wfn.org | Conference Speaker Thanks Wesley

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"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS" by SUSAN PEEK on Aug. 11, 1991 at 13:58 Eastern,
about FULL TEXT RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (3128 notes).

Note 3126 by UMNS on Aug. 14, 1996 at 16:20 Eastern (4854 characters).

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CONTACT: Thomas McAnally                          412(10-71){3126}
         Nashville, Tenn. (615) 742-5470             Aug. 14, 1996

Salvation Army General thanks 
John Wesley for her ministry

by Thomas McAnally*

     RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Salvation Army General Eva Burrows
of Australia, in a major address at the World Methodist
Conference, here Aug. 12, thanked Methodism's founder John Wesley
for enabling her ministry as a woman.
     The Salvation Army was created in the late 19th Century by
William Booth, an ordained Methodist clergyman. Burrows said Booth
attributed to Wesley the authority for some of the more
controversial aspects of the Salvation Army methods such as using
women in ministry. "So as a woman Salvation Army leader and
speaker here today, I say, thank you, Mr. Wesley."
     Wesley and Booth would agree that the imperative for the
Christian church today is to obey the Great Commission of Jesus
Christ to "go into all the world," she said.
     While a great deal has been done in response to Christ's
challenge 2000 years ago -- including entrance of 120,000 people
into the faith each day -- Burrows said, "We are ashamed that
there are millions who have never heard Christ's name.
     "We are ashamed that we have often gone about the task of
communicating the gospel in the wrong way, with Western
superiority or even without the empowering of the Holy Spirit."
     "Communicating the Gospel to all the World" was Barrow's
topic at the eight-day conference, which had as its theme, "Holy
Spirit, Giver of Life."
     While many Christians are looking towards the second coming
of Christ, she said, "there are two million people who are yet to
hear clearly of his first coming."
     Just as Paul sought to be relevant to the cultural context in
which his hearers lived, Burrows said modern evangelists are
coming back to that approach.
     "In the last few decades there has been a dramatic change of
attitude, a new awareness of and respect for cultural differences,
a desire to make the gospel culturally relevant and authentic
while being faithful to the revealed truth in Christ," she said.
     By using this "contextualization" to communicate the gospel,
she said young churches are grasping the gospel and are themselves
becoming missionary-minded.
     She also stressed the importance of today's evangelists
following Jesus' example to live and identify with the people they
serve. "That is true whether it is overseas in a country not your
own and an entirely new language, or with people of a sub-culture
within your own community," she said.
     "So often the Christian worker leaves the ethnic ghetto, the
rough housing area or the favella, the shanty town, or the red-
light district to drive in his car to his comfortable home in the
nice, suburban neighborhood," she observed. "So a great deal of
the effect of his work and witness is lost."
     It costs something to identify with another person, she
warned, "whether it is a matter of shedding your familiar
theological terms for the language of the pop culture of modern
youth, or the motorcycle gang or the baby boom generation." 
     Her audience burst into applause and laughter when she showed
them a hotel "do not disturb" sign and said "Too many Christians
seem to wear this like a sign on themselves. But they need to be
disturbed from their comfortable lifestyle, so that they will
serve and win their neighbors to Christ."
     She stressed that evangelism and social action must go hand
in hand but warned that the theology of liberation "is not
balanced by the proclamation of Christ with His call to conversion
and discipleship."
     She reported that the number of third world missions is
growing so fast that by the year 2000 there will be more non-
Western missionary evangelists than missionaries from Western
countries. Churches of Asia, Africa, and Latin American are no
longer "objects" of missionary activity, she said, but are agents
of mission themselves. "These Third World missions are strongly
biblical and evangelical in their theology and are also involved
in meeting human need."
     She also noted that non-Western missions have the advantage
of being freed from the criticism of being identified with
colonialism and evangelical imperialism."
     In conclusion, she called on the Methodists to give their
money, prayers and themselves to greater mission activity where
they live or around the world.
                               # # #

     * McAnally is director of United Methodist News Service,
headquartered in Nashville, Tenn.

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