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Kenneth Neigh remarks to standing committee on urbanization, 174th General Assembly, May 21, 1962, side 2.
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- speaker[Lindquist, Raymond I., speaking] It is a great thing to be a part of the extension cord. [Neigh, Kenneth Glenn, speaking] It has been my sad and solemn fate across
- speakerthe years to always have someone make me feel like the dog
- speakerafter the headliner.
- speakerAt the conclusion of the drafting labors of your Standing Committee on National Missions, its
- speakerSecretary, an old friend of mine who is not widely known for his optimism, observed that the
- speakerdocument was not monumental. This is true. It is not a great utterance
- speakerabout the state of the Church or its nature. It is however, a thoughtful review
- speakerof the program, referrals to, and projections of, the Board of National Missions made in all too short a time. To this most adequate
- speakerdocument, may I add a footnote. May I add a statement of intention. Being more
- speakerconservative of speech, may I apologize for some lack of oratorical orthodoxy in refraining from quoting D. T. Niles [Daniel Thambyrajah Niles] or Lesslie
- speakerNewbigin and return to the oldhat, but old stand by,
- speakerArnold Toynbee. Dr Toynbee wrote recently, in effect,
- speakerthat America was somewhat like a man with two wives to support,
- speakerbut who had an all but forgotten child by a former marriage.
- speakerThe two wives, he continued, are Africa and Asia.
- speakerAnd they were coming in for a fulsome, albeit sentimental
- speakerattention, but the child, America's adolescent culture, was left to fend for itself.
- speakerIt is in the care for the abandoned child of the first wife that the
- speakerchurch still has a concern and National Missions has some
- speakerintentions. Last year, from this Assembly's platform in
- speakerBuffalo, speaking to this same report, a young
- speakerUnited Presbyterian layman, a professor of political science at New York
- speakerUniversity, told the one hundred seventy third General Assembly,
- speakeras only a layman could, what he thought of a church that runs away from the
- speakercity. Reporters call his speech the best of the Assembly.
- speakerIt was searing, frightening, intense, humorous and
- speakerconvicting. It was intended to make the church man enough to fight
- speakerfor its life. In a nation becoming more urbanised
- speakerwith every tick of the clock. The trouble was that he did not know
- speakerthat the fight that he had intended to start in his own church as
- speakera principle was largely over. Stems from a
- speakerconviction, based upon what I think is documentable experience,
- speakerthat the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America put
- speakerthe brakes upon its flight from the city more than a decade ago.
- speakerIt is also based upon the conviction that when the General Assembly
- speakerdirected its churches to minister to the neighborhoods in which they were located,
- speakerit set the denomination on the move in urban America.
- speakerFor in so doing, it added sinews and support
- speakerto its servants deep in the conflict. And, it is no new news to the
- speakerBoard of National Missions, its staff, the staff of any
- speakerurban synod or presbytery, or the committees thereof,
- speakerthat when trained personnel, programs that speak to the community,
- speakerand decent financial resources are available, your church can and
- speakerdoes slug it out successfully with the debilitating, demoralizing
- speakerforces of paganism. For example on Sunday
- speakerafternoon, when most of us were engaged in the annual rites of
- speakerself-congratulation which are the Sunday afternoon Board teas,
- speakera significant, but unusual occasion was being
- speakerobserved in Cleveland Ohio. The Glenville United Presbyterian
- speakerChurch was being formally organized by the Presbytery of Cleveland.
- speakerThis culmination of less than a year's work, elicited the following comment
- speakerfrom the head of the regional church planning office.
- speaker"The United Presbyterian Church is one of only two denominations,
- speakerwhich have had the courage and the vigor to keep the ministry of the Christian Church
- speakeralive in the Glenville area since the community became racially integrated."
- speakerNow the fact that such comments are fairly commonplace in this day,
- speakerand the fact that the list of points where urban culture
- speakeris being successfully confronted fairly long, this
- speakeris not a time to say that the church is leaping to the task.
- speakerOur witness suffers desperately from fiscal and personal anemia, which must be
- speakercorrected. Our witness, however, is also suffering. Suffering from
- speakeran addiction to negative cliches, which we mouth long after
- speakerto the truth has been sucked out. One is this. The church
- speakerruns from the city. Another, which is about ten years out of date, too,
- speakeris accusingly, "The church is the captive of the suburb. Now
- speakerthis seems to say that new churches are ministering to fugitives from the city.
- speakerAnd, that those who enter there, come only by letters of dismissal.
- speakerThe truth is that a healthy seventy two percent of the members over the last ten years
- speakercame on profession or reaffirmation of their faith in Jesus Christ.
