Luis Palau in Aberdeen: Melting Scottish Reserve

Evangelist Luis Palau had a good idea of what he was getting into when he traveled to northeast Scotland last month for a series of brief crusades. He had heard this was one of the most difficult regions in all of Britain in which to try to generate new spiritual life. A variety of circumstances seemed to confirm this:

• A Scottish television station produced a one-hour documentary that made the point that the only empty buildings in Aberdeen, now an oil boom town, are churches. And it is true that many other churches have closed and been converted into apartments, offices, appliance warehouses, and garages.

• A Church of Scotland minister said a whole generation of the working class has been missed; not one person in his congregation works with his hands.

• Most churches are top-heavy with older members. Philip Simpson, general secretary of the YMCA in Aberdeen, said, “Young people think church is dull and boring … that it’s a place for middle class people and old ladies with big hats and they want nothing to do with it.”

A small group of Scots saw these needs, got together and prayed; then they invited Palau. His final ten days in Scotland would be spent in Aberdeen, where there had not been a unified evangelistic effort for an entire generation.

Evangelist Billy Graham, who was successful in mass evangelism in England and Scotland during the 1950s, had advised Palau: “Don’t conduct a prolonged series of meetings in an outdoor stadium in any part of Britain at any time of the year.” The problem was that there were just two choices of facilities in Aberdeen: the Music Hall, indoors, with a seating capacity of 2,000; and the football (soccer) stadium, which is outside and accommodates 20,000. The local committee prayed, then decided on the football stadium.

Palau came with his team, including Jerry Edmonds, director of the Moody Bible Institute Chorale, and Dave Pope, a popular Christian singer in Britain. They provided music during the Aberdeen crusade, which began in cold and rainy weather that held down attendance: an audience of about 3,000 huddled in one portion of one section of the huge stadium during the first several nights.

Palau admitted he had some doubts for a while because of all the empty seats. But the Aberdonians were optimistic: they saw instead the seats in which people were seated, and said they had not seen so many people at a religious event in their lifetime. A local reporter wrote about “The Miracle in the Rain,” and the response to Palau’s invitations to Christian commitment was good—40 to 50 persons each night, 70 percent of them under 20 years of age.

There were other meetings besides those at the stadium. Astronaut James Irwin spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at the Music Hall; Pope gave two concerts to overflow audiences at the YMCA; ventriloquist Audrey Benmuvhar and a drama group, “Carpenter’s Workshop,” from Northwestern College in Minnesota, appeared in schools; and local young people carried signs in downtown Aberdeen inviting people to the stadium, so that on the last two nights nearly 5,000 persons attended.

Committee members said that crowds would have picked up noticeably if the crusade could have continued for another week. It seemed as though it had taken the first ten days to break down the Scottish reserve. While the older folk were a bit skeptical of Dave Pope and his band’s bouncy, contemporary music, they were beginning to clap their hands and tap their feet as they sang, “He’s Coming Back.” (The nightly crusades were broadcast throughout Europe and to North Africa and the Middle East over one-million-watt Trans World Radio in Monte Carlo.)

At the end of the Aberdeen crusade, Palau explained that he had come without illusions. He said, however, that he was “very pleased”: “I’ve seldom been at so much peace in a crusade. And when you consider the weather, the attendance has been tremendous … the response of the people [has been] good.”

He further observed: “The crusade set precedents, it clarified people’s thinking about mass evangelism, galvanized the Christian forces, it has brought ministers together, it has made the evangelicals feel a new confidence to speak boldly for the Lord; fringe people are realizing evangelicals have convictions and will not back down.”

The churches will be challenged to nurture the new converts, such as the policeman and his wife who found Christ early in the crusade and cancelled vacation plans in order to attend all the meetings, and the journalist who sent Palau a note on the last night of the crusade: “Sorry, I didn’t come forward tonight, but thanks for the greatest gift in the world.” Albert Wollen, Palau’s pastor in Portland, Oregon, was in Scotland and helped ministers organize Bible classes; at least five congregations took part.

Palau wasn’t sure if Scotland was ready for a spiritual harvest, or whether this was the time to sow seed. But some observers note a stirring throughout Great Britain. Pete Meadows, editor of the evangelical Buzz Magazine, says that church attendance in Britain (now estimated to be only 4 or 5 percent of the population) has stopped its decline, and is beginning to level off. He said that many churches are learning lessons from the church growth movement.

In North Wales at Easter, about 3,500 young people gathered for a Spring Harvest. Next year, Spring Harvest will be combined with a national congress on evangelism, coordinated by the British Evangelical Alliance, and about 12,000 young people are expected to attend.

Another sign of new life is the increasing number of evangelical ministers—an increase of about 200 in northeast Scotland in the last 10 to 15 years. David Temple, a Church of Scotland minister who headed the counselors during the Aberdeen crusade, calls this increase “the great hope as far as the Church of Scotland is concerned.”

