The 1940's and 50's were a seed-time for Faith at Work, and at the end of the latter decade the impact of the witness was discernible in the younger generation. By 1960, names which were to become household words in Faith at Work for many years to come, had begun to emerge, among them B.J. Cannon, Roger Fredrikson, Don James, Ralph Osborne, Howard Keeley, Robert Miller, Lloyd Ogilvie, Webb Howard, Margaret Peale Everett, Geoffrey Kitson, Gordon Hunter, and Bruce Larson.
The change was heralded in 1959 by the appointment to the Faith at Work staff of Bruce Larson, a young Presbyterian clergyman. Charismatic and gifted as a speaker and writer, Bruce had served churches in Illinois and New York State and completed a graduate degree in psychology. He had proved himself both innovative and judicious. Bruce was given no very clear description of duties but he was to be available to the churches as a "resource leader," exploring and developing the role of the laity.
Bruce went to work with a will. He wrote clearly and persuasively for the magazine, participated in innumerable conferences, conceived of a more systematic application of the concept of "lay witnesses" to local churches, helped to develop the format of the Talk-lt-Over-Groups (TOG's) for conferences, and served to initiate the Field Associate program.
The TOG's (the name is John Dutton's) were an improvement on the old style of after-meeting. Composed of 10-12 participants under a carefully selected leader, the TOG's helped to systematize the sharing process. The leadership was overwhelmingly male and clerical with relatively little female and lay involvement, but the TOG's did prepare the way for a new thrust later in the decade by giving a larger place to the gifts of all the people. It also served to encourage "team training" of group leaders, a significant step toward leadership development training.
The 1960's brought additional significant changes to the staff and family of Faith at Work. In 1963 Walden Howard became editor of Faith at Work magazine. A graduate of Wheaton College and Dallas Theological Seminary, Wally had served for almost 20 years on the Young Life staff, had edited Young Life magazine, had been Dean of the Young Life Institute, and had served for three years as youth editor of Gospel Light Publications.
Relationship with God, Self, Others and the World
With Wally's editorship, several new emphases were given to the Faith at Work magazine and to the organization as a whole. Although the idea of the four relationships was not new, the magazine began to interpret these relationships more specifically and more realistically. One noticed a growing emphasis on self-understanding and self-acceptance, a more realistic approach to the relationship to significant other people, and a tendency to interpret the relationships to the world in terms of social concern.
New writers dealing with these interests began to appear in the pages of the magazine: Keith Miller, Elizabeth O'Connor, Mary Lou Jacoby, Bob Miller, and Bill Milliken.
Closely tied to the growing relational approach was the development of relational Bible Study. This approach developed under the particular leadership of Wally Howard, but it was also adopted and used with increasing effectiveness by the entire staff.
By the middle of the 1960's many new influences were at work, both within and outside the organization. There was a growing awareness of the complexity of human response. The Oxford Group and, after it, the evangelicals who formed the Faith at Work vanguard were suspicious of feelings, of group dynamics, and particularly of psychotherapy.
When Irving Harris retired in 1963, Bruce Larson became President of FAW. In Faith at Work, October-November, 1963, Bruce wrote, "Honesty is the key to personal effectiveness. God uses my confessed, redeemed sins more than all the theology and psychology I've learned."
Generalizations are hazardous but it seems as if for Faith at Work, group activity until this time was concerned more with "thinking through" spiritual and moral decisions than in being vulnerable and expressing feelings. In an article on "The Group," (Faith at Work, July-August 1963), Lee Whiston wrote "Emotions often become so involved that thinking is cloudy."
But a change was on the way. In the first place, the new leadership was open to change. The TOG format yielded more and more to smaller groups of three, four, or six without appointed leaders but responding to questions presented to the entire group. Smaller groups allowed greater openness and emotional intimacy. In that environment new procedures developed.
These procedures were partly the outgrowth of the Human Potential movement and related behavioral principles and processes. Transactional Analysis with its emphasis on personal O.K.ness, the National Training Laboratories with their interest in honest and open encounter, Parent Effectiveness Training which argued for seeing the child as a person, Esalin, Gestalt and a host of other workshops, laboratories, strategies and training centers-all put the total human being at the center and pleaded for a greater awareness of personal growth and identity.
