Page 5041 – Christianity Today (2024)

Mark Ritchie walks swiftly through the glass-walled sky walk over Van Buren Street in the hub of Chicago’s financial district. As he hurries to catch the closing bell in the Chicago Board of Trade, he’s reciting the words of one of his favorite songs:

This man was preaching at me and turning on the charm / Asking me for $20 with $10,000 on his arm / … I almost wrote a check out and then I asked myself … / If he came back tomorrow there’s something I’d like to know / Would Jesus wear a Rolex on his television show?

No one will ever catch Ritchie with a Rolex on his arm, though no doubt he can afford one. On this rare day when he has returned to the Board of Trade to show his visitor where he began his rags-to-riches story, he wears a modest Casio watch. There are no visual clues that this bearded 41-year-old is a successful trader in the world’s largest commodities exchange. He is also a Christian with a sense of mission.

The Dollar And The Scholar

From the visitor’s gallery high above the Grain Room, Ritchie explains the curious combination of high technology and good old-fashioned, shoulder-rubbing trading below. Flanked by towering electronic quote boards and banks of computers and phones, hundreds of men and a handful of women are waving their arms wildly, flashing hand signals, and yelling. If they weren’t standing, facing each other on the shallow steps of the several bowl-shaped “pits,” they could be mistaken for zealous fans at a playoff game.

Amidst this dollar-charged atmosphere, Ritchie has held on to his integrity, his faith, his mission—and his fortune. That combination is unusual. Ritchie himself admits that according to the stereotype, integrity and commodities trading go together like Al Capone and Mother Teresa.

“The church has forgotten that behavior is the bottom line,” says Ritchie. “We’ve turned our faith over to academicians and then we criticize them for giving us a theoretical faith and a theoretical Jesus. Our behavior in the marketplace has just not been credible at all.”

Far from leaving his faith in the books, Ritchie put his seminary career on hold in the late 1970s, concluding that “maybe God could use the dollar more than the scholar.” In 1977, he, his brother, his brother-in-law, and a friend formed a trading partnership called Chicago Research & Trading Group, Ltd. By 1988 CRT had grown to become, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, “the world’s largest options-trading company and the envy of the industry.”

Even to an industry outsider, it’s obvious that CRT is unique. The most visible difference is just a half-block from the trading floor—CRTreats, a cozy employee cafeteria with country decor and a sweeping view of the city and Lake Michigan from its thirty-third floor perch. At CRTreats, all the food is on the company tab. A cross-stitch sampler reads, “We make you kindly welcome.” That’s no empty greeting.

Between bites of a roast-beef sandwich, Ritchie energetically launches into a tutorial on the worthiness of commodity trading:

“Paul’s injunction to a thief to stop stealing and to labor with his hands is not taken seriously in the church. If the average person were to finish that verse he’d say, ‘so that the person would be an example to everyone and have a story to tell on the speaking circuit.’ But Paul says be productive so he can have extra; make more than what he needs so he’ll have a tool to help the poor.”

Ritchie’s biggest passion now is to help the poor become independent entrepreneurs themselves. Disappointed with what he saw in most development agencies, Ritchie formed his own about six years ago.

“Ceretech has gained a reputation for being interested in the economic independence of the people,” he says. “We want to leave them. But we want to be able to leave them with what we call appropriate technology. That means no tractors that they can’t repair and can’t get fuel for.”

Relying only on simple, foot-powered machines supplied by Ceretech, about 120 women in the slums of Nairobi have increased their knitting production at three projects administered by local churches. Ceretech understands the cultural differences, so it doesn’t have the women keep the machines at their homes. “Other family members don’t understand what it means to have a capital asset—they would take it and sell it,” Ritchie explains.

“No normal agency can afford to monitor a project that’s less than half-a-million dollars. But we’re committed to small projects that help the little guy.”

Ceretech is no normal agency. Because the organization is financed by Ritchie, it is not looking for cash donors to keep it afloat. “But we can and do use investors on specific projects. We like to see a church invest in a project—that can vary in size from $5,000 to $100,000—and then help it network with the people there.”

No stranger to poverty himself, Ritchie saw the harshness of the Third World as a youth in rural Afghanistan, where for four years his father was an engineer with a missionary’s heart. Then, as newlyweds, Mark and his wife, Nancy, had their share of lean years—times when their only meal was the next pizza that Nancy could bring home from her job as a waitress.

“I would like to take a poor guy and give him an opportunity to create wealth,” Ritchie says. That is more than just the credo for Ceretech; it is his own life story.

Soybeans For Sale

Ritchie is quick to clarify that he does not believe that God blesses him with a corner on the market. In his autobiography, God in the Pits: Confessions of a Commodities Trader, he tells the story of how he lost $200,000 in the gold market in one day. “God’s children are no luckier than anyone else’s children,” he concludes.

Although risky, commodities trading is far from mere gambling. There are principles behind the apparently chaotic practices. “I will buy soybeans when I judge that they’re too low in value. The only way I can buy them is to step up and pay the highest price being paid at any given time. If I didn’t buy them the farmer would have to give them away; the farmer might go broke; the farmer might not be able to grow grain in the future. The point is the farmer has risk that he cannot bear any longer. That’s why the market is dropping the way it is.

“So I say to myself, I have the capital to be able to withstand a price drop—if I don’t, I’m gambling—but if I do have enough capital to cover the drop, the farmer has taken his risk and dumped it on me until I can sell the beans back at a profit. So, sometime down the road—it could be six seconds or six months—the situation reverses. The soybean producer needs beans, and the farmer is out of them, and the price begins to rise. So I come along with some to sell. That is my economic justification for being in business and the way I’ll make profit.”

There is even biblical precedent for this activity. If Joseph had not been there to buy up grain for the pharaoh, it all would have rotted, says Ritchie.

Ritchie no longer trades for CRT, although he is still a partner there. At his 16-acre home in outlying Wauconda, he is spending more time writing and helping Nancy with their five children, ages 14 to three-and-a-half. He just finished writing his second book, Joseph and Mary’s Scrapbook. It explores one of his favorite themes: how ordinary people responded to Jesus.

Unlike some “wealth bashers” in the church, Ritchie has no qualms about making money. A computer at home linked to a satellite dish allows him to continue trading as an independent. To Ritchie, wealth is inherently useful—especially to the poor.

“Let’s suppose that you’re a missionary, and your goal is to teach the poor the gospel. Your understanding of the gospel is a theology of the Atonement. How many times do you recall Jesus having mentioned that to anybody? His reputation was for going around doing good.

“If, Mr. Missionary, you could teach them how to spin yarn from wool so they could make a little income, you could do the good which Jesus did. When you came back to buy their yarn from them, you would have some questions to answer.”

