Energy Crisis: Bleakness or Blessing?

Many businessmen, government leaders, and energy experts are predicting dire times as a result of the energy crisis. Most of the nation’s pastors and church leaders meanwhile are looking for the silver lining in those oil-black clouds.

In a survey conducted by CHRISTIANITY TODAY a number of church spokesmen acknowledged that the winter may bring some degree of bleakness into their churches, but most also said it might bring some blessing. For example, they cited, President Nixon’s ban on Sunday gasoline sales may boost attendance (and offerings) by ending the weekend “exodus” to cottages, resorts, and distant relatives.

“We estimate that 25 per cent of our faithful are absent at [second] homes, sailing on the Pacific, or basking on Catalina Island on any given weekend,” said Robert Schuller, pastor of the nation’s largest drive-in church, the 6,400-member Garden Grove Community Church in Garden Grove, California.

Says National Council of Churches president W. Sterling Cary: “Lacking the opportunity for vacation weekends, people may find again their local church, get to know their neighbors, and have time to search again for the values which once made this nation one of hope and trust.”

The crisis may also force churches to rethink their ministries, asserts Paul Benjamin, professor of church growth at Lincoln Christian Seminary in Lincoln, Illinois. “Churches may have to ask themselves what caused people to drift away on weekends in the first place.” Further, the crisis “might stimulate the church to more creative thinking,” concludes Garden Grove’s Schuller.

Among the possibilities facing the church, they say, are rescheduling of services and meetings to other times and maybe even days, consolidation of activities to one or two nights and keeping lights and heat off in buildings as much as possible, car pools, formation of church groups in neighborhood homes, and making greater use of broadcasting.

First Baptist Church of Van Nuys, California, already has an energy conservation committee. It is headed by church transportation minister Terry Spahr. Spahr’s church—like all those surveyed by CHRISTIANITY TODAY—is following President Nixon’s recommendations by cutting thermostats below seventy degrees, imposing speed limits on church vehicles, and turning off unused lights. The crisis hits three areas of the church, Spahr believes: the people, the bus ministry, and church utilities. Congregation members are urged to use public transportation where possible, or—with an assist from the church’s computer—form car pools. “We already have church-giving records on computer, so forming car pools shouldn’t be difficult,” said Spahr. Should a Sunday driving ban come about—something all the ministers interviewed feel won’t happen—First Baptist’s members will be asked to form neighborhood Sunday schools and chapels and then tune in the church’s televised morning service.

In Dallas, the 18,000-member First Baptist Church—spread out over five city blocks—is promoting Sunday car pools and instituting conservation measures in use of buildings.

Home churches and cell groups may be a distinct possibility, said several ministers. Norman Foss, pastor of a 150-member Missoula, Montana, Christian and Missionary Alliance congregation, said his church has home Bible studies operating and will settle for them should necessity force curtailment of some services. Foss meanwhile is buying a bike to save gas—“and expend a little of my own energy.”

Another Alliance minister, James A. Davey of Arlington Memorial Church in Arlington, Virginia, is convinced the crisis may propel churches into new ministry forms. Evening services may be dropped, and the sermon changed to a cassette-taped Bible study for use in neighborhood cell groups, he said. The churches must rethink their “hyperthyroid programming which says ‘more is better,’ ” Davey added.

WEATHERING THE WINTER

The Houston Chronicle, in a recent article on its religion page, listed ten ways churches can respond to the energy crisis:

• Churches can encourage members living nearby to walk or ride bicycles to church services.

• They can encourage or actually work out car pools for members to get to church.

• Churches can limit, consolidate, or dovetail their services, to cut down on the number of trips to church.

• They can be sure the cars they buy for their ministers to drive are the smaller, gas-saving models.

• They can encourage members who drive great distances to attend church to visit churches closer to their homes until the crisis is over.

• Churches located on bus routes can offer their parking lots on weekdays to people who would otherwise use the excuse that they have to walk too far to the bus.

• Churches can work out carpools for their members who work in the same areas of town.

• They can talk about biblical stewardship of the earth, including the wise use of natural resources.

• They can lower their theromstats, switch off lights, and urge members to do likewise at home.

Hardest hit by the oil shortages are the super churches operating extensive bus ministries and drawing crowds from surrounding areas.

