The key 73 Congregational Resource Book is unquestionably one of the most helpful manuals for evangelism ever published in America. A study of it can motivate any minister to renew evangelistic efforts in his church, and give him a treasure chest of ideas about how to reach people in his community for Christ.

But the book lacks one ingredient that more and more strategists in evangelism and missions are recognizing as essential to effective evangelism. This missing ingredient is diagnostic research.

Any minister who intends to lead his church out into a year of concentrated evangelistic work needs first of all to determine the health of his church. Once this is done, he needs to write the proper prescriptions and then make appointments farther down the road to see how the patient is doing.

Experience has shown that this is a relatively new concept. I have gone through mountains of Key 73 materials, and have not found anything that suggests it, though some denominational materials that I have not yet seen may include it. The fact is, however, that many are not building this rather essential prerequisite into their Key 73 programs.

Every seminary teaches ministers to consider a church an organism. Professors prove from the New Testament that a church is not basically a human organization but a vital, growing, pulsating body. Christ is the head of this body, and the Holy Spirit is the continuous life force.

But, curiously, few seminaries teach future ministers to evaluate the health of this body. I graduated from a seminary that gave me excellent training in counseling and homiletics but no guidelines for how to tell a sick from a healthy church. No one even encouraged me to think in these terms. When I look back now, I see myself as a civil engineer who has not learned the scales on a slide rule or a physician who cannot interpret an X-ray picture.

Of course, diagnosing church health should not be a one-time event. Like the annual physical check-up, it should be regular—and the older one gets, the more important the annual check-up becomes. Skillful physicians can discover health problems that have not yet shown outward symptoms, and begin treatment before the problem becomes serious. Skillful ministers ought to be able to do the same thing.

Although health is qualitative, the M.D.’s diagnostic research is highly quantitative. He measures temperature, blood pressure, pulse, respiration, hemoglobin, uric acid, sugar content, and so on down a long list. He charts heart activity on an electrocardiogram. The diagnosis of human health becomes very largely a process of comparing quantities.

Now, of course, diseases can be diagnosed without all that testing, quantifying, and graphing. When the symptoms are pronounced, the patient himself may have a good idea of what is wrong. In countries where medical aid is not readily available, diagnosis is either a do-it-yourself process or is given over to witch doctors who know nothing about stethoscopes. Most human beings, however, prefer modern medicine and trained physicians, when they have the choice.

It is a painful fact that our conclusions on church health have been arrived at more by feelings and guesswork than by modern diagnostic research. In other words, we’re hardly beyond the witch-doctor stage. Some people downgrade church statistics, claiming that they leave the Spirit of God to one side and that, besides, no one was ever saved by statistics. Well, no patient was ever cured by a clinical thermometer either, but patients have been cured by decisions based on the information a thermometer revealed.

Church membership statistics provide the data necessary for diagnosing the health of a church. It is true that membership statistics are not everything. Dedication of the believers to God; the practice of tithing, the family altar, grace before meals; freedom from adultery, drunkenness, envy, backbiting, and other sins of the flesh; love of neighbor, social concern, missionary involvement; Bible memorization, individual prayer, personal devotions; marital harmony—these and scores of other Christian characteristics are related to the quality of church health. But for diagnostic purposes, no facts approach membership statistics in usefulness.

In his remarkable book Why Conservative Churches Are Growing (Harper & Row, 1972), Dean Kelley comes to the same conclusion. He takes pains to answer common objections to membership statistics, such as the charge that they are inflated and unreliable. Then he strongly asserts that membership statistics are the best index we can find of the particular quality he isolates in his book: the social strength of a church.

Membership loss, like human weight loss, may be justifiable and even helpful—but only to a point. If weight loss goes too far, there is no patient left. In any case the physician will want to know exactly why it is being lost. Ministers should be no less informed about their church membership, and this can be done well only through the use of statistics.

It is necessary to stress church membership statistics to avoid a common error that has produced inaccurate diagnosis. This is the use of Sunday-school attendance as the data base. A huge fleet of buses fanning out in ever widening circles is sure to raise Sunday-school attendance, and that is good. The more children in Sunday school the better. But this figure tells very little about the health of the church, which is essentially composed not of youngsters but of adult men and women who are baptized, who take communion, who support the church financially, who hire and fire pastors, who minister to one another, who decide on church policy, and who win others to Christ.

By themselves, of course, even church membership statistics are not very useful. Skillful handling of them is needed. Here are some guidelines:

1. Plot the statistics on a graph. A simple graph with membership on the vertical scale and time on the horizontal scale is a good tool. The refinements can come later. Carefully study the ups, the downs, and the plateaus over at least the past ten years. The graph will raise important questions about your church’s health.

2. As a basis for comparison, start with the membership point of your church ten years ago and then plot a 25 per cent increase for the ten-year period. This gives a rule of thumb for what is called “biological growth”—it reflects normal additions to the church that should have come from the families who were already members. If your membership growth line is near the biological growth line, or below it, you have found a danger sign that your church may be sick.

3. Calculate yearly growth rates. Compare these on a bar graph. If your rate is holding at 10–20 per cent a year, this is a healthful sign. Keep up the good work. If it is 5 per cent or below, however, and declining, ask yourself and your deacons why.

4. Refine your statistics. Break down annual additions to the church into transfer growth (from other churches), biological growth (children from families already in your church), and conversion growth (people won to Christ from the world and taken into membership of your church). Then break down those leaving your church each year: transfers out, death, and reversions (including excommunication if you practice it). Build these refinements into your graphing, and seek answers to the new questions they raise.

5. Make comparative studies. To a point, health is a relative thing. You will know more about your church’s health if you compare it with the condition of other churches in your area. Be careful to choose only those that are working with the same kind of people as those found in your congregation; churches composed of people from other economic and social or ethnic groupings are irrelevant for this study. Go through steps 1–4 with as many other similar churches as you can, and compare the results. If you find others are growing 100 per cent per decade while your church is growing at only 40 per cent, you have uncovered an important fact. Find out why this has happened. The reasons are there, but they must be dug out.

Once you have done all this, you will know more about your church than you have ever known before. You should have discovered what you have been doing right and what you have been doing wrong. You have the type of diagnostic research necessary to plan realistically for Key 73 or for any other year of growth for your church.

The next step is to prepare for the annual check-up one year hence. Using today’s membership as a starting point, plot a theoretical line of growth over the next five years. Plot next to it the biological line. This is a test of your faith. Ask yourself, “How many new members can we trust God for over the next five years?” The answer certainly should be more than the biological rate, but how much more depends on dozens of factors concerned with your own local situations.

This is why it is much better if you do not do this alone. Include other leaders of your church so that you will keep one another from unrealistic projections, which can be frustrating. Go through this with other ministers and leaders from your own denomination or others in the community. Build in some procedure that will commit you to accountability to others, just to keep you on your toes.

The more you do this, the better you will be able to do it. At least one theological seminary in America is now teaching courses in this type of church planning. Those of us who did not study it in seminary have to get along the best we can, and allow experience to teach us.

It would be a shame to “spend many long hours in prayer, interaction, study and research in trying to sort out strategy, materials, methods, and suggestions which we feel can be most effectively used in a great evangelistic thrust for our nation,” as the Key 73 Resource Book suggests, and when it is all over, not to be able to look back and accurately report whether the effort was a success or a failure. Many saturation and other evangelistic efforts have ended this way, and it is a pity.

The health of each one of our churches, and the church in America as a whole, is important enough to receive the best of specialized diagnostic research and prescriptive care. It is important, not because a church is an end in itself, but because our churches are God’s chosen instruments to win those multitudes of pagan Americans to Jesus Christ.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

It is late afternoon, or evening, and there is a deep sense of frustration as we look back on the day. Everything has gone wrong. Things that usually are easy were difficult today, while unexpected problems brought a sense of irritation and futility.

A harsh word led to unpleasantness with a loved one. Colleagues seemed unusually annoying, and the daily task has been a burden, not a pleasure.

The news has been bad, the world outlook unusually foreboding. Some incidents of the day struck home with unusual force. We face the remaining hours of the day with a deep feeling of dissatisfaction.

