Thom Corbett
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Archbishop Ted Scott added a new flavor to ecumenism last month, and not everyone liked his sense of taste.
Scott opened the doors of the 3,000-seat Saint Paul’s Cathedral in Toronto (Canada’s largest Anglican church) for an interfaith service featuring Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama. Scott, who chairs the World Council of Churches Central Committee and is primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, invited the top leaders of the city’s religious community.
A handful of protesters from the Toronto Free Presbyterian Church picketed outside Saint Paul’s. But for the most part, the 45-minute service ran without a hitch. Scott, representatives of the Greek Orthodox and Jewish communities, and two chanting Buddhist monks, participated in the service.
Scott explained to the 1,000 attenders that the Dalai Lama is Tibet’s Buddhist leader by virtue of his followers’ belief that he is the fourteenth reincarnation of Tibet’s patron saint. The archbishop bemoaned the fact that as a child he was never exposed to other religions but now felt it was important to acquaint other people with them.
Following a reading of the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3–12, the Dalai Lama (described in an official release as “possessing the nature of God in the form of a human being”) spoke in halting English of the need for “inner peace,” without which food, clothing, a home, or other material goods were useless. A heckler interrupted at several points.
Despite the presence of a flock of personal bodyguards, the crowd created a few tense moments. One woman attempted to present the Dalai Lama with an offering of cheese, crackers, and bottled water, while another woman offered him her two-year-old son. Both offers were rejected with stony silence and a gentle shove from a bodyguard, as the Dalai strode out of the Gothicized church surrounded by well-wishers who attempted to touch his flowing robes.
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Tom Minnery
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Two years ago, the Internal Revenue Service thought it had a good idea: private schools desiring to keep their tax exempt status would prove they don’t discriminate by enrolling a quota of minority students, vigorously recruiting minority teachers, and through other measures. Since most of the nation’s 20,000 private schools have religious ties, church leaders across the country howled at this government intrusion. The IRS was buried in nasty letters, and Congress passed a law prohibiting the IRS from spending any money to activate the plan. It was shelved.
Now the IRS has begun—but only in Mississippi—to do almost exactly the same thing. This time, however, the IRS is armed with something with more force than its own regulation: it has a District of Columbia federal court order. The order requiring the IRS to act resulted from a Mississippi discrimination suit, Green v. Connally, filed in the early seventies and finally settled by the June court order. The IRS intends to obey the order rather than appeal it, Congress and public opinion notwithstanding.
About 20 schools in Mississippi have refused to answer exploratory questionnaires, sent by the IRS, which ask for information about the racial makeup of the schools’ students, faculties, and administrations. One of these is the tiny, 14-student Greenwood Christian School in Greenwood, which hired a Washington lawyer and drew a line firmly in the dust. The attorney, John Whitehead, said in an interview: “This is the number one issue as far as Christian schools go. We may stand or fall on how we respond to it.”
Until now, all the IRS could do about suspected racial discrimination was require each private school to publish an annual statement saying it does not discriminate; outside Mississippi that is still all it can do. Because of the June court order, the IRS must now require Mississippi private schools to provide, among other things, proof of their attempts to recruit minority students and teachers, and to reveal the racial composition of their boards. An IRS spokesman said the court order requires just about what the 1978 IRS proposal did, which was so fiercely fought. Like the 1978 regulation, the court order does not apply outright to all private schools, only to those that began or expanded during local desegregation, or to those whose racial policies are in legitimate doubt.
If there is any school in Mississippi that need not fear a racism probe, it would seem to be Greenwood Christian, which was started in 1971 by Grace Bible Church. According to church elder George Whitten, the school had three black students one year, and another year it had one, although there are none this year. Whitten, who is a lawyer, and the church’s other elder (John Hey, a physician), serve as the school’s administrative board. Besides blacks, the school has had students from India, whose fathers were professors at nearby Mississippi Valley State University. One Indian family was converted to Christianity because of its association with the school and the church. Whitten said.
The school graduated its first high school senior the year before last, and he was a National Merit Scholar. The third student, who will graduate next spring, is a National Merit semifinalist still in the running. Despite its credentials, Whitten said the school will not obey the IRS’s request for information: “When the government comes in with a blanket order like this, it’ll get you all tangled up and you just can’t operate.… One piece of information I know we can’t provide is the racial composition of our board of elders.”
Whitten claims that the fact the IRS isn’t fighting the court order means it has a “sweetheart” deal with the court, whereby the IRS is letting the court force it to do what it really wanted to do all along but couldn’t because Congress and the public intervened. A spokesman at IRS declined comment on that question, saying only that the agency reviewed all the pertinent facts before deciding not to fight the court order by appealing it to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Lawyer Whitehead believes the IRS is especially eager to comply because the order applies in Mississippi. “Why Mississippi? The IRS isn’t stupid. What pops into your mind when you say ‘Mississippi?’” The answer, of course, is segregation. Whitten believes the people at Greenwood Christian will win little outside sympathy for their stand against the IRS because it is a Mississippi school. If they are alone in their fight, they may not stay that way for long, however. Another case is percolating through the courts that would apply the Mississippi court order to private schools in all states, and depending on how that suit is settled, private school interests across the nation might end up standing in line to join the Mississippi schools in another round against the IRS.
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(The following story is based on reports from CHRISTIANITY TODAY correspondent Mark Komaki in Japan, journalist Roger Palms, and CT interviews.)
Because numbers don’t always tell the whole story, church leaders avoided drawing overly enthusiastic conclusions about evangelist Billy Graham’s October meetings in Japan. But with record crowds attending in every city and unusually high numbers of Christian commitments, the crusade showed them something is happening spiritually in Japan, a nation where fewer than 1 percent of the 120 million population are Christians.
“The Japanese pastors feel there is a new openness to Christianity,” said Donald Hoke, former missionary educator who founded Tokyo Bible College in 1955 and served as its president until 1972. Hoke gave Graham background ideas and information gained during his many years in Japan, as he circulated among church leaders and former acquaintances during the month-long campaign. He found a “new interest” and a “seriousness of response” to Christianity among the Japanese.
Results from the October 4–26, six-city Japan Billy Graham Crusade seemed to confirm that observation:
• Statistics showed an aggregate attendance of 330,000. More than 25,000 persons inquired further about making a Christian commitment (an almost 8 percent response).
• In Fukuoka, a city with only 1,000 church-going Protestants, a total of 36,000 persons attended two nights of meetings in a local baseball stadium, despite driving rains.
• New cooperation between Japanese evangelicals resulted in a well-organized, well-publicized campaign. Local churches finished raising the entire $970,000 crusade budget before the meetings ended. The local Osaka and Tokyo committees even made sizeable donations to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
The Graham crusade fit into a three-pronged initiative first conceived two years ago, primarily by evangelical pastors from the Osaka area. They set goals of (1) mobilizing 100,000 prayer companions for evangelism; (2) emphasizing church growth among the local congregations; and (3) holding a crusade to serve as a catalyst for reaching the other two goals.
Crusade planning received the strong support of missionaries from U.S.-based agencies. Ken McVety, a 31-year Japan missionary veteran, and Verner Strom, both of The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM), served on the Tokyo committee.
Crusade planners recognized ties that continue to block Japanese openness to Christianity. The Graham organization bought ads in evangelical magazines prior to the campaign, requesting prayer for the meetings.
The tiny Christian church in Japan historically faced government obstacles. Roman Catholicism arrived in the mid-sixteenth century, and widespread acceptance made it the strongest unifying Christian force in feudal Japan. However, Japanese rulers, fearing the church’s influence, imposed harsh restrictions. Newspaper historical studies tell of Christian martyrs. Not until 1873 was the law repealed that forbade persecution of Christians; prior to that, people received awards for informing on secret Christians. Those days have long since passed, but the memories remain.
Many of the materially rich Japanese care little about spiritual things, and others lack any awareness of the Bible. Many Japanese have no consciousness of sin, and think it’s something “only criminals do,” commented one Graham team official.
Japan’s Buddhist and Shinto followers are among the most devout in the world. Strong devotion to family remains, with roots in the once-strong practices of ancestor and emperor worship.
In many Japanese families yet today, the older son gets the inheritance, and parents arrange their children’s marriages. Decisions are often made by the family, not by the individual. The non-Christian whose family is Buddhist might fear making a Christian commitment since that would seem a betrayal, and perhaps lead to ostracism.
Because a Christian commitment may involve far-reaching consequences, crusade organizers hoped the thousands of inquirers truly meant spiritual business and that they didn’t act from a herd instinct. Advisers had asked Graham to make clear in his messages all the possible implications of accepting Christ as Savior.
He did; for example, in one sermon he stated specifically that following Christ may lead to difficulties with family, friends, and business associates: “But you must say, ‘Yes, I am willing to face it and do anything to have Christ in my life.’”
Graham kicked off the Japan campaign with a news conference in Tokyo, which was designed to begin whetting the interest of the mass media-conscious Japanese. Throughout the crusade, organizers promoted the meetings with television and radio spots, advertisements in newspapers and on trains, and with posters and literature handouts.
The evangelist made Okinawa his first stop. The October 4–5 meetings attracted the highest rate of inquirers of any of his stops: about 4,400 out of a total attendance of 34,000—a 13 percent response. Graham next spent five days (Oct. 8–12) in Japan’s commercial center and second largest city, Osaka, where a total of 115,000 attended the meetings in Nissei Stadium.
In the week before Graham’s next stop, evangelist and associate Leighton Ford led two-day crusades in the cities of Nagoya (Oct. 14–15) and Hiroshima (Oct. 16–17). A typhoon’s rains dampened the meetings in Nagoya, called the “Valley of the Gospel,” with more than 160 churches in and around Japan’s third largest city.
The same inclement weather hit Fukuoka when Graham arrived for October 18–19 meetings. Torrential rains fell even as the audience came, and continued through the meetings. But attendance still ran high.
Planners attributed the success to advance prayer. The national crusade committee promoted the Operation Andrew program, in which Christians promised in writing to pray for non-Christian friends, and to bring them to the meetings. They also cited thorough publicity: three movie theaters in Fukuoka, for instance, ran commercials saying, “Billy Graham has preached the Word of God throughout the world and has now come to Fukuoka.” Organizers planned a “Graham tour” for Christians in Kagoshima, 240 miles away. They came by airplane and returned home by sleeper train.
Graham concluded his Japan outreach with five days of meetings (Oct. 22–26) in Tokyo’s 50,000-seat Karakuen Stadium. More than 1,100 local churches supported the Tokyo meetings, and more than 43,000 persons packed the stadium for the final Sunday afternoon service. Church leaders called the response higher than that in Graham’s Tokyo meetings in 1967, his last preaching campaign in Japan.
Speculations vary about the past and future of evangelism in Japan. Osaka Governor Masuru Kishi speculated that Japan has remained only 1 percent Christian because “Christians have not made their message clear.” Perhaps with that in mind, Graham fully explained scriptural terms and steps of salvation in all the meetings. He often said, “I want to make the teachings of Jesus so clear that every one of you will understand.” Many attributed Graham’s clarity to the skill of his interpreter, Evangelical Free Church pastor Yosuke Furuyama of Osaka.
