A LETTER TO DR. ROYCE MONEY, PRESIDENT ABILENE CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY

Dr. Royce Money, President
Abilene Christian University
ACU Station
Abilene, TX 79699

Dear Bro. Money:

I trust this note finds all well with you. Although we have never met, I have visited the ACU lectures and read many of the publications that have come forth from those who teach there.
Having carefully read the first two volumes of the Heart of the Restoration Series, which you so warmly endorse, and which ACU is publishing, I feel constrained to write you my thoughts and observations. I do hope you will take time to read and reflect on them.
Our congregations cross America are experiencing conflict and turmoil because of a flood of unscriptural changes that are being promoted to the point of division. One of the primary sources of this “change teaching” is Abilene Christian University.  Faculty members are issuing a stream of books promoting change and students are being filled with their new ideas about the faith and worship of the church. They then come home and sow the seeds of change in their home congregations. Young preachers are being educated and sent forth who do not understand or appreciate the concept of restoring the original faith and practice of the church.  In the name of promoting unity, more division is being sown. As a brother in Christ, I appeal to you to reflect on the following points:

• As a matter of integrity, should you not consider and respect the interests and purpose of your founders?  Your school was not started by brethren who believed that one could be saved before his baptism. Not one of them believed that instrumental music was acceptable in Christian worship.  Not one of them believed that women could fill public leadership roles in the church.  None of them thought the church of Christ was a denomination.  They sacrificed to establish and build up your school in order to advance the cause of Christ, to provide an educational setting so that young Christians could be trained in an environment that would sustain and strengthen their faith, not undermine it.
• Should not your leadership reflect love, honor and respect for the church which you exist to serve?  Your school was not founded nor financed to promote denominational teachings and practices.  Its was never intended to take upon itself the imposition of changes to the faith and practice of the Lord’s church.
• Is it not inconsistent to keep on your faculty those who have departed fro the faith of Christ as revealed in the New Testament? A man who prefers Baptist doctrine should be teaching in a Baptist school. If his preference is with the Christian Churches, he should go there!
• You should feel a deep sense of personal responsibility to the parents who have intrusted their children to you for their education, trusting that you would help make them stronger Christians, and useful members of the church of Christ.
• Should you not show greater respect for all of those saints who have given their hard-earned money to keep your school afloat in days past?  They bequeathed to you their wealth and their estates, firmly believing the faith they held would be perpetuated to future generations by your teachers.
• If you no longer believe in or respect those basis fundamentals of New Testament Christianity, held and preached by past generations of the churches of Christ, then would it not be the honorable thing for you to resign your post and allow others, who still believe, to carry on?
• The direction charted for ACU needs to be carefully weighted against the Christian virtues of fidelity, honor, justice, respect and loyalty (Phil 4:8).  Abilene Christian University has been entrusted to your care for a few short years. When you have finished your term of office it should be better than when you started, certainly not worse. A Christian school should in every case be a blessing to Christ’s church and never a hindrance.
• I have also read Bro. Don Morris’ book, Like A Star Brightly Shining and bro. Owen Cosgrove’s book on the life of Bro. Morris.  Surely you will agree that the philosophy and direction of the school today is quite different than it was in the past.  Will future historians of the Lord’s church identify you and ACU as leaders in the moment that led Churches of Christ away from their Biblical roots and into a weakened brand of Protestant denominationalism? At this point it seems that you folks are following the same path that was trod by “progressives” of the late 19th and early 20th century. They left our forefathers to be the Disciples of Christ/ Christian Churches denomination.

I send these thoughts with the prayer that you will seriously consider them and reflect on the path you have chosen for the school; that you will reaffirm your commitment to the principles upon which ACU was founded.