by Steve | Sep 28, 1985 | Archive - 1985
Roman Catholics are forming Bible studies, being born again, and sending out traveling evangelists…What’s going on?
Archive: Here Come the Catholic Evangelicals
by Nick Cavnar
Some months ago I attended a meeting of church renewal leaders representing several denominations. The only Roman Catholic present, I listened as evangelical and charismatic leaders from the Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and United Church of Christ spoke of their struggles to bring renewal to the churches. I was moved by the commitment I heard in their voices, moved also by the sense of common purpose that united us despite our many differences. But when it came my turn to speak about renewal in the Catholic Church, I found myself in a quandary. For how can any one person hope to sum up the course of Catholic renewal?
When the Second Vatican Council opened in 1962, it set renewal as the official agenda for the entire Catholic Church. Pope John XXIII, who called the council, encouraged the highest possible expectations when he said, “It will be a new Pentecost indeed, which will cause the church to renew her interior riches.” By the time the council closed in 1966, it had opened every facet of Catholic life for renewal and change.
Today, 20 years after Vatican II, renewal remains the rallying cry of the Catholic community. Liberal theologians claim the mantle of renewal as they pick apart traditional morality and basic doctrine. Traditionalists calling for return of the Latin mass also peak of renewal—authentic renewal, they say. Catholics have liturgical renewal, charismatic renewal, parish renewal, marriage renewal, the renewal of Biblical studies, renewal through social action, renewal in religious orders—to name only a few varieties. One popular parish program sums up the present climate by just calling itself “Renew.”
I would not dare claim to identify the Catholic renewal movement from among so many claimants. Yet, among the many, sometimes conflicting cries of renewal, I do hear certain voices that—to my ear, at least—blend together. What is more, they resonate with what I hear from Protestant leaders of evangelical renewal. Indeed, I believe this particular strain of Catholic renewal could eventually prove as significant for evangelicals as for Catholics, for it can really be called Roman Catholic evangelicalism.
On the face of it Catholic evangelicalism seems a contradiction in terms. Within many denominations the evangelical or low-church wing represents the opposite pole from the catholic, high-church types. Within the wider Christian body no gulf has been deeper than that dividing evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics. Many evangelicals do not even consider the Catholic Church to be Christian, while Catholics generally dismiss evangelicals as benighted fundamentalists.
Yet, today you can find people throughout the Catholic Church whose faith can only be called evangelical. These Catholic evangelical emphasize conversion to Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior; indeed, many will point to a specific moment when they “came to the Lord.” They look to the Bible as their basic rule and guide for living. They evangelize others and believe evangelism should be the first priority for the church. You can even find traveling Catholic lay evangelists who sound like Baptists on the revival circuit.
Like their Protestant counterparts, Catholic evangelicals also generally stand on the conservative side of debates over basic Christian doctrine, morality, and social policy. Yet not every conservative Catholic could be called an evangelical. It is something in one’s basic approach to faith—specifically the emphasis on personal conversion, the Bible, and evangelism—that I consider the hallmark of Catholic evangelicalism.
Much of this new evangelicalism traces its roots back to the Catholic charismatic renewal. The charismatic movement swept through the Catholic Church in the United States like wildfire during the 1970s. According to some polls, as many as 8 million Catholics attended at least one charismatic prayer meeting. Today the renewal has lost some of the early momentum, yet it remains the largest lay movement in the Catholic Church.
In the Catholic charismatic renewal, tongues-speaking and other gifts never became a major issue in themselves as often happened among Protestants. For one thing, there was never much controversy over these gifts; Catholic theology had always accepted miracles and mystical phenomena. What amazed Catholics was not that charismatics spoke in tongues, but that they talked about God as if they knew Him personally.
Traveling evangelists
Personal conversion and a personal relationship with Jesus quickly became the major focus of the Catholic charismatic message. Today a whole new movement of Catholic lay evangelism has appeared as an outgrowth of the renewal, with evangelists who travel from parish to parish around the country speaking to Catholics about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Other Catholic lay movements have also emphasized evangelism and personal commitment. The Cursillo movement, which originated in Spain, centers upon a special retreat designed to lead people to a conversion to Jesus. Twenty years ago my older brother sent our staunchly Catholic parents into shock when he came home from his sophomore year at Notre Dame saying he had met Christ for the first time on a Cursillo. Focolare, Marriage Encounter, the neocatechumanate, even the Legion of Mary—these and other Catholic movements all brought something of an evangelical spirit to their participants.
At the same time, Catholics have also had more contact than ever before with Protestant evangelical and charismatic ministries. The 1970s was the “born-again” decade, when evangelicalism rose to national prominence. With the greater ecumenical openness created by Vatican II, more Catholics felt free to read Protestant books, listen to Protestant preachers, attend Protestant revivals. Who knows how many Catholic evangelicals made their commitment to Christ at a Billy Graham crusade or prayed the sinner’s prayer with Pat Robertson of the 700 Club?
Yet, some observers question just how many Catholics have been touched by all this evangelical ferment, and it is probably true that they remain a small minority within the total Catholic Church. For example, the Gallup polls indicate that very few Catholics practice an evangelical-style faith. Only 6 percent of American Catholics say they evangelize others, compared with 15 percent or Protestants. Only 7 percent of Catholics say they read the Bible daily, compared to 21 percent or all Protestants and 48 percent of evangelicals.
Small minorities can have influence far beyond their numbers, however. And one reason I believe the new Catholic evangelicalism will have a growing influence and impact on church renewal is that I hear it echoed at some of the highest levels of the church.
Since the Vatican Council there has been a growing awareness in the Catholic hierarchy that the church’s strategy for Christian formation no longer works. Catholics had always put their main focus simply on getting people into the church. As long as you had gone through the sacraments and some basic doctrinal instruction, the depth of your personal conversion was rarely questioned. People were catechized and sacramentalized, but often never evangelized.
In other times and places, where the church could count on a strong surrounding Catholic culture, this strategy worked quite well. People grew up in an atmosphere that encouraged and fostered faith in Christ; they did not necessarily need a more deliberate evangelism. But in today’s highly secularized society, the old system has broken down. The turbulent 1960s and ’70s, when young people in particular deserted the church in droves, forced the Catholic hierarchy to admit that many who had gone through years of catechesis and all the sacraments had nevertheless failed to develop a deep personal faith.
Consequently, the Catholic hierarchy is placing more emphasis on personal conversion and on evangelism. The late Pope Paul VI issued an encyclical letter “On Evangelization in the Modern World” that declared, “the church must evangelize herself by a constant conversion and renewal if she is convincingly to evangelize the world.”
