Because of a “problem within the staff” and because of his “closeness to the situation,” Bill Gothard has temporarily relinquished control of his eminently successful Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts (IBYC). In addition, CHRISTIANITY TODAY has learned of:

• The resignation of Bill’s younger brother, Steve, who handled the day-to-day operations of the multi-million-dollar nonprofit corporation, based in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook on a 200-acre property.

• The resignations of Bill and his father, William, Sr., from the board.

• The board’s election in July of a new chairman, Milwaukee attorney John McLario, who was spending most of his time last month in Oak Brook overseeing the situation.

• The resignations and dismissal of an unknown number of the IBYC staff, which had numbered more than 50.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY also learned that as long as five years ago IBYC staff members had charged Steve Gothard with serious sexual misconduct. (He and Bill are single, and live with their parents in LaGrange, Ill., not far from institute headquarters.) Recent charges of Steve’s sexual involvement with a number of staff secretaries apparently led to the organizational shakeup. The official statement tersely said that “the situations have been dealt with.” None of the charges involved Bill himself.

Asked to comment on the board’s announcement, Bill at first replied, “I have nothing to say.” Later, however, the institute released to CHRISTIANITY TODAY on July 21 a copy of a letter (dated July 18) that Bill Gothard prepared for the ministry’s supporting pastors, in which he gave further details. Following is part of what he wrote:

“I must report to you that there has been serious failure within our staff. My brother, who was in a leadership position, has confessed to deception and fornication with several women. Those involved have acknowledged their personal responsibility, have submitted to scriptural discipline, and have been dismissed from the staff as a step toward restoration. My brother has encouraged me to make this statement; however, I must explain how I have failed.

“For many years I have put the ministry ahead of my family and staff, and especially my brother. My pride and wrong priorities resulted in encouraging him to postpone marriage because of the demands of the ministry, thus disregarding his personal needs. I have also failed others, including present and former staff members who have sought to warn me of my incomplete handling of past staff problems, rejecting reproofs, and personal inconsistencies.

“I deeply regret that it has taken this tragedy as well as the leaving of additional staff to bring me to comprehend the full significance of the problem. It is for this reason that I have asked the board for a release from administrative responsibilities for a period of time in order to seek the Lord’s direction in correcting the situation. I ask for your prayers for my family, staff and their families, the board and me at this time.… We are continuing the seminars as scheduled, using the videotape.…”

Contacted at the Gothard home, Steve told CHRISTIANITY TODAY that he had “resigned first” as part of a “mutual understanding with the board.” Other staff persons had been dismissed, but he could not recall exactly how many.

Regarding the allegations against him, Steve Gothard said: “I have failed deeply before the Lord. The Lord has cleansed me; I am under the blood. I want to concentrate on rebuilding my life and on undoing the damage that has been done. I hope I can bring glory to God through this failure.”

Gothard’s Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts has sponsored hundreds of rally-like seminars across the country. These will continue, but Gothard himself probably won’t attend any in the immediate future. Of the scheduled 18 seminars remaining this year (of 56 total in 1980), Gothard was to have appeared personally at only three. He leads the other lectures by means of videotape.

The 1957 Wheaton College graduate had conducted a ministry to Chicago teen gang members prior to the start of his seminars in 1965. Now the 32-hour, six-day seminars—even those on tape—consistently draw 5,000 to 10,000 persons. Repeat attenders—called “alumni” by the IBYC—are invited back, and do not have to pay the regular fee of $45 per person.

Because of Gothard’s strong insistence on biblical principles, and because thousands of people have testified to having received help from his lectures and his manual, the announcement of an organizational shakeup brought expressions of surprise and dismay from evangelical leaders, as well as questions about what had gone wrong. In the past, Gothard has refrained from responding to criticisms of his seminar and in general from talking to reporters. The institute has shunned publicity.

Numerous interviews with former IBYC staff members and other sources, however, would indicate that matters came to a head in April. Former staff members Ken Nair, Ed Martin, and Gary Smalley, along with IBYC video seminar host Tony Guhr (who since has been dismissed), had confronted Steve, and then the board, with the allegations of Steve’s sexual involvements with staff secretaries. Sources indicated that before leaving IBYC, he and the women confessed. (An IBYC area representative in New Jersey, Bob Bulmer, has come to the Oak Brook headquarters to help out in Steve’s absence.)

Bill Gothard and his father, a former Gideons executive, had comprised two-fifths of the five-member IBYC board. Acting board chairman McLario and suburban Chicago businessman Fred Warded were elected to fill the two vacancies. (McLario is a Bob Jones University board member and chief counsel for Christian Legal Defense, a Wisconsin-based legal resource agency, mostly serving local, fundamentalist churches.)

Medical doctor Gustav Hemwall of Oak Park, Illinois, remained on the board, but stepped down temporarily as chairman because “we [IBYC] needed legal help,” he said in a telephone interview. The remaining board members are retired Wheaton College professor Samuel Schultz and pastor emeritus W. Hamilton Sinclair of First Baptist Church in Downers Grove, Illinois.

Gothard’s seminars have a central teaching called “the chain of command.” Essentially, he uses Scriptures to teach that everyone is under authority, and that the chief authority, God, deals with people through various structures and channels of authority: family, church, business, and government. Within the family, for example, the father is God’s appointed leader, followed by the mother, and then the children. In business, employees are under the authority of their employers. Gothard says Christians are to remain obedient to their authority figures, except when asked to do something contrary to God’s expressed Word.

How Gothard used, misused, or did not use his authority in the IBYC apparently was a cause of the organization’s troubles. In the case of his brother Steve, as far back as 1975 institute executives Nair, Martin, and Smalley had brought to Bill what they thought was serious evidence. According to Nair, who at that time coordinated Gothard’s videotaped seminars, Steve had confessed and promised to change his ways. Nair and the others understood that Bill’s intention was to have Steve confess to the board.

However, the matter apparently never reached the board, which indicated it first learned of the situation involving Steve at last April’s meeting.

In the meantime, according to Nair, Steve was sent away from the home office to IBYC’s 3,000-acre retreat and research center at Watersmeet, Michigan, an isolated spot in the remote Upper Peninsula. From all indications, Steve lost none of his managerial responsibilities.

(The Michigan property includes a 5,000-foot airstrip for the institute’s Lear jet, a multiunit lodge, and a number of other buildings. Bill Gothard and other staff members go there frequently for study and writing, and IBYC intends to invite select groups of individuals there for seminars.)

John Farhat, of suburban Los Angeles, who says he lived with Steve for nearly three years at the Michigan property while he was an IBYC staff artist, complained of Steve’s alleged lavish spending of institute money. He also voiced criticisms, since echoed by Nair and other former staff members, which may explain the large turnover of personnel since the reorganization: that Bill Gothard exerts too much authority over staff members’ lives and that internal critics are ostracized and labeled as having bad attitudes—in some cases, being asked to leave the organization.

Meanwhile, Bill Gothard’s brother-in-law, Ken Musil, a teacher who lives in the Chicago suburb of Western Springs, said that by not being a part of the organization, he has found himself having the opportunity to be a neutral “listening ear” during the crisis, both for those supporting Bill Gothard and for those, such as Farhat, who have left.

Musil also revealed that he had felt free in the past to be critical of IBYC, and that as a result he sometimes found himself outside the graces of IBYC. But in the wake of the problems, he says he has been able to draw close and minister to the family. He remained optimistic that in a matter of time, IBYC’s serious problems would be satisfactorily resolved by the board.

The Local Church

Nelson Lets Sparks Fly; Witness Lee Files Suits

Thomas Nelson, Inc., in Nashville had good reason to sing the blues during the first week of June: the publisher had just been socked with three law suits totaling more than $37 million for allegedly libelous statements in the book The Mind Benders: A Look at Current Cults, by Jack Sparks.

The suits were filed in Santa Ana, Dallas, and Atlanta, by the Local Church of Witness Lee (LC), an Anaheim, California—based group, discussed in one chapter of the book. Named in all three suits were Nelson Publishers, and author Jack Sparks. The Dallas and Atlanta suits also named Dick Ballew and Jon Braun, who assisted Sparks in writing The Mind Benders. The Dallas suit added the fourth name of Peter Gillquist, editor in chief of Nelson.

Besides demanding compensatory and punitive damages, the LC wants Nelson to stop all further publication of the book and recall all unsold copies. (More than 50,000 copies are now in print, according to Nelson.)

During the last week of June, Nelson retaliated with a $7.5 million countersuit in Atlanta, alleging that the Local Churches conspired to prevent Nelson from exercising its First Amendment rights.

Local Churches claim they suffered financial damage, as well as “injury to their reputation, public scorn, hatred, ridicule, and contempt, and their honesty, integrity and virtue have been impeached” because of The Mind Benders. They also reported “a sharp decline” in the number of new members.

Particularly irksome to the LC is the second edition of The Mind Benders, in which a new chapter on the People’s Temple of Jim Jones immediately follows the chapter on the LC. The LC claims the book communicated “in effect” that LC members “are the same type of people and could be expected to engage in the same tactics and conduct as the People’s Temple.”

“I think Satan’s overstepped himself,” Sparks said. “We wrote the book to contend for the faith rather than to attack the Local Church.”

Other allegedly libelous statements in The Mind Benders cited by the LC included the following:

• that the LC is a cult rather than a church;

• that it wants “absolute control” over one’s mind;

• that Witness Lee is an “autonomous dictator” of a “worldwide religious cult”;

• that the LC practice of “pray-reading”—shouting Scripture passages while punctuating them with “Oh, Lord Jesus” and “Amen”—is similar to the mantra of TM or Hare Krishna;

• that people in the LC are “held by the power of fear”;

• that “the brainwashing, or mindbending, of the Local Church is … the most powerful and lasting of any cult on the contemporary religious scene.”

Does Sparks regret anything he said in the book? “No, I don’t,” he said. “I’ve gone through everything I said, and I feel that it’s true and appropriate from the standpoint of contending for the faith and for orthodoxy.”

Some outsiders, however, while agreeing that Sparks’s facts and basic information in The Mind Benders are correct, feel that his tone was a bit caustic. One observer who monitors the cults said, “He’s far from loving in his approach toward his enemies. He has alienated people because he comes on like gangbusters.”

Sparks disagreed. “I can’t imagine what they’re talking about,” he said. “My purpose was to draw people out of heresy and to protect the people of God.”

Nelson is not the only evangelical institution to anger the LC. The group has allegedly threatened others with suits, including Moody Monthly and Eternity magazines for statements they printed about the LC; Inter-Varsity Press, which hopes to publish a book about the LC; and several individuals who have written about the group. In Europe, the LC tried unsuccessfully to prevent a Swiss publisher from distributing a German translation of the forthcoming IVP book.

The Local Church’s leader, Witness Lee, declined a telephone interview. According to an LC spokesman, Lee had been a coworker with Watchman Nee in China from 1933 until the Communist takeover in 1949, when Nee sent Lee to Taiwan to carry on the movement. Lee worked largely in Taiwan until 1962, when he established the movement in Los Angeles.

Now based in Anaheim, the LC has approximately 7,000 members (in about 70 churches) in the U.S., and approximately 30,000 members worldwide, the spokesman said. Each Local Church is named for its city—The Church in Anaheim, The Church in Seattle, and so on.

Lee, 75, is married and has eight children. According to the spokesman, who is an elder in the The Church in Anaheim and a member of the LC since 1962, the movement has no successor in mind for Lee, believing that “the Lord will raise up someone to take his place.”

Conflict between the LC and evangelicals has centered primarily on the complex teachings of Lee and the practices he appears to advocate. Though Lee is a prolific speaker and writer, no systematic presentation of his teachings is yet available. Evangelicals who have studied Lee’s writings are of the opinion that they include many orthodox teachings, but also appear to present several distinctive LC doctrines:

• There should be only one true church in each geographic area—the Local Church—and all other churches are sectarian and apostate. There may be real Christians outside of the Local Church, but they must join it before they can be properly related to God.

• Christ’s nature was a “mingling” of the divine and human natures to form a third nature, and all true Christians become Godmen in the same way Christ is.

• A complex doctrine of the Trinity appears to include the “Body”—that is, the Local Church—as a fourth member. In addition, the doctrine allegedly is a form of modalism, in which the members of the Trinity are merely functions or expressions of one Person rather than three distinct Persons. (The LC denies that it teaches the doctrines of mingling and the Trinity as described here.)

