Maria worked as a secretary in the Nurse Service Agency. We talked. It was such a pleasure to have some young adult companionship, especially female companionship. I wearied of Colin’s cloying cheeriness and ebullience.
Miss Harding and Mrs. Toby were not pleased with my flirting. Miss Harding was in her seventies. She was being paid as a secretary to do the work preciously done by a male with the title, Director, who had been paid accordingly. She had initially been hired as his secretary. When he left, the board took so long finding a replacement they discovered Miss Harding didn’t need a boss. So she became the de facto Director, without the title or the salary. She did not have a lot to say, but she made it clear she did not approve of my getting romantically involved with a Puerto Rican girl. Someone like me should stick to white girls.
Mrs. Toby’s concerns were more sophisticated. Maria was a moody, lonely woman with no particular educational or career goals. She just wanted a man in her life. A minister needed a different kind of woman in his life. I found her moodiness intriguing. Her neediness was attractive. I laughed Mrs. Toby’s concerns. After all Maria and I were just friends.
Maria invited me for a meal at her mother’s place in the Bronx. Her mother was very pleased to meet me. She spoke her slight English to me. I tried my meager Spanish on her. Then she disappeared into the back of the apartment leaving Maria and me to ourselves in the kitchen. I sat on the vinyl covered, cushion-topped chair while Maria set the Formica-topped table. The fried rice had bits of chicken in it. She apologized. I brushed off her concerns and ate it anyway, the first time in my life I knowingly ate meat.
When Mrs. Toby found out Maria had served me meat, she was indignant. Maria knew better. Whatever her own personal habits, she should not have fed a ministerial student meat! What was she thinking?
I didn’t know what she was thinking. I certainly suspected Maria was interested in more than mere friendship, but I was happy for her company. True, she was a bit older than I was, but not by much. I was just happy to have some young adult, especially female, companionship. It was good to escape the Center for an afternoon. But the next time she invited me to her place, I declined.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Chapter 23 Vegetarians
Colin was something of a health nut. We made our own yogurt using a culture he had obtained from friends. We grew our own sprouts–mostly alfalfa and mung beans–but occasionally we’d try lentils or some other vegetable Colin had heard about. He bought a Champion juicer and we experimented with all sorts of vegetable and fruit combinations. The juicing and yogurt making lasted for a few weeks respectively. The sprout-making we did off and on the whole time I lived with him.
I had grown up vegetarian, which in the sixties in Memphis, made me a real curiosity. Little purple people from Mars would have elicited less notice. Sometimes when people learned I was a vegetarian they would want to feel my arms to see if there was really anything substantial in them.
In tenth grade, our class took a trip to Big Bend National Park in Texas. Somewhere along the way we stopped by a huge sand dune to play. We ran up and down for several hours. That night around the campfire one of the men who had known our family for decades came over to me. “Well, Johnny, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I would never have believed it. I didn’t think vegetarians could go all day like that. You were running up and down that dune like a mountain goat. I thought you had to have meat to build muscles like that.”
But vegetarianism in our home meant the standard American menu–something brown (meat), something white (potatoes) and something with color (vegetables). As vegetarians, the “brown” was fake meat instead of real meat–“steaks,” “nuggets” or patties made variously from wheat gluten, soy or peanuts. Mother also made “roasts,” combinations of grains, nuts and vegetables that were supposed to resemble meat loaf. The variety in our meals came from the vegetables–broccoli, asparagus, beets, okra, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, cabbage, “green English peas” (I hated peas), black eyed peas, crowder peas, string beans, eggplant, (another one I hated), turnip greens (yuk!), mustard greens, artichokes, purple hull beans, corn, yellow crook neck squash, spinach, carrots. Sometimes we had spaghetti and fake meat balls. My number one, all-time-favorite supper was macaroni and cheese, fried Choplets, and broccoli. (Choplets was the brand name a kind of gluten steaks.)
Following Colin around to vegetarian conferences and health fairs I was exposed to a whole new universe of vegetarianism. I met vegans and raw food enthusiasts. Of course, in New York City I experienced cuisine from cultures that had never built their meals on steak and potatoes.
I had grown up vegetarian, which in the sixties in Memphis, made me a real curiosity. Little purple people from Mars would have elicited less notice. Sometimes when people learned I was a vegetarian they would want to feel my arms to see if there was really anything substantial in them.
In tenth grade, our class took a trip to Big Bend National Park in Texas. Somewhere along the way we stopped by a huge sand dune to play. We ran up and down for several hours. That night around the campfire one of the men who had known our family for decades came over to me. “Well, Johnny, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I would never have believed it. I didn’t think vegetarians could go all day like that. You were running up and down that dune like a mountain goat. I thought you had to have meat to build muscles like that.”
But vegetarianism in our home meant the standard American menu–something brown (meat), something white (potatoes) and something with color (vegetables). As vegetarians, the “brown” was fake meat instead of real meat–“steaks,” “nuggets” or patties made variously from wheat gluten, soy or peanuts. Mother also made “roasts,” combinations of grains, nuts and vegetables that were supposed to resemble meat loaf. The variety in our meals came from the vegetables–broccoli, asparagus, beets, okra, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, cabbage, “green English peas” (I hated peas), black eyed peas, crowder peas, string beans, eggplant, (another one I hated), turnip greens (yuk!), mustard greens, artichokes, purple hull beans, corn, yellow crook neck squash, spinach, carrots. Sometimes we had spaghetti and fake meat balls. My number one, all-time-favorite supper was macaroni and cheese, fried Choplets, and broccoli. (Choplets was the brand name a kind of gluten steaks.)
Following Colin around to vegetarian conferences and health fairs I was exposed to a whole new universe of vegetarianism. I met vegans and raw food enthusiasts. Of course, in New York City I experienced cuisine from cultures that had never built their meals on steak and potatoes.
Chapter 22 Colin, the Preacher
Occasionally, Colin preached. He was a fiery orator. His sermons were exegetical–that is he expounded at length on a particular Bible passage. His tone was Calvinist. He strongly emphasized the sovereignty of God and the depravity of man. He did not hesitate to make very explicit applications of his preaching to social and political life.
Once, he preached on Isaiah’s vision regarding Babylon. According to the prophet, even though Babylon was a cruel and wicked nation, it was God’s chosen agent to punish Israel for their idolatry and apostasy. In the same way, Colin argued, God was using the evil Soviet Empire to rein in the pride and arrogance of the United States. Sure the Soviets were guilty of all kinds of evil. But the United States had its own deeply rooted sins. And without the opposition of the Soviet Union, there would be no check on American egotism, greed and self-confidence. Colin did not dispute the idea that God had raised up America. God raised up every nation that came to power. But if God raised us up, he could take us down. And the check on American power provided by the Soviet Union was clearly an act of God.
For someone reared in a church environment that emphasized individual choice and character, this notion of God’s involvement with the political and social order was a new concept. For someone who had grown up in the South, the idea that God was somehow involved positively with the godless Russians was a startling novelty. But I could see that Colin had not invented the Bible passages he was expounding. It was there in black and white.
I’m sure it was easier for Colin to imagine God checking American pride since he was British. It may have helped that he was preaching to a congregation comprised largely of people who were originally from the Carribean where American arrogance had repeatedly demonstrated itself over the last hundred years. The congregation also included Filipinos who would have remembered the brutal atrocities committed by American soldiers in the Filipino war for independence in the early 1900s.