Through the Graham meetings, Japanese church leaders gained hope for the future, said TEAM missionary McVety. “People are realizing that their Japanese countrymen are winnable.”
Church leaders eyed the high response of Japanese young people. A 1975 poll had shown that 60 percent of the Japanese young have no interest in seeking any religious affiliation. Yet in Tokyo more than 40 percent of the 11,000 inquirers were between the ages of 16 and 29. At Graham’s first meeting in Osaka, two-thirds of the 900 inquirers were under 30 years old.
Individual Christians give more money to the local church now than when he was in Japan in the middle 1960s, said Hoke. In addition, he said, Japanese evangelicals seem to have broken the pattern of small churches of 30 or so members. Now, some churches have from 100 to 300 members.
Some evangelical congregations have shown 100 percent growth since Graham’s 1967 meetings in Tokyo. During the same period, the liberal United Church of Christ in Japan (formed when the Japanese government during World War II forced all the churches into a single body, and which still comprises about two-thirds of the nation’s 800,000 Protestants) increasingly lost members.
As with any Graham crusade, the ultimate impact depends on the incorporation of inquirers into existing churches, but especially is this so in Japan. One Osaka pastor, for instance, got 300 referrals to his church. The national crusade committee, headed by Osaka pastor Yukio Nagashima, trained local church pastors in the same follow-up procedures as those used in Graham’s U.S. crusades. A Graham team member noted, “If the new Christians don’t get into the churches, they might drift away—especially since there aren’t cultural reinforcements for being a Christian in Japan, as there are in the U.S.”
Catholics
Bishops’ World Synod Ends; Traditional Views Upheld
From the outset no one figured the world synod of Roman Catholic bishops, meeting in Rome during October, would try to nudge the church into uncharted doctrinal waters. And as the meetings wound down last month, that appeared to be how things turned out.
As the final reports to Pope John Paul II were being written, the bishops were expected to reaffirm the 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae” (Of Human Life), written by Pope Paul VI, which condemns all forms of artificial birth control. American Catholics, hoping to see some small sign of softening by the bishops on this most nettle-some of Catholic doctrines, were likely to be disappointed.
John Paul called his first synod to address the subject, “The Role of the Family in the Modern World,” and it was attended by more than 200 Catholic church leaders, including 16 Catholic lay observers. The synod, the body that advises the Pope on matters of his choosing, was the sixth since 1967 on various topics.
Although they didn’t challenge doctrine, the bishops in their floor speeches did signal the need for a more “pastoral” approach to the deep cleavages brought about by the contraception issue, as well as by the church’s teaching on divorce and remarriage. To the surprise of many, the bishops openly stated that most Catholics do not obey the church’s ban on artificial birth control. They asked for a more loving approach on the whole subject of sexuality, although just how that is to develop remained unclear.
The depth of concern about birth control surfaced on the first day of the synod when Archbishop John Quinn of San Francisco, speaking as president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, called for a “new context” for the church’s teaching on birth control, while remaining carefully within the bounds of the 1968 encyclical. He spoke forcefully in spite of the fact that Pericle Fellici, head of the church’s highest ecclesiastical court, reminded the bishops that because of the encyclical the issue was closed and need not be discussed.
In his closing speech to the bishops, the Pope seemed to dash the hopes of divorced, remarried Catholics who would like to be readmitted to Holy Communion. The Pope said only those remarried divorced Catholics who abstain from sexual intimacy can be welcomed back. The bishops were in a more conciliatory frame of mind, however. In one of their 43 recommendations to the Pope, they suggested that the church study how in some cases the Eastern Orthodox church found a way to readmit divorced, remarried members to Communion.
There were some odd moments during the synod, brought on by misinterpretation of remarks. San Francisco’s Quinn was widely reported to have challenged the Humanae Vitae encyclical, and the on looking press thought it glimpsed some hierarchical dissent. Only after a clarification was issued in five languages was it clear that Quinn was not departing from doctrine.
The Pope twice told the bishops in his speeches that a husband could even commit the sin of adultery by lusting after his own wife. In context, the Pope was actually saying that even within the bounds of marriage a husband may not use his wife for his own physical pleasure only, at the expense of his other responsibilities to her.
Israel
Name Has Ancient Ring but Modern Purchasing Power
Israel completed its switch from pounds to shekels last month. By changing the currency to the Old Testament-era shekel, government officials hoped to restore confidence in the nation’s currency, and help return the land to its biblical roots.
However, it’s tough trying to compensate for 3,000 years of inflation. Scripture notes that King David bought the site of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem for 50 shekels of silver. A national wire service pointed out that 50 of today’s shekels, at six to the dollar, wouldn’t buy hamburgers for a family of four.
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The Genuine Christian School
Who Educates Your Child? A Book for Parents, by D. Bruce Lockerbie (Doubleday-Galilee, 1980, 192 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Larry M. Lake, English teacher and department chairman, Delaware County Christian School, Newtown Square, Pennsylvania.
What are the goals of education? How can we achieve those goals? What can parents do to be sure their children receive the best education possible?
Bruce Lockerbie, writer and educator at the Stony Brook School, suggests answers to such questions. In the first three chapters, he surveys the essense of education as the shaping of character, the building of self-discipline, and the inculcation of Christian ethics. He next analyzes the deterioration of U.S. public education, explains parents’ privilege in choosing schools for their children, and offers guidelines to evaluate the quality of education a school offers. He then surveys the history of Christian education and key shortcomings of schools that claim roots in that tradition, and describes the major features of a genuine Christian education. In the final chapter he describes what a responsible school expects of parents, and what God expects of parents. A valuable appendix of education terms and a helpful guide to further reading follow.
Lockerbie’s warnings about some aspects of the Christian school movement are extremely important. He argues, “A school—any school—is a very special place. It has specific responsibilities not pertaining to other institutions, chiefly academic responsibilities. So a Christian school must not confuse its identity or be confused with, say, a Christian camp or a Christian orphanage!… Parents who are looking for something other than a place of academic learning—whose children may need psychiatric treatment or restraint for incorrigible behavior—must be honest themselves and not expect a school to do the work of a clinic or penitentiary.”
But most of his energy and concern are reserved for a defense of what a Christian education should be. He identifies the goal of education as integration: wholeness. While other schools may excel intellectually and have first-rate programs in physical development, while they may even acknowledge the importance of religious experience and teach an altruistic concern for others, the genuine Christian school knows, as Erasmus said, “All studies … are followed for this one subject, that we may know Christ and honor him.”
In a day when there is increasing confusion about the goals of education, the declining quality of public schools, and the conflicting claims of educators, ministers, and parents, this book can be an important guide to careful thought, fervent prayer, and effective decision making.
Growing Old In Christ: A Survey Of Books On Aging—Part I
Books on Aging are reviewed by David O. Moberg, professor of sociology, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
In 1960 Henry Jacobson stated that older people were beginning to receive the attention they deserve from everyone except the Christian church. Happily, the situation now is better.
Publications mentioned here are a sampling of the better works currently available on the subject. They are like the aging themselves: each unique in orientation, purpose, intended audience, scope, and style. Yet most are similar in three respects: flawed by occasional dubious or questionable statements, lacking in indexes or containing incomplete and sketchy indexes to help retrieve choice passages and topics. And, except for textbooks and specialized studies, they are based to a considerable extent upon personal or professional experiences in relating to or working with aging people.
General surveys.The Fullness of Life (Lutheran Church in America), edited by Cedric W. Tilberg, covers the topic well, integrates the role of the church and religion into all chapters, and includes an exceptionally good list describing films on aging. Florence M. Taylor’s You Don’t Have to Be Old When You Grow Old (Logos) has 26 chapters reflecting upon a variety of experiences and ideas she has confronted in her post-80 “winter years.”
Based on his extensive reading and experience, the late theologian-minister, Robert Worth Frank, wrote between ages 75 and 88 a stimulating series of sermonettes, meditations, and reflections on aging: Talks on Old Age (Montview Boulevard Presbyterian Church, 1980 Dahlia St., Denver, Colo. 80220, enlarged edition, 1978). Participation in a senior adult retreat and observations as a pastor’s wife led Pauline E. Spray to write The Autumn Years: How to Approach Retirement (Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City), a smoothly written compendium of wholesome counsel for people in the retirement years. It consistently integrates Christian perspectives into discussions of mundane as well as spiritual topics.
The Fourth Generation (Augsburg), by John M. Mason, is based upon decades of leadership and consultation in church-related agencies and programs in aging. His thoroughly informed and passionate revelation of the dehumanization confronted by the elderly—partly as a result of well-intended governmental regulations designed to protect them—contributes significantly to his goal of producing constructive action in churches and society. Perhaps the best overall textbook on the subject remains The Church and the Older Person (Eerdmans, rev. ed., 1977), by Robert M. Gray and David O. Moberg.
Retirement planning resources. There is some very useful material here among retirement planning books. Except for an almost total neglect of religion, Looking Ahead (American Association of Retired Persons), by the staff of Action for Independent Maturity, and The Complete Retirement Planning Book (Dutton), by Peter A. Dickinson, are probably the best overall guides to retirement planning. Both cover major areas for consideration with helpful questions, suggestions, and information. On matters of income, medical costs, taxes, and other financial topics, the best single guide available for preretired and retired people and the professionals who work with them is probably Consumer Guide: Get More Money from Social Security, Government Benefits, Medicare, Plus … (Publications International, 3841 W. Oakton St., Skokie, Ill. 60076), by Peter A. Dickinson and the editors of Consumer Guide.
Sunbelt Retirement (Dutton), also by Peter A. Dickinson, is a guide to each state and many specific communities across the southern strip of the U.S., from North Carolina to California and Hawaii. It includes such useful information as temperatures by seasons, housing costs, quality of medical care, recreational and cultural attractions, services for senior citizens, and cost of living. But it gives no guides to “houses of worship” or religious values, leaving their exploration up to each individual.
Three excellent action-oriented books for aging people deserve special mention. John Warren Steen’s Enlarge Your World (Broadman) shows senior citizens a wide range of constructive ways to express their Christian faith by using their “senior adult power” correctly and profitably in society and the church. The Forty Plus Handbook (Word), by David Ray, on “the fine art of growing older” is a guide to retirement planning and living. It clearly places spiritual wholeness at the center of all plans and activities. Oren Arnold’s The Second Half of Your Life (Harvest House) has the same goal and is filled with humorous and anecdotal materials that increase reading interest; at only a few points is its commonsensical advice of dubious quality.
Problems of “middlescence.” Herbert B. Parks has built his counsel in Prime Time (Nelson) upon personal experiences of “the turbulence of middle age,” during which he almost ran away from a fruitful ministerial and educational career. His book is like a collection of sermons linking contemporary experiences with biblical characters and passages.
