Valentine’s Day holds more significance for the Rev. Francis V. Crumley than for most people, for it was on February 14, 1932, that Crumley gave his heart to Christ. Crumley’s conversion is particularly important in the perspective of North American Christianity because he went on to become a leader of the rescue-mission movement during a period of crucial transition.
That transition is in full sway, and Crumley, now 61, wants to see it through. He is the superintendent of the Central Union Mission in Washington, D. C., and president of the International Union of Gospel Missions.
“Primarily because of urban-renewal programs,” Crumley says, “missions everywhere are faced with relocation or adopting new ministries.” Most are taking the latter route, but that isn’t always an easy answer. Crumley notes that when urban-renewal gets rid of one Skid Row it often creates five or six smaller ones elsewhere. And it’s becoming ever more difficult to start large new missions in metropolitan areas.
One thing is certain: Rescue missions are needed in many inner-city areas more than ever before. Christians seeking to exercise their faith can find no better place, for human problems seem to be taking on an ever wider variety in crowded downtown areas. Rescue missions still carry through their historic emphasis as a haven for helpless alcoholics, but the picture is changing.
“Rescue missions have been branching out into other phases of social service with a religious orientation,” Crumley says. “Our ministries now run the gamut from pre-natal care to old folks’ homes.” In between are such efforts as homes for unwed mothers, child-care centers, Bible classes for all, personal counseling, Christian day schools, aid for hippies, and medical and dental clinics.
Many of the several hundred inner-city rescue missions scattered across North America have become large-scale enterprises with annual budgets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Among the largest are missions in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. The biggest in the world is one in Australia that employs 107 people full-time. A number of smaller cities are also able to support substantial efforts: Among these are Great Falls, Montana; Asheville, North Carolina; Flagstaff, Arizona; London, Ontario; Parkersburg, West Virginia; Anchorage, Alaska; and Hagerstown, Maryland. The oldest is the McAuley Water Street Mission in New York.
In a number of cities, doctors and dentists are donating professional services to rescue missions. Crumley estimates that between 35 and 40 per cent of rescue missions are now involved in some kind of medical ministry. The Island of Hope in Omaha, Nebraska, has resident interns on duty through a special cooperative arrangement with local hospitals.
Rescue-mission superintendents say that churches and individual Christians get more return per dollar in rescue-mission work than in any other ministry. “Examination of financial records will enlighten you to the fact that your rescue-mission dollar goes far beyond your expectation,” says F. Dickson Marshall of the City Rescue Mission in New Castle, Pennsylvania. “It is a place where the dollar does the work of a dollar,” says Alonzo M. Heath of Bakersfield, California. “Budgets are not weighted down with salary designations, but most of the mission’s dollars are spent right on the job.”
Interestingly, rescue-mission work is attracting a number of younger men, even though salaries are way below par (a recent survey showed that among 155 rescue missions, only three paid their superintendents more than $10,000 a year). The International Union has a training program for would-be rescue-mission workers, and Philadelphia College of Bible has a specially tailored curriculum. A number of PCB graduates go on to get a master’s degree in social work at the University of Pennsylvania before getting into rescue-mission work.
Crumley says that a Supreme Court decision several years ago recognizing alcoholism as a disease has taken something of a burden from the shoulders of rescue missions. A number of cities are establishing “withdrawal centers” for alcoholics. Crumley welcomes this development, though he hopes that rescue-missions can continue to expand their own kind of help for alcoholics.
Crumley does not apologize for the missions’ insistence on proclaiming Christ’s redeeming love and atoning work as they carry on their ministries of compassion. Professional social workers in secular agencies tend to look down upon the rescue missions because of this stipulation. But Crumley points out that modern social service has its own prescribed routine, and that government-subsidized social work demands that a patient adhere to this routine if he is going to get help. Similarly, rescue missions have their own requirements. “If a man is going to eat God’s food,” Crumley says, “he should also be willing to hear God’s word. We make no bones about it.”
In rescue missions where there are well-trained workers, personal counseling ministries are growing. But Crumley says that about 90 per cent of rescue missions still hold nightly preaching services. Local churches usually supply the speakers, and thereby often enable laymen to get involved.
How are rescue missions financed? Most income is derived from churches that include the missions in their budgets and from individual contributions. A few get united-fund charity help and tax dollars.
Crumley was born in New Bedford. Massachusetts, and left home for Philadelphia when he was eighteen. He spent his first day in Philadelphia in a saloon. But a grocer around the corner from where he lived took a personal interest in him and brought him to a men’s Bible class at the Lawndale Methodist Church. After his conversion Crumley worked his way through Bible school and subsequently pastored churches in the Philadelphia area. Throughout this time he did volunteer work at the Eighth Street Wayside Mission and in fact met his wife there. He was appointed superintendent of the mission in 1943, and several years later took a similar position at another mission in Philadelphia run by the Sunday Breakfast Association. He came to Washington in 1965.
“The rescue-mission is a spiritual station where the Gospel goes forth that lives might be transformed by the power of its message,” says Crumley. “I believe in the rescue-mission ministry because God does—and blesses it.”
DAVID KUCHARSKY
Reaching The Unchurched
A telephone survey designed to locate the unchurched was credited with encouraging new commitments to Christ during a two-week crusade conducted by Leighton Ford in Tampa, Florida.
The January meetings, initiated by the Tampa Ministers Association, drew an aggregate crowd of 75,000. The closing service was held January 25 in Tampa’s Curtis Hixon Hall with a near capacity crowd of 6,250.
Ford urged the audience to “identify with Christ. Lay your life on the line and demonstrate that you belong to him. I’m not simply talking about coming forward in a meeting. But in your home, in your school, in your business, begin to live for him and stand for him. Then we will see a transformation take place in this society.”
The telephone campaign got to approximately two-thirds of Tampa’s population of 400,000, and of these 60 per cent indicated they were unchurched. Prior to the crusade, local churches were encouraged to make contact with these people.
A spokesman said that “an unusually high percentage of inquirers indicated that they had no church connection whatsoever,” and it was believed that this was the direct result of the calls made.
Several noted sports figures were featured on the crusade program. The musicians included George Beverly Shea, Ethel Waters, and folksinger John Fischer. Billy Graham’s mother spoke briefly during a family-night service.
The 38-year-old Ford is an associate of Graham and married to his sister. He alternates with Graham as speaker on the weekly “Hour of Decision” radio broadcast, which is heard around the world. A native of Canada, he lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. He is author of The Christian Persuader, published by Harper in 1966, and delivered one of the major addresses at the 1969 U.S. Congress on Evangelism.
