Pastoral Theology Abroad

The Art of Pastoral Conversation, by Heije Faber and Ebel van der Schoot (Abingdon, 1965, 215, $3.75), is reviewed by Melvin D. Hugen, pastor, Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

This book is a first in intercontinental travel in the field of pastoral theology. For far too long the theological traffic across the Atlantic has been one way instead of round trip. And this space mission is a resounding success.

Two Reformed ministers in Holland, both university professors of pastoral theology, have written a book that does not dismiss the American contributions of Carl Rogers, Seward Hiltner, and others as regrettable activism. Drs. Faber and Van der Schoot accept the American lead in this area of theology and then make a typically European contribution. They illuminate the theological significance of the pastoral conversation.

Both their debt to America and their contribution are illustrated in these comments by Faber.

I am also perfectly certain that the pastor must begin from this position of acceptance, and that he must accept the consequences. I should indeed go so far as to suggest that Roger’s acceptance of the client … has its roots in the Christian acceptance in God’s name of every man. However, this acceptance is not the only aspect even though it is an essential, indispensable, and often sufficient aspect of the pastor’s job. The pastor must also know … [that] he has a prophetic assignment [p. 29].

Again, “My proposition is this, that in this contact the message and the messenger are not to be divided, and that the effect of the message depends not only on the chance telling of it, but also on the fact that it is this messenger who brings it” [pp. 38, 39].

Significantly, the authors see that a pastor must not only listen (and listen he must, first and well); he must also be. He must be what he expects the other to become. But the pastor also speaks. As he listens and is, he communicates.

The question, “What can the pastor learn from Rogers and others in this field?” is answered in the context of a particular concept of the pastoral task: “He has, in the first place, the task to lead people to faith and to keep it alive, to help them see themselves in God’s light” (p. 133). Again, “revolution and faith are fundamental categories for a pastoral conversation” (p. 135).

This highly readable book is one of the best introductions available to the newer methods of pastoral counseling. It should be particularly appealing to evangelicals, since it gives a thorough theological analysis of this form of the ministry of the Gospel.

The first part is an attempt to reproduce in book form the clinical training of Rogerian type. The attempt almost succeeds, and that is no small contribution. Faber and van der Schoot add their theological concept of the specific nature of the pastoral conversation:

1. The pastoral conversation takes place, because the church—and through the church, Christ—commissioned the pastor. This awareness of not speaking on your own authority but in service of the Lord appears to me to be the fundamental presupposition. 2. The pastoral conversation finds its fulfillment there where the Strange Word is heard, where the Third Party enters the conversation, where people know themselves to be standing in God’s presence [p. 175].

Many evangelicals fear the client-centered approach to pastoral counseling. Any approach other than an authoritative one raises the specter of relativity. The authors develop a penetrating distinction between necessary authority in counseling and the authoritative approach.

This book should become a standard introductory text for pastoral counseling courses in Protestant seminaries.

MELVIN D. HUGEN

One Baptism Or Two?

Baptism Today and Tomorrow, by G. R. Beasley-Murray (St. Martin’s Press, 1966, 176 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by James Daane, assistant editor,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

This is one of the most fascinating books that I, an endorser of infant baptism, have read against infant baptism. The author, principal of Spurgeon’s College, London, and a participant in the discussions that produced the World Council of Churches’ One Lord, One Baptism, recognizes that there is renewed interest in this subject within the ecumenical movement because baptism involves the question both of the sacraments and of the nature of the Church. He agrees with the statement of Cambridge theologian A. Vidler: “All the chief Christian doctrines are involved in the theology of baptism.”

As a Baptist, Beasley-Murray, rejects baptism as a sacrament, of course. But he is highly critical of Baptists who reduce baptism to a mere symbol and points out that it is foolish indeed to live and die for nothing but a symbol. He also scores Baptists for spending vast energies on debating the proper subjects of baptism without ever seriously attempting to develop a theology of baptism.

The author himself rejects infant baptism on the ground that the meaning of baptism in the New Testament is much more than infant baptism can bear. And after pointing out that various churches which practice infant baptism have defined infant baptism in smaller terms than that of New Testament baptism, he says bluntly that these churches have in fact not one but two baptisms.

Beasley-Murray sees certain values in infant baptism: it eloquently demonstrates the priority of grace and its initiation of all matters of redemption; and it demonstrates that children of believers are set apart from the world and exist within the “outer court” of the Church. Indeed, he asserts that some rite to demonstrate these truths is needed and suggests that the Church form a rite that would meet this need without beclouding the truth of New Testament baptism. It seems to me that this is a telling admission.

Pedobaptists have always urged that without infant baptism the children of believers in the fuller New Testament dispensation of grace would be more impoverished than the Jewish children of the Old Testament. Beasley-Murray does not go into this—indeed, he quite ignores the whole Old Testament background of infant baptism. But the admission, after infant baptism is rejected, that the children of the Church need some kind of rite that the Lord has not provided is one whose significance ought to be pondered. Either the Bible, and the Lord, fail the children of the Church at this point, and the Church itself by biblical definition is deficient, or Beasley-Murray has given us an incomplete version of New Testament baptism. To admit that the Church has a need which the Bible does not meet is particularly significant in the light of Beasley-Mur-ray’s belief that “all the chief Christian doctrines are involved in the theology of baptism.”

Ultimately Beasley-Murray’s Baptist church is left with a need that it must itself fulfill, for he holds that “faith is not merely an accompaniment of baptism but an inherent element of it.” And he approvingly quotes W. G. Kümmers comment that faith is “an ingredient of the event of baptism, as it is of justification.” But this is a violation of the Reformation’s “by grace alone,” in regard to both baptism and justification. The objectivity of the sacrament for ordinance) of baptism and the distinctive priority of grace are surrendered in both baptism and justification when man’s act of faith becomes an inherent element or ingredient in baptism and in justification. Beasley-Murray asserts the priority of grace, but he cannot have it both ways.

Even so, the argument of the book is intelligent and interesting, and its spirit irenic. The book may serve to prod pedobaptists into thinking through the full meaning of New Testament baptism, for infant baptism and reveal the folly of reducing infant baptism to something less than full baptism.

This little book carries a price that suggests either that the publishers expect it to have a small sale or something less charitable. But the author is right; given the ecumenical movement and the increased interest in biblical study, the problem of baptism is going to be with the churches a long time.

JAMES DAANE

The Central Point

The Theology of the Resurrection, by Walter Künneth, translated by James W. Leitch (Concordia, 1965, 302 pp., $5), is reviewed by Robert D. Preus, professor of systematic theology, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

Professor Künneth has done a great service to all committed Christian theologians with this study of the theology of the Resurrection. First published in German in 1951 and now translated most adequately by James Leitch, the volume presents the most rigidly systematic and complete study of the Resurrection to appear in our generation, and this by a conservative scholar.

The book is divided into three parts: (1) the reality of the Resurrection, (2) the dogmatic significance of the Resurrection, and (3) the Resurrection and eschatology. Interspersed in the discussion are some of the most valid and telling polemics this reader has ever run across. For instance, the critique of Bultmann and his attempt to demythologize the Resurrection is devastating; Künneth shows that it is upon the resurrection and its reality (its anti-mythical character), that the entire demythologizing enterprise founders. Tillich, too, is criticized for making the Resurrection a mythical sign of something transcendent and unconditional; to Künneth this levels down the particular to the universal and reduces all special revelation (as in the Resurrection) to a general revelation. Again, Brunner comes under severe criticism for finding a difference between Paul’s theology of the Resurrection and the gospel accounts. That Paul does not mention the empty tomb does not imply that he was influenced by Greek thought. On historical and exegetical rather than on theological (philosophical) grounds, Künneth contends against Brunner that there is a connection between the Resurrection and the empty tomb.

Of the three sections, the first is by far the most difficult for the reader to understand, and for at least this reason the most unsatisfactory. Künneth wishes to maintain the reality of the Resurrection against all possible heterodoxy. It is grounded in history, he says. But it is not historical. The weight and character of it “simply does not depend at all upon his historicality.” It is a reality “beyond history” and “outside history.” The Resurrection is not “an objectively ascertainable object of knowledge.”

Such language, which may be used to guard against certain outmoded orthodox apologetics or the encroachments of scientific historicism today, is surely neither clear nor adequate. Now we must understand that Künneth is talking about the Resurrection as such and not the appearances of our Lord when he speaks this way. But the Scriptures do not make much distinction between the Resurrection and the appearances. And certainly the appearances lead each witness back to the Resurrection itself. If the Resurrection was a unicum that transcends historical analysis, as Künneth says, so also was each appearance; and so, for that matter, was the death of Christ, for it was an atoning death. Surely we would wish to call the Resurrection (although no one was present to observe it) historical simply because it took place on earth at a certain time and place (something which I am sure Künneth would profess).

By making the Resurrection “nonobjective” and by making the accounts of the Resurrection not purely eyewitness accounts but confessions, Künneth wishes to place the Resurrection theology above transitory world pictures and the Resurrection itself above scientific analysis or criticism. This is also his explanation for “possible contradictions” in the Resurrection accounts. One wonders, however, whether the author has not thereby paid too high a price to both scientism and the form critics. Certainly science is not competent to judge the Resurrection as something historical. And calling the traditions of the Resurrection “confessions” that involve a “believing knowledge” of the Resurrection, right as it is, will hardly satisfy the problem of “possible contradictions.” We will want to know that these “confessions” involving “believing knowledge” are true to what really happened and are not contradictory. Professor Künneth is most insistent upon the reality of the Resurrection, and one gets the impression that this involves also belief in the empty tomb. For this reason we wonder about the propriety of such vague, apologetic terminology.

In the second section, Künneth shows the centrality of the Resurrection for all Christian theology. Christology is best approached from the point of the Resurrection rather than from the classic Logos-incarnation motif or the Spirit Christology of E. Hirsch. Beginning in this way we naturally progress to the themes of Sonship and Lordship so fundamental in any Christology. Künneth breaks with the old classic Lutheran and Protestant Christology in saying that both Sonship in the sense of divine authority and Lordship were “given” through the Resurrection. To Künneth, the Resurrection (as the exaltation of Jesus) does not manifest what was formerly hidden but effects something new in Jesus. And to Künneth Lordship is divinity. This would indicate that the ground for a confession of Christ’s deity is first laid by God’s action in the Resurrection, and that God cannot be found apart from Christ. This does not deny the Incarnation, in which the Logos became flesh; but the Incarnation is incomplete without the Resurrection and is “conditioned” by it. Künneth contends also that the Resurrection shows that Paul’s theology, though it goes beyond that of Jesus, is legitimate.

