MINI-MEETING TRAIL: TEXAS STYLE

Like those jack rabbits for which our state is famous, I have been jumping around Texas somewhat of late. Since my last report I have been as far east as West Virginia and as far west as California (and as far north as Ohio), but it is Texas that I want to talk about this time. After all, there is no way to tell it all, and if charity should begin at home, maybe mini-meetings should too. Anyway, I have had joyous experiences in Austin, Houston, Lufkin, and San Marcos in recent months, not to mention excursions in my own immediate area. And if one is going to talk about ‘what is going on in the Church of Christ he should not ignore Texas for long. The Baptist Church may be our state church, but the Church of Christ is a contender for the runner-up spot. It is likely that there is not a single town in Texas with a population of 1500 that does not have one of our congregations. And what makes it even more interesting is that there are hundreds of small communities that have several different kinds of Churches of Christ. none of which is in fellowship with the others.

I have been to Lufkin twice in recent months, both times to visit with the Westside congregation, a small but lively group that has learned the rigors of the road to freedom. They are hard-core Church of Christ folk in background who have been drawn together by a common desire for spiritual food. They are not a faction and they are not mad at anybody. They are indeed the family of God, loving and enjoying one another, studying and sharing together even in the assembly very much as if it were around the kitchen table at home. Stung for so many years by feuding preachers and church fights, party rivalry and editorocracy, they seek escape from the valley of dry bones that they may be led beside still waters. Fratricide they know; brotherly kindness they seek.

Some of them are old timers, having been in Lufkin when there was but one congregation. They endured the oppressive years of the cooperation controversy, Lufkin coming to be known as the center of “antiism” in the Church of Christ. But amidst it all was a lot of in-fighting by preachers, vying for preeminence. The stories they can tell is something else! Lufkin is a veritable gold mine for research in sociology of religion, but one would almost have to be of our background to comprehend what has occurred there.

Lufkin is the only city of any size in Texas, I think, where the “antis” (conservatives) are in the majority. The Central congregation is mainline and alone, while four or five other congregations of substantial size are conservative. Leading figures of the “anti” persuasion have been associated with Lufkin: Yater Tant, Roy Cogdill, Charles Holt, William Wallace, and in an earlier day Cled and Foy Wallace. For some 20 years it was the home of the Gospel Guardian and the cradle of “the Guardian angels.”

Since I love all our angels, anti as well as pro, and no longer allow folk to draw lines of fellowship for me, I called on all sorts of brethren in Lufkin. I had a delightful and brotherly visit with Bill Wallace, editor of the Guardian, who related to me the story of the paper’s move to Athens, Alabama. He also told me that, he is reexamining his own position of fellowship, suggesting that he finds it too difficult to live with his present position. He is not likely to go as far as to embrace Carl Ketcherside’s and my position, he observed, but he is moving in our direction. At a point like that I want to ask what one understands Carl’s and my position to be, but I was enjoying Bill too much to start anything like an argument. Not in Lufkin anyway. There are too many ghosts around those parts that might rise up in judgment over all the bloodletting that has already occurred.

Bill Wallace is a gentle man, loving and sincere. He shared with me some of the tragedies in his own life, deep divisions within his own family, especially the break with his father, Foy Wallace, facts which have for the most part been widely publicized, including the sad story of his not being able to visit with his own mother. I felt for Bill, longing that God’s Spirit will give him peace, and in that moment I wished that our brotherhood could see the Bill Wallace I then saw, not an “anti” but a brother beloved who needs God’s grace just as we all do.

Well, we are all changing and growing, and that’s what happens when Jesus comes into our lives. So Bill Wallace is changing, and the Guardian, and Lufkin. And from what I know that reaches far beyond Lufkin, much of the “anti” brotherhood is changing.

I also visited with Carl Allen, who ministers to the Timberlane congregation, also “anti”, but Carl is hardly one of the old-timers. But ghosts or no ghosts, angels or not, one is not likely to sit with Carl for long without there being some controversy. But that is all right too, and Carl is a loving brother. We had old times and old friends to talk about. It is always comforting to me to be around men who are right, and Carl is right. It is a safe place to be in the event of Parousia, right there at Timberlane with Carl Allen.

