The Peace House

The Roots of Resistance: A Prequel

A SEQUEL BY JOHN T. SCHWIEBERT 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: Beginnings

CHAPTER 2: Growing Differences

CHAPTER 3: Fighting Poverty?

CHAPTER 4: Living in LaGrande

CHAPTER 5: Dropping Out

CHAPTER 6: Refocusing

APPENDIX

INTRODUCTION

Five years ago, on the occasion of Pat’s and my 40th Wedding Anniversary, I determined to publish a memoir which I titled Resistance and Redirection: Our First Forty Years.  I was obviously anticipating that Pat and I would have some more good years left and we have not been disappointed.  So it was that after we celebrated our 45th Anniversary earlier in 2020 I prepared a 5-year sequel to bring our Peace House/Metanoia story up to date.

Unlike that original forty year introspection which appeared in book form (available for order on Amazon or at www.griefwatch.com), this sequel does not appear in print.  It is available, however, to read (and/or print out, if you wish) at the following web page:https://www.thepeacehouse.org/resistance-and-redirection-20152020

But now, before my memory fades even more than it already has, I feel led to compose a prequel covering the years or my life and ministry before Pat and I formed our partnership in the mid-1970s.  I was recently confirmed in my interest in this part of my past when I was clearing out some very old files and discovered a folder containing copies of the Threshing Floor, a relevant but seldom reverent commentary on institutionalized church life in the Idaho conference of the Methodist Church, which I, along with several ministerial and lay colleagues, cranked out periodically on an old mimeograph machine back in the 1960s.

Rereading words that my young clergy and lay friends and I had written more than 50 years ago reminded me that my theology of the church had begun to develop even earlier than my 40-year memoir might seem to suggest.  The reader will be able to access quotations from those early documents in the appendix at the end of this prequel.

Also in my archives I found and re-read old church newsletters that I composed and mailed to parishioners during the first years of my ministry in Idaho and Eastern Oregon.  These triggered old memories, most of them precious!

As with the two previous memoirs, I am not writing for a large audience.  I will be content if these recollections are of interest to family and friends who are curious about details of the faith journey that led to my particular understanding of ministry, and of the nature of the church. These understandings have clearly been at odds with some of my colleagues in pastoral ministry and many leaders in the denominational church hierarchy.  My recollections in this final memoir of earlier times will show how early in my ministry these differences began to emerge. 

CHAPTER ONE:  Beginnings

The denomination known as The Methodist Church and later the United Methodist Church has been my home since early childhood.  I was one-year-old when The Methodist Episcopal Church North and two other Methodist denominations merged to form The Methodist Church.  About that same time my parents Erwin and Mary Schwiebert joined the Methodist congregation in Caldwell, Idaho (population 10,000) where my father served on the faculty of The College of Idaho.

From that time on my twin sister Jean and I, and later my brother Erwin, Jr. and our younger sisters Linda and Nancy, attended Sunday School and Worship with our parents every Sunday without question.  After I turned 12, Sunday evenings were devoted to the Junior Hi youth group.  In high school I was a loyal member and later President of the Senior Hi Methodist Youth Fellowship.  Upon graduation I enrolled in The College of Idaho and became a leader in the College Student program sponsored by our local church. 

Church life was in my bones and I could scarcely imagine ever being disconnected from it.  So when I was invited to attend a retreat where youth from throughout the Boise Valley were going to be learning about opportunities for “full-time Christian service,” I went and found a warm welcome and serious interest.

At first I supposed that full-time Christian service for me could involve being hired as a church musician—organist and choir director—and/or perhaps also a Director of Christian Education which was a career possibility in larger Methodist congregations at the time.  These were fields of service to which I was already devoting myself in my local church, so why not make a career of my involvement.

As I explored such possibilities I entered college expecting to pursue a major in education and a minor in music.  I had already studied piano, violin, viola and voice in high school.  I had been a student conductor of the high school choir and orchestra.  To these skills I added pipe organ lessons after I entered college. 

By my sophomore year in college, however, I changed my major from education to philosophy because I craved a more stimulating and challenging curriculum.  Then, with encouragement from the College Chaplain Al Denman and the head of the Philosophy Department Lee Underhill I began to set my sights on pastoral ministry.

Several experiences during my college years helped in the formation of my understanding of Christian faith and my personal call to pastoral ministry.  The College of Idaho was and still is a highly rated liberal arts college.  It had been founded by Presbyterians in the late 19th century and while I was a part of the campus community, it maintained a regard for religious life as part of its generally liberal curriculum.

By long tradition, regular course classes were suspended for 5 days each year to accommodate a Religious Life Week observance where visiting lecturers spoke, offered seminars and sat in on student and faculty conversations focusing on religion and theology.  The RL Week I remember most was when two campus ministers from separate colleges in Montana spent the week with us.  

The two were close friends even though they argued with each other from two very different theological perspectives.  One was considered theologically liberal, probably more Unitarian in his thinking than most Methodist pastors would be.  The teachings and example of Jesus were more important to him than the Christological formulations that are found everywhere in the New Testament.  His favorite Gospels were Matthew, Mark and Luke.

The other campus minister was, by his own definition “neo-orthodox.”  His favorite Gospel was the Gospel of John.  He was more ready than the other to embrace the mystical parts of the accounts about Jesus in the New Testament.

I found myself drawn more to this second understanding. 

As opportunity presented itself I occasionally gave preaching a try. It was a common practice for small rural churches without a regular pastor to “fill their pulpits” with guest preachers—retired clergy, lay speakers and college students who took turns leading Sunday worship services in these places.  My occasional assignments included the Methodist church in the tiny desert town of Jordan Valley, Oregon—60 miles and one-and-a-half hours away by car—plus churches in the rural villages of Sweet and Apply Valley in Idaho

My own local church too gave me opportunities to assist in leading worship and encouraged me to pursue a career in ministry.

During my sophomore year in college I joined a group of drama students who were discovering and performing serious plays that explored religious themes.  With encouragement from the college chaplain, the following summer I attended a religious drama workshop at Lake Forest College near Chicago.  It was my first extended trip away from my family and my Idaho hometown and I managed it by myself on a Greyhound bus.  The trip included several extra days in Chicago savoring the delights of the city, at least those available to a nineteen year old!  The return trip, also by bus, included a side trip through Rapid City, South Dakota and a chance to see the Passion Play that is performed outdoors every summer near the town of Spearfish.

The following September I returned to my religious drama cohort and shared what I had learned.  This led to our planning a 1959 Spring Vacation tour of churches in southern and eastern Idaho where we performed a new play, Christ and the Concrete City.  Also, in the College Drama department I was cast as Rev. Parris in The Crucible, a Broadway play written by Arthur Miller.

My senior year was packed with activity: writing a major paper on the religious philosophy of the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, as revealed in his several novels, preparing and playing a senior recital on pipe organ, deciding what would be my choice among theological schools where I could aim for a Master’s Degree, and making plans for marriage with a new fiancé. 

Marva Gass, also a student at the College of Idaho, and I had sealed our engagement in the summer of 1959 when my graduation was still a year away, and Marva would then have finished her sophomore year.  My choice for graduate school was the Theological School at Drew University in Madison, N.J.  This could have meant a long postponement of our marriage, but I persuaded Marva to marry me in the summer of 1960 and come with me to New Jersey, even though I would only later appreciate what a sacrifice it would turn out to be for her.

Three months after my graduation from the College of Idaho, Marva and I were married in the sanctuary of the Meridian, Idaho Methodist Church on Sunday afternoon, September 4, 1960. Our 1953 Studebaker was heavily loaded and well hidden from potential wedding pranksters and we managed to depart before nightfall for the long drive across the United States and a new life together in a two bedroom student apartment.

Marva had already enrolled in Brothers’ College, the undergraduate school at Drew.  Fortunately she was able get a job working at the University Library to help us pay the bills.  Regrettably, this rather snobbish eastern school declined to accept some of the perfectly valid academic credits she had earned from a western college they had never heard of, so that set her back a bit.  But she learned a lot that would stand her well, although unfortunately she would not be able to earn enough credits in three years to complete her Bachelor’s degree by the time I had earned my Master’s Degree.

I was able to be employed for my three full years of seminary as a student assistant pastor at the Methodist Church in Livingston, New Jersey, just five miles from the Drew campus.  I also managed to handle two other part-time jobs so that we could meet all our expenses by the time of my graduation without having to borrow money.

While at Drew, we enjoyed living just 25 miles from New York City.  Whenever we could we sampled the offerings of that great metropolis, attending Broadway shows, trendy off Broadway productions, the Metropolitan Opera, and (of course) Radio City Music Hall.  

One summer I answered an invitation to be a guest preacher on two Sundays for a small Reformed Church in the New Lots neighborhood of Brooklyn.  I guess my sermons were at least adequate, because, after the second service, the chairman of the church Board of Directors asked me if I would consider becoming the pastor there.  He then gave Marva and me a tour of the vacant church parsonage, of which he was most proud, and which he supposed would surely tempt us since it was the only house with a yard in a neighborhood of dingy, ancient, multi-story apartment houses.  The parsonage did not tempt us, but I realized that I was attracted to the possibility of ministry in multi-cultural urban places of poverty.  This would be a stark contrast to my previous experiences in Idaho.

As a seminary student I felt like an intellectual midget among scholarly giants.  I listened a lot to professors and older students who seemed much smarter than I, but I learned a lot by listening and regained a lot of confidence by the time I finished my final year.  I had studied Old Testament with Bernhard Anderson, and New Testament with Howard Clark Kee the authors respectfully of the textbooks that had given me a start in my undergraduate studies in religion.  I had learned the basics of Greek language from Robert Funk before he later became famous as the founder of the Jesus Seminar.  I wrestled with deep theological questions under the tutelage of Carl Michalson.  And with Nell Morton, one of only two female faculty members at Drew and arguably one of the first feminist theologians in America, I learned how to read the Bible on my own—instead of having to rely solely on the opinions of other people or commentaries written by Biblical scholars.  And throughout my ministry over many years I would teach lay people in the churches I served how to do the same.

One thing Marva and I were both sure about: by the spring of 1963 we were more than ready to return to the West.  I obtained permission to receive my diploma by mail so that we could leave campus before the graduation ceremonies in order to arrive at Rupert, Idaho in time to attend the Idaho Annual Conference gathering where Bishop A Raymond Grant would announce the name of the local church to which I would be appointed to serve my first year of pastoral ministry.

We had not been back to Idaho for three years.  This time, after selling our old Studebaker for $50, we made the trip across the country in a shiny new Volkswagen bus, not yet knowing where we would be living next.

Only after our arrival at the Conference site did we learn that we would live and serve in Shelley, Idaho.  Because the previous pastor of the Shelley Community Methodist Church took longer than he should have to move his family out of the parsonage next to the church, we had to settle for only one Saturday night in an almost empty house before I would meet the congregation and preach my first sermon the very next morning.