James Bjornstad of the cult-watching Institute of Contemporary Christianity in New Jersey feels that Witness Lee “goes too far” in some of his statements, particularly regarding his doctrines of “mingling” and the Trinity. Those statements “go beyond orthodox Christianity, and form a theology that is heretical. But there’s also the orthodox side of the Local Church, and many members will not accept the heretical side.”

Bjornstad thinks that the LC could improve its situation by officially coming to grips with those particular teachings of Lee and rejecting them. He added that the LC has deemphasized the practice of pray-reading in recent years.

LC members and leaders claim that evangelicals have simply misunderstood their teachings. “It’s been deliberately intentional,” said Clarence Hunt, legal counsel for the LC in California. “I’m not a theologian, but I don’t believe in one so-called Christian saying that another so-called Christian is Satanic or crazy. Each group has the right to its own doctrines.”

Hunt also claimed that Sparks himself uses some of the tactics he criticizes in the LC—apparently referring to the authority structure of the Evangelical Orthodox Church, which Sparks, Braun, Ballew, and Gillquist helped to form. All are bishops in the one-and-a-half-year-old denomination, and Gillquist is the presiding bishop.

Sparks said that he viewed the suit as an opportunity to show specifically what the differences are between orthodox Christianity and the cults. “I’m praying that the proceedings will be used to draw people out of the cults and into the Christian church,” he said.

VERNE BECKER

Presbyterians

The PCA Invites Three to Merger, Minus the Haggling

Several Presbyterian bodies may unite under the name Presbyterian Church in America, and without the bureaucratic hassles of a merger.

In an unusual move, the governing body of the 75,000-member PCA in June asked three other evangelical Presbyterian bodies to consider simply joining the PCA instead of engaging in complicated merger negotiations. The proposal was intended to preclude long, and potentially divisive, discussions on issues such as denominational name, governing documents, and other details that frequently take months of negotiation in a typical church merger. A favorable response from the national governing bodies of the other three denominations would lead to a constitutional merger vote by a subsequent PCA general assembly, and then would require ratification by three-fourths of the 24 PCA presbyteries (district governing bodies).

The 20,000-member Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod, had the chance to respond first to the invitation. Its national governing body last month overwhelmingly approved (157–4) to begin formal preparations for a 1981 vote on the PCA’s invitation. The assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church met before the PCA’s invitation was issued, but that body had gone on record in favor of formal talks with the other groups. The Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America held its annual meeting this month.

The four denominations, which have a combined membership approaching 115,000, are the only U.S. Presbyterian bodies (there are about 10) with consistent growth patterns over the last decade. The PCA has nearly doubled its size since formation with 40,000 in 1973. The other three denominations, which, like the PCA, have a strong missionary emphasis and are generally conservative on theological and social issues, have been averaging annual growth of at least 5 percent per year.

Structural unity of the four churches has been discussed for more than a year. Support has grown, along with the opposition to alleged liberal trends within the 2.4-million-member United Presbyterian Church.

North American Scene

For 20 years John Perkins’s Voice of Calvary ministry has pioneered in blending social action with spreading the gospel among Mississippi’s poor. To highlight this twentieth anniversary, a voc Jubilee was held last month at Millsaps College in Jackson, where the keynote speaker, evangelist Tom Skinner, focused on God’s concern for the poor. voc operates health centers, thrift stores, preschool and adult education programs, and a community gym in several communities and is expanding to others. Perkins reiterated the “three Rs” of VOC’s basic philosophy: relocation—living and working among the poor, reconciliation, and redistribution.

The American Psychological Association has granted a five-year renewal of accreditation to Fuller Seminary’s School of Psychology. Approval of the school’s graduate program in clinical psychology was jeopardized last year when five Fuller students protested to the APA about alleged discriminatory policies and a conservative sexual standards statement at the Pasadena. California, school (July 20, 1979, p. 34). In response, the APA withheld its approval of Fuller’s program—the only one it has accredited that is religion-affiliated—and sent a special team to the school to investigate. Psychology school dean Neil C. Warren said APA approval was important not only for Fuller, but “for all church-related institutions that have a relationship with secular accreditation agencies.…”

International Students is building a conference center especially for discipleship training of new converts from countries restricting or forbidding open Christian witness or ministry. Located at its Colorado Springs, Colorado, headquarters, the new facility will have meeting and living quarters for up to 160 persons. Hal Guffey, president of the organization, which ministers to internationals coming as students, businessmen, or diplomats to the U.S., explained: “Before internationals can return to closed countries as effective witnesses for Christ, they need to learn doctrine, and they need to develop Christian fellowship with other converts from their homelands.”

Several major U.S. religious figures have called on the government to “launch a thorough examination of the entire spectrum of issues involved in genetic engineering … before it is too late.” The shared statement, by National Council of Churches general secretary Claire Randall, U.S. Catholic Conference general secretary Thomas Kelly, and Synagogue Council of America general secretary Bernard Mandelbaum, was issued in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court decision authorizing patents on new forms of life, specifically ruling that a “man-made” microbe is patentable. “We believe,” they said, “that no government agency or committee is currently exercising adequate oversight or control, nor addressing the fundamental ethical questions in a major way.” The statement also urges international guidelines for genetic engineering and pledges that the religious community “will address these fundamental questions in a more urgent and organized way.”

Townspeople of the fishing towns of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and Kodiak, Alaska, are apprehensive about a convergence of Moonies in their midst. Followers of Sun Myung Moon have opened the most modern fish-processing plant in Kodiak, at a cost of $3 million. In Gloucester, the Moonies have a thriving lobster business and are plunging into other fishing operations. In June, also in Gloucester, they bought a 30-room seaside mansion on 12 acres. They purchased the property for $1.1 million from a businessman who had just acquired it from an order of Roman Catholic nuns for about $120,000 less. Seven days later the Unification Church paid $650,000 for a popular Gloucester seafood restaurant after outbidding all others at a public bank auction. The Moonies say they will turn the mansion into a “professional education center.”

Professors from a dozen evangelical Christian colleges met recently to discuss the ethical questions involved when confronting the environmental crisis. Meeting for four days at the AuSable Trails Institute of Environmental Studies in Mancelona, Michigan, the professors and other environmentalists asked that Christians discard the frontier mentality that says the U.S. has infinite resources and that growth is progress. Instead, they urged a biblical stewardship view of world resources, one in which the Christian assumes a caretaking, serving role toward nature instead of exploitive.

New York’s Governor Hugh Carey last month vetoed a so-called cult bill that had been passed by the state legislature. In effect, the bill would have allowed parents to forcibly “rescue” grown children who had undergone “a sudden and radical change in behavior, lifestyle, habits, and attitudes” and subject them to “deprogramming” for up to 90 days. Proponents of the bill cited the hazards of the “Moonies” and Hare Krishnas; some observers speculated that Hebrew Christians were a hidden target. Governor Carey said the bill would be “both unworkable and unconstitutional.” An Albany clergyman, in a published letter to the New York Times, said the bill really attacked conversion; by its language, he declared, Saint Paul and Martin Luther would have qualified for deprogramming.

The Unitarian Universalist Association has resolved to promote the hiring of openly homosexual and bisexual persons to leadership positions within the denomination and its local congregations. At their annual meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico, delegates from more than 1,000 member churches in the United States and Canada also voted to offer assistance to those wishing to apply for conscientious objector status, and in favor of public financing of abortions. Denomination president O. Eugene Pickett said that a major domestic priority for the church is “rebuffing the emergent new right in its vengeful desire to smother the rights of women, gay people, minorities, and others who struggle for justice.”

The Roman Catholic segment of the United States population has increased dramatically during the last 33 years—at the expense of Protestants and Jews. In its newsletter, the George Gallup-related Princeton Religion Research Center further indicated that since 1947 Catholics have moved from 20 to 29 percent of the nation’s adult populace, while Protestants have slipped from 69 to 59 percent, and Jewish adherents from 5 to 2 percent. A “relatively high birth rate” and “the influx of Hispanics” are cited as factors in Catholic growth.

World Scene

Pope John Paul II’s visit to Brazil last month was well received. He clearly defined a social action role for the Roman Catholic Church in Brazil that Rome could live with, according to Warren Hoge, writing in the New York Times, Hoge said, “He endorsed the church’s commitment to social causes but insisted that it be strictly nonviolent and orderly, not linked to any parties or ideologies, and always subordinate to the primary mission of spreading the gospel.”

The Presbyterian Church of Ireland voted to withdraw from the World Council of Churches (WCC) at its June General Assembly in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The 433-to-327 vote made final a move begun two years ago when the church suspended its WCC membership. The main issue then was WCC’s grant to the Zimbabwe Patriotic Front, perceived by many as parallel to a subsidy of armed resistance movements in Northern Ireland.

A French public opinion institute, IFOP, says there are three times as many Protestants in France as officially listed. Published results of its poll, commissioned by a group of religious magazines, showed that 4.5 percent of 10,000 adults interviewed accepted the Protestant version of Christianity. It had been claimed that only 1.5 percent of the population are Protestants (750,000). By extrapolation, however, there may be 2.3 million Protestant adults among France’s 53.6 million.

The opening of a first nudist colony in Greece has aroused the wrath of Orthodox Church bishops and their followers. One thousand demonstraters attempted to storm the Salandi Beach resort where 300 members of West Germany’s Obona Free Body Culture organization were swimming and sunbathing. The Greek government since has assigned armed police to protect the nudists. The national Tourist Organization would like to attract more nudist camps, and is at odds with existing laws that provide for the arrest and trial of nudes if a local inhabitant protests to the police. The bishops have set up “watch committees” to file complaints.

Religion is alive and well in Hungary, according to a study recently featured in the government newspaper Magyar Hirrlap. A social scientist author reported that from 50 to 60 percent of Hungary’s 10 million hold religious beliefs. About one-third of adults, he found, attend church regularly.

Soviet Pentecostals sent an open letter to President Jimmy Carter this summer voicing support for the Olympics boycott and stating that authorities were forcing believers to leave cities in which Olympic games would take place. The letter said such measures were being taken because Soviet authorities were “worried that the true plight of believers in the USSR will become known to the world public.”

Soviet authorities in June broadcast an alleged confession by Russian Orthodox priest Dimitri Dudko, a leading activist for religious freedom. Dudko, 58, had been in solitary confinement since mid-January (Feb. 22 issue, p. 50). On Soviet television Dudko appeared healthy, totally calm, and he was smiling as he read a statement acknowledging “anti-Soviet activities”—which could result in seven years of prison and five years of exile. Friends speculated about the possible use of a euphoria-inducing drug. Released immediately afterwards, Dudko is reported to be resting not far from Moscow. Keston College cites a source who reports that Dudko is in poor physical condition, has lost more than 40 pounds, and is in a state of deep depression.

The Africa Inland Mission is moving into fields outside its traditional sphere in east central Africa and has changed its name to reflect that expansion. The newly-dubbed AIM International is expanding into the Reunion, Seychelles, and Comoro Islands in the Indian Ocean east of the mainland, and inner-city work in Newark, New Jersey. There are also tentative plans to enter Rwanda and Namibia.

Thirty-five church leaders in South Africa who staged an illegal demonstration in July were fined $70 each, with the alternative of 50 days in jail. Bishop Desmond Tutu, general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, and all but three of the rest chose to pay the fine. Representatives of the SACC were scheduled to have a long-sought meeting with Prime Minister Pieter Botha on August 7.

The Evangelical Churches of West Africa are launching a second seminary next month. The new seminary in Jos, northern Nigeria, will complement the existing seminary founded by the Sudan Interior Mission in Igbaja, southern Nigeria. Each can accommodate only 40 students currently, and each received 300 or more applications for the coming school year. H. Wilbert Norton, retired dean of the Wheaton College Graduate School, will be principal of the Jos school, with Yusufu Turaki, a Ph.D. candidate at Boston University, vice-principal.

Thousands of Ethiopians are starving and their cattle dying because of drought. The normal spring “short rains” did not materialize this year, and the summer “long rains” came late. Lacking clean drinking water, people have turned to contaminated sources and are contracting intestinal diseases; 84,000 cases of dysentery have been reported in Gamo Goffa Province alone. The Sudan Interior Mission reports an initial shipment to the province of 20 tons of Fafa, a local high-nutrient grain. Together with its sister Word of Life Churches, SIM is working to provide new fresh water sources.

