Travel Letter . . .

TENNESSEE BACK TO BACK

My last two times out were to Tennessee, where a Texan has every right to feel secure. The first time was to Nashville where I shared in a renewal conference with 90 brothers and one sister from what might be called open or free Churches of Christ, with some from Christian Churches. Open and free might not describe all the congregations represented, so we can simply say that those present are interested in renewal, which is the word they kept using.

After a few days at home I flew to Atlanta and then to Knoxville, where I was met by a young sister who is part of a campus ministry at the University of Tennessee, who bore me to the resort town of Gatlinburg, which is the gateway to the Rockies. Fellowship 80, sponsored by Challenge Unlimited, which ministers to work on campuses, welcomed 900 college youth to the weekend affair at the elegant Sheridan Hotel, which is perched atop the highest in high Gatlinburg. Usually a summer resort, the kids got bargain rates for their February gathering. I was doubly blessed that weekend, for I was not only one of the teachers for that grand gang, but I had Tom Skinner, the famed black evangelist who made his way up from gang fights in Harlem, as my roommate.

The Nashville meeting was sponsored by the Belmont Church of Christ, which has been avant-garde among us for a decade or more, and it may well be the most unique Church of Christ in the world. About 1,000 “members” (nothing is really official) attend two services Sunday a.m., and there are sundry gatherings all over the place through the week. About 50 of them are involved in tutoring school kids, especially blacks, who are behind in their studies. Others conduct studies in homes. Several are involved in Koinonia Ministries, which is a separate legal entity but practically the same, housed across the street. The area is inner-city if not ghetto, and the church for years has reached out to the sub-culture. But the church is cross-section, old but mostly young, Church of Christ and non-Church of Christ (more non perhaps), rich and poor (but mostly well-employed), traditional and “Charismatic,” (tilted toward the latter though not tongue-speaking in the assembly). They are deeply spiritual and animated. They will stand in the old pews in order to talk to someone across the crowded auditorium, and if you visit you will probably get hugged, and maybe prayed for, if you suggest it. But they are not pushy, not at all.

Their building is an old Church of Christ landmark, having had in its pulpit and pews some of the great names of our past. When other churches fled to the suburbs, it stayed put, but it barely made it until it brought Don Finto in as preacher, which is the most reckless thing it ever did, for life has never been the same since. They are a curiosity (and perhaps a threat) to other Churches of Christ and for years have been less than enthusiastically fellowshipped, to put it mildly. Even though its preacher was once on the David Lipscomb College faculty, the college has been know to fire any of its staff who attend there. But today Belmont sort of ignores its Church of Christ ties, such as they are, and goes on and does its thing.

The story is out that Belmont has gone instrumental music, which is not quite right, even though this gives the other churches a kind of “I told you so” victory. Since the church is in the very heart of the western-country music center of the world, it has some of those talented people in their midst, composers and singers alike, such as Amy Grant, the Dogwoods, Brown Banister, Ron Huff, Henry and Hazel Slaughter, Gary Paxton, and Mike Hudson, artists known in Nashville music circles and beyond. Because of this and other reasons the church has a lot of special music, which does not always lend itself to a cappella arrangement, so the elders decided that instruments can be used for these special events. One evening while we were there Amy Grant sang, self-accompanied with guitar, and Carl Ketcherside spoke (no guitar!), both highly talented people. You just haven’t been there until you hear Amy sing My Father’s Eyes, which she composed. By the way, many if not most of the songs Belmont sings are composed by their own people! How is that for uniqueness?

If you should visit Belmont, you would probably have to stand unless you were early, and you would likely sing with the congregation a cappella, but you might also see such symbols of apostasy as a guitar in the hands of some singing group like the Homecomers. If that is “going instrumental,” then Belmont is gone. But you would see more, which is far more significant, such as Spirit-filled people who love each other and who reach out to suffering humanity.

I will leave it to others to argue about their instruments, for I am impressed that they give, through various and spasmodic offerings, upwards of $800,000 a year, much of it to the poor and to missionary outreach. How many churches do you know that give $240,000 a year to benevolence, which was Belmont’s figure for 1979. They also have a substantial missionary program, including a home for missionaries on leave. Some of the sharing groups take on special projects, one of which is the sponsorship of a Laotian family of seven. I met with this family with Ken and Ruth Rideout, recently missionaries to Thailand, who served as interpreters. I found the parents of this young family with an insatiable appetite for Jesus and his teaching.

Belmont reaches out to all segments of society. Don Finto told us of a stripper who was led to visit them. “I take off my clothes for a living,” she said to him, “Can I be a Christian?” He gave his warm smile and told her that if she surrendered her life to Jesus that he would solve that problem for her.

