Jesus Festivals

Sunshine, rock festivals, and Jesus add up to the ideal way to spend the summer for thousands of young Christians from coast to coast. Each area has its own angle. On a North Carolina beach the Gospel is preached from an ice cream parlor. In Texas 10,000 Baptist youth joined in a “spiritual blitz” of Fort Worth. And in California the July 4 message was “Come to Santa Barbara for sun and Son.”

Billed as Spiritual Independence Weekend, the Santa Barbara happenings included two afternoons of beach evangelism and a “Jesus is the Rock Festival” sponsored by Areopagus, a coffeehouse ministry.

Over a thousand people gathered in an open-air amphitheater in the hills south of Santa Barbara to hear the witness of California’s top Jesus-movement musicians. Surrounded by eucalyptus, pine, and live oak trees, the natural bowl was filled with the folk and rock sounds of groups such as Gentle Faith, Bridge, and Ron Salsbury and the J. C. Power Outlet. Solo performers included folksinger Larry Norman, jazz pianist and singer Tom Howard, flamenco guitarist Drew Crune, and blues guitarist Randy Stonehill.

Though the groups are all veterans of Jesus rock festivals, they agreed that this one was the “heaviest concert” in which they had ever performed.

“The Spirit was so heavy—there was a real movement of the Spirit,” explained David Carlson, associate director of Areopagus. In addition to the usual free-for-all singing, clapping, and shouting, personal testimonies and exhortations by the singers produced an unusual closeness among everyone present: long-haired Jesus people, young straights, older conservatives from local churches, and performers.

Though some responded to the altar call, the majority attending were Christians, and the festival was one of celebration and uplift for the church rather than outreach. About one-fourth of those gathered were long-haired and hip: hitchhikers, dopers, street Christians, and members of nearby Christian communes such as Shepherd by the Sea.

Besides playing at the rock festival, the musicians performed in the afternoons on three Santa Barbara beaches, while witness teams from local churches spoke personally with vacationers. Californians, well aware of Jesus people through recent publicity, took their beach appearances in stride. But the message was Jesus Christ, not Jesus people—and that left some wondering. Others made commitments.

While gospel rock echoed through Santa Barbara, similar sounds were heard in Minneapolis and Portland, where more Jesus rock festivals marked the Fourth of July weekend.

Duane Pederson, publisher of the Hollywood Free Paper, transported the California phenomenon to Minneapolis, leading two rallies of about 400 people each.

The “J-E-S-U-S” cheers quickly became popular, as did a rock version of “Just a Closer Walk With Thee.” Carrying well-worn Bibles and wearing “Happiness is knowing Jesus” buttons, the crowds were for the most part Christian and conservative in dress, though some long-hairs were present.

On the shores of Lake Minnetonka new Christians spoke of their conversion experiences and fifteen were baptized by a dunking in the lake.

A marathon four-hour festival with seventeen performing groups rocked Portland on the afternoon of July 4. Held in the football field of the University of Portland, the event drew more than 2,500 people, including some priests, nuns, and other establishment Christians.

Lutheran Youth Alive, a lay movement among members of several Lutheran denominations, sponsored the festival as part of a weekend conference for encouraging evangelism.

As the festival began, John Rondema, northwest director of LYA, turned down the loudspeakers, fearing to disturb local residents in the surrounding neighborhood. To his amazement they came and asked him to make the music louder again.

About 1,000 high school and college Lutherans attended the full conference, learning outreach techniques such as Campus Crusade’s four spiritual laws and engaging in one-to-one evangelism.

Earlier, forty prayer groups had gathered on the grass to call for a movement of the Holy Spirit. From fifty to one hundred conversions occurred throughout the weekend.

The singing of “Amazing Grace” by the whole group with hands held high “for the Lord” closed the festival on a high level of feeling, according to Watford Reed, Portland news correspondent for CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Representatives of the Roman Catholic university welcomed the Lutherans and afterward expressed hope “that all of us may grow more deeply in the life of Jesus Christ, whom you preached so beautifully in your stay with us.”

At another football field in Hereford, Texas, young Baptists held an evangelistic crusade that resulted in 583 professions of faith.

The overwhelming response may have been partially due to the amazing experience of the two main speakers just before the rally. Terry Bradshaw, quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers, and Debbie Patton, Miss Teenage America of 1970, were flying in a private plane to the rally when the craft developed engine trouble.

The pilot prepared for a possible crash landing at the closest airport, but the radio went dead and the landing gear locked. While the other passengers prayed, Bradshaw wrestled the landing gear loose and manually lowered it into position, following instructions from the pilot.

After the Hereford crusade, Bradshaw went on to speak to 14,000 young people at the Texas Baptist Youth Evangelism Conference in Fort Worth. One of three Bible-reading, witnessing Christians on the Pittsburgh team, he said he would take Jesus with him as he returned to training camp in July.

“I realize that my right arm and all the talents I have were given to me by God, but … he can take them away,” stated Bradshaw, adding that he would continue to love Jesus Christ if this happened.