Vietnamese churches in and near Saigon are experiencing revival, according to sources reported in the Alliance Witness, organ of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Services reportedly are so full that Christians stand outside to make room inside for nonbelievers. At least two congregations have enlarged their church buildings to accommodate more people. Members arrive as early as 5:00 A.M. to pray.

Availability of Bibles is important news in China. Bryan Johnson of the Toronto Globe and Mail reported last month from Canton (Kuang-chou) that a customs official had asked if he had any Bibles and informed him that importing them was no longer permitted. The United Bible Societies has reported publication this month of the complete Today’s Chinese Version Bible in a regular Chinese script. Inside the People’s Republic, the government-regulated Three-Self Movement is planning to print 135,000 Bibles by October. But there is a distribution hitch: those who want a copy reportedly will have to provide their names, addresses, and occupations. Given memories of past religious crackdowns, that is unlikely to encourage Scripture circulation.

A Sports Ambassadors amateur basketball team has been invited to play a series of games in China this month. The team was invited by the People’s Republic of China’s Supreme Sports Council as the result of contacts established nearly three years ago. Sports Ambassadors, a division of OC Ministries (formerly Overseas Crusades) usually features player half-time testimonies in tours of its basketball, baseball, and soccer teams. But the goal of this visit is limited to showing friendship, building good will, and paving the way for return visits.

The Korea International Mission is entering two new fields. Twelve years old and a leader in Third World missions, KIM plans to send 12 families to Thailand and 12 to Indonesia in joint projects there with national churches and mission organizations.

The Christian memorial service for Japan’s Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira may not have seemed unusual to President Carter and other foreign visitors. But for most of the 3,000 Japanese dignitaries who paid their respects at his home, the cross prominently displayed above his coffin underscored the contrast with prevailing Buddhist ceremonies.

Nearly two centuries ago, eleven Mexican families traveled north into present-day Southern California to establish a farming settlement, “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula.” Since then, the name has been shortened to Los Angeles, but the city itself has grown immensely—in recent years, because of a second, much larger, migration of Hispanics.

Literally millions of Hispanics (mostly from Mexico) have moved to the Los Angeles area, as if following the smog like a cloud in the wilderness. They have looked for good jobs and enough to eat, but a majority apparently haven’t yet found a personal relationship with Christ.

Of the estimated 4 million Hispanics living in greater Los Angeles, only about 1 percent are evangelical Christians, according to researchers. The situation for years has called for an outreach to the non-Christian Hispanic and a strengthening of the tiny Hispanic evangelical community, but such leadership never emerged.

For that reason, Hispanic ministry specialists are encouraged by new stirrings within the city’s Hispanic evangelical community, stirrings that emerged last month during Argentine evangelist Luis Palau’s June 28 to July 6 Festival of the Family Crusade in the Los Angeles Sports Arena.

By evangelistic standards, the nine-day event seemed mediocre. There was an aggregate attendance of 52,000, for an average of about 5,800 per meeting, and approximately 1,950 persons talked with one of 300 trained counselors, to make either first-time or renewed Christian commitments.

But then, neither the Palau team nor local committee members had expected multitudes—especially in light of estimates of only about 20,000 Hispanic evangelical Christians in the metropolitan area.

The greatest optimism came from previously unknown cooperation between the city’s Hispanic evangelical pastors. About 125 of 250 known evangelical churches played an active role in the crusade. Of that number, roughly 50 were affiliated with the Assemblies of God or other Pentecostal groups. About 25 were Baptist.

Palau crusade director John McWilliam called the Los Angeles crusade “the most difficult” of any he has directed for the Portland, Oregon-based evangelist. McWilliam cited the lack of unity within the tiny, scattered Christian community, not necessarily because of theological or doctrinal disputes (although Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals have tended to remain aloof from each other), but because the pastors weren’t used to working together.

For that reason, the Hispanic church leaders who conceived the crusade had to do an effective sales job, and spent months in preparation. About 25 of them met two years ago in pastor John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church in suburban Panorama City, where they took steps toward forming the organizational structure for Latinos para Cristo. They decided the group would have a limited life span, during which time members would promote evangelism, church growth, and Christian literature programs among the Hispanic churches. These efforts would terminate with an evangelistic crusade, and the group decided to invite Luis Palau as the evangelist.

In the months before the crusade, Latinos para Cristo held church growth seminars for pastors, a Christian businessman’s luncheon, and a Hispanic Sunday school convention. Palau team members McWilliam and Eric Ericsson spent most of the past 18 months in Los Angeles organizing crusade efforts alongside Latinos para Cristo leaders: crusade president Mike Protasovicki, a respected local businessman, and coordinator Juan Carlos Miranda, a Brethren Church (Ashland, Ohio) Hispanic ministry supervisor on loan to the Fuller Evangelistic Association in Pasadena.

During the crusade, organizers bought space on 20 billboards and 54 city buses. Usually the message was Los Latinos tenemos un buen futuro … si unificamos a la familia (We Latinos have a good future … if we unify the family). Palau’s messages reflected this family emphasis: divorce, premarital sex, teen-agers’ problems. (The Palau team was dismayed that the local Hispanic television station, Channel 34, refused its request to buy air time.)

Palau called the crusade an “experiment.” This was his first, full-scale, Spanish-language crusade in the U.S., and the 45-year-old evangelist noted that Los Angeles Hispanics were neither entirely Latin nor American, but something of a “third culture.” More than 20 Latin American nations were represented among them, and, he said, “There isn’t a unifying factor—there is a sense that every man is for himself.”

The crusade had been postponed from October to June, because of conflicts with college and professional football game schedules, and lack of sufficient support from the churches. Organizers had to answer several questions. They decided all meetings would be conducted in Spanish (to do otherwise would be “too confusing,” Palau said), and also agreed on the need for thorough follow-up. Local churches received the decision cards of inquirers from their geographic areas, and churches not following up on the individuals on the cards within 72 hours would be given no more. Ericsson of the Palau team would revisit the area at three-month and six-month intervals after the crusade to oversee follow-up.

(As it turned out, well over half of the inquirers were Roman Catholics—even though the Archdiocese of Los Angeles had no official communication with crusade organizers. Hispanic Protestants remain distrustful because of past persecution by Catholics in Latin America, Palau said. While there is greater cooperation between Protestant and Roman Catholic Hispanics today, evangelicals still “perceive enough doctrinal differences that they can’t pull together.”)

Even after the crusade began, some kinks had to be worked out. Overzealous musicians at first took nearly two hours at the start of several meetings, thus causing them to run overtime. Organizers learned to accept such other Hispanic idiosyncrasies as people drifting in up to an hour late, and guest speakers waxing too lengthily at the microphone.

But for those involved, there were bright spots that erased any shadows. Several conservative pastors clapped along with the Pentecostals during joyful, rhythmic gospel music, and said for the first time they didn’t feel self-conscious doing so. Crusade organizers said Palau was ideal since he was accepted by the conservative as well as the more emotional and charismatic Hispanic Christians.

The crusade brought to light some interesting personalities. Participating Anglos had entered Hispanic ministries from several directions, such as church secretary Nina Faulkner of Bethel Independent Presbyterian in Houston, who volunteered her services during the crusade. A former public school Spanish teacher, her hobby is Spanish evangelism: “Every vacation I put my Spanish and the Bible together somehow.” Crusade director McWilliam had learned Spanish as a teen-ager while working summers with Mexican field hands on a California ranch.

Among local Hispanics, youth committee leader Dagoberto Ramos, 20, had gyrated as a professional disco dancer at an exclusive Los Angeles nightspot before making a Christian commitment two years ago. Pastor Alex Montoya of the bilingual First Fundamental Bible Church in Monterey Park is developing a graduate program for Hispanic pastors at Talbot Seminary. Montoya says the Hispanic church’s greatest problem is a lack of trained, full-time clergymen. Most Hispanic churches are too small to afford a full-time pastor’s salary, and many of their brightest minds enter business or the professions instead. Meanwhile, lay pastors must hold second jobs and have neither the time nor the money to get adequate Bible training.

Crusade president Protasovicki, born in Argentina to Russian parents, came to America 17 years ago with neither money nor English, but with a large faith. He has since become president of his own furniture manufacturing company. Three years ago he became pastor of a Southern Baptist-affiliated Hispanic congregation and has opened the Alpha and Omega Christian bookstore in East Los Angeles—a booming business that often is an informal gathering point for local Hispanic pastors.

Palau kept a busy schedule during the crusade. He spoke at a luncheon for Hispanic business professionals, gave the opening address for a school of communications run by members of his team, and met with Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. (Assistant Los Angeles Police Chief Bob Vernon, an active layman, helped arrange the interview.)

After each evening meeting—even while the last inquirers moved to the counseling area—Palau dashed from the speaker’s platform and out the back exit to a waiting car, which took him to a Spanish radio station in Pasadena for an 11 P.M.-midnight open-line talk show.

Are Illegal And Immoral The Same Thing?

What is the church’s position regarding illegal aliens? Right now, there isn’t one, and there probably won’t be. Pastors with Hispanic ministries, who inevitably will have contact with illegals, have had to decide individually when, and if, obedience to the government takes precedence over equally strong scriptural charges to take in strangers and love one’s neighbor.

Illegal aliens, who form a big chunk of the U.S. Hispanic population, have entered the U.S. illegally or overstayed their visas. Generally, pastors have made every effort to reach out to non-Christian illegals. But when illegals become Christians and ask their pastor whether they should return home or turn themselves in out of conscience under the law—knowing they will face terrible poverty and joblessness if they return—well, that’s a stickier question.

Violations of federal immigration law can carry up to five years imprisonment and a $2,000 fine. Some immigrant advocacy groups are saying immigration laws are too broad in scope, applied too strictly, and need to be reformed. At the same time, federal prosecutors have said it is unlikely churches will be prosecuted for harboring illegal aliens—that authorities at present are more concerned about stopping the drug traffic than the flow of people from south of the border.

Most called about family or marital troubles. One woman had been denying her husband sexual relations to make him stop smoking marijuana, and wondered if she was right in doing so. A widow wanted to remarry, but feared she was being haunted by the spirit of her dead husband. A 21-year-old man admitted mistreatment of his wife—causing her to take the children and live with her parents. Palau prayed with the man to receive Christ, and asked him to invite his wife to accompany him the next day to one of three counseling centers set up for the crusade. The pair was reunited the next night, and attended the crusade.

Palau was going through his own family crisis at the time of the crusade. Serious cancer had been discovered in his wife, Patricia, four weeks earlier during the evangelist’s meetings in Scotland. She underwent her first chemotherapy treatment after the start of the crusade. He confessed his wife’s illness was an emotional and creative drain, but said at least he could preach, using past materials since “the gospel is always the same.” The couple has four boys: 17-year-old twins, and a 10- and a 14-year-old.

The local crusade committee wants to hold a “truly major crusade,” lasting perhaps a month, in two years, organizer Protasovicki said. Both he and Palau indicated problems in raising enough funds for this year’s crusade.

The local committee’s goal from the start, however, was for Hispanic Christians to raise the funds, said Protasovicki. To do otherwise would be “defeating,” he believed. He was pleased that the Hispanics raised at least 80 percent of the $200,000 budget (revised downward from an earlier $350,000 goal). These funds came from Hispanic Christian businessmen, a walkathon, appeals to Hispanic churches, and offerings.

Protasovicki believed the Los Angeles crusade set a new level of communication and cooperation that would continue even after the sponsoring Latinos para Cristo disbands, according to plan, after about six months.

He hoped publicity of the Los Angeles crusade would spawn ideas for Hispanic ministry projects in other parts of the country. When Protasovicki moved to America, he first began a ministry to Russian speakers, while doing church planting in Mexico on the side. Later, seeing the exploding Hispanic population, he devoted all his time to Hispanic ministry in Los Angeles. There were few Hispanic ministry role models in the United States then, but Protasovicki plunged in anyway because of the need. He found himself asking, “Why should we be going to Mexico when we have millions of Hispanics here?”

Evangelical Women’s Caucus

Feminists of a Feather Affirm Each Other

In the apropos setting of Saratoga Springs, New York, an area that spawned such notable feminists as Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth, over 400 men and women from across the United States and Canada, representing a variety of denominations, convened for the fourth national conference of the Evangelical Women’s Caucus.

