A Church of Christ Renewal Movement Perplexes Many

When pastor Andy Lindo came to the Church of Christ in Poway, California, a town near San Diego, the church membership soared, especially among young people. Something else soared at the Poway Church of Christ: controversy. As Lindo’s ministry took hold, some parents of young members began picketing.

Lindo is a practitioner of a much-debated renewal movement spreading throughout local congregations of the Church of Christ across the country. For want of a better term, outsiders call it “The Crossroads Movement,” because it started with Chuck Lucas, pastor of the Crossroads Church of Christ in Gainesville, Florida, in 1971. Lucas conducts seminars for other Church of Christ ministers.

The practices include discipleship, aggressive evangelism, prayer partnerships in which older Christians are matched with newer ones, and something known as “one-another Christianity,” a term that summarizes the emphasis on personal growth in the faith.

There have been some excesses that caused much consternation among Church of Christ members who are not part of the movement. At Lindo’s church in Poway, it was once a practice to discuss the personal problems of members openly in a “soul talk.” This is no longer done.

Ronald Brumley, an elder in the Poway church, said, “We have been overly strong in giving out advice” about how participants should live their lives, and people who wanted to leave the movement have been unduly ostracized. He and Lindo say they regret the division and controversy surrounding the movement, but they also feel the blame does not lie only with them, and say they are making efforts at reconciliation.

Some accusers attack the books used by Crossroads workers. Jay Adams’s Competent to Counsel is labeled “a Calvinistic book with incorrect relation to the Holy Spirit.” Stephen Olford’s Manna in the Morning is criticized as “an extra-biblical catechism.” (Olford and Adams are widely known authors in the larger evangelical sphere). The New International Version of the Bible has been called “a transdenominational version that cannot convert anyone.”

The Church of Christ has no denominational hierarchy or official spokesmen, but affiliated schools and publications are divided over the Crossroads movement. Jerry Jones of the Harding University Bible Department, James Lovell of Action magazine, and Reuel Lemmons, editor of the publication Firm Foundation, all support Lucas and Crossroads. All three reject the charges of cultism leveled at Crossroads, and say that news media sensationalism has blown things out of proportion. There have been numerous articles appearing in local newspapers in cities to which Crossroads has spread. The Gainesville, Florida, paper has written extensively on it, and with hostility. Ira Rice, editor of a Birmingham, Alabama, Church of Christ publication, Contending for the Faith, is critical, and has reprinted an investigative article on Crossroads from the Los Angeles Times. Rice believes the movement’s philosophy of total commitment amounts to a kind of salvation by works.

John Banks, a San Diego-area Church of Christ minister, regards Rice as a muckraker, but he said Rice has handled the Crossroads issue correctly. “Someone has to blow the whistle sometime,” he said. In conjunction with other San Diego ministers, Banks purchased an extensive, theologically detailed, newspaper ad that echoed many of the charges against Crossroads, and which dissociated the ministers’ churches from it.

Much of the furor has been on university campuses, pitting longstanding campus outreaches and Crossroads workers. William J. Teague, president of Abilene Christian University, states that his university does not permit Chuck Lucas or his direct associates to speak on campus. Otto Spangler of the Baptist Campus Ministry on the Gainesville campus of the University of Florida feels that after many efforts to cooperate, “there is no room for dialogue” with the exclusivist Crossroads workers. Said Spangler: “I could not begin to tell of the damage done to students whom I have counseled because of the practices of this church. I would warn anyone against involvement with this mindset.”

Brumley, of the Poway Church of Christ, was asked if the large numbers attending his church means that the Crossroads movement is valid. He said the numbers at least show that “something is happening.” It seems, though, that within and without the Church of Christ, there is little agreement on what this is.

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