Pope John Paul II, especially, has emerged as a force for evangelical renewal in Catholicism. His first encyclical letter focused on Christ as “the Redeemer of Man,” declaring that “the only direction for our intellect, will, and heart is toward Christ, the Redeemer of man, because there is salvation in no one but Him, the Son of God.”
In his travels throughout the world, Pope John Paul has constantly sounded the invitation, “Throw open your doors to Christ.” In statement after statement, he has emphasized that personal repentance and conversion are the key ingredients of church renewal, and he has specifically encouraged lay movements that focus on evangelism.
John Paul has appointed many bishops in the same mold. Here in the United States, the new Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston is one example. Cardinal Law has given his support to several key segments of what I call Catholic evangelicalism, and has shown great interest in fostering cooperation with Protestant evangelicals as well.
Moving into ministry
With the support of many other bishops like Bernard Law, Catholic evangelicals are now moving into a wide range of ministries within the church. Last year, for example. I attended a meeting in Florida to organize a new network of Catholic lay evangelists. The small group of perhaps 25 people represented a striking variety of ministries. Some were publishing tracts for Catholics, others were involved with a magazine called The Catholic Evangelist, others traveled the country to speak in Catholic parishes, others sponsored evangelistic retreats. There were ministries devoted to family life. ministries that served the poor, ministries that trained others to evangelize.
Small ministries of that type—and some not so small—are springing up among Catholics throughout the country. When you look to see who is behind them you always find the same people: Catholics who come from the charismatic renewal or a similar movement, Catholics who emphasize personal conversion, the Bible, and evangelism.
When you examine the more institutional church programs—the new permanent diaconate. for example, or the Renew parish program mentioned earlier—you find the same people involved. When you look at the fast-growing field of Catholic television, they are there again. And now even in Catholic seminaries. A recent study shows that some 30 percent of the seminarians were involved in a charismatic prayer group before entering seminary!
These developments in the Catholic Church convince me that the Catholic evangelical renewal is here to stay. I am not sure what will happen to some of the individual movements within it. The charismatic renewal. for example. shows some signs of entering a new stage of growth and other signs of continued decline. Yet, I believe we will see the continuing presence and influence of a Roman Catholic evangelicalism that emphasizes persona I conversion, personal commitment, and the preaching of the Gospel.
Protestant evangelicals are not always quite sure what to make of their counterparts in Roman Catholicism. Some evangelicals can accept the idea of a Roman Catholic becoming a born-again Christian, but don’t understand how a born-again Christian can remain a Roman Catholic. They may be glad to hear John Paul II proclaim. “Open the doors to Christ!” But they shake their heads when he calls for greater devotion to Mary or reasserts papal authority.
Clearly, the theological issues that divide Catholics and Protestants are still with us. Nor do they seem likely to vanish soon—even among those who consider themselves evangelicals. Nevertheless, I find among many Protestant evangelicals, especially those from the mainline denominations, a new sense of unity with Catholics based on the fundamental beliefs we do share.
The battles evangelicals face in the United Methodist Church or United Church of Christ have now shifted to those points which unite Catholics and Protestants rather than those that divide us—the nature of Christ, the inspiration of Scripture, the morality of homosexuality and abortion. As more than one Protestant leader has said to me. “I feel I have far more in common with sincere Catholics who believe that Jesus is the Son of God, believe in the Virgin Birth. and believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. than with some liberals in my own denomination who don’t seem to believe in much of anything.” The appearance of a Catholic evangelicalism can only serve to increase this sense of unity.
Yes, Catholic evangelicals remain convinced Catholics, who fully accept Marian devotion, the mass, papal infallibility, and all the other doctrines of their church. But because they also share the evangelical desire for a truly Scriptural, Christ-centered faith, these Catholics are concerned to understand and express their beliefs in Biblical terms that may, in the long run, prove more comprehensible to Protestants.
Even then we are unlikely to find ourselves anywhere near agreement, but we may at least better understand each other’s positions. And possibly, in the light of that understanding, some of our barriers will prove smaller than we have thought.
It may seem self-serving for me to say it, but I believe Protestant evangelicals have every reason to welcome the appearance of a Catholic evangelical renewal. An evangelically revitalized Catholicism could prove a powerful ally in our common struggle against secularism within and without the Church. But more importantly, Catholic evangelicalism offers hope for a Christian unity based not on a watering down of our deepest convictions, but on a common faith in the one Savior, Jesus Christ.
Nick Cavnar is the executive editor of New Covenant, the magazine of The Catholic charismatic renewal. Residing in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he is also a freelance writer and has been published in God’s Word Today, Catholic Digest, and Charisma.
by Steve | Sep 17, 1985 | Archive - 1985
Archive: Rise Up and Walk
By Bishop Richard Wilke
September/October 1985
Bishop Richard Wilke, of United Methodism’s Arkansas area, brought sobering words to the Council of Bishops’ meeting held several months ago in Seattle. Wilke presented in bold relief the picture of United Methodism’s decline and warned that, if not reversed soon, it could be fatal. The following article is from Bishop Wilke’s remarks to the Council of Bishops.
Last month I attended a civic luncheon in Little Rock. I went because Arkansas’ distinguished senior senator, Dale Bumpers, was to speak. A member of our church. He stood and acknowledged my presence. That made me feel good. Then he proceeded to say that like the blue whale and the whooping crane, he is a member of an endangered species: he is a United Methodist. That didn’t make me feel so good.
“… there was a feast of the Jews. and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda. having five porticoes. In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame. and withered …. And a certain man was there, who had been 38 years in his sickness. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition. He said to him, ‘Do you wish to get well?’ The sick man answered Him, ‘Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming. another steps down before me.’ Jesus said to him. ‘Arise, take up your pallet, and walk”‘ (John 5: 1-3. 5-11).
We lie beside the pool, you and I and the United Methodist Church. We lie beside the pool, and the waters are stirring. We lie beside the pool with the blind and the lame, as a paralyzed man, withering and weak. The King James version uses the word “impotent,” and I suppose the translators meant lacking in power to walk or to do, but the word means for us today the inability to reproduce. Actually we United Methodists are both, impotent and unable to reproduce as well as paralyzed and weak.
Once we were a Wesleyan revival, full of the Holy Spirit, running like a young man, tackling a whole continent with Scriptural holiness. Now we’re like a runner out of breath, like a withered old man lying – in our case – 20 years beside the pool. Since 1964 we have been lying there, withering away. Twenty years of paralysis, unable to reproduce. From 1960 to 1964, 4.2 million people came to our Sunday schools every Sunday morning. Today 2.1 million attend. Half of all our Sunday school is gone. And these are not just membership figures. These are your sons and daughters and our friends.
