What some groups call renewal is really mutiny.

The ship is a classic symbol of the church. From ancient etchings, to Rembrandt canvases, to the letterhead of First Presbyterian, the people of God have often been pictured as a vessel cutting through storm-tossed waves, kept on course by the Captain at the helm. It is a venerable image, and a helpful one—provided the proper craft is pictured. You do not have to live in Seattle or Boston to know there is a variety of ways to get across the water: rafts and canoes, sloops and yawls, tugs and barges, cruisers and liners. What sort of ship is the church?

It can only be a schooner. I say this not out of aesthetic preference, though I don’t deny considerable affection for this great and graceful craft, but because it most accurately depicts the communal life of Christians. The church must be a sailing vessel, for it moves only by the power of wind, the ruach of God. And it must be large enough to carry the whole covenant family through the roughest seas; only a two-masted schooner has the spaciousness and the steadiness necessary.

Now, some may counter: Isn’t the church more like an armada of different vessels? So it seems, certainly, if we absolutize the differences between Saint Peter Catholic and Wesley Methodist and Calvary Chapel. But the church has always confessed its essential unity: “we believe,” in the words of the Nicene Creed, “one holy catholic and apostolic church.” It is more accurate, therefore, to view the divisions as inevitable arguments of sinful sailors on board a single ship.

Slow sailing

For the schooner to get out of the harbor demands a division of labor. The officers, serving under the Captain, provide leadership for many tasks. Gazing dreamily upon the horizon might be nice, but there is precious little time for it. Sails must be tended and lines spliced, brass polished, decks swabbed, compasses read, and logs kept. A working schooner, in other words, is no Love Boat. There is plenty to do, and the doing of it requires organization and attention to details—which is to say, the schooner is an institution.

It is a slow-moving institution, to be precise. A schooner moves through the water surely and steadily, but not speedily. It has too much bulk, too heavy a keel keeping the ship balanced. Some sailors, it seems, find this difficult to endure.

There have always been those who think the church does not move quickly enough, who despair of its institutional sluggishness, who wonder what spreading tar and sewing canvas have to do with the love of sailing that got them on the ship in the first place. They forsake hope of reforming the routines of the schooner, and they doubt whether it will ever make it to the harbor.

So with other like-minded souls they determine to set off by themselves. They find smaller boats on deck, more maneuverable and less cumbersome—the property of the schooner, really—and in the name of “renewal” they commandeer them. They want the thrill of skimming across water; they feel a need to separate themselves from other sailors who have, in their view, made too many compromises and become too comfortable with routines.

They leave the ship partly for good motives. They long for a community nearer the ideal of the kingdom, as if the Lord himself had not described the kingdom in this age as a field with wheat and weeds growing side by side. Life aboard a schooner can be difficult; a large crew means a variety of people, which means contending ideas and conflicting personalities. Like Noah’s ark, if it weren’t for the storm outside you could not stand the smell inside. Ah, to be with real sailors, to be set free from the floating mess they call the institutional church!

Other motives are not so good. There is boredom, for example. Life on board ship can get dull; the same chores need doing day after day. And months go by with barely a whisper of wind, when everything slows intolerably.

Anyone who has been on board the schooner for any time knows what happens next. An enthusiasm, often a neglected truth that needs fresh emphasis, sweeps through the ship with the help of best-selling books and newly crowned stars (making reform, not incidentally, a profitable enterprise). The result is distortion; passion for one truth can drown others in its wake. Eventually some zealots grow impatient with the rest of the crew, who seem too content to sail in the wrong direction. So they leave the ship.

What happens to them? It is no doubt pretty exciting at first. Little boats, closer to the elements, are more easily lifted by the wind. Everything feels so much more authentic, and the adventurers want everyone else to have the same experience.

But it is a big sea. Storms can be rough—especially on small craft. The enthusiasts soon discover that having fewer people on board does not necessarily guarantee harmony. Disagreements arise. New ways of doing things must be discovered through trial and error. The errors, unfortunately, wash a few sailors overboard.

Admittedly, a schooner needs continual revitalization, but authentic reformers have always remained committed to the ship. Luther, Calvin, and Wesley, for instance, never intended to divide the crew; their work, as they saw it, was the renewal of the “one holy catholic and apostolic church.”

Following the captain’s word

To grow spiritually, we must stay with the ship. The Captain has provided three things to keep us on course.

First, the Word. We need the navigational direction of the Captain, and so we must stay connected to the Word of God. This Word is sufficient for all our needs, for by it creation came into being (“And God said, let there be light”), and through the Word-made-flesh, the recreation of all things has begun. We call the Bible the Word of God, because from its pages God continues to speak to nothing, and it sits up and becomes something; and from those same pages God continues the work of grace manifest through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Heresy does not ignore Scripture, but it sees only a part of it. From Arianism in the fourth century to the “health and wealth” gospel of the twentieth, the pattern is the same: a bit of truth is emphasized in isolation from the broad sweep of Scripture, and the consequent distortion and imbalance leads away from the schooner.

The proper use of Scripture, therefore, demands that every part be understood in relation to the whole, and the whole of Scripture leads to Christ. It is not enough for a would-be reformer to quote this verse or that; authentic renewal only happens through encounter with “the whole counsel of God.”

Shifting attention from Scripture to other “revelations,” no matter how spiritual they seem, always results in trivialization. Not long ago this journal reported on the “Kansas City prophets,” who reportedly give “words of knowledge.” In a service, for example, it is announced that someone in the audience has a father named Howard who needs prayer, or that someone has a backache in need of healing.

Well, so what? (I’m not being flip but asking a serious theological question.) These tidbits of information, though perhaps a manifestation of the Spirit, cannot compare with the wonder of God’s Word revealed in Jesus Christ and made known to us through Scripture. The Enemy must be pleased when the people of God divert their attention to something that, while appearing “spiritual,” is really relatively unimportant. All the “oohs” and “ahs” of impressed audiences at such times cannot hide the trivialization of God that takes place. Scripture alone has the authority to convey an adequate understanding of God; Scripture alone is the infallible guide for faith and practice.

Searching for signs

Second, the sacraments. We must be satisfied with the concrete signs we have been given. Life on the schooner, as I said, can get dull. The promise of more obvious proofs of God’s presence, more dazzling signs and wonders, may tempt us to follow others and jump ship.

But the Lord himself promised only two signs as the physical indication of his presence—baptism and the Supper. The God-given act of initiation into Christian discipleship is not going forward at an altar call, or becoming an official member of a church; the sign of becoming one with Christ and his people is baptism. And the God-given act of spiritual nourishment is not a miraculous answer to prayer, or an ecstatic experience, or having a vision of shining angels; the sign that thus sustains and strengthens faith is a simple meal of bread and wine.

Just as inattention to Scripture leads to trivialization, so also does neglect of the sacraments, for our seeking after more dramatic signs and wonders will inevitably be shaped by our own narrow desires. As a result, God gets reduced to being the slave of our shortsighted longings. The holy God of the patriarchs and prophets, the Father who raised Jesus from the dead and opened the gates of eternal life, becomes a genie whose specialty is to lengthen legs and find parking places for impatient drivers. Though we might prefer something more dramatic, these acts of washing and eating have power enough to keep us sailing until we arrive safely at the harbor.

Staying with the crew

Finally, the community. We must stay with the rest of the crew. No matter how resigned others seem to the institutional structure of the ship, and no matter how inadequate their understanding of proper seamanship, we may not separate ourselves from them. There is one body of Christ, only one. Those who launch out in little boats of imagined doctrinal purity not only sin against the body—and in so doing sin against the Captain, who prays for the unity of the crew—they also find themselves in waters too treacherous to navigate on their own.

If ever a person might have felt justified in having an independent ministry, Paul was the man. The resurrected Christ had dramatically seized him and commissioned him for special tasks. He had great success establishing churches all over the Mediterranean world. But even though he did not always agree with other leaders, he felt compelled to have his ministry approved by the presbytery of Jerusalem; he willingly submitted to the council of elders. Why? Because he knew they were all part of one body—disagreements or not—and they really had no choice but to labor together on behalf of the kingdom.

