The leadership of World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF) has recommended moving the organization’s headquarters from the United States to a non-Western nation, most likely Singapore. Regional support and liaison offices would be maintained in Wheaton, Illinois, and in Europe.
Those recommendations came as part of a plan to restructure the international alliance of evangelical bodies. A working group of the WEF executive council recommended the reappointment of David M. Howard to serve as general director for a second four-year term. Howard’s reappointment will be voted on at the WEF’s Eighth General Assembly, to be held this June in Singapore.
The working group also recommended shifting WEF’s basic operations from a coalition of commissions to five departments that will deliver services to the fellowship’s member bodies. The departments are Publications and Information Services; Leadership Development; Missions and Evangelism; Global Issues and Human Need; and Discipleship and Church Renewal. The existing commissions will continue in an altered form, carrying out specific tasks through the five newly created departments.
The proposed restructuring required the redrafting of WEF bylaws. New bylaws are being submitted to WEF members by postal ballot. Fifty-two national and regional evangelical fellowships and alliances belong to WEF.
NORTH AMERICAN SCENE
UPDATE
Blessitt Is Still Walking
Baptist evangelist Arthur Blessitt started walking around with a large wooden cross on his back in 1969. He had suffered a stroke, he says, and God spoke to him while he lay in a hospital bed.
“The doctors were talking about brain surgery when suddenly God came to me and told me to get up and walk,” the 45-year-old Mississippi native says. “I managed to get up, flushed my medicine down the toilet, and limped out.”
Blessitt began his trek in Los Angeles, later walking across the United States and other countries. When the bottom of his wooden cross started wearing down from being dragged across pavement, he fitted it with a wheel. The sight of a man bearing a 12’×6’ cross attracts attention.
“I’ve been arrested about 20 times for being a suspected gun-runner, CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] man, FBI agent, spy—you name it,” he says. “But mainly my path is a peaceful one.…” Encounters with police and multitudes of curious passersby give the evangelist opportunities to share his Christian testimony.
Blessitt has carried his cross 23,560 miles through 77 countries in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Most recently, he has been walking through a desert in the Southern African country of Namibia.
“I wouldn’t trade my pilgrimage for anything,” he says. “Who would choose Sunset Boulevard [in Los Angeles] when they can have sunset in the Sahara?”
NORTH AMERICA
Seminary Enrollment Drops
Figures compiled by the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) show a slight enrollment decline last year in North American seminaries. It was the first enrollment drop since the organization started publishing figures in 1969.
After a 2.5 percent rise in 1984, North American seminary enrollment dropped by 16 percent last year. A 1 percent decline in U.S. enrollment was not offset by a 6.9 percent increase in Canadian schools.
An ATS report cites two factors that could have contributed to the loss of students among its 196 member schools. First, demographic data predict gradually declining enrollments for higher education. Second, the report cites the “broad American cultural influence which has been less than supportive of those opting to prepare for ordained ministry.” In addition, the higher 1984 figures included one seminary that closed before the 1985 statistics were compiled. ATS said North American seminary enrollment last year totaled 56,377.
The study found that more people are delaying their theological education until they are older, and that fewer students are pursuing seminary education on a full-time basis. The report also shows an increase last year in the number of women students (up 3%); black students (up 4.4%); Hispanic students (up 10.6%); and Pacific-Asian American students (up 5.8%). Women represent nearly 26 percent of the students in ATS-member institutions, with blacks making up 5.4 percent, Hispanics 2.6 percent, and Pacific-Asian American students 2.1 percent.
ATS represents most major denominational and independent seminaries in the United States and Canada. The enrollment data are reported in the association’s Fact Book on Theological Education.
TELEVISION
Coalition Against Violence
A diverse group of 1,600 Christian leaders has condemned excessive sex and violence on television, pledging to pressure networks and advertisers to curb what the group calls “moral pollution.”
The coalition, called Christian Leaders for Responsible Television, includes Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox Christians. At a news conference last month, the group outlined its goals.
“We call upon the television networks and the advertisers to take immediate steps to reduce incidents of sex and violence and profanity by at least 35 percent in the fall of 1986, and to work for another such reduction in 1987,” the group said. “We pledge ourselves to monitor the situation and to engage in serious dialogue with sponsors to encourage them to join in the reduction of this moral pollution.”
Representatives of the group will seek meetings with heads of the three major television networks and with companies that sponsor offending programs. The group stopped short of calling for a boycott of networks and advertisers, but it held out the possibility of taking such action in the future.
Donald Wildmon, a United Methodist minister who directs the National Federation for Decency, was named executive director of the new coalition. The group’s executive board includes Billy A. Melvin, executive director of the National Association of Evangelicals; Bishop William C. Wantland of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Wisconsin; Auxiliary Bishop Nelvin Hayes of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago; and Milton Efthimiou of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America.
PEOPLE AND EVENTS
Briefly Noted
Died: Harold Shaw, 69, head of Harold Shaw Publishers, former chief financial officer of Tyndale House Publishers, former head of the Moody Correspondence School and Moody Publications Division; on January 30, in West Chicago, Illinois.
Elected: Richard R. Wynn as president of Youth for Christ/USA (YFC). Wynn succeeds Jay Kesler, who resigned last year to become president of Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. Wynn joined YFC 23 years ago. He has served as chapter director, Michigan state director, regional field director, and vice-president of YFC’s national field organization.
Published: In 1985, complete Bibles in seven languages spoken by 6.5 million people. The Bible has now been translated into a total of 293 languages, according to the United Bible Societies. Last year the New Testament was translated into 31 additional languages, bringing the total to 618. Portions of the Bible have been translated into 918 languages.