By Laura Sokol Urban, a free-lance writer and editor living in Evanston, Illinois.

Sensible Reasoning

Charles Colson’s sensible article in the issue of December 15 concerning prolife activists was stimulating [“How Prolife Protest Has Backfired”]. There must be a better way to get the message across.

The abortion practice is the result of turning the church into an entertainment center. Godly, biblical joy is turned into carnal, fleshly happiness by clowns acting as preachers. If God is not first of all holy, he is not God. And if there is no God, there is no morality—and then abortion cannot be wrong.

John Renno

Danville, Pa.

I am distraught over Colson’s article. I feel he has grossly missed the point of the rescue movement and fallen for the argument of the prochoice movement in matters of rape or incest. Those who risk arrest at abortion clinics are not protesters; they are there on a rescue mission. Anyone who cannot attend a rescue without displaying anger should not go; but please don’t say no one should go because a few have been photographed with un-Christlike expressions on their faces.

I do not understand the concern over what the media says or does. Anyone involved in the prolife movement knows that the secular media’s agenda is prochoice and discrediting of prolife people. This gives us cause to be careful in how we conduct ourselves, but it should not cause us to back down from strategies that have proven to save lives.

Dianne M. Hoover

Marietta, Ga.

Thanks to Charles Colson for bringing sanity to our insane world (both secular and Christian). I look forward to reading his latest book. The Lord has given him great wisdom and insight into our culture.

Franklin Ross

Tucson, Ariz.

I am not out every day with the prolife cause, but I have never seen Christians with faces twisted with hate and anger while screaming and waving their Bibles. In every instance, it was the other way around, with Christians singing hymns and praying. In an emotionally charged atmosphere, the self-control of Christian prolifers has seemed remarkable, making me feel proud and grateful for this fellowship of repentance.

Eleanor Reed

Boston, Mass.

Fresh Insight On The “New Russia”

We really enjoyed Terry Muck’s article, “Under the Eye of the Big, Red Machine” [Dec. 15]. As a fan of Argentine-born evangelist Luis Palau, I was particularly glad to see you cover at least partly the success of one of his evangelistic campaigns. This excellent article gave us fresh insight into the New Russia.

Rev. David Macfarlane

Toronto, Ont., Canada

Muck’s excellent report on his recent visit to the Soviet Union has missed at least one item. He writes that Protestant churches have no seminaries in Russia. This is incorrect, because the Seventh-day Adventists operate one not too far from Moscow.

Rev. Jeremia Florea

Bee Branch, Ark.

The December 15 cover painting by [Soviet artist] Vladimir Smirnov was exquisite. Bravo!

David Luma

Birmingham, Mich.

Missed Point?

CT’s report on the Religious Right [News, Dec. 15] misses the point—the Religious Right now passes itself off as mainstream. I’m hoping 1990 is the year CT does something worthwhile on this most significant story in evangelical Christendom.

Stephen M. Fox

Collinsville, Ala.

Euty’s Cussin’

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like more and more of my friends from church are, um … ah … cussing. We’re not talking your good, clean evangelical expletives: gosh dam, heck, or holy crimenee. We’re talkin’ the big time. Four letters and counting. The stuff they used to say made a Teamster blush.

Now, I’m no prude. I realize there are things that really can make a preacher swear. Like when your teenage son uses the car all weekend and then forgets to put it in the garage Sunday night; it rains, the windows were left open, and the fuel gauge is on empty. Gosh dam hardly seems expletive enough.

But come on, folks. It’s bad enough that we look like the rest of the world. Do we have to talk like them, too?

It’s time someone came up with some really good evangelical swear words. Crimenee is okay, but kind of wimpy compared with … well, you know what I mean.

So here’s my list of certified swear words worthy of that occasion when you open the envelope and learn the IRS would like to look over last year’s returns:

Pit: Sounds naughty, but it is totally clean (and used to be a fun game, to boot). It’s best used in situations of total frustration, as in “Aw pit, I thought the war was on drugs, not people who run a yellow light!”

Mikhail Gorbachev: I’m tired of hearing both our Lord’s and Judas Priest’s (like jeez, a euphemism) names being taken in vain. There’s nothing in the Bible against swearing by the name of a Communist leader, is there?

Fibula: Ever wonder why various body parts became the expletives of choice? Instead of calling someone an … um … well, you get the picture … why not just call him a less offensive part of the anatomy, as in “stay in your lane, you stupid fibula.”

You say pit, Mikhail Gorbachev, and fibula are patently more ridiculous than gosh dam and heck? You’ve got no argument from me. But let’s face it. Trying to swear Christianly is a lot like trying to turn the sanctuary into a theme park.

Maybe it would be better just to say no to sanctified (as well as regular) swearing.

EUTYCHUS

Top Ten

The feature on 1989’s top ten [news stories] was interesting [News, Dec. 15]. It is always valuable to put things into perspective. The adult Sunday school class I teach made our own list. Without informing the class of your choices, I asked them the question to determine the top ten news stories with greatest impact for the church.

This is our list:

1.The abortion issue—Supreme Court rulings and all.

2.Diminishing trust for televangelists.

3.The events in Poland specifically, and all of Eastern Europe as well.

4.Awareness of world missions.

5.Disasters, and the relief projects by the church.

6.Multiple family issues, including divorce, new definitions of “household,” further fractioning of families, single partners, and so on.

7.The plight of the homeless.

8.The increasing emphasis on “me” in America.

9.The unity of Europe and its prophetic ramifications.

10.Church-state issues in America, such as home schooling, religious displays in public places, and so on.

The importance of any list is to help us use history as a window for the future. Events are changing so rapidly in the world that historical perspective is mandatory. Perhaps today, the class would add the events in Central America.

Dwain C. Illman, M.D.

Bloomington, Ind.

The War Will Get Hotter

Kenneth Kantzer’s editorial, “A Winning Prolife Strategy” [Dec. 15], was right on target. The abortion war is not over and will probably get hotter in 1990. Christians must continue to pray and educate the public so that at least the 95 percent of those aborted now for trivial reasons can be saved. Unless the moral attitude and values of this country change, we are going to be in trouble. Mother Teresa said it best recently: “If a mother can kill her own child, then what is left of the West to be destroyed?”

Howard DeWitt

Alamogordo, N.M.

In devising a prolife strategy, we dare not enter into a conscience-salving compromise for the sake of popularity. All of the exceptions are for human convenience. Even the life of the mother—except where mutual destruction is assured—is suspect. I realize this is heretical, but God is nowhere obligated to cater to human convenience. We often hear: “It would take a saint to do that.” Well, we are called to be saints.

