The Bible on the Beaches

Campus evangelism followed college students to Florida and West Coast beaches again this year during spring vacations. Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship sponsored musical combos and hootenanies. The “All-American Caravan,” an interdenominational enterprise, put on beach performances with twenty-five Christian athletes, musicians, and show business personalities. Campus Crusade for Christ fanned out over the sands with clipboards and questionnaires.

Instead of relying on classic methods, these groups are using what might be called guerrilla tactics to penetrate alien, and often hostile, territory. This year at Fort Lauderdale, radio antennas on cars were stacked high with beer cans; at Daytona Beach, sweatshirts bore such slogans as “Help Stamp Out Virginity.” On Balboa Island, on tile West Coast, Campus Crusade hung out its sign at headquarters, while across the street someone hung out another sign bearing the legend, “Booze is the Answer.”

But the unorthodox methods have proved themselves, according to their proponents.

Inter-Varsity reported that sixty students and a nucleus staff talked to 2,000 students on Southern California beaches during Easter week, that 300 students expressed definite interest, and that several professed faith.

At Fort Lauderdale, IVCF Regional Director Burton Harding led workers in a variety of approaches, including beach forums, student surveys, hotel patio parties, and hootenanies.

The All-American Caravan worked the nine miles of seashore at Daytona Beach, relying heavily on Ed Beck, captain of Kentucky’s national basketball champions in 1958, and using jazz piano and chalk drawings.

Beck and Bill Peckham, leaders in the group, are both members of the Methodist General Board of Evangelism.

“We’re not here to judge anybody, to tell them not to smoke or not to drink,” said one member. “We’re here simply to tell them what the Christian faith means to us.”

At Newport Beach-Balboa Island, Campus Crusade teams of two strolled up and down the beaches with their questionnaires for a “religious opinion survey.” More than 1,000 forms were completed, and more than 400 young people accepted Christ as Saviour, according to Josh McDowell, a crusade director.

“No, we don’t convince everyone we talk to,” said McDowell, “but we give everyone a chance to hear the message.” Members talked to some 1,300 vacationers on the beaches, on the streets, and at twist parties.

“One to one” witnessing is not easy under such conditions, but the young people have impressed both vacationers and local townspeople with their earnestness.

“This is a new breed of teen-ager,” said a California resort resident. “For years kids have been coming down here at Easter vacation and tearing up our town; but these young people are different.”

Protestant Panorama

Presbyterian U. S. Board of World Missions plans to add Indonesia to its fields of service. The board also set a goal of 600 missionaries by 1970. The present force numbers 519.

Publication of the monthly magazine Methodist Layman will be discontinued with the June issue. An annual program guide will be issued by the Methodist General Board of Lay Activities to replace some material now carried by the publication.

United Church of Christ filed petitions with the Federal Communications Commission charging that two television stations in Jackson, Mississippi, fail to serve the interests of the area’s Negro population. A Mississippi NAACP official and a Negro minister in Jackson endorsed the petition, which could result in denial of license renewal by the FCC.

Baptists in Portugal are planning simultaneous evangelistic campaigns throughout the country October 18-November 1. All twenty-three churches of the Portuguese Baptist Convention are expected to take part.

German Protestants have launched a fund drive for a “repentance church” to be built on the site of the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau.

Three Lutheran free churches in Germany announced plans for a merger. The three represent a constituency of about 73,000 and are now associated in a loose cooperative organization. They are in formal fellowship with the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod of North America.

German Protestant Bible Society plans to publish a New Testament in four versions: a counterpart of the New English Bible; the revised Luther translation of 1956: the Zuercher Bibel, a widely used modern translation; and a Roman Catholic translation by Fritz Tillmann.

Miscellany

Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish leaders are cooperating in a survey of the religious preferences of exclusive apartment dwellers in Chicago. A spokesman for the group said such apartment dwellers, often “self-immured behind doormen and locked entrances, are too often impenetrable to evangelism,” but that united action can open their doors.

The Coptic Church in Egypt is planning a campaign to bring Christianity to millions on the African continent. The campaign will highlight celebrations of the nineteenth centenary of the church, which was founded in A.D. 45. It is the largest and oldest Christian church in Egypt.

Decision magazine, published by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, will hold its second annual School of Christian Writing June 29-July 1 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Chinese Catholics have been cut off from Rome and their bishops have been “brainwashed,” said Abbot Laurentius Klein, at the University of Minnesota last month. The German abbot told his audience that one plan under discussion proposes placing Catholics in Communist China under the protective spiritual care of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow.

The Sudanese government, after expelling 272 foreign missionaries last year, has now entered into a “friendly agreement” with the native Roman Catholic priests in the country, according to Mohamed Ahmed Irwa, Minister of the Interior.

DATA International Assistance Corps, an organization devoted to helping foreign missionaries with technical problems, says it will launch a joint program with the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce whereby more Americans abroad can avail themselves of DATA services.

A Bible said to have belonged to Martin Luther is currently being restored in the National Hungarian Archives in Budapest. It dates back to the year 1542.

Quaker-related Malone College of Canton, Ohio, won accreditation from the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.

Personalia

Dr. Jared F. Gerig elected president of the National Association of Evangelicals. Gerig is head of Fort Wayne Bible College and a past president of the Missionary Church Association.

Dr. Paul L. Kindschi elected president of the National Holiness Association.

The Rev. John P. Donnelly will resign as director of the Bureau of Information of the National Catholic Welfare Conference to become Vatican correspondent for the NCWC news service.

The Rev. Norman Cummings elected president of the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association.

Dr. Ilmari Salomies submitted his resignation, effective September 1, as primate of the state church of Finland.

They Say

“Thus far, the movement toward overtly un-Christian and anti-Christian themes is more noticeable in foreign and independent films than in the product of the organized American industry. Nevertheless, in Hollywood production there are signs to justify concern. For the present it will be sufficient to cite the covert attempts to condone and even promote premarital sexual indulgence. In addition to the immorality of such a theme, these films are also fundamentally dishonest in their manner of presentation; the liaison of hero and heroine is surrounded by glamorized opulence and shielded from any probing of the very real personal and social implications of such behavior.”—American Roman Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Motion Pictures, Radio and Television.

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