HIGH ADVENTURE AT PAT BOONE’S HOUSE

A bumper sticker on one of the cars in the Pat Boone family in Beverly Hills reads Jesus Is High Adventure. For one walking along Beverly Drive one Friday evening in November, there would be a distinct impression of something exciting going on at the Boone’s, to be sure, but he might not know just how to account for it. Cars occupied all the parking space up and down the long block on both sides. People of distinction, Jews and Gentiles alike, were making their way into the spacious home. Some 75 persons were gathered in the large den for some kind of powwow. And it wouldn’t end, for at midnight it was only getting started. At 2:30 a.m. folk started falling into the family swimming pool, or something, with or without their clothes on. Just another wild Hollywood party where folk have had too much to drink, the observer might suppose. But he would no doubt be puzzled by the shouts of Hallelujah! from the swimming pool, especially if he drew close enough to see men burying others in water in the name of the Messiah. He might think, The stuff people drink these days!, but he might think something else, even if it is Beverly Hills.

My mini-meetings in California had but one night to go and I was looking forward to the flight home late that same night. Harry Bucalstein, who labors with the Board of Missions to the Jews, was my companion that day. He had taken me to meet Myron Taylor of the Westwood Hills Christian Church, and the three of us lunched together in the heart of the Jewish community in Los Angeles. A visit to Pepperdine College was on our agenda, but we didn’t have time for it since we had to get back to Pomona for a meeting. But Harry thought I should call Pat Boone and say hello before returning to Texas. Pat invited us to his home that night, explaining that Arthur Katz was to be there giving a testimony of his work among the Jews and that part of the audience would be Jews. I explained that if we attended we would have to arrive late, due to our commitment for the evening. He assured us that things would get started late, that Arthur himself had an earlier speaking appointment, and for us to come on when we could.

Harry and I had to park on another street due to the congestion around the Boone home. It was 10:30. A note on the front door read “Bell out of order. Please come on in.” You would think that once inside one would have no trouble finding 75 people, but it took us awhile, wandering as we did through a dining room and a couple of living rooms. The den, perhaps 40 x 50, protruded from the central part of the house toward the swimming pool. Besides the 75 or so people that were gathered, there was room left for a pool table, a large oval study or dining table, and a fireplace semicircled by long couches.

Shirley Boone was dressed in a smart reddish hostess dress that reached her slippers, a dress made for her by Pat’s secretary. Dangling from her neck on a stout chain was a large gold cross that hung to her mid-section. Her long silky hair was combed back, unlike her daughters who let their hair partially cover their pretty faces, allowing her comely features to radiate, especially as she shared in the testimonials of the evening. Pat too was dressed informally, wearing a white turtleneck sweater that accentuated his chestnut hair that has now grown surprisingly long, well down the neck but hardly to the shoulders. It gives him a classic look, something like Apollo, but by no means is he a Longhair.

As we took our seats Pat was standing with his back to the fireplace, reading from Acts, at some length, relative to apostolic preaching among the Jews, from The Living Bible, I believe. Then came several testimonials from Jewish believers, telling of their love for Jesus and their work among Jews. We then had the privilege of hearing Arthur Katz, author of the recently published Ben Israel: Odyssey of a Modern Jew, which is the story of his experience from rank atheism to Messianic faith. The chapter in that book that deals with his visit to Dachau in Germany, where he saw the remains of the concentration camp with its gas chambers and ovens that killed multiplied thousands of his Jewish people, is one of the most moving accounts I have ever read. It provides deep insight as to how a Jew himself feels about this gross indignity perpetrated against humanity. The scene that follows, with Katz riding a train across from a German soldier that he finds himself despising because of what he represented and yet identifying with him as a fellow sufferer when he sees the soldier has but artificial arms and legs, is as touching as anything Hemingway ever wrote. And it is a lesson in brotherhood to see these two, a German and a Jew, riding through Deutschland together, exchanging cigarettes and calling each other brother.

Arthur talks like his book reads, which is a call for total commitment to God. He insists that it is only as we cry out to God, with the desire of the panting hart for the water brook, that religious faith will have more than superficial meaning. He compares faith in God to marriage, observing that if there is not wholehearted commitment (his chief emphasis) there is no real value. He is a man of deep sensitivities who doesn’t just say anything, for every utterance has a sense of urgency about it. He is a man of action, and so his testimony has to do with what God has done or is now doing through him and others. He is also an example of how the gospel changes people’s lives. He admits to once having actually hated the name of Jesus, but he who once hated now loves with a heart aflame.

