Page 5456 – Christianity Today (2024)

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How can local churches minister to prisoners?

The man to answer that question is Charles Colson of Prison Fellowship. Paul Robbins, Leadership executive editor, and Christianity Today, Inc., board members Fred Smith and Stephen Brown went to Washington, D. C. to interview the author of Born Again and Life Sentence.

Smith, a Dallas company president, questioned and commented from the layman's point of view, while Brown, pastor of Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church in Florida, contributed the pastoral perspective. In the process, many thorny church/parachurch questions surfaced.

The resulting mosaic touched on the problems of sharing volunteer manpower, spreading the gospel to the unchurched, and dividing the labor between church and parachurch organizations.

Although many questions emerged, they all seemed tied to a basic one: "How can Christians infuse the light of the kingdom into the world's dark corners?"

Leadership: Is the allegation true that most parachurch ministries bleed the manpower and womanpower of the local church?

Charles Colson: No, I don't think so. Last week, for example, I spoke in northwest Indiana, and pastors from most of the churches in that area attended our meetings. As they came through the receiving line after one session, their comments were 100 percent supportive.

Fred Smith: This allegation has been around for a long time, and like most, it probably has a particle of truth in it. After all, there are a couple of potential conflicts in any parachurch/local-church relationship: the denomination and the local dynamics.

The denominational conflict with parachurch organizations is often the most intense, because both have programs to promote.

Meanwhile, the local minister faces conflict in three areas. His people come back from parachurch meetings all excited and energized about some new inspirational program. They wonder why their church can't get involved right away. They fail to realize that most of the work of implementing the programs falls on the poor, tired minister—who has not been out and gotten all excited. Instead, he feels a need to cool them down and get them back to being productive church members. Second, the pastor can't compete with the famous celebrity who heads up the parachurch program. Third, the parachurch organization naturally wants lots of financial support, and that threatens the local church's economy.

But the laymen see the parachurch ministry as an opportunity to cross-pollinate with other Christians. When you're a Baptist, for example, you're looking for an opportunity to be with Lutherans and Wesleyans, to see what they're like.

Steve Brown: Those conflicts do threaten me, Fred, and I wish they didn't. My ministry philosophy says I want people involved in organizations like Prison Fellowship, but it's not easy to step away from our church's programs and say to each member, "What is God calling you personally to do?"

Colson: I can't speak about Key Biscayne in particular, but I do find that laymen often get into parachurch ministries because they've already done everything in the church that's fulfilling to them. Now they see an opportunity to reach out beyond themselves and the local church. The biggest thing Prison Fellowship gives to laymen is a vehicle of direct ministry to people who are hurting badly. They often don't get that in traditional local-church activities.

People have a natural desire to help. Our ministry has no lack of volunteers, and we think the real key is making sure volunteers are challenged. They get on fire; they're giving beyond what they ever thought they could; they want to do more. They get out of the narrow confines of some churches, where they've done all the volunteer tasks and still feel unfulfilled. They go to hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, and skid row rediscovering the gospel they've been taught for many years. They see it working in the lives of people in totally different cultures—that's spiritually explosive.

Smith: There is, however, one thing local churches do that parachurch groups can never do—mature the saints. In parachurch organizations, you go to give, not to get. Yes, you get in the process of giving, but that isn't the same.

The maturing of the saints, not the reaching of the lost, should be the number one priority of the local congregation, because if you mature the saints, they'll reach the lost. If you reverse this priority, you create loveless evangelistic programs. People become involved not out of love but guilt or fear and end up spiritually crippled.

Colson: The church and the parachurch can't be viewed as either/or; they must be complementary. If they aren't, one must give way—and if one must give way, it should be the parachurch. The basic unit of the kingdom of God is the local church; the second chapter of Acts teaches us that. The parachurch serves its purpose only when it enables the church to better fulfill its biblical mission.

The parachurch can provide services that the local church, for one reason or another, is unable to provide. One pastor in one congregation can't be expert in nineteen different areas where people want to be involved. Thus he must draw on the training, resources, facilities, and skills of people who have committed themselves to a particular calling—a mission that's part of the biblical command but beyond the resources of the local church.

Leadership: Well over half the people reading this article are serving in churches of less than 250 people. Each of them has probably had ten or twelve appeals for help already this month: Youth for Christ wants to use the church facility for a meeting; Campus Crusade will be in town next week with a Lay Leadership Institute; the Billy Graham advance men have just been through preparing for a metropolitan crusade; Chuck Colson's going to come in a month to speak at the ministerium and will be looking for lay volunteers to minister at the local penitentiary.

What would you say to these individual pastors about the ideal relationship between these parachurch ministries and their 250-member congregations?

Colson: I would tell them we must help each other. I use their pulpits to challenge people to participate in the fellowship of suffering, and they use me to fill up their churches and get local people involved. Ideally, the motives on both sides are pure, although I recognize that's not always true. I've had some disillusioning experiences where churches used me on their big day to burn the mortgage, guarantee large revival attendance, or get more membership. And I probably have taken advantage of some churches by using their manpower without enough regard for their needs. But these situations are rare, and most parachurch ministries honestly work for a complementary relationship. We don't want the church to feel threatened.

Brown: In the beginning, most parachurch organizations seem to have great integrity. Temptation sets in when their bureaucracy begins to grow. They start seeing the weaknesses of the church and think they can do better—not just the special ministry they started, but everything.

Colson: I agree. The parachurch must remain distinctive from the local church. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is a good example of this distinctiveness. They could use their power and influence in ways that could be very threatening to local churches, but they work very hard not to do that.

Smith: There's a correlation in business, by the way. Breakthroughs in advanced technology are usually made by one engineer somewhere in a lonely laboratory. He forms a little company, perfects his idea, and then a larger company comes in and buys or merges with him, because it has the resources to saturate the market with his idea. The original idea may later be modified to suit the needs of the parent company.

Leadership: Doesn't specialization usually preempt generalization? The local church is committed to the general task: taking care of people from the cradle to the grave. The parachurch organization is committed to a specific task: ministering to prisoners behind bars. Doesn't the concentrated focus of a specialized ministry give it an attractive, advantageous quality that a generalized ministry will never have?

Colson: Yes. And if Prison Fellowship used its distinctive appeal to develop a whole range of ministry services, if we began to have Sunday worship for our own people, for example, we'd be out of line.

Leadership: Steve, what does a pastor look for in a good working relationship with a parachurch organization?

Brown: Being a pastor is not easy. In a church of 250 members, you've often got 250 bosses. So more than anything, a pastor looks for understanding on the part of parachurch personnel—that local-church ministry is a tough place to be. That simple recognition goes a long way toward establishing a good relationship.

Colson: That is our biggest problem in parachurch ministries: insensitivity to pastors' needs. We should genuinely desire to put them at ease. We don't want to take over what they're doing; if we do, our mission will fail. I'm fifty years old and can look forward to ten, maybe twenty more years of God allowing me to serve in this way. I want to leave behind something important to the kingdom, because I realize what I left behind in politics didn't matter. If I leave behind a parachurch organization that is at war with the local church, then I've failed. But if I've been able to speak prophetically and energize the church, giving it resources and equipment to do a biblical mission that hasn't been done, then I'll feel I've been faithful to God's calling.

Leadership: Chuck, how would you define a good working relationship with the local church?

Colson: I can tell you what it is not. We've run into the situations where a church or group of churches listens to our teachers, takes extensive notes, and then sets up its own independent prison ministry. This defeats one of our major purposes, which is to develop a national network of prison ministries. When somebody gets out of prison in Minneapolis and returns to Miami to live, we want to be able to call our care committee coordinator in Miami and have him meet this person at the plane. We can't do that if the ministry is fragmented.

Leadership: Doesn't this smack of turfism? The local church's turf is worship services, and Prison Fellowship's turf is anything having to do with prisoners.

Colson: No, I don't think so. Effective prison ministry requires a high degree of training and expertise. The 350,000 incarcerated people in this country cannot be stereotyped in any way except one: they all have a very low sense of self-esteem. Eighty-six percent have average or above IQ, but they're in a dehumanizing environment that makes them feel worthless. And in most of the prisons where we have worked, the local church has done as much harm as it has done good. Most people simply aren't trained to do prison work; they resort to methods that turn off more prisoners than they help. Sometimes it's because of fear, sometimes naiveté, and sometimes it's just lack of skill. For example, tracts usually don't work with prisoners. Once-a-year sermons are worse than useless. Unless visitors are willing to spend regular time caring about prisoners, they're just turning inmates against religion.

Leadership: What mistakes do you think most parachurch organizations have made that you want to avoid?

Colson: The parachurch usually comes in with a well-known leader who gets publicity and attention, while the unappreciated local pastor keeps slugging it out in the trenches. We run into this with prison chaplains. Although I never ask the press to go into a prison with me, they invariably do. And the chaplain, who has sat up all night with a prisoner whose father was dying or has spent hours with a drunk who's been in and out of prison seven times, begins to feel a little resentful of the big splash I make. I try to be especially sensitive to these feelings as they relate to both chaplains and pastors. I make sure I don't go to any prisoners unless our organization can offer them something they couldn't get otherwise.

I want us to stick to our unique services: First, expertise, experience, and training in prison ministry that we've spent five years developing. Second, a national network of care committees, so that people being released in one area can find help in another area. When an inmate fills out a form giving us the name and address of his family, we send it to a care committee in that area, and someone goes to visit the family. That is potent ministry. Third, we take the gospel to the people who will never attend a local church. The biggest problem in evangelism today is preaching to the same people over and over. Most of the people we minister to would not be willing to walk into a local church.

Smith: Too often the parachurch doesn't explain its program adequately to the local pastor. Such groups must tell what they're trying to do. Prison Fellowship is joining the local church in trying to reach needy people, but you're doing two additional things the local church can't do: you're ministering to the national prison population, and you're trying to change the prison system. The local church can do neither. The common purpose is to reach needy people—both can do that. But the local church needs to know that Prison Fellowship is doing more than reaching needy people.

Colson: That's an excellent summary. Jacques Ellul, the famous French lay theologian, wrote that if we can't identify with the suffering masses, our words are empty orthodoxy. We try to help the church identify with the suffering masses.

