USA > Pennsylvania > Change and challenge: a history of the Church of the Brethren in the southern district of Pennsylvania, 1940-1972 > Part 5
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The significance of change was illustrated by an experience recorded by The Gospel Messenger.35 An Old Order brother once said to Ira Frantz, "If the Church of the Brethren were what it was when I was a boy I would be a member of it today". Bro. Frantz replied that if he church were the same as when he was a boy, he would not be a member of it.
THE REGIONAL PROGRAM
Vernon F. Schwalm, a moderator of the Church of the Brethren, once noted that the denomination was at work in three major areas prior to World War II. These areas included missions, relief and welfare work and Christian Education. Much of the organization of the brotherhood and the districts centered about these concerns. In the Southern District, a series of boards handled the work. There was little coordination of activities and each group established its own objectives.36
Since 1936, however, there was a gradual growth of regional planning. The regional program was a by-product of a number of influences. The need for coordination and planning at the brotherhood level led to the reorganization of the denomination into a General Brotherhood Board. This in turn led to a more institutionalized approach to the various relig- ious ministries of the church. As the church confronted one emergency after another in the nation and in the world, it expanded its budget with new ministries.
At the same time, many congregations were resorting to the salaried pastoral system. Where once Ministry Commissions were content to seek for pastors from members within their own districts, they now began to reach beyond their districts for church leadership. As the pastoral sys- tem grew, the need for trained local leadership also expanded. All of these factors required someone beyond the local congregation to foster the developing programs.
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The churches were very deliberate in accepting the leadership of Regional Executives. In spite of the existence of a General Ministerial Board for the Eastern Region, local ministerial boards in the districts and the congregations continued to exercise independence in searching for pastors. Dr. Tobias F. Henry, pastor of the Huntingdon Church of the Brethren, was elected to the General Ministerial Board of the Eastern Region. This board actually had little authority and served primarily as a consultative body. Once Dr. Henry suggested a course of action for a congregation. "Two brethren traveled more than fifty miles to ask me what authority I had to interfere in their affairs".37
As a member of the General Ministerial Board, Dr. Henry met with the ministerial boards of the districts. At this time, the Southern Dis- trict Ministerial Board was composed of persons who were serving in the nonsalaried ministry. "It was difficult for me to help them in considering the problems of the free ministry", said Dr. Henry. The years were to bring change as the number of salaried pastors increased and new orga- nizations replaced the loose confederation under the District's Council of Boards.
Dr. Henry was an experienced pastor and teacher who began to serve the pastoral needs of the churches of the region. He served in pastorates in Indiana, Maryland and Pennsylvania and taught at Juniata College (1947-1966). His doctoral thesis was written on The Development of Religious Education in the Church of the Brethren in the United States (1938) for the University of Pittsburgh. His experience in district work had given him insights into district and regional problems.
In the transition period from 1940 to 1950, Dr. Henry found the church slowly developing a new style of organization. These were dif- ficult years as he tried to counsel churches which wished to retain their congregational independence. It took time for them to accept the matur- ing regional organization. Even as late as the 1970s, there have been com- plaints about the centralizing, presbyterian tendencies in denominational polity.
In 1942, Galen C. Kilhefner and Donald M. Snider were employed as Eastern Regional field men. Don Snider served basically in the territory assigned to Juniata College (1942-1944) and Galen Kilhefner served from offices at Eliza- bethtown College (1942-1947). These Re- gional Executives were employed to give stress to the total program of the Church of the Brethren. At this time, the major emphasis was given to the developing Brethren Service program and to prob- lems centering in the drafting of young men for military service. The Executives visited congregations, addressed confer- ences and interpreted to the District Meetings the changing phases of the church's program.38
Bro. Snider had been a member of Galen C. Kilhefner the Waynesboro congregation where he was licensed to the ministry. Galen Kil- hefner was a member of the Ephrata con- gregation and, at the time of his regional responsibilities, a member of the Elizabethtown Church. During the war years, both Executives were involved in counseling young men as they faced the military service. On
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a number of occasions, Bro. Kilhefner issued a memo to the district churches, reminding them to take a stand against the flourishing mili- tarism. "Let us not hold our tongues!" he said as he appealed to church members to train their children for the Kingdom of God.39
These brethren served as the first Regional Secretaries in Pennsyl- vania for the Church of the Brethren. Bro. Kilhefner, who was responsible for Southern Pennsylvania, was employed cooperatively by Elizabethtown College, Camp Swatara, the Brotherhood offices and several districts. He carried the responsibility for teaching a class at Elizabethtown College and assisted the college in the recruitment of new students. In addition, he interpreted to the districts the program of Brethren Service and the Civilian Public Service camps.
