Methodists: The Challenge of Fortune

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Mediocre Pietism? The new breed of minister wants a "tough" Christianity; instead he finds in Methodism a mediocre pietism with an increasingly narrow range of appeal. Rural pastors complain that the hierarchy has forgotten the needs—and the value—of small churches. Urban preachers sadly note that newcomers to city slums turn, if at all, to Pentecostal and Holiness storefronts—and rarely to the Inner City's empty cathedral-size Methodist churches left over from the days when the neighborhood was an enclave for the wealthy. What is left as an audience for Methodism is the suburb; in this kind of environment, charges the Rev. Thomas Oden of Enid, Okla., church thinking "is oriented around an unBiblical legalism which acts on the assumption that when we do good works for God, he accepts us because of our goodness."

But other Methodist voices are not yet ready to see the Mene, mene on the wall. "We've never been stronger," insists Lawyer Parlin. "Methodism is not a dying or decadent church," adds Dr. Earl Brewer of the Candler School of Theology in Georgia. "It is a giant of a church—justly proud of its past, relatively satisfied with its present, but slightly timid about its future." Still another voice that chimes in—loud and clear—to defend Methodism is that of its bishop for the Los Angeles area.

At 56, Gerald Hamilton Kennedy is still young for a bishop but old in term of service (16 years)—and he stands just about midway in the spectrum of Methodist opinion. He shares the concern for relevance that motivates the young ministers; with the older hierarchs, he speaks proudly of the church's accomplishments. Along with Bishops Fred Corson of Philadelphia, James Mathews of Boston, Richard Raines of Indianapolis and John Wesley Lord of Washington, he ranks among the most respected and influential figures in the church. "He's the best of the old wing," says one radical minister. "He's bright, creative, not stuffy at all."

Traveling the Connection. Kennedy is certainly not, as he puts it, "a very bishopy bishop." He is far more at home in sports clothes than in the hair shirt of clerical garb. He drives to work in a sports car—currently a white Karmann Ghia Volkswagen, which followed an MG, an Austin-Healey, and a Nash Metropolitan. In an age of episcopal administrators, Kennedy is primarily a preacher who happily forsakes paper work for the chance to deliver a ser mon. He takes seriously the injunction in the Methodist Discipline that bishops should "travel through the connection," and averages 50,000 miles a year on inspection and lecture tours.

It is unthinkable to Kennedy—or to anyone who knows him—that he would ever have accepted anything but what he calls "the greatest calling in the world." Born in Michigan, the son of a Methodist lay preacher, he grew up in California, and with his parents' faith. "My whole life has been centered in the church," he says. "I went to church in my mother's arms and slept on the back seat while my father was finishing his Sunday evening sermons. It seemed inevitable to me that the ministry was my calling as long ago as I can remember."