by Steve | Jul 3, 1992 | Archive - 1992
Archive: Mission Impossible
Is Teenage Discipleship an Oxymoron?
By Duffy Robbins
Mention youth ministry among the average group of pastors or church members and watch how the room comes alive—all of the excitement and expectancy of an appointment for oral surgery.
Around the group, would-be Isaiah’s are thinking, “Lord, here am I; send somebody else!”
It’s understandable, of course. Our society’s response to teenagers over the last 50 years has taught us that these people are drug-crazed, sex-hungry rebels, differing from other lower primates only because they have opposing thumbs, people whose spiritual aptitude ranks barely above plant life.
What it really boils down to is that most of us think of “teenage disciple” as an oxymoron, one of those little phrases like “freezer burn,” “jumbo shrimp,” “congressional action,” “Plymouth Reliant,” “rap music,” or “United Methodists.” Some see “teenage disciple” as just that kind of contradiction in terms.
Yet, the mandate of our Lord is to go into all the world and “preach the good news to every living creature.” No matter how you exegete it, that’s broad enough to even include 14-year olds!
Somehow, we in the United Methodist Church have got to regain a vision for evangelizing and discipling teenagers. We must believe it is possible. We must embrace it as our mandate. We must strategize to make it a reality.
In the words of researcher George Barna:
“Traditionally, we pour the bulk of our funds for outreach and evangelism into ministry to adults. Existing research shows that most people accept Christ before they become adults. With the population aging and with fewer and fewer young adults to reach, we may wish to make a concerted effort at reaching adolescents during the coming decade. If we are striving to efficiently utilize limited resources, we may find that this represents our best approach to evangelistic outreach” (Frog in the Kettle, Regall).
The Process Doesn’t Always Look Like Progress
Perhaps one of the reasons that ministry with teenagers can be sometimes so disheartening is that we’re not completely clear about what we’re looking for. Anyone who has ever had the wonderful experience of parenthood will relate to the fact that it isn’t always so easy to envision the “finished product” of new life and maturity when it’s still early in the process.
I remember when my wife first contracted pregnancy, she didn’t choose to make this happy announcement by putting a daisy on my pillow, or booties in my lunch bag. This wondrous news came to me one morning when I was awakened by the sounds of my wife in the bathroom throwing up. As I stumbled into the bathroom she looked up long enough to proclaim with a smile, “I’m pregnant.” Now, I try to be spontaneous and open-minded, but in all honesty, that moment confronted me with mixed emotions. There was my wife with her head bowed over our toilet bowl with a big smile on her face. I’m asking “what’s wrong with this picture?”
What was wrong, of course, is that the process doesn’t always look like progress. Seeing your wife with her head bowed over a bathroom fixture struggling with morning sickness, it’s difficult to realize that someday that same head will be bowed in prayer at your child’s confirmation. It’s hard to witness this moment of nausea and see it as a moment of splendor. Part of me that morning standing in the bathroom wanted to say, “Oh, this is awful,” part of me wanted to say, “Wow, this is awesome.”
It’s those same conflicting emotions that greet us when we are involved in making teenage disciples because the process doesn’t always look like progress.
Too many of us in the church see the hassles, the pain, the grief and mess of youth ministry, without understanding that beneath ‘this process is a work of splendor. It may not look like it right now, but God is at work here. Even in the midst of this trauma, new life is stirring.
It’s probably significant that when Paul writes to the immature Christians in the church at Galatia, his exasperation takes on the tone of an expectant parent, “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19).
It would be wonderful if youth ministry were only about those great breakthrough moments of new birth and recommitment. But, if teenage discipleship is ever going to be a reality, there will be all those months and years of care and nurture in between that begin with “gestation” and pre-evangelism and continue all the way through the bumps and falls of learning to walk alone.
Kids and God: How Teenagers Grow Spiritually
For most pastors and churches, the only way to regain our vision for that long-term process of teenage discipleship is to learn to see beneath “the nausea and pain” of everyday youth ministry, and recognize that God is at work in this process of sometimes unapparent splendor. That can happen only if we take time to reflect on some of the ways that God brings about spiritual growth in the lives of teenagers.
