The Evangelical Generation: It Hasn't Led to Decline

[I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they've had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time. Here are some thoughts on what remains after a generation of evangelical prominence].


Reports of Our Death Exaggerated

Don’t believe what you hear about the decline of the evangelicals.

There isn’t a more potent force in American life and society than active, believing evangelical Christians, marked by their vibrant faith, clear expression of their beliefs, biblically informed habits, and selfless and life-altering ministries. Where can you find these believers? They’re everywhere–in every town; nearly on every block. Their numbers are increasing and their involvement in all aspects of national life and policy is growing and morphing and infiltrating like a viral storm.

Are evangelicals in decline, as posited by Rodney Clapp in Christian Century? He writes:

Evangelicalism is in] deep trouble because it faces a significant cultural and generational shift. Identifying itself with the wedge tactics of the political right, which is now falling (at least for a time) out of power, the movement cannot easily shake the image of being primarily negative and destructive. Indicators show that it is losing attractiveness not only among unconverted fellow Americans, but among its own young.

More significantly, evangelicalism is in deep trouble because the gospel really is good news, and reactionaries are animated by bad news, by that which they stand against. Undoubtedly Jesus Christ faced and even provoked conflict. But he embraced conflict as a path or means to the health and liberation—the salvation—of the world. And he hoped for salvation even, perhaps especially, for his enemies. If evangelicalism is innately reactionary, then it can follow Christ only by being born again.

Clapp pretends that the evangelical church is the same as the vocal evangelical politic whose public voice has been dominated by its most conservative leaders. As a former senior writer at Christianity Today, he knows better; but the feigned confusion serves his purposes here.

The faithful and vibrant American Christian church that is evangelical in its beliefs, either as defined by Barna or by Gallup is very different from the evangelical politic. While the two configurations align theologically and indeed in some key areas of public concern [Clapp calls them wedge issues], they are very different and the thriving church at worship, at life, and in service transcends and routinely ignores the residents in the White House and on Capitol Hill.

I have learned in 31 years consulting with Christian ministries and causes that while many activists wish that local evangelical churches and their members would be politically active, the vast majority of them are not. Although they vote in high numbers, evangelical Christians are not particularly political and their churches rarely use facilities and services to advance any political positions.

I know this is extremely difficult to believe for people whose understanding of evangelicals comes only from media, which portray evangelicals as heavily involved in partisan and issue politics.

There are evangelicals who are very active in politics. My wife, Debbie, and I have been quite active in partisan and cause-related political action. But we are the exception, and friends and family often turn to us for readings on the political environment. Our level of political involvement is extremely rare among our church friends and our strongly evangelical families.

The levers of institutional power and notably the microphones and gateways of communication of the evangelical politic have been controlled by politically oriented conservative evangelicals for some time (often to good effect, in my opinion, but certainly not always).

The power of these leaders is waning as they age—many are in the 70s and 80s–and as the next two generations begin to be heard. These new generations are open to many new areas of public concern, and yes they are generally more open to at least a new tone on issues such as gay rights. I agree that if the NAE board was dominated by one generation removed from the present leadership, Rich Cizik would still be working the halls of power for the association.

But to suggest that young evangelicals are politically and socially to the left of their forebears on most issues is wishful thinking by those who would benefit from that shift. It’s much more complex than that, and on abortion, polls show that young evangelicals are more pro-life than their parents.

While young evangelicals are more concerned about the environment than the previous generation, this is hardly a swing to the left. As I have said previously, a green evangelical does not a liberal make.

For a number of years the public relations firm I was with represented Jerry Falwell as public relations counsel. We saw over and over how Falwell was featured and interviewed by mainstream media about topics on which he clearly was not the most qualified evangelical spokesman. Jerry never met a microphone he didn’t love, and media loved to portray him as the face and voice of American evangelicals.

Of course he wasn’t, nor are many of the current common voices of the evangelical politic. But they are presented as such, even as writers such as Clapp portray their declining influence as evangelical decline.