The organization focused this year’s convention on the theme, “Women and the Ministry of Reconciliation,” and keynote speaker Virginia Ramey Mollenkott wove an address critical of military spending into that context. Mollenkott, a Milton scholar and English professor at William Paterson College in Wayne, New Jersey, asked that attendees be “agents of change,” according to 2 Corinthians 5:14–21.

Believing that “security comes not by might,” she said: “Escalated military spending is done for the profit of the already rich at the expense of the poor, the hungry, the exploited peoples of this earth.” She said Jesus made “no division between love and doing justice” and told her audience to “recognize our enemies as enemies, but do loving justice anyway.”

In its brochures, the EWC is described as “evangelical Christians who believe the Bible, when properly understood, supports the fundamental equality of the sexes.” (The group, whose paid membership has doubled to 525 since 1979, might be characterized by some as “progressive” and by others as “radical,” depending upon their perspective. Mollenkott, the keynote speaker, and Letha Scanzoni, who chaired this year’s convention, have aroused controversy by supporting “covenanted” practicing homosexuality.)

The group attended a banquet and a historical “fashion show” of America’s leading nineteenth-century feminists; costumed abolitionists and suffragists paraded by as “living links with history” while their capsule biographies were narrated. Then Susan B. Anthony II, grandniece of her famous forebear whose likeness is engraved on the new dollar piece, and Victoria Booth Demarest, granddaughter of Salvation Army cofounder Catherine Booth, addressed the convention.

Anthony, one of the first Roman Catholic women to receive a doctorate in theology, had marched recently in Chicago with 85,000 supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment, which the EWC has officially endorsed. Like the Old Testament prophets, she said, the suffragist should turn private spiritual experience into public action. “Aunt Susan advocated both radical personal change and radical social change,” Anthony said, and “a revolutionary tenderness toward each oppressed person—black, female, or poor.”

As white-haired, 90-year-old Victoria Demarest, formally ordained a minister in 1949 by the now United Church of Christ and often called the “grand dame of evangelists,” shuffled to the podium and began to speak, the years seemed to fall away from her.

She animatedly regaled the convention with reminiscences of her parents, who organized the Salvation Army in Europe, and of her own revival campaigns, often in churches that had never before allowed a woman to occupy the pulpit.

The speaker for the EWC’s plenary session was black South African Christian Motlalepula Chabaku, whose name means “one who comes with the rain.” Describing herself, Chabaku said that being a single, black woman from South Africa is “quadruple jeopardy.” She deplored apartheid and white domination in South Africa, a country that “is ancestrally mine.” She said, however, that she still believes in the possibility of peaceful change—“in the ballot rather than the bullet.” She reminded American women of the sacrifices made in winning the vote and urged them not to be apathetic in exercising their right to it.

In one of the more than 50 workshops, “Language, Sex, and Gender,” linguistics Ph.D. candidate Linda Coleman described how gender, as a way of classifying objects in the world, affects one’s perception of God and reality. Some languages, such as English, divide the world into masculine, feminine, and neuter, while others, such as Algonquin, may divide it into animate and inanimate, in which God will not fall into a category of either “he” or “she,” she said.

All attenders participated in a Communion service led entirely by women. Nancy Hardesty, who holds a Ph.D. in church history from the University of Chicago Divinity School (and who, with Letha Scanzoni, coauthored All We’re Meant to Be), acted as liturgist. She adapted the liturgy largely from the new Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church. Marchiene Vroon Reinstra, ordained by the United Presbyterian Church in 1979 and founding pastor of the new Port Sheldon Presbyterian Church in Western Michigan, delivered the sermon, using individual women in the Bible as paradigms.

And perhaps paradigms, or live “role models,” was what the EWC convention was all about. Fran DeJong, a chaplain at Central College in Pella, Iowa, and a graduate of McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago more than 20 years ago, counsels couples before marriage—but must bring in a minister to marry them. Although she leads her congregation in worship every Sunday, she must bring in a minister to serve Communion. But relief was in sight: two weeks after the convention she was to become the sixteenth woman ordained by the Reformed Church in America.

SUZY KANE

Personalia

J. Raymond Knighton founded MAP International almost by accident. Philadelphia pastor Donald Barnhouse had telephoned Knighton—then the head of Christian Medical Society—about unusable drugs valued at $26,000 that were going to be destroyed. Could he use them? Knighton lugged the drugs into his office, and began phoning missionaries. The drugs were soon on their way to hospitals overseas. That was the beginning; now Knighton has announced his retirement as head of the 26-year-old agency, which provides about $12 million in medical supplies overseas each year. Executive vice-president Larry Dixon, 35, will succeed Knighton as MAP president and chief executive officer.

Pop gospel singer Andraé Crouch and his 11-member band, The Disciples, are disbanding after 14 years together. Crouch and the band, who have won three Grammy Awards and were the first black gospel group to play the Grand Ole Opry, have done plenty of traveling in recent years, and Crouch explained to a reporter: “We are all sad about breaking up, but we’re all tired.” A Word Records representative said Crouch is going solo because of the expenses of transporting such a large group.

Stanley B. Long in September becomes the first full-time president of the San Francisco-based Fellowship Bible Institute. For seven years Long has been executive vice-president of Tom Skinner Associates, and is vice-president of Evangelicals for Social Action.

Jack McAlister, founder of World Literature Crusade, has retired as president; his successor is Korean-born Johnny Lee, long-time overseas director for WLC.

Deaths

C. N. Hostetter, Jr., 81, an active, well-known Brethren in Christ leader who served as: president of his denomination’s Messiah College (1934–1960), chairman of the Mennonite Central Committee (1953–1968), and the first chairman of the National Association of Evangelicals’ World Relief Commission (1961–1969); June 29, in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, after a long illness.

Albert J. duBois, 73, long-time leader of “high church” Episcopalians in the American Church Union, and editor of the organization’s magazine American Church News during his years as executive director (1950–1974); he left the denomination in opposition to its 1976 approval of women’s ordination and revised prayer book, and since had worked to reunite conservative, Anglo-Catholic Episcopalians with the Roman Catholic church; June 6, in Long Beach, California after a long illness.

Kenneth George Grubb, 79, Church of England ecumenist and missions leader who was president for 24 years of the Church Missionary Society; he began with the Anglican society in 1923 as a missionary-explorer in Brazil’s Amazon basin; in Salisbury, England.

The Consultation World Evangelization

Lausanne’s Extended Shadow Gauges Evangelism Progress

In strongly Buddhist Thailand last month, 650 invited participants from 87 countries met for the long-awaited Consultation on World Evangelization (COWE). Organizers carefully spelled out their purpose at the opening press conference: their overriding concern was evangelization, for this was part of the Lausanne Covenant. The present gathering was to be a working consultation, evaluating “where we are” in the task of reaching the world’s 3 billion non-Christians with the gospel.

The 10-day meeting sponsored by the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelization (LCWE) earlier had come under fire because of its choice of site: a first-class hotel in the holiday resort of Pattaya, some 85 miles from Bangkok and a former R&R haunt for Americans from Vietnam. Explained COWE director David Howard: the hotel could house everyone (mostly triple-occupancy rooms) under one roof, provided the necessary meeting facilities, and offered remarkably favorable prices during this off-season period.

Even more decisive, said Howard, they had consulted the Thai church, whose leaders had encouraged them to come. It would do nothing but good for the Christian testimony to the nation (46 million population, about 320,000 Christians), whose refugee problem would not have been helped by staying away, he said.

The Thai government was extremely helpful. COWE was officially opened by Sanya Dharmasakti, president of the privy council and personal representative of King Bhumidol Adulyadej. He reminded his hearers that his country’s national constitution guaranteed complete freedom of worship and religious activities. Observers remarked that not every day does a distinguished Buddhist encourage a Christian gathering to “continue the search with unflagging diligence and firm conviction for ways in which to set all of us on the path to lasting peace and eternal salvation.”

The assembly gathered into 17 “mini-consultations,” which dealt with outreach to groups as diverse as Muslims and Chinese, Marxists and city dwellers, nominal Christians and mystics/cultists. So that members of each group could speak freely, especially those dealing with more controversial or sensitive issues, even the consultation news staff was banned from attending (the consultation as a whole was closed to the press). This was understandable, but journalists attending in other capacities, after promising to respect confidentiality, were encouraged to “feel free to visit any of them [the miniconsultations] during the 10 days.” News staffers were bewildered and frustrated that a similar promise could not have been taken from them, and there were signs toward the end that the sponsors regretted the anomaly.

COWE agreed that the Lausanne Committee be given a fresh mandate to continue its ministry; that the theological units of LCWE and the World Evangelical Fellowship be merged, while rejecting for the present a union of the two parent bodies; and that while recognizing the value of “other Christian ministries which are not directly accountable to the churches” (or parachurch agencies), “it is the local church that must provide opportunities for fellowship, worship, teaching, and service.”

Also accepted was a “Thailand Statement,” which acknowledged the need for humility in evangelization and confessed that attitudes held by Christians have sometimes marred their testimony in areas such as imperialism, religious persecution, racial pride and prejudice of all kinds, cultural insensitivity, and indifference to the plight of the needy and the powerless. The need to strengthen evangelical cooperation in worldwide evangelization was also recognized; in LCWE (and COWE) chairman Leighton Ford’s words, “We are not the whole show.”

The document nonetheless stressed that such cooperation “must never be sought at the expense of basic biblical teaching.” Spokesmen made clear that the statement in no way superseded the Lausanne Covenant, which has had significant influence throughout the world since its adoption at the LCWE initial meeting in Switzerland in 1974.

At Pattaya, a group that included Bishop David Gitari of Kenya, Orlando Costas, and Ron Sider issued “A Statement of Concerns on the Future of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization.” Signed by about one-quarter of the 875 present (225 of whom were nonvoting participants or staff), it declared that the Lausanne Committee “does not seem to have been seriously concerned with the social, political, and economic issues in many parts of the world that are a great stumbling block to the proclamation of the gospel.”

The statement further urged that LCWE should within three years convene a world congress on evangelical social responsibility and its implications for evangelism.

The fact that the group formulating the statement had met first only two days after the consultation began emerged at a press conference. (“You didn’t give them much of a chance, did you?” suggested one newsman.)

An active women’s group at COWE lamented that their sex had provided only 9 percent of COWE’s 650 participants, none of the plenary speakers, and only three of LCWE’s 50 members. Program director Saphir Athyal, denying discrimination, indicated that women were represented in the miniconsultations where the real work was done, and that every effort had been made to encourage the different regions to send women to Pattaya. The women’s group organized a meeting during COWE attended by 34 women, of whom 11 were from the Third World.

Also meeting separately during COWE was a group of Latin Americans concerned about a COWE news release revealing that 27 Latin Americans had formed an ad hoc committee to study the creation of an evangelical association in Latin America. The news release had quoted the committee’s members as saying that the present Latin American Council of Churches (LACC) supports liberation theology—a position denied by LACC members at Pattaya. In a special session at COWE, issues dividing Latin Americans were clarified. Those concerned expressed anxiety that the issue should not reflect negatively on LCWE, since all agreed with its aims.

Notable absentees from COWE included Billy Graham, Carl Henry, Luis Palau, Francis Schaeffer, Festo Kivengere, René Padilla, Samuel Escobar, and Michael Cassidy. On medical advice Graham had reluctantly agreed not to pay two visits to Asia this year, and decided that his prior commitment was to his Japan crusades scheduled in October.

Special interest was attached to reaching Chinese. Thomas Wang of Hong Kong said the church is on the threshold of history’s greatest ingathering of Chinese to Christ, as the Chinese church is transformed into a gospel missionary vehicle.

COWE chairman Leighton Ford expressed a similar sense of expectancy. “I believe,” said the Canadian evangelist, “that the next 10 years may bring tremendous problems … political upheavals, revolutions and persecutions, economic displacement and hardship. But in the middle of this I believe we can expect that God will also be opening all over the world doors to the gospel.”

J. D. DOUGLAS

Liberia

Separation of Church and Witch

Liberian newspapers are revealing the apparent hypocrisy of the nation’s deposed leaders. As a result, in the wake of the army-led revolution, missionary radio station ELWA has asserted that the population faces a spiritual vacuum.

The new regime’s newspaper, The Redeemer, published photographs of witchcraft paraphernalia discovered in the house of the former speaker of the Liberian House of Representatives, Richard A. Henries, and added, “Yet he was known publicly as a Christian.” At the time of his execution on charges of corruption, Henries was head deacon of Liberia’s prestigious Providence Baptist Church.