I was only 25 years old when I suddenly found myself immersed in the demands of serious pastoral ministry in a town whose population was 85% Mormon and our church was the only non-Mormon church in town.   I was suddenly facing parishioners, many much older that I, who were looking to me to walk with them through personal problems, family crises, grief, and other life challenges with which I had very limited personal experience.  

For example, one morning I got a call from a mother telling me that her 10-year-old son had just been taken to the hospital in Idaho Falls with a dangerously high fever. I rushed to the hospital as quickly as I could and met the parents as they were coming out of the room where their child had just been pronounced dead because of meningitis. Feeling helpless I asked, “What can I do to help?”  The answer, “You can go to the schools where our other two children are attending class. Explain to them that their little brother will never be coming home and try to explain death to them while you bring them home to be with us.”

On November 22 of my first full year of preaching my preparation for the following Sunday’s sermon was well underway when we all learned that President John F Kennedy had been assassinated.  Of course there was no way the sermon I had been preparing would suffice.   Somehow, in a short space of time I had to figure out what I was called to say to a shocked and grieving congregation in the face of this tragedy.  And I was pretty much a stranger to grief myself because in my young life the loss of a loved one had not yet touched me personally, let alone the public loss of a U.S. president.

I was forced to mature as leader in a very short time, and I stumbled more than a few times.  But the people of our congregation were generous and forgiving and Marva and I developed some solid and satisfying relationships with the people there, especially young families who, like us, had small children.

Our first child, Rodney was born during our second year at Shelley. The birth came about 3:00 in the morning at the hospital in Idaho Falls.  After meeting my new son I left Marva and Rodney at the hospital and went home at 7:00 AM hoping to catch up on some sleep.  But when the phone started ringing off the hook I got a taste of another feature of small town life that city folks could scarcely imagine.

Apparently the morning DJ from a local radio station phones the hospital to learn of the births that have occurred during the previous 24 hours so they can be celebrated on the air.  So instead of sleeping I was receiving congratulations from our church family who knew about the birth even before I had a chance to announce it myself.

As a new proud father I gave myself fully to sharing the parenting of an infant, even as I carried out my pastoral duties, so that Marva could continue her undergraduate studies at Idaho State University in Pocatello—a 40-mile daily commute.  

Pastoral ministry in this small town was different from what I later experienced after I moved to the city.  In Shelley it was not at all unusual or unexpected for the pastor to knock on the door of a parishioner without calling ahead to make an appointment.   Indeed such surprise visits were welcomed.  I made it my personal goal to visit in each of the sixty or so homes in my parish at least four times every year.

I also discovered that, in a small town, there were townspeople who were not directly connected to any church but who considered the local Methodist minister to be their pastor—a kind of de facto town chaplain.  And I became casual friends with some of them.

We also maintained bonds with the other Methodist ministers who served inMethodist churches spread from Ashton, Idaho, near Yellowstone Park, to the city of Pocatello.  On the first Monday of each month we would all travel to one of the parsonages and share a potluck lunch together, while we shared stories about our lives in ministry.

Marva and I also developed a significant personal essional friendship with Willie and Ann Ludlow, when, in 1964, he was appointed to serve as pastor of a neighboring congregation, St Paul’s Methodist Church in Idaho Falls, just 10 miles from Shelley.  I will have more to say later about Willie and his influence on my ministry as our story moves forward.

After nearly two years in Shelley we felt a sense of contentment.  Our first experience as a parsonage family couldn’t have been more ideal.  We would have been happy to remain longer with the people of the Shelley Church.  But that prospect was soon and suddenly interrupted.

CHAPTER 2: Growing Differences

In my 2015 and 2020 Memoirs, to which this current offering is a prequel, I report my experience of finding myself at odds with the leadership within the Methodist denomination to which I have been connected my whole life.  In retrospect, as I explain below, I now realize how much these nagging disagreements with the church institution can be traced back to these first years of my ministry.

Marva and I supposed, in mid1965, that we would continue to grow our friendships with the people of the church in Shelley for several more years at least before being appointed to serve elsewhere.  But that was before I received a telephone call in early May of that year from my Methodist District Superintendent. He told me that Bishop Grant had in mind next month to appoint me to become part of a pastoral team in a new Larger Parish ministry in Union County Oregon, which, though in another state, was a part of the Idaho Conference.  He told me that if I accepted the appointment our family would live in a parsonage in the town of Union, and I would preach weekly at the Methodist churches in Union and in the village of Cove, 8 miles north.  I would be working closely with 3 other ministers who would be serving churches in North Powder, Elgin, LaGrande and the Methodist campus ministry at Eastern Oregon College, located in LaGrande.

The superintendent also said that I could say no to the Bishop Grant, if I felt I should remain in Shelley and that he, the Superintendent, would call me the next day to learn of my response.

Marva and I discussed the proposal and decided that when I got the call the next day I would respectfully decline.  But the next evening the call came not from the Superintendent but from Boone White the pastor of the Methodist church in LaGrande.  Boone was a person for whom I had a great deal of respect.  Before I could tell him we had decided to say no, he strongly urged me to say yes to the Bishop’s proposal.

He said that he personally would value working with me in the Larger Parish, where he would be the team leader.  He also tempted me by suggesting that the bishop had his eye on me, viewing me as a person with leadership potential—someone who, if I cooperated with the hierarchy of the church could move quickly up the ladder of success and be appointed to serve larger and more desirable churches in the coming years leading towards a successful retirement with distinction.

When I agreed to accept this new appointment I told myself it was because I didn’t want to disappoint Boone White, not because I cared about the approval of the Bishop and whatever other benefits and advantages might follow.  But perhaps I was actually confused and uncertain about my motives as I confronted for the first time and up close the realities of “power over” and preferential treatment in a hierarchical system.

I got an even clearer picture of how that system operates when I was told that I was to tell no one about my immanent change of appointment, keeping the secret until the second Sunday before the convening of the Annual Conference in early June.  I would then be allowed to announce to the Shelley congregation from the pulpit that I would be leaving almost immediately, that I would preach my final sermon with them on the following Sunday and that Marva, Rodney and I would then move out the parsonage starting the next day, leaving the space for a new pastor who would arrive shortly after.

I inconspicuously disobeyed these orders twice. First I invited 6 key lay people in the Shelley congregation to meet privately with Marva and me a week before I would be making the announcement of the congregation, so that these six would be more emotionally prepared to support others in their grief and disappointment when they heard the announcement the following Sunday.

Second, before the public announcement, I phoned my parents and told them I would soon be moving to Union, Oregon.  They were not disappointed because it meant that our family including their first grandchild, would be closer to their home in Caldwell, Idaho.

When I told them I would also be pastoring the church at Cove my mother said, “Oh, wasn’t it sad what happened to the Cove church.” “What happened?” I asked with surprise.  “Oh,” she said.  “I read in the newspaper that the Cove Methodist church building was destroyed by fire just last week.”  I had to tell her that no one had bothered to let me know!

When I arrived at Annual Conference and greeted Orville, he said, “Oh by the way, John, you and I need to talk.”  “That definitely would count as an understatement,” I replied.

From him I learned that the very same evening that Boone White was convincing me to say yes over the phone, Orville had been conducting a meeting with the Cove church leaders in the Cove church building when he announced that their beloved lay pastor who had been serving them for about 10 years would soon be replaced by a fully ordained clergy Elder whose name—mine—would soon be revealed to them.  An angry exchange then erupted between Orville and the church leaders.  I knew Orville and had already suspected that diplomacy was not one of his strengths. 

Orville then told me that very late that same evening, after the meeting was adjourned, the Cove volunteer fire department was called to an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the total destruction of the building. Rumors about the cause of the fire were rampant, of course, until a short circuit in the electrical system, unrelated to the heated exchanges during the meeting, was found to have been responsible.

“So,” said Orville. “One of your first tasks at Cove will be to oversee the planning and construction of a new building for the congregation.  I’m sorry I can’t help you in this because I don’t dare show my face in that community as long as I remain the District Superintendent.”

 In spite of lingering parishioner hostility to the Annual Conference I was able to win the hearts of the people in Cove while we designed and built an attractive frame building on a slope overlooking the beautiful Grand Ronde Valley.  

I also had positive relationships with the people of the Union Church.  My Sunday routine included leading an hour of worship and preaching at Cove starting at 9:45 AM, before traveling the 8 miles back to Union just in time to join a service that started at 11:00 AM.

During the third of my four years in Union County, I was also given responsibility for conducting a third Sunday service at 8:00 AM at the Methodist Church in the town of North Powder—25 miles to the south.

Marva and I both managed to be active in local community activities in the town of Union and we certainly enjoyed living in the Grande Ronde valley surrounded by wooded mountains and a favorite camping spot on Catherine Creek which also ran through the center of town.  Our camping trips now included our second son Andrew who arrived during our second year in Union.

I got to renew my interest in the dramatic arts when Marva and I helped produce two short plays in the local community center. The first was a morality play, “The Sausage Maker’s Interlude” followed by a good old fashioned melodrama whose title I can’t now recall!

But during our time in Union Marva and I, who had not been very politically active during our college years, suddenly found ourselves confronted with the reality of our nation’s military involvement in Vietnam.  I knew next to nothing about Vietnam until Willie Ludlow educated me about U.S. foreign policy in S.E. Asia.

We then joined with Willie and connected with a circle of Methodist clergy and lay families across the Idaho Conference who were not only opposed to U.S. military action in the far east, but who, like us, were wondering why most Methodist Church members seemed to hardly know about, let alone care about, U.S military involvement anywhere. 

Soon I was writing pieces in our weekly church newsletter about the Vietnam War and other current social issues like the civil rights movement and the farm worker movement led by Cesar Chavez.  I felt compelled to get our churches more in touch with the clear commitment to non-violence in the New Testament witness and the almost forgotten declarations in our own Methodist social principles that call for churches to oppose war as an instrument of foreign policy and to witness and act in public struggles for social and economic justice. 

In 1967, our small cohort of clergy and lay families across the Idaho Conference decided to publish a newsletter that would raise serious questions about the state of the Methodist churches in our area.  Calling ourselves the Committee for Renewal we began to connect with a larger church renewal movement that was emerging throughout the country as it began to question the very form and function of church life that we had come to experience it in the mid-20th century. 

Publishing in our case meant cranking out editions every month or so on various church mimeograph machines and mailing them to local church pastors and lay leaders and anyone else who cared enough to send a dollar to help pay for the paper and ink.

Unlike “underground newspapers” which were not uncommon in those years, ours was not to be underground in any sense but rather, as some would say, “in your face.”  The articles were signed by the persons who composed them and who took full responsibility for the opinions expressed, even when they were openly critical of specific policies and practices within the Idaho Annual Conference, and of the leaders who promoted and maintained these policies and practices.