Mike Fortson is in his first year as minister to Central, the mainline church, having returned recently with his lovely wife Doris from missionary work in Africa. My visit with him was refreshing, for here is a man who is conspiring with love to find ways to heal the ugly wounds of division and oppression. He may be called all sorts of names, and criticized even for having parties for kids, but he and love have the whit to win, as the poem goes, and they keep drawing circles that take the critics in. That Mike and Doris will win for Jesus’ sake there can be no doubt, and, God bless them, they have found a new “dark continent” in the East Texas lumber belt. And I believe Central will stand behind them in their work of love.

I have also been to Houston two times lately. Along with mini-meetings in homes I addressed the Burke Rd. church on one occasion and the Bering Drive congregation on the other. These are among our great, free congregations. It is not that they are particularly different doctrinally, but that they are open enough to hear different viewpoints and bold enough to innovate.

Bering Drive, for instance, has an eight o’clock Sunday morning service that lends itself to creative changes. They do things like form a great half circle around the Supper, singing to the Lord while they’re at it. Prayers are more spontaneous, with the usual cliches missing. They have a hymnal that contains responsive readings, and these they use freely, with all the congregation participating—like those Presbyterians do! The morning I was there (I gave my lesson on “My Dream of Brotherhood” to two different assemblies) a sister behind me started singing “Amazing Grace,” and it was most inspiring. I learned later that it was at this point a visiting couple got up and stalked out. When the assembly had earlier begun to read antiphonally, the couple had whispered the question, “Is this the Church of Christ?” It was doubtless too much when the sister began to sing about God’s grace—of all things, about his grace—and so they walked out in search of soundness, figuring that someone had lied in saying it was a Church of Christ.

But had they come to the ten o’clock service, even at Bering Drive, there would have been no problem. It would have been a true Church of Christ to them, right down the line. My address on Peter’s vision of the oneness of the body might have been a new emphasis to them, but they would have come and gone without a hitch. Strange how two assemblies of a church can be all that different, and they say around Bering Drive that what I had to say that morning might well be accepted by one assembly and not so accepted by the other. A kind of “Birds of a feather” sort of thing. Is it not really two congregations in one? And why isn’t this an answer to some of our problems? Let a congregation have two assemblies, one open and free to explore new ways of service and the other strictly traditional. And let them love each other and go on and work together in other areas. They could even have two sets of officers if necessary. And yet use the same building and nobly practice unity in diversity.

While I was in Houston a brother fell dead in the pulpit at another congregation. Once briefed on the details, I was resolved to write an article on “The Man We Killed in Houston,” but I will be content to give the bare facts in this account. I will not say, as Mark Anthony did, that if you have tears to shed prepare to shed them now, but I will say that if you have any doubt as to the kind of warfare we are in for freedom and peace among Churches of Christ, then this should wipe away any misgiving as to the magnitude of our task.

It is not just my conclusion that religious oppression killed the brother, but the physicians that attended him decided that anxiety over church trouble caused his stout heart to stop. He was not a preacher (some of whom can endure as much friction as they create without so much as a sick heart, much less a broken one), but a brother in the church who was greatly disturbed over one of our tragic church brawls. He was leading the closing prayer, following which he fell over dead.

The eye of the storm was no less person than the mayor of Houston, who has for many years been a faithful member of that congregation. The charge against the man was social drinking. Being a politician, the mayor’s picture would sometimes appear in contexts where it could be presumed that he was indulging, though he hardly has a reputation as a drinker. But this is a bad example for a Christian, the two preachers who man the congregation insisted, and so the mayor was given a hard time. No one bothered to sit with him as a brother and talk it over in a spirit of love. He was first sent a letter, signed by the elders but almost surely written or inspired by the preachers who were for some reason after him. He was summarily ordered to repent and make public confession or be withdrawn from by the congregation.

