September 1997
Back Issues

Contents

• Norris Named Professor of World Mission
• Emmanuel Alumni in Campus Ministry
• From the President: The Voice of the Bulldogs
• Taber To Deliver Mission of the Church Lectures
• Emmanuel Announces New Scholarships
• 1998 Winter Intersession Classes
• Emmanuel Presents Youth Ministry Seminar
• Emmanuel’s Class of 1997
• Tour Italy with Chancellor Calvin L. Phillips

Norris Named Professor of World Mission

Emmanuel School of Religion is pleased to announce the move of Dr. Frederick W. Norris to the position of Professor of World Mission, a post vacated with Dr. Charles Taber’s retirement at the end of the 1997 spring semester. Dr. Norris previously served Emmanuel as Professor of Christian Doctrine. He will retain the title of Dean E. Walker Professor of Church History.

Dr. Norris is making this move with the recommendation of the Christian Ministries Area and the faculty. He will teach courses in World Mission, and will also teach some theology courses.

A committee has been formed and work has begun on the search for a Christian Doctrine professor.

Emmanuel Dean Eleanor A. Daniel said of the move, “We are pleased for Fred Norris’ decision to accept the position of Professor of World Mission. Dr. Norris is qualified by experience, education, and interest to make a significant contribution as a missiologist, as he describes himself in the following article.”

No one could replace Charles Taber. We all knew that. But in our original search we did not find a fit, so we looked at ourselves. After Mick Smith discerned that he was better placed in the Supervised Ministerial Education post working on integrating theology and ministerial practice, I recognized that I might be able to fill the world mission and evangelism position.

Why would I think that? I grew up in a minister’s home in which missionaries regularly circulated. After my formal education and two years teaching at Milligan College, I worked in Tübingen, Germany, with the European Evangelistic Society for five years. At Emmanuel I have always championed mission as the center of our community. And a series of things have occurred in the last four years which led me to this decision. As president of the North American Patristic Society in 1993-1994 I insisted that the study of the early church would be enhanced if we regularly included non-Western Christians as fellow students. During that period I was working as an associate editor of The Encyclopedia of Early Christianity putting out the second edition. We enlarged it significantly by looking at the missionary expansion of Christianity toward India, China, Korea and even Japan. In 1995 I joined the American Society of Missiology and that summer spent seventeen days in Brazil preaching for the Brazilian Methodist Churches who have sent us quite a few students. During 1996 Carol and I enjoyed four and a half months of our sabbaticals in Edinburgh, Scotland where I was a Fellow of the Divinity Faculty and sat in on classes about Africa and the Near East in the Center for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World. My research project, funded by the Pew Evangelical Scholars Program, involves looking at Cappadocian Christology for Non-Western Christians. While in Edinburgh, Andrew Walls, former director of the Center, asked me if I would work with him in writing a history of the Church, one concerned deeply with the mission of the Church. When I came back I wrote a small article on Dean Walker as a missiologist, the best category I have found to encapsule what his contribution was. I also began to meet with my sister, brother-in-law and the staff at First Christian in Kingsport trying to understand what a church looks like that is in many ways adapting the Willow Creek model. Indeed my home church here, Grandview, has a new worship service that is effectively reaching out.

As I glance at my library I see books collected over the last decade which I have wanted to read and now must make mine because of the courses I will be teaching. With the Tabers, the Smiths, and the Tim Ross family-former missionaries to Kenya now living next door to me and serving at Hopwood Christian Church-all in the area, as well as the growing number of our faculty who have studied and taught in other lands, I think we can continue the strong mission program Charles began at Emmanuel eighteen years ago.

—Frederick W. Norris

Emmanuel Alumni in Campus Ministry

Emmanuel School of Religion boasts several alumni who are making an impact for Christ on the campuses of secular universities across the United States. Campus Ministries provide university students with a Christian refuge from the traditional secularism which is dominant on many, if not most, university campuses. Discipleship, evangelization, nurturing, counseling, instructing, providing opportunities for corporate worship and fellowship are some of the ways in which Campus Ministers serve our Lord and His Church. And to this already impressive list of services rendered, one must also add the opportunities for introducing Christ to the international students who come to the United States to study and who are often curious about what they may perceive to be the religion of the United States.