In another sermon, Colin offered a withering critique of homosexuality based on his exegesis of the First Chapter of Romans. According to Paul (and thus according to God and in reality), same sex desire arose from the deliberate inner suppression of what a person knew of God. It was not that these people were ignorant of God and his will. They knew God or at least they knew about God. They had encountered God through his self-revelation in the Bible or, at the very least, through the more ambiguous testimony of nature. But being in possession of this revelation–and understanding it–they squelched its witness. They “pressed it down,” Colin quoted Paul as saying. They refused to acknowledge what they knew. They suppressed the knowledge God had given them. So God gave them over to depraved passions. And the most depraved passion was the introversion of normal sexual desire, the lust of women for women and men for men.
I didn’t know any homosexuals personally. All I knew about it was what I had picked up from casual reading and conversation. Well, and there were a couple of guys who had moved in next door to my parents’ house in Memphis a couple of years previously. They were nice enough neighbors. They had fixed up the house and yard until their place was the most attractive on the block. What I had seen of the inside looking in through the front door looked pretty fancy. That didn’t seem bad. But I had heard homosexual men did really weird stuff. And Colin’s preaching was persuasive.
Once, he preached on Isaiah’s vision regarding Babylon. According to the prophet, even though Babylon was a cruel and wicked nation, it was God’s chosen agent to punish Israel for their idolatry and apostasy. In the same way, Colin argued, God was using the evil Soviet Empire to rein in the pride and arrogance of the United States. Sure the Soviets were guilty of all kinds of evil. But the United States had its own deeply rooted sins. And without the opposition of the Soviet Union, there would be no check on American egotism, greed and self-confidence. Colin did not dispute the idea that God had raised up America. God raised up every nation that came to power. But if God raised us up, he could take us down. And the check on American power provided by the Soviet Union was clearly an act of God.
For someone reared in a church environment that emphasized individual choice and character, this notion of God’s involvement with the political and social order was a new concept. For someone who had grown up in the South, the idea that God was somehow involved positively with the godless Russians was a startling novelty. But I could see that Colin had not invented the Bible passages he was expounding. It was there in black and white.
I’m sure it was easier for Colin to imagine God checking American pride since he was British. It may have helped that he was preaching to a congregation comprised largely of people who were originally from the Carribean where American arrogance had repeatedly demonstrated itself over the last hundred years. The congregation also included Filipinos who would have remembered the brutal atrocities committed by American soldiers in the Filipino war for independence in the early 1900s.
In another sermon, Colin offered a withering critique of homosexuality based on his exegesis of the First Chapter of Romans. According to Paul (and thus according to God and in reality), same sex desire arose from the deliberate inner suppression of what a person knew of God. It was not that these people were ignorant of God and his will. They knew God or at least they knew about God. They had encountered God through his self-revelation in the Bible or, at the very least, through the more ambiguous testimony of nature. But being in possession of this revelation–and understanding it–they squelched its witness. They “pressed it down,” Colin quoted Paul as saying. They refused to acknowledge what they knew. They suppressed the knowledge God had given them. So God gave them over to depraved passions. And the most depraved passion was the introversion of normal sexual desire, the lust of women for women and men for men.
I didn’t know any homosexuals personally. All I knew about it was what I had picked up from casual reading and conversation. Well, and there were a couple of guys who had moved in next door to my parents’ house in Memphis a couple of years previously. They were nice enough neighbors. They had fixed up the house and yard until their place was the most attractive on the block. What I had seen of the inside looking in through the front door looked pretty fancy. That didn’t seem bad. But I had heard homosexual men did really weird stuff. And Colin’s preaching was persuasive.
Chapter 21 The New York Center
In the morning I met the rest of the people who worked at the Center. Miss Harding, the Center administrator, had been the secretary for two previous administrators. After the second one left, Miss Harding ran the Center while the church spent months looking for a replacement. Finally, after a year, they gave up and left the operation of the Center to her. It saved them money, since she was a woman who worked for a secretary’s wages.
When Colin introduced me to Elder Grieve, the head of the Spanish radio and TV ministry, I responded to his greeting with “Mucho gusto.” He immediately launched into animated Spanish with a broad smile on his face.
I spread my hands apologetically. “Lo siento. No comprendo. Hablo muy poquito.”
He laughed and switched back to heavily-accented English.
In the offices of the Nurse’s Registry, I met June Croft. She had gone to nursing school with my aunt decades earlier. She was a curious combination of friendliness and some kind of class arrogance. Because of who I was, I was included. I had the distinct sense of being invited into a separate world, a privileged society quite distinct from the society of her office staff and employees.
The Registry did not place many nurses. Its specialty was home health aides, West Indian immigrants trained right there in the Center by Mrs. Croft and her staff. Mrs. Croft told me “her girls” were the most highly sought-after home health aides in the city. She credited this to her training program and their deep religious faith.
In the basement, I met the staff of the Adventist Book Store and Peter Vandulek and Igor Yanovich who did the maintenance. Peter spoke understandable English. Igor communicated mostly by smiling and nodding.
Mrs. Toby was the receptionist. A tiny, bird-like woman with laughing, bright eyes. She was from Arizona, had been working at the center for six years and loved it. She was working for Jesus. Every person who walked in the front door was an opportunity to share Jesus. She was also fiercely protective of God’s Center. No one got past the lobby without passing her scrutiny.
That evening Colin and I took the subway to Greenwich Village to see my brother. He and his friends had set up a coffee house in the basement of an old Adventist Church on 11th Street. The space occupied by the Catacombs had been a coalery seventy-five years earlier. The entrance was a steep, improvised stairway down the coal chute that opened onto the sidewalk. The floor was dirt. The ceiling was very low. There were tables set helter skelter with candles burning in jars. A bar provided juice and ersatz coffee for people who could afford it.
Arthur introduced me around–couples and individuals, all in long hair, jeans, long dresses, smiling, laid back. Arthur described a conversation he had had just the previous evening. A guy he had met earlier in the day in Washington Square Park dropped in. An agnostic. He and Arthur talked till two in the morning. By the time the visitor left his doubt was diminished; his openness to faith increased. Arthur expected him back this evening.
I was amazed. I couldn’t believe the space. Who would think you could operate a coffee house in the unfinished basement of a church? The fascination of talking every day with hippies about God, spiritual life, the Bible, faith! The romance of doing this together with a group of friends who had all renounced middle class mediocrity and stifling convention.
Since we lived and worked in the Center, it was natural that we attended the Crossroads Church which met in the auditorium there. What a let down! Everyone was pleasant and welcoming. Colin introduced me to three couples, people he had told me about earlier, who were committed to working with him in ministry. But where I had envisioned a street ministry that reached hippies and other young people, Crossroads Church was mostly middle-aged immigrants from the West Indies. The auditorium was dark and oppressive. The pastor was a white man in his fifties, British. When he became intense, his preaching sounded shrill and petulant.
After church that first Sabbath we were invited to Miss Harding’s apartment for lunch. Besides Colin and me, guests included Mrs. Toby and two older White couples who had helped to found the church twenty years earlier. They talked of the original vision behind the name of the church, a congregation at the Crossroads of the world that would communicate the special message of Adventism to thought leaders and influential people. It would be a high-status church that would impress high status people. Now, it was a church of Jamaican immigrants. All of the people around the table lamented the failure of the original dream. They resented the Jamaican take over of the church. If only the Jamaicans would understand that once they comprised a majority of the congregation, White people who visited would feel uncomfortable. It was fine to have some Black people in the congregation, but the immigrant membership grew so much faster than the White membership. Now, it was very difficult to draw White people into the congregation.