Regional Conferences were instituted as a means of bringing various boards and committees and other district workers into consultative, work- ing sessions. These conferences were begun on a regular basis in 1942 at the Martinsburg Church of the Brethren. The second conference, conducted during the war years, met in the First Church of the Brethren of York in 1943. These conferences continued until 1964. In many in- stances, they were held either at Elizabethtown College or at Juniata College. The decision to rotate these gatherings was not made until the 1958 conference.
The Regional Executives and the Council of Board representatives had responsibility for designing the Regional Conferences. The confer- ence at York, for example, was held at a time when gasoline- and tire- rationing created travel restrictions. Raymond R. Peters, H. L. Hartsough and M. R. Zigler came from the brotherhood level to given interpretations of the theme, "A Constructive and Aggressive Program for the Region". H. L. Hartsough discussed "Recruiting in War-Time", as he outlined the need for pastoral leadership in the brotherhood.
A Regional Conference, convening in the Green Tree Church of the North Atlantic District in 1944, centered on the theme, "Forward Steps in the District". S. C. Godfrey, the moderator of the Southern District, joined with moderators of the other four districts in outlining goals and programs. Dr. Ross D. Murphy presided as the moderator of the Regional Conference.
Donald M. Snider
When Donald M. Snider became the youth director for the brotherhood (1944), Levi K. Ziegler was invited to become the Executive Secretary out of the Juniata College offices. He had wide experience as a pastor and as a director of Civilian Public Service work. From 1944 until 1947, he counseled congrega- tions and individuals in the area served by Juniata College.
Levi K. Ziegler and Galen C. Kil- hefner cooperated in promoting the brotherhood program in the five dis- tricts of the Eastern Region. They also joined in promoting the inspiration, training experiences of the Regional Conferences They conducted Bible In- stitutes for the Region and joined crea- tive talents in submitting brief articles for The Gospel Messenger.
On September 1, 1947, Levi K. Ziegler began his responsibilities as Executive Secretary for the entire Eastern Region. In order to be more
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centrally located, a residence and office was purchased at 518 Bosler Avenue in Lemoyne, Pennsylvania. This parsonage was maintained until a new one was purchased in 1954 in the city of Harrisburg.
The emerging regional program was an outgrowth of the report of the Committee of Fifteen to the Orlando Conference (1947). Five regions had developed informally across the nation since 1931. The Annual Con- ference recognized these divisions as desirable and as permanent liaison organizations between the districts and the Annual Conference.
An Eastern Regional Board was formed with two representatives from each of the five districts. Members of the General Brotherhood Board living within the region became members of this new board. These representatives met in two regular sessions each year. They were assigned such responsibilities as: 1) .- Interpreting, coordinating and promoting the total program of the church; 2) .- Assuming responsibility for the enlistment, placement and supervision of pastors in the region; 3) .- Plan- ning and promoting the Regional Conference; 4) .- Representing the re- gion on the Locating Committee for the Annual Conference when the con- ference is in the region; 5) .- Choosing the Regional Secretary; and 6) .- Helping to plan the regional program for the churches.40
The Regional Board employed the Regional Secretary to coordinate and promote the total church program. The Secretary met with and counseled congregations, ministers, District Board, church boards and other church groups concerned about the brotherhood program. He co- operated with the General Church Board and the various district boards in promoting church extension and pastoral placement. In addition, he cultivated desirable public relations for the college by interpreting the college program to the districts.41
The Regional Secretary spent much time in 1947 and 1948 in promot- ing the Advance with Christ program. This program called the church to unusual and courageous action in a distraught world.
