wfn.org | Great Commission event spans 'conservative'-'liberal' gap

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

April 11, 2002 News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
10-71B{156}

By Alice M. Smith*

ATLANTA (UMNS) - In the United Methodist Church, where differences in
theological outlook and methodology can create polarization, sometimes
bringing "conservatives" and "liberals" together is difficult - even to
talk.

Yet when Candler School of Theology at Emory University approached
evangelism and mission leaders from differing perspectives about a
"Consultation on the Great Commission," people were willing and even eager
to participate.

"We didn't have a second of hesitation from anyone, either from the
cooperating agencies or from the people invited to speak," said the Rev. W.
Stephen Gunter, associate professor of evangelism and an ordained elder in
the North Georgia Annual (regional) Conference, who was chairman of the
consultation.

He called the April 3-6 conference an "historical gathering in a sense,"
since it brought together "the people who study this in formal kinds of ways
with people who practice it on a day-to-day basis with people who oversee
the programmatic emphases of the denomination."

In addition to United Methodist-related Candler, the other official sponsors
were the denomination's Board of Discipleship and Board of Global
Ministries; the Foundation for Evangelism; and the World Methodist
Evangelism Institute, which has a dual relationship with Candler and the
World Methodist Council. 	

Other groups in the church were represented in focus seminar leadership -
three more seminaries, including Asbury in Wilmore, Ky., Perkins School of
Theology at Southern Methodist University and Reutlingen in Germany; United
Methodist Volunteers in Mission of the Southeastern Jurisdiction; and the
Mission Society for United Methodists, an independent missionary-sending
agency in the church.

International speakers included Andrew Walls, former missionary and retired
professor at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland; Archbishop Ayo Ladigbolu
of the Methodist Church of Nigeria; and the Rev. Grace Imathiu, a native of
Kenya serving as senior pastor of First United Methodist Church in Green
Bay, Wis.

"There were other groups whose presence would have made the conversation
even more complex and interesting, but this was a good place to start," said
the Rev. Russell Richey, Candler's dean.

In addition to plenaries and workshops, participants gathered for worship at
several different points, including evening services in Atlanta United
Methodist churches. New missionaries were commissioned April 4 at Decatur
First United Methodist Church, with North Georgia Bishop Lindsey Davis
presiding. Part of Candler's goal in bringing together a diverse group,
Richey said, was its desire to project a "centrist" image in the
denomination.  "Candler lives in this [conservative versus liberal] tension
all the time ... within the student body and faculty. We're friendly to
conservatives and evangelicals, and we wanted people to know that."

Another draw was the chance to explore a central tenet of the Christian
faith, the Great Commission, most often quoted from Matthew 28:19-20: "Go
therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey
everything that I have commanded you.  And remember, I am with you always,
to the end of the age."

Similar mandates are found in the other three gospels, noted the Rev. H.
Eddie Fox, director of World Evangelism for the World Methodist Council,
whether "it is 'go into all the world,' in Mark; 'feed my sheep, feed my
lambs' in John; or 'you shall be my witnesses' in Luke."

"The mandate is a global one, Fox emphasized. "Within the world, there are 2
billion people yet to hear the name of Christ, and another 2 billion who
know the name but don't acknowledge him as Messiah. May we do our part in
fulfilling this Great Commission."

As top executive of the Board of Discipleship, which provides evangelism
resources for local churches, the Rev. Karen Greenwaldt said her agency was
concerned about a "lack of passion" for the gospel among church leaders and
the fact many "don't read the Bible, don't pray, don't study scripture and
don't talk with another one another about what it means to be a disciple of
Jesus Christ."

"What does it take," she asked, "to move us from being people who hear the
[gospel] story and are afraid to tell it to being people who are
passionately committed to telling the story in every way we possibly can?"

The Rev. S T Kimbrough, head of mission evangelism for the Board of Global
Ministries, pointed out the integral relationship between evangelism and
mission. "We should be very clear," he said, "there is nothing we do in
mission in which there are not implications for evangelization."

Over the past two decades, he noted, cooperation across general agency lines
has increased, particularly between the Board of Global Ministries and the
Board of Discipleship. "No single entity of our church has the resources to
effect all that needs to be done or should be done in the name of Christ,"
Kimbrough said. "Cooperatively, we can be much more effective if we
demonstrate unity of the body of Christ in what we do."

Bishop Richard Looney, who served South Georgia before his retirement and is
now president of the Foundation for Evangelism, said the consultation came
at a "fullness of time moment" in the life of the church. "The church seems
to be ripe again to talk about making disciples. We've discussed and debated
it for years. It's time we learned to do it."

In the opening plenary address, Bishop Kenneth Carder of the Mississippi
Area denounced as "heresy" the belief that evangelism can be "bifurcated"
into a social gospel and an evangelical gospel.

"Those who speak of personal salvation are considered evangelicals," he
said, "and those who address issues of poverty and racism and other social
concerns as constitutive to the gospel are labeled as liberals."

The two can't be separated, he said, since Christ's sovereignty extends over
the entire world as well as the human heart, and his power can change the
universe, neighborhoods, congregations and individuals.

"Limiting Christ's salvation to individual human souls and defining
evangelism primarily as church growth while ignoring social structures,
political dominations and economic forces is to operate from a very
deficient Christology that reduces the cosmic Christ to a private chaplain
of individual personal fulfillment," Carder said.

The bishop built his address around two Mississippi churches, both in
economically and racially changing communities - one that kept drawing into
itself and is closing in June and the other that is thriving since it
reached out and brought in people living in the surrounding neighborhood.

"A Christ-formed church," he said, "walks the streets of its neighborhood
and welcomes the strangers, those who are different.  Strangers become
friends and together they work for neighborhoods that reflect God's justice
and compassion for the transformation of each other."

In a powerful luncheon talk, Archbishop Ladigbolu gave his testimony, both
as a recipient of Christian evangelism and now as an evangelist. A member of
Nigeria's ruling family, Ladigbolu was a leading Muslim figure when he
encountered the gospel in 1962, through the words and actions of a young
member of the Methodist Church. After his conversion, he was exiled by his
family for four years but later was allowed to return home. Since then, his
mother and four of his brothers have become Christians.

"Muslims, difficult as they may be, can be reached with the gospel," he
said. "They can still be reached."
# # #
*Smith is editor of the Wesleyan Christian Advocate, the newspaper of the
United Methodist Church's North and South Georgia annual conferences.

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United Methodist News Service
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