The South African Leadership Assembly
An incredulous black youth said, “It was like a dream, sitting next to whites, talking to them and singing with them.”
And in a sense, the South African Christian Leadership Assembly (SACLA) was like a dream—but a fulfilled one for its organizers. Many said the meeting could never happen, considering the bitter racial and church divisions in South Africa. Special interest groups on the right and left politically had lobbied against it.
But over 5,000 participants, almost equally divided between blacks and whites and representing almost every denominational, racial, and ethnic category in the South African ecclesiastical mosaic, came together last month in Pretoria for the week of meetings. Officials said that SACLA represented a wider range of cultural backgrounds than any previous meeting in the country, which has more than 3,000 denominations and church groups. Indeed, the participants’ only mutual link was their Christian faith.
Because of their differences, the participants felt tension and uncertainty when the sessions began. David Bosch, University of South Africa theologian and chairman of SACLA, doubted whether there had ever been a large meeting of Christians “as fragile as this one.” He said in his opening address, “The whole assembly can blow up today.”
But what emerged from the meetings was a new spirit of unity, rather than an explosion. In some cases, dialogue between persons from different backgrounds took place for the first time. Louise Wigens from Durban, white and 16 years old, said, “I came from Kenya eight years ago, but SACLA was the first time I’ve had a chance to speak to people of other races.”
Methodist theologian Elliot Mogojo summarized: “There is yet hope for South Africa—that came out of SACLA.” Mogojo and other participants had the view that “SACLA worked.” They believed the meetings showed a oneness, which many had considered an impossibility within the fractured South African context.
For the first time, hundreds of whites had a chance to hear firsthand the anguish of their fellow Christians across the color line. Unity was demonstrated by scenes of whites and blacks embracing in Christian friendship. Political rivals shared the same platform: Piet Koornhof, the Nationalist government minister in charge of black affairs, and Kwazulu chief Gatsha Buthelezi, a frequent critic of the government’s apartheid policies, called each other “brothers in Christ.” And conservative evangelicals joined the standing ovation for Bishop Desmond Tutu, general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, who previously viewed by them with intense suspicion.
The spirit of unity at SACLA, while distinct, was somewhat qualified. For some participants, the bottom line of success was that SACLA didn’t fall to pieces after it started; the week of lectures, worship sessions, and group discussions ended without a major confrontation. But there were undercurrents of tension that surfaced before and during the meetings.
As Bosch said, “The fact that we are here today is nothing short of a miracle.” The often vitriolic opposition to the assembly from groups such as the Christian League of Southern Africa on the right, or militant black groups on the left, kept an unknown number of potential delegates from attending. Presumably, the right wing opposition was responsible for painting a hammer and sickle on the SACLA banner on the main gate of the meeting site, and for deflating dozens of delegates’ car tires. One Afrikaans SACLA organizer described an “almost constant conference with the security police” for the two weeks preceding the assembly.
As it was, the men who developed SACLA from their experience at the Pan African Christian Leadership Assembly (PACLA) in Nairobi in December 1976 faced an almost impossible task. They wanted the South African church to experience the oneness that they, as black and white countrymen, had discovered in the Kenyan capital.
The week-long activities followed a three-day preparatory conference for about 1,000 delegates. SACLA itself took the form of several parallel conferences: for high schoolers, university students, youth leaders, congregational leaders, and national leaders—as well as plenary meetings for the assembly as a whole.
Some three dozen foreign visitors attended, including Northern Ireland’s Cecil Kerr; England’s Tom Houston; Orlando Costas and Bruno Frigoli from Latin America; and Mennonite professor John Yoder, Ron Sider, and Don Jacobs from the U.S. African visitors included Kenya’s Archbishop Festo Olang and John Gatu. Ugandan Bishop Festo Kivengere was forced to cancel his visit because of the tense situation in his country.
The SACLA experience of a “oneness in Christ,” which delegates saw as transcending political or cultural differences without ignoring them, took time to jell. Many delegates came with reservations or suspicions, and wanted to safeguard (if not actually promote) a certain viewpoint. Bosch identified four factions at the conference.
• Those who wanted SACLA to become a springboard for a major evangelistic thrust in the southern African subcontinent.
• Those wanting church renewal to be the focus of the assembly.