From the President:
The Voice of the Bulldogs

C.S. Lewis said in an article on culture, “Every road out of Jerusalem is also a road into Jerusalem.” This was a comment on the church’s attempt to reach unbelievers by building roads to the culture in which it found itself. The liability of course was that in reaching out to the surrounding culture, the church also absorbed some of the values of that culture. The “road into Jerusalem” then raises the question as to how much the church can take on the trappings of the culture without losing its integrity and identity as the Body of Christ. It was this question that was central to the recent Doctor of Ministry course I taught entitled “Gospel and Culture.”

One of the eight books the students read in preparation for the class was Robert J. Higgs, God in the Stadium. Dr. Higgs, a native Tennessean with an engaging folksy sense of humor, is a retired English teacher from East Tennessee State University. His book is a perceptive criticism of the idolization of sports and sports heroes in American culture. No cloistered ivory tower scholar throwing stones toward the football field, Dr. Higgs played varsity football during his time at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. As I read his book I remembered seeing a sign held by an enthusiastic Buffalo Bills fan which said, “Kelly is God.” We do get carried away. My own penance came when I presented a lecture entitled, “Confessions of a Theological Cheesehead.” (It was good to see that the August 3 issue of The Lookout addressed the issue of sports and Christian faith.)

When I invited Dr. Higgs to discuss his book with the class I did not realize that one of the students would be a sports announcer. David Bruce is minister of the First Christian Church in Dayton, Washington. He recounted how his ability to reach people in the community was considerably enhanced when he became the announcer for the high school football games. He was hardly known when he was simply the minister of First Christian Church. But when he became “The Voice of the Bulldogs,” many previously closed doors were opened to him. David represented the “road out of Jerusalem”; Jack Higgs was concerned about the “road into Jerusalem.” No cheerleaders were needed to inspire a spirited discussion on this specific example of the tension between Gospel and culture.

There was an equally helpful discussion on the question of church marketing. Knowing that Paul Williams, president of the Go Ye Chapel Mission, would be auditing the course, I invited his good friends, Philip Kenneson and James Street, to discuss their book, Selling Out the Church: The Dangers of Church Marketing. Paul and his associates successfully use a number of contemporary marketing techniques in their church planting efforts in the Northeast. Phil and Jim convincingly express their concern for churches that actually become shaped by a marketing mentality and hence tend to look more like the local chain store than the Body of Christ. As the discussion began one might have expected quite a bit of horn honking on the roads in and out of Jerusalem. Quite the contrary! Phil and Jim were hardly the iconoclastic opponents of “church growth” some have suspected, and Paul was certainly not the “black marketeer” of cultural identification. Put into their discussion the perspectives of the 10 experienced ministers in the class and what you heard was a synthesis in which there was a balanced concern for the Scriptural integrity of the nature of the church and an appreciation for creative methodologies to reach the lost. Some uneasiness, yes. But maintaining the richness of the fellowship of the church requires living with a certain amount of uneasiness.

In my mind the course became a metaphor for the ministry of Emmanuel School of Religion. There must be a wholesome synthesis between faith and works, knowledge and practice, theory and application. The Scriptural integrity of the church cannot be sacrificed to cultural fads, nor can effective evangelism be sacrificed to a prissy sense of perfectionism.

Space does not permit me to talk about the other books we read for the course or the other helpful discussion leaders. But it has been our experience in the Doctor of Ministry Program that as faculty we are better prepared to teach students at the masters level because of the time we have in peer-group learning with D.Min. students. To use a military metaphor, “We are getting intelligence directly from the front.” Or I suppose I could say, when the bulldog barks, we listen.

—Dr. C. Robert Wetzel, President

Taber To Deliver Mission of the Church Lectures

Dr. Charles R. Taber, Professor of World Mission Emeritus, will present the 1997 Mission of the Church Lectures November 11-14 on the campus of Emmanuel School of Religion. The theme of the lectures is “Incarnation and Mission.”

Taber will present his lectures in the Mildred Welshimer Phillips Memorial Chapel at 11:00 a.m. each day. Individual lectures include:

• Incarnation: A Paradigm for Mission: Looking at the history of the concept in relation to mission
• The Style of the Incarnation: What is the significance for mission of the various dimensions of the divine insertion into human experience?
• The Agenda of the Incarnation: What did God set out to accomplish by means of the incarnation?
• The Power of the Incarnation: An exploration of forms of power and the significance for mission of the kinds of power Jesus chose to use

Dr. Anjelyne Dries of Cardinal Stritch College and Dr. Wilbert Shenk of Fuller Seminary will respond to each lecture.

