wfn.org | Newsline - Church of the Brethren weekly news update

[Church of the Brethren News Services]

Date:      August 20, 1998
Contact:  Nevin Dulabaum
V:  847/742-5100   F:  847/742-6103
E-MAIL:   CoBNews@AOL.Com

Newsline                                          Aug. 20 1998

News
1) Over 1,100 Brethren are set to attend the fourth biennial
     National Older Adult Conference at Lake Junaluska, N.C. 
2) "Let the Servant Church Arise!" will be the theme of the 213th
     Church of the Brethren Annual Conference, June 29-July 4,
     1999, in Milwaukee.
3) A new $75,000 initiative to combat hunger in Sudan is
     announced.
4) Four Emergency Disaster Funds grants totaling $43,400 were
     allocated this month.
5) Two Bosnian refugee families will be resettled next week by
     Emergency Response/Service Ministries; other ER/SM updates.
6) A new stewardship education and spiritual initiative, which
     will span 52 days, is set to begin Oct. 4.
7) One immediate and several future initiatives around the
     Fellowship of Brethren Homes are announced.
8) The sixth Fundraiser Kickoff Dinner of Atlantic Northeast and
     Southern Pennsylvania districts' annual disaster auction
     raised $20,000 in June.
9) Members of the Brethren Benefit Trust pension plan now have a
     third option with what to do with their funds upon
     retirement.
10) Harvey Leddy and Miriam Copp are new General Board-sponsored
     educators in Nigeria.
11) Deadline to register for the 1999 Nigeria workcamp is 
     Sept. 1. 
12) Mutual Aid Association announces a plan in an effort to
     increase its referrals.
13) Brethren Bible Institute offers five correspondence courses.
14) New action alerts and updates will be listed on the Church of
     the Brethren Washington Office's web site beginning Monday.
15) Spurgeon Manor of Dallas Center, Iowa, is the newest member
     of Fellowship of Brethren Homes.
16) Northern Plains District holds its annual conference.
17) The American Religion Data Archive will go online Sept. 1.

Feature
18) A recent survey details how computers could affect organized
     religion.

1) About 1,100 Brethren are preparing to attend the last major
Church of the Brethren gathering of 1998 - the fourth biennial
National Older Adult Conference, scheduled for Aug. 31–Sept. 4 at
Lake Junaluska, N.C. The conference is for Brethren ages 50 and
older. Sponsored by Association of Brethren Caregivers, NOAC will
blend worship and other main sessions dealing with older adult
issues with a plethora of activities, such as interest groups,
service projects, recreational and handcraft activities, music,
and sight-seeing. 

Brethren not attending NOAC can keep informed of the daily events
-- the NOAC daily journal will be sent each day over the Newsline
network; pictures and information from NOAC will be updated daily
on www.brethren.org.

2) The 213th Church of the Brethren Annual Conference will
convene June 29-July 4, 1999, in Milwaukee with the theme, "Let
the Servant Church Arise!" based on Luke 10:1-11. This theme was
selected last week during a meeting of the Annual Conference
Program and Arrangements Committee at the Church of the Brethren
General Offices, Elgin, Ill.

Subthemes for the six worship services "will highlight awakening
to leadership, spiritual centeredness, servant community,
reconciliation, evangelism, and empowerment/mission," said Duane
Steiner, Annual Conference executive director. Specific
scriptures, preachers and worship leaders for each worship
service are still being finalized.

Brethren artists are being sought to design this year's Annual
Conference logo. Entries are due by Nov. 5. For details, contact
the Annual Conference office at annualconf@aol.com or at 800
323-8039.

3) A new $75,000 Global Food Crisis Fund appeal has been approved
by the Church of the Brethren General Board Executive Committee,
at the request of David Radcliff and Merv Keeney, directors of
Brethren Witness and Global Mission Partnerships, respectively. 

A mailing will be sent to Brethren asking for support of the
appeal, which is needed because the food situation in Southern
Sudan has deteriorated rapidly over the past months. According to
the United Nations, 1.2 million people currently are at risk. In
June the U.N. classified the situation as a famine and the
situation is expected only to get worse, as rainfall is well
behind recent yearly averages.