• Those anxious to keep politics out of religion, wanting SACLA instead to bring the country to national repentance.
• Those who believed SACLA should speak forcefully and unequivocally to the political issues of the day.
In SACLA’s first days, differences were fueled by various disgruntlements. White political conservatives, and probably moderates, too, were put out when Latin American Orlando Costas said: “Jesus Christ is today one with the outcast and oppressed of the earth.… We can affirm that Christ today is a black Southern African, a poor Latin American.…”
Likewise, those stressing the need for far-reaching social change were unimpressed by the impassioned testimony of Justus Du Plessis, head of the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa: they thought Du Plessis had downplayed the social aspects of reconciliation.
A group of young Christians, feeling that SACLA was neglecting the political and social issues in South Africa, staged a sit-down demonstration to protest the superior lunch served to delegates at the national leaders conference. Taking the title of a book by simple lifestyle advocate Ron Sider, a guest speaker at SACLA, they displayed posters reading “Rich Christians in an age of hunger,” adding “Enjoy your lunch.” While the delegates enjoyed their meal of steak and fruit salad, the youths read passages from the Bible.
Other grumbles came after several high-powered scholarly presentations: these left nontheologians in the audience in ignorance or bewilderment.
But then came two changes in the mood at SACLA. First, the papers delivered in the second half of the week became secondary to a rising sense of expectation from people who wanted something tangible to emerge from SACLA. There were frustrations among young black delegates in particular, who felt the assembly was skirting the vital issues of political change. They hoped increasingly for some unmistakable commitment by SACLA to politically oriented change in the country.
Then there was a new shift in the atmosphere. Rather than anxiously hoping for some dramatic climax or resolution of the assembly, most delegates suddenly seemed to realize that what they were wanting had already taken place—that they had been living SACLA’s message to South Africa just by meeting together.
That blacks and whites had come together—sharing homes, meals, prayers, hurts, and aspirations in the face of all that South Africa has heard about the merits of separation—constituted the message of SACLA. Speaker after speaker asserted that God’s people belong together. It was they who now needed to provide the model to the rest of their country.
Despite its success, many black and white participants realized SACLA was something of a contrived situation. For them, the meaning of SACLA was the need to take the assembly’s spirit of Christian oneness back to their local situations.
Only if “the failure and impotence of the church of God,” as Anglican Archbishop Bill Burnett put it, were replaced by a model spirit of unity, could the church hope to make an impact on the country. Sider said it was a farce for the church to criticize apartheid when it did not practice unity itself.
There was an urgent need for repentance on a national scale, said SACLA program chairman and evangelist Michael Cassidy. And many delegates also indicated that the church must get its own house in order before it dares to bring its message of reconciliation to the rest of South Africa.
There was little time at SACLA to work towards these ends. Said Chief Buthelezi: “Let us remember that we face an increasingly violent situation. It depends on what those who are playing leadership roles in South Africa today do, on both sides of the color line, whether this violence we face will escalate or not.”
He continued: “Only if we are true to our Lord can we as leaders perform that task successfully. It is by accepting the Lordship of Christ in our lives as leaders that we have a ghost of a chance in the task of successfully preventing hell from being let loose in South Africa.”
For the school children, university students, youth leaders, clergy, and laity who heard him, the charge was to live full Christian lives in the various leadership positions of their local situations. For them, SACLA was only a beginning.
Nicaragua
Squeezing Drops of Blessing from the Bitter Fruit of War
Guatemala-based correspondent Stephen Sywulka filed this report early last month, before the resignation of President Anastasio Somoza and the transfer of control in Nicaragua to a Sandinista-backed junta.
As National Guardsmen and Sandinistas slugged it out in bitter and bloody fighting, evangelicals and foreign missions personnel were caught in the middle.
Communication has been difficult during the latest round of conflict, which began in early June as leftist-backed Sandinista guerillas began another major uprising against the government of President Anastasio Somoza, whose family had ruled the country for 43 years and owns a good portion of it. But there were no reported injuries or deaths of missionaries or pastors among the estimated 10,000 persons (mostly civilians) killed in Managua in recent weeks. The majority of foreign missionary personnel has left the country.
