According to a March 29 Grand Rapids Press report, “The Rev. Richard McLain is leaving Leighton United Methodist Church in Caledonia in June,” to become “director of personnel of the Mission Society for United Methodists,” a “conservative,” “breakaway missionary organization based in Decatur, Ga.” Although “he assumes the new job with the support of his congregation,” his bishop, Judith Craig, disapproved the move because the 1984 General Conference had disapproved the organization of another sending agency in competition with the denomination’s Board of Global Ministries. The new conservative mission agency had been formed in 1983 by conservative clergy and. lay members who charged that the churches’ official agency had forsaken traditional “soul-winning evangelism” and adopted “liberation theology.” Pastor McLain explained that, while so-called liberation theology often emphasizes change in the social structure and doesn’t focus primarily on personal conversion, the new agency was returning to the church’s historic emphasis on changing a person’s life with the gospel first and then helping him or her change the society around them.
This local news report reveals a situation among the Methodists very like that which prevailed among the Northern Presbyterians a half century ago, when Bible-believing Christians could no longer in good conscience support official missionaries such as Pearl Buck who held that her religion could be the same if Christ had never lived. Toleration of that kind of unbelief in the official mission agencies drove J. Gresham Machen and others to organize an independent Board of Foreign Missions in 1933. For that he was suspended in 1935, and from that development there came the Presbyterian secession in 1936. The concluding chapters of Stonehouse’s biography of Machen seem remarkably up-to-date in relating that story.
Reading about the current Methodist developments and the earlier parallel among the Presbyterians raises the question how far we are from comparable developments in our church agencies. Our missionary and educational institutions and publications are not without defenders of liberation theology who show more concern about correcting social and political conditions than about evangelism. Our missions are undergoing a forced merger with the relief organization which is preoccupied with giving material help, and have to complain in the Agenda that even in formulation of the basic mandates the priority of gospel proclamation is being overlooked (p. 126). The foreign board also “requests synod’s assistance in making internal and external changes to regain the confidence of churches which is necessary for continued and increased financial support, . . .” (Agenda p. 130). The growing confusion about what we believe together with the denominational refusal to maintain our clear confessions of the gospel and the corresponding complaints of lack of confidence in and waning support of our official agencies suggest that we are rapidly “catching up” with the bigger “mainstream” denominations also in this way.
P.D.J.