This effort is in addition to Sudan: Partnership or Peace, the
General Board's three-year initiative to support child-feeding
programs, women's development efforts and peace training.

4) Four grants totaling $43,400 were allocated this month from
the Church of the Brethren Emergency Disaster Fund for projects
in Ohio, Haiti, Tajikistan and Bangladesh.

Twenty thousand dollars were allocated to respond to widespread
flooding in Ohio that occurred June 27-28. Affected were 2,518
households in 18 southeastern counties. Miller Davis, manager of
the General Board's Emergency Response/Service Ministries, said
volunteer labor is desperately needed.

These funds will be used to assist with establishing a long-term
project in some of the most severely affected areas. Interfaith
Response to Ohio Disasters has invited Church of the Brethren
Emergency Response/Service Ministries to start a repair project,
which it is hoped can begin by early September so some residents
can be back into their homes before winter.

An additional $18,400 was allocated to support ecumenical
assistance in Haiti. The funds will be used with those from other
relief agencies to provide a vocational education program, as
well as direct medical assistance for Haitians and for Dominicans
of Haitian descent who have been deported to the Dominican
Republic.

Two grants of $2,500 each were approved to assist with
international flood relief -- one for Tajikistan, which had 7,115
structures damaged or destroyed following severe rains and
subsequent landslides and avalanches. About 390 families will
receive hygiene assistance and 60 families will receive housing
reconstruction assistance. 

The other grant will assist with repair work in Bangladesh,
following severe monsoons. These funds will help provide basic
food and nonfood items and repairs to homes and infrastructures.

5) Two Bosnian refugee families will be resettled Aug. 27 by the
Church of the Brethren Emergency Response/Service Ministries. One
family, with five members, will locate in the Annapolis, Md.,
area. The other, with three members, will be resettled in
Thurmont, Md.

ER/SM also recently sent a 20-foot contained of medical supplies
and equipment to Nairobi, Kenya, on behalf of the Medical
Benevolence Foundation. Five 40-foot containers that included 400
roles of plastic sheeting, 16,000 five-gallon water containers,
7,200 blankets and 320 tents were recently shipped to Guam for
the U.S. Office of Disaster Assistance. These items will be
stored in Guam for use in future disasters. ER/SM also sent a
20-foot container of medical supplies to North Korea.

Through the first seven months of this year, ER/SM reports it has
resettled 196 refugees from 14 countries. It also has shipped out
2,015,000 pounds of blankets; quilts; layettes; and health,
clean-up and school kits, at a value of more than $7.5 million.
These shipments were on behalf of the Church of the Brethren and
Church World Service, Lutheran World Relief and United Methodist
Committee on Relief. ER/SM's New Windsor, Md., service center has
also shipped over 980,000 pounds of medical supplies, valued at
nearly $6 million, for agencies such as the Church of the
Brethren and Interchurch Medical Assistance. 

6) A new stewardship education and spiritual formation initiative
by the Church of the Brethren General Board for this fall will
provide Brethren a different kind of "Journey of Faith," one that
will build on fifty-two days of devotions in the home.

The devotions span from Oct. 4 through Nov. 26; from World
Communion Sunday through Thanksgiving Day.

In addition to the 52 daily guides to scripture, prayer and
discussion, the materials include a prayer calendar and weekly
worship resources.

"Journey of Faith is an invitation to read scripture, spend time
in prayer and share in discussion," explains project director
Beth Sollenberger Morphew, coordinator of the Area 2
Congregational Life Team. "It includes fun activities children
will want to participate in. And it is an opportunity to
strengthen the ties that bind us together as Brethren, praying
for one another and supporting the ministry and mission we do
together."

Working with Sollenberger Morphew on the task team named by the
General Board to create the program were Donald Booz, McPherson,
Kan., chair; Ruth Clark, Froid, Mont.; and Tom Zuercher, Ashland,
Ohio. The task team urges every congregation to participate.
Each Church of the Brethren congregation should receive a set of
materials ready for copying by early September. For more
information, contact Sollenberger-Morphew at
bsollenberger_gb@brethren.org or at 800 323-8039.