In support of these movements and programs was a host of young people disenchanted with organizational forms and the identities bestowed by roles and longing for the immediacy and freshness of person to person contacts. It is no accident that the Jesus movement came out of this time, that Young Life was given a new impetus for personal interaction and social ministry, that increasing numbers of young people began to attend Faith at Work Conferences.
Among these were some devoted young people who gravitated toward the inner city ministry in New York and particularly toward the leadership of Bill and Jean Milliken and Bo and Mary Nixon on the Lower East Side. Space does not allow a listing of these persons of whom many have remained active within the Faith at Work family but the roles of Nickie Shoemaker Rae and Heidi Frost deserve mention. Nickie and Heidi were students at Goucher College near Baltimore 1960-64. Because of the involvement of Sam and Helen Shoemaker and the gifts of the young women, the latter began to participate significantly in the leadership of Faith at Work Conferences here and in Canada. Nickie devoted time and energy to the Lower East Side ministry and worked on the staff of Faith at Work; Heidi was invited to join the Faith at Work staff for a ministry to youth shortly thereafter. Nickie was married in 1963 and joined her husband in a graduate project in Africa in 1964. Heidi went on to become Director of Field Ministries for Faith at Work, a position she held until her marriage in 1976. Heidi combined personal charisma with solid training and an intuitive grasp of where people were in terms of their interior struggles.
The presence of young people with these gifts and interests and the circle of friends they attracted influenced Faith at Work in an increasingly relational direction. This trend was given further support by the appointment of Ralph Osborne to the staff in 1967. Ralph was a Presbyterian pastor who had served churches in Illinois and Pennsylvania. His post just before joining the Faith at Work staff was the influential parish of the First Presbyterian Church in Paoli, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. Ralph had been active in the conference program of Faith at Work and had served for a time as a member of the board. He had become known as a compassionate and skillful counselor, an effective communicator and enabler of people.
Ralph's presence on the staff rounded out a gifted team of Bruce, Wally and Heidi which was to serve ably for the next three years. It was a team deeply committed to the primacy of Christ and the authority of Biblical faith and open to the fusion of these evangelical values with the insights of the behavioral disciplines. The result was a time filled with creative excitement.
Christian Wholeness
Under Bruce's leadership the concept of Christian wholeness was made central to the relational life style. To begin with, the staff discussed four aspects of wholeness: the confessional, volitional, emotional, and relational. Gradually the number was increased to include the conceptual and physical.
Because of increasing demands on Bruce's time as President as well as a conference leader, speaker, and writer, Ralph Osborne was invited to the position of Executive Director in 1967. Ralph retained this position through the transitional years 1967-73, carrying major administrative responsibility as well as participating in the conference and LTI programs.
Up to this point the field of Faith at Work had
not been carefully defined. Hence, planning got under way in the late sixties
to try a more systematic penetration of congregational and denominational
life. This led in the months and years that followed to three significant
program steps:
The result was the Leadership Training (Development) Program which was launched with another grant from the Lilly Endowment in the fall of 1970 and under the leadership of Karl Olsson. The year 1970-71 was used to develop a training institute model and in September 1971, the first Leadership Training Institute was held. Through 1976, 40 LTI's had been held throughout the United States and Canada with over 2,000 participants.
The main thrust of the LTI's was on the un-leader stance, accepting one's humanity and personhood as basic to relationships. The objectives of self-awareness, self-acceptance and self-delight, of group building, and of discerning gifts governed the institute program. Here as elsewhere there was an effort to fuse Biblical faith with insights from the behavioral sciences.
In 1974 those who had participated in previous LTI's were given an opportunity for additional training to equip them further for an enabling role in the communication of the Faith at Work lifestyle. Six LTI II's have since been held with an attendance of 300-400 and a very positive response.
In 1976 an experimental workshop for selected LTI II graduates was held in Albion, Michigan. Informally designated LTI III, the workshop was designed to provide additional skills for those interested in more specific enabling roles.