The dealer who supplies the fastgrowing 13,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, announced a 28 per cent reduction in the church’s gasoline allocation (to 10,000 gallons per month, down 4,000 gallons) and said further cutbacks can be expected within weeks, according to assistant pastor James Soward, who heads up the church’s energy strategy. Anti-freeze and lubricating oil are also in short supply, he says. Contingencies are under discussion, adds Soward, but for now the church is doubling up some of the bus routes (they extend as far as fifty miles beyond Lynchburg), and social outings—including youth activities requiring buses—will be curtailed.

Also hit hard was First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana, boasting the nation’s largest Sunday school at 10,000-plus—most of them brought in by the church’s fleet of 150 buses that operate on 170 routes. Pastor Jack Hyles says the church’s fuel supply has been cut “by about a third.” The remainder will be kept solely for Sunday use. Other bus users—choirs, youth groups, adult fellowships—will have to pay cash at the nearest gas station that will accommodate them.

Van Nuys First Baptist, which operates fourteen buses, will cut bus use by 20 per cent, giving priority to Sunday use. Outreach ministries, such as choir trips, will be severely curtailed and social activities chopped completely. One ministry hurt by the cutbacks, Spahr said, will be an annual fifteen-weekend teen outreach at mountain ski resorts. The church is looking for ski resorts closer to home, although the whole program is in jeopardy.

But at Temple Baptist in Detroit, Michigan, curtailment of bus operations is out, Pastor G. B. Vick told reporter Hiley Ward of the Detroit Free Press. Besides, he implied, it makes better sense to keep the buses running; their elimination would result in increased numbers of private cars on the road on Sundays.

The shortages will also lead to sermons on ethics, say some pastors. “We’ll be preaching on obeying the spirit—not just the letter of the law,” remarked Spahr. Churches must lead Americans in a cutback of waste, adds Schuller. “I truly believe America is shot full of waste. We’re an undisciplined and prolifigate people. We waste gas, money, and time.” First Baptist Church in Dallas has already sent conservation guidelines to its members, reports associate pastor James Draper. Pastor Warren Wiersbe of Moody Church in Chicago said a committee is issuing a “manifesto” to the congregation asking for priorities in energy conservation.

THE MINISTER HAD A BABY

For the first time, a Lutheran Church in America minister has given birth. It was a baby girl—and the minister is LCA staffer Margaret Krych of Hights-town, New Jersey. Mrs. Krych was the first woman ordained into the Methodist church of Australia, and she was ordained again last year in the Hights-town LCA church her husband serves as pastor. She is one of eight ordained women in the LCA.

The heating oil shortage is a major headache for many churches. At Pipestone, Minnesota, where temperatures can drop to 40 degrees below zero, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church is faced with oil cutbacks and few ways to conserve it. Church offices and non-used classroom space are all on the same thermostat and therefore can’t be lowered sufficiently to save without making extensive system changes, says pastor Willard E. Koch.

Wheaton College, with more than fifty buildings, beat the fuel oil shortage more than a year ago by converting to natural gas for heating. Even so, said physical plant director Ralph Swanson, thermostats this winter will be set at 70 degrees maximum, with some low-use areas kept at 65 degrees, and use of heating and electricity will be severely restricted during holiday periods (even the outdoor decorations, including the school’s Christmas tree, remained unlit for Christmas—a negligible but visible savings in energy and only a dent in this year’s utilities bill of more than $300,000.)

Preachers might receive an unexpected bonus from the energy cutback, however. Cooler churches will keep people wider awake and more alert. Church-scene commentator Martin Marty suggests half in jest that church services might even become livelier (clapping hands and the like) as members seek to stay warm.

Rationing, if and when it comes, is something the churches have had to face in the past. Under the World War II system, most drivers were issued three gallons per week with instructions to cut unnecessary driving. But the government included church-going as a necessary function, and ministers received unlimited gasoline supplies because clergymen’s jobs were held to be necessary for the national morale.