Assassinated President William R. Tolbert, who had been president of the Liberia Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention, was known to consult diviners of both Islam and traditional religions. People so feared his presidential cane for its reputed black magic that the soldiers who killed him first knocked the cane from his hand.

The Liberian Express Special headlines read that former Vice-president Bennie D. Warner “calls himself a liar.” Warner, a United Methodist bishop who was attending a UMC council of bishops in Nashville, Indiana, at the time of the coup, publicly admitted he had lied about not being in neighboring Ivory Coast to set up a government in exile.

Reginald Townsend, former chairman of the ruling True Whig party, and moderator of the Presbyterian Church, was among the 13 leaders executed at the time of the coup for “crimes against the people.” The Liberian National Student Union labeled as enemies of the state such secret societies as the Masons, of which most government officials were members. Thirteen people, including several prominent leaders, were recently acquitted of ritual murder charges, but according to Africa magazine, in February last year seven people were hanged for performing human sacrifice as a ritual aimed at winning higher government positions.

The army coup was essentially a revolt led by indigenous Liberians—who have an $80-a-month average income—against the dominant and more affluent “Americo-Liberians” who are descendants of returned slaves. Marxist ideology has not played a major part, although the young soldiers have had to call on people with a wide spectrum of political ideologies to fill cabinet posts. Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe, head of state, and several other leaders have had considerable contact with evangelical groups, and favor Liberia’s Christian traditions. They declared a week of prayer following the coup.

“The revolution has shown up not only the hypocrisy of many nominal Christians,” said an SIM official, “it has also underlined the need for a strengthening among evangelicals, so they will bear the witness in [Liberia] that God intends.”

W. HAROLD FULLER

The Baptist World Alliance

20,000 Baptist Delegates—Registered and Otherwise

For the second time in its 75-year history, the Baptist World Alliance held its international congress in Toronto. In contrast to the 5,000 who came in 1928, however, 20,000 Baptists from 85 countries and every continent descended on the Canadian city for the five-day conclave that was held during the second week of July.

In spite of outside attempts to introduce confrontation and division, the congress had the appearance of a global Baptist love-in, involving people of many races, colors, and cultural backgrounds.

One issue that could have been contentious involved the presence of representatives from the All Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (registered Baptists in the Soviet Union). In the week prior to the congress, Carl McIntire’s tiny core of fundamentalist International Council of Christian Churches supporters alerted members of the news media to the coming of the Russian Baptists. The city’s daily tabloid, through its news pages, columns, and editorial page, spoke darkly of the Baptists and the KGB.

In spite of that free publicity, McIntire addressed a crowd of only 200 at an evening protest meeting in a school auditorium a few blocks from Maple Leaf Gardens where more than 15,000 Baptists gathered. The Gardens congress meeting that evening concluded with a benediction from one of the Russian delegates.

The ICCC protesters distributed literature outside the arena alleging that the Russian Baptists were agents or dupes of the Soviet government.

In response to McIntire’s charge of a “high level conspiracy,” retiring BWA general secretary Robert Denny told the press: “I have been with the Alliance for 25 years and I know of no conspiracy.”

“We are dealing with a Communist country. We have a different set of laws regarding religion. We are commanded to preach the gospel in every country regardless of political ideology. We preach and let the gospel of Jesus Christ speak for itself.”

Denny added that BWA was aware of the problem. “Communism has not changed,” he said. “Its purpose is still to take the world. But, thank God, the Christian religion has not changed either. We are still commanded to go to all people regardless of the political ideology under which they live.”

The McIntire protest fizzled. More disturbing and heart-wrenching to BWA officials and delegates was a four-day conference, “Voice of the Persecuted Church,” led by Georgi Vins, the unregistered Baptist leader released from Soviet imprisonment last year. Now secretary in exile and international representative for the Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (unregistered Baptists, sometimes designated “the underground church”), Vins held his rally in a downtown Toronto hotel during the BWA congress.

Vins refused to engage in demonstration and confrontation and avoided any alliance with McIntire, who had told the press that he supported the Baptist dissident. Visitors to Vins’s conference saw a portable, homemade press smuggled out of Russia where it had printed Bibles and literature. A scale model of a Soviet concentration camp and pictures of imprisoned and executed Baptist leaders told a chilling story.

Vins charged that he had been denied permission to address the BWA congress regarding the plight of the suffering church. On the next to last day, the congress granted him registration as an official delegate and gave him press credentials. At a press conference, incoming BWA president Duke McCall shook hands with Vins. “I reach out to my brother who calls on the name of Jesus,” said McCall, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. The USSR delegates protested Vins’s registration, contending that he was no longer a Soviet citizen.

The press seized on the tensions surrounding the Russian Baptists, but the alliance maintained its solidarity. The appearance of the Russian flag and delegation at the closing rally brought spontaneous applause from the 20,000 who packed Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens.

The tensions had grabbed headlines, but what delegates would remember would be the fraternal atmosphere, rousing singing, fervent preaching, and an expanded global vision. A gigantic global Baptist family reunion on Wednesday afternoon brought together more than 20,000 on the lakefront Canadian National Exhibition grounds. Garbed in colorful national costumes, they assembled under banners designating eight regions of the world.

Evangelist Billy Graham, who has addressed the past five BWA congresses, spoke at the closing evangelistic rally. He issued a stirring call to evangelization, reminding his fellow Baptists that evangelism had characterized their history.

The congress elected McCall its president for the coming five years; he succeeds David Y. K. Wong, a Hong Kong architect.

Other administrative changes bring two German Baptists to the BWA Washington office. Gerhard Claas of Hamburg succeeds Robert Denny as general secretary. Denny, who retires after 24 years on the BWA staff, will head up the International Baptist Seminary in Switzerland. Reinhold Kersten, editor of the Baptist Herald, the North American Baptist Conference denominational publication, was named BWA director of communications, succeeding Cyril E. Bryant, who becomes administrative aide to the general secretary.

The alliance now has 119 member bodies in 85 nations and dependencies, including conventions from Angola, India, Indonesia, and Thailand, which were received at the 1980 congress. The BWA estimates that it represents about 87 percent of the world’s Baptists.

LESLIE K. TARR

Is Your Church Energy Efficient?

The Energy-efficient Church by Douglas R. Hoffman, editor (The Pilgrim Press, 1979, 86 pp. $4.95 pb).

In these days when the energy crisis has moved from being simply a monetary problem to a moral one, it is heartening to note that the church has become interested in discovering what it can do to help.

Douglas Hoffman has produced a handy, practical guide that will enable churches to set an example for the community in energy efficiency—and save money to boot. This book is not a complicated treatment of theory, but a practical handbook on how to get the job done, complete with easy to understand illustrations.

Hoffman makes four basic points. First, churches should act as good stewards of creation by using energy wisely. Energy conservation means saving energy and saving money. Second, churches have unique opportunities to save energy. Third, the best energy conservation measures vary from building to building, but as a rule, they embrace three main strategies: (a) Don’t send it up the chimney. Increase the efficiency of heating and air conditioning systems. (b) Use it when and where you need it. Reduce the demand for heat by reducing the temperature difference between inside and outside and by controlling ventilation. (c) Keep it where you want it. Increase the resistance to the flow of heat between inside and outside.

Fourth, strategies (a) and (b) usually save more and cost less than strategy (c). Therefore, investigate (a) and (b) first, even though insulation, storm windows, and other (c)-type measures generally come to mind first when energy conservation is mentioned.

An appendix on how to calculate cost/saving and a topical bibliography conclude the work.

Every church board ought to look closely at this book and then follow the sane advice it offers. That would not only be a good testimony, but good business as well.

Education That Is Christian

Are Textbooks Harming Your Children? by James C. Hefley (Mott Media, 1979, 223 pp., $3.95 pb); Blackboard Tyranny, by Connaught Coyne Marshner (Arlington House, 352 pp., $11.95); Christian Day Schools: Why and How, by D. L. Kranendonk (Paideia, 1978, 118 pp., $3.95 pb); The Purpose of Christ-centered Education, edited by David B. Cummings (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1979, 133 pp., $4.50); Religion, Education and the Supreme Court, by Thayer S. Warshaw (Abingdon, 1979, 99 pp., $4.95); Sex Education—In the Classroom? by Dr. and Mrs. J. C. Willkes (Hayes, 1979, 159 pp., $4.95); Aesthetic Dimensions of Religious Education by G. Durka and J. Smith (Paulist, 1979, 235 pp., $8.50), are reviewed by Norman E. Harper, dean of the Graduate School of Education, Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson, Mississippi.

The issues in education today are numerous, complex, and deeply felt. Anyone doubting this need only consider the number and kinds of books now being published on the subject.

I knew there were serious problems with school textbooks but I did not realize how serious until I read James C. Hefley’s Are Textbooks Harming Your Children? originally published in hard cover as Textbooks on Trial. In a moving account, Hefley tells how Mel and Norma Gabler struggled with the educational establishment to restore Judeo-Christian values to the textbooks used in the public schools of Texas. We see in some detail how these concerned parents, at considerable sacrifice to themselves, learned to work within the system to accomplish their objectives. The book reveals the mindless way in which textbooks are often adopted without being read by anyone in authority. Illustrations are given of books that contain offensive language, excessive violence, and relative value systems. The Gablers conclude, however, that these things are but the logical outgrowth of publishers’ bias toward secular humanism.

The book is well written and sufficiently documented to accomplish the author’s purpose, which is to create sufficient public awareness of the problem to motivate people to act.

Addressing some of the same concerns is Blackboard Tyranny, by Connaught Coyne Marshner. The author rightly contends that much of today’s public education policy has been formulated with total disregard for the public will. For example, busing has been forced on the community by the courts, and as a result the local neighborhood school has been broken up—much to the dismay of both black and white parents. Textbooks are selected by state textbook committees far from the watchful eye of the parent whose children will have to use them. Prayer has been banned in the classroom not by public mandate but by order of the U.S. Supreme Court. In this connection Marshner says, “God has been not only removed from the public curriculum, but replaced by a vigorously pursued antitheism.”

Although the author holds out little hope for changing the system, she believes the concerned citizen is obligated to make the attempt and, if that fails, to work around the system. With this end in view, guidelines are provided for the parent activist, whom the author defines as “a concerned parent who recognizes that if he doesn’t do something, nobody else will either.” One suggestion for working within the system is that parents may lobby for alternative schools that are publicly financed and individually adapted to each ethnic, religious, or special interest group. This book gives a helpful analysis of the problem, but for the Christian parent it falls short in its proposals for solution.

Many evangelical Christians are convinced that the problems in public education are so fundamental in nature that the concerned parent has no alternative but to work for the establishment of Christian schools. D. L. Kranendonk’s Christian Day Schools—Why and How takes this position. “All education,” he declares, “is religious education. The idea that the basis, purpose, methods, and principles of education can be neutral is a myth.” The author defends the sphere sovereignty idea that all institutions—state, church, and family—are unique but interrelated, with each having “its own primary task for which it receives authority-responsibility directly from God.” On this basis, he argues against the control of schools either by the state or the church and for control by Christian school societies made up of parents and others who share their commitment.

Not every reader will agree with all of Kranendonk’s conclusions, but evangelicals as a whole will applaud his concern for the development of schools that are honoring to God. The book is all too brief, however, considering the foundational issues with which it deals.

The Purpose of a Christ-centered Education, edited by David B. Cummings and sponsored by an organization called Christian Education Association, is intended to be one volume in a series of publications designed “to assist Christian educators and concerned parents in the task of teaching their children.” Each chapter is written by an author well known to the Reformed community. While the book is somewhat lacking in coherence, as is often the case in volumes with multiple authorship, the belief that the Scripture must comprehensively and pervasively direct the total educational process (pupil, parent, and teacher) is a theme that runs throughout its pages. Unfortunately, it is not hard to tell that the book was written mostly by Bible scholars and theologians rather than by Christian educators recruited from the ranks of elementary and secondary schools. Perhaps this is one reason why it is more helpful in the area of sanctification than in the application of a biblical world-and-life view to the teaching-learning process.