To begin with, the Leadership Training Institutes were staffed largely by members of the Faith at Work staff and by selected platform people from Faith at Work conferences and other large gatherings. But gradually the staffing was assumed in part by those who had completed LTI I and II training. For the last few years the leadership teams have been composed of Faith at Work staff persons, LTI I and II graduates, and some seasoned veterans from Faith at Work and other training events.
In 1976 Karl Olsson resigned his position as Director of Leadership Development. He was succeeded by Alfred Hanner, who had served one year as Associate Director. Hanner came from years of ministry as a pastor and training director in the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church.
The Leadership Development Program was strengthened and facilitated by substantial funds from the Lilly Endowment. The last of these grants which was terminated June 31, 1976, was designed to help devolve responsibilities for the LTI I program on denominations and agencies through a franchise contract arrangement. The purpose of this arrangement was to expand the range of the Leadership Training Institutes without enlarging the Faith at Work staff. By 1977 denominations, agencies, and the Chief of Army chaplains had entered into contracts for seven LTI's.
The Seminarian Program was a further effort to share the relational life style and the Faith at Work witness with denominations and local churches. The Faith at Work staff initiated a modest pilot program in 1970-71, but the real thrust came with the appointment of Stan Jones in 1972 and with the help of additional funding from foundations.
Originally designed to communicate primarily with seminary students rather than with administration and faculty through relational retreats, the Seminary Program expanded its scope. It provided weekend retreats for seminarians, and their wives and makes summer internships available to students in a number of churches, but it also played an increasingly vital role in programs of spiritual formation on seminary campuses and sponsored an annual workshop on spiritual renewal for representatives of seminary administrations, faculties, and student bodies.
Move to Columbia MD
In 1971 Faith at Work, which had had its beginnings in New York, moved its headquarters from Manhattan to Columbia, Maryland. An office building on Fifth Avenue, purchased with the help of generous gifts and loans by friends of Faith at Work, was sold and the proceeds invested in a new structure which was completed in Columbia in 1975. Designed for half occupancy by Faith at Work headquarters and half rental, the Sam Shoemaker Building, as it was named, faced some difficult months. Financial recession and the superfluity of office space in Columbia made renting difficult.
Other transitions marked the next five years. Heidi Frost was made Director of Field Ministries in 1970. For a time the Field Associates had been Faith at Work's "persons in Havana," leaders who could help convey the image of the Faith at Work life style to the community at large. Now they were increasingly seen as enablers of area teams, whose responsibility it was to provide support, training and opportunities for ministry to Faith at Work people in a specific area. Area teams would meet not primarily for the purpose of sponsoring regional Faith at Work conferences-although this could well be an outgrowth of their team process-so much as for discovering and developing a life together as a team.
The idea had much to recommend it. It offered to provide a needed continuity for Faith at Work activity in an area, and it seemed to promise a stable base for personal interaction and process. But in some places it floundered on the rock of geographical actuality. The Faith at Work people in some areas were too widely scattered to allow frequent encounters. When meetings were held, the demands for program planning clashed with those for personal caring and maintenance.
Many in the Faith at Work family who remembered the old conferences with their inspirational meetings and delightful personal encounters, supporting and supported by memories and traditions, deplored the change of emphasis.
Despite these problems, the Faith at Work conference program and area team effort continued. In Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky, under the strong personal leadership of Donald Duck, the conference program remained effective. In 1976 - Faith at Work Conferences were held in various parts of the country. In 1977 conferences were scheduled for Arkansas, Texas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New York, Washington, California, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
In 1973 Bruce resigned the presidency to devote more time to research and writing, and Ralph was made President of Faith at Work. The years which followed were burdensome. There were some positive gains. The LTI and Seminary Programs were finding wider acceptance. The magazine was growing in circulation and influence. Paula Breen's promotion to editorial responsibility was a strength. So was the growth of the financial development program. And in 1975 Ralph brought Al Hanner to the Leadership Development staff.
But the financial recession, the commitment to construct a new building in Columbia, the drying up of foundation grants which had helped initiate but were not designed to support programs on a year to year basis, and some changes in personnel combined to create and compound problems.
