Crusade Stymied on Catholic Follow-Ups

An estimated 3,000 Roman Catholics who made spiritual commitments during evangelist Billy Graham’s recent crusade in Anaheim will be getting evangelistic literature in the mail, but a Graham official who heads the crusade’s counseling programs said this week he is uncertain what other follow-up would be appropriate.

The official, Charlie Riggs of Nashville, Tenn., had earlier said the Southern California crusade, which concluded Sunday, was the first one he could recall in 28 years in which official Roman Catholic cooperation was not obtained to provide Catholic groups to receive people of that faith who made the commitments.

Riggs said the Graham organization usually establishes links with Catholic charismatic renewal groups and prayer fellowship groups to train them to use crusade materials in Bible study groups and in follow-up calls to the people who come forward at the end of each night’s service, when Graham asks people to “make a commitment to Christ.”

About 10% of the 33,000 respondents at the 10-night Southern California crusade identified themselves as Catholics, Riggs said.

Riggs said it is a longstanding policy of the crusade not to refer Catholics to Protestant churches. “We don’t think that is ethical,” he said.

Nevertheless, everyone who came forward during the crusades received a Bible study booklet and will receive a subscription to Decision, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn. magazine.

The crusade leaders also hope to get the Catholics into Bible study groups.

“We’re going through our files to see how many counselors (of the 10,000 who were trained in pre-crusade classes) are Catholic,” said Riggs, noting that some Catholics on an individual basis had joined crusade activities.

Crusade officials said they tried last fall and failed to meet with the Most Rev. William R. Johnson, bishop of Orange. The officials said Auxiliary Bishop John Steinbock told them that the diocese had its hands full with Renew, its own spiritual-renewal program.

Steinbock said in a brief interview this week, “We wished them well, but we did not want to participate in the way they wanted us to.” He said the diocese is “hoping that they would send Catholics to parishes where they live.”

Contrary to what Riggs said earlier, however, Auxiliary Bishop John Ward of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles was not invited to join in the follow-up phase of the crusade. “They gave us their assurance that they were not proselytizing Catholics, and we were never asked at any time to participate,” Ward said.

The Rev. Emory Campbell of Los Angeles, vice chairman of the crusade’s administrative committee, agreed with Ward’s assessment of the meeting, which took place about a month before the crusade and after a meeting with Cardinal Timothy Manning could not be arranged.

“Our intent was to seek his (Ward’s) involvement, but we were not as clear as we wanted to be,” said Campbell, who is a Baptist official and a frequent panelist on the popular radio talk show “Religion on the Line.” Riggs said he cited to Ward several examples of Roman Catholic participation in other dioceses, but the bishop did not indicate that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles wanted to do the same.

Juanita Meller, executive administrator of a large, predominantly charismatic renewal organization, said her group “probably would have” helped if asked. Meller said the Serve Catholic Renewal in the Church has worked with Campus Crusade and other evangelistic Protestant groups to counsel newly interested people with Catholic backgrounds.

The organization, better known by its initials SCRC and now in the process of establishing a new office in Redondo Beach, has more than 200 English-speaking and 200 Spanish-speaking groups in the three-county Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Meller said there are numerous English- and Spanish-speaking affiliates in Orange County as well.

Los Angeles Pastor Charles E. Blake, named one of the 15 greatest preachers in America by Ebony magazine last fall, has been appointed to succeed his late father as bishop of the Southern California First Jurisdiction of the Church of God in Christ.

The appointment makes the 44-year-old Blake, pastor of the 2,000-member West Angeles Church of God in Christ, one of the youngest bishops in the predominantly black Pentecostal denomination based in Memphis, Tenn. His father, Bishop J. A. Blake, died last November.

Blake will not preside over a district as large as his father did, however.

A spokesman said the Rev. George D. McKinney of San Diego, runner-up in voting by pastors for a new bishop, was also appointed a bishop by International Bishop J. O. Patterson, the denomination’s presiding bishop, during recent deliberations in Los Angeles. The Southern California Second Jurisdiction was created out of the first district, and churches in the Los Angeles and San Diego areas will subsequently choose which jurisdiction to join.

McKinney, 53, is pastor of St. Stephens Church of God in Christ in San Diego, which was destroyed by fire last year. The congregation has been meeting in a large tent on the church parking lot.

The United Methodist Church is trying to organize its first church in the Santa Ynez Valley in 100 years. The key may be in hiring a good organist, said the Rev. Lyman B. Ellis, who has researched the history of the picturesque area around Solvang.

In the 1880s, a Methodist church was started in Ballard by the Rev. Adam Bland, who had been the first Methodist minister to preach in Los Angeles.

After a strong beginning, the church invited a Presbyterian congregation to share its building and even the Methodist organist played for the Presbyterian worship services. But the Methodists eventually asked the Presbyterians to find another location, Ellis said.

“Alas, the organist, a vigorous young man of 17 years, had fallen in love with the daughter of the Presbyterian minister, and when the Presbyterians moved out, so did the Methodist organist,” Ellis said. “The Methodist church was never the same after that, and in a short time the congregation disbanded.”

Ellis, who previously served churches in Blythe and Los Osos, Calif., said an organ has been donated for the new congregation’s first service Sept. 8 in Veterans’ Memorial Building in Solvang.

The pastor said he is looking for an organist--if possible, “one of the great-grandchildren” of the young man who got away a century ago.