Eutychus and His Kin: July 20, 1979

My engineer friend Jack Hubblestone is fed up with religious bumper stickers. “They are a cheap way to witness,” he complained to me. “On top of that, the exhaust gets the stickers dirty and I hate to see the name of the Lord polluted with exhaust.”

It is Jack’s conviction that automobile witnessing ought to be on a higher level. This is why he has founded “Reflect-O-Witness,” a whole new approach to this vital ministry of the church. He explains it thus:

“Instead of having a dirty sticker on your bumper, you focus a slide projector on a screen in the rear window of your car. It’s controlled by a button on the dashboard. You catch the driver behind you by surprise, and you have the added advantage of being able to change the message.”

Confidentially, Jack claims he got the idea during his quiet time. He was reading 2 Corinthians 3:18 in the Living Bible: “But we Christians … can be mirrors that brightly reflect the glory of the Lord …” He tells me that a rival ministry—“Mirro-Message”—is starting in another church. They are now trying to find a matching text in the King James Version.

“You can imagine the surprise of a truck driver,” says Hubblestone, “when he looks down at the back window of your car and reads PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD. Then the text changes to YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN, followed by a special slide that says: ‘Honk if you are under conviction.’ If he honks, I start an automatic series on ‘The Four Spiritual Laws.’ ”

Have there been any results from his high-level witnessing? “You never really know,” he says. “You do these things by faith, not by sight.”

I was following Jack’s car the other day, so I thought I’d test “Reflect-O-Witness” for myself. Apparently I got too near, because the back window flashed with DON’T GET TOO CLOSE, YOU DANGEROUS JERK!

Is that from the King James or the Living Bible?

EUTYCHUS

Lopsided and Negative

I would like to register my disappointment in the lopsided and negative reporting on the Evangelical Press Association convention in Nashville (“Young Editors and Unused Clout,” News, June 8). It is not only inaccurate but represents a very narrow point of view.

Both the reporter and the few he interviewed must have been asleep or absent during excellent workshops and sessions that sent the majority of us away with new insights, technical updating, and greatly needed inspiration. Addresses by Dr. Oswald Hoffmann, Dr. Stanley Mooneyham, and Dr. Haddon Robinson could hardly be ignored.

It seems that a good job of reporting should include discovery of the purpose for an event reported. EPA conventions are not primarily geared to exploration of social and economic issues, although this is a definite part of it.

It’s true that without gasoline or paper we cannot produce magazines. It is even more basic that without inspiration, technical growth, and spiritual depth we are wasting our time as evangelical writers and publishers.

ELEANOR L. BURR

Editor

OMS Outreach and Action

Greenwood, Ind.

Unmarrieds, Sex, and Divorce

In reading “Sex and Singleness the Second Time Around” by Harold Ivan Smith (May 25), I was disturbed by the implications of the research and the tone of the article, which was very tolerant of extramarital sex.

L. LEADER

Phoenix, Ariz.

I very much appreciated Harold Smith’s article on the shepherding of singles—an area of ministry too often neglected by the church. I take issue with one point in Mr. Smith’s article. He states that “we must affirm celibacy as not only choosing not to seek intimacy, but also not to accept intimacy outside the bonds of marriage.”

To equate intimacy with sexual intercourse is to build a wall of fear around the word. Sexual intercourse is intended only for married couples. Intimacy is intended to be a part of every Christian’s life as he or she seeks to follow Jesus’ commandment to “love one another as I have loved you.”

JANET E. GUNN

Lake Elsinore, Calif.

If Smith’s “research” is supposed to be a social scientific study, as his dispassionate treatment of the questionnaire answers might indicate, it is only in its incipient stages. The “sample” is extremely small and is in no demonstrable way representative of the Christian universe; moreover, there is no control sample, unless the Gagnon and Hunt studies are considered as approximating one.

Smith realizes some of these limitations; but then why did he let his material be published prematurely?

DR. H. WADE SEAFORD, JR.

Chairman

Department of Sociology-Anthropology

Dickinson College

Carlisle, Penn.

More on PTL

It’s bad enough when the newspapers and secular magazines say unkind things about a Christian man like Jim Bakker, but when a Christian publication makes fun of that individual (that’s how it came across to me) it disappoints me. (See News, May 4.) You owe your readers an apology.

MRS. E. STOCKER

Norridge, Ill.

I don’t always agree with the articles in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, but I don’t think anyone could accuse you of being unkind or unloving toward Jim Bakker based on what you said in the May 4 issue.

REV. DALLAS AINSLEY

Good News Baptist Church

Chesapeake, Va.

Your PTL story reflects the quality of reporting that makes CHRISTIANITY TODAY the most respected journal in evangelical America. Your Christian “duty” is not merely “to pray for him and to try to uphold him in every way possible” (as one reader wrote). Your higher Christian duty is to speak the truth in love, which may sometimes sound “like a very uncharitable thing” (as another reader wrote).

ROGER HEIDELBERG

Memphis, Tenn.

Correction

Several extra words were inadvertently added to one of Madeleine L’Engle’s statements in her June 8 interview (p. 15). The statement should have read: “I have a point of view, you have a point of view. God has view.”

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