, with no succession. This was a minority report issued by seven members of the Quadrennial Study on Episcopacy. It had been widely supported by a variety of people wanting to further restrict the authority of bishops. After much debate delegates voted against the eight-year limit 625 to 345.

“This action reaffirmed the office and power of episcopacy,” observed Rev. Dr. Paul A. Mickey, Associate Professor at Duke Divinity School, a process observer at General Conference for the General Council on Ministries, and first vice-chairman of the Good News Board. “But this also constitutes a mandate for bishops to take the reins of leadership, especially with regard to exercising restraining influence on the general boards and agencies.”

A surprise was the vote to include evangelism along with world hunger and ethnic minority church strengthening, as a three–faceted quadrennial emphasis under the theme: “Committed to Christ—Called to Change.” The first proposal called for funding in the amount of $250,000 per year for evangelism, but later, in a final budget shuffling, the evangelism allocation from World Service was reduced to $ 125,000 yearly.

Delegates were unhesitating in their desire to vote money for hunger and ethnic minorities, but they were reluctant to fund evangelism. At the last minute, they voted the Joint Committee on Communications an additional $659,000 yearly for promotional activities. In the end, evangelism rated no better than the $125,000.

The pressure for evangelism to be included seemed to come from two sources: 1) awareness of deep lay desire for more emphasis on evangelism, 2) worry over the loss of some 1,000,000 members since merger in 1968. But whatever the motive, this General Conference decision was cheered by those United Methodists who have always regarded evangelism—the winning of the lost to Christ—as the number-one business of the Church.

Wednesday night brought one of the tensest moments: consideration of the Social Principles statement, which the Board of Church and Society wanted to change so as to condone both homosexual practice and fornication.

Long hours had been spent in the legislative committee. With 5,758 petitions urging no change in the denomination’s position on human sexuality, the subcommittee consistently voted down the changes proposed by Church and Society.

David A. Seamands, Good News third vice-chairman and delegate (1-18) from the Kentucky Conference, had been assigned to the legislative committee on Church and Society. Wanting to be part of the particular subcommittee dealing with human sexuality, he had mistakenly signed up for a different subcommittee. Then, mysteriously, the subcommittee assignment list was misplaced! So the chairman invited members to make their choices again. This time Delegate Seamands got onto the crucial subcommittee.

As the debate on human sexuality approached, he felt led to tabulate the huge pile of petitions opposing the proposed changes. Several hours were spent sifting and counting.

Then, at a critical moment in the debate, one delegate sneered that the petitions had come from ignorant fundamentalists of the Bible belt. Delegate Seamands then presented his breakdown of the petitions. They had come from 45 states, representing every jurisdiction across the church, he reported. Annual conferences had sent 50 petitions. There were 749 petitions from charge conferences, administrative boards, councils of ministry, local UM Women, or various local church commissions. These facts seemed to blunt the drive to write “new morality” into our Social Principles statement.

During the debate in subcommittee, homosexual caucus leader Keith Spare, a UM layman from Reserve, KS, was given permission to speak. He claimed that 1,000,000 United Methodists are homosexual—a highly debatable statistic!—and he urged that it would be wrong to exclude this many people from full participation in the UM church. Another homosexual, Gene Leggett from Texas, also spoke for the “gay” cause.

The subcommittee listened, but then voted down the proposed changes. Further, it strengthened the statement against homosexuality by amending the present sentence: “We do not recommend marriage between two persons of the same sex;” to, “We do not recognize a relationship between two persons of the same sex as constituting marriage.”

Wednesday evening, with the atmosphere electric, the actions of this subcommittee came before the General Conference. The delegates voted to permit a three-minute statement by homosexual caucus leader, Keith Spare.

June Goldman, lay delegate from Iowa then said, “… What we are facing here is to listen to the voice of the grassroots of the church … I think it would be a great breach in credibility for this General Conference to vote against the wish which has become a mandate from United Methodism. …”

Another high point in the debate came when the venerable Dr. Albert C. Outler rose to speak:

“This is the moment I have been dreading for eighteen months, because this puts this conference and the UM Church on one of the tightest, hottest, and most significant points of decision we have ever been. …The essence of the issue before us is not Christian or pastoral compassion for homosexuals. … Nor is it some imagined difference between welcoming homosexuals into membership and refusing them ordination. No, we are being asked here and now … to condone homosexuality and to welcome and avow homosexuals into our ministry. We are being asked to vote for or against antinomianism in an acid test case. We are being asked to vote for or against moral decadence in one of its characteristic forms. We are being asked to endorse sexual promiscuity in the case of homosexuals, since we stipulate against homosexual marriage, thereby logically entailing endorsement of promiscuity for heterosexual Methodists (which some of them might prefer!).