The mayor was shocked by such treatment, as were his family and friends. One elder did finally go and talk with him about what was going on, only to be reprimanded by the preachers for interfering with the strategy. Since many in the congregation became incensed over all this, it became a question as to whether the elders should remain in the eldership. Finally there was a congregational meeting in which all this was aired, all one Sunday afternoon. And it was that night that our brother, caught up in the tragedy of all this, slumped to the floor and died after speaking to the Father once more, leaving behind a young family.

We need an Amos or a Jeremiah, men angered by such idiocy, to cry out against this wickedness in high places. It is time for concern when men in responsible positions break hearts as well as shatter reputations, all in the name of Jesus the Prince of Peace. When a sister, one of the wives involved, pled with the preachers, “If you only hadn’t sent that letter,” she was met with the old bromide that has been crammed down many a throat: “We have to stand by the truth.” God pity their souls, here’s hoping they’d recognize the truth if they should see it—or better Him. And there’s the trouble, the truth that is an it we seem to know. If we really knew Him, we would not destroy a brother for the sake of meat or drink.

This position is not biblical, for where do the scriptures enjoin against drinking, social or otherwise? One thing for sure, Jesus of Nazareth had better stay clear of that Houston church, even if it is his, for anyone that would make wine as well as drink it would surely be hanged from the highest beam in the Astrodome. And don’t think we haven’t bruisers in that city that would dare. to do it. “If you did it unto one of these, the least of my brethren . . .

This story takes us to the very heart of what fellowship is all about. It is the sharing of the common life in Jesus that makes for joy, peace, love, and understanding. The assembly is to be a happy and uplifting experience, all in an atmosphere of brotherly affection. When the mayor of one of the great cities of the world happens to be a disciple of Jesus, it ought to be that his presence in the assembly of saints will bring “seasons of refreshment from the presence of the Lord” and thus make it less difficult for him to bear up under the burdens of a public servant. But when he finds more solace from his business associates and more love and understanding from the pagans of the world, it makes mockery of the claims of the fellowship of the saints. The scriptures speak of the love that covers a multitude of sins, which by a little stretch of the imagination just might be made to include such a beastly thing as tipping a glass of champagne.

Anyone who would threaten a brother with “withdrawal of fellowship” for social drinking is looking other than to the Bible for the basis of his conduct. Exclusion from a congregation (there is no such thing in scripture as withdrawing fellowship) can be only for one of three things: gross immorality (1 Cor. 5), heresy (Tit. 3), and denial of Lordship of Jesus (2 John). Drunkenness is included in the first, but not drinking. Just as gluttony is a sin, but not eating. Jesus came both eating and drinking, and for this he was accused of both drunkenness and gluttony!

If I believe a brother is hurting his influence by the occasional drinks he takes, love might impel me to say a word to him about this. Once done, it is henceforth none of my business. As Paul puts it in Rom. 14:4: “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls.” The Bible thus frees me from such judgment. And how liberating it is not to have to sit in judgment on all my brothers!

Well, after all this talk I have still said nothing about Austin or San Marcos, cities that are only minutes from each other. What has happened to our folk in San Marcos provides insight into the problem of being both free and peaceful. The new congregation there, known as Holland Street, grew out of the old mainline congregation, and as to whether it is a faction depends on whose story you prefer to believe. It appears certain, however, that the new group attempted to leave in peace and with every intention of continual fellowship. The new work was talked about well in advance of the event, and the innovators supposed they had the blessings and cooperation of their old friends. But the reason for leaving was such as to make this kind of expectation unrealistic. The new group was tired and bored with Church of Christism and all its trivia. They wanted a freedom that would never be theirs, they supposed, at the old congregation. As is usually the case, the disenchanted ones included much of the cream, if by cream we refer to responsible community leaders who are really concerned for spiritual verities. But in this case the break was not engineered by some preacher, but by longtime members of the old congregation, such as business people and college professors, who had “had it” when it comes to traditionalism and the party line.

It was the new group that invited me to spend a long weekend with them, and I found them an exciting experience. They already have a handsome piece of property and have converted a home into a place of assembly. Their problem now is what to do with themselves now that they are freer than before. Part of the answer to that is, they seem to say, that freedom in Christ removes the obstructions for personal growth and enjoyment of religion. Now they can think, read, and question, without the usual eyebrows. Now going to church is not boring but exciting. Now they can have mind-expanding experiences, hearing such men as Maurice Weed, who comes over from Austin where he attends the Presbyterian seminary to speak for them. Isn’t that reason enough to be free?