In the recent national survey that found a decline in the number of people who call themselves Christian, the reach of evangelical belief spread. One in three people in the country now consider themselves to be evangelical Christians. But note the following from the study itself (I couldn’t find this in any media reports)–

[The study] “reveals the dimensions of a significant trend in “belief” among the 76 percent of contemporary Americans who identify as Christians. These respondents were specifically asked “Do you identify as a Born Again or Evangelical Christian?” No definition was offered of the terms, which are usually associated with a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ together with a certain view of salvation, scripture, and missionary work. As the table shows, 45 percent of all American Christians now self-identify in this manner and they account for 34 percent of the total national adult population. What is significant is the recent spread of Evangelicalism well beyond Christians affiliated with those groups that are members of the National Evangelical Association so that millions of Mainliners and Catholics now identify with this trend.”

The CNN story on the study said:

The survey also found that “born-again” or “evangelical” Christianity is on the rise, while the percentage who belong to “mainline” congregations such as the Episcopal or Lutheran churches has fallen. One in three Americans consider themselves evangelical, and the number of people associated with mega-churches has skyrocketed from less than 200,000 in 1990 to more than 8 million in the latest survey.

If there is national evangelical leadership, it has shifted to the megachurches, but it is largely pastoral, not political.

Certainly, all is not well. There is work to do on the image of evangelical Christians, as explored by Gabe Lyons and Dave Kinnamen in UnChristian. Their introduction:

Christians are supposed to represent Christ to the world. But according to the latest report card, something has gone terribly wrong. Using descriptions like “hypocritical,” “insensitive,” and “judgmental,” young Americans share an impression of Christians that’s nothing short of . . . unChristian.

Groundbreaking research into the perceptions of sixteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds reveals that Christians have taken several giant steps backward in one of their most important assignments. The surprising details of the study, commissioned by Fermi Project and conducted by The Barna Group, are presented with uncompromising honesty in unChristian.

But those who follow Christianity closely know that the true heartbeat of evangelicalism isn’t behind microphones or plying the halls of Congress. If you pay attention, you hear the heartbeat of evangelicalism:

• In the villages of Angola, where Christians involved with Living Waters International have provided clean water to thousands of people in recent years in a country where 56 percent of the people don’t have clear water.

• In an abandoned building that now serves as a school and clinic for rescued child soldier girls just north of Gulu, northern Africa, where young woman and their babies born in captivity are given the basic building blocks of new lives they never thought they’d see by a group of Christians operating under the name ChildVoice International.

• In a series of gers—round teepee-like structures—in northern Mongolia, where Christians in a group called LifeQwest houses hundreds of orphans that they swept off the brutally frigid streets of Mongolian cities to literally save their lives and give a future vision to children of an ancient people.

• In the homes of staggering Atlanta neighborhoods, where Christians in the Charis Community Housing group help families purchase and care for homes in ways that will help them recover from the foreclosure crisis that has hit the inner cities far worse than the cushy suburbs.

• In a large churchyard garden in Boise, Idaho, where a retired Christian farmer helps dozens of church volunteers grow fruits and vegetables, “producing and giving away over 20,000 lbs. of produce, feeding approximately 1281 families, representing around 4108 individuals.”

• At an unimpressive building on New York Avenue in Washington, D.C., Christians at The Salvation Army’s Harbor Light Center take in down-and-out drug addicts and rather than just getting them off drugs, they get them into a new relationship with Jesus Christ—and the recidivism rates are dramatically better than run of the mill recovery centers.

The heart of American evangelicalism beats in places and ministries such as these, and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of other places in this country and around the world.

We see faithfulness in small group meetings in the homes of millions of Americans that are opening their Bibles and searching together for the way God wants them to live their lives. Yes, the heart beats in worship in churches blanketing the country—most small, 75-200 members, and in some very large. People eschewing an extra hour of sleep on Sunday morning to point to their Creator and give praise and to listen to a minister trying to help them in their walk with God.

