Restoration Review, Vol. 31, No. 2, February 1989

READERS' EXCHANGE

Thanks for continuing to help peel away our prejudices. Every layer that is gone gives us a little more freedom. — Gene Jarrett, Morrow, GA.

I wish I had a Church of Christ like yours to go to, where they do not use the organ but do not make it a test of fellowship.— Kenneth Loeffler, Athens, OH.

(I am confident this is the position of the majority in Churches of Christ. For whatever reason, whether biblical or traditional, they want to be non-instrument, but they do not want to be sectarian about it and dechristianize those who use an instrument. It is only a matter of time until most of our churches will be explicitly non-instrument instead of anti-instrument. — Ed.)

Tribute to Carl Ketcherside

(Since these commendations include me, I am reluctant to publish them, but it is appropriate for those who want to "give flowers while you live" to be allowed to do so, and it is most fitting for folk to be able to say nice things about Carl's work while he is yet in the sunset years of his ministry. We all know that a lot of mean things have been said through the years. These are selected from things that have come my way lately. - Ed.)

Members of the Bering Drive Church of Christ in Houston gave the Marty Award for 1988 to both Carl Ketcherside and Leroy Garret. It read as follows:

The "Marty" Award goes to one who is not quite a martyr, but who has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous brethren during a long ministry of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. To Carl Ketcherside should go honor from a recalcitrant brotherhood for being a frontiersman among Churches of Christ. He has courageously led us in exploring such frontiers as: (1) Open, honest, and non-sectarian examination of the Scriptures; (2) Outreach to the truly lost and truly needy; (3) loving, open fellowship and unity in diversity; and (4)The nature and work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the life of the church. He has been a prophet of Christian unity and rationality for his generation of Churches of Christ. FOR THESE AND OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS HE HAS BEEN ASSAILED BY MANY AND THANKED BY FEW. "For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country." — John 4:44

The work you have done over the past three decades is truly remarkable. Because of you and others like Carl Ketcherside the Churches of Christ are slowly but surely moving away from the sectarian exclusivism that has characterized them throughout most of this century. The congregations that cling to that exclusivism are either dead or dying. — Myer Phillips, Irving, TX

(I thought it especially appropriate to pass this along since this man wrote his Ph.D. thesis at Baylor on the history of exclusivism in Churches of Christ, in which he gave extended treatment to the longtime unity efforts of two editors, Carl Ketcherside and Leroy Garrett. —Ed.)

I have been a member of the church for 40 years. The church has needed men like you, Cecil Hook, and Carl Ketcherside. We should have listened to you more. — C. L. Thompson, Rockford, IL

I want to go on record today as paying tribute to Carl Ketcherside and Leroy Garrett for the great work they have done and for the fruit it has borne among us in changed attitudes and amore open and candid view of the whole church of Jesus Christ. I don't believe there is anyone in this century who his contributed more to the destruction of sectarianism and the development of a scriptural view of the church. They will be recognized by our future historians; it would be good for us to acknowledge their good work now, while they are living. let us give honor to whom honor is due. It is becoming fashionable today to say the things they were abused for saying 25 years ago. What bothers me somewhat is that the most recent converts to unity want to act as though they are discovering these great truths when they know what Carl and Leroy have been saying for years. It is still not safe, I suppose, to risk being identified with yesterday's "heretics." —Thomas A. Langford, professor and dean at Texas Tech and an elder in the Quaker Ave. Church of Christ, Lubbock, in an address to leaders of non-class Churches of Christ and others in 1988.)

You might be encouraged (not flattered) to know that when I gave my large library to a congregation I kept only my favorite commentaries, a few key reference books, and your writings along with Carl Ketcherside's. I only tell you this to allow you some flowers while you live and to remind you of the positive influence that has been made on at least one truth seeking mind, Steven Clark Goad, and others I suspect, with your literary contribution to the cause of Jesus and Christian unity. Thanks for helping me out of the stupefying sectarianism and choking legalism in which I was reared. I felt empathy pain for Carl in reading of the loss of his dear wife. What a blessing he and she were as a team! I thank God for Carl and Nell as I do for you and Ouida.— Steven Clark Goad, Mesa, AZ., who for years wrote brilliant and provocative articles for several Church of Christ papers, especially the Firm Foundation.