Pilgrimage of Joy. . . No. 41 

FROM LUBBOCK TO KIMBERLIN HEIGHTS
W Carl Ketcherside 

         It would serve no good purpose to pass by the year 1966, without detailing one special event which had great significance. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the First Christian Church in Lubbock, Texas, and I was invited by the genial Dr. Dudley Strain, to speak at the banquet honoring the event. Upon my arrival in Lubbock I found that Broadway Church of Christ was but a short distance down the street and that Batsell Barrett Baxter was in a meeting there, with special noonday services. I resolved to attend. 

         We went early and 1 met Bill Banowsky, who was minister, and also Jim Bevis, who was on the staff. I was amazed to see about 450 present at midday. After Bro. Baxter had finished, Bro. Banowsky arose and said he could not introduce all of the many visitors who were present, but there was one who was giving such a fresh and wholesome outlook to the churches, that he wanted all to come and meet him, for the day was coming when men would say, "We had a prophet among us and knew it not." He then asked me to stand and be identified. He also announced that he had called Dr. Strain and had reserved a table for Church of Christ folk, and he intended to hear me at the Christian Church that evening. 

         During the afternoon I met with more than a dozen preachers of the Christian Church --- Disciples of Christ, discussing what course would he pursued by those who loved the Lord in our day. I was appalled to see how the so-called social gospel had eroded their minds and how little of the sacred scripture they really knew. After the banquet I learned that Dr. Kline Nail, head of the English Department at Texas State University, had arranged for a wide open meeting on the subject of fellowship. It was attended by a number of disciples of Christ ministers, together with representatives of seven different Churches of Christ. There were about ninety present. I spoke about ten minutes and then opened it for questions. To give everyone a fair opportunity for questioning, I limited the number of questions to three from one person each round. 

         Brother Banowsky was present and listened carefully but asked no questions. Brother Baxter quietly asked a few during the course of the evening. But Brother Thomas B. Warren set out to trap me and throw the thing into confusion. On his last question he asked a number of them, each one with a design in mind. It was easy to detect his purpose and I "headed him off at the pass." It was that evening, during the three hours "among the doctors" that I became convinced that the position I held on fellowship was unassailable and invincible, and that all the objectors could do was to quibble and cavil. I also left feeling that some of those present were in actual sympathy with my position but could not say so openly. It was a refreshing experience and made me more glad than ever that I was free in Christ. 

         On February 23, 24 I went to Columbia, Missouri, seat of our state university, to speak three times at a fellowship forum at Westside Christian Church, and to address those who attended the banquet for the college-university class, which was under the sponsorship of Dr. James Fcrneau. It was while I was there that I became convinced that the battle for the minds of men would be fought out on the university level. It became obvious that our real enemy was humanism and secularism. I returned home to begin a study of these, and to gird myself for the future combat. It was suddenly born home to me that we are not in the arena with ignorant anti-intellectuals any more, but with sophisticated rebels in an "age of doubt" and some of these are razor sharp. 

         On February 27, March 1, I was with approximately 100 preaching brethren at Edendale Camp in. Southern California. The camp itself was beautiful. We lived in covered wagons. Meals were hearty and substantial. I had not yet caught a vision of the need for the development of a strategy for world conquest, such as I now have. But the first rays of light were beginning to dawn and I shared with these men my developing ideas about our role in God's scheme. What a setting it would have been in which to help them see the need for recognizing our real enemies, to keep from killing off other believers. But it would be several years before I could see clear enough to recognize our greatest need. Perhaps they would not have been ready for it then. 

         On March 6, I began with Riverside congregation in Wichita. It was only by God's providence that I should be there. It had been the congregation where G. K. Wallace, had held forth for so long. Sister Wallace, the wife from whom he was divorced, was still there. When I debated with Brother Wallace, in Arkansas, a number of years before, no one would have dared to predict that I would preach there. The people were great Christians, above the average intellectually. They were nervous and upset by the continuous attacks made upon them by other Churches of Christ in the area. They were under a constant barrage. 

         Bro. Robert Meyers was preaching for them, and I was with him and his great family a lot. Bob was not a traditional Church of Christ preacher, nor a preacher of Church of Christ traditions. This disturbed a few in the congregation, who not only wanted to hear the same things said, but in the same words they were accustomed to hear. I received Bob because of his deep faith in Christ, and admired his superb scholarship, although I was probably a trial to him by my lack of it. I returned for another meeting later and I suspect some good was done. Eventually Bob changed to teaching at Wichita State from Friends University, and became preaching minister at the Congregational Church in the city. I have often longed to see him again. 