Staying with the crew also entails staying with those who have gone before us, those sisters and brothers who have braved rough seas and endured the drudgery of seamanship, who have completed their voyage and are now safe in the harbor. They have much to teach us, if we let them.

Would-be reformers generally view tradition as a problem rather than a solution. They think the ship moves too slowly because the barnacles of tradition have encrusted the hull. The chisel of renewal doesn’t seem sharp enough to chip them off, so it seems best to launch a new, smooth-bottomed boat.

It behooves sailors to show a little humility. Why waste time devising new knots, some of which won’t hold, if old salts have already discovered ones that serve well? More efficient ways of doing things may be found, certainly, but only on board the ship, only within the community. The traditional patterns developed for a reason; they must be understood and mastered before they can be fine-tuned.

Respect for tradition is not simply efficient; it is trusting a promise of our Lord. On the night of his arrest, Jesus assured his disciples, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.” Everyone tempted to leave the ship had better ponder these questions: Has the Holy Spirit been inactive for the last two millennia? Is it probable the Holy Spirit has waited until this exact moment in history to reveal the truth that warrants separation from other sailors? Does not the Holy Spirit always work toward unity and not division?

The Holy Spirit who fills the sails of the schooner and moves it through the centuries is the same Spirit who speaks in the Word, who seals our faith through the sacraments, and who creates community among believers. To leave the ship, in other words, is to leave the sphere of the Spirit. Life on board the ship may not be all we would like, but it is the life the Spirit has given us. It should therefore be received with thanksgiving. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, at a time of great compromise and cowardice in the German church, wrote, “If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches that are there for us all in Jesus Christ.” In other words, “Happy sailing.”

Loren Wilkinson is the writer/editor of Earthkeeping in the ’90s (Eerdmans) and the coauthor, with his wife, Mary Ruth Wilkinson, of Caring for Creation in Your Own Backyard (Servant). He teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

As Christians increasingly use marketing insights to communicate the gospel, CT Research Fellow James Engel has reason to watch with interest. An author of widely respected marketing textbooks, Engel has long encouraged biblically consistent application of marketing and managerial concepts. But as this article adapted from Transformation journal shows, Engel is wary of some of the potential pitfalls.

Consider these two headlines and the claims that accompanied them:

“The Sunchip Also Rises.” Frito-Lay’s multigrain salty snack, Sunchips, has generated over $100 million in sales with $30 million in advertising.

“200,000,000 Reached with Mass Media.” The electronic miracle of radio and TV evangelism generates great breakthrough.

Do you see any essential differences between the two reports? One appeared in a secular trade journal, the other in a denomination’s annual report. I suggest they are disturbingly similar.

The implication of the second is that new technology will allow us to “finish the task” of world evangelization and usher in the Lord’s return. Such approaches lead me to think we are dangerously close to neglecting biblical mandates for Christian witness and the lessons of church history, to say nothing of evidence of how conversion really takes place. While I applaud the acceleration of evangelistic efforts, I do not endorse an uncritical embracing of every method or new technology.

Properly used, the mass media (anything other than personalized, face-to-face communication) are powerful tools for communicating the gospel. But Christ’s words in Matthew 28:18–20, often referred to as the Great Commission, are in danger of being reduced to the Great Campaign, as we are urged to win as many customers for the gospel as possible before the end of this century. Most problems with such use of print and electronic media arise through the adoption of a wrong paradigm, which missions scholar Samuel Escobar terms “managerial missiology.”

More than numbers

Escobar coined the phrase managerial missiology to refer to an unduly pragmatic orientation. This approach reduces missions to numerical analysis and marketing principles. Escobar labels its acceptance as “yielding to the spirit of the age.” I concur. Managerial missiology has led us in some unfortunate and even dangerous directions.

The claim of media impact cited above is a good example. It represents faulty logic; no reputable marketer would ever make such a statement without valid evidence. When pressed, the mission board admitted it had no definitive factual basis for the claim that so many were reached by mass media. The most that could be said is that approximately this many people could have turned on their radios or TVS every time a program was aired. To say that a given number were reached is little more than wishful thinking. This claim represents not only bad science, but defective missiology.

Problems also arise in some Christian groups when they turn to mass media with undiscerning urgency. In their attempts to evangelize the world quickly, they lose sight of the long view of God’s work in the world. Some lose sight of the fact that people are converted one at a time, largely through face-to-face interaction. They forget that one-on-one witness has been the bedrock of evangelistic strategy throughout history. The gospel becomes understandable when it is incarnate in the lives of others. It is the ongoing story of Jesus Christ lived out in community that gives the whole picture.

The gospel is simply not a consumer product to be presented by mass-merchandising methods. Effective witness normally will not happen solely through mass media (although “closed” countries where no other avenue of access to non-Christians exists form an exception).

Admittedly, certain patterns are common to any decision-making process with major implications, including the decision to follow Christ. But people do not choose from a menu of philosophies or religions on the basis of which offers the greatest benefits, or solely because one answers certain motivations and needs. We do not build “product awareness” in hopes that the consumer will visit the distributor or outlet (in this case, the local church). The communicator does not “close a sale” as he or she would with products such as Sunchips.

The communicator’s responsibility is to tell the story of Jesus in such a way that it is understood. It is ultimately the Holy Spirit who works miraculously and sovereignly through both conviction and regeneration to bring about conversion. While much can be gained from good management principles, how does one set numerical goals and definitive strategies when persuasion is not our ultimate responsibility?

The audience is sovereign

To grasp how mass media can be used properly, we first ask what it means to say that someone is reached. One axiom of marketing and all other forms of communication is that the audience is sovereign. This means that members of the audience will see and hear what they want to see and hear.

In the case of electronic media, it would be unusual for 15 to 20 percent of a given audience even to have their radios or TVSon, let alone for them to pay attention, comprehend, and respond. This fact has been documented in thousands of studies.

We have discovered over the years that people are equally selective in responding to Christian programming, especially when receptivity is low. Obviously, the Holy Spirit can and does override this human tendency, but it is presumptuous to contend that technology will suddenly enable us to bypass normal limitations.

At an earlier time in my life, I would have been more sympathetic to media-driven strategies to reach the masses. I am increasingly coming to see, however, that undue preoccupation with accelerated world evangelization may be causing us to lose sight of biblical realities. Those in Third World countries have opened the eyes of many of us to what I call a kingdom paradigm for world evangelization. This emphasizes building faith communities that exemplify the “narrow way” proclaimed by Jesus, terminating “top-down” strategies in favor of grassroots efforts, and a holistic gospel manifested in both word and deed. In this model, local bodies have foremost responsibility for strategy. Evangelism grows out of people’s empathetic relationships in which the story of Jesus Christ is both demonstrated and proclaimed.

Mass media of all kinds can play a distinctive role in this paradigm, but their use must be grounded in the following principles:

• The local church is both message and medium. All too frequently I hear the one-sided view that the church is on earth for one reason—to reach the lost. If that were true, then the local church is only a communication medium. In many ways the church is the message. Michael Green comes right to the point:

Unless the fellowship in the Christian assembly is far superior to that which can be found anywhere else in society, then the Christians can talk about the transforming love and power of Jesus till they are hoarse, but people are not going to listen very hard.

The mass media are secondary to the firsthand witness of individuals and groups of believers. Mass media have no message if the story of Jesus is not evident and alive in local churches.

• God created humans to have five senses, not one or two. The undue Western preoccupation with the spoken or written word continues to baffle me. People use more than the left hemisphere of their brains in coming to Christ and growing in the faith. We need to learn anew from liturgical church traditions that art, music, sacred dance, drama, and other less cognitive media can tell the story of Jesus.

• Understanding must be created, not assumed. I find it disturbingly common to encounter a philosophy of ministry that is based on the premise that I communicate the Bible, God does the rest. At first glance this sounds quite biblical, but when translated into practice, it becomes nothing other than a lazy justification for ignoring the example of Jesus, the master communicator.

Communication does not occur until there is a match between the message as intended by the sender and the message as perceived by the audience. This does not just happen. It takes intensive effort. Jesus demonstrated this compellingly when he communicated with those who were genuine seekers. First, he understood people’s longings and pain through continual exposure and genuine empathy. He started where they were and patiently moved them from the known to the unknown. Second, aspects of his message changed from one audience to the next, reflecting their unique needs and dispositions. Finally, Jesus moved beyond felt need to real need, reflecting the agenda of his Father, not that of the world.