Creation, too, must be interpreted in the light of the Resurrection. Thus we are saved from falling into any philosophy of nature, either a pantheistic glorifying of nature or a Manichaean depreciation of it. Time, too, must be determined by the Resurrection, which marks the consummation of time. The Resurrection is also the basis for the presence of Christ and for the bestowal of the Spirit. It is even “the basis” (presumably in the sense of a principium cognoscendi) of the Trinity (again an advance from catholic theology). Even the Church is “realized” in the Resurrection, and the sacraments derive their meaning from it. In fact, all ethical effectiveness in the Church gains its power from the Risen One. Finally, ontology, in the sense of man’s “Dasein,” must be a resurrection ontology (against Heidegger). Particularly the meaning of death (against naturalism or a naïve ethico-religious conception) is made clear only by the Resurrection; for death is God’s “no” to the world of the Fall and sin. If nothing else, Künneth in this long section shows how fundamental the Resurrection is to all Christian theology, and does not do so by depreciating the life and death of Christ.

In the final section, which is perhaps the best, the author attempts to ground all eschatology in the Resurrection. Against Althaus, he insists that Christian eschatology looks for a bodily resurrection on the basis of Christ’s resurrection. And this must be maintained in defiance of all historical criticism. In fact, the Resurrection is the central point in history (although it is not “a historical fact as such”) that sheds light on all history and saves us from every speculative philosophy of history. Again against Althaus, who teaches the essential unity and simultaneousness of death and judgment, of homecoming to Christ and resurrection, Künneth insists that biblical eschatology is determined by a principle of succession and progression. This means that he holds to an intermediate state of bliss as well as to judgment and resurrection, and at this point his work is particularly convincing.

In our day when the resurrection of our Lord is misunderstood, made peripheral and irrelevant, and called myth and legend—and this by theologians—it is gratifying to find a competent theologian not only defending the Resurrection against these many forms of unbelief but proclaiming it as central to our theology.

ROBERT D. PREUS

For The Shallow Life

Personal Religious Disciplines, by John E. Gardner (Eerdmans, 1966, 134 pp., $3), is reviewed by Gary R. Collins, assistant professor of psychology, Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Modern man lives a fragmented life—without meaning, direction, purpose, or clearly defined values. For many people, life is little more than a “tangled web or a frustrating pattern of multiple loose ends.” This is the message of contemporary philosophers and the observation of clinical psychologists and psychiatrists. Even many Christians find that life is shallow and their religion irrelevant.

A number of writers have diagnosed this modern condition: Dr. Gardner is one of the few who have offered solutions. “The dream of being a whole person cannot be realized without great effort,” he writes. “Christ must be put at the center of all thought, feeling, and action, and kept there …” by the practice of devotional discipline. This book is a penetrating consideration of the three disciplines Jesus describes in Matthew 6: giving, prayer, and committed, disciplined living.

Dr. Gardner (who teaches at Memphis Theological Seminary and is not to be confused with John W. Gardner) has written a persuasive, thought-provoking book. His style and message discourage rapid reading but invite careful and frequent reflection. This is a book that deserves to be read and by any one seeking a richer relationship with God.

GARY R. COLLINS

Orthodoxy Confirmed

The Temptation and the Passion: The Markan Soteriology, by Ernest Best (Cambridge University Press, 1965, 222 pp., 32s. 6d.), is reviewed by I. Howard Marshall, lecturer in biblical criticism, University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

The appearance of this book as the second monograph in the series recently begun by the Society for New Testament Studies indicates the character of the audience for which it is meant. In 1957, J. M. Robinson put forward the thesis that in Mark the ministry of Jesus is presented as a conflict with Satan, who acts through his agents, both human and demonic, until his defeat at the Cross. Dr. Best, an Irish scholar who has already made his mark in the world of scholarship with his study of Pauline theology, One Body in Christ (1955), attempts to rebut this thesis.

In Part One of the book, Best shows, by linking together the stories of the temptation and the Beelzebub controversy, that Jesus as “the stronger man” overcame Satan at the beginning of his ministry (Mark 3:27). Thereafter, Jesus was able to plunder Satan’s kingdom at will, the demons recognizing in him their Master. The other temptations that came to Jesus after the initial experience were not due to Satan but to other sources (Mark 8:33 means that Peter took on the role of Satan, not that he was possessed by him), and Best demonstrates from a study of the Bible and other relevant literature that Satan is only one of many sources of temptation.

In Part Two the author puts forward an alternative, positive interpretation of the ministry and death of Jesus. He examines in turn, sometimes rather tediously, the evidence for Mark’s theology in his editing of his material (especially in the “seams” that join up the individual pericopae), in his choice and ordering of the material, in the witness borne to Jesus and the titles assigned to him, and finally in the evangelist’s view of the Christian community. This study, which is conducted in the light of the latest scholarship, leads to a conclusion that readers of this review might have thought to be self-evident: Mark sees Jesus as the Teacher who brings men to an understanding of his Cross and calls them to repentance and as the One who in his death bears the judgment of God upon human sin and thus makes himself a vicarious sacrifice for men. Traditional though this conclusion may be, it is good to see it confirmed by careful, critical scholarship.

There are a number of points on which one could well take issue with Best, but mention of one must suffice. The author is concerned in this book to expound the theology of Mark rather than the mind and teaching of Jesus. Living as he does in the post-form-critical era in which the evangelists are regarded as theologians in their own right, he believes that a delineation of the theology of Mark is an essential preliminary to any attempt to work back to the historical Jesus. We may be glad that Dr. Best is plainly not disposed to agree with scholars who are telling us today that the historical Jesus is irrelevant to our faith. But it is a pity that in this book, where the opportunity to do so was often present, he has not made any attempt to indicate the relation between the historical Jesus and Mark’s portrait of him; indeed, he goes to great pains to tell us repeatedly that in this book he is not concerned with the question of historical reliability. One may surely ask what the value of Mark’s theology is if it is not in harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself, and it is a pity that Best has not shown whether what he calls “Mark’s inspired comment” is true to the facts. Attention to this point would have enhanced the value of what is a challenging piece of scholarship with which future interpreters of Mark will have to reckon.

I. HOWARD MARSHALL

Book Briefs

The Next Christian Epoch, by Arthur A. Vogel (Harper and Row, 1966, 111 pp., $3.50). Vogel responds to the secular, linguistic, God-is-dead theology and insists it is “catchy” but superficial.

The Ways of Friendship, by Ignace Lepp, translated by Bernard Murchland (Macmillan, 1966, 127 pp., $3.95). A very competent discussion of the various possibilities of friendship.

What the Cults Believe, by Irvine Robertson (Moody, 1966, 128 pp., $2.95). Brief, popular treatments.

With the Whole Heart, by Bud Collyer (Revell, 1966, 96 pp., $2.75). A good confession if you close one eye to its theology.

The Minister’s Wife as a Counselor, by Wallace Denton (Westminster, 1965, 172 pp., $3.95). For the pastor’s wife who feels she must.

John XXIII and the City of Man, by Peter Riga (Newman, 1966, 239 pp., $5.50). A commentary on John XXIII’s Mater et magistra.

Christian Economics: Studies in the Christian Message to the Market Place, by John R. Richardson (St. Thomas Press, 1966, 169 pp., $4.95). Practical comments that grew out of camp work with young people.

Hymns and Songs of the Spirit (Judson and Bethany Presses, 1966, 223 pp., $1.90). A collection of excellent hymns.

The Concept of Irony, by Sören Kierkegaard, translated by Lee M. Capel (Harper and Row, 1965, 442 pp., $7.50). One of Kierkegaard’s earliest major works and the last to be translated into English. Only for the most serious Kierkegaard students.

A History of the Jews in Babylonia, Part I: The Parthian Period, by Jacob Neusner (E. J. Brill, 1965, 236 pp., 36 Guilders). A scholarly work for scholars only.

The Generosity of Americans: Its Source, Its Achievements, by Arnaud C. Marts (Prentice-Hall, 1966, 240 pp., $5.95). Why do Americans give $11 billion a year in private generosity for the public good? An informative, historic survey of the major role Americans have played in philanthropy.

Luke and the Gnostics: An Examination of the Lucan Purpose, by Charles H. Talbert (Abingdon, 1966, 127 pp., $2.75). The author’s thesis is that Luke and Acts were written to counter Gnosticism. A scholarly work.

Joy to My Heart, by Gene Gleason (McGraw-Hill, 1966, 217 pp., $4.95). The true story of nurse Annie Skau, medical missionary to China and Hong Kong.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Portrait of an American Humanist, by Edward Wagenknecht (Oxford, 1966, 252 pp., $6). For the person who wants to know the smallest detail about Longfellow, who was not long.

More Beautiful than Flowers, by Joan M. Lexau, drawings by Don Bolognese (Lippincott, 1966, 28 pp., $2.95). A poem-prayer set to lovely drawings; its purpose is to show the small child what God is like.

Paperbacks

Faith, Fact and Fantasy, by C. F. D. Moule, et al. (Westminster, 1966, 125 pp., $1.45). Provocative essays that should provoke critical evaluations. One is by John Wren-Lewis, to whom John A. T. Robinson often appeals.

A New Approach to Sex, by William Fay Luder (Farnsworth Books, 1966, 103 pp., $.85). Some good sense on sex offered in the name of Christianity by an author whose theology is essentially non-Christian.

Priest and Worker: The Autobiography of Henri Perrin, translated by Bernard Wall (Regnery, 1966. 247 pp., $1.95). The interesting story of the French priest-workers, particularly of one of its first and most famous.

Layman Extraordinary: John R. Mott, 1865–1955, by Robert C. Mackie (Association, 1965. 128 pp., $1.25). The story of the man who perhaps more than any other contributed to the birth of the World Council of Churches.

Understandings of Man, by Peter Le-Fevre (Westminster, 1966, 187 pp., $2.45). The understanding of man in the thought of such men as Freud, Reinhold Niebuhr, Marx, Buber, J. Huxley. For critical readers.

Assignment: Overseas, compiled by John Rosengrant, edited by Stanley J. Rowland, Jr. (Crowell, 1966, 129 pp., $1.95). How to be a welcome resident and a worthy Christian abroad.

The First Southern Baptists, by Robert A. Baker (Broadman, 1966, 80 pp., $1.25). New, thorough research gives interesting insight into Baptist beginnings at Charleston, South Carolina.

Is the New Testament Anti-Semitic?, by Gregory Baum, O. S. A. (Paulist, 1965, 350 pp., $1.25). A son of Jewish parents, now a Catholic theologian, whose vocabulary is reflected in the Vatican Council’s statement on the Jews, stresses that God continues to make himself known in the synagogue.

Abraham and Jonas, both by J.-M. Warbler and Harold Winstone and illustrated by Jacques le Scanff, and The Prophet and the Soldier, by J.-M. Warbler and Harold Winstone, illustrated by Alain le Foll (Macmillan; 1966; 25, 27, and 25 pp.; $.59 each). Well-written, evangelical in content, and delightfully illustrated. For small children.

Where preaching should he biblical, relevant, existential, confessional, and sacramental

Sermons come out of a man’s life. Good preaching depends more on what a man is in himself than on academic preparation, accumulated reading, or the experience of the years. What a man is at the center of his being will very largely determine what he becomes in the pulpit. The channel of music is an instrument or a voice. The channel for God’s Word is the cleansed, unfettered personality of the preacher at home with both the visible and the invisible, a man saturated with the mind and spirit and love of Jesus Christ.