Leadership: After your organization goes into a prison, how do you build a ministry bridge to the local church?

Colson: When the inmate gives us the name and address of his family, the care committee finds a local church that will adopt them. These are families that would never have gone to church; if they had, they would have felt terribly out of place. Coming by this route, however, they do. The church feels a sense of paternal responsibility for them. It breaks down cultural and spiritual resistance.

Brown: The attitude with which a parachurch organization approaches this is very important. We've already said a pastor can't do 19 different things, but too often he's expected to do 119 things. He feels guilty at night when he goes to bed. Campus Crusade comes in and says, "We're going to win the world by 1985," and he thinks, I'm not even winning my community. Young Life comes in and says, "Kids in this town are drowning in sin," and he thinks, I can't even get my youth group going. Pretty soon he feels like he's drowning in a sea of need that can never be met.

Parachurch organizations can do two things for such a pastor. First, they can affirm him: "Pastor, you're a man of God." Second, they can offer help: "You'd like to reach prisoners, and we are going to help you."

Unfortunately too many groups come in with the attitude "You're not reaching prisoners, even though God told you to. What's wrong with your ministry?"

Smith: Pastors should be allowed to say to other organizations, "Look, I'm not going to help you with this. I'll cooperate in spirit; I'll pray for you; but I've got a ministry that God's called me to do. I've only got twenty-four hours in my day; when he gives me thirty-six, I'll give you half the increase."

Colson: We're not asking for the pastor's time—that's the point. We're only asking the pastor to help us find volunteers. The pastor should not say to us, "Get out—my ministry is discipleship, and I'm not interested in prisoners." First of all, there are people in his congregation who are. Second, prison work is biblical. He can say, "I'm busy twenty-four hours a day, but I'm delighted to appoint a task force in the church to work with you." We're asking the pastor to assign a lay person in his congregation to do the worrying about this issue, because he obviously can't.

Leadership: Are you saying he needs to remove himself from the line of communication, so the Prison Fellowship people talk directly to a lay person?

Smith: Many will be threatened by that.

Colson: But that kind of delegation is good leadership. One of the church's problems in using volunteers is that it doesn't give them things to do. If they volunteer but don't get told what to do or how to do it, they're soon bitter. Prison Fellowship has made its share of mistakes here. We've gone into an area, gotten people all excited about serving in the prison, and then for one reason or another not come back, not trained them and put them to work. It embitters them.

Through these experiences we've come up with some very basic principles on how to use volunteers:

First, when you recruit them, be sure you can use them.Second, screen them. Be sure they're the right people to do the right job.Third, train them. Tell people how to do what you want done.Fourth, be very specific about what you expect.Fifth, hold them accountable. If you give people a job to do and thereafter ignore things, they get the idea the job wasn't very important. But if you check two weeks later to make sure the job got done, they feel important and come back to do more.

We sometimes hear this argument that the parachurch takes volunteer labor away from the local church. I argue just the opposite. The parachurch helps use volunteer labor that would otherwise go to waste in the local church, because we give them jobs beyond the boundaries of their church, where they may be burned out. We must get believers out of their snug cocoons to experience the impact of what the Christian life can really mean to someone who is suffering. In politics, the motivation is the recognition, the stroking you receive, plus a bit of idealism that your views will prevail over the other guy's; it's mostly a reward of the ego. The only reason anybody should give money or time to the kingdom, however, is gratitude to Christ. If Christian volunteers do what they do out of a grateful heart—they'll stay with it. And they will be effective.

Leadership: Will Prison Fellowship help train the local church to eventually carry the organizational responsibility for prison ministry as well as the spiritual responsibility?

Colson: This is the difficult area. Right now we conduct 200 prison seminars each year. Through skilled instructors, we are easily able to train one volunteer for every four inmates. We are contemplating whether we could package this in such a way so we could go to a church and say, "We'll teach you how to put on a seminar in the nearby prison," train them, and then walk away.

The difficulty with this is that it introduces denominationalism into the prison—a huge stumbling block for the inmates. By working through local churches, we could put on three times as many seminars, but we'd be fostering denominationalism. We want to get local churches more directly involved but not at the expense of the unity and effectiveness of prison ministry. So far the only organizational structure we have within the local church is the Prison Fellowship task force, which adopts families.

Leadership: How does that work?

Colson: The best way to describe this is to share an example. After conducting our seminar at a prison in Jefferson City, Missouri, we set up a task force. After several months of ministry they realized that inmates' families coming to visit jailed relatives had no place to stay. So our volunteers started taking them home. That didn't work—too many problems of all kinds. So the churches got together and bought an old building to house inmates' families. It's being run by a former Southern Baptist missionary and a Catholic sister. Thirty women and their kids can stay there every night. During the day, a nursery is provided for the kids while the women visit their husbands. Talk about a witness! It's worth a thousand sermons. Churches are doing this, and we're providing the help and expertise.

Leadership: Just recently we heard a pastor say, "If the church were doing its job, we wouldn't need any parachurch organizations."

Brown: I've probably said that at least twenty times over the years—but I'm convinced it's a lie.

Leadership: Is it conceivable that part of a parachurch organization's ministry is to raise the consciousness level of ministry needs and then begin working its way out of a job?

Colson: In the first Prison Fellowship letter I ever wrote, I said, "I hope that in five years we will have established a model and I'll be free to move on and do something else." Now here we are, celebrating our fifth anniversary, growing bigger daily. It was unrealistic to think we could go out of business in our area of specialization. Somebody has to maintain the national network, somebody has to guarantee access to the prisons, somebody has to certify volunteers. You can raise the consciousness level, but by doing so you've created a movement, and the movement needs a rudder.

Smith: A parachurch organization has a sense of mission that makes members totally committed to a single cause. That's tough to create in a local church because of its very nature. Thus it shouldn't be feared.

Colson: That may be true. But both are needed. The great thing about the kingdom of God is its diversity. We'd be in terrible trouble today if there weren't some intellectuals, like R. C. Sproul and Richard Lovelace, who have profoundly affected my life. We'd be in awful shape without good Christian publishers. We'd be in bad shape if we didn't have good, strong local churches. God has called different people in different areas to provide different resources. All weave together to form a tapestry, which is the building of the kingdom. We can't say anyone thread is more important than another.

Brown: Ninety-nine percent of the people reading this article will agree with that, Chuck. But a day or two after reading it, half will be fighting like cats and dogs with another ministry somewhere. What goes wrong?

Colson: I think you overestimate how many would agree with my statement. Everybody gets a personal vision of the kingdom, and too often it crowds out everybody else's vision. We have to realize that only God has the overall picture.

Leadership: What should a pastor say to people about their financial support of parachurch ministries?

Smith: Many have been brought up on the theology of the church as the storehouse, the treasury. Some say you violate the storehouse concept when you give to a parachurch organization.

Colson: I don't agree with that strict a view. I consider myself a good member of my own church; yet there are needs and causes I want to be a part of, as God leads me. When you start saying all funds must be channeled through the local church, you are defeating the spirit that gave birth to many important movements. I know it's a problem; there are churches where Prison Fellowship is part of the church budget largely because they don't want us appealing to their individual members. I understand that. And although I think the storehouse concept is wrong, I agree there has to be accountability within the local church. I'm not sure you can have a hard and fast policy that's right for every church.

Leadership: Steve, how did you arrive at the financial viewpoint you teach at Key Biscayne Presbyterian?

Brown: Through what I call "significant failures." (Laughter) We tried urging people to pledge individually to specific missions. But we found some very worthwhile ministries were being ignored because they were low-profile and people didn't know about them.

Then we decided to have both specific pledges to a mission budget and pledges to our general expense budget, out of which we'd support lesser-known ministries. That didn't work, because some people weren't giving a dime to some things we felt should be supported. We didn't think someone should be able to say, "I'm giving my money for the pastor's salary but not for Prison Fellowship."

So after these two failed, we decided on a unified budget: we declare a percentage, different each year, that goes to missions outside the church. We're also open to our people giving to programs on their own. But we don't want it going both ways. We tell worthwhile organizations, "We want to support you. If you get money from our church budget, you'll get so much. But we realize you might do better on your own. So we'll still give you credibility with our people and you can try to approach them individually. But you don't get both. You must decide which route you want to go."

Leadership: What practical guidelines would you offer a pastor who wants to cooperate with parachurch ministries?

Smith: Find the person in your church who has a real burden for a specific task, and then let him do it.

Brown: Remember that you don't have to be in charge of everything.

Colson: Remember that the church is not the pastor—the church is all the people. The extent to which the pastor can get lay leadership involved multiplies the ministry of the local church geometrically and matures the saints.

Every recently arrived pastor feels the presence of the preceding minister. This can be a positive or a negative feeling. A pastor leaving a church can provide several categories of information to make sure his or her legacy is a positive one

Records

The membership roll should be up to date. It should include:

• Name of each member

• Current address

• Date of membership

• Method of membership (baptism, confirmation, transfer, or reinstatement)

In several denominations these records are kept by a lay volunteer. In most large congregations membership records are maintained by a paid staff member. Nevertheless, the departing minister should check to be sure that the membership roster is in order. A constituent roster should include persons who identify with the congregation but are not carried on the membership roll. This list may be nearly as long as the membership roster.

If a picture directory has been prepared, a copy of the two most recent editions should be given to the new minister. A list of shut-ins and others who need special attention from the pastor should be available. In many respects, the most valuable list of names a predecessor can leave behind is that of prospective new members, but too often it is carried in the pastor's head, and no written record exists.

The new minister will be grateful for a roster of all leaders and workers. It should include a list of all officers and also a list of Sunday school teachers, ushers, and others with special responsibilities. As a general rule, charter members expect a little extra deference, so if today's membership roll includes any charter members, their status should be noted.

If a new building has been constructed during the past several years, the successor will find it useful to receive a list of the names of the persons on the building committee. One reason this group deserves special attention is the widespread tendency for one or more members of the building committee to drop into inactivity after completion of construction. The new minister may be in a position to reactivate those former leaders by means of some active listening.