For those Christian educators and parents who choose to work within the public school system, Thayer S. Warshaw’s Religion, Education and the Supreme Court will be a helpful source of information. Landmark Supreme Court decisions related to the role of religion in education are presented chronologically. The facts of each case along with the most relevant aspects of the majority opinion are given, followed by the author’s own commentary. Warshaw’s purpose is not to come down on one side or the other but simply to answer the question, “What does the law of the land forbid and what does it permit?” The appendixes greatly enhance the use of this little book as a reference tool.

Few programs in elementary and secondary schools have aroused more public outrage than sex education courses. Should the school teach about human sexuality? According to Dr. and Mrs. J.C. Willkes in their Sex Education—In the Classroom? the answer depends on what is meant by sex education. They go to some lengths to show the failure of those approaches that try to reduce sexuality to the biological facts, what they call “non-value type programs.” On the other hand, the authors are convinced that if human sexuality is taught in the context of wholesome values and attitudes it should have a place in the curriculum. The Willkeses give detailed suggestions from their perspective on how to develop a sex education program in the school. What the authors advocate is certainly more palatable than programs sponsored by such organizations as the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS); but from the point of view of the Christian parent, their book leaves much to be desired. The real difficulty for me is their basis for making value judgments. They appeal not to a transcendent standard but to “broad society preserving norms,” which in reality is a pragmatic, not a Christian, view. For example, premarital sexual relations are to be discouraged because those who engage in such experiences “have the least happiness and poorest sexual life after ten years of marriage.”

Aesthetic Dimensions of Religious Education, edited by Gloria Durka and Joanmarie Smith, was written in the belief that the aesthetic is not an optional matter. “Unless the process is aesthetic, the editors say, “it is not education and it is certainly not religious.” Much of the book is based on the theory that the left side of the brain directs the intellectual and analytical approach to reality, while the right side controls the intuitive and aesthetic approach. Completely aside from the right lobe/left lobe research, any thoughtful observer would have to agree with the basic concern of the writers that there has been a great neglect of the aesthetic dimension of education. Evangelicals may not agree with some of the views of this work, but many will find it thought provoking.

Significant New Reprints

Publishers continue to make available out-of-print books that will reopen old worlds for the pastors and scholars of this generation. These are appearing in increasing number, testifying to the growing awareness of their value on the part of the reader.

Theology. Baker Book House, in its Summit Books series, has reprinted The Table Talk of Martin Luther, introduced and edited by T. S. Kepler. This is Luther at his pungent, witty best. The Beauties of Thomas Boston (Christian Focus Publications, Henderson Road, Inverness, 1V1 1SP, Scotland) is the 1831 collection of this seventeenth-century Scottish divine. Topically arranged, there is some choice material here. A full set of Boston may be obtained in 12 volumes from Richard Owen Roberts (205 Kehoe Bl., Carol Stream, Ill.). The Primitive Baptist Library (107 Elm Lane, Streamwood, Illinois, phone: 312-837-5314) has three new offerings: A Body of Divinity (from the 1815 edition) and The Cause of God and Truth (from the 1855 edition) both by John Gill (1697–1771), beautifully bound and printed; and A Defense of the Doctrine of Eternal Justification (from the 1732 edition) by John Brine. You may have a copy of this excellent 80-page book free, believe it or not, by writing or calling The Primitive Baptist Library.

W. H. Griffith Thomas’s standard. The Principles of Theology (with an introduction by J. I. Packer), and J. C. Ryle’s Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots have both been reprinted by Baker Book House. The early sermons of Karl Barth and Edward Thurneysen, Come Holy Spirit (the 1933 collection), have been made available again in paperback by Eerdmans.

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich offers two stirring books by Thomas Merton in paperback, The Waters of Siloe and The Sign of Jonas. Although perhaps not technical theology, the three books of The Crosswicks Journal by Madeleine L’Engle, reprinted by Seabury, A Circle of Quiet, The Summer of the Great-grandmother, and The Irrational Season, are spiritual reading at its best.

Old Testament. Nelson has beautifully done the Matthew Henry/Thomas Scott Commentary on the Holy Bible (3 vols.). Of Henry, C. H. Spurgeon said, “Every minister ought to read it entirely through once at least.” In Baker’s Twin Brooks Series one can find The Unity of the Book of Genesis by William Henry Green, and The History of the Religion of Israel by J. H. Raven. Both books will serve a new generation well. The incomparable R. S. Candlish’s Studies in Genesis (1868) is reprinted by Kregel Publications. Spurgeon said of it, “we characterize this as the work on Genesis. It should be in every biblical library.”

New Testament. Kregel has made available some valuable and impressive works. The Nichol’s edition of William Gouge’s (1578–1653) Commentary on Hebrews is available in one massive volume. Three of Frederic Godet’s invaluable commentaries are also available again, Commentary on John’s Gospel, Commentary on Romans, Commentary on First Corinthians, as is J. Armitage Robinson’s Commentary on Ephesians. Those who have used these books know of their abiding worth. Baker Book House has put us in their debt by reprinting John Eadie’s five commentaries on Paul’s letters: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians. B. F. Westcott’s St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, the Greek Text with Notes (Baker) is also available again.

Two much older works are now available once more, thanks again to Baker Book House: John Lightfoot’s (1602–1675) timeless Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica (4 vols.), and Martin Luther’s 1535 Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians.

Explaining Conversion Experience

Religious Conversion and Personal Identity, by V. Bailey Gillespie (Religious Education Press, 1979, 246 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Lewis R. Rambo, professor, San Francisco Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union.

With the resurgence of evangelical Christianity and the notoriety of the new religious movements, many scholars have become interested in the phenomenon of conversion.

The fundamental argument of Gillespie’s book is that there are many parallels between the formation and structure of personal identity and the process of religious conversion. He explores the definition of conversion, the various factors that effect the change process, and formulates a normative view of the nature and development of identity. Concluding chapters make explicit the parallels between conversion and identity and also give suggestions for fostering an optimal conversion experience and nurturing the individual through an identity crisis toward maximum psychological maturity and spirituality.

Gillespie formulates a four-fold normative definition of conversion, which is his paradigm for comparison with identity processes. First of all, he believes that conversion fosters a unification of the self; second, conversion gives the individual various positive experiences, such as a feeling of freedom and ethical energy; third, there is an intense and vital commitment to a world view; and fourth, there is a moment in which the person makes a conscious decision to commit himself or herself to a particular world view and way of life.

The concern of this reviewer is that Gillespie’s book continues the biased belief that conversion is primarily an adolescent phenomenon. Furthermore, Gillespie does not deal significantly with theological issues, and neglects the theology of conversion advocated by particular groups, which has an impact on the conversion experiences of individuals within that group. The book also could have been more interesting had he used more case studies to illustrate his theoretical points.

The Evils Of The New Apocalypticism

Jesus Against the Rapture: Seven Unexpected Prophecies, by Robert Jewett (Westminster, 1979, 147 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by David E. Aune, professor of religion, Saint Xavier College, Chicago, Illinois.

Robert Jewett, professor of religion at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, regards the contemporary belief in the imminent return of Jesus with less relish than parents do the chicken pox. Though this doctrine is not to be found among the teachings of Jesus, he asserts, it crept into primitive Christianity very early (1 Thess. 4:16–17), and has continued to exercise an insidious influence on Christian life and thought ever since. Rather than face contemporary realities with creative openness, the author charges, adherents of the New Apocalypticism (an apt designation for fundamentalists and evangelicals preoccupied with the imminent Rapture) have “copped out” by banking on a miraculous rescue in the final reel by a Jesus who functions as a macho superhero of cartoons and comic strips.

Professor Jewett takes the novel tack of using a number of prophecies of Jesus to refute the beliefs and attitudes that appear to him to characterize this New Apocalypticism. For example, he juxtaposes Jesus’ statement “But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32ff.), with Hal Lindsey’s claim that the end will come “within forty years or so of 1948.” This neat contrast, however, is vitiated by the Markan depiction of Jesus predicting the end of the age within his generation (9:1; 13:30), in a manner not unlike that of Lindsey. Each of the remaining six prophecies selected by the author is similarly used to refute one or more of the unwholesome features of the New Apocalypticism.

Though I greatly value the author’s contribution to NT studies (and there are many), I find a number of features of this popular work objectionable. Halfway through the book it dawned on me that I was actually reading a book of sermons in which the historical-critical interpretation of selected sayings of Jesus was being generously layered with homiletical imagination. I shall try to outline some of the major problems I found in the book.

First, it is apparent that Professor Jewett regards each of the seven sayings of Jesus that he uses in the book as genuine because of the principle of dissimilarity.

Second, the author distinguishes the authentic teachings of Jesus from what he regards as the illegitimate development of falsification of those teachings, both within the Gospels themselves (Mark 13 and parallels), as well as throughout the remainder of the New Testament (e.g., 1 Thess. 4:16–17; Revelation). The result is a kind of canon within the canon in which the teachings of Jesus are elevated above those of the New Testament authors. Jewett never really comes clean on the issue, but it appears that he regards the early Christian expectation of the Parousia of Jesus to be a post-Easter development.

Third, the author is critical of those who claim to be on God’s side, like the Pharisees whom Jesus criticized as a brood of vipers. This notion is, in fact, a leitmotif which pervades the book; those confident of possessing a special, privileged relationship to God are invariably smug, complacent, vindictive, or at the very least aloof and indifferent.

My fourth observation is simply a different way of stating some of the points already made above: the book is a fairly blatant, even anachronistic, attempt selectively to fashion the teachings of Jesus so that they agree in a most remarkable manner with the opinions of the author.

Fifth, though Jewett deals with a potentially fascinating subject, the popularity of the New Apocalypticism, he does so in a generally superficial manner. He provides little analysis and commentary to enable those of us who are not part of the movement to understand it religiously, psychosocially or culturally.

Finally, it is apparent that the author writes about the New Apocalypticism, and indeed about fundamentalism-evangelicalism, as an outsider who knows the literature but not the reality. He castigates the smug aloofness and self-satisfaction of Christians waiting for God to blast their spiritual enemies to smithereens, but never once considers the correlative emphasis on missions and evangelism that characterize fundamentalism-evangelicalism. One can only specualate why or to whom Jewett addressed this book.

Briefly Noted

Cults

Ronald Enroth has written a very helpful introduction in The Lure of the Cults (Christian Herald). A revised What the Cults Believe (Moody) by I. Robertson briefly explains the basic cults of today. A sympathetic, yet critical look at neopaganism is Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today (Viking) by Margot Adler.

There are four recent books on Mormonism. Walter Martin takes a critical look in the revised edition of The Maze of Mormonism (Vision House). A shorter but also helpful book is The Mormon Illusion (Gospel Light) by Floyd McElveen. An attempt to understand Mormonism as a part of its time is Mormon Answer to Skepticism: Why Joseph Smith Wrote the Book of Mormon (Clayton Publishing House, Box 9258, St. Louis, Mo.) by Robert Hullinger. The best and most exhaustive treatment is The Changing World of Mormonism (Moody), by Jerald and Sandra Tanner.

Jesus and Jim Jones (Pilgrim) by Steve Rose takes a look at the horror of Jonestown. Victor Paul Wierwille and The Way International (Moody) by J. L. Williams is a careful exposé of that cult.

Escape (Accent, Box 15337, Denver, Colo.) by Rachel Martin is the gripping story of breaking away from “Brother Evangelist” Jim Roberts. Come Into My Parlor (Logos) by Avril Flinn tells of a spiritualist who was freed from satanic power. Moon-Struck: A Memoir of My Life in a Cult (Morrow) by A.T. Wood, and Hostage to Heaven (Potter) by Barbara and Betty Underwood, are accounts of being in and getting out of Moon’s Unification church, but not necessarily to turn to Christian faith.

Recent Books On Old Testament

A new printing (the forty-second) of H. I. Hester’s standard survey, The Heart of Hebrew History, has been made by Quality Press (Liberty, Mo.). The NIV Interlinear Hebrew-English Old Testament: Vol. I/Genesis-Deuteronomy (Zondervan), edited by J. R. Kohlenberger, is now available and will prove very useful. Ernst Wurthwein’s The Text of the Old Testament (Eerdmans) will be invaluable with its excellent text and illustrations.