In a lecture John Knox declared that Christian preaching should be biblical, relevant, personal, existential, confessional, and sacramental. I should like to feel at the end of my days that my preaching has been characterized by these qualities.

Everyone must have his own method. I began my year of work during the long summer spent at a home by the waters of the Bras d’Or Lakes on Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, Canada. From the earliest days of my ministry I have kept a large, black, loose-leaf notebook, and this book goes with me to my summer home, supplemented by several large boxes of books and some commentaries.

The notebook might be called my homiletical garden. In it the idea and the inspiration for a sermon begins, grows, and in time finds expression. At the top of a page I write a single text or a series of texts, or a theme that has arisen out of my devotional disciplines or has come to me from “beyond” into my consciousness as I have gone about my work. Each idea or text gets an entire page; then with the passing of time the page begins to fill up with an outline, illustrations, and some paragraphs and sentences, and lengthens into several pages. It may be several years before the seed idea becomes a skeleton and the skeleton takes on form and substance and at last becomes a manuscript. But the book always has in it many pages with a wide variety of sermon stimulants at various stages of development.

God gives the preacher his authentic message. It comes from the biblical word, from the living word, and breaks in upon his consciousness by the power of the Holy Spirit under every conceivable situation. I have been prompted to jot down sermon suggestions while studying the Scriptures, while praying, hiking over a mountain, walking by the seashore, or swimming, on a train or a plane, in the middle of the night. I have dictated an entire sermon to my wife as we have driven on some long motor trip. When the channel is kept open, the message of the Spirit will come through.

Gradually, as the summer weeks pass, my preaching plans for the coming season evolve, until in about the second or third week of August the plans are sufficiently well formed that I can list all my sermon subjects and texts from the first Sunday of September through the following January. This list I send back to the church office in Washington for the minister of music and other members of the staff to use as they plan their part of worship for the coming season. During the first week of January 1 provide the staff with my topics and texts through Easter. Then about midway in the Lenten season I provide the topics and texts for each Sunday until mid-June, when the vacation period begins. But before September arrives I shall have the main emphasis of the coming season’s work clearly in mind and much of it on paper.

The preaching cycle for the year falls into rather natural categories. September is a time of renewal of the regular church schedule, and my preaching reflects this fact. I find, for example, that in 1961 I preached a series of sermons in September under the title, “Christ and Your Daily Life.” The subtitles were (1) “Christ and Your Home,” (2) “Christ and Your Work,” (3) “Christ and Your Education.”

The first Sunday of October is always World-Wide Communion Sunday, and the Communion festival in our church is always a high and significant occasion. The Communion service begins with the preparatory service on the preceding Thursday night, at which time the sermon is preached and the sacrament of adult baptism is administered. On Sunday the order for Holy Communion is rich and full of meaning. Since the sermon was preached on Thursday night, the invitation to the sacrament becomes a brief Communion meditation.

October is the month of the festival of faith for Protestants. I generally preach a series of sermons, certainly not fewer than two, on the salient features of Protestantism, treating the subject in its historical and contemporary setting. Thus I note in 1961 a series of three sermons on “The Unfinished Reformation,” and in 1962 a sermon on “The Reformed Church and the Vatican Council,” another on “A Protestant Reformer and the American Revolution—An Appreciation of John Witherspoon,” and still another on “Freedom and Order.” October closes with All Saints’ Day, when there is an opportunity for a service of remembrance for the faithful departed.

Several Sundays in November must be given to Christian stewardship and the Church in mission, for this is the period when church members are making their stewardship commitment for the next church year. November includes Veterans Day and Thanksgiving Day, with an opportunity for appropriate emphasis.

Soon after the Harvest festival emphasis, Advent begins, and I preach an Advent series each year. There are many extra services in December—stated Communion on the first Sunday, a Christmas Eve celebration of Holy Communion, and two or three vesper services containing the great treasure of Christmas hymns and carols. In January there are topical sermons dealing with the events at the turn of the year.

Then after a few weeks Lent is upon us. During this season I always preach a series of Sunday sermons, supplemented by Wednesday noon and Thursday evening services at which guest speakers preach. Such a series leads helpfully to Holy Week, Maundy Thursday, and the Good Friday commemoration. Such a series one year was “Words Spoken at the Cross” (1) “By the Gamblers,” (2) “By the Crowd,” (3) “By the Priests,” (4) “By the Malefactors,” (5) “By the Commander,” (6) “By Christ.” Another year I preached a series of Lenten Sunday sermons on the seventeenth chapter of John under the title, “The Time of Grief and Glory.” During the last Lenten season, the series was entitled “A Credo For Christians,” and I dealt with the following subjects: “A Look at the Apostles’ Creed,” “A Look at the Nicene Creed.” “The Westminster Confession—and the Proposed Revision,” “Honest to God—and the New Theologians,” “The Ecumenical Thrust,” and (Palm Sunday) “Christ and Our Times.”

On the Sundays in Eastertide several years ago, I preached a series of sermons on the “Words of the Risen Christ.” This series of nine sermons later became a book, And Still He Speaks.

Looking back, I find that I have preached three or four series each year—in the fall, in Advent, in Lent, and between Easter and Pentecost. There have been series on the parables, on the beatitudes, on great personalities in the Bible, on the Apostles’ Creed, on the Character of Jesus, the Work of Jesus, the Prayers of Jesus, and so on. There have also been topical sermons, especially on political freedom as it is derived from and sustained by the Christian faith. Special sermons appear at the time of a national election, the opening of Congress, or the convening of some international tribunal. By its very nature the National Presbyterian Church plans and conducts many special services.

Planning one’s preaching is one thing; preparation is quite another. I make a careful and detailed outline and assemble the material that is to be quoted. I then dictate the sermon either to a secretary or to a machine, and the manuscript is given to me for use or for revision. I preach from notes but do not read from a manuscript. I do not memorize words or sentences as such, though I reproduce in spoken word almost precisely what has been written. I spend part of Saturday evening and early Sunday morning with the manuscript in my hands, pacing the floor, mulling it over, soaking it up, and praying that God will use these efforts to his glory.

The value of a complete manuscript is that one has a permanent record, yet is free for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to use, change, or even discard the sermon. The manuscript can provide the substance of what one subsequently might publish, and sometimes manuscripts end up in unexpected places. The preacher in the pulpit of the National Presbyterian Church is always exposed, and I have found a manuscript in the church office makes possible accurate quotations by the press.

When I preached my first sermons after my ordination, I wondered whether I would have enough in me to last six months. Now I fear there may not be enough Sundays left for the texts or themes growing in my homiletical garden—that big black book.—

The Rev. EDWARD L. R. ELSON,

The National Presbyterian Church,

Washington, D. C.

The “God is dead” cry that has attracted so much attention in the secular press is one of numerous things that have combined to create a deep sense of frustration and uncertainty in many people today.

All about us we see evidence of moral and spiritual decay. Man-made alliances crumble, while wars and rumors of war so complicate the world situation that men despair of ever living in a peaceful world.

These things should not surprise the Christian. Rather, they should strengthen faith in the Word of God, for they are in full accord with what the Lord and the apostles prophesied would come upon the earth.

The Christian who loses his own bearings at a time like this will lose a great opportunity to witness to the faith. This is no time for pessimism on the part of believers. It is a time to rise up and point men to the Lord of history who is still sovereign. So far as God is concerned, things are not out of hand. He, as the Apostle Peter tells us, “is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9, RSV).

Actually these are times when we should look up and rejoice in the Lord as never before. We Christians must not remain silent, for we alone have the answer, not within ourselves but in the person and work of the Lord of all history.

For the “God is dead” blasphemers we should have both pity and prayer. They are denying a God about whom they know very little. The Christian can take refuge in hundreds of passages in the Holy Scriptures, such as, “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting thou art God” (Ps. 90:1, 2).

For the present world order there can be nothing but pessimism. Men who willfully reject God have no hope, only a “fearful prospect of judgment” confronting them. Christians, on the other hand, stand on the sure promises of God and know both their present position and their future prospects in the Lord. Never more than now have they needed to bear witness to their faith, not in a series of philosophical propositions, but in the person and work of Christ, the Lord of glory.

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says: “So that by two utterly immutable things, the word of God and the oath of God, who cannot lie, we who are refugees from this dying world might have a source of strength, and might grasp the hope that he holds out to us. This hope we hold as the utterly reliable anchor for our souls, fixed in the innermost shrine of heaven, where Jesus has already entered on our behalf” (Heb. 6:18–20, Phillips).

How men need an anchor of the soul in these days! And how thankful we should be that we have such an anchor.

“Change and decay in all around I see; O Thou who changest not, abide with me.” Henry F. Lyte wrote these words well over a hundred years ago. How applicable for today! What a comfort to know the One who is the God of the past, of the present, and of the future, and to rest in him!

At such a time as this there are many lessons for Christians to learn. One is to rest in the Lord. This is a very difficult command for some of us to follow. There is the urge to “up and smite them,” to call down fire from heaven on those with whom we strongly disagree. There is also the ever-recurring desire to go out and do something; but God calls us to pray before we act. Church history is full of well-meaning projects that foundered because they were based on the energies of the flesh and not on the leading of the Spirit.

In times of stress we are also prone to fret when God says, “Fret not.” We are tempted to turn to organizations and work, to set up some program, when God says, “Trust in the Lord,” or “Wait.” The flesh tempts us to rush out to correct situations when we should be waiting for the Lord. Too often we see the evil in others and fail to realize that we ourselves may be guilty of sin for which we have never repented.

We look at the world with a great feeling of frustration and forget God’s admonition, “Commit your way to the Lord.” We are tempted to give way to anger, often excusing it as some form of “righteous indignation.” But God commands us, “Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!”

These admonitions were given by God, not to absolve Christians from active work in his Kingdom, but to give them guidelines and to encourage them to depend on him. It is vitally important to consider God’s work in his way, by his Spirit, and in his time.

The anchor of our souls is fixed firmly in the sovereignty of God. If we look at the waves of a chaotic world, we begin to sink. But if we look up to the One who is sovereign in all history, we find peace of soul and quietness of heart.

The great danger confronting the Christian is that his faith should waver and he should succumb to the devices of Satan. All need to heed the warning: “You should therefore be most careful, my brothers, that there should not be in any of you that wickedness of heart which refuses to trust, and deserts the cause of the living God. Help each other to stand firm in the faith every day, while it is still called ‘today,’ and beware that none of you becomes deaf and blind to God through the delusive glamour of sin. For we continue to share in all that Christ has for us so long as we steadily maintain until the end the trust with which we began” (Heb. 3:12–14, Phillips).

We Christians also need to bear in mind that we adorn the faith by showing loving concern rather than belligerent intolerance. Paul’s admonition to Timothy holds for us today: “The Lord’s servant must not be a man of strife: he must be kind to all, ready and able to teach: he must have patience and the ability gently to correct those who oppose his message. He must always bear in mind the possibility that God will give them a different outlook, and that they may come to know the truth. They may come to their senses and be rescued from the share of the Devil by the servant of the Lord and set to work for God’s purposes” (2 Tim. 2:24–26, Phillips).