Richard W. Bliesman

Creston, Iowa

Needed: Middle Ground

Your editorial “Epitaph for the Eighties” deserves comment. All the eighties really prove is that conservatism in whatever form is not holy ground. The spats within the evangelical community and the moral outrage unleashed by greedy televangelists suggest that the seeds of its own destruction are as present within the Right as the Left!

Give us an ethical middle way: that’s what the nineties plead for.

Brian Witiver

Ft. Wayne, Ind.

I take issue with your comments about “the disarray of theological liberalism.” Evangelicals have been taunting the so-called liberal mainline churches and organizations like the NCC in vain because the “liberals” are in the evangelicals’ ranks! That which was secular-humanist behavior at the turn of the century is now being taught in many conservative evangelical colleges and seminaries.

The “grassroots poor people’s” churches have come of age in the 1980s and are themselves the establishment and status-quo churches that mainline churches once were. In the 1990s evangelicals are going to have an identity struggle. I wonder how long evangelicals can try to appeal to all sides of the theological spectrum, yet maintain their identity and a degree of integrity of what it means to be “evangelical.”

Rev. David Coffin

Malinta, Ohio

Toward Pulpit Excellence

Kevin Miller’s column, “We Ask for Poor Sermons” [Speaking Out, Dec. 15], was timely and topical. Most of us who are pastors feel extraordinary time pressure at the Christmas season, when we face the most strategic services and searching congregations. It is a wise and exceptional church that realizes its best investment is neither in facilities nor electronics, but rather in time given to the pastor to probe, study, pray, and think through to pulpit excellence.

Rev. Wayne A. Detzler

Calvary Baptist Church

Meriden, Conn.

There are other elements to this issue. Beginning from our seminary days we pastors are groomed to splinter ourselves in the ministry. Many seminaries require a smattering of Hebrew and Greek, a smattering of counseling courses, and similar dabs of church history and theology. Meanwhile, in the distance are visions of megachurches that represent success in the ministry.

The message a prospective pastor gets subliminally is that there are formulas for success. Among the ingredients in most formulas is seldom “much time in secret.” Often the “successful pastor” is a good administrator rather than a scholar. Few pastors I know—I am tempted to say no pastors I know—are intimately acquainted with their Hebrew and Greek Bibles. It is very hard work with meager practical dividends. Once in the ministry, interlinears may be the closest many pastors will come to the original languages.

For whatever reasons there might be, few congregations want meaty preaching that has been hard-won in the packing house of the pastor’s study. It is not expected that the pastor be a learned person. Instead, the common ideal seems to be a friendly, earnest, pietist who is “practical” in the pulpit. I’m really not certain how “meat” from the pulpit is to be defined. “Popular” and “meaty” are not synonymous.

Rev. Stuart D. Robertson

West Lafayette, Ind.

In this country, we have grown accustomed to seeing groups of men and women carrying signs either in favor of or against abortion. One could easily get the impression Americans are the only ones who struggle with this issue. But when associate news editor Randy Frame suggested we report on the abortion question in other countries, it became clear that our nation’s annual toll of more than one million abortions represents only a small percentage of the total number of preborn babies killed each year on this planet.

Randy has followed the abortion wars in this country for eight years. His detective-like curiosity usually gets results, but he was stumped by the metal spoons in our cover photo of an Italian proabortion rally. Enter Francine Biscan, production coordinator of our marketing department, whose Italian relatives solved the mystery: In Italy, feminists wave metal spoons to symbolize their freedom from domesticity.

A less-sensational story begins on page 12, with Robert Brow’s description of a major shift of emphasis among evangelicals. Brow, a writer, a minister, and a former seminary teacher in India, has observed evangelicalism across the years and around the globe. When we asked five other scholars to respond to Brow’s essay, the manuscripts all came in fast—and some of them furious. We think their eagerness to write suggests we may have stumbled upon a hot topic. Our mailroom is ready for your response.

LYN CRYDERMAN, Senior Associate Editor

Only nine more eating days till Lent. That flippant attitude has in some times and places made the Tuesday before Lent a day of gluttony and carousing (“Fat Tuesday” in Latin-influenced cultures), or at least a day of fund-raising pancake suppers (“Shrove Tuesday” in churches with an English accent). On February 28, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, and other historic Protestants will begin a formal period of self-denial, reflection, and penitence.

Those who don’t observe Lent may scoff at the formality of the observance, doubting the reality of the experience. But one former Baptist favorably compares Lent with the annual revival services with which he grew up. Both Lent and the visit of the revivalist came with annual regularity. Both events brought with them predictable external trappings. Both could easily be scoffed at. But both offered also a clear opportunity for personal reflection and public recognition of spiritual failure and rededication.

The spiritual goal at stake here is not so much a rigid adherence to a church calendar (whether catholic or revivalist), but the recognition that human beings need to be reminded regularly of their need for self-examination and a reopening of the self to grace.

The history of Lent is a history of increasing permissiveness. Originally, only one meal a day was allowed for the 40-day fast (and that in the evening), and many foods (such as meat and dairy products) were forbidden. By the sixteenth century, the monastic office of Vespers was moved to midday (thus making the entire afternoon into a kind of “evening”) so that the evening meal could be eaten quite early. Today only Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are observed as strict fasts—and that by only a few Christians. With the near disappearance of the serious observance of the Lenten fast, we suspect two important things have been lost: the spiritual benefits of self-denial, and community support for spiritual discipline.

The spiritual benefits of self-denial are many: increased awareness of the hungers that drive us (money, food, sex, power), of our bodiliness (feeling faint reminds us not to take our bodies for granted), of our psycho-physical fragility (how easily feelings of an empty stomach can turn into a critical spirit!), of our need for sustenance beyond meat and drink.

All those weaknesses can overcome us, however, unless we experience the rhythms of repentance in the context of the communal assurance of grace. Historians have pointed out that the Protestant Reformation not only brought about a return to biblical doctrine, but unleashed on the world a radical individualism: “Here I stand.” For many of us, that heritage means that we lack a community of support for our Christian living, that we are “Lone Ranger Christians,” that the individual conscience is the court of last resort. We believe in standing up for conscience, but it is a pity when spiritual disciplines are relegated almost entirely to matters of individual choice. Jesus said that when we fast we should make no outward display. He did not say we should abandon community support.

Whether we give up something for Lent or find another context in which to engage in communally supported self-examination, we recommend that all Christians engage in a fast with some regularity. The unimaginative may give up sweets or red meat. One insightful teen we know gave up homework for Lent. She knew that the point at which we need to be tested is the point of our strength and pride. She had built her self-image on scholastic superachievement. She found renewal in leaning on grace—a lesson we all could learn a little better.