Why does this happen to us, to Christians? We know it is more than a problem of getting up on the wrong side of the bed. In our hearts we know there is something wrong inside, some turn we missed, some action of the vagaries and perversities of human nature of which we have been the victim. What has happened? What is wrong?

The trouble is that no proper foundation was laid for the day. There was no turning to the Fountain of Life, no drinking from the well-springs of eternity, no use of the means of grace God has made available to all who will look to him. A Christian who starts his day without first turning to God in prayer and to his Word for truth and guidance has taken a sure step toward a day of frustration and ineffectiveness. Many Christians live lives devoid of power, purpose, understanding, security, assurance, and victory because they are starved for spiritual good.

Why do we presume to walk without a lamp to guide our feet, a light to lighten the way?

Why do we go on in willful sins when our hearts may be fortified by the Word of the living God?

Why do we settle for inward chaos when by asking we may have the peace of God, which passes understanding?

Why do we look at the panorama of unfolding history and cringe in fear at the things we see coming on the earth when it is our privilege to know and rest in the God of history?

Why do we walk blindly, stumbling over the adverse circumstances of life, when it is our privilege to walk in the conscious presence of the God who gives light and understanding?

Why do we perversely insist on our own way when we should know that such a course may be the way of death, while there is a certain way that leads to life eternal?

Why do we often complain against the providences of God when in those acts we find his perfect will and his unlimited blessings for us?

Has the god of this world blinded our eyes? Surely not the eyes of Christians! Then what is the matter? The answer is clear and the way is sure. God expects his children to take advantage of privileges open to no one else, namely, to live by his wisdom, his power, his guidance, and in the light of his loving favor.

When the day goes wrong, when things turn sour and we find ourselves no longer conscious of the joy of the Lord in our hearts, it is high time to stop and take stock of ourselves. The Holy Spirit will show us that the fault lies within us, for God has neither forsaken us nor voided his promises.

Engaged in an unending battle with the enemy of souls, we have but one weapon against which he cannot stand: the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

Strange how willing we seem to remain ignorant of what God has said! Strange that we are willing to start even one day without the comfort, hope, and guidance that can be found in Holy Scripture! Strange that we will undertake important projects without first talking to the One who sees the past, the present, and the future all at one glance and who holds all in his loving hands!

Living in a dying world order, a transient speck in the panorama of eternity, men need the steadying and clarifying truth of the God of eternity, a perspective that takes the unseen into account.

We also need something better than the frailties and fallibilities of human wisdom and speculation; we need something that is certain in the midst of uncertainties, something that is revealed from heaven rather than merely that which man himself can discover.

The Apostle Paul, writing to his spiritual son Timothy, said: “From a babe thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”

Are we neglecting the Scriptures today? Is our “Bible reading” done with a hasty and undisciplined mind and life? Do we approach Scripture as we would a fetish or Aladdin’s lamp, thinking there is a magic that may do us good? Or do we recognize that God has spoken and that it is our privilege and duty to find out what he has said?

The Bible is not a book on which we sit in judgment. Rather, it is a book that speaks to us in clear and unmistakable terms, judging us in every thought and motive. Here we find doctrine (Christian truth), instruction in righteousness, reproof, correction, and above all else, God’s revelation in the person of his Son.

To start the day without the help that God is so anxious to give is to court disaster. To lean upon our own understanding is to walk in darkness rather than in the light. To neglect the Bible is to live in ignorance when we should be living in the way of divine revelation.

We owe it to ourselves and to our profession as Christians to follow the example of the Berean Christians, who “examined the scriptures daily,” taking them for what they are: God’s word to man.

For My Critics

This is my second column of the new year. You perceptive readers will realize this means the editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY has renewed my lease on this space for another year.

That’s good news for some of you and bad news for others. It’s good news for those who dig this column—a distinguished and peculiar people I like to think of as the great silent majority. (By the way, it wouldn’t hurt you folks to be a little less silent.) But it’s very bad news for those of you who find these columns to be utterly without redeeming religious significance.

The editor recently commented to me, “Eutychus [you’ll notice we’re on a first-name basis], your readers either love you or hate you. There’s no middle ground.”

There seems to be a great deal of truth in his observation. This dissertation is directed to those who fall in the second category—many of whom have sacrificially given of their limited and valuable time to write and call attention to the absolutely useless nature of my efforts.

What, dear critics, can you expect from someone who goes to sleep in church, falls out of the second-story window, and lands on his head?

Perhaps a part of the difficulty that exists between us is a problem of perspective. I was recently listening to an old recording of Paul Blackman, last of the professional one-man bands, playing “Alabama Bound.” On this record the soloist sings, plays the kazoo, jokes, and beats out the rhythm on an assortment of tin cans, a five-gallon drum, a wood block, and a cowbell. All in all he produces a wonderful lot of noise and fun.

It would be a loss of perspective to compare the Cleveland Orchestra to Mr. Blackman. As magnificent as that group is, it could never produce the great foot-stomping nonsense that emanates from this virtuoso. I dare say it wouldn’t even try.

So just try to think of me as the noisy one-man band trying only to please his audience and be a pleasant divertissement.

I leave you with an observation made by the famous radio funny-man Fred Allen. Upon having a script returned that had been heavily blue-penciled by a network executive, Allen turned to the executive and asked, “Where were you when the paper was blank?”

EUTYCHUS V

LEADING FOUR

The four articles that led things off in the December 8 issue were superb and—of great importance to this country pastor—readable, thoroughly understandable, and free from the ponderous prose I have come to expect from religious magazines.

“The Men Who Missed Christmas,” by James Montgomery Boice [was] undoubtedly the basis of a number of fine and penetrating messages this Christmas season. “The Virgin Birth—A Broader Base,” contains material needful for us to know as we more perfectly proclaim what I know is fact and what my people question. Thanks to William Childs Robinson. Harold Lindsell’s “Tests For the Tongues Movement” places in a few pages some of the very real questions some of us have had to wrestle with, especially as we see those of our own congregations leaving the church with smug and superior airs as they follow their inner lights and ignore the solid evidence of the Scriptures and their doctrine. Well put! “Fierce Pragmatism in Missions: Carnal or Consecrated?” by C. Peter Wagner strikes home to one who has spent several years on foreign soil on behalf of the Christ. Missionaries do need a new and often rude sort of a shock to break them from the often invalid platitudes that form the basis of much of what is known as Christian mission today.

GEORGE C. WESTEFELDT

Clarksburg Community Church

Clarksburg, Calif.

NO FEARS

In the second paragraph of Barrie Doyle’s news story “ ‘Good Samaritan’ State: Federal Aid to Religion?” (Nov. 10), he states, “World Vision, for instance, gets more than $1.4 million dollars from the Canadian government, plus another $250,000 in ocean freight subsidies from Washington.”

According to the audited statements of World Vision of Canada, it received from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) $84,000 in its 1971 fiscal year and only $86,000 in our 1972 fiscal year. The $1.4 million dollars to which Mr. Doyle refers is the rounded-off figure of our total income for the year 1971. It should be noted also that World Vision of Canada is a separate organization from World Vision International (with headquarters in Monrovia, California).

Speaking for World Vision of Canada, we also take issue with Mr. Doyle’s paragraph which states, “Few groups are willing to publicize the government hand-outs, mostly because of fears that church-state separatists may stop giving.” First, World Vision of Canada does not look upon CIDA grants as “government hand-outs.” We take the view that development aid is taxpayers’ money and that there are many Christions who pay income tax. We would rather see this spent by a Christian organization with its stated set of values and a spiritual dimension than by secular agencies. We should also mention that “proselytism” has never entered into our conversations with CIDA officials.… We feel the Canadian government has a sensible view of giving aid through voluntary agencies. We reach for and emphasize that part of the social component which CIDA describes as “those things which in the end affect the spirit of man,” that is, the spiritual aspect of man’s life.

BERNARD BARRON

Director of Projects

World Vision of Canada

Willowdale, Ontario

MORE FACTS

I would like to supply you with additional information which your writer evidently lacked in regards to the first Pentecostal (Assemblies of God) Bible Institute behind the Iron Curtain, located in Yugoslavia (News, “World Scene,” Nov. 24).