PRINCIPLE #1: God Doesn’t Always Act When He’s “Supposed” To
If you were asked to reflect back to two or three key spiritual events that brought you to your current relationship with Christ, what would you say? Some might mention a worship service. Others might mention a camp. Quite often, people think back to some crisis experience. What I bet you will often observe is that very few of the key memorable events in your spiritual odyssey are the kinds of events on which we spend so much time and concern in ministry.
Seven years ago I was returning from a trip to Boston with a van load of my youth ministry students from Eastern College. We found ourselves in a blizzard that turned a rather easy six-hour drive into a nerve-wracking twelve hour ordeal of slips, slides and close calls. When we finally got to our exit off the Skuykill Expressway in Philadelphia we ran into a gridlock of backed up cars that trapped us in the van for another six hours! There we sat—twelve of us—praying, singing, freezing, in a van that had no bathrooms.
Finally, several days after our eventual return to campus, students were to write a reflection paper about which part of the course had the greatest impact on them spiritually. Naturally, I expected them to cite some profound insight from one of my lectures. But instead, it was unanimous: the most spiritually powerful part of the course was being trapped on the Skuykill Expressway in a snowstorm for six hours!
I couldn’t believe it. All those incredible lectures (I know good stuff when I hear it), all those wonderful interviews in Boston, and they felt that the most important spiritual benefit came from sitting in a van in a snowstorm. Well, needless to say, the next year we just drove up and parked on the highway for six hours; but, it also reminded me of an important fact about spiritual growth in the lives of young people: God doesn’t always act when he’s supposed to.
While most of the students I’ve worked with may attest to a particular speaker or sermon as having been significant in their Christian journey, there would be precious few who could actually recount what was the topic of the sermon or the text of the study. And yet, it is these kinds of matters that seem to constantly preoccupy us in pastoral ministry.
PRINCIPLE#2: The Bulging Tummy Principle
One of the frustrations of expectant fatherhood is watching the stomach of his pregnant wife for nine months and except for the huge bulge, there doesn’t appear to be any sign of progress. Every now and then, Mom reports a kick or a move and this sets off gawks of anticipation. It’s easy to think from one month to the next, “Well, nothing is going on in there today.” And then, all of a sudden … BIRTH HAPPENS!!
That waiting process is not unlike working with teenagers in ministry. Youth workers spend a lot of time just waiting around. Every now and then there’s a kick or a move, and you start to get hopeful. But most of the time discipling teenagers is about praying, loving and caring for kids while waiting for God to work. And often it looks like nothing is happening.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I left a junior high Sunday school class discouraged and thinking, “Boy, that was a great class today; I wish God could have been there.” And then, of course, months or years later, through some prayer or passing comment or vow of commitment, we get a chance to see that the cumulative effect of those years of faithful nurture had a deep spiritual impact in the life of a student.
One of the reasons that youth ministry has gotten such a bad rap in the church is that we want quick results. We want something that can be written on a report, hung on a wall, or stood up in front of the congregation. But teenage discipleship is not about quick results. It’s about being there and offering patient care and nurture while God does his work in the life of a teenager.
That’s why I like this sign that hangs in my office. It offers a variation on a familiar bumper-sticker theme: GRACE HAPPENS!
PRINCIPLE #3: Negatives With A Positive Effect
Have you ever taken the time to reflect on how many of the key events in your spiritual growth seemed to be negative and painful at the time? I have had countless conversations with adult youth workers who will recount three significant events in their own sojourn with Christ and will admit that at least one of those three events seemed counterproductive at the time.
At a recent youth leaders’ workshop in North Carolina, one youth worker shared how his own encounter with God came through a serious sports injury that forced him to re-evaluate his identity, his plans and his life goals. At the time, he remembered, “It seemed like a lousy break. Now, I can see it was the beginning of God’s restoring me to wholeness.”
That is very important for us to remember in youth ministry. We are so busy worrying about teenagers’ bad decisions and difficult times. Maybe, in John Wenham’s words, we need to be reminded that “God whispers in our pleasure, but shouts in our pain” (The Goodness of God, Inter-Varsity Press).