These ten financial records should be made available to the incoming minister:

• Last year's budget

• This year's budget

• Proposed budget for next year

• Financial statement for last year

• Financial statement for year to date

• Amount and repayment schedule of any current indebtedness, including accumulated unpaid bills

• Total expenditures on a year-by-year basis for the past twelve years

• Total receipts from member giving (excluding loans, rentals, etc.) for each of the past twelve years

• Amount given by each of the top twenty contributors last year (without names attached to the dollar figures)

• Sources of all benevolence giving, including special offerings, designated gifts, and budgeted items. The attendance records should include:

• Average attendance at Sunday morning worship for each of the past twelve years

• Sunday-by-Sunday worship attendance record for the past calendar year plus to date for this year

• Average attendance for each Sunday school class

• Average attendance for special services such as Easter, Christmas Eve, the annual meeting, and other special occasions

A copy of the history of this congregation should be made available to the new minister. Several pastors have left to their successor a file, or a bound volume, of the bulletins for the past year and of each issue of the parish newsletter.

Ideally, this bundle of a dozen different sets of records should be gathered by a group of lay volunteers, not the departing minister, and given to the successor either immediately on arrival or even before arrival. The greater the lay ownership in putting this package together, the more helpful those members can be to the new minister. The departing pastor should make it happen rather than do it.

Real Estate

A new minister should receive a key to every door that will lock in the building. Most older buildings have distinctive characteristics or idiosyncrasies, and the new minister should be advised about the doors that will not lock, the rooms that cannot be heated without overheating the rest of the building, and the public address system that picks up local fire department calls.

If the congregation provides a church-owned residence for the pastor, it should be repaired and improved during the period of vacancy. The departing minister should be honest rather than polite in providing a complete list of all necessary repairs.

If, as is increasingly common, the congregation pays a housing allowance rather than providing a church-owned residence, the departing minister could raise the question with the finance committee as to whether the allowance is adequate for a newcomer to purchase a home at current interest rates.

If the congregation owns a gymnasium, fellowship hall, or other building space used by nonmembers, the new minister should receive a list of policies and rules governing the facility and a schedule of the projected events for the next several months.

Program

A three or four-page list might include:

• Strongest groups, classes, organizations, choirs, and programs.

• Proposals for new programs now in the planning stage

• The most important annual events (such as the traditional format for Christmas Eve, the schedule for Easter Sunday, or the annual celebration of the congregation's founding)

• Traditional role of the choir

• Regular weekly schedule, including any seasonal changes

• Traditional responsibilities of any staff person (Does the associate minister always preach the Sunday after Easter? Who leads the worship experience on laity Sunday?)

• Special warnings on what is "off limits here"

• Local traditions for weddings, funerals, baptisms, farewells to departing members, a rose on the altar for the birth of a baby, or installation services for new officers

• Comments on the distinctive responsibilities and roles of special program staff, both lay and volunteer

Community

Ensure that the new pastor receives:

• A map of the community, preferably with homes of members spotted on it

• An economic and social statement about the community (often available from the local chamber of commerce or planning agency)

• Information about the local school systems, both public and private

• Traditional expectations of that congregation in regard to the role of the pastor as a community leader

• A list of the churches in the community or neighborhood with a few comments about relationships between this congregation and each of the others in programming (such as a union Thanksgiving service)

• Any special local tax provision for which the new minister may be held responsible

• A list of community events and programs this congregation and/or its pastor traditionally have shared in, such as the baccalaureate program for high school seniors or organ recitals.

People

Perhaps the one possibility that produces considerable anxiety among the laity is that the departing minister might leave for the successor an annotated membership file describing all the characteristics, problems, faults, weaknesses, and shortcomings of each member. Obviously that should be avoided!

The departing minister might consider, however, a few notes on individuals who possess unfulfilled potential or who see themselves in the line of succession for certain leadership positions or who hold community leadership responsibilities. Some new pastors also appreciate being advised, "You should know that Mabel Jones is Harold Brown's sister."

The most useful "list" in this category may be the creation of a committee that will take the initiative and spend a few weeks helping the new minister become oriented to the community and acquainted with the members. Too often the call committee disbands after planning the reception for the new pastor.

Personal Concerns

Many new pastors appreciate knowing whom the predecessor chose as family physician, dentist, babysitter, or automobile mechanic, and who services the parsonage plumbing.Some pastors also leave behind a note on the vacation schedule followed by the departing pastor or the names of ministers who might fill the pulpit in an emergency. Others may suggest special recreational and holiday opportunities.

Victories and Defeats

One of the most effective methods of helping the new minister gain a sense of the distinctive legacy left by the predecessor accomplished by one pastor who left behind two lists. One was labeled, "The six most meaningful highlights of my ministry here." The other was headed, "My six most serious mistakes." To make such lists requires a considerable sense of personal and professional security on the part of the predecessor, but it can be very helpful to the new minister.

Other Pastors

Organize several neighboring pastors to call on the new minister. Few pastors take the initiative to meet their new ministerial neighbors.

Unsolved Problems

"I know that none of my predecessors had a pleasant relationship with this choir director, and I haven't either," reflected one minister to himself as he was preparing to leave, "but maybe my successor will be able to work out a better relationship." Substitute for "choir director" such titles as custodian, organist, church secretary, associate minister, or director of Christian education, and that reflection covers thousands of situations.

If the departing minister is convinced that a serious and continuing problem exists, it may be appropriate to attempt to resolve it before leaving rather than passing that legacy on to the successor. This same generalization applies to that leak in the roof, the church school budget, or to the need to rotate a long-term member out of a particular office. It often is easier for the departing minister to face these unpleasant situations than for the new pastor.

A Healthy Termination

Whenever the pastor-parish relationship is terminated, some people feel a sense of loss and grief. In the case of most long pastorates, this grief may be so profound that it automatically casts the successor in an "interim pastor" role.

The departing minister often can reduce the unproductive dimensions of the termination by an early announcement of the decision to leave, by cooperation with the congregation's desire to plan an impressive good-by party, and by a willingness to accept a farewell gift. The humble minister who gives the people only a week or two to adjust to the announcement and who refuses to participate in any farewell events may be helping to convert grief into a destructive response—with the successor becoming the recipient of those negative feelings.

The congregation must be given time to recover from the shock of the announcement, to plan a farewell event, and to become adjusted to the fact that a change will be made. People, like horses, do not like to be surprised. Sometimes they react to surprises with destructive behavior.

Finally, a pastor should not use that last sermon as the occasion to unload years of pent-up hostility. That may be a therapeutic exercise for the departing minister, but it also undercuts the people's respect for the office of pastor—and the successor who will inherit that office inherits the attitude.

The task of preparing this legacy sounds like a big load to place on the departing minister. It is—and some will not accept it. They should turn most of the work over to a lay committee.

There is another value in this checklist, however. It also can be used by the prospective new minister as a resource in suggesting expectations for the members to consider as they prepare to welcome their next pastor.

My pet rabbit died rather abruptly (as pet rabbits have a way of doing). Thus it was a forlorn 8-year-old who lovingly buried him beside the sandpile. Then every day I dug him up to see how he was getting along. The last time I saw him he was green.

The principle of “love covers” versus “investigative reporting” in Christian magazines is being kicked about like a ball on a soccer field. The opposing teams are the Pros versus the Cons. At the moment the Pros are ahead.

Thinking about our greater mission family in China while I was growing up, I remembered gratefully one occasion when someone fell—and how quickly, quietly, and effectively that fall was dealt with. Then love covered: it was not, like my pet rabbit, dug up again. I thought about our own family through the years and how, on occasion, situations had to be faced and dealt with. And buried.

I think of churches that wisely and compassionately deal the same way, remembering Paul’s plea for a censured Christian he felt had had enough: “So that contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive him, and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow” (2 Cor. 2:7).

There is a school where a student who needs to be disciplined has to do a certain number of laps around the football field; how many depends on the seriousness of the offense. But if another student taunts him or refers to it later, he receives the same punishment—doubled.

There will always be those rare occasions when some heresy, some cult, or some con game operating under the name of Christianity needs to be exposed so as to warn Christians. But that is something different. It seldom involves the trip-ups and tragedies of true believers. In “the family,” flagrant sins should be dealt with promptly, compassionately, privately. Then silence.

Every cat knows some things need to be buried.

Are The Cults Really Coming?

Kidnapping is a crime. Yet Steve Kemperman believes it was justified in rescuing him from the Moonies, and praises his parents. His book, Lord of the Second Advent (Regal), is a gripping story of three-and-a-half years in the Unification Church, his kidnapping, and his subsequent conversion to Christianity by deprogrammers. The book ends with an appeal for the establishment of cult information programs, legislation to discourage deception and fraud by the cults, support groups for the rehabilitation of cult victims, and evangelism by Christian churches to meet the cult challenge. It is a powerful book, designed to mobilize Christians to action against the cult movement.

Strange Gods (Beacon Press) is about books like Kemperman’s. Its subtitle is “The Great American Cult Scare.” In it sociologists David G. Bromley and Anson D. Shupe challenge many widely accepted views about the cults. They claim “there is no avalanche of rapidly growing cults … furthermore, the size of these groups has been grossly exaggerated … much of the cult explosion has been a media hype. There is no mysterious brainwashing process used to trap and enslave millions of young Americans … Finally, there is no bona fide mental health therapy called deprogramming …” (pp. 4–5).

These are strong words. Christians will be tempted to dismiss the authors of Strange Gods as ivy-towered intellectuals who are either misled or employed by the cults. But such a reaction might be unjustified. Bromley and Shupe are aware of the problems created by the cults and have no illusions about cultists’ methods. However, they argue that the problems are not as great as most people have been led to believe and that proposed solutions may pose more problems for civil and religious liberties than those created by the cults.

Evangelical Christians often visualize Moonies and members of groups like the Hare Krishna Movement as brainwashed zombies, but they need to be careful not to generalize the concept of brainwashing. Indeed, many secular opponents accuse evangelicals of using the same techniques.

In Snapping (Lippincott), Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman argue that “the Evangelical movement shares many characteristics with religious cults … many Born Again Christians have been severed from their families, their pasts, and society …” (pp. 44, 46). The only difference they can find between evangelicals and the cults is that “For the most part, the expressed doctrines and values of Evangelicalism are in keeping with the most basic ideal of American life” while those of the cults are not (p. 44).

