A Wolf Appears at the Door of Ralph Winter’s Mission Center

Pasadena campus could be lost for his Carey University.

For four years the U.S. Center for World Mission has held tenuous title to the Pasadena, California, campus it agreed to purchase for $8.5 million. Now it appears that foreclosure proceedings are imminent.

From the initial option-to-buy payment in October 1977 on, each quarterly installment due date has produced another crisis. During all of 1980 the center fell back to meeting overdue payments one day before the next was due. This year it has not kept to even this tardy schedule, failing to meet payment obligations on both March 1 and June 1. A grace period date extending payment of the $300,000 in arrears to July 15 was also missed. As of August 18, only $140,000 of that amount had been assembled, and another $175,000 payment fell due on September 1.

In July of 1980, the U.S. Center borrowed an interest-free amount of $300,000 to exercise its option to purchase and make the down payment on homes adjacent to the campus for an added $3.3 million. This move was defended because income from the rented properties would cover the added payments, and because control of the neighborhood would prevent deterioration and eventually restore balance to the campus (since two former dormitories have been converted to other uses). Because of a “wrap-around” clause in that transaction, loss of the campus would also spell loss of the added housing.

The sellers of the campus—a Nazarene college that moved to more spacious facilities in San Diego, now named Point Loma College—felt obliged to protect its interests. It therefore filed for foreclosure with the State of California last month. From the date notice was served, the U.S. Center has 90 days to cure its payment delinquency. If it fails to do so, a final 15 days will be permitted for coming up with the total outstanding balance. Thereafter the property would be forfeited and offered publicly in a foreclosure sale.

The U.S. Center for World Mission is the brainchild of Ralph D. Winter. He wanted to provide a facility that could be utilized by mission agencies in exploring ways to communicate the gospel message to the more than half of the world’s population now culturally isolated from contact with Christians.

The creative ferment he wanted to stimulate is going on. Forty-two agencies are involved in activities at the center, and have devoted 200 full-time staff to them. These operations are financially self-sustaining.

The fertile mind of the soft-spoken and talkative Winter has spawned an astonishing number of bold new concepts and movements. He has collected degrees from California Institute of Technology, Columbia and Cornell universities, and Princeton Theological Seminary in engineering, teaching English as a second language, structural linguistics, and theology. He served as a missionary to the Mayan Indians of Guatemala for 10 years and as a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of World Mission for 9.

He helped found the theological education by extension (TEE) movement, and has inspired the formation of the Association of Church Missions Committees, the William Carey Library, the American Society of Missiology, and the Institute of International Studies. He has created such conferences as Edinburgh ’80, which drew mixed reviews (CT, Dec. 12, 1980, p. 62), and the 1979 First Athens Congress on World Missions, which is best forgotten.

Winter’s recent energies have been focused on his William Carey International University for postgraduate extension studies in international development (CT, Nov. 7, 1980, p. 70), but Virgil A. Olson, formerly executive secretary of the Baptist General Conference Board of World Missions, became president this month. Winter is currently concentrating on his Frontier Fellowship, designed to mobilize broad-based action on behalf of the unreached peoples.

Most of Winter’s concepts that were visionary at the time have eventually been vindicated. But conceptualizers do not always make the best administrators. And Winter’s restless mind is prone to move on to new challenges before the last ones have been nailed down.

The disenchanted note that the member agencies of the U.S. Center for World Mission have now been consigned to one building of the campus and that the rest is now earmarked for the William Carey International University. Some loyal to the center concept object to the secularizing of both the WCIU charter and catalog descriptions that has accompanied the school’s drive for accreditation.

The agencies based at the U.S. Center seem mostly unfazed by the latest turn of events. “We’ve been under this for the four-and-a-half years that I’ve been on this campus,” said C. Ray Carlson of International Films, expressing doubt that this crunch is any more serious than those that have preceded it. He noted that member agencies have one-year leases that any new owner must honor—and most likely would be willing to extend for at least the short term.