We called our periodical “The Threshing Floor,” because, as our masthead proclaimed, we were “separating hopes from illusions” within and beyond the Idaho Annual Conference.  Writers and editors besides me included the aforementioned Willie Ludlow plus Miles Hutchins, Richard Burdon, Virden Seybold, Ralph Lawrence, Bob McNeil, Glen Selander, Dennis Mullins, Dwight (Levi) Williams, Ed Stanton, and Milton Jordan, Jr., who after his 1966 graduation from Perkins School of Theology in Texas, had been appointed associate pastor of Trinity Methodist Church in Idaho Falls.

There were others also who were supportive of, if not directly involved in, our efforts, and I apologize to those whose names and contributions I have failed to recall. 

Those of us who worked on the Threshing Floor became like an extended family.  Geographically we were separated by large distances in churches spread over the areas between LaGrande, Oregon and Idaho Falls, Idaho—a distance of 450 miles by car.  In order to meet in person, which we attempted to do several times a year, many of us hopped in our cars after our respective Sunday morning church activities and traveled with our spouses and young children to the designated place of meeting. We enjoyed supper and conversation until late Sunday evening, then stayed overnight in sleeping bags.  On Monday, after breakfast together followed by Monday morning and afternoon work sessions we exchanged warm goodbyes before heading home.

Since most of our churches were in communities scattered along the Union Pacific mainline that connected southern Idaho and eastern Oregon, some travelled overnight by passenger train, connecting with traveling companions along the way.

Of these gatherings, Willie Ludlow was moved to write, in one issue of the Threshing Floor:

If official annual conference meetings are often deficient in their ability to maintain meaningful fellowship and a sense of purpose, not so the area meeting sponsored by the Committee for Renewal.  Even those who endured two nights of round-trip train coach travel to make the recent meetings agreed that their efforts were rewarded. And even though the meetings have lacked organization and polish, the urgency, sensitivity, and fraternal warmth have more than justified the time and energy devoted to them.

Without discrediting any of my colleagues, I especially credit Willie Ludlow and Milton Jordan with influencing my theological development during our times together.  They were fearless in their prophetic witness and they helped me to become fearless also!

Among the church related issues we actively, but unsuccessfully, promoted in The Threshing Floor were the equalization of pastor’s salaries within the Idaho conference, opposition to the deference paid to ordained clergy coupled with the subordination of non-ordained lay people, and denunciation of the prideful preference for our own denomination in the face of an expanding ecumenical movement.

In fact we even proposed that Methodist churches in Southern Idaho join with churches of other denominations in the region—Presbyterian, UCC, Disciples of Christ, and others to form a new ecumenical body to be known the “Church of Southern Idaho.”  This kind of ecumenical merger was not a new idea, having already been implemented in a new “Church of South India,” and “The United Church of Canada.”

Our “lets-get-serious” ecumenism may have been one reason why a proposal suddenly surfaced that would bring about a merger between our Idaho Conference and the Oregon Conference of the Methodist Church. The pitch was that a merger would strengthen the Methodist churches in Idaho; the subtext was that a merger among Methodists would reduce the need for an Idaho church merger involving other denominations.  

Our hopes for an ecumenical movement in southern Idaho faded fast as the push for merger prevailed leading to affirmative votes to merge in both conferences in June of 1968.

Most of the brothers and sisters in our Threshing Floor cohort actively opposed the merger for a variety of reasons.  Chief among these was that merger would only postpone and not resolve the real problems that the church was facing and which we were trying to address via the Threshing Floor.  But once merger became inevitable we accepted the invitation of Pastor Ralph Lawrence to gather at Pioneer Methodist Church in the St John’s neighborhood of Portland in August of 1968 to figure out what the next steps for the Threshing Floor would be. Ralph, who had joined our group when he was serving as a pastor in the Idaho Conference, was the only clergy person in our renewal group who now, in 1986, was serving a church outside the bounds of the Idaho Conference, although we all knew it was inevitable that soon there would be others.

We decided to continue publication and to introduce ourselves to the new Oregon-Idaho Annual conference (or as some of us preferred to call it, the Idaho-Oregon Annual Conference!) by publishing a daily Threshing Floor during the first session of the merged Annual Conference scheduled to begin June 3, 1969, in Salem.

We had thought that we might find common cause with a group of progressive Oregon Conference pastors some of whom were already reading and appreciating the Threshing Floor, but we found that their ideas about church renewal were not as basic as ours.  They were also somewhat underground and less willing to be visible and vociferous advocates for change.   They even called themselves by a humorous fictitious name, “The Smoky Mountain Bible College Alumni Association,” in an apparent attempt to avoid being taken too seriously! 

But before I get too far ahead in my story, I need to tell you about the growing tension that developed during 1968 between a number of Idaho Conference clergy and lay persons on the one hand and Everett Palmer on the other hand.  Palmer had been selected as Bishop over the Idaho and Oregon Conferences during the summer of 1968 and therefore would be leading the facilitation of the merger process.

In the fall of 1968 Bishop Palmer invited Idaho Conference pastors and their wives to gather for a two day retreat in Boise where we could get acquainted with our new Bishop.  (I say “pastors and wives” because this was at a time when there was only one female pastor in the Idaho Conference and she didn’t have a spouse.) 

The first day of our gathering, after morning worship including a sermon by the Bishop, it soon became apparent that the Bishop was more interested in our getting acquainted with him than with his getting acquainted with the rest of us.  He mostly wanted us to know that he would be in charge and that he would expect us to defer to his wishes.  These wishes included our maintaining impeccable professional decorum at all times in the congregations and towns we served and in this way to merit the respect of our parishioners and the public.  I specifically remember him telling us to always take care that our shoes were shined, as if that might even be even more important than taking up our cross to follow Jesus.

Decorum had never been a priority in our mostly rural and small town churches, which were not that many years removed from the times when those churches were first planted on dusty desert soil of southern Idaho and eastern Oregon even before irrigation made extensive farming possible.  But the Bishop seemed to remain a stranger to the environment in which we carried out our ministry in Idaho.

It was also telling that in his overture to us he made no mention of the Threshing Floor which was the most exciting thing that was happening in the Idaho Conference at that time.

In the next session after his morning presentation the bishop invited our comments and questions.  Marva raised her hand and got right to the point.  “Bishop,” she said. “This morning in your sermon you spoke about love.  But during your presentation just now I did not experience any love in the patronizing way you were speaking to us without even taking the time to get to know us.”

There was a gasp in the audience and several of the brothers attempted to suggest to the Bishop that Marva did not really mean what she seemed to be saying or at least that they would never have said such a thing. (Now, in the 21st century, this would be called “mansplaining!”)

Then Willie Ludlow said something like the following: “I disagree with Marva. What Bishop Palmer said earlier about love was not inconsistent with what he has been saying since, because the love he was describing this morning was not the love taught by Jesus in the Gospels, but rather the cheap superficial love offered by those who don’t understand what deep, genuine, unconditional love is.”

Needless to say, our relationship with Bishop Palmer from that time on was problematic. 

Thoughout the rest of that year we did not hesitate to challenge the Bishop’s conduct in The Threshing Floor, especially after he announced that there would be two great gatherings of Methodists, Festivals of Faith I he called them, one in the Portland Area and one in Nampa, Idaho.  Both would be held in large venues with thousands of seats to accommodate the many Methodist members who he imagined would attend, plus scores if not hundreds of others who, he presumed,would be attracted to such a large spectacle, and the chance to hear a Bishop preach.

Pastors were instructed to wear their formal robes and academic hoods in a dramatic procession of clergy which would start the proceedings and, it was supposed, would inspire awe in the attendees.  The Bishop announced that he would lead the parade carrying a gold “crosier” which few in Idaho, besides Roman Catholics, had ever seen or heard of.  It was an ornate curved staff that would identify him as the chief shepherd of the Methodist flock over which he proudly presided.

It was no coincidence that about that same time Willie Ludlow, who had been an avid student of the writings of John Wesley, the 18th century founder of the Methodist movement, inserted into the Threshing Floor a quote from one of Wesley’s published letters to a correspondent.   It read:

“How can you, how dare you, suffer yourself to be called bishop. I shudder, I start at the very thought.  Men may call me a knave, a fool, a rascal, a scoundrel and I am content.  But they shall never by my consent call me ‘bishop. For my sake, for God’s sake, for Christ’s sake put a full end to this”

My own father Erwin Schwiebert was the Lay Leader of the Idaho Annual Conference at that time.  Before the date of the promised spectacle in Nampa, he contacted Bishop Palmer to warn him that the laid back folks of southern Idaho, including Methodists, would probably not be impressed by, attracted to or even comfortable with the high church pageantry promised for the forthcoming event.  He respectfully suggested that the Bishop consider not displaying the crosier at the Nampa gathering. 

Several days later, at the beginning of the event, the bishop said, “I suspect some of you are wondering why I did not carry the crosier, as promised, in the procession today.  Well frankly in my rush to get here, I just forgot to bring it.”  But some of us knew, without bothering to comment publically, that the Bishop was probably not telling the whole truth.  He was, I’m sure, also disappointed at the number of empty seats that remained in the large auditorium.

To those who imagined that these two large-scale events could in any sense be considered a form of evangelism—a Methodist version of a Billy Graham Crusade perhaps, The Threshing Floor printed the following critique:

Evangelism is introducing the “Good News” into a world where such news is strange, truly new.  Bombarded by words and spectaculars, modern man has become immune to the evangelistic approach which bases itself on extravaganzas.  Also in today’s world, this sort of evangelism would be out of place. Evangelism, proclaiming the good news, is effected through servanthood, washing feet, binding wounds, protecting worker’s rights, listening rather than talking . . .  A “Festival of Faith” does not point to this kind of evangelism. 

There is one other story I must tell before I report the dramatic and disturbing events that transpired in 1969.  In 1968 two denominations—The Methodist Church and Evangelical United Brethren Church—agreed to a merger which would form a new denomination to be known as The United Methodist Church.

Shortly after the merger was consummated I got a phone call from Earl Riddle, who was at that time the executive director of the Oregon Annual Conference, asking me if I would be willing to serve on an ad hocTheological Study Commission on Doctrine and Doctrinal Standards for the new United Methodist denomination.  The General (World) Conference of the Church had directed the new Commission to prepare a clear statement of Our Theological Task as a new denomination to be presented for consideration at the 1972 General Conference. (A statement was eventually approved and still appears as Paragraph 105, Section 4 in the most recent edition of the UM Book of Discipline. 

Earl Riddle explained that because in order for the Commission to represent the full spectrum of Methodist membership it was expected to include a balance between clergy and laity, men and women, old and young, white and people of color and persons from different geographic locations.  The other members of the Commission had already been picked but they still needed one young adult clergy person from the Pacific Northwest to fill out the roster.  He said I was the first person he thought of to recommend, perhaps because he appreciated the theological work I was doing with others through The Threshing Floor.  I was honored to be nominated and said yes. 