By David Neff.

I recently suffered through a depressing but necessary experience—reading Charles Shepard’s Forgiven, the painfully detailed account of the rise and fall of Jim Bakker.

It was depressing because the story contains all the elements of classic Greek tragedy: a leading character trapped in his own web of deceit. Only this isn’t ancient literature, it’s real life. And the tragedy has wrought incalculable harm upon the cause of Christ.

Studying the book was necessary, however, because of its sobering lessons for the thousands of us in Christian service. As I read, I was reminded of how vulnerable we all are. Let no one be self-righteous: The terrifying truth is that what happened to Bakker could happen to any of us.

But as I labored through the pages of Forgiven, another lesson came home to me, one that applies to the evangelical movement as a whole: In a sense we created Jim Bakker, or at least the lethal environment in which he fell. This is not to excuse his misdeeds, but the lesson is plain. Jim Bakker’s demise was the nearly inescapable consequence of a popular idolatry: celebrity worship.

Raised in a modest Muskegon, Michigan, neighborhood, a poor student with a self-confessed inferiority complex, Bakker managed only three semesters of Bible college before launching out on a small-town revival circuit. When Jim was 25, his and Tammy’s puppet show for kids hit the big time on then-fledgling Christian television.

Fame came fast. Adoring crowds heaped mountains of money on the “house” that Jim built, gorgeous buildings full of high-tech studios. Jet setters, Jim and Tammy cruised Palm Springs in leather-lined limousines, and were even courted by presidential candidates.

Such instant fame often destroys, as it has countless other celebrities. Most of us are not as immune to pride as Mother Teresa.

Star Worship

Celebrity worship has become so pervasive that, as Richard Schickel writes in Intimate Strangers, it substitutes “for a sense of organization, purpose, and stability in our society.” This is understandable perhaps in the values vacuum of secular America; but the baffling part is that Christians have fallen into the same trap.

We evangelicals mindlessly elevate our own superstars: honey-tongued TV preachers, baby-faced World Series heroes, converted rock stars, and yes, a former White House aide who supposedly would have run over his own grandmother.

We worship fame for fame’s sake. So what if the celebrity is long on outward looks and short on inward substance? Theological depth, spiritual maturity, and even integrity matter less than worldly fame.

There are at least two possible explanations for this very nonbiblical attitude.

One is that ordinary citizens who may feel insignificant in this super-hyped media age can experience power and privilege vicariously through the celebrity. Why else do widows living on social security send their $10 or $20 checks to televangelists who wear Rolex watches and live in ministry-provided palatial estates? Somehow these supporters must be living out the fantasy of the Christian high life right along with the celebrity, a phenomenon Schickel describes at length in his book.

There is a second explanation: The celebrity affirms our faith. “If God could convert him,” I remember people saying about me, “he can convert anyone.” This leads to a tendency to paint the convert’s past more sinful and his present more saintly than either deserves. I know.

Shortly after my release from prison, I was waiting to give my testimony to a packed auditorium of students. A former White House colleague, on hand to introduce me, leaned over and whispered to the emcee, “I’m going to tell the audience what a great guy Chuck was before.” The emcee turned ashen. “No, no,” he stammered, “you’ll ruin the whole thing.”

God’S Paid Professionals

But the danger of celebrityism in the Christian world is not just that we puff up mere mortals with pride, put them on pedestals, throw our coins at them, and then shake our heads disgustedly when they fall. No, there is a less obvious but even more deadly effect of Christian idol-worship: Celebrityism lets individual believers off the hook.

It’s tragic that the illusions of our culture have us believing that only big names or big organizations can accomplish anything. And so we send our checks off to worldwide Christian ministries and settle back in the easy chair. We serve God by remote control.

In truth, the most important work of the gospel is done directly by citizens living out their biblical responsibility in their everyday circ*mstances. This is one reason I look forward to visiting Third World countries. In most there are no evangelical superstars, no big organizations, and so those “poor” Christians simply go out and do the gospel themselves.

In Peru, for example, during last year’s financial crisis, the government cut funds for prisons, threatening food supplies for 7,000 inmates at the infamous Luringancho prison. Volunteers went door to door, filling trucks with canned goods, home-cooked stews, or whatever they could gather. When those trucks rolled through Luringancho’s imposing gates, they were greeted by swarms of inmates. As the volunteers busily served the food, the inmates spontaneously broke out in hymns of praise.

These Christians had to trust solely in God to work through their hands. I was confronted with a similar story in Madagascar where I found that the diligent efforts of one man kept alive several hundred inmates. I was so moved I asked if there was anything I could do to help, expecting him to say, “send money.” “Oh no,” came his astonishing reply, “our God is sufficient for all things.”

Those simple words and solid examples are a sobering message for today’s evangelicals: We must forsake the worship of Christian megamen—which, as the Bakker tragedy showed us, spells doom—and get on with our duty to do the gospel. Our faith belongs not in corruptible media icons but in our God who is sufficient for all things.

Don’t write off My Left Foot as just another disease-of-the-week weeper. This powerful Irish film is a brutally honest, stunningly executed examination of all the little humiliations cerebral palsy victims face every day, and the limited, but magnificent victory achieved by Christy Brown. He wrote books with the only part of his body over which he could exercise normal control: his left foot.

Daniel Day Lewis (A Room with a View) is one of Britain’s most accomplished young actors. To research the role of Brown he lived and worked for eight weeks in a hospital for cerebral palsy patients. On the set, he lived in his wheelchair, eating only when others fed him. The result is a believable, deeply empathetic cerebral palsy sufferer. Hugh O’Connor’s portrayal of Christy as a child is nothing short of brilliant.

Christy Brown’s limbs and face are contorted, his every utterance is a triumph of the will. We cringe as adults belittle him to his face. We weep when his bewildered mother tells him, “We can’t understand you, Christy, but God can.” When he finally makes his intelligence known, we rejoice with his ecstatic father.

Christy Brown went on to write five books—novels, poetry, and the autobiography upon which the film is based—as a fully dimensional human being. He curses his affliction and the people who humiliate him. He falls in love, struggles with alcoholism, and emerges as a sinful man, full of dignity, in need of salvation. We come away with a deeper understanding of what it means to be made in the image of God.

By Stefan Ulstein.

ARTBRIEFS

Glasnost Comes to Music

If you understand Russian, or know someone who does, a new recording just released in the U.S. by Integrity Music might interest you. “Heal Our Land” is billed as the first praise and worship recording in the Russian language; it contains ten songs from Integrity’s Hosanna! Music series, including “Give Thanks,” “Lord of All,” “Worthy, You Are Worthy.”