So many times I will ask my youth-ministry students here at Eastern College to share their story with me about how they came to discover Christ was real, and chose to serve him in some kind of vocational service. It’s uncanny how many times I hear them point back to what at the time could only have been described as a tragedy.
They will point back to a situation that must have seemed to their pastor or youth minister at the time as the final nail in their spiritual coffin. I can’t help but wonder if those pastors and youth ministers have since heard that the tragedy of those high school years was only the earliest labor pain of God bringing a whole new life into reality.
PRINCIPLE #4: Acting Their Age
Several years ago, Gordon MacDonald gave expression to the pessimism many feel about youth ministry when he stated in an article for Youthworker Journal that “Genuine commitment doesn’t happen during the teenage years …” It’s certainly a sentiment easy to understand. How many times has a parent said, “Hey, it’s great that he wants to go down to the city and clean up a vacant lot, but if this thing’s for real how come we can’t get him to clean up his room?”
In response to this skepticism, let’s begin with the obvious: teenagers are quite capable of making commitments—very serious commitments. The kid that sits in his room and practices his guitar for hours, the girl that practically starve herself to lose weight, the guy that runs three miles a day for football, the girl who gives up every night for four months rehearsing for the school musical—all of these teenagers have made very real commitments.
What confuses and discourages us, I think, is that we misunderstand what it means when a teenager makes a commitment to Christ.
I remember 22 years ago falling in love with this beautiful bright-eyed blonde. I knew immediately that she was THE ONE, but of course, I didn’t want to tell her that right away because it would seem shallow and insincere. So I waited and didn’t tell her l loved her until our second date!
To make a long story short: I married her. It has been over 22 years since that first night when I told her I loved her. And guess what? This morning, one more time, I told her again, “I love you.”
What is important to understand is this: when I told her this morning that I loved her, I really meant it. And, when I told her more than 22 years ago I loved her, I meant it. But, what I meant when I really meant it 22 years ago, is quite different from what I meant when I meant it this morning. Since that first time I made a commitment to her, much has changed. We have been married, and we’ve had two babies. I am more aware of what there is of me to give to her, and I am more aware of what there is of her for me to love. That doesn’t mean that my commitment to her at age 18 was insincere or phoney. It just means we’ve matured.
One reason that pastors and youth sponsors tend to be skeptical about teenage discipleship is that we evaluate teenage commitment by the standard of our commitment. When they say, “I’m committed,” they don’t mean what we mean when we say “I’m committed.” That doesn’t mean the teenager’s commitment is not real. It just means they need time to grow and mature.
A Real Possibility—A Real Challenge
For the United Methodist Church in general and for every local church in particular, the opportunity and possibility of teenage discipleship is very real. There is some excellent youth ministry being done right now in some of our UM congregations around the country. But far too many churches are letting this opportunity go unclaimed. Admittedly, the process does not always look like progress. And it’s hard to recruit volunteers and raise money on the basis of a few “kicks” every now and then.
But, I can hope that by understanding how teenagers grow spiritually, we can begin to reaffirm our belief in a God who wants to change kids’ lives. The potential is virtually unlimited, but as a church and as workers we must really believe: “Grace Happens!”
Duffy Robbins is chairman of the Youth Ministry Program at Eastern College in Sr. David’s, Pennsylvania. He has written two books that speak directly to these issues of programming to make teenage disciples, Youth Ministry That Works, Victor Books, Wheaton, IL and Ministry of Nurture: Helping Kids to Grow Spiritually, Zondervan/Youth Specialities, Grand Rapids, Ml. Duffy is a contributing editor of Good News magazine and will write a column entitled “The Next Generation.”
by Steve | May 8, 1992 | Archive - 1992
Archive: First New World Missioner front Cuba
by Cheryl A. Capshaw
For the first time since a New World Mission program was initiated by the United Methodist Board of Discipleship in 1975, a Cuban pastor is participating.
The Rev. Rinaldo Hernandez, Havana, is among 23 missioners from 18 countries who are visiting churches and communities across the United States during March and April.