In my high school years, I had prided myself on my progressive views on race. I had looked down on my parents for their racism. (And they were far more respectful of Blacks than most other adults I knew in my home town.) Now I had to deal with my own racism. It was not difficult to like the individuals at Crossroads, but I resented having the ethos of my church determined by people stuck in the religious culture of 1950s Adventism–a religious culture taught them by missionaries from the United States, a culture I thought we had outgrown. I wondered how my emotions were colored by the fact that this alien culture belonged to Black people.
When Colin introduced me to Elder Grieve, the head of the Spanish radio and TV ministry, I responded to his greeting with “Mucho gusto.” He immediately launched into animated Spanish with a broad smile on his face.
I spread my hands apologetically. “Lo siento. No comprendo. Hablo muy poquito.”
He laughed and switched back to heavily-accented English.
In the offices of the Nurse’s Registry, I met June Croft. She had gone to nursing school with my aunt decades earlier. She was a curious combination of friendliness and some kind of class arrogance. Because of who I was, I was included. I had the distinct sense of being invited into a separate world, a privileged society quite distinct from the society of her office staff and employees.
The Registry did not place many nurses. Its specialty was home health aides, West Indian immigrants trained right there in the Center by Mrs. Croft and her staff. Mrs. Croft told me “her girls” were the most highly sought-after home health aides in the city. She credited this to her training program and their deep religious faith.
In the basement, I met the staff of the Adventist Book Store and Peter Vandulek and Igor Yanovich who did the maintenance. Peter spoke understandable English. Igor communicated mostly by smiling and nodding.
Mrs. Toby was the receptionist. A tiny, bird-like woman with laughing, bright eyes. She was from Arizona, had been working at the center for six years and loved it. She was working for Jesus. Every person who walked in the front door was an opportunity to share Jesus. She was also fiercely protective of God’s Center. No one got past the lobby without passing her scrutiny.
That evening Colin and I took the subway to Greenwich Village to see my brother. He and his friends had set up a coffee house in the basement of an old Adventist Church on 11th Street. The space occupied by the Catacombs had been a coalery seventy-five years earlier. The entrance was a steep, improvised stairway down the coal chute that opened onto the sidewalk. The floor was dirt. The ceiling was very low. There were tables set helter skelter with candles burning in jars. A bar provided juice and ersatz coffee for people who could afford it.
Arthur introduced me around–couples and individuals, all in long hair, jeans, long dresses, smiling, laid back. Arthur described a conversation he had had just the previous evening. A guy he had met earlier in the day in Washington Square Park dropped in. An agnostic. He and Arthur talked till two in the morning. By the time the visitor left his doubt was diminished; his openness to faith increased. Arthur expected him back this evening.
I was amazed. I couldn’t believe the space. Who would think you could operate a coffee house in the unfinished basement of a church? The fascination of talking every day with hippies about God, spiritual life, the Bible, faith! The romance of doing this together with a group of friends who had all renounced middle class mediocrity and stifling convention.
Since we lived and worked in the Center, it was natural that we attended the Crossroads Church which met in the auditorium there. What a let down! Everyone was pleasant and welcoming. Colin introduced me to three couples, people he had told me about earlier, who were committed to working with him in ministry. But where I had envisioned a street ministry that reached hippies and other young people, Crossroads Church was mostly middle-aged immigrants from the West Indies. The auditorium was dark and oppressive. The pastor was a white man in his fifties, British. When he became intense, his preaching sounded shrill and petulant.
After church that first Sabbath we were invited to Miss Harding’s apartment for lunch. Besides Colin and me, guests included Mrs. Toby and two older White couples who had helped to found the church twenty years earlier. They talked of the original vision behind the name of the church, a congregation at the Crossroads of the world that would communicate the special message of Adventism to thought leaders and influential people. It would be a high-status church that would impress high status people. Now, it was a church of Jamaican immigrants. All of the people around the table lamented the failure of the original dream. They resented the Jamaican take over of the church. If only the Jamaicans would understand that once they comprised a majority of the congregation, White people who visited would feel uncomfortable. It was fine to have some Black people in the congregation, but the immigrant membership grew so much faster than the White membership. Now, it was very difficult to draw White people into the congregation.
In my high school years, I had prided myself on my progressive views on race. I had looked down on my parents for their racism. (And they were far more respectful of Blacks than most other adults I knew in my home town.) Now I had to deal with my own racism. It was not difficult to like the individuals at Crossroads, but I resented having the ethos of my church determined by people stuck in the religious culture of 1950s Adventism–a religious culture taught them by missionaries from the United States, a culture I thought we had outgrown. I wondered how my emotions were colored by the fact that this alien culture belonged to Black people.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Chapter 20. Manhattan
New York City. I had seen pictures, of course. But New York was not a place that lived in my imagination. Up until I read about Arthur’s project in Greenwich Village, New York was just “the big city.” And in Adventist culture, “big city” was synonymous with crime, air pollution, crowds, muggers, prostitution, litter. Our prophet had advised people to “leave the cities.” Big city in Adventist parlance was “wicked place.”
Sure, New York had the Statue of Liberty, but the Statue wasn’t really part of the city. And there was Carnegie Hall and its famous concerts. But for an Adventist, the most important fact about Carnegie Hall was the church had rented it in the fifties a major series of evangelistic meetings. This was designed to give our work “stature” in the city. It showed we had something to say to people of culture and influence.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was simply not part of my awareness. And Adventists didn’t go to theaters so Broadway held no appeal. Greenwich Village had slipped into my consciousness, but somehow as a separate category from the city of skyscrapers and subways. So I landed at LaGuardia curious and excited but with no clear picture of the place I was coming to.
The first shock came at the airport. Colin was there to meet me at the gate. A bright-eyed, small, almost elfish, Britisher. He walked with a painful-looking limp caused by childhood polio. He shook my hand like with great vigor.
“Great to see you, ole chap. Welcome to New York.” We picked up my suitcases from baggage claim, then headed out to the curb. I figured we would pile into Colin’s car for the drive to the New York Center. But Colin explained he had been unable to borrow a car that evening. His friends had something going on and needed their car. He himself didn’t have a car because a car would just be a hassle living in Times Square.
I had never met an adult who didn’t have a car. Well, when I was a kid, our Black maid didn’t have her own car, but her husband did. And one or two of the Black men who did our lawn had been without cars. But an adult white male without a car?
The bus dropped us off at the Eastside Airline Terminal, a fancy name for a bus depot at 35th and First Avenue in Manhattan. We took the R subway from 34th up to 49th. Coming up the stairs out of the subway we were deep in the canyons of midtown three long blocks from Colin’s apartment. The side street was dark. We dodged other pedestrians and garbage cans. I shifted the aching weight of my suitcases from hand to hand. Taxis passed, making a peculiar thunk as they hit potholes and irregularities in the pavement. I stared up at the buildings that seemed to vanish overhead in the misty rain. The street wasn’t crowded, just populated. I imagined people passing were noticing my astonished wonder as I craned my neck staring up with wide-mouthed amazement at the towering buildings. At street level there were metal roll-up doors and old, worn massive stones that formed stoops and the foundations for loading docks. It was an alien world, full of magical enchantment.
We crossed Times Square, then walked the half block down 46th Street to the glass doors of the Center. There, we hauled my suitcases up a flight of stairs to the elevator, then rode to the sixth floor. I would be sharing a bed room with Calvin, a student from California.
“Here you are, Ole Boy. Calvin has the bed next to the door. This is your dresser here. Why don’t you unpack, then I’ll show you the building.”
After Colin left the room, I opened the window and stuck my head out. Three stories down was a roof. Ten or fifteen feet across from me were the windows of the rooms in the other wing of our building. Looking up I could see the giant red sign on top the twenty-eight-storey Hotel Edison behind us.