Similarly, Jim Conway has provided an excellent resource as a result of his own personal crisis plus pastoral counseling and study of the subject. He touches upon all areas of personal, family, and professional life and reveals both inner and external sources of help in Men in Mid-Life Crisis (David C. Cook). Gerald O’Collins, S.J., The Second Journey (Paulist), also covers “spiritual awareness and the mid-life crisis,” drawing particularly upon literary and historical resources and emphasizing his personal belief that we find ourselves when we are found by Christ and his community.
The marital and family crises of middle age are the focus of Elof G. Nelson’s Keeping Love Alive (Augsburg). It draws upon Christian values to show how to find fulfillment during the middle years of marriage. Shirley Cook shows married women how to face their midage crisis as Christians in Building on the Back Forty (Accent Books). All of these midlife crisis books weave spiritual values and perspectives together with earthly experiences and trials, and include at least indirect recognition that coping satisfactorily is good preparation for old age.
Jerusalem, The Golden
Jerusalem, City of Jesus, by Richard Mackowski (Eerdmans, 1980, 224 pp., $29.95).
Not everyone can make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. But everyone can read this book, which is as good a second choice as could be made. This is an extremely well-researched, well-written, and beautifully illustrated volume that makes the Holy City live in a way few books do.
Mackowski begins by circling the city looking at the roads, hills, and valleys. History comes to life as he recounts the events preceding Jesus’ life. The walls, gates, and water supply are then discussed in detail, emphasizing what archaeology has shown. Written in 1977, the book unfortunately does not include some of the most recent information, such as that regarding the possible Essene Gate on Mount Zion. The fortress and the temple are nicely handled.
The events surrounding Jesus’ death and resurrection are reverently and accurately handled, in my view. It is a bit odd, however, that the chapter about the resurrection should be called “The Garden Tomb”—with a picture no less—when Mackowski explicitly rejects the theory that the so-called garden tomb was the place where Jesus was buried.
The photographer, Garo Nalbandian, is to be commended for his fine work in this volume. Altogether, it is a magnificent and valuable work that will be welcomed by everyone interested in the life of Jesus and the city of Jerusalem.
The Best In Biblical Geography
Student Map Manual: Historical Geography of the Bible Lands (Pictorial Archive, 1979, 167 pp., $29.95 [distributed by Zondervan]).
Many years have gone into this atlas/manual, produced under the leadership of James Monson and directed by Richard Cleave. The results are staggering in the wealth of detail they contain. Two wall-size maps (1:275,000) are divided into 15 sections (1:215,000) with a west-to-east orientation, containing a color-coded historical and archaeological atlas. The perspective (W to E) takes some getting used to, but it does reflect more accurately the orientation of the Bible.
The following section contains all the known archeological sites of the Holy Land from Chalcolithic to late Roman and Byzantine times. This is conveniently arranged by time period. Seventy-eight maps follow, going through the same periods of time, and giving in minute detail the place names, locations, wadis, international roads, local Roman roads, historical events, biblical references, and references to secular writings, where known.
A special section on the archaeology of Jerusalem is the most current and best available anywhere. The diagram is color-coded to indicate what is certain archeologically and what is merely probable or conjectural. This section alone makes the work worth having. An index of 865 names summarizes all that is known about this area.
It would be hard to find fault with this labor of love that makes such a stupendous amount of information available. It is definitely not for the intellectually indolent, however; when you read it, be prepared to learn something about the Bible.
Does God Exist?
How to Think About God: A Guide for the Twentieth Century Pagan, by Mortimer J. Adler (Macmillan, 1980, 175 pp., $9.95), is reviewed by Troy D. Reeves, associate professor of English, Angelo State University, San Angelo, Texas.
The audience for How to Think About God is identified by its subtitle, “A Guide for the Twentieth-Century Pagan.” Defining a pagan as “one who does not worship the God of Christians, Jews, or Muslims; an irreligious person,” author Adler makes it clear that he does not intend the term in a derogatory sense. In fact, the author identifies himself as a pagan: a lapsed orthodox Jew who has embraced no religion but has devoted his life to the philosophical pursuit of truth. Adler’s thesis is that the existence of God can be demonstrated on the pagan’s own terms—through use of natural reason alone, without appeal to revelation.
Adler, who is chairman of the board of Encyclopedia Britannica, sets out first to refute the traditional proofs of God’s existence advanced by Christian apologists. He maintains such apologists have never successfully proved God’s existence by use of pure reason because their faith has consistently predisposed them to foregone conclusions. The most famous traditional proof, the argument of First Cause, illustrates the problems. The First-Cause argument assumes that time is a finite creation. But, if time is, in fact, infinite, one need not look for a First Cause; one may track back causes without ever reaching a beginning. Adler also finds unsatisfactory “the best traditional argument,” Aquinas’s argument to necessary being.
Having disposed of traditional arguments and defined the mode of philosophical thought, Adler sets forth what he calls a new and original “cosmological” proof of God’s existence. While conceding that radical contingency may not be accorded any particular existence, Adler argues that it may be accorded the cosmos. There is no reason to think the cosmos could not exist in forms other than the one in which we observe it to exist. And if the cosmos does not have to exist in its present form, then it is contingent and must be kept from existing in some other form by a necessary being apart from itself—namely, God. Adler speculates on the nature of this being, and distinguishes between the God of Christian faith and the anthropomorphic gods of superstition.
Though clearly phrased and devoid of obscurantism, Adler’s book suffers from two deficiencies: faults of logic in the refutations of traditional arguments, and lack of originality in the exposition of a “new” argument. Faulty logic is evident in his insistence that nothing is radically contingent because nothing is ever annihilated. Adler equates one type of Aristotelian cause, material cause, with existence per se. In fact (to pursue Adler’s example), if a chair is reduced to ashes it ceases to exist as a chair. To equate material cause with particular existence is to deny the radical diversity of existence and to make all existence univocal.
But more disappointing is the lack of originality in Adler’s “new” cosmological proof. This is merely an adaptation of Aquinas’s argument to necessary being, demanded not by insufficiency in Aquinas’s logic (which Adler does not fault) but by the author’s insistence that only the cosmos is radically contingent. He fails to explain how the cosmos differs, except in size and complexity, from other existence. Nor does he prove that the cosmos is not part of a larger whole and thus comparable to other existences.
The success of this book does not depend upon the originality of the cosmological argument. Despite its weaknesses, it succeeds because Adler achieves his primary goals: (1) to prove the existence of God can be demonstrated through use of natural reason; and (2) to show the reader how to think about God. What Adler does best of all is set the reader onto the high road of philosophical thought.
Home Of The Centauri
Alpha Centauri, by Robert Siegel (Cornerstone Books, 1980, 255 pp., $9.95; an excerpt is printed on pp. 30–33).
A veritable explosion of fantasy books has taken place, ignited by Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams. Few of them burn very brightly, but Alpha Centauri thus bursts in the sky like the Fourth of July, brilliant to behold.
A University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee English professor, Robert Siegel, has woven a nicely textured story that grips the heart and imagination from start to finish. Although intended primarily for young people, no one will want to put the book down until it’s finished.
It is the story of Becky, who is drawn back in time through the “Eye of the Fog” to the age of the centaurs. They are locked in mortal conflict with the Rock Movers, and the story is told of how Becky enters into their struggles. An unexpected mission is thrust upon her as she realizes she is the fulfillment of some ancient prophecies. She also finds an integral part of her mission is a faithful horse, Rebecca, which becomes a constant and comic companion during her trials. The ancient seer had said: “Then trust the horse to know the rider/And through the night and fog to guide her.” Events move swiftly as the forces of evil tighten the net around the dwindling centaurs.
High adventure, drama, self-sacrifice, courage, a bit of romance—it is all to be found in this well-written and beautifully illustrated tale. The ending is no great surprise, but that is probably because the Christian contours of the story shine through so clearly.
This is a fine work and a joy to recommend. Books like this don’t come along very often.
Missions
STUDIES IN MISSIONS.Religion Across Cultures (William Carey) by Eugene Nida is a primer in how to communicate the gospel cross-culturally. Cultural Anthropology (Zondervan) by Stephen Grunlan and Marvin Mayers provides a Christian analysis of basic human institutions; reading this prepares people to communicate cross-culturally. Many new books deal with specific aspects of the missionary enterprise: The Unresponsive: Resistant or Neglected? (William Carey) by David Liao looks at the homogeneous unit principle in a Chinese village; All Nations in God’s Purpose (Broadman) by H. C. Goerner is a study of missionary themes in the Bible; Let’s Quit Kidding Ourselves About Missions (Moody) by James M. Weber is a hard-hitting statement about American evangelicalism’s failure to take missions seriously; A. J. van der Bent raises more questions than he answers in his critical study, God So Loves the World: The Immaturity of World Christianity (Orbis); Orlando Costas is more positive in The Integrity of Mission (Harper & Row); Michael Collins Reilly, S.J., provides a historical, theological, and cultural study in Spirituality for Mission (Orbis); Mario Di Gangi offers a biblical look at the church’s outreach in I Believe in Mission (Presbyterian and Reformed); and Christ and Caesar in Christian Missions (William Carey), edited by Edwin Frizen and Wade Coggins, looks at problems of church and politics. Two interesting reprints are Key to the Missionary Problem (Christian Literature Crusade) by Andrew Murray, and Student Mission Power, Report of the First International Convention of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 1891 (William Carey). Roger Bassham has written a volume that is a must for students of contemporary missions history: Mission Theology (William Carey). Mission Trends No. 4: Liberation Theologies (Paulist and Eerdmans), edited by G. H. Anderson and I.F. Stransky, is a series of articles on advanced to radical views. The Indigenous Church and the Missionary (William Carey) by Melvin Hodges is a practical discussion of a difficult problem. In the Gap (InterVarsity) by David Bryant is a well-written handbook on being a “World Christian.”
ACADEMIA.Readings in Dynamic Indigeneity (William Carey), edited by Charles Kraft and T. N. Wisley, is a very helpful selection of top-flight articles on missions theory. Bibliografia Missionaria, Anno XLII–1978 (Pontificia Universita’ Urbaniana, 00120 Citta’ del Vaticano) lists over 2,500 books and articles pertaining to missions for the year 1978; an absolute must. Paternoster Press (3 Mount Radford Crescent, Exeter, U.K. EX2 4JW) makes available the Evangelical Review of Theology, a twice-yearly theological journal that contains excellent articles on missions (e.g., “Christianity As an African Religion” by Byang Kato) and much more. It is well worth subscribing to.
ASIA. An interesting book is Christian Art in Asia (Rodopi) by W. A. Dyrness. Needless Hunger (Institute for Food and Development Policy, 2588 Mission St., San Francisco, Calif. 94110) outlines the plight of Bangladesh. Beyond Ideology (Cornerstone) by Won Sul Lee is an excellent, evangelical assessment of the sociopolitical conflict in Asia. The Theology of Change (Orbis) by Jung Young Lee is a less traditional discussion of God in an Eastern perspective. Mindanao Mission (Seabury) by Edward Fischer and Lady of the Tboli (Christian Herald) by Doris Fell tell of mission work in the Philippines.