British psychiatrist William Sargent is even more critical of evangelicals in his book Battle for the Mind (Pan Books). Writing about recent revivals in his own country, he describes widespread ignorance of brainwashing techniques, accusing the revivalists of using similar methods. Such statements show the importance of the brainwashing debate for evangelicals, who need to keep their methods free of any alien influence. They should avoid even the appearance of evil in such a sensitive area.

In Strange Gods, the authors present carefully documented evidence to show that although anticult propagandists claim millions of Americans are trapped by the cults, in reality, cult membership is relatively small. They point out that a person who joins a cult will most likely choose to leave of his own volition after a relatively short time. They also argue that using the concept of brainwashing to explain the cult phenomenon “is a distortion of a real, understandable process of attitude change that is neither mysterious nor unusual in American society” (p. 124).

Their chapter on deprogramming is perhaps the most controversial. By “deprogramming” they mean coercive deprogramming that involves kidnapping and forcible detention. Denouncing this, Bromley and Shupe claim that “What really occurs is … a situation where the conflict of interest is resolved in favor of the parents” who are embarrassed or threatened by the fact that their child has rejected their lifestyle and joined a strange religious group (pp. 202–4). In response to the horror stories so many former cult members tell to justify deprogramming, Bromley and Shupe argue that “the horrific stories they tell are necessary, to provide fuel to attack unpopular movements, but, more important, to absolve families (and themselves) of any responsibility for their actions” (p. 201). But in fact, according to Bromley and Shupe, such actions are not really necessary because the vast majority would leave anyway if left to themselves. They conclude therefore that “deprogrammers are self-serving, illegal and, fundamentally, immoral” and present a threat to both civil and religious liberties (p. 204).

It is worth rereading Kemperman’s book after this critique. His conversion was a slow process, motivated by a desire “to learn about the group firsthand … an experiment” (p. 77). The effect was that the Unification Church fostered “a growing awareness of life after death, of the spiritual universe and of death itself; accordingly, girl thoughts and sexual thoughts fled my consciousness …” (p. 78). This occurred when he found that Moonies practice what they preach.

While at first he attempted to probe the truth claims of the Unification Church, after three months he was confronted with the challenge that “the best way to understand the Divine Principle is to live it” (p. 88). He had many doubts after joining the Moonies full-time. Although, as a result of his deprogramming, Kemperman claims he realizes Moonies are “victims of mental, psychological and spiritual bondage” (p. 174), he provides no evidence of brainwashing to refute the counterarguments of Bromley and Shupe. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that if his parents had not attempted earlier deprogramming, which failed, he might have left the Unification Church of his own accord.

However one may react to these arguments, both books are worth reading. Kemperman shows that cults are a genuine menace to the Christian faith, and Bromley and Shupe issue a warning regarding how to handle them. In effect they are saying, don’t use their methods: this only creates more problems than it solves.

Christians who want more information about cults may be tempted to buy Walter Martin’s Cult Reference Bible (Vision House). The idea of such a work is good and Martin is the person to write it. But it is a bit disappointing and overpriced. It would be better to write to Spiritual Counterfeits Project (Box 4308, Berkley, Calif. 94704) for information. An annotated bibliography and newsletter about new religions will also be available soon from the Research Working Group on New Religious Movements (Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Man., Canada, R3T 2N2).

Reviewed by Irving Hexham, assistant professor, Department of Religion, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada.

Keeping The Cults Away

Answers to the Cultists at Your Door, by Robert & Gretchen Passantino (Harvest House, 1981, 206 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Jerry Root, college pastor, College Church, Wheaton, Illinois.

From the unexpected knock at your door to the airport solicitations or son or daughter caught in their webs, everyone is affected by the cults. It is not unusual when thinking about the cults to wonder, “Why their sudden growth?” “When they come knocking, what will I say?” “Will my child leave home for one?” “Is the situation hopeless?”

Robert and Gretchen Passantino answer these and other questions in their book. As professional research associates with Walter Martin (Kingdom of the Cults) for several years, as well as successful outreach workers among cultists, the Passantinos are qualified to write authoritatively in this area.

The book is written simply, clearly, and concisely. It is not technical, but very practical. The focus is on the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Moonies, Hare Krishnas, and The Way International. Little time is spent dissecting all the intricate oddities of each group. In its concentration on essential doctrines maligned by the cults, the book becomes a valuable tool. Its aids are easily transferred to other similar groups that also err in their view of Scripture, God, Christ, and the way of salvation. In light of this, the Passantinos have also provided the reader with a good, uncomplicated review of Christian orthodoxy.

The concluding chapter, “Help for Your Loved Ones in a Cult,” is worth the price of the book. The authors give advice on how to prevent your children from becoming the prey of these organizations. According to the Passantinos, cults play on loneliness and insecurity. Children who are loved and encouraged in the Scriptures are least vulnerable. For those caught in a cult, it is consistent love and guidance to help them think for themselves that is the best medicine.

Testimonies of people who have come out of various cults are given throughout the book. The reader must remember, however, that these examples are highlights of ten years’ ministry. All the same, these valuable personal glimpses provide a vivid picture of how witnessing to the cultist can be done, as well as the hope that it can be done successfully.

Don’T Hop On One Leg

Eastern Paths and the Christian Way, by Paul Clasper (Orbis, 1980, 136 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Jack Buckley, a teacher at Covenant Circle, Berkeley, California.

Like it or not, East and West continue to meet for cultural and religious trysts. Western Christians are understandably reluctant to endorse the romance. Believing in Jesus’ uniqueness among world religions, we want both to build on points of contact and avoid confusion or compromise.

Paul Clasper’s experience as a missionary teacher in the Orient gives him firsthand knowledge of the problem. This book, winner of Religion in Media’s “Silver Angel” award, addresses the issues with reverent diplomacy.

Sharing C. S. Lewis’s perspective on world religions and mythologies as not so much counterfeits of Christian truth as incomplete graspings after God’s whole truth, Clasper sketches themes in three “Eastern Paths”: Hinduism, Teravada (classical) Buddhism, and Zen. Hinduism’s erotic polytheism expresses compulsive longing for divine love, Buddhism offers a disciplined quest for truth, and Zen is Japan’s unique development of Buddhism in search for unfrantic, spontaneous life.

In his longest chapter, Clasper eloquently expounds Christian faith as both unique and universal. It is unique because Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life”; it is universal in that those elements are what all religions systematically search for. The loving, giving, dying God has actually come among us in Jesus. Christ has demonstrated what true wisdom is, how real power works, and the extent to which divine love will go.

But how can pilgrims on the Christian way meet those on the Eastern paths without losing the gospel’s uniqueness or universality? Clasper reminds us that life’s journey is traveled on two legs. Hopping on one foot is an absurd, tiring way to move forward, so we must put equal weight on each leg of uniqueness and universality. Thanks to John S. Dunne (Notre Dame) and John V. Taylor (Church of England), he advocates a method of “passing over and coming back.” It is in this way that Christians are enabled to retain integrity and get good mileage by meeting Eastern thinkers as friendly visitors in their own living space. We would be compelled to spend time, listen closely, and truly understand their words and actions.

“Passing over” is to enter a new world; “coming back” means returning as a new person. “One is bound to look at one’s own world with fresh eyes and with fresh questions once the journey of friendship has been taken,” warns Clasper.

Change is inevitable for everyone involved on such a road. Clasper says we cannot program what kind of changes will happen, or their degree. It is risky, but he is sure that Christianity, uniquely and universally true, is worth the risk.

Evangelicals may cringe at some points along the way as Clasper spells out his theme. His empathy for foreign points of view and ways of life may seem too optimistic, his zeal for friendly encounter naïve or syncretistic. But the unique, universal Christ we meet in the Gospels seems strangely to fit Clasper’s model. This book can help us to follow in his steps.

To Be A Mother

The Wedded Unmother, by Kaye Halverson with Karen M. Hess (Augsburg, 1980, 128 pp., $3.95); and The Gift of Life, by Sally Lentz Palmer (Westminster, 1980, 151 pp., $7.95), are reviewed by Patricia Gundry, free-lance writer, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The Wedded Unmother meets a definite need among evangelicals. Christians generally assume that everyone—or almost everyone—will marry and produce children, and that it is a woman’s central function to bear children and nurture them. Kaye Halverson has written this small book out of her own anguish and experience as one of those women who cannot have a child.

This is not a scholarly treatise, but it does give important information and provides resource material concerning infertility and adoption. It is written with deep feeling, and that is how we need to hear it. The unintentional cruelties committed against those who long for children but cannot have them are preventable.

This book is the first in a needy area. It belongs in every church library, every pastor’s study, every doctor’s waiting room.

The Gift of Life is a candid personal account of one woman’s entrance into motherhood. She reflects on her perceptions and experiences, and relates them to her personal faith and relationship to God and her husband. This book has the depth and scope to make it worthwhile reading not only for men and women contemplating parenthood, but also for those who are anticipating birth or who already have had children.

Sally Lentz Palmer is a wife and mother. She is also a woman with a theological education, and is now a minister. She writes from the vantage point of a woman who is not indifferent to, nor ignorant of, the inward and outward struggles of today’s woman. She writes with insight, feeling, and skill.

The book’s only disadvantage is its graphic and potentially frightening description of her own delivery. Readers need to be told that not every prospective mother undergoes the feelings and events the author describes, but that she is relating her own very unique experiences and how they affected her.

Briefly Noted

Doctrine. James M. Boice continues his easy-to-read “Foundations of the Christian Faith” with Volume IV, God & History (IVP). It would be difficult not to be helped by reading this fine material. The Voice of Our Fathers (Reformed Free Publishing Association), by Homer Hoeksema, is an exposition of the Canons of Dordrecht. It is high Calvinism, logically and relentlessly developed, with Arminianism coming off as the bad guy (“no covenant, no reconciliation, no grace, no sin, no salvation—nothing at all in the Scriptural sense” [p. 411]. Paul Mickey writes as an Arminian in Essentials of Theology: A Contemporary Affirmation (Zondervan), covering the loci from God to ethics. Somewhere between these approaches is The Word of Truth (Eerdmans), by the Southern Baptist theologian Dale Moody. It is traditional in format, biblically oriented, irenic in tone, and should be a good textbook for basic courses in theology.