The director of another agency, however, was concerned that he had heard of no contingency plans from Winter, and has made his own—obtaining promises of space in a Southern California mission agency headquarters and in commercially leased space.

Observers say they feel that valuable interaction fostered at the U.S. Center among, for instance, groups concentrating on the approach to Muslims, Chinese, and animists will continue whether or not they remain physically contiguous, with some shakeout in the groups now clustered there. But loss of the campus would seal off student access to the missions think tank—a tangible loss.

Determinedly optimistic, Winter says the threat of foreclosure is what is needed to reawaken the Christian world. “It’s like we’ve been crying ‘Wolf! Wolf!’ and there’s never been a wolf appear. We really need a wolf about now.” Switching metaphors, he says God has given this “genuine” crisis to “push us out of the eagle’s nest, forcing us to fly” as people realize what God has “been doing on that campus.” That, he contends, will enable them to soar to meet the $6 million payment due in two years. “I think,” he adds, “it would be just hopeless to barely make these payments right up to the doorstep of that ‘balloon’ payment.”

Before the end of the year it should be clear whether Winter’s venture has begun to soar—or crash-landed.

Outcome of ORU Encounter

The Bar Association Does Accreditation About-Face

The outcome seemed uncertain, but in the final David-versus-Goliath encounter between Oral Roberts School of Law and the American Bar Association, the small man won. After hours of heated debate last month in New Orleans, the ABA House of Delegates voted 147 to 127 in favor of amending its standard 211, thereby permitting accreditation of a law school that requires its students and faculty to pledge adherence to the school’s religious precepts. With that, ABA accreditation of ORU followed.

At issue was the question of religious discrimination. Earlier the ABA denied accreditation to ORU’s Coburn School of Law, charging religious discrimination in its exclusive hiring of faculty and admission of students who would sign its code of honor (CT, Sept. 4, p. 73).

But in a June 8 lawsuit, ORU turned the tables on that charge, insisting that the ABA itself discriminated against a religious institution’s First Amendment right to practice its beliefs. And a federal district court judge in Chicago issued a preliminary ruling in favor of the law school, suspending court action against the ABA only until its house of delegates could meet in August to settle the matter.

Delegates to the ABA convention thus faced probable court action plus an unstated but clearly perceived threat to the ABA’s future role in approving and accrediting law schools.

“It was a strong underlying issue that was not stated,” said Detroit lawyer Dennis Archer about that threat. Archer had hotly debated against ORU accreditation, convinced the action would be tantamount to ABA approval of “pronounced discriminatory practice.” He said ORU lawyers by their own admission stated ORU “intended to be discriminatory,” admitting only students or faculty who would sign their pledge.

Archer added, “ORU has a right to do what they want to do even though I object to it. But they have no right to obtain the ABA accreditation. That’s a privilege, not a right. So why should we succumb or else be blackjacked into giving them something just because they want it?”

Robert Skolrood, ORU general counsel, also believes ORU’s pending lawsuit influenced the August decision. “Although the ABA had recognized for a long time that it would have to amend its standard 211,” he said, “they had really dragged their feet on it. The lawsuit obviously had a strong effect on that change.”

Even though Skolrood feels lawsuit action is a “last resort measure,” he said this one was necessary. “Any time you have groups telling religious institutions what they should believe contrary to that religious body’s own beliefs,” he explained, “then on the basis of First Amendment free exercise of religion and a group’s refusal to follow the Constitution you have to resort to the courts.”

He added, “Once you allow any group to tamper with another group’s First Amendment rights, we’re all in trouble.” He said we live in the aftermath of the sixties when freedom from religion was stressed rather than freedom of religion.