Don’t believe that evangelicalism is fading. It’s changing to be more relevant to the problems of a new time, just as it has for millennia. And its political power rises and falls and stagnates. But bellicose commentators and lobbyists are not the church, and they never have been. Prescient observers know that. Many just won’t tell you.

Jim Jewell

Leaders of the Evangelical Generation #27: Bill McCartney. Man's Man

[I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they've had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time].


#27 Bill McCartney. Man’s Man. b.1940

In October 1997, well over a million Christian men crowded onto the Washington Mall to sing, pray and listen to inspirational and emotional charges to lead godly lives as fathers, husbands, and leaders. Promise Keepers’ Stand in the Gap (SITG), perhaps the largest religious gathering in American history, was a historic phenomenon and the high water mark of Promise Keepers and the career of its president, Bill McCartney.

There are millions of men and families who benefited from McCartney’s courage and the unwavering biblical teaching in the masculine stadium settings and from in–your-face teaching of the Promise Keepers stadium events. There had never been anything like 50,000 men gathering in a sports stadium to celebrate their faith and hear hard teachings about the way they should lead their lives as Christian men. SITG was the culmination of these events; like 100 stadium events at once.

In many ways, Bill McCartney was the personification of PK, and its dramatic history is a reflection of the red-hot persona of the former high-level football coach and his stubborn single-mindedness. The heights to which the PK movement soared and the speed of its ascent may be without parallel, the drama of which is matched only by its nearly total collapse within two years of the Washington gathering.
Promise Keepers is a symbol of evangelical conquest of one of its greatest problems—the failure to reach and persuade men—and a sad symbol of bad management based on careless theology.

A few days before the great SITG gathering, I took Bill McCartney to Washington television studios to do network television interviews, including a memorable time at ABC News. The sheer size of SITG made it impossible for media to ignore, although they were clearly inclined to dismiss a religious gathering on the Mall, where dozens of groups hold large rallies every year. Since McCartney was the straight-talking founder of the group and a former coach of the national champion Colorado football team, there was strong interest in interviewing him.

One interview was on ABC Nightline with Ted Koppel, which was taped in the afternoon and aired at late night. While the interview was fine and fair, the memorable part of the visit was prior to the taping. We arrived well in advance of the interview and we were relaxing in the comfortable chairs of the green room. McCartney was reading his Bible when Koppel entered the room and greeted us warmly. “What are you reading?” Koppel asked, and McCartney reviewed the passage that he was studying. Koppel listened thoughtfully, then added: “Let me share with you a little of my daily reading in the Torah.” At which point he pulled a copy of the scripture from his briefcase, read a few passages and had a brief discussion with McCartney about spiritual truths.

I’d taken Christian leaders into hundreds of news offices and green rooms over the years, and I’d never had a mainstream news anchor sit for a personal discussion, open the scripture and discuss spiritual things. I’d always found Koppel to be a serious, fair, quality newsman. This experience gave me a new level of respect.

It was part of a remarkable week in Washington for McCartney, Promise Keepers, and the evangelical movement in America.

Jim Jewell

Leaders of the Evangelical Generation: #4 Bill Bright

[I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they've had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time].

#4 Bill Bright. Evangelist (1921-2003)

The call came into the public relations firm late one afternoon in early 1999, and although Campus Crusade was not my account, the account executive wasn’t in, and I was the ranking executive on duty, so I took the “important call from Crusade.” The director of communications, our contact, was on the line; he breathlessly asked me to hold for Dr. Bright.

Campus Crusade founder and president Bill Bright was on a mission. As the end of the millennium loomed, he was increasingly burdened with the challenge to bring millions more people to faith in Christ. While it seemed as though every church and Christian group in the world had a campaign to fulfill the Great Commission before 2000, Bright also had a personal plan.