At an orientation session held in Nashville, Hernandez said recent events in Cuba have brought a recognition of 30 years of discrimination experienced by Christians there. He said that in October “the Communist Party abolished the law by which (Cuba) had been declared an atheist state” and now “many party members have been visiting the churches.”
Others are visiting, too, he said. “We have received hundreds of people. We have been praying for something like this for 30 years.”
He explained that during the 1960s, when Cuba became an atheistic state, all 50 U.S. missionaries fled the country, along with 85 percent of the Cuban Methodist pastors.
“That left 12 pastors for 120 congregations. There was a call to youth to fill empty pulpits. They had to learn while they were in ministry. In the 1970s, things remained much the same, but in the 1980s, things started to change. There was a great hunger for the word of God,” Hernandez said.
Proudly noting that his church, which is located on a college campus, has 200 people attending, he pointed out that about half of that number are 30 or younger. “The generation that was taught that there is no God is the generation that is the church. It’s a challenging time and an exciting time to be a pastor in Cuba,” he said.
According to Hernandez, “It is difficult to be the church in a socialist society. It is not enough for people to have a house, clothing and food. Humans need something else. They need God.”
Evidence of the search for God, he said, is also apparent in a new interest in the ministry. “In 1978, when I was in seminary, I was the only student in my first-year class. I am now teaching a first-year class of 26 students. You have 56 students in seminary; 13 are Methodists.”
The New World Mission evangelistic outreach program brings Christians from around the world each year to the United States where they preach in churches and speak to community groups.
Other countries represented in this year’s program include the Philippines, South Africa, Australia, Singapore, India, Malaysia, Germany, Tonga, Nigeria, Fiji, Brazil, Liberia, Switzerland, Estonia, Sweden, Sierra Leone and Northern Ireland.
U.S. congregation that participate in New World Mission undertake three phases of programming: preparation, proclamation and penetration. It is during the second phase that each New World Missioner spends five days in each of three churches, preaching and meeting with church and community members.
Shirley F. Clement directs the program which has been sponsored by the Board of Discipleship’s section on evangelism since 1975. The next mission will be in 1994.
Cheryl A. Capshaw is communications director of the United Methodist Board of Discipleship, Nashville, Tenn.
by Steve | May 7, 1992 | Archive - 1992
Archive: After the Storm in Los Angeles
While delegates to the General Conference passionately discussed the causes, effects and aftermath of the verdict of the Rodney King case, United Methodists in southern California were ministering to the needs of riot-torn Los Angeles. Two clergy couples are particularly involved in the restoration effort.
Enterprise United Methodist Church in Compton, California became a Saving Station, ministering to those affected by the riots and devastation. By utilizing professionals from within the church, Enterprise reaches the community by:
- offering hot food prepared by a professional chef and served on tables with flowers and tablecloths; providing food bags which include bread, milk, eggs, beans, baby food and diapers;
- offering medical care through doctors and nurses; and
- providing clothing to adults and children.
Open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., the Enterprise ministry stations have aided more than 3,000 people.
The Rev. Lydia Waters says she has received much prayer and practical support from female and evangelical pastors in the area. “We have felt a lot of love from all of this,” she told Good News, “especially from the people in the Emmaus movement and the prayer chain at the Upper Room.”
In the heart of the destruction of south central Los Angeles, the Rev. Kenneth Waters, her husband, transformed his Vermont Square United Methodist Church into an emergency shelter. The day after the riots began the church became a collection and distribution center for food packages for hundreds of needy people.
“The evangelical response has been outstanding,” he said.
In nearby Orange County, the Revs. Gwen and Todd Ehrenborg, pastors of Spurgeon UM Church in Santa Ana, California, organized the area collection to help the front-line churches in Los Angeles.
“As soon as I heard what had happened,” says Todd Ehrenborg, “I called to see how we could pray, how we could help.” Lydia Waters told him that they needed food.
“We organized the Orange County food drive, because being a Christian means meeting the needs of the whole person—spiritual, as well as physical and emotional,” says Ehrenborg. “To me, this is what it means to be evangelical.”