Three shorter surveys of basic doctrine are: Basic Beliefs of Christians (Judson) by Douglas Beyer, which is evangelical but almost too brief to be of much value; Credo (Augsburg), by Gustaf Wingren, essentially a look at Father, Son, and Spirit in a spirit of reverence and sound scholarship; and Ingredients of the Christian Faith (Tyndale), by Keith Hardman, an easy-to-follow evangelical, dispensationalist handbook that would be hard to beat as an introduction to doctrine.

Contemporary Roman Catholic theology may be found in: Our Christian Faith (Crossroad), by Karl Rahner and Karl Heinz Weger, which argues strongly for basic Christian doctrine in the face of modern denial; An Introduction to Christian Faith (Paulist), by Tubingen’s Walter Kasper, containing profound and serious discussion of basic theology; and Principles of Catholic Theology (Alba House), edited by Edward J. Gratsch—more obviously Roman Catholic, but perhaps helpful for that very reason.

Various types of interaction between spokesmen for the free world and communism have occurred since Marxism was incorporated in the USSR and the Western world was divided into spheres. The quasi-honeymoon period between Western liberals and the dynamics of Soviet Marxist society gradually came to a halt with the revelations of Stalin’s excesses. A period of anti-Marxism prevailed in much of the West until World War II, and then for two decades after 1945.

A mood developed, prompted by many elements, that encouraged dialogue between intellectuals on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Discussion of a wide spectrum of questions, many ethical in nature, came into play. This led toward intellectual accommodation—or at least toward a degree of mutual understanding.

In the fifties, men like John C. Bennett attempted a nonemotional understanding of Russian Marxism, while much Marxist thinking in Eastern European countries tended to harden into orthodoxy. Peace conferences and symposia were held in the sixties, usually under Eastern auspices, frequently in lands controlled by Russia. Occasionally they were held in neutral lands, and less frequently in the Western hemisphere.

Meanwhile, expatriates from Eastern Europe played a significant role in the movement for Christian-Marxist conversations. Before leaving his native Czechoslovakia following the “Prague spring” and the August 1968 Russian invasion, John Lochmann had sought to interpret Marxism to Western academic groups. Interchange between Christians and Marxists was limited by two elements in the sixties and seventies: (1) the need for Eastern European speakers to avoid difficulty at home by offering only the most restrained critiques of the thought of Marx and Engels, and (2) the politeness Western intellectuals felt obliged to use in dealing with Eastern visitors.

Helmut Gollwitzer, a Protestant, and the Jewish thinker Ernest Bloch, who, along with Lochmann was a professor in the University of Basel, Switzerland, attempted to establish dialogue during this period. In the early and midsixties, Joseph Hromádka exerted influence through peace conferences to which Western intellectuals were invited. But his hopes that the “socialism” developing in Czechoslovakia might adjust to rising demands for freedom were shattered as the Russian tanks rolled into Prague.

In recent years, conversations between West and East have been at a relative standstill. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and events in Poland have chilled the atmosphere until those who sought ideological exchanges across the Iron Curtain were inhibited—Easterners for reasons of prudence, and Westerners because of disillusionment.

Now, new conversations are in progress within Eastern bloc lands. A recent volume by Paul Majzes, professor of religious studies at Rosemont College (Pa.), suggests that a window has opened upon the Eastern European landscape, revealing discussions of Marxism by those who live in close, daily contact with Communist authorities. Majzes wrote Christian-Marxist Dialogue in Eastern Europe (Augsburg) as a Christian whose Yugoslavian background gives him a unique understanding of many issues. Among them are compulsory “acceptance” of Marxism by Christians; the relative possibility for dialogue between Christians and Marxists among lands in the Eastern bloc; and the manner in which “praxis” (or pragmatic governmental policies) at times takes precedence over dogmatic Marxist “orthodoxy.”

Majzes uses Yugoslavia, which enjoyed a period of relatively free dialogue from 1967 to 1972, as a kind of laboratory for the practice of Christian-Marxist conversation. While the Belgrade government is Marxist, it has performed the almost miraculous feat of throwing off the yoke that Russian “liberation” from Nazism brought to the other Eastern European nations after World War II. For over three decades it has been able to maintain relative independence from the USSR, producing a Marxian “soft side,” and making public discussion of ideological issues possible. Majzes notes that careful academic and critical studies in Marxist theory have developed “an astonishingly broad base among intellectuals” by whom “criticism of Yugoslav Marxist views on religion by Soviet writers is generally dismissed with amusem*nt.” His knowledge of Slavic languages and earlier participation in this dialogue enable him to write with understanding about the Christian-Marxist discussion in lands in the Russian orbit.

In most of these countries, dialogue must be conducted with extreme caution, and approaches and modes of expression vary. Recognizing these differences, Majzes traces elements common to these conversations between Christians and Marxists, a few of which follow:

• Dialogue is an extremely limited activity. It generally avoids either raising unrealistic hopes or inciting conflict with the demands of the state. Christians are dissuaded from seeking power, which is felt to distort the Christian message. Conversations are deemed to have real value in reducing incidents of internal threats.

• The content of these “interfaith” conversations stresses elements of compassion for the poor of the world and upon strong scriptural statements to this effect, especially in the Magnificat (Luke 1:51–53).

• The pilgrim quality of the present life is emphasized, along with a recognition of the evils of the world (upon which Christianity and socialism agree), coupled with emphasis on the need for united effort toward the good of all. Frequently there are unexpressed but deeply felt hopes for major modifications of Marxist practice, and for preservation of the life of the church as intact as possible.

Much more could be lifted from this volume to indicate the strongly creative elements within the dialogue. They are there despite the necessary acceptance of the power and authority of the “people’s republics” governments.

Dr. Kuhn is professor of philosophy of religion, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

To listen to a Kurt Kaiser song, musical, or recording is to hear some of the finest gospel music being written and performed today.

Kurt Kaiser’s name has been associated with music issuing from Word, Incorporated, for 23 years, since the young musician made the long move from his native Chicago to Waco, Texas, to become Word’s director of artists and repertoire. Word was an eight-year-old record company and he was a musician then known primarily in the Midwest for exceptional ability as a pianist. Both have grown considerably in stature and influence over the intervening years: Word is much more than records, having launched into music publishing, then book publishing, films, and video, while Kaiser’s musical credits now show him to be a composer, arranger, conductor, and record producer. That Word has stood at the top of the gospel music industry for so many years must owe in large part to the long-standing association between the two.

Kaiser’s youthful accomplishments might tend to put him in the prodigy class. He was a part-time staff musician at radio stations in two states while he was still a teen-ager, and by the time he was 20, he was beginning five years as minister of music at Chicago’s Bethel Community Church.

At the same time Kaiser was gaining recognition for his piano ability and his church and radio ministries, he was acquiring an education. He studied first at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, then earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from Northwestern University. Aspiring gospel musicians today would be well served to acknowledge the importance of such solid grounding in the classical traditions. To be able to go on, as has Kaiser, to become arranger and producer for such artists as Carol Lawrence, Pat Boone, Robert Hale and Dean Wilder, George Beverly Shea, Anita Bryant, Jerome Hines, and many others, is no accident. Genuine ability joined to sound training allow a musician of Kaiser’s caliber—indeed any musician, and especially a Christian musician—to use what God has given him to the fullest.

In 1959, besides the move to Waco, his second child was born. (He and his wife Pat have a daughter and three sons—one of the sons a top athlete at Baylor University.)

After kaiser joined Word (he is currently vice-president, music, of the Word Music Group), his contributions to gospel music began to multiply. In 1969 he wrote “Pass It On.” The song quickly became a favorite among evangelicals, and is one of the few new gospel compositions to have achieved a permanent place in contemporary hymnody—and hymnals. Also in 1969, he and Ralph Carmichael collaborated on something new in church music: musicals. Their Tell It Like It Is and Natural High were immediately popular, particularly among young people. Four years later they produced I’m Here, God’s Here, Now We Can Start, and in 1974, Kaiser and Charles Brown collaborated on God’s People. His last musical, Just for You, was written in 1979, and is clearly the statement of a mature, yet continually growing, musician.

Along the way, Kaiser has also published reams of sacred choral compositions, recorded a half-dozen piano albums, written collections of solos for high voice and arrangements for choirs, and ferretted out new artists.

He is a true craftsman. When writing or arranging solos, for example, he keeps the soloist very much in mind. One of his favorites is Robert Hale of the Hale-Wilder duo, leading baritone of the New York City Opera. “I know his voice,” Kaiser says, “the notes that sound nice with him. His E-flat is especially rich, and if I can aim for an E-flat at the end of a phrase and just let him sit on it, it’s perfect. When I spend time on melody and lyric like that, it is custom made—like gloves—and he’s pleased.”

Among kaiser’s current projects is the development of a new line of recordings aimed at offering the Christian public an exceptionally high caliber of music. To date two records have been issued in the new Medallion Series: organist Diane Bish’s Music for a Royal Wedding and How Sweet the Sound, by the Baylor University Chamber Singers. Of the Medallion Series Kaiser says, “We’re making a concentrated, conscientious effort to produce albums of music that is really great.

“For years, no religious recording company has done anything in terms of recordings that have real inherent quality. We’ve all gone the way of rock and pop. In the past we did some beautiful things, but they never really sold. Now, with the new Medallion Series, our computer technology enables us to isolate the people who are interested in that kind of music.”

Kaiser also believes it is possible to stretch people’s musical understanding and appreciation. “Some churches have marvelous music programs where they’re really doing some exciting things and their congregations love it,” he says. “I think the reason is that they’re exposed to this kind of music.” Referring to the Christian artists’ seminar held each year at Estes Park, Colorado, he says he suggested to seminar director Cam Florida that there is “a whole side of Christian music that the kids who come aren’t hearing—the sort of thing that Bob Hale and Dean Wilder are doing.” We owe it to these kids, he believes, to let them hear this. Hale and Wilder went to Estes Park in 1980, and got a standing ovation. Says Kaiser, “People like anything that’s quality.”

He is enthusiastic about Word’s recent acquisition of what he calls “the George Beverly Shea musical family—Chancel Music.” Included are such songs as “I’d Rather Have Jesus” and “The Wonder of It All,” and he plans to make choral settings of all of them. “We feel we have a pretty good idea of what evangelical church choirs are singing, and I think something like ‘I’d Rather Have Jesus’ will go very nicely.”