"Members of the Church of the Brethren have seen at least dimly the necessity of transforming our faith into more aggressive action. Certain aspects of our program have already moved forward in an amazing way. The time seems now here for the church to swing into aggressive action on all fronts."42
The church became aware that it could no longer be content with mediocre attainments. A revitalized church became the general goal of the program. Inactive members were to be revived, 15,000 new members were to be added to the church rolls, twenty new congregations were to be established, a vigorous peace program implemented, the alcohol problem con- fronted and a new stewardship program adopted.43 Levi K. Ziegler spent many days with many congregations in develop- ing objectives and programs.
The Regional Secretary was respon- sible for 196 churches with a combined membership approaching 50,000 persons. The work load was burdensome and assis- tance was needed in the Regional Office. Levi K. Ziegler David K. Hanawalt was employed with the title of Associate Executive Secretary. This change was made at a time when the General Brotherhood Board began to stress the need for a field program. Many board members felt
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each district should have part- or full-time personnel set aside for district leadership.44
Bro. Hanawalt assumed his work on January 1, 1949. He was excep- tionally qualified for the work, having served the Pennsylvania Council of Churches as Director of Overseas Relief (1947-1948). He had been active in the non-salaried ministry for the Church of the Brethren (1928- 1940) and ministered as the pastor of the Green Tree Church in the North Atlantic District (1940-1947). He had also served as a public school teacher prior to his new work as Associate Executive.
He carried diverse responsibilities as the new Associate Executive. He worked with young adults, youth and junior high students in order to develop programs within the five districts. He promoted Brethren Service and Relief ministries. He encouraged the support of the Heifer Project and helped to care for displaced persons and refugees. Since David K. Hanawalt also maintained a keen interest in camping, he helped to foster the regional camping programs. He aided in developing the youth Appa- lachian Trail Hikes. In the course of his years of service for the region, he visited nearly all of the congregations in the area and sat in on many regional, district and local church board meetings.
In 1951, David K. Hanawalt submitted his resignation as the Associate Regional Secretary. He accepted responsibilities as the new Executive Secretary of the Middle District of Maryland, effective September 16, 1951 He located his new offices at New Windsor, Maryland and continued in this position until 1961.
With the resignation of Bro. Hanawalt, the Regional Board searched for someone to assume the Christian Education responsibilities for the region. They found such a person in Virginia S. Fisher, whose husband was professor of music at Elizabethtown College. A native of the state of Virginia, Mrs. Fisher is a seventh generation descendant of Jacob Showalter who emigrated from Switzerland to America in 1750 on the good ship "Brotherhood". As the new Associate Executive, Mrs. Fisher established her offices at Elizabethtown.
Virginia Fisher's work centered in the development of a Christian Education program which would be of use to local congregations. Much stress was given to the development of workshops, training sessions and schools to help develop congregational leadership. National and regional training conferences were supported by representatives from each of the five districts. Demonstration schools were held for teachers of children. At the beginning, much of this was by the Associate Executive Secretary who had been employed on a part-time basis at the regional level.
Levi K. Ziegler continued to serve the region as a counselor to pastors and congregations. He met with district and local ministerial boards. He assisted in licensing men to the ministry and in ordaining others to the eldership. He arranged for the itineraries of missionaries and other church workers who appeared in the region. He was responsible for the tour of P. G. Bhagat, a convert and minister of India, and arranged a speaking schedule for Bassey Minso, a native Christian from Africa. He served on the locating committee for the Annual Conference when the conference convened at Ocean Grove, New Jersy (1949). His diary records that he had more than 1100 preaching and speaking engagements, including numer- ous radio broadcasts, in his total ministry. He retired from the regional office at the age of sixty-five years in 1953.
On January 16, 1911, Levi K. Ziegler wrote into his diary these sig- nificant words:
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"This day is a turning-point in my life. I have resolved to give God my life and let Him use it where He wills."