“Beside being contrary to Biblical interpretation of sexuality and the whole tradition of Christian ethics, homosexuality is at least doubtful proposition as a positively equal sexual option, in view of a great many, if not most, modern biologists, psychiatrists, and ethicists. Moreover, the evidence is very far from solid that homosexual liaisons are positively good and humanly fulfilling over all and in the long run.

“Nevertheless we are now being asked to ignore all this and to pass directly from homosexuality decriminalization which we favored in 1972 to its positive institutionalization in 1976. This is wrong. This is unwise. This is a foolproof recipe for a irreversible disaster in the UM Church and in the Christian community. … This is an issue of conscience, and for me I aim to vote against that . antinomianism as any heir of Wesley would, and to vote against moral decadence; and I appeal to this conference to do the same.”

Dr. Leigh Roberts, psychiatrist and Wisconsin lay delegate (who served as chairman of the legislative subcommittee which handled the matter of a study of human sexuality) compared the anti-homosexual sentiments of the church to the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s.

The vote showed that General Conference strongly opposed relaxing our Social Principles statement’s clear position against homosexual practice. With that crucial vote, delegates protected the legal bulwark which both the bishops and the Division of Ordained Ministry considered the key reason why practicing homosexuals cannot legally be ordained.

The mood of General Conference was to listen carefully — as evidenced by permitting the top homosexual leader to address the delegates. Then the vote was cast decisively. It could not be said that this General Conference had been “closed” to the homosexuals. On the contrary, this General Conference has been far more “open” than the church itself. Yet the final show of hands vindicated both the Word of God and the overwhelming mandate of the church.

By Thursday, delegates were nervously eyeing the enormous pile of remaining business. Would adjournment be possible by Friday night? A poll showed that less than a quorum would be available on Saturday. So the 1976 General Conference would have to complete its business Friday evening. With an eye to this goal, the maximum (1-20) length of individual speeches was cut from six to three minutes. And as the clock ticked toward adjournment, an impatient General Conference often voted to shut off debate so business could proceed.

The closer to adjournment a matter was considered, the greater the pressure to vote with minimal deliberation. Herein lay a major problem: Some highly delicate, complex, and controversial matters were voted in this atmosphere of haste. In this manner, General Conferences have provided boards and agencies with wide mandates to involve the church in coalitions and to advocate positions which have proved highly divisive.

A long debate focused on two plans for the denominational youth representation. The present UM Council on Youth Ministries, which spearheaded efforts to gain acceptance for homosexual practice by the church, was abolished. A new youth organization, directly accountable to the UM Board of Discipleship, will begin in 1977. UMCYM’s strongest critics were youth and young adult delegates who spoke sharply of UMCYM’s inadequacy, and called for a new, more representative youth organization.

The most controversial portion of the Social Principles statement had been debated, and Church and Society proposals condoning homosexuality and fornication had been defeated. Consideration of the rest of the document brought ratification of the 1972 document, with some significant changes:

• An attempt to insert a specific condemnation of homosexual practice was overwhelmingly defeated. Delegates apparently felt this issue had been dealt with adequately.
• Ministry to divorced persons by the church is encouraged.
• The position on abortion was changed to read, “We support the legal option of abortion under proper medical procedures.” This replaced the 1972 statement reading, “We support removal of abortion from the criminal code, placing it instead under laws related to other procedures of medical practice.” Thus the UM Church continues its favorable stance toward abortion. However, a proposal to endorse the pro-abortion decision of the US Supreme Court was strongly rejected.
• Added a statement favoring the licensing of all gun owners and registering all firearms.

Significantly, the delegates rejected a proposal by Church and Society for a publicly administered, universal health-care program.

The traditional church position recommending abstention from alcoholic beverages was affirmed, in what Newscope described as “a statement somewhat less permissive than the 1972 resolution.”

Delegates adopted a comprehensive communications program, replacing the defunct magazine, United Methodists Today, which died in June 1975. The new emphasis shifts away from the traditional church magazine, utilizing radio, television, church newsletters, and annual conference publications. No effort was made to launch a new all-church magazine, nor to compete in official news coverage with the flourishing Texas Methodist/ UM Reporter, now reaching 375,165 readers in 31 annual conferences.

“Ageism,” discrimination because of age, was added to “sexism” and “racism” as evils to be opposed by the church.