According to the Waters, the clean-up effort has been multi-ethnic and inter-racial, as businessman and street people work together with shovels, rakes and trash bags. “It is cutting across all of the traditional lines,” says Kenneth Waters.
Waters wants United Methodists to know that “the violence in Los Angeles last week was the result of an overload of pain that comes from institutional violence. The victims live with the denial of opportunity, creative expression, and the security and love of a home environment. The pain has been increasing over the years.”
Despite the pain and suffering caused by the King verdict and the subsequent riots, Waters hope that good can come from the experience: “This should be an opportunity to hear the voices coming out of the inner city.”
Good News Media Service
by Steve | May 5, 1992 | Archive - 1992
Archive: Leaders Discuss Evangelism
by M. Garlinda Burton
Prominent United Methodist scholars and some of the church’s most provocative pastors began building bridges among academia, church bureaucracy and grass-roots parishes during an international symposium held in Atlanta earlier this year.
Evangelism—why and how—was the common ground plowed by scholars representing the gamut of church thought and geography, from Malaysia and South Africa to Wilmore, Kentucky, and Evanston, Illinois.
Conclusions drawn by the 35 speakers were myriad, but common observations included:
- evangelism is a “theological imperative” for the UM Church;
- seminarians and pastors are pushed to be administrators and paper-pushers, and lack proper training to perform the “primary task” of evangelism and Christian nurture;
- responsible, effective Christian evangelism is incomplete unless converted people become instruments for social justice and world peace.
Some at the symposium pointed fingers, but most accepted at least partial blame themselves (or on behalf of their disciplines) for the church’s lost fervor for evangelism.
Washington-based professor James C. Logan criticized theological education for “increasingly distancing itself from the community of faith,” in favor of finding credibility “in academic circles.”
“Theologians need evangelism. Theology is faith seeking understanding,” he said, urging colleague theologians to reclaim their place as partners in the church’s ministry.
A coordinator of the symposium, Logan is the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Wesley Theological Seminary, supported by the Foundation of Evangelism. The foundation, which raises money for evangelism education, sponsored the symposium.
Methodism must reclaim its ardor and self-confidence to be an instrument for God’s plan for the world, said the Rev. Peter C. Graves of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Great Britain.
He decried an “ignostic” church—full of people ignorant of the power of their own Christian faith—and contrasted it to the vibrant Methodist renewal movement begun by founder John Wesley.
“The early church grew simply because it never occurred to them not to. The people were so convinced of the Holy Spirit’s power to change people’s lives that they wanted to be a part of that,” Graves said.
He also reprimanded an elitist clergy network for failure to include laypeople in ministry, thereby “ignoring the greatest wasted resource in the church.”
Also championing laypeople was the Rev. George Hunter, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky. “In Wesley’s movement, the ministry and mission of the church was primarily entrusted to laity,” Hunter said. “Methodism radically ‘out-laitized’ other traditional Christian movements in its day.”
But, said the Rev. Kenneth Carder, Knoxville, Tennessee, the church bureaucracy and seminaries do not push evangelistic education or Bible study and reflection for pastors, but stress administrative duties. That leaves little time for personal renewal, much less nurturing laypeople to be in ministry, he said.
While Wesley admonished pastors in his charge to study five hours a day, “pastors and congregations devote prime time to institutional maintenance and administrative tasks, and the hierarchy of the church tends to reinforce and support such use of time,” Carder said.
“In my thirty years as a pastor, I have had only one district superintendent and one bishop to admonish me to study. I have yet to have any (churchwide agency) leader seek to hold me accountable for the theological integrity of my preaching,” he said.
While identifying structural barriers to true evangelistic spirit in higher education and the church bureaucracy, several speakers said evangelism at all levels of the church must be guided by belief that Christianity can make a difference in individual lives and in the world.
Patricia Brown, mission evangelism executive for the church’s Board of Global Ministries, New York, called for renewed connection between personal piety and social holiness, the hallmark of the early Methodist movement.
“Because of our fear of anything that has the appearance of propaganda or proselytism … (our) evangelism has lost its passion,” she said. Brown admitted her own fear of wrong-headed evangelism gone amok—used to manipulate people and evoke “fear and guilt.” However, she urged her colleagues to “do the gospel.”