The fuel crisis is worse overseas. Churches in at least five European nations have had to contend with Sunday driving bans. Planners of next summer’s International Congress on Evangelization at Lausanne, Switzerland, are keeping an uneasy eye on problems. Atleast three charters were planned from North America, says Wanda Snyder of Wheaton Travel Service, main stateside agency for the conference. Now, however, there may be only one. Its projected price is now $375 with a fuel increase rider attached, meaning the price can go up again—and again—before it finally leaves. The only alternative is regularly scheduled service, she said. “People will be able to get to Lausanne as long as they’re willing to pay the higher non-charter fares,” she said.

THE MASTER’s CHARGE

Above the organ strains of the Sunday morning offertory there’s a steady click-clack of credit-card imprinters as the ushers move from pew to pew.

That’s a farfetched prediction about future church services, perhaps, but credit-card use is already here. Some churches have made arrangements for members to charge their contributions in connection with special fund-raising campaigns. One of them is the Coronation of the 950-family Blessed Virgin Catholic parish in Buffalo, New York, which used Master Charge, Bankamericard, and the local Empire card for a debt-reduction drive. Rector Eugene Radon credits the credit for an increase over last year’s drive, and now the banks are helping the church plan for possible use of the cards in weekly giving. With an increasingly credit-oriented society, credit giving may well keep the church of the future afloat, Radon believes.

Whether or not his prediction holds up, his members seem satisfied with the credit idea, and other dioceses have requested information.

BARRIE DOYLE

With bus use curtailed, church-related driving restricted to fifty miles per hour or less, electric lighting dimmed, and thermostats turned down, churches may want to take a long look at the Amish Mennonites of Pennsylvania. Not seriously bothered by an energy crisis—they use no cars and they shun electricity and other modern conveniences—the Amish seem more concerned about the cost of oats to keep old Dobbin trotting to church. And unless coal, wood, and propane (the Amish’s major concession to modern heating is the propane stove) are in short supply, the Old Order folk are in for a relatively comfortable winter at home and in church.

One thing is certain. For American churches the winter will be one of consolidation, self-examination, and perhaps new mobilization of the congregations. That cloud may or may not be so black after all.

Managua: Year Of Reconstruction

Almost one year after the December 23 earthquake that leveled Managua, the signs of one of the worst disasters ever to hit the Western Hemisphere are all too evident. For the most part, a 280-block fenced-off area that was once the Nicaraguan capital’s downtown still lies in ruin. No one will ever know how many of the estimated 10,000 dead still lie beneath the piles of rubble.

But the massive international relief effort and the determination and courage of the Nicaraguan people are also evident. Even though plans for rebuilding the city are uncertain, construction—under much stiffer building codes—is booming all around the edges of Managua. Shopping centers, something new, are springing up all over. Most businesses have relocated outside of downtown, and life goes on.

It is impossible to calculate the total amount of relief funds and supplies given through church agencies. In addition to efforts by such groups as the World Relief Commission of the National Association of Evangelicals, World Vision, Food For the Hungry, the Mennonite Central Committee, The Evangelical Alliance Relief (TEAR), Fund of Britain, the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, and church groups all over the world, most of the missions working in Nicaragua mounted programs of their own. The aid enabled the local churches to get back on their feet remarkably quickly. Pastors report attendance and giving are generally back up to or above pre-quake levels, despite continuing dislocation of people and high unemployment.

Almost all the churches destroyed or damaged in the quake have been or are being rebuilt, some with temporary structures. The Central American Mission bookstore, which lost its rented building and more than $10,000 in stock and equipment, reports sales are double pre-quake levels. The large Baptist School has split its operations between the nearby town of Masaya and undamaged portions of its old building—one of two schools allowed to operate within the fenced-off downtown area. The American Baptist hospital has continued to function, despite major damage to some buildings, with limited in-patient care.

The earthquake has apparently had a profound spiritual impact on Nicaragua. The Central American Mission, which included a strong evangelistic effort in its $100,000 relief program, reported more than 500 decisions in a ten-week, nation-wide campaign early this year, with over 850 people enrolled in Bible correspondence courses. CAM missionary Ward Johnson believes the next five years will be “a time of unprecedented opportunity for spreading the Gospel.”