In 1975 Heidi Frost resigned from her position as Director of Field Ministries to be married, a decision which took effect the following year. And in 1976 Karl Olsson announced an early retirement from his position as Director of Leadership Development.
In the fall of 1976 Ralph Osborne gave his resignation to the Board to be effective Dec. 31 In his resignation, he gave as his reasons for his action, his desire to return to the parish ministry and his feeling that the presidency had become too burdensome.
Thus as 1977 got under way, only two of the New York staff remained at Faith at Work, both associated with the magazine. They were Walden Howard and Paula Breen. Looking back on the history of Faith at Work, this may not have seemed inappropriate. For Faith at Work had really begun as a magazine during the Calvary years of Sam and Helen Shoemaker, and Sam had said of it, "Faith at Work is a meeting in print."
But even the magazine had changed with the years. It was no longer just a "meeting in print," that is, an organ publishing the witnesses of a diversity of people who had met Christ in their daily life as well as the teaching of the leaders of the movement. As we have seen, Wally brought one kind of change in 1963. In 1969 after years of financial and staffing problems, all responsibilities except editorial ones, were assumed by Word Inc. in Waco, Texas. From a pocket size format, attractively but not dramatically printed, Faith at Work leaped in one issue to a multi-colored magazine format with a heavy emphasis on art and photography and a growing volume of advertising. It also became more "issue" oriented, dealing with a range of relevant topics such as "Marriage," "Singles," "Loneliness," "Work," "Women," "Midlife," "Healing," and "Mission."
Members of the Faith at Work family who had gotten used to the more direct, evangelical approach of the older order were asking questions of the newer one. They felt that everything had changed.
That was not true. Not everything had changed. In fact, most things remained unchanged. But some things had changed.
The matter of "change" itself had changed. When Sam Shoemaker talked about "getting changed," he meant originally being converted, a once-for-all dramatic reversal of direction. Faith at Work still believed in that change but now saw conversion as initiating a series of changes in all areas of personhood: the conceptual, confessional volitional, physical, emotional and relational. In other words, to be a Christian in 1976 meant being on the way to wholeness in all the parts of one's being and asking Christ to be the Lord of that process. Putting it theologically, justification was now seen as worked out in sanctification.
Another change had to do with self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-delight. The older order had put a great deal of emphasis on the four absolutes, among which was absolute unselfishness. Selfishness and pride were seen as the root causes of misery and destructiveness. The newer order certainly deplored arrogance and egotism but saw these behaviors and attitudes as consequences of a lack of healthy self-love. Hence the emphasis was less on inducing guilt than on recovering the fact of God's awareness and acceptance of us in Christ.
Still another shift came in the area of group process. The older order had seen the group as a place to air questions and to generate a spirit of fellowship and love, but had not perceived it as the arena of emotional struggle and growth. The newer order saw the group, at least potentially, as the microcosm of the Body of Christ, where one could dare to trust oneself to others, to share one's weaknesses and strengths, to confess, to confront, to affirm, to rejoice, to will, to weep, to pray, and to celebrate. In other words a place and a context where Christ was truly present to all in all.
A final change was in the area of gifts. Gifts were seen less as the given, dramatic capabilities of the few and more as the ad hoc blessings of the Spirit given for ministry. Seeing with Stan Jones that "the treasure is in the people," leadership was shifted more and more to all of God's people. In some way each could claim a gift for ministry: listening, vulnerable sharing, caring, touch, presence, support and affirmation, loving confrontation, logistics, enabling, prayer, healing, discernment, celebration, and many, many others.
What had not changed in the midst of all the changes was faith in the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; in the Bible as God's living word; in the need for a new birth in the Spirit; in the Church as Christ's Body; in the mission to witness and serve; in the promise and hope of Christ's appearance and his Kingdom.
This had not changed. As twenty official years came to an end, Faith at Work still felt itself to be one with all those who had affirmed their unity with the First Century Christian Fellowship 50 years before.
(End of Part 5)
[TOC] [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6]
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