“Let’s find Noah’s Ark,” Bright said, and I stammered some agreeable words, uncertain of what he actually meant. He meant just that. His conviction was that the people in the villages of Turkey knew the whereabouts of the remnants of the ark; all we needed to do what make it worth it to them to tell us. Bright had decided that we’d run ads in the major newspapers of Turkey and offer $1 million to the person who would provide us with inconvertible evidence of the ark’s location and remnants.

Bright had the same reason for this long shot scheme that compelled him through decades as head of Campus Crusade—to provide evidence that would bring millions of people to faith in Jesus Christ. He figured that if we could provide failsafe modern evidence of one of the Bible’s best know stories, it would convince skeptics around the world that the Bible is an accurate historical record. And that would result in their trust of Scripture and their commitment to the biblical Jesus.

And so we did. Our PR firm was the only contact because Bill Bright and Campus Crusade were to remain anonymous. We wrote and designed a compelling ad with the help of our friends at The Puckett Group, who found a Turkish translator and tapped into the international advertising services necessary to place ads in the newspapers of Turkey.

This earnest effort brought drawers full of packages with long descriptions of places and proofs, with grainy pictures and even video. We couldn’t produce any more certainty than many other teams of filmmakers and authors and researchers could throughout the centuries. The project deadline arrived without conclusive evidence and all that remained to be done was to continue writing polite responses to dozens of wishful treasure hunters in Turkish villages for months that followed.

Perhaps the best result was another glimpse into the hopeful and sincere heart of one of evangelicalism’s most energetic and respected champions of mass evangelism. Bill Bright introduced not only the massive college evangelism effort, Campus Crusade, but also tools and campaigns that—although sometimes derided as simplistic and incomplete—nonetheless brought millions of people to Christ. These campaigns became pervasive symbols of evangelical marketing of the time—such as the Four Spiritual Laws (1965), the I Found It campaign (1976), and The Jesus Film (1979).

Bright, born in Coweta, Oklahoma, described himself as being a "happy pagan" in his youth. He graduated from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma with an economics degree. In 1944, while attending the First Presbyterian Church, Hollywood, Bright became a Christian. He immediately began intensive biblical studies which led him to graduate studies at Princeton and Fuller Theological Seminaries. It was while he was a student at Fuller that he felt what he regarded as the call of God to help fulfill Christ's Great Commission (Matthew 28:19) by sharing his faith, beginning with students at UCLA. This gave birth to the Campus Crusade for Christ movement.

During the decades to follow, Bill Bright and his wife, Vonette, remained faithful to this work, and the ministry expanded greatly. Campus Crusade now has more than 27,000 full-time staff and over 225,000 trained volunteer staff in 190 countries.

The First Ten PR Secrets for Non-Profits: #2 Be Different

When you engage in public relations as a non-profit organization, every move must be strategic and thoughtful. The road to visibility can be long and arduous, and there is nothing more important than your reputation. For more than three decades, we have been providing counsel and service to organizations and public figures in the Christian and non-profit sectors. We’ll unfold ten things we’ve learned. Today: #2 Be Different.

#2 Be Different

A crucial question that you need to ask yourself is: “What sets us apart?” Why would an individual be involved with our organization instead of someone else doing similar things, or similarly laudable things? Why would media take note of us instead of someone else? What would a volunteer, a donor, or a reporter say is unique about our organization?

A term coined by a popular marketing book was “differentiate or die.” In the consumer world they call this unique element the unique selling proposition (USP). Non-profits need to create a unique proposition, as well, and although you are not selling products, you are persuading people to your cause or position. To gain the right to do so, you will often need to show a very busy public why they should listen to you rather than someone else.

Jim Jewell

Leaders of the Evangelical Generation: #8 W. Stanley Mooneyham

[I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they've had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time].