Trying times? They certainly are; but no situation is beyond the control of our sovereign God. Challenging times? Yes, for we Christians have the only answer to the world’s problems. We do not know the answers ourselves, but we know the One who does know. It is in him, and in him alone, that men will find all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3, Phillips).

Rather than being overwhelmed by the chaotic conditions to be found on every side, we must thank God because we have a sure foundation, an anchor that will not drag, a hope that will not fade. We have a Saviour who is the Lord of today and of all history. Therefore there is nothing to fear.

Comments on an Evangelical Institute

The Sons Of Light

If you ever go from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Atchison, Kansas, you will drive through part of the rich Missouri Valley, formed eons ago when the wandering Missouri laid down layers of good topsoil for miles around. And if you should happen to be there for the sunset, you will see some of the most beautiful scenes this country has to offer and your soul will be at peace.

To my left a long freight train met and passed me, and because of the habit of years I counted the cars. There were more than a hundred. I thought again of the riches of this great land and of whatever the gimmicks are that hold our system together. To my right a man on a tractor was working his fields, with the tractor lights on. Farmers don’t worry so much any more about the wind and the weather, because they can work night and day when they have to. Someone on the radio informed me that 2,000 fingerlings had just been dumped into several of the lakes in the northeast corner of Iowa. He went on to report that last year 32,000 fishing licenses had been issued in Iowa, and that considering one thing and another the people interested in this sort of thing had figured out that every fisherman caught 3.4 fish. This is a little high, even for my own lifetime average.

I stopped for something to eat in a diner in Atchison, mostly to find out where I was and where the church was where I was supposed to speak at a dinner meeting. As I ate I listened to a man standing by one of the tables tell the three people there and the rest of us in the restaurant about his son-in-law, who had been to Japan, the Philippines, and all the islands of the South Pacific. As frequently happens in such situations, I was depressed to think of all the preparation I had put into my speech when so many other people were interested in so many other things and not at all in what I was about to say. So I went to the dinner and spoke to forty men about the new Presbyterian confession. They hung on my every word, I am sure, but before and after my speech the conversation was about politics, farming, and athletics. Oh yes, they tell me that every fourteen seconds somebody buys a new Ford!

EUTYCHUS II

Enthusiasm For The Institute

I am intrigued with your idea.… Many of the faculty of even a large state university still have interests and concerns for evangelical Christianity. On our campus we have learned that an institute can develop tremendous new thrusts in a particular discipline. I am confident that the proposed Institute of Advanced Christian Studies with an interdenominational base but dedicated to the study and advancement of evangelical Christianity could be a tremendous force in overcoming the “watering down” of Christianity which has been taking place throughout the Christian society and even in many of our church-supported universities. May God grant the development of such an institute.…

M. J. CONRAD

Educational Administration

and Facilities Unit

The Ohio State University

Columbus, Ohio

Your current editorial suggesting an Institute of Advanced Christian Studies (May 13 issue) is a most encouraging proposal and would fill a real need.… As to location of the institute, I think there could be no better place than the Boston area. Besides the finest libraries, I think the climate of the academic world is both stimulating and tolerant, and the attitude towards visiting scholars receptive.…

J. FRANK CASSEL.

Professor of Zoology

North Dakota State University

Fargo, N. D.

Let me take this opportunity of assuring you of my genuine enthusiasm for the project—a really splendid idea!

PHILIP EDGCUMBE HUGHES

Columbia Theological Seminary

Decatur, Ga.

You are to be commended for your proposal.… The objectives of the institute highlight the major reasons why a Christian university is needed and could very well be a vital complementary activity.

HUDSON T. ARMERDING

President

Wheaton College

Wheaton, III.

The editorial “A Proposal for Evangelical Advance” (May 13 issue) focuses one of the great needs of the faith in our time. The prevailing views and teachings of an age are the reflections of what a very few intellectual leaders have set forth in seminal literary works. While the Christian faith is more than the process of intellectual activity, biblical theism is still a far more rational and intellectually acceptable answer to the dilemmas of man and the universe than are the fashionable ideologies of our era. When top Christian scholars produce systematic and comprehensive works that are convincing to other top scholars that perhaps the biblical way of thinking has arrived at some of the right answers after all, then will we begin to see basic changes made. In this far-ranging endeavor we must have works on man and his faith, his society, his family, his education.

CHRISTANITY TODAY is a shining example itself of how the filling of a real need in these high levels of thought leadership causes ever-widening circles of influence to radiate. Now one of the imperative needs is in the academic field and for a new Christian Institutes to be hammered out by the finest Christian thinkers.

Would not a location in northern Virginia not far from Washington with the Library of Congress and the University of Maryland be a good one for the Institute of Advanced Christian Studies and the later university? (The influential University of Virginia would not be far distant either.)

ROBERT M. METCALF, JR.

Memphis, Tenn.

As a member of the faculty in the department of philosophy of a secular college, I welcome your proposal and hope it will bear fruit.…

The libraries of secular colleges and universities are virtually devoid of defenses of the conservative Protestant position.…

PATRICIA CRAWFORD

La Mesa, Calif.

One Race

My heart sang with great joy this morning as I read “One Race, One Gospel, One Task” in the April 29 issue.… It is the declaration the world needs today for all who name the name of the Lord Jesus—and especially in the light of the purposeful design of the enemies of the Gospel to destroy its impact in the churches and in the world.… I would like to purchase 100 extra copies of this article.…

S. G. POSEY

Executive Secretary Emeritus

Southern Baptist General

Convention of California

El Cajon, Calif.

You have a wonderful issue.… But you defeat your purpose in “One Race, One Gospel, One Task.” Your cry “One Race” is the most dastardly kind of racism! When will you let God be God? He created men of different races.… Racism is wrong, yes! Yours, too! Think about it!…

WILLARD SCOTT

Boligee Presbyterian Church

Boligee, Ala.

Sunday School Days

Your brief statement, “Sunday School on Monday” (News, April 15 issue), was apparently written from partially misinformed sources.

Our board is in the process of redesigning the church’s educational services and printed resources. Your reference to upgraded teacher preparation, more substantive material introduced at an early age, and the like is a correct interpretation. However, in none of our working papers have we advocated the elimination of the Sunday (church) school. This would be (1) inappropriate on our part, since in the Presbyterian system a church session decides what its educational program should be; and (2) our strategy calls for more of almost everything now employed in the Church’s educational arsenal. This includes more time, not less, in which members of the Christian community may develop the abilities they must have in carrying forward the mission and ministry of the Church.

One hour on Sunday has never been an adequate response to the educational need in the Church. For too long we have been expecting too much from too little! Our board feels that church education in the future must be geared to a more inclusive time-event strategy. This need and our emphasis at this point in history is on addition—not on subtraction.

LEE EDWIN WALKER

Assistant General Secretary

Board of Christian Education

United Presbyterian Church

Philadelphia, Pa.

• Our report was taken from usually reliable news sources, which in this case erred.—ED.

We Want More!

Accept our thanks for the article (Apr. 15 issue) “Preach, Pastor!” by Harold R. Crasser. Please give us more of this type of message.…

HAROLD G. BALL

Hartland Baptist

Middleport, N. Y.

It stirred the coals of my soul.

ROBIN GUESS

First Baptist Church

Navasota, Tex.

Hawks Vs. Doves

Let me commend you for the fine editorial on “The Church and the Viet Nam-Bound Soldier” (May 13 issue). With some 3,500 servicemen on our own denominational roster, we find it a real task to keep local churches interested in maintaining contact with our servicemen.

ROBERT A. CRANDALL

Director

The Servicemen’s Department

Free Methodist Church

Winona Lake, Ind.

“The Church and the Viet Nam-Bound Soldier” is about the most heathen statement you have made. Are you encouraging ministers to becloud the Word when it says “Thou shalt not kill”?…

GLENN LEHMAN

Leola, Pa.

Your editorial speaks to a most timely question. I trust that the Church will begin to exercise her responsibility to her young men.…

Not only must our young men be brought to face the implication of “Thou shalt not kill” for the Viet Nam situation, as you suggest; they must also face up to the requirements of our Lord’s command, “Love your enemy” (even if one feels called to kill Viet Cong soldiers).… While we do have the responsibility to encourage our young men to serve in the military only in a way consistent with biblical injunctions, we must not hush up our criticism of a military conflict which is being waged immorally, illegally, and futilely.…

PAUL D. STEEVES

Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship

Lawrence, Kan.

Ramsey No ‘Artful Dodger’

Dr. Douglas (News, April 15 issue) has quite misrepresented the Archbishop of Canterbury’s comments on his Vatican visit. Almost every statement of the specific paragraph is typical of journalistic half-truth.

It is quite unfair to label Dr. Ramsey an “artful dodger.” His replies to questions were what many in England have come to expect from most respectable diplomats. The archbishop made it very clear that, since the pope is a head of state, arrangements for a visit by the supreme pontiff do not therefore lie in ecclesiastical hands.

Nor did Dr. Ramsey “duck” questions on infallibility. He very wisely pointed out that Catholics themselves do not seem to agree with regard to the meaning of this term. Still less did Kenneth Harris (the TV interviewer) understand its meaning—and who knows, still less (apparently) Dr. Douglas!

DAVID J. ELLIS

Editor

Faith and Thought

London, England

Correction

In my article, “The Teacher of Righteousness from Qumran and Jesus of Nazareth” (May 13 issue), the omission of the phrase “Allegro concludes that” in the paragraph on The Nahum Commentary reverses the sense I intended. The sentence with the omitted phrase italicized is as follows: “Although the Teacher of Righteousness is not explicitly mentioned, as the enemy of the Wicked High Priest, Allegro concludes that he was one of those who were crucified.”

The point of the matter is that Allegro has read into the text what is not there. For the reasons which led him to do so, one should consult his article, “Further Light on the History of the Qumran Sect,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 75 (1956), 89–95.…

EDWIN YAMAUCHI

History Dept.

Rutgers—The State University

New Brunswick, N. J.

Clearing Up The Mystery

The review of the revised edition of my The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (April 15 issue) contains a number of inaccuracies that are in need of correction. First the statement, “The revision was so minor, incidentally, that the author makes no mention of it in his introduction.” On page xii of the new preface are three paragraphs, each dealing with an item of considerable import dealt with in chapters six, nine, and ten.

A comparison of the new edition with the old would have revealed many new items all the way through. Scarcely to be escaped are sixteen charts of the kings presenting the vital yearly details of each reign, these taking the place of the single chart in the first edition; there would have been found over forty new tables and graphs greatly clarifying the presentation; in chapter six is found my new view of the Azariah-Menahem section of the annals of Tiglath-pileser III with a map of that period, etc., etc.

The statement of the reviewer [Dr. Gleason Archer] that I said only that “no evidence has been forthcoming that has given me cause to change my views on any item of major importance” is misleading in that it has been lifted from its specific application and has been made to apply to the entire field. What I was dealing with in that connection was my chronological conclusions, which happily were in no need of major revision. To take so localized a statement and make it cover the whole field is to make me say something I did not say and which is not true. Actually the fifteen years since the publication of the first edition have been highly fruitful in progress toward a clearer understanding of many of the perplexing problems involved.