Copies of the master tape were given to church leaders in the Soviet Union for duplication and distribution throughout the country. Evangelist Terry Law took the tapes to a group of church leaders from 19 Soviet republics and reported that “everybody in the room was crying, their hands were in the air, and they were praising the Lord. And when we came to [the song] ‘Heal Our Land,’ … a weeping came over the crowd.”

“Heal Our Land” has been made available in the U.S. because response to it in the USSR was so overwhelming.

Christian Rating Service

Ted Baehr, whose Good News Communications issues Movieguide, a conservative Christian guide to movies and entertainment, has just produced two volumes covering most of the major (and minor) films made for the American viewing public. Published by Wolgemuth & Hyatt, The Christian Family Guide to Movies and Videos rates all movies (and videos) from a four-star excellent (e.g., It’s a Wonderful Life) to no rating: bad—totally without merit (Psycho III)—and offers opinions on how offensive the films are to Christians who would rather not view nudity and violence or hear profanity and false teaching.

Volume 1, coauthored by Baehr, Bruce W. Grimes, and Lisa Ann Rice, contains three chapters that discuss a biblical perspective on movies and precede the reviews, which were culled from four years of Movieguide. If you’re stymied when you visit the video store and wonder which movies are “safe” for your family, you might appreciate Baehr’s efforts. Both volumes are expected to be available in local book stores.

Musicians for Life

The news media and popular press would have the public believe the vast majority of Americans are now prochoice on the abortion issue. Into this arena comes a new recording by a group of contemporary musicians who have joined forces to protest the slaughter of the innocents. The recording “It’s Gotta Stop!” subtitled “Artists Against the Abortion Holocaust,” was produced for the Christian Action Council (CAC) by Diadem Music, and includes the voices of Pat Boone, Phil Keaggy, A.D., Randy Stonehill, Sandy Rios, the late Keith Green, and seven others. All of the artists have agreed to forgo royalties as a benefit to the CAC.

Each song addresses the abortion question directly. Perhaps the most striking cut is Pat Boone’s “Let Me Live”; it describes a dream in which developing children sing a paean to the life that is theirs since they were conceived. All the lyrics are strong, and the music, which is well done by the well known, covers the spectrum of musical styles.

Diadem is marketing the recording to book stores, and CAC expects to offer it as a contribution premium.

By Carol R. Thiessen.

Ohio State University’s new Wexner Center for the Visual Arts has attracted attention not only from the press, but from Christian critics who take issue with the building’s apparent philosophical foundation. The structure is a $43 million argument for deconstructionism, and not since a glass pyramid was added to the Louvre has an architectural controversy spilled over into mass culture with such ferocity. The building, by architect Peter Eisenman, was praised by Newsweek as a work of art and “America’s first big deconstructivist building.”

It defies architectural conventions. As Cathleen McGuigan writes in Newsweek, the Wexner Center “turns architectural convention on its head: There’s no façade, no center, no stable ground plan. Windows are set along the floor; columns slam down from the ceiling and stop in midair.”

Study In Contrast

Meanwhile, at the University of Notre Dame, a believing Christian architect is working in the opposite direction. Thomas Gordon Smith, new head of Notre Dame’s School of Architecture, practices classical architecture, which draws on over 2,000 years of tradition while working within modern constraints. It is based on the aesthetics of people—unlike modern architecture’s aesthetics of engineering. Though deconstruction’s methods and details are similar to modern architecture’s, Smith said, it challenges the conventionality of modernism.

“Deconstructionism and classicism,” said Smith, “represent diametrically opposed ends of the architectural spectrum.” Classical architects “believe in continuity,” he said. “We believe in the potential, over time periods, of ideas that have been an important part of Western culture.” And though deconstruction may hold the current spotlight, he is not worried that it will become the dominant style. “Its approach to architecture is highly theoretical, extremely impractical, and extremely stylish,” he said.

Smith and others suggest that by flouting architectural tradition, deconstruction creates inhospitable buildings. “I think that’s a stated aim. The theme of alienation and nihilism is the root of deconstruction,” Smith said.

A Decadent Idea

Smith is not alone in deploring the deconstruction approach. Virginia Stem Owens addresses aesthetics in her book The Total Image and in a recent Reformed Journal essay. She says, “I suspect that what is behind this style is a certain kind of anger directed at the audience and the patrons. It’s almost a narcissistic kind of self-loathing.”

James Mellick, a sculptor who teaches at Calvin College, compared deconstruction to Dada, the artistic movement that reveled in irrationality, chance, and intuition. “It’s sort of Dada comes to architecture. When you confront the public and rub art in the stupid public’s face, and do that on an architectural scale, it’s a pretty expensive joke and a pretty expensive whim,” he said. “When you turn architecture into sculpture—where you’re only concerned about form—I think that is a decadent idea.”

Charles Young, a Calvin College facility planner and art teacher, compares the Wexner Center to an elaborate puzzle or a funhouse mirror. “I enjoy puzzles. I would not like to spend all my time figuring them out, but I enjoy working on them,” he said. “I think I would be very frustrated spending my life inside of one. Once you’ve figured it out, [the mystery] is gone.” He believes the Wexner Center would be a fun place to visit. “But our lives, long-term, are not built on entertainment. At some point you become jaded, and nothing matters.”

Young, Owens, and Smith all see deconstruction as part of a larger philosophical conflict. “In all the humanities, we face a crisis in history,” says Young. “The model that history is going somewhere has been dismantled and abandoned.” And Smith says he finds the battles “are being fought at every level. So many of the ethical values and world-view issues are at work.”

Owens believes “American culture is getting the buildings its imagination is currently capable of”; she doesn’t think people consciously plan these things, but that they come from the inside out. Says Owens, “There is a strained way in which people are building churches today so they can be identified as churches and not be confused with the savings and loan. I’m not sure how successfully that works out.” Mellick, a sculptor in Columbus, Ohio, before he joined the Calvin faculty, called the building a reflection of “extravagant, self-centered arrogance.”

For his part, Smith is at work on a residence for his family in South Bend that should give the Wexner Center some competition for architectural flair. He is basing the design on a formula for a temple front by Vitruvius, a Roman architect and engineer in the first century B.C. It will feature six Ionic columns adhering to Vitruvius’s specifications for height, diameter, and spacing between columns.

“It’s very common that a particular building is cited as a paradigm for a movement,” Smith said, adding that he hopes his home will become such a paradigm for a resurgent classicism—just as the Wexner Center stands as a chaotic tribute to deconstruction.

By Doug LeBlanc, an editor with Compassion International.