#8 W. Stanley Mooneyham: Humanitarian. 1926-1991

With today’s ubiquitous calls for Christians to respond to human needs around the world, it is difficult to remember the days when evangelicals didn’t see the connection between physical and spiritual needs in a holistic outreach. W. Stanley Mooneyham was a giant in moving the church to “come walk the world” and respond to the great needs of body and soul.

Mooneyham was a passionate maverick who, as the second president of World Vision International after its founder Bob Pierce, became an advocate for international aid and the first real star of television fundraising for the hungry and suffering children and families of the world. During his tenure, Mooneyham took the organization from an annual budget of $7 million in 1969 to $158 million with a worldwide staff of 11,000 when he left.

He really gave his life serving the poor. The ravages of the diseases he encountered in constants trips to the cesspools of the most impoverished areas of the world led to the failure of his kidneys in 1991, when he died at 65. The trauma and lure of almost constant international travel, as well as the emotional roller coaster of a life spent immersed in Southern California hedonism and Third World squalor, took a toll on not only his health but also his family. His marriage ended about the same time his days with World Vision did.

During Mooneyham's tenure as president, he directed the relocation efforts that helped Vietnamese boat people. It was an involvement typical of his time at World Vision. He was advised not to pursue the venture, which he called Operation Seasweep, and there was no place to take the boat people rescued on the high seas. But Stan threw caution to the wind, bought a World War II landing craft, outfitted it, and sent it to the South China Sea.

That’s when I met Mooneyham. In 1978 I was beginning my first job, as a writer for World Vision, and in after just seven months on the job I was sent to Asia to document the maiden voyage of Operation Seasweep. I hadn’t met Mooneyham during my early months at WV, but he wasn’t about to have me writing about the mission without a good talking-to.

When I arrived in Singapore, I was summoned to Stan’s hotel, where he lectured me on treating the poor and suffering with respect. And he didn’t want my copy filled with wonder at how “different” these people were.

That year, we rescued 228 Vietnamese boat people from the Thai pirates and the deathly surges of the high seas. Within two years, the world was shamed by the boldness of World Vision’s leader and the U.S. Navy was picking up these refugees.
Mooneyham was a special assistant to Billy Graham before joining World Vision. He was one of the first practitioner of telethons and direct-mail campaigns to raise funds and was not afraid to use emotional appeals. Responding to criticism of his methods in 1978, Mooneyham said: "We are accused of emotionalism, but hunger is emotional, death is emotional and poverty is emotional. Those who wish to make it all seem neat, clinical and bureaucratic are the ones falsifying the picture, not us."

Mooneyham was the seventh child of a cotton sharecropper in Mississippi. He joined the Navy and served in the South Pacific during World War II. He told The Times in a 1981 interview that he became a Christian because of the war. He graduated from Oklahoma Baptist University on the GI Bill. Mooneyham joined the Graham evangelical crusades as a media liaison worker in 1964 and became advance planner for Graham evangelism congresses around the world. It was in some of those foreign lands that he saw what he described as "the awesome human needs" and joined World Vision.

Jim Jewell

The First Ten PR Secrets for Non-Profits

When you engage in public relations as a non-profit organization, every move must be strategic and thoughtful. The road to visibility can be long and arduous, and there is nothing more important than your reputation. For more than three decades, we have been providing counsel and service to organizations and public figures in the Christian and non-profit sectors. We’ll unfold ten things we’ve learned. Today: #1. Be One Thing.

#1 Be One Thing
Most organizations at their birth have a shining new idea and a vision for changing the world. A solution that people are willing to get behind. The founders seek to right a wrong.

Far too often, success in the journey toward that vision breeds branches in the road.

The first principle of successful non-profit public relations is to Be One Thing. Remain focused on one product, mission, ministry, or cause. We have found that the same impulses and drives that cause a visionary to begin and develop an organization often lead that founder to expand the non-profit brand by addressing additional areas of need.

This isn’t unique to the non-profit world, of course. Companies with some of the most successful consumer brands have tried to use the brand equity not just to increase the product’s market share, but also to expand what the brand represents.