AFRICA.Africa Christian Spirituality (Orbis), edited by Aylward Shorter, is a valuable collection of readings. Equally valuable is Salvation in African Tradition (Evangel Publishing House, Box 28963, Nairobi, Kenya) by Tokunboh Adeyemo. Leroy Fitts has written a biography of the first black missionary to Africa in Lot Cary (Judson Press).
ISLAMIC WORLD. Helpful books are: We Believe in One God (Seabury), edited by A. Schimmel and A. Falaturi; Dialogue and Interfaith Witness with Muslims (distributed by Moody Books, 469 E. Sullivan St., Kingsport, Tenn. 37660) by Ray Register; The Mutual Effects of the Islamic and Judeo-Christian Worlds: The East European Pattern (Brooklyn College Press), edited by A. Ascher, T. Halasi-Kun, and B. Kiraly. G. H. Jansen in Militant Islam (Harper & Row) probably overstates the case of militancy.
SPECIAL MINISTRIES. David Seal offers Challenge and Crisis in Missionary Medicine (William Carey); Paul Freed writes of missionary radio in Towers to Eternity (Sceptre Books); Leona Fear in New Ventures (Light and Life Press) tells of Free Methodist Mission work from 1560–1979; and Dieter Hessel edits a very helpful book in The Agricultural Mission of Churches and Land-Grant Universities (Iowa State University Press); I Will Build My Church (team, Box 969, Wheaton, Ill. 60187) by Vernon Mortenson is a nicely written and illustrated overview of The Evangelical Alliance Mission’s work around the world.
PRACTICAL HELP BOOKS.The Overseas List (Augsburg) by D. Beckmann and E. A. Donnelly is a valuable collection of opportunities for living and working in developing countries. Here’s the place to look if you want to go elsewhere. You Can So Get There From Here (MARC, 919 W. Huntington Dr., Monrovia, Calif. 91016) is a handy guide to the problems of becoming a missionary. Passport to Missions (Broadman) by W. Guy Henderson, and Mission: A Practical Approach (William Carey) by D. C. Hardin, are both helpful treatments of what is mission.
Neal A. Kuyper
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Many pastors retreat from this supposedly fruitless task to spend time in the many other “worthwhile” duties.
“Does the minister like to call?” This is a question often asked by the pulpit committee in search of a new minister. But is this question archaic? Is it possible to make “calling in the home” a vital part of ministry today?
Such questions may spring from a deeper quest: the parishioner fears he is unknown to his minister. A young couple said to me recently, “We have lived here for two years and direct the church choir; but the pastor has never been in our home.” A tone of rejection sounded in their voices. Could it be that in many denominations there is a direct correlation of the loss of church members and the pastor’s increasing apathy toward home visitation?
Many pastors retreat from the supposedly fruitless experience of calling to spend time instead in numerous other worthwhile duties—sermon preparation, Bible classes, committee meetings, the Sunday bulletin, and other endless tasks. And people come to them in need of pastoral counseling—a death, a baptism, a wedding—and so the hours are filled. There are also books waiting to be read, piles of periodicals that claim our time. But when the sermon has been preached, the Bible class finished, and we shake hands and greet people, do we really know them? Or do we have a sinking feeling that pastor and people are in reality strangers? Calling in their homes may breach this barrier and bring about a new unity and closeness. Too often attempts are made to bridge the gap with such substitutes as small groups and retreats. But can these really take the place of a visit in the home?
The home visit can be revitalized; the advantages are manifold. Consider the following:
1. I think about one person or one family in the church for at least one day. Doing so fixes their name, where they live, and their environment into my conscious thoughts. I am mindful that a good shepherd knows his sheep by name.
2. On arrival at their home, I see the setting of their daily lives. The way I am greeted at the door tells me something of their attitude toward the church and my ministry. Inside the home, I observe the arrangement of the furniture, the colors on the walls, and the pictures. It all speaks to me of the living habits of the family.
3. When I sit down to talk, I want to make certain I learn about the members of the family. I want to know the names and ages of the children, whether or not they attend church school; I want to know about both the churched and any unchurched members of the family; I want to learn of other members of the household—for example, an aging parent.
4. I am now on their ground. They have come to church, now I come to them. They have listened to me preach and teach; now I listen to them. They may tell me about the family, about their work, their joys, and their pain. I now sit where they sit. I become alive to them, caring, and building trust.
5. They may tell me about their journey of faith. A few appropriate questions will help them do this. They may speak of a significant religious experience, of times of barrenness, or of a life experience that brought renewal of faith.
6. It is important to discuss the “here and now.” Are they being nurtured in the church? What would they like to see changed? Have they dropped away from the church because they felt no one cared? While you may be inviting expressions of hostility, you are providing them an opportunity to release repressed feelings, and may find that a first step toward that family’s new redemptive relationship to Christ and the church. It could lead to their commitment to Jesus Christ.
7. Other factors may be revealed in the dialogue experience. A high school student’s need for a closer tie to the church may be noted. An elderly parent may be in a nursing home. Talent within the family not yet utilized in the service of Christ and the church may surface. The pastor can describe resources in the community or the church available for pastoral counseling or organizations that can give assistance with alcoholism, locate help for the special needs of children within the home, or discuss a church membership class.
8. I believe in ending a pastoral visit with Scripture reading and prayer. This is not to do “something religious” but rather to give recognition to Christ within that home. Like the breaking of bread in the Emmaus home revealed the Christ, sharing in dialogue around the Word opens the way for the Holy Spirit to reveal the Lord.
But having explored these values of the pastoral call, a minister still may say, “I just do not like to go calling in the home.” True, many pastors have found ways to use the telephone effectively as well as luncheon and office appointments as means of contact with members. But it may help to look at why we resist and to reevaluate our “standard work week” and provide for pastoral calling to become part of each week. Look at some of the possible reasons for resistance:
1. We may fear closeness to parishioners. We may be a bit shy, and bashful about taking the initiative in going to a home. The desk and the pulpit are more comfortable as the ground for launching our ministries.
2. It is hard to shift gears and listen. Our frame of reference is to preach, to talk, and to give information.
3. We fear criticism of our work—our sermons. We become vulnerable when listening to criticism, for most criticism carries with it pain.
4. People are not readily available. The closed door turns us off, and this gets in the way of developing productive calling.
5. We may feel that deacons, elders, and lay persons should be doing the calling. While these lay persons need training so they will be fruitful as they assist in this endeavor, the people also want to know their pastor.
6. We may say, “I have too many people,” or, “Our people are scattered over a large area. It is impossible.” Yet if you called on only two families a day, four days a week, for 48 weeks in a year, you would have been in 384 homes.
7. You say, “Look at the paperwork I have—church committee assignments, preparation for sermons, Bible classes, board meetings, counseling”—and you’re probably right! But many a pastor testifies that if he visits in homes, it affects his sermons, his classes, his counseling, his committee meetings. He knows the people, their homes, and their families.
A lot of energy goes into our resistance to pastoral calling in the home, energy that could be used to revitalize home visitation. Maybe in rethinking our priorities and emphasis in the ministry we can design a new strategy in home visitation.
It is nice to hear a child say, “I know our minister. He was at our house.” It is a thrill to hear a businessman say, “For years, I have been driving to the church; it feels good to have you stop at our home.” When an elderly woman shakes your hand on Sunday morning, it is a little warmer and has a little more gentleness in it because you shared coffee in her home this past week. And both of you knew Christ was there with you.
Neal A. Kuyper is director of the Presbyterian Counseling Service, sponsored by the Seattle (Wash.) Presbytery.
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Harold Fickett
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Man’s art takes the humble materials of creation and allows them to reflect the spirit.
Evangelicals tend to lament the lack of skillful writers brought up and nurtured in evangelical Christendom, who, in later life, remain faithful in their art to the Christian vision. But to emphasize our shortcomings may hinder the recognition of writers and other artists who are doing good work. It is thus fitting and important to celebrate the accomplishments of Robert Siegel.
Two of Siegel’s books were published this fall: Alpha Centauri, a fantasy novel (an excerpt is on page 30), and a volume of poetry, In a Pig’s Eye (Univ. of Florida Press). These follow The Beasts and the Elders, a collection of poems that prompted the London Times Literary Supplement to remark: “To meet the unpretentious versatility of Robert Siegel after the single-mindedness of other poets is like returning to the mainland after a tour of the islands.” Of Alpha Centauri, Madeleine L’Engle says: “Absolutely fantastic! Has all the qualities of classical fantasy.” My own reading of the second volume of poetry confirms the opinion of Poetry’s associate editor that, “In short, though still relatively young, [Robert Siegel] has demonstrated his mastery of the most difficult of artistic forms … he has already fulfilled much of his promise.”
A warm and radiant Christian faith informs Siegel’s work. Readers of Alpha Centauri will enjoy the superb way the narrative’s young heroine comes to embody the precept: Perfect love casts out fear. As a poet, Siegel draws from the best of the trinitarian romantic and neo-Platonic traditions within Christianity and crafts a poetry that urges the reader toward the place where “the fire and the rose are one,” where natural images reveal the supernatural that sustains them, the “divine milieu” in which the natural world and humanity move and have being. His incarnational aesthetic shows forth in poems that, while undeniably contemporary, are reminiscent of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and G. M. Hopkins.
I asked Bob Siegel about his vocation and his work. After undergraduate education at Wheaton College (Ill.), and graduate work at Johns Hopkins, he earned the Ph.D. at Harvard, where he worked with Robert Lowell, perhaps the most recent American poet to whom critics would venture to ascribe greatness. Coming to understand his vocation as a poet, Siegel feels that it was in his very early college years that he “became a loss to the world of getting and spending.”
After a period of agnosticism, Siegel underwent a “reconversion” as a college sophomore, spurred by reading Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. In this work, he says, the “journey of the Red Crosse Knight [plagued] by evil magicians, sorceresses, and dragons struck me … [with] the capriciousness of life, the sense of a lurking plot, the quick change of the beautiful into the terrible, and the terrible into the beautiful.” He found in “Chaucer, Spenser, Coleridge, and Wordsworth a sense of the divine underlying all things.” If pressed to provide an apologetic for his faith, although insisting that “an intellectual system … is never in any ultimate sense representative of faith, which transcends the mere intellect,” he would point to the philosophy of Coleridge as one schema that, for him, offers an excellent defense of Christianity.
The romantics stressed the need to counter the hegemony of reason over the other faculties of the mind. Similarly, in Alpha Centauri, the author expresses through a pastoral landscape and its mythic inhabitants—the centaurs—the need to present our “whole bodies” as a living sacrifice.
“As C. S. Lewis points out,” says Siegel, “the animals have always represented parts of us that we lost in the Fall, and that we will regain when we are renewed.… You can consider the beasts as the subconscious, the eight-ninths of our minds that are below the surface, the feeling and intuitive part.… In a rationalistic age there’s a tendency among Christians to block out that whole aspect of themselves, to concentrate on rational belief and the will—which of course are very important—but to ignore the feeling and intuitive side of themselves. Yet God, being a jealous God, wants all of us.”