“It would seem that the Lord has greatly protected the believers,” said Rafael Baltodano, a member of the Latin America Mission who left Managua with his family June 29. The Baltodanos’s home is in one of the barrios taken by the Sandinistas, and they were forced to seek refuge in the Baptist hospital for 10 days before leaving the country.
CAM International (formerly Central American Mission) reported that its three missionaries who remained in Nicaragua were safe. One of them, Mark Robinson, had been on the Atlantic coast at a church conference when the fighting broke out, and there was uncertainty regarding his whereabouts during the two weeks before he was able to get back to Managua. His family and other CAM dependents had been evacuated to Panama on a U.S. embassy flight; two other missionary families were out of the country when hostilities began.
The Nicaragua Bible Institute in Managua closed during the fighting, but most of its students, including five from other Central American countries, were unable to return home for nearly three weeks. The institute—operated by CAM and located on the relatively calm southwest side of the city—also took in about 75 refugees. Many churches served as refugee centers, reported institute director Joe Querfeld.
One CAM-related church was occupied by the Sandinistas and used for a time as a command post. The rebels later abandoned the church and a nearby Christian bookstore, and both structures were relatively undamaged. The bookstore lost almost half its stock to looters, however.
There were reports that Sandinistas had commandeered other church buildings in the eastern sector of Managua. Several church buildings, including the new Gethsemane Baptist Church, were damaged by rocket and shell fire. Hundreds of homes and businesses likewise suffered damage from the street-by-street fighting and the indiscriminate bombing, mortar, and rocket fire by the National Guard. Large sections of the city lay in ruins.
CEPAD—the Evangelical Committee for Development—has served as the coordinating agency for a majority of the evangelical churches and missions in Nicaragua. Set up after the 1972 Managua earthquake, CEPAD is a permanent development agency, largely funded by Church World Service.
During the current conflict, CEPAD has worked closely with the Red Cross, primarily in providing food to refugees in Managua. Nearly 20,000 families, representing 100,000 persons, have received CEPAD services, said CEPAD president Gustavo Parrajón. His agency has been able to maintain political neutrality and the respect of both sides.
Several Christian relief agencies from the United States, including World Vision, World Concern, the Mennonite Central Committee, and Church World Service, along with Good Will Caravans of Costa Rica, were putting together a joint aid program for Nicaragua. By July 1, they had sent by airplane over 40,000 pounds of powdered milk and high-protein cereal. These supplies, which also included some medicines, were distributed by CEPAD personnel. The group also prepared to stockpile supplies in Costa Rica for shipment when the highways were again open.
World Vision, CAM, Good Will Caravans, MAP International, and other agencies also have been active with programs for the sick and injured and for the thousands of Nicaraguan refugees. Of 80,000 Nicaraguans in Costa Rica and 40,000 in Honduras, about half are considered refugees.
The ongoing crisis challenged Nicaraguan evangelicals on several fronts—economic, political, and spiritual. Massive aid programs will be needed to revive the devastated economy. Political uncertainty remained; many evangelicals, particularly the young, sympathized with the rebels, although there was uneasiness over the Communist influence in the Sandinista camp.
And to the atmosphere of fear and suffering, some evangelicals applied a gospel witness. One missionary woman, whose home stands near an area of fierce fighting, witnessed to her neighbors while machine gun and mortar fire rattled in the background, and 14 made Christian commitments.
STEPHEN R. SYWULKA
Mennonites
Smoke Signals from Smoketown
“We’re not here to pick a fight; our stance is irenic—peacemaking,” said Pastor William Detweiler of Kidron (Ohio) Mennonite Church, one of the conveners of an ad hoc consultation of Mennonite evangelicals last month at a Smoketown, Pennsylvania, motel.
With that, the 20 leading pastors, educators, and laymen—all but one of them members of the 98,000-member (Old) Mennonite Church or the 60,000-member General Conference Mennonite Church—began sorting out the issues in their denominations that troubled them most.
Several common themes quickly emerged. Among them: the authority of the Word of God is being eroded on some fronts, rank and file Mennonites are being misrepresented on social issues by a few outspoken leaders and writers, evangelism and piety are not being emphasized enough, and respect for the Anabaptist biblical heritage of the Mennonites is giving way to adulation of cultural Anabaptism. As a consequence, several participants noted, some Mennonites have left their churches, and more than a few who remain are giving their money elsewhere, especially to evangelical parachurch ministries.