Integrating the mass media

While face-to-face witness is the historic cornerstone of evangelistic strategy, other media can be especially useful in sowing seeds of awareness and stimulating interest. Mass media and personal witness are being integrated fruitfully all the time.

Audiotaped messages, for example, build awareness of one Supreme Being and the possibility of knowing him personally, thus laying the foundation for real response when a believer makes a personal visit. A magazine tells the story of an addict who found new life in Jesus, and this motivates a reader to seek Christian help. Shortwave broadcasters are cooperating to find ways to plant churches, initially through programs aimed at the unreached. Showings of Campus Crusade for Christ’s Jesus film often surface the receptive, who then receive personal witness. The same can happen in an evangelistic crusade.

Because of the priority of integrating mass media with the local context, the days of importing media from the West should be drawing to an end. Missions writer Walter Sawatski has clearly demonstrated the harm being done in the Commonwealth of Independent States by well-meaning outsiders flooding it with Western-oriented media that fail to create understanding. Having spent nine weeks in that country over the last two years, I can testify to the validity of what he says.

Local churches and believers have an indispensable contribution to make to contextualized mass media. Media Associates International, an agency dedicated to training Christian writers around the world, has joined hands with local leaders to train hundreds of local authors who now produce materials that have true relevance and power.

Would that we were willing to spend less time and money importing Western books and televangelists and more on equipping nationals to do the job! Where this has been done conscientiously, the gospel invariably is communicated with far greater effectiveness. It is time for our priorities and strategies to shift.

The narrow way

One of the final lures of managerial missiology lies in the area of appeal to felt need. People do respond when their felt needs are addressed in a way that does not call for an altogether different motivation and lifestyle. The “broad way” of appeal unfortunately has found its way into evangelism, especially the mass media. I cannot think of a better way to lay a thin veneer of Christianity over an otherwise unchanged group of people. It is possible to build a large church quickly and easily by promising that Jesus is the answer to all our hopes and felt needs. Crowds thronged around Jesus during his early ministry because of this very expectation. However, as he focused on the narrow way, on the true meaning of kingdom living, the crowds dwindled.

Christ did take felt need seriously, but this was only the starting point. He quickly moved to the underlying real need and issued a stringent call for commitment and radically altered lifestyle. Numerical growth can slump drastically when we follow his model, but do we have any other choice? While we may end up with “negative church growth” we may experience decidedly positive growth in the numbers of those who are willing to forsake everything and follow Christ.

I must admit that there are times when I wish I could turn off the switch of all Christian mass media. I have asked myself whether it would make any real difference. But then I always realize anew the mass media’s great potential for good. When used at the grassroots to put forth a message characterized by biblical fidelity, true relevance, genuine contextualization, and full accountability, we can use mass media as the powerful tools God intended them to be.

Loren Wilkinson is the writer/editor of Earthkeeping in the ’90s (Eerdmans) and the coauthor, with his wife, Mary Ruth Wilkinson, of Caring for Creation in Your Own Backyard (Servant). He teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

“Welcome to the Crystal Cathedral of baseball,” says Pat Richie, chaplain of the San Francisco Giants baseball team. It is 9:00 A.M. on a foggy first Sunday of summer, and the Giants’ chapel is about to begin in a small, dingy room, buried under tons of concrete in the bowels of Candlestick Park. The room has a sofa and a few institutional chairs; the carpet is stained, and the ceiling is hung with plumbing. Richie, a large, easygoing man, laughs about the room. “It has a first-century look,” he says. “Like the catacombs.”

As half-a-dozen Giants straggle in, they are still pulling up pants and tying shoes; when the seats are gone, these young millionaires plop down on the floor. Richie makes announcements, offers an opening prayer, and then introduces Tom Eisenman, a local pastor. He talks earnestly for ten minutes about the courage men need to put up a fight against temptation. “I want to learn to play hurt,” he says, “and come back from injury in the Christian life.” When the meeting ends, the players do not linger. Batting practice begins immediately.

This is Richie’s seventh year as the Giants’ chaplain; he is in his twelfth year as chaplain for the San Francisco 49ers football team. Later, while watching batting practice, he explains that Sunday-morning chapel services are only the visible tip of his ministry. “I see the services as a place to acquaint people with Christianity,” he says. “If a guy comes to chapel, I can call him for a meal or a game of golf.”

The more productive time in his ministry comes in the couples’ Bible studies he organizes for players and their wives, and the wives’ Bible study his wife, Nico, leads. He also helps facilitate ministry for players who are committed Christians. For example, Jeff Brantley, a relief pitcher for the Giants, sponsors two Little League teams for poor kids in the Bay Area.

“Basically, I’m a missionary to 65 people—40 in football, 25 in baseball. These are men who need Christ, and Christians who need to be discipled. I know a guy in Indonesia who is responsible to reach 750,000 people. Sometimes I ask myself how I can justify what I do compared to what he does. I come down to this: they need to know Christ, too.”

By permission of the baseball commissioner’s office, Baseball Chapel, a nondenominational ministry, organizes Sunday-morning chapels for all 28 major-league teams, as well as for more than 160 minor-league teams. It is one of dozens of other organizations, large and small, that spring from the powerful American affection for sports. In the face of scandal, greed, and churlishness, Americans cling to a childlike faith in athletics. Translate that into ministry, and it seems natural to have a full-time chaplain for a team with 25 members and only a handful of believers.

Baseball Chapel is a small organization with a $200,000 budget. It does not work alone, however. Like many major-league chaplains, Pat Richie is employed by Athletes in Action, a division of Campus Crusade for Christ. He raises his salary and expenses through churches and individuals.

The president of Baseball Chapel is Bobby Richardson, an outstanding second baseman for the New York Yankees during their heyday in the fifties and sixties. He traces the organization’s beginnings to a Sunday morning in Minneapolis. He, shortstop Tony Kubek, and Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle wanted to attend church, something they rarely could do during the six-month baseball season. Richardson knew a pastor whose church was near the team hotel. The players took a cab, arriving unannounced. After sitting through most of the service, they tried to slip out just before the altar call, to minimize any fanfare.

“Half the congregation got up and came out with us, because they wanted Mantle’s autograph,” Richardson remembers. “We were laughing about it later. [Yankee broadcaster] Red Barber said, ‘I’ll tell you what, let’s just have church right here at the hotel.’ ” Richardson began to organize Sunday-morning services, inviting speakers to address the players. At about the same time, other clubs began doing the same thing. In 1973, retired sportswriter Watson Spoelstra took the idea and, using his contacts with baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, formed Baseball Chapel.

“It was real uncommon in those days for someone to give a testimony for Christ,” Richardson says. “Now it’s almost the norm.” One reason for the change, he says, is that chapels in the minor leagues have led many baseball players to Christ. By August, when some Giants and their wives meet for Bible study, the team is floundering 17 games out of first place. Worse, they are caught in one of those confusing financial and legal binds that bedevil modern sports. Owner Bob Lurie has accepted an offer from Tampa Bay, Florida, to buy the team. The players want to focus on baseball, but they cannot. Reporters are clamoring to know their reaction to the move. In truth, their feelings are mixed: few have permanent homes in the San Francisco area; they are as attached to it as a traveling salesman is to his Days Inn. They just want to get on with playing baseball. But they can’t tell reporters that; it would be treason.

For the players who come to the Bible study, things are not going so well individually, either. Kevin Bass, a veteran outfielder, has been traded since the last Bible study, whisked off to New York on a day’s notice. (Richie launches the study time by joking, “I’m disappointed that the Basses aren’t here. No commitment, apparently.”) Jeff Brantley, a young pitcher, is feuding with manager Roger Craig. Scott Garrelts, another pitcher, has been recuperating from major arm surgery for a full year.

The “Bible study” is really a talk about stress from psychologist Sonny Arnold. The subject clearly interests the players and wives; the latter talk volubly about their difficulties with moody husbands, with pregnancy, with construction projects in their off-season homes. Kathy Garrelts tells about losing sleep with a new baby and a husband whose future is uncertain. Jeff Brantley describes a recent temper tantrum when he threw water coolers on the field after losing a game; he says it was hard to act that way and then to invite other players to chapel the next day.