Brand extension is the enemy of clear and strong identity, whether it happens at a mission or with a consumer product.

Watch for #2.

Jim Jewell

FRC Testimony to the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission

By Robert Schwarzwalder
Senior Vice President
Family Research Council
November 12, 2009

Co-Chairmen McGovern and Wolf, Congressman Smith and Members of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, thank you for allowing the Family Research Council to submit testimony on China’s human rights record.

In one sense, it is difficult to know where to begin. The catalog of China’s human rights abuses is so extensive that to highlight only several areas is to imply that the others are less significant. This is not the case.

Since the Maoist take-over of mainland China in 1949, tens of millions have perished under the wheel of totalitarian Communism. The exact number is difficult to quantify, but conservative estimates place the number into the 40 millions; the actual number may exceed 100 million.

We cannot truly mourn these losses without working actively to prevent additional brutality in our time. For that reason, Family Research Council will highlight two aspects of the Chinese government’s long pattern of inhumane treatment toward its own citizens that are of particular relevance to the work and ministry of our organization: its ongoing persecution of Christian believers and China’s “one child,” coercive
abortion policy.

The most authoritative study now available indicates that as of 2008, there are roughly 40 million Protestants and 14 million Catholics living in China. Of the latter number, about 10 million worship in churches not recognized by Beijing due to the Communist government’s antagonism toward Rome. Of the Protestants, substantial numbers worship in “unregistered” house churches. 1

What is the fate of these faithful men and women, productive citizens who want only to worship according to their consciences and in fidelity to the mandates of their faiths? Consider a small selection of the findings of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bi-partisan federal agency, in its 2009 annual report on China:

In May 2008, the Beijing Police raided the unregistered Shouwang Church and ordered the members to leave and stop meeting. The Shouwang Church has tried to register with the local government, but their application has been denied repeatedly because their clergy was not trained by the officially recognized Christian association. Unregistered Catholic priest Wang Zhong was sentenced to three years imprisonment for organizing a July ceremony at a new church that was legally registered with the government. Provincial authorities in Sichuan also interfered with the humanitarian activities sponsored by unregistered house church Protestants following the May 2008 earthquake. Two Protestants from Henan Province were detained and questioned about their efforts to help earthquake victims; they were held for about a week and ordered to pay a hefty fine for engaging in illegal religious activity. 2

As the Members of this panel know, lengthy books could be written about individual cases of religious persecution by the Chinese government. These not only clearly violate international accords of which China is a signatory, but more profoundly they do injustice to men and women of all ages, some quite young, others very elderly, whose only crime is to believe in the Creator of life and desire to worship Him according to biblical lights.

With respect to China’s “one child” birth policy, the three decades-old policy – euphemistically called “strategic family planning” – has resulted in untold numbers of coerced abortions, many on late-term unborn babies, and now by the Chinese government’s own admission, “there are 37 million more males than females now in China. Within the 0 - 15 year age group, there are 18 million more boys than girls.”

The massiveness of China’s forced abortion policy and its sheer brutality has not discouraged the Communist government from sustaining it. According to recent comments by Zhang Weiqing, minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, “The current family planning policy, formed as a result of gradual changes in the past two decades, has proved compatible with national conditions. So it has to be kept unchanged at this time to ensure stable and balanced population growth.” 4

Sadly, President Obama has chosen to waive the historic Kemp-Kasten prohibition that denies federal funding to organizations or programs that “support or participate in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization” and provide $50 million to the United Nations Family Planning Fund, some of which will go to assist Chinese officials who will further facilitate compulsory contraception, forced abortions, and even prison terms for women who have more than one child. 5

“Nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on,” said President Lincoln. This is the essential meaning of our Declaration of Independence, that God has created all of us equal and bestowed us with “certain unalienable rights,” the foremost among them the right to life.