Margaret Fromer and Sharrel Keyes have revised their two study guides to Genesis: Genesis 1–25: Walking with God and Genesis 26–50: Called by God (Harold Shaw). Liberating Limits (Word) by John Huffman is a look at the Ten Commandments for today. Ezra and Nehemiah (InterVarsity) by Derek Kidner is an excellent, short commentary on these two books. The Anchor Bible Series continues with I Samuel (Doubleday) by P. Kyle McArther. A devotional work is A Year With the Psalms (Word) by Eugene Peterson. Isaiah II: An Exposition of Isaiah 40–66 (Northwestern, 3624 W. North Ave., Milwaukee, Wis.) by August Pieper is a massive conservative work on the Hebrew text. Laura C. Pleming offers a devotional, poetic run through Job in Triumph of Job (R.H. Sommer, 27 Blanvelt Dr., Harrington Park, N.J.). A new study guide to Habakkuk is Just Living by Faith (InterVarsity) by A. T. LePeau, P. J. LePeau, and J. D. Stewart.

David Bakin argues that a matrilineal family structure was replaced by patriarchy in And they Took Themselves Wives: The Emergence of Patriarchy in Western Civilization (Harper & Row). Fortress Press has produced two major scholarly works in The Promises to the Fathers: Studies on the Patriarchal Narratives by Claus Westermann, and Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel by Robert R. Wilson. William Dyrness has written a very helpful Themes in Old Testament Theology (InterVarsity).

A major source book containing original texts regarding Messianic speculations that are difficult to locate is The Messiah Texts (Avon, 959 Eighth Ave., N.Y.) by Raphael Patai.

If you don’t learn something new this week, you’ll sound canned, frozen, dried out.

A growing minister sets the pattern for a growing church. A minister’s wife can help him grow by setting up conditions conducive to their mutual growth: growing becomes a shared adventure. The whole church soon takes on a pastor’s quality of life and growth—or lack of it.

If you are going to bring life to others, you have to stay alive yourself. One of the dictionary definitions for life is capacity for growth. Church members think that because you went to school all those years, all you have to do is stand up and a sermon comes out. Or open your mouth, and a new program for the Sunday school springs forth full-blown. But you and I know nothing really good comes out that hasn’t been freshly planted in your mind and experience, then watered, fertilized, weeded, and brought painstakingly to maturity. Whether you’re a preacher, or a minister whose primary job is teaching, visiting, directing youth or Christian education, you need to have learned something new this week. All those good things from the dear dead past will sound canned, frozen, dried out, or rotten. You have to develop a lifestyle that stimulates growth. How can a minister help himself to grow?

1. A minister can grow through preparation for teaching or preaching. Some feel they must get their own devotional food from Bible reading apart from sermon preparation. Others preach out of their own devotional lives. Or they gather spiritual food for themselves as they study, allowing plenty of time to stop, meditate, and pray. Either way works. Block off ample hours for wide study and deep pondering. You grow through expounding the Bible. A minister grows as he hears and studies great pulpit masters.

2. A minister can grow in his vacations. We have made a lifelong hobby of travel, even on a minister’s salary. Since both of us are crazy about the same things, we have made ridiculous sacrifices to gain a new experience. To us a vacation doesn’t count as a vacation unless we have learned something new to take back to the job. Summer conferences and courses can also contribute to growth.

3. A minister can learn from his church members. Bart once had a ponderous verbal style. A friend in the church gave him Rudolph Flesch’s book, The Art of Plain Talk, which started us on the route to talking plain English.

Other members have made suggestions, both large and small; both pleasant and unpleasant. Bart’s father, also a pastor, had mastered the art of receiving criticism. He used to say, “When you get criticism, learn what you can from it. Thank God for the person who gives you a kick. He may prove your best friend.”

4. A minister can grow through discussing the range of life with a soulmate. He can help her to grow through interacting with her. She can inspire him. Together they can search out illustrations for sermons from daily life, from travel, or from books. They can think and talk in terms of applying spiritual truths to everyday problems; to problems in the church; to problems in people’s lives; to problems in organizations. A minister will grow as he encourages his wife to grow. As he encourages her to do her own things, his world will expand.

But perhaps a pastor’s wife lives in a different world from his. Perhaps he needs a wife quite different from himself as an emotional complement. He may find spiritual or intellectual interaction with a fellow pastor, or with a member of his church. The point is, he must keep himself open to a point of view other than his own.

5. A minister can grow through suffering. One pastor spent six months at home recovering from a heart attack. He could have spent the time reading, meditating, praying, thinking. He might have grown a foot taller spiritually. He didn’t. He simply waited out the entire time, watching television.

6. A pastor can learn by his mistakes. It’s not the end of the world if something doesn’t turn out right. Admit your mistake, and criticism will collapse. Try something else next time.

7. We can learn from listening carefully to people who are quite different from us. However strong our convictions, listening can give perspective and insight. We grow by understanding other people’s thought processes. We grow by getting close to people from backgrounds that are entirely different from ours.

8. A minister can grow by knowing his own children. Innumerable parallels exist between God’s relationship with us and our relationship with our children.

9. A minister can grow through his hobbies. Any hobby—gardening, sports, woodworking—can give him illustrations. Hobbies can give insights, new points of contact with other people.

10. A minister can grow through wide reading of magazines and books. There is much that we can skim. Some books prove capable of reshaping our thinking; these may require careful study and rereading.

Growing takes time. But the Bible says, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: … a time to plant … to build up … to embrace … a time to keep silence, and a time to speak” (Eccl. 3:1–8).

By budgeting, even a minister can allot specific amounts of time for his own development. He can allot other pieces of time for his family, his meetings, his sick people, his friends, his community service. A time budget tells him when to say no; then he can give himself to the one thing he is doing at any given time. And he can do it to the best of his ability in the time allotted to it. A minister’s personal growth proves the key to a growing church.

If we are growing, we can be unabashed about where we stand spiritually—as long as we stand firmly in Christ. Margaret’s father repeated throughout her childhood that to be was more important than to seem. The idea helps one never to put on a mask in the first place. We can dare to let our real selves show.

The first time Margaret was asked to speak at a retreat she felt appalled. To her, people who led retreats seemed like special people, very holy. She tried too hard. Later she learned she could be honest; she could be herself. When she shared her own stages of growth, some people even grew beyond her. At any stage of growth in the Christian life, we can hold before people the excitement of the process of growth.

The man or woman of God holds onto God with one hand, onto people with the other. He will never encompass all the riches of God in Christ Jesus; neither will he ever plumb all the depths of people. But he can keep trying. If he does, he’ll “flourish like the palm tree; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.” (Ps. 92:12).

MARGARET J. AND BARTLETT L. HESS

Coauthors Margaret and Bartlett Hess, husband and wife, have ministered for 25 years at Ward Presbyterian Church in Livonia, Michigan, where Dr. Hess is senior pastor.

It is his testimony that possibility thinking works.

The weight of the massive stonework is gracefully and deftly carried aloft in slender rods that race and meld into cross ribbing of balanced geometric patterns. My eye is carried always upward. The thickness of walls remains cleverly concealed behind roods, screens, and arches. Soft, ambient colors of light filter through translucent walls of stained glass that murmur of parables and saints.

I could be standing beneath the nave of the Cathedral of Chartres, of Rheims, or any score of others erected during Europe’s Middle Ages. I vaguely suspect the richness and depth of theology enshrined for centuries in the quiet majesty of these monuments. They speak of an earlier time, a Christian time. It was a time when people sacrificed their lives and fortunes to erect these formal manifestations of a Christian world view, an ordered harmony of form and function repeated over and over again, in proportional geometric patterns of stone, echoing the order of God’s creation. Light, forced through the walls in rosetta patterns, reconciled the transcendent with the imminent—the medieval essence of beauty. Light was seen with a unifying quality that could carry the tentativeness of temporal existence into the eternal dimension. The cathedrals were at once a model of the medieval universe and an image of the celestial city.

The cathedral was physically, socially, and spiritually prominent in the cities and towns of the Middle Ages. It was a source of civic pride, a seat of civil government; it provided lodging for the transient, and gave substance to the religious faith of its parishioners. But just when cathedrals had risen to the supreme expression of a Christian civilization it seemed they became irrelevant as man chose to place himself first in the order of things.

During the intervening centuries, religious buildings have not regained a sense of theological unity. The attempts to recapture the lost spirit of cultural dominance for our own time, by fabricating artifacts (e.g., The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., or the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City), demonstrate a nostalgia for a lost consensus and the lack of courage—or at least an ineptitude—to translate the gospel into icons that will speak of faith to our post-Christian culture.

Then, in the mid-fifties, Dr. Robert Schuller began to sweep up the dusty cobwebs of our spiritually diffident age and infuse it with “possibility thinking.” His supersaturated mixture of self-esteem and success crystalized into a current-age cathedral. Its 10,500 two-foot by six-foot glass cells, held together with sinews of filigreed steel, soar to a height of 128 feet. Its horizontal dimensions are 415 by 207 feet.

Schuller began by trying to sell unchurched Californians on the promises of an afterlife and other-worldly “fantasies.” Californians seemed preoccupied with their inner hurts and the loss of esteem sustained in the here and now. Taking cues from his potential “customers” and rethinking the “sales” approach Jesus used, Schuller decided some product modification, or at least the use of more competitive packaging and a new psychologized sales strategy, were in order. He followed the lead of his mentor and fellow Reformed Church of America clergyman, Norman Vincent Peale, and coined “possibility thinking” as the way to make things happen: a marketing modernization of the Christian “faith concept,” but one that allows the user a greater sense of participation.

Schuller employs the marketing metaphor to undergird all aspects of his current ministry at Garden Grove Community Church. He calls the building complex a “22-acre shopping center for Jesus Christ.” The sparkling, 10,500-window “showroom” merits the label “cathedral” if only because it serves as an icon of Schuller’s theology. The saga of its financing also reflects the values and temper of our time.

The space enclosed by its shimmering façade exceeds that of Notre Dame; yet, explains Schuller, “the doors are deliberately kept small at the entrance. We want the average person to identify with this place. If the door were 30 feet high, it would have been out of correspondence. The ceiling of the foyer is only seven feet, ten inches. I can put my hands flat on it without standing on tiptoes. It signifies that God is concerned about a little guy like me.” So, initially, at the entrance, the inward looking “me” generation is accommodated, even invited. But once inside the huge rhomboid prism, the sky is the limit. Says Schuller, looking up through the walls and ceilings of one-way glass, “Finally we have a church where the heavens can do their thing and declare God’s glory.” And, although the geometry of the structure may not symbolize the theological patterns with which God imbued the universe, renowned architect Philip Johnson, who has won prizes for this dazzling four-pointed star, calls it the crowning achievement of his career. He says, “It is what a church ought to look like in California.” In a more telling comment, Johnson said of doors opening to the drive-in portion of the sanctuary outside, “They’re 80 feet high and 12 feet wide. And the opening of those doors will look great on TV. Dr. Schuller knows exactly what he’s doing.”

Garden Grove’s associate pastor, Dr. Raymond Beckering, succinctly describes exactly what Schuller is doing. “He has been eminently successful in whetting the appetite and bringing people to Christ, and then from that point on, entrusting the nurturing process … to the staff here.”

Herein lies grist for the controversy that swirls about Schuller’s feet. He believes people today are biblically illiterate. Weighty theological teaching—any preaching that assumes biblical knowledge—Schuller avoids. He says, “I am something like a show barker who cries out to the unchurched, ‘Come in here, there’s something good inside for you.’ ” Billing the Crystal Cathedral as “the most talked about religious building of the twentieth century” sets it up as Schuller’s symbol of success in the American tradition. He wants it to be talked about. It is testimony that his “possibility thinking” works.

Certainly the expense and financing of the Crystal Cathedral contribute to Schuller’s image of success for service. Begun, finished, and paid for in less than four years, the $16.5 million cathedral confirms Schuller’s claims that “possibility thinking” can relieve the impatience, anxiety, and financial frustrations from which our culture and its people suffer.

But, as with much of Schuller’s image making, the financial success of his cathedral casts a long shadow. “Wasteful,” “indulgent,” are some of the labels applied. Yet by comparison, the cost of the cathedral is a mere pittance against that spent to build the great cathedrals of Europe. The sacrifices of time and money made to erect those expressions of faith—often commitments made with the realization that their fruits must wait to be enjoyed by grandchildren and great-grandchildren—were also called “wasteful” and “frivolous” by some of the saintly. Yet, because of their magnitude, those undertakings were perhaps larger statements of faith focused, and, in that sense, were less wasteful.

