Letters

Hestenes An Inspiration

Returning from a Fuller Seminary conference, where Roberta Hestenes had taught and inspired me, I was surprised to see her on the cover of your March 3 issue! Your article points out clearly that women can desire ordained ministry. As an evangelical woman pastor in a mainline denomination, I often feel like whining, “Nobody understands me.” Most other women ministers in my denomination assume I share their agenda of pushing social issues without personal conversion; most hold me at arm’s length. When I interact with other evangelicals, I often face prejudice because they assume they know what a mainline woman minister believes.

Thank you for telling Hestenes’s story. There are other women in the church who are “being found” and “called to use [their] gifts.” Thank God he advances his kingdom through both men and women.

Rev. Judie Ritchie

Christ Presbyterian Church

Minneapolis, Minn.

Your cover story on my friend and colleague Roberta Hestenes is most heartwarming. A decade ago, when she was invited to join our World Vision Board, she was selected not because she is a woman but because of her passion for hurting, suffering people, her brilliance as a thinker, and her very evident leadership qualities.

Ted W. Engstrom

President Emeritus World Vision

Monrovia, Calif.

My heart sank upon reading the article about Hestenes “blazing the trail” for evangelical women into more leadership positions in the church. I cannot accept women being ordained or holding positions of spiritual authority over men. I am surprised and dismayed that you would feature such a woman as a “trailblazer.”

Mrs. Janet Lindeblad Janzen

Wichita, Kan.

The article brought tears to my eyes—of joy, over the work of God in her life and through her to others, and over what her triumph (and CT’s article) means for Christian women.

W. Ward Gasque

Princeton, NJ.

I would like to suggest that the part Robert Munger played early in Hestenes’s life is a significant “role model” to men in ministry who are in positions to recognize, respond to, and release the gifts God may have given to women.

Rev. Jacquelin Gatliff

Carmel Presbyterian Church

Charlotte, N.C.

See It and Say It in Christianese

When a friend recently became a Christian, he told me his toughest adjustment wasn’t talking to his old buddies about his conversion. It was learning to talk like a real believer.

The first time he put his freshly sanctified foot in his mouth, he said, was when he called the pastor’s sermon “a talk.” But he really felt like a neophyte when he told someone at the church he began attending that he wanted to read a Bible passage he’d come across the day before. He was greeted by quizzical looks, until a helpful eavesdropper translated: “I think he means share.”

So for my friend and anyone else nonconversant in the language of the faith. I’ve created this chart. Carry it with you, and when you’re not sure what to say, select at random any three-digit number. Instantly, you’ll have a phrase that will unmistakably stamp you as Christian. For instance, a 455 is “nurturing, devotional praise,” a phrase only a Christian could say, or would want to—even if no one knows what it means.

EUTYCHUS

The “Ten Suggestions”?

Judith Loback’s “Sunday Is No Day for Shopping” [Speaking Out, Mar. 3] is a good supplement to Eugene H. Peterson’s “Confessions of a Former Sabbath Breaker” [Sept. 2, 1988]. Both speak of the Sabbath (Sunday) observance as being for our benefit. Why is everyone (including pastors) afraid to say that God commands us to keep the Sabbath day holy? It seems that we no longer have the Ten Commandments, but ten suggestions for more successful living.

Allen Marsh

Nampa, Idaho

If Christians would refrain from Sunday activities that require others to work to serve them, we would have a much better basis on which to criticize those who work on Sunday.

Paul R. Couzens

Gallup, N.M.

It is regrettable to find such objections as set forth by Loback and reference to the habit of many who shop after the morning service as wrong. There is positively no condemnation for such a practice in the Bible. As a matter of fact, to do so is probably as much a restful exercise as is mowing the lawn on Sunday afternoon.

William Ritz

Santa Cruz, Calif.

Conversion Through Mra

Thank you for the good and fair review of the biography of Frank Buchman by Donald Bloesch [Books, Mar. 3]. I came to Christ 30 years ago at college through people in Moral Re-Armament. As for downplaying doctrine, MRA always emphasizes that it is for “enhancing people’s primary loyalties.” Furthermore, for over 75 years the Oxford Group and MRA have sought out those far removed from the church, and through some brilliant pre-evangelistic approaches reached out to guerrilla fighters, Communists, even headhunters, and been a gateway for hundreds of such people choosing the church of their choice. Despite this freedom of choice, virtually all who have come to faith through MRA have chosen a Trinitarian church and believe deeply in the divinity and power of the resurrected Jesus.

Dr. Bryan T. Hamlin

Cambridge, Mass.