Lessons From A Megalomaniac

Fair, Clear and Terrible: The Story of Shiloh, by Shirley Nelson (British American Publishing, 447 pp.; $21.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Luci Shaw, writer-in-residence at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and author of God in the Dark.

What is it that turns a vigorous religious movement in on itself—reversing the flow of energy from an outgoing vision for mission to the centripetal pull of decay and self-destruction? Shirley Nelson, author of The Last Year of the War (Harold Shaw), has provided us with a compelling case history in the rise and fall of the Shiloh movement, begun in Durham, Maine, in the 1890s.

Its leader, Frank Sandford, had all the qualities to get such a movement going—he was handsome, intelligent, bold, magnetic, a powerful presence with an almost electrical spiritual intensity. He was also headstrong, volatile, and fanatical, and eventually became convinced that he alone was the mouthpiece of God.

Maine’S Elijah

In the beginning, the call of God in Sandford seemed authentic enough. He was able to gather around him followers who were hungry for spiritual renewal and eager to claim the world for God. With their diligent help he soon erected a remarkable hilltop training school whose symbolic configuration (the tower of the main building was topped with a golden crown visible for miles) was echoed in the biblical nomenclature attached to Shiloh’s buildings, people, and tasks: David’s Tower, Bethesda, the Twelve Tribes, Olivet, the Nineveh Fast, the Feast of Tabernacles, Hephzibah, the White Horse—names that had either an Old Testament or an apocalyptic ring.

Sandford felt himself to be a modern prophet-leader, calling himself “David” and “Elijah.” The usual catalyst for decision or movement came through words of command “received” or heard by Sandford or his lieutenants in prophetic manner—words such as “Go straight,” “Give up,” “Continue,” “Turn,” “The conquest of America afresh!” “Go around [the world]!”

Sandford and his inner circle seemed to thrive on crisis. Shiloh’s history was characterized not only by enthusiasm but also by epidemics of illness, lack of fuel in the severe New England winters, food shortages, harassment by unsympathetic townspeople, purges among the faithful, broken families, personality conflicts, sudden reversals of policy. All were seen as challenges of faith and opportunities for deeper commitment. Even when poverty was at its deepest, Sandford specialized in raising money for his special projects—new buildings, ships, a chariot with horses. Prayer meetings, often of many hours’ or days’ duration, were held: sins were confessed, faith was expressed, and empty pockets were emptied more thoroughly; and miraculously, the money came in.

One of his most singular efforts was the purchase of a sloop, the Coronet, with which to evangelize the world—not literally (though outposts were established in England, Egypt, and Jerusalem), but symbolically, by sailing in sight of continents or islands and “claiming” them for Christ. For years the Coronet and the high seas became Frank Sandford’s refuge. He dared not land again in North America where charges of manslaughter and neglect awaited him, and the tribulations he and the crew underwent—their sails often ripped and hull leaking, food supplies exhausted or rotting, and sickness, despair, and mutiny rampant—make for extraordinary reading.

Though Sandford was eventually indicted and imprisoned in an Atlanta penitentiary for several years, the deepest tragedies were enacted in the lives of his followers. Often they were brainwashed into an irrational devotion and loyalty that made any criticism of the movement seem like unfaithfulness to God himself. Their way of life consisted of cycles in which miraculous provision and prosperity and spiritual exhilaration alternated with destitution—hunger, cold, illness, all exacerbated by exhausting physical labor. These times of privation were seen not as predictable consequences of Sandford’s unsubstantiated visions and idiosyncratic enterprises, but as the result of disobedience, willfulness, or compromise on the part of his followers.

In 1919, after continued legal complications and financial shortfalls, Sandford received the directive “Remove!” and left for Boston with his family. Eventually the movement, dwindling in size by disillusionment and defection, went underground. Frank Sandford moved to a secret destination known only to a few close followers. He died in 1948.

A Timely Warning

Though her own parents had been involved in the Shiloh movement (her own childhood memories are part of the book’s fabric), Shirley Nelson tells the story candidly, with a fairness and compassion that adds to its impact. Her reliance on primary sources—journals, letters, newspaper reports, court records—gives the work a compelling authenticity. Combining the zeal of the historian with the transcendent eye of the novelist, Nelson lends every telling detail the hard edge of reality, and makes Fair, Clear and Terrible one of the most engrossing slices of history to be released in the past decade.

This story is a warning, no doubt about it. Christian readers will find it sobering and salutary. It should provoke in all of us the question, in the wake of more recent leadership scandals, “How can we prevent this horror from happening again?”

A British Panorama

Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, by D. W. Bebbington (Unwin Hyman, 364 pp.; $44.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Grant Wacker, associate professor of religious studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

By any reasonable measure of such things, evangelical Protestantism ranks as one of the most important forces of modern British history. Evangelicals permanently altered the course of the Established Church in the eighteenth century, set the tone of British culture in the midnineteenth century, claimed the allegiance of both archbishops of Canterbury in the 1970s, and through their well-oiled missionary agencies molded the shape of Christianity throughout much of the non-Western world.

Not surprisingly, numerous books have been written on one or another aspects of that notable tradition. But till now no one has tried to tell the whole story at once. Bebbington, a 40-year-old Baptist history professor at the University of Stirling, and already the author of three other substantial works, is the first to survey the evangelical panorama in Britain from beginning to end—and all around as well.

Radically Modern

This is not a book for the faint-hearted. It bends under the weight of its footnotes as it marches from century to century across rolling fields of social and cultural history. Even so, this is not a general textbook with neatly parsed chapters on one of everything. Rather, it is a closely reasoned monograph governed by a single argument. That argument, briefly stated, is that evangelicalism is, despite its self-perception, a radically modern form of Christianity.

On the face of it, that claim seems tame enough. But the implications are far-reaching—especially if one believes, as many evangelicals do, that the apostle Paul was just Billy Graham with a Greek accent. The crucial point here is that evangelicalism was born in Britain and in British North America in the 1730s not as a reaction against the enlightened currents of the age, as many have supposed, but as a religious expression of those very currents.

Evangelicalism’s fondness for rational argument and pragmatic method, its optimism about the providential course of history, its concern for religious toleration and humanitarian reform, its aptitude for precise expression and effective communication betokened a religious movement as indebted to Newton and Locke as any Latitudinarian Anglican.

Deep cultural indebtedness continued to hold true for later years as well. In the nineteenth century, the heightened supernaturalism and fideistic intuitionalism that animated Wordsworth and Emerson also fired the preaching of Edward Irving and Charles Spurgeon. Secular romanticism bubbled over into faith healing, proto-Zionism, apocalyptic eschatology, and ear-splitting shouting matches over biblical inerrancy.