One apparently permanent result of the quake is CEPAD, an alliance organized four days after the catastrophe as the Evangelical Committee to Help Earthquake Victims. Its aim is to coordinate evangelical relief efforts and provide a mechanism for receiving and distributing supplies. Made up of representatives from thirty-one church groups and missions and headed by Dr. Gustavo Parejón of the Baptist Hospital, CEPAD provided government recognition for Protestants within the country and foreign evangelical relief agencies. As the first phase of immediate food distribution and medical care passed, the name was changed to Evangelical Committee for Development, and emphasis shifted to long-range programs.

Now operating pretty much as an independent agency, CEPAD provides a variety of social services. Over 200 temporary housing units have been built in cooperation with the Mennonite Central Committee. A permanent housing project sponsored by World Vision, using the “stack-sack” method (bags filled with a dirt-and-cement mixture and reinforced with steel rods) widely applied in Peru after the earthquake there, is going slowly because of red tape and higher-than-anticipated costs. About thirteen houses of this type have been built.

A hot-breakfast program operated by CEPAD, with food provided by the government, serves some 20,000 children and expectant and nursing mothers in forty-two centers, down from a peak of eighty-two centers and more than 85,000 breakfasts daily. Other CEPAD activities include a revolving fund that has provided almost $12,000 in loans to fifty-one small businesses, vocational training and recreation programs, the Roberto Clemente Temporary Children’s Home, and—in cooperation with the literary agency ALFALIT, a literacy and basic education program that by October reported that some 4,600 people had learned to read.

Advisory personnel and the bulk of operating expenses for CEPAD are provided by Church World Service, the relief arm of the National Council of Churches. For the evangelical church in Nicaragua, the slogan adopted by the government after the earthquake seems to have come true: “1973—Year of Hope and Reconstruction.”

STEPHEN R. SYWULKA

Regent College: Moving Up

A new development in graduate theological studies conducted by evangelicals is under way in Vancouver, Canada’s third-largest city, where Regent College was voted into affiliation with the prestigious University of British Columbia.The faculty senate vote is subject to ratification by the university’s ruling board. Regent began with summer sessions in 1969 and launched its full-year operation in the fall of 1970 with only four full-time students; this year it has sixty-three, plus forty-five part-timers.

Unlike Bible schools, Regent is for college graduates, but unlike seminaries, it is aimed for the student who is not presently planning on the professional ministry. The head of the school, James Houston, previously taught geography at Oxford University. The school’s four full-time professors have both seminary degrees and university doctorates (two in Old Testament, one in New Testament, and one in history of Christianity). Their aim is to help college graduates who will be participating in the lives of local congregations to make a start at bringing their knowledge of the Bible and its implications for today up to the level of their competence in secular professions.

Women and men, Canadians and Americans, are attracted to the program in about equal numbers. Most come for a one-year diploma; some remain for a two-year Master of Christian Studies degree. Among the alumni there are diplomats, civil servants, school teachers, and journalists. Some graduates have gone on to traditional seminaries to finish preparing for professional ministry.

Regent College was initiated by members of the Plymouth Brethren, but since its beginning the trustees, teachers, and students have come from many denominations. The school rents a facility on the university campus from the Vancouver School of Theology, a traditional seminary with an enrollment of sixty, including forty-four full-timers. The seminary serves Canada’s two largest Protestant denominations, the United Church and the Anglicans.

Affiliation with the university will ease transferring of credits and foreign-government recognition and, without compromising its autonomy, better enable Regent to show the academic world that genuine scholarship and Christian commitment can go hand in hand.

DONALD TINDER

Southern Baptists: A Vote For Autonomy

Political immorality and housekeeping details were the predominant topics of discussion at a bevy of state-level conferences of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The major household item of national significance concerned “alien baptism” and the practice by eleven SBC churches in North Carolina of accepting into membership non-immersed persons. After facing the question for three straight years, the North Carolina Baptists turned down a resolution which would have barred “messengers” or voting delegates from churches that accept alien baptism. Convention spokesmen said the vote was a victory for local church autonomy, and was not to be construed as a vote for change in Baptist policy. As one delegate declared: “A convention is a convention and a church is a church, and a convention should not tell a church what to do.” (Southern California SBCers voted similarly on the issue.)