         I would not want to be critical, nor "hurl the cynic's ban," but it seems to me that we are unable to make room under the umbrella of God's love for those who challenge us to think beyond ourselves. We are uncomfortable with men who want to scale the peaks, and dwell among the clouds. Our God is a "God of the valleys" and we prefer to dwell there "in peace and quiet" like the inhabitants of Laish who "had no dealings with other people." The demand for parrots has produced a lot of "chickens" among us. It is only when we learn to make allowance for one another in love that we will have arrived. 

         If you recall, 1967 was in the thick of the counter rebellion which originated primarily at Berkeley, but could have burst out anywhere. The Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco was composed of the flotsam and jetsam of our culture which was blown up by the westerly winds. The "flower children" were doing their thing. Nudity was being flaunted. The sex-revolution was at its height. Drug abuse was fast becoming a way of life. Young people were blowing their minds as frequently as they once blew their noses. It was at this very time that Gene Rogers and Loran Biggs, ministers, brought me to Gardena, California, to spend the entire Easter break working with the young people of the area. 

         The arrangements were ideal. Buses brought 152 high school kids in every morning. They were alone with me for two hours. Then the church furnished them luncheon. Closed circuit television allowed the parents to see me and hear my answers to the questions, but not see the children. Their questions were terrific. They covered the whole range from the nature of religion to sexuality. I was training them to be not only aggressively pure but to wage war against the whole mixed-up social order. I wanted them to become "commandos for Christ." Those who were in high school were not there merely to study algebra and science. They were dropped behind the lines to wage a warfare. They were secret agents for the greatest kingdom ever founded. Their task was not to run from evil but to infiltrate the ranks of those who were engaged in it and take them captives for Christ. It seemed to work. In the afternoon I met with 60 college people, and at night spoke to an average of 330 adults. It seemed to me that we were privileged to give Satan a real blow and drive back the forces of darkness. 

         March 30 found me at the Southern Christian Convention in Kingsport, Tennessee. Present also to speak was George Gurganus, at the time with the Harding Graduate School in Memphis. He was there because of his great knowledge of missions. It gave me a chance to observe how men from the non-instrument ranks reacted around other brethren. They were not free and comfortable. I found that they simply spoke and retired from the scene. They did what they came to do and that was it. Most of them, at the outset of their speeches, disavowed the idea that their speeches implied fellowship. It was evident they were "covering their tracks" if they were questioned by some of the more radical brethren back home. There was no warm fraternization, except in the case of Bill Banowsky and Norvel Young, who seemed to appreciate being invited by the North American Christian Convention and generally appeared to have a good time. Bill Banowsky especially treated the folk like brethren. 

         April 10-14 I conducted a five night study on the Holy Spirit at Fort Wayne, Indiana. My good friend, Bill Lower, was minister. He has since removed to Denver, Colorado where he has done a remarkable job. The Charismatic movement was just beginning to gain momentum. Demos Shakarian and Dennis Bennett were still unfamiliar names to a lot of folk in the restoration movement. I chose to make my teaching positive, rather than negative, and to tell what the Holy Spirit does for us, rather than what He does not do for anyone. 

         The lessons were well received, and I kept polishing them up for presentation elsewhere. Eventually they became the basis for two of my books One Great Chapter and Heaven Help Us. The first constituted a verse-by-verse study of Romans, chapter 8, in which Paul seems to reach new heights in telling of God's great provision in Christ. I used a great number of the questions I received in my talks on the subject as groundwork for the material in the books, which could well have been designated a kind of "brotherhood project." I was a little astounded to find out how little most of the brethren knew about "Our Other Helper." 

         It was during this year I spoke at the Homecoming at Johnson Bible College, where anything can happen, and something usually does. It was a rare privilege for me to be on Kimberlin Heights, where Ashley S. Johnson, through sheer drive made his dream take reality. It was here he began The School of Evangelists in 1893. Always known as "the father of the poor young preacher" he threw the doors of his school open to any young man of purpose in the mountains who was willing "to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." Everyone was expected to work in those days, on the farm, in the dairy, or in the kitchen. Students arose at 4:30 a.m., and found the president already up and praying. 

            Of course things have changed in our day, but there still hangs over the lovely campus which has displaced the rude one of an earlier day, enough of the spirit of its founder to sanctify many of the students and. to give them some of the courage of him who, like Napoleon, refused to recognize that there was such a word as "impossible." It was a really great thing to be there where so many of his books had been written. I had read all of them.
 

 

         Brotherly love, like every other good thing, begins in the heart. If the God of love touches us on the one side, we should touch our brother on the other, and thus shall love flow from heart to heart. --- Ashley S. Johnson, Expository Sermons, No. 23