The novel comes off as it does at the end because the heroine, Becky, sacrifices her own self-interest—her whole self—in the cause of the centaurs: she is committed to them as we are to be committed to Christ. Siegel says, “When she can forget herself, even her own fear of failure, and let something else work through her, then she can completely identify with [the centaurs] in love and things open up. I think there is a spiritual principle operating here. This whole climactic scene is central to what I believe is going on in the book.”
Most of Siegel’s energies have been directed into his poetry. He agrees that while the fiction writer wants to expand his tale—to say everything—the poet works at compression. “The lyric poem,” he says, “is organized spatially like the visual arts, while fiction is organized musically: it moves through time.” Citing Coleridge’s exploration of poetry in the Biographia, he settles on the formula, “the best words in the best order,” as a description of what makes the two genres essentially the same.”
For Bob Siegel, “poetry begins in a moment of sharp awareness when things rise up as words and words become things. The mind and what it observes fuse for a moment, and the circle of meaning is complete. The working out of the poem is an attempt to record and elaborate that experience. I sincerely hope that in its own dim way the process is a reflection of creation and also of a consciousness which we may one day clearly have. I agree with Tolkien’s line: ‘We make by the same law by which we’re made.’”
These remarks imply that each word in a literary creation is a logos, an utterance that brings into being—not merely refers to—the thing it signifies. Such a high view of language contrasts markedly with what might be called the “instrumental” opinion of many evangelicals: the word they view as a tool whose only purpose and justification derives from its limited ability to evoke the higher reality of spiritual things. Those who share this view generally place a greater importance on “principles” that lie behind a story rather than the tale itself. They ask the poem or story to illustrate an abstract proposition. But the poet who views words as logoi intends to create the experience from which one may choose to cull abstractions as one means of understanding that experience.
Siegel says the “instrumental” view can be traced back through the “Puritan fear of idolatry … [their eagerness] to distinguish the functional language we use to talk about Scripture from the inspired words of Scripture.… [They wanted to make sure they weren’t] idolizing language, as well as to be absolutely clear in what they said. The functional view was also encouraged by the scientific revolution: the Royal Society [of science] deliberately fostered a simple and straightforward kind of prose in its search for empirical truth. Its ideal harmonized with the intent of Puritan preachers to avoid the adornment and literary art that had flourished earlier in the century in such preachers as John Donne, who were full of puns and verbal plays and metaphors.”
Similarly, Siegel agreed that a one-sided emphasis on the spirit has a corrosive effect on the means, the language, by which we know and evoke the things of the spirit: “It’s so anti-incarnational. We seem to forget that God came into the world and took upon himself our flesh, took matter up into his divinity. That is the thing the Christian artist has constantly to remember: that God divinized flesh … God has honored not only our physical being but our desire to be subcreators; that is, to help him in the matter of creation.… He has graciously allowed us to extend and efoliate—I love that word of Coleridge’s—efoliate the creation. I mean, he may have created the tree, but we’re branches of that tree; we are there extending some of the leaves of it.… Man really has been given license in his art to take the humble materials of creation and to help extend it.”
Robert Siegel does so, and creation is fuller and we are the richer for his efforts.
Mr. Fickett is the author of Mrs. Sunday’s Problem and Other Stories (Revell, 1979). He teaches English at Wheaton College, Wheaton. Illinois.
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Robert Siegel
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An excerpt from the new fantasy novel, Alpha Centauri.
“The Moon of First Harvest” is an excerpt from the new fantasy novel, Alpha Centauri, by Robert Siegel (Cornerstone, 1980). The novel takes place in a mythic time when an evil people called the Rock Movers sought to exterminate the last of the centaurs. Transported through an aperture in time and space, a modern girl, Becky, finds herself caught up in this fight between good and evil; she must finally intercede with Providence on the centaurs’ behalf in order to effect their escape to the star Alpha Centauri. Her ability to do so depends on her enduring many trials, and, most important, learning several crucial lessons. Cavallos, a leader of the centaurs, enacts the most important lesson in “The Moon of First Harvest”; by risking his own life, he shows Becky that love (the source of all true religion) consists in an exchange of one’s own life for another. This is in direct opposition to the false paganism of the Rock Movers who are about to sacrifice another’s life to propitiate their angry god Phogros and thus secure their own well-being. Cavallos and Becky have just escaped from the evil city of the Rock Movers, Longdreth, when they have this excerpted encounter. It shows in miniature, like the works of C. S. Lewis, the “adventure of salvation.”
The moon had come up and her silver light winked through the leaves as Cavallos with Becky riding on his back threaded his way south in the shadow of hedgerows. This night was colder than last, the stars above bright and hard edged. The hint of fall that often haunts early August was in the air. All the insects in the world woke and sang to the full moon as she climbed toward the zenith.
Hour after hour they walked in a dream, punctuated here and there by light from a distant cottage. When they must cross an open field, Cavallos galloped full speed. The moon travelled south with them, and it was hard to believe the noisy crowds of Longdreth and Targ’s foul dungeons could exist in so quiet and beautiful a world.
Becky was nearly asleep when Cavallos stopped.
“What is it?” She sat up.
“Shhh,” he said. They listened. Far ahead and very faint, she heard a long, heart-rending wail.
“There it is again!” Cavallos exclaimed. “It seems to come from the top of that hill.” Becky shuddered. All evening they’d moved closer to the hills, and now the first of any size—still fairly low—lay across their path.
Without warning a light burst from its top. They saw a brief tongue of flame and a rush of sparks heavenward. The sparks were followed by a roar of many voices. The moon stood nearly overheard.
“They must be celebrating the Moon of First Harvest,” Cavallos said softly.
“We can skirt the bottom of the hill,” Becky suggested.
“Yes, we can. And yet—” he broke off.
“Yet what?” Becky shivered, afraid of his answer.
“Yet, if it hadn’t been for you and Rhadas, I would have been the victim at such a ceremony. I feel we must try to save whoever or whatever made that scream.”
And so began a night Becky never forgot. Swiftly they crossed the field into the trees at the foot of the hill. Slowly, tree by tree, they climbed to the top. Here the underbrush had been cleared away, and when close enough, they saw red flames flickering between the trunks. Keeping to the shadows, they crept closer. Soon they heard a rhythmic chant, a low drone, and glimpsed grotesque shadows passing between them and the fire. They couldn’t make out any words except the repeated name, “Phogros.”
The last tree was still 20 yards from the fire. Leaving Cavallos, Becky crept behind it. On the far side of the fire stood a group of men, women, and children in ordinary dress, except for a mark on their foreheads and holly in their hair. They were staring at something with great interest.
Becky jumped when she saw what they were watching.
Naked, except for leaves about the hips, seven tall men danced around the fire. One side of their bodies glistened blood-red; the other, black. The black and red paint divided them from their toes to their scalps, and the whites of their eyes shone hideously. Their hair, red and black to the waist, whirled madly as they danced. Each clutched a stone knife and chanted, raising it whenever he muttered the name of Phogros.
After a while Becky noticed something else. Next to the fire, on a low stone, lay a small bundle, mostly rope. Horns stuck out of one end and little cloven hoofs out of the other. “A sheep,” she thought. “They’re sacrificing a sheep.” Then the horns lifted and, as a log burst, she glimpsed a resigned and terribly sorrowful human face.
Stumbling back into the shadows, she gasped the news to Cavallos. “I was afraid of that,” he said, his voice cool and even. “They’ve found a faun.” Quickly he outlined a plan.
They moved quietly around the hilltop to a point directly opposite and about 50 yards below the top. On the way Becky took out her knife and tested its sharpness. From the new spot, they heard the frenzy increase. “There’s no time to lose!” Cavallos whispered.
Putting his hands to his mouth, his chest expanding far beyond a man’s, he called out in a deep and frightening voice, “I AM PHOGROS! I AM PHOGROS!”
The revel above came to a sudden halt. “I AM PHOGROS!” he repeated.
A high, almost feminine, voice shrieked. “Kill the blasphemer!” With a roar and a flicker of torches the crowd crashed down the slope toward them. Cavallos, Becky clinging to him, slipped quickly around the hill toward their original hiding place. The crowd, as he had gambled, hurried down the far side and spread out over the fields, looking for the “blasphemer.”
From behind the tree, they saw that five priests had left with the crowd. Only two now stood above the victim, watching the moon and chanting under their breath. Cries of “There he is!” and “This way!” floated up from below, answered by others of, “I see him!” and “Over here!” Soon the crowd would return. They must act quickly.
The priests now stood silent over the stone, their eyes wide and unseeing, waiting for the precise second the moon would cross the zenith. From one’s mouth a little foam trickled white in the moonlight. Slowly they raised their knives high over the victim.
“Now!” Cavallos said under his breath, and charged. “I AM PHOGROS!” he shouted, halfway across the clearing. Amazed, the priests turned to find a centaur bearing down on them. They staggered back as Cavallos reached down and snatched up the faun. As he whirled about, one shrieked and with both hands thrust a crooked knife at Becky. Cavallos’s hind hoofs lashed out. Thud, one caught the priest in the middle and his knife flew into the fire. With a cry the other priest turned and ran. Cavallos let that one go and rushed headlong down the hill the way they’d come. At the bottom he raced across the field without pausing, the faun still in his arms.
“There they go—on a horse,” a voice cried out. Becky saw the sparkle of a torch behind them to the right. Cavallos jumped the first hedge, turned a sharp left, and began a wild zigzagging detour around the hill, far ahead of their pursuers. Becky hung on for dear life. After three fields, the farm land gave out and they found themselves in a moonlit beech wood by a stream sparkling among boulders. Cavallos waded in and climbed upstream to avoid leaving a scent.
After a half-hour, they paused to listen. There was no sound of pursuit. Breathing hard, he put down the faun by a moonlit pool, and Becky dismounted to untie him.
“Bless you! Bless you!” was all the faun would reply to their questions as he rubbed his limbs, sore and stiff from the ropes. “Ah, that was a close one, that was!” He kept looking to every side, as if he couldn’t believe they weren’t surrounded by enemies.
By dint of much patient questioning, Cavallos and Becky managed to calm the faun and to piece together his story. He’d been one of a nutting party that ventured out of the wild wood to collect the still unripe acorns favored by the fauns. They’d dared to search for them on the hill sacred to Phogros.
“I sneaked off from the party to have a bit of a snooze,” the faun winked, “and went to sleep under an ash. When I woke, I was surrounded by the two-footed kind. They held hooked knives at my chin.” The party of reapers had bound and imprisoned him. At the memory, he snuffled loudly.
“Do you know these hills then?” Cavallos asked, changing the subject.
“Aye, I was raised in them,” the faun winked again and then, suddenly suspicious—“Why d’ye want to know?” Cavallos explained that their only chance was to hide deep in the hills before they were tracked to this spot.
“And if you don’t wish to roast, we’d better hurry!” Cavallos added, not unkindly. At a whisk, the other was off.