7) The first of several programs designed by the Fellowship of
Brethren Homes to help Brethren retirement communities develop a
collaborative approach to common issues and concerns has been
announced by the Association of Brethren Caregivers, which
manages the Fellowship as one of its ministry groups. The first
initiative, the forming of a new core group of collaboration
advisers, will be followed by the hiring of a new staff position,
the hiring a collaboration consultant and planning for a new
interactive communication forum.

These new initiatives are a result of recommendations from
participants of the Second Forum on Collaboration, a conference
sponsored by the Fellowship of Brethren Homes for administrators
of retirement communities and denominational leaders, which was
held May 3-5 at the New Windsor (Md.) Conference Center. 

"Over the past two years considerable enthusiasm for the
possibilities of collaboration emerged during the Forums on
Collaboration; now is the time for us to act on that enthusiasm,"
said Steve Mason, executive director of the Association of
Brethren Caregivers and Fellowship staff. "Given the highly
competitive and increasingly regulated environment in which the
denominational retirement communities must operate,
representatives from Brethren retirement communities are
beginning to recognize that their ability to continue to offer
quality service may be predicated on their ability to work
collaboratively."

The new Collaboration Core Group, which will work to formalize a
structure for focusing on collaborative possibilities, will hold
its first meeting Aug. 29-30 at Lake Junaluska, N.C. Core Group
members are Louise Alley of John M. Reed Home, Limestone, Tenn.;
Zenta Benner and Rodney Mason of Peter Becker Community,
Harleysville, Pa.; Charles Cable and Donald Clague of Brethren
Hillcrest Homes, La Verne, Calif.; Fletcher Farrar of Pleasant
Hill Village, Girard, Ill.; Tim Hissong of The Brethren's Home,
Greenville, Ohio; and Joyce Person of Pinecrest Community, Mount
Morris, Ill.

Future initiatives will include filling a new ABC staff position
to provide additional staff support for the Fellowship and its
programs; retaining Michael Winer, president of Synoptics Inc. of
St. Paul, Minn., as a consultant on collaboration efforts; and
establishing an online forum on ABC's web site for members to
discuss issues and pose questions. (ABC's web site has links to
the web sites of Fellowship members.)
     
Many of these new initiatives will be funded by a special
Brethren Homes fund.

"The foundation has been laid for an extensive and systematic
examination of the feasibility of collaboration for the
Fellowship of Brethren Homes," Mason said. "If there is any
benefit to working together in this way, I believe the mechanisms
are in place to discover them and then to implement them."

8) The Sixth Annual fundraiser Kickoff Dinner of Atlantic
Northeast and Southern Pennsylvania districts' annual disaster
auction was held June 13 at Hempfield Church of the Brethren,
East Petersburg, Pa. About $20,000 was raised for disaster
response through the price of admission for the 600 attendees and
an offering taken that evening. Entertainment was provided by the
Midway Men's Chorus.

This year's annual auction, the 22nd, will be held Sept. 25-26 at
Lebanon (Pa.) Area Fairgrounds. Last year's auction raised
$585,893.

9) Members of the Brethren Benefit Trust pension plan now have a
third option with what to do with their funds upon retirement.
Retiring plan members formerly had to use the money in both their
employee and employer accounts to fund a lifetime annuity, or use
their employer account to fund the annuity and roll over or
transfer the money in their employee account to fund an
individual retirement account, where their investment could
continue to grow.

While these two options for employee accounts are still
available, the BBT board in July voted that its pension plan
members can also leave their employee accounts in the Brethren
Benefit Trust investment program.

For more information, contact Don Fecher at
dfecher_bbt@brethren.org or 800 746-1505.

10) Harvey Leddy of Dayton, Va., and Miriam Copp of Richland,
Pa., have begun working as full-time educators in Nigeria on
behalf of the Church of the Brethren General Board.