And no one should be surprised that the late twentieth century, with its fondness for “nonrepresentational art, stream-of-consciousness literature and … the nonrational in all its forms,” was also the era of the charismatic insurgence, with its affinity for doctrinal fuzziness and ecstatic piety. All together, it would be difficult to find a barometer in any age that was more consistently sensitive to the culture in which it lived.

Evangelicalism’s essential modernity showed up in other ways, too. Bebbington demonstrates that the tradition did not tumble from the sky as a sacred meteorite. Rather, it exhibited an almost predictable sociological profile. Over the centuries evangelicalism most readily took root among artisans, skilled laborers, and up-and-coming merchants—not among the destitute nor among the gentry. Its message proved most attractive in towns and in thriving cities rather than in isolated rural areas or in densely packed urban settings. Women were numerically dominant, yet evangelicalism remained virtually synonymous with patriarchy. Evangelicalism fought for such landmark reforms as the abolition of slavery and the opium trade, yet it deemed those practices evil because they fostered private vices rather than because they were unjust or inhumane.

A “Quadrilateral Of Priorities”

Bebbington recognizes, of course, that there were significant continuities within the evangelical tradition, too, enduring hallmarks that defined and made it what it was. He locates those continuities in what he calls a “quadrilateral of priorities”: conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism. None of those emphases was wholly new but, taken together, they composed a profile unique within Christian history. Even so, the way that each priority functioned wobbled from one generation to the next.

On these counts and many others, Bebbington’s work squares with the findings of historians of North American evangelicalism. The tradition often resembled a vast lava flow, rolling over national boundaries and cementing new communities of information exchange. But in many respects, Britain really was an ocean away. Perhaps the most striking difference between the North American and the British stories was the absence in the latter of a sustained fundamentalist controversy or of a viable fundamentalist faction. The Brits had their fair share of bare-knuckled battlers, to be sure, but there was no Scopes Trial and no Jerry Falwell.

In a study so broadly conceived and so boldly argued, it would be something of a miracle if thoughtful readers walked away nodding agreement on all points. One might fault Bebbington for making little effort to hide his likes and dislikes. Reformed Nonconformity receives, as they say, privileged treatment throughout, while the Keswick tradition, which undergirds the current Pentecostal/charismatic and Third World missions explosion, takes some needless slaps.

Without doubt, Bebbington’s argument for the perennial impact of secular culture on evangelical sensibilities assuredly challenges readers who are prone to think of evangelicalism as a timeless molecule, quietly floating above the vicissitudes of history. But Bebbington’s interpretation harbors problems of its own. Over the centuries evangelicals insistently denied some of the most fundamental assumptions of secular voices, even as they rushed to appropriate other assumptions and to express themselves in the idioms of the day.

Above all, it is worth noting how persistently evangelicals returned to the Bible itself for anchorage and direction and spiritual sustenance. They were men and women of their times, to be sure. Bebbington leaves little doubt that evangelicals ended up reading the Scripture not only through the lenses of their age but also often enough through the lenses of their self-interest. Yet for all their bias and priggishness and plain human cussedness, evangelicals remain remarkable for their determination to sail history’s uncharted seas by the aid of that one familiar star.

A Merciful Killing?

Euthanasia: Spiritual, Medical and Legal Issues in Terminal Health Care, by Beth Spring and Ed Larson (Multnomah, 219 pp.; $12.95, paper). Reviewed by Charles Edward White, Spring Arbor College, Spring Arbor, Michigan.

In Euthanasia we are introduced to five candidates for euthanasia. All five lives could be sustained only by machines. One woman took poison to avoid a lingering death. One man pulled the plug, and then, much to his surprise, recovered. Another went home and died, and the fourth died in the hospital. The fifth was unconscious and breathed only with a respirator for more than a year, until the morning he awoke and asked for his mother. Within months, he recovered fully.

These stories remind us that the euthanasia debate is not just an academic discussion. Beth Spring, a journalist, and Ed Larson, who teaches history and law at the University of Georgia, say our society faces a crisis in terminal health care. This crisis is caused by four trends: the increasingly technical and impersonal practice of medicine, the aging of the baby boomers, the growing ability to postpone death, and the rising cost of medical care. If these trends continue, caring for the elderly will consume 45 cents of every health-care dollar. To avert this crisis, the proponents of euthanasia are vigorously offering their solution.

Speaking to an aging population fearful of intrusive tubes and of burdening their children, some are promoting “death with dignity” through suicide and the duty of the terminally ill “to die and get out of the way.” These once-extreme views are now debated in our courts and legislatures.

Spring and Larson reject euthanasia for several reasons. First, they say it attacks the sovereignty of God; God is the only one who has the authority to give or take life. Second, euthanasia neglects God’s power to heal. Third, it forgets that death is an enemy and not originally part of God’s plan for the human race. Fourth, euthanasia discounts the value of suffering. Finally, euthanasia is wrong because it cuts dying people off from the communities God has ordained to serve them. The church is God’s vehicle to minister to the dying, and euthanasia spurns that ministry.

Besides simply resisting the growing euthanasia movement, Spring and Larson recommend that Christians promote “hospice” as an alternative both to “mercy killing” and to technologically prolonged death. The prospect of dying with dignity in a loving environment will remove much of the appeal of euthanasia. In addition to advocating hospice, Spring and Larson offer guidance in preparing for the medical problems of old age.

Euthanasia is clear and accurate. It alerts evangelicals to the next major battle in the prolife movement. Just as many in the church were not prepared for the ferocity of the assault of the abortionists 20 years ago, so now most are unaware of the plans of the “mercy-killers.” In such a short, readable book the authors could never answer all the questions, but their work is a blast on the trumpet signaling the enemy’s approach to an unguarded flank.

Ana and Laura were shocked to learn that as Youth for Christ leaders they would be expected to raise their own support. “Portugese people just don’t do that,” they protested. Nevertheless, the young women reluctantly decided to attempt the impossible—to raise funds from their friends and churches in Portugal. “Little by little, people are starting to give more,” they said.

“The biggest obstacle facing young people considering missions in Europe today is finances,” said George Verwer, international director of Operation Mobilization, a largely European mission agency. “In the U.S., missions has a relative degree of acceptance as a proper career,” Verwer said. “In Europe, missions and missionaries generally are looked down upon.”

Nevertheless, missions interest among young Europeans is growing. “Operation Mobilization is growing so fast, we are at a breaking point,” Verwer said. “We now have 2,000 missionaries, with the biggest group from Europe. Half of them can’t find the proper support.”

