Christian Research Institute - Early Ministry Development

Early Ministry Development

The basic charter for CRI began with the aim of serving as a bureau of information on cults, other religions, and Christian apologetics. Walter Martin subsequently gave this summary profile about CRI: "The Institute's purpose is to supply primary data on all the cults, and non-Christian missionary activities, both here and abroad. It is the function of this Institute to index the major cults and to supply resumes of their origin, history, and doctrines, with bibliographical material aimed at specifically evangelizing and refuting their respective teachings."

CRI was assisted by individual donors and by charitable grants from organisations like the Pew Foundation. CRI was administered by a Board of Directors that included Martin's brother-in-law Everett Jacobson.

In the early 1960s much of CRI's activities centered on Martin's itinerant preaching ministry in churches and with para-church organisations. Martin delivered seminars throughout North America on the problems churches and missionaries faced with cults. He utilised the emergence of audio-cassette tapes with several of his seminar presentations recorded and initially distributed by Bible Voice Inc in New Jersey and the Audio Bible Society in Pennsylvania (later through Vision House and finally by CRI itself).

Martin also developed a profile on radio initially as a co-host of Barnhouse's Bible Study Hour, then as a regular panel guest on the Long John Nebel show in the 1960s. Martin then became the host of his own shows, The Bible Answer Man and Dateline Eternity. The shows became nationally syndicated and accelerated in popularity following the ministry's relocation to California.

Martin sought to develop a library of resources on cults and apologetics, including books, audio files, and periodicals. He encouraged the development of a bureau of speakers associated with CRI, which in the 1960s included figures such as Walter Bjorck, Floyd Hamilton, James Bjornstad and Shildes Johnson. Other prominent theologians who were affiliated with CRI included Harold O. J. Brown and John Warwick Montgomery. The intention was to maintain a network of scholars involved in apologetics.

CRI produced various tracts about the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, distributed tapes, books and booklets by Martin, and initially ran a periodical in 1961-62 known as Religious Research Digest. In 1968 the ministry published a 26 page booklet UFO: Friend Foe or Fantasy.

In 1963 Martin conceived of the idea of creating a computer data bank of apologetics information. The concept was subsequently framed under the acronym SENT/EAST (Electronic Answering Search Technology). In 1968 a symposium of scholars was convened in Austria where the plans for CRI's computerised apologetics data bank were presented in lectures by Martin and John Warwick Montgomery. Much of these details were reported in Christianity Today and then in Montgomery's book Computers, Cultural Change and the Christ.