In his salaried staff position, Leddy is teaching high school
choral music and possibly band at Hillcrest School in Jos. Leddy
and his wife and their infant daughter arrived in Nigeria earlier
this month and now live at the Boulder Hill compound, long used
as a residence for Church of the Brethren mission personnel.
Leddy is a 1998 music education graduate of Bridgewater (Va.)
College, with a concentration in vocal and choral music. His
membership is with Bridgewater Church of the Brethren.

Copp traveled to Nigeria in July to become the Church of the
Brethren's first teacher at the new Ekklesiyar Yan'uwa a Nigeria
(Church of the Brethren in Nigeria) Comprehensive Secondary
School, which is located on property adjacent to Kulp Bible
College near EYN headquarters and close to Mubi. Copp, who took
this assignment as a Brethren Volunteer Service worker, is a 1997
graduate of Hanover College. She is a member of Little Swatara
Church of the Brethren, Bethel, Pa.

11) Continued construction of a secondary school located close to
the headquarters of Ekklesiyar Yan'uwa a Nigeria (the Church of
the Brethren in Nigeria), near Mubi, will be the focus of the
14th annual Nigeria workcamp.   

Workcampers will also visit local churches, participate in
cultural events, and travel throughout Nigeria during the Jan. 16
to Feb. 15 work experience. Registration deadline is Sept. 1. For
more information, contact Global Mission Partnerships at
mission_gb@brethren.org or at 800 323-8039. 

12) Mutual Aid Association has announced it is trying increase
the number of referrals it receives from Brethren. Ten dollars
will be given to Brethren for any quote form that is sent to MAA
for processing from potential new members. "In the spirit of what
MAA is all about, the church member may request that the $10 be
paid to their local congregation," the announcement reads. For
more information, contact Debbi Hanson at 800 255-1243 ext. 12 or
at dhansen@maabrethren.com.

13) Five correspondence courses have been prepared by Brethren
Bible Institute instructors for Brethren who are unable to attend
Brethren Revival Fellowship's annual Brethren Bible Institute.
The materials include self tests and quizzes.

Topics offered include "Expository Studies in Colossians" by
Herald Martin ($12); "Bible Peace and Nonresistance" by Galen
Hackman ($8); "Expositional Study of the Beatitudes" by Galen
Hackman ($12); "Major Bible Doctrines (Part I)" by Harold Martin
($12); and "Major Bible Doctrines (Part II)" by Harold Martin
($12).

For more information, write to BBI Correspondence School, Route
10 Box 201-N, York PA 17404.

14) Some new updates and action alerts will be available on the
Church of the Brethren Washington Offices web site, beginning
Monday. Some of the issues that will be highlighted are  campaign
finance reform, immigration, School of the Americas, the Cuban
embargo and foreign aid. The Washington Office's web site address
is www.members.aol.com/washofc/main.html.

15) Spurgeon Manor of Dallas Center, Ia., is the newest member of
the Fellowship of Brethren Homes, bringing the number of
retirement communities that are organizational members of the
Association of Brethren Caregivers (ABC) to 21.

"I'm pleased that Spurgeon Manor chose to join the Fellowship of
Brethren Homes; they will now receive the benefits of membership
within this organization," said Steve Mason, executive director
of ABC and staff for the Fellowship of Brethren Homes. 

All retirement communities affiliated with the Fellowship through
membership in ABC are eligible to receive distributions from the
Gahagen Trust, to participate in the Long-term Care Insurance
program sponsored by ABC, to participate in an annual Forum of
leaders within the Church of the Brethren and in the Fellowship's
section of ABC's web site. Members also receive a subscription to
Brethren Homes Connection, a quarterly publication.

Founded in 1971, Spurgeon Manor is the only Brethren retirement
community in Iowa. 

16) With the theme "Giving Voice to the Spirit", the Northern
Plains District Conference met at the University of Northern Iowa
in Cedar Falls, Iowa July 31 - Aug. 2. Moderator Gordon Hoffert,
pastor of the Lewiston (Minn) Church of the Brethren, gave
leadership during the business sessions and preached at the
Friday evening worship service. Rodney Clapp, senior editor of
InterVarsity Press, was the guest preacher Saturday evening and
Sunday morning.  