Our youth program, too, has withered. I remember being challenged to enter the ministry by Richard Raines and E. Stanley Jones. They brought an idealism to the youth of our denomination. I had visions of thousands of young people in Christian service. Now I watch two young Mormons dressed a lot like I am, walking down the street, house to house. I called last week to see how many US-2 [short-term. U.S. based] missionaries we have. We have 27 now.
People argue whether our membership decline of over 1.7 million is caused by our inability to retain members or by our inability to reproduce. The answer is both.
Fifty thousand lost
The average United Methodist Church has 287 members. For 20 years we have closed the equivalent or 300 such churches a year. Last year at the General Conference in Baltimore, late at night, seemingly from an unknown source, someone said, “Let’s have 20 million members by 1992. All in favor say ‘aye’.” And we all lifted our hands. Since we set that goal we have lost another 50,000 members. We’re paralyzed.
What was the matter with that fellow beside the pool at Bethesda? I don’t know, do you? The Bible doesn’t say why he was withered and weak and impotent and paralyzed. And I don’t know why our church is in such a condition. Lately we’ve been asking every church consultant and knowledgeable church-growth person, and we’ve gotten a hundred different answers. I think about 57 of them are right. I don’t know what is wrong, but I intend to find out.
When Lee Iacocca became president of Chrysler, he immediately began to ask for data about simple things. For example, he asked, “What is the unit cost of production’!” Chrysler didn’t know. Do you know how many young people attend Methodist Youth Fellowship on Sunday night in our denomination? No one knows. Do you know how many young people attended our church camps last year or any previous year? Nobody knows. Do you know how many men attend our United Methodist Men’s meetings? Nobody knows. I called New York to ask how many women attended United Methodist Women meetings last year. The reply: “That statistic has never been deemed significant.” Nobody knows.
How many new churches have we started in the last 20 years’? I asked an official. and he said. “I can give you figures since 1977, but we’re researching the ’60s and the ’70s.” Nobody knows.
This reminds me of when my father was dying. The doctor said all his signs looked good. “He has a strong heart,” the doctor said.
I said, “Yes, but he’s dying.”
The doctor said, “He has a good color.”
I said, “Yes, but he’s dying. What’s the matter with the man? He’s lying there on the bed. That’s not like my dad.”
The doctor said, “I don’t know.”
“He’s dying,” I said.
After my dad died, an autopsy was done and a lace-like cancer of the adrenal gland was found, but while my father was dying nobody knew why he was so weak and withered. And so it is with us. We’re not sure.
But the water is swirling, all right. The Holy Spirit is moving. In some places with explosive power, people are being healed. People are being converted. Churches are being formed.
Some say that we are in the third Great Awakening in America. We see more interest in religion today than at any time for a hundred years. Even the secular media asks questions about religion. For the first time in my ministry, newspapers and television care what the Church is doing.
People are hungry. The spiritual vacuum in our land that calls for the Gospel is indescribable. Whether you’re talking about teenagers in Plano, Texas or about the brokenness of homes anywhere. Yet, we have a half-time person in our Board of Discipleship working with marriage and the family.
Forty percent of all American adults are single. Yet we have not devised a strategy of ministry to singles.
The baby boom is here – 80 million Americans between the age of 17 and 34. And those baby boomers are producing a baby baby boom boom! I’m a new grandfather, and across the land families like my son’s who delayed having children are now having them. Yet, we don’t even know how many pre-school children are in United Methodist Sunday schools. Nobody knows. Who is minding the store?
Still our Savior speaks the probing words, “Do you want to be well? Do you want to be healed?” And we are not so sure. Do we want to learn from the Koreans? They don’t form churches quite like we form churches. And the itinerancy seems a little strange to them. Are we willing to take into our fellowship these kinds of people and bend our rules?
Lyle Schaller says our whole system is designed for failure. We penalize the growing church by increasing its “taxes,” and we make it easier on the declining church by easing off on apportionments.
I just came from our conference’s cabinet meeting where I had conversations like this:
“That’s a good pastor at that church. Pull him out of there. We need him somewhere else.”
I say, “He’s only been there three years.”
“Well, we ought to give him a $1200 promotion.”
First in the Water
We have so many excuses for our impotent condition. The man at the pool said, “Someone always gets into the water before me …. ”
The Southern Baptists in Texas have projected a five-year plan. This is not the Southern Baptist Church across the nation, mind you, just in one state. In the next five years the Southern Baptists intend to plant 2,000 churches in Texas!
That denomination has 20 full-time church planters. Not planners, but planters. Furthermore, one-half of those church planters are ethnics. They are targeting the black population, the Hispanic population, the blue-collar worker. Somebody is always getting there before us.
In Houston a massive meeting was held last month sponsored by 20 denominations. Its purpose was to formulate strategics to reach Hispanics for Christ. Someone who was there asked me why, with 20 denominations represented, none of our United Methodist leaders were present. I think the reason was because some of those folks who came to the meeting use dirty words like “born again” and “praise the Lord.”
Our conference is trying to start a new church near Rogers. Arkansas. I am excited about it. The population studies have been done, the surveys have been made, and after several years of work we are now able to purchase a piece of land.
I went out to help inspect the site. When I looked up the street. Three blocks away I saw an Assembly of God church. It had been there for 11 years, thriving and nourishing in this new population area.
“Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up … while I am coming another steps down before me.” And the Lord spoke the word of power. “Arise,” He said. “take up your pallet, and walk.” Another time he said. “Which is easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven’ or to say. ‘Rise up and walk”!”‘
Our sins are many. I leave it to you to catalog them. But we are not impotent because we are skinny: we are impotent because we are fat. We are not unable to reproduce because we’re unimaginative. But because we’re misfocuscd. We are like modern couples who decide not to have children because they want to fulfill themselves.
Our timetable, I think, is the word of Jesus in the parable of the vineyard. A certain man has a fig tree in his vineyard and he comes to look for fruit from it. He says to the vinedresser, “I’ve come here for years seeking fruit and lo, there is none. Cut it down. It is using up valuable space.” But the vinedresser answers, “Lord, don’t destroy it this year. Let me dig around it and fertilize it. And if it bear fruit, good. If not. then you can cut it down.”
Our real danger is not that we fail to have 20 million members by 1992. (In fact, that idea is ridiculous. Never in our history have we had an increase like that. The Southern Baptists, with all of their intensity, project just a one percent growth. For us to more than double our denomination is a ludicrous goal.) Our true danger is that we cannot even turn the ship around. My fear is that we have only another year or so before the Lord will let us die for lack of bearing fruit.