While the stresses they discuss seem normal, it is doubtful these couples could talk so openly anywhere else. As one of the wives says, it’s hard to be comfortable even with old friends when they have seen you on TV and think you’ve changed.

“Muscular Christianity” was the phrase that first wed sports to Christianity, beginning in about 1857. According to sociologist James Mathisen, Christians had generally thought of games as a waste of time or a devilish distraction. Then two British novelists, Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes, came up with the idea that sports were a training ground for morality and patriotism. The idea quickly spread to the United States. Billy Sunday, a baseball-player-turned-evangelist, became a prominent role model.

By the 1920s, muscular Christianity had virtually disappeared, Mathisen says, only to be rediscovered after World War II. As evangelicalism rose from the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, it devised a panoply of innovative methods for reaching youth. Anything that would draw a crowd was worth a try, which is how evangelist Jack Wyrtzen came to invite Gil Dodds, the top American miler, to a rally in New York City’s Madison Square Garden. Other evangelists took the cue; in 1947, Dodds ran six laps around a North Carolina audience before Billy Graham delivered his sermon. A few years later, Youth for Christ began sending amateur basketball teams to play and evangelize in Europe and Taiwan, which led to the formation of the first sports-ministry organization, Sports Ambassadors. Fellowship of Christian Athletes soon followed, and in the sixties, Campus Crusade launched Athletes in Action. All three groups used sports to attract an audience for evangelism.

Eventually athletes themselves became targets. Baseball Chapel, for example, focuses mainly on the spiritual needs of the players; so do chaplaincies in many other professional sports. They still, nonetheless, encourage Christian athletes to use their celebrity to draw crowds for Christ.

Sports and ministry work well together. Both sports and Christianity are activistic, cheerful group endeavors believed to build character; both seem to offer a simpler version of life in which standards are unchanging, hard work is generally rewarded, and results are unambiguous. The clean-living, disciplined athlete is a paragon of evangelical virtues.

As the season wears down to its end, Jeff Brantley, Scott Garrelts, and Brett Butler, their former teammate who now plays with the Los Angeles Dodgers, show up at San Quentin prison bearing a box of signed baseballs and a bat. It is an event Baseball Chapel arranges every year: a special prison chapel service featuring the players.

The three are in a good mood, particularly Brantley, who today won his first game ever as a major league starter. He and Butler kid about the at-bats Butler had against him, and joke about “the book”—the standard oral testimony on how to get a particular batter out by pitching him a certain way. “Don’t you think I know the book on me?” Butler asks with a laugh.

Chaplain Earl Smith gives the players a sobering tour of the grim, crowded prison, which dates from before the Civil War and houses 5,800 prisoners. Most of the 300 men who come to the chapel service are African-American. The singing is black gospel: full-throated, heartfelt, soulful. Jeff Brantley gets up to speak and says he had come to the prison two years before, and really wanted to come back: “It’s one of the most moving things I’ve ever done.” He tells how he became a Christian and says he is playing first and foremost for Jesus Christ.

Scott Garrelts also gives his testimony but spends most of his time talking about the struggle he has had with his arm. The latest news is that doctors think they will have to operate again, reattaching a tendon they replaced over a year ago. If that’s so, he’s unlikely to pitch for another year.

He is a tall, lanky man with a gentle, boyish manner. Usually hesitant to speak, tonight he seems determined to get something off his chest. He says he has spent the whole year focusing on himself, thinking about getting back on the mound. He is just realizing how much he has taken his eyes off Jesus. He tells the blue-jean and workshirt—clad prisoners that he has prayed for forgiveness. “For the first time in quite a while I’m able to be at peace with myself,” he says. “People see the uniform. But when the uniform is off, I’m going to be just Scott, and what am I going to do with myself?”

Brett Butler speaks last. He is a 12-year veteran of the major leagues, a certified star who speaks with deep emotion about his son, Blake. “I love my son like nothing else, but God gave his only son to die on the cross because he loved us.” Butler appeals to the men to commit themselves to Christ, and dozens do, forming close-knit huddles to pray for each other. As the players leave, there are spontaneous outbreaks of singing: “I’m going to stay on the battlefield until I die.”

The 1992 season ends with the Giants in next-to-last place, 26 games behind the Atlanta Braves. “Ministry with the Giants was disappointing,” Pat Richie sums up. Just three years ago he had one of the strongest groups of Christians in baseball, but teams change quickly. “We didn’t have a lot of players involved, and we didn’t break much new ground with players who didn’t know the Lord. Chapel attendance was low, Bible-study attendance was low. The ministry revolved around the few players who were committed.

“It’s a tough audience to witness to,” he says of professional baseball players. It is a theme the players often repeat: they say it is impossible to “preach.” Former Giant Dave Dravecky puts it bluntly: “In the major leagues, you witness by your lifestyle.” He says that when he was playing, other players told him pointedly that God-talk was not welcome in major-league locker rooms.

Richie says that something unusual happened after the season: one player’s wife wrote a note to thank Richie and his wife for what they had done through the year. That happens to him, Richie says, about once a decade. “Athletes are often very self-centered people,” he says. “You rarely get a sense of gratitude back from players.” But then, he notes, it’s not really their fault. “I had a football player tell me, ‘Just once I wish I had a next-door neighbor ask me, “What did you do to make those petunias look so good?” Instead, it’s always, “What happened to you guys in the game last week?” ’ Athletes feel that everybody is thinking, ‘I’d like to get a free ticket out of these guys.’ Almost everybody wants something from them.

“Lots of Christians say to me, ‘You have the best job in the world.’ If I were to communicate to the American church about pro-sports ministry, I’d say it isn’t nearly as glamorous as they think; the initial euphoria they would feel in speaking to professional athletes wouldn’t serve them well. Players need someone who can get by that; but I find few people in the church who can. We’ve been trained to idolize.”

That raises a fundamental question about sports ministry: is it really about ministry to needy people, or about the pleasure of associating with American gods? The answer is: surely, some of both. Part of sports’ ministry’s sustaining energy comes from the thrill of rubbing shoulders with adored, inaccessible ballplayers. Otherwise, why would the full-time chaplains all be in the major leagues? It is the minor-league players who are most open to the ministry.

Richie says his own commitment to pro sports comes from the impact Christian stars can have. “We estimate that we share the gospel with 75,000 to 100,000 people each year, through speaking opportunities for our athletes.” The pro locker room is a strategic place to minister, Richie says, just as Rome and Philippi were for the apostle Paul. College or high-school athletes are more receptive to ministry, but their impact on a wider audience would be minimal. In short, ministry to the pros is built on faith in celebrity evangelism.

Yet celebrity evangelism seems to endorse our culture’s belief that the rich and famous matter more. It supports the very mindset that keeps many major leaguers from listening to the gospel: their belief that they really are special. Besides, celebrity in sports depends on winning, not character; it does not fit neatly with a Savior whose life goals included crucifixion. Having said all that, one has to remember those black San Quentin prisoners thronging to hear young, white millionaires talk about the meaning of life. Does anybody doubt that celebrity evangelism is sometimes innocent and moving, and can lead to unthinkable breakthroughs?

Questions about celebrity evangelism aside, Baseball Chapel stands or falls by its effectiveness in reaching a subculture of very isolated human beings. If anything, Baseball Chapel offers these ballplayers the only kind of ministry where their fame does not get in the way. The locker room continues to be hard, agnostic, pragmatic. Yet, on nearly every team in the major leagues, one finds a few solid Christians, and often on Sunday half the team will be at chapel. It didn’t used to be that way.

Some call the chapel talks simplistic. Mathisen refers to them as “an amalgam of biblical aphorisms, pop psychology, and training tips.” Those devotionals do not often feature warnings about greed or calls to self-sacrifice.

When you think about the Giants’ 1992 season, however, it is hard to claim that they avoided being challenged. Those who attended chapel were not really superstars gliding above life’s difficulties. Rather, in a little back room they were reminded on a weekly basis that something mattered besides their success on the field. Maybe the message was lightweight, but these guys are not intellectuals, either. The difficulties of life poked them, and so did the chapel messages. They were reminded of family, of integrity, mostly of God. If they were not prodded at all the levels they might have been, they were more than they wanted to be. Compared to the alternative—nothing—Baseball Chapel did a lot.

