Second in a Series . . .

SOME CHURCH OF CHRIST HEROES

Faith was his greatest shield, Enthusiasm was his greatest weapon, Death his greatest victory.

So reads a new stone on a new grave in a new cemetery behind a new meetinghouse for the Church of Christ in Grassy, near Arab, Alabama. The tribute in marble is especially significant in that it was composed by an elder of a congregation in honor of a fellow elder, a brother who passed from this earth while he was doing what he loved most, teaching the Word to the congregation on Lord’s Day.

It has been nearly 25 years since I first met Oliver D. Stone. He then lived on a farm near the Grassy congregation that he served as an elder. He was one of those hospitable men, along with his dear wife who survives him, who always had the preachers in his home who came to hold meetings. These were significant occasions to him, for it gave him further opportunity to talk about the Bible. He loved the Word as few men do, and he delighted in entertaining new ideas. And he loved people, especially children. Nothing pleased him more than to go hiking or on a fishing trip with a bunch of kids, always talking about the Bible along the way. This had its effect upon the youth growing up in the congregation who came to love this man so deeply. It was a sad ordeal to send out the word to these kids, now with families of their own, that O. D. Stone was gone. They knew that the trips back home to Grassy would never be the same without brother Stone up teaching the Bible. “He died while up teaching the Bible?,” they would respond to their parents, “How else!”

Oliver Stone was youth’s kind of man: enthusiastic, hopeful, confiding, trusting, nonjudgmental. And yet he was a man of substance. He was no phony, but plain Oliver Stone who lived and let live, and they loved him for it. I remember him as an example of Paul’s words “Love believes all things,” for he was this way almost to the point of being naive. Not only did he put the best, not the worst, interpretation on what someone did, giving him every benefit of the doubt, but he would go on believing when there was hardly any ground left to believe. As a building contractor he often “lost” materials that somehow managed to take an legs and walk away. When such items sometimes showed up in the possession of some of his workers, he would find someway to make an excuse for them. In this suspicious, distrusting world his simple, gracious faith was indeed refreshing.

But what I admire most about Oliver Stone is the way he responded to the recent unity efforts among Churches of Christ, along with the changes in attitude and practice that this called far. When I first began to hold meetings in that part of Alabama, where I eventually conducted 25 or more through the years, everything was orthodox Church of Christ doctrine, except that I supported Grassy in their determination to have a congregation not dependent on the pastor system. I held meetings under tents, under brush arbors, in the open air, as well as in our church buildings. I rapped the sects rather hard and baptized scores and scores of people. I continually issued the challenge that the Church of Christ is scriptural in name, doctrine and practice, and I had more fusses and debates with ignorant, undisciplined preachers than I could count on the fingers of both hands.

That Oliver Stone could somehow endure the Leroy Garrett of those days, and then go on in his senior years to make the changes he did is surely a tribute to his openness. And he, along with his fellow elders, led the Grassy congregation into this new freedom, so that now, even though he is gone, Grassy is a free church in the Lord, willing to give any reasonable brother a fair hearing and any new idea a chance to prove itself. All through these years of change Grassy has left its pulpit open to all viewpoints, and they continue to invite “orthodox” and “unorthodox” alike to address them. Even now as they lay plans far a unity meeting they are eager that it be a love feast in which every participant is not only received with affection, but that every viewpoint be given a sympathetic hearing.

Oliver Stone was a man who never grew too old to learn and to change. When it dawned on him what liberty in Jesus really means, and that the church of Christ an earth involves far more than what we had always thought, he was as joyously liberated as a man loosed from years of imprisonment in a dark cave. Once when I was back in Grassy brother Stone wanted me to go with him to call on the shut-ins, and he gladly included in the number some “brother Baptists.” He went on to call some of the non-Church of Christ ministers in the area brother. A few years earlier I would have gotten on to him for that! But once Oliver’s concept of brotherhood came closer to Jesus’ concept of the kingdom of God, he found brothers all across the country, and he fell in love with every one of them. Somehow, after all these years, he came up with brothers that I hadn’t baptized!

As James Ledbetter, once a fellow elder to Oliver, said in his lines of praise on marble, Oliver’s greatest weapon was his enthusiasm. Not content that Grassy congregation hide itself in an old building back in the sticks, he campaigned for a new brick structure out on the highway, and suggested that the church could have a large cemetery out back and help pay for the building by selling lots. It is all now a reality, with brother Stone living long enough to enjoy the new building and being among the first to be laid to rest in the new cemetery.

Death his greatest victory. James is right here too, for all his life Oliver looked forward to the experience of death and to what he believed it leads to. He made his loved ones promise that in his last hours they would not allow physicians to give him any anesthetics so that he could enthusiastically drink deep of life’s last great drama, death itself.

Oliver’s last years were difficult ones. Failures in business cost him everything he had, even his name. He had grown old and was left a poor man, though earlier he had accumulated considerable wealth. Even the savings laid aside for his and his wife’s declining years had to be sacrificed. But somehow the Lord strengthened him and even in these last year’s his enthusiasm was unabated.

And the Lord granted Oliver’s lifetime desire about death. He took him on a Sunday when no doctors or anesthetics were around. Oliver had opened the old Book before the congregation and began to teach as he had far so many years. The Lord sent an angel to touch him gently on the shoulder and bid him home. He laid down on the floor of the meetinghouse and fell asleep in Jesus, and while he was at it he drank deeply and enthusiastically of this world’s last great drama, death itself. — the Editor