Yet again, Archer’s charge that I have heaped “very severe judgment upon all and sundry critics” of my work is hardly in accord with the facts. I owe much to the many observations and criticisms that have come to me, and so stated when I mentioned “the benefits of the reactions” from “scholars around the world” which I have followed “with much of interest and profit.”

Instead of pronouncing “severe judgment upon all and sundry,” my remarks quoted by Archer were directed to the limited few standing at opposite ends of the spectrum who base their conclusions on “an a priori bias.” On the one hand are those who feel that the chronological data of Kings cannot possibly be as accurate as my work has shown them to be, and on the other hand are the few who regard as altogether inerrant a volume in which I admit certain slight imperfections due to the fallacies of human hands. Fortunately those in these categories constitute a small minority rather than the large majority, and such was plainly stated. When in my preface I twice referred to the “few” thus involved in raising their “few voices of dissent,” only to have it misinterpreted by Archer as my pronouncing “severe judgment upon all and sundry,” is neither accurate nor fair.

The point I was endeavoring to make in that connection was the difficulty of coming to sound conclusions when evidence is molded to fit predetermined judgments rather than allowing assessments to be shaped by the weight of evidence. The development of Archer’s argument in favor of the accuracy of the synchronisms of Second Kings 17 and 18 is a good example of what I had reference to. It is my view that those synchronisms reveal a chronological pattern some twelve or thirteen years out of line with the other chronological data of that period and with the historical requirements of the times.

To support his view of a biblical pattern with a 728 date for Hezekiah as against my view of a 715 date, Archer finds it necessary by means of “textual emendation” to deny the accuracy of the synchronism of Second Kings 18:13 of Hezekiah’s “fourteenth” year and to substitute for it a “twenty-four” of his own invention, and to make an additional accommodation of three years in order to complete the thirteen years involved by reducing the year of Hezekiah from his 728 to 725. An emendation of fourteen to twenty-four in Second Kings 18:13 would, however, require another emendation in Isaiah 36:1, where the same synchronism of Hezekiah’s fourteenth year for Sennacherib’s campaign is found. Why the synchronisms of Second Kings 17 and 18 should be any more inerrant than those of Second Kings 18:13 and Isaiah 36:1 he does not explain. Neither does he provide any biblical evidence as to how his date of 728 instead of my 715 is secured. The only biblical date for Hezekiah is 715, not 728, and to secure a date of 728 he must forsake the biblical positions of the reigns of Jotham, Pekah, and Hoshea and turn to Assyria for the dates of those kings. Actually, in this endeavor to provide support for a 728 date as against my date of 716/15 Archer has unwittingly acknowledged the existence of the two biblical chronological patterns some twelve or thirteen years apart.

Would not a more careful evaluation of the details of my volume as a whole have provided a fairer picture and a better review than this presentation so largely concerned with an attempt to set forth his reasons for 728 as against my 715?

EDWIN R. THIELE

Berrien Springs, Mich.

I conceive it to be a prime responsibility of any reviewer to take special note of the main issues raised by any book which he undertakes to review. Certainly the question of the beginning of Hezekiah’s reign was the principal issue raised by the author, both in the first edition and in the second. For this reason I devoted the greater portion of my comments to this much discussed and difficult question.

For two reasons the commencement of Hezekiah’s reign was the main matter for discussion. First, because it was the principal area of deviation from the earlier chronologies worked out by such conservative predecessors as the Fourth Edition of Davis’s Dictionary of the Bible. For the most part, except for occasional shifts of two or three years, Thiele comes out to substantially the same results, although with many refinements and improvements in detail. Secondly, because it represents a deviation from Dr. Thiele’s own presupposition of unfailing accuracy in the biblical authors for him to concede that in this one instance the original Hebrew record was in error by a margin of thirteen or fourteen years. The question cannot be suppressed: if the original manuscript of 2 Kings 18:13 contained so gross an error, what assurance do we have that he may not have erred in regard to the extent of Pekah’s reign (an apparently contradictory set of statements which Thiele very ably cleared up in his discussion). In other words, if this one passage (and its parallel in Isa. 36:1) was in error, then all of the rest of Thiele’s work is undermined. No other chronological statement in Kings can be regarded as completely beyond suspicion.

Despite misgivings about the textual emandation proposed in my review, I still feel that it does clear up the apparent discrepancies quite satisfactorily.…

GLEASON L. ARCHER

Prof. of Old Testament

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Deerfield, Ill.

It is regrettable that disagreement must be expressed with both Dr. Thiele’s construction and Dr. Archer’s reconstruction of the dates for these kings, for most pertinent data is neglected by both. This is the reference in Second Kings 16:1 to Ahaz’s first year and this twelfth year in Second Kings 17:1, the latter working out only four years after his first. This is impossible.

Over a year ago I read at the midwest section of the Evangelical Theological Society my solution to this problem. It is now shortly to be published in the ETS Bulletin.…

The solution has commended itself to a number of my colleagues, and it has the advantage of taking the dates as they are and omits altering the text in any way.

HAROLD G. STIGERS

St. Louis, Mo.

A homiletician’s comments on sermons and preachers

The late Andrew W. Blackwood, Sr., former professor of practical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary and Temple University and contributing editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAYwas my favorite professor-friend. It was my privilege to take no fewer than fifteen of his graduate-school courses—which may be some sort of a student record. Our conversations and correspondence through the years dealt with everything from pussy willows to politics—but mostly preaching. During class periods I kept voluminous notes that included many of Dr. Blackwood’s off-the-cuff remarks, most of which are not found in his writings. The following article is a compilation of Blackwood-quotes, gathered from correspondence and class notes and presented as if he himself had written the manuscript for publication.

Preaching. Preaching is God’s favorite way of transmitting power. Preaching is communication on fire. And it is a lot better to make a rhetorical slip now and then than to hand out ice cubes Sunday after Sunday.

Proclaim the positive Word of God! Christ is the Living Word of God. The Bible is the written Word of God. Preaching is the spoken Word of God.

There is too much negation in present-day preaching. There may be someone in your audience, listening to you, who will never hear you again; don’t let him leave having heard nothing but negations from your pulpit. There is not a single pessimistic note anywhere in the New Testament after the Resurrection. Why should there be any pulpit-pessimism today, anywhere, by any preacher of Christ’s Good News? The pulpit is no place for apologies. Don’t ever say “perhaps” or “I think” when you are preaching. The preacher ought to make his pulpit pronouncements authoritative.

I have probably read more sermons of undergraduates and graduates than any other seminary professor in the United States. I have discovered that nine out of ten preach in the past tense. They learned this unfortunate feature from the older preachers in today’s pulpits. Always preach in the present tense.

A minister’s pulpit work could well be divided three ways: 30 per cent from the Old Testament, 40 per cent from the Gospels, and 30 per cent from the rest of the New Testament.

My advice to the preacher may be summarized this way: (1) Preach what you understand. (2) Preach only what you believe. (3) Dare to be simple, but not childish—give solid substance in the simple form. (4) Plan each paragraph carefully. (5) Rely on repetition. (6) Stress persons—one at a time—rather than abstractions. (7) Give preference to persons in action. (8) Bring out tension—the good versus the bad. (9) Use “live” words and “fact” words that appeal to the ear and the eye. (10) Make the most of your imagination.

I strongly recommend that every preacher prepare one or more publishable manuscripts every twenty-one days, or at least prepare a piece as if he were going to publish it. And I am not against his submitting it to the proper magazine for publication. The more the minister writes well, the better his preaching becomes; the more he writes carelessly, the worse it gets!

The Sermon. A good sermon should be as exciting as a baseball game. Most sermons are dull, dull, dull. To make the most of preaching, get hold of a few big ideas and drive them home. Choose your subjects carefully. I wouldn’t dare preach on any subject that I hadn’t thought through for more than a week. Start off right by putting religion in your sermon topic: this will be proof that it is a sermon topic.

One text for a sermon, and a short one at that, is sufficient. Parishioners are already confused enough. When a preacher uses more than one text in a sermon, he makes for lay confusion, especially for those listeners who are biblical illiterates.

The most important sentence in the sermon is the first one. The most impressive part of the sermon, besides its text, is the conclusion. A good conclusion does not include a summary; a summary looks back, and you don’t look back in a conclusion. The now is most important in a conclusion. If you want to spoil a good sermon, summarize! The last sentence in your sermon might well be either a restatement of the text or a rephrasing of the text in your own words.

The Master Preachers. I am a great admirer of the master preachers. I am convinced that a minister can learn more in five minutes from a sermon of a master preacher than from an entire book of sermons by a minister who has not yet proved himself. Greatness in preaching is measured by the effectiveness that continues long after the preacher has ceased to preach.

Living with the sermons of the great preachers is time well spent. That is what John Henry Jowett did. He lived with one great preacher at a time, and then went so far as to “try the master’s method” in his own pulpit.

Frederick W. Robertson was the most influential preacher in the last one hundred years. His influence was due to his unique way of preaching from the Bible. He was a master at preaching either doctrine or duty. Robertson was my type of pulpit master, because he was a hearer-minded preacher.

Charles H. Spurgeon was the most useful pastoral-evangelist, as well as the most amazing preacher, since St. Paul! He proclaimed the Bible; he never apologized for it. He was a happy preacher, and he made his hearers happy with the Gospel he preached.

Alexander Maclaren ranks as the best at interpreting the Scriptures. However, Robertson and George Adam Smith interpreted the Scriptures best when meeting human needs specifically.

John Bunyan and Dwight L. Moody were simple preachers, yet master preachers. Some of us are afraid to be simple. When I was young, I didn’t like either Bunyan or Moody; I could understand every word they wrote. I learned later that I was wrong and they were right.

Horace Bushnell was the most brilliant preacher we ever had in America. He was the intellectual giant of the American pulpit. Phillips Brooks was the best preacher ever produced in America because he was our best pastoral evangelist. His Lyman Beecher Lectures, Lectures on Preaching, are the finest of the entire lecture series.

T. de Witt Talmage was probably the most popular preacher in American history. But when Talmage left a church, the people did also. His sermonizing was too preacher-centered.

What about the preachers of this century? Well, the sermons of Arthur John Gossip and James S. Stewart will probably live longer than those of any other twentieth-century preachers. Gossip and Stewart are master preachers with master sermons. By the way, Stewart is my favorite living book-writer.

The two most famous sermons in the English language are Horace Bushnell’s “Every Man’s Life a Plan of God” and Phillips Brooks’s “The Fire and the Calf.” Book IV of Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine contains the finest material ever written on homiletics. [Although Dr. Blackwood never specified what he considered to be the second-best work on homiletics, he was full of the highest praise for Chrysostom’s “Treatise on the Priesthood.”]