Kaiser is a strong advocate of gospel music that is so well matched to its lyrics that the listener is not just entertained, but helped to worship. “If the music is right, it enhances the worship experience,” he says. “If the lyric is good and the musical setting is not right, it’s distressing. I hate it!”

Many Christians are critical of shallowness in the lyrics of much of today’s gospel music—lyrics that seem to be almost totally experience oriented. Kaiser thinks the situation was worse a few years ago, but that “it’s getting better,” and says he is personally spending more time finding Bible texts that “really do say something.” A 1981 collection of Kaiser choral arrangements entitled Father, Lift Me Up attests to this. Among his own compositions in the collection are “Give Me Thine Heart,” based on Proverbs 23:26, and “If Any Man Thirst,” from John 7:37. The recent musical Just for You includes others, like “He Careth for You,” based on the familiar 1 Peter 5:7, and “Sing O Heavens,” taken from Isaiah 49:13.

His most recent recording, A Part of Me, is primarily piano music, backed by a string group and an occasional vocal line to supply words. He calls this personal statement “part of who I am at this point in my life. Each song represents experiences—physical, spiritual, or emotional …”

Included on the album is a long, interpretative arrangement of “Oh How He Loves You and Me,” a little chorus he wrote a few years ago that is now widely sung, and which he describes as “all I wanted to say at the piano.” Also included is the very personal “I Am Willing, Lord,” written “out of a rather painful experience … a testing reevaluating of priorities.”

“I am willing,” it goes, “to be just exactly what You want me to be.”

Willingness of this nature, more than anything else, allows a man like Kurt Kaiser to make an impact on contemporary gospel music. He is talented, he is well trained, and he has a wide background of experience. But most important, he is using all of it to offer the Lord, and not incidentally the Christian musical public, the best he has to offer.

The founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators penetrated unknown languages.

From the remote comers of the globe, the leadership of the world’s largest Bible translation organization came to North Carolina late last month for the funeral of William Cameron Townsend. He was founder and retired general director of the 4,500-member Wycliffe Bible Translators (WBT), now working in 735 minority languages. David Gotaas, pastor of the Winnetka (Ill.) Bible Church and speaker at graveside services, ranked him (with William Carey and Hudson Taylor) as one of the three greatest missionary leaders of modern times.

Joining the Wycliffe leadership was a motley collection of friends and admirers of the beloved “Uncle Cam.” They included a Soviet Jew who traveled all night by bus from New York to attend the funeral services in Charlotte and Waxhaw, North Carolina. A world-famous Jewish photographer, a Cakchiquel Indian from Guatemala, members of the small neighborhood black evangelical church, where Townsend was an associate member, and hundreds of others came not to mourn but to celebrate his “home-going.”

They came to pay tribute to the 85-vear-old Townsend, whose career as a missionary linguist spanned 65 years, beginning in Guatemala in 1917 when he was a 21-year-old Bible salesman. This was followed by pioneering stints in Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and—after his retirement—the Soviet Union.

Home-based in Waxhaw, where Wycliffe’s technical affiliate, Jungle Aviation and Radio Service (JAARS), is located, Townsend had been noticeably slowing during recent years. Still, a heart problem had not kept him from making his eleventh trip to the Soviet Union and to other distant spots.

Last August a medical checkup indicated that he had borderline leukemia. In October, he flew to Peru to receive from President Fernando Beláunde Terry the “Order of the Sun,” the highest honor Peru bestows on a foreigner. January 29, after attending his last Wycliffe board meeting, he was found to have pneumonia and an alarmingly low hemoglobin count. During the next three months, he rallied and fell several times, sometimes receiving four blood transfusions in a single day. Back in the hospital on Wednesday, April 22, he was told by Dr. William Duke (twin brother to astronaut Charles Duke), “It won’t be long now until you’re over there in glory.” Uncle Cam reportedly smiled back, “It’ll be good to be over there.” Late Saturday afternoon, April 24, he lost consciousness and died peacefully about 6 P.M. “He never complained,” a nurse reported. “Every time I came in, he had a sweet smile.”

The Wycliffe leadership was preparing to attend a board meeting at Saint Simons Island, Georgia, when news came of his death. Several remarked at the seeming providential timing of the two events, making it possible for all board members to attend the funeral.

The main service was held in the large independent Calvary Church of Charlotte, which Townsend had often attended. (He retained membership in the Church of the Open Door in Los Angeles.) The 1,700-seat sanctuary was about two-thirds full. The program featured a blend of personal tributes, reading of Townsend’s favorite Scriptures, a recording of one of Uncle Cam’s last appeals, a message from Billy Graham, and the singing of Townsend’s missionary hymn, “Bible-less Tribes.”

Ben Elson, director of the Mexico branch and one of Uncle Cam’s first recruits, read a selection of messages from Latin American political leaders and American evangelical dignitaries. Peru’s Belaunde Terry called Townsend’s death “an irreparable loss.” Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala cabled “profound sadness” at the death of “this man of great spiritual stature.” A Mexican professor declared, “Mexico has lost one of its greatest friends.” Billy Graham said, “Uncle Cam’s death is a great loss to the Christian world. I lost a great personal friend.”

Most moving were recollections given at the funeral by the graying first-generation Wycliffe leadership and other old friends. Former WBT president George Cowan, who presided, said, “God gave Uncle Cam a vision of himself and the world. Uncle Cam was not disobedient to that vision.” Kenneth Pike, recognized worldwide for scholarship in linguistics, called Townsend “a giant under God, one of the greatest leaders since Paul.” Pike noted that Townsend made Wycliffe “a unique hybrid of scholarship and devotion.”

Richard Pittman, another of Townsend’s first proteges, told of accompanying Uncle Cam to visit “God’s Enemy Number Two” in Mexico during the heat of anticlericalism there. “This man had stood in the Mexican congress and defied God to strike him dead. Uncle Cam greeted him with a Mexican embrace. Forty years later, I went back to see this man and he had a Bible on his desk. ‘I’m now identified with you in faith,’ he told me. He was won by Uncle Cam’s love.”

“Uncle Cam,” Pittman continued, “believed in two kinds of Bible translation: translation into words and into deeds. Now God has ‘translated’ him.”

The spirit of the man was mentioned more often than his attainments. “Uncle Cam radiated a true human, loving spirit,” reported photographer Cornell Capa. “I never saw him lose his cool.”

Several singled out Uncle Cam’s practice of loving his enemies, especially hostile Catholic prelates during early years in Latin America. “Uncle Cam delivered me from the demon of hatred,” said colleague Al Shannon, who is now a counselor and Bible teacher for Catholic charismatics in Lima, Peru.

Neighbor Bea Wright recalled that Uncle Cam always greeted the garbage men with a cold drink or coffee. Writer Hugh Steven said, “Uncle Cam taught me the theology of courtesy.” Calvin Hibbard, Townsend’s private secretary for 32 years, recalled that hardly an evening went by when I left his house that he didn’t say thanks in some way for my help.” Joe Chicol, Townsend’s first Cakcbiquel translation helper, called his old friend, “a determined gentle man, who, when he made up his mind about something, went on with it.”

Family members also gave testimony. Son Billy, a resident of Dallas, called his father “a family man, a man of faith, who exemplified the fruits of the Spirit.” Daughter Joy, a Bible translator with her husband, David Tuggy, among the Aztecs, where her father once worked, said, “With Daddy’s enormous vision, he still had time for tea parties and volleyball with us.” Other surviving members of the immediate family include wife Elaine, and daughters Elainadel Garippa (married to an Arizona pastor) and Grace Goreth, whose husband Tom is an engineer. One brother, Paul, an ordained minister who spoke at the funeral, a sister, Ethel White, and 12 grandchildren survive.

After the observance, one question seemed to remain: Can the memory and vision of Uncle Cam keep Wycliffe advancing toward the acclaimed goal of reaching 3,000 additional Bibleless tribes?

“We’re more together than we ever were,” said executive vice-president Frank Robbins. “The world is different now. There’s no stable place left. But there are also more opportunities than ever before. Even where we’ve had to leave, God is still providing ways to complete the task of translation.”

Other Wycliffe executives agreed. “One of Uncle Cam’s great strengths,” observed North American director Al Spence, “was his willingness to delegate. His vision will be fulfilled.”

They reflect Uncle Cam’s confidence expressed on the tape played at his funeral: “There will be in glory among the redeemed, some from every tribe, nation, and language.”

For this “Uncle Cam” Townsend lived.

JAMES HEFLEY in Charlotte, North Carolina

The southern Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) is approaching its June meeting of the general assembly with less than complete harmony. The cause of contention, ironically, is a constitutional amendment designed to bolster denominational unity.

Called “Chapter Six” because that is the constitutional section up for amendment, the proposed change would give the denomination control over the real estate, bank accounts, and trust funds of each of its 4,000-plus congregations, regardless of any legal titles held by a local board of trustees.

PCUS officials say the amendment only makes explicit what has been implied throughout the history of the denomination (it began with the Civil War). The proposed amendment states: “All property held by or for a particular church … is held nevertheless for the use and benefit of the Presbyterian Church in the United States.”

Flynn Long. Jr., associate stated clerk, noted the Westminster Confession of Faith affirms “the oneness of the church,” implying that congregations are individually a part of a larger whole. Congregational independency has never been a tenet of an individual Presbyterian denomination.”

Another official said the new Chapter Six is not “some grab for power.” Joseph Grier, Jr., who last year chaired the Committee on Polity, said the amendment was necessary only as a legal safeguard, to “prevent churches in Georgia from withdrawing without the consent of presbytery.”

Opponents of the amendment have labeled it an effort to “deny the civil rights of the congregation to own property.” They vehemently dispute the amendment’s statement that it is “declaratory of principles” present since “the inception of the presbyterian form of church government.”

Yet the amendment has already been approved by the necessary majority of PCUS presbyteries. Thirty-three have approved it, 23 have voted against it, and 4 have yet to vote. The amendment is expected to be approved when the PCUS general assembly meets June 11 to 17 in Columbus, Georgia.