Our Lord, in His final imperative, made our mission so clear. In Luke 24 He said, “repentance for forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all the nations.” In Mark, the Lord commanded, “go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation.” And in Matthew, I think the correct translation should be, “as you are going into the world (as you are about your life in the world), make disciples.”
We have been preaching ethics for 30 years (and I believe in the ethics of the Gospel and its social implications), but we have not been rooting that preaching in the faith in the atoning work of Christ and the mercies of God and Jesus.
Dear friends, we are impotent, lying beside the pool. Make no mistake about it. But the Spirit is moving in the waters. It is no longer adequate for us to make excuses or bemoan the fact that others go into the water before us. Our cry is for the word of the Savior to give us power and to Say, “Your sins are forgiven.” To say, “Rise, pick up your bed and walk.” To say again, “As you are going into the world, make disciples.”
Post script
Bishop Wilke’s words to the Council of Bishops were words not only of sober assessment but of guarded optimism. That element of hope springs, in part, from his success in helping First UM Church of Wichita reverse its membership decline. He told the bishops:
” … All across America, the great churches of our cities had begun to die. First Church Wichita was among the ‘dyingest’ … Sixty percent of the membership was over 65. Membership had dropped in 11 years from 3,800 to 2,300. Sunday school was down 50 percent in the children’s department. The senior-high fellowship had seven members. So we began to pray ….
“The Wichita church, which Wilke pastored until his appointment as bishop in 1984, also tried 18 different ways to start growing again. None of them worked. The church tried various evangelistic strategies, including “2 by 2” lay evangelism – all to no avail.
When finally the membership decline did begin to turn around, much of the new growth came through the Sunday school. In 10 years it grew from 9 adult classes to 19, with 700 adult members.
Under Wilke’s leadership the church began to reach out more to downtown people in the lower economic brackets. “We had tried reaching the prosperous and the wealthy,” he said, “but they didn’t come …. Those people tee off about 9 a.m. every Sunday, or they have a boat on the lake …. ”
In an interview with The United Methodist Reporter, Bishop Wilke said, “New-style Sunday school classes and congregations that have more fellowship, more are for one another, more discipleship, and where people come not to hear a lecture but to meditate on the spiritual life … those are the groups that will attract more members.”
If his recent remarks are any indication, Bishop Wilke has hope for the church. But it is a hope tempered by a realistic view of the current state of United Methodism.
by Steve | Jul 29, 1985 | Archive - 1985
Archive: Youth Festival Offers Electric Guitars and Jesus
By Ruth Snyder
“We took Jesus to our high school. There were three of us who began to pray every morning, ‘God, give us boldness, and give us our high school.’ We began to witness in locker rooms. We saw our friends start coming to Jesus. And the year we graduated over 80 percent of that high school was born again.
“They may not let your pastor in, they may not let your youth pastor in, but they’ll let you in. You have to go. So go—and take Jesus.”
This admonition was delivered in late April by Christian rock musician Russ Taff to a rambunctious crowd of over 13,000 young people, many of them United Methodists. The occasion was Ichthus 1985, a Christian music festival held in Wilmore, Kentucky.
For each of the past 16 years, Ichthus has brought thousands of high school students from as far away as Canada and Colorado to Wilmore, a college town of just 3,800 inhabitants. The young people come for a weekend of upbeat Christian music and youth-centered teaching seminars.
Ichthus is the original model of a now-popular genre-the “Jesus music festival.” The initial Ichthus was held in May, 1970, It was hurriedly organized by Dr. Robert Lyon, professor at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, along with a group of concerned seminary students. The festival was to be a Christian alternative to Woodstock, a gigantic and unruly rock festival which had shocked Americans in 1969. There were only six weeks of planning for Ichthus ’70. Local talent provided the music. But an encouraging crowd of 1,200 attended.
Today, Asbury Seminary students prepare nearly two years in advance for each of the gigantic annual gatherings, and the music is provided by big-name recording artists. This year the Ichthus crowd listened to famed Christian entertainers Farrell and Farrell, Larry Norman, Jessy Dixon, and Grammy Award-winning Russ Taff, to name a few.
John Criswell, general chairman of Ichthus 1985, explained the selection criteria for lchthus participants. “Performers and speakers for the festival are chosen with three principles in mind. They must be Christian artists, intensely concerned with the issues of youth, and willing to minister to youth with a quality program.”
Contemporary Christian music and its performers have changed drastically since Ichthus began. Punk and new wave dress, squealing guitars, and blaring amplifiers are no longer uncommon at Christian rock festivals like lchthus. Because this commotion can be jarring to post-teenagers, the contemporary Christian music scene has become somewhat controversial.
Russ Taff addressed this issue when he challenged the crowd, “I ask, please don’t judge by your tastes, judge by the fruit. Every year we’re seeing thousands of people come to Jesus through this music.”
Steve Stratton, youth counselor at a Alabama, echoed Russ’ view. “I have a lot of young kids, and they’ve never been exposed to an alternative to secular music. I think it’s going to be a positive experience for them and will lead to a lot of discussion.”
Although the music dominates the Ichthus scene, Carla Ockerman, member of the St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, observed, “the music is 80 percent of it [Ichthus], but the foundation is the [other] 20 percent—the seminars and the counseling.”
This year a host of top-notch speakers addressed the young people concerning sex and dating, rock videos, devotional time, being genuine, and being missions-oriented Christians,
Father Bruce Ritter challenged the crowd to help “feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless.” Father Ritter is founder of Covenant House, a center for runaway and homeless young people headquartered in New York City. He told stories of Billy, a 14-year-old boy who had been living in cars for a year, and of Ernie, a 12-year-old who was found sleeping in a big plastic garbage can on the streets of New York.
The combinations of music, speakers, and seminars make Ichthus weekend largely an evangelistic experience. The Ichthus bylaws state its purpose is to “provide a Christ-centered environment stressing personal conversion and deeper commitment.”
Volunteers from the seminary and Asbury College are trained as counselors and meet on a one-to-one basis with those who respond to the altar calls, which are given periodically throughout the weekend. This year the number who responded exceeded 300. By the end of this year’s gathering, officials noted there were at least 71 new Christians.
Ichthus benefits the youth who attend, and it benefits the youth counselors, according to Diane Kisamore, a youth pastor at Muir’s Chapel UMC in Greensboro, North Carolina. She brought a group of young people to the 1984 festival and returned with another group this year. She commented, “The seminars and the speakers last year really affected our young peoples’ lives. It made them ask many questions about God. They all wanted to come back.