The news release was made by the American Assemblies of God missionary fellowship, which does have eight Bible institutes associated with the work in Continental Europe. But our sister fellowships operate one in England, one in Denmark (which the American fellowship helped to found), one in Finland, one in Portugal for the Assemblies of God there founded by the Swedish missionaries, a missionary Bible training institute in Norway, and one in Sweden. Besides these, other Pentecostals have a few Bible schools in Europe.

Also, not long ago you carried a fine news article on the Assemblies of God Spiritual Life Convention in Minneapolis this summer, stating that 5,000 people attended. But the fact is that crowds up to 7,500 attended the great rally with black missionary evangelist Bob Harrison as the speaker, who has been the only Assemblies of God or Pentecostal minister to serve as an associate evangelist for Billy Graham’s Evangelistic Association that I know of.

THE REVEREND LARRY SOUTHWICK

New Life International

Fresno, Calif.

UNTO THE FATHER

William Childs Robinson in “The Virgin Birth—A Broader Base” (Dec. 8) perpetuates a myth that I have been hearing frequently. He says that “Jesus was using for Father the nursery term, Abba, Daddy, Papa.” Abba simply means “Father” in Aramaic, not “Daddy.” In fact, in the Western Aramaic that Jesus spoke it may have a vocative force, “O Father,” since the ending –a was meaningful in that dialect (in most Aramaic dialects its meaning was lost). By the same token, when Paul uses the term in Romans 8:15 it is no nursery term, and we should just translate it as “Father.” It is my belief that this misunderstanding of the word Abba has come about because of the influence of modern Hebrew, where it does indeed mean “Daddy.” This just points up how important it is for those of us who learned our Hebrew from Israeli teachers to maintain a clear distinction in our minds between biblical and later Hebrew.

FRANCIS J. MORROW, JR.

College Park, Md.

The article is intellectually irresponsible. It is inconceivable that an informed and fair-minded person could write such an article.

Dr. Robinson “finds” the virgin birth in Paul and John (where it has previously been hidden for 1,900 years) by breaking every rule of logical inference. If fundamentalist doctrines can be “proved” by exegesis such as this, then there is absolutely nothing which cannot be wrenched from the pages of Scripture.… The principal point, of course, is that Paul, in the earliest New Testament writings, makes no reference whatever to Jesus’ miraculous birth, an event which would seem to demand the most profound attention if true. Even more important, Paul four times refers to Jesus’ birth without once indicating that there was anything physiologically unusual in that birth. It is simply incredible that anyone would twist that bald fact around to make it appear that somehow Paul was authenticating the virgin birth in this way!… Robinson’s “arguments” concerning what Paul “must” have learned from Peter et al. after his conversion are of course logical nonsense. Only by assuming that Peter and the earliest Christians believed and taught the virgin birth (which is the heart of the question) can one then assume that Paul must have learned it from them. This is reasoning?

Dallas, Tex.

WILLIAM R. WILSON

What text was Dr. William Robinson using when he wrote that Jesus used the term Abba in Luke 2:49 and in Luke 10:21? Nestle uses the word Patros in both instances (and also three times in 10:22), and lists no variant readings at all. I am puzzled.

First Christian Church

SIDNEY SPAIN

Lufkin, Tex.

I was much interested … until I came to the words, “Jesus continued to call no man on earth his father, knowing that his father was in heaven”—Matt. 23:9. This quotation was Jesus’ teaching to the disciples not to follow spiritual fathers and so is quite out of context. Robinson could make his point without this quotation, and using it weakens our trust in his whole line of argument.

Saskatoon, Canada

MRS. F. HEDLIN

PRIME DOUBLETALK

Harold Lindsell in his article “Tests For the Tongues Movement” (Dec. 8) seems to be unable to answer his own questions concerning “tests.” He asks questions such as, “How is it to be understood in the light of biblical revelation?” It is too bad he does not answer the question, especially in light of what he says of those who equate Spirit baptism with the manifestation of tongues.

When he states in the next to the last paragraph of his article, “If he is inclined toward the Pentecostal viewpoint, let him by all means seek both the baptism and tongues,” he is stating positively that a genuine Christian may or may not have already received Spirit baptism. If they have, then he is persuading them to continue in erroneous doctrine. Is baptism of the Spirit a doctrine subject to give or take, or to allow or disallow according to whim; to give to some believers and not to others? This is a prime example of rhetorical doubletalk.

Dr. Lindsell has written some good articles, but the shoddy thinking and lack of scriptural verification in this article is appalling (there is only one scriptural reference cited, and that of exegetical unimportance). It is a tragedy that he mentions repeatedly the imperative of scriptural light and neatly circumvents any reference to passages that may throw light on the baptism of the Spirit (such as First Corinthians 12:13 and Ephesians 4:5). It is such articles as this that cause further confusion concerning this important doctrine.

THOMAS S. BURRIS

Central Bible Church

Kansas City, Mo.

In reference to your news report on “Pneuma ’72” (Dec. 8), I would like to point out that the new president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies is Dr. Russell Spittler of Southern California College (Assemblies of God).

Also, in Lindsell’s article, I was impressed with his overall grasp of the current situation. Yet not one of my acquaintances among Pentecostals of any type accepts the appellation “tongues movement.” Although all Pentecostals see tongues as important, they are not exalted as the be-all or end-all of Christian experience. Pentecostals attempt to ascribe to glossolalia and the other gifts of the Spirit no more emphasis than does the New Testament—and no less. The phrase “tongues movement” has always had for us a pejorative sense, and I regret your use of the term. Instead of using the terms “tongues movement” or “charismatic movement,” why not use the term with which we have always identified—the “Pentecostal movement”?

VINSON SYNAN

Emmanuel College

Franklin Springs, Ga.

As a member of a conservative, doctrinal church and as one also involved in the charismatic movement, a tongue-speaker (though this now comes mainly for spiritual help or verification in some event—as dew on fleece), I feel that I can both subscribe to the article, and yet wonder and doubt. I think the tests which Lindsell wants to emphatically imply are valid, but his insistence on the application is much too strong. Lindsell is right when he says that a man is justified by the imputed righteousness of Christ. I doubt whether he can use this and other reformational doctrines as the test for fellowship. For truth, yes; but not strictly for fellowship. We must remember that, though one is saved by Jesus’ imputed righteousness, one is not saved by a thorough understanding of this doctrine. Only God really understands this truth and applies it to his people.

M. PAUL VAN HOUTEN

Christian Reformed Church

Rapid City, S. D.

As a former Roman Catholic priest who has rejected Roman church authority for Bible authority (sola scriptura), I find your article super-excellent. The appalling ignorance on the part of charismatics regarding Roman Catholic teaching is disturbing to the serious Bible student. I hope your message will teach us never to compromise propositional truth.

BARTHOLOMEW F. BREWER

Vista Hills Community Church

Richmond, Calif.

From time to time I have been thrilled by your handling of articles about the charismatic movement. You provide so much more coverage than other religious publications not exclusively charismatic. And you’ve been fair and said “almost” what I, a charismatic Methodist, would have said. Of course “I would that you were not almost but altogether.”

I realize that would not please the bulk of your readers, but let me make just two comments. All of your writers, including Harold Lindsell, almost completely ignore the private, devotional, “go into your closet and close the door” use of glossolalia. To most, this is the most blessed and most meaningful use.… [Also], you have never, in my memory, published a feature story by an experiential writer (one who himself spoke in tongues). This is like assigning that society in England, which still believes the earth to be flat, to write a commentary on an Apollo space shot. You cannot give fair treatment to a gift from God which you neither believe in or have experienced.

W. O. BERNER

Riverside United Methodist Church

Houston, Tex.

Dr. Lindsell left out one of my favorite evangelists in his list of the spiritual giants from Martin Luther to Billy Graham—it is Charles Finney. In his official memoirs Mr. Finney says, “No words can express the wonderful love … and I do not know but I should say, I literally bellowed out the unutterable gushings of my heart.” This is almost exactly the way I would describe my experience of speaking in “tongues.”

I, like many others in the charismatic movement, was baptized with the Holy Spirit long before I ever even heard of “tongues.” While I later received this spiritual gift, I never had the slightest doubt that men of God like Mr. Graham are Spirit-filled giants whom I desire to emulate.