Dorm (for that was the faun’s name) proved to be a reliable, if unusual, guide. He led them up the stream by leaping from rock to rock and then on a stony path that only his eye could follow. Last, he disappeared. When they’d nearly given up on him, he returned to lead them across the shoulder of a hill. Finally, squeezing between two rocks (at least Cavallos had to squeeze) the party entered a small dingle crowded with giant rowan and beech. The dingle had limestone sides. It was watchfully silent.
Dorm gave a low whistle. Suddenly the rocks were scrambling with fauns. They crowded around him, all speaking and laughing at once. A very fat female, with white hair on her head and haunches, shrieked and waddled over to him weeping. At that, all the fauns wept.
Some threw dust in the air and stamped their feet, so mournfully glad were they that Dorm had returned. Only after this commotion had gone on for some time did they notice the centaur and human.
When Dorm had introduced his new friends and told of the rescue, the others cheered and formed a ring about them. They danced in a circle, moving feet and short tails so fast that Becky saw nothing but a moonlit flashing of hoofs. All was done to the skirl of pipes hidden in the rocks, sounding like the soul of a beech tree bleeding from a broken branch. The dance and music stopped. For a moment the trees sighed and rustled; Becky glimpsed a figure with pipes scurrying into a hole. The dingle was empty, except for themselves and Dorm.
“My people are very shy, and it is time to go on,” he whispered. “Also, the trees tell us men follow.” He led them out the other end of the dingle, down a ravine into a forest of solemn elms. The moon had set by the time they came to its far edge. To the south open fields grayed in the early light. They paused.
“Goodbye,” Dorm sighed, and once again burst into tears. Becky tried to comfort him, but it was no use. She herself felt sad, though she’d known him only a few hours.
“Here,” he said, handing her a small pipe of greenish wood. “Breathe on it lightly and it will play itself—especially in the moonlight.” When she looked up again, he was gone. She and Cavallos stared after him wordlessly. A robin gave a sleepy cry, and they heard from far, resounding on a hollow log, the tattoo of little hoofs.
Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.
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J. Daniel Baumann
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Thanksgiving offers us an opportunity to reflect on this often misunderstood dimension of Christian experience.
What is Thanksgiving, if it is not praise and worship? The annual holiday not only gives Christians a chance to celebrate with a truly spiritual, God-honoring perspective, it also forces us to reflect on the basic meaning of worship itself. In fact, every gathering of Christians ought in some way to be marked by the thanksgiving-day spirit so nobly, powerfully expressed in Psalm 150.
But consider first two axioms. The first is a simple fact: God made us to worship; the second is an unsettling confession: Most of us do not do it very well.
God made us to be worshipers. Life has no other purpose than to be rendered up to God in adoration and gratitude. “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father” (Col. 3:17). The Shorter Catechism reminds us that the true end of man is “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” God made man for a purpose, and that purpose is worship.
However, most of us do not worship very well. A. W. Tozer noted correctly that worship is “the missing jewel in the evangelical church.” In most places worship is subordinate to preaching, evangelism, Christian education, and pastoral care. It is all well-intentioned, but questionable. Even in some of the noteworthy models of church growth, the prime Sunday morning hour is viewed as a preaching service. Once the “opening exercises” are dispensed with, everyone can concentrate on the high point, namely, the sermon.
Worse things could happen to the gathered believers, of course—but so could better things. Tozer says it well: “The purpose of God in sending his Son to die and live and be at the right hand of God the Father was that he might restore to us the missing jewel, the jewel of worship; that we might come back and learn to do again that which we were created to do in the first place—worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, to spend our time in awesome wonder and adoration of God, feeling and expressing it, and letting it get into our labors and doing nothing except as an act of worship to Almighty God through his Son Jesus Christ.”
Because we miss this truth we get our priorities wrong. After an individual is converted we immediately make a worker out of him. But God’s intention is otherwise. God wants a convert to learn first of all to be a worshiper, and after that to be a worker.
By reflecting on the truth of Psalm 150 we can get our spiritual house in order. It is not enough to know God meant us originally and primarily to be worshipers; we also need to know that his will in the matter of worship is clearly spelled out.
Psalm 150, the summary psalm of the Psalter, teaches the where, why, how, and who of worship. While this psalm is not a legalistic rule for contemporary worship, it is an important biblical standard to which we can relate what passes for worship today.
Praise God in his sanctuary … praise him in his mighty expanse. When God’s people gather together, it is for the purpose of worship, which includes adoration, confession, instruction, and response. Most any place in God’s creation can become an informal sanctuary. Why not worship on the freeway, in the classroom, in the laboratory, even in the supermarket? God is there—and he is worthy.
Praise him for his mighty deeds. Peruse the Psalms and you will be treated to a recital of God’s goodness: he has created us as the apex of his universe; we are important (Psalm 8); he leads us into pleasant places (Psalm 16); he provides all that we really need (Psalm 23); he forgives: no sin is too great (Psalm 32).
God answers prayers (Psalm 40); he takes shelved sinners and restores them to usefulness (Psalm 51); he provides grace as we grow old (Psalm 71); he gives us his Word to guide us (Psalm 119); and when all others fail, we find that he is entirely trustworthy (Psalm 146). As the contemporary gospel chorus puts it, “God is so good; God is so good; God is so good, he’s so good to me.” He deserves our praise.
Praise him according to his excellent greatness. All his works notwithstanding, God is worthy of our worship simply because of who he is. Wasn’t that Isaiah’s experience in the temple when he was awe-struck by the one who is holy, holy, holy (Isaiah 6)? The sons of Korah said it for us, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised” (Psalm 48:1).
The psalmist suggests that we praise God with trumpet sound, with harp and lyre, with timbrel and dancing, with stringed instruments and pipe, with loud cymbals—yes, even with “resounding cymbals.”
Is this a bit too much for us? Does this sound more like a Saturday night youth concert than a Sunday morning worship service? Perhaps the fault lies with our image of worship as a solemn, even morose experience. As the Devil says in The Brothers Karamazov, “Everything would be transformed into a religious service: it would be holy, but a little dull.” Often true, isn’t it?
Worship frequently degenerates into a formalism that is devoid of vitality and spiritual life. Biblical worship, I contend, is celebration. That is not to say we are to be flippant or careless (see Psalm 89:7), nor that we gather in order to exchange emotional highs and get spiritual goose pimples. When I was a child, I was given to occasional restlessness during church services. I was admonished to “sit still, you’re in church.” Somehow I got the wrong message. My folks never intended it—but I was getting the impression that God was a grouch; I wasn’t convinced I could ever enjoy him. I’ve changed my mind or, better yet, the Bible is changing my mind.
The characteristic note of Old Testament worship is exhilaration. No wonder we read, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go into the house of the Lord’” (Psalm 122:1), and, “Let the heart of those who seek the Lord be glad” (1 Chron. 16:10). Many churches need a healthy dose of Psalm 100: “Shout joyfully to the Lord … Come before him with joyful singing … Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise” (vv. 1, 2, 4).
Worship should both fill the mind with God’s truth and the spirit with God’s joy. How strange that we can yell till we are hoarse at the World Series—and on Sunday turn as cold and lifeless as drugstore Indians when we are confronted by the most earthshaking news in human history: the invasion of our planet by God. That is worth getting excited about. Let’s have more spiritual celebration; the saints in Scripture did.
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Worship is not the exclusive domain of the preachers, liturgists, instrumentalists, and vocalists. The only qualification is that we breathe and, of course, that we love God. Have we ever left church complaining that we got nothing out of the service? Sure we have. But, let’s be clear about one thing: worship is not something done for the laity; it is an experience in which all share. The question is, “What do we bring to the service?”
Worship in Scripture is filled with participation by the laity. They were involved in sacrifices (Exod. 20:24); in bringing offerings (Neh. 10:39; Deut. 12:11; Psalm 96:8); in providing music (2 Chron. 5:13); in giving thanks (Psalm 35:18); and in confession (Isa. 1:16).
One notable thing about a New Testament church service must have been that almost everyone came feeling he had the privilege of contributing something to it. “To sum up, my friends: when you meet for worship each of you contributes a hymn, some instruction, a revelation, an ecstatic utterance, or the interpretation of such an utterance” (1 Cor. 14:26, NEB).
Stephen Winward has said that the “most obvious (and some would maintain the greatest) weakness of some forms of Protestant worship, is the undue predominance of the one man ‘conducting the service.’ There is a ministerial monopoly.… How can this state of affairs be rectified?”
It is well for us to affirm that worship is like dialogue. Like Jacob’s ladder, worship is a stairway on which there is a movement in two directions: God comes to man, and man goes to God. When we worship we should meet him with our adoration, our confession, our pliable will, and the offering of ourselves and substance.
Years ago I read A Faith to Proclaim by James S. Stewart. In the chapter on “Proclaiming Christ” there was a section entitled, “When the Church Rediscovers Christ.” When I come to church expectantly, it does not matter if the room is poorly ventilated, if the choir is flat, or even if the sermon is prosaic. If I have an encounter with the living Christ, I have worshiped. Worship is to meet him.
That experience can occur anywhere, by any believer with his God, and ought to be a moment of deep spiritual exhilaration. For this purpose we were created.
A Weatherman’S Thanksgiving
And now … because Thanksgiving is a particularly significant holy day to me, I’d like to step out of character as your weather reporter for a few moments and share something with you. It is a bit of wisdom out of the ancient past. Within this wisdom is a secret—the secret of making every day a Thanksgiving day.
Most human beings are in one of three broad categories insofar as they relate to Thanksgiving. Each of us is invited to a great feast—a feast we call life. The food is superb—the wine incomparable. Some sit down to this feast, wolf the food, drool the wine out of the corners of their mouths, get up and walk out of the banquet room without word or glance.
Some there are who eat and drink with obvious relish and a sense of impersonal gratitude, yet never look toward God the Most High—their Host—who sits at the head of the table.
Others, unlike these heedless ones, cast warm, bright smiles of appreciation, gratitude, and thanksgiving toward the One who is the Giver of ail gifts.
But then there are those who prefer to sit at the feet of their Host—to bask in the effulgent light of his smile—not spurning the feast, but choosing him in preference to all his gifts.
And lo, to such as these, angels of the Lord come bringing even choicer viands and more splendid wines—gifts greater than the ransom of ten thousand kings. Reverently they place them at the feet of those who love the Most High God—the Giver of all gifts—above all else.
Thank you for listening—we return you now to WKWF.
STEPHEN J. CONSTANT
Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.
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A new and exciting spirit for evangelism is coming into the American Christian community.
In the first seven years of the 1970s, the United Methodists lost nearly a million members, the United Presbyterians just over a half million, and the Episcopalians just under a half million.
Some evangelical churches, too, noted signs of decline: in 1977 baptisms among Southern Baptists in Texas decreased for the first time in history. Even the fast-growing Assemblies of God has seen a two-year decline in Sunday school attendance.
