Pilgrimage of Joy. . . No. 37

THE CUTTING EDGE
W. Carl Ketcherside

The advent of 1961 brought with it what might be the highest level yet attained in the discussion of fellowship. Of course, as we later honed our thinking, we were able to present the cutting-edge of it more fully. But I was writing on the theme with a great deal of power and brethren were anxious to hear of it. It was evident that it was an idea whose time had come. It was now ten years since I had my spiritual encounter in Ireland, and I had returned home to investigate the revelation of God’s divine purpose in my life with fresh insights.

I was booked for meetings from coast to coast. In everyone of these I invited questions from the audience. So new was what was being said that the queries were many. This proved to be the most interesting and exciting part of the studies. As an illustration I will refer to a meeting in Sullivan, Indiana. The restoration movement there was fractured into four separate groups. I was invited by the smallest. The little building had standing-room only on Saturday night and on Sunday afternoon we moved to the Four-H Club building where there were 42 congregations and 14 preachers in attendance. And this was in the dead of winter, on January 14 and 15.

During the next two years I crossed and re-crossed the country. The Missouri Christian Lectureship, a powerful forum in earlier days, was revived by Grayson Ensign, president of Moberly Christian College. I spoke on “The Ground of Christian Fellowship.” The speech has since appeared in a book and has been reproduced in a couple of booklets. It represented my most complete treatise on the subject up to that time.

Of special significance was an invitation to come to Louisville. It was issued by two congregations but was held at Kentucky Avenue Church building. It was my first appearance among brethren of the pre-millennial persuasion. Brother E. L. Jorgenson was still alive and it was my pleasure to meet him and to come to know him. The pre-millennial brethren had always been known for their freedom and openness toward others. I was well received arid mutual love bridged any difference that existed. Later that year I went to Southeastern Christian College at Winchester, Kentucy, and spoke to the student body and friends of the college who came. We had a beautiful relationship and I returned to the college upon other occasions in the future.

As a result of these encounters I was invited to come to Shawnee Church in Louisville, where I held a meeting later in the year. Willis Allen was the minister and he proved to be a fine man and a great brother in the Lord. Through these contacts I came into contact with the brethren at Portland School and with those who carried on The Word and the Work. I became quite convinced that they had been misrepresented and unmercifully ill-treated by preachers of the dissenting view.

Not everything was rosy, however. It was during this year that Brother Roy Loney launched a new little journal called The Gospel Message. It was intended to provide a medium for those who thought I had departed from the faith. It did not create a new party but served to perpetuate an old one. Brother Loney had been invited to speak in Saint Louis in years gone by and he did his best to divide the brethren in Saint Louis and to gain a foothold. He wrote to a number of the brethren making false accusations and insinuations, but the letters were generally handed to me and his efforts came to naught. The brethren who wrote to him were sympathetic because of his deafness and he took their sympathy for this to be sympathy with his divisive attitude. It was not.

One thing of especial interest that occurred during this time was arranged by Jim Mabery. He was a great brother and ardent for the work of Christ. Brethren arranged to celebrate my fortieth anniversary of preaching the Word with a “This is Your Life” presentation at Green Parrot Inn, in Saint Louis County. Old friends attended I had not seen for years. A special recording for the session was sent by Brother Winstanley and some of the saints in Great Britain. Our children and their companions sang special numbers. There were several hundred present for the event and it was a thrilling experience master-minded by a professional. Anything Jim arranged was sure to be a success, and he had working with him his good wife, Ina Lee.

During the year word was received of the death of Walter Crosthwaite in Great Britain, on May 23. He passed across the Jordan at Ulverston, in Lancashire, and with his going I lost a precious friend and sensed the closing of an era. His noble stand for the purity of the gospel had earned for him the burning hatred of some, but the warm friendship of others. I cherish the memory of the time spent in his cheerful little home more than anything else which happened on my journey to England.

He was unshakable in his convictions and those who grew up at his feet were fortunate indeed. He spanned the time when the church was beginning to go off the deep end over the compromise with “liberal theology” and saw it become affiliated with the World Council. He was the leader of the Old Paths Brethren who resisted the drift of the tide.

God needed such a man for such a time and raised him up. He and Levi Clark had a profound impression upon my life. I will never forget my association with them.

During the year I also went to Lakewood, California, for a meeting with the congregation there, which was ably shepherded by Bro. Bill Jessup. Lakewood was established by Ernest Beam, a pioneer in the attempt to unite the forces of the restoration movement. In my ignorance and the party spirit I had opposed his effort. He was hounded and harassed by men infinitely smaller than himself during his life and probably died with a broken heart, feeling that his efforts were a failure. They were not, of course, for the planting of the seeds of freedom is never a loss.