The Bible. People are buying the Bible, but most of them don’t know what to do with it after they make the purchase. Their preachers could be at fault. The one thing many preachers don’t know is their Bible. I wish some of them knew as much about the Bible as they do about Plato. My favorite Bible verse is Second Corinthians 10:7: “Look at what is before your eyes. If any one is confident that he is Christ’s, let him remind himself that as he is Christ’s, so are we.”

Evangelism. Evangelism is another name for “missions at home.” In my estimation, the professional evangelist is good; the pastoral evangelist is better; the lay evangelist is best. I support C. H. Dodd’s view that whenever the New Testament refers to preaching, it really means evangelism. There is no closed season to evangelism, no reason why a congregation shouldn’t have converts in July.

Seminary, It is very difficult to teach seminarians who have been called to the ministry by their mothers and not by God! Seminaries, generally, have failed to teach what to preach and how to preach it. If I had the chance at age thirty-five to be a bishop or a beginning professor in a seminary, I would choose the latter. [Dr. Blackwood made this comment in his late sixties.] If I were the president of a seminary, I would say to each professor who was called to teach: Your business in teaching theology or Old Testament or New Testament or dogmatics or whatever is to prepare men to believe it and interpret it, to preach it and to teach it in facts of experience.

Parishioners. Many a minister pities himself and his situation when he has everything he needs: Parishioners! There are four types of parishioners: the dreamer, the drone, the drudge, and the doer. If the parishioners love their pastor, they will think seriously about what he preaches.

Pastoral Practice. For the good of the parish, the pastor and his wife should contribute at least 10 per cent of their income to the congregation’s program, engage in grace before meals, and have a daily family altar. The news of such practices will eventually saturate the parish—and there is nothing wrong with such news as this getting around.

Our world is nearly drowning in a rising tide of words that pour forth through every kind of medium. Books, pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers emanate from high-speed, automated typesetters and presses. From radio and TV come cascades of words. Even the skies are profaned by devices reflecting words that cross all boundaries.

If Christ returned to this word-choked world, could his voice be heard?

Imagine his appearing on the West Coast, where he would find a Babel worse than that depicted in the Bible, and one with greater capacity for self-promotion. Or in Washington, D. C.—would he be drowned out by the cacophony of conflicting pronouncements? Would the truth and universality of his words rise above competition from religious hucksters?

Or what if he appeared in New York City’s Central Park and repeated the words he once spoke in Galilee? What would happen? Probably, the police would pick him up for his own protection. At precinct headquarters, skeptical reporters would relay to city editors the bare details about another self-appointed saviour claiming to be divine.

If the press of Babylon-on-the-Hudson then sensed a story, imagine the scene: popping flashbulbs, blazing floodlights, flying questions, imploring reporters, TV cameramen moving in with their zoomar lenses, the crowd pressing in. Questions … questions!

“Give us a bit from the Sermon on the Mount.… Louder, please!… Look this way.”

If Christ were to come in his full power, mass communications might make his task easier. But if his ministry were like that which he had on earth before, one shudders to think of the danger and stupidities he would surely have to endure.

Christ is not present bodily in the world today, but Christians are. They must confront the marvels and menaces of mass media to transmit his message. They face the possibility of instantaneous worldwide transmission of the message through communications satellites. Increasing literacy expands the audiences they can reach in less dramatic ways. And journalism schools have contributed skillful insights into what must be said and how it can best be said. (In a future issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, I shall discuss what Christians can learn from the new achievements in communication theory.)

Often, however, Christians have surrendered the airwaves and columns of print to the insipid drone of an uneasy, materialistic society. Many conservative Christians do not have access to these media or, if they do, lack the sophistication to do more than repeat shopworn homilies.

Polished liberals have the style but are bewildered about the content of the message. The height of confusion is reached in Dr. Gabriel Vahanian’s book The Death of God, in which generalization replaces accuracy and semantic confusion hides the simple truth that God lives for all those who seek hint through Christ.

Another source of difficulty is destruction of communication between nations, some of which is intentional, as in the raising of the Iron and Bamboo Curtains. This product of deliberate policy, which has endured now for half a century, has corrupted the meaning of political concepts and nomenclature and aroused suspicion and hatred around the world. No politically organized people has escaped this semantic poison.

Another type of breakdown arises because some “Christians” cannot communicate what they should, since they do not believe the truth of their cause and perhaps never did. Not only in secular universities but also in some seminaries, church colleges, and pulpits, there is a growing denial of the need for communication with God, even denial of its possibility. Instead, one is told to establish rapport with the crowd and to relate to his own group. Out of this, a supposedly, well-adjusted, socialized being will develop. Morals are relative, and anything goes if the crowd and the circumstances are right.

These pitiable communicators in classroom and pulpit have never found the spirit and soul of Christianity and the transformation it brings to human hearts. They do not share the comforting presence of the Holy Spirit and his guidance in daily living. Nor do they know from experience that the Spirit of God unites with the spirits of men so that, while yet on earth, men may fellowship with God in eternity. They little know how to communicate with the Triune God, so they are lost leaders. Not knowing the way, they can only lead others into spiritual confusion and misery.

One who comes fresh into the knowledge and acceptance of Christ’s saving work on the Cross from a career in mass communications, as I did, can scarcely believe the complacency with which some Christians greet the ever-fresh truths of Jesus Christ—their eternal verity, and the worldwide light they might cast on current political and social problems! Only through Jesus Christ is there a solution to this crisis in spiritual and ordinary human communication.

Christians must communicate not only with those apart from the truth but with one another. Some ministers no longer understand what their own parishioners think and feel. As a result, only habit takes laymen to their Sunday seats before God, and habit is not enough to fill their hearts. Bewildered church leaders accept certain fashionable beliefs about the inadequacy of Christianity to meet today’s problems. Some ministers cannot even communicate among themselves. The confusion is enhanced by subtle new variations on the meaning of the words used to communicate God’s truth (as in the case of biblical terms like “revelation,” “reconciliation,” and “redemption”).

What forces are disrupting man’s communication with the Creator, without which he cannot communicate spiritual truth to other men?

One destructive force is the drive for excessive security—freedom from want of food, clothing, shelter. All these are necessities, but our world exalts them above the God from whose generous hands they come. Christ’s precepts leave no room for pursuit of unnecessary worldly goods and may require many to “sell all … and give to the poor.”

Another is status-seeking. The status-seekers want approval of their associates instead of their God. Christ-inspired humility ends dependence on the opinion of others. Meekness, always disadvantaged in the pursuit of wealth, brings earth’s greatest treasures, none of which is for sale in stores or likely to be highly prized by non-believers.

The frenetic pace men follow to achieve success inevitably creates tension that shatters the inner calm without which they can scarcely hear the Holy Spirit’s voice. Even in a more placid society, Christ drew apart and went up into the bills to commune with the Father.

Other internal states that distract and upset one’s emotional balance are anger, anxiety, resentment, fear.

At a time when ecclesiastical communication is diminishing, when the use of mass communications to impart spiritual values is endangered by the worldwide struggle between the two great rival political philosophies, when channels of communication between the Creator and the Christian contract or vanish, when God’s death on earth is announced by some theologians, let spiritual communication start now with you as you read this. Let your cry be:

“Lord Jesus, I open my heart to thee, my Saviour. Forgive my errors and accept my life. As I live for thee, let me hear thy Holy Spirit telling me what I ought to be and ought to do. In knowing thee as the Truth of God and the Way to the Father, may I know the truth and the way under God to real communication with mankind.”

Only in this way will there be a start toward solving the appalling breakdown in worldwide communication. First must come recognition that the real crisis is between man and God, and then must follow restoration of communication among men—on God’s terms.

A great debate is swirling around the question of the Church’s evangelistic strategy. In the matter of world missions, the issue was recently brought into focus in a series of articles in a national student publication. Various leaders evaluated the history of missionary endeavor, analyzed the contemporary scene, and proposed a philosophy for the days ahead. One assigned high priority to city and student work but gave low priority to “tribal efforts.” Another plumped for concentration on tribes yet unreached as the most consistent response to the Great Commission. A third held to the need of reaching first the emerging middle classes, as the traditional “conveyors of information.” For several months the discussion continued, as the editors were deluged with more articles and endless letters submitting yet another scheme or proposing a combination of all views. This public reaction showed the hunger for a clear enunciation of Christian priorities in the new age of revolution.

What is our strategy to be? As we seek the answer, we must keep two things clearly in mind.

First, we are seeking, not to invent a plan, but to discover God’s strategy. Our task is not the “making of a president” nor the winning of a war. While we may get help from “secular” procedures in relating our message to the contemporary world, our main concern is to understand what the will of the Lord is. Jesus Christ is the great evangelist, the master strategist. Paul did not “venture to speak of anything except what Christ has wrought through me to win obedience from the Gentiles, by word and deed” (Rom. 15:18, RSV). A human witness is the hand by which God touches men, the mouth through which Christ speaks, the tool to carry out his plans. The Holy Spirit gives the divine strategy to the waiting, obedient fellowship. At Antioch, “while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them’.… So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went …” (Acts 13:2, 4, RSV).

God’s ways may seem foolish to men, for they are higher than ours. Consider the massacre of five young men by Auca Indians in a South American jungle. What a waste it seemed! But in God’s providence the martyrdom of Jim Elliot and his companions ended finally in the conversion of their murderers. And this in turn has penetrated into the highest government circles of Ecuador, as men have seen the transforming power of Christ. The Christian strategist must indeed possess a keen mind; but that mind must be under the control of the sovereign God, through a humble spirit and a flaming heart.

Secondly, we must not confuse strategy with methods. Strategy includes methods, but much more. Strategy involves vision—a clear-cut sense of what we are sent to do, and of the best principles of achieving our objectives. Methods can become tyrants, unless they are made the servants of strategy. This is why evangelism is always in peril of being stifled by the idolizing of one particular method.

The strategy to which we are called today is one of “total evangelism.” This strategy includes three things: goals, agents, and methods.

Our goal is nothing less than the penetration of the whole world. Jesus expressed this clearly: “This gospel of the kingdom trill be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations …” (Matt. 24:14, RSV); “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given, to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations …” (Matt. 28:18, 19, RSV). Luke records Jesus’ final orders both at the end of his Gospel and the beginning of the Acts: “… that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:47, 48, RSV), and “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8, RSV). And John in the Revelation foresees a day when “a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, [stand] before the throne and before the Lamb …” (Rev. 7:9, RSV).

Elton Trueblood has suggested that most of the figures Jesus used of the Gospel—salt, light, keys, bread, water, leaven, fire—have one common element, “penetration” (The Company of the Committed, p. 68), and the Christian is true to his calling only when he is penetrating the world around him.

But what are we to penetrate? What frontiers did Jesus mean when he said, “Go into all the world”? He meant not only the world of the geographer but also the world of the sociologist; not only the frontiers of Tibet, Brazil, and the Congo but also the frontiers of all the little worlds in which we spend our lives. Surely our Lord wants us to penetrate the world of government, of school, of work, of the home. And does he not want us to penetrate those areas of modern life that all too often are “lost provinces” to the Church—the world of entertainment, of the intellectual, of the laboring man, of the disenfranchised, of the “pockets of poverty”?