For me this meant several challenging meetings with some of the denomination’s brightest and best theologians and other church leaders, among which I felt like the least qualified.  But what an opportunity for me!  The experience definitely helped me to sharpen my theology as I fraternized with Dr. Albert Outler, whom we elected as our chairman, and other prominent Methodist theologians.

There was a dark side to the experience also, though it took me a while to begin to figure it out and even then I never came to fully comprehend it.   I became aware that there was a political dimension to the work that the General Conference had given to this Commission. There were partisan forces in the church leadership that had conflicting opinions about what the Commission should conclude in its final report by the time it finished its work, and these conflicting forces were lobbying for specific outcomes.

As a participant I was a largely unaware of these political forces, and since I was mostly unknown to those whose interests drove them, I was never a target of these lobbying efforts.

Unfortunately, perhaps, I later chose to resign from the commission for reasons I will explain after I tell about the disturbing events of 1969.

1969

Actually the story of 1969 begins in the fall of 1968 when I spoke with Keith Mills who was then my District Superintendent.  I reminded him that as I was approaching the end of 4 years serving in Union and Cove (and North Powder for one of those years), I felt my it would not well serve me, Marva, or the other folks in these congregations if I continued to serve in these places.  This was because Marva and I felt led to help people deepen their practice of Christian discipleship and expand their awareness of the need to support peacemaking, labor justice and racial equality through non-violent action.  These congregations, however, were content with the isolation of small town church life the way it was and had mostly always been.

I also expressed a sense that my calling was to urban, not rural, ministry.  This sense was reinforced when Marva and I and another clergy/spouse couple Ralph and Mary Jane Fothergill led a group of 10 high school youth from the Idaho Conference on a week-long “Portland Seminar” where each night we slept in sleeping bags in the Centenary Wilber Methodist Church building on Portland’s eastside.  It was like summer camp except that instead of living, worshipping and learning in the woods we were living, worshipping and learning in the downtown environment of a busy city.

Every morning we started the day with a communal morning prayer time patterned after that of the East Harlem Protestant Parish in New York City. Then from seasoned urban religious leaders we learned together about the frontiers of urban ministry, and visited sites where Methodists and other people of faith were involved in caring for the poor and working to improve economic opportunities for them  in the largest city in our region. 

I remember at the time thinking how great it would be to serve in a local church where the members lived together and started each day with a monastic-style morning prayer practice, just as the fourteen of us had been doing for seven days.

My picture of the ideal church congregation was also enlarged when our whole group was invited to observe an actual 12-step meeting where alcoholics introduced themselves at every meeting with the well-known phrase “Hi, I’m ________ and I’m an alcoholic,” even though they might then say, “and I have not consumed a drop of alcohol for the past 12 years.” 

Later in a debriefing session our group talked about churches becoming places where each member could say, “I am a sinner” and then say, “That’s why but I come to worship each week—to confess my sin as I meet with other sinners who are helping each other continue to work on recovery from the sinfulness we share in common.”

In August of 1968 I asked the District Superintendent to recommend to Bishop Palmer that I be appointed to lead a church, however small, in one of the larger cities of our soon-to-be-merged Conference starting in mid-1969.  

I was encouraged to think that a transition to urban ministry might actually happen when I was invited to travel to downtown Portland to meet with clergy from other denominations who were assigned as ecumenical campus ministers at Koinonia House, located in the heart of the Portland State University campus. I was also interviewed by members of the Campus Ministry Board of Directors.  Because the current Methodist lay campus minister was about to retire, it was thought that I might be a good replacement.  My interviews went well and I fully embraced this possibility.

Later I got a call from the Superintendent about another opportunity. A new congregation was being formed in north Corvallis, the city where Oregon State University is located.  It would be an ecumenical congregation and the start-up financial support would be shared by several different denominational bodies. At the invitation of the Superintendent I travelled to Corvallis to meet the people I needed to connect with there, after which that situation was added to my list of possibilities.

A third possibility was dangled before me although this did not involve an interview. The prospect was exciting to me because Sunnyside Methodist Church was a historic church in a deteriorating neighborhood of Portland’s east side inner city.  It seemed the perfect place for developing and supporting creative urban ministry.

So by the spring of 1969 Marva and I were just waiting in the parsonage in Union for the phone call that would reveal Bishop Palmer’s choice among these three attractive options.   Marva was especially excited because a move to either Portland or Corvallis would mean she could enter a graduate degree program at a State University and further her career opportunities.

The call came, but the message was not what we expected.  Keith, the District Superintendent, seemed embarrassed to report that Bishop Palmer was planning appoint me to be the pastor of the United Methodist Church in the small mill town of Toledo, near Newport on the Oregon Coast.  Naturally I asked, “What about the PSU Campus Ministry position that we talked about.”  His response was “Uh, well some on the Board at the PSU Ministry thought you might be too avant garde for this position.”  I then asked, “Does the Bishop think that if I am too avant garde for PSU campus ministry I won’t be too avant garde for the church in Toledo?”  He of course could not or would not speak for the Bishop.

So I asked him about North Corvallis and he said that some of the funds for that project had not materialized so that venture had been postponed indefinitely.  

And Sunnyside UMC?  “Uh, well,” Keith said, “The Sunnyside Church is diminishing in membership and attendance and they are debating whether they want to try to recover their former status as a prestigious east-side Methodist congregation or be content with struggling to serve the lower-income neighborhood population which now remained after wealthier families were beginning to move to the suburbs.  The leaders of the Sunnyside Church fear that you might push the needle toward the latter outcome and they are not ready for that.”

Dismayed, I asked, “Can Marva and I have some time to ponder whether or not I can accept an appointment to the Toledo Church?”  I was thinking maybe a few days of soul searching would suffice, but Keith said, “Talk to Marva and call me back in 30 minutes.  I’m meeting right now with the Bishop and the other Superintendents and the Bishop needs to have your answer before we adjourn this meeting.”

I called back in 30 minutes to say that our answer to the Bishop was NO.

Seriously concerned about our future, I quickly consulted with some of my more experienced ministerial colleagues.  They agreed that the Bishop very probably did not approve of Marva or me and was therefore trying to edge me out of active ministry in his Annual Conference.  Their advice was that I should contact the Bishop at once and agree to accept the Toledo appointment.  That, they said, could buy me some time while I, with their help, could try to figure out how to negotiate some kind of alternate outcome.

So I called Bishop Palmer and asked for a one-to-one meeting with him in his office in downtown Portland, and he agreed.  When we sat down together on his leather couch I told him I had decided I would be willing to accept the Toledo appointment.  His reply seemed less than sympathetic, and possibly even passive aggressive.  “I’m so sorry, John.   It’s too late for that.  I’ve have already arranged to appoint someone else to the Toledo position.  But wait. There is another appointment possibility I could offer to you.  Let me get us connected by conference call with the superintendent of the Southern District and I’ll have him explain it to you.”

The three-way conference call was quite awkward as the Superintendent explained that the appointment would be to a three-point charge meaning that I would preach every Sunday in the rural churches of Chiloquin, Fort Klamath and Williamson River while Marva and I lived in the parsonage at Chiloquin.  Thinking that if I wanted to remain employed I might have to make the best of this questionable situation, I asked the superintendent to tell me about the three churches.

He hesitated as if was having trouble thinking of something positive to share.  Then after asking if we had small children he told me that the Chiloquin parsonage had a large lawn that our children would love to play in, as if that might make me feel more positive about the appointment.  

I asked him is this was a racially integrated situation, because I knew that the three churches were located on or near the Klamath Indian Reservation.  He couldn’t use the word integrated, he said, because one of the churches was 100% Native American (except in most cases for the pastor assigned by the Annual Conference) and the other two congregations were all White.  In other words I couldn’t expect significant inter-racial mixing in this pastoral charge unless I was able to accomplish something that no prior pastor had been able to achieve.

Then I listened to an uncomfortable two-way conversation between the Bishop and the Superintendent, who had been planning to fill those positions with part-time (and less costly) local or lay pastors, and seemed uncomfortable that the Bishop was now proposing to appoint a full-time ordained clergy Elder instead.  When the Superintendent reported how little money the 3 churches could afford to contribute to this arrangement, the Bishop said something like, “I could never ask a person of John Schwiebert’s caliber to take this position for less than $9,000 a year.”  He told the Superintendent to raise as much money as he could, and said that he, the Bishop, would provide the rest out of some other funds (we would say “slush funds”) over which he had personal control. 

At that time my combined salaries in Union and Cove added up to only $5,500 a year, so this would have meant a sizeable increase in financial support for our family. 

I didn’t even wait to contact Marva before declining the Bishop’s offer, and perhaps the Bishop was already hoping that my answer for a second time would have to be NO.  

When I asked him what the next step would be for me he was candid.  He said that since I had rejected two of his offers including one with a substantial increase in pay, I had two choices according to United Methodist polity.  I could ask for an indefinite leave of absence without pay or I could accept “honorable location,” a Methodist term which means agreeing to leave the traveling Methodist ministry and the benefits that it affords and, presumably, find some other line of work.

When I told my colleagues about my conversation with the Bishop they agreed that the Bishop’s ploy had worked.  He had effectively edged me out of the picture, because I had proven what he had already discerned:  I was not someone willing to demonstrate my uncritical acceptance of his ecclesiastical authority.

What I had learned through this experience is that when church bodies are guided more by institutional considerations than by spiritual discernment; they are bound to make mistakes in judgment.  I also faced the fact that after a few weeks I would no longer be able to depend on the United Methodist Annual Conference to honor my gifts or look after my needs.

I returned to Union, and Marva and I began to wonder what our next step might be. 

I shared my dilemma with Dale Young, who was the executive director of the Eastern Oregon Community Development Council, a non-profit organization that contracted with the federal Office of Economic Activity (OEO). Its mission was to create programs to serve and empower poor families in Union, Baker, and Wallowa Counties as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty.”  I had done volunteer work with the EOCDC while serving as Pastor in Union and even did some writing assignments for the agency for which I received compensation, so I was familiar with its work on behalf of the poor. 

Dale told me that the Agency was preparing to hire a full time Community Developer and encouraged me to apply for the position. I was excited about the prospect of working with the poor in what seemed like a promising effort. So I filled out an application and waited hopefully while my application was considered along with about 40 others.

When, by Monday morning June 2, 1969, I had not heard back from Dale Young about a hiring decision I phoned to tell him that a car pool of pastors from Idaho was waiting for me so we could ride together to the five-day-long session of Annual Conference in Salem.  If possible, I told him, I would like to know before I left if I would, or would not, be hired for the position.  He said he needed to make a few telephone calls before giving me his answer.  I said that since we needed to get on the road right away I would stop by his office in LaGrande, which was on our route to Salem, to learn what he had to report.

