NEWS
Something is happening on a number of college campuses across the nation. At the once-incendiary Isla Vista campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara, Christ “is the most talked-about issue among the students,” says junior Gary Fischer. Nearby, a theater that once showed underground films is now a Christian bookstore frequented by hundreds of students.
“I sense we are on the verge of something big,” says Baptist minister Don Hawkinson, 31, who has organized “Committed Reach” at Albany (New York) State. His words were repeated by other campus workers in a spot check of colleges coast to coast.
Hawkinson’s group is composed mostly of new believers from Jewish and Catholic backgrounds. (Of Albany State’s 15,000 students, 40 per cent are estimated to be Jewish, 45 per cent Catholic.) Dozens are “active in daily evangelism,” says Hawkinson. They sponsor two houses named One Way Inn, evangelistic coffeehouses in the school’s cafeteria, a book table in the student center, distribution of Christian tabloids, a School of Evangelism on Saturdays, a highway missionary van to reach hitchhikers, weekly Bible-study and prayer groups.
This month scores of Christian students plan a week-long low-key witness campaign at Harvard. At another Ivy League school, Princeton, a coffeehouse known as “The Lower Room” is at the center of some heavy campus witnessing. Seminarian Slider Steuernol, who directs it, comments: “The power behind the Jesus movement is the same power behind our coffeehouse—the Holy Spirit.” He says many Princeton students are deeply committed to Christ but alienated from participating in the organized church, and that’s where the coffeehouse comes in. There are also well-attended Bible-study seminars on campus, he says.
There is probably outright revival at 9,000-student Eastern Illinois University at Charleston, Illinois. Campus minister James Robert Ross, 37, tells the story:
“From the time less than two years ago that a cadre of Christian students and I founded the Christian Collegiate Fellowship on campus we have felt God’s spirit moving among us. Last October a few students began meeting daily at 6:00 A.M. to pray for revival at Eastern.
“In January several unrelated campus projects jelled at the same time: thousands of Christian newspapers handed out on campus, an evangelical worship service in a university auditorium, a Christian coffeehouse, and an ear-splitting but heart-touching performance by E, a Jesus rock band from Indianapolis. The unfolding result has been rebirth and revival at Eastern.
“Student leader Dennis Greenwald and other students staged a big happening they billed as ‘Eastern Resurrection,’ with E as the headliners. About 500 came to the Student Union on each of two nights to hear the E’s members sing and testify. I gave a short gospel message. People were coming and going all evening, but many stayed until the Union closed at 11:30 P.M. At 11:00 P.M. students began streaming to the front, kneeling in prayer, asking others how to receive Christ. There was little pressure or regard for statistics.
“Within a week I baptized seven students. My phone was busy day and night as students called, wanting to know more about Christ, about the Christian life, about a date for baptism.
“The Fishnet, a Christian coffeehouse organized about the same time by an interdenominational group, became a meeting place where students shared with others what was happening. There were more decisions for Christ.
“There has been a minimum of organizational push. Spirit-filled students are the prime movers and witnesses. A bond of cooperation among evangelical campus groups has emerged. We all feel we have seen only the beginning of something big to come: a harvest of hundreds, perhaps thousands. Meanwhile, the Spirit is moving among us.”
Officials of many Christian colleges have detected a new mood on campus within the past two years. They speak of deeper Christian commitment, of record numbers of students involved in both spiritual-growth groups on campus and outreach projects off campus. In some cases, revival like that of the 1970 Asbury College outpouring (see February 27, 1970, issue, page 36) has taken place.
The 1,100-student North Park College, an Evangelical Covenant school in Chicago, is among the most recent to experience a spiritual surge. It happened during the last week of January in an event called Festival of Faith, and the impact has been spilling over into Midwest churches.