A minister was overheard saying, “Some men are narrow. All they can see is their own church. But I have the broad view—I keep in mind the whole denomination.” A “broad” view indeed! God put the whole wide world for which Christ died—in all its height and depth, its width and length—on our hearts.

If our goal is the penetration of the whole world, then for the agents to carry out this task we must aim at nothing less than the mobilization of the whole Church.

We have not been promised by our Lord that the world will be converted. Thus success is not our standard. But by any standard the growth of the Church over the last century has been agonizingly slow. While Christians (Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox) made up a little less than 30 per cent of the world’s population in 1868, one hundred years later they are a little less than 32 per cent. Unless missionary work increases beyond present expectations, the rate of population growth suggests that the percentage of Christians in the world will be smaller by the year 2000. With the world population increasing by about 65 million per year, there would have to be about 57,000 won to Christ every day—about 2,400 every hour, 40 every minute—just to keep pace with the increase.

These figures reinforce a premise that has long received lip service: World evangelism cannot be done by “professionals.” Indeed, the historian Harnack claimed that “when the Church won its greatest victories in the early days in the Roman Empire, it did so not by teachers or preachers or apostles, but by informal missionaries.”

If the Church bottlenecks its outreach by depending on its specialists—its pastors and evangelists—to do its witnessing, it is living in violation both of the intention of its Head and of the consistent pattern of the early Christians. When Jesus said to his twelve apostles, that microcosm of his people, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men,” or “As my Father sent me, so send I you,” or “You shall be witnesses unto me,” did he intend to restrict evangelism to a few specialists? Or did he mean that all his disciples should become apostles, that is, “sent ones”? The seed that Jesus planted in the Gospel blooms in the Acts and gives us the answer. Of “specialists” there were plenty: Peter and Paul, Philip and Apollos. But evangelism was the task of the whole Church, not just the leaders. Consider this incident. “… there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles.… Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the Word” (Acts 8:1, 4). Observe the phrase, “except the apostles.” Those who were scattered witnessed. Therefore, in this case, the only ones who did not witness were the apostles—the “professionals.” Persecution exploded the Church. The believers were scattered like glowing embers from a fire, igniting new fires wherever they landed. And all of this without the leadership of one ordained apostle!

SUMMER LITANY

My prayers arise for all

these things that thou hast given;

each hour from sun-up to

birdsong at even,

a child’s warm hand in mine,

the tasks a woman knows—

the broom, the shining pane,

fragrance of sun-dried clothes,

the aproned gathering

of garden wealth.

And, always, Lord, for love’s

close walk, for strength and health,

for seas revisited

where sunswept grey gulls wheel,

near drifted, light-washed dunes

the rise and fall of keel.

For these, the common things

and thy uncommon grace

upon my very soul

I lift my heart and face.

MARIE J. POST

To be true to our heritage and equal to our present task, we must make it a basic part of our strategy that evangelism be considered the responsibility of the whole Church. To be sure, evangelism is not the sole task of the Church. The Church is called to glorify God, both as Christ’s Bride and as his Body. As his Bride we worship, offering God spiritual sacrifices acceptable through Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 2:5). As his Body we witness, demonstrating the wonderful needs of him who called us out of darkness into light (1 Pet. 2:9). The two belong together: worship that does not lead to witness is spurious, while witness that does not lead to worship is abortive.

The mobilization of the Church will call for a drastic revolution in the relation of the clergy and the laity. Too long the accepted pattern has been that the layman pays the minister to evangelize and do the whole work of the ministry. The growth of lay organization in the Church led to another pattern in which the layman helps the clergy to evangelize and minister. This is a welcome advance; but it still falls short of the New Testament ideal, because it places the main responsibility for evangelism on the “professional” ministry.

The old patterns of evangelism will not do. It is not enough for the layman to pay the preacher to win souls, or even help him to do so. The pattern must be that the minister helps the layman to evangelize. The minister is like the foreman in a machine shop, or the coach of a team. He does not do all the work, nor does he make all the plays, though he may be a working foreman or a playing coach. If a man cannot operate a lathe, the foreman rolls up his sleeves and shows him how. If a player cannot carry out an assignment, the coach demonstrates how to make the play. So the pastor does not try to do all the witnessing. His main task is training the Christian mechanic how to witness in the garage; showing the Christian student how to testify in school or college; inspiring the Christian housewife to be a godly influence in her neighborhood. He learns the talents of each player and fits him in the best spot, so that the whole Church becomes an effective witnessing team.

Our vocabulary of church activity will change if we really begin to take seriously this New Testament pattern. As Richard Halverson, executive director of International Christian Leadership, has said, when we are asked how many ministers our church has, the traditional answer is “one” or “five,” depending on how large the paid staff is. But the real answer is “200” or “2,000,” depending on how large the membership is, for every believer is a minister. When we are asked, “Where is your church?,” the traditional reply is, “On the corner of Broad and Main.” But the correct reply is, “What time is it?” If it is 11:00 A.M. Sunday, then our church is “on the corner of Broad and Main.” (That is where the headquarters building is.) But if it is 11:00 A.M. Tuesday, then our church is Room 511 in the Professional Building, where Bill White, Christian attorney, is practicing law. It is at 3009 Melody Lane, where Jane White, Christian housewife, is making a home. It is at Central High, where Jimmy White, Christian student, is studying to the glory of God. There is the church in action!

How come guys like you care about me and my gang?” That penetrating question often asked of our Young Life leaders comes this time from a Negro boy named Russell as he walks the littered streets of Lower East Side Manhattan late one Friday night. A thousand fellows and girls stand around aimlessly within the space of several blocks. Many of them have been “high” since 9:00 P.M. There is little else to do. All their lives they have been told, directly and indirectly, that they are nothing, nobody. Any motivation they may have had to accomplish something has been nearly wiped out. These inner-city people are unwanted by society, including most Christians.

What should be the Christian’s attitude toward these deprived people? Why is the world in revolution today? Could the reason be that one segment of sinful, self-centered society determines it is going to gain the possessions of another segment of sinful, self-centered society, which is equally determined to prevent this? Should a Christian be surprised at such a revolutionary situation, when he knows that only Jesus Christ can transform people’s lives? Why do middle-and upper-class college students, both Christian and non-Christian, come to me and say: “Who am I? I am last in the System—big government, big business, big church, in each of which money talks.” Why must Christians listen to embarrassing questions from agnostics and Communistically oriented persons? Because they have too long avoided facing up to their responsibilities to broken humanity, desperately in need of healing.

The “good people” of Christ’s day derisively called him “the friend of publicans and sinners.” When God invaded humanity, it was not by chance that he came through the Jewish nation (already long despised by most of the rest of the world). And even beyond his national identity “he was despised and rejected by men.” Therefore I, as a Christian, can tell my rejected friends that Christ understands them at the point of their deepest hurt! Only one who has been rejected can understand the hopelessness that pervades the minds and hearts of millions of deprived persons found throughout the world, and concentrated in big cities.

The population explosion, automation, and urbanization are relatively new to the world. Man has not yet learned to live satisfactorily with them. Physically he lives closer to his neighbors than ever before, but the social barriers to relationships with them grow higher and higher. Many persons are doing a commendable job in trying to remedy the depravity in the large metropolitan cities. I honor the sociologists, social workers, and others who are dedicating their lives to alleviating these tragic and rapidly growing problems. And I feel that the Christian Church in general has lagged far behind in meeting its God-appointed responsibility to the inner city.

God was aware that humanity was in trouble. What did he do? Only an all-wise and totally loving God could have devised such a marvelous plan. He entered the human race through a peasant woman and had his angels announce his coming to rough and rugged shepherds. At the same time, he made known his incarnation to wise and economically elite rulers who traveled thousands of miles to worship at his feet. The Lord knew that in 1966 no one would be able to say:

FLAME ETERNAL

I cannot think

that death will come

silent, still

or gentle-fingered

hut rather

it must

Burst

Shatter

Split my tissued bones

in one lightning-fractured

tick of second’s hour

and this new-woven flesh

that somehow will be

still-remembered me

now fused with Christ

will flame

in pause eternal.

SISTER M. BERNARDA

“I am too poor, too tough, or too wise, too rich, to need Jesus Christ.” God spanned all segments of society so no one could be excluded, either by himself or by others. To be a faithful disciple of Christ, the Christian, regardless of his social position, must have equal concern for all people. The Church of Jesus Christ cannot remain a middle-class cultural society in which members gather around their kind rather than allowing all who desire to, to gather around Jesus Christ. This is what more and more becomes our burden in Young Life, an independent organization that seeks to evangelize youth.

The words that could perhaps best characterize the inner-city phase of Young Life are: identification, communication, and nurture.

Identification

God has led us in Young Life to go and live with the people we are seeking to reach. This means that our leaders take up residence in the neighborhoods. They spend many hours studying the people by spending time with them on their “turf,” where they are dominant. People are relaxed in that atmosphere, and our leaders get to know them as they actually are. Through Christ we accept them right there, and this is vitally important to a lasting ministry. But we dare not stop with this.

At first these people do not trust our leaders. Why should they? They have been hurt too many times. They have developed a sensitive radar system that enables them to feel, without any exchange of words, whether or not they are really liked. If they do not sense a true love, it matters little what is said about Christ or anyone else. Only God the Holy Spirit can implant this quality of love in a person. Many of Young Life’s new leaders endure months of inner struggle while God points out unreality in their lives. The Lord greatly uses the lives of inner-city kids in the cleansing of these Christian leaders. Most leaders tell me that the first six months of living in the inner city do more for them than they could possibly do for the people. “Hit and run” evangelism is not very effective in such environments.

Another point of strategy that our inner-city leaders believe God has shown them is “zeroing in” on those between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two. In this group are usually found the neighborhood leaders. There is a fantastic “grapevine” in the crowded city, and it is important that good news get into this effective communication system. When our workers penetrate this grapevine, they are in. The neighborhood leaders control the grapevine, so they must be won or most effective work will be stopped. Sometimes it takes months of prayerful effort to win the friendship of neighborhood leaders, but this pays off.

The power of Christ is amazing as one watches it work in humanly impossible situations. The “way of life” of some 50,000 people in a two-square-mile area of Lower East Side Manhattan has been changed because most of the former gang leaders are now committed Christians. Scores and scores of kids now profess Christ, and this one section of New York is as safe as any other community of our land. This achievement came through five years of sacrificial, dedicated effort by Bill Milliken and many other leaders. A juvenile judge in Jacksonville, Florida, is an ardent promoter of our program in that city because of the quality of the work done by the Jim Hornsby family and their fellow workers who have lived and labored in economically deprived areas of that city, In Dallas, Texas, Bob McGhee and his workers have been the Holy Spirit’s instruments in bringing to Christ some boys in “Little Mexico” (Dallas). The top leader in that area, who ran the lives of about fifty boys, is now a deeply dedicated Christian. He is a detached worker for the YMCA, and his boss says this nineteen-year-old man is one of the finest in the department. Yet it was only last spring that Bob and I got him out of jail three times for robbery. Equally productive ministries are being carried on in Pittsburgh and Kansas City, and a work is beginning in Chicago.