Inside the room itself, the building’s age was obvious. The paint on the molding around the doors and windows was dozens of layers thick. Crack patterns in the walls suggested plaster over lathe instead of sheet rock. The ceiling was nine feet high rather than the conventional eight. There was a small closet stuck out into the room in one corner, obviously added as a concession to more modern habits.
We toured the building. It had been built as a hotel and theater. The denomination purchased it in the fifties for use as an evangelistic center. The theater which took up the first two floors served as home to an Adventist congregation. The third floor was offices for various church organizations. The fourth floor housed two small congregations–a Ukranian group and a Hungarian congregation and included apartments for the families of two men who did the maintenance on the building. The top two floors were apartments and guest rooms. Colin showed me how to set the alarm. Told me what to do if the alarm went off and he wasn’t around. (Call Peter, the maintenance guy.)
Back in the apartment, Colin told me about my roommate. (Calvin was out of town visiting friends in Pennsylvania.) He talked about his work and his dream of a center that would draw young people from all across the country to study theology and engage in active ministry in the heart of the city. I was thrilled to be part of something so audacious and grand.
Sure, New York had the Statue of Liberty, but the Statue wasn’t really part of the city. And there was Carnegie Hall and its famous concerts. But for an Adventist, the most important fact about Carnegie Hall was the church had rented it in the fifties a major series of evangelistic meetings. This was designed to give our work “stature” in the city. It showed we had something to say to people of culture and influence.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was simply not part of my awareness. And Adventists didn’t go to theaters so Broadway held no appeal. Greenwich Village had slipped into my consciousness, but somehow as a separate category from the city of skyscrapers and subways. So I landed at LaGuardia curious and excited but with no clear picture of the place I was coming to.
The first shock came at the airport. Colin was there to meet me at the gate. A bright-eyed, small, almost elfish, Britisher. He walked with a painful-looking limp caused by childhood polio. He shook my hand like with great vigor.
“Great to see you, ole chap. Welcome to New York.” We picked up my suitcases from baggage claim, then headed out to the curb. I figured we would pile into Colin’s car for the drive to the New York Center. But Colin explained he had been unable to borrow a car that evening. His friends had something going on and needed their car. He himself didn’t have a car because a car would just be a hassle living in Times Square.
I had never met an adult who didn’t have a car. Well, when I was a kid, our Black maid didn’t have her own car, but her husband did. And one or two of the Black men who did our lawn had been without cars. But an adult white male without a car?
The bus dropped us off at the Eastside Airline Terminal, a fancy name for a bus depot at 35th and First Avenue in Manhattan. We took the R subway from 34th up to 49th. Coming up the stairs out of the subway we were deep in the canyons of midtown three long blocks from Colin’s apartment. The side street was dark. We dodged other pedestrians and garbage cans. I shifted the aching weight of my suitcases from hand to hand. Taxis passed, making a peculiar thunk as they hit potholes and irregularities in the pavement. I stared up at the buildings that seemed to vanish overhead in the misty rain. The street wasn’t crowded, just populated. I imagined people passing were noticing my astonished wonder as I craned my neck staring up with wide-mouthed amazement at the towering buildings. At street level there were metal roll-up doors and old, worn massive stones that formed stoops and the foundations for loading docks. It was an alien world, full of magical enchantment.
We crossed Times Square, then walked the half block down 46th Street to the glass doors of the Center. There, we hauled my suitcases up a flight of stairs to the elevator, then rode to the sixth floor. I would be sharing a bed room with Calvin, a student from California.
“Here you are, Ole Boy. Calvin has the bed next to the door. This is your dresser here. Why don’t you unpack, then I’ll show you the building.”
After Colin left the room, I opened the window and stuck my head out. Three stories down was a roof. Ten or fifteen feet across from me were the windows of the rooms in the other wing of our building. Looking up I could see the giant red sign on top the twenty-eight-storey Hotel Edison behind us.
Inside the room itself, the building’s age was obvious. The paint on the molding around the doors and windows was dozens of layers thick. Crack patterns in the walls suggested plaster over lathe instead of sheet rock. The ceiling was nine feet high rather than the conventional eight. There was a small closet stuck out into the room in one corner, obviously added as a concession to more modern habits.
We toured the building. It had been built as a hotel and theater. The denomination purchased it in the fifties for use as an evangelistic center. The theater which took up the first two floors served as home to an Adventist congregation. The third floor was offices for various church organizations. The fourth floor housed two small congregations–a Ukranian group and a Hungarian congregation and included apartments for the families of two men who did the maintenance on the building. The top two floors were apartments and guest rooms. Colin showed me how to set the alarm. Told me what to do if the alarm went off and he wasn’t around. (Call Peter, the maintenance guy.)
Back in the apartment, Colin told me about my roommate. (Calvin was out of town visiting friends in Pennsylvania.) He talked about his work and his dream of a center that would draw young people from all across the country to study theology and engage in active ministry in the heart of the city. I was thrilled to be part of something so audacious and grand.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Chapter 19 Revival
I was in my dorm room doing homework the second week of December, 1971. The guy at the front desk called on the intercom. “McLarty, you there?”
“Yea.”
“You have a phone call.”
“I’ll be right down.”
The first thing I noticed when I picked up the phone was the voice–cheery and British.
“Hey ole chap. Colin Cook here. Your brother said you might be interested in coming to help us here in New York.”
Arthur had talked to me about this guy when we met at a Bible conference a couple of weeks earlier in upstate New York.
The Bible conference was a student-organized event growing out of a revival sweeping Adventist campuses in the United States. On some campuses, the spark was preaching by Adventist Jesus Freaks. At Southern the preaching of Morris Venden was the catalyst.
Student organizers at SMC chartered a couple of buses for the trip north. Faculty at the school tried to dissuade the leaders, then tried to dissuade the rest of us. But it was a hopelessly lopsided contest. Revival, mission, preparing for the end of time and taking the gospel to the world on one side. On the other, normal class schedules, protocols for approving trips that took students out of classes, concerns about the credentials of the conference’s organizers.
We boarded the busses Thursday night with grudging faculty approval and pulled into Camp Berkshire about four o’clock Friday. The kids from the other three schools–Andrews U. in Michigan, Atlantic Union College near Boston and Columbia Union College near Washington, D. C.–were already there. I asked around for Arthur, but nobody knew anything about him.
Camp Berkshire had been built in the 1920s as a summer resort in the Taconic hills an hour or so north of New York City. Adventists bought it in the sixties long after the Catskill region ceased being a summer destination. There were still hints of the resort’s former glory. The porch of the “Lodge” was built around two massive red oaks. The broad front steps spilled down onto a paved patio that wrapped around another three or four grand oaks.
The Lodge housed the kitchen and dining room on the ground floor and had a few sleeping rooms on the second floor. Across the patio from the lodge was the “Hotel.” It had four floors of sleeping rooms. Both buildings were ancient wooden structures. The floors felt soft when you ran down the halls. If your room was not on the ground floor, it was wise to look out your window to see if you could find a way to climb down or a reasonably soft place to land in case of a fire in the night.
After supper that first night, we gathered in the hotel’s solarium, a large room on the south side of the second floor. It was jammed. There were no chairs. We all sat on the floor.
The music was folk songs accompanied by guitar. (This was 1971.) Elder Taylor, the youth director for the New York City Conference spoke. He was warm and fatherly, not particularly compelling as a speaker. But the kids who knew him all liked him. He was real, they said. So I listened.
At the end of his sermon, he invited kids to share their testimonies, to tell how God had been working in their lives. A girl told of growing up religious, going to church, going through the motions, but God never seemed real. He voice was low and almost apologetic. She seemed on the verge of tears as she talked. “The whole religious thing was just habit,” she said. “There was nothing about it that was real.