A former Cleveland Browns football star, the Reverend Bill Glass, also spoke to the Baptist youth. The conference often turned into a spontaneous revival with all the color of a rock festival as both long- and short-haired youth shouted “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” pointing one finger skyward to signify “one way in Christ.”

The spirit poured out in a “blitz” of Fort Worth as 10,000 young people scattered through the city singing and telling about Jesus. Two days of meetings resulted in 158 professions of faith and 404 rededications.

Folk and traditional music presented by youth choirs and personal testimonies formed most of the programs. At one point, the 14,000 listeners rose to their feet cheering and applauding Skip Allen, son of the President of the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

“I blew off of LSD and turned on to Jesus,” Skip said, after describing the roller coaster of despair that led him to attempt suicide twice. The decisive influence for him was a talk given by Justin Tyne, a former drug addict who operates a Christian coffeehouse in Los Angeles.

Another youth gathering, this one with the emphasis on soul-shaking speakers rather than musicians, was the fifty-first International Christian Endeavor Convention in St. Louis. Keynoter Bill Glass was joined by black evangelist-author Tom Skinner, Dr. Myron S. Augsburger, president of Eastern Mennonite College and Seminary, and Dr. W. Stanley Mooneyham, president of World Vision International.

For exemplifying “the heart of the Christian Endeavor pledge,” Vonda Kay Van Dyke, Miss America of 1965, was presented with the Distinguished Service Citation. Dr. Laverne Boss of Grandville, Michigan, was elected president of the organization.

Though delegates spent most of their time in conference groups, noontimes were devoted to witnessing on downtown St. Louis streets.

While Christians across the country try street witnessing, rock festivals, and crusades to win others to Christ, a North Carolina group uses a simple come-on: ice cream.

The Circus Tent Ice Cream Parlor is located near the site of the Wright brothers’ first flight on the Outer Banks, a popular family vacation spot with miles of national seashore including the pirate Blackbeard’s island.

Crowds fill the four-year-old Circus Tent every night, eating concoctions such as the Fat Lady Sundae and the Sword Swallower Dessert. Meanwhile, Christian folk groups perform and witness, and movies like “The Parable” are shown. Many of the vacationers enter the spirited discussions held after the shows, and many are converted.

Those who flee the message in the tent may wander through the award-winning garden outside and find a little chapel inviting prayer and meditation.

From California to North Carolina, it’s harder for Americans to take vacations from God this summer.

Gospel Via Tube

Christian young people from Texas and California are appearing on a new weekly television variety show this summer. The Monday-night show, called “The Newcomers” and aired nationally by CBS, features fresh musical and comedy talent. Host Dave Garroway is attempting a television comeback.

“The Californians,” a ten-member musical group from the Lemon Grove Baptist Church near San Diego, appears on the program each week. Two young women who have sung in Baptist churches in Dallas, Cynthia Clawson and Peggy Sears, have been soloists. Robert Tamplin, executive producer of variety programs for CBS, is an active member of Hollywood Presbyterian Church; his secretary teaches a Bible class each Thursday afternoon for studio employees.

Evangelical visibility on television this summer extends to the educational network with the appearance of Dr. Sherwood E. Wirt on William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line,” taped for broadcast on August 4. Wirt is editor of Decision. the most widely circulated religious periodical in the world. He appears with Bishop Fulton J. Sheen and Dr. Gerhart Niemeyer, an Episcopal layman who teaches philosophy at Notre Dame. They discuss Wirt’s new book. Love Song, a translation of Augustine’s Confessions.

A Protestant Debut

Ukrainian Protestants finally have a New Testament they can call their own. Protestants are a sizable but somewhat overlooked minority among the 50 million people in the world who speak Ukrainian. Until now they have been obliged to use Scriptures slantedMary is rendered not as the “highly favored” one but as “blahodatnaya.” which implies that she imparts grace. toward the Orthodox and Catholic faiths.

It took the initiative of a Ukrainian Canadian clergyman—the Reverend James Hominuke—and his family to bring out “the first truly Protestant edition” of the New Testament and Psalms in Ukrainian. The family operates an evangelical printing and publishing enterprise in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Hominuke, a graduate of Northern Baptist Seminary, has already devoted nine years of his life to the Ukrainian translation project. He hopes to continue until he completes the whole Bible.

Hominuke brings to the task not only a rare resourcefulness and perseverance but a scholarly understanding of both the Bible and the modern Ukrainian language. His press already has to its credit the publication of an 1,163-page Ukrainian-English dictionary financed by the Rockefeller Foundation and the East European Fund in cooperation with the University of Saskatchewan.

The new Ukrainian New Testament and Psalms appears in an attractive maroon hard cover with thin, quality paper (initial press run was 5,000). It builds somewhat on a translation made in Ukraine in the mid-nineteenth century by a literary group that sought to embrace Christian truth minus Orthodox accretions, but was not Protestant as such. The whole Bible has been available in Ukrainian only since 1903. Since then there have been two complete translations, one by a Ukrainian Orthodox prelate in Canada published in 1962 by the British and Foreign Bible Society, the other by the Vatican in 1963.