ALEXANDER L. BODA

United Methodist Church

Tilghman, Md.

A GERMAN CHALLENGE

With due respect to … Dr. Carl F. H. Henry and his evaluation of evangelical life in Germany, I cannot but question seriously the validity of some of his statements made in his article “The Gospel in Germany” (Footnotes, Dec. 8).

I would challenge him to name the Baptist leaders who supposedly work to tie our union fully to the ecumenical movement. To be sure, there are some influential Baptists who may tend towards this direction. But the Union Council has affirmed again and again that membership in the WCC is not under consideration.

There is even less interest in joining it now than there was a couple of years ago—let’s say before Uppsala. And even those who basically favor such a move will refrain from advocating it in order to safeguard the unity of our union, which consists not only of Baptist but also of Brethren churches, the latter being violently opposed to ecumenism. And would Dr. Henry please define a little closer his rather enigmatic statement concerning the “noteworthy overtures” to German Baptists made by ecumenical leaders?

It is also an exaggeration to state that the Evangelical Alliance is largely free-church oriented. The free churches are very active in it, true. But at least equal in strength and influence are the pietistic groups within the “Volkskirche” or the “Landeskirchen,” such as the “Gemeinschaften,” Christian endeavor, the mainstream of the YMCA, and others. (By the way, a state church does not exist in Germany any more since 1918. What we call the “Volkskirche” might be rendered as “established church,” which enjoys several privileges due to its history and its size but is not controlled by the state.)

It seems to me that we are slowly but surely overcoming “evangelical fragmentation”—and from some impressions I got talking to British leaders I don’t even think we are lagging far behind them.

W. MÜLLER

Informationsdienst der Evangelischen Allianz

Frankfurt, Germany

ONE-WAY TRAFFIC

I have just finished reading C. Peter Wagner’s [article] “Fierce Pragmatism in Missions: Carnal or Consecrated?” (Dec. 8). On the whole I agree with his suggestions. However, I cannot help but feel that in the mind of contemporary missiologists, missions is still a predominantly Western Christian enterprise, and hence a West-centered endeavor.

This can be seen in his suggestions on who should initiate and introduce a system of evaluation for the missionary enterprises. There he suggests three groups of people: the mission executives from the top, the pastor, and the Christian laymen who support missions. No mention is made of the national ministerial and lay leaders in the fields where the missionaries work.

In this post-missionary era when most former mission fields have produced their own local and sometime indigenous churches, shouldn’t the missionary, the mission executives, conduct “self-evaluations” by consulting national leaders? Shouldn’t the missionary enterprises be evaluated by the local national church in addition to one-sided evaluation and recommendations made by mission-broad representatives? If missions is to maintain one-way traffic in terms of decision-making, ignoring the leadership of the third world, then the non-Christians or the anti-Christians (sometimes Communists) of the nations are right when they call missionary endeavors “cultural imperialism” of the West, particularly of America.

JONATHAN CHAO

Vice-President

China Graduate School of Theology

Philadelphia, Pa.

“Key 73 carries the vision of every unchurched family in North America being visited by someone who comes with loving concern to share his faith in Christ.” So reads the Key 73 Congregational Resource Book. 1 can well believe that when this vision abruptly broke upon the American church scene, it met with spontaneous, unconditional acceptance. How wonderful for North America! Replace disunity and cynicism and selfishness with the flame of God’s love moving from heart to heart! Reach every home with a winsome witness to Jesus Christ! And yet, will it happen? Why shouldn’t it happen? Others have written in these columns that action is the order of the day: let each Christian select a personal evangelistic project and begin to put heart and strength into its accomplishment. American and Canadian churches will be transformed! Imagine the difference if every Christian begins to say: “God works through me; God works where I am!” Imagine the many new converts who will join them in the worship and service of God!

But can this vision be realized? Can we actually come under the compulsion of God’s Spirit so that we are transformed into God’s envoys to the unbelieving world around us? I believe so. But how do we begin? I would like to suggest that we take time to reflect on the central Christian truths we already hold dear. Each one is related to the vision of Key 73.

Think of Jesus Christ and his Lordship. Did not the One who died for all command us to share the Gospel with all? And the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life—has he not imparted to every Christian gifts and grace for the service and witness of the Church? One cannot reflect on the Godhead without being renewed in his sense of missionary obligation.

Some Christians feel that the great truth to be held before this generation is the inspiration and integrity of Scripture. Its truths are inerrant. It is utterly reliable and worthy of the full trust our Lord accorded it. When mysteriously united with the Spirit of God it becomes a means of grace, and its authority reaches the hearts of men.

But dare we stop here? Why not resolve in 73 to take this wonderful book more seriously? Scripture’s ultimate witness is not to itself; it is to Jesus Christ and the desire of God that “all men should find salvation and come to know the truth” (1 Tim. 2:3). Do you want to do the will of God? Then take seriously the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. “All men” means just that! Forsake your comfortable existence and reach your neighbors for Christ.

Others feel that the great truth for our generation is the imminence of Christ’s Second Advent. They are dismayed by the indifference of the Church to the “signs” of his coming. They consider history largely irrelevant, apart from—say—a late twist in the European Common Market tangle that confirms for them the revival of the Holy Roman Empire.

Recently a Jewish Christian approached a prominent “prophetic teacher” known for dramatizing the significance he sees in the epochal establishment and survival of the State of Israel. “Do you love the Jews?” He was taken back, and protested. “My ministry is largely devoted to analyzing the place of the Jews in God’s program for the ages.” “Yes, but are you in contact with any Jewish people, seeking to lead them to Jesus Christ?” Under this persistent probing, the pathetic moment came when he confessed he did not have even one Jewish friend. How different from the Apostle Paul’s abiding burden for Israel and his ceaseless efforts to win them. What good is eschatology if it does not issue in evangelism?

A contrasting segment of the Church that can’t abide the millennialists with their charts and predictions keeps looking backward. These people glory in the Reformers and the Puritans and sigh, “That was the golden age!” The call is for doctrinal loyalty, for rigid confessional orthodoxy. But will this win our neighbors to Jesus Christ? Did not Kierkegaard rightly affirm: “The highest of all is not to understand the highest but to act upon it?” And Robert Boyd added, “The God in whom the Christian believes is not the Object of prepositions that one can set about proving or disproving, but the Subject of encounter, an encounter centered on our moral response to Christ.”

The Christian lives by repentance and the forgiveness of sin. He cannot persevere without the Holy Spirit’s continuing work of regeneration. Indeed, Calvin included sanctification under regeneration and by this underscored the fact that the Christian life plays an absolutely decisive role in a man’s salvation. Calvin’s understanding of election did not keep him from affirming the biblical thesis that “the moment we turn away even slightly from Jesus Christ, our salvation, which rests firmly in Him, gradually vanishes away” (Institutes II, 16, 1). If we take at face value the warnings of the book of Hebrews, it would appear that one’s election can be forfeited.

The relation of all this to Key 73 is obvious. The Christian life involves a continual reaching out for a deeper repentance, a more complete regeneration, and a greater surrender to Christ. In short, the call is to “follow him.” And what will be the result? He will make us fishers of men (Matt. 4:19). And those who do not reach out after others this year are not faithful followers of Jesus Christ.

Other emphases could be added. Those who contend for the primacy of the doctrine of election strongly affirm, “Only God can make a man winnable.” Agreed! But why not put this truth to work in 1973? If the parable of the sower tells us anything it is that the good seed should be planted in the “good” soil where large returns can be expected. In North America today, certain segments of the population are highly receptive to the Gospel. Do we know where they are? They may be next door! Why not engage in some soil sampling in your very neighborhood? Find out where God is at work and get where the action is! Let’s end the snide remarks about those who go from house to house and persuade men to embrace Christ.