Detweiler, cospeaker with his brother, Robert (also a consultation convener), on “The Calvary Hour” Mennonite broadcast, warned that a “low view of the inspiration and authority of Scripture,” held by some Mennonite educators and clergy, is a threat to the churches. Pastor Albert Epp of First Mennonite Church, Newton, Kansas, spoke critically about “humanistic trends” and theologically liberal “pseudo-intellectualism” spreading in Mennonite circles.
Some participants lamented a decline in spirituality among adults. Veteran professor J. C. Wenger of Goshen Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana, commented: “Often the students in our seminaries are more concerned about spiritual realities than are their professors.”
Another convener, Pastor Kenneth Bauman of First Mennonite Church, Berne, Indiana, called for a reexamination of priorities. Publicly, he said, “We have shifted from a scriptural emphasis to a political one.” Broadcaster-pastor Arthur McPhee of Harrisonburg, Virginia, asked for “more accountability in our institutions.”
Exhorted Pennsylvania Pastor Ivan Yoder: “Let’s keep the gospel clean; let’s resist the temptation to let it degenerate into a social gospel.” Bishop David Thomas of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, reminded the group that Jesus was involved with the whole person, a fact that has social implications; but he acknowledged that there is “an increasing gap between those people who are speaking and writing and those who are in the pews.” Some participants charged that a few Mennonite activists are taking controversial social action positions apart from biblical bases, giving all Mennonites a blackened public image. “Let us not turn our ethnic nonconformity into a new ethical nonconformity,” advised Nathan Showalter, president-elect of the Eastern Mennonite Board’s home ministries division.
Much of the discussion centered on the so-called war tax issue. Owing to their views of what the Bible teaches about peace and the separation of church and state, the Mennonites from their beginnings in the 1500s in Switzerland have been pacifists. This stance usually involves exemption from military service, but some Mennonites think it should involve far more. They say that Christians should not pay taxes that go to support the military, and a few refuse to pay the estimated military portion of their income taxes. Other Mennonites argue that such practices are acts of disobedience to Christ, who taught that his followers should pay their taxes.
To a man, the consultation participants agreed that Christians should pay their taxes. Professor Wenger, one of the translators of the New International Version New Testament, declared that payment of taxes is part of the wider submission to the state that Mennonites have always espoused. “The government has been kind to us in granting relief from conscription, yet our church is constantly on [the government’s] back,” complained William Detweiler. He added that the gospel, as proclaimed by headquarters people, often comes across as a witness to peace instead of as the good news in Christ regarding salvation.
During the consultation’s 10 hours of deliberation, the participants drew up a six-part statement for circulation among congregations of the two Mennonite bodies. The statement:
• Reaffirms the authority and trustworthiness of Scripture.
• Affirms “the central need of a personal encounter with Jesus Christ as Savior,” and the need to reflect the personal piety and joy that comes from this encounter.
• Calls for a reexamination of priorities with emphasis on “the saving power of the gospel,” making sure that “all of our social ministries and ethical decisions [are] the fruit of our experience of the transforming gospel of Jesus Christ.”
• Urges that evangelism be given renewed emphasis.
• Sets forth the biblical basis for paying taxes (“We regard taxation as the power of the state to collect the monies needed for its budget and not as voluntary contributions by citizens”).
• Upholds the “centrality” of the local congregation and states that denominational agencies are “servants” of the congregation. (“It is easy for these agencies to become unaware of what is happening and what the concerns are at the local level and so fail to represent and serve the congregation.”)
Though couched in soft-sell—irenic, says Detweiler—language, the statement is bound to disturb the peace in some Mennonite circles.
The lone non-Mennonite, Simon Schrock, a literature evangelist from Virginia and a member of the Beachy Amish (an ecclesiastical cousin of the Mennonites), exclaimed: “This meeting has been long overdue. Why haven’t you spoken out over the years?” A number of the participants, who identified themselves as representing the silent Mennonite majority, nodded agreement.
EDWARD E. PLOWMAN
Jewish Christians
Messianic Congregations form Mini Denomination
Some Jewish Christians worship together in services, which, at least in liturgy and music, resemble those in synogogues. Now, many of these Jews, who often call themselves “believers” or “Messianic Jews,” have formed what constitutes a denomination: the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations.