“Then one night I had a dream. In my dream I was walking downtown surrounded by all these people, strangers. They were hurrying somewhere. All of a sudden I heard someone call my name. I stopped and looked around but didn’t see anyone. I started walking again. And again I heard my name. I looked around. Then the crowd parted and I saw the kindest man in the world looking right at me. I realized it was Jesus. He smiled then disappeared.
“I went back to sleep. It was the sweetest sleep I’ve ever had. The next morning when I picked up my Bible, it was like God was right there talking to me. I can hardly wait open the Word now and see what God will tell me.”
Guys and girls talked. A few students told of playing with alcohol and drugs before God got through to them. One fellow told of struggling to come up with the money for college this year. His parents weren’t Christians. They wanted him to go to the local college at home, but he was sure God wanted him in a Christian school. He had gotten a good job at the beginning of the summer but had an accident on the job at the end of June. He spent a week in the hospital and two more weeks at home recuperating. There was no way he was going to pull together enough money for registration, never mind tuition.
He fretted and worried. Then in the middle of August he finally told God. “I can’t do it. I’ve done the best I can. I still owe $800 for last year. I can’t register until that is paid off, and I have to have a thousand for registration, books and first tuition payment by the time school starts. If you want me to go to college, you’re going to have to do it.
“After that, I had a real peace about it.” He said. “It was like God told me, ‘Don’t worry. I can handle it.’
“A week before school started my pastor called me and told me that a member of the church had offered to pay my back tuition and my registration and to give two hundred dollars a month toward my tuition.
“I was amazed. I shouldn’t have been. God keeps his word. He promises that if we put him first, he will make sure we have everything else.”
Another guy talked of growing up in a minister’s home. “My dad and mom are good people, but I just didn’t connect. God seemed so unreal. In high school, I became an atheist. My parents didn’t pressure me, they just prayed.
“I did the smoking and drinking routine, but mostly I read books. Belief in God seemed so naive. I went to University of Pittsburgh my freshman year as a philosophy major. My professor was brilliant, but the more convinced I became of atheism the more miserable I became.
“At home on Christmas break I told God I was going to give him one more chance. (It was kind of funny. Here I was, an atheist, telling God I was going to give him one more chance.)” A ripple of sympathetic laughter ran through the crowd. “I was going to read the New Testament. If he showed up, fine. It not, well he couldn’t say I didn’t try.
“I sat down and started reading Matthew. By the time I was reading the story in Luke about the shepherds going to search for the baby in the manger, I found myself hoping they would find him. I found myself wishing I could go find him.
“The next day as I was reading the gospel of John, I knew something was happening. I could hardly put it down. God was showing up. I was being born again.
“I finished out last year at the University. Nearly everyday I would find something new in the Bible. God gave me chances to talk with other students about faith. This fall I went to Columbia Union College. I love it. Sabbath afternoons, a group of us spend time with kids in a project, doing crafts with them, telling them stories, trying to share Jesus’ love with them. I’ve never been happier.”
A guy named Tim told of going back and forth for months over whether he should be a teacher or nurse. It was driving him crazy. Finally, one night he prayed, “God, I need you to show me. I don’t know what to do. I have to make a decision. You’ve promised to speak to your people through your word. Please show me what to do.”
“I took my Bible, set it on my desk and let it fall open. I plunked my finger down on the page, then looked to see what it said. My finger was on Jeremiah 30:17. Guess what it says. ‘For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the LORD.’”
“I figured that was pretty obvious. I’m trying to spend an hour every day reading my Bible, because I know that God speaks through his word. He talks to me, that’s for sure.”
I loved the stories. They made God real. But I also listened with envy. Why did God give everyone else experiences they could talk about? I read the Bible every day. I believed God was present when I read it. But God did not talk to me personally when I read it. I had memorized whole chapters. I was formidable in arguments about Bible doctrines because I knew so many passages by heart. But I never received personal guidance. I didn’t encounter texts that solved my great dilemmas. No Bible verse ever answered my question about whether or not I should be a minister. The Bible didn’t give me any particular guidance about dating or breaking up with a particular girl. The Bible gave no information about what summer job God wanted me to do.
The experiential part of my religious life felt like an uncertain quest for a God who could not be touched or pleased. I knew what theologians said about God. I could quote Bible verses about God’s love, about his promises to answer our prayers. I had mastered the language Morris Venden used to describe a relationship with God. But what I felt was inadequacy, incompleteness, unworthiness, existential loneliness.
It was 11:30 before the meeting broke up. Afterwards, I ran into Arthur and his friends. I had read about their work in a church paper. They had created a coffee house, The Catacombs, in a former coalery under the 11th Street Adventist Church in Greenwich Village. They were sharing Jesus with hippies and street people. They themselves looked the part–the guys with their great shaggy beards and long hair, the women with long dresses, long hair, sunny faces and gentle spirits. They were all so . . . so Bohemian, so carefree. The chemistry among them was electric. They offered a sirenic glimpse of real community, of belonging. I admired the rawness and directness of their ministry. They all looked poor. They had struggled to come up with gas money to make the drive up from NYC.
I gave Arthur twenty bucks. It was really Dad’s money since Dad was paying my way through college. Dad and Arthur were not on the best of terms at that point, but sharing Dad’s money with Arthur seemed right. It was a sweet moment for me. For the first time in my life, Arthur appeared genuinely pleased with something I had done. He invited me to share a room with him and a couple of other guys.
The next morning, we were back in the solarium for Sabbath School and church. The sun came out. When the hotel was built, the solarium had overlooked the lake. Since then the trees had grown up and the lake was invisible, but the sky and views of distant hills filled the glass walls. It was a perfect setting for worship.
After lunch I went for a walk with several other kids. It had snowed over a foot on Thursday and the ground was still covered with heavy slush, but the roads were mostly clear. We walked north. The road was bordered with the remnants of ancient stone walls, stones dragged from the fields over a hundred years ago by farmers trying to pull a living from the ground. On the right, the fields had been completely taken over by trees–not that long ago. Beyond the large trees along the road, the trees formed a dense thicket of small diameter trunks. On the left the fields were still open, pasture apparently. The barbed wire fence along the road strung haphazardly on fence posts and trees.
Later in the afternoon there was more music, testimony and preaching. Saturday night was supposed to be recreation–snowmobiling, snow shoeing, a bonfire. But too much snow had melted for any decent snow activities. It was kind of rainy.
Arthur and his Jesus Freak friends saw this as divine intervention. God had more spiritual work he wanted us to do. About half the students joined them in the solarium for an evening of Bible study and prayer, especially prayer, using a novel format.
They called it conversational prayer. A person prayed for a sentence or paragraph or two then stopped. Someone else would pick up and pray whatever was on his or her mind. Then someone else. There was no particular order. We didn’t pray around the circle. We didn’t kneel. We didn’t always keep our eyes shut. The idea was to spend time together in the presence of God. Prayers began and ended without the customary formalities of “Our father in heaven . . . in Jesus’ name, Amen.”
Kids prayed about what they thought God might be calling them to do back at their schools. They prayed about old habits they wanted to change. At some point Arthur prayed someone would be called to take to gospel back to our home church in Memphis.
As he prayed, I felt a call in my heart. I would be that person. I loved my home town. I liked the people in the church. I wanted them to experience some of the excitement and enthusiasm I saw people experiencing at this Bible conference. I wanted them to know the good news that God is not waiting for us to become “good enough” before he will accept us and pardon us. God accepts us the way we are.