In my brief meeting with Dale he was able to tell me that (a) they had decided to hire me, (b) I could start work on the Monday after Annual Conference, (c) I would have an office at the agency headquarters in LaGrande and (d) my starting salary would be $9,600/year. That was $600 more than what the Bishop had said he was willing to pay to banish me and my family to the isolation of southern Oregon!

A great burden had been lifted from my shoulders and I headed to Annual Conference with my clergy friends.  I was feeling free and confident.  I phoned Marva and shared the good news with her. And as soon as I arrived in Salem I told my District Superintendent that I didn’t know or care whether the Conference would want to grant me a leave of absence or an honorable discharge because I had arranged for employment elsewhere, and I would be looking out for myself from now on.

Neither of these two options was recommended for me, and when the pastoral appointments were read out on the last day of the Annual Conference I found that I had been granted a special “appointment beyond the local church” to serve with the Eastern Oregon Community Development Council!  So I was still “in the ministry” of the UMC, but on my own terms. 

This was the first Annual meeting of the new Oregon-Idaho Conference, and, as I reported earlier, our Threshing Floor cohort was set up to publish five daily issues of our newsletter (reprints of articles from these issues can be viewed in the Appendix to this memoir.)  I was happy to be about this work, even if it meant missing some of the activities related to Conference business and staying up late at night to help put the publication together and get multiple copies printed.

Our crowning achievement came with the next-to-last edition of the week on Friday, and it involved Bishop Palmer.  A succession of previous Bishops had ended the historic practice of reading the Pastoral Appointments on the final day of each Conference session.  This was because they had observed that several days of gossip—and, for some, anxiety—while waiting for the final announcement tended to distract attention from the other important conference deliberations.  

But Bishop Palmer made a big deal about reverting to the traditional practice.  At the beginning of the week at a gathering reserved for clergy only, he warned us that the list of appointments was not going to be released early and should not be considered final until the names were read aloud on the last day.  His meaning was clear.  He could change an appointment at the last minute if any of his ministers said or did something that was displeasing to his majesty. 

Our Threshing Floor cohort couldn’t resist a rapid response to his threat. Over the next couple of days several of our ‘reporters’ quietly chatted one-to-one with every minister present and learned where they had been told that they would be appointed for the coming year based upon their conversations with the bishop and/or superintendents.  Then we published the entire list of appointments in the Threshing Floor on Friday, a full day before the appointments were scheduled to be read from the podium by the Bishop!

Our list was spot on accurate, and of course there was no way the Bishop could make last minute changes without exposing his deviousness.

On the last day of the Conference I got a note from Marva saying, “I hope you won’t be disappointed.  After you told me you would soon be starting a new paying position, I took all the income from your May paycheck and made a down payment to purchase a small house in LaGrande!

At Portland’s Union Station that same day, I boarded a Saturday evening train bound for home.  This was in pre-Amtrak days when there were actually three Union Pacific passenger trains running daily between Salt Lake City and Portland.  Marva was waiting for me at the LaGrande station stop and even before we returned home to Union we went to meet the real estate agent at our new house. We signed the papers and I got to see, for the first time, the only house we would ever own together. 

The house was small and directly across Jackson Street from the railroad round house and a switching yard where diesel engines were moving, switching cars or idling 24-hours a day.  And it was, as they used to say, on the wrong side of the tracks.  But it was, happily, not a parsonage, and it was a little bit of heaven for us under the circumstances.  Also it was only a short walk across the tracks to the office of my new employer.

CHAPTER 3: Fighting Poverty?

When I started in my new position, many things were different from what I had become used to in my pastoral ministry.  Now I was definitely not my own boss. Although part of my work involved organizing directly with the poor in Union County, I was also involved in what could be called middle management. My work was under the close supervision of Dale Young, the executive director.  I, in turn, supervised three community organizers, each living in one of the three counties in which our agency administered our part of the nationwide war on poverty.  The persons I supervised were all women with families.  They had been plucked out of poverty because of their people skills and were paid a living wage to do community organizing with other low-income families.

Each county had a community center run by our agency, with each managed by a competent local woman who was paid an above poverty wage.    Ted Hays, who also lived in LaGrande, supervised the three community center managers, so it made sense that Ted and I together made trips to Enterprise in Wallowa County one day each week, and to Baker City in Baker County on another day each week to keep tabs on the organizing and service work in those places. 

Ted and I developed a solid friendship that soon expanded to include Marva plus Ted’s wife Sharon and our respective young children, who were close to the same age.

I wore other hats also.  I edited the agency newsletter, coordinated staff training, wrote grant applications and was the primary agency person who focused on the development of affordable housing for our low-income constituents in three counties.

I began my work with considerable excitement   I was proud and happy to be a part of what I saw as an important opportunity to address the concerns of a rural population  struggling with serious financial deprivation.  It was not the urban ministry that I had dreamed about, but a lot of the needs and issues for low-income people were the same here in these remote places where I already knew the territory and some of the people.

It wasn’t long, however, before I began to run into significant systemic roadblocks to freeing the poor from poverty.  For example I assembled a cohort of low-income people who were interested in home ownership.  I turned them on to the idea of cooperative housing, which had been developed in large cities but had mostly not been tried in rural areas or small towns.  We envisioned a city block in LaGrande where we could build as many as 12 duplex units.  The 24 families who lived there would not own their individual units, but each would own a cooperative share of the entire property.  If they ever wanted to move to another location they would be able to sell their share to another family directly, with approval of the co-op.  Or the co-op itself would buy their share and shop it to another family.

Because the coop would be a non-profit venture we could keep our costs low enough to make the cost of shares affordable to the families who signed up with the new venture.  We worked with an out-of-town consultant who specialized in cooperative housing development.  And we found an ideal property for sale on which to develop our project.  But one day Dale Young called me into his office and told me that we could not move forward with acquiring the property we had identified. He explained, that he had just learned that the chairman of the Board of Directors of our organization, an influential local businessman, had his eye on purchasing that same property so he could build market-rate rental housing there.

I began to be aware that the whole structure of the war on poverty was built on a concept that seemed equitable on the surface, but that was actually much less beneficial to the poor than to the wealthy private-sector partners who we had enlisted as partners in this battle against poverty.

In theory each Community Action Agency, like our EOCDC, had three partner interests, (a) the poor, (b) federal and state governments, and (c) private sector helpers.  The three interests were represented equally if you count the numbers of members on the Board of Directors. But what I gradually began to notice was that the government interests which had access to the money that Congress had appropriated, were primarily devoted to paying the private sector helpers so that they could profit from their involvement in direct efforts to lift the poor out of poverty.

An example of this is described in an appendix to my earlier memoir, “Resistance and Redirection: Our First Forty Years.”  It describes my unsuccessful effort in 1970 to help a particular low income family acquire ownership of a new 3-bedroon factory-built home through a HUD program where the interest on a building loan would be partially subsidized by the Federal government (4% paid by the homeowner and 5% paid by the Federal government directly to the bank).  I realized that, had I succeeded in setting up this arrangement, after making monthly payments on their new home for forty years, the family would have paid a total of $31,000 for a house valued at $15,000  ($15,000 on the principal plus $16,000 in interest). During the same four decades the bank would have received $20,000 in subsidized interest from the Federal government.  Thus the total cost for a $15,000 house would be $51,000.  I then realized that the Federal government could have saved $5,000 if they had just bought the house outright and given that house to the poor family for free. 

I could tell other stories like this one, but the point is that I realized that poverty programs that were supposedly designed to lift the “have-nots” financially were dependent also, and maybe even primarily, on further enriching the “haves” at the same time.

Despite my growing discomfort I earned my pay for more than two years, and even earned respect from others across Oregon who were engaged in similar war on poverty efforts.  At one point I was even contacted by the head of the Oregon State Economic Opportunity Office and asked if I would consider applying for a position as Executive Director of the Washington County (Oregon) Community Action Agency which was floundering at the time.  He said the state OEO office would provide technical assistance to help me get that agency on a sound footing financially and other wise.

I’m glad the offer didn’t go to my head, and that I quickly remembered the Peter Principle in business, the concept that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their level of incompetence having been hired based on perceived success in their previous employment!

CHAPTER 4: Living in LaGrande 

After I started working in the war on poverty, I decided that I probably could not afford the travel time to attend meetings of the United Methodist Theological Study Commission to which I referred earlier.  And frankly I was feeling a strong sense of distance from the whole UM denomination.  So I resigned from the Commission even though remaining would have been enjoyable for me personally and would have meant that my name would have been included with the others who went on to complete the historic document that I helped to craft. 

Still I could not fully disengage from my connection with church life.  I continued to meet with and work with the Threshing Floor cohort.  And Marva and I found occasion to travel as we were able to visit socially with Willie and Milton and other pastors and their families who shared our vision for the churches of Oregon and Idaho and the frustrations that went with the work.  They were still in the fight for church renewal and we certainly wanted to support them.

There was of course the United Methodist Church in LaGrande which we managed to attend some of the time.  We were less than inspired by the sermons delivered by the the pastor who succeeded Boone White.  But we found refuge, meaningful fellowship and common cause in an adult Sunday School class with about a dozen others with whom we were already acquainted through our previous work together in activities of the Union County Larger Parish.  One of them was Linda Kowalsky, about whom I will have more to say later.

Our circle of church friends met at other times as well—like Saturday mornings in one of our homes.  There we shared coffee and talked about the big social issues of the day, and how we might tackle some important problems in our own community like developing housing that low income families could afford.

One weekend we all went on a recreational retreat at the United Methodist campground at Wallowa Lake.  I have never forgotten that weekend because of the rap session that kept us up talking and enjoying each other’s company all night.  Some of our companions had to retire to their sleeping quarters when they could no longer keep their eyes open.  Other brought mattresses from their bunk beds and finished the night sleeping in front of the fire.  But after about six of us continued to talk non-stop until 6:00 AM, we realized we needed to take a shower break so we could make it to breakfast at 7:00.

I cannot recall the details of our animated conversations that night, but I can remember the excitement of imagining how individual local churches could become so much so much more than what we had previously experienced in our church life.                 

I remember two particular ways our group worked together in church related activities focused on peace and justice.  The first was in 1969.  On May 4th of that year James Forman, a prominent black civil rights advocate strode up to the pulpit in Riverside Church in New York City and delivered what was called “The Black Manifesto.”  It was addressed to all the white churches of America and was strongly critical of the role that our churches had played in helping to keep black people subservient, poor and unable to advance economically.  As part of his manifesto he issued a demand that white churches together contribute a total of $500 million to finance black economic opportunities and in so doing to at least partially repair the damage white Christians had done to black Americans during slavery, Jim Crow days and even more recently.

Since our local church, the LaGrande UMC, was one of the thousands of churches to which James Forman was speaking, we felt that our congregation should hear it read  aloud to us, and that we should take time to decide how we as one congregation were going to respond to his challenge, both in owning our part in the problem he had exposed and in deciding how much of the half billion dollars our local church would donate to black economic development. 

