The Evangelical Free Church of America is...

The Evangelical Free Church of America is expected to adopt a document that would put on paper what has always been its practice--limiting clergy ordinations to males--when the denomination convenes its five-day national convention next week at Biola University in La Mirada.

The same document, if adopted, for the first time will grant ministerial licenses or credentials for both men and women in various church posts other than senior pastor. But women will be explicitly barred from ordination under recommendations by a committee that spent four years on the questions.

“We have a theological basis for that recommendation and a practical one--none of our churches are asking for women as pastors,” said the Rev. Thomas A. McDill, president of the denomination that is headquartered in Minneapolis. “Some women, out of principle, may object to the wording, but I think the document will pass.”

The theologically conservative denomination with a Scandinavian heritage is growing at the rate of one new congregation a week. The 140,000-member church has vowed to triple its number of congregations, now just under 1,000, by the year 2000.

Each evening session, including the Monday night opening, will be held at one of the denomination’s largest congregations, the 3,500-member First Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton. Senior Pastor Charles Swindoll, who will speak Tuesday night, preaches to an average of 6,000 persons each Sunday at the Fullerton church.

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His Holiness Karekin II, the spiritual leader of the Beirut-based Armenian Apostolic Church, began a monthlong visit to California on Thursday. The 56-year-old Oxford-educated pontiff will make numerous appearances in the Southland, including a lecture June 28 at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. He has planned several days of audiences with church leaders while he stays at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Since a political division in the 1930s, Armenian Apostolic churches in the United States have affiliated either with the See of Cilicia, which Karekin II heads in Lebanon, or the church still directed from Etchmiadzin in Soviet Armenia. Vazken I, the supreme patriarch for Soviet-based church, visited California last November.

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In keeping with their growing denominational “partnership” at the national level, the Southern California bodies of the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) will meet together for the first time next weekend at Pomona College in Claremont, starting Friday with a clergy luncheon. Church officials expect at least 1,500 persons from 140 United Church congregations and 120 Disciples churches to attend. Delegates will debate and vote on joint resolutions concerning health care, South Africa sanctions and economic justice, among other issues.

A two-hour program of music and mini-sermons decrying anti-Semitism is expected to draw people from about 100 churches today at 4:30 p.m. at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa. The Celebration of Friendship for Jewish People Worldwide was planned as a “united stand by caring Christians with the Jewish community against all expressions of anti-Semitism and prayerful support and concern for Israel” during the present Palestinian uprisings, according a spokesman for the event. The host church and Frank Eiklor, founder-president of Shalom International, are the sponsors. Speakers include pastors David Hocking, Tim Timmons, Chuck Smith, Billy Ingram, Jack Hayford and Hal Lindsay. Rabbi Chaim Assa of Temple Beth Tikvah in Fullerton will offer a response.

More than 1,500 United Methodist clergy and lay people Thursday opened the five-day annual meeting of the California-Pacific Conference at the University of Redlands. A report to delegates by the School of Theology at Claremont acknowledged there was “grave concern” last fall when business manager and comptroller John W. Kirkman admitted to seminary officials that he had taken $269,000 in school funds for personal use over a 14-month period. “Our recovery from this is almost complete and substantial sums have been restored,” according to the report, which gave no figures. Seminary President Richard Cain said last October that because of insurance coverage and promises of restitution by Kirkman, the seminary did not expect to lose any funds.