Dan Jester, 31, spiritual leader (pastor) of the 150-member Beth Messiah Congregation in metropolitan Washington, D.C., was elected president at an organizational meeting last month in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and 19 congregations from the United States and Canada joined as charter members. These congregations have an average membership of 50, said Jester, of which about nine or ten have full-time, paid, spiritual leaders.
The Union will promote congregational planting, organization, and growth among Messianic leaders, said Jester, a Wheaton College and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School graduate. He also would like production of common worship materials since “there is a problem of duplication of educational and worship materials” among congregations.
Many Jewish Christians are members of mainline Protestant denominations, some of which (the Assemblies of God, for instance) have ministries specifically for Jewish Christians. But Jester believes that Messianic worship, since it reflects the Jewish identity, enhances the evangelism potential of Jewish Christians to Jewish nonbelievers.
Faith, Science, And The Future
Putting Science on a Leash
A strong movement within the World Council of Churches to temper science and technology with Christian ethics and social purpose was behind the 13-day World Conference on Faith, Science, and the Future held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last month.
The conference was attended by more than 450 scientists and theologians from some 77 countries. Both groups expressed a keen awareness of the global effects of technology that get out of control; both see Christian ethics as one source of control.
In a welcoming speech, Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston, declared, “A technology that ignores or disregards the question of Christian ethics, especially the value it places on humanity, will quickly reduce the earth to a desert, the person to an automaton, brotherly love to planned collectivization, and introduce death where God wishes life.”
Charles Birch, an Australian biologist, argued that science has projected “A mechanistic world view” that regards the universe as a machine, and that Christian theology has accommodated itself “uncomfortably” to this perspective.
At a preconference session, more than 100 science students from 55 countries worried that education is not doing the necessary job of tying values to technology. Many complained that educational systems pump them full of scientific knowledge without accompanying consideration of the effects of that knowledge on society.
North American Scene
Over 1.1 million unmarried couples lived together in 1978—double the number in 1970—according to a recent United States Census Bureau report. Other statistics: there were 48 million traditional households with married couples in 1978; however, eight million families last year were supported by women not living with a husband—a 44 percent increase since 1970. More than one-fifth of all households in 1978 consisted of individuals living alone—40 percent more than in 1970.
Roughly 12 million Canadians, or one-half of the population, are “secularists” who have no active commitment to organized religion, according to the Canadian Church Growth Center (based on 1977 statistics). It indicates that the “secularists” are neither open to, nor seeking, any religious orientation. Other figures show that the major religious body is Roman Catholicism: Catholics outnumber Protestants by almost three to one. Old-line Protestants—United Church, Anglican Church, Lutheran, and Reformed—comprise less than 5 percent of the population, and “heterodox” groups, mainly the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, have so grown that their attending constituency is 1.6 percent of the population.
The transition to evangelical leadership at King College was completed last month, after a Bristol, Tennessee, chancery court approved the transfer of control of the Presbyterian (Southern) school to a new board of trustees, King College, Inc. (see the June 29 issue, page 45). The court, in effect, approved an agreement reached earlier between the old board of trustees and the incorporated body of five evangelical Presbyterians, who had offered financial rescue to the school on condition that it have a greater evangelical emphasis.
About 14,000 married people, priests, and members of Roman Catholic orders attended the Worldwide Encounter conference at the campus of Kent State University last month. The couples, who represented all 50 states, came to the conference to learn how they could improve the quality of their marriage. About two million persons have participated in the program since it was begun in Spain 20 years ago and spread to nearly 40 nations.
A controversial bill that would deregulate the broadcast industry appears to be dead for this session of Congress. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Lionel Van Deerlin (D-Calif.), was aimed at revamping the 1934 Communication Act. The broadcast portion of the bill proposed an immediate end to federal regulation of radio, and a 10-year phasing out of federal regulation of television. If the bill is approved, licenses would be made permanent and the equal time provision and fairness doctrine would be abolished. The proposal received stiff opposition from religious groups, educators, labor unions, and other groups concerned with the quality of television programs.
