National Council of Churches Leadership
Following his retirement from professional Scouting, Goodman served the National Council of Churches (NCC) during 1951–1954 as the NCC's first general director of the United Church Men, a laymen's program he formed to strengthen men's ties to local churches and their communities. Goodman publicly inaugurated the laymen's group on October 7, 1951 in Cincinnati, Ohio. By the end of 1952, United Church Men departments were formed in more than 24 states, providing financial support to NCC–affiliated colleges and missionary work. His new post entailed working closely with Eugene Carson Blake, NCC president (1954–1957), and meeting frequently with officials of the participating denominations in the NCC. Speaking with various men's church groups in the U.S. and abroad was, he believed, a means of promoting brotherhood. Reflecting on his NCC service with these notable church leaders, Goodman said more than a decade later, "Great faith and devoted service, I am very sure, are for ordinary folk as well as for the clergy. ... I have been privileged to know some great clergymen in my day ... but I have also known and loved some truly great laymen, men whose lives and works matched their faith". Goodman retired from his NCC post on September 1, 1954 because of tuberculosis.
Read more about this topic: E. Urner Goodman
Famous quotes containing the words national, council, churches and/or leadership:
“The cultivation of one set of faculties tends to the disuse of others. The loss of one faculty sharpens others; the blind are sensitive in touch. Has not the extreme cultivation of the commercial faculty permitted others as essential to national life, to be blighted by disease?”
—J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)
“There by some wrinkled stones round a leafless tree
With beards askew, their eyes dull and wild
Twelve ragged men, the council of charity
Wandering the face of the earth a fatherless child....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, and that Missionaries of that description from [France] would avail more than those who should endeavor to tame them by precepts of religion or philosophy.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“A woman who occupies the same realm of thought with man, who can explore with him the depths of science, comprehend the steps of progress through the long past and prophesy those of the momentous future, must ever be surprised and aggravated with his assumptions of leadership and superiority, a superiority she never concedes, an authority she utterly repudiates.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)