The LaGrande pastor, and most of the congregation were clearly not interested in this problem as something that the whole congregation would or could attend to.  We were not even allowed to read The Black Manifesto aloud to the congregation. So our small class spent a series of Sundays reflecting on the issues raised by James Forman, before taking an offering amongst ourselves, to be added to the paltry sum of barely $500,000 that was eventually raised nationally.

A second focus in our push to get our local church involved in advocacy for peace and justice, was draft counseling.  We asked the church to sponsor a draft counseling center, which we would be willing to staff as volunteers, and to actively invite young people who faced the possibility of being drafted into U.S. military service to come and receive guidance about their options.  We could, for instance, explain to them how to apply for, and convince the local draft board to grant them, “conscientious objector” status, if that was their choice.

We let the congregation know that another Methodist congregation, Centenary-Wilber UMC in Portland not only did draft counseling already.  They also provided space to a group that was advocating draft resistance and other forms of civil disobedience!  But folks in the LaGrande congregation were obviously less impressed with that possibility than we were.

A vote by the Church Board to create such a center was defeated, because of fears that such a decision by the church would be too controversial in the larger community.  But we did get the church to agree that our little group could use one room in the church where we could do draft counseling weekly on our own, as long as we did not claim church sponsorship.  So every Thursday night for two hours we were allowed to put an A-board sign on the sidewalk outside the church.  It invited youth and young adults to come inside and chat about their concerns relating to the draft. And we took turns waiting for them to show up.

Few did, but at least, by our very presence, we were continuing to confront our local church and a small number of others with issues related to mandatory military service by the U.S. to support a hopeless war in a distant land in SE Asia.

For part of our time in LaGrande, I did not concern myself with the United Methodist congregation at all, at least not on Sunday mornings.  I had already become friends with Paul Lucky, the pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in LaGrande while I was still serving as pastor of the churches in Union and Cove.  After he learned that I had interest and training in church music, and was moving to LaGrande he invited me to be the volunteer choir director at Zion.  I thoroughly enjoyed a year of rehearsing and leading the singers who sang from a balcony in the back of the sanctuary.  I even doubled as an assistant organist on several occasions.

CHAPTER 5: Dropping Out 

But after two years in LaGrande I was beginning to realize that I could not continue much longer in what I had once thought was a dream job with the war on poverty.  Marva agreed with me that we should begin exploring something else.  Together we began to hatch a risky plan with another couple, Larry and Linda Monk who were a part of our Sunday School cohort. 

We had first Known Linda as Linda Kowalsky, even before we moved to LaGrande, when we were in a Yokefellow Group together with Linda and her first husband Steve. We had continued as friends with Linda as we supported her when she and Steve were divorced and after he later died by suicide.

But by 1971, long story short, she had met and married Larry, a United Methodist minister on leave of absence and he had moved to LaGrande to make his home with her.  We told Larry and Linda about our crazy idea which was to sell our house and use the financial gain to travel leisurely throughout Mexico with our two children, living in our Volkswagen van for six months or more until the money ran out.

They were both attracted to the idea of sharing the adventure with us.  Linda also had a house she could sell, a Volkswagen van (same color as ours,) and, like us, pre-school children.  Larry also brought another advantage to the proposed joint venture: he could speak fluent Spanish because he had spent part of his childhood in Venezuela living with his parents there! 

The story of our excellent adventure in Mexico could occupy an entire memoir in itself so I will do my best to summarize.  We spent most of the summer of 1971 preparing.  We outfitted the two VW vans for sleeping, and got a tentmaker to make a custom tent that could be quickly attached to the side of our van to create more than double our living space when we needed it.

At the last minute we were joined by my younger sister Linda who was unemployed, ready for adventure, and equipped with her own sleeping bag and pup tent.

We entered Mexico at Nogales, Arizona in October traveling leisurely and camping in the Sonora desert before moving on through Hermosillo, Ciudad Obregon, Los Mochis, Mazatlan , Tepic, and Guadalajara, to Mexico City.  After a week in the capital city, where we slept in our cars in the parking lot at the southernmost terminal of the city’s subway system and used public transit for sightseeing, we headed south to Cuernavaca where we paused to evaluate our trip so far.  

Our two families often had difficulty agreeing on how far we wanted to travel each week, and how long we might want to stay put in any single place.  Marva and I also recognized that we and our boys were not learning to speak Spanish as quickly as we might otherwise, because we tended to rely on Larry to communicate in Spanish for us instead of launching out on our own.

We decided then to take different routes and travel at our own separates paces for the next portion of our travels.  Since it was next to impossible to keep in contact with each other in this time before cell phones, we would try to communicate over the next six weeks by sending letters c/o American Express offices in the major cities, and always checking for mail at those places when we passed through them.  But of course we could only guess about where the others might be on any given day.  In case we couldn’t keep in touch by mail we agreed to reunite again in the main square in Managua, Nicaragua on Christmas Day.  There we would figure out what to do next.

Our little family then spent time in Oaxaca before heading east toward the border with Guatemala.  But then, on a hot Sunday afternoon, as our heavily loaded vehicle struggled through the mountains on the way to our next scheduled camp site in San Cristobal de las Casas, the little 4-cylinder  air-cooled engine in our van breathed its last. 

We checked our notes and found out that there was a Volkswagen repair facility in the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez which we had passed through earlier that day.  A kind trucker towed our car with a chain to the crest of the mountain pass we had just crossed.  There he had to disconnect us and leave us on our own while we descended to the valley below using only our brakes to slow our descent.  Then he towed us to the repair facility where we slept in the driveway overnight (in the disabled car) waiting for the place to open up on Monday morning.

There we got the bad news that our engine would have to be totally rebuilt.  But we also learned that, if we had them do the job, because of the different specifications for engines built by Volkswagen of Mexico, we would not then be able find useable parts for later repairs in the U.S. after we returned.  

We clearly needed German made parts, but how could we get them?  We had been warned that waiting for parts to be shipped from the US to southern Mexico could be a nightmare, because in those days there were no computer assisted systems for keeping track of parcels and all or some of the parts might sit on a loading dock somewhere un-noticed for many days, while we would be waiting helplessly in a cheap hotel.

I took a bus to Tapachula on the border with Guatemala, to see if I could enter Guatemal and buy German-built engine parts there since Volkswagens in Guatemala are imported from Germany, using German parts,  but that option proved impractical.   So did the option of my taking a bus to Laredo, Texas and accompanying a shipment of German parts back to where the rest of the family was waiting. 

Our final solution?  We paid to have our van trucked 800 miles to Puebla where Volkswagen of Mexico’s huge manufacturing facility is located and where, we learned, there were German parts available.  My plan was that I would ride with the truck to Puebla and Marva and the boys would make the trip by bus and meet me there.

We watched as the car engine was placed inside the sleeping area of the van and at least 20 men pushed our car up a steep improvised ramp onto the truck.  Marva was reluctant to agree to a plan that would mean that our family would be separated and totally out of communication in the event of any emergency.  So she climbed onto the truck and into the van, covered the broken engine with a tarp and improvised an arrangement for sleeping. 

Picture Marva and our two boys traveling for two-and-a-half days inside our crippled van as it sits chained on the back of open truck.  Then picture me riding in the front seat of the truck with a nervous driver who is worried the whole time about the four strangers in his care who speak a language he does not know and whose ability to converse with him in Spanish is still quite limited.

Each of the two nights while the driver slept in the cab, I was able, gratefully to spend the night with my loved ones in our portable, and now transportable, home.  

My sister did not accompany us on this leg of the trip. After weighing her options she decided to take an intercity bus to Guatemala City where she spent several weeks having her own amazing Central America sightseeing adventure before rejoining us in Villahermosa after our car crisis was well past us.  Then shortly afterward she decided to fly back to the US to tend to a budding romance with a man who would soon become our brother-in-law!

At the Volkswagen facility in downtown Puebla, we slept in our motorless car on a busy city street for several days while the new engine was being assembled inside.  When the facility closed for the mid-day siesta each day, we set up our Coleman stove and cooked one large daily meal on the sidewalk outside.  I suspect that our conspicuous presence in front of their showroom was an incentive to complete the repair work sooner than later!

Finally we were on our way with lots yet to see, and not much money left.  Going all the way to Nicaragua and back, or even to Guatemala was out of the question.  So we settled for a trip the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico where we visited Aztec pyramid sites and ocean beaches and enjoyed Christmas day with a swim in the pool at our trailer park in Merida.

In January 1972 we re-entered the US at Laredo, Texas and after some visits with my twin sister and family in Austin, Texas we headed for our parents’ homes in Idaho with no future plans and very little money.  

Because we had never arrived at Managua, Nicaragua on Christmas Day we didn’t see or hear from Larry and Linda and their children again until they arrived back in Oregon in April, the month that had been our original target return date before our savings were depleted by the cost of car repairs.

When we compared notes and logs about our separate adventures we found evidence that both they and we had probably been in the city of Tuxtla Gutierez on the same day without realizing it.  Linda remembers one of their children saying, as they passed through the city, that they had seen the Schwiebert’s car parked next to a Volkswagen dealership.  But they didn’t see us. Linda told the children that it probably couldn’t have been our car because she presumed that we would be well ahead of them, having already left Mexico bound for Central America.

I will never forget our time in Mexico. Besides being just plain fun, mostly, it afforded both Marva and me some valuable time to reflect on the nature of our respective callings as we began to map out our futures.

This was the time when women’s liberation was blossoming and as we traveled we read and discussed the writings of Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinam.  We also discovered that while leaders in the United States were just starting to talk about recycling, Mexico already had a robust recycling program.  We observed life in Mexico first hand and compared it with our experiences in the U.S.  In some ways we found we preferred what we experienced in Mexico.

We did not feel threatened when we camped outside, or even when we slept in our van on a busy street in the middle of a Mexican city.  For example one time we were approached by a policeman as we were setting up our camp site in a city park.  He wanted to know what our intentions were and how long we planned to stay.  We thought he was going to order us to leave.  But after we explained our situation, he told us that he only patrolled this park until midnight.  But not to worry, he said.  He would tell his replacement what we were doing so the other cop could continue to look after us and keep us safe through the rest of the night! In the morning we cooked breakfast on the camp stove and offered the replacement cop some of our scrambled eggs for which he was very grateful.

In San Blas we were confronted by several cops who, somewhat apologetically told us we would not be allowed to camp on the beach.  He explained that they had to keep the area clear so that they could keep track of illegal drug traffickers in small boats who were using that beach as a landing area.   We asked where we might be allowed to camp instead.  Over there, he told us as he pointed to a large vacant area across the road.  Over there is public property so anybody can sleep there, he told us.  In Mexico, we discovered that, unlike in the U.S, public property meant the people’s property not the government’s property, so of course the people would be welcome there.

