Episcopal Press and News
Evangelism Conference Held
Diocesan Press Service. November 8, 1972 [72185]
Burtis M. Dougherty
(special to The Virginia Churchman)
"A quietly fanatic community of changed men and women" -- one speaker used these words of the late John Heuss to describe the 475 laity and clergy of the Episcopal Church gathered in Grace-St. Luke's, Memphis, Oct. 4-7, for the church's first nation- wide conference on evangelism.
Frederick W. Putnam, Jr., Oklahoma's suffragan bishop, said he was impressed: "This unexpectedly large turnout from every part of the country shows a grass roots recognition of the desperate need for evangelism in the staid, often stodgy, Episcopal Church."
Delegates were heartily positive in their comments about the size and quiet enthusiasm of the sessions. The Rev. Dabney Wellford (Warsaw, Va.) was "impressed that there were so many people interested enough to be here " -- most of them at their own expense in time and money.
Mary Johnson, a young woman in her twenties from Elizabeth, N.J., "came because it was happening" and said she "no longer felt all alone" in her evangelism concerns and efforts.
Mrs. Bruce C. Fisher (Charles City, Va. ) commented on her pleasure at seeing the large turnout, but added quietly : " I don't know why I should be surprised to see these numbers -- I've been praying about this for years. "
A Trade Show
Jointly sponsored by the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer, Brotherhood of St. Andrew, Daughters of the King, Episcopal Center for Evangelism (Miami), and Faith Alive, the three-day meeting presented a "trade show" of 22 varieties of evangelistic effort currently being conducted by church-related individuals and groups.
The Rev. Robert B. Hall, executive director of the Center for Evangelism, served as conference coordinator.
Hall said he hoped the conference would show the Episcopal Church that "there are many ways of evangelism open to us. We may have to adapt much of what we adopt, . . . but this is what we are working on."
He indicated that leaders of the five sponsoring groups all had the idea of such a conference at about the same time, "and from there on the pieces just all began to fit together."
Expressing pleasure at the response and noting that two-thirds of the group were laity, Hall said, " Perhaps more might have come had we called it an Advance Institute for Applied Salvation Therapy."
Variety of Speakers
The three daily general assembly speakers and the six daily workshop leaders included an amazing variety of national, regional, ecumenical and local groupings involved in Episcopal church related evangelism.
Houston furnished persons such as Gordon Abbott, manager of Fishermen, Inc., and the Rev. Jeff Schiffmayer, both connected with the strongly charismatic life of the Church of the Redeemer in that city.
From the same city came the Rev. Claxton Monro of St. Stephen's, a parish that has won national recognition for its challenging experiments in lay ministry.
Monro said he thought the conference "bubbled with a spirit of joy and expectancy." He rejoiced, he said, that lay ministry "was an accepted fact in this gathering. " He felt " a new spirit of freedom and hope, as useful structures for this new age in the church's life are beginning to emerge," he added.
Keith Miller
Many who attended the workshop of Texan author Keith Miller said he was most helpful. For example, Miller said the evangelist's role is "to be a door-opener, not a theologian. " He urged his hearers to use any power they may have been given, but to use it "gently" -- there is "no need for us to close every deal for Christ."
Loren Mead, director of Project Test Pattern, based at Washington Cathedral, was loud and clear in his insistence that if " anything is going to happen, the parish is where it will happen. "
Canadian Anglican evangelist the Rev. Marney Patterson, whose crusades have been held in every part of that country and Japan, suggested that "God called me not in spite of the fact that I am an Anglican but because of it."
Patterson, like many of the other speakers, was most explicit in his understanding of evangelism as part and parcel of the church's life and work and not as a separate, splinter activity of some people.
Dealing With Small Groups
David Stoner, lay director of the Midsouth Yokefellow Center (Florence, Ala.), dealt feelingly with the nature and function of small groups in the church.
Stoner said it was necessary for individuals to be able to relate to small groups for support and strength. These groups were not primarily problem-solving groups, he added. Their job is not to give "you should have or you shouldn't have" advice.
Rather, Stoner said, group members have a responsibility to hear one another and respond, to pray daily for each other, to attend church weekly, and to contribute to Christian work.
Without this discipline the group may well end up sending out the message, "we got it, and don't you wish you did too. " Or what is even worse, Stoner said, "we got it, and are not sure you deserve to have it."
Stoner urged individuals to "contract" for a specific period of time, having first learned the group's purpose, decided what one wants from the group, and only then to make a definite, limited-time commitment to the group.
The Rev. Charles Huffman, associate director of the Pittsburgh Experiment (founded by Sam Shoemaker), outlined his group's evangelistic effort.
Pittsburgh's small groups have included business executives, middle managers, skid-row characters, students, and jail inmates, all relating to one another in a "get changed, get together, get going" pattern first tried by Shoemaker.
Gordon Kelly, a layman from Canton, Ohio, presented a workshop on the arts and media for evangelism. Harry Griffith of the recently established American branch of the Bible Reading Fellowship and the Rev. Peter Moore of the Fellowship of Witness also spoke.
Formerly Frozen
Eleanor Searle Whitney, who describes herself as a "formerly frozen Episcopalian but now a thawed one," managed the almost impossible task of holding the attention of a conference assembly session for more than an hour, as she regaled them with her transformation from stereotyped wealthy society matron to witnessing Christian.
The Very Rev. Clyde Angel (St. Mary's, Colonial Beach) and the Rev. George Barton (St. Thomas, Orange) were other Virginians who attended.
This reporter came away with the sense that many in the church had had the opportunity to share in the healthy aspects of grass roots evangelism that exists in the church today. I for one was pleased to note that the charismatics, while very much present, were keeping a very low profile. They, just as every other group, were not there to push their own convictions and methods, but to share in what was an excellent "trade-show for evangelism" and not a tent-show.