These lectures are free and the public is invited to attend. For more information, call the Office of the President at (423) 461-1510.

Emmanuel Announces New Scholarships

Emmanuel School of Religion is blessed with nearly $1,000,000 in approximately 100 different endowed scholarship funds. These permanent funds range in value from $5,000 to over $100,000. Each scholarship award comes from annual income generated by the fund. The amount of funding necessary for an endowed full scholarship is $50,000; however, a partial scholarship may be awarded in the name of the donor once the fund reaches a minimum of $5,000.

We are pleased to announce the following new scholarships which have been established at Emmanuel School of Religion in recent months for the benefit of our ministerial students:

Dr. William S. Boice Scholarship: In order to honor his long-time pastor and friend, Carl A. Bimson of Phoenix, Arizona, established this scholarship at Emmanuel School of Religion to aid students preparing for ministry. Dr. Boice was minister of First Christian Church of Phoenix for many years. The late Dr. Carl Bimson was a faithful member and elder of that Phoenix congregation. He served as president of the great Valley National Bank in Arizona. It grew during his tenure to the 70th largest of the nation’s 15,000 banks. At the 86th annual convention of the American Banking Association Mr. Bimson was unanimously voted as their president. Bimson once said, “Selling products you believe in is the most stimulating work in the world.” He believed strongly in the work of Emmanuel School of Religion. His gift to the “Dr. William S. Boice Scholarship” makes this scholarship the largest endowed scholarship at Emmanuel, with well over $100,000 in principal. This scholarship is a most fitting tribute to a friend from a friend.

George Washington and Martha Washington Bradley Scholarship: This scholarship has been established by Dr. Martha Bradley in memory of her late husband and in acknowledgment of her interest in and support of Emmanuel School of Religion. Dr. Bradley, retired from a long career in education at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, has served on the Board of Associates at Emmanuel for many years and as Chair of that Board for 1996-98. This scholarship reflects Martha’s and her husband’s interest in young people and their concern for the spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Edgar Ethan and Ruth Jordan Hiatt Scholarship: The Hiatt Scholarship has been established by Mrs. Hiatt to honor her husband, Edgar, who died a few years ago. Mrs. Hiatt is a graduate of Butler University and has many ties to the founding fathers of Emmanuel School of Religion, including the first president, Dean E. Walker. The Hiatts have been long-time supporters of the seminary, both directly and through their church, Northview Christian Church in Danville, Indiana.

Robert W. and Ruth K. Hobbs Scholarship: This scholarship was established by Mrs. Hobbs to honor her husband, Robert, after his death last year. Robert had been a member of Emmanuel’s Board of Associates for many years and was very interested in Christian education and Christian causes. The scholarship reflects the Hobbs’s concern for young people and is set up to aid students pursuing a ministry with youth. Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs resided in Miami, Florida, before retiring recently to Lawrenceville, Georgia.

1998 Winter Intersession Classes

JANUARY 6–16

Seminar in Theology: Theology and the Arts
CD 795, Dr. J. Lee Magness
 
     This course explores theological implications of depictions of Jesus in literature, art, music, and film. Assignments include reading fiction and poetry; analysis of painting, sculpture, and architecture; auditions of musical performances, and viewing several films. We will analyze and discuss representative examples from various cultural contexts and from across the centuries of Christian creativity. Our goal will be a clearer understanding of the complex relationship among verbal and visual images of Jesus, our common faith in Jesus, and communication of that faith. 3 hrs.

The Minister and the Local Church
CMA 501, Dr. Calvin L. Phillips
 
     A consideration of the nature of congregational leadership ministry with emphasis upon the minister’s personal characteristics; relationships in the family, local church, other churches in the fellowship of Christian Churches, and community; and functions of the ministry such as preaching, counseling, administering, teaching, evangelism, and leading worship. 3 hrs.

JANUARY 20–30

Christian Social Ethics
CD 674, Dr. C. Robert Wetzel
 
     This course is a consideration of the teachings of Scripture and the writings of certain Christian ethicists concerning the responsibility of the church, as the Body of Christ, to make visible the life of Christ in its service to people. 3 hrs.