An interesting sidelight was a special presentation made by Bishop W. McFerrin Stowe, of the Dallas area, to Bishop and Mrs. Onema Fama of Zaire. The North Texas General Conference delegation purchased a quantity of snake antivenom, needed because people in the Mulungwishi mission station area of Zaire are dying from poisonous snake bites. Thus an unusual cry for help was heeded in between votes.

The last day of the 1976 General Conference tested the endurance of delegates, already groggy from activities of the past days. Business began at 9:00 a.m. Friday and did not adjourn until 2:00 a.m. Saturday.

From the mass of actions taken during the 13½ hours of this marathon closing session, perhaps the most significant concerned whether or not to authorize a churchwide study of human sexuality. Many United Methodists feared it would be, at best, a useless waste of resources, and at worst a “Trojan horse” through which pro-homosexual advocates could seek to “condition” the church during the next quadrennium.

John Grenfell, Superintendent of the Marquette District, Detroit Conference, and third vice-chairman of Good News, presented the minority report. The vote was 477 for, 446 against. The upraised hands translated the Good News-created minority report into church law. It meant that delegates had wished to avoid the hazards and extravagance of a churchwide study. Perhaps most important, it placed responsibility for study of human sexuality where it really belongs: with the local church. Resource materials will be collected by the General Council on Ministries, to assist local churches desiring a study. A wide variety of viewpoints will be included, but GCOM has indicated no pro-homosexual bias, and is the most representative of all UM boards and agencies. So we have confidence that the resources provided will be fair and balanced. Finally, results of local church studies are to be shared with the whole church through the Interpreter magazine.

A further protection was provided by a General Conference resolution ordering UM agencies not to give church funds to any “gay” caucus or group, “or otherwise use funds to promote the acceptance of homosexuality,” reported UM Communications. The church’s chief fiscal agency was given the right to stop any such expenditures.

Another action of General Conference called on boards and agencies to spend church funds “only in accord with the denomination’s Social Principles statement.”

Bishop Kenneth Goodson, President of the Council of Bishops, spoke the final words. Compressing a closing address, due to the late hour, he declared that the 1976 General Conference “has been sensitive to grass-root concerns. The criticism that the local church 1 not heard is no longer valid.”

Emerging from Memorial Coliseum for the last time, delegates hurried through the early morning coolness to their rooms. Some packed hastily and snatched a few hours sleep before heading home.

By 9:00 a.m. Saturday the coliseum was being prepared for the next event. The thunder of ecclesiastical debate had been replaced by the sound of rock music, which entertained workmen disassembling the desks, the great stage, and the sound system.

The 1976 General Conference had passed into history.

“It was wonderful to be here,” commented one delegate as he checked out of his motel Saturday morning, “but it is time to be heading home. That’s where the wheel will touch the road on all we have done in Portland.”

The Church Beautiful

by Steve | Mar 3, 1976 | Archive - 1976

The Church Beautiful

Condensed from an address delivered at the 1975 Good News Convocation by Paul Morell, Pastor, Tyler Street United Methodist Church, Dallas, Texas
Chairman of the Good News Board, 1974-75 

I have some particular ideas that I want to share with you concerning the Church. The Church is meant to be a community of faith and fellowship. It is a service center, not a cultural center. It is meant to be a place of prayer and praise and power —not— a  place where there is deadness in formal worship, or where there is informality in worship to the point of anarchy. And, the Church is not a place where our moral laxity is excused or OK’d!

The Bible teaches that the Church is the Bride of Christ. We are to be the Church beautiful while He is to be the Bridegroom (John 3:29). The beautiful Bride (Church) belongs to Him. In Matthew 9:15 Christ calls Himself the Bridegroom; His Bride is the Church.

In Matthew 25 there is that story of five foolish and five wise virgins. This entire parable is built around the Bridegroom’s expected arrival. Those who have come to attend the wedding have really only one purpose: to be ready when the Bridegroom arrives. To share with Him in His happiness is life. Not to be ready means that you shalI not share life with the Bridegroom … instead, you shall be left outside when the doors shall be shut.

The Church is lifted up as Christ’s Bride in chapters 21 and 22 of Revelation. Here we see an angel coming to take John the Elder and lifting him to a high place where he can see the New Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. From this vantage point with the angel, John gives a description of the New Jerusalem, Heaven, the City Foursquare, the City that is perfect, the City that is the dream and the fulfillment of the people of God who believe and who care. The angel describes this new and holy City of Jerusalem to be the Bride of the Lamb. We of the Church are meant to be the Bride, individually and collectively, of the Bridegroom who is Jesus Christ.