Mission ’90

Helping missionaries find support was one of the main purposes of Mission ’90, a European missions-oriented congress that drew 9,300 young participants from 45 countries to Utrecht, Holland, from December 28 to January 2. It was the fifth such congress sponsored by the European Missionary Association (TEMA) since 1975. “In Europe, there is a great weakness on the level of the local church,” said Luc Verlinden, vice-chairman of TEMA. “We started conferences to encourage young people to be rooted in the Lord and to really start to live their message where they are—in their family and the local church.”

Conferees are also encouraged to consider full-time Christian service, including cross-cultural missions. This year 210 exhibitors, including Bible schools, Christian colleges, and mission agencies, actively recruited young people.

While the TEMA congresses usually produce a large number of volunteers for short-term missions, the challenge is to get youths to consider missions as a career option. “We have a lot of Danish people who come on short-term assignments,” Verwer said. “Few ever return as long-term missionaries.”

The same is true for most other European countries. “Young people in Sweden are very interested in missions,” said Rune Carlsson, youth secretary of Orebro Mission in Sweden. “But many want to give one year to the Lord, and then go back to normal life.”

Egil Grandhagen, general secretary of the Norwegian Lutheran Mission (NLM), also bemoans the tendency of young people to opt for short-term missions. Even so, NLM’s primarily long-term force has doubled in the last 15 years. The agency, the largest in Norway, now has 600 foreign missionaries. With 2,000 foreign missionaries, Norway (population 4.2 million) has the world’s highest ratio of foreign missionaries to general population, says Grandhagen.

In other countries with a weaker Protestant missionary-sending heritage, recruiting has been extremely difficult. Delores Lasse, a missionary with the Africa Inland Mission, is assigned with her husband to recruit missionaries from France for French-speaking Africa. Although progress is slow, about 700 French young people attended Mission ’90. Almost twice as many—some 1,300—came from West Germany, where mission recruiters Herbert and Lorelei Apel of the Evangelical Alliance Mission have found enthusiastic response, especially among Bible school students.

“Interest in missions is definitely growing among European young people,” Verwer said. He noted that last summer, 7,000 attended Love Europe, a youth conference and short-term missions outreach in Europe. “There is a lot more going on for God in Europe than anybody knows.”

By Sharon E. Mumper in Utrecht, Holland.

The recent formation of the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) reflects the growing acceptance of a somewhat new style of thinking on how the church should meet its obligation to the poor. In essence, the community-development concept stresses providing the poor a way out of the cycle of poverty instead of giving a handout.

Said William “Bud” Ipema, president of the Chicago-based MidAmerica Leadership Foundation, “In a sense, [the concept] is as old as Christ’s inauguration of his ministry in Luke 4:18–19. But in this century we have seen a separation of community and church interests.”

A Closer Look at the Poor

Dolphus Weary is president of Mendenhall Ministries in Mendenhall, Mississippi, a model of rural Christian community development. The ministry was founded in 1962 by John Perkins as Voice of Calvary, and took on its current name in 1981. Weary spoke with CHRISTIANITY TODAY about some of the issues and goals facing community-development ministries.

What are the major challenges facing ministries such as yours?

The biggest one is to get people to think harder about the poor in this country. A lot of people think it’s okay to build a hospital or a clinic or a school in a foreign country. But when we start talking about doing it here, it’s a foreign thought.

Why is that?

It probably has to do with the American mentality that says we have all the answers, and we are the ones trying to correct the problems in the rest of the world. We don’t want to confess that we have problems right in our own back yard. This mentality has permeated the Christian community. We are sometimes embarrassed when we hear about other countries sending missionaries to America.

What can be done about this?

All that can be done is to re-educate people, to challenge them to rethink the situation, and to do something about it. It’s a slow process, but it is happening. The formation of the [Christian Community Development] association represents recognition of the problem and the will to do something.

What do you know now about forming a community-development ministry that you wish you had known when you got started?

We started as a Christian organization, not closely linked with a church. I strongly advise churches in communities to become involved in community-development ministries. At the very least, ministries should be identified with a church. The church needs to own the vision of reaching out and loving communities wholistically.

This way, you have a whole community of people committed to the cause, not just a few. And this ensures there will always be a spiritual dimension to the ministry. Christian organizations in dealing with practical problems can lose perspective. The church enables you to maintain the central focus of carrying the gospel everywhere.

Certainly there are success stories. But what is the success rate? Don’t the majority of people who frequent ministries to the poor end up back on the street?

Maybe so. So let’s look at minorities rather than majorities. And measure change in inches, not feet. We have had over 200 young people come through our leadership-development ministry. Ninety percent of them have gone on to be successful. By that I mean people who went to college or to trade school and now have meaningful employment who otherwise probably would have gone nowhere.

As far as those touched by community-development ministries, what is considered successful? Ten percent? Fifteen? All I know is that I’ve gone to board meetings of community-development ministries. And some of the people serving on those boards were drug addicts or bums on the street six years ago. People do change.

Ipema identified two different contemporary models of church development: the “regional church” model, which draws people out of the communities in which they live to a common worship experience; and the community-development concept, which seeks to bring the church to the communities.

According to Ipema, most community-development ministries have sprung up in the last decade or so. He noted that the increase in leadership foundations across the nation (there are now 16) documents the trend. These foundations, usually urban based, support in various ways churches attempting to minister in their own communities.

Those involved in community development generally credit John Perkins with pioneering the first contemporary model from an evangelical perspective. Perkins in 1962 began Voice of Calvary in Jackson, Mississippi. For Perkins, who was elected chairman of the board of CCDA at its founding conference in Chicago, the association represents the fulfillment of a 30-year goal. He said, “We’re not forming the CCDA to patronize the poor, organize a protest, or go over the facts of poverty again. We’re not trying to help the poor get more out of welfare, but to put an end to welfare.”

According to its statement, the association’s essential purpose is to “mobilize spiritual and physical resources in and for communities of need through the Church.” Cynder Baptista, senior administrator of CCDA, noted that the association regards evangelism and social work as inseparable.

Baptista said community development ministries attempt to enable individuals and families become self-sufficient by providing whatever is needed—education, child care, legal advice, job training, counseling—all within the context of biblical values.

The CCDA’s activities will include producing a newsletter, sponsoring seminars, and establishing regional training centers for classroom education and practical experience in community development ministry. In part, this will enable various ministries to exchange practical advice in such areas as how to establish a children’s ministry, to deal sensitively with potentially dangerous people, to determine when the ministry is being exploited, and how to enlist suburban churches in the effort.

More than 150 ministries, including churches, are in the process of joining the CCDA, said Baptista. Membership is also open to individuals, educational institutions, and supporting organizations that are not themselves active in ministry to the poor.

By Randy Frame.