I knew the misery of feeling unworthy and guilty. I figured many other people in my home church felt the same. Maybe I could help them understand God’s grace. I prayed out loud saying I accepted the call to go back to Memphis to preach the gospel.
Sunday morning we boarded the bus for the return trip to SMC. Two weeks later Colin called.
When I talked with my parents about taking a year off from school to work at The New York Center, they were not thrilled. My mother was the most vocal. Why did I have to go so far away? Why didn’t I finish college first? New York was a dangerous place full of muggers.
Dad offered a few vague comments questioning the wisdom of working with a thirty-five-year-old minister who was single and living in Times Square. I could tell he wasn’t excited, but I was determined to go. My dad was a libertarian parent regarding anything that was not explicitly prescribed or proscribed by our church. Outside the rules of our religion, we kids were free to make our own decisions, however haywire and cock-eyed they might be. Dad bought my plane ticket.
“Yea.”
“You have a phone call.”
“I’ll be right down.”
The first thing I noticed when I picked up the phone was the voice–cheery and British.
“Hey ole chap. Colin Cook here. Your brother said you might be interested in coming to help us here in New York.”
Arthur had talked to me about this guy when we met at a Bible conference a couple of weeks earlier in upstate New York.
The Bible conference was a student-organized event growing out of a revival sweeping Adventist campuses in the United States. On some campuses, the spark was preaching by Adventist Jesus Freaks. At Southern the preaching of Morris Venden was the catalyst.
Student organizers at SMC chartered a couple of buses for the trip north. Faculty at the school tried to dissuade the leaders, then tried to dissuade the rest of us. But it was a hopelessly lopsided contest. Revival, mission, preparing for the end of time and taking the gospel to the world on one side. On the other, normal class schedules, protocols for approving trips that took students out of classes, concerns about the credentials of the conference’s organizers.
We boarded the busses Thursday night with grudging faculty approval and pulled into Camp Berkshire about four o’clock Friday. The kids from the other three schools–Andrews U. in Michigan, Atlantic Union College near Boston and Columbia Union College near Washington, D. C.–were already there. I asked around for Arthur, but nobody knew anything about him.
Camp Berkshire had been built in the 1920s as a summer resort in the Taconic hills an hour or so north of New York City. Adventists bought it in the sixties long after the Catskill region ceased being a summer destination. There were still hints of the resort’s former glory. The porch of the “Lodge” was built around two massive red oaks. The broad front steps spilled down onto a paved patio that wrapped around another three or four grand oaks.
The Lodge housed the kitchen and dining room on the ground floor and had a few sleeping rooms on the second floor. Across the patio from the lodge was the “Hotel.” It had four floors of sleeping rooms. Both buildings were ancient wooden structures. The floors felt soft when you ran down the halls. If your room was not on the ground floor, it was wise to look out your window to see if you could find a way to climb down or a reasonably soft place to land in case of a fire in the night.
After supper that first night, we gathered in the hotel’s solarium, a large room on the south side of the second floor. It was jammed. There were no chairs. We all sat on the floor.
The music was folk songs accompanied by guitar. (This was 1971.) Elder Taylor, the youth director for the New York City Conference spoke. He was warm and fatherly, not particularly compelling as a speaker. But the kids who knew him all liked him. He was real, they said. So I listened.
At the end of his sermon, he invited kids to share their testimonies, to tell how God had been working in their lives. A girl told of growing up religious, going to church, going through the motions, but God never seemed real. He voice was low and almost apologetic. She seemed on the verge of tears as she talked. “The whole religious thing was just habit,” she said. “There was nothing about it that was real.
“Then one night I had a dream. In my dream I was walking downtown surrounded by all these people, strangers. They were hurrying somewhere. All of a sudden I heard someone call my name. I stopped and looked around but didn’t see anyone. I started walking again. And again I heard my name. I looked around. Then the crowd parted and I saw the kindest man in the world looking right at me. I realized it was Jesus. He smiled then disappeared.
“I went back to sleep. It was the sweetest sleep I’ve ever had. The next morning when I picked up my Bible, it was like God was right there talking to me. I can hardly wait open the Word now and see what God will tell me.”
Guys and girls talked. A few students told of playing with alcohol and drugs before God got through to them. One fellow told of struggling to come up with the money for college this year. His parents weren’t Christians. They wanted him to go to the local college at home, but he was sure God wanted him in a Christian school. He had gotten a good job at the beginning of the summer but had an accident on the job at the end of June. He spent a week in the hospital and two more weeks at home recuperating. There was no way he was going to pull together enough money for registration, never mind tuition.
He fretted and worried. Then in the middle of August he finally told God. “I can’t do it. I’ve done the best I can. I still owe $800 for last year. I can’t register until that is paid off, and I have to have a thousand for registration, books and first tuition payment by the time school starts. If you want me to go to college, you’re going to have to do it.
“After that, I had a real peace about it.” He said. “It was like God told me, ‘Don’t worry. I can handle it.’
“A week before school started my pastor called me and told me that a member of the church had offered to pay my back tuition and my registration and to give two hundred dollars a month toward my tuition.
“I was amazed. I shouldn’t have been. God keeps his word. He promises that if we put him first, he will make sure we have everything else.”
Another guy talked of growing up in a minister’s home. “My dad and mom are good people, but I just didn’t connect. God seemed so unreal. In high school, I became an atheist. My parents didn’t pressure me, they just prayed.
“I did the smoking and drinking routine, but mostly I read books. Belief in God seemed so naive. I went to University of Pittsburgh my freshman year as a philosophy major. My professor was brilliant, but the more convinced I became of atheism the more miserable I became.
“At home on Christmas break I told God I was going to give him one more chance. (It was kind of funny. Here I was, an atheist, telling God I was going to give him one more chance.)” A ripple of sympathetic laughter ran through the crowd. “I was going to read the New Testament. If he showed up, fine. It not, well he couldn’t say I didn’t try.
“I sat down and started reading Matthew. By the time I was reading the story in Luke about the shepherds going to search for the baby in the manger, I found myself hoping they would find him. I found myself wishing I could go find him.
“The next day as I was reading the gospel of John, I knew something was happening. I could hardly put it down. God was showing up. I was being born again.
“I finished out last year at the University. Nearly everyday I would find something new in the Bible. God gave me chances to talk with other students about faith. This fall I went to Columbia Union College. I love it. Sabbath afternoons, a group of us spend time with kids in a project, doing crafts with them, telling them stories, trying to share Jesus’ love with them. I’ve never been happier.”
A guy named Tim told of going back and forth for months over whether he should be a teacher or nurse. It was driving him crazy. Finally, one night he prayed, “God, I need you to show me. I don’t know what to do. I have to make a decision. You’ve promised to speak to your people through your word. Please show me what to do.”
“I took my Bible, set it on my desk and let it fall open. I plunked my finger down on the page, then looked to see what it said. My finger was on Jeremiah 30:17. Guess what it says. ‘For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the LORD.’”
“I figured that was pretty obvious. I’m trying to spend an hour every day reading my Bible, because I know that God speaks through his word. He talks to me, that’s for sure.”
I loved the stories. They made God real. But I also listened with envy. Why did God give everyone else experiences they could talk about? I read the Bible every day. I believed God was present when I read it. But God did not talk to me personally when I read it. I had memorized whole chapters. I was formidable in arguments about Bible doctrines because I knew so many passages by heart. But I never received personal guidance. I didn’t encounter texts that solved my great dilemmas. No Bible verse ever answered my question about whether or not I should be a minister. The Bible didn’t give me any particular guidance about dating or breaking up with a particular girl. The Bible gave no information about what summer job God wanted me to do.