What does it mean to be a Bride?

The Bride is to be pure. The Bride is to be beautiful. The Bride is to be faithful. And the Bride is to keep alive her first love as she gives her total self to the Bridegroom. All things are centered in Him and for Him. The Bride’s purpose is the Bridegroom. She desires to be His delight and His joy. This includes the experience of worship, the experience of praise, the times of prayer, the times of service to mankind and to one another within the Church. In all the Church does we are endeavoring to be His happiness … His delight. For the Bride (all of us) Christ is the fulfillment of our dream … and we are here to be the fulfillment of Christ’s dream.

We are the Bride of Christ, and at this point we are feminine. We are married to Him in order to ultimately produce fruit; God expects us to be fruit, and that becomes beautiful. Beautiful indeed!

We must also see the Church as the Body of Christ. In Romans the 12th Chapter, St. Paul writes that there is only one Body though there may be many members.

First Corinthians 12, verse 14 in particular, also talks about one Body, many members. On either end of this passage are suggestions as to how gifts of the Spirit enable the Body to be alive and vital. Our purpose is to be united in the Spirit of Christ and so we are enabled, in the power of God, to be His Body.

The whole epistle to the Ephesians concerns the Body of Christ. In the fourth chapter we find a listing of the gifts of the Spirit of the Church. And of course they’re not just to the Church, they are given to individuals in behalf of what the Body must become. We are even told that Christ is to be the Head of the Body, that He is its Savior Himself.

Colossians 1:18 also lifts up the Body of Christ. Here it is driven home, We are the Body of Christ!

And the work of the Body is really to make people in the world beautiful through the power that God supplies. We’re supposed to gather together for inspiration and encouragement. And then, our souls marching under divine orders, we are supposed to go out and do the will and the work of God as the Body of Jesus Christ. We are to become God’s Word, enfleshed for our generation.

The Church beautiful is the Church that is willing to minister in the Name of Jesus Christ, without apology and without shame. But here I want to say a word of warning. As we begin to march out into the various types of ministries, we must make sure that whatever we are doing in outreach does not sap the time and the energy needed for the vital work of evangelism, and Christian nurture and growth. One difficulty of our age is that so much of what we’re doing in ministry is, frankly, sapping the strength away from the work of conversion … lessening our time to be involved in quality growth as Christ’s disciples.

Our church in Dallas sponsors a home for the elderly, located in the same block as our church building. Not too long ago an 85-year-old lady told me she wanted to belong to our congregation. She was a Baptist, she had been born Baptist, dipped Baptist, and had always believed Baptist.

I said to this dear lady, “Why do you want to join this United Methodist Church?”

Her answer was a simple one. She said, “You have provided a home for me. You are giving me spiritual nourishment. The least that I can do is belong and participate in the fellowship that cares like this.”

I said, “Amen.” We received her into the fellowship.

There was a Baptist church right across the street from where she was living, but she chose to respond to ministry that mattered.

Why did we build this home for the elderly? We are interested in increasing the number who believed and who would serve, who would praise and honor God.

I believe in making disciples. That is what the Church beautiful is all about. A few years ago, I went to a little church in eastern New Mexico. It had only 18 members, but we had a full-fledged, four-day revival. No one came into the fellowship or made a decision for Christ the first day, nor the first night. or the second day. Nor the second night. or the third day, third night, nor the fourth morning.

But on the final evening, the mantle of God’s Spirit fell upon the congregation. Two persons accepted Christ, and the congregation wept. They jumped around, dancing, they were so happy. For here was evidence that the Church was alive; that the church spire yet had purpose! Two people in their 20’s had accepted the Lord! A new generation would yet live in Christ and the church would continue the ministry for which it had been created back in 1912.

Why could they get so excited moving from 18 to 20 members? In the Church beautiful, we need to get excited about God redeeming and changing lives. The Church beautiful is the Church in which the Spirit flows. One of the things wrong with United Methodism in recent decades is that we have not had the Spirit flowing through us as we should. He must flow through us! He must cleanse us!

Do you know what is the initial two-fold ministry of Jesus? It’s in the first chapter of Joh n’s Gospel. Verse 29 records the words of John the Baptist, “Behold, the Lamb of God, he takes away the sins of the whole world!”

Yes, Jesus takes away your sins. That is first. Second, Jesus gives to you the Holy Spirit (John 1:33).