CHAPTER 6: Refocusing

But as much as we liked living the relaxed life that was possible for us in Mexico, we were beginning to look forward to our return to the United States. 

For my part, I felt even more called to some kind of church based ministry.  Even pastoral ministry in the Oregon-Idaho Conference was something I was willing to re-consider, especially after I had learned that Bishop Everett Palmer was now out of the picture.  He had died suddenly of a heart attack while playing golf in California.

I had also begun to read about the liberation theology movement which had roots in Latin America and focused on organizing poor people of faith to advocate for justice based upon the teachings of Jesus and the example of the churches described in the New Testament before Christianity turned them into something else.  But I knew I could not be easily satisfied with institutionalized Christianity as I had experienced it before and that I would have to have a role in creating my future in prophetic and pastoral ministry. 

Marva and I were beginning to feel pulled in different directions. She had lost interest in church life completely, based upon our negative experiences.  And I couldn’t blame her for it. She was ready to put all her energies elsewhere, including enrolling in graduate studies in sociology and social service.  So that difference would be something we would have to work on.

I remember her reminding me on one occasion that she had put her future career on hold for more than a decade while supporting me in launching my career in ministry and being the primary caregiver for our children. And now here I was talking about not having careers and giving up our financial security so we could follow Jesus.  “Not me,” she said.  “Now it’s your turn to take more responsibility for the care of our children so that I can finally pursue a career.”

After spending some time with our parents in Idaho and later with Ted and Sharon Hays who were now living in Pendleton, Oregon we drove our VW van to Portland and slept in it for several rainy Portland days—all four of us and also now a small dog—while Marva I took turns looking for permanent employment. Sometimes we overnighted in a church parking lot; other nights we drove to a freeway rest stop on Interstate 5, because it had hot water and showers.  

We agreed that we would rent a house or apartment near wherever either of us was the first to find some kind of paying job.  

Among the places I applied was The Washington County Community Action Agency (WCCAO). They hired me almost immediately, because of my experience and reputation in N.E. Oregon.  This was the War on Poverty again but the Executive Director and my fellow employees in this new situation had radical views that were much closer to mine.  They were willing to stick their necks out farther to give power to the poor and for that I was grateful. 

We rented a house on Baseline Road in downtown Hillsboro, just four blocks from my new office, and moved in on February 22, 1972.  We enrolled Rodney and Andy in the neighborhood elementary school.  Both boys demonstrated that they did not need to be held back even though they had missed five months of the current school year, as they entered first and second grade respectively.

In late April our futures again began to take a dramatic turn.  I got a telephone call from Robert Burtner who was then pastor of the Rose City Park United Methodist Church in Portland.  He had heard that I was now living in the Portland area and he wanted to meet with me.  Later as we sat in the iconic Goose Hollow Tavern in SW Portland, he asked me if I might consider an appointment as his Associate Pastor, working with him and the Rose City Park congregation.  I already had a healthy respect for his style of ministry, and this seemed closer to the kind of situation I had been imagining for several years, so I said yes.

Bob then contacted the new Bishop and convinced him to make the appointment at the forthcoming Annual Conference session in June.

I put off announcing my plans to my supervisor at WCCAO for as long as I could.  After lunch one day, when I could wait no longer, I went to her office but learned that she was busy meeting with the Executive Director to work on budgets.  As I waited for her in my cubicle she came bounding in smiling to announce that they had figured out a way to give me a raise in salary!  And that was the moment when I had to tell them that I would be leaving the agency at the end of June.

They were caring and gracious and fully accepting of the reality that I had to follow my calling and not be constrained by other opportunities however attractive they might be.

Soon afterward Marva learned that she would be hired as a social worker by the State of Oregon to work with elderly clients on public assistance.  Happily we moved our belongings into a small parsonage on NE 58th Avenue in Portland directly across from the Rose City Park Church.  The boys enjoyed the summer in their new home before beginning to attend the Rose City Park grade school just one long block from where we lived.

I remember that spring and summer as the best of times.

And with this declaration I have now brought the account of my early personal history up to the point where it connects with the beginning of my already published 2015 Memoir.

APPENDIX

Below are random selections from THRESHING FLOOR, an unofficial mimeographed newsletter published by a Committee on Renewal in the 1960s and described in the above account of John Schwiebert’s early life and ministry.  The republishing of these samples offers a glimpse into what John and other clergy and lay persons were led to say to the churches in the Idaho Conference, and later in the Oregon-Idaho Conference of the United Methodist Church more than 50 years ago. These writings reveal how little has changed in the church in the past 50 years since these concerns were raised, and what was said then still has relevance in 2020. 

As you read the following articles you will notice the lack of inclusive language and know that these lines were written before most people had realized the importance of addressing gender inequities in our language as well as in our church life.  The sixties was a decade when there were few women encouraged or allowed to serve as ordained ministers and pastors of churches and those of us who wrote pieces for the Threshing Floor now recognize our own shortcomings in not recognizing and commenting on the injustices that we too were  a part of.

RENEWAL FELLOWSHIP 

   If official conference meetings are often deficient in their ability to maintain meaningful fellowship and a sense of purpose, not so the area meetings sponsored by the Committee for Renewal.  Even those who endured two nights of round trip train coach travel to make the recent meetings have agreed that their efforts were rewarded.  And even though the meetings have lacked organization and polish, their urgency, sensitivity and fraternal warmth have more than justified the time and energy devoted to them.

   What is it that makes the renewal fellowship so winsome?  Certainly it is not the aroma of “success.” If anything conditions in the Idaho Conference are worse that they were two years ago when a group of disheartened ministers and laymen first banded together to share their fears and hopes. Every morning is punctuated by outpourings of woe, especially as we become aware of our own neglect. Nor can the unique association be attributed (as some critics have sought to do) to an idle craving for intellectual sophistry.  The whole movement was conceived in response to concrete needs and has continued on the basis of some generally accepted goals.  That we have consumed a substantial amount of our time and energy in dialogue does not obscure the fact that we are action (note:“informed” action) oriented.

 The real glue that holds the renewal fellowship together is nothing less than a concrete manifestation of the Christian hope.  As we mourn the state of the Church, we feel the blessing of Jesus’ words, “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

 Bonhoeffer’s commentary on these words, with responsible variations, helps to explain the spirit of the renewal fellowship (In this case read ‘the establishment’ for Bonhoeffer’s ‘world.’) 

“. . .by ‘mourning’, Jesus of course means . . . refusing to be in tune with the world or to accommodate oneself to its standards.  Such men mourn for the world, for its guilt, its fate and its fortune.  While the world keeps holiday they stand aside, and while the world sings ‘Gather ye rose-buds while ye may’ they mourn.  They see that for all the jollity on board, the ship is beginning to sink.  The world dreams of progress, of power and of the future, the disciples meditate on the end, the last judgement and the coming of the kingdom.  To such heights the world cannot rise.  And so the disciples are strangers in the world, unwelcome guests and disturbers of the peace.  No wonder the world rejects them!. . . Nobody loves his fellowmen better than a disciple, nobody understands his fellowship better than the Christian fellowship, and that very love impels them to stand aside and mourn.  It was a happy thought of Luther, to translate the Greek word here by the German Leidtragan (sorrow-bearing.  For the emphasis lies on the bearing of sorrow.  The disciple community does not shake off sorrow, but willingly bears it, and in this way they show how close are the bonds which bind them to the rest of humanity . . . They simply bear the suffering which comes their way as they try to follow Christ, and bear it for his sake.  Sorrow cannot tire them or wear them down, it cannot embitter them or cause them to break down under the strain; far from it, for they bear their sorrow in the strength of him who bears them up, who bore the whole suffering of the world upon the cross . . . This is their comfort, or better still, the Man is their comfort, the Comforter (cf. Luke 2:25)”

     (from “The Cost of Discipleship”)

 What else but this mutuality of comfort and hope could account for the kinship we have felt across the miles?  We share a deep uneasiness about the direction of contemporary church institutions, but we also share the knowledge that Jesus Christ is still Lord of the Church (capital “C”) and able to shed light into every dark circumstance.

      * * * * *    

A PRECONFERENCE REPORT

This is the pre-conference report of Threshing Floor.  We hope that it will stir some debate of important issues which will certainly come before the session of merging Conferences in Salem, June 8.  It was put together by many who have long been associated with Renewal movement in the Idaho Conference.  It is our wish that ministers and members of every local church in the two conferences have a chance to consider some of the ideas that it raises.  Threshing Floor is still the official voice of an obviously unofficial, sometimes unorganized, group of ministers and laymen in Idaho and Oregon.  We hope that many of you will want to join with us this spring in keeping major issues before the members of the annual conference.  If so, you could start by helping us pay for this issue and at least two more before the conference session in June.  Send your contributions to the address in the next column.

       * * * * *

 Reactions:

Everyone who is interested in debating the issues being raised in this issue of Threshing Floor or anyone who is convinced that there are other issues to be raised before the session of the Annual Conference is invited to use this journal as a forum for their ideas.  The editors, of course, do not promise to print everything that is submitted.  (We don’t even promise to print another issue before Annual Conference).  However, we will try to present all of the ideas which you readers might have for reforming the structure of the United Methodist Church in line with the points made in the essay below.

                   * * * * * 

THRESHING FLOOR AS A MOVEMENT 

“Threshing Floor’s unpredictable publishing schedule speaks much about the movement which it expresses—a movement rather than an organization which might forever be under the necessity of perpetuating its existence and securing its life by means of elected officers, bylaws, and deadlines. So long as some of us see the Church in need of renewal, especially within the Idaho Conference, we will meet and act.  Whenever specific issues need a thorough airing, we will publish. As many individuals as can, even temporarily, identify with our work we welcome to the fold.

 We are pleased that a number of additional laymen and clergy have identified themselves with our work since our initial gathering last year.

THRESHING FLOOR is published now and then by ministers and laymen in the Idaho Conference dedicatted to the renewal of the Church and its Ecumenical movement.

The following DECLARATION OF CONCERN appeared in our initial issue:

The moment for choosing and acting is upon us.  Methodists in the Idaho Conference have to face the challenges to which God is calling us.  The Church has accommodated herself to the world too much; she has lost her identity and is not bearing real fruit in the present.

     We believe that the Church exists for mission as a fire exists for burning.

     We admit to being a part of the problem.  Our unwillingness to speak up has been a contributing factor to the problems we are facing.  We have abdicated our responsibility to a nebulous “they” who receive all our blame.  We must now take responsibility which we have heretofore refused for what is happening around us.

     We will no longer affix blame, but will strive for constructive resolutions of the problems before us.  We invite others into this effort, to contribute position papers to further issues of THRESHING FLOOR, and engage in enlightening conversation for renewal.  We stand united for the mission of the Church in the world and accept responsibility and criticism for this task.