It started with the arrival on campus of a team of Jesus people led by youth pastor Don Williams of the Hollywood Presbyterian Church. Skepticism about their coming had run high among students and faculty alike; they expected another “rah rah Jesus rally,” said campus chaplain Mike Halleen, who had invited the team to lead the festival. But the hostility melted, he said, as the team fanned out to live in dorms and spent much time in serious conversation, counseling, classroom lecturing, and small-group Bible studies.
Evening meetings drew as many as 500 students. These were addressed by ex-doper Tom Rozof, 24, a street evangelist who heads up a ministry among 700 high-schoolers in Wichita, Kansas. When Rozof first arrived, the president of the freshman class complained to him that the money paid out for team travel expenses could have been used to hire a famous rock band instead. Two nights later he prayed to receive Christ.
At another meeting, hundreds responded to Rozof’s call to receive Christ, then lingered late into the night in an afterglow service marked by tearful embraces, singing, prayers, and testimonies. Prayer groups were seen scattered throughout the campus all night.
The next morning in a packed chapel service Halleen called upon faculty members to confess their commitment to Christ and their availability for spiritual leadership among the students. Nearly fifty walked to the front. Halleen challenged students to similar commitment among their peers, and amid singing hundreds crowded forward embracing the teachers and one another.
President Lloyd Allen commented that what he had seen had been his goal as a Christian educator.
Students have been sharing their experiences in area churches, on occasion sparking mini-revivals as meetings go on for hours, says Halleen. Meanwhile, he says, they have discovered that—as Williams pointed out—the college is a built-in commune where they can support one another spiritually and be a model of what it means to share in love as the body of Christ.
The Heat’S On In Duluth
What began as “just another” Jesus youth festival in Duluth, Minnesota (population 106,000), is now—by all appearances—a full-blown revival.
“I’ve lived in Duluth all my life and seen a lot of ‘church revivals,’ but I’ve never witnessed anything like this before,” observed Julie Elick, wife of a local Youth for Christ director.
Despite sub-zero temperatures and snowstorms, thousands of young people and adults jammed into meetings, with more than 1,000 reportedly praying to receive Christ. Nightly sessions began in early January and continued into February in churches, auditoriums, and the city arena. The revival spirit has meanwhile spread to nearby Superior and the outlying countryside, according to reports.
The action was spearheaded by the Jesus People of Milwaukee, a group that began last year with seven members in a former Milwaukee doper commune and has now grown to 110, living in a converted but somewhat rundown nursing home. The home has been named the Milwaukee Discipleship Training Center, and all 110 residents are enrolled in the “full-time faith school.” It is headed by ex-bartender Jim Palosaari and his wife Sue, converts from the West Coast drug scene. Quarter breaks are spent in team witnessing.
During such a quarter break the Palosaaris took a team, including the Sheep, a Jesus rock group, to Duluth at the invitation of a college student who set up a weekend stand. That’s when revival broke out, and Palosaari sent for fifty Milwaukee reinforcements.
Dino, a well-known disc jockey on a Duluth rock station, interviewed Palosaari, later attended a meeting and accepted Christ, reports a CHRISTIANITY TODAY correspondent. Dino has injected Jesus music into his show, says the reporter, and helped arrange a daily fifteen-minute afternoon broadcast by Palosaari.
Likewise, a Duluth Herald newspaper reporter prayed to receive Christ while interviewing Palosaari.
Last month the E music group arrived to spell the weary Sheep. Following the group’s appearance at Barnum high school in tiny Mahtowa fifteen miles from Duluth, revival broke out on campus, reports teacher Jack Smith, who is also a Covenant pastor. A number of teachers and students alike received Christ. “We were all praying, ‘Jesus, let this be real,’ ” Smith recalls. The high school, he adds, has “changed.”
“We’ve got a gusher; now we’ve got to cap it,” Palosaari said in an interview. The “capping” took place on February 12 with a Jesus march by 2,500 in below-freezing weather and a rally at the arena. Mayor Ben Boo was among the speakers. Physical healings occurred during the arena rally, according to eye-witness reports.
