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Birmingham
Ronnie Schreiber: "The Jewish community must do a better job ..."
many. Each child is precious.
It represents a whole family,
a tradition, a world. It is an
irreplaceable loss."
Exact figures on the
number of Jewish converts to
Hebrew Christianity are hard
to come by. A head count of
those attending the estimated
80 Messianic congregations
across the country does not
give the total picture. For a
large number of converts,
these provide a half-way
house on the way to member-
ship in other churches,
notably the Assemblies of
God and branches of the Bap-
tist church.
Hope of Israel, for example
is not a church but a mission,
emphasizes Lew. "When
(members) are ready we help
them to find churches which
welcome Jewish people," says
Lew, who is himself a Baptist.
According to Lawrence
Levey, a survey of Jewish
Christians taken by Jews for
Jesus showed that, one year
after conversion, only ten per-
cent continued to attend
"Jewish" congregations. The
remaining 90 percent had
gone into other churches.
Estimates from Messianic
and countermissionary ac-
tivists suggest that there are
approximately 5,000 Jewish
Christians in Israel and
about 80,000 in the United
States, with roughly 300 of
them in or around Detroit.
Both missionaries and
monitors of the movement
believe that these numbers
are likely to grow.
For one thing, the
Schreibers point out, Jim and
Tammy Bakker notwithstan-
ding, fundamental
evangelism continues to pro-
sper and to make its con-
siderable financial and
political power available to
Messianic missionaries.
Among
the
leading
evangelists to offer money,
organizational aid or air time
to the movement are Jerry
Falwell, Oral Roberts, Jimmy
Swaggart and Pat Robertson,
whose Christian Broad-
casting Network is the single
biggest purveyor of Jewish
Christian programming.
Not only is broadcast
evangelism an effective way
to reach Jews, but it has pro-
ved to be an even more effec-
tive way to engage Christian
support for the Messianic
movemen-particularly since
the increft2d exposure given
to Messianic groups has coin-
cided with a growing interest
in the early church.
Consequently, more in-
dividual churches, not only
from the evangelical
denominations, have been
willing, on local levels to
sponsor Hebrew Christians
financially and to host their
presentations. Jews for Jesus'
roadshow, "Christ in the
Passover," was shown at 11
Detroit area churches this
year, including St. Paul
United Methodist in Bloom-
field Hills and Christ the
King Lutheran in Grosse
Pointe Woods.
"We have seen much more
involvement of the mainline
churches," says Lawrence
Levey, "even in those who are
officially opposed. The only
one that has no involvement
at all," he says, "is the
Catholic church."
Most church leaders
welcome the genuine upsurge
of interest in both the early
church and in Jewish ritual
and tradition. Many, like the
Rev. James Lyons, director of
the. Ecumenical Institute for
Jewish-Christian Studies in
Southfield, feel that it is im-
portant, however, to draw a
clear line between the two.