     It is our concern to speak out on the various issues we have long ignored, or at least merely complained about.

     We propose to present positive steps and programs which can be dealt with by the Church in our area, for we are committed to the Church.

     It is not our intention to destroy but to renew the Church in the proclamation of the Word to the world.  If our institutions of that Word they will stand against any adversity and if not, their collapse cannot be mourned. 

THE TITLE 

Just a word about our title and the sub-titles. “Separating Hopes from Illusions is a phrase from Reinhold Neibuhr’s Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic.  It is the minister’s and laymen’s primary task and purpose of this journal, THRESHING FLOOR, where the wheat and the chaff are separated.  Another image, the plumb line (Amos 7:8) tells if he is on the up and up.  God keeps testing us by his standard.  It is our purpose to see how it hangs and how we stand. 

       * * * * 

ANNOUNCEMENTS

   Have you been to CONFERence yet?  You probably haven’t if you missed yesterday’s “Experimental Theater and Teach-in” featuring Willis Ludlow as immoderator.

   For more excitement, information, frustration and fun, plan to attend more of same throughout the week.

   The principal Wednesday “teach-in”, featuring information on the A.B.S. controversy, will take place at 4:30 in the basement of Matthews Hall.  Other shorter sessions will happen as the need arises and as the Spirit directs.

       * * * * * 

QUOTES

“When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us.  So it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are.  It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life.  I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally non-violent struggle for justice.  To be a man is to suffer for others.  God help us to be men”

                --Cesar Chavez

“The Methodists are to spread life among all denominations; which they will do until they form a separate sect.”

--J.Wesley, Journal, Vol 1,p.471

RADICAL ALTERNATIVES TO THE METHODIST MESS

   The position paper by Virden Seybold and Milton Joran, circulated last December, moved the renewal emphasis in the Idaho Conference (or at least the more radical part of it) into a new phase.  The paper questioned the widely held assumption that the only difference between Threshing Floor persons and other Christians on issues of church renewal is that the radicals want to move faster.  The paper was explicit in recognizing that differences in basic values are at issue, not mere differences in method. “No longer is there a common ground of values evident for all within the church.  No longer can we assume a basic agreement on values, let alone on tactics.”

     Seybold and Jordan then delineated three areas of criticism where the difference in values is most apparent:  “First, the United Methodist Church is not organized in such a way as to be an agent of God’s love in the world.  Second, any institution depending basically on the ordained ministry cannot be such an agent in our world.  Finally, the Christian faith, so long as it is considered a method of relating individual men to God and insuring their salvation, is not capable of giving rise to such an agent."

    The above assertions were stated in unequivocal terms so there would be no more misunderstanding as to what is meant.  The Threshing Floor dialogue from this point cannot honestly hide from specific issues by trying to pretend a non-existent agreement on principles.  In short, we will each have to decide: 1) whether we believe we can expect renewal under the present system functioning atits best, of whether the system will have to be reformed; 2) whether we can any longer tolerate the clergy patronage system at its best; and whether our view of the Christian faith and mission is basically individualist and pietistic or in fact social and political in character.

     The effect of these statements, if they are taken seriously, will be to polarize the view of renewal-minded Christians.  The polarization has been evident in meetings of people concerned about the church since the papers was distributed. Many will want to smooth over the polarization before it has become clear, and before we have determined the meaning of our positions and their strengths and weaknesses in relation to one another.  This polarization will at least keep us honest with each other as to what we feel we must do to reform the church.  This has already meant fewer passengers on the Threshing Floor bus.

     The new polarizing phase in the renewal movement will not be welcomed by those who find safety in a middle position and virtue in ecclesiastical diplomacy.  Some will find it easy to dismiss the movement by labeling it extremist.  This will be unfortunate if confrontation with the issues raised is thereby avoided.

     There is no question that the criticisms and proposals advanced by Threshing Floor have (at their best) been extreme.  Contrary to the charges of some, this is not because of any need to be extreme.  (There would be no more value in that than there is in the frequently expressed need of the established order to avoid extremes.) Rather, Threshing Floor has been extreme out of the conviction that extreme measures are necessary at this point in the history of the Church to offset practices which are Biblically untenable, theologically unjustifiable, and (even) organizationally impractical.

     Some of us at least will be placing a higher value on the glorious imperative of radical reformation, than upon the need to maintain a broad basis of consensus and support.  Our function as a forum of friendly debate will need to give way to clear-cut efforts to change the present course of the church.  This will not necessarily mean the presentation of what we consider viable alternatives in church structure.  It should mean, as outlined below, simply acting in ways we can determine to move any section of the church onto a new course.  That is to say, radical renewal efforts demand new structures. In the friendly forum stage of the movement many persons presented various suggestions for new organization which were never given any serious review.  In this more radical stage we will put into practice many of these and other ideas which are founded in a new understanding of purpose.

     Those who share these views will need to get together to outline useful courses of action.  In the meantime, the following possibilities deserve our careful consideration:

1) First, if we agree with point one above, that the present system of organization within the United Methodist church is no longer capable of serving Christian aims, then we must be prepared to be disobedient to its illegitimate expectations.  This of course puts a heavy burden of judgment on us to determine what features of the structure and its demands are not legitimate.  The burden is no greater, however, that that which should be felt also by those who otherwise relate to the system
     Such disobedience should include selective refusal to participate in certain Annual and General Conference programs, promotions, and apportionments. Systems and programs which by design or practice, side-step any direct congregational decision or involvement must be prevented by just such a refusal.  We must not urge participation, financial or otherwise, in national projects unless they are honestly understood at the congregational level.  The important thing is that such refusal should be accompanied by a clear statement of the reasons why (in contrast to the time honored method of connectional foot dragging which has been practiced in the church for years).  Another form of disobedience would be to set up alternative, even undisciplinary, congregational models to test our viable options,  Underground church structures are appearing nationwide, even in Idaho and Oregon. These are offering concrete models which in many cases have shown themselves preferable to the established structures by Biblical social and political (organizational) standards.  The time is right for just such an experiment in the Oregon-Idaho area.  Such an experiment would certainly be in conflict with the established institutional forms

2) Secondly, if we agree with point two above, that the clergy-laity caste system is harmful to the church and unlikely to change so long as the symbols of the distinction are maintained, then we ought, if we are laymen, to refuse to grant favors to the clergy.  If we are clergymen, we ought to refuse to accept such favors.  Clergy discounts, special rates, and other gifts and favors must be stopped.  They will only be stopped when we refuse to give and accept them.  We ought to refuse to participate in activities (such as annual conference executive session and its lay counterpart), which tend to initiate Christians into separate fraternities.  We ought to support and encourage experimental congregational forms in which indigenous leadership is trusted to lead the congregation with the professional minister removed or serving only in an advisory role.  We ought to ignore conference appeals which are addressed to the local church through the minister only and do not involve the duly constituted lay leaders.

3) Finally, if we agree with point three above, that our missionary imperative is to implement God’s creation of a new order, rather than to develop a bigger stable full of happy, saved Christians, then we will quit sending in pastor’s reports filled with meaningless statistics about attendance and Together subscriptions.  We will be emphatic in our denunciation of such manipulative tactics as “fill-a-pew” and “each one bring one”.  We will even consider ignoring and declining to maintain permanent membership records, recording membership instead on a chalk board where the swift stroke of a crayon or eraser is all that is needed to update the rolls.

Such tactics will not create the best of feelings among all the brethren of the church.  And we might be forced to admit the inappropriateness of certain tactics and the need to amend them from time to time.  But the anxiety created by such moves would be healthy.  The whole church would at least have to come to terms with the values under which it operates.  The church would be impelled either to risk a defense of its operative values, by disciplining those persons who refuse to honor them, or else to discard those values in favor of better ones.

GLOSSARY

Editor’s Note:

   Annual Conference sessions are noted for their verbosity. The amount of words printed, written, proclaimed from pulpits, shouted from rostrums, and whispered in caucuses is exceeded only by the variety of interpretations which can be given to these same words.  We hope the following definitions will serve as a guide in understanding some of the more common words and phrases which have become a part of annual conference lore.

COMMUNICATION-–public relations jargon for “There’s nothing wrong with our publicity what a few more mimeographed mailings won’t cure—especially if we can flossy them up with some slick new slogans.

QUADRENNIAL EMPHASIS—Methodist conference talk for the railroad we expect the Holy Spirit to ride if it’s going to work through the United Methodist Church during the next four years.

CHALLENGE,LIFT UP, FORWARD THRUST, etc.  District Superintendent talk that means “This program is dying, boys so let’s get with it.”

GRASS ROOTS--An imaginary place where program executives (who are always thinking up new crusades for local churches) think they came from, but don’t ever want to go back to.

POSITIVE APPROACH—in general, all programs conceived and planned in the conference office and mimeographed for shipment to the grass roots. 

NEGATIVE APPROACH—In general, those programs proposed and/or submitted by the Threshing Floor.

ONGOING-WORK-OF-THE CHURCH—includes promotion of attendance, record keeping, fund raising, sermons, potlucks, and “encounter groups.”  Not to be confused with such extra-curricular activities as civil disobedience, draft counseling, war on poverty on hunger (which are “social concerns”)—to be encouraged as long as they don’t interfere with the “on-going-work-of-the-church.”

MOVING TOO FAST—a phrase applied to renewal programs in general and Threshing Floor proposals in particular.  A condition easily corrected by appointment of a long range study committee. Important Note: the above wording does not apply in the case of officially sanctioned programs . . . In these cases speed is of the essence.

STUDY COMMITTEE—an invention of the devil to keep people from getting to work.

CONFERENCE SPEAKER—time out from the real concerns of the day, to enjoy a vintage sermon by a bishop who’s already made it or a budding minister who’s on the make.

15TH OF THE MONTH—the low point of every month, when bills and taxes come due and the mail is Riddled* with conference propaganda 

BAR OF THE CONFERENCE—1. The area on the conference floor where voting members may be found during the sessions.  2. The place off-campus where voting members are sometimes found unwinding after the sessions.

MUTUALITY OF SPIRIT—a comfortable phrase *Palmered off on conference members as a disclaimer of the infighting, and grudge bearing that really characterize the Annual Conference.

ECUMENICAL CONCERNS-- a highminded desire to fraternize with other denominational groups (especially for tea and mutual sympathy), provided that differences are not discussed, wine is not served, our autonomy is not threatened, and the world is not invited. 

FELLOWSHIP—the Methodist version of a cocktail party, only with charades and coffee. 

EVANGELISM—a good word, twisted around to mean, “I don’t care how you get the members in—romance them, threaten them, make them feel guilty, or confirm them at the age of six--do anything, but get them in or it will look bad on our record.” --adapted from Christian advocate, January 29, 1955

*NOTE: Everett Palmer was the Bishop and Earl Riddle was the conference executive during 1969, the year these words were published in the Threshing Floor, Daily Conference Version