The event marked a transition, says Palosaari. “More than 1,500 professed Christ in the first forty days of the revival; now we must teach them.” Already, he adds, many small Bible-study and prayer groups are meeting throughout the area. The revival brought together Youth for Christ, other Christian groups, churches, and street Christians in fellowship and outreach, and that unity still exists, he says. Second Presbyterian Church provided sleeping space for the majority of the out-of-towners.
Most of the Milwaukee youths have returned to their training center, where head elder John Herrin, a former United Church of Christ minister, tends school while Palosaari continues the Duluth ministry.
The revival has ignited reaction in some quarters. A high-school principal dislikes the activism of some of his newly turned-on students and has barred them from distributing Street Level, the Milwaukee Jesus newspaper, and other literature on campus.
Further testing of a different sort may be ahead. U. S. Steel has announced it will close a large Duluth operation, throwing thousands out of work.
Bandaging Bangladesh
“We don’t want to talk to anyone. Just send us poison.” These words, spoken by three pregnant women, sum up the attitude of many of the 200,000 rape victims in Bangladesh. At least four to five thousand are now pregnant, report Bangladesh doctors. The problem of these homeless or ostracized women (their husbands and children won’t take them back), just one of numerous problems facing Bangladesh, may be the most difficult to solve.
Of the many organizations sending funds and relief packages to Bangladesh, only a few have investigated the possibility of aiding the rape victims. One is World Vision International, whose staff member Bill Kliewer, just back from Bangladesh, reports that orphanages and medical supplies may not alleviate the problem.
Doctors working in that country say the hardest part is finding these women, said Kliewer. “They’ve gone into hiding. They don’t want to talk to anyone or be identified in any way as rape victims.”
Some doctors in Bangladesh think that the number-one solution to the problem is abortion. Although the government doesn’t sanction abortion, an official notice circulated to all doctors advises them to use their “discretion” in treating these women—a notice doctors interpret as special permission to abort if they deem it in a woman’s best interests. But, the doctors say, the women won’t come to the medical centers for any kind of help. There have been rumors of numerous suicides and self-attempted abortions. Kliewer reports that one woman cut open her stomach to kill her fetus, and then killed herself.
Mother Teresa, the well-known nun who has worked in Calcutta for forty-four years, is in Bangladesh to set up an orphanage. She has advertised her phone number in the Dacca area newspapers; any woman can call anonymously to receive help. Her program appears to be the only one having any success so far. In Kliewer’s words, “Mother Teresa is doing a masterful job.”
The immediate needs of food, clothing, and shelter are easier to meet. The World Council of Churches, in cooperation with the Bangladesh government and the Roman Catholic Church, has designated about $5 million for Bangladesh relief, concentrating on a plan to to air lift protein and foodstuffs, blankets and clothing, and medical supplies and equipment when the monsoon season begins in April.
Southern Baptists have given an initial $25,000 to rebuild a village outside Feni. Their officials have asked the Foreign Mission Board for $76,500 more to finance similar projects outside Dacca, Comilla, and Faridpur.
The Mennonite Central Committee, according to spokesmen, has been in touch with the prime minister’s office in Bangladesh; the MCC in its aid program wants to work through the government and local churches. A request to Mennonite churches in the United States and Canada for $350,000 has netted more than $530,000 to date.
Of the three major disaster areas—Dinajpur. Rhulna, and Garo—Garo, the most isolated, is getting the least attention from these programs. The Garo refugees, many of whom fled to Assam across the border, have returned to find their villages gone and their schools looted or destroyed.
World Vision is sending aid into the tribal belt through the 103 Garo Baptist churches, pioneered by the Australian Baptist Missionary Society. The sixty village schools are run by three Australian Baptist missionaries, all of whom were in Garo for the war’s duration. (One of the missionaries, considered a Bangladesh leader by West Pakistani officials, was slated for assassination the day after the army retreated.) A large percentage of Garos are Christians, Kliewer said. The indigenous churches will distribute the supplies (food, clothing, seeds, ploughs, cows, and building materials) to all the Garo people, regardless of religion.