Buchman appears in print as an evangelical. Heresies Exposed, by William C. Irvine, is an expose of Buchmanism or the Oxford Group movement. With this generation being tossed to and fro, and sailing about with every wind of doctrine, a storm warning must be given.

Hugh Cantelon

Bellingham, Wash.

“Crazy, Cultic Charismatics”

I was saddened by your review of D. R. McConnell’s book A Different Gospel [Books, Mar. 3], I am one of those “crazy, cultic charismatics” who has much faith in Christ Jesus, according to his Word. I feel I can go to Jesus in prayer and ask for healing and he will heal me according to his Word. I pray readers will not try to judge Brothers Hagin and Price and other followers of Jesus until they first pray and analyze to see if their “faith” sermons line up with the Word of God.

Patricia Marshall

Kingwood, Tex.

I’ve listened to Kenneth Copeland for five years on TV and know what he says. What he preaches is new business because since Saint Augustine neither Roman nor Reformed clergy has preached the full gospel.

Homer William Smith

Louisville, Ky.

If I knew you took such views against truly anointed men of God as Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Robert Tilton, I would never have touched your magazine.

Rev. Rita A. Nugent

Brigham City, Vt.

Fed Up With Televangelists?

As an avid and enthusiastic reader of your magazine, I beg to differ with a comment by Peter Crescenti [Arts, Mar. 3] regarding popular music’s perception of the embarrassing antics of some television evangelists. Crescenti’s suggestion of a boycott of the record industry is like a doctor treating only the symptoms but not the problem. Music is an expression of the songwriter’s opinion. A song may become popular if it touches a common feeling in a number of people. A lot of people are obviously fed up with spiritual leaders on television who beg for both forgiveness and money. It is not bad to have a little reminder from the rest of the world to be careful of the images we project.

Easily Ozzy Obsourne has gone too far in expressing his views. Perhaps more in order would be a boycott of some of our more public leaders who have proven themselves to have little moral or financial accountability.

Karl Russell

Denver, Colo.

The Mk Paradox

Thanks for Ruth Tucker’s article on MKs [Feb. 17]. I have done a survey myself of over 300 adult MKs. Since the publication of my own efforts to put perspective on my MK experience (formerly Letters I Never Wrote, now Letters Never Sent [David C. Cook]), I have heard from hundreds more.

As Tucker discovered, conclusions of us as a group seem to be elusive. I believe it is because we refuse to face the simple fact that in the very act of following Christ, our lives take on the same paradox that his did—the great joy of resurrection, but the great travail of the garden as well. To affirm the positive side of the MK experience is not to negate the harder parts. To talk of the pain issues is not to negate the joy. As in any other non-MK’s life, there are both joys and sorrows. This inability to accept the paradox of both pain and blessing seems to be what provokes the extremism on both sides—those who say there are no problems and those who say it’s culture. It’s also a difficult thing to be 13 and try and integrate into your own culture when you don’t know the rules. Boarding school can be fun, with lots of activities, but it isn’t home. It’s the confusion of “When I have so much good in my life, how come sometimes I can feel so bad?” that leads to despair.

But beyond all the words and discussions, let us not forget one thing. For whatever reasons, some were wounded in the battle. I hear from them constantly.

Ruth E. Van Reken

Indianapolis, Ind.

I really sat up when Tucker quoted from an article published recently in Simroots, in which the author branded MKs who complain about alienation and loneliness “a bunch of crybabies.”

In fairness to the author—me—though those four words make a good quote, they do not convey the heart, which was about 2,000 words long. I agree that many had, and still have, a great deal of pain stemming from their upbringing. This brings a twofold responsibility. The one who is hurting must not wallow in his pain but must seek godly solutions to his present difficulties. Second, those of us whose MK experience was positive have a responsibility to help those who are hurting. Indeed, we are perhaps best qualified to do so.

Rev. Lance V. Long

Wheatfield, Ind.

It is surely a misunderstanding of Scripture to think that the Great Commission somehow supplants our covenant responsibilities to our children.

James and Robin Pfeiffer

Kintnersville, Pa.

I wish someone would ban that awful term “MK.” When I was a child, I had no idea I was an MK—I thought I was a regular person who lived abroad with her parents in a rather fascinating country. Only when I came to live in the U.S. as a teenager did I find myself lumped into a category with people I didn’t know and with whom I sometimes had little in common—someone for whom the little box of weirdness had already been constructed. Please, if you want to help the children of missionaries feel well-adjusted, don’t saddle them with such a dreadful label.

Sara K. Davis

Havertown, Pa.

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