NEWS
The new year was only a few minutes old. More than eleven thousand Christian students had just eaten the bread and drunk the cup together in memory of their Lord in the vast Assembly Hall of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. The meeting was dismissed, but as they were leaving the students on their own initiative broke into a joyful hymn that had set the tone of the convention: “We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord, … And we pray that all unity may one day be restored: And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.…”
This spontaneous expression was typical of youthful participation throughout what was undoubtedly the largest student missions convention ever held. For four and one-half days at the end of 1970, students from forty-eight states, every Canadian province, and seventy foreign countries came together to sing and pray, talk and listen about “World Evangelism: Why? How?
Who?” Urbana ’70, as it was nicknamed, was the ninth in a series of triennial conventions sponsored by the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowships of Canada and of the United States. More than was true of its predecessors, students were involved in planning it from the earliest stages at the highest level. Interaction with the speakers in large groups and small was intense. On the last day one speaker, Tom Skinner, said he had been averaging less than two hours of sleep a night because of talks with students.
The basic format of Urbana was little changed from previous conventions. All who attended were divided into groups of ten living in adjacent rooms to meet for Bible study in the morning and prayer in the late evening. For two hours each morning and evening everyone came to the Assembly Hall, basically for speeches, though congregational singing and musical groups using contemporary idioms added variety. There were thirteen major speakers plus four messages on John 13–17 by master expositor John Stott. Every continent was represented among the speakers. Three of the major evening addresses were by IVCF leaders who spoke on the history of students in evangelism (David Howard; for much of what he said, see our November 6, 1970, issue, pages 15–17), finding the will of God (Paul Little), and directions for the future (John Alexander). The other two evening speakers were full-time evangelists. Tom Skinner brought the audience to its feet with the proclamation, “The Liberator has come!” (see editorial, page 20), and Leighton Ford defended an unpopular teaching in our time: the biblically revealed fact of Hell.
Each afternoon the scene shifted to the Armory, where scores of missions and, for the first time, some graduate-level theology schools had exhibit booths and about 400 personnel. More than 5,000 of the students who had registered early enough were notified of 47,000 possible matches with the 6,400 job openings reported to a computer service earlier in 1970. Throughout the afternoon, rooms in the Armory were used for numerous small discussion groups on dozens of different topics such as “youth work in Latin America” and “the missionary call.” In auditoriums around the campus hour-long question-and-answer sessions focused on nearly forty major topics (e.g., aviation, Islam, saturation evangelism).
Missionaries reported that interest in overseas service for Christ was as high as ever. Beards and other evidences of the younger generation’s different styles of dress were much more in evidence than at previous Urbana meetings. Greater interest in the social implications of the Gospel was manifest, though this note has not been neglected in previous Urbanas (indeed it could not be, in view of the continued high level of missionary participation in efforts to relieve the physical suffering of men). The trans-cultural, supra-racial nature of Christianity was repeatedly reaffirmed, but not with the idea of obliterating the individual Christian’s sense of identification with his own particular background. Blacks, Vietnamese, Brazilians, and Chinese, among others, had separate meetings on relating Christ to their cultures.
The only conspicuous dissent at the convention came from a group associated with Vanguard magazine and the graduate-level Institute for Christian Studies, both of Toronto. They felt the IVCF leadership was not radical enough in seeking to promote the Lordship of Christ in every area of life, which they understand can require such things as Christian labor unions and corporations.
Inter-Varsity (the name reflects the movement’s origin in Britain, where “varsity” can be equivalent to “university” rather than being an athletic term) began in 1929 in Canada, where it is now found on almost every English-speaking campus and also has chapters in high schools. The French-speaking work is still in its infancy. IVCF came to the States in 1940 and has chapters on more than 400 campuses that together enroll four-fifths of the nation’s students. In addition, a division for nursing students has 250 groups, and one to promote foreign missions at Christian colleges has well over 100 active chapters.
The two North American groups are part of a worldwide International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, which has some three dozen autonomous and indigenous national member movements and is aggressively seeking to create more. (One night at Urbana, the students were given an opportunity to donate to the work of IFES, and over $77,000 plus $18,000 in pledges was received.) The emphasis upon national autonomy and student, rather than staff, leadership at the chapter level is a key distinction between IFES and another student movement, Campus Crusade. Typically, an IFES member-movement staffer helps groups on several campuses, while several Crusade staffers combine to concentrate their efforts at one campus.