CHERYL A. FORBES
Better Entertainment
Repercussions from the financial failure of the Dick Ross Associates (DRA) film firm (see January 7 issue, page 44) are said to be hampering funding of another evangelical film-maker, Better Entertainment Productions (BEP). BEP premiered its motion picture, The Ballad of Billie Blue, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, last month (see review below), and holds rights to the book Run Baby Run by converted gang leader Nicky Cruz. Cruz is a central figure in David Wilkerson’s bestseller, The Cross and the Switchblade, from which DRA—now reorganizing under bankruptcy laws—made one of its two movies.
BEP’s head, dentist Robert Plekker of suburban Grand Rapids, contends that several prospective investors have backed away and a bank has called in a note early—all because of the DRA debacle. He insists BEP is sound and tightly managed, a key talking point in light of the box-office success of The Cross and the Switchblade—negated, insiders say, by inept financial management.
Plekker hopes to raise $1.5 million to underwrite The Ballad of Billie Blue by enlisting ten Limited Partners who will put up $150,000 each and split two-thirds of the profits among themselves. Five had signed aboard as of last month. (Plekker, a well-known layman in Christian Reformed Church circles, is one of two trustees of a combine that invested $100,000 in DRA; he says he has no other ties to the Ross venture.)
Plekker points out that the motion-picture screen can present Christ to millions of persons who probably wouldn’t attend a church. In the movie Plekker himself plays the part of the preacher who helps to win Billie Blue to Christ. How many of the millions of unchurched will respond as easily as Billie remains to be seen.
Billie Blue’S Ballad
Hamlet knew the value of drama for catching consciences and causing conversations:
I have heard
That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim’d their male-factions.
Evangelical film-makers are beginning to understand this. And Better Entertainment Productions, with its first release, The Ballad of Billie Blue, intends to strike viewers’ souls with the Gospel.
The realistic and believable story centers around Billie Blue, a country-and-western singer who succeeds in his field, succumbs to alcohol and drugs, and after an encounter with Preacher Bob begins to reconstruct his life and career with Christ at the center.
The film’s message is clear: man is sinful and needs salvation. But unlike many secular films that depict man’s sin, Ballad doesn’t leave the viewer with a sense of hopelessness; it shows Billie dealing effectively with his problems.
The realistic portrayal of adultery, jealousy, drunkenness, covetousness, and even murder grips the viewer. Preacher Bob doesn’t step out of his role to serve the audience a fare of pat answers and traditional preachments. This is the movie’s finest success. Preacher Bob deals directly with Billie Blue and his problems; the involvement is personal, simple, honest.
Some college students who have viewed The Ballad of Billie Blue see a development in the Christian movie since The Cross and the Switchblade. Students recognize that films like this one are a dynamic way of helping guilty viewers confess their sins and turn to Christ.
ERVINA BOEVE
Tiny Wedding Suit
Radio evangelist Jack Wyrtzen turned down the job, but the Reverend William Glenesk didn’t. Now he’s sorry he didn’t follow suit, because the pay was a mite too small.
Glenesk, the pastor of Spencer Memorial Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, who married singer Tiny Tim and his “Miss Vickie” before Johnny Carson’s 20 million televiewers, is suing the show’s producers for $500.
In order to appear on the Carson show for the wedding. Glenesk had to join the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. He owes the organization $275 for his appearance, plus three years’ worth of dues; he was paid Only $265 by Raritan Enterprises. The minister voiced displeasure that the show, in effect, “expects me to pay for my appearance.” He says the $500 will cover his overdue union dues as well as his wedding fee.
Tiny Tim, who says he loves Jesus as well as Vickie, originally asked Wyrtzen to perform the ceremony, and he agreed—on three conditions: the singer had to cut his hair, cancel his performance contracts, and get out of show business and into a Bible school. Tim agreed to everything except cancellation of his immediate contracts, but Wyrtzen refused to perform the wedding.