- speakerAnd, it is sheer sophistry to suggest that these emerging,
- speakerburgeoning, restless populations, who move from city to city,
- speakercity to suburb, suburb to suburg, and from suburb back to the city, that they stand
- speakerany less in need of the gospel simply because they do not make their move
- speakerin prairie schooners. And if, as D. T. Niles suggests,
- speakerthe nut of the future does lie in Western Europe and America,
- speakerthen they probably need the Gospel even more.
- speakerNow, you will know from the document in your hands,
- speakerit does not confine itself to a report, on these two important aspects
- speakerof National Missions. As you read, you catch the short breath of urgency
- speakerin town. in town and country. Health, welfare, and education.
- speakerYou have already caught it from the commissions on radio and television and evangelism.
- speakerBut, I lift up new church development and the urban church out of the text.
- speakerBecause it is about them that one may best center the intention
- speakerof National Missions. And what is that intention? It is to
- speakercarry out the will of God for this our day, as directed by this
- speakerGeneral Assembly. This we will do, in the face of thread
- speakerbare structues, historic prejudices, financial strictures,
- speakerCouncilar pressures to often belabored in any Assembly.
- speakerThis National Missions will do by continuing to update its administration
- speakerupon the principle that administration is best exercised
- speakerwhere the service is rendered. And, that is where you live.
- speakerThis National Missions will do by establishing budgeting procedures
- speakerwithin National Missions that will provide mobility and assure the
- speakerchurch that its National Missions resources are directed at the proper
- speakerpoint at the proper time. This it will do it by providing
- speakerplanning procedures and planners, that in the areas assigned to
- speakerNational Missions, the church may precede and never again follow
- speakersocial and cultural movements. This National Missions will do by
- speakerproviding within it, evaluating processes by which the far-flung
- speakerprograms of National Missions will be held up and judged in the light of each other
- speakerand in the company of the peers. This it will do in
- speakercocnert with the other boards and agencies, as well as within the
- speakerecumenical circles of cooperation described in this report. For example,
- speakerurbanization is the result of industrialization. And, this
- speakerproblem is not national, it is a worldwide problem.
- speakerThis National Missions will do by a realistic appraisal of its needs.
- speakerAnd an even more realistic appraisal of its own ability to
- speakermeet its needs. Much of this it will do through its national
- speakerstaff, which is as fine a cadre of leadership as is found in
- speakerProtestantism. As a practicing pastor,
- speakeras an administrator in theological education and synod and presbytery,
- speakerI have, like you, levelled many charges against the national church and its
- speakeragencies. As a Board secretary, I have heard even more.
- speakerBut the most serious, I have not heard. I think it's this.
- speakerNever have the church and the judicatories and the agencies so
- speakerconspired to put carpet slippers on the soul of the church, for never have we
- speakerbeen so concerned with eliminating our problems at a discount.
- speakerThis is by way of saying that the tin cup and pencil approach to the needs of
- speakerToynbee's disinherited child are unworthy of the church. The total
- speakerresources of the church must be mobilized, including its credit, wherever
- speakerthat credit is found. To this end the Board of National Missions has
- speakermade a ten year projection of capital required, capital requirements.
- speakerThis amoung achieves the astronomical total of some eighty-five million
- speakerdollars. It includes urban new church development, mission
- speakerchurch and institutional needs. Obvious amount it appears that the
- speakerBoard over ten years can anticipate twenty-eight million three
- speakerhundred fifty thousand dollars from board resources or funds now.
- speakerassigned to it. Of the remaining amount, ten million dollars
- speakercould be obtained by additional borrowing from the New York.
- speakerLife insurance company. The General Assembly of nineteen fifty-eight
- speakerapproved a ten million dollar loan from New York Life for the purposes of new church
- speakerdevelopment. This is borrowed fund is about exhausted.
- speakerAnd, if the United Presbyterian Church in the USA is to continue to
- speakermeet its full share of the Protestant responsibility for our spirialling
- speakerpopulations, we must provide. Therefore, the Board of National
- speakerMissions, in concurrence with the General Council, requests you to
- speakerpermit the borrowing of ten million dollars additional from the New York Life,
- speakerin a method to be described by the General Council, and in the
- speakeraddenda to your report. Provision is being made for
- speakerother Board needs by redefinition of existing rules
- speakerand by new plans of financing, not to be
- speakerconfused or in conflict with, the proposed capital funds campaign. This all is
- speakera great deal of money, especially for someone
- speakerfrom a small town from the high hills of Ohio. And, I agree with the classic statement of William Inge in his play, "The Dark
- speakerat the Top of the Stairs," as apropos for the church and National Missions.
- speakerDarned, if I don't think it's sometimes easier, sometimes easier, to pioneer a
- speakercountry than to settle down in it. Mr. Moderator.
- speakerWhat you have just heard was Mr. Neigh [Neigh, Kenneth Glenn] speak at the General Assembly in nineteen sixty-two.