“A big part of Ichthus for my young people was finding out that there are other people like them—or as different as they are—who still love the Lord.”
by Steve | Jul 28, 1985 | Archive - 1985
Archive: Patchwork Central
By Michael Sigler
Patchwork Central is not a craft store or a coffee shop, as its name might suggest. It is a Christian community, located in an inner-city neighborhood of Evansville, Indiana, which has developed a “patchwork” of ministries to and with the poor of that area.
Three United Methodist couples and their four children began Patchwork seven years ago. John and Ruth Doyle were already living in Evansville, where John pastored a UM church. Their longtime friends Phil and Elaine Amerson were educators in Atlanta, Georgia. Also living in Atlanta were Calvin and Nelia Kimbrough, both ordained UM ministers, who became the third family involved in starting the community.
John and Phil had talked and dreamed, while they were students at Asbury College during the ’60s, of forming something like Patchwork Central. But before the dream could materialize they went their separate ways, and gained experience and training that one day would be of value to the Patchwork ministry. For example, Phil earned a Ph.D. and taught at two Christian institutions (Westmont College’s Urban Program and Candler School of Theology).
In 1979 the three families moved into houses within a block of each other in the Evansville neighborhood. They found jobs. (Still today only one person, an office worker, receives a salary from Patchwork Central). They had come, as Phil explained, “to live near each other and act out our faith together and in the larger community.”
Patchwork Central was born. The remarkable thing about it is that, unlike many other such experiments that grew out of the ’60s era, this community has survived and is moving forward in the ’80s.
If you were to visit Patchwork on a Sunday evening you would find a group of 30-40 adults and children meeting together for worship, celebrating the Lord’s Supper, and then sharing a meal together. But a Sunday visit would provide an incomplete picture of what the community is about. Its members share a commitment to social justice, a concern they express through day-to-day involvement with the people of the inner city and their needs.
So, for example, when Evansville decided to close the neighborhood’s elementary school, Patchwork members helped organize parents and friends to keep the school open. It was, and still is, the city’s only elementary school that is naturally integrated (without busing).
When Patchwork members discovered that most of the city’s federal community-development funds were being used in emerging middle-class neighborhoods instead of in the poorest parts of town, Patchwork developed a monitoring program. Its goal is to insure that federal block grants benefit the city’s disadvantaged.
In response to the growing number of inner-city children who were walking the streets unattended, Patchwork started an After School Children’s Program. It provides supervision, activities, and tutoring.
Though the Patchwork community is small in number it seems to attract gifted people. Not only are many talented professionals in Patchwork-Ph.Ds., professors, scientists, people in public service-it also receives support from other church and civic groups as well as from individuals. The United Methodist Church, for one, has contributed grants and special offerings. Drawing on these resources, Patchwork Central has developed an impressive list of ministries and programs, including:
- The Back Alley Bakery – a business which provides jobs for neighborhood people who would otherwise be without work.
- The Neighborhood Economic Development Center – helps inner-city people obtain loans and grants to start businesses in the neighborhood.
- The Personal Counseling Program – directed by one of Patchwork’s founding members, John Doyle.
- A Health Improvement Program for inner-city residents – provides checkups, dental care, and nutritional education.
- The Food Pantry – cooperates with the local Volunteer Action Council, the Council of Churches, and others to help feed over 500 people each month.
- Garden Plots – helps inner-city people, especially the elderly, develop backyard gardens for a supply of fresh vegetables.
Patchwork Central is about programs to help needy people, but it is also about a diverse group of individuals who make up the Patchwork community. Some, like the Amersons, the Doyles, and the Kimbroughs, have been with the group since its beginning. Others stay for a while, contributing their time, gifts, and talents, then move on.
Ed and Marion Ouellette, the oldest members of the community, have been with Patchwork since 1979. Ed is a retired minister of the United Church of Christ. “Having spent 40 years in a name-brand church,” he says, “I have seen how it can become so preoccupied with itself-with buildings and organization and committees—that its real mission gets the short end of the expenditure of time and money.
“Jesus talked about His job description that day in Nazareth when he said, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord’ (Luke 4:18). I think what we saw in this group of people was an awareness of Jesus’ own job description, of why He came into the world. ”
Being involved with the younger members of Patchwork Central, Ed explains, “gives me a feeling of having a handle. on the future—and it is good. ”
Paula Swank, 32, teaches high-school journalism in Evansville. A United Methodist, she and her son, Sean, have been members of the Patchwork community for two-and-a-half years. They live in the inner-city neighborhood where approximately half of Patchwork’s members make their homes. Paula has served as Food Pantry coordinator, helped with the Back Alley Bakery, organized a voter registration drive, as well as working with other Patchwork programs.
She says two factors drew her to the group. “One was a sense of community—people who cared about one another, ate together, were friends together, were a support group, and related to each other warmly and closely. The other factor was that I had a need to do more in my life than get up every morning and go to work, come home, fix supper, and go to bed. … I began to read the New Testament and take to heart that there was work to be done and people to be served. ”
Both Ed and Paula speak of Biblical roots, and yet the community is somewhat of a patchwork, theologically. Members include Baptists, Quakers, and Mennonites, as well as United Methodists; theological liberals as well as the more evangelical types.
“There are folks here,” explains Paula, “who don’t know much about how it [Patchwork Central] got started. But the people who began Patchwork were certainly rooted in a Biblical tradition. If I have learned anything from Patchwork it has been to root my social action in the Biblical tradition. But this is new for me. I didn’t grow up in that tradition. … I’m still learning about it, and it is one of the reasons I’m in Patchwork.
“I could do social justice work a lot of places in Evansville. But I could not do what I’m doing with a Biblical and Christian rooting in very many place.”
The work goes on, and so does the community life of the group called Patchwork Central. Presently, much of the group’s energies are directed toward rebuilding “the Meetinghouse,” a former Jewish synagogue which Patchwork had used for several years for worship and office space. Fire gutted the building in December ’83. The loss hurt Patchwork-some of it ministries had to be cut back.
Yet, somehow the struggle to adjust and keep going seems to typify the durability and commitment of this group. The average lifespan of such communities is only about one year, yet the Patchwork people have survived there in the poor part of Evansville for nearly eight years.
Some time ago founding member Phil Amerson, reporting to Patchwork Central’s board of directors, spoke of the struggles and joys of the Patchwork ministry. He used as a metaphor the account of his grandmother’s “double messages”: “Watching family members devour her goodies in gluttonous delight was for her a joy,” and yet she always told her grandson, “Don’t let your eyes get bigger than your stomach!”