If you do not have the two-fold ministry of Jesus in your life, I doubt if Jesus has really come. If you are a Christian, the Spirit is within you. And if the Spirit of God is within you, then the power of the Spirit is there. This means that you are empowered to become a different individual, a new creation, a new creature in Christ. As there is color in a sunbeam, so there is power in the Christian because the Spirit dwells within.

Why does Jesus want the Church beautiful, and the people beautiful, to have His Holy Spirit?

Because we’re here to glorify God. The 15th chapter of John’s Gospel tells us this very clearly: without Christ we can do nothing. Since Christ has gone up to the Father, “even greater things shall ye do because I go unto the Father.” You have a Counsellor’ You have a Comforter’ You have an Eternal Presence with you’ And it is only in this Eternal Empowering Presence that we can move forward in the work of being the Body of Christ.

What about gifts?

By “the gifts of the Holy Spirit ” we mean the various ways by which the power of God works through the life of the believer.

By “the fruit of the Spirit” we mean the character and the nature of Jesus Christ shining through the life and the action of the believer. To have the Spirit is to be Christlike. And to be Christ-like is to have God’s Spirit. Oh, this is the joy of it! We need the gifts and we need the fruit. We need love, joy, peace and self-control. And we need the gifts as they are listed in I Corinthians, the 12th chapter.

This experience of gift and fruit is what makes the Church beautiful … the Spirit enabling … the Spirit making us lovely. And it is beautiful when we are willing to be the Bride of Christ. The beautiful Church is where the Spirit is able to flow among us.

Finally, the Church is beautiful when it is willing to pay the price required to be triumphant. The first Christian martyr, Stephen, paid that price. As he fell under the load of stones, he looked up and the door of Heaven opened. The clouds rolled away and he saw Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, at the right hand of the Father. That was his dying testimony as a member of the Church beautiful. The Church triumphant.

One day I went to see an Indian mission in my home state of Oklahoma. In the days of the five Indian nations, Presbyterians had opened the work there. I visited two graves on a little knoll in a persimmon grove. A hundred years or more had passed, but you could still see the names. One was the wife of the Presbyterian missionary. She had died in childbirth and the little baby was buried there too.

I didn’t have a hat on, but I sort of took it off anyway. I was kneeling in my heart as I thought of the price they paid to take the Gospel to the whole world.

My father has been gone six years now. Like many Methodists he went to church regularly. He used to walk across the frozen fields of northern Oklahoma in order to sing in a little country church.

My father wasn’t the religious type, though he was a church member. But my dad was a man of principle and of faith, and I know, a man of Christ.

Six years ago he came toward his final illness. He was in a Baptist Hospital in Oklahoma City. In the bed next to him was an elderly Baptist missionary pastor who had served Christ many years, and was in his last hours. Suddenly Dad’s roommate sat up in bed and said, “Lord Jesus, you’ve come for me.”

This scared my father! He wasn’t used to that kind of religion.

Then the Baptist minister lifted up both of his arms because Christ had come for him. Looking up with radiance in that sick face, he said, “Wait a minute, Lord Jesus. I’ve got someone I’ve got to pray for.” Then he fell back in bed. His hands came together, clasped in prayer. His lips moved. Then his eyes opened and the smile came back. He looked that look of love that can be looked only when perfect love is present.

“Thank you for waiting,” he said to Jesus. “I’ve prayed for him. Let’s go.” With that his arms fell to his side and he was gone.

I’m not positive what my father’s theology was about the triumphant ·church before then. But I know very well what my father believed in his last days, before he joined that great caravan of faith. He had seen the Church triumphant and it was beautiful!

What about you? Our fellow United Methodists? Our pastors? Our bishops? Are we really willing to be the Bride of Christ? To bear Him fruit and children of faith? Are we ready, as God’s people, to really be the Body of Christ? To minister as Jesus would today? Are we the Church which is willing to let the natural power of God flow through our lives? Do we welcome the living Spirit who cleanses and washes and challenges and lifts and empowers? Do we really believe in the Church triumphant? And do you and I, though our days may be few or many, and though we may be on the top or the bottom of social or material success … do we believe that all shall be made right when we are at His feet?

Dear people, pray for me. I pray for you, that together we may be God’s beautiful people. I pray that United Methodism may be the Church beautiful.

Mister Methodist of the 19th Century

by Steve | Mar 2, 1976 | Archive - 1976

Mister Methodist of the 19^th Century

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Father Otterbein III – The Gentle Revolutionary

by Steve | Jan 2, 1976 | Archive - 1976

Father Otterbein – The Gentle Revolutionary

Part III

by Sondra O’Neale

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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