The Rev. Joe Hale, chief executive of the World Methodist Council, agreed. He lamented that the notion of evangelism has become associated with self-serving “televangelists” and unscrupulous persons concerned only with converting people to their own brand of Christianity.
Quoting late theologian Georgia Harkness, he said, “We must rescue evangelism from the ‘red-light’ district of the church,” and call converted Christians not only to the Good News, but live it out in justice ministries.
M. Garlinda Burton is director of the Nashville, Tenn., office of United Methodist News Service.
by Steve | May 4, 1992 | Archive - 1992
Archive: The NCC and the New World Order
by Alan Wisdom
The long-troubled National Council of Churches (NCC) has a new general secretary who speaks of change. The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell has said that she is “very concerned about the ineffectiveness of our public witness.” She looks toward a kinder, gentler NCC, in closer touch with its constituency and its audience. “I am trying very hard as general secretary to bring a more balanced tone to our statements,” Campbell asserts. “I want them to be more pastoral, more rooted in theology.”
Campbell points to “unity” as the focus for NCC theology, which would appear to run counter to the council’s habit of “prophetic” witness. To be prophetic, by current CC standards, means to begin with the premise that social and class conflicts are fundamental and pervasive in American culture and international affairs—a “structural” problem that requires a radical response on behalf of “oppressed” groups. This requires taking clear side in all social and political issues, which necessarily makes a shambles of unity.
Hence, the dilemma: Will Campbell maintain unity as solidarity with the oppressed in the customary divisive, prophetic style? Or will she seek a broader unity of the Church, a true ecumenism—but at the cost of antagonizing the “prophets”, the self-proclaimed champions of the oppressed, who hold powerful positions in her organization?
There may be no better test for the new general secretary than her special project, a series of NCC consultations entitled “Toward a World Made New: The Public Witness of the Churches and the New World Order.” The project made its debut last November. Significantly, the first paper presented by Yale Divinity School Dean Thomas W. Ogletree offered a challenging re-evaluation of the last 30 years of ecumenical social activism.
Ogletree expressed his sympathy with “the central themes of the ecumenical Protestant witness” since the 1960’s: “racial justice, advocacy for the poor, resistance to an unjust war, and opposition to the nuclear arms race.” Nevertheless, he observed, there was a high price to be paid for adopting that agenda: intensified conflicts within NCC member denominations.
The problem, according to the Yale dean, was that the social witness repeatedly “went beyond—and in some respects, counter to—well-founded traditions of social thought in American Christianity.” For example, most U.S. Protestants have believed that our economy, if managed wisely and justly, could provide for all Americans. Likewise, they have “supported American wars out of a basic confidence in America’s positive role in God’s purposes in this world.” But, Ogletree said, increasingly sharp ecumenical criticisms of U.S. capitalism and U.S. military involvements “placed in question the Protestant presumption of America’s basic goodness.”
Ogletree argued for relinking the churches’ social witness to their peoples’ traditions. He asserted that an effective Christian witness must come to grips with “the reigning civilizational ethic of society.” In the U.S. case, that means our churches must draw critically on American ideals such as liberal democracy and a mixed capitalist economy in order to expand their Christian vision of peace and justice. Ogletree was not suggesting a blind blessing upon “Christian America.” He was affirming that “patriotism has by no means lost all legitimacy within a Protestant social witness, nor has it become improper to celebrate the social and political accomplishments of the American people.”
The Yale dean called for change not only in the churches’ message, but also it’s way of advancing that message. He described the clergy activists, starting in the 1960s, who “had a tendency to identify ourselves as individual prophets.” Their goal, he said, “was to gain control of ecclesiastical structures if we could, and use them in order to promote our own views.” These ecumenical leaders have not listened well to other religious voices, according to Ogletree, and they have the greatest difficulty in communicating with evangelicals in their own churches. They pass resolutions on all sorts of topics, presuming that the numbers (in decline) and prestige of their own mainline denominations would guarantee them a wide hearing.