DAVID KUCHARSKY

Personalia

Two Southern Baptist missionaries, Mr. and Mrs. Paul E. Potter, 38 and 36, of Marshfield, Missouri, were found slain in bed at their residence in Santiago, Dominican Republic, in early July. The murders were the first among the denomination’s 2,500 missionaries since 1951, making a total of five such deaths since 1861.

Alan Walker, world evangelist, author, and president of the Methodist Church in New South Wales, will be awarded the annual Upper Room Citation for 1971 on August 26 in Denver.

Television and nightclub star Cliff Richard has been named outstanding singer of the year by the Songwriters’ Guild of Great Britain. Since meeting Billy Graham, Richard has combined preaching and singing, getting fifty records into the top ten in his thirteen-year career.

Billy Graham has been named honorary chairman of Explo ’72, a Campus Crusade for Christ-sponsored congress on evangelism to be held in Dallas next June.

The Reverend Wilmina M. Rowland, a Presbyterian from Philadelphia, became the first woman to offer the opening prayer during a session of the U. S. Senate.

Sister Taddea Kelly, a member of the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary, is the first woman to hold a senior Vatican office. The California nun will direct a division of the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation for Religious Orders and Secular Institutes.

Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle, Archbishop of Washington for twenty-four years, has turned 75 and submitted his resignation, in compliance with a 1968 policy recommendation of Pope Paul VI.

The New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a couple cannot be denied the right to adopt a child because they are atheists, allowing Mr. and Mrs. John Burke to keep their two-year-old daughter, Eleanor.

The Reverend Jim Wilson, a Canadian who has developed youth ministries in Korea for the past seven years, was appointed executive director of Youth for Christ International.

The Baptist General Conference elected Robert A. Johnson, a layman from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, as its moderator.

Bob Jones III, 32, was invested as president of Bob Jones University, replacing his father, who became chancellor of the school in Greenville, South Carolina.

John A. Evenson, full-time film producer with the American Bible Society, will be ordained to a part-time ministry by the Lutheran Church in America. The appointment is the LCA’s first call to a “tent-making ministry.”

Former Representative Henry C. Schadeberg (R.-Wis.) will return to the pastoral ministry at the First Congregational Church, Greenville, Michigan, after serving eight years in Congress. He is probably the first clergyman to return to pastoral work after being elected to Congress.

Religion In Transit

Three non-subscription periodicals showed large circulation gains over 1970, according to the Associated Church Press directory. Decision, the Billy Graham organ, gained 500,000; Abundant Living, by the Oral Roberts Association, gained 650,000; and the American Bible Society Record gained 100,000. Several denominational publications showed losses.

The Interreligious Council of Southern California, a primarily Judeo-Christian federation, has accepted the membership application of the Islamic Foundation of Southern California.

The fourth annual Charismatic Clinic will be held at Melodyland Christian Center in Anaheim, California, August 15–23.

International headquarters of Wycliffe Bible Translators will move to five-acre grounds in Huntington Beach, California, a few miles from its present location. Ground was broken for a 60,000-square-foot office building, a museum and auditorium building, and twenty transient housing units.

The interdenominational agency Faith at Work has moved its national headquarters from New York City to Columbia, Maryland, a planned suburban city being developed on a large site between Baltimore and Washington, D. C.

The Office of Economic Opportunity will give an additional $159,307 to school voucher experiments, apparently in the belief that the Supreme Court’s recent ruling against parochaid does not affect the principles of the voucher plan.

The Texas Legislature legalized the selling of liquor by the drink for the first time since pre-Prohibition days. Church lotteries were legalized, too, and indirect aid to church colleges was approved through $4 million in tuition equalization grants for needy private-college freshmen and sophomores.

The Lutheran Church in America has designated 1973 as a year of special emphasis on evangelism.

Third World Media News, a national news service to gather and distribute news of minority groups, has been established through a $30,000 grant by the United Presbyterian Church to Ecu-Media News Services.

Christians have no monopoly on the problem: Reform Judaism rabbis recently discussed the growing tensions between congregations and their rabbis; the rift was said to threaten synagogue life in the United States.

You can tell where the money is! Senator Gaylord Nelson (D.-Wis.) topped senatorial journalistic earnings last year by pulling in $9,800, $3,500 of it for two articles in Playboy magazine. Low man was Senator Harold B. Hughes (D.-Iowa), who snapped up a $35 largess for an article in Theology Today.

Deaths

LYNN HAROLD HOUGH, 93, Methodist educator, particularly in the field of Christian humanism, former Drew Seminary professor and National Council of Churches figure; in New York.

KARL AUGUST REISCHAUER, 91, United Presbyterian missionary pioneer and educator instrumental in founding Tokyo Women’s Christian College and the Japan seminary of the Church of Christ; in Duarte, California.

W. HAROLD ROW, 59, Church of the Brethren peace and service ministry leader; in Washington, D. C., after a two-year illness.

JOHN F. WESTFIELD, 64, secretary of church development and building for the United Church of Christ; in New York after he was struck by an auto.

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