The leaders develop friendships with the kids on the streets, on basketball courts and softball fields, in pool halls, and in other places where they gather. Christ tells us to go, and that is what we are doing. The founder of Young Life, James Rayburn, used a phrase twenty years ago that expresses a basic requirement for reaching an adolescent: “Winning the right to be heard.” The leader must also be a good listener, or he will be an ineffective communicator.

Communication

The Young Life Club meets on a week night in a church building, a recreation center, or one of our own centers. The meetings vary in size, for many reasons. There is some lively gospel singing, an appropriate but amusing skit for fun, and a short “punchy” message concerning Jesus Christ. The meeting is a rallying point and usually provocative. Spiritual results come mostly through individual talks between a leader and a fellow or girl.

Campaigners is a Bible study for the committed Christian. The leader tries to show how Christ is available for help in every area of life.

Cross Carriers is a leadership-development group. Ten or twelve persons gather in a deep sharing experience that helps to develop integrity in every area of daily life. Through this experience each person becomes aware that he needs the others as brothers in Christ. Members develop a deep friendship that leads to earnest prayer for one another’s problems.

In Pittsburgh, Reid Carpenter is starting a group of non-Christian fellows in whom he hopes to develop a sense of responsibility toward their community. As the members become committed Christians, they can carry on as partially equipped ambassadors of Christ.

Camp, weekend and summer, is one of our most productive situations. A counselor lives with, plays with, eats with, and talks with four kids for the weekend or an entire week. The total program is designed to enable the camper to relax so that he can hear that he is very important, since he is made by, like, and for God. Only then is it time to tell him that God loves him.

Only God the Holy Spirit can change these kids who express such distrust and hate at first. As they experience God’s love through a Christian counselor-friend, their barriers crumble. Transformed lives result. Last summer at the end of the camp week a boy who had scarcely talked to anyone all week came to me to ask what love was. He had an illegitimate daughter six months old, and he said he thought that love was what she needed so she wouldn’t become a beast like him. Many conversations flood my mind as I write these words. What a tragedy it is that superficial barriers prevent us from looking on these people as first-class human beings whom Christ loves.

Nurture

This phase of our program merits volumes, though only a few sketchy comments can be made here. Obviously, what I have already said covers the major part of our spiritual nurture. Let me also point out that living with the fellows and girls in apartments and homes is extremely important for the development of Christian character. Through a home where love and discipline prevails, one of the greatest needs of young people in the inner city is met.

Harv Oostdyk, our New York area director, has pioneered in the field of Christian nurture with amazing results in the lives of Harlem young people. The program of remedial educational therapy for dropouts aged sixteen to twenty-two has caught the attention of leaders throughout the nation. Christ brings motivation to a life where previously there was none. It is the Church’s responsibility to help these budding leaders realize their dreams and hopes for a worthwhile life.

Part of our goal in Young Life is to reach and train indigenous leaders. If we continue to lead all dedicated Christian leaders out of the inner city, conditions will never change. We want to see many of them go back during and after training to be Christ’s agents in changing the neighborhoods.

In Kansas City, Thor Hagen has opened a recreational center where kids can enjoy supervised play of all kinds, in all our work the leaders develop, coach, and train athletic teams, and this too is important. Young Life has developed committees of men in some areas to help kids with adequate skills obtain jobs. Many, many types of Christian nurture are needed to cope with the problems of inner-city dwellers.

Our inner-city work has the assured support of Bill Starr, Young Life’s executive director. We shall continue, in the name of the Christ who was himself rejected, to minister to the rejected youth of our large cities. To the inner cities we shall go, to live, to be accepted, to accept others as they are, and by deed and word to show the meaning of Christ to those who have-surrendered to cynicism and futility before they have really begun to live.

Churches and other Christian bodies bear a responsibility to organize more Christian social agencies, says this Bible college spokesman

At Philadelphia College of Bible, a new prong has been added to the long-established ministry to the city. In the new social-work undergraduate curriculum, the college is acknowledging and dealing with today’s inner-city crises.

Concern in this area is not new at the college. It saw extreme inner-city conditions in the second decade of this century, when it began. Since then, through days of prosperity and days of depression, it has consistently ministered to the poor, even before the word “poverty” was rediscovered. This ministry was carried on through the practical-work departments of the two Bible institutes that later merged to form the present college, and it is continuing through the present Department of Christian Service. The “new prong”—the Department of Social Work—will augment the general thrust by training workers for urban areas. And non-urban areas will not be overlooked.

Philadelphia College of Bible is not entering into undergraduate social-work training solely because of the plight of the Philadelphia inner city. Urbanization is taking place the world around. In view of the prospect that by the year 2000, 80 to 90 per cent of the people of the world will be living in or dependent upon cities, the college has established this new department along with a strategy called “Urban Advance.” This strategy takes into account the reality that cities have many things in common, yet differ widely from one another. New York, Buenos Aires, and Singapore, for instance, are both similar and yet very different.

The social-work program at Philadelphia College of Bible is in the best Bible institute-Bible college tradition of required student ministries. When Dwight L. Moody was asked why he had organized the school that later became Moody Bible Institute, he said that, besides training students in the knowledge and the use of the Bible and in gospel music, he wanted to train them “in everything that will give them access practically to the souls of the people, especially the neglected classes” (Bernard DeRemer, Moody Bible Institute: A Pictorial History, Moody, 1960, p. 30).

If Mr. Moody were on the scene today, he might well have been the first to see a whole new field of service open to Christian workers. The social-work profession is acknowledging the need to train workers in undergraduate courses for two main reasons. First, the population explosion is increasing the number of people on earth, which means there are more problems to be solved. Second, there is no likelihood that graduate schools of social work alone can train enough persons to meet the need in the foreseeable future (see Wilbur J. Cohen, “The Role of the Federal Government in Expanding Social Work Manpower,” Indicators, United States Dept, of Health, Education and Welfare, March, 1965, p. 20).

At meetings of the Council on Social Work Education held in New York City this past January, the social-work profession featured its long-continuing survey of the prospect of more concentrated undergraduate training for workers. Just as medicine has its “pre-med” and law its pre-law courses, so will social work more and more have its pre-social-work sequences in undegraduate schools of social work. Others will go directly into social work, in such roles as caseworkers, group workers, and residential care workers. Nearly all these workers will then get in-service training. As social workers become licensed by the various states (a process now taking place), social-work training on all levels will become imperative.

Christian social agencies very much need born-again workers, especially those who go on to graduate school and qualify to become administrators. State laws more and more are requiring executives to have the master’s degree in social work. Lack of administrators with this level of training often jeopardizes the start or continuation of new agencies and services.

Another factor leading Philadelphia College of Bible into the present course is the ground swell from churches in its constituency. As social problems and the evils that often accompany them increase, young people are asking the churches and the churches are asking the colleges, “Why aren’t you preparing people to deal with delinquency, child abuse, problems of the aging, and the like?”

In reply, Philadelphia College of Bible is saying that for several years it has seen this need. Over five years ago, Dean Clarence E. Mason, Jr., decided to consider ways of providing special training in social welfare. When President Douglas B. MacCorkle later came on the scene, his own awareness of these issues merged with that of an already alerted board of trustees, and the new Bible social work major was launched.

In this venture the college is in no sense endorsing the “social gospel.” Rather it is facing up to the implications of the Gospel for society at large. Our Christian schools have long trained foreign missionaries to perform medical and other social service for people and at the same time give them the Gospel; surely the same practice is desirable in our own homeland.

This is not to say that such training will be helpful only through agencies outside the local church. The regular benevolence and welfare work of the church can be immeasurably aided by trained workers. The pastoral function, once relegated to the pastor only, is now carried out in part by specialists in music, missions, and Christian education along with and under the pastor. A recent addition to the team is the social worker, increasingly being added to the church staff.

If the charge were made that workers trained in our courses would have to work in non-Christian settings, this writer would immediately counter with the charge that the responsibility lies with churches and other Christian bodies to organize more Christian social agencies through which help can be given to thousands upon thousands of those in need. Within the framework of such agencies, the Gospel can be given without obstruction. And if Christians meet professional social-work standards and use accepted methods in their own agencies and churches, other people will be more receptive to the spiritual help they offer.

One cannot emphasize strongly enough that the community at large needs, and sometimes desires, the spiritual emphasis evangelical social workers make. While it is true that many church workers have refused to work outside their own little circles, it is also true that others, unsung and too busy to complain about being unsung, have been “in there pitching.”

One nationally known social-work leader expressed pleasure at PCB’s new curriculum because he thinks social work could learn from the real love and involvement shown by rescue missioners (about whom he was talking at the time) in contacting and helping those in need. Granted, this cannot be worked up artificially and is possible only through the operation of the Holy Spirit. The point is, however, that some are turning, almost plaintively, to those evangelicals who are meeting social-work standards, implicitly urging them to call on any reserve of Christian power to help in the current social crises. In a revealing passage, Herbert Stroup says:

The growth of social work in the United States cannot be fully understood without constant recourse to the contributions of religious persons and organizations.… at present there is a strong inter-relationship between religion and social work.… many social workers not employed by sectarian agencies cherish religion—as does the citizen generally—and seek to interpret its significance for their lives and professional practice.… The important question for religion and social work is not the fact of their relationship, but how concretely and in what detail they can and do relate to each other. This problem is pertinent, for example, in a day when social workers are concerned with urgent recruitment programs [“The Common Predicament of Religion and Social Work,” Social Work, April, 1962, pp. 92, 93].

This significant statement reflects the generally favorable attitude social workers have toward “religion” today, much more favorable than at times in the past. True, “religion” is variously defined; but evangelicals should be visible enough to make their definition felt by deed as well as word. Mr. Stroup’s statement also highlights the dire need of social work manpower, and voices social workers’ willingness that religious social workers help all the people they can in order to relieve other social workers of that many problems.

Philadelphia College of Bible’s social-work courses will, it is hoped, train people to work effectively in the culture of their local communities and larger environments; to collaborate with other workers within their own groups and in the surrounding communities to meet human needs; to communicate in the best way with those who need help; and to give aid as fully as possible.

The social-work courses include sociology, social problems, and psychological counseling in the sophomore year. The junior-year course is “social welfare,” in which man’s meeting of man’s needs is studied from Moses’ day to the present. The senior-year course is “social work as a profession,” with the study of major social-work methods, fields of practice, and understanding of human development. Field work in the junior year is done in a Christian setting. In the senior year, placement is in a secular setting under professional social-work supervision. The college department chairman gives overall supervision of the students throughout the course, and stated personal interviews are a prominent feature. These interviews are directed at helping students plan careers as well as helping them understand immediate academic issues and the larger leading of the Lord in their lives.

With such a preparation, the Christian social worker goes forth to “do good unto all men” (Gal. 6:10) and to present Christ, as God leads, as the “one thing needful” (Luke 10:42) and as “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24).