Taking the Advice
Subsequent presentations indicated, however, that powerful sectors of the ecumenical world were not prepared to accept the Yale dean’s advice. Those in attendance—primarily NCC staff and General Board members, as well as denominational staff—received much more enthusiastically the arguments made by the subsequent parade of speakers who claimed to represent oppressed peoples around the world. These speakers stood fast in their deep suspicion of liberal democracy, capitalism, and the entire “reigning civilizational ethic” of this country. The victimizer, of course, is and was the evil West.
Dr. Ninan Koshy, former director of the World Council of Churches’ Commission on International Affairs, identified himself more generally with “the Third World” and “the South.” From that perspective, he viewed President Bush’s announcement of a new world order as a threat: “The message is heard as one of domination, of unipolar hegemony, of increasing dependency of the Third World on the West. It signals that the United States is unashamedly laying down the rules of the world order and is being prepared to enforce them.” Koshy warned against possible “false hopes” in “the wonders of the free market economy and even democratization.”
Professor Thomas Hoyt of Hartford Seminary sketched a vague vision of the ecumenical movement as “a rainbow coalition which surpasses that of Jesse [Jackson’s].” It would join “women, blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, persons with disabilities,” and others. These would “learn new values of love and sharing” which “may call for a critique and challenge to the economic systems which privilege some and oppress others.”
The Rev. William Sloane Coffin—the epitome of the unreconstructed 1960s clergy activist-delivered the closing summary in fine utopian style. Coffin did not try to focus the NCC’ s concern on a few key issues. Instead he extended Hoyt’s rainbow to include yet another, a trendier oppressed being: “Mother Earth.” He suggested that schoolchildren should “pledge allegiance also ‘to the earth and to all the flora and fauna and human life it supports; one planet indivisible, with clean air, soil and water, economic justice, liberty and peace for all’.”
In addition, Coffin put in a pitch for two revolutionary changes: a redistribution of wealth and an end to all wars. He gave few clues to how these utopian goals might be achieved, except to claim that distinctive Christian doctrines might have to be jettisoned. “What the churches need most to ponder is less their many and differing creeds, more a single ethic of global responsibility” common to all major religions, Coffin contended. The NCC’s speakers knew much better what kind of world order they opposed than the kind of world order they favored. Speakers raged—again and again, often with almost the same words—against President Bush, the United States, and capitalism. The Rev. Dr. Charles Adams of the Progressive Baptist Convention set the tone at the opening worship service: “The President’s New World Order is nothing but the perpetuation of Old World racism, selfishness, hatred and greed.”
Most of the time, there was nobody—at the podium or from the floor—who questioned the repetition of these angry attacks on America. Nobody would directly challenge the anointed spokespersons for oppressed peoples.
Dissent from within
The lone voices of dissent came from the Eastern Orthodox. Most prominent was the Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky of the Orthodox Church in America. He had just ended his term as NCC president, and his own church, with four other Orthodox communions, had suspended its participation in the council. At the closing worship service, Kishkovsky spoke directly: “There were at this conference gaps and absences in our consciousness of human suffering and injustice.” The litany of suffering by oppressed peoples seemed selective, limited to the victims of western capitalism and Christianity. “Why is it that 20 million dead under Lenin and Stalin are not part of the litany?” Kishkovsky asked.
The Orthodox leader also made two points in apparent rebuttal of William Sloane Coffin. First, he urged that the churches’ ideal of community be more strongly grounded in a transcendent theology. Second, Kishkovsky insisted that the council clarify that “the Christian vision of justice and God’s kingdom is not the same thing as a political and economic utopia.” He remarked grimly, “The examples of political utopia from our time are images of hell and genocide.” Kishkovsky’s call “to find a way to make the policies of our government, especially our American government, more obedient to the cause of justice” appeared quite modest in comparison to Coffin’s agenda.
When the former NCC president finished speaking, only about one-quarter of the audience clapped vigorously. Another quarter clapped half-heartedly. And fully half of those attending the conference sat stony-faced with hands folded. They hadn’t liked what they’d heard. They were, after all, some of the very people whom Kishkovsky was criticizing for their selective solidarity, their weak theological grounding, and their embrace of false utopias. These were among the activists who, according to Ogletree, had damaged the ecumenical movement by their radical break with the traditions of their churches.
