Notes from a Travel Diary . . .

DRAMA ON BOTH SIDES OF THE BORDER

The series on my trip to Europe has dominated this section for the past several months, so we are eager to get on with the business of sharing with you some of the things the Lord is letting me in on in fields nearer home. Since returning from Europe I have been to St. Louis, Louisville, Gallup (N. M.), EI Paso, New Orleans, Waco and Austin (Tx.), and Phoenix. There has been excitement around every corner, and the people I come to know surely must be among the most interesting and beautiful in the world. These are almost altogether my own Church of Christ folk, and being with them only confirms my longstanding conviction that we are a growing people, changing in a way that can best be described as dramatic.

There is no way to share with you all the drama, but I do want to report on some of the highlights and bring you up to date somewhat on what has been going on in my part of the world.

The most exciting experience of all was a Sunday afternoon in Juarez, Mexico, across from El Paso, with Vic and Gloria Richards. We sometimes have to wait many years to see the subtle means used of the Lord to realize his purpose. Vic revealed to me on this trip that it was a letter I wrote to him many years ago, suggesting that he get acquainted with the Spanish work being done by Woodrow Wilson and the Downtown Church of Christ. This was while he was in the Army in El Paso and at a time when his ministry was in limbo. He could not then so much as give a greeting in Spanish, and he had no interest in a Spanish ministry, but he is today wonderfully fluent and articulate in the language and is engaged in a radio ministry that goes out over nine radio stations and covers a large part of Mexico. His lessons cover everything from how to have a happy home and rear a family to those gracious stories that tell of God’s love and mercy. I am thankful for Vic and Gloria, so beautiful are they in body and soul alike, and it buoys one up to see a family like theirs dedicated to the gospel of the grace of God, serving the people that need them most and doing it so well.

After having dinner with the Richards in El Paso, along with a handsome Spanish couple that they had led to the Lord, the man being active in business in Juarez, we went across the border for a baptismal service. Vic preaches over a Juarez radio station and has occasional meetings in a rented auditorium, where he attracts respectable audiences, including some of the clerical leaders. This represents a change in method for him, for his manner is now more solicitous and cooperative. He has convinced the Latin clergy that he is no more “Protestant” than he is Roman Catholic, for he is not trying to separate people from their churches, but rather to lead them to Jesus, or, if they are already believers, to bring them closer to Jesus and make them better Christians.

We gathered in the home of the Latin couple referred to above, a “rich” home by Mexican standards, and it was apparent that the poor were reluctant to enter the premises, the class distinctions being what they are. But once the large crowd was urged to enter, Vic proclaimed the gospel with ringing clarity, with special attention given to the place of immersion. The ground was so familiar that I could follow somewhat even in Spanish, but Gloria was at my side to fill me in. A priest had insisted to some in the group that they needed no further baptism, once sprinkled in the Roman Catholic faith, so Vic gave that matter some attention.

We then repaired to the yard where a portable baptistry on wheels had been rolled in. Vic stood on one side and I on the other, and that afternoon we immersed 27 Roman Catholics into Christ. There were, I believe, six couples, husbands and wives immersed together. In those cases, we immersed the man first, then had him assist in the immersion of his wife. In several instances Vic paused to ask the one who had stepped into the tank if he had an addiction. He would then ask God to deliver the person from the addiction as well as his sins before we immersed him. He explained to me later than many of the Mexicans were on some form of dope. One girl stepped into the pool weeping, and after some counseling and prayer we immersed her, Vic confiding to me, “She has a special problem.” It turned out to be a severe case of hatred that she could not handle. It left me thinking: Vic could just as well bring that way of doing things north of the border!

I will always remember Vic’s radiant face as he asked each believer stepping into the water, Le ama? Do you love Him? Some clutched their crucifix hanging around their neck as they answered in the affirmative, often with great feeling. A few crossed themselves and raised their arms in praise, crying out in their native tongue, “Yes, senor, I love Him!” It gave me special delight to bury into Christ people with faith like that. And they just kept coming out of the crowd that had gathered. When Vic asked afterwards how many had seen an immersion for the first time ever, almost every hand went up. I then explained, with Vic translating, that they had seen the way that Jesus’ was baptized, and that that is one good reason why we should all be baptized, because he was and like he was.

I thought of those 27 Roman Catholics, now believers who had perfected their obedience to Jesus in baptism, back at Mass in their own church, still within their own religious culture and not “Americanized,” and still Mexicans. I thought of standing in front of Lady of Guadalupe and saying to myself, “There’s a Church of Christ in there!” Should they be separated and formed into the kind of “Church of Christ” you find over in El Paso — or Fort Worth? Should they be separated at all? Vic and I talked about that, of course. It is right to immerse believers into Christ, and, yes, under normal conditions the evangelist would then form them into a congregation and teach them how to keep house for the Lord.

We decided he should allow the Lord to lead. Preach the gospel and baptize, and keep on doing it; and, if possible, without antagonizing the powers that be, which is the Roman clergy. Vic hopes that if he cultivates friendship with the priests, sharing with them the Jesus he has come to know, that some of them also will turn to him for grace and mercy, and commence a renewal within the Roman church that will reach all of Mexico, without anyone “leaving” to join an American church, as they would interpret it. So, he doesn’t try to get anyone to leave the Roman church, but only to obey Jesus in all things. This causes them to view him as a reformer, but not as a Protestant heretic. He is especially interested in reaching influential people — the affluent, the politicians, the professionals — who in turn put the pressure on the priests to do some changing. After all, in the scriptures no one is ever urged to leave other believers, but rather the pagans and disbelievers. What power might be ours once we catch the vision of working within the churches, capturing them for Jesus’ sake and renewing them by his grace and truth, and using their own people to do it!