And what of the ecumenical emphasis? Those burdened for the reunion of the broken fragments of the Church are on scriptural ground. They need to keep in mind, however, that the ultimate objective should be not ecclesiastical unity or even unity in spirit but rather the conversion of the whole world to Jesus Christ. This was his concern: “I pray … that they may all be one … so that the world may believe that thou has sent me” (John 17:20, 21). Do you want to be active in the ecumenical movement today? Don’t call churches back to the Luthers or Calvins or Wesleys; seek their reformation in the light of the Gospel. And nothing reforms a church more quickly than for its members to break with their introversion, confess their sins, pray to God for mercy and grace, and then reach out with the Gospel to their unsaved neighbors. That is what Key 73 is all about.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

I am staggered to read in Key 73’s statement of primary purpose the phrase, “to confront every person in North America with the Gospel.” Can this be done? To do it requires us to confront each of the subgroups we read about in Charles Kraft’s article in this issue. I sincerely doubt that the plans as now outlined will lead to this. Key 73 has immense planning and diligent creativity and is now borne aloft by millions who are praying and working for its success. Never before has so vast an evangelistic campaign been galvanized into action. But “to confront every person in North America” requires something new in American evangelism: planting new congregations in subcultures strange to those who are doing the evangelizing. Why?

The newly appointed missionary leaves behind an America that he may assume to be relatively unified. When he returns he has new vision. He has bumped up against cultural barriers big and small, and now he sees at least what Nixon’s campaign managers saw—the 40 million ethnic voters of twenty-eight nationalities we read about in Kraft’s article. Unlike the campaigners, the missionary may even sense the striking differences among people who speak the same language, such as Puerto Ricans and Mexicans, Cubans and Argentinians. And there are still other differences of great significance to those who would evangelize: each of these ethnic subcultures has its aristocracies and its social residues. To suppose that all these different people, divided in so many ways, are going to fit easily into existing churches is simply folly!

And so, I believe that the present Key 73 plans are, in one central, crucial respect, drastically inadequate: they assume that existing congregations are ends and not means. Although there are some small exceptions in the materials, the overall deficiency is plain. The consistent assumption throughout is that we can win America merely by renewing and expanding our existing churches. Key 73 leaders may feel this good but limited approach is necessary in order to attract local churches and denominations into enthusiastic involvement. But the limitations of this approach can doom Key 73 to very limited results.

I realize full well that Key 73 strategists may have felt they could not enter into the complexity of specific denominational procedures for founding new congregations. And I realize that many churches might think they don’t need any more competitors. But if the Key 73 planners cannot speak about this subject, may I?

All around the world today we see outstanding examples of thriving church growth in dozens of different subcultures. Most of this growth has come through new congregations, not enlarged ones. There are 3,000 new congregations a year in Brazil, for example. Let me show how this applies in the United States by referring to three of the many axioms of church-growth theory.

Axiom 1 states that evangelism is truly effective only where those who are won become incorporated into ongoing Christian fellowship. Everyone knows this, and the church-based plans of Key 73 do not overlook this point. It is set forth here because it makes the next axiom more significant.

Axiom 2 says that people do not readily join Christian fellowships that clash with their own cultural backgrounds. This truth is, I believe, mainly overlooked in the Key 73 materials. This omission is tragic when you consider the cultural diversity outlined in Kraft’s article! How successful will Key 73 plans be if it turns out that most of un-won America is either isolated or alienated from the cultures and life-styles represented by the existing churches? How successful will any method of evangelism be that counts on people’s joining churches they are simply not going to join? Should we blame the newly won? Or must we rather face the urgent necessity that we develop the skills and tools to establish brand new congregations in the un-won subcultures of America?

Axiom 3 acknowledges the need to penetrate the subgroups and goes on to observe that churches as churches are unlikely to punch through successfully into pockets of people that are significantly different from themselves.This would seem to fly in the face of the Key 73 emphasis that total mobilization is essential for success. That’s because Key 73 is not talking about winning “different” people. Very few churches as churches have been successful in founding new congregations, and fewer still have done this across cultural barriers. The average church member, the average pastor, and the Key 73 materials I have seen do not recognize the need for bringing new congregations into the world and the method of doing it.

What does it take to win America? It is essential to talk more specifically about various kinds of evangelistic methods suited to the various kinds of “cultural distance” between us and the people to be won. This cannot be avoided if Key 73 is to work seriously toward its stated goal of touching every person in North America.

Let’s see if we can diagram the situation.

The Evangelism-One (E1) sphere is where we can, Key 73 style, reach people of our own language and culture and realistically expect to bring them into our own churches.

The Evangelism-Two (E2) sphere includes all those people with whom we have some common ground culturally, some kind of head start in evangelism, but who nevertheless are far enough away so as not to be candidates for membership in our own local church. E2 people for me are those whose mother tongue is Spanish (which, compared to Chinese or Navajo, is practically the same as English), or the American blacks, whom I understand only partially, or new immigrants from Europe, whether from England or the Continent.

The Evangelism-Three (E3) sphere includes all those people beyond any significant common ground of language and culture, that is, people totally strange to us. For me, E3 people include most of the Navajo Indians, the newly arrived refugees from Hong Kong, many of the Koreans among us, and so on.

Granted, not all E2 people are equally distant from me. I find it easier to talk to an Englishman than a Frenchman. The point is simply that people must be dealt with by “Evangelism-Two” methods when they are sufficiently distant to feel uncomfortable in the congregation where I feel at home. Of course, when people are totally strange to my church and culture, “Evangelism-Three” methods are essential.

If I were to sit down in a Chinese restaurant and be introduced to a Chinese family newly arrived from Hong Kong, it might be a courteous gesture to invite them to my church. But if I am in dead earnest evangelistically, I have to distinguish between the courteous and the feasible, and if it is not feasible to invite them to my church, I must be prepared to do something that is feasible. As a matter of fact, I know a Chinese family that is quite happy in a predominantly Swedish church. There is nothing wrong about this. But this just does not happen to be the best solution to the winning of all those thousands of Hong Kong refugees. I’m not saying we mustn’t let Chinese join Anglo churches; I’m only saying that our evangelism plans will be inadequate if they assume that, in general, Chinese will join Anglo, or Swedish, or black, or Japanese churches.

“Can’t Chinese win Chinese, Koreans win Koreans, and Navajos win Navajos?” you might say. “Isn’t it true that a Chinese family newly arrived from Hong Kong might be E3 to me but would be E1 to some other Christian?” Not necessarily. The family I mentioned above is most likely not E1 but E2 even for most Chinese in the United States. Why? Because the thousands of Cantonese-speaking refugees from Hong Kong coming into Los Angeles are not going to feel at home in an English-speaking Chinese church, or in a Mandarin-speaking Chinese church, or in a Swatow-speaking Chinese church, or even in a Cantonese-speaking Christian church where the members are well-established or second-generation Americans. We will not begin to reach out to the real America if we are not willing to recognize that a large proportion of those needing to be won are at an E2 or E3 distance from all existing congregations.

Is it only the experienced foreign missionary who does not boggle at the problem of cultural diversity? No. Many, many parents of long-haired children have put their natural reactions on the shelf and honestly tried to understand the need their children have both to make sense and to be understood by their own substantially changed new generation. These parents with the missionary’s “cross-cultural” awareness are likely the ones most prepared to acknowledge that the many other subcultures of the United States (and Canada) are also unlikely to become nicely assimilated members of existing Key 73 congregations.

Such people will, it is hoped, see the need for evangelism to go beyond the “half-way house,” the assumption that people won to Christ will eventually come the rest of the way over to the evangelizers’ home church. They may be the first to be willing to establish “no-way” houses that “no way” are going to become part of their own home church. A “no-way” house is very simply a permanent Christian fellowship in addition to, and perhaps even quite different from, the churches we now have. The “no-way” house you do not assume to be merely a transition to your own church. It is not a part of your own congregation, and may not even affiliate with your denomination, because it simply isn’t half-way.

The great difference between the missionary and the ordinary Christian witnesser is that the missionary is working with people whose resulting Christianity will very likely be different from that of his home church. The missionary may more easily come to this approach overseas, but the approach is not less necessary in the United States.

The “Jews for Jesus” are a case in point. They have come to Christ, but they are not likely to join your church or mine. Are Key 73 methods designed to deal with this probability? Will Christ allow people who are not like us to worship him and serve him if they do not set up shop in exactly our Christian pattern?