The strongest recent opposition to Chapter Six erupted in Mississippi, where all three of the state’s presbyteries oppose the measure. The 426-member Cleveland, Mississippi, church divided almost equally among members who want to leave the denomination and those who want to stay. Pastor Wilson Benton has been particularly outspoken against amendment. Two other Mississippi churches and 12 in other states have left or are trying to leave PCUS because of the property amendment.

A second controversial subject will also be considered at the June meeting: the reunion of the southern Presbyterians with the northern United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA). Fifteen PCUS presbyteries already have joint affiliation with the UPCUSA. A number of conservative churches also object to the reunion move because they fear it will eventually require election of women elders (UPCUSA now requires male-and-female boards.)

Cardinal Cody Of Chicago Dies At Age 74

John Patrick Cardinal Cody, archbishop of Chicago, died April 24 at his home there. He died of an apparent heart attack at age 74. Cody’s last months as leader of the country’s largest Catholic archdiocese were marred by accusations that he misspent church funds. A federal grand jury was investigating charges that he had channeled $1 million to a longtime friend, Helen Dolan Wilson. Cody denied the charges, saying, “any accusations against the shepherd are also against the church.”

A dramatic development hours after Cody’s death was the reading of a letter he had written months before. The letter was penned in the midst of the funding controversy with instructions that it be read at the cardinal’s death. Cody wrote that he forgave the news media and others who caused him “personal hurt” but added that “God will not so forgive.”

Cody’s letter expressed sentiments that those alleging misuse of funds had “malicious designs” against the archbishop. Nonetheless, he said, “I can turn away because I am a Christian, a bishop, a person. I do so.”

“But God will not so forgive,” the letter continued. “God’s is another way—He stands before my former enemies insisting forever with good will that they change.” Cody also lamented that some people, “even priests,” had attacked him “because a delusion is too compelling.”

Cody was head of the Chicago archdiocese for 17 years. Previously, he spent 11 years in Rome, earning three doctorates. He also served the church in important positions in St. Louis and Kansas City. Cody was widely known before his 1965 arrival in Chicago for his work in integrating Catholic schools in New Orleans, where he served four years. He was known for his defense of church doctrine and was a canon law scholar.

His successor will probably not be decided upon until next fall or later. Cincinnati archbishop Joseph Bernardin has been a frequently mentioned possible successor to Cody. Other possibilities include Theodore Hesburgh, now president of the University of Notre Dame. Many observers, however, suggest the next archbishop (to be appointed by the Pope) will be a surprise—some name new to most churchmen.

John Richard Keating, cochancellor for personnel of the Chicago archdiocese, was named interim administrator. Keating, 47, was ordained in Rome and has been in Chicago since 1963.

North American Scene

Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) agreed with NBC television to split coverage of the Nabisco-Dinah Shore Invitational golf tournament. Ironically, the deal was made during the Coalition for Better Television’s boycott of NBC. The coalition considers NBC particularly guilty of offensive programming and an “anti-Christian” bias. NBC chairman Grant Tinker stated that the CBN agreement “shows that we’re thoroughly objective about everything.” CBN carried the early rounds of the tournament with NBC televising the larger-audience finals.

A French study of astrology concludes that there is no correlation between people’s character traits and the signs of the zodiac under which they were born. The Los Angeles Times quoted Michel Gauquelin, the study’s director, as saying that “the results were completely negative.” Gauquelin’s group compared the biographies of 2,000 successful people with their astrological signs. The subjects included athletes, soldiers, actors, politicians, and writers. For all 12 signs, a statistical analysis found that the correlations between personality traits and signs were no better than would have been predicted by chance. Gauquelin’s paper appeared in the Skeptical Inquirer, a journal set on debunking claims of the paranormal.

Cult deprogrammer Ted Patrick was cleared of charges of kidnapping, assault, and sexual battery. Patrick was accused of kidnapping a 19-year-old Cincinnati woman whose parents thought she had been led into lesbianism through mind control. The prosecution contended the woman’s parents paid Patrick $8,000 to organize the kidnapping. Patrick’s attorney said his client was not involved. The woman, Stephanie Riethmiller, has also filed a $2.75 million civil suit against her parents, who are said to have instigated the “deprogramming.”

The largely hom*osexual Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches has cleared the first hurdle to becoming a member of the National Council of Churches. The council cautions that the controversial denomination has still not been accepted, however. An NCC committee did vote to send the denomination’s membership application to the NCC’s governing board. That board will decide this month if the church is eligible. Founded in 1970, the hom*osexual denomination now has 172 churches in eight countries. An estimated 15 percent of the membership is heterosexual.

The Lutheran Church in America is considering closer ties with the Episcopal church. A recommendation for the LCA’s biennial convention in September calls for mutual LCA-Episcopal recognition, provision for joint worship, interim eucharistic hospitality, and sharing of facilities. It has been praised by LCA bishop James R. Crumley, Jr., and Episcopal church presiding bishop John M. Allin. The priority item at the LCA’S convention will be another proposed strengthening of ties. The LCA is considering a union with the American Lutheran Church and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches.

North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt’s Commission on Crime wants that state’s legal drinking age raised to 21. The commission also suggested that two-or-more-times offenders be referred to an alcohol treatment center. That would focus on the offender’s alcohol problem rather than place emphasis on drunk driving merely as a crime. Persons 18 and over may now buy beer and wine in North Carolina, but not liquor. The commission wants the age raised to 21 for purchase of alcoholic beverages. The commission’s recommendations were accompanied by grim statistics: at least 360 of the 1,330 fatal accidents in the state in 1980 were alcohol related, and 61 percent of those killed in one-car accidents were intoxicated.

The red-clad followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh outvoted long-time residents in a move to disincorporate Antelope, Oregon. A vote of 55 to 42 will keep the town (officially listed as a ghost town) incorporated and on the map—unless a judge decides some voters weren’t eligible and nullifies the vote. Antelope natives attempted to disincorporate the town so that Rajneesh’s 300 Oregon followers would have to deal with county government (county residents would outnumber the Indian guru and his followers in any votes). The original Antelope residents fear Rajneesh will take over their town, then raise taxes to drive out the “old-timers.” Meanwhile, Rajneesh has plans to incorporate his own town just 18 miles away from Antelope (CT, April 23, p. 38).

Personalia

Richard S. Reilly has been appointed director of Gospel Literature International. Reilly, formerly a missionary in India, was director of Calcutta Youth for Christ and secretary of the United Missionary Society.

Vonette Bright, wife of Campus Crusade founder Bill Bright, was honored as distinguished alumna of Texas Woman’s Univeristy. She graduated from the school in 1948 with a bachelor’s degree in home economics.

George C, Fuller, 50, will be the next president of Philadelphia’s Westminster Theological Seminary. Fuller is a graduate of Princeton and Westminster. He has taught at Reformed Presbyterian Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, and Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minnesota. He succeeds the retiring Edmund Clowney, president of the seminary 16 years.

Donald Robinson has been declared the new Anglican archbishop of Sydney, Australia. He succeeds Marcus Loane. Robinson is a graduate of Sydney University and Cambridge.

Deaths

Susan Alamo, 56, cofounder of the Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation, a Pentecostal ministry to drug addicts and runaways, and the target of some cult deprogrammers; April 8, at Oral Roberts’s City of Faith Medical Center in Tulsa, of cancer.

The Church of England primate, Robert Runcie, was howled down in March and forced to abandon a Liverpool church service by demonstrators against the imminent papal visit to Britain. No reigning pontiff has ever set foot on English soil, and the protesters wanted to keep it that way.

But the May 28 to June 2 visit is going ahead at an estimated cost of some $11 million, and elaborate security precautions are being taken so that John Paul II’s nine-city itinerary will not be disrupted by the activities of Orangemen and their allies. In Glasgow a spokesman for the Orange order (a Protestant anti-Catholic society formed in Northern Ireland in 1795 and named for William of Orange) promised that the Pope “will have a visit to remember.” The less extreme Protestant Reformation Society, despite profound misgivings about the tour, is likely to settle for more symbolic protest, such as a rally in London’s Trafalgar Square to coincide with a service in Canterbury Cathedral in which Runcie, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the Pope will celebrate Communion together.

In terms of British history, that service is an almost inconceivable event. In no other country are the religious conflicts of the sixteenth century so etched onto the national consciousness. Canterbury is the center of an English Christianity severed from the church of Rome by King Henry VIII in a quarrel about a royal divorce that happened to coincide with the European religious revolution associated with Martin Luther and John Calvin. Subsequent events generated great bitterness—Queen Mary, Henry’s Roman Catholic daughter, had leading Protestants burned at the stake; and Elizabeth I, Mary’s Protestant successor, replied with an intense persecution of Catholics, and many priests died on the gallows.

That history lies behind the ground swell of protest and controversy building around John Paul’s visit.

Moderate Anglicans welcomed his coming, but called it “sensitive” because, in the words of the preface to the current Church of England Year Book, “in coming to England, the Pope will be visiting a country where there is a historic folk church not in communion with him and yet confident that it is the ‘Catholic Church of this land.’ ”

A number of observers judged this an inauspicious time for John Paul to come. They pointed out that merger talks between the Church of England and three historic denominations (Methodist, United Reformed, and Moravian) are at a crucial stage and could be jeopardized by the appearance of an Anglican-Roman Catholic deal.

Then there was the recent announcement that Britain’s relations with the Vatican were being upgraded to ambassadorial status. Non-Anglican churchmen were sore that they were not consulted. British Council of Churches general secretary Philip Morgan commented on the insensitive timing of a declaration that seems to change the nature of the papal visit from pastoral call to state function.

Finally, the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), which has been meeting since 1970, published in March a report of deliberations concluded last September. The report suggested the bishop of Rome should have primacy of honor if a new relationship is forged between Rome and the Anglican communion. The 18-member commission claimed to have reached a large measure of agreement on the Eucharist, ordination (Pope Leo XIII rejected the validity of Anglican ordination 86 years ago), and authority.

The theologians said they “agree that ‘conciliarity’ and primacy are complementary”—that the church needs both active involvement in decision making at the local level and a single head as the “focus of visible unity.” The report goes on to caution that “this does not mean that all differences have been eliminated.”