Art is suffering persecution from the very ones he seeks to help, his own Jewish people. Even at UCLA, where he once taught and where he had recently witnessed to Jewish youth about Jesus, he was met with an indescribable hatred. It is not unusual when people actually spit upon him and shake their fists at him. There must be something to the gospel, he figures, or it would not be opposed so vehemently.

Arthur Katz is charismatic in that he believes he has been baptized of the Holy Spirit and has received some of the special gifts listed in 1 Cor. 12, including, if I understand him correctly, both the gift of tongues and the gift of healing. But the meeting that night was not charismatic in that there was none of this. It was a quiet sharing session where there was hardly an audible Amen.

Arthur and Pat both emphasized the importance of praying for people to be saved. Art told of how a woman had come to him once after a lecture, telling him that she had long been praying for his salvation. Shocked and even resentful at the time, he now looks to the power that came from her prayers as the motivating force in his conversion to Jesus. Pat told us of a young lady named Rebecca, present that night, an Illinois farm girl that he had not met before. She read Pat’s book ‘Twixt Twelve and Twenty in her early teens, and then began praying for Pat Boone, regularly, that he might be a real Christian, feeling somehow that he might not be fully committed. Pat was touched by this, and shared with Art the conviction that this kind of concern for one’s soul makes a difference with God.

Once Art was through with his part of the sharing, Pat proceeded to explain to those gathered that once a person comes to accept Jesus as Lord, he is to be baptized. He went on to read the story of Philip and the eunuch, explaining that the one who seeks Jesus is to do as the eunuch did. At this point Harry leaned over to me and whispered playfully “That Campbellite!” I had to admit that Pat was hardly behaving as the apostate he is suppose to be. If that is the way people are going to behave when we kick them out of the Church of Christ, then I say let’s run off a lot of others!

While there was nothing akin to an “invitation,” it was soon apparent that several had asked to be immersed. By this time we were dismissed and moving toward the family baptistery, which is sometimes used for swimming, a place where some 200 people have been baptized into Jesus in recent years. Art first immersed 5 or 6 people, mostly Jews, calling upon the Lord in Hebrew as he did so. Perhaps from lack of experience, Art is not the smooth immerser that Pat is, who afterwards immersed another person or two, for several times he failed to bury the person completely in the water, allowing an arm or part of the shoulders to remain above the water.

My mind went back to my days at Freed-Hardeman College when one of the teachers immersed a student but allowed part of an arm to remain unburied. It caused such a stir that the act had to be repeated some days later, and that time she was completely buried, every whit, to everyone’s satisfaction. I was very young then, and I supposed that if she didn’t make it into Christ the first time, surely she did the second time around. But it made for lively discussion in the bull sessions as to what would have happened to her had she died between the first and second time around!

Anyway, the people that night were being gloriously delivered from one form of legalism, and I was not interested in introducing them to another. I was ready to receive them as immersed believers and as my brothers and sisters in the Lord. It was a beautiful example of Jews and Gentiles together becoming a part of the new humanity. And what a sight it was to see those Jews in that swimming pool being baptized into the Messiah of Israel. I looked into the starlit California sky and thanked God for what my eyes were seeing and hearing. It was indeed high adventure!

But one Jew being baptized was not content to praise God as quietly as I was. When Pat immersed him, he shouted Hallelujah! so loudly that he could be heard all the way to Jack Benny’s house. Then he embraced Pat, continuing to thank God for Jesus. It was just great!

On and on it went into the wee hours, with people showing their love for each other and rejoicing in God. There were three Church of Christ ministers present that night, friends of the Boones from former years, who, I think, were more sympathetic than otherwise, and who certainly contributed to the quality of the occasion by their own graciousness. Pat and Shirley seemed to be especially pleased that they were there. We agreed that what we had witnessed at the Boone’s that night could not and would not have happened at any of our Churches of Christ across the land, and not likely at any other church for that matter. Isn’t it glorious what God can do through heretics like Pat Boone and Art Katz?