The total number of years he served in the Christian ministry nearly reached fifty. His Memoirs, after his retirement, reads:
"This is not so much the story of what one imperfect human being has done, as it is a view of what God attempts to do through a life which has been dedicated to Him."45
Levi K. Ziegler's basic phlosophy was expressed in words which he once wrote to The Gospel Messenger:
"The prime factors in the ongoing program of the church are people. People are to be taught, guided, evangelized, encouraged and redeemed."46
The Eastern Regional Board employed Stewart B. Kauffman as the successor to Levi K. Ziegler. He began his work on September 1, 1953. It was during this period that various districts began to ac- cept the Regional Offices as useful and necessary. The District Boards invited the Executive Secretary to attend board meet- ings and submitted copies of the Minutes to his office. Stewart B. Kauffman found he could work rather comfortably with boards relative to pastoral placement and the ministerial vocation. This was a time in which the pastoral program was gaining a wider acceptance.
The new Regional Secretary spent much of his time as a counselor to pastors (1953-1955), and as an advisor to the re- Stewart B. Kauffman gional, district and local church boards. His own experience as a pastor in the Shade Creek congregation (1945-1948) and at the Everett congregation (1948-1953) prepared him for his larger ministry to the five districts. Concerted efforts were made to upgrade the ministry of the denomina- tion. His success in dealing with professional ministers opened the way for a call to serve the brotherhood as Director of Ministry and Evangelism (1955-1960). At the regional and the brotherhood levels, Stewart B. Kauffman served as an able administrator and a strong churchman.
In 1954, the Eastern Region parsonage and offices were relocated at 1820 Market Street in Harrisburg. Bro. Kauffman was the first Execu- tive to use the new parsonage. The Christian Education offices continued for a time at Elizabethtown College. During a period when the Executive Secretary's Office was vacant, Mrs. Virginia S. Fisher cared for the pro- grams of the districts.
When Bro. Kauffman moved to Elgin, Illinois, his new position per- mitted a continuing, meaningful ministry to the salaried and non-salaried pastors of the district. He was now in regular contact with district per- sonnel, giving them guidance with reference to the Licensed Ministers' Reading program, the Summer Pastoral program and polity and practice in relation to church-pastor concerns. He once wrote to the District Ministerial Board:
"Counseling and guiding these new ministers through their years of preparation is a very sacred task and your leadership is greatly appreciated."47
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Harold Z. Bomberger
In 1955, the Eastern Regional Board called Harold Z. Bomberger to the posi- tion of Executive Secretary. He assumed his responsibilities on February 1, 1956. Bro. Bomberger entered the work with wide pastoral experience in summer pas- toral work and in full-time pastorates in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
During his years as the Regional Ex- ecutive Secretary, Bro. Bomberger was responsible for five areas of work (1955- 1960). He served as the regional represen- tative of the brotherhood program and coordinated this work within the cooperat- ing districts. In turn, it was his responsi- bility to report each year to the Standing Committee his observations and evaluations of the strengths and weaknesses of the region he served.
Again, he was involved in the pastoral placement and counseling services, assisting churches as they looked for pastoral leadership or pastoral change. He developed a fellowship among ministers of the region by providing an annual camp for ministers and their wives. At the 1960 camp for clergymen, Bro. Bomberger spoke on "The Use of the Anointing Service in The Church of the Brethren". He assisted young ministers in making use of the newly-prescribed Three-Year Reading Course.
The Regional Conference was used to promote the regional and the brotherhood program. In 1959, at the Regional Conference in Chambers- burg, the Call Program of the brotherhood was stressed. Evangelism was appraised by many representatives in terms of the new patterns and per- spectives of the age.