The Denominations
Summer Time, and the Church Is Convening …
Summer for the local church means vacation Bible school, Sunday school picnics, and sparse attendance. But for most Protestant denominations (and tourist-hungry U.S. cities), summer means annual conventions. At denominational gatherings in recent weeks, scriptural inerrancy and homosexuality were among recurring concerns.
The Lutheran Church/Missouri Synod, which in recent years has weathered doctrinal turbulence, observed a comparatively placid biennial convention last month in Saint Louis. J.A.O. Preus, president of the 2.7-million-member body, told the 1,100 voting delegates, “Since the church has just emerged from a major doctrinal controversy, this calmer convention is needed.” He advocated greater emphasis on global witness as part of the convention theme, “God Opens Doors.”
Past doctrinal arguments weren’t ignored entirely, however. After some of the most heated debate of the convention, the delegates voted 861 to 147 to continue their “fellowship in protest” with the American Lutheran Church.
Since 1969, LCMS and ALC pastors have been allowed to preach in each other’s churches, and members of both bodies have been able to worship and have Communion together. However, synod delegates in 1977 voted to place this altar and pulpit fellowship in protest primarily because of the ALC policy allowing women’s ordination and its more liberal view of biblical inspiration.
Some delegates last month in Saint Louis preferred that ALC links end without delay; a convention report noted that doctrinal differences between the two churches have grown. However, the delegates voted to reject a proposal to end fellowship immediately. Unless the LCMS perceives a change in ALC policy during the next two years—such as a strong stand in support of biblical inerrancy—Missouri Synod officials have speculated that the fellowship might be terminated at the 1981 convention.
The synod also adopted a new denominational hymnal, Lutheran Worship, which will be available late next year. The hymnal was prepared by the synod after it pulled out of a joint project with three less conservative Lutheran bodies on the hymnal, Lutheran Book of Worship. The Missouri Synod had opposed the latter hymnal, citing liberal doctrine.
At the other end of the theological spectrum, the United Church of Christ took action on several social issues. The 703 delegates at its twelfth biennial convention called for an end to the death penalty, for a halt or slow-down of nuclear energy plants until safety problems are solved, and for members to conserve energy and adopt more frugal lifestyles.
Pastor Loey Powell publicly disclosed her lesbianism as she led a worship service at the meetings. This upset the more conservative delegates, but they took no action against ordination of homosexuals; instead, by a wide margin, the assembly voted to continue its policy of leaving ordination decisions to the local church authorities. The 1.8-million-member denomination became the first to ordain avowed homosexuals when, seven years ago, a Mill Valley, California, congregation ordained William Johnson. The New York Times reported the same congregation ordained Powell and two other acknowledged lesbians last year.
Nathanael M. Guptill, head of the Connecticut Conference, was elected moderator of the UCC; he succeeds Milton Hurst, dean of students at Talladega (Alabama) College. The delegates also approved six more years of study and discussions with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in preparation for a decision on whether to enter formal union negotiations.
Other denominations took these actions at their conventions:
• The Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) by resolution opposed accepting that homosexuality is “normal, desirable, or Christian.” The 170,000-member denomination will celebrate its centennial next year.
• The Church of the Brethren approved a paper that indicated the diverse understandings of the Bible held by members of the 180,000-member denomination. Conservatives, particularly within the Brethren Revival Fellowship, had wanted a strong proinerrancy statement. But a five-member committee, authorized two years ago to study Brethren positions on the nature and function of Scripture, could not agree on a single statement; instead, its paper contained eight statements. Among these, the paper affirms the inspiration of the Bible while not agreeing whether inspiration is a finished or continuing process. The paper also calls the Bible a “fully trustworthy guide for our lives,” while not agreeing whether trustworthy means inerrant.
• The General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, a 45-year-old fundamentalist group based in Schaumburg, Illinois, adopted resolutions opposing government regulation of private schools, reaffirming the inerrancy of Scripture, and commending exiled Soviet pastor Georgi Vins and the Soviet underground church—while repudiating the officially recognized church in that country as having capitulated to government control. Delegates also elected Paul N. Tassell, a Bob Jones graduate and Des Moines, Iowa, pastor, as national representative of the 240,000-member denomination; he succeeds Joseph M. Stowell, the church’s top official for the past 10 years.