Loren Wilkinson is the writer/editor of Earthkeeping in the ’90s (Eerdmans) and the coauthor, with his wife, Mary Ruth Wilkinson, of Caring for Creation in Your Own Backyard (Servant). He teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Middle-class suburbia is not the first place people seeking the spirit and soul of a black gospel choir might look. But on a cool November evening in a suburban Chicago auditorium, about 2,000 normally sedate and proper citizens are helping themselves to a hearty offering of real soul food.

The musical feast is being served up by about 120 African-American youth ranging in age from 7 to 17. Clad in dazzling blue-and-white robes, their clapping hands, choreographed moves, and impassioned voices sing, hum, chant, and shout.

Their spirit is immediately contagious, and the suburban crowd, normally stiffened by suits and ties, is loosening up; routinely somber and reverent faces give way to smiles of joy; children and adults alike unabashedly dance in the aisles.

And, most intriguingly, at least for this evening, a cosmopolitan brew of Christians—black, white, Asian, and Hispanic—are worshiping together in a fashion that arguably could well be a primer for heaven itself

A little child shall lead them

The Soul Children of Chicago seem to have the same effect just about everywhere they go. The group’s founder, Walter Whitman, says these little children see soul as more than music and emotion—it’s a call from above.

Every Saturday morning the group gathers in a haven of sorts from the stark, inner-city woes of Chicago’s rough South Side. In the basement of Saint Sabina Church, soul may come naturally, but good music takes practice.

Mister Whitman, as he is known by his choir, darts to and fro at the front of the rehearsal hall. One moment he is teaching new choreography, the next he is plunking out a tune on the piano for the aid of his musicians, and the next he is pulling every ounce of sound out of his choir’s adolescent lungs.

Classically trained at the Chicago Conservatory of Music and broadly exposed to many cultures as an air force child in Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Holland, the slender, energetic Whitman, 32, is the minister of music for Saint Sabina’s racially blended congregation.

He formed the choir in 1981 as an extracurricular activity at Chicago’s Saint John De LaSalle Elementary School, where he taught music for four years. He had no clue that his curious after-school activity would quickly outgrow its original purpose and mushroom into a full-time mission. “I didn’t even like kids,” he playfully recalls, “but God had a different plan.”

Excitement is almost palpable during Saturday’s rehearsal, which, like most others, begins with choruses, intense prayer, testimonies, and simple sharing. The atmosphere is candid. Though many of the children don’t have personal relationships with God when they join the choir, its whole structure is designed to nurture a “total commitment,” says Whitman.

This Saturday morning, as many other teens are still sleeping off a hangover from the night before, or just “hanging” on an adjacent street corner, 17-year-old James Simond, a veteran choir member, leads off the choir’s sharing: “I just want to thank God for waking us up this morning and giving us another day.”

A 15-year-old alto chimes in. “When I’m riding on the el [elevated commuter train], I see a lot of cold people,” she says, motioning with her hands as if she is seeking the right words. “How can I tell them about the Lord without looking crazy?”

Then a small, young man wearing glasses and looking barely in his teens timidly stands. “Last night one of my best friends, who’s in a gang, was shot. I just thank God that he’s okay.” For a moment the room is utterly still, before suddenly bursting into an applause of praise.

The Soul Children are family. Requirements for joining are firm: no drugs, gang involvement, teen pregnancies, or truancies—not the easiest prerequisites in the Windy City.

But every June hundreds of kids from all over the city audition for fewer than 30 openings. Whitman alone makes the final selection of new members, and he is not just listening for smooth voices; parental support is also a large factor. “If I don’t sense the parents are going to be with us, I won’t take the child,” he says. “Without the parents’ involvement, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”

Choir practices reflect the group’s close-knit character. An assortment of moms and dads inhabit the rehearsal, taking attendance, passing out music scores, quieting chattering kids, or simply waiting at the back of the hall for their sons or daughters. (For some parents, says Whitman, this is the only “church” they attend.) Whitman relies heavily on parents and volunteers for donations, and parents also serve as secretaries, chaperons, and tutors, among other things.

Given such complete family involvement, it may not be surprising to discover that Whitman monitors his children’s study habits. Choir members with grades of C or lower are subject to probation and must attend tutoring sessions after each rehearsal. “Sure they can sing,” says the choir’s conductor, “but can they think? I want to show people that there are black kids out here that are doing something. Kids who are capable of becoming mature contributors to their communities.”

Kia Hartfield is one of them. “When I go to school now,” says the 13-year-old soprano and honor-roll student, “I have a reason to get good grades.” Hartfield has her eyes set on college. More than two-thirds of the 300 kids who have graduated from the choir in the last 11 years have done so.

“If you’re going to be in this organization, God is going to change you,” Whitman declares to the choir during one practice break. “You have to live what you’re singing.”

To his kids, this bachelor assumes all at once the roles of father, teacher, drill sergeant, and friend. His manner suggests a maestro leading an orchestra, coupled with the showmanship of a ringmaster beneath the big top. The control he exerts appears at first uncanny. One swift wave of the arm can instantly shift choir members about-face or spin them 360 degrees. A vertical slice through the air turns the host of voices on and off, up or down, like a human light switch.

And when the choir is unleashed in its fullness, the effect is both stirring and wonderful:

This is the day that the Lord hath made;

This is the day to be joyful, joyful, oh yes!

Their voices ring out with exuberance, flooding the air in a brilliant sound that is dramatic and sometimes overpowering, but that always calls for praise and response. “We don’t just want to sing to people,” says one 16-year-old tenor, Cinque Cullar, “we want God’s Spirit to overflow on them.”

Whitman recalls an older Jewish man approaching him after a concert and wanting to adopt him as his godson. “You helped me to see God in a new way,” the man said.

At another concert in St. Louis, a female gang leader accepted Christ as a result of the Soul Children’s ministry. The following Sunday, she returned to the church with 30 members of her former gang.

And on one particular cool night in the suburbs of Chicago, a mostly white-collared group with little expertise in singing “with soul” joins hearts in worship. Whitman’s choir is not a household name around the country, although it has performed on television and twice during Christmas at the White House. But one need look no further than this suburban gathering to gauge the group’s success. The Soul Children implore in one of their closing songs:

Use me, have thine own way.

Use me, as an instrument of praise.

Perhaps they are not even aware of God’s prompt reply.

By Edward Gilbreath, a free-lance writer living in Wheaton, Jllinois.

Misunderstood Subject

The article by Allen C. Guelzo, “Fear of Forgiving” [Feb. 8], was outstanding. I am of the opinion that forgiveness is one of the most misunderstood subjects of the Bible. Guelzo covered all the dimensions of the subject in a clear, precise, and understandable way, making it easy to apply. Good for him!

Fred Klopfer

Canal Winchester, Ohio

When Guelzo writes, “Forgiveness does not mean pardon,” I think he is making a statement open to misinterpretation. Sometimes forgiveness does involve pardon—especially when there can be matters of “restoration” involved. What happens in the story of the Prodigal Son if not a form of actual pardon?

Tied to this is the statement that “Forgiveness is personal: it refers to the impact an offense has on you and your need to release the resentment you feel.” What about many situations in the church where judgment and forgiveness are indeed “corporate,” not just personal in the sense of an individual’s concern? There is no better example of this than in the story on page 55 of the same issue of a pastor [Gordon MacDonald] who has been restored.

Larry Isbell

Venus, Pa.

I appreciated the clarification that forgiveness was not equivalent to either pardon or excuse as some would suggest. I then read the update on David Hocking asserting his privilege to resume pastoral ministry less than three months after the revelations of his sexual misconduct were made public. Are there no consequences to this sin that has left in its aftermath a bewildered congregation of 6,000+ members?

Barbi Krome

Danville, Calif.

The point of prophecy

Everyone interested in eschatology should read carefully D. Brent Sandy’s “Did Daniel See Mussolini?” [Feb. 8]. Every Sunday when I turn on the radio or TV, I hear a new detailed plan of what will occur in the days to come. Each person who reads this article should clip out these two sentences and place them in his or her Bible: “The primary point of prophecy is to assure readers that God is going to accomplish his plans, in unique and amazing ways. Its function is both to warn and comfort, not to assuage our curiosity about what the next year will hold.”