Resolutions calling for new commitment to Christ, prayer support for all government leaders, and renewed efforts at rooting out political corruption were among those passed during the conferences. Baptists in Maryland, the home state of former Vice President Spiro Agnew, called for “redemptive involvement” of the church in the affairs of government and in “personal relationships wherever possible” with “fallen” politicians.

Stormy Weather—Or Showers Of Blessing?

Behind a severe weather system last month in Oklahoma came the National Missionary Convention (NMC) of the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ (instrumental), the first religious group to use Oklahoma City’s new Myriad convention facility. While the platform climate was mild enough, there was stormy weather in the corridors over the spread of the charismatic movement among the faithful. On hand were more than 200 missionaries and 6,000 members. (Basically congregational and indigenously American, the denomination—members prefer “movement”—includes some 6,000 congregations with about one million members. Until a few years ago, most of the movement was nominally associated with a smaller but better-known, ecumenically oriented, and more organized branch, the Christian Church [Disciples of Christ]. The two groups, plus the largest branch, the Churches of Christ [non-instrumental], comprise the self-styled “Restoration movement.”)

Convention sessions featured Fuller Seminary School of World Mission professor Donald McGavran speaking on world-wide church growth. Other meetings and workshop discussions centered on mission procedures and problems, especially matters of missionary responsibility and authority.

Prior to the meeting, concern was expressed over the alleged involvement of some convention personnel in the charismatic movement. A lengthy letter raising the issue was published in Horizons, the unofficial NMC missions publication. The writer said he would be unwilling to support the NMC if the allegations he had heard about charismatic leadership could not be disproved. He also said that his church was preparing to write all the missionaries it supported for a statement of doctrine and position on this matter. Richard Bourne, editor of Horizons and a member of the Continuation Committee of the NMC, said that he too was quite concerned but wanted more information on “how widespread this movement is among our missionaries. I just don’t know.”

The controversy was not directly mentioned but was alluded to in some of the main sessions. Outside the main sessions it was rather pronounced, and it is now simmering in many of the churches. The debate is not over the charismatic movement per se as much as it is over the place of opinion. The Restoration movement theoretically functions on the principle, “In Essentials, Unity; In Non-Essentials, Liberty; and in All Things, Love.” But what is essential and what is non-essential? No final decision can be made because the NMC is not a delegate convention nor one that attempts to force doctrine upon its participants. An unwritten code or creed, however, which is expanded as needed, is used as a standard of judgment. If enough missionaries or preachers can be rallied on a particular issue, then a private censure can be made against troublesome elements. This is the system that brought about the differences between the non-instrumental and instrumental wings of the Restoration movement. Next came the dispute over theology and organized missions. Now tongues is at issue.

Four basic variations can be distinguished in the controversy: (1) One aggressive segment strongly believes in the present-day existence of the charismatic gifts, especially glossolalia, seeing them as latter-day showers of blessing for the Church. A group of this type was busy passing out literature defending the tongues position, similar to that held by Pentecostals. (2) A second group practices the use of glossolalia in private prayer sessions but does not make an issue of it. (3) Another group does not practice tongues but does respect the charismatics, and sees the issue as a matter of opinion rather than a test of fellowship. (4) A very conservative group sees the charismatic movement as intolerable, some going so far as to say it is a work of the devil. This group politely “disfellowships” members found to be charismatics.

There is no way to know the extent of the controversy or just how serious it could become. Level heads are pleading with both factions to seek the unity of the church.

WESLEY PADDOCK

Hineni: God In The Garden

A hand-clapping overflow crowd of 10,000 mostly young Jews in the Felt Forum at New York’s Madison Square Garden sang, danced, wept, and listened intently to Esther Jungreis call for a return to God. A reporter for the Jewish Press called it the “first Jewish revival meeting in history.”

Well, perhaps in modern history. At any rate, it was the biggest audience yet for Esther Jungreis’s Hineni organization (hineni is Hebrew for “here am I”), which is shaping up as the Jewish answer to the Jews-for-Jesus movement. “Open the book once more and learn who you are!” she implored. Education and knowledge, she asserted, are meaningless without belief in God.

Mrs. Jungreis, wife of New York rabbi Theodore Jungreis, founded Hineni in response, she says, to an inner call to serve God with every ounce of her being—by winning back the multitudes of Jewish young people who have strayed from the path of Torah.

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