The experiential part of my religious life felt like an uncertain quest for a God who could not be touched or pleased. I knew what theologians said about God. I could quote Bible verses about God’s love, about his promises to answer our prayers. I had mastered the language Morris Venden used to describe a relationship with God. But what I felt was inadequacy, incompleteness, unworthiness, existential loneliness.
It was 11:30 before the meeting broke up. Afterwards, I ran into Arthur and his friends. I had read about their work in a church paper. They had created a coffee house, The Catacombs, in a former coalery under the 11th Street Adventist Church in Greenwich Village. They were sharing Jesus with hippies and street people. They themselves looked the part–the guys with their great shaggy beards and long hair, the women with long dresses, long hair, sunny faces and gentle spirits. They were all so . . . so Bohemian, so carefree. The chemistry among them was electric. They offered a sirenic glimpse of real community, of belonging. I admired the rawness and directness of their ministry. They all looked poor. They had struggled to come up with gas money to make the drive up from NYC.
I gave Arthur twenty bucks. It was really Dad’s money since Dad was paying my way through college. Dad and Arthur were not on the best of terms at that point, but sharing Dad’s money with Arthur seemed right. It was a sweet moment for me. For the first time in my life, Arthur appeared genuinely pleased with something I had done. He invited me to share a room with him and a couple of other guys.
The next morning, we were back in the solarium for Sabbath School and church. The sun came out. When the hotel was built, the solarium had overlooked the lake. Since then the trees had grown up and the lake was invisible, but the sky and views of distant hills filled the glass walls. It was a perfect setting for worship.
After lunch I went for a walk with several other kids. It had snowed over a foot on Thursday and the ground was still covered with heavy slush, but the roads were mostly clear. We walked north. The road was bordered with the remnants of ancient stone walls, stones dragged from the fields over a hundred years ago by farmers trying to pull a living from the ground. On the right, the fields had been completely taken over by trees–not that long ago. Beyond the large trees along the road, the trees formed a dense thicket of small diameter trunks. On the left the fields were still open, pasture apparently. The barbed wire fence along the road strung haphazardly on fence posts and trees.
Later in the afternoon there was more music, testimony and preaching. Saturday night was supposed to be recreation–snowmobiling, snow shoeing, a bonfire. But too much snow had melted for any decent snow activities. It was kind of rainy.
Arthur and his Jesus Freak friends saw this as divine intervention. God had more spiritual work he wanted us to do. About half the students joined them in the solarium for an evening of Bible study and prayer, especially prayer, using a novel format.
They called it conversational prayer. A person prayed for a sentence or paragraph or two then stopped. Someone else would pick up and pray whatever was on his or her mind. Then someone else. There was no particular order. We didn’t pray around the circle. We didn’t kneel. We didn’t always keep our eyes shut. The idea was to spend time together in the presence of God. Prayers began and ended without the customary formalities of “Our father in heaven . . . in Jesus’ name, Amen.”
Kids prayed about what they thought God might be calling them to do back at their schools. They prayed about old habits they wanted to change. At some point Arthur prayed someone would be called to take to gospel back to our home church in Memphis.
As he prayed, I felt a call in my heart. I would be that person. I loved my home town. I liked the people in the church. I wanted them to experience some of the excitement and enthusiasm I saw people experiencing at this Bible conference. I wanted them to know the good news that God is not waiting for us to become “good enough” before he will accept us and pardon us. God accepts us the way we are.
I knew the misery of feeling unworthy and guilty. I figured many other people in my home church felt the same. Maybe I could help them understand God’s grace. I prayed out loud saying I accepted the call to go back to Memphis to preach the gospel.
Sunday morning we boarded the bus for the return trip to SMC. Two weeks later Colin called.
When I talked with my parents about taking a year off from school to work at The New York Center, they were not thrilled. My mother was the most vocal. Why did I have to go so far away? Why didn’t I finish college first? New York was a dangerous place full of muggers.
Dad offered a few vague comments questioning the wisdom of working with a thirty-five-year-old minister who was single and living in Times Square. I could tell he wasn’t excited, but I was determined to go. My dad was a libertarian parent regarding anything that was not explicitly prescribed or proscribed by our church. Outside the rules of our religion, we kids were free to make our own decisions, however haywire and cock-eyed they might be. Dad bought my plane ticket.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Chapter 18. Morris Venden
Spring Week of Prayer came the second week of April. The speaker was someone named Morris Venden. He was the pastor at the La Sierra College Church. He had an unusual approach for a Week of Prayer. He had no drug experience or sexual adventures to spice up his “pre-conversion story.” In fact, he didn’t even tell a conversion story at all in his first sermon.
He began with Pascal’s wager. Give me a fifty-fifty chance that God is real, that the Bible is true. I’ll give you a fifty-fifty chance that it’s all a fairy tale.
If you’re right and I’m wrong, what have I lost? Maybe a few momentary pleasures that I avoided because I thought they were wrong. But in general, following Jesus, especially in the United States, does not take away from one’s quality of life. If you’re right and there is no God, no heaven, no hell, what have I lost? Not much.
But if I’m right and you’re wrong. What have you lost? Everything. Heaven. God. A billion years of joy and happiness. And that is just the beginning.
My cousin Ricky, who wasn’t particularly religious found Venden’s approach intriguing. He would have rejected the pushy revival approach. But Venden’s laid back, conversational style sneaked past his defenses. He actually found himself listening.
Another evening, Venden began with an imaginative story about an encounter with the Devil: You are riding the elevator in the Empire State Building. On the 33rd floor someone gets on the elevator with you. He looks vaguely familiar, but you try not to stare. He speaks to you. He has a proposition. He’ll give you ten million dollars on two conditions. One, you’ve got to spend it all in the next twelve months. And two, at the end of the twelve months you agree to return to the Empire State Building, take the elevator to the observation deck and jump off.
Venden wanted to know, would you do it? Again, Ricky found himself hooked. Venden engaged his imagination, his spirit of adventure. But I was troubled. Venden was interesting, but there was something wrong with his theology.
Venden told of getting a phone call while he was a young pastor. The woman on the phone wanted to know, do you know God?
Venden was a preacher. He knew all kinds of things about God. He could give Bible studies on multiple religious topics. But this woman was asking if he knew God? He was already struggling with his sense of disconnection with God. This phone call brought it into devastating focus. He realized he did not know God.
He decided to read the book Steps to Christ written by our prophet. Surely, this book would help him get to know God. He underlined everything that seemed important. When he was done, he had underlined nearly the entire book underlined. Which wasn’t very helpful. So he went back through the book. This time he underlined only those passages that offered concrete, understandable instructions. He skipped all the poetic stuff, phrases like “fall on the rock and be broken,” “look to the Lamb,” “be washed in the blood.” He had heard these all his life. Everyone used them, but he didn’t have the foggiest idea of what they really meant. How do you fall on the rock? How can you take a bath in blood?
He underlined only explicit, comprehensible commands. Do this. Do that. When he got all the way through he could summarize the entire book in three sentences: Read your Bible. Pray. Tell other people what you found in doing the first two.
Venden insisted if a person did these three things, they would be in relationship with God, i.e. saved. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. Read your Bible, pray and witness . . . and you are . . . saved.
This was the refrain of his sermons all week. The longer I listened the more uncomfortable I became. What about doing right? What about conquering bad habits like sexual fantasizing and masturbation and exaggerating and eating sweets?
He sounded like a Baptist. All you had to do to be saved was believe. You could sin all you wanted. You didn’t even have to make any particular effort. Just believe and everything would be all right. There was no way this could prepare a person to live through the time of trouble without a heavenly mediator. It was way too simple.