My overtures toward the old congregation were limited, but it was enough to assure me that the feelings were not benevolent. After all, there are very few congregations, if any, that will applaud when a substantial number of their best members walk out on them in order to be free, leaving them with debentures on the building to satisfy and a preacher to pay.

But the Holland Street group is to be commended for their effort to leave in peace, and the old congregation must be realistic enough to see that this is part of the price of obscurantism. If a group goes on year after year, immune to change and to new ideas, it is going to lose some folk who are looking for room to breathe. What happened in San Marcos, which is different from the usual pattern of factious splits in churches, may well become common throughout the brotherhood. The churches that refuse all overtures for change and innovation are going to experience some benevolent separations, which only by poor grace can be called factions. There might, after all, be separations without divisions. It all depends on the attitude people have toward each other.

I have been saying all along that a disenchanted group, such as was in the old church in San Marcos, should hang in there and help to change what they love, and by all means not leave. But it must be granted that there are circumstances when this kind of game, however loving, becomes terribly oppressive. In looking at San Marcos one is forced to conclude that the way they chose may also be an answer. Let the Lord lead. The important thing is that we act out of love and that we keep loving. There is really no harm in there being two congregations in a town where there was but one, if there is love and forbearance. The old can say of the new, “Those brethren like to venture forth in ways that make us uncomfortable, but ‘each to his own,’ and we all love each other just the same and there are instances in which we do things together.” And the new could say: “There are things that, for conscience sake, we wanted to do that we couldn’t do over there, but those folk are our bothers nonetheless and we love them dearly, and we are not interested in stealing sheep.” That would be separation without schism.

In Austin there are two distinct faces of the Church of Christ, and I am referring only to mainliners. It is Exhibit A of how different people can be on the theological spectrum and still be in the same party. I do not use party unkindly here, but as descriptive of those folk in Austin known as Churches of Christ, all of them in the same “brotherhood” of churches and yet so different.

Austin is the home of both the Sweet Publishing Company and the Firm Foundation Publishing Co., the editors and publishers of which almost certainly have more in common with respective “denominationalists”, with whom they enjoy no fellowship, than they have with each other, with whom they are in fellowship. While there is not all that difference in doctrine, there is a wide gap between them in attitude, which is reflected in the materials published. So it is with the congregations in Austin. I visited with both the University and Brentwood congregations, which are so much more open than the typical mainline congregation.

But this is as it should be. It is unlikely that God intended for all of us to see everything eye to eye. Some of us are going to be more liberal in our views, others more conservative. Some more tied to the traditional past than others. But if together we find joy and peace in Christ the essence of what God intended is ours. This is why some of our churches can have instrumental music or the Sunday School or plurality of cups and others not have these things, and yet all be one in the Lord. It is senseless to talk of any other kind of oneness. Unity in diversity is the only unity there ever was, is now, or ever shall be.

I have some difficulty in announcing my meetings well in advance, for the clusters I try to arrange do not always form in time. But here are some that have been decided for sure, and I would of course be pleased to have any of you to be with us.

Oct. 6-8, Frankston, Tx., J. E. Hicks. Rt. 1

Oct. 11-1 5, Wichita, Kansas, Riverside Church of Christ, Lee Parish, phone 838-5033.

Oct. 17-18, Eldon, Mo., Church of Christ, Woody Wilkinson, 308 N. Oak.

Oct. 27-29, Arkansas City, Ks., Random Rd. Church of Christ, Dr. Max Foster, 1817 N. 8th.

My offer to come to your home or congregation for a short meeting, large or small, and at my own expense, still stands. Write and let your wishes be known, and I’ll fit you into my plans sometime when I am coming your way, the Lord willing.—the Editor

You will remember that we publish no July or August issue. This is Vol. 14, No.7, which follows the June issue, Vol. 14, No.6.