“I guess it is because of Grandma,” said Amerson, “that I recognize double messages in my life and work today. … I grew up hearing about the richness of the Gospel and how the Christian call is that we give ourselves for others. I heard that those of us in the Church are to give (yes, even to sacrifice) so that we can share with the poor and the weak and the oppressed. I heard that Jesus’ message … to the least of these … is to be our message.
“And then today as I reach for a plateful of my opportunity as a disciple of Jesus, voices are heard which seem to contradict all those sermons over all those years. They say: ‘You expect too much.’ ‘It is not the ’60s any longer.’ ‘The denomination will not make such a commitment to urban settings.’ ‘Why do you keep working in a place like that?’ ‘For your own future and for your family’s sake get out while you can.’ ‘We have other priorities.’ And so they surge over me, these double messages. … And often I quietly sob as I see my sisters and brothers spend more on pew cushions or toilet paper for their congregations than on food or jobs for the poor.
“Amid all this, for many years I have had the joy of watching special people give magnificent gifts shaped in their scarcity. I have watched people who live at subsistence levels so that Patchwork and similar ministries across the country could operate food pantries, provide crises housing, create job opportunities, work with poor children, and on and on. They have given themselves in fashioning a great banquet of ministries.
“Oh yes, they get tired. And yes, these people hear the double messages perhaps more loudly than most. For they hear voices which suggest that they are not doing enough, or not doing it in the right way. And they also hear the voices saying, ‘The price is too great. …’ Yet they work on, and there is joy … exquisite joy.”
by Steve | May 28, 1985 | Archive - 1985
Archive: Advocate for Evangelism
Former attorney Frank Warden now uses his persuasive powers to proclaim the Gospel
by Ruth Snyder
Frank Warden was a partner in the biggest law firm in Arkansas. But at age 35, after 13 years of practice, he turned in his resignation.
“When I told my senior partner I was leaving the firm to go into fulltime ministry, he understood. ‘I admire you,’ he told me.”
Such is the testimony of Frank Warden, minister of evangelism at Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas, the second largest UMC in the nation. In 1968, when Frank left his Little Rock firm to enter Perkins School of Theology, he thought he would return to north Arkansas after graduation and be a local pastor. Instead, right out of seminary he was offered the evangelism berth at the gigantic Highland Park Church. That’s where he’s been ever since.
During the past 12 years Warden has been instrumental in dramatically increasing the church’s membership. Moreover, he has developed the Trinity Bible Study, now used around the world in thousands of churches.
Even back in Arkansas, Frank had always been active in his local United Methodist church. He had served as trustee, chairman of the board, Sunday school teacher, and choir director. But it wasn’t until March, 1967, that Frank and his wife, Dorothy, totally committed their lives to Christ while attending a Lay Witness Mission.
“To me that was the moment of truth in my life, but I didn’t have any call to the ministry,” says Warden. “So I continued my law practice and committed myself to reading a chapter of the Bible every day. I started to see miracles happen that convinced me of God’s calling on my life.”
Soon after his commitment, Warden’s many open law cases mysteriously began to settle, some of which were “non-settle-able.” As of January 1, 1969, his calendar was wiped clean. “God made it very clear to me that He wanted me to follow Him,” says Frank.
So Frank and Dorothy sold their home, their airplane, and their interest in the law firm, and launched out.
In 1973 when Warden accepted the assignment from Highland Park’s senior minister Leighton Farrell to set up a department of evangelism, the congregation had lost about 2,000 members. Enrollment had gone down below 8,000 after General Conference of 1968, from a peak of over 10,000.
Granted, that is still a huge membership. But the staff of Highland Park read the membership loss as a sign of a declining church. They wanted to see the trend reversed. But how does an attorney from Little Rock, Arkansas organize an evangelism department for such a job?
Should he evangelize through street ministry? Should he teach courses on Methodism or on prayer or spiritual formation? How could he make the church attractive to the unbeliever? Warden wasn’t sure.
He organized a “fishers group” to call on prospects throughout Dallas, thinking this might be the answer. “One night,” he recalls, “there were only three college kids and me (from a church of 10,000 members). I was in such despair. I said, ‘Surely there’s got to be something better than what we’re doing.‘”
There was. What Warden decided was that, for his church at least, going out to practice evangelism techniques was not the answer. “The church itself has to be the evangelism tool.”
He concluded that evangelism is the responsibility of the entire church. The education people teach about Christ, the preacher preaches about Christ, the choir sings about Christ. Evangelism cannot be departmentalized. This approach Warden calls “church evangelism.”
In fact, Frank says, “Unless the church is presenting Christ and showing people the Gospel in its music and preaching and Bible teaching, then it’s wrong to go out and use confrontation evangelism and talk about Jesus.” Without “church evangelism,” Warden believes, those coming into the church services by way of home evangelism would be surprised and let down. “Church services are conducted in a different language, a different style than confrontation evangelism.”
Studies have shown that only two percent of the people who make commitments outside the church end up being active members of a local church, says Warden. So he believes that the conversion, the commitment to Christ, ought to be made in the church.
Bringing in members
How does church evangelism at Highland Park work in bringing in new members?
Visitors. Every local church has visitors. “We have between 300-400 visitors every Sunday morning in our church,” says Frank. “If we harvested 20 percent of them, we would be the fastest-growing church in America.
“People are actively shopping. They don’t care about denominational labels. They just want to go where they can feel comfortable and where they can hear the Good News.”
Frank has made it the responsibility of the evangelism department to match visitors with compatible members of the church. Those members make phone calls to invite the newcomers into the church. Church members involved in the education department follow up with phone calls too, inviting children to Sunday school programs.
This strategy is what members of Highland Park UMC know as “telephone evangelism.” It makes visitors feel welcome and comfortable and, in effect, it keeps them coming. Also, it involves the active members of the church in an effective evangelism program.
Telephone evangelism isn’t a revolutionary idea; but it’s a practical solution to a big problem, and it’s working. Nearly 8,000 people have come into Highland Park UMC since 1973—more new members than any other UMC in the nation. Membership has increased to 11,600 a net gain of almost 4,000.
The end, however, is not to receive people into the church, but to bring them into a personal relationship with Christ. According to Warden the lack of this emphasis has cost the denomination dearly.
“There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that, if we had followed the principles of Biblical Christianity and emphasis on the basics which Good News espouses, the United Methodist Church would not be apologizing for membership loss, but would be growing constantly,” Frank says. “When Christ is there, the church is a mighty force; when He is not, then no human programs can be devised to take His place.”
But Warden acknowledges that bringing people into the church does not automatically bring them into a conversion experience. “We want to embrace and court those people and lead them to a growing relationship, and eventually a commitment to Christ.” Every service at Highland Park is an opportunity to make that commitment.