In talking with one of the Jews who was immersed that night, I learned that what had brought him to Jesus was the love he saw in those that professed his name, the love they had for one another and for him. I thought of the words of the Lord: “Hereby shall men know that you are my disciples, because you love one another.” Pat later told me that the man with whom I was talking was a TV script writer of considerable importance.

A few nights before there had been an even larger gathering in the Boone home, mostly Jews, where Art and Pat witnessed of their faith in the Messiah, which helped set the stage for what happened this night. This mission to the Jews came as one of those surprises from the Lord. One of the Boone girls won one of her Jewish friends at school for the Lord. Because of Oral Roberts’ several trips to Israel and his apparent sympathy for the Jews, the girl wanted him to baptize her. But Oral wanted Pat to do it. Pat insisted that Oral should do this for the girl, so Oral takes the girl into the Boone pool on a cold, rainy day and immerses her into the Lord. Now, isn’t that a blessed scene, Oral Roberts immersing that Jewish girl in a backyard swimming pool. Oral later told Pat that the experience had been good for him, that it was the first Jew he had ever baptized. Anyway, they started it, a schoolgirl talking to her friend about Jesus, and from her to others.

I had long since missed my flight back to Dallas, so I had to bid Harry Bucalstein adieu and yield myself to the good graces of the Boones to get me to the airport a few hours later. It was already morning and I saw little reason to bother with going to bed, but my hosts thought that there would be time if I took a late morning departure. But I was up again in a few hours, enjoying a walk around Beverly Hills while my hosts rested awhile longer. I noticed that there were several fine homes in that area for sale, with neat little signs saying so, and I concluded that movie stars and film producers are having as hard a time of it these days as are college professors and aerospace engineers.

Time also allowed me to get acquainted with the family dog and the cats and to stroll around the grounds. After awhile here came a maid and a housekeeper to clean up from the night before. Said the black sister from Selma, Alabama: “Well, I hear there were some baptizings here last night.” I assured her that it had really been a wild party. I was thinking that her remark must be a first, for imagine a maid coming in after an all-night Hollywood party to clean up and start talking about how many had been baptized.

But that illustrates how Pat and Shirley are glorifying God in their lives and in their home. All across the land their light illumines many lives, and that includes the girls, for they are all together a family witness for God in the home. On the piano were autographed pictures, with words of respect and love, from the likes of Jonathan Winters, Carol Channing, Bob Hope, and the most recent of all, one of the Boones with Richard and Pat Nixon at the White House. Thousands of such leaders across ‘the country now know the Boones as people who really love Jesus and who allow him to make all the difference in the world in their lives.

Pat told me one story that illustrates this point, and I think it is all right to pass it along. When Pat and the family were special guests on the Flip Wilson Show, Flip departed from the script at the beginning of the act and said to the Boones, “Y’all Christians?” Taken aback by the unexpected, Pat knew only to smile and say yes. “Well, you look like Christians!,” said Flip. Pat was pleased to be so identified, for all through their part of the show they could be seen for what they love most to be, friends of Jesus. The show that night had an unusually high rating, with something like 50 million Americans looking on!

Pat and Shirley still love us in the Church of Christ and still think of themselves as part of us. They return occasionally to the Inglewood congregation, the one that excluded them, to assure their friends there of their love, which is in turn joyously reciprocated. And they still love Jim Bales and speak of him with respect. The preachers that were there that night told me that Pat and Shirley had sent flowers to brother Bales while he was in the hospital, and that dear J. D. was so touched that he wept. Thank God for tender scenes like that.

Pat finally got rid of me at the airport, assuring me along the way that God has strengthened him in all his ordeals and that he can now see light at the end of the tunnel. Everything is going to be all right, despite all the rocky roads. I had to share with him what God had done for me and Ouida in the fried chicken business, making me rich, peanut rich perhaps by Beverly Hills’ standards, but rich to me. Pat slapped his knee with delight and rejoiced with me. He is certainly a fine person and a delightful Christian, one aglow with God’s Spirit. That goes for Shirley too. And the four girls, they are something else. Before long, if Pat and Shirley do not watch, they will become famous the world over as the parents of the Boone girls!

On the flight back to my home state I had to admit to myself that California has one thing over Texas. Anything can happen in California, and thanks to folk like Pat and Shirley it usually does. And I am now a believer in bumper stickers, if not before. Jesus is high adventure! — the Editor