Besides campus ministries and Urbana, IV also sponsors His, a high-quality monthly aimed at collegians (its circulation surpasses 25,000), and Inter-Varsity Press, which in recent years has greatly expanded its range of books and become one of the top evangelical publishers. During the convention, book sales, mostly of IVP titles, amounted to more than $65,000.
Black students—over 400 of them—were more in evidence than before. A black, Bernie Smith, was song leader. Tom Skinner, also black, was one of the featured speakers. Although Skinner has not shrunk from denouncing aspects of white middle-class evangelicalism that seemed to him contrary to Scripture, even in the presence of those he’s criticizing, he said, he could find nothing to complain about in the way that IV leaders had conducted Urbana.
Indeed, the handling of the more than 12,000 registrants (25 per cent more than in 1967), when the university had only 9,000 beds for them, was masterful; convention director Paul Little was quick to acknowledge the providence of God. For example, the consistent Christian testimony of one businessman on the IV board led a Jewish acquaintance of his, when he learned of the situation, to see that 3,000 blankets were on hand just in time. An equal number of cots were purchased. There were a few foul-ups, of course, and there were many long lines in the dining rooms, but these were taken in stride. There was ample opportunity for demonstrating the refrain of the hymn, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love.” Long-distance operators manning greatly overloaded lines commented on the unusual patience of their callers.
Urbana ’70 was thousands of Christians from a wide variety of nations, races, classes, life-styles, and denominations exhibiting the unity that is the will of God for his people, and is especially symbolized in the sharing of the bread and the cup. But the coming together at Urbana was not to encourage Christians to withdraw into some kind of holy huddle until the Lord comes. Hanging in the Assembly Hall behind the platform were giant banners on which was inscribed the essential outward thrust of Urbana: “LOVE YOUR NEIGHBORS./ PROCLAIM THE GOOD NEWS./ GO MAKE DISCIPLES OF ALL MEN./ FOLLOW ME AND I WILL MAKE YOU INTO FISHERS OF MEN.”
Adapting An Outreach
A federal court suit in Virginia and shifts in modern educational methods have started the 35-year-old Children’s Bible Mission, headquartered in Lakeland, Florida, considering new appraaches in its ministry.
Myron H. Schuit, general director of the evangelical work reaching approximately 100,000 elementary-age children each month through seventy-five full-time workers in eight states, said the organization is weighing the manner of its outreach.
“It looks now as if we may go into a correspondence-course type of approach,” he said. “We probably would continue to use Bible clubs and released-time programs in schools where it is legal.”
The CBM’s work has centered on once-a-month programs in public schools. Some of them have been included in the school curriculum. Others have been a part of a released-time approach. And the rest have been after-hours meetings on school property.
The use of the public schools has been challenged in the Virginia suit, Schuit reported, and the organization is preparing to end that program if necessary.
He noted that the standard CBM approach of telling a Bible story and then involving the children in memorizing Bible verses fits in less and less with the teaching methods in secular subjects, where memorization has virtually been abandoned.
“For several years we have anticipated the possible need for changes in our work,” Schuit said.
ADON TAFT
Mcintire: On The Gateway To The Stars
“Freedom is everybody’s business,” Dr. Carl McIntire says repeatedly over the several hundred radio stations that carry his “Twentieth Century Reformation Hour.” And apparently, for him, at least, it is good business.
The tiny city of Cape Canaveral, Florida,1Although the cape was officially renamed Cape Kennedy when President Johnson took office, the city kept the former name of Cape Canaveral. severely depressed by cutbacks in the space program, once more began looking to the stars for its help. Before the year’s end, McIntire proudly announced before 100 television cameramen and newsmen that he was establishing on 300 acres of the city’s choicest commercial and waterfront property “The Gateway to the Stars.”
The city fathers beamed. McIntire’s new freedom center could mean only one thing—thousands of tourists with plenty of the stuff that makes Florida green.