The 122-page report stressed that it is not a blueprint for unity, but the Anglicans were generous in their acceptance of papal primacy. “It is possible,” the document states, “to think that a primacy of the bishop of Rome [the report avoided use of the word pope] is not contrary to the New Testament and is part of God’s purpose regarding the church’s unity and catholicity, while admitting that the New Testament texts offer no sufficient basis for this.”

But the ARCIC report only finesses a stand off over papal infallibility. “Infallible,” it notes, is a “term applicable unconditionally to God alone and … to use it of a human being, even in highly restricted circ*mstances, can produce many misunderstandings.”

The initial response of the Vatican doctrine unit to the report was negative. Publication was delayed from a scheduled mid-January date while Cardinal Basil Hume, archbishop of Westminster, England, flew to Rome to talk the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) out of insistence on an accompanying series of dissenting notes, arguing they would be an insult to the Anglican communion.

Last month CDF head Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote, “It is not yet possible to affirm that a really substantial agreement has been reached in all the questions” ARCIC studied. In his letter to Alan Clark, Roman Catholic bishop of East Anglia, he also said, “Various points, held as dogma by the Catholic church … cannot be accepted as such, or are … accepted only in part, by our brethren of the Anglican church. Moreover, some formulations in the ARCIC report can be given divergent interpretation, while others do not seem readily reconciled with Catholic doctrine.”

The Pope himself will not be able to dodge giving his own reaction to the report while in Britain.

The next Lambeth Conference (mouthpiece of the Anglican communion, which is competent to deal with the report) is not due until 1988.

But the Anglo-Catholic wing of the church has already made a favorable pronouncement. The general secretary of its Church Union Society states: “Provided the Church of England does not miss this great opportunity and creates no new barriers to mutual understanding, the flower of Anglican-Roman Catholic unity could be in full bloom by 1988.”

Very different is the reaction of evangelical scholar Roger Beckwith. He points out that the report’s “silence on the doctrine of salvation, its failure to agree on the doctrine of revelation, and its adoption of unacceptable Roman Catholic teaching on papal primacy and the Holy Communion, mean that it fails to provide a doctrinal basis for closer relations between the two churches.”

HARRY GENET with J. D. DOUGLAS in Scotland

World Scene

The parents of the late Chester Bitterman III flew to Colombia last month to present an ambulance as a gift from the believers of Bitterman’s home town, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They were met by President Julio César Turbay Ayala and granted a private interview. They also presented the keys to the hospital in Villa Vicencio in a dedication service. El Tiempo, Bogotá’s largest daily, editorialized: “The family of the … linguist … has eloquently demonstrated that the imperishable principles of Christianity have not been lost.… To respond to such an inconceivable monstrosity of a crime by donating an ambulance is to interpret in a very beautiful fashion the lesson to love your neighbor.”

Latin American evangelicals turned out in strength last month to form their own regional fellowship. Called to Panama City by an ad hoc committee, the 200 delegates (representing some 80 national denominations and more than 17,000 congregations) to the Consultation of Evangelicals in Latin America (CONELA) scrapped most of the scheduled workshops to devote at least 10 hours to vigorous debate in drafting a constitution. Ad hoc president Asdrubal Ríos turned over the gavel of the tumultuous sessions to an impromptu choice for moderator, José Messina, a Paraguayan Baptist. Marcelino Ortiz, a Mexico City Presbyterian and a member of the ad hoc committee, was elected president by the assembly. But the other three officers—two Pentecostals and a Baptist—were not from the committee. In a rider to the constitution, the conferees declared that CONELA should not join either the World Council of Churches or the International Christian Council.

At the height of the Falkland Islands crisis, British Christians sent a substantial gift and a message of people-to-people support to the churches of Argentina. Clive Calber, director of British Youth for Christ (YFC), who, together with Baptist minister Ian Coffey, delivered the $17,500 gift to an Argentine delegation, said, “We want to tell them Christians in Britain love their brothers and sisters in Argentina.” The action grew out of a spring vacation conference for youth in North Wales called Spring Harvest. More than 12,000 conferees at the event, sponsored by YFC and Buzz magazine, signed the message. The Argentine delegation that received the gift and message was in Panama for CONELA, the Consultation of Evangelicals in Latin America.

Herman Nickel’s nomination as ambassador to South Africa breezed through the Senate although opposed by two religious groups. Their opposition arose from an article Nickel wrote in the June 1980 issue of Fortune magazine titled “The Corporation Haters.” It said the National Council of Churches (NCC) harbored “Marxists marching under the banner of Christ.” Nickel is opposed to apartheid but believes the economic sanctions promoted by the NCC would hurt blacks most and invite violent rather than peaceful change. The NCC and the church-supported Washington Office on Africa opposed Nickel’s appointment.

Protestant and Roman Catholic church weddings won legal status in Greece in March, along with civil marriages. And the usually fragmented Protestants pulled together in an unprecedented manner to help bring it about. In the past, only Greek Orthodox weddings were legally valid.

And what one couple decided to do about it.

Years ago, an African student in the United States to attend college, asked for a drink of water. An American pointed him to a spittoon. The student was humiliated. He was Kwame Nkrumah, who rose to head the government of Ghana for 14 years.

Another African student received his military training at Aberdeen, Maryland. His experience here apparently did not endear Americans to him, for when Mengistu Haile Mariam took power in Ethiopia in 1977, he expelled Americans from his country.

Ironically, nine revolutionary leaders in China in the 1940s were introduced to communism while they were studying here. Most international students do not distinguish between Christianity, Americanism, and capitalism. Rejection of one leads to rejection of the others.

More than 311,000 international students from 184 countries are enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities. They present pastors and mission leaders with remarkable mission fields, and that fact is especially significant because among those 184 countries are those closed to Western missionaries. By entering the States, the students indirectly open locked doors. In addition, these students are among the most intelligent, highly educated, and influential in their countries.

International students, however, seldom find Americans friendly towards them. Stories of bitterness, mistreatment, and rejection abound.

Robert and Mary Taussig spent four years in Nigeria, where Robert, a professor of veterinary medicine, taught college. They met many Nigerian students bitter about their experiences in America. “I hate America. It has nothing to offer me,” said one student.

The Taussigs returned to Manhattan, Kansas, in the fall of 1976, and Bob Taussig resumed his teaching position at Kansas State University (KSU).

“We returned feeling very convinced that God was leading us to do something for international students,” said Taussig. “But we didn’t know what to do.” They obtained a list of names of international students and spent a year praying for each name.

What germinated was the conviction that the students’ social and cultural problems must be handled before spiritual needs can be addressed.

The Taussigs began by emphasizing personal friendship. “And by friendship,” Taussig said, “we mean something more than that which is casual. It has to have some depth and quality.”

Unexpected assistance helped launch the friendship program. Three American students who lived in basem*nt rooms in the Taussig home became willing recruits when their hosts shared their ideas. The trio invited international students over for meals, visited them, helped them with their shopping, and with housing during breaks when dorms were closed.

More volunteers soon joined them. The scope of their activities expanded to include Bible study and evangelistic meetings.

Objectives crystallized. This led, in the fall of 1978, to the formation of Helping International Students (HIS), a church-based community service organization. The Taussigs are HIS directors and now have more than 270 American helpers. More than half are from their congregation, Grace Baptist Church.

Chuan-Hsin Hsueh was a chemist doing research at Beijing College of Chemical Engineering, and is working on a doctorate in chemistry at KSU. He came alone; his wife and five children are in mainland China.

When he landed at Kansas City, Kansas, in February last year, he had only $30 in U.S. currency, and “a little English.” He took a bus to Manhattan, Kansas, as he could not afford a commuter plane, arriving at 9 P.M. Sensing that he was a stranger, a Christian approached him, found out his circ*mstances, and rang Taussig. The Taussigs took him in for the night.

Another KSU student who was a lecturer is Korean Nam-In Kim, 34. He taught crop physiology in South Korea. When he arrived on campus three years ago, he was single and not a Christian. He now has a Korean wife he met here, and a three-month-old boy. Baptized at Grace Baptist Church in September 1980, he is the only Christian in his family of seven.

Kim said, “He [Taussig] is the symbol of Christianity. When new students come to KSU and they need transportation, he has someone to pick them up. He helped me spiritually. When I stayed in the dorm, he visited me one night and gave me a book on Christian living.”

Grace Baptist Church figures prominently in HIS activities. When the pastor first gave Taussig pulpit time in the fall of 1978 to explain the HIS program and appeal for volunteers, 80 responded. Since then, appeals are made at the start of each semester.

Besides serving the community, the Taussigs feel that HIS helps stimulate the congregation to be missions minded, promote world awareness, and provide a training and support base for cross-cultural work. They believe that the local church, rather than parachurch organizations, should be the base for international student work. The church’s communal and family life, its manpower, and financial resources render it an ideal center.

Nigerian students respond well to HIS. James Hassan, one of 120 Nigerian students at KSU, said, “Nigerian culture is very different from American culture. Back home I’m used to talking to anybody. But nobody cares about me here. I show a friendly face, but I get the impression that I’m not wanted. Some seem to say, ‘What business have you got with me?’ I’m referring to American students and adults alike.

“But I see a spirit of brotherhood in Dr. Taussig. They [the Taussigs] are among the people who care.”

Several training programs, workshops, and seminars have been designed to teach American volunteers cross-cultural principles of conversation and communication.

“The American is more of a problem to us than the international,” said Taussig. “The problem is with our narrow, provincial outlook, our Western culture that thinks that everything resides here. This even splinters off into the idea that Western Caucasian people are more intelligent, more sophisticated. It’s a type of Western blindness.”

Although HIS’s concepts and training materials developed independently of other international student ministries, the Taussigs now have ties with several organizations, including International Students and the Southern Baptist Convention.

Since these experiences, the Taussigs said they are grateful to God for the opportunity to go to 80 countries without leaving Manhattan, without needing a visa, and without learning a foreign language. KSU is a veritable mission field.

The Taussigs have seven children and 22 grandchildren. They look upon the international students as part of their extended family—their spiritual children.

Two verses guide them in their labors: “When a foreigner lives with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him … love him as yourself” (Lev. 19:33–34).

LAWSON LAU in Manhattan, Kansas