Evangelical Christians and editors of Christian publications see Palau as the man for the times in Britain. He’s been invited to the Glasgow area next spring for ten weeks, where he will conduct crusades and apply the lessons learned in northeast Scotland. The prospects are for a larger attendance in Glasgow, partly because of the successful meetings held there by Graham in 1955, and partly because more churches will be involved there than in northeast Scotland.

Personalia

King J. Coffman, who recently ended his 31-year career in the United States Army with the rank of colonel, was appointed president of Christian Service Brigade. His primary duties will be working with the field staff and church constituency of the Wheaton, Illinois-based organization, which produces various Christian training programs for boys.

Illinois Congressman John B. Anderson, 57, on June 8 announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. A 10-term congressman and a member of the Evangelical Free Church, Anderson is regarded as one of the best orators in the House and was the first Republican representative to call for President Nixon’s resignation during the Watergate scandal.

Michael Griffiths, general director of Overseas Missionary Fellowship for the past ten years, has been named principal of London Bible College. When he assumes the post next fall, Griffiths becomes the third principal in the 33-year history of the school—England’s leading Bible college.

The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, a self-governing watchdog agency that organized formally in March, has its first executive director: Olan Hendrix, most recently the publisher of Regal Books and best known for his management seminars, was appointed to the full-time post by the temporary ECFA board of directors. His ECFA office will be in Pasadena, California, at the Huntington Sheraton Hotel. ECFA was established to promote voluntary and responsible financial disclosure among Christian organizations.

The United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia elected as its new president Nathan M. Pusey, 72, president emeritus of Harvard University. The organization, which was established in 1932 as the Associated Boards for Christian Colleges in China, had the largest religious claim compensation for properties expropriated by the People’s Republic of China. He is a former member of the World Council of Churches Central Committee.

Jewel Freeman Graham was elected president of the national Young Women’s Christian Association at its recent national convention in Dallas. Graham, a member of the Unitarian Fellowship of Yellow Springs, Ohio, was a former vice-president of national YWCA, and is a black leader in interracial education.

Deaths

OSCAR NAUMANN, 69, president for 26 years of the 400,000-member Wisconsin Evangelical Luthern Synod; June 18, in Milwaukee, of a massive stroke.

PATRIARCH ELIAS IV OF ANTIOCH, 65, a leader of Arabic-speaking Eastern Orthodoxy, who had under his jurisdiction the 152,000-member Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America; June 21 in Damascus, Syria, of a heart attack.

Malaysia

A Muslim-leaning State Curbs Its Zealots

Muslim extremism in Malaysia is creating a backlash. The former prime minister of Malaysia, Tunku Abdul Rahman, in his capacity as national president of Perkim (the Malay name for the Muslim Welfare Organization), disclosed recently that some 20,000 Muslim converts in Malaysia have reverted to their original religions in recent years.

“The Tunku,” as he is popularly called, attributes this phenomenon to the growing number of Muslim dakwah movements in the country. Militant and extreme in their views, these Muslim missionary groups are characterized by a total rejection of material progress; converts are known to burn or throw into the river such “worldly” possessions as TV sets. While attempting to spread their conservative brand of Islam, the dakwahs have created a negative response to the religion, says the Tunku. The dakwahs’ aggressive stance has led to several reported incidents of desecration of Hindu temples. Hindu priests have retaliated violently, resulting in at least one intruder killed. National publicity of such incidents has been kept to a minimum—the news media giving the issue a wide berth.

In a move that stressed the gravity of the situation, the Malaysian government said it would consider using its Internal Security Act against persons responsible for the destruction of temple idols. The Security Act provides for the indefinite detention of individuals without trail.

Malays constitute a majority 47 percent of the population and are nearly all Muslims. Other ethnic groups include Chinese (34 percent), Indians (9 percent), and tribal people (10 percent). Christians—about 4 percent of the population—come primarily from the tribal and Indian populations. Missionary observers also note potential for response to Christian witness among that segment of the Chinese who have abandoned their traditional Buddhist-Confucian heritage.

Burundi

Evicted Missionaries: Pawns in Tribal Feud?

Fourteen U.S. Protestant missionaries were among the 52 missionaries expelled June 11 from the Central African state of Burundi on charges of engaging in anti-government activities. They were given 48 hours to leave the country.

Of the Americans who were expelled, six each were from the World Gospel Mission and the Free Methodists, and two from the Evangelical Friends.

Lewis Hedges, one of the expelled missionaries of the World Gospel Mission, said, “No one seems to know how the government decided on which missionaries were to go and which were to stay.” He said he had only two and a half hours in which to do all his packing.

When asked how the ejections might affect the national church, Hedges worried that “the expulsion order will worsen the existing lack of trained leadership in the national church.” At the time of the expulsions, the spiritual condition of the Burundi church was “very encouraging,” and “an evangelical revival spirit existed among the churches,” he said.