ABA accreditation of ORU Coburn did not come without warnings, however. Opponents said the ABA was setting a precedent for future exclusionary practices by other law schools. “Contrary to the whole history of this country,” said Erwin Griswold, former U.S. Solicitor General, “any institution now that wants to will be able to put up a sign that says no Jews admitted or no Catholics admitted.”

But in the final heat of combat, former bar association president Whitney North Seymour, Sr., said it all. “It may be necessary to take a deep gulp,” he advised, “and accept things we might not wish to accept in order to preserve the role of the ABA in approving law schools.”

With that gulp the little ORU law school won the battle against the 200,000-member ABA. For newly accredited ORU law students, that legal battle may be the most significant fight of their careers.

The Pentecostal Holiness Church

Members Send A Message By Electing A New Bishop

The International Pentecostal Holiness Church last month elected as general superintendent a man who had resigned from an administrative position in the denomination only five months earlier.

Leon Stewart succeeds Bishop J. Floyd Williams, who headed the church since 1969. (Bishop is an honorary title conferred for life upon general superintendents of the denomination.) Williams is also the current president of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Stewart, the man chosen to succeed Williams, served during the previous four years as vice-chairman, the number two post in the church administration. However, after 16 years of service at the national level of his denomination, most recently as director of evangelism, Stewart resigned in March of this year, partly, at least, in protest “against the leadership of the church.” After a four-month pastorate in Roanoke, Virginia, Stewart made a triumphal return when he won with 55 percent of the votes on the third ballot. But so unexpected was this turn of events that his wife, Donna, was preparing to fly back to Roanoke from Oklahoma City when she learned after being paged on the Dallas-Fort Worth airport public address system that her husband had just been elected bishop.

Almost unnoted by the delegates was the fact that the new bishop is legally blind. Over many years he has done his work so well that his handicap was not an issue. An unsuspecting visitor would not have guessed the presiding officer was unsighted, so efficiently and precisely did he direct the conference business.

During the 12 years of Bishop Williams’s administration, the Pentecostal Holiness Church was transformed from a rural southern denomination to one of international character. A visible sign is relocation of its headquarters from rural Georgia to metropolitan Oklahoma City. Williams personally supervised rewriting of the church’s charter, changing the name to include the word international, and providing means for affiliation with similar churches in other nations.

Known for his ability to deal with tough problems facing his denomination, Williams most recently led in closing the denomination’s Oklahoma Southwestern College, which relieved the church of a long-standing financial burden.

The election of Stewart marked the culmination of several controversies that had simmered beneath the surface in the denomination for several months. One of these concerned the Catholic charismatic renewal, which Williams attacked in several church forums during the summer. “There is no way,” he said, “a person can be saved, sanctified, and baptized with the Holy Ghost and be a devout member of the Catholic church.” He warned against the specter of “Romanism” as a threat to his denomination.

Following what was assumed to be Williams’s lead, newsletters were sent to all the Pentecostal Holiness ministers in the U.S. attacking Vinson Synan, assistant general superintendent of the church. Synan, a well-known historian and activist in the charismatic renewal, is the son of former Bishop J. A. Synan, who was general superintendent for 24 years until replaced by Williams 12 years ago.

Despite these attacks, Synan was returned to office in the number three position in the denomination’s administration, after running third to Stewart and Williams for the office of bishop. Some observers interpreted this action as a middle-of-the-road directive, neither condemning present relationships with the charismatic renewal nor making any greater official recognition of the group. In a later action, the conference condemned the use of church mailing lists to attack church leaders.

Another problem facing Williams related to his activities as one-third owner of Bethany Village Incorporated, a private nursing home at Bethany, Oklahoma, near the denomination’s headquarters building. The nursing home was supposedly begun as a denominationally sponsored project, and irregularities were alleged in its transfer to private ownership.

In July, Williams was tried and acquitted by the General Board of Administration on charges brought by two laymen alleging conflict of interest in the nursing home. Nevertheless, documents circulated in the lobbies of the conference kept the issue alive before the delegates. Williams was also under criticism for allegedly heavy-handed treatment of subordinates who disagreed with his policy.