I studied his work intensely when I began to realize the merit of it and came to the conclusion he had made two mistakes in his method of going about it. I resolved to avoid those mistakes. Our meeting lasted five nights from October 16-20. More than 400 attended every meeting, crowding the little building to standing-room only. Every evening we had prayers for unity in a little room just off the patio. Some evenings the room was virtually full. The Vernon Brothers sang for the meeting. It was my first occasion to meet them. Harold. Clark led the congregational singing. A busload of fifty came from Pepperdine College every night. The question periods each day were very lively. Some questions were earnest attempts to find a solution. Some preachers asked things only to disrupt. But God was with me and I found a ready answer for all.

It was about this time that Reuel Lemmons unleashed an attack upon me in the Firm Foundation. An excellent editorial writer and a man of tremendous ability, generally when he assailed a person in print, which he did very rarely, that person curled up and played dead. It is an outstanding phenomenon of the restoration movement how much power is centered in editors. A withering blast from one of them and you have had it. Brother Lemmons entitled his editorial in which he named me several times, “Blind in One Eye.”

This time it did not work. It seemed rather to publicize my effort to bring sanity to a body intent upon consuming itself. Thousands heard of me who did not know me before. I received scores of letters, many of them from Texas. It was apparent that many people were fed up with the sterile “status quo” and the establishment for which Brother Lemmons was one of the chief spokesmen. There was a grassroots yearning to become free from the domination of a self-imposed clergy group. An articulate coterie of brilliant young people was beginning to form which would make itself heard and felt.

The work was given impetus by a “Concourse Toward Unity” held at Denver, Colorado, July 1-7, which was attended by 500 people from 21 states, Mexico and the Philippines, to discuss the problems we faced in order to be united. M. F. Cottrell was one of the speakers. He fired the audience with new hope. Man after man spoke on the subject in a dynamic way. When it became apparent that there was a unity or purpose one of the congregations sent for C. E. McGaughey to come. He made a stereotyped speech demanding agreement upon matters of opinion and stating there could be no unity without conformity. When he finished he knew that he had made a miserable failure.

Brother Cottrell and I invited him to have lunch with us. He reluctantly accepted. Brother Cottrell told him that he needed to come into the twentieth century and get off his hobby horse. Brother McGaughey said he intended to ride the horse right up to the gates of heaven. Brother Cottrell told him that if he did a voice from inside the gate would tell him to tie his horse outside and come on in. There would be no hobbies in heaven. Conditions were changing when brethren from every segment of the movement could share together in love as they were doing there.

It was this year I was first invited to come to camp at Macrorie, Saskatchewan. Paul Tromburg was laboring at Outlook and I had visited the work there. At the time the men met in the daytime, but the evening meetings were open to the sisters. The camp has since changed and is now a Family Camp with more than 200 registered. Back in those days it was heavily weighted with people from the non-instrument Churches of Christ, but it now involves about half of those who use the instrument and the other half of those who do not. It is sponsored by a congregation which has no instrument but does not make a test of fellowship out of it. The question is never mentioned by any speaker and causes no problem. It is a tremendous annual affair which brings together in a primitive setting brethren from almost every province in Canada, as well as from several states. I have returned almost every two years since that time and have seen great strides in our reception of one another in Christ. The interesting thing now is to see people from various other backgrounds coming and being treated with love.

On September 17-21 I was invited to Rosemead, California, for a fellowship forum by Robert E. Hanson. The house was packed every night. One evening two carloads of brethren drove in. They sat together around Glenn Wallace. When I had finished my speech, Brother Wallace arose and said I had insulted the Lord’s church of which he was a member and he demanded an opportunity to reply. It shocked the audience. They could not think of anything I had said which could be so interpreted. I arose slowly, walked to the speaker’s stand and looked at Brother Wallace for a long time with a smile upon my face. You could have heard a pin drop. I told him that if he felt offended he should be given an opportunity to reply, and that next afternoon he could do so for fifteen minutes.

The building was crowded to capacity the next day. I introduced Glenn and told the audience he had a few things to say. He put on quite a show, pounding the organ with his fist and declaring it was the real problem. When he finished his harangue, I simply ignored him, and arose and quietly said, “It is now time for questions from the audience. Who will be first, please?” Brother Wallace bounced out of his seat and asked if I was going to answer him. I said, “No, I do not find anything which requires an answer, so we will proceed according to our regular format.”

He and the seven others who came with him stalked out, murmuring something under their breath as they went. We proceeded with the meeting.