It was very clear that the NCC elite was not ready to change its tune. Too many ecumenical leaders have too much moral capital invested in the “prophetic” mode of social witness to give it up easily. Joan Campbell and others are to be commended for including voices, like Ogletree’s, suggesting healthier ways for the council to make its witness. But if she wants those voices to be heeded, and the NCC truly to get back in touch with its roots in the churches, she and others like her will have to put up more of a fight. At present, neither Joan Campbell nor any other NCC leader has shown a taste for such confrontation.
Alan Wisdom is a senior research associate with the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D. C. This is reprinted with permission from Religion & Democracy.
by Steve | May 3, 1992 | Archive - 1992
General Conference Afterthoughts
Archive: Yeas and Nays
General Conference is eleven days of highs and lows, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. It is the quadrennial showing of the good, the bad and the ugly within United Methodism. We arrive in unity with singing and communion and leave divided over politics and theology.
On the way to the final evening of adjournment, delegates and observers experienced many highs and lows, disappointments and encouraging moments:
- It was encouraging that delegates voted to fast 24 hours and contribute their meal money to post-riot Los Angeles relief efforts. A special offering garnered $24,000.
- It was disappointing, however, to discover from the Religious News Service that General Conference would cost $37,362 per hour or a total of $3.1 million for the 11-day event.
- It was encouraging that the delegates were not overcome with a spirit of pessimism about the future of United, Methodism, even though we have lost almost 250,000 members within the last four years. They voted in favor of ambitious and visionary plans of ministry to Hispanics, Native Americans, older adults and deaf and hearing-impaired persons.
- It was disappointing, however, to see that the General Conference refused to establish a separate Board of Evangelism to show our corporate interest in spreading the uniquely good news of Jesus Christ to everyone.
- It was encouraging that delegates rejected the General Council on Finance and Administration’s request for a 4.5-percent-per-year increase in the church budget.
- It was disappointing, however, to hear that the agreed upon increase in the budget will mean that apportionments from local churches, many of which are already financially strapped, will increase an average of 2.5 percent a year in 1993-96.
- It was encouraging that delegates voted to move the Board of Global Ministries out of New York City, even though it was delayed for an additional four years.
- It was disappointing, however, that the delegates did not vote to pare down the top-heavy church bureaucracy by reducing the number of voting members on general agencies to 72.
- It was encouraging to hear the high-caliber discussions going on at the lunch-time briefings sponsored by the Institute on Religion and Democracy over the usefulness of General Conference resolutions, the future of Islamic-Christian relations, and ministry opportunities in the former Soviet Union. The leadership of John Stumbo and Diane Knippers was first-rate.
- It was disappointing, however, to watch as members of “Affirmation,” the caucus of lesbian, gay and bisexual UMs, were allowed to disrupt the General Conference with their protest banner and foot-stomping. Furthermore, it was discouraging to see some delegates, including the head of our Board of Church and Society, stand in prolonged solidarity with the protesters.
- It was encouraging that delegates approved May as “Christian Family Month,” with emphasis on family worship in the home, on setting aside a day of prayer for the family, and on the family in local church worship and program planning.
- It was disappointing, however, to hear so little serious discussion from the General Conference floor about the breakup of the family in America.
- It was encouraging to see delegates intentionally amend the proposed Book of Worship so as to avoid any direct references to “Mother God,” even though God is referred to as “Mother” in three different places.
- It was disappointing, however, to hear two different bishops intentionally avoid the phrase “Father” when referring to God. One bishop ignored it in a printed liturgical program and the other bishop avoided saying “Father” during a Scripture reading during a morning devotional.
- It was encouraging to see over 200,000 signatures in support of the spirit and the call to action of the courageous Memphis Declaration.
- It was disappointing, however, to hear some delegates, in committee and from the floor, downplay the importance of such an outpouring of grassroots sentiment in such elitist and condescending tones.
- It was encouraging to go home and return to our local churches where the ministry of Jesus Christ is evident year round.