To tell of the various programs of Koinonia would take more space than I have, for they deal in books, records, tapes, mail-outs, in-house programs of various sorts, coffee house counseling. I was there one evening after a day of research at the Disciples of Christ Historical Society library, where I spent a few days following the conference. I watched school kids flock in, mostly blacks, and be entertained by a big, handsome black man, who talked to them about opera, explaining some of the themes in great operas, and then singing parts to them, accompanied by another black at the piano, a teacher at Fisk University. The singer took pains to show them that he was singing opera, not opry. All this impressed me as tall stuff for poor blacks in Nashville’s inner city.

I have not left much room to tell about the conference, but that is intentional, for I will not describe it in detail. The day sessions were conducted at the DCHS library, which was appropriate since that charming edifice basks in history, and they were closed to the public, while the evening sessions, where I spoke, were open. Those attending compared notes, shared mutual problems, and encouraged each other. They worked in part through small groups, praying and opening up to each other.

At Gatlinburg I conducted three seminars, addressed the assembly on the meaning of baptism, and did a “walk on” on Raccoon John Smith for the Sunday a.m. gathering. After the baptism speech they walked down the mountain to the Holiday Inn for several immersions, late Saturday night, by pre-arrangement of course. Mid-way through the baptisms the police came to run them out of the hotel’s heated pool, which was not the best PR for Holiday Inn. I suspect every kid there will think of that whenever they see such a hotel. Someone at the hotel must have blown it, for our people had it all set up with the management well in advance. They returned to the Sheridan and finished the job in a very cold outside pool. Baptism always goes better in the cold, anyhow.

Some there had seen me do a sort of Hal Holbrook (Mark Twain) on our pioneers, and wanted me to do one on this occasion. So with a Prince Albert coat, raccoon hat, and cane I did old Raccoon for them, walking in from the back of the ballroom, causing some to think I was some kook who had walked in off the street, which was not altogether wrong. Since I was the first man, if not the only man, in history who ever united two churches, it seemed appropriate that the angels would accompany me to a visit to 900 college youth atop a mountain who believed in unity so much that they would sing “We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord” at 2 o’clock in the morning. With that entree I told them about my life (“You can call me Raccoon ‘cause I come from the boondocks of southern Kentucky where the raccoons roam”), its triumphs and tragedies, and how me and Barton Stone put believers together in a unity meetin’ in Lexington, Kentucky. The kids from Kentucky especially liked it!

Walter Short of St. Louis let me ride with him to Nashville where I again spent several days in the DCHS library. I am now on Chap. 15 (about 400 pages) of a 20-chapter history of the Stone-Campbell Movement, which I never call the Restoration Movement. Staying with the retired dentist Dr. Fred Hall and wife, the visit was enhanced by getting to talk with Dr. Hall about Tolbert Fanning, David Lipscomb, T. B. Larimore, H. Leo Boles, R. H. Boll, and others who made Nashville famous for Churches of Christ, many of whom Dr. Hall knew personally in his younger years, having been a student in the last year of old Nashville Bible School, while his wife attended the first year of David Lipscomb College.

He shared many interesting tidbits, one being how Tolbert Fanning’s remains were transferred to another cemetery so as to make room for Nashville International Airport, his farm and school having once stood where the big jets now do business.

But it was T. B. Larimore that I wanted the doctor to talk about, for he knew him personally and often heard him preach. There is an aged sister here in Denton who also knew him, and I have pumped her memory as well. Schooled by Tolbert Fanning, T. B. Larimore, in my view, represents “the finest” in Church of Christ history. Dr. Hall confirmed my own findings, that brother Larimore during the days of the Disciples-Church of Christ split, which continued for decades, could never be persuaded to take sides with either faction. He would teach the word and preach the gospel, powerfully, but never take part in the controversies that his brethren chose to divide over.

Dr. Hall remembers this story from Larimore: There was this train engineer that would get terribly upset over a dog that continually came to bark at his big engine. He would stop the train and throw coals of fire at the dog! Then Larimore would say, referring kindly to those who wanted him to preach for or against organs or missionary societies, I don’t have time to stop and throw coals of fire at dogs!

It is tragic that the modern Church of Christ did not follow in the great tradition of T. B. Larimore and his beloved teacher, Tolbert Fanning. We have always been vulnerable to men more ambitious, more party-minded, more manipulating, more bombastic. Still it is a glorious heritage and I am thankful for it. I love to dig in those old hills and mine the gold, learning lessons even from the alloy. --- the Editor