The 100 conference delegates approved the adoption of a district
vision and mission statement, elected new board members and other
leaders, approved the requests of two congregations to
disorganize and approved changes in the district constitution and
by-laws. They also set Aug. 6-8 as the dates for next year's
conference.

The Brethren Agri-Urban Auction raised about $2,700, which will
be distributed to various ministries within the district.
Recently printed district cookbooks were available for purchase,
with the proceeds going to the two district camps.
Conferencegoers also participated in insight sessions, a youth
retreat, children's programming, Milestones in Ministry
recognition and an ice cream social. 

Sunday morning worship, attended by nearly 250 people, concluded
with the consecration of new moderator Roy Unruh of South
Waterloo Church of the Brethren, Waterloo, Iowa, and new
moderator-elect Wanda Button of Ivester Church of the Brethren,
Grundy Center, Iowa.

17) American Religion Data Archive, a project supported by the
Lilly Endowment that will provide free access to quantitative
data sets for the study of American religion, will be launched
Sept. 1. Its address will be www.arda.tm.

This service will allow users to search for topics of interest,
to save and print searches, to download data and file information
and to conduct basic statistical analysis. This resources is
located in the department of Sociology and Anthropology at Purdue
University.

18) One out of 16 teens questioned in a recent poll said that
within the next five years they expect to use the Internet as a
substitute for their current church-based religious experience.
According to the Barna Research Group, which conducted the poll
and released its findings earlier this year, this notion was most
common among teenagers who currently attend church regularly.
African-American teens were four times more likely than Caucasian
teens to rely on the Internet for their future religious
experiences (31 percent versus eight percent).

"If that seems outrageous," the report states, "consider the fact
that a recent survey among adults shows that 12 percent of the
adult population is already using the Internet for religious
purposes. The most common of those purposes is to interact with
others via chat rooms or e-mail about religious ideas, beliefs or
experiences. That represents about 25 million adults who rely on
the Internet for religious expression each month."

Seventeen percent of the so-called "baby busters" (ages 18 to 32)
use the net this way, compared to 11 percent of the "baby
boomers" (33 to 51), eight percent of "builders" (52 to 70) and
four percent of "seniors" (71 or older). According to the report,
an unexpected finding is that nonwhite adults are 60 percent more
likely to use the Internet for faith matters than white adults
(16 percent versus 10 percent). Also, nonChristians are nearly as
likely as Christians to seek spiritual input through the Net (10
percent versus 14 percent).

This data was obtained through two national telephone surveys --
620 teens and 1,006 adults were interviewed.

The teen survey showed that 60 percent use the internet, although
that usage is somewhat irregular. Only nine percent of teens use
the Internet every day; just one-third use it every week. Teen
segments most likely to use the Internet are boys, the youngest
teens (13 and 14 years old), Caucasians, "A" students, those
perceived by their peers to be leaders and born-again Christians.

George Barna, president of Barna Research Group, said the
research indicates that by 2010 "we will probably have 10 to 20
percent of the population relying primarily or exclusively upon
the Internet for its religious input. Those people will never set
foot on a church campus because their religious and spiritual
needs will be met through other means -- including the Internet."
He added that the most pressing issue in all of this is how this
"emerging church form" will be shaped by the existing church.

"The discomfort of today's church leaders with the cyberchurch is
not surprising. When Willow Creek Community Church (of
Barrington, Ill.) popularized the 'seeker church' format in the
late 1970s and early 1980s, the mainstream of the church
community rejected the approach as an invalid and nonviable form
of church, an inauthentic expression of biblical faith," the
report reads. "The cyberchurch will receive the same treatment
from today's church leaders."

Newsline is produced by Nevin Dulabaum, manager of the General
Board's News Services. Newsline stories may be reprinted provided
that Newsline is cited as the source and the publication date is
included.

To receive Newsline by e-mail or fax, call 800 323-8039, ext.
263, or write CoBNews@AOL.Com. Newsline is available at
www.brethren.org and is archived with an index at
http://www.wfn.org.