Eugene Lincoln

Hagerstown, Md.

Respect needs to be revived

I was encouraged by the article “Abstinence: The Radical Choice for Sex Ed” [Feb. 8]. The title of one sex education curriculum, Sex Respect, intrigued me. I think respect is a concept that needs reviving in our society. How about a curriculum with the generic title “Respect”? It could be approached from a Christian or a secular point of view. Some of the topics which could be presented and discussed: Respect for authority: God (for Christians), parents, teachers, law, government. Respect for self: body and mind (spirit, too, for Christians), including sex, eating, exercise, recreation, drugs. Respect for others, including sex, race, social status, economic situation, disability. Respect for the earth, including conservation and recycling. I’m praying a Christian educator will develop this concept.

Elvina N. Martens. M.D.

Sterling, Ill.

The article may have inadvertently perpetuated some confusion regarding the relationship of the Sex Respect abstinence curriculum materials by Coleen Mast, and the Committee on the Status of Women (also known as Project Respect) and its president and director, Kathleen Sullivan. The article seems to treat them as part of the same entity. However, Mast is an independent contractor and sole author of the Sex Respect textbooks. She assigned copyrights in the textbooks to Respect Incorporated, the sole lawful publisher and distributor of Sex Respect materials.

Although the Committee on the Status of Women received government funding to test the effectiveness of Mast’s Sex Respect program in the public schools, a U.S. District Court decision on February 17 makes clear that the organization has no right to reproduce or publish the materials. The Federal District Court in Chicago [was expected] to issue an order on March 17 enjoining the Committee on the Status of Women from further infringing Respect Incorporated’s copyrights.

Neil F. Markva

Attorney for Coleen Mast

and Respect Incorporated

Springfield, Va.

Blaming The Darkness

The recent wave of novels about “spiritual warfare” has opened my eyes and brought me immeasurable comfort. For years I have been blaming much of my poor behavior on my own depravity and attributing many of my bad habits to lack of spiritual discipline. But now I see the light. Or rather, now I see the spooks.

It’s so easy to let the little imps convince me that I’m somehow responsible for my foibles. If I allowed them, they would have me in a constant state of self-scrutiny, wondering if I were living up to standards and mistakenly thinking such intense conviction could come from a credible source.

My prayer time has evolved dramatically now that I am sensitized to spiritual warfare. All that time I was spending on misguided confession is now focused on launching spiritual Patriot Missiles at ugly little demons. On a clear night, I can almost see them vaporize.

Of course, not everyone is handling the spiritual warfare scene as well as I am. Mabel Crawley stood up in the middle of the sermon last week and shouted, “Duck, Pastor, here comes a big one!”

While the ushers were “assisting” Mabel, a junior-high boy across the congregation echoed, “I’ll get him, Mabel!” and launched a marble from his slingshot, shattering the water glass the pastor keeps on the pulpit.

The boy was later disciplined for being opportunistically mischievous rather than spiritually sensitive. Of course, I know where the real blame belongs, because now I see the spooks.

I appreciate all the work that people like Pat Socia and Tony Campolo are doing toward making abstinence as common a word as condom.

Sherry Carnuccio

Philadelphia, Pa.

Needed: Christ-centered love

Tony Campolo’s [Editorial, “Sex Ed’s Failure Rate,” Feb. 8] reveals a significant problem in the church’s thinking on this and many other issues. While it is admirable to encourage children and youth to focus on love rather than sex, love without the knowledge of Jesus Christ can only be a poor, human substitute grounded in the shifting sand of our insecurities instead of the Rock.

Instead of Scripture, Campolo focuses on what sociologists, a neo-Freudian Marxist psychoanalyst, and M. Scott Peck either say about love or how what they say is compatible “with the nonreligious and religious alike” (whatever “religious” means). Nowhere does he mention the need for a Christ-centered love (except in the implied compatibility of 1 Cor. 12:30 with the previously noted people’s ideas).

Brent Stackhouse

Austin, Tex.

Campolo’s suggestion that a virtual consensus may be reached on the meaning of love, and that this consensus will move us in the right direction, overlooks the fact that the “love ethic” of secular humanists has had no small role in moving us in the wrong direction. Isn’t the presence of love at least as significant a factor in sexual temptation as the absence of love? Why lovers should refrain from love-making is a “burning” question, to which no compelling answer is to be found outside of the moral framework of revelation. Absent a consensus on marriage as the exclusive domain of the sex act, one can hardly expect that more of the situationist version of love will lead to less sex among lovers.

Rev. Timothy R. Bennett

Main Street Baptist Church

Binghampton, N.Y.

Gays and the spirit of Jesus

I sought, but frankly could not find, the spirit of Jesus in Alexander Webster’s editorial, “Homosexuals in Uniform?” [Feb. 8]. Rather, I found the very antithesis of the Lord’s example of unconditional love—namely, that unholy trinity of fear, ignorance, and hatred. The homophobic views espoused by Fr. Webster are exactly that.

The reactionary world view of this editorial must not prevail against rational, honest dialogue and a willingness to engage in biblical scholarship informed by and reflective of the many advances made in hermeneutics and exegesis in the last 50 years.

Common sense should dictate government military policy. European armies have successfully never excluded anyone from serving on account of sexual orientation, and Canada’s lifting of their ban on gays several years ago certainly did not result in a flood of madness and depravity. As followers of Jesus Christ, let us at long last realize the ideal of our essential equality before God and one another.

Joseph Wei

Farmington, Conn.

The writer says the issue boils down to two questions: what do gays do, and should there be public sanction for it? Nothing I’ve seen in Clinton’s proposals says anything about requiring the military to approve what gays do, any more than it approved the unnatural, unhealthy, and ungodly lifestyle (including sodomy) exhibited by heterosexual males in the navy’s Tailhook scandal.

Yes, homosexual practice is wrong. Heterosexual practice can also be wrong. The deeds can be punished, but the inclination or preference should not be proof of wrongdoing.

Sam Duncan

Kimberton, Pa.

As a former active-duty USAF chaplain for over 22 years, I can attest to the strain of combat, separations, and hardship on all military personnel. Attempting to legitimize, sanction, and protect deviant behavior within the military will make impossible the task of chaplains, judge advocates, commanders, and all who are interested in good order and discipline.

Harland R. Getts

New Ipswich, N.H.

Working through the pain

We deeply appreciated “Let’s Stop Childless Abuse” [Speaking Out, Feb. 8]. Like the author and his wife, we have struggled with the nightmare of infertility and have been deeply hurt by ignorant and insensitive comments directed at us by well-meaning Christians. Few people, for example, realize the high emotional and financial risks involved in the “simple” solution of adoption.

In general, we have found more sympathetic understanding among unsaved acquaintances and co-workers than within the church. By God’s grace, we have matured through this devastating situation. But we are still working through the pain inflicted on us by fellow believers.

Bob and Pam Davies

Novato, Calif.

Alternative education

William Willimon’s article, “I was Wrong About Christian Schools” [Feb. 8], gives a good rationale for pursuit of this normal alternative to children’s education. It does, however, imply that state-run education is rather hopeless. I would suggest that the primary reason for the effective results of Christian schools and other private or parochial schools rests not on the superiority of teaching, cost-effectiveness, or any other measures applied to education. The success is a function of simply paying attention to people—in this case, the children. As the half-century-old classic Westinghouse study showed, people, when they are given attention, are more productive.

In the public schools, more attention is given to the disruptive student, while the majority are left to get along with minimal support. The difference is simply that the contract between private school and student is that if they don’t want to be there, the school can, in effect, “fire” them. The public schools have no such contract.

Don Mechlin

Philadelphia, Pa.

Something to be desired

Robert Bittner’s defense of Quentin Schultze’s book Redeeming Television leaves something to be desired [Books, Feb. 8]. His comparison with Coleen Cook’s All That Glitters was pretty shallow. All That Glitters exposes TV’s inherent defects as well as its immoral intrusions into our cultures. I do not see how we can have what Schultze calls “informed viewers” without the kind of research and informed analysis this book offers.