The nineteenth quadrennial general conference of the Pentecostal Holiness Church was convened in Oklahoma City amid the travel confusion of the air controllers’ strike. Although the strike reduced attendance, the denomination’s 1,400 U.S. churches were still represented by 1,200 voting delegates.

Three smaller Pentecostal denominations loosely affiliated with the IPHC also participated. The major sermons at evening sessions were brought by the leaders of these groups: Herbert Carter of the Pentecostal Freewill Baptist Church (13,500 members); James Martin of the Congregational Holiness Church (6,000 members); and James A. Forbes, Sr., of the predominantly black Original United Holy Church (25,000 members). These three groups are in various stages of a process leading to full merger with the Pentecostal Holiness Church. The conference also adopted a resolution affirming full communion with the Pentecostal Methodist Church of Chile (320,000 members), thereby confirming at the highest official level an affiliation that has existed since 1967.

The Home and Family Life Department brought the most explosive report to the floor in a document pointing out the problems brought by divorce, homosexuality, unmarried couples, single parent families, and abortion. The resolution on abortion was a strongly worded right-to-life document that called abortion on demand “intentional murder of an innocent, unborn child,” usually due to selfishness.

V. ALEX BILLS

Greece

Believers Get A Taste Of Public Evangelism

Laws in Greece against proselytizing have continued to hinder open Christian witness, despite guarantees of such freedom under the country’s new constitution. In previous years, Protestant Christians have been jailed for handing out tracts. A Jehovah’s Witness currently awaits trial for trying to win converts.

Against this background comes news of a successful 12-day gospel campaign organized by the Hellenic Missionary Union in southeastern Greece this summer. Costas Macris, president of the HMU, led “Project Maranatha,” the first of its kind in Greece in recent times.

A 17-year veteran with the Regions Beyond Missionary Union in Irian Jaya, Macris was afflicted with several tropical diseases that forced him to end his ministry there. After a year’s convalescence in the U.S., he returned to his native Greece to take up a new career challenging Greek believers to evangelize both at home and abroad.

Maranatha’s 55-member team, most of whom had no previous such experience, presented the gospel at two beaches, a prison farm, a disco center, and in the main squares of eight villages and cities. Each day’s program included 45 minutes of contemporary Christian music by “Anagennesis” (Regeneration), a group of young Greek Christians. This reporter, a missionary with Greater Europe Mission, gave 15-minute magic shows, presenting the gospel through visual illusions. Apostolos Bliates, director of Campus Crusades AGAPE movement in Greece, preached at the meetings.

Negative responses to the outreach ranged from accusations that it was politically inspired to distrust from people who would have nothing to do with a spiritual movement outside the state (Greek Orthodox) church. A group of political leftists came to harass the team on one evening. On another, a number of Jehovah’s Witnesses came to take advantage of the public interest in the gospel.

But a combined total of more than 7,000 were attracted to the presentations, and at about half of the gatherings local Greek Orthodox priests were not only in attendance but supportive. An inmate at the prison farms in Nafplion remarked, “in the five-and-a-half years that I have been here, no one has ever presented the gospel to me.” Dozens of personal contacts following each meeting resulted in about 250 individuals leaving their names to receive more information or a New Testament.

Maranatha’s success was due primarily to good organization. Before the project started, an exploratory team enlisted the support of local clerics, politicians, and the police. In Corinth, where the evangelistic team had perhaps its most receptive audience, the mayor printed one thousand handbills, and at his own expense placed front-page advertisements announcing the programs in the city’s newspapers.

In each locality the team made a positive impact on its listeners and evoked many inquiries about similar future presentations. The team distributed over one thousand copies of the Gospel of John and the Four Spiritual Laws booklet. Fearlessly sharing the gospel publicly was challenging, especially for team members with no previous experience. As an exhilarated director Macris remarked, “The day of aggressive evangelism in Greece has arrived.”