This principle is true for Americans and Chinese alike, and should be reinstated as essential to America’s relationship with China’s government and its gruesome human rights policies.

Thank you again for giving the Family Research Council the opportunity to submit this testimony.



1 “Facts about Numbers of Christians in China,” Dr. Werner Burklin, www.gospelherald.net, Dec. 9, 2008

2 U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, 2009 Annual Report on the People’s Republic of China, p.5

3 “China has 37 million more males than females,” People’s Daily Online, July 10, 2007. www.english.people.com.cn

4 “China Sticking with One –Child Policy,” Jim Yardley, New York Times, March 11, 2008

5 “Conservatism's Future in Foreign Policy,” by Family Research Council Senior Fellow and former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission Ken Blackwell, The Washington Times, Sept. 9, 2009; FRC News Release, “FRC Commends Effort to Protect Pro-life Riders, Prevent Taxpayer Funded Abortions,” Feb. 25, 2009

Leaders of the Evangelical Generation #19: Millard Fuller

#19 Millard Fuller. Builder. 1935-2009

[I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they've had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time].

On February 17, 2009, I received a letter from heaven, and while it certainly seemed odd, it was the news that an old friend had died that shocked and saddened me. I grieved for the dear wife and family of a truly great man.

Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity and the Fuller Center for Housing, died Feb. 3 at the age of 74. It appears it was a heart attack, which was a surprise for a razor thin man of drive and energy. I didn’t see any news stories on his passing; perhaps you didn’t either.

I had sent Millard a letter about the new ministry we’re involved in called Flourish, an effort to energize Christian churches around the right priorities of creation care. He received my letter on January 27 and dictated a gracious response (remember when people routinely exchanged letters; how quaint). His secretary transcribed the letter and mailed it to me on February 5, with the notation: “dictated by Mr. Fuller and transcribed after his death.”

Our firm, Rooftop MediaWorks, worked with Millard and Linda Fuller soon after a late-in-life crisis, when Millard was forced out of his position as the leader of Habitat, the organization he and Linda had begun, by the board he had chosen. [When you spend much of your life in the public relations business, as I have, you often meet people at times of crisis.]

It was an ugly parting, and I first talked with Millard about it when I wrote a news piece for Christianity Today on the separation. My research left me troubled by the board’s rough treatment of Millard, so when I saw that he and Linda were continuing the ministry of providing low cost housing through a new organization, the Fuller Center for Housing, we offered to provide public relations services—which we did for the next several months, introducing the new group to the world.

When I learned yesterday of Millard’s passing in this odd and unexpected way, my first thought was that when he was pushed out of Habitat at the age of 70 he should have stepped back and enjoyed his accomplishments and bounced some grandkids on his knee. Maybe that would have prolonged his life. But instead he chose to continue serving people who suffered because of substandard housing. He believed in serving his God and his neighbors in this way, which he called the Theology of the Hammer.”

So Millard died, figuratively, with a hammer in his hand, and although his life could have been longer, I doubt that it could have been much richer.

People like Millard Fuller are great not because they are flawless or all-wise. Great people like Millard Fuller do great things by challenging themselves to do ever more, by motivating everyone in their path, and by trusting in a Greater God.

We owe Millard much and we do well to emulate him. At very least, in his honor we should pick up a hammer this year and help some folks who cannot help themselves.

That Beauty May Flourish

"We all have our own internal lists of what we call beautiful. My list would include my captivating wife, the bright eyes of my newborn daughter, the layered contours of a mountain range, the pulse and drama of a rocky shoreline, the power of a pounding waterfall, the bounty of a vegetable garden, the autumn explosion of a brilliant tree-lined lane, and even the sculpted, balanced architecture of a well-planned cityscape."

With new beauty about to be added to my life--the birth of a third daughter very, very soon--my further thoughts on beauty and the care of creation are featured today on the Flourish blog (they highlight thoughts from my one son, Michael).

Jim Jewell