In light of this, what are the prospects for growth in the eighties? I am optimistic because of the potential. Church growth does not come about by accident or coincidence, but by a combination of the blessing of God and human planning. Most church growth is intentional. When God’s people desire growth, pray for it, and plan and work for it, it usually occurs. It can happen in the eighties.
Roots
To see what God has in store, look first at post-World War II patterns. The fifties can be characterized as a decade of church growth. Most denominations, whether mainstream or otherwise, experienced steady increases in church membership and attendance. New churches were being planted regularly. In 1950, for example, 57 percent of Americans were church members; by 1958 the number had increased to 67 percent. The decade of the fifties, in fact, capped at least a century of steady growth in most American church groups.
Few if any church leaders suspected in 1959 that the coming decade would bring a reversal to mainstream American denominations. It now appears, however, that the sixties can be labeled a decade of transition. The momentum of the fifties carried the churches through to just about 1965. Then the most severe decline in church membership and attendance in the history of the mainstream denominations began as if on cue.
In this decade of transition one highly significant fact must be noted: not all American churches began losing members in the mid-sixties. Between 1965 and 1975, for example, while the Lutheran Church in America lost 5 percent of its members, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod gained 3 percent. The Presbyterian Church in the U.S. lost 8 percent, but the Church of the Nazarene gained 8. The second largest American denomination, the United Methodists, lost 10 percent while the largest, the Southern Baptists, were gaining 18. The most drastic loss was 34 percent in the Disciples of Christ—but the Assemblies of God were growing 37 percent at the same time.
The Seventies: A Time of Reassessment
As nonchalant as some church leaders were about the drop in membership in the early seventies, they did eventually begin to face the unpleasant fact that if such losses continued, their institutional existence would be in jeopardy. By 1975 they were asking why Americans seemed to be turning away from mainstream churches but not from religion in general.
A key stimulus to this reassessment was the 1972 publication of Dean Kelley’s book, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing. It brought membership trends to widespread public notice and is on nearly everyone’s list of the most influential American religious books of the decade.
As a result of the reassessment, for example, two thoroughgoing official studies of membership trends in the United Presbyterian church and the United Methodist church were published. Also, the Hartford Seminary Foundation was commissioned to establish a two-year think tank from a cross section of religious researchers, sociologists of religion, and denominational executives from the main denominations. Financed by the Lilly Endowment, the group’s study, Understanding Church Growth and Decline 1950–1978, was published in 1979. Sixteen scholars contributed under the general editorship of Dean R. Hoge and David A. Roozen. The book was the capstone of the decade of reassessment.
The Hartford consortium, however, concentrated on only one of the two areas up for reassessment in the seventies. They dealt largely with trends in membership in the main American denominations, mostly (with the exception of Southern Baptists) those belonging to the National Council of Churches. Equally important was reassessment among denominations in the evangelical stream that were growing, but not at rates commensurate with their potential. Look first at the Hartford assessment.
Mainstream Decline
Analyzing the drop in membership in mainstream denominations is complex. As Hoge and Roozen show, trends in church membership are caused by a sometimes delicate interplay of four factors: contexts at both national and local levels, together with institutions at national and local levels. Dean Kelley’s book stressed the national institutional factors. The Hartford consortium generally (though not unanimously) thought contextual factors were more significant in explaining membership trends.
Though a member of the Hartford consortium, I believe Kelley’s position has much merit (he was also a member of the consortium). To me, the chief causes of the great decline were national institutional factors, meaning decisions made by denominational bureaucracies and translated into policies, programs, and budgetary allocations. Contextual factors do not seem to be the key because, for instance, while mainstream denominations were declining, in the same contexts evangelical denominations were growing. Both were happening in the same nation and in the same states. On the local level, in many suburbs where all could have grown, conservative churches were growing more vigorously than mainstream churches. In transitional urban areas, while Anglo-American churches were leaving, whether evangelical or mainstream, new churches taking their places tended to be of the evangelical stream. The central institutional problem concerned priorities of ministry. Though complex, clearly the relation of the ministries of evangelism and social service is crucial.
What happened in the sixties? The social climate is well known. The civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, the hippie movement, the death-of-God viewpoint, situation ethics, and other social and psychological factors convulsed the religious world. Those already inclined to be “public Protestants,” as Martin Marty might say, particularly developed strong guilt feelings about the politically conservative nature of the American church. Those in power used this guilt to give social service top priority on the agendas of the mainstream denominations. Some were advocating theologically that “the world should set the agenda.” Evangelicals in general were not convinced, believing that the Bible should set the agenda.
Here is the major point: the studies cited show fairly convincingly that a strong emphasis on social service is not in itself a cause of decline in church membership. Churches can be very active socially and still grow vigorously—and here is a large if—if they do not give social service a higher priority than evangelism. But precisely this mistake was made first in the national offices, then on the level of judicatories, and then in many parishes in the mainstream denominations in the midsixties. Evangelism and the multiplication of churches, the primary stresses in the fifties, took a back seat. In their enthusiasm for social service, some leaders went so far as to ridicule evangelism as “scalp hunting” or “the numbers game.”
The result? In a seven-year period (1970–1977) the United Methodists, for example, lost 886,000 members, the United Presbyterians lost 526,000, and the Episcopal Church lost 467,000.
During the seventies—the decade of reassessment it might be called—some of the mainstream denominations began to reevaluate their priorities. Few, if any, did it with more determination than the United Methodists. In their 1976 Quadrennial Conference in Portland, Oregon, they established three priorities for programming over the following four years. Reportedly only two of them, reducing world hunger and strengthening ethnic churches, were previously recommended by denominational executives in Nashville and New York. The third, evangelism, gained its place among the three as a result of grassroots pressures. Theoretically all three have equal priority, but in practice the budget for evangelism is minuscule compared to the other two.
Reassessment by Evangelicals
Were churches in the evangelical stream slowing down during the seventies? While mainstream churches were reassessing their ministries, evangelical churches, which by and large had not reversed priorities, tended to coast along. Most of them were growing. Toward the end of the decade, however, some conservative churches and denominations saw they were not growing as fast as they could.
Southern Baptists are a case in point. Under the motto, “Bold Mission Thrust,” they had determined at home and abroad to confront every unbeliever with the gospel by the year 2000. During the seventies, while the American population was growing 7 percent, the Southern Baptists were growing 17 percent. But in 1977 an ominous statistic began to appear. In 1976, 1977, and 1978 the number of baptisms decreased nationwide. In 1977 and 1978, for the first time in history, there were fewer baptisms in the Texas State Convention. Some say, “As goes Texas, so goes the Southern Baptist Convention.” In 1978 Southern Baptists netted only 121 new churches—a meager 0.4 percent increase—and over 6,000 churches did not report baptisms. These figures are well known to SBC leaders who refuse to rationalize the lack of growth and are making changes before they, too, face a drop in membership.
Several other evangelical denominations are gearing for accelerated growth even though they have not experienced actual decline. It is true that Pentecostals, for example, grew 48 percent during the seventies while non-Pentecostal evangelicals grew only 10 percent. However, two of the most vigorous Pentecostal denominations, the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) and the Assemblies of God, have noticed signs of slowing. A two-year decline in Sunday school attendance, for example, was a clear danger sign to general superintendent Thomas Zimmerman. He introduced a program for expansion, and the Assemblies of God now call the eighties “The Decade of Church Growth.”
In the Church of the Nazarene, home missions executive director Raymond Hurn noticed a gradual decline in the rate of membership growth in the midseventies. With the backing of the general superintendents, he launched an intensive training program in church growth throughout the denomination. Prof. Paul Orjala wrote a denominational study, Get Ready to Grow, which sold 50,000 copies in the first six months. Every Nazarene district superintendent has now taken formal church-growth training. The scholars in the Nazarene colleges and seminary have been introduced to these concepts, too. Change has already occurred.
Many other examples could be mentioned. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has provided church-growth training for all their district presidents and executives of evangelism and missions. Many Churches of Christ and others have accelerated their growth through consultation with Paul Benjamin of the National Church Growth Research Center. The Christian and Missionary Alliance, already one of the nation’s most rapidly growing denominations, in 1979 took what has to be the boldest step of all: they set a seven-year goal of doubling membership by 1987, their one-hundredth anniversary.
Action for Growth in the Eighties
If the fifties were a decade of church growth, the sixties of transition, and the seventies of reassessment, what lies ahead for the eighties? These years all will be more like the fifties than the sixties or seventies, with great potential for evangelism, church planting, and church growth. Consider four groups:
1. Mainstream denominations. To me, the most exciting possibility for the eighties is the potential turnaround in the declining growth patterns of many denominations. If this happens, it will be a first in American history. Given the sociological life cycle of institutional churches, declines of this nature are seldom reversed. But they can be. The key to significant change, I believe, will be a reexamination of priorities. Evangelism and church planting need to regain the top position in denominational philosophies of ministry.
Evangelicals in these denominations realize that social service need not suffer as a result. Holistic mission can be held high. In fact, as the Gallup surveys tell us, churches that have held to the biblical priority of evangelism have actually ended up making more of a contribution in the area of social ministries than churches that have reversed their priorities and allowed evangelism to slip down the list.
2. Evangelical denominations. Fundamentalist and evangelical denominations should continue to grow and accelerate. In general, they have not been tempted to reverse biblical priorities. They believe in the evangelistic mandate. Probably Pentecostal denominations will continue to lead the way in growth, and non-Pentecostal evangelicals can learn much from them.
As we move through the eighties, I see an increase in the number of superchurches on the one hand and of house churches on the other. We will probably see the building of a significant number of sanctuaries seating 2,500 to 5,000. One is under construction in Orlando, Florida, to seat 7,500 and another planned for Birmingham, Alabama, seating 10,000 (both Assemblies of God). Many unchurched Americans will be attracted and won to Christ through these superchurches.
But many are repulsed by them and are more inclined toward house churches. Perhaps the model in Los Angeles by the Open Door Community Churches, under the supervision of Robert Hymers, merits careful study. Membership and the number of house church congregations have both doubled each year for the last three years. They seek to maintain that rate of growth and project 1,000 house churches of 35 members each by 1985.
As evangelical churches grow in the eighties, it will be instructive to watch the development of new, creative denomination-like structures that are not members of the National Association of Evangelicals or even listed in the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. They do not like to be called “denominations.” Many even refuse to count their members. One example is the group of Calvary Chapels, offspring of Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, California. An unofficial goal of some of their leaders is 10,000 churches by the end of the decade. Their target is the “rock generation,” young adults, ages 18–29, who, according to the recent CHRISTIANITY TODAY-Gallup Poll, are most likely to drop out of more traditional churches. Churches that want to learn more about ministering to this segment of the population can get good clues from the Calvary Chapels.
3. Local churches. In the final analysis, all church growth takes place in local churches. While many find themselves in areas of low potential for growth with some even suffering from terminal illnesses, many others—probably the majority—can grow if they have determination and are willing to pay the price. Churches belonging to denominations need not wait for denominational programs to come along: a large and growing number of resources is available to them. So many institutes and agencies geared toward helping local churches grow have emerged that they are forming a professional society called the Academy of American Church Growth. They produce films, books, home study programs, seminars, games, Sunday school curricula, computerized surveys, long-term planning models, and many other aids. These combine with an increasing number of denominational resources to make church growth a possibility for most local churches.