The Church’s Ministry to Children
CME 607, Dr. Eleanor A. Daniel
 
     A study of child development, from birth to age twelve, with attention to characteristics and needs, and to organization, methods, and materials to meet those need. The primary thrust of this course is to determine how to mobilize the church to teach children effectively. 3 hrs.

All classes meet Tuesday - Friday from 8:00 a.m. until 12:30 p.m.
For more information, contact the Office of the Dean at (423) 461-1520.

Emmanuel Presents Youth Ministry Seminar

Emmanuel School of Religion presents the continuing education seminar “The Many Faces of Youth Ministry,” led by John Cutshall on Saturday, September 20, from 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. Topics include: contemporary youth culture, community ministry, youth ministry: the dark side, and unlikely resources.

John R. Cutshall is a life-time minister to youth currently serving at First Christian Church in Marshall, Illinois, a medium-sized church in a small community. He holds BA and MA degrees from Cincinnati Bible College and Seminary, both in Christian Education. Registration, including lunch, is $35 per person. Contact the Office of the President at (423) 461-1510 to register or for more information.

Emmanuel’s Class of 1997

In June, 29 students graduated from Emmanuel with Master of Divinity, Master of Arts in Religion, and Doctor of Ministry degrees. The following lists the graduates and where they are currently serving:

• David Abulhusson continues to run his small real estate business
• Timothy Mark Brokaw now serves as Minister of Midlands Christian Church in Columbia, S.C.
• Mark Alan Brown is seeking a ministry.
• Robert Thomas Bruce now serves as youth minister at Northwest Christian Church in Phoenix, Ariz.
• Warren Steven Carmichael is seeking a Christian education position.
• Kei Eun Chang continues his ministry with the Korean congregation in Colonial Heights, Tenn., and has been accepted into the Ph.D. program at Fuller Theological Seminary for Fall ’98.
• John Mark Coleman now serves as minister of Northwest Christian Community Church in Vernon Hills, Ill.
• Larry Stephen Cook Jr. serves as youth minister at Belmont Christian Church in Roanoke, Va.
• Claudio da Fonseca Divino moved to the New York City area to form the Antioch Christian Church, a ministry to Portuguese-speaking people.
• David Melvin Doty now serves as associate minister of Powells Point Christian Church in Harbinger, N.C.
• Randall R. D. Ekstrom now serves as minister of Twin Oaks Christian Church, Eugene, Ore.
• Sandra Tempesti Fleming now serves as Adjunct Instructor of Humanities at Northeast State Technical College in Blountville, Tenn., and continues to teach “in lingua,” a cultural transition English course for international professionals.
• Chris Robert Hughes continues as Senior Minister of Cedar Grove Baptist Church, Johnson City, Tenn.
• Alex F. Jack now serves as minister of Central Christian Church, Greeneville, Tenn.
• Aaron Thomas Jones now serves as minister of Alta, Iowa, Church of Christ.
• Kevin Mark Keene is seeking a youth ministry position.
• Gary Franklin Lyons serves as minister of First Christian Church, Princeton, WV.
• Bruce Kevin Payton is raising support for CMF missionary work in Ukraine while continuing his youth ministry at Harrison Christian Church in Johnson City, Tenn.
• Miriam Yvonne Perkins is Associate Campus Minister at Ohio University.
• Carol Ann Pierson is seeking a position in Christian Education.
• Robert Perry Rigsbee now serves as associate minister of New Hope Christian Church, Columbus, Ind.
• Charles Lawrence Rodgers continues as minister at Bunker Hill Christian Church, Bluff City, Tenn.
• Lynn William Schleicher is seeking a preaching or associate ministry.
• Kyeong Hea Seo is seeking a position with a Korean congregation in the San Francisco Bay area.
• Kenyon Lane Smith now serves as Minister of Education at Rogue Valley Christian Church, Medford, Ore.
• Mark E. Stevens now serves as business manager and lecturer at Boise Bible College, Boise, Idaho.
• Robert Sidney Tiller Jr. continues as minister of Central Christian Church, Bristol, Tenn.
• Daniel Attwood Turner continues as senior minister of Galion, Ohio, Church of Christ.
• Cheryl Lynne Wissmann continues missionary work in the Philippines.