A mecca for freedom lovers and sun worshipers it will be. Included in the 300-acre tract were a convention hall that can seat 2,000, the IBM Building, and 280 apartment units. The three-year-old, $4.5 million Kennedy Hilton was thrown in for good measure.
Almost simultaneously, McIntire announced he had purchased two more hotels in Cape May, New Jersey, home of a combination freedom and fundamentalism complex that last year attracted more than 50,000 persons and supports Shelton College. McIntire says he’s interested in “preserving the Victorian architecture that is the hallmark of America’s first seaside resort.” Despite the controversial nature of the Presbyterian minister, he’s good business for Cape May as well. “We’re the biggest taxpayers in the community,” McIntire said.
A symbol of the Cape May complex is a fleet of double-decker London buses which offer free transportation to the center’s ongoing Bible conferences and other activities that start full swing in June and go on into the fall. One of McIntire’s first moves was to ship two of the buses to Cape Canaveral and place an order for more.
Not that the buses figure into it, but McIntire sees a real shuttle service developing between the two centers, separated by about 1,100 miles. “Many of the same persons who will make use of the facilities at Cape May will want to continue by coming down to Cape Canaveral.” He will open the center next month and keep it operating through May.
Included in the package, besides 600 feet of oceanfront property and much more frontage on the Banana River, is the Boeing Administration Building, whose two stories will house McIntire’s second four-year college. “We plan to open in September,” the evangelist who claims to be “in step with God’s timing” said.
The Kennedy has been renamed the Freedom Center Hotel, but the college has not yet been named. This month McIntire, who purchased prime time on several of Florida’s key radio stations to push Jesus, freedom and his new enterprise, opened a nationwide contest to allow his friends in radioland to name the college. Speculation is that in this manner, somehow the McIntire name will appear.
The impetus for McIntire’s grand entry into the state where he says he gets a large percentage of his support came in the flurry of publicity over his March for Victory last fall in Washington. Among those who encouraged him to come and take a look-see at the convention center were now-replaced Governor Claude Kirk and Representative Louis Frey, Jr., whose district embraces the boom and bust Cape Kennedy area.
Ironically, part of the bust in the space program came because of the high cost of the war.
McIntire was playing coy about the purchase price, although his Christian Beacon newspaper carried in the same issue the purchase price of the New Jersey transaction. He indicated, however, that he would announce the price “in time.”
The evangelist said that although, as a religious non-profit corporation, he is normally exempt from paying property taxes on either property, his organization nonetheless will pay the full property tax.
He admitted that it was largely because the community has hit a depression that he fared so well. “But there’s one thing you’ll always have to consider,” he said. “This will always be remembered as the place where man left the earth and landed on the moon.
It will always be a place of interest.”
“We stand now on the gateway to the stars.”
WILLIAM WILLOUGHBY
Eight Sides To This Conversation Piece
The new building rising at the corner of 16th and I Streets Northwest in Washington, D.C., is Third Church, the downtown branch among the seven Christian Science churches in the nation’s capital. But the sixty-six-foot-high structure, made of what its designers say is “colorful architectural concrete,” already is a conversation piece in Washington, though its doors won’t open until at least this June.
The architect is Araldo Cossutta of New York’s famous I. M. Pei and Partners, designer of the new L’Enfant Plaza in Southwest Washington. Among the unusual features of the unusual church—it is but two blocks from the White House as the crow flies across Lafayette Park—is the location of Sunday-school classrooms on the fifth (top) floor. The octagonal building is designed so that all functions may be held above ground level in natural light. A sixty-two-car garage is under the site, with access to the church by elevator.
The site, owned by the Boston Mother Church, covers 17,560 square feet; about two-thirds of this has been leased by Third Church (first organized in 1918) for the new edifice. An open eighty-foot plaza is included in the plot plan, and a seven-story office building opposite the church will house the denomination’s Washington office for publication and the Christian Science Monitor capital bureau. The building will thus take on the role of a strategic center for sophisticated promulgation of Christian Science dogma.
The shape, design, and building materials of Third Church roused consternation in Washington Post architecture critic Wolf Von Eckardt (he doesn’t like the National Presbyterian Church and Center, either). Von Eckardt calls the Christian Science edifice “the big concrete bunker … rude … brutal … military … uncivilized … a chubby pillbox.…”