Venden kept preaching. I kept listening. I was drawn. He quoted from Ellen White and the apostles Paul and John. He argued the only real security we could have during the end of time was a good relationship with someone strong enough to save us. In fact, the best modern word for the ancient concept of faith was “relationship.”
As the week progressed, I found myself being convinced. His aphorisms made sense. We are saved by faith not by works, by relationship not by behavior, by who we know not what we know. Maybe. It was worth considering.
By late in the week, I had come far enough around that I wanted to ask this preacher about my great struggle with the call to ministry. I signed up for one of the time slots he had available on Friday.
I walked into the room and shut the door behind me.
“Elder Venden, how does a person know if they have been called to the ministry? I always planned to be a doctor, but now I’m a theology major. Still, I wonder. How you know if God is really calling you?”
Venden was slow answering, but there was no hesitancy in his voice, “My advice for anyone considering entering the ministry is go do something else. If God wants you to be a minister, he won’t let you be anything else. If God doesn’t want you to be a minister, you don’t want to be one either.”
The answer had a certain irresistible logic. It didn’t do much to calm my inner turmoil. Did it mean I should drop my theology major and go back to pre-med? How hard could one legitimately work at avoiding the ministry? Watching Venden enthrall a thousand students with his preaching gave me a new vision of what ministry could be. Here was a preacher who wasn’t boring, whose preaching was not rooted in a conversion story featuring drugs, alcohol and sex, who talked about spiritual life in a way that made sense.
I could see myself doing that. I could travel around the country to Adventist colleges telling students about God. And doing it in a way that was compelling and transforming. If ministry was like that, I could see myself doing it.
I spent the summer after my freshman year doing volunteer construction at two different Adventist schools. My cousin Jimmy came with me. I read Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. I loved it. Jimmy asked questions I couldn't answer. Like, if Christians are supposed to be unselfish, why do Christian men look for pretty women? If you were to really follow Christ wouldn't you find the ugliest woman you could and marry her to give her happiness? I had never thought of that. Jimmy also talked about how a person who receives kindness benefits the giver of kindness by allowing them the pleasure of serving. I had never thought of that either. Jimmy's questions didn't destroy my faith. They did make me puzzle over the operation and limits of altruism.
The next fall, I was back at Southern Missionary College.
He began with Pascal’s wager. Give me a fifty-fifty chance that God is real, that the Bible is true. I’ll give you a fifty-fifty chance that it’s all a fairy tale.
If you’re right and I’m wrong, what have I lost? Maybe a few momentary pleasures that I avoided because I thought they were wrong. But in general, following Jesus, especially in the United States, does not take away from one’s quality of life. If you’re right and there is no God, no heaven, no hell, what have I lost? Not much.
But if I’m right and you’re wrong. What have you lost? Everything. Heaven. God. A billion years of joy and happiness. And that is just the beginning.
My cousin Ricky, who wasn’t particularly religious found Venden’s approach intriguing. He would have rejected the pushy revival approach. But Venden’s laid back, conversational style sneaked past his defenses. He actually found himself listening.
Another evening, Venden began with an imaginative story about an encounter with the Devil: You are riding the elevator in the Empire State Building. On the 33rd floor someone gets on the elevator with you. He looks vaguely familiar, but you try not to stare. He speaks to you. He has a proposition. He’ll give you ten million dollars on two conditions. One, you’ve got to spend it all in the next twelve months. And two, at the end of the twelve months you agree to return to the Empire State Building, take the elevator to the observation deck and jump off.
Venden wanted to know, would you do it? Again, Ricky found himself hooked. Venden engaged his imagination, his spirit of adventure. But I was troubled. Venden was interesting, but there was something wrong with his theology.
Venden told of getting a phone call while he was a young pastor. The woman on the phone wanted to know, do you know God?
Venden was a preacher. He knew all kinds of things about God. He could give Bible studies on multiple religious topics. But this woman was asking if he knew God? He was already struggling with his sense of disconnection with God. This phone call brought it into devastating focus. He realized he did not know God.
He decided to read the book Steps to Christ written by our prophet. Surely, this book would help him get to know God. He underlined everything that seemed important. When he was done, he had underlined nearly the entire book underlined. Which wasn’t very helpful. So he went back through the book. This time he underlined only those passages that offered concrete, understandable instructions. He skipped all the poetic stuff, phrases like “fall on the rock and be broken,” “look to the Lamb,” “be washed in the blood.” He had heard these all his life. Everyone used them, but he didn’t have the foggiest idea of what they really meant. How do you fall on the rock? How can you take a bath in blood?
He underlined only explicit, comprehensible commands. Do this. Do that. When he got all the way through he could summarize the entire book in three sentences: Read your Bible. Pray. Tell other people what you found in doing the first two.
Venden insisted if a person did these three things, they would be in relationship with God, i.e. saved. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. Read your Bible, pray and witness . . . and you are . . . saved.
This was the refrain of his sermons all week. The longer I listened the more uncomfortable I became. What about doing right? What about conquering bad habits like sexual fantasizing and masturbation and exaggerating and eating sweets?
He sounded like a Baptist. All you had to do to be saved was believe. You could sin all you wanted. You didn’t even have to make any particular effort. Just believe and everything would be all right. There was no way this could prepare a person to live through the time of trouble without a heavenly mediator. It was way too simple.
Venden kept preaching. I kept listening. I was drawn. He quoted from Ellen White and the apostles Paul and John. He argued the only real security we could have during the end of time was a good relationship with someone strong enough to save us. In fact, the best modern word for the ancient concept of faith was “relationship.”
As the week progressed, I found myself being convinced. His aphorisms made sense. We are saved by faith not by works, by relationship not by behavior, by who we know not what we know. Maybe. It was worth considering.
By late in the week, I had come far enough around that I wanted to ask this preacher about my great struggle with the call to ministry. I signed up for one of the time slots he had available on Friday.
I walked into the room and shut the door behind me.
“Elder Venden, how does a person know if they have been called to the ministry? I always planned to be a doctor, but now I’m a theology major. Still, I wonder. How you know if God is really calling you?”
Venden was slow answering, but there was no hesitancy in his voice, “My advice for anyone considering entering the ministry is go do something else. If God wants you to be a minister, he won’t let you be anything else. If God doesn’t want you to be a minister, you don’t want to be one either.”
The answer had a certain irresistible logic. It didn’t do much to calm my inner turmoil. Did it mean I should drop my theology major and go back to pre-med? How hard could one legitimately work at avoiding the ministry? Watching Venden enthrall a thousand students with his preaching gave me a new vision of what ministry could be. Here was a preacher who wasn’t boring, whose preaching was not rooted in a conversion story featuring drugs, alcohol and sex, who talked about spiritual life in a way that made sense.
I could see myself doing that. I could travel around the country to Adventist colleges telling students about God. And doing it in a way that was compelling and transforming. If ministry was like that, I could see myself doing it.
I spent the summer after my freshman year doing volunteer construction at two different Adventist schools. My cousin Jimmy came with me. I read Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. I loved it. Jimmy asked questions I couldn't answer. Like, if Christians are supposed to be unselfish, why do Christian men look for pretty women? If you were to really follow Christ wouldn't you find the ugliest woman you could and marry her to give her happiness? I had never thought of that. Jimmy also talked about how a person who receives kindness benefits the giver of kindness by allowing them the pleasure of serving. I had never thought of that either. Jimmy's questions didn't destroy my faith. They did make me puzzle over the operation and limits of altruism.
The next fall, I was back at Southern Missionary College.
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