On the other hand, the Crystal Cathedral, while a minority statement culturally speaking, does herald hope for those who have passed beyond innocence, who are broken and in pain. For a practical apologetic, Schuller points to the “4,100 income-producing seats” with which he plans to finance other service ministries. “Only a materialist, not a Christian, would be reluctant to invest money in people service,” says Schuller.

Perhaps, in the end, neither architecture, nor fundraising, nor packaging the gospel are the bedrock issues. Debates between devotees of Gothic cathedrals and the Crystal Cathedral rarely result in conversions. However, what some evangelicals might wish for is foundational theological certainty—especially regarding man’s sinfulness—articulated by Schuller himself. If he has downplayed some of the more unpalatable (to the man in the street) aspects of biblical doctrine in order to attract worshipers, his critics might be somewhat mollified if, along with statements about how his new church fits his evangelistic strategy, he would at the same time come forth with some bold—shall we call them Gothic?—affirmations of classic Christian theology.

Beneath the doctrine of “possibility thinking” and beneath the rationale for the Crystal Cathedral lies the possibility that some of the multitudes might be either misled or spiritually tranquilized, rather than being confronted to repent. Of course, the medieval Gothic cathedrals in themselves did not bespeak a pure gospel. It is fitting, therefore, for evangelicals to examine their own theological roots, to see if their buildings, their liturgy, their packaging of the message—whether it be Schuller’s or the country preacher’s with his tiny flock of 50—truly conform to the whole counsel of God.

The “successful” Christian life must have built into it a certain expectation of failure.

Now and again, we must reread those passages of Scripture we didn’t underline—the truths we did not like, the passages that threaten certain of our theological schemes. Particularly, we need to take a second look at what Scripture says about “Christian victory.”

It is not enough to hear or read only verses about the abundant life. We need also biblical teaching when we are not only Spirit-filled, but physically tired. While the joy of the Lord is mine by his grace, I find serving him very trying, very difficult. The wind is seldom I to my back. Often I feel burned out. The “other side of Jordan,” with all its rewards and undeserved blessings, is simply not what I was promised it would be.

Too often our message of “victory in Jesus” is like the half-time highlights on ABC’s Monday night football. The network replays only the touchdowns and the long gainers. Rarely do we see the plays that lost yardage, the broken patterns, dropped passes, or injuries. In like manner, are not we evangelicals sometimes guilty of reporting primarily our spiritual highs, implying that they are the norm, and that spiritual lows just don’t occur?

The “victorious Christian life” gospel is at best only half true. Don’t misunderstand: I don’t believe for a moment that being in union with Christ in his church is misery. But it’s patently not all victory. To gain victory, you must have battles, some of which will end in defeat. And whoever heard of winning battles without casualties? Even “winning-isn’t-everything-it’s-the-only-thing” football coaches don’t believe that!

Charles Swindoll writes, “Somebody needs to address the other side of the Christian life. If for no other reason than upholding reality, Christians need to be told that difficulty and pressure are par for the course. And no amount of biblical input or deeper-life conferences or super-victory seminars will remove the struggles.”

If we expect a trouble-free walk with Jesus Christ, we will not be prepared to handle the inevitable trials and failures that will confront us. Was it not our Lord himself who promised, “In the world you shall have tribulation” (John 16:33)? Fortunately, he went on to say, “but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world.” The Christian life is victory only in the midst of warfare.

Think about the “Promised Land” messages you have heard. Remember how bad they said the wilderness was? (All Israel had there were meals provided, cloud cover by day, fire light by night, and a God who, even in the midst of their rebellion, was “a father to them.”) And how marvelous everything would be once we crossed the river? “Everything will be all right, Brother. Right now you can experience the glory of the other side.” Somehow I never saw the price of the glory!

Consider just a small sampling of the problems Israel encountered after crossing the Jordan: the battle of Jericho; defeat at Ai; Achan in the camp; the capture of Gibeon; the burning of Hazor; the burdensome task of apportioning the land; the death of Joshua; Israel’s turn to Baal; Gideon’s tiny band; more national apostasy; oppression of Israel by Amnon and later by the Philistines. All of this before the Book of Judges ends! Then comes the tumultuous kingdom era and 70 years of Babylonian captivity. And this is all sweet victory?

There is no victory without conflict!

I once worked for a Christian leader who boldly proclaimed, “I have no problems.” He was part of the Jesus-will-do-all-through-you crowd. But in spite of his optimism, he has lost three layers of his top leadership in 10 years. Such an unreal view of life brought about enormous internal conflict in the lives of his associates.

God help us all to resist being regular-sized Christians who make giant-sized claims. Spiritual life on this earth simply is not Eden extended. As British evangelical Michael Harper writes, “We should not make the mistake of thinking that giving oneself to Jesus means moving the gear lever into neutral and coasting downhill, folding our hands and letting the Lord live His life through us. That is an irresponsible cop-out.”

Countless evangelicals are buying a “victorious life” theology that tends to promise that once a person is filled with the Spirit, problems are eliminated or at least greatly reduced. Some charismatics are currently facing a sort of “name it and claim it” approach, often accompanied by promises of prosperity for all. But when we allow the Book of Acts to speak to this matter of life in the Spirit, we get a far different picture. In addition to the ecstacy of the post-Pentecost miracles, we also find that Peter and John are arrested; Ananias and Sapphira fall over dead; Peter and the apostles are jailed; Stephen is murdered, followed by massive persecution of the church; Simon the sorcerer causes great trouble; the Jews plot to kill Paul; Herod kills James; Paul is stoned; Paul and Silas are arrested at Philippi; riots start in Ephesus; Paul is mobbed and imprisoned in Jerusalem; and a great storm at sea shipwrecks him at Malta. It is in the midst of these troubles and defeats that the church is called to victory.

The “successful” Christian life must have built into it a certain expectation of failure.

One of my heroes in church history is Saint Athanasius. Under the authority of Bishop Alexander, he won a battle for the orthodox faith against the heretic Arius and his followers at the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325. But the war did not cease simply because 318 bishops signed the document we know today as the Creed of Nicea. Subsequently, Athanasius was made bishop of Alexandria and was five times in exile, banished for a total of at least 17 years. His life was in constant danger. It took decades to clean Arianism out of the churches. Was he not victorious? Yes—but at severe cost.

Luther’s life, too, was a constant battlefield. They called him almost every name in the book. His adversary, John Eck, publicly dubbed him “heretical, erroneous, blasphemous, presumptuous, seditious, and offensive to pious ears.”

We see John Wesley as a model of piety and godliness, but the pain and agony the man endured were almost without parallel. On one occasion, a cohort of Wesley’s, William Morgan, died after a long illness. A false rumor spread that Wesley had caused his death by imposing on him excessive fasting. Hostility to Wesley increased, and people maligned him all the more. Disappointment was a constant companion to the victorious John Wesley.

Some modern evangelicals have taught a bogus notion of victory that has made people unrealistic and passive. Christian victory somehow has been made synonymous not with struggle and pain, but with living the “good life.” The smell of smoke and fire that permeated the robes of the ancients has all but disappeared from our vestments. We have been tamed. We have redefined tolerance to justify a cessation of hostilities with the powers of evil. Some of our most visible leaders are succumbing to immorality, divorce, and even a quiet tolerance of “responsible” homosexuality. But though often unrepentant, they still frequently appear on the speakers’ circuit, because we’re into being “nice.”

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, writing in U.S. Catholic, charges Western Christendom with having undergone a “change in attitude which sees the church militant softening into the church hospitable.” Yet what are our marching orders in Scripture? “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18). “But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved” (Matt. 24:13). “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake” (Matt. 5:11).

Christian victory is not being “Overcomers, Retired.” The battles go on. Here are three areas for needed victory:

1. Let us encourage our churches to substitute salt and light for some of the sugar and spice. We need to begin again to know the sort of victory and blessing and humdrum hard work that comes from serving the poor, the widowed, the infirm, the lonely. Jesus Christ often ministered to the people nobody else wanted.

2. Though people won’t like us for it, we can draw our lines where the Scriptures do. We can confront and care for those Christians toying with divorce, greed, gossip, sloppy or unethical practice in business, and immorality. We must be aggressive in righteousness.

3. Let us make our spiritual accounts accurate, testifying to God’s faithfulness in failure, not just in success. In testifying to our conversion to Jesus Christ, we must not make the B.C. days worse than they really were, or our A.D. days better. If we have occasion to write of our ministry or of that of our church or organization, we need to tell both of those saved and of those who leave the faith—and why. We must report as well about those for whom prayer was offered and who were not healed.

May the Lord grant us victory over the belief that we always have to be victorious!

Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Washingtonville, New York, not too famous for anything except that George had lunch there, is a little village in cold, downstate Orange County, with a small First Presbyterian Church of 173 members. But thanks to a homemade solar heating device, the church has caused ripples all across the country and around the world. The reason? It has cut its fuel oil consumption by 40 percent: from 4,500 gallons to 2,700 gallons per year.

It all began in 1977 when Pastor Lee Poole, worried by the mounting expense of heating the church and inspired by a newspaper article describing a homemade solar device, sketched out plans for something similar that could be attached to the church. The initial response reminded him of what Noah must have faced when he set out to build the ark: a lot of talk and laughter about the pastor’s “beer can boiler.” The nickname was accurate, for the unit starts with aluminum beverage cans cut in half.

Pastor Poole persisted and convinced the men’s council that his plan was worth a try. The men agreed to pay for the materials ($540) and to donate their time to build the unit; somewhat skeptical, the trustees said they could hook it to the building.

Their pilot ran on a sunny August day produced a temperature of 173 degrees, registered on a hastily requisitioned meat thermometer. That was enough to convince the doubters and the men put on a public display of the unit. Happily, on the day chosen the unit turned out a reading of 203 degrees.

By now word was leaking out about the oddball preacher trying to fight the oil companies, but Pastor Poole by this time had more than enough support to put together two more units. All three units were ready for the entire congregation on Sunday, October 25, 1978. The people gathered in a Sunday school room and felt a steady stream of hot air. This was proof enough to put the device into service for its first winter test. It passed handsomely and netted the church a savings of $660 on its fuel oil bill. After that first winter, other churches, denominational leaders, and the press teamed about Pastor Poole’s “beer can” coup.

To those looking for sudden relief from fuel bills. Pastor Poole cautions that his units are strictly supplementary and do not replace the church’s standard heating units. Only one portion of the Sunday school building, 46,800 cubic feet, is warmed by heat from the three solar units. The system is designed to reduce the use of oil and not to store heat.

Directly behind the church stand three 4′ × 8′ solar collection panels. Tilted at 51 degrees, which is correct for Orange County in February, the sunniest winter month in the north, each panel has 476 halved soda pop and beer cans. Double insulation surrounds the cans, which are painted black to transform light into heat energy. The three panels produce enough heat to raise the temperature four to six degrees in the building on a sunny zero-degree day in February without the use of one drop of fuel oil. Ducts below deliver cool air from the building’s basement; ducts above return the heated air to the building.

The highest temperature recorded in the device is 263 degrees. In February, with zero degrees outside, the temperature will hold at 135 degrees with the 14-inch fan operating at full force, delivering 90-degree air into the building.

The insulation in the building guarantees that this subsidy of 4 to 6 degrees neutralizes about 50 percent of the common 10 to 15 degrees of heat loss overnight. This means that over three days the heat diminishes so slowly that no oil must be burned. It’s during this time that Pastor Poole juggles the church schedule so the building can be used during those days when there is accumulated heat from the solar panels.

Word of First Presbyterian’s successful fuel conservation project literally encompassed the globe. More than 11,000 inquiries have come from every state and 27 countries. The church is glad to send a mimeographed set of plans and instructions for $1.00.

The beauty of the project is that it can be done by anyone. Any church can put on an aluminum can drive and sign up volunteers to do the work. However, Pastor Poole cautions that churches must not anticipate heating rooms comfortably simply with his solar panels.

“That’s not the case.” he says. “It subsidized our heating program, which has included lots of insulation, lower thermostats, careful administration of heated areas, and a lot of prayer and hope. What we have proved is that we can do something to overcome rising costs of fuel.”

The next stage is a nine-unit permanent solar heater to provide 60 to 70 percent of the church’s needs.

Meanwhile, that first collection of cans symbolically made it to the White House. Pastor Poole and his board chairman, Jack Learch, were invited to the White House during a consultation on religion and energy last January. “We found out that very little is being done nationwide,” he reported. “We tried to give the hope that there is much everyone can do, because we did it.”