Or take the Jesus people. Like the Jews for Jesus they have emerged with precious little help from the straight churches. Not churches as churches but church people in many para-church organizations, such as Teen Challenge and Campus Crusade, have gotten a little closer. But are we going to be satisfied only if the Jesus people become straight Presbyterians or Methodists or Baptists? Missionaries on many fields have faced the toughest test of their careers in seeing the power of the Gospel burst forth in ways they had not expected. But new wine needs new wineskins! And churches that seek merely to save their own lives will lose them.

But there is hope: even older denominations are recognizing wall-less congregations. A breath of fresh air is blowing as Fuller Seminary opens its Extension Division, allowing laymen to meet the ordination requirements of the established denominations. Churches with more than 1,000 members may learn both to foster discipline and to allow unprecedented autonomy to subgroups within their membership—just as Mormon stake houses keep adding semi-autonomous wards.

Churches call in fund-raising experts when they need that kind of help. Churches with vision for people at a cultural distance around them may call into being similar specialized para-church organizations that will coach some of their people in the specialized tasks of founding and fostering viable, autonomous congregations within the needy pockets. Resulting new “mission” congregations can often be associated in some way with the “mother” church, but there may be more wrong ways than right ways to do this. And we must realize that association is not the most important thing.

One pressing need is for churches to evaluate the vast number of para-church organizations, like Young Life, Campus Crusade, Inter-Varsity, Navigators, Christian Business Men’s Committees, and International Christian Leadership. These are often the organizations that are dealing with the un-won subcultures. Yet traditionally church denominations in the United States have supported neither the para-church structures nor the idea of para-church structures.

If some of these organizations are not all they ought to be, this may be due in great part to neglect by the churches. Those para-church structures that make every effort to cooperate with the denominations, like Campus Crusade, the Billy Graham Association, and the American Sunday School Union, are so cowed by potential ecclesiastical opposition that they dare not even think about starting congregations in even the most exotic subcultures. The American Sunday School Union has been held at bay on this point for over 100 years. Yet the planting of churches by para-church organizations is quite common in the so-called mission lands. Hudson Taylor’s famous China Inland Mission planted churches for the Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and others simultaneously, all the while holding them in a larger fellowship. Why can’t this be done in North America?

One thing is clear: All the various pockets of North America’s un-won cannot be reached unless the Key 73 churches become means, not mere ends—means to an end that is far greater than present Key 73 plans. Once the full scope of the task is understood, the details can be elaborated. Only in that way can the yawning chasm between Key 73 plans and Key 73 purposes be eliminated.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

Nothing would do more to make Key 73 ineffective than an attitude of non-faith on the part of evangelizing Christians. The most common cause of non-faith is expecting rejection of one’s witness because a field is resistant to religious appeal. This in turn leads to theological rationalization: The harvest is God’s, not ours; let him determine the hour. To this the biblical answer is: When the field ripens, has he not already indicated his hour?

Although this ripening is apparent in every city, we hold fast to our cliché of “the resistant secular city.” If Key 73 is to win the city we should take a hard look at that notion of its secularity, for this is one of our great myths.

When early Christians turned from Roman religion and declared they would not name Caesar as lord and savior, they were branded as atheists. But they really were deeply religious; this abandonment of Roman religion was no turning to secularity, as Christian martyrdoms show. Neither is the city secular just because it rejects the Church. In presenting the Gospel to non-Christians, we should ascertain first whether they are secular or animist (pagan), because the problems of communication are different. A secular man will not accept the concept of the supernatural at all, and the evangelizer has a philosophical problem to deal with. An animist or pagan is a believer in the supernatural. The confrontation is religious, and the central question is, “In which supernatural power do you place your faith?”

When we eliminate those who still consider themselves church people, whether Protestants, Catholics, or members of those many marginal groups like the Mormons, the Christian Scientists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, we are getting close to having the residue I want to discuss. Perhaps we should eliminate also the adherents of Asian religions—all intensely religious and missionary, like the Zen Buddhists, the Bahai, and the Hare Krishna Hindus. These too are certainly not secular. The Hare Krishna, for example, have branches in forty major cities across the United States. Washington, D. C., is not the only city where the tourist attractions include a bus tour of shrines and temples. In the sixties Soka Gakkai was growing at an annual rate of 35,000 in the United States, and another Japanese sect was winning 2,000 converts a month, only 5 per cent of them Japanese. Several syncretistic religions from Korea currently enjoy similar prosperity. This is all growth by conversion, and we Christians should take a hard look at ourselves when we say the city is resistant and secular.

What lies on my heart now is the hard-core animism of every conceivable kind, buried in ordinary homes all about us—the cults, rituals, shrines, and covens in which small groups meet like the early New Testament house churches, and multiply as rapidly. (I hope the analogy says something to Key 73.) In the attic of an ordinary house not far from my Pasadena home, the Temple of Esoteric Religion is led by a “priestess.” The adherents worship the Great Feminine Principle, the Great Masculine Principle, and the Primordial Principle, the Dark Womb. The sponsors of this fertility cult support themselves with an occult bookshop.

I wonder how many city people make their living by divination. I have before me the promotional literature from eight, all close enough for me to visit. Three were unsolicited and came by mail. They offer to solve my problems, to give me a soul journey to cosmic consciousness, and to supply everything else from a good job to fertility. They will indicate my propitious days, interpret my dreams and omens, fix my marriage or divorce, provide charms, and read my palm. They fulfill the needs met by diviner, shaman, and medicine-man in animist society.

Other forms of divination have been commercialized. The decision-making of thousands of teen-agers is determined by the Ouija board, a divination mechanism that has had sales of two million in the United States in three years. Christmas toys I have seen include vampire sets, fortune-telling sets, crystal balls, zodiac medallions, and astrology games. One line of Christmas cards had horoscopes. More than two-thirds of the newspapers in the country run astrology columns. One writer on astrology has sold 20 million copies of his books around the world. One journal estimates that 40 million Americans dabble in the art and 10 million are firmly addicted. Many university bookstalls devote full displays to this pagan literature. Special works on astrology exist for parents, to help them train their children in the way. There are 10,000 professional astrologers in the United States. The implications this search for guidance raises for Key 73 are plain. Astrology is a religious matter, because people put their faith in it, and live by it.

Two kinds of witchcraft are practiced in the United States, the medieval European and the African. I do not have to go beyond Pasadena and Hollywood to find them. The twenty-five or thirty covens in San Diego have from thirty to fifty members each. In a recent Los Angeles witchcraft convention, many of the business personnel were also teachers in the public schools.

In one Los Angeles inter-racial area recently the police reported an abnormal number of animal carcasses, presumably killed sacrificially, and the blood mixed with LSD for the members of sacrificial cults. Spiritist statistics show that more than 6,000 meetings exist across the country. Sorcery is widely practiced. A TV commentator interviewed a sorceress who manufacturers and sells voodoo dolls by mail. These are made to order and personalized. She uses dried chicken feet and dried leaves from a graveyard, draws faces from photographs, and supplies white- and black-headed pins for the process.

Public prayers have been abolished in tax-supported schools; yet a student at Berkeley can obtain a degree in magic and then go out and establish himself as a Wizard Consulting Service, calling himself a Druid and practicing sorcery.

The First Satanic Church in San Francisco has more than ten thousand carefully screened members “with a demon in each man.” Led by the demoniac Anton LaVey, it reverses Christian forms and rituals and has placed more than a quarter of a million copies of the Satanic bible on the market. One of the best markets is the university campus. Many of the strange forms of contemporary marriage are pagan and cultic like the Cult of Happiness, which features the apple and the serpent.

The Church of Scientology, which claims a quarter of a million in California alone, has a church structure and a confessional, but its theology is unbiblical and its anthropology weird. Its eschatology makes it definitely religious, but its moral record is questionable.

The animism of the modem city is reinforced by big business. The “world’s most experienced airline” offers tourists a “Psychic Tour of Great Britain at $629”; each participant receives his own astro-numerology chart and the experience of a séance. One big bookshop carrying occult literature worth $25,000 turns over 65 per cent each month and offers day-long crash courses in palmistry at $25.

I press again the point that these are not signs of a resistant secular society. When we see people of all ages turning vainly to one form of animism, we know that the city is filled with hungry people, groping for something that eludes them, and we know this is a religious search. I believe we can say the fields are whitening unto harvest.