To suggest carte blanche “support” of public television, and the demand that Christians watch the other more objectionable shows before we offer criticism, just won’t cut it. Cook, as Bittner admits, offers two chapters of responsible, constructive, Christian responses for TV viewers who are not afraid to “think” critically. For Christians, a “thoughtful and balanced critique of the medium” will require that kind of disciplined analysis, not blind affirmations.

William J. Brown

New Orleans, La.

Focus rebuts news article

It is difficult to convey the disappointment and sense of betrayal we feel after reading your article “Focus Under Fire” [News, March 8]. Focus has been warmly received in Colorado Springs, and we enjoy friendships with all the major evangelical ministry leaders here as well as the pastors of evangelical churches. The passage of Amendment Two in Colorado, which prohibits special civil rights status for homosexuals, has raised tensions, but misleading articles such as yours undermine the courageous stands taken by evangelicals.

Specifically: Your article states that [Citizen’s Project’s] “6,000 supporters may be the loudest critics of Focus on the Family.” Are all 6,000 people on this local mailing list loud critics of Focus?

The same paragraph adds: “but they are not the only critics.” Yet there is no one who appears by name in your article to support this contention. [There is no] reference [to] any of the dozens of pastors and ministry leaders who would have said precisely the opposite.

The article says, “Many residents … say the town has been sharply divided since Amendment Two won 53 percent of the state’s vote.” Why use the statewide figure of 53 percent in an article about Colorado Springs [where] Amendment Two passed by 66 percent—a landslide?

[Concerning] the attack on the therapist, following the first and only day of news stories about the attack, all the papers in Colorado seemed to drop the story. Why? Rumors have abounded that the incident might have been a setup. There is no evidence that the therapist was assaulted by any “angry evangelical homophobe,” nor evidence to suggest that she was attacked by anyone.

You mention the suicide by the homosexual following Amendment Two’s passage. However, the man was dying from AIDS, and he had tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide prior to the passage of Amendment Two. Some of the media left out those details, including CT, leaving the implication that conservative activism now has this man’s blood on its hands.

You say, “Ever since the election, Focus has publicly been trying to distance itself from the homosexual controversy.” Focus hasn’t done or said anything that differs from any statement or action we made prior to the election.

We at Focus have a well-rounded set of family concerns we believe God has called us to address, although the press chooses to concentrate only on that 5 percent of our time and effort we devote to public-policy matters.

I believe it is accurate to say that Focus derives from the strongest traditions of the evangelical movement. We are of the same fabric as Nelson Bell, Billy Graham, and Carl Henry. There is nothing we stand for that has not been eloquently propounded in CT over the years.

The “many critics” referred to in various ways throughout your article are not really the many, they are the few who are magnified by the hostile press. We have critics, but to the extent they are religious, their tradition is neo-orthodox, classically liberal, or militantly secularist. They promulgate the ideas CT has fought against across the years. Yet your article lacks this context. There is no point of philosophical reference for the Citizen’s Project except to imply that someone has to keep watch on those darn fundies, and these good citizens have risen to the task. There is no acknowledge[ment of] the moral backbone of the evangelicals in Colorado Springs, nor the worthwhile nature of the endeavors here, nor the reality of the sin against which the evangelicals stand. In short, there is little to distinguish your article from the secular press.

Tom Minnery

Focus on the Family

Colorado Springs, Colo.

As the fires smoldered across Los Angeles a year ago in the aftermath of the most destructive riot in United States history, the pulpits of the nearly 7,000 L.A. churches burned with oratorical fire. At African-American, white, Latino, and Korean churches, a collective mixed chorus of anger, grief, confusion, hope, and faith rose like incense alongside the smoke from countless destroyed stores in South Central, Pico Union, Crenshaw, and other neighborhoods throughout L.A. county.

A tense multi-ethnic meeting of numerous pastors called together by World Vision ended in repentance and forgiveness expressed in tears and embraces. Rabbi John Rosove of Temple Israel led 75 of his faithful to worship at Messiah Baptist Church, a black congregation. Churches played a vital role in becoming local hubs for relief efforts and as they admonished looters in their congregations to make restitution.

On the one-year anniversary of the disturbances, many wonder what has come of these and many similar efforts. Journalist Andres Tapia recently visited Los Angeles and filed a special news report that starts on page 42. His report reveals how the problems in urban America are deeply rooted and how they are complicated by economic, racial, and social factors.

This fall, Andres will be returning to the issue of race with an article, “What Black Christians Want White Christians to Know,” as we continue to explore ways for Christians to understand the meaning of racial reconciliation through God’s grace.

TIMOTHY C. MORGAN, Associate Editor

The Consumer Who Ate The Church

The Body: Being Light in the Darkness,by Charles Colson, with Ellen Santilli Vaughn (Word, 455 pp.; $19.99, hardcover). Reviewed by Roger E. Olson, professor of theology at Bethel College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and coauthor of 20th-Century Theology: God and the World in a Transitional Age (InterVarsity).

More than just another evangelical jeremiad, Chuck Colson’s latest book is a prophetic warning that, if heard and heeded, might rescue the American evangelical church from a new Babylonian captivity. Colson is not content to curse the darkness. He wants to point toward the light—the light of authentic Christian faith that still glimmers here and there in a culture of new barbarianism that threatens to overwhelm and extinguish that light.

Although The Body is, at its core, a book of hope, its warnings are dire: “All too often the twentieth-century church takes its cues and defines its role by the ways of the world. It accommodates a consumer-oriented culture that wants, above all else, to feel good. And it focuses on action at the expense of character, on doing rather than being.” According to Colson, to be the body of Christ in the twentieth-century, the church must recognize, face, and conquer the disease that would destroy it: the subversion of the gospel by culture. To translate the message for better communication in a particular context is one thing; to transform it by accommodating the values and sensibilities of culture is to subvert the message.

Marketing to the pews

But wait! We’ve heard this all before, right? In the seventies, Christians saw secular humanism as the grand subverter; in the eighties, it was the New Age movement. What is different about this latest enemy of the gospel?

The difference is that Colson is not content to cast stones at such easy targets. The true enemy, he avers, is more subtle. It is our consumer mentality that bases everything—including how we package and deliver the gospel—on not offending anyone. Its bottom line is: What does the market want?

Colson believes that this consumer-oriented model of business has filtered into all areas of American culture. Now the only thing not to be tolerated is intolerance, and the only minority that can be offended is the one that talks about absolutes and dares to name the growing darkness as sin and evil. This mentality, Colson argues, has even filtered into and corrupted our evangelical churches so that the gospel preached and taught is fast becoming a generic gospel designed to offend no one and to bring fulfillment and self-actualization to everyone. Gone, or fast going, are the classical themes of sin and repentance, God’s wrath and judgment, sacrifice and service, and being willing to suffer for the cause of Christ.

The book is not just 400-plus pages of doom and gloom, however. The chapters on the growing darkness are interspersed with chapters recounting stories of heroic Christian “points of light,” individuals and churches that have shone forth into that darkness. The stories are of people like Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, who offered his own life to replace that of a young man condemned to die in Auschwitz, and Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and numerous lesser-known Christians who have found life through giving it up. All are stellar examples of finding hope and meaning by rejecting the consumer-oriented, therapeutic, self-centered gospel of cultural Christianity. These are exciting and inspiring, if somewhat melodramatic, stories.

Colson may not be today’s Jeremiah, but he is a voice crying in the late twentieth-century wilderness of Christian confusion showing how evangelicals (and others) can become salt and light in society.

A darker darkness

In spite of the many strengths of The Body, there are some flaws. Occasionally the authors engage in rhetorical overkill. Referring to Gorbachev, they ask: “But had the glasnost cowboy riding the buckling [sic] brontosaurus of his ailing nation really pulled off such a miracle?” It would be a better book without such tabloid language.