Since 1951, the regional program was underwritten by district appor- tionments and by brotherhood subsidies. The total support of the program grew hesitatingly. Many people were content with the kinds of program they knew in earlier decades and were slow to adapt to change. Others found difficulty in accepting the differences in thinking which the trained pastoral ministry would bring to the district. Harold Z. Bomberger once observed about his work:
"One of our biggest problems was to find and use the strengths and virtues which existed in the midst of our diversities."48
The Regional Executive was regularly confronted with the need to spur the congregations to their fullest efforts. Such areas as leadership recruitment and training, long-range planning for church extension, mean- ingful Christian Education for the home, school, church and college and the need to aid youth in making wise career choices were concerns of the time. There were frequent references in this period to the fact that the Region and the districts were "sleeping giants ready to be wakened".
By 1959, the districts were prepared to launch into their own field programs. The region was too extensive and too demanding for two Executives. Western Pennsylvania began to withdraw from the Regional program by employing its own Executive in 1958. On September 1, 1959, Virginia S. Fisher resigned as the Associate Executive Secretary, the resignation to be effective August 31, 1960. She had served in regional work in Pennsylvania and in the state of Virginia for a period of twenty years at the time of her resignation. She assumed a teaching responsi- bility at the Evangelical Reformed Seminary in Lancaster during a sab- batical leave of the professor of Christian Education.49
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Harold Z. Bomberger resigned on September 14, 1959, to accept the pastorate of the McPherson Church of the Brethren in Kansas. His resignation became effective on July 31, 1960. In September, 1960, the Middle District of Pennsylvania entered its own field program. The re- gional program in Pennsylvania was coming to a close.
CHAPTER THREE
THE EVOLUTION OF THE FIELD PROGRAM
An earlier chapter relates the rise of new administrative programs in the Church of the Brethren. Beginning with large geographical units, the field program became too massive and unwieldy for several Executive Secretaries to handle. The comprehensive field program was gradually modified to serve smaller geographical areas.
THE TRI-DISTRICT PROGRAM
Three queries before the 1958 Annual Conference suggested the pos- sibility of realigning the districts throughout the brotherhood. The study committee appointed by the conference gave two years of intensive study to the problem. The report which was presented to the Urbana-Cham- paign Conference (1960) proposed the reduction of the forty-eight dis- tricts within a decade to eighteen.1 At the time the proposal was adopted, thirty-two of the forty-eight districts had less than five thousand members.
The conference report suggested that districts adjacent to one another might find ways to encourage and aid one another with cooperative pro- grams. Actual functional cooperation was to be effected by joint District Board and commission meetings; joint conferences, workshops and labora- tory schools; joint camping and social welfare programs; and by "joint field programs . .. using the services of dedicated and competent field- men and other specialized workers".2 The report also recommended that Eastern, North Atlantic and the Southern Districts in Pennsylvania might be realigned into one district.
On July 30, 1960, the District Boards of the Eastern, North Atlantic and Southern Districts met in joint session at Elizabethtown College at the call of M. Guy West, the chairman of the Regional Board. To facili- tate the business of the boards, a special committee prepared a preliminary report for discussion.3 The study committee suggested possible courses of action in the light of the Annual Conference recommendations. One of these courses was to effect a merger of the Eastern and North Atlantic Districts. In effect, this would result in a return to the boundary lines of the Eastern District prior to the 1910 division. In the course of events, this suggestion was ultimately adopted by the districts.
The Southern District was asked to appoint three members to serve on a committee to study the feasibility of a functional merger of the three districts. Other cooperating districts appointed their representa- tives, and the first Tri-District Committee was composed of the following personnel: A. C. Baugher, Hiram J. Frysinger, and A. G. Breidenstine from the Eastern District; Donald H. Shank, Donald W. Rummel and John R. E. Hoover from the North Atlantic District; and Ronald H. Row- land, Glenn E. Kinsel and M. Guy West from the Southern District. Dr. A. C. Baugher served as the first chairman.
The joint District Boards at their Elizabethtown College meeting adopted five recommendations:
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1 .- It is the judgment of the boards that the districts are not ready for an immediate organic merger;
2 .- A more effective total church program would result if the three districts worked cooperatively in the areas of Children's Aid Work, Church Extension, Homes for the Aged, Camping and various Age-Group activities;
3 .- The Eastern District and the North Atlantic District should petition their respective District Meetings to look with favor upon the two districts uniting, hopefully within three years;
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