The problem of Key 73 is to discover why these people rejected the Church when religiously hungry; why 200,000 Americans chose Soka Gakkai in preference to Christianity, why 10,000 in one city turned to Satanism and reversed morality, thereby rejecting the Gospel—for every acceptance is also a rejection.

We believe that the answer to their quest is the Gospel. The Jesus people have shown that. But have we the forms and structures to incorporate them into the Church and the communicating capacity to help them grow in the faith afterwards? If we have, and yet they still do not become part of us, then is there something about us church people that holds them off?

If Key 73 is to win the not-so-secular city, perhaps we should begin with ourselves.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

America was founded on the myth of the infinite assimilability of foreign peoples into a single homogeneous “American Way.” There have been so many magnificent examples of cultural assimilation that we cannot seem to grasp the fact that “The Melting Pot” does not melt everybody. We look at the Irish, the Italians, the Poles, and a multitude of others and note that national origin does not seem to matter much any more. We point to the fact that we can travel the length and breadth of this country and have no difficulty communicating in English as further evidence that America is a single cultural and linguistic entity—produced from a heterogeneous multitude of the “poor,” the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free … the homeless, tempest-tossed.”

Our understanding of what our churches are and should be is likewise tied to the myth of infinite assimilability. Denominations point with pride to the date when their churches no longer found it necessary to conduct preaching services and business meetings in Swedish or German, and date their Americanization from that time. Both outside and inside our churches we have come to believe, first, that assimilation is the only right way, and second, that everyone as yet not assimilated believes this too and has no higher ambition than to be absorbed into “the mainstream of American life.”

Running counter to the very real process of assimilation in our society, however, have been certain other processes. One of these is our refusal to allow certain types of people to become fully a part of the mainstream. We have allowed and even insisted on assimilation for Caucasians, but have just as strongly refused to grant such badges of assimilation as equal opportunity in housing, education, employment, and especially marriage (to Caucasians) to large segments of our population manifesting non-Caucasian skin color and other racial characteristics. And, despite our strongly held ideal of assimilation, we have, both inside and outside the churches, denied to these groups the right to really belong to “our” society.

But we have seen the error of our ways and are taking steps to remedy this unchristian situation. For Paul says that in Christ, “gone is the distinction between Jew and Greek, slave and free man, male and female—[we] are all one …” (Gal. 3:28, Phillips). And we now strongly advocate assimilation “for racial minorities—on the assumption that assimilation is the only right way and that of course “their” highest desire is to be “like us.”

Another process working against assimilation operates mainly through the influence of the schools. This is the process that welds each generation of youth into a tight “peer group.” Young people are pushed to develop most of their meaningful relationships with members of their own generation; they are taught the latest theories, often untried, rather than the kind of tried and true knowledge and techniques that would tie them strongly to preceding generations; and, overall, they are encouraged to regard the age groups previous to theirs as passé, “out of it,” threats to progress and barriers to their own advancement. Yet in spite of this, we persist in assuming that assimilation is the only right way and that of course young people’s highest desire is to become like us.

We also fail to pay due heed to the meaning of such counterassimilative features of our society as denominationalism and its secular counterparts in political parties, service and social clubs, and the like. In our intense dedication to the belief that becoming like us is the only right way, we prefer to focus on the evils of denominational fighting and of Christian disunity, ignoring the positive benefits of the “place to feel at home” in Christianity that denominations provide for the many diverse groupings within our society.

America, then, is no cultural monolith. Assimilation has not been uniformly successful, though the results within certain sectors of the population have been impressive. Denial of the right to be assimilated, dissimilation, and refusal to be assimilated are just as much features of the American scene as is the impetus toward assimilation. Our country is characterized by a very high degree of diversity.

Of our more than 200 million people, for example, there are better than 20 million blacks. In other words, one out of every ten Americans is black. But blacks are largely unassimilated into and often antagonistic toward mainstream American culture.

There are, further, more than 80 million persons under twenty-one—four out of every ten Americans. Youth are largely unassimilated into and often antagonistic toward mainstream American culture. Twenty million persons over sixty-five constitute another significant subgroup. Large numbers of these are retired, and often feel rejected and dispossessed by the society to which they have devoted their lives.

One out of every twenty Americans is of Spanish heritage; 84 per cent of these list Spanish as their heart language and 20 per cent of them are not literate in English. The United States has, in fact, the fifth-largest Spanish-speaking population in the world. Half a million Americans speak an American Indian language as their heart language, and nearly another half a million list Japanese as their linguistic “place to feel at home.” A further half million of Asian background—such as Chinese, Filipino, Korean—are American citizens as well. Canada has similar diversity.

Then there are the occupational and educational differences that pervasively affect us. These define for us which segments of our peer groups we will primarily associate with, and largely cut us off from meaningful encounters with members of the other occupational and educational groupings. Nearly half of the employed Americans—and one out of five of the total population—is listed as a “white collar worker.” One out of every eight of our population is listed as “blue collar.” Over three million are farmers. Of the 110 million over twenty-four, nearly 30 million have not gone beyond eighth grade. Another 55 million stopped their schooling at the end of high school, while fewer than 25 million have gone beyond high school. One restricted set of figures shows an estimated two and a half million adult Americans—one in every fifty—as illiterate! The real total may well be higher.

Yet despite this overwhelming evidence of heterogeneity, mainstream America chooses to believe that this country is basically homogeneous and is rapidly becoming more so. It upsets us to discover that although we have set up many well-meant and expensive programs to bring about “integration” (i.e., assimilation to mainstream culture), increasing numbers of blacks, youth, Chicanos, American Indians, and others don’t want to be assimilated. They just don’t want to become like us! Or, often, they see the possibility of true assimilation as so remote that they have given up trying.

Political leaders find that to win election campaigns they have to give up their blind adherence to the American melting-pot myth. Votes just do not come if the facts of socio-cultural diversity are ignored. In the recent election campaign, President Nixon’s staff found it necessary to produce campaign buttons appealing to some 40 million “ethnic voters” of twenty-eight nationalities.

What does all this say to the Church? In the midst of such diversity, can the assimilationist approach that characterizes most mainline American churches possibly be God’s desire?

In a very similar situation in the first century, the Judaizers proclaimed the Gospel in this way. Their message was that the Good News was for everyone on condition that they first become Jews. Their sociology was out of line with that of the God who, with a world to win and all methods open to him, did not depend on mass evangelistic techniques. He rather incarnated himself in a specific Galilean village within a specific human culture, focusing an incredible amount of attention on twelve individuals with whom he dealt in specifically appropriate Galilean Hebrew ways. He, further, dealt with Nicodemus in one way, with the Rich Young Ruler in another, with the Woman at the Well in yet another way. He treated each disciple and each of the women and each of those he healed in the specific way that was appropriate to that person, showing the way for effective non-assimilationist evangelism down through the ages.

The Judaizers’ approach was fine when the audience was Jewish. But, since it required assimilation to Hebrew culture, Paul found it not only lacking but also very misleading when carried outside the Jewish community. This Gentile world was made up of other groups, and each needed to be approached just as specifically as Jesus had approached the Jews. Jesus and Paul practiced “hearer-oriented” communication techniques and elicited responses appropriate to the hearers. I hope that Key 73 will be as aware of the need for a diversity of approaches and as tolerant of a diversity of responses. A fitting goal for Key 73 might be: that every group may hear and respond to the gospel message in a culturally appropriate way.

To bring this about, pastors and churches will have to diversify their approaches to communication. Preachers will need to learn to focus on hearer-oriented communication to adopt whatever form of communication gets through to a particular audience. Monologic preaching is not a sacred form. For those groups (many, nowadays) for whom this kind of communication obscures the sacred message, it should be altered or replaced with more appropriate and more communicative forms (e.g., dialogue, drama, various kinds of participatory techniques). This can be done in heterogeneous congregations by focusing on one group in the audience at a time.

Many churches, especially larger ones, should provide two or three widely different types of worship and communication services. This cannot be done simply by altering the “preliminaries” before turning the service over to the same old preacher to do the same old thing. In some churches, different persons should minister in the different services; in others, the same person using different approaches may appropriately minister.