Academics will wince at some of Colson’s Franky Schaeffer-like attacks on Christian higher education. When he criticizes Seattle Pacific University for allowing a professor to bring a homosexual couple as speakers to a class and for allowing a professor to use a textbook that endorses homosexual marriage, one has to wonder if he understands the nature of a liberal-arts education. The contexts of such incidents are all-important in judging them. Should all speakers who contradict Christian beliefs and lifestyle be banned from Christian campuses? Should textbooks be limited to ones that never endorse a point of view contrary to evangelical beliefs? It seems that Colson’s criticism is somewhat inconsistent with his own statement that “we must be familiar enough with the prevailing world-view to look for points of contact and discern points of disagreement.”

My main criticism of The Body, though, is its limited characterization of the “darkness” of modern American culture. For Colson, that darkness is made up of consumerism, secularism, relativism, extreme individualism, and hostility to traditional values and Christian beliefs. But what about other aspects of darkness? At the same time I was reading The Body, I was also reading God and Gaia, the latest jeremiad from Rosemary Reuther, a liberal, feminist theologian. She identifies some legitimate areas of the “darkness” that Colson does not mention but that Christians and allies must nonetheless struggle against, such as the destruction of nature and injustice toward oppressed people.

Still, pointing out other areas of darkness hardly undermines Colson’s important thesis; in fact, his challenge is made all the more relevant and urgent. The church must wake up, throw off the warm comforts of consumerism, and become a distinctive community that lives up to its name, the body of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Christ, Our C.E.O.

Everything You’ve Heard Is Wrong,by Tony Campolo (Word, 190 pp.; $15.99, hardcover);Transforming Leadership,by Leighton Ford (InterVarsity, 300 pp.; $16.95, hardcover);The Taming of the Shrewd, by Paul de Vries and Barry Gardner (Nelson, 286 pp.; $18.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Steve Rabey, religion editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph.

“Greed is good!” proclaimed Gordon Gekko, the amoral business tycoon in Wall Street, the 1987 film that explored the unbridled avarice of the 1980s. For many, the film was depressingly accurate. The world of work has indeed turned into a relativistic arena in which traditional values like honesty and loyalty have given way to the all-out pursuit of power and financial gain.

Three recent books attempt to challenge these laws of the modern marketplace by articulating a solidly Christian approach to a host of vexing workplace and management issues. While they differ in advice and strategies, all the authors agree that Christ’s life and message contain the key to filling the moral void at the heart of American business.

Love in the jungle

In Everything You’ve Heard Is Wrong, author, speaker, and teacher Tony Campolo delivers a blistering critique of modern sales training (which reduces success to the art of how best to manipulate others for one’s selfish ambitions) and calls corporate leaders to focus on a principle rarely discussed in M.B.A. classes: love.

When Campolo is not teaching sociology at Eastern College, he is speaking and writing books, including recent titles on environmentalism, the crisis of consumerism, and the charismatic movement. So what can he tell us about business? As it turns out, Campolo has a practical, firsthand grasp of the moral tensions within the world of work, to which he brings his refreshing approach toward biblical texts, his willingness to dive head-first into tough issues, and a reader-friendly, unpretentious communication style.

The book’s title comes from a speech Campolo gave at an insurance sales conference, where he offered a radical alternative to the previous speakers’ advice on how to sell and close deals. “People are not things to be manipulated with the right techniques,” he railed. “They are sacred! Each of them is an infinitely precious person in whom the Eternal God has chosen to make His home. And all of them deserve to be treated with reverent respect.” Although the book is brief, the questions it raises linger: What kind of person do you want to be? How can you do something meaningful with your life? What do you want your legacy to be? “These questions cannot be avoided,” he writes. “Even if you repress them by day, they’ll haunt you by night.”

Part of Campolo’s answer is found in the Christian concept of calling. Campolo revives the traditional view that all people, not just pastors and missionaries, must have a vocation or calling from God, and that all occupations that do not directly disobey biblical teaching are worthy in God’s sight. One’s calling provides the basis for choosing a profession and an employer.

Using 1 Corinthians 13 in a fresh way, Campolo also deftly shows how love can be the foundation of a fruitful career and life. While Gordon Gekko may be confused by these ideas, Christians will find them persuasive and satisfying. Young people who are struggling with what God would have them do would greatly benefit from this book, as would older executives who may be overdue in checking their career aspirations against Christ’s counsel.

The leadership gap

Leighton Ford, who has dedicated himself to developing new leaders, writes that we are in the midst of a leadership gap.

Young people are intimidated by the size and scope of multinational corporations and organizations; they are skeptical of authority; and they have seen highly placed leaders in religion, business, and politics tumble from their pedestals. What these potential leaders need, writes Ford, is a fresh introduction to the person and principles of Jesus of Nazareth, “the greatest leader in the history of the world.”

Ford compares the challenge of leadership in the postmodern world to a rocket with a malfunctioning guidance system: “We hurtle at incredible speed into the future while lacking instruments that can track our course and tell us where we have been, where we are, or where we are going.” The solution, Ford writes, is “transforming leadership”: where leaders allow themselves to be transformed by Christ and in turn transform others through the example of their “vision, communication, trust and empowerment.”

The question of how Christian ethics relate to the world of business is not new. In the 1920s, Bruce Barton’s The Man Nobody Knows took Jesus out of his robes, dressed him in a three-piece suit, and portrayed him as a master executive. Ford’s Christ retains his peasant garments but demonstrates leadership principles for business leaders nonetheless. Chapters on Christ’s vision, strength, strategy, communication, servanthood, and shepherdmaking are moving and insightful, though they lack real-world examples, which would make them more compelling.

Of snakes and doves

Ethicist Paul de Vries and consultant Barry Gardner describe a corporate environment where moral stands have been downgraded to the status of personal preferences. Today’s corporate leaders do not make moral judgments; in consultation with corporate lawyers, they see how much they can get by with in the pursuit of greater profits.

De Vries and Gardner call business leaders to a full-fledged return to ethical thinking in all areas of life and work. Decisions should balance spiritual principles with real-world demands and seek to find the middle ground; or, as Jesus said, be “as shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16).

The book includes a dizzying array of charts and tables; references to everyone from Nietzsche to Tom Peters; cartoons; Wall Street Journal articles; thought-provoking questions; and many practical scenarios designed to guide the reader through the steps in critical thinking required to make godly decisions.

The focus of the authors’ efforts is something they call “excellence-virtues,” and they humbly call their “rediscovery of the fundamental unity of quality thinking, excellent values, and good living” “the most consequential, practical breakthrough of our time.” Unfortunately, the authors’ choppy, machine-gun style tends to obscure their important message rather then make it clearer.

Together, these three books offer inspiration and direction for Christians struggling to make their faith real in an often unfriendly environment. But these authors would all agree with Campolo’s simple axiom: “In a world where everything seems to be measured by dollar signs, we can do well by doing good.”

Is The Antichrist A Computer?

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, by Neil Postman (Alfred A. Knopf, 222 pp.; $21.00, hardcover). Reviewed by Reed Jolley, pastor of Santa Barbara Community Church.

America is in the midst of a great social experiment, according to culture critic Neil Postman. We must ask ourselves: “Can a nation preserve its history, originality, and humanity by submitting itself totally to the sovereignty of a technological thought-world?”

Postman, the author of Amusing Ourselves to Death, describes our culture as a “technopoly,” in that it deifies technology, “which means that culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology.” The technological society is drenched with “information,” overly quantified with the results of meaningless polling data, and enamored of technology because of its efficiency. Everything—a beauty queen’s body, a student’s IO, and a worker’s performance—is assigned a number. Computers, in such a society, begin to function as surrogate deities. “The computer has determined …” becomes the functional equivalent of, “It is God’s will.” The net result is the loss of both our humanity and any notion of transcendence.

Postman is readable, humorous, and prophetic. This essay functions as a coherent preface to the less accessible works of Jacques Ellul. Like Ellul, Postman is long on analysis and brief on corrective solutions to our predicament. The author does, however, call the reader to be “a loving resistance fighter” against the onslaught of technique in every area of life. He calls sympathizers to be suspicious of the very idea of progress and to distinguish between information and understanding. He calls America back to “the great narratives of religion,” to family loyalty (“reach out and touch someone” should carry with it the expectation that the person is in the same room), to know the difference between the sacred and the profane, and to question technological ingenuity when it interferes with our humanity. Every technology is both a blessing and a burden. Postman invites a technophile society to count the cost before going to the battle.