“I’m a radically church-centered evangelist,” Frank reiterates. “I believe the marriage [of commitment to Christ] should take place at the altar of the church.
“But the courtship should not die at that point of marriage. We have to keep the courtship going—caring, embracing, and teaching.” That, to Frank, is one of evangelism’s many vital functions.
Warden insists it is also necessary that a church make demands. “That’s what people want,” he says, “a church with definition and starch. So we’re straightforward. We tell our people, if you promise to give, remember to tithe. If you promise to pray, sign up for one hour a week. If you promise to give service, we list your name on the computer list and ask, ‘What service?’ And if you quit attending we ask ‘What’s wrong?’” Not everyone can direct evangelism at Highland Park UMC, but every member of the Body can use his gifts to help evangelize. That’s church evangelism.
Dramatic increase
And what is the result? At Highland Park there has been a dramatic increase in Sunday school attendance from 1,200 to over 2,000; by means of six Sunday services in a sanctuary and a chapel, an average of 2,200 worshippers attend each Sunday. Often there is standing room only. A large congregation in a small sanctuary is a problem requiring multiple services. But it is a much more pleasant problem to have than that of membership loss.
Yet Warden wants to make sure members have a personal relationship with Christ and not just assume they do. Frank admits that one of his biggest aggravations is Christian people who show very little evidence of their Christianity.
“My concern is whether we born-again Christians are visibly showing what we believe. We’re to emulate Jesus. Are we doing it? My biggest fear is that we have forever lost the distinction between Christians and non-Christians,” Frank says.
The problem is how to define Christianity in a way which produces an evident behavior difference in the lives of Christians. “I do this through Bible study,” says Frank, “because there’s not a lesson in the Bible that does not have a street-level application on how I am to behave.” The Bible gives Christianity definition, and that, says Frank, is what people want.
“I found that we were able to harvest, in the big city of Dallas, people who are floating around looking for those churches which would preach Christ and teach the Bible,” says Warden.
So he began teaching the Bible, but he found he wasn’t satisfied with the Bible studies available to pastors. “I thought, after praying about the matter, I would write something. I applied what I had discovered as a speaker and lawyer, about learning theory and memorizing and retaining things, and incorporated that into the Trinity Bible Studies.”[1]
Trinity Bible Studies
In 1978, Frank introduced his innovative Bible study to Highland Park. It was so well received that he decided other churches might benefit as well. Today, Trinity Bible Studies is used in over 3,000 churches, 520 of them in Korea. As recently as March, Frank was in Korea teaching Trinity to a class of 2,500. The series has been translated into four languages.
Why is it so popular? Frank suggests that “people are finding it is affirming, and very positive. … The evangelical denominations have been teaching the Bible all along, but it was always packaged with their doctrine,” says Frank. “In fact, many people don’t think you can teach Bible content without doctrine.” Trinity does just that, Warden asserts.
The name comes from a three-level approach to presenting the Bible: fact, meaning, and application. Students enroll in intense 10-week “semesters” which entail completing regular assignments, worksheets, and Bible readings. The students study to understand what the Bible says, what it meant at the time it was written, and how it applies to their lives today. Trinity affirms that the Bible is God’s Word to us, Warden says, rather than asking, “Is it true?”
The low cost of the material is the way in which Frank remedied the lack of an affordable Bible series for the local pastor. Frank has never viewed Trinity as a money-making project. “The mainstay of our support,” says Frank, “is selling materials at cost.”
As the Trinity Bible Studies series became increasingly popular, many people began using it on Sunday morning. But Trinity involves outside reading—homework. For that reason, Frank explained, “we don’t recommend it for Sunday school.” Youth, for example, don’t want to be saddled with more homework. “I know from a dozen years of teaching youth in church that if you can get them down off the walls and into the classroom, you’re lucky. Anyway, we want to embrace visitors during the Sunday school hour, not embarrass them because they haven’t done their assignments.”
The need for a Bible study for Sunday morning posed one more challenge. But Frank was hesitant to write his own material until one bishop assured him there was no rule restricting a Methodist preacher from writing Sunday school curriculum. So Frank wrote Choose Life; it’s “plain vanilla Bible study” for youth.
Choose Life
Choose Life is quarterly material, and includes clear guidelines on how to teach it. Throughout the study Frank directly instructs teachers, ” Prayerfully decide what you can affirm and then only teach what you can affirm. Do not disaffirm what you’re not sure of.” Also enclosed in the teacher’s edition of every course is a detailed explanation and cassette tapes that provide additional instruction for teaching each lesson.
Although Choose Life is still young, by next year it will exceed Trinity in sales. Warden’s Sunday school material is also used by Disciples, American Baptists, and Presbyterians. It has been adopted by prison systems in many different states, including Army prisons, and it is used both with women and men in the Dallas County Jail.
Frank wrote Trinity Bible Studies and Choose Life because he is convinced Biblical principles should guide the behavior of a Christian. And there are many cases in which these Bible studies have changed people’s lives.
Frank tells of 74-year-old Jake, who had been an oil field worker, and a “rough-neck in the truest sense of the word.” Frank was teaching on the Genesis account of Adam and Eve being exiled from the Garden, and commented that the “rest of the Bible is an account of how God is seeking us to get back into fellowship with Him.”
Jake was present that day. He later told Frank, “It never occurred to me that God wanted an old reprobate like me.” Jake’s life changed as a result of understanding a Biblical principle.
“Now,” Frank says, “Jake is the most attractive Christian I’ve ever seen.”
Trinity Bible Studies is Warden’s answer to one of the problems he sees in the church. He also is disturbed that despite all the talk about evangelism and spiritual growth lately, something has been lost. “In all of our debates about evangelical versus non-evangelical or saved versus unsaved,” he fears, “we are losing forever in the United Methodist Church the basic concept that the converted life is different from, and with a different destiny than, the unconverted life.”
But Frank Warden isn’t discouraged and his ministry isn’t hampered by problems in the church. He is not the type to focus for long on problems. Furthermore, he says, “I’m not ready to turn in my badge as an evangelical Christian. I’m optimistic about the Church of Jesus Christ. The ministry is the world’s greatest calling, and I’m thankful to be part of it.”
[1] As of June 1, 1985 Frank Warden will be appointed full-time to Trinity Bible Studies. Address inquires to: Frank Warden, Box 25101, Dallas, TX 75225.
by Steve | May 28, 1985 | Archive - 1985
Archive: Who’s training our youth ministers?
