wfn.org | Good News

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"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS 97" by SUSAN PEEK on April 15, 1997 at 14:24
Eastern, about DAILY NEWS RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (194
notes).

Note 190 by UMNS on July 1, 1997 at 15:44 Eastern (6571 characters).

Produced by United Methodist News Service, official news agency of
the United Methodist Church, with offices in Nashville, Tenn., New
York, and Washington.

CONTACT: Linda Green                              378(10-71B){190}
         Nashville, Tenn. (615) 742-5470              July 1, 1997

Good News celebration 
emphasizes revival and renewal

     LANCASTER, Pa. (UMNS) -- Revival and renewal of the United
Methodist Church was the focus of this year's Good News
celebration here June 23-26.
     From the opening ceremony to the closing session, the annual
assembly of the self-described renewal movement and evangelical
voice within the denomination concentrated on the theme "Stirring
Up and Spurring On."
     More than 500 United Methodists from across the country
listened as speakers used the theme to advance ideas about
changing the denomination in a way Good News supporters claim is
more in keeping with Scripture. Proponents also called on the
church to reclaim its doctrinal identity and be centered in Jesus
Christ. 
     Thirty years ago, the organization and its Good News 
magazine was one of the first movements established to voice
concern about the health of the larger church and the United
Methodist Church in particular. The bi-monthly magazine, mailed to
approximately 68,000 people, provides a forum for discussing
differing perspectives on policies embraced by the denomination 
and seeks to witness to Jesus Christ.
     According to the Rev. James V. Heidinger II, chief executive,
"Good News is not the only player on the block." He said that "if
there was ever a time the church needed theological exchange, it
is the day in which we live." 
     Good News' directions over the years have come from the
struggles in the life of the early church, he said. "We thank God
for the tension the church sometimes has to go through. We need
the kind of sharpening that comes from theological exchange."  
     Citing the homosexual debate and the recent annual conference
votes on the Reconciling Congregation Program, Heidinger said "the
issue is not whether we are to be in ministry to those struggling
with sexuality but whether the church will affirm that practice
and behavior."
     Another sponsor of the convocation was the Northeastern
Evangelical Connection. It was organized in 1994, as an
affiliation of United Methodist clergy and laity in the northeast
who "sense  a common bond in desiring to stand for scriptural
orthodoxy as it applies to the life, ministry, mission and
theology of the United Methodist Church."
     A new connection of evangelical clergywomen was launched
during the convocation. Representatives of Good News-affiliated
groups also made presentations and provided displays.
     In the opening session, the Rev. Mark Horst, pastor at Park
Avenue United Methodist Church, Minneapolis, and member of the
Confessing Movement Steering Committee, gave a background lesson
on the Confessing Movement in the United Methodist Church. He said
the movement began as a broad coalition of traditionalists,
Wesleyans, centrists and evangelicals to proclaim the lordship of
Jesus Christ in the denomination. 
     The movement exists, he added, to enable the church to
retrieve its classical doctrinal identity and live it out as
disciples of Jesus Christ.
     He claimed there are "cracks in the foundation" of the church
today, membership decline and "bureaucratic inefficiency."  The
cracks have occurred because of the denomination's "inability to
confess with clarity, with enthusiasm and with a decisiveness the
faith of the Christian Church." 
     Criticisms of the Confessing Movement, he said, "are probably
the best signs of the cracks in the  basement." 
     In particular, Horst addressed a document titled "The
Critical Challenge to the Confessing Movement," written by
seminary presidents, prominent clergy and theologians. 
     "I think the content of this [document] demonstrates that
very significant leaders in our church are in danger of confusion
in scripture, in creed, in Wesleyan heritage, in theological
integrity and in social witness."
     According to Horst, "we verses they" arguments say the church
has substituted Scripture and interpretation of Scripture for the
word of God. He said the church has allowed issues of biblical
interpretation to come between it and God's word, which "cuts like
a sword, crushes like a hammer and stands like a rock in a storm
against wind and wave."
     The church is in crisis, he continued, because leaders see
"talking about Jesus Christ as an exercise on Christocentric
idolatry." He said Jesus must be at the center of the church and
that renewal will come when he is lifted up. "There is power in
the name of Jesus, in the name of God."
     Also speaking of a Christ-centered church, Faye Short,
executive director of the women's program arm of Good News, said
her RENEW network is comprised of "women of faith and principle
whose Christian heritage is founded, not on mere human invention,
but on divinely revealed truth."
     She based her address on "A Christian Woman's Declaration,"
to be released by the Ecumenical Coalition on Women and Society, a
project of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.
     RENEW's ministry is two-fold and calls the Women's Division
and United Methodist Women of the churchwide Board of Global
Ministries to accountability and works for renewal with the women
of the church. Policies and practices of the Women's Division have
been "more secular than sacred, and often very politically
partisan, leaning far to the left theologically," she claimed.   
     Another speaker, the Rev. Idalmis Garcia, an Afro-Cuban
pastor of Iglesia Christiana Juan Wesley Methodista Unida, Miami,
Fla., declared that America is in distress and while the church
constantly utters that children are the church of tomorrow, "the
church of tomorrow has some scary statistics." 
     She said, the church needs people who will stand up for "thus
sayeth the Lord." She said it doesn't need "microwave" sermons but
"spirit-filled people with a spirit-filled message."
     Other speakers for the celebration included: David Stevens,
executive director of the Christian Medical and Dental Society; 
the Rev. Violet Fisher, a district superintendent in the Eastern
Pennsylvania Annual Conference; the Rev. Scott Field, pastor of
Wheatland-Salem United Methodist Church, Naperville, Ill.; the
Rev. Seth Asare, pastor of the United Methodist Church of
Newtonville, Mass.

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