Personal and group evangelistic efforts should likewise be varied in accord with the culturally conditioned expectations of the persons and groups approached. Mechanistic “quote-four-verses-and-press-for-a-decision” techniques of “personal” (rather, impersonal) evangelism are not really adequate. Jesus’ approach started with the person or the group, not with the method.

Key 73 can be an exciting and effective vehicle of church growth if it takes diversity seriously and starts where the people are—communicating to each group in its own way and encouraging it to respond in its own way. It can become an instrument of “spiritual imperialism” if it simply seeks to imitate the Judaizers’ approach and make everybody “like us.”

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

Church-growth thinking is paying off around the world. In country after country it brings hope and effectiveness to those who use it. It introduces new methods, opens up new fields. As they swing into growth thinking, churches in the third world are declaring dividends. They find it profitable.

Can church-growth insights be applied to the American scene? An increasing number of leaders in this country think it can. The articles that follow are presented in the hope that the denominations taking part in Key 73 will apply church-growth thinking to the largest and best-planned evangelistic program ever conducted on this continent. As 200,000 congregations from 150 denominations surge forward in “a coordinated campaign aimed at confronting every person in North America more fully and forcefully with the Gospel of Jesus,” they too will profit by using church-growth thinking. Key 73’s Congregational Resource Book glitters with good ideas. We add church-growth thinking to the other Key ingredients with a prayer that the whole may be blessed by God to bring substantial growth of sound Christian churches.

In the summer issue of United Evangelical Action, Bruce Shelley proclaimed in bold, black letters, “The acid test of evangelism is never numbers of decisions but growth of churches.” He was doing good church-growth thinking. Key 73 must pass that test. The dividends declared a year from now should appear in the form of lasting growth of churches. At the beginning of this fateful year, let us be clear that the goal of Key 73 is that every person in the United States and Canada have a real chance to say “yes” to Jesus Christ and become a dependable member of his Church.

What Is Church-Growth Thinking?

As Methodists, Baptists, Churches of Christ, and other denominations planted 250,000 congregations in North America, they used church-growth thinking. It is the way classical missions thought as they undertook the colossal task of establishing thousands of churches across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. (By God’s grace they have already established more than 300,000.) In recent years, the Fuller Seminary School of World Mission has devoted itself wholeheartedly to discovering what makes churches in the third world grow. What makes them stop growing? What historical and anthropological factors are involved? Where do receptive populations live? What biblical and theological principles apply?

Researchers have made more than a hundred studies to dig out answers. More than fifty books have been published. Church Growth Book Club sold 50,000 volumes last year. More than 10,000 missionaries, ministers, and mission executives read the Church Growth Bulletin six times a year. All this and much more is part of church-growth thinking, a large, complex body of principles and practices.

The following articles set forth principles of effective evangelism; but let none think that they exhaust church-growth thinking. They merely introduce a few practices, principles, books, and researches that are proving valuable in many lands. As Americans and Canadians study church growth, they will make applications that suit their own cities or countrysides.

As they call this continent to Christ, North American Christians can profitably do the following things.

1. Accept the fact that God wants his lost children found, brought into the fold, and fed. Glad acceptance of this truth dispels the debilitating suspicion that church growth is somehow disreputable and evangelism “can easily be overstressed.” When churches really believe that God wants lost men found, they will quit rationalizing decline in membership as “probably good for us,” will stop making excuses for not finding and enfolding God’s children, and will engage in effective evangelism.

2. Dig out the facts about the growth of congregations and denominations. Church-growth research is paying rich dividends in the third world and can do so in America. Even very elementary fact-finding is useful. For example, in two church-growth workshops at Celebration Evangelism West, which convened at historic First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, California, growth patterns of fifteen typical Presbyterian churches in the Synod of the Golden Gate were studied. This was the first time anything like that had been done in a public meeting of the 165 synod congregations. Facing the facts stimulated interest in evangelism and church growth. Research in North American church growth, whether done within a denomination or across the denominations, will yield rich rewards.

3. Recognize the winnability of North Americans. For too long we have deceived ourselves into thinking that Americans are indifferent to Christ’s claims. The fact is that of all the populations on earth, those in North America are among the most winnable. While some Californian denominations had resigned themselves to little or no growth, the Southern Baptists in California between 1937 and 1967 grew from 12 churches to 992. In the last decade the Mormons have been increasing at a steady 5.6 per cent per annum. Christians who believe that theirs is a more reasonable doctrine might do even better!

4. Harness insights of the social sciences to evangelism and church growth. This is already being done in a small way, but in view of the tremendous resources of psychological and sociological insight in North America, much more extensive application is indicated.

5. Pray and plan revival. God is giving many of his people a bright new blessing. What happened at Asbury Seminary can happen on many campuses and in thousands of churches, through prayer and faithful study of God’s Word. Revival releases power. The Holy Spirit will do in a day what of ourselves we cannot do in a year.

6. Multiply lay evangelists—men and women, boys and girls. Tremendous unused evangelistic resources lie all about us. As we study church growth in other lands we see that God has used trained laymen in practically every outburst of effective evangelism. He will use them here, too.

7. Multiply new cells of Christians, in such forms as Bible-study groups, prayer groups, underground churches, house churches, ski-slope and locker-room groups. In these, persons meet Christ and Christians are born. The comfortable fiction that, because in our part of town we have four churches on one crossroads, America has enough churches, should cease to deceive us. The uncomfortable truth is that we need substantial church growth. Some churches should grow bigger. Some should give birth to daughter congregations. At least fifty million Americans are living without knowing Christ. Thousands of new cells are needed in which these millions may start the redeemed life.

8. Expect rich dividends in the Christian life-style. As millions become Christians, we shall see more kindness, more honesty, more justice, more brotherhood, and more beauty. Subcultures will be ever more irradiated with divine light. Churches, since their purpose is to obey Christ and to walk in the light of his revelation, are the most potent originators of the good life known to man. Let us multiply them and improve them.

How To Apply Church-Growth Thinking

The church-growth thinking developed by the community of missionary scholars and associates gathered at Fuller’s School of Mission has been applied chiefly overseas; but a successful recent experiment proves such thinking readily applicable to North American churches.

Professor C. Peter Wagner of the School of Mission enrolled eighteen Los Angeles ministers and lay readers in a class in church-growth principles. It met for eleven weeks from seven to nine Tuesday morning. The men studied two texts thoroughly, Wagner’s Frontiers of Missionary Strategy and my Understanding Church Growth. After brief lectures they discussed the chapters and applied them to their own congregations and situations. Although illustrations in both books were taken from third-world churches, class members had no trouble in applying the principles to this country. The last three sessions were spent in drawing up hard, bold plans for effective evangelism in the congregations represented. One person in the class, Dr. Win Am, an executive for Christian education in the Evangelical Covenant Church and an expert in visual education, produced ten charts and work books to teach growth thinking. These he used to good effect with 150 Covenant leaders in three “VIP Church Growth Seminars.” The class also asked Dr. Am to publish his church-growth kit so that it could be used in Key 73 by interested churchmen around the country.

If Key 73 is to pay the growth dividends God is making available, a hundred thousand congregations all across the land should emphasize church growth. The thinking proving fruitful abroad is available to churches and their leaders in North America.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

The seed of Key 73 was planted in the offices of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Following a challenging editorial in this magazine the Key Bridge meetings were held, and out of them developed Key 73.

Last fall when I was in Los Angeles I arranged to have lunch with the faculty members of Fuller Seminary’s School of World Mission and Institute of Church Growth. We discussed Key 73 in relation to the church-growth principles these men have enunciated. While some of the principles underlying church-growth strategy are not new, the emphasis has been revitalized. The central person behind this renewed thrust is Donald McGavran, longtime missionary and missions statesman.

One of the results of my visit was the promise of School of World Mission professors to write articles that would suggest principles and strategies useful to all Key 73 participants. In this issue five articles and The Minister’s Workshop are devoted to the subject of Key 73 and church growth. We think that this material merits distribution beyond our own family of subscribers, but time did not permit working out advance arrangements for extended use. If there is sufficient demand we could reprint the articles in this issue in booklet form.

May 1973 be the year of great spiritual awakening!