By Duffy Robbins
Who’s training our youth ministers in the United Methodist Church? Sad to say, the short answer is: almost nobody.
Now, that might not send chills up your spine or get your adrenalin pumping—but then again, maybe we don’t understand what is at stake here. Before we can be concerned about who is training our youth ministers, we may need to ask if specific training for youth ministry is even necessary. I’m convinced that it is.
I grew up in a large UM church in the Western North Carolina Conference. During those growing-up years, our church had five different senior pastors, four different associate ministers, two different directors of Christian education, a business manager/church treasurer, and a minister of music.
During that same period in which we had full-time people handling our money and our music, we never once had a full-time person to work with youth. I think that may be one reason · why I dropped out of the United Methodist Church while I was in high school. Eventually, I received Jesus Christ at a Young Life club.
Another reason why I’m convinced of the importance of this issue is based on my own ministry, over the past 14 years, with junior and senior high youth. I have found among them an openness to the Gospel that confirms to me the need for the church to reach young people at an opportune time.
Statistically, most people who ever make a decision for Christ do so by the time they are 21. Only a small percentage of people who have not made Christian commitments by that age will ever do so. Granted, the teenage years can be the years when youth drop out of the church. But with the right kind of outreach and discipleship, those years can be the time when people get established for a lifetime of service. Why then are we not giving specific training in our seminaries so we can reach junior and senior high youth during those critical years?
I’m also convinced that this issue is important because of something that happened while I was youth minister at a UM church which is located “in the backyard ” of a Methodist-related seminary. Every spring, I would be besieged by students from the seminary who were about to graduate and receive their first appointments.
To their dismay almost all found themselves facing some direct responsibility for youth ministry. And they felt ill-equipped for the task. I can’t count the number of times a panic-stricken senior came to me with the request, “Tell me everything you know about youth ministry in the next hour.”
The average seminary graduate is not going to be appointed to the senior-pastor role in a large church. If he or she is appointed to a large church at all, it will likely be as an associate with youth responsibilities. And if the new minister is appointed to a small church with a staff of one, youth ministry will be part of that pastor’s responsibilities. Who is training United Methodists for these very typical scenarios of ministry?
Keeping youth ministers
Probably the most important reason for United Methodists to confront this question is that we have an extremely poor record of keeping youth ministers in our churches for more than 12 months. And if you are a teenager, you aren’t going to open up much of your life to a stranger who, “like the other two guy before this guy,” is going to be gone in a few months. We must reverse the trend in which the name on the youth minister’s office has to be penciled in because it is changed so often.
Training people for youth ministry can help make that happen. A basic management principle is that people like doing what they are good at doing. If someone is well-trained for youth ministry, chances are he will enjoy doing it and maintain some continuity in that position. If he is ill-trained and unprepared, he will seek as quickly as possible to “graduate” to a (more comfortable) senior pastor’s role.
The question of youth ministry training is vital, as well, for anyone with a concern for the perpetuation of the Methodist heritage and tradition. Simply put, this is because many of the folks who know how to do youth ministry and are eager to do it do not come from a Methodist background.
Since there is virtually no UM-related seminary with specific training in youth ministry, it is no surprise that persons interested in it will go to schools where they can receive such training. For the most part, that means going to a Southern Baptist- or Presbyterian- related seminary. The result is that United Methodist churches across the country have to go outside of their tradition to find youth ministry professionals for their congregations.
What sort of training is now available?
A person seeking seminary training specifically in the area of youth ministry has few choices. I do not claim to know of every program of every seminary, but my informal surveys have been discouraging.
I know of only three major seminaries that offer intentional youth ministry training. By “intentional” I mean that these schools provide courses in which youth ministry is given not only attention (“These are principles that can be applied to youth”), but intention (“Let’s explore some ways this can be applied in a church youth program”). Most schools simply offer a course or two that is broad-ranging enough to mention or encompass youth ministry, but gives little focus on the “how-to’s” and “why-to’s” of such ministry.
Of the three seminaries that currently offer the most thorough training in youth ministry (at least ten specific courses are listed in their respective catalogs), Gordon-Conwell in Boston (largely Reformed Presbyterian in theology), Fuller in Pasadena (interdenominational), and Southwestern Baptist in Fort Worth (Southern Baptist), none of these trains the bulk of seminarians who minister in the United Methodist Church. And only Southwestern has a concerted emphasis in youth ministry within the local church.
I have had occasion to take a close look at the seminary that trains more United Methodist ministers than any other seminary in the country. What sort of intentional youth mini try training is going on there? In my opinion, not nearly enough.
What are offered are some excellent general courses on moral development, a general course related to camping ministry, a course related to “church music for youth and adults,” and a catalog full of superb courses related to ministry in general. The only course specifically devoted to youth ministry is an annual three-day seminar. The same seminary offers 27 different course titles in church music.
However, within the United Methodist tradition, this inter-denominational seminary is the leader in youth ministry training! The denominational seminaries generally offer one course every other year.
What should be done?
To begin with, we need to recognize that the training issue is symptomatic of our tendency to relegate youth ministry to a position of low priority. “As long as the kids don’t go in and mess up the sanctuary, who cares about youth ministry?”
We have made it very difficult for men and women to pursue a call to youth ministry and become ordained within our denomination. And once they have been ordained, our message to them, too often, is that they should get out of the minor leagues as quickly as possible and become a “real” pastor.
While serving as youth minister in a United Methodist church, I once introduced myself to our bishop and explained that I was the youth minister.
“Oh, well,” he responded, “you’re not really a minister then, are you?”
I fear that this attitude is reflected and engendered in our approach to seminary training.
Secondly, I am not suggesting that all UM-related seminaries should institute a youth ministry major. That would prove too confining, and it is not necessary. I recommend to ministerial students that they pursue the Master of Divinity degree so they can maintain flexibility in where they choose to serve.
But I am suggesting that a student should have the option of taking several courses that focus solely and thoroughly on ministry to youth. Eastern College, where I now teach, offer ten different courses that focus specifically on youth ministry. Course titles range from “Youth Ministry in an Urban Setting,” to “Youth Ministry Skills,” to “Ministry in the High School Setting,” to “Youth Ministry in the Wilderness” and a special senior seminar in youth ministry. Course work is coupled with field experience in youth ministry placements.
Granted, much of what makes a youth minister effective is not transferable in a classroom. But the same can be said of any minister. It takes more than being young and funny to disciple today’s youth. Our ministers need training if they are to adequately meet the challenge.
David W. (“Duffy”) Robbins is director of the department of youth ministries at Eastern College. St. Davids, Pennsylvania. He is a veteran of numerous leadership posts in youth ministry.
