First In A Series . . .

SOME CHURCH OF CHRIST HEROES

I became acquainted with Phylene Pressley of Maricopa, California by way of correspondence. Her letters, lengthy as they are, pulsate with excitement, and they reveal her to be a person of both spiritual depth and mystical insight. She would have made an impressive poet. Indeed she is a poet who expresses her mysteries in prose rather than verse. Her letters rival Thomas a’ Kempis or St. Frances in their devotion to Jesus, and her experiences, which include dreams and visions, are in the class with those of Ezekiel and St. Teresa.

One such letter to Ouida and me ran many pages, beautifully penned and abounding in existential experiences. As welcomed and it was, I read only part of it the morning it arrived so as to attend to the rest of the mail. As I went to bed that night I found Ouida curled up among the pillows, absorbed in Phylene’s letter, somewhere around page 12, and as captivated as if it were a Sherlock Holmes’ mystery. “Have you read this?,” she asked. “I’m reading it in installments,” I replied defensively. “In installments!,” she exclaimed, “How could you possibly stop once you started! “

Phylene’s visions are in color, including such phenomena as mushroom clouds, mountains with lightning flashing, dark caves and flashing light, fields of yellow roses, and even deep sea scenes by way of a glass submarine. Such lines as these Ouida and I found engaging:

Words cannot express the changes within my thinking, nor the love I have for all my Christian brothers and sisters. Nor the willingness that if it is my Lord’s will that I be cast out, then cast out I shall be. I have been filled with his presence to such a state of ecstasy that I felt only the form of my body was present. Instead of my spirit being inside my body, I felt that it was God’s presence filling every corner, every nook; and my skin was the only thing holding it earth bound.

We were both able to meet Phylene and her husband at the unity forum in Lubbock in the summer of 1970, but it was all too brief and too crowded for us to become well acquainted. Only when I went to California recently for some mini-meetings was I able to get better acquainted.

She is wife, mother, and grandmother; and, mystic or not, she is a practical person, holding down a post office job as well as attending to the usual womanly chores. White hair graces her quiet features, and her sweet smile reflects a beauty that obviously goes deep. Like the Lord she loves, her life is marked with sorrow and suffering, burdened as He was with a perennial illness in her family. She is more extroverted than most women, and yet she has that “gentle and quiet spirit, which is of high value in the sight of God.”

In our prayer circles Phylene spoke to the Father in simple trusting faith. It was evident that she was communicating with one with whom she was intimately acquainted. She knows the Jesus that we were all inviting into our hearts. The loveliness of her prayer reminded me of what we have lost in the Church of Christ with our “men only” religion.

What especially impresses me about Phylene is her undying love for those of us in the Church of Christ, the only church she has ever known. In these California meetings our hosts arranged that the Lord’s Day assembly should be in their home, those attending having more or less left the Church of Christ and therefore no longer attending any of the four mainline congregations in the vicinity. Our two evening meetings together, attended by some 25 “turned on” disciples, had been thrilling, and the assembly on the Lord’s Day clearly promised to be far more exciting than the plastic services at the typical Church of Christ.

As appealing as all this was to Phylene, she excused herself from the planned “house church” on Sunday, explaining that she could not neglect her ministry at the home congregation. Further conversation revealed that this was to her a ministry of love in a situation the like of which has caused many others among us to give up in despair. “I have been there since I was a girl,” she explained to me, “and I have a deep love for them.” She doesn’t leave because of her love for them, even though the conditions are far from what she would consider ideal. She reminds me of our pioneer preacher, Raccoon John Smith. who, even when his Baptist brethren tried to run him off, would say, “I can’t leave you, for I love you too much!”

This dear sister may not have a chance to take an active role in her congregation because of her unique experiences in the Lord, but she assumes a ministry that no one can deny her loving and praying for her people as she sits in their midst. She would probably find greater welcome in some of the Pentecostal fellowships, but she is staying with those who in a special way are “my people,” believing that in some way she can contribute to the renewal of the Church of Christ.

She once shared with her minister some of her charismatic experiences, including speaking in tongues, or what Pat Boone chooses to call a prayer language. This must have really upset him, for he soon berated such things from the pulpit with a fury out of character with his usual mild-mannered style. It was apparent to the audience that he was abnormally disturbed, and they began to eye each other for some clue as to what or who had upset him.

As the service closed Phylene rose to her feet and ask if she might be allowed to speak to those who would choose to remain after dismissal. Realizing the attitude that our folk have toward a woman’s place in the church, she waited for several leading brothers to give their nodding approval. Once the assembly was dismissed, most everyone remained to hear what she had to say.

One would suppose that a woman would have to have a lot of guts to do something like that, but those who heard her would conclude that it must have taken a lot of love. Even after being “preached to,” she made no effort to defend herself, but rather apologized for having upset the minister, thus causing him to behave abnormally in the pulpit. She took the blame, conceding that her experiences were strange and held in suspect by her people, experiences that she ordinarily kept to herself. She solved the mystery of the preacher’s behavior, revealing that it was she whom he was talking about, and expressing her regrets that she had caused the unfortunate incident.

Phylene Pressley is different from the common herd, but she is so lovingly different that she manages to be part of the answer rather than part of the problem. She pays her congregation a wonderful compliment by staying with them, for it shows not only that she loves them but also that she believes in them, expecting greater things of them in a brighter tomorrow. It is the person who walks out on us and gives up in holy despair who is reproaching us.

She trusts the Lord to provide her a ministry where she is — by writing letters, sharing literature (which is sometimes returned to her marked Refused, praying, loving, hoping, smiling.

As I sat in the “house church” the next morning with those who had, for the most part, left the Church of Christ, I was persuaded that Phylene had chosen the braver and more loving course. I kept thinking of her there among our people in the Church of Christ who need her kind so badly. Even though I knew the easier way would have been to be with our group, I was thankful she was where she was, ministering in her own way. Like Plato’s philosopher, she has the courage to return to the cave from which she might have fled, believing that darkness will give way to light, and that she might in some way help bring it about. More than that, she is like Jesus who stayed with his people in the synagogues even after they rejected him.

When the smoke of battle has cleared and the great new day is here, when the Church of Christ has become a free and responsible people, making its contribution to the one, united congregation of Christ on earth, it might be in order to pass out medals. I would count it an honor if I might be allowed to hand one to Phylene Pressley, one of solid gold and trimmed in silver, embossed between seraph’s wings with the words, “Well done, good and faithful sister.”

And the congregation she now serves as a dynamo of love, which may by then be part of the church of Christ in heaven, will surely rise as one man and applaud the honor. Its elders and minister will surely have honors of their own to bestow, something appropriate for a poet of course! — the Editor