4. Those who share the faith with others. I perceive a new and exciting spirit for evangelism coming into the American Christian community, both Protestant and Catholic. We all need to encourage one another in this. Less energy should be expended in criticizing and demeaning, and more in praying and supporting. Anyone can find fault with the Four Spiritual Laws, or a Crystal Cathedral, or buses in Hammond, Indiana, or a 100-foot banana split in Sunday school. But after reviewing Philippians 1:15–18, one wonders whether the apostle Paul would use his energy that way. He would at least be pleased that Christ is preached.
Support in prayer and encouragement for evangelism can be shown through the American Festival of Evangelism scheduled for Kansas City in the summer of 1981. If the anticipated 20,000 clergy and lay leaders from all denominations come together, the festival could provide a major impulse for evangelizing our nation in the eighties. The planners hope it will feature the kind of evangelism that produces not merely decisions for Christ, but people who accept responsible church membership as well.
What does the decade of the eighties have in store for the church in America? It will present unprecedented opportunities for growth if only God’s people redeem the time, direct their prayers to the Lord of the harvest, and dedicate themselves and their resources to appropriate action.
Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.
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Responses to the CT-Gallup Poll present an optimistic self-image of the local church that is difficult to find.
On a typical Sunday morning, according to the Gallup Poll conducted for CHRISTIANITY Today, some 36 percent of our American population is likely to find itself in church. Some are dropins, doing their monthly duty. Probably about 12 percent of the faces in the average congregation will be vaguely familiar—they come in a couple of times each month to maintain a nodding acquaintance with God and their coreligionists. Others are well known: folks who seem always to be standing around waiting for the church doors to open.
Looking around at the faces, you wonder: What are these people like? What do they expect of the church? And what are they willing to give?
While the CHRISTIANITY TODAY-Gallup Poll cannot provide a profile of your local church or mine, it has provided some very suggestive data about the Great American Congregation. It has told us some ways the G.A.C. reflects our society, and some ways it differs.
In this article, one of the series exploring data from the CHRISTIANITY TODAY-Gallup Poll, we will focus narrowly on that Sunday morning crowd, and draw a profile of the people who show up.
The True Believers
The CHRISTIANITY TODAY-Gallup Poll distinguished three groups identified as “evangelical.” One group, the orthodox, hold hard to the fundamentals of the faith, and read Scripture and attend church at least monthly. Another group, the conversionalists, shares the monthly minimum of involvement in church and Scripture, but is distinguished by a reported conversion experience: an identifiable point in time when Jesus Christ was asked to become personal Savior. Finally, there was a third group, the orthodox/conversionalists. Members of this group reported a personal conversion experience and adherence to an inerrant Scripture, a Christ who is true God and true man, and a conviction that salvation is found only through personal faith in Jesus.
While 54 percent of the general population are unable to make it to church even two or three times a month, over 83 percent of all three “true believer” groups are present each week. So, in our Great American Congregation, most people in the pews will at least be already convinced, if not converted. It follows that a wise minister might consider directing sermons to the people who are there—not to those who are absent.
By the way: when present in church on Sunday, the evangelicals in the Great American Congregation are likely to give generously. Over 50 percent in each category (and over 60 percent of the orthodox/conversionalists) claim they contribute 10 percent or more to their church or other religious organizations. And another 18 percent claim to give 5 to 9 percent of their income.
Still, attendance and giving patterns don’t really tell us much about the Great American Congregation, so the CHRISTIANITY TODAY—Gallup Poll probes a little deeper. It pictures the congregation at work, and provides a disconcerting glimpse of what the congregation expects from its church.
The G.A.C. in Action
To understand the bustling activities of the Great American Congregation, it is helpful to know what its members view as the top priorities of Christians.
While the general public believe Christians’ top priority should be “concentrating on the spiritual growth of one’s self and family,” the top priority of over 50 percent of each evangelical subgroup (the real churchgoers in our country) is “to help win the world for Jesus Christ.” The next highest evangelical choice for top priority is personal and family growth. While there is mild interest in joining groups and supporting causes that improve the entire community as the first priority, strengthening the local church seems more important to evangelicals. Participating in efforts to influence legislation at any level, even on important issues, fades to relative insignificance as the top priority. But it must be noted from other poll data that this does not mean evangelicals are uninterested in influencing legislation.
Thus, when the Great American Congregation swings into action, the chances are its workers see themselves as helping to win others to Jesus and contributing to spiritual growth, while incidentally helping strengthen the local church.
If we imagine our typical American Sunday congregation, as portrayed in the poll, made up of some 200 people, we can translate the percentages into some fascinating numbers. So let’s go visit the G.A.C.
It’s Sunday morning, not yet time for the worship service, but almost the Sunday school hour. As we go in we can see dressed-up boys and girls—some delivered by a proud parent—enter the classroom doors. As usual there are a few teens dodging here and there in the corridors, awaiting a last-minute summons before straggling into their rooms.
According to the poll, some 35 adults in this 200-person Sunday congregation are Sunday school teachers. This seems rather high, as most churches of this size have between 15 and 18 classes. Apparently the Great American Congregation doesn’t have the staffing problem of the churches with which I’m familiar. Also, according to poll percentages, the G.A.C. has no less than 42 adults working with children and youth overall, while 52 visit the sick and elderly. Visitation is actually more popular than holding church office, or working on building maintenance: each of the last two involves some 35 of our 200 attenders.
It is likely the same individuals may be involved in several church tasks; the poll doesn’t tell us that. It does reveal that of those evangelicals who do volunteer work, over 50 percent give from one to five hours a week. Only 13 percent give less than one hour.
It’s fascinating, as we watch these busy Christians leave after the service, to realize that according to information given Gallup, a large number will “talk to people who are not members of [their] own faith about [their] own religious beliefs” daily. Even more say they will talk about their faith at least once in the coming week, but not daily. So, of the 200 who showed up this Sunday to form our Great American Congregation, 70 say they will speak up about their faith to at least one person in the next six days!
I must confess I’m a little skeptical of this rosy picture of the Great American Congregation in action. Not that I doubt the poll or its methods. It’s just that no behavioral scientist views self-report as the most reliable source of information about behavior. It is always important to check self-reports against other kinds of measures. I wouldn’t insist that respondents to this poll tended to give themselves the benefit of the doubt in reporting their activities. I would, however, suggest you might compare the poll’s data with personal observations and with other congregations before equating the testimony with reality.
Congregation Members in Need
“Ask not,” John Kennedy said, “what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
It seems from the CHRISTIANITY TODAY-Gallup Poll that members of the Great American Congregation have taken Kennedy’s advice, but applied it to their churches. Evangelicals show a solid sense of responsibility for involvement in the church’s ministries. But neither evangelicals nor the general public expect much help themselves from the church.
Earlier I said the picture of what the congregation expects from the church is disconcerting. I have to confess that this reaction reflects a view of the church that may not be shared by all. My own bias is toward that biblical portrait of the church as a family of brothers and sisters. In God’s family, burdens are shared with others and carried by one another (Gal. 6:2). And, if one brother lacks, another helps with his material needs (James 2:14–17). In my idealism I see the family of God as the relational context for growth toward maturity (Eph. 4:13–16), where deep and real caring exists.
But it is apparent that evangelical members of the Great American Congregation do not experience the church this way. The poll reveals that an evangelical with a problem relating to physical needs (such as food, clothing, or shelter) would be slightly more likely to turn to a volunteer community organization than to a member of the clergy. A friend (Christian friend?) or neighbor ranks even lower as a source of help. And three times as many evangelicals would turn to members of their immediate family as to the church or to volunteer agencies. (Evangelicals rank government organizations lowest of all as places to turn, while members of the general public prefer the government to the clergy, 9 percent to 5 percent.)
There seems to be clear notions about what kinds of help it is appropriate to seek from the church (represented by the clergy), and the kinds of help it is not appropriate to seek. If one has a problem with personal development (growth as a human being), church and family are equally acceptable as sources of help. For something “spiritual or religious,” the church is the place to go, even for the general public. Clergy outranks family as a source of help with alcohol or drugs, but so does the volunteer community organization.
What is disconcerting to me is that a “friend or neighbor” consistently ranks low in every problem area. If we can assume that the clergy represents the church as an institution, “friends or neighbors” ought to reflect interpersonal relationships between members of the same congregation. Clearly, from the CHRISTIANITY TODAY-Gallup Poll, the typical evangelical does not perceive his church as a helping community, nor his fellow believers as persons he feels free to turn to when he is in need.
Questions About the Great American Congregation
To me, one of the great values of a poll such as this one is in the questions raised, not the answers it provides. On such a criterion, this poll provides a significant peek at the church in American society.
Generally speaking, self-report types of measures are reliable when they deal with what a person believes. We should be quite impressed that the 1,553 persons, questioned at random in over 300 scientifically selected locations, included 317 (20 percent) who professed evangelical beliefs and/or Christian experience. This is a higher proportion of the general public than I, at least, would have expected.
But also speaking generally, self-report is less reliable when used to measure behavior. Any responsible social scientist who tries to develop a description of the behavior of a given population will try to use several kinds of measures. It is thus important to recognize the limitations of the Gallup-type questionnaire in behavioral areas. We can say with confidence the poll actually portrays what the respondents report as their behavior. But we cannot say it accurately portrays the behavior itself.
But, allowing for this, the comparative figures with the general populace are reliable—assuming evangelicals are no better than the average in describing truthfully their own conduct. Thus we have to raise questions about the poll’s picture of the Great American Congregation in action on purely methodological grounds. Are there really that many people out there, witnessing weekly? Are the Sunday school and other church agencies as blessed with willing workers as the poll indicates?
This kind of question should be answered by each individual reader in reference to his own congregation and the churches of his community. And, if the picture at home looks bleak compared to the dynamic impression given by the poll, try not to feel too bad. It might be that your congregation gives a more reliable picture of actual behavior than does the poll.
Again, on methodological grounds, we can expect a high level of reliability of answers when individuals were asked where they would turn for help. We have moved away from actual behavior to attitudes and perceptions. It is just because these answers are probably reliable that they are so disconcerting—and that they raise so many significant questions.
What is the church to most evangelicals? Are relationships in our churches so sterile that we hesitate to turn to brothers and sisters in God’s family when we’re in need? Is Scripture’s picture of a loving, living, intimate community in which our needs are met as alien to modern believers as the poll results seem to suggest? And, if the poll does describe reality, must we settle for our contemporary experience? Or can we look to God with yearning, expecting him to bring about what Scripture suggests can be?
We’re left with a mixed picture of the Great American Congregation. We are a church with surprising numerical strength and a high level of activity. But we seem marred by a disturbing impersonality. I wonder: With all our busyness, do we really care about people?
It would seem from the survey that we doubt whether other Christians care about us.
Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.
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