ROBERT H. HILL

World Scene

The Salvation Army has withdrawn its membership in the World Council of Churches. The denomination, which operates in 86 countries, put its membership in suspension in 1978 after a couple of its workers were killed by guerrilla activity in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia). The WCC helped provide funds for the Zimbabwe Patriotic Front. The Salvation Army said it withdrew last month because it felt the WCC is guided “by politics rather than the gospel,” but stressed that it intended to maintain a “fraternal status” with the ecumenical body.

Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) and the Andes Evangelical Mission (AEM) have decided to merge.SIM general director Ian Hay and AEM head Ronald Wiebe jointly announced the merger in Bolivia last month. The decision ends more than 18 months of study and discussion between the two organizations. Hay stated that both missions are “remarkably compatible” in their church-planting goals, administrative structures, and financial policies, as well as in doctrinal beliefs. AEM ultimately will become part of SIM. Formal integration of the two bodies is scheduled for January 1, 1982.

The Greek Bible Institute and a Christian old people’s home miraculously withstood fires that swept through a dozen suburbs in Athens early last month. The fires only scorched grass and shrubbery in front of the school and blistered paint on front windows and doors. A corner of the roof caught fire briefly before it was put out. The nearby old people’s home did not suffer any damage. The flames came up to the Bible school property line, then stopped. The fire burned down trees on property located on both sides of the school, operated by the Greater Europe Mission. The fires followed a continuing wave of bombings that started last December.

A colored (mixed race) woman withdrew her membership in one of South Africa’s all-white Dutch Reformed churches two weeks after the church accepted her as a full member. Miss Saartjie Pieterse, a 29-year-old live-in servant of a white family, withdrew under pressure from both her congregation and other white Christian supporters of the government’s policy of racial discrimination. Awie Heiberg, minister of the Linden church, said he had advised Miss Pieterse to withdraw to protect “her own interests and her future.”

Availability of Bibles in China is on the increase. A report from North China confirms that an active church ordered and received a shipment of 600 Bibles from Shanghai, where they were printed. The entire shipment sold out in two days.

North American Scene

The Spiritual Counterfeits Project in Berkeley, California, has started a telephone information service for people with questions about new religious groups and cult involvement. The Information and Referral Service was set up to handle more than 500 calls and letters coming into SCP monthly. The IRS number is (415) 527–9212, and is in service from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Pacific Time. The organization also will refer callers to people in their own areas if they need more help than they can get by phone.

A millionaire Fort Worth businessman, T. Cullen Davis, is offering a $100,000 reward to anyone who can prove that evolution is true. “I feel my money is absolutely safe,” said Davis, who recently became a Christian. He originally offered $2,500, then raised it to $50,000, and then doubled it to make the award attractive.

The Journal of Communication studied 12 television soap operas for sexual content and found “General Hospital” to contain the most. The magazine reported that the social as well as sexual relationships between males and females in the soaps, and the intimacy of conversations, were not typical of real-life patterns. The researchers also found that intimate sexual relationships in the programs were most likely to occur between unmarried partners. They reported that “General Hospital” has gained a “cult-like” following among teen-agers.

Personalia

Dr. Verent J. Mills is stepping down as executive director of the Christian Children’s Fund of Richmond, Virginia. The 68-year-old native of Birmingham, England, who began his missionary career more than 50 years ago, joined the fund in 1947 as regional director for the Far East, and became director of operations in 1958. His successor will be James MacCracken, former executive director of Church World Service.

A raised consciousness to the need for evangelical churches to reach out in social renewal—that’s just part of what motivates Bill Kallio, age 31, as the new executive director of Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA). Kallio was formerly assistant director of Baxter Community Center ministries with the Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Deaths

Morrow Coffey Graham, 89, mother of evangelist Billy Graham; of a heart ailment August 14 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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