According to John Robinson, the general superintendent of the Mid-America (formerly Kansas) Yearly Meeting of Friends, a division of the Evangelical Friends Alliance, one of the two Friends missionaries heard of the expulsion order while in Nairobi for medical tests. James Morris, the field superintendent of the mission who has spent 25 years in Burundi, was given only a 48-hour reentry permit into Burundi, Robinson said. However, 13 Friends missionaries were not affected by the order.

When contacted at the Burundi Embassy in Washington D.C., Clement Samdira, the charge d’affaires, said, “The missionaries were expelled because they violated the law. As foreigners, they have no political rights, but they were preaching politics in churches and were encouraging people to engage in ethnic activities.”

Samdira declined to answer whether these missionaries preached the allegedly political sermons during a given week or extending over a longer period of time.

Burundi, one of the poorest nations of Africa, is about the size of Maryland and has a population of about four million. Fifty-two percent of the population is Roman Catholic and 8 percent is Protestant. Most of the other missionaries expelled were European Roman Catholics.

Like many other African countries, Burundi is vulnerable to tribal confrontations. The country is comprised of three ethnic groups: Hutu, 85 percent; Tutsi, 14 percent; and Twa, 1 percent; with the Tutsi clearly in control.

In April 1972, an unsuccessful attempt by the Hutu to overthrow the ruling Tutsi resulted in the massacre of an estimated 100,000 Hutus, mostly the influential and educated. Many church leaders, apparently because of their education and leadership potential rather than their religion, were killed. This caused a dearth in leadership from which the local churches were recovering before the recent expulsion order.

World Scene

The Mexican government continues its ban on evangelical radio broadcasts. An official letter from the Secretary of the Interior’s legal office to evangelical announcer Alejandro Garrido last month stated that “it is not possible to remove the prohibition” on Spanish language religious radio programs imposed in July 1978. A Mexico City newspaper quoted the same office as saying the reason was that programs, particularly broadcasts along the U.S. border, often promised miraculous cures. A spokesman for the National Commission of Evangelical Executives, which represents 90 percent of the evangelical community in Mexico, denounced this “flagrant violation of human rights” that confuses legitimate evangelical programs with “a few charlatan broadcasters.”

Latin America has a new magazine for pastors and church leaders. The 36-page quarterly Continente Nuevo (“New Continent”) was launched last November by the Luis Palau Evangelistic Team. The magazine is published in Mexico City.

A conference of Latin American charismatic Catholic leaders in Lima, Peru, was attended by the archbishop of Lima. Thus Cardinal Juan Landazuri, who earlier served as first vice-president of CELAM III, put his stamp of approval on charismatic renewal in the Roman Catholic Church. The 90 participants at this sixth Charismatic Catholic Encounter for Latin America were elated. They closed the conference with a nine-hour evangelistic meeting that drew 10,000 persons. Hundreds responded to an invitation to accept Christ.

Namibia’s Roman Catholic prelate has broken with the dominant Lutheran church’s strong backing of SWAPO. Last December German-born Bishop Rudolph Koppmann joined with Lutheran and other church leaders in a pastoral letter deploring South Africa’s decision to go ahead with elections in Namibia without United Nations supervision. But he finds the current UN plan for elections “too wishy-washy” and the Finnish and Evangelical Lutheran Churches “openly pro-SWAPO.” He blames the South West African Peoples Organization for importing Soviet influence and, along with South Africa, for escalating the guerilla war.

The Irish Presbyterian Church has voted by a wide majority to continue suspension of its World Council of Churches membership for a second year. At its General Assembly last month, the church also recognized a motion to be presented to next year’s assembly that would terminate WCC membership. Also in Northern Ireland, Ian Paisley, clergy leader of the Protestant hard-line Democratic Unionist Party, led all others in elections to the European Parliament.

Georgi Vins’s family has joined him in the United States. The wife, five children, mother, and niece of the exiled Soviet pastor arrived last month, the same night as Vins was addressing the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. The family is living in a rented house in Middlebury, Vermont. Vins has stressed that he ought not to be identified as a human rights dissident, or as a campaigner for Russian Jews wanting to emigrate, or as part of an underground church. “Reform Baptists meet openly,” he says. “We only want separation of church and state as guaranteed in the Soviet Union constitution, and the freedom to preach the gospel.”

Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan has announced he will resign in January. Coggan, primate of the Church of England, will be 70 in October. For the first time, Anglican clergy will have a voice in the selection of their leader. Prior to the formation of a Crown Appointments Commission in 1977, only government officials presented their selection to the Queen for her formal appointment.

Pope John Paul II will summon the Roman Catholic Dutch hierarchy to a “special synod” in an unprecedented effort to resolve their deep differences. The meeting with the seven bishops is slated for early next year in Rome. The Dutch clergy is among the most theologically “progressive” in the Catholic Church, and feisty Bishop Jan Matthijs Gijsen of Roermond has taken strong exception to these trends. Earlier this year he warned Catholic politicians against supporting legalization of abortion in the country, saying they should be refused the sacraments if they do.

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