The alternative is to go among such people, bringing as it were a different culture, uprooting them from all they’ve ever known, separating them from friends and kin. Along with it both priests and politicians block your every move, believing you to be an agitator who is interested only in building his own sect. To the extent possible, we should avoid such confrontations.

On our side of the border in El Paso I had a happy weekend with the Downtown Church of Christ, where Woodrow Wilson has labored for many years, ministering to a bilingual community of believers. Woody is like Jesus in that the poorest of the people are his friends and at the center of his concern. He makes his rounds in El Paso and Juarez, distributing the bare necessities of life along with the gospel, supporting himself as a teacher.

Another unusual experience was with the Baptists at Baylor University in Waco. Jim Sims, who has been preaching in the area among our people while doing graduate work at Baylor, arranged for the Graduate Fellowship Seminar to hear an exchange between Dr. C. W. Christian, Dr. James Leo Garrett, both on the university faculty of religion, and me. They asked me to draw upon Baptist-Disciple relations in history and to relate this to my own ministry in unity, with the two profs responding.

I explained that while our forebears were mostly Presbyterians, both in this country and abroad, the Baptists came to play a crucial role in the Restoration Movement, with many of our pioneer preachers coming from the Baptists — not into another church, but into a Movement “to unite the Christians in all the sects,” and I pled for a renewal of that Movement, with all God’s people involved. The first Campbell church, Brush Run, belonged to the Redstone Baptist Association, and the second congregation, Wellsburg, to which Alexander Campbell transferred his membership to avoid conflict with the Redstone Baptists, belonged to the Mahoning Baptist Association, which proved to be amicable.

Campbell defended immersion as practiced by the Baptists in his earliest debates with Presbyterians, becoming something of a hero among them for awhile, and he named his first publication the Christian Baptist. In those days our folk were often called “Reformed Baptists,” even before they were called “Campbellites.” There was, of course, no reimmersing of Baptists, for all through those decades our people accepted all as Christians who were immersed believers. In our discussion there was some mutual embarrassment in that the Baptists often rebaptize Church of Christ folk who go to them, while we often reimmerse Baptists who come to us.

Since the Campbell-Stone ministry was a unity movement, it makes a good question as to why the Baptists and the Disciples did not get together. I attributed this to the early antagonisms emanating from the ignorance of the Baptist clergy and the general sectism of the frontier churches, along with the restoration goals of the Disciples that the Baptist leadership could not accept. But Campbell in later life repeatedly asserted that they should never have separated, and he wept with joy on his death bed when he was told that a move was on to unite the two groups, assuring the bearers of the news, “This is the happiest day of my life.” Unfortunately, nothing became of the effort, and for the most part the Baptists and Churches of Christ have been estranged all these years, to the shame of us all.

I am gratified that our men can study with the Baptists as they are doing in Waco, Ft. Worth, Louisville, and New Orleans, and especially with the likes of Professors Christian and Garrett, the latter of whom I knew at Harvard, and who is now scheduled to appear on a seminar at Pepperdine which is better than I’ve been able to do! If the Baptists are now educating a high percentage of our Bible departments in the colleges, it is surely something less than heresy to talk of enjoying fellowship with them. The Waco Baptists seemed to appreciate my emphasis on the fact that there is but one Body of Christ, which is neither “Baptist” nor “Church of Christ.” And they took it with a smile when I accepted them as my brothers, “Not because you are Baptists, but because we are in Jesus together.”

I have long since quit looking upon people as Baptists, Methodists, or what ever, but as men and women for whom Christ died. If they share the faith in the risen Christ and have responded to the gospel, they are my brothers and sisters. Not Baptist brothers or Church of Christ brothers, but simply brothers. I have no cousins or half-brothers in the Lord. They are all full blood brothers, and I reject the whole sordid mess of sectarianism that presumes to separate us into separate stalls, tempting us to bellow forth our silly shibboleths to one another and to insist that we must cross over into yet another sect as the answer to our divisions.

An interesting by-product of the Baylor meeting, which may be why the Lord wanted me there after all, was that it attracted a Baylor student who is engaged to a Church of Christ girl. The young man was distraught by his rejection by the Church of Christ world into which he is moving. He is quite willing to be married “in the Church of Christ,” with all that that implies, but he doesn’t want to feel that he has to give up his Baptist heritage to do this. It was obvious that he wants love and acceptance. His fiance told him she did not know of any of our preachers who would accept him with the understanding that he sought. So, when he saw the ad of this Baylor gathering, between, of all people, Baptists and Church of Christ folk, he had to investigate.

“My fiancé told me there were no Church of Christ preachers that I was hoping for, but I have met several here tonight,” he told me afterwards, with obvious joy. He and his future wife, along with her parents — all beautiful and loving people— have since attended two of my meetings down that way. Ouida was with me once and got in on the celebration, and of course they all fell in love with her.

And now comes an invitation from the girl’s parents for me to perform the ceremony! I really felt for him when he said to me, weighed down by a feeling of rejection, “I only ask that the preacher who marries us accept me as one who loves Jesus just like he does.” Well, bless his heart, his problem is solved now. I never cease to be amazed how Jesus is always putting things together, even in little ways like that, which may not be so little. Feelings are important to him. I now chide the couple with, “Now I know why the Lord wanted me at Baylor, for surely it wasn’t just to shoot the breeze with those professors of religion.”

But if we’ve eased a couple’s problem, we may well have created another problem when I go to that Church of Christ down in Texas hill country for the big event. Well, the Lord will take care of that too, probably with still more surprises. I’m getting so that when I go out, I say to the Lord, “The product I know; I’ll be watching for the by-products!” But still he surprises me, and blessed be his name for the dynamic of love! — the Editor