Calvin Synod Herald, 1974 (74. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1974-02-01 / 2. szám
8 CALVIN SYNOD HERALD & ecauóe Because you prayed God touched our weary bodies with His power, And gave us strength for many a trying hour In which we might have faltered Had not you, our intercessors, Faithful been — and true. Because you prayed God touched our eager fingers with His skill, Enabling us to do His blessed will With scapel, suture, bandage; Better still, He healed the sick, the wounded, Cured the ill. The Witherspoon Building has been owned by the United Presbyterian Church since it was built in 1896-97. Sale of the structure follows a decision to move nearly all the church’s national and international agency offices to The Interchurch Center in New York City. The United Presbyterian Foundation will hold proceeds of the sale for uses authorized by the denomination’s General Assembly. A.D., February 1974, p. 66 CATHOLIC PRELATE'S TRIBUTE TO DR. ESPY Notable among many tributes paid to Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy during the NCC Governing Board’s testimonial dinner to him was that of Catholic Bishop James S. Rausch. Because you prayed God touched our lips with coal from altar fire, Gave Spirit fullness, and did so inspire That when we spake sin-blinded souls did see! Sin-chains were broken; Captives were made free! Because you prayed The dwellers in the dark Have found the light! The glad, good news has banished heathen night! The message of the Cross, so long delayed, Has brought them life at last — Because you prayed! — Author Unknown. Illlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll WITHERSPOON BUILDING BRINGS $2,750,000 The United Presbyterian Church has sold its downtown Philadelphia headquarters building to a bank for $2,750,000. By an agreement of sale signed in November between the church and Fidelity Bank of Philadelphia, the church all but abandoned an 11-story structure that has been a landmark of Presbyterianism in the East. Only three divisions of the church — the Board of Pensions, the publications unit of the Program Agency, and the circulation department of A.D. — will remain in “the Spoon” in 1974. Describing the Council’s General Secretary, who will retire at the end of the year, as a man of “indefatigable spirit” and “great faith,” Bishop Rausch said: “There have been many days when no one would find his job enviable, but never a day when he was not a source of encouragement to the rest of us. His patience, his vision, his sensitivity, his integrity and his perserverance are well known to us and deeply admired.” The General Secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the U.S. Catholic Conference recalled the turbulent decade during which the NCC’s top executive post has been occupied by Dr. Espy: “The quest for racial justice and the pursuit of peace came before us as two issues that could not be ignored or dealt with from a distance,” Bishop Rausch said. “Those who served the National Council and its member churches knew that in pursuing those goals they would have to face militancy, blacklash, polarization and the sheer agony of men’s consciences, and that they could use none of these as an excuse to stop their efforts.” “As the decade developed,” Bishop Rausch continued, “the Council was faced with finding ways to work with a greater economy of means and going still further through a sensitive period of internal restructuring. At many points this meant that new hopes had to be brought forth out of a background of many painful decisions. “In addition,” the bishop said, “the Council of Churches also saw the task of extending a supporting hand to the Catholic Church, which had come to new ecumenical resolves in the Second Vatican Council. No small amount of skill has been necessary to carefully develop ecumenical collaboration and protect the potential it contains for the future.” “There has been one constant during the past ten years, the person of Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy,” said Bishop Rausch. Tempo, Oct. 1973 SOMETHING NEW: STACK-SACK HOUSING When earthquakes strike, as they do each year in some part of the world, tens of thousands of people are made homeless in a matter of minutes — even seconds. Providing shelter for the refugees and rebuilding homes has always been a costly and time-consuming effort. Thousands have gone homeless, sometimes for months, before the rebuilding is completed. Now, however, there is something new: stack-sack housing. This is a new and revolutionary home-building technique which has been devised by a builder from Dallas, Texas: Mr. Edward T. Dicker. Stack-sack houses require a minimum of equipment and material. Burlap bags, six by twenty-four inches in size are filled with a dry mixture of sand, crushed stone, and cement. The filled bags are then soaked in water before being skewered on long steel rods which secure them to a concrete slab foundation. In effect, the bags become giant bricks, forming the exterior and interior walls of the house. The walls are finally sprayed with a cement-like substance to give them a smooth and attractive appearance. Last year in Peru, Church World Service was able to construct stacksack houses for as little as one hundred and twenty-five dollars each. A thousand families were rehoused rapidly as the result. In Nicaragua, too, it is hoped that stack-sack housing will have a part in the rebuilding of Managua. Your gifts to the One Great Hour of Sharing-SOS All-Church Offering, together with directed gifts for relief and rehabilitation of disaster victims around the world, are channeled through our United Church Board for World Ministries. In most places in the world, our Board